No More Learning

That is not an unworthy theme;
and Lucan evidently felt the necessity for development in epic. But he
made the mistake, characteristically Roman, of thinking history more
real than legend; and, trying to lead epic in this direction,
supernatural machinery would inevitably go too. That, perhaps, was
fortunate, for it enabled Lucan safely to introduce one of his great and
memorable lines:

Jupiter est quodcunque vides, quodcunque moveris;[12]

which would certainly explode any supernatural machinery that could be
invented. The _Pharsalia_ could not be anything more than an interesting
but unsuccessful attempt; it was not on these lines that epic poetry was
to develop. Lucan died at an age when most poets have done nothing very
remarkable; that he already had achieved a poem like the _Pharsalia_,
would make us think he might have gone to incredible heights, were it
not that the mistake of the _Pharsalia_ seems to belong incurably to his
temperament.

Lucan's determined stoicism may, philosophically, be more consistent
than the dubious stoicism of Virgil. But Virgil knew that, in epic,
supernatural imagination is better than consistency. It was an important
step when he made Jupiter, though a personal god, a power to which no
limits are assigned; when he also made the other divinities but shadows,
or, at most, functions, of Jupiter. This answers to his conviction that
spirit universally and singly pervades matter; but, what is more, it
answers to the needs of epic development. When we come to Tasso and
Camoens, we seem to have gone backward in this respect; we seem to come
upon poetry in which supernatural machinery is in a state of chronic
insubordination. But that, too, was perhaps necessary. In comparison
with the _Aeneid, Gerusalemme Liberata_ and _Os Lusiadas_ lack
intellectual control and spiritual depth; but in comparison with the
Roman, the two modern poems thrill with a new passion of life, a new
wine of life, heady, as it seems, with new significance--a significance
as yet only felt, not understood. Both Tasso and Camoens clearly join on
to the main epic tradition: Tasso derives chiefly from the _Aeneid_ and
the _Iliad_, Camoens from the _Aeneid_ and the _Odyssey_. Tasso is
perhaps more Virgilian than Camoens; the plastic power of his
imagination is more assured. But the advantage Camoens has over Tasso
seems to repeat the advantage Homer has over Virgil; the ostensible
subject of the _Lusiads_ glows with the truth of experience.
But the
real subject is behind these splendid voyagings, just as the real
subject of Tasso is behind the battles of Christian and Saracen; and in
both poets the inmost theme is broadly the same. It is the consciousness
of modern Europe. _Jerusalem Delivered_ and the _Lusiads_ are drenched
with the spirit of the Renaissance; and that is chiefly responsible for
their lovely poetry. But they reach out towards the new Europe that was
then just beginning. Europe making common cause against the peoples that
are not Europe; Europe carrying her domination round the world--is that
what Tasso and Camoens ultimately mean? It would be too hard and too
narrow a matter by itself to make these poems what they are. No; it is
not the action of Europe, but the spirit of European consciousness, that
gave Tasso and Camoens their deepest inspiration. But what European
consciousness really is, these poets rather vaguely suggest than master
into clear and irresistible expression, into the supreme symbolism of
perfectly adequate art. They still took European consciousness as an
affair of geography and race rather than simply as a triumphant stage in
the general progress of man's knowledge of himself. Their time imposed a
duty on them; that they clearly understood. But they did not clearly
understand what the duty was; partly, no doubt, because they were both
strongly influenced by mediaeval religion. And so it is atmosphere, in
Tasso and Camoens, that counts much more than substance; both poets seem
perpetually thrilled by something they cannot express--the _non so che_
of Tasso. And what chiefly gives this sense of quivering, uncertain
significance to their poetry is the increase of freedom and decrease of
control in the supernatural. Supernaturalism was emphasized, because
they instinctively felt that this was the means epic poetry must use to
accomplish its new duties; it was disorderly, because they did not quite
know what use these duties required. Tasso and Camoens, for all the
splendour and loveliness of their work, leave epic poetry, as it were,
consciously dissatisfied--knowing that its future must achieve some
significance larger and deeper than anything it had yet done, and
knowing that this must be done somehow through imagined supernaturalism.
It waited nearly a hundred years for the poet who understood exactly
what was to be done and exactly how to do it.