LOn Thursday, October 19, 2023 at 4:36:42 PM UTC+1, Dennis wrote:
On Thursday, October 19, 2023 at 3:55:39 PM UTC+1, Dennis wrote:
Sublime Shakespeare Outrageous Oxford
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Colin Burrow
Imitating Authors
...On the Sublime begins Ch.2 with the question which is so foundational to the rhetorical tradition: whether art (techne) or nature produces the sublime style. Longinus’s answer to that question is to emphasize the role played by natural power: he
argues that hypsos or sublimity requires an extreme form of natural talent, which he denotes by the word megalophue (2.1), or greatness of nature, and which requires both art and nature.
(Snip)
Burrow (con’t)
When Longinus moves on to discuss imitatio it is as though he is deliberately seeking to remove from it all traces of the traditionally ‘Greek’’ method of teaching through precepts. He begins with a light allusion to the metaphor of the path:
one road (hodos) to the sublime, he says, is imitation and emulation (mimesis Kai zelosis, Sublime,13.2). That road leads, not to Rome (...) but to the inspired centre of Greek religion, the Pythian Oracle at Delphi. It is possible to be inspired by an
earlier author, Longinus declares, as the Pythian princess ‘becomes impregnated with the divine power and is at one inspired to utter oracles; so, too, from the natural genius of those old writers (apo tes ton archaion megalophuias) there flows into
the hearts of their admirers as it were an emanation from those holy mouths’ (Sublime, 13.2).
This priestly description of imitation as a kind of inspired birth develops Longinus’s earlier assertion that the true sublime elevates its readers and makes them believe that they themselves had created it (...). (Sublime, 13.2) the keyword here
is gennesasa: the creation of the sublime is a kind of birth, which spreads by inspiration from author to reader, and which is *implicitly ungovernable by principle or rule*.
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On Shakespeare. 1630
BY JOHN MILTON
What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,
The labor of an age in pilèd stones,
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?
Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame,
What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a live-long monument.
For whilst to th’ shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
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Haterius ‘Full of the Ben Jonson, on Shakespeare (~Timber)
‘I remember, the Players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing, (whatsoever he penn’d) hee never blotted out line. My answer hath beene, Would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech. I
had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who choose that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted. And to justifie mine owne candor, (for I lov’d the man, and doe honour his memory (on this side Idolatry) as much as
any.) Hee was (indeed) honest, and of an open, and free nature: had an excellent Phantsie; brave notions, and gentle expressions: wherein hee flow’d with that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should be stop’d: Sufflaminandus erat; as
Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his owne power; would the rule of it had beene so too. Many times hee fell into those things, could not escape laughter: As when hee said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him; Caesar, thou dost me wrong.
Hee replyed: Caesar did never wrong, but with just cause: and such like; which were ridiculous. But hee redeemed his vices, with his vertues. There was ever more in him to be praysed, then to be pardoned.’[1]
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Haterius - Full of the God
flow'd with that facility - Shakespeare "Profluens/Superfluens"
Some Myths and Anomalies in the Study of Roman Sexuality
James L Butrica, PhD
...Next we turn to Haterius himself, and what Seneca was trying to convey about him; this requires that we put him into two contexts, the historical and the literary.
By combining notices in the historian Tacitus (who puts his death in the year that we call 26 CE) and Jerome (who reports from Eusebius that he was nearly ninety at the time) we can put Haterius' birth in the range of 64-62 BCE; for a part of 5 BCE
he served as one of Rome's two chief magistrates, having been appointed a consul suffectus ("substitute consul") by Augustus. His reputation was well established in his own day but (as Tacitus noted) did not last long beyond it. Seneca the Younger (
nephew of Seneca the Elder) discusses him briefly at Epistule morales 40.10. The text is unfortunately corrupt, but Seneca was clearly contrasting two very different orators, Publius Vinicius, who plucked his words one by one as if dictating rather than
talking, and Haterius, whose style he characterizes as cursus, or "running"; Seneca says that he wants a "sane man" to have nothing to do with Haterius' manner, for he "never hesitated, never left off, would begin only once, would stop only once." That
impetuous, unhesitant forward rush was noticed by the emperor Augustus, who is quoted approvingly by Seneca the Elder as saying that Haterius noster sufflaminandus est, "Our friend Haterius needs to have a brake applied." In his obituary notice at Annals
4.61, Tacitus says that Haterius impetu magis quam cura uigebat, that is, excelled in his forward drive - IMPETUS is here a synonym of cursus - rather than any careful attention to detail, and sums up his distinctive characteristic as canorum illud et
PROFLUENS, "that sonorousness and volubility," where PROFLUENS (lit. "flowing forth") again suggests his sheer momentum. Seneca the Elder, quoting him at Controversiae 1.6.12, likewise refers to "the usual cursus of his oratory" (quo solebat cursu
orationis). At Suasoriae 3.7, Seneca relates an anecdote in which Haterius is one of several orators described by Gallio as Plena deo, "full of the god" (but with a feminine form of the adjective "full," generally taken as an allusion to Virgil's
description of the inspired Sybil of Cumae in Book 6 of his Aeneid, though Virgil does not use the actual phrase). Thus, even without the specific reference in Seneca the Elder that is being discusses here, an image emerges of an orator easily carried
away and lacking a sense of just when to stop.
Note - Seneca says he did not so much currere "run" as decurrere "run downward".
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Continence:
The concept of 'proper limits' is bound up with the classical ideal of decorum (propriety in manners and conduct). Quintilian writes that ‘'A good man (vir bonus) will see that everything he says is consistent with his dignity and the
respectability of his character (dignitate ac verecundia); for we pay too dear for the laugh we raise if it is at the cost of our own integrity
(probitatis)'
Jonson paraphrases this passage at the close of his epigram
"To My Book” (probitas – integrity,honesty, uprightness):
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Holding/Restraining/Ruling Shakespeare's Quill:
From To the Deceased Author of these Poems (William Cartwright)
by Jasper Mayne
...And as thy Wit was like a Spring, so all
The soft streams of it we may Chrystall call:
No cloud of Fancie, no mysterious stroke,
No Verse like those which antient Sybils spoke;
No Oracle of Language, to amaze
The Reader with a dark, or Midnight Phrase,
Stands in thy Writings, which are all pure Day,
A cleer, bright Sunchine, and the mist away.
That which Thou wrot'st was sense, and that sense good,
Things not first written, and then understood:
Or if sometimes thy Fancy soar'd so high
As to seem lost to the unlearned Eye,
'Twas but like generous Falcons, when high flown,
Which mount to make the Quarrey more their own.
For thou to Nature had'st joyn'd Art, and skill.
In Thee Ben Johnson still HELD SHAKESPEARE'S QUILL:
A QUILL, RUL'D by sharp Judgement, and such Laws,
As a well studied Mind, and Reason draws.
Thy Lamp was cherish'd with suppolied of Oyle,
Fetch'd from the Romane and the Graecian soyle.
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(Billy Budd/Beauty - noble foundling)
Vere/Truth
'Yes, Billy Budd was a foundling, a presumable by-blow, and, evidently, no ignoble one. Noble descent was as evident in him as in a blood horse.' (Melville, _Billy Budd_)
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Melvillian Sublime:
1850: "Hawthorne and His Mosses" by Herman Melville
"Would that all excellent BOOKS were FOUNDLINGS, without father or
mother, that so it might be we could glorify them, without including
their ostensible authors."
“I know not what would be the right name to put on the title-page
of an excellent book, but this I feel, that the names of all fine
authors are fictitious ones, far more than that of Junius,-- simply standing, as they do, for the mystical, ever-eluding SPIRIT of all
BEAUTY, which ubiquitously possesses men of genius. Purely imaginative
as this fancy may appear, it nevertheless seems to receive some
warranty from the fact, that on a personal interview no great author
has ever come up to the idea of his reader. But that dust of which our bodies are composed, how can it fitly express the nobler intelligences among us?”
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Phoenix and the Turtle - sublime poetry
Truth and Beauty buried be
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Melville’s Sublime uneventfulness. Toward a phenomenology of the Sublime – Ruud Welten
The sublime is something strange, beyond our imagination, uncanny even. The term is of great importance to Herman Melville. Moby Dick, the whale, is sublime because of its terrifying existence. This chapter investigates the consequences of a
phenomenology of the sublime as a prime condition for consciousness itself. Sublimity is not a property of objects, but of subjective experience alone. Philosophic language and poetic language presume that subjectivity is overwhelmed by the experience of
the sublime. As one tries to describe, it radically exceeds its parameters.
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Catherine Maxwell, Female Sublime.
What this poem [Milton's sonnet on Shakespeare] seems to be rehearsing is the sublime. Shakespeare’s admirers, stupefied by the effect of his language to ‘wonder and astonishment’, are like those wrought upon by a sublime spectacle.
Astonishment says Burke is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree. Shakespeare’s verse is a pleasurable petrification, a stimulating paralysis. Readers, the poem suggests, remain arrested at that stage of the sublime in which they are
exhilarated – dizzy and reeling under the bombardment of its mixed images and multiple dislocations. However, Milton’s poem reproduces this scene of petrification in order to break out of it. The mental spin induced by lines 13-14 mimes the dizzying
effect produced by Shakespeare’s verse, *but the cool control and detachment with which Milton describes the Sahekspearian sublime suggests assimilation – the poet has absorbed it and has moved beyond it to a new creativity*. Moreover, the poem is
itself monumentalising and thus substitutive – it saves the potentially stricken Milton from the paralysis of perpetual witness by offering itself as epitaph. Yet this is no simple act of submission.
* An example itself of highly ingenious ‘conceiving’, the poem not only reproduces the effect of Shakespeare’s language but it rivals it.* By writing in a sublime manner about the way the sublime arrests writing, and by appropriating the
precursor as ‘my Shakespeare’, the poem masters the experience that might otherwise leave the imagination subject. p.50
(snip)
The key figures and ideas which Milton uses in this poem to express the power of a sublime precursor and the effects of his legacy are ones which will recur in different form in Shelley’s poetry. Paralysis, petrification, impress or inscription are
some of the means by which we will recognize the disfigurative mark of the sublime, while defensive evasion through forms of proxy or shielding shows us ways of protecting oneself against total constriction.
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Oxford/Shakespeare/Comus (ungodly sublime)
Milton, John: Comus
118: COMUS enters, with a charming-rod in one hand, his glass in the
119: other: with him a rout of monsters, headed like sundry sorts of
120: wild
121: beasts, but otherwise like men and women, their apparel
122: glistering.
123: They come in making a riotous and unruly noise, with torches in
124: their hands.
125:
126:
127: COMUS. The star that bids the shepherd fold
128: Now the top of heaven doth hold;
129: And the gilded car of day
130: His glowing axle doth allay
131: In the steep Atlantic stream;
132: And the slope sun his upward beam
133: Shoots against the dusky pole,
134: Pacing toward the other goal
135: Of his chamber in the east.
136: Meanwhile, welcome joy and feast,
137: Midnight shout and revelry,
138: Tipsy dance and jollity.
139: Braid your locks with rosy twine,
140: Dropping odours, dropping wine.
141: Rigour now is gone to bed;
142: And Advice with scrupulous head,
143: Strict Age, and sour Severity,
144: With their grave saws, in slumber lie.
145: We, that are of purer fire,
146: Imitate the starry quire,
147: Who, in their nightly watchful spheres,
148: Lead in swift round the months and years.
149: The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove,
150: Now to the moon in wavering morrice move;
151: And on the tawny sands and shelves
152: Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves.
153: By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,
154: The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim,
155: Their merry wakes and pastimes keep:
156: What hath night to do with sleep?
157: Night hath better sweets to prove;
158: Venus now wakes, and wakens Love.
159: Come, let us our rights begin;
160: 'T is only daylight that makes sin,
161: Which these dun shades will ne'er report.
162: Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport,
163: Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame
164: Of midnight torches burns! mysterious dame,
165: That ne'er art called but when the dragon womb
166: Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom,
167: And makes one blot of all the air!
168: Stay thy cloudy ebon chair,
169: Wherein thou ridest with Hecat', and befriend
170: Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end
171: Of all thy dues be done, and none left out,
172: Ere the blabbing eastern scout,
173: The nice Morn on the Indian steep,
174: From her cabined loop-hole peep,
175: And to the tell-tale Sun descry
176: Our concealed solemnity.
178: In a LIGHT FANTASTIC round.
179:
180: The Measure.
181:
182: Break off, break off! I feel the different pace
183: Of some chaste footing near about this ground.
184: Run to your shrouds within these brakes and trees;
185: Our number may affright. Some virgin sure
186: (For so I can distinguish by mine art)
187: Benighted in these woods! Now to my charms,
188: And to my wily trains: I shall ere long
189: Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed
190: About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl
191: My dazzling spells into the spongy air,
192: Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion,
193: And give it false presentments, lest the place
194: And my quaint habits breed astonishment,
195: And put the damsel to suspicious flight;
196: Which must not be, for that's against my course.
197: I, under fair pretence of friendly ends,
198: And well-placed words of glozing courtesy,
199: Baited with reasons not unplausible,
200: Wind me into the easy-hearted man,
201: And hug him into snares. When once her eye
202: Hath met the virtue of this magic dust,
203: I shall appear some harmless villager
204: Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear.
205: But here she comes; I fairly step aside,
206: And hearken, if I may her business hear.
207:
208: The LADY enters.
209:
210: LADY. This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,
211: My best guide now. Methought it was the sound
212: Of riot and ill-managed merriment,
213: Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe
214: Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds,
215: When, for their teeming flocks and granges full,
216: In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan,
217: And thank the gods amiss. I should be loth
218: To meet the rudeness and swilled insolence
219: Of such late wassailers; yet, oh! where else
220: Shall I inform my unacquainted feet
221: In the blind mazes of this tangled wood?
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From the Ode to Oxford in John Southern’s Pandora, The Music of the Beauty of his Mistress Diana.(1584)
Epode
No, no, the high singer is he
Alone that in the end must be
Made proud with a garland like this,
And not every riming novice
That writes with small wit and much pain,
And the (God’s know) idiot in vain,
For it’s not the way to Parnasse,
Nor it will neither come to pass
If it be not in some wise fiction
And of an INGENIOUS INVENTION,
And INFANTED with PLEASANT TRAVAIL,
For it alone must win the laurel,
And only the poet well born
Must be he that goes to Parnassus,
And not these companies of asses
That have brought verse almost to scorn.
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From a Context-bound to an Essentializing Conception: A Study of Longinus’s Treatise On the Sublime
AMRITA BHATTACHARYYA
Glorifying Bourgeois Hero: Megalophrosyn: A Marker of Movement?
The dual transcendence-structure of sublime is to a large extent, determines the attitude toward the great social revolution of modernity. The historical discourse of sublimity witnesses a significant shifting point from the decline of the feudal
nobility to the emergence of a middle class. This shift denotes a shift from a culture promoting aristocratic-warrior ethos to another reflecting bourgeois-mercantile values. The intricate connection with affect and the possibilities for a secularized
existence enable the experience of the sublime to speak about an evolving democratizing society. Doran views, “In effect what thinkers such as Boileau, Burke and Kant achieve through the sublime is a *bourgeois appropriation of aristocratic
subjectivity (the heroic cast of mind)*.” (The Theory of Sublime 20)
Aristotle mentions the concept of “megalopsuchos”, the man of great soul as a key element in the Book IV, section 3 of Nichomachean Ethics. Longinus used “megethos” (grandeur) as synonymous with hypsous. Megalo encompasses both the talent or
ability of the writer and his or her moral superiority (nobility of mind). Curtius in European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages views: “the Greeks did not know the concept of the creative imagination. They had no word for it. What the poet produced
was a fabrication. Aristotle praises Homer for having taught poets ‘to lie properly’. For him, as we know, poetry was mimesis... But is Aristotle really the last word of antique literary criticism? Fortunately, we have the treatise On the Sublime.”
(398)
The concept of megalophrosyn thus marks a movement, a shift from the context-based concept of a hero to the essentializing concept of a hero. In “The Morality of the Sublime: To John Dennis”, Jeffrey Barnouw shows that through the notion of
megalophrosyn, Longinus did not indicate anything other-worldly; rather, the ideas associated with ‘greatness in mind’ are interrelated with political oratory and “touches the concerns of reputation and interest in civic life” (“The Morality of
the Sublime: To John Dennis” 32). Longinus’ treatise unfolds a tension between the mystical-religious and the secular poetic.
Doran exposes the explicit relationship between the social change/revolution occurred from the Fronde of 1650 – 1653 (French civil war paving the way for concomitant destruction of the feudal order) to the French Revolution (1789-99) which
consolidated the power of the bourgeois as the dominant social class; and, the peak period holding interest in the theory of sublimity from Boileau’s translation of 1674 to Kant’s third critique published in 1790 (Doran 20). Boileau extols the heroic
nature of Cassius Longinus, the 3rd century philosopher and critic. He associates the qualities of the 17th century figure of the honnete homme (a man possessing high sensibility, refinement, and probity) with the mental elevation of Longinus. It might
sound appropriate if we correlate this term with an evolving social category (by and large associated with the middle class, though not necessarily) with a progressing mental disposition.
Ekstasis (ecstasy), Ekplexis (astonishment, amazement) and Thaumasion (wonder, awe): Sublime in Experiencing the Shift from Aesthetic to Cultural
The history associated with the word thaumazein bears much significance in this context. Since Aristotle, this word bears a sense closer to the verb “to wonder”. Aristotle had used this verb “to wonder” (thaumazien) in Metaphysics, to describe
the starting point of philosophy: “For from wonder (thaumazein) men, both now and at the first, began to philosophize, having felt astonishment (thaumazein) at things which were more obvious, indeed, amongst those that were doubtful” (982b). Socrates
dictum in Plato’s Theaetetus also echoes the same: “This is an experience which is characteristic of a philosopher, this wondering (thaumazein): this is where philosophy begins and nowhere else” (155d). Later Edmund Burke cited this idea as “
confused images” (images that excite by their lack of clarity) in his Enquiry to describe Milton’s portrayal of Satan in Paradise Lost as being productive of the sublime.
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Republican Milton on Shakespeare:
And so sepulchred in such pomp doth lie
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die ———————————
APOLLO from his SHRINE/ Can no more divine,/
With hollow shreik the steep of DELPHOS leaving. - Milton
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King's Book/King's Shrine
Shakespeare's Book/Oxford's Shrine
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Milton, Eikonoklastes
...And here may be well observed the loose and negligent
curiosity of those, who took upon them to adorn the setting out of
this book; for though the picture set in front would martyr him and
saint him to befool the people, yet the Latin motto in the end, which
they understand not, leaves him, as it were, a politic contriver to
bring about that interest, by fair and plausible words, which the
force of arms denied him. But quaint emblems and devices, begged from
the old pageantry of some twelfthnight's entertainment at Whitehall,
will do but ill to make a saint or martyr: and if the people resolve
to take him sainted at the canonizing, I shall suspect their calendar
more than the Gregorian. In one thing I must commend the openness, who
gave the title to the is book, Eikon Basilike, that is to say, the
King's Image; and by the SHRINE he dresses out for him, certainly
would have the people come and worship him. For which reason this
answer is entitled, Eikonoklastes, the famous surname of many Greek emperors, who, in their zeal to the command of God, after long
tradition of idolatry in the church, took courage and broke all superstitious images to pieces.
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Performing early modern trauma from Shakespeare to Milton
By Thomas Page Anderson
In the "Preface" to Eikonoklastes, Milton establishes his strategy to
disarm the book in a disingenuous offer of praise. He "commends" the
King's "op'ness" in giving the title of The King's Image to the book.
And he complements as well the appearance of the project: "by the
SHRINE he dresses out for him, certainly would have the people come
and worship him" (EK, p.68). Milton's reference to the shrine echoes Protestant writings that worked to debunk notions of the sacred altar central to the Catholic sacraments. By acknowledging the altar-like
status of the text, Milton associates the book's appeal to its
putative efficacy. However, he qualifies the king's SHRINE by
suggesting that its altar-like status is the product of effective
staging or "dress[ing] out."
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I sing the starry axis and the singing hosts in the sky, *and of the
gods suddenly destroyed in their own SHRINES*. -- Milton, 1629
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Billy Budd - Melville
Chapter 4
In this matter of writing, resolve as one may to keep to the main road,
some by-paths have an enticement not readily to be withstood. I am going
to err into such a by-path. If the reader will keep me company I shall
be glad. At the least we can promise ourselves that pleasure which is
wickedly said to be in sinning, for a literary sin the divergence will
be.
Very likely it is no new remark that the inventions of our time have at
last brought about a change in sea-warfare in degree corresponding to
the revolution in all warfare effected by the original introduction from
China into Europe of gunpowder. The first European fire-arm, a clumsy contrivance, was, as is well known, scouted by no few of the knights as
a base implement, good enough peradventure for weavers too craven to
stand up crossing steel with steel in frank fight. But as ashore,
knightly valor, tho' shorn of its blazonry, did not cease with the
knights, neither on the seas, though nowadays in encounters there a
certain kind of displayed gallantry be fallen out of date as hardly
applicable under changed circumstances, did the nobler qualities of such
naval magnates as Don John of Austria, Doria, Van Tromp, Jean Bart, the
long line of British Admirals and the American Decaturs of 1812 become
obsolete with their wooden walls.
Nevertheless, to anybody who can hold the Present at its worth without
being inappreciative of the Past, it may be forgiven, if to such an one
the solitary old hulk at Portsmouth, Nelson's Victory, seems to float
there, not alone as the decaying monument of a fame incorruptible, but
also as a poetic reproach, softened by its picturesqueness, to the
Monitors and yet mightier hulls of the European ironclads. And this not altogether because such craft are unsightly, unavoidably lacking the
symmetry and grand lines of the old battle-ships, but equally for other reasons.
There are some, perhaps, who while not altogether inaccessible to that
poetic reproach just alluded to, may yet on behalf of the new order, be disposed to parry it; and this to the extent of iconoclasm, if need be.
For example, prompted by the sight of the star inserted in the Victory's quarter-deck designating the spot where the Great Sailor fell, these
martial utilitarians may suggest considerations implying that Nelson's
ornate publication of his person in battle was not only unnecessary, but
not military, nay, savored of foolhardiness and vanity. They may add,
too, that at Trafalgar it was in effect nothing less than a challenge to
death; and death came; and that but for his bravado the victorious
Admiral might possibly have survived the battle; and so, instead of
having his sagacious dying injunctions overruled by his immediate
successor in command, he himself, when the contest was decided, might
have brought his shattered fleet to anchor, a proceeding which might
have averted the deplorable loss of life by shipwreck in the elemental
tempest that followed the martial one.
Well, should we set aside the more disputable point whether for various
reasons it was possible to anchor the fleet, then plausibly enough the Benthamites of war may urge the above. But the might-have-been is but
boggy ground to build on. And, certainly, in foresight as to the larger
issue of an encounter, and anxious preparations for it--buoying the
deadly way and mapping it out, as at Copenhagen--few commanders have
been so painstakingly circumspect as this same reckless declarer of his
person in fight.
Personal prudence even when dictated by quite other than selfish
considerations surely is no special virtue in a military man; while an excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest
sense of duty, is the first. If the name Wellington is not so much of a
trumpet to the blood as the simpler name Nelson, the reason for this may perhaps be inferred from the above. Alfred in his funeral ode on the
victor of Waterloo ventures not to call him the greatest soldier of all
time, tho' in the same ode he invokes Nelson as "the greatest sailor
since our world began."
At Trafalgar, Nelson, on the brink of opening the fight, sat down and
wrote his last brief will and testament. If under the presentiment of
the most magnificent of all victories to be crowned by his own glorious
death, a sort of priestly motive led him to dress his person in the
jewelled vouchers of his own shining deeds; if thus to have adorned
himself for the altar and the sacrifice were indeed vainglory, then
affectation and fustian is each more heroic line in the great epics and
dramas, since in such lines the poet but embodies in verse those
exaltations of sentiment that a nature like Nelson, the opportunity
being given, vitalizes into acts.
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