The Artist of the Monostich Again
— On a second visit to the workshop, in company with the Censor, I found the Artist of the Monostich engaged in some studious work of cutting and polishing, — such as befitted this lapidary of the Muses. The
The Censor, by way of engaging the Artist in conversation, and referring to previously expressed opinions, asked to what extent he thought it possible to reduce an epic, or, to employ a phrase borrowed from a far different and a more mechanical industry, how many “ pounds pressure ” a composition of this order could sustain. Why not, for instance, the reduction of the Iliad ?
Now, the Artist, strange as it may seem, had been a soldier, before cultivating the gentle arts of peace in the form of his present novel avocation. To say that the Artist detected a lurking irony in the Censor’s “ for instance ” would be to hazard no unsafe venture of opinion. It was patent to one observer, at least, that a gray glint shone forth in the Artist’s eye. He replied that had Mount Athos, as proposed, been cut in the likeness of the human countenance (a work of needless magnitude, perhaps), no upstart engineer would have been so rash as to attempt reducing the monolith to a cameo relief ! There were, likewise, works of the human brain which, to use the plea of Shakespeare’s early editors, had had their “triall alreadie ” and had “stood out all appeales.”
The Miltonic epic was then cited. Whereupon the Artist observed, not so irrelevantly as at first seemed, that Swedenborg, a seer who at times approaches the poet, had not done so badly in compressing the Miltonic epic : witness that spirited polemic scene where two sages are still disputing, in the other world, some question that vexed them to sore disagreement in this ; witness the famous description (so nearly filling the requisitions of a single heroic line) :
words.”
While the Censor and the Artist were following up some line of thought suggested by this new-found poem, I allowed my eyes to rove about the studio ; and in their journey my attention was arrested by the work upon which the Artist was bent when we entered. Involuntarily I exclaimed, “ Why, here are several epics in parvo ! By your leave ” — and I read aloud, in my zeal to convince the Censor of his error in baiting the Artist, the following concentrated verses descriptive of scenes too well known to one who was a soldier before he was an artist.