•^'j Jt."^ %0 •i?+< ^•^ ■s*- m ^^^^ Qass Pff< TS I Book //? /^ r- T j^ By bequest o^ '^ ^"^ William Lukens Shoemaker 'w^mmMmmu %.mh m^ki i^.tj^ -i^fikVi^ THE POETICAL LITERATURE PAST HALF-CENTUEY PRINTED BY W. BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EniNBURGH. SKETCHES POETICAL LITERATURE PAST HALF-CENTUEY D. M. MOIE W THIRD EDITION WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCLVI TK5 81 C3AfL W. L. Shoemaker 7 S '06 PREFACE The Directors of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution having resolved that their Lectures for the Session 1850-51 should be devoted to a review of the Social, Literary, and Scientific History of the Half-Century then just terminat- ing, the Author was requested to undertake the six which, by their Syllabus, were to be appro- priated to the Poetical Literature of the period. His first impression certainly was to decline the honour — ^for most assuredly he held it to be such, seeing the names with which his own was to be brought into conjunction — partly on private grounds, and more especially from a conviction of his inadequacy to do justice to the subject ; nor were his scruples for some time overcome by those on whose judgment he has been accustomed to place reliance. Vr PKEPACE. In addressing himself to his subject-matter, the first prominent difficulty was the disposal of materials so comprehensive into such sections as might enable him to bring the whole, as it were, in a bird's-eye view, within the prescribed limits ; thus giving at least something like a due share of consideration to each. The comparative import- ance of the long line of celebrated men who were to be submitted to critical remark, was the next source of perplexity ; nor was the delicacy or difficulty of this task lessened from the circum- stance of the Author having been honoured by the friendship of several of the illustrious departed, as well as of not a few of the illustrious living, whose works were necessarily to form the main themes of comment. The likelihood of accomplishing this, without occasioning disappointment or provoking displea- sure in some quarters, the Author soon felt com- pelled to make up his mind to, as an impossibility. But be this misfortune to whatever extent it may, he can unhesitatingly affirm, that in his critical judgments — which of course can go for no more than they are worth — ^he has approached his task solely and exclusively in a literary point of view ; PREFACE. and, in as far as he himself can judge, with that impartiality and candour with which he would have viewed it had the writers to be examined belonged to the era of Queen Elizabeth or of Queen Anne. That many of his critical conclu- sions may be erroneous, or founded on insufficient data, is very probable ; but that is quite another matter. Nor is he at all wedded to these — more especially as applicable to our more recent poets — in any degree incompatible with whatever change of opinion he may hereafter deem to be just and fair. With regard to the style and tone of the following pages, it may be as well to say, that they are scarcely such as their Author would have adopted had their contents been intended solely for the closet ; but were simply preferred as those most likely to conduce to effectiveness in delivery before a very large popular audience. Nor in this, so far, was he disappointed ; for the measure of their acceptance proved to be very much beyond his most sanguine expectations, and has indeed been a main reason for committing them to the press ; more especially as, from the limited time allowed for delivery, a considerable portion of eacli Lecture was necessarily omitted, as well as many of the extracts, which had been selected for illustrations and proofs of particular positions. To the mighty minds whose productions passed in review before him, the Author has ever been accustomed to look up with love and veneration — feelings which, however unceremoniously he may occasionally seem to have presumed to dis- cuss the merits of those productions, remain unabated and unchanged. As the temporary occupant of a critical chair, he hesitated not to speak out his opinions freely and fearlessly ; but he trusts without one iota of personal prejudice, or the slightest leaning towards asperity. In- deed this could not well be ; as not a single name has been adverted to, throughout, which did not suggest its claims to attention by some high or peculiar excellence. CONTENTS LECTURE I. Page State of Poetical Literature at the commencement of the present century, — The long mastery of the school of Dryden and Pope ultimately modified by Thomson, Goldsmith, Cowper, and Burns. — The tem- porary triumphs of Hayley, Darwin, and the Delia Cruscans. — Literary tastes influenced by social changes. — Matthew Gregory Lewis, and the supernatural school ; its characteristics and pecu- liarities. — Kirke White and James Grahame; specimens of the manner of the latter in Love of Country and The Covenanters. — The satirical and humorous poetry of Canning, Frei-e, Gififord, Mathias, and Geoige Colman the younger. — Sketches of Bloomfield and Ley- den. — Specimen from the first. The Blind Boy ,- from the second. Apostrophe to Aureliair—Yem&lei writers of the period : Charlotte Smith, Amelia Opie (specimen, Forget-me-Not), Mrs Hunter, Mrs Grant, and Mrs Tiglie. — Translators and Poets of the period less commonly known ; general estimate of their merits. — The Rev. George Crabbe ; his rise and progress ; his originality. — Specimens in Qipsy's Tent and Lyrical Tales. — Samuel Rogers and Lisle Bowles ; the high artistic excellencies of the former : examples of his manner. — Controversy regarding the invariable principles of poetry between Campbell, Bowles, and Byron, . . . 1 LECTUEE 11. The origin, progress, and tenets of the Lake School. — S. T. Coleridge, Robert Southey, Lloyd and Lovell.— The Lyrical Ballads.— Willism Wordsworth as a reformer of our poetry ; his peculiar views ; his faults and excellencies : extract from Goody Blake and Harry Gill; CONTENTS. Page Elegiac Poems, Justin Martyr, Poems from Eastern Sources, The Suppliant.— T\xom3i& Pringle, John Clare, Bernard Barton, Thomas Haynes Bayley, Alaric A. "Watts.— Specimen , Cftt7d &Zot«n£r Bufebfes. — T. K. Hervey. — Rev. Charles "Wolfe. — The Squire's Few, by Jane Taylor. — Various other poets of the period, . . . 259 LECTUEE VI. PART SECOND Ballad-historic poetrj'. — J. G. Lockhart : Spanish ballads : his Napoleon. — T. B. Macaulay ; Lays of Ancient Rome, Lake Regillus. — Profes- sor Aji»un ; Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, Battle of KilUecrankie. — Mrs Stuart Menteath, Mrs Ogil\"y, Miss Agnes Strickland. — Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer: his poems and translations. — Rev. John Moultrie; stanzas, "3/y Scottish Lassie," — Scottish and Irish poets of the period. — Dirge by Mrs Downing. — The Metaphysic- romantic school.— Alfred Tennyson ; Ballads, Princess, and In Memoriam.— Specimens, Oriana and Stanzas. — R. M. Milnes and Dr Charles Mackay. — Robert Browning ; Paracelsus, Sordello, Bells and Pomegranates. — John Sterling. — PhDip James Bailey ; Festus, The Angel "World : extract, Dream of Decay. — Mysticism and obscurity the pervading faults of our recent poetry. — Concluding remarks, ........ 297 POETICAL LITEKATUEE PAST HALF-CENTUET LECTURE I. State of Poetical Literature at the commencement of the present century. — The long mastery of the school of Dryden and Pope ultimately modified by Thomson, Goldsmith, Cowper, and Burns.— The temporary triumphs of Hayley, Darwin, and the Delia Cruscans.— Literary tastes influenced by social changes. — Matthew Gregory Lewis, and the supernatural school ; its characteristics and peculiai-ities. — Kirke "White and James Grahame ; speci- mens of the manner of the latter in Love of Country and The Covenanters. — The satirical and humorous poetry of Canning, Frere, Gifford, Mathias, and George Colman the younger. — Sketches of Bloomfield and Leyden. — Specimen, from the first. The Blind Boy ; from the second, Apostrophe to Aurelia. — Female writers of the period: Charlotte Smith, Amelia Opie, (specimen, Forget-me-Not), Mrs Hunter, Mrs Grant, and Mrs Tighe. — Translators and Poets of the period less commonly known ; general esti- mate of their merits. — The Rev. George Crabbe : his rise and progress ; his originality.— Specimens in Gipsy's Tent and Lyrical Tales.— Samuel Rogers and Lisle Bowles ; the high artistic excellencies of the former. — Examples of his manner. — Controversy regarding the invariable principles of poetry between Campbell, Bowles, and Byron. Such was the mastery which the writings of Dryden and Pope had acquired over English literature, that their influence continued to be felt to the utmost limits of the last century : their sentiments and modes of thought seemed stereotyped ; and the music of their verse was that to which not only Churchill and Samuel NATIONAL MODES OF THOUGHT. Johnson, but Goldsmith and William Haylej, tuned their lyres. Many circumstances had, however, been latterly combining to bring about a revolution in public taste ; to stimulate to novelty ; to extend the circle of thinkers and readers ; and to irrigate and refresh the fields of literature. Scarcely had the American war terminated, when that lurid flame skirted the horizon, which was afterwards to blaze abroad in the raging hurricane of the French Revolution — when thrones were to be shaken, and faiths were to be convulsed, and old landmarks removed, and the very bonds which held society together stretched to the verge of utter rupture. The literature of an age is the reflection of its existing manners and modes of thought, etherealised and refined in the alembic of genius ; and the truth of this position will be evident, if we turn for the highest tone of the Greek mind to J^iSchylus and Euripides — for that of the Roman, to Virgil and Horace — for that of the Italian, to Dante and Ariosto — for that of the German, to Goethe and Schiller — for that of the Spanish, to Calderon and Cervantes — for that of the French, to Racine and Corneille — and for that of the English, to Shakespeare and Milton. It may also be admitted, that the intel- lectual character of an era must ever be, in a great measure, moulded and modified by cotemporaneous exigencies. In semi-barbarous ages, indeed, there have appeared, like gigantic apparitions, spirits that have grappled with and overcome stupendous diflaculties ; and yet have evidently been so far before their time that their rising might be considered merely heliacal, as, single and unaccompanied, they have irradiated the gloomy atmosphere to which their extinction seemed to lend an added darkness. Such was Alfred, the morning star of Saxon civilisation ; such was Roger Bacon, who paid the penalty for thinking more deeply than his cotemporaries could comprehend ; such was " The Starry Galileo with his woes ; " and such was Geoffrey Chaucer, INFLUENCE OF CIVILISATION. 3 by more than two centuries the harbinger of that day which was to rejoice in the meridian sunlight of Shake- speare and Milton. Since the era of these Titanic spirits, it would appear, on a general survey, that we have been more anxiously employed in refining the materials to work upon, than in adding to our hereditary treasures. It may be argued, that circumstances are not now so advantageous for observation as they were of yore, when the mind of the nation was emerging from rudeness to refinement, — when manners retained their sharp angles, and etiquette had not amalgamated the various groups of society into one great concrete mass. One of the phases of civilisa- tion being concealment, — the teaching man how he may most dexterously and successfully hide his wants, and yet realise his wishes, — this suppression of the external working of the passions lends an artificial varnish to character ; through which it is more difficult to divine the springs of action, and to penetrate the motives by which individuals are governed. While the materials for verse, therefore, cannot well exist in abundance in the Cimmerian chaos of primal barbarism — for we cannot desecrate the name of poetry by applying it to what may be gleaned from the rude memorials of crime and cruelty and bloodshed, which brutalise the infant steps of society — scarcely more affluent will they be found in the zenith of that luxury which states and peoples generally attain immediately before their decline, and final overthrow and extinction. There is a middle space between light and darkness, a twilight with its receding stars and its rising sun, a table-land separating the confines of barbarism and refinement, which appears to be that best adapted for most things, — for intellectual exercise and enterprise, as well as for the development of the imaginative faculty ; for there the arabesque pageantry of night and the sha- dows of darkness have not yet disappeared, and the 4 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. dawn is fringing the orient clouds with gold. Pictu- resqueness is the attribute which renders this particular aspect of man the best adapted for representing him in a poetical light. His actions appear in it more impulsive and less involved ; and, from the alternations of light and shade, with a more aerial perspective, the world is in it rendered a fitter theatre alike for '•' The painter's pencil and the poet's pen." This was the very state of things existing at the commencement of the present century ; and with it a new grand epoch of the world's history was to begin. A band of giant intellects, as in the days of Elizabeth, was again to illumine the foot-hardened and cloud- shadowed pathways of literature and of science. Old feelings were to be set aside, old customs to be abrogated, old manners to pass into oblivion ; and out of bloodshed and confusion, and revolutions civil and religious, anew order of things was to arise, — gloomy, ghastly, deplor- able, and hopeless, according to some ; but, according to the sun-bright hopes of more ardent spirits, freighted with " a progeny of golden yeai-s, Permitted to descend and bless mankind." Far, as yet, have these Elysian dreams been from perfect fulfilment ; yet have we every reason to plume ourselves, when we regard what has been done for literature by Scott, by Wordsworth, by Byron, by Crabbe, by Coleridge, by "Wilson, by Campbell, by Southey, and their compeers ; and what science has achieved through "Watt, through Davy, through Her- schel, through Dalton, through Brewster, through Wheatstone, through Faraday, and others. By the steam-engine we have conquered alike the winds and the waters ; and, from their being the masters, have made them the slaves of man. The great phenomena CONCLUDED CYCLES OF LITERATURE. 5 of nature, resulting from electricity and magnetism and galvanism, have now been nearly ascertained to have one common origin ; while, in the electric telegraph, space has been annihilated by the same wondrous agent ; which realises the line of Pope, by " Wafting a sigh from Indus to the Pole ; " and may, almost without metaphor, be said to be the fire which Prometheus is fabled to have stolen from heaven. When we consider, moreover, that all these things are as yet only in a state of infantine progression, we have reason to be proud, not only of our day and generation in its literary and scientific men, but of the ample modicum of germinating knowledge which that generation has contributed for the furtherance of the best interests of mankind throughout all future ages. To appreciate this, so far as literature is concerned — and with poetical literature we have now alone to do — we have only to take a rapid bird's-eye glance back- wards. Many circumstances, whether civil, religious, or both, contributed to make a marked separation between the age of Anne and that of Elizabeth. Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, had been succeeded by Dryden, Cowley, and Pope ; while the dreary gulf between them had been almost wholly given up to civil broil, sectarian controversy, and fanatical persecution. A better order of things had at length been established. The veto which had been put on Fancy was removed, and Pegasus was permitted to capricole. The passionate energy of the national mind, which had been allowed to find exhibition and exercise only in the great drama of politics, now found vent in other channels ; talent shot forth its hydra heads in every department of the social field ; while genius, freed from the shackles of superstition and prejudice, owned no restraints but those legitimately imposed on it by morality and religion. 6 CHANGE IN NATIONAL MANNERS. It is not to be denied that, with the departed order of things, some peculiarities worth preservation were necessarily swept away — as the American floods, while they hurry down debris and drift-wood, may also whirl away to the ocean particles of gold mixed up with their turbid waves. With the increase of national power and wealth perished much that contributed to the nutrition of its infant strength. The bold bluff freedom and heartiness of English manners, when — " 'Twas merry in the hall, When beards wagged all " — when every passing stranger had his seat at board, and every beggar had his dole, had been gradually subsiding into the technicalities of grade, the finicalness of address, and the formalities of polite decorum. Old customs, handed down from generation to generation, were allow^ed to fall into desuetude : Yule and Christmas were shorn of half their festivities ; and young ladies began to think the games of hunt-the-slipper, hot- cockles, blind-man's-buff, and snap-dragon, antiquated and vulgar. As with the pursuits, so with the person. The same change took place in dress and in manners, as in the habits of thought, and the contour of dialogue. Nature and warm-heartedness were being gradually superseded by art and luxury. We were becoming what the French were at the time, and what the Greeks and Romans had been before us — a polished nation. Cities increased, and arts and agriculture flourished, while year after year man was reduced more and more into a mere machine. The elements of romance were gradually and steadily, although imperceptibly, disap- pearing from the land, and the hills and valleys of Britain became a more flourishing but far less poetical region. In the first great era of our national literature — that of Spenser, and Shakespeare, and Milton, and Taylor, ALEXANDER POPE. 7 and Hooker, and Bacon, and Browne, each of whom may be regarded as the fountain of separate great rivers, whose branching waters were intellectually to fertilise the land — we discover that their materials were found in great first principles — in the grand and overboiling emotions of the heart — in the passions, whose display stamp character — in the heroic as to action, and the tender as to feeling. The materials of the second grand era — that of Dryden, Pope, and Swift — are admirably huddled together in the lines of Cowper : — " Roses for the cheeks, And lilies for the brows of faded age ; Teeth for the toothless, ringlets for the bald ; Heaven, earth, and ocean, plundered of their sweets ; Nectareous essences, Olympian dews, Sermons, and city feasts, and favourite airs ; Ethereal journeys, submarine exploits ; And Katerfelto, with his hair on end At his own wonders, wondering for his bread." The great forte of Pope and his school lay in their acquaintance with, and skilful depicturing of, the fashions, follies, and frivolities of polished life, wherein art is made, in a great measure, to supersede nature in subject, style, and expression. His imagination never hurries him away on the pinions of inspiration, nor is the music of his verse like that of the old ballad — a simple " melody, That's sweetly played in tune." His taste keeps his fancy in check, and is continually pruning her wing. His versification loses occasionally its raciness, from being laboured into mellifluousness. He deals not with the great passions of the human heart — love, jealousy- hatred, remorse, despair ; he is all for parlour-window ethics, and the niceties of morale. His heroes are beaux, battered or unbattered ; his heroines are belles, of the same descriptions ; his levee 8 AKENSIDE AND THOMSON. is made up of courtiers, generals, gamesters, artists, authors, and men about town. His females are madams and their maids — ladies dressed out in the pink of fashion, who dispose themselves in knots through the drawing-rooms, — " Some sipping scandal, and some sipping tea." From the windows of the house we have a glimpse of nature indeed ; but it consists of shaven lawns and clipped hedges, and diamonded parterres, beyond which are parks redolent of tame deer, artificial cascades, and Chinese bridges. Pope had, however, this — his own enchanted circle — " And in that circle none durst walk but he," save as an humble follower. He was among the most perfect of English writers, and will ever stand on one of the summits of the three-peaked hill, as the author of the " Essay on Man "—of the " Windsor Forest "—of the "Epistle of Abelard to Eloise"— of the "Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady" — and of "The Messiah" — and as the yet unsurpassed translator of Homer. Let no one imagine, therefore, that I have no relish for his beauties, simply because I think them of a less magni- ficent order than those of some of his great predecessors. Indeed, it would be as vain to look for another Alex- ander Pope as for another Edmund Spenser. The influence of this school — whose origin may be traced back to the poets and dramatists of the age of Charles the Second, which acquired stability from the transcendent powers of Dryden, and which was perfected by Pope — continued its mastery, as I have already remarked, until almost the commencement of the pre- sent century. A dawn of better things showed itself in Akenside and in Thomson, and expanded into the daylight with Cowper. To him we are to look as the great regenerator of our modern poetry, for his star WILLIAM COWrER. 9 was towards its setting when that of Wordsworth arose. Throwing aside pedantic trammels and metrical sing- song, he dared, after his own fashion, to look upon and describe nature, as well as men and manners ; and he give to his pictures a freedom and a freshness which had been for centuries banished from poetical limnings. To walk abroad, even in the city, with Cowper in our heaits, is the next best thing to a walk in the country itself. All his sketches are full of truth and nature ; and nothing can surpass his winter scenery — his snow- covered valleys and frozen brooks, and leafless trees, and hungry birds picking on the highway. He deals not, like Thomson, so much in general description as in presenting to the mind's eye a series of features, the aggregate of which forms a perfect portrait. TVe delight in Thomson as an instructor, while we look up to him with something of reverence and awe ; but we sit down on the sofa with Cowper, and feel that we love him as a friend. It was not to be expected, however, that an innova- tion like that of Cowper in his " Task," was immediately to influence, and carry with it, the undivided suffrages of a generation which had so enthusiastically rejoiced in Darwin, Hayley, and Seward. He was content to divide the laurels with them, and even compliments were bandied between them ; while, in their hands, poetry continued to carry on a strange immigration into the regions of science. Steam-engines boiled in song ; and flowers wooed and won each other according to the most approved doctrines of their high -priest, Linnseus. Wedgwood was immortalised, together with all the patterns of his exquisite procelain ; and Lunardi ascended in his parachute to the music of heroic verse. In short, by a series of inverted rules applied to the art, whatever had been previously the favourite subjects for embellishment, from the days of Hesiod and Homer downwards, were utterly neglected ; that subjects, 10 ROBERT BURNS. which had never been before supposed capable of poetical embellishment, might be attempted. Like all ingenious novelties, the system for a while attracted attention, and gained disciples, until it was carried to degrees either of monstrosity or silliness perfectly in- tolerable. The Laura Matildas, the Mrs Robinsons, and Bertie Greatheads, and Merrys, and TTestons, and Par- sons, and the rest of the Delia Cruscan school, the rough-knuckled GifFord demolished in a twinkling, and pilloried them in the " Maeviad and Baviad ; " while Hookham, Frere, and Canning, in the " Anti- Jacobin," did the same good turn to the poetical votaries of science, by " The Loves of the Triangles." Although the lights of Rogers, Bowles, Crabbe, Camp- bell, Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, had already, at the close of last century, begun to irradiate the lite- rary hemisphere, we find that the stars then nearest the zenith were Darwin, Hayley, and Cowper — that of the last-mentioned being, as it deserved, strongly and steadily in the ascendant. A greater perhaps still — Robert Burns — had just untimeously set ; but the universality of fame which was thereafter for ever to attend that miracle of human nature, was as yet but slowly irradiating from a local centre : — " First the banks of Doon beheld it, Then his own land formed its span, Ere the wide world was its empire, And its home the heart of man." In Robert Burns, poetry showed itself no longer a weak nursling, like cresses reared on flannel floated on water, but a healthy plant springing from the soil, and redolent of its racy qualities. He wrote not from the mere itch of writing, but from the fulness of inspira- tion ; and coming from the heart, his poetry went to the heart. Much, therefore, as we owe to Cowper, yet probably more — although in a more indirect way — we •WILLIAM HAYLEY. 11 owe to the author of "Tara O'Shanter," " Hallowe'en," ^nd " The Cottar's Saturday Night ;" for, although suc- ^ssors caught his manly tone, his manner and subjects mast have remained for a considerable period, to the English reader, matters of mere admiration and wonder. Burns threw himself unreservedly upon domestic life, and triumphantly showed that the morally sublime might be united to the extrinsically humble ; thus proving — long before Wordsworth's day — that human- ising sentiment could be extracted from the daisy be- neath his feet, as well as ennobling emotions from " The lingering star with lessening ray," that ushers in the light of the morn. "The fire,'' as James Montgomery has finely said, " which burns through his poems, was not elaborated, spark by spark, from mecha- nical friction in the closet. It was in the open field, under the cope of heaven, this poetical Franklin caught his lightnings from the cloud as it passed over him ; and he communicated them too by a touch, with elec- trical swiftness and effect." The popularity of Hayley in an age so artificial and so pragmatical as that wherein he flourished — an age of minuets, and hoops, and pomatum, and powdered queues, and purple-velvet doublets, and flesh-coloured silk stockings — is not much to be wondered at, when we consider the subjects on which he wrote, and the real graces of his style. Such poetry was relished, be- cause it was called forth by the exigencies, and adapted to the taste, of the particular time at which it was written. It was a reflection of existing modes and habits of thought ; and it must be allowed that his mastery over versification was of no common order. True it is, that his mawkish or overstrained sentiment might at times expose him to ridicule ; but the praise he received from Cowper is a strong proof of the influ- ence which his writings at that time exercised over 12 ANNA SEWABD. society. That power and that popularity have now alike utterly passed away, for he was deficient in truth and nature ; his house was built on the sand ; and ex- cept the case of Churchill, it would be difficult to point out another whose reputation had assumed so much the aspect of a fixed star, and yet only proved " the comet of a season." Anna Seward, yclept the Swan of Litchfield, was the Sappho of that era of ribbons and guraflowers, and a fitting one for such a Juvenal as Hay ley, and such a Lucretius as Darwin. She wrote with fluency, and poured out a cataract of verse. Her elegies on Captain Cook and Major Andre, from the interest attached to the subjects, and the kind of electro-galvanic animation which characterised her compositions, attracted general attention, and ran successfully the round of popularity. With equal adaptation to the prevailing tastes, Paul Whitehead wore the laurel crown ; and, mounted on his spavined Pegasus, duly chanted his New Year and Birthday Odes, according to the terms of the statute. As nothing in reference to literature, except what is founded on truth and nature, can be expected to be permanent — and as Darwin, Hayley, and the Litchfield coterie were deficient in both — so their triumph was an evanescent one. It has been well said, that " the poetry of Darwin was as bright and transient as the plants and flowers that formed the subject of his verse." He had fancy, command of language, varied metaphor, and magniloquent versificatioA ; but the want of nature marred all ; and although his bow was bent occasion- ally with nervous strength, and always with artistic skill, yet his arrows fell pointless to the earth. He had no repose, no passion ; and consequently his poetry alike palled on the ear and failed to touch the heart. He had the power to astonish and to dazzle, but lacked that tenderness necessary to create sympathetic interest, and without which the other is but a tinkling cymbal. LAKE AND DARWINIAN SCHOOLS. 13 In matter and in manner, the Lake and Darwinian schools of poetry are the very antipodes of each other — hostile in every doctrine, and opposed in every charac- teristic. The extreme radical error of the former con- sists in the debasing what is in itself essentially dignified and lofty, by meanness of style, triteness of simile, and puerility of description : it clothes Achilles once more in female habiliments, and sets Hercules to the distaff. The other endeavours (if I may be allowed the com- parison) to buoy up the materials of prose into the regions of poetry, by putting them into an air-balloon, not expanded by the divine afflatus, but by hydro- genous gas ; while the aeronaut, as he ascends, waves his embroidered flag, and scatters among the gaping crowds below gilded knick-knacks, tinsel-trinkets, and artificial flowers, amazingly like nature ! The one re- minds us of Cincinnatus throwing aside the ensigns of office, and withdrawing from the bustle of camps and cabinets to the tranquillity of his Sabine farm : the other to Abon Hassan in the Arabian Tales, transported from the tavern to the palace, when under the influence of a somniferous potion, and awaking amid the music of a morning concert, surrounded with the splendours of mock royalty. Were it not for the similes, which are, however, too frequently pressed into the service, " The Botanic Gar- den," and " The Temple of Nature," with all their luxuriant description, splendid imagery, and pompous versification, would be the most tedious and uninterest- ing performances imaginable ; " altogether flat, stale, and unprofitable." The subject-matter, abstractedly considered, wholly precludes pathos and sympathy — elements without which, in our critical opinion, poetry is a mere caput mortuum, and stripped of all fascination. We can easily conceive how Lucretius could construct a grand poem, " De Rerum Natura," and how the genius of Virgil could be suitably employed on " The Georgics ;" 14 "the botanic garden." — rural sights and sounds continuing to exert thos e imaginative infiiuences in the days of Thomson, Cowper, and Grahame, which they did in the patriarchal ages, alike when Isaac went forth to meditate at eventide, and when Ruth gleaned in the fields of Boaz ; and which they will never, can never cease to exert, while human nature preserves its present constitution. Almost any subject may be invested with a poetical interest, although that interest is not prominently in- herent in the thing itself, nor even in the associations immediately connecting themselves with it. Garth's " Dispensary," and Armstrong's " Art of Preserving Health," for instance, as well as the " Eclogues of Sannizarius" and " The Nurse of Tansillo," are essen- tially and intrinsically prosaic. That these writers have sprinkled a poetical garnish over them, alters not the case. Darwin had no faith in simplicity and nature ; and he spoiled all his delineations " by gilding refined gold, and painting the lily ;" while the faults and failures of Wordsworth and his followers, on the other hand, originated in equally vain attempts, either to dignify the intrinsically mean, or to decorate the hope- lessly worthless. For utilitarianism, as strictly applied to poetry, I have no liking. What possible end could be gained by describing the machinery of a cotton-mill, or the im- provements on the steam-engine, in verse, that could not be better attained in prose ? If Dr Darwin intended to excite pleasurable feelings in his readers, he might have unquestionably chosen a more appropriate subject ; if instruction was his aim, verse ought not to have been his vehicle. We are told, indeed, that it is the design of " The Botanic Garden" " to enlist imagination under the banners of science, and to lead her votaries from the looser analogies that dress out the imagery of poetry, to the stricter ones which form the ratiocinations of philo- sophy." But the great end of poetry is here forgotten. ovid's metamorphoses. 15 We look on, and are dazzled ; but we have none of those emotions which either " entrance the soul and lap it in Elysium ;" or that awaken " thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." " The Loves of the Plants" are wholly different from " The Metamorphoses" of Ovid ; because, in the latter, the transmutation is merely a secondary object, both in the eyes of the poet and in the estimation of the reader. As the hero or heroine falls off from all intellectual grandeur, and thereby ceases utterly to excite aught of moral sympathy, we are wholly indifferent, since the absurdity of transfor- mation must take place, into w^hat it may be — an ani- mal, or a stone, or a flower. Swift and Prior have admirably travestied some of these stories ; and in the " Baucis and Philemon," the former has with great naivete adapted the classic fable to rural English man- ners, and turned his hospitable domestic pair into yew trees, which long remained objects of wonder : — " Till once a Parson of our town, To mend his barn, cut Baucis down ; At which 'tis hard to be believed How much the other tree was grieved, Grew scrubby, died a-top, was stunted ; So the next Parson stubbed and brunt it." Ovid, indeed, tells us that, when Ajax stabbed himself, his blood was turned into the violet. But this is only the supernatural winding up of a scene of human pas- sion, full of nature, feeling, and heroic action. He has previously introduced us to the two great leaders who plead their claims before the assembled Grecian chiefs for the armour of Achilles. We are taught to listen to the applausive shouts of the soldiery, and to have our hearts touched with the eloquence of the champions, as either in turn recounts the services he has rendered to his country, and '•' his hair-breadth 'scapes by flood and 16 dakwin's similes. field." Of Darwin in his purest form take the following short specimen : — " Nymphs ! you disjoin, unite, condense, expand. And give new wonders to the Chemist's hand ; On tepid clouds of rising steam aspire, q And fix in sulphur all its solid fire ; With boundless string elastic airs unfold, Or fill the fine vacuities of gold ; With sudden flash vitrescent sparks reveal. By fierce collision from the flint and steel ; Or mark with shining letters Kunkel's name In the pale Phospor's self-consuming flame. So the chaste heart of some enchanted maid Shines with insidious light by love betrayed. Round her pale bosom plays the young desire, And slow she wastes with self-consuming fire." Here is science united to poetry with a vengeance ! Now, we maintain that the passage has no title what- ever to the latter appellation, save for the simile so strangely conveyed in the last four lines, which carries us back from dry art to images of natural beauty. The parts of Darwin's writings worthy of admiration (and the finer portions are well worthy of it) are, with- out an exception that strikes me, only those passages which are subsidiary to the main objects of his poetry, and introduced by way of apostrophe or illustration. We do not think of the Digitalis 'purpurea, but of phi- lanthropy and Howard ; we do not think of the embryo seeds, but of Herschel and the starry firmament ; not of the Carline thistle, but of the ascent of Montgolfier ; not of the Orchis, but of Eliza and the battle of Minden ; not of the vegetable poisons, but of the desolation of Palmyra. Incongruity, instead of being disclaimed by, seems a favourite axiom of Darwin and his school — subjects hopelessly prosaic being artificially stilted into eminence, and loaded with epithet and embellishment. If a beggar were to be introduced, it would be in a tattered lace- THE SUPERNATURAL SCHOOL. 17 coat, and he would ride to the lower regions — down the ^'facilis descensus Averni^' — on a broken-kneed horse; and, if a " slaughterer of horned cattle," he would, after stalking through the shambles like a dancing-master, apostrophise his slain bullock in the fashion of Mark Anthony over Ca3sar. As, with persons technically termed ^ne singers, sense is sacrificed to sound, so there is with the Darwinians no solicitude about the sentiment, provided you have the tones ; and intrinsic beauty is unhesitatingly buried beneath the gorgeous glitter of external drapery. When a Grecian matron is brought before you, instead of the robes of snowy white and the elegance of simplicity, you have her cheeks bedaubed with rouge, her ringlets filleted with embroidered ribbon, a tinselled cincture about her waist, and a scarf of purple thrown over her shoulders. In fact, you are invited to a mere scenic exhibition — a panorama of picturesque and fanciful objects — where you have the soft and the rug- ged, the Bay of Naples and Loch Lomond by moonlight, alternating with the Devil's Bridge and the whirlpool of Corryvreckan. It is never thus with the really great poet. In him, fancy and feeling are found combined ; and, although all the varieties of actual life, and all — " The outward shows of sky and earth, Of hill and valley he has viewed, Yet impulses of deeper birth Have come to him in solitude." He looks, indeed, on the beauties of the external world, on all the aspects of nature, with a gifted and a glad- dened eye ; but this does not prevent him from making the springs of action, the secrets of the inner man, all that elevates or depresses the human heart, " the haunt and the main region of his song." To the artistic artificial school of Darwin, Seward, Hayley, and the Delia Cruscans, may be said to have succeeded the purely romantic one — of which Matthew B 18 ANN RADCLIFFE. Gregory Lewis ought to be set down as the leader, and John Leyden, Walter Scott, Coleridge, Southey, James Hogg, Mrs Radeliffe, Anna Maria Porter, and Anne Bannerman, as the chief disciples. The germ of their tenets must be traced back to the North, rather than to the ballads and romances of Percy, Ritson, and Ellis ; and their demonology throughout savours much more of the Teutonic than either the Saxon or Celtic. The unsettling of men's minds by the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau, among the French — and the new order of things created by the dangerous philoso- phising of the Academicians, and by Kant, Schelling, and the German transcendentalists — combined to bring about a new era, in w^hich were rekindled all the magical and mystic reminiscences of the dark ages. Horace Wal- pole had written his " Castle of Otranto " merely as a burlesque ; but, hitting the tone of the day, it had been read and relished as an admirable transcript of feudal times and Gothic manners ; and his success taught Mrs Radeliffe and others to harp — and far from unpleasantly — on the same string. " Clarissa Harlo we" and "Pa- mela," quietly located on the book-shelves, had for a while their " virtue unrewarded," even by a reading ; and nothing went down but "Udolphos" and " Ro- mances of the Forest," " Sicilian Bravos," and " Legends of the Hartz Mountains ;" corridors and daggers, moon- light and murdering, ruined castles and sheeted spectres, gauntleted knights and imprisoned damsels. Three men of peculiar, two of them, indeed, of great imaginative strength, at this time started up — Godwin, Coleridge, and Lewis ; but it is with the last of them only that I have at present to do. As a man of truly original powers, M. G. Lewis was far behind either Godwin or Coleridge, and stood much on the level of his successor Maturin ; but what his imagination lacked in grandeur was made up by energy : he was a high- priest of the intense school. Monstrous and absurd in M. G. LEWIS. 19 many things, as were the writings of Lewis, no one could say that they were deficient in interest. Truth and nature, to be sure, he held utterly at arm's-length ; but, instead, he had a life-in-death vigour, a spasmodic energy, which answered well for all purposes of aston- ishment. He wrote of demons, ghouls, ghosts, vampires, and disembodied spirits of every kind, as if they were the common machinery of society. A skeleton " in com- plete steel," or the spectre of " a bleeding nun, " was ever at hand, on emergencies ; and wood-demons, fire- kings, and water-sprites, gave a fillip to the external scenery. His "Monk," that strange and extramundane production, made the reader "sup so full of horrors," that mothers were obliged to lock it up from their sickly and sentimental daughters — more especially as its morale was not of the choicest ; and when Lewis took a leap from the closet to the stage, his power was equally felt. I yet remember, when a boy, trembling in the very theatre, at the scene in "The Castle Spectre" which brings the murdered maiden on the stage ; and if productions are to be judged by their effect, that drama, like "The Robbers" of Schiller, has left on facile imaginations traces never to be obliterated. The "Tales of Wonder," and the "Tales of Terror," suc- ceeded ; some of them stories of amazing vigour — wild, extravagant, unnatural — but withal highly readable, nay, occasionally of enchaining interest. In spirit Lewis was a thorough convert to the raw-head-and- bloody-bones and the trap-door German school ; and his thoughts were ever away amid the Hartz Moun- tains, seeing " more spirits than vast hell could hold." His every night was Hallowe'en, or a Walpurgis Night ; and he is said to have become, in his latter years, the dupe of his own early over-excited feelings, and as sincere a convert to a frequent infringement of the established laws of physics, as Mrs Crowe in her "Night Side of Nature," or the Baron von Reichenbach himself, 20 lewis's coadjutors. with his Odylic light. He conjured up ghosts to affright others, and came to he haunted by them himself — a most natural retribution. Most of the writers of the " Tales of "Wonder " were young men of enthusiastic temperament, panting for distinction ; and in their contributions they gave yivid indications of what, in maturer years, was to accom- plish greater and better things. Lewis himself had an exquisite ear for Yersification, as demonstrated in his " Durandarte, " and "Alonzo the Brave" — of which latter, "The Fire-King" of Smith, in " The Rejected Addresses," was a legitimate and scarcely extravagant burlesque. In " The Eve of St John, " and " Gleufinlas," Walter Scott exhibited the glorious dawn of that day, whose transcendent meridian was to irradiate the world in " The Lay of the Last Minstrel," in " Marmion," and in " The Lady of the Lake." Leyden poured out his whole rough strength in "Lord Soulis, " and the " Mermaid of Corryvreckan. " Southey forestalled his " Madoc " and " Roderick " in " Mary, the Maid of the Inn," "Donica," " Rudiger," "The Old Woman of Berkeley," and " Lord William " — the last thoroughly exquisite. While, although published elsewhere, Cole- ridge displayed wild and wondrous fruits from the same Hesperides in *'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," the "Tale of the Dark Ladie," "Christabel,"and"Kubla Khan." I repeat, however, that Lewis was a man rather of enthusiastic temperament than of high and sustained imagination. He could not face the sunlight and the clear blue sky ; he required clouds and tempest, a howling wind and a troubled sea. He was what the vulture is to the eagle, what the leopard is to the lion, what the scene painter is to the artist. His plays are what melodramas are to tragedy ; and the terrors of his poetry trench as much on the burlesque as on the sublime ; yet so great were the effects he produced, more HIS SPIRIT-WORLD. 21 especially in his prose romances, and so unbounded was their popularity, that the mighty minstrel, then a young man, confessed to have looked up to him with an admi- ration bordering on awe, and even deferentially sub- mitted to be schooled by him in the art of versification. Like the school of Darwin, that of Lewis was des- tined to have a day fully as remarkable for its brevity as its brightness. The readers of " The Feudal Tyrants," "The Monk," "The Tales of Terror," "The Isle of Devils," and "The Castle Spectre," became surfeited with perpetually dining on high-spiced curries, and began to long for a little "plain potato and salt." His spirit-world was neither the spirit-world of Milton in his " Paradise Lost" and his " Comus ; " nor of Shakespeare in his "Hamlet" and "Macbeth;" nor of Spenser in his "Faery Queen." It was not the spirit-world of the Greek drama, which ^schylus and Euripides never ventured into, save in search of an avenging Nemesis, worthy of some awful occasion — transcendent misery, or transcendent guilt. On the contrary, the exceptions, with Lewis, were all on the other side, and were made the rule. Every one is bamboozled about the nature of everything he either hears or sees. What we take for a knight may be the foul fiend in incognito. Every third house is haunted ; every second old woman is a witch ; each tree has an owl ; the moon is in conspiracy with the stars to blight the earth, on which they shed a malign influence ; and thunder is ever at hand, with copious streams of blue zigzag lightning. The noises on the wind are the howling of spirits ; the skeleton of a murderer dangles in chains at every cross-road ; very many chambers are particularly dark, grotesquely wainscotted, have secret doors, and are disturbed by the death-tick ; while all the ponderous nail-studded gates hideously creak on their rusty hinges. In short, man, instead of being a prosaic payer of poor-rates and property-tax, is 22 HIS FOLLOWERS. made to inhabit a land of enchantments ; where ogres tyrannise in castles, and dragons spout fire in caves; and where all the accredited Aristotelian elements — fire, air, earth, and water — are continually reverber- ating to each other — " Black spirits and white. Blue spirits and grey — Mingle, mingle, mingle, Ye that mingle may ! " Thehideousness, the monstrosity, the exaggeration of this style of writing, combining and amalgamating with the perturbed temper of the times, gave it an ac- ceptability and a fascination which it probably would not have otherwise acquired. At its acme it caught hold also of our most powerful cotemporary prose, in the " St Leon " of Godwin ; it was reflected in the " Canterbury Tales " of Sophia and Harriet Lee, in the "Frankenstein" of Mrs Shelley, and the "Melmoth" of Maturin, and died away into a gentler and more graceful spirituality in the " Rip Yan TVinkle " and "Headless Hessian" of "Washington Irving, the "Van- derdecken's Message Home" of John Howison, and "The Metempsychosis" of Robert Macnish. As the sacrifices of the high-priest ceased to ascend, the wor- shippers gradually deserted the mouldy shrine ; the younger devotees — Scott, Southey, Coleridge, and Ley- den — took, in the maturity of intellect, to higher and more legitimate courses — forsook the melodrama for veritable tragedy and comedy, and, doffing the mas- quer's robes, endeavoured " to look melancholy like gentlemen." To accelerate their flight from this de- batable land the bow of ridi" "The Village Deso- 138 "evening in furness abbey." late ;" "Lines in a Highland Glen ;" and "The Sleep- ing Child." The following very beautiful extract, from the" Even- ing in Furness Abbey," is given as a specimen of Pro- fessor Wilson's blank verse. " The day goes by, On which our soul's beloved dies ! the day On which the body of the dead is stretched By hands that decked it when alive ; the day On which the dead is shrouded, and the day Of burial ; — one and all pass by ! The grave Grows green ere long ; the churchyard seems a place Of pleasant rest ! and all the cottages, That keep for ever sending funerals Within its gates, look cheerful every one, As if the dwellers therein never died, And this earth slumbered in perpetual peace. For every sort of suffering there is sleep Provided by a gi'acious Providence, Save that of sin. We must at first endure The simple woe of knowing they are dead — A soul-sick woe, in which no comfort is, And wish we were beside them in the dust ! That anguish dire cannot -sustain itself, But settles down into a grief that loves And finds relief in unreproved tears. Then cometh sorrow like a Sabbath ! Heaven Sends resignation down, and faith; and last Of all, there falls a kind oblivion Over the going out of that sweet light In which we had our being ; and the wretch, Widow'd and childless, laughs in his old age, Laughs and is merry, even among the tombs Of all his kindred. Say not that the dead Are unforgotten in their graves ! for all Beneath the sun and moon is transitory ; And sacred sorrow, like a shadow, flies, As unsubstantial as the happiness Whose loss we vainly wept ! " "UNIMORE." 139 "Unimore" is, in some respects, the richest of all its author's ^v^itillgs ; and in it his ideas seem to have poured upon him like the flood of the Sohvay. Indeed, we know not its equal anywhere, in Niagara-like copiousness of imagery and diction. Probably this is its defect, for it is somehow felt not to be altogether a successful poem. There is a lavishness of wealth about it, a pomp and prodigality of power, which mars its definiteness of tone, as well as its distinctness of outline. "We look on its landscapes as through a summer haze, or through the silver of moonlight ; and thus its perso- nages seem too remote and Ossianic. It abounds in magnificent passages ; and visions ninth and tenth — "Expiation" and "Retribution" — are replete with pathos and solemn beauty. The "Evening in Furness Abbey" is more chastened and severe, and is, throughout, perhaps the finest specimen of Professor "Wilson's blank verse, which has nothing of the ruggedness of Young, or the verbosity of Thomson, but breathes a music of its own — "a linked sweetness long drawn out" — which rivets the ear by its varying cadences ; tones of per- suasive softness, now lively, like the breeze in the summer tree-tops — now mournful, like the far-off thunders of the waterfall. His aversion is the bois- terous and the bustling, whether these are to be gleaned from themes high or low — from the modernising of chivalrous romaunts, or from the fables of classical mythology. His delight is in the poetry of still life, — the blind man sitting on the way-side stone — the effigies in a ruined abbey — the solitude of the midnight mountain-ridge — the waveless lake — the autumnal moonlight, with the hawk sleeping on the sepulchral cairn, among the hoary cannachs of the moor. He allows nothing sinful or sullying to mar " The radiance of bis gifted soul. Where never mists or darkness roll ; 140 CHARACTERISTICS OF WILSON's POETRY, A poet's soul, that flows for ever, Eight onwards Hke a noble river, Refulgent still, or by its native woods Shaded, and running on thro' sunless solitudes. In gazing on the picture of a patient " Ass in a snow- storm," a thousand bright and beautiful ideas awaken to his imagination, of patient suffering and endurance — of heroic fortitude in adversity, of serene faith amid the evils of life ; and, in describing the cottage of a pious and resigned old dame, we are characteristically told that " The wreath that stole From the rose-tree and jasmine clustering wide. O'er all the dwelling's bloomy side. Tells that whoe'er doth there abide Must have a gentle soul. Then gently breathe, and softly tread, As if thy steps were o'er the dead ! Break not the slumber of the air Even by the whisper of a prayer. But, in the spirit, let there be A silent Benedicite ! To Professor Wilson we owe the introduction into our literature of a style of criticism at once more philoso- phical and more genial — of a criticism which combines analytical subtlety and precision with amazing powers of imaginative illustration, and which renders his essays on Homer, on the Greek Anthology, on Spenser, on Milton (yet in MS.), on Wordsworth, on Scott, on Burns, on Moore's Byron, and on the English Satirists — all written in the same catholic spirit — among the finest things in our language. As a delineator of Scottish pastoral life — say rather of primitive life and manners, as contradistinguished from conventional or town life — his " Lights and Shadows," his " Trials of Margaret Lindsay," and his "Foresters," seem destined to remain unapproached in their peculiar excellencies ; but, were it allowable to say so, that eloquence, which Hal- THOMAS CAMPBELL. 141 lam has designated as 'Hhe rush of mighty waters," is nowhere to be found in such magnificent power as in the " Recreations of Christopher ^'ortl)," and in the Shake- spearean " Noctes Ambrosiana?," and " Dies Boreales." There are only two other poets, whose career links them with the termination of last century, that now remain to be noticed: these are James Montgomery and Thomas Campbell. The former arose like a beacon- light and gradually blazed into a star ; the other burst forth at once, like the sun from dawn, in all the efful- gence of glory. They have this in common, however, that by each a middle course was adopted between the chaste severity of the classical model, and the licentious freedom of the romantic, which, under the mastery of Scott, afterwards became paramount. No poet ever made a more brilliant entree than Thomas Campbell did, in "The Pleasures of Hope," written at twenty-one. In fact, it was regarded as completely a marvel of genius, and at once deservedly placed its author among the immortals ; for if language is capable of embalming thought, and that thought consists of pictures steeped in the richest hues of imagination, and of sentiments which, in their splen- dour and directness, may be regarded as " mottoes of the heart," the poem could not possibly ever be forgotten, provided the lines of any other writer were destined to be held in remembrance. With a daring hand the young poet essayed every string of the lyre, and they each responded in tones of sublimity, or of beauty and pathos. The poem was evidently the product of fine genius and intense labour ; for nothing so uniformly fine, so sustained in excellence, was ever produced without intense labour ; yet so exquisite is the art, that the words seem to have dropped into their places, and the melody, " like one sweetly played in tune," flows on apparently without effort — now wailing through the depths of tenderness, and now rising into 142 " PLEASURES OF HOPE." the cloud-lands of imagination with the roll of thunder. That traces of juvenility should have been here and there discernible in an effort otherwise so high and so sustained, is not to be wondered at ; but, even in these exuberances, genius and taste were ever predominant, while the diction, chaste and pohshed, was yet instinct with spirit. An energetic eloquence, which occasionally supplied the place of inspiration, and an art which could lead Beauty in flowery chains, without depriving her step of the air and the graces of Nature, made up for all other deficiencies. When we look on " The Pleasures of Hope" as a work achieved while the author yet stood on the threshold of manhood, it is almost impossible to speak of it in terms of exaggerated praise ; and whether taking it in parts, or as a whole, I do not think I overrate its merits in preferring it to any didactic poem of equal length in the English language. iS"o poet, at such an age, ever produced such an exquisite specimen of poetical mastery — that is, of fine conception and of high art combined ; but if time matures talent, and the faculties ought to strengthen by exercise, Campbell cannot be said to have redeemed the pledge given by this earliest of his efforts. How could he 1 With the exception of a few redundancies of diction, he left himself little to improve on, either in matter or manner ; for sentiments tender, energetic, impassioned, eloquent, and majestic, are con- veyed to the reader in the tones of a music for ever varied — sinking or swelling like the harmonies of an .^olian lyre — yet ever delightful ; and these are illus- trated by pictures from romance, history, or domestic life, replete with power and beauty. What could possibly excel, in pathos and natural truth, the mother's heart-yearnings over her cradled child 1 — the episode of the Wanderer leaning over the gate by " the blossomed beanfield, and the sloping green," coveting the repose and comfort of the hamlet-home beside him ? — the "lochiel's warning." 143 allusion to the melancholy fortunes of the Suicide ? — the parting of the Convict with his Daughter ? — or in power, " The Descent of Braraa ?" — the apostrophe to the wrongs of Poland ? and the allusion to the consummation of all things, with which the poem magnificently con- cludes ? It is like a long fit of inspiration — a chequered melody of transcendent excellence, passage after passage presenting only an ever-varying and varied tissue of whatever is beautiful and sublime in the soul of man, and the aspects of nature. No ungraceful expressions, no trite observations, no hackneyed similes, no un- natural sentiments, no metaphysical scepticisms break in to mar the delightful reverie. The heart is lapped in Elysium, the rugged is softened down, and the repul- sive hid from view ; nature is mantled in the enchanting hues of the poet's imagination, and life seems but a tender tale set to music. From a poem in every one's memory, extracts were superfluous. If any composition could combine more energy of sentiment with versification as magnificent, it is to be found in the " Lochiel's Warning" of the same author. From the mists and commingling shadows of the Highland mountains, he has singled out and con- jured up two solitary figures, a chieftain and a sooth- sayer. The one — a man of this world, daring, deter- mined, and a scoffer at danger, full of heroic ardour, devoted loyalty, and quenchless faith in the success of the desperate cause he resolves to support — is brought into picturesque approximation to, and contrast with, a being who, although on earth, yet seems not of it — who is wrapt up in visionary thoughts and shadowy abstractions — whose fevered fantasies overleap Nature's boundaries, and who declares that " Man cannot cover what God would reveal ; 'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, And coming events cast their shadows before." 144 Campbell's fastidiousness. There is a mysterious solemnity in all he utters, as if his voice was only the response of an internal oracle, which overhoils with tempestuous energy, and which has its utterance through him. His soul is illumined with the corruscations of prophetic light, by which he has glimpses into the gloom of that Futurity whose chambers shut and open before him. The resolution of the chieftain is, however, immovable '^ as the rock of the ocean that stems A thousand wild waves on the shore." Although not unaware that Doubt, Darkness, and Ruin encompass the perilous enterprise in which he is about irremediably to embark, he scorns the adverse omens of the seer, indignantly exclaiming — " Down, soothless insulter ! I trust not the tale ; For never shall Albyn a destiny meet, So black with dishonour, so foul with retreat ; Tho' my perishing ranks should be strewed in their gore Like ocean-weeds heaped on the surf-beaten shore, Lochiel, untainted by flight or by chains, While the kindling of life in his bosom remains, Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low With his back to the field, and his feet to the foe ; And leaving in battle no blot on his name. Look proudly to heaven from the deathbed of fame." Campbell has there concentrated, in a short poem, as much vigour of conception, grandeur of description, and originality of illustrative imagery, as would, in ordinary hands, have been deemed adequate to replenish volumes. It is throughout sterling ore, thrice refined from all alloy in the furnace of taste. Having achieved such a triumph as " The Pleasures of Hope," and measuring himself by the high standard of that composition, it is not wonderful that Campbell " O'CONNOR'S CHILD : " 145 was chary about hazarding his acquired reputation, or that his after appearances were like his own "angel visits," not only "short, but far between." Yet, from year to year, some stray lyric gem attested to the public the unabated fire of his genius, and led them on to expect with delight the meridian of a day which had been ushered in by a dawn so gloriously brilliant. It was asserted by the late Lord Jeffrey, that the great writers of this age are in nothing more remarkable than the very fearlessness of their borrowing. We could point out a cento of brilliant things in Campbell — who forms certainly no exception to this general charge — for which he has been indebted to a discrimi- nating taste and a retentive memory ; but then, as with Coleridge, he has conjoined a distinctness, an originality, and a superiority of view quite his own, together with that polish which is the peculiar charm of all his writings. He might admire excellencies in others, and imitate what he admired ; but, beyond that, Campbell had a distinct path of his own, along " a wild unploughed, untrodden shore." He possessed the invention of true genius ; and sought for and owned no prototype in " Lochiel's Warning," in " Hohenlinden," in "The Battle of the Baltic," in "Reullura," in "The Last Man," or in " O'Connor's Child," the diamond of his casket of gems. In this last-named poem Campbell opened up a vein ofthought and imagery, to which nothing in our pre- ceding literature has the remotest resemblance, except- ing, perhaps, the lyrical tales of Crabbe — " The Hall of Justice," and "Sir Eustace Grey," The resemblance, however, if there be any, is very slight ; and it is highly problematical if Campbell had them at all in his eye during the composition of this the most thoroughly inspired of all his writings. " O'Connor's Child" opens in a strain of deep but chas- tened melancholy ; and the vague wildness of remote K 146 EXTRACTS FROM IT. tradition is blent with the refinement, peculiar only to modern times, in its imagery — " Placed in the foxglove and the moss, Behold a parted warrior's cross ! That is the spot, where evermore The lady, at her shieling door, Enjoys that, in communion sweet. The living and the dead can meet, For lo ! to love-lorn fantasy, The hero of her heart is nigh ! " Before the scene opens, the catastrophe has been con- summated. The lovely daughter of a noble bouse has been left to wander, in frenzied desolation, the historian of her own sad tale. For the love of Connocht Moran, " her belted forestere," she had forsaken her palace- home to roam the wilds ; while the disgraced pride of ancestry urges on her infuriated brothers to seek her lover's blood — and destruction thus comes like the simoom. " AYhen all was hushed at eventide, I heard the baying of their beagle ; ' Be hushed ! ' my Connocht Moran cried, ' 'Tis but the screaming of the eagle.' Alas ! 'twas not the eyrie's sound. Their bloody bands had tracked us out. Up-listening starts our couchant hound — And hark ! again, that nearer shout Brings faster on the murderers. ' Spare — spare him, Brazil, Desmond fierce ! ' In vain, no voice the adder charms ; Theh weapons crossed my sheltering arms ; Another's sword has laid him low, Another's, and another's. And every hand that dealt the blow, Ah me ! it was a brother's ! Yes ! when his moanings died away, Their iron hands had dug the clay, "the flower of love." 147 And o'er his burial turf they trod — And I beheld, oh God, oh God ! His life-blood oozing from the sod !" Such poetry requires no comment. When "The Flower of Love," shut up within tlie embattled turret of her ancestral castle, sees her brothers, armed for war, about to depart with the banner of her sires in the midst, she thus exclaims, in prophetic fury — " Sooner guilt the ordeal brand Shall grasp unhurt, than ye shall hold The banner with victorious hand Beneath a sister's curse unrolled. Oh, stranger, by my country's loss, And by my love, and by the cross, I swear I never could have spoke The curse, that sever'd Nature's yoke, But that a spirit o'er me stood, And fired me with the wrathful mood ; And frenzy to my heart was given To speak the malison of heaven. They would have crossed themselves, all mute : They would have prayed to burst the spell ; But at the stamping of my foot Each hand down powerless fell ! * And go to Athunrie ! ' I cried ; * High lift the banner of your pride ! But know that where its sheet unrolls, The weight of blood is on your souls ! Go where the havoc of your kerne Shall float as high as mountain fern ! Men shall no more your mansion know ! The nettles on your hearth shall grow ! Dead, as the green oblivious flood That mantles by your walls, shall be The glory of O'Connor's blood ! Away ! — away to Athunrie ! Where downward, when the sun shall fall, The raven's wing shall be your pall ! 148 " GERTRUDE OF WYOMING : " And not a vassal shall unlace The vizor from your dying face ! ' A bolt that overhung our dome, Suspended till my curse was given. Soon as it passed these lips of foam, Pealed in the blood-red heaven." The greatest effort of Campbell's genius, however, was his " Gertrude of Wyoming ; " nor is it likely ever to be excelled in its own peculiar style of excellence. It is superior to " The Pleasures of Hope " in the only one thing in which that poem could be surpassed — purity of diction ; while in pathos, and in imaginative power, it is no whit inferior. The beauties of Gertrude, however, are of that unobtrusive kind, that, for the most part, they must be sought for. Its imagery is so select as to afford only indices to trains of thought. It "touches a spring, and lo ! what myriads rise ! " If we add to this, that, as a story, Gertrude is particularly defective, the circumstances will be made palpable which have operated against the popularity of a composition so thoroughly exquisite. The versification of the poem is intricately elaborate, the diction fastidiously select, and the incidents, as I have just hinted, less brought out than left to be imagined ; as, for instance, where, in one stanza, Henry TTaldegrave is the infantine com- panion of Gertrude, and, in the next, we are told of his arrival from foreign travel, ere we are dimly apprised that he had ever set out from home. Weighed, however, with the real excellencies of the poem, these and other minor blemishes — as inaccuracies in natural history — are " mere spots in the sun," and are amply counter- balanced by the Elysian description of Wyoming, with which the poem opens — although its tone occasionally more than reminds us of Thomson's "Castle of Indo- lence," and its imagery of Wordsworth's "Ruth;" — the arrival of Outalissi, " the eagle of his tribe," with the white boy in his hand, " like morning brought by ITS HIGH EXCELLENCIES. 149 night ;" the landscape surrounding the home of Albert, so like " the pleasant land of drowsy head ; " the loves of Henry and Gertrude, so touching in their sweet sincerity, and their rapturous walks amid the shadowy majesty of the primeval Pennsylvanian forests; the gathering and picturesque grouping of the motley warriors on the fatal eve of battle ; the death, of the patriarchal Albert, and the dying address of the daughter to her husband, so full of pathos and nature ; and the energetically sublime invocation of the Indian chief, w^ith which the scenes close. Interspersed, there are also delineations of scenery which display the very highest powers, and that minute fidelity which indicates the fine and accurate observer. Campbell did not work like Wordsworth, or Crabbe, or Southey, by touches repeated and repeated, till the minims make up a whole, but by sweeping lines and bold master-strokes. The following few words, for instance, convey a whole and almost boundless prospect to the mind : — " At evening Alleghany views, Through ridges burning in her western beam, Lake after lake interminably gleam." The following single stanza is full of a similar ma- jesty. It is a picture not only finely conceived, but faultlessly executed : — *' Anon some wilder portraiture he draws ; Of nature's savage glories he would speak, — The loneliness of earth that overawes, When, resting by some tomb of old Cacique, The lama-driver on Peruvia's peak Nor living voice nor motion marks around. But storks that to the boundless forest shriek. Or wild-cane arch, high flung o'er gulf profound, That fluctuates when the storms of El Dorado sound." Turn from the desolation, the vastness, and wildness 150 Campbell's lyrics. of this, to a delineation of morning in five lines. It has the freshness and beauty of Claude Lorraine : — " The morning wreath had bound her hair, While yet the wild-bee trod in spangling dew ; While boatmen carolled to the fresh-blown air, And woods a horizontal shadow threw, And early fox appeared in momentary view." Of Campbell's highest lyrics it would be impossible to speak in terms of exaggerated praise ; and in them more especially be has succeeded in engrafting the fresh wildness of the romantic school on the polished elegance of the classic. Whether we regard originality of con- ception, artistic skill, brilliancy of execution, vividness of illustration, moral pathos, or that impassioned energy which makes description subservient to feeling and sen- timent, it would be difficult, from the far-off days of Pindar and Tyrtaeus, down to those of Collins and Gray, to point to anything finer or grander, or, to use the phrase of Sir Philip Sidney, that more "rouses the heart like the sound of a trumpet," than his "Mariners of England," his "Battle of the Baltic," his "Lines on Alexandria," his " Hohenlinden," and his "Lochiel's Warning;" while, for mellow pathos, for picturesque touches of nature, for phrases of magical power, and words or single lines that, within themselves, concentrate landscapes, he has lent a charm all his own to "The Exile of Erin," the "Lines in Argyleshire," "The Soldier's Dream," "The Turkish Lady," "The Grave of a Suicide," " The Last ]\ran," " Lord Ullin's Daughter," " Glenara," "Wild Flowers," and "The Rainbow." Campbell, like Coleridge, left utterly unfulfilled the promise of his youth ; for he did few things worthy of his fame after " Gertrude," and that was published when he was just thirty-two. His magnificent May had no corresponding September; his " Theodrics " ** MARTIAL STANZAS." 151 and " Pilgrims of Glencoe " were the mere lees of his genius, and utterly unworthy — more especially the last — of his former self. Pity they ever saw the light ; and better for him had it been— knowing he had done what he had — to have hung up his harp, and silently lingered out his life in a secure consciousness of poetic immortality. Here are a few bright droppings from Campbell's patriotic vein. The stanzas were written to commemo- rate Corunna, and the death-day of Moore. " Pledge to the much-loved land that gave us birth ! Invincible, romantic Scotia's shore ! Pledge to the memory of her parted worth ! And, first among the brave, remember Moore ! And be it deemed not wrong that name to give In festive hours, which prompts the patriot's sigh ! Who would not envy such as Moore to live ? And died he not as heroes wish to die ? Yes ! though too soon attaining glory's goal, To us his bright career too short w^as given ; Yet in a mighty cause his phoenix soul Rose on the flames of victory to heaven ! Peace to the mighty dead ! our bosom thanks In sprightlier strains the living may inspire ! Joy to the chiefs that lead old Scotia's ranks Of Roman garb, and more than Roman fire. Triumphant be the Thistle, still unfurled, Dear symbol wild ! on freedom's hills it grows, Where Fingal stemmed the tyrants of the world, And Roman eagles found unconquered foes ! Is there a son of generous England here, Or fervid Erin ? — he with us shall join, To pray that in eternal union dear, The Rose, the Thistle, and the Shamrock twine ! 152 Campbell's writings : Types of a race who shall the invader scorn. As rocks resist the billows round their shore — Types of a race who shall to time unborn Their country leave un conquered as of yore ! " The writings of Thomas Campbell are distinguished by their elegance and their perspicuousness, by their straightforward manliness and their high tone of moral sentiment. They abound with original imagery, with lofty aspirations after the true and beautiful, and with ideas that, from their prominent beauty, may be almost said to be tangible. Taste, however — the perfect equi- poise of his fine faculties — was the source of that mas- tery w4iich controlled and harmonised all. Hence he had concentration ; for his poetry was like a weeded garden, and every blossom that " dedicated its beauty to the sun " was placed in the situation most appro- priate to its perfection. His nervous manliness never degenerated into coarseness ; and judgment ever pruned the wings of his imagination and fancy. His delicacy was free from affectation, and his enthusiasm never '' o'erstepped the modesty of nature." Even when im- pelled by the whirlwind of inspiration, the helm obeyed his hand, and the bark ploughed on, amid the roaring of the waves, towards the haven of her destination. Few poets combined, in an equal degree, such felicity of conception with such perfect handling — such vigour of thought Avith such delicacy of expression ; yet this delicacy was as free from mawkishness as his sentiment from metaphysical obscurity — the rock on which so many have foundered. He could not rest self-satisfied until he had placed each object in its fairest point of view — until he had harmonised all his separate mate- rials with his general design. While in the selection of his topics he was fastidious, in his treatment of them he was alike daring and original — presenting us either with new and striking images, or with familiar ones unexpectedly placed in a novel aspect ; and whatever THEIR GENERAL CHARACTER. 153 these were, he laboured until he had imparted to them all the graces of thought and language. His usual success resulted from bold generalisations; but, when occasions offered, he descended to the minute with an elegance quite apart from tedious trifling. His genius is characterised by bursts of abrupt lyrical enthusiasm ; it is like his own " Andes, giant of the western star," his "wolf's long howl from Oonalaska's shore," his "aye as if for death a lonely trumpet wailed," his panther " howling amid that wilderness of fire," his " storks that to the boundless forest shriek," his " pyramid of fire," his " death-song of an Indian chief." He took, not to by- lanes, as many have done, for singularity's sake, when the fair broad highway was before him. He preferred the classical to the quaint, the obvious to the obscure ; and the general sympathies of mankind to an " audience fit though few," which none, I presume, ever did, who could not help it. In the management of his subject he either grappled with it, as Hercules did with the Lernsean hydra ; or tenderly blent all its elements into harmonious beauty, as if encircling it with the fabled cestus of Cytheraea. Much of what has been just said regarding Thomas Campbell, applies also — although, perhaps, not with equal force — to James Montgomery ; but their courses towards poetical eminence have been in the inverse to each other. At the time of life when the day-star of Campbell's genius, having past its early meridian, was already going down, Montgomery had scarcely signalised himself, and that only by unequal compositions, which he has since readily excelled. Coleridge and Campbell were thus at one : Montgomery, on the other hand, resembled Milton, Dryden, and Rogers, whose best poetry was that of their grey hairs. " The Wanderer of Switzerland," Montgomery's ear- liest performance, could scarcely have attained its popu- larity, either from its subject, which is local, or its 154 JAMES MONTGOMERY. treatment, which verges on common-place, or from its poetical merits, which are not of the rarest ; but along with it some fine lyrics were published, high-toned in sentiment and feeling, which bespoke the true touch, and found an echo in many hearts. " The West Indies," a poem written in commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade by the British legislature, was also an unequal although a much superior production ; and has a raciness of manner, a beauty of thought, and occa- sionally an indignant vehemence of expression about it, which, coupled with the nature of its subject, deservedly won for it a wide acceptation. Had it been the work of his later years, Montgomery would have assumed a higher and more exulting tone, and made it a jubilee hymn, instead of its being, what in its least inspired portions it is, an exposition, from local and historical sources, of the horrors of that abominable traffic ren- dered into elegant verse. What he has done, however, he has done well ; and its finest passages and apos- trophes — as that on love of countr}' — could only have been written by a genuine poet ; for it is but to a cer- tain height in heaven that the vulture can maintain his semblance to the eagle. Somewhat loosely put together as it here and there is, it sparkles throughout with gems of thought, which are appropriately and beautifully set, yet lose little of their lustre when removed from their places, and shine by their own intrinsic light. It is a poem, however, rather of the feelings than of the fancy, and has too much to do with stern facts to be through- out delightful ; and in this respect is inferior to the other three larger works which succeeded it — *'The World before the Flood," "Greenland," and "The Pelican Island " — the two former likewise in the heroic couplet, the last in a peculiar kind of blank verse, which has much less reference to that of Milton, Thomson, Cowper, or Wordsworth, than to our early dramatic writers, and with all their force, freedom, and ease ; in many parts HIS LONGER POEMS. 156 more resembling an improvisation than a composi- tion. Of these three last mentioned performances, each may be said to be successively in advance of the other in development of poetical power and resources. In the first, the description of the antediluvian patriarchs in their valleys of bliss — the true Arcadia — allows him a free and full range for his pleasant fancies ; and he luxuriates in describing the lai'ge happiness they enjoyed ere invaded by the giant descendants of Cain. Among its finer delineations are the innocent loves of Javan and Zillah, the translation of Enoch, and the death-scene of our first parent Adam. The prevailing fault of the poem is a monotony and languor arising from its length, and the deficiency in stirring incident — in short, from the preponderance of description over action ; and this notwithstanding its being written throughout with great care, and studded over with passages of uncommon elegance and beauty. " Greenland" is shorter, but perhaps still more highly finished. The subject being quite congenial to the taste, feelings, and genius of the author, is written con amove, and the composition is pervaded by a noble but subdued enthusiasm. The voyage of the Moravian missionaries to the inhospitable Arctic regions is finely described ; and their appearance there, under the touches of his pen, is as if angels of hght had been commissioned to walk for a season amid the darkness and desolation of the realms of frost and snow. But by far its finest section is that commemorative of the depopulation of the Nor- wegian colonies on the east coast of Greenland, and its final abandonment by Europeans, from the increasing inclemency of the winters about the beginning of the fifteenth century. Montgomery here rises above himself in passionate earnestness, and in force of description ; and by that canto alone would have distinctly stamped himself a poet of original power. 156 "the pelican island." Essaying a still loftier flight, the whole of his imagi- native strength was garnered up to be put forth in " The Pelican Island;" nor was his attempt like that of Icarus. It must he placed at the head of his works, whether "we regard it as a whole, or in insulated passages ; for it exhibits a richer command of language, and its imagery is collected from a much more extended field of thought and research, than any of its predeces- sors. It is also more remarkable for careful artistic adaptation of its parts to the general design, while its situations are more varied in their aspects, its sug- gestions more original, and its speculations more bold and daring. Indeed, Montgomery repeatedly trenches on the sublime in several parts of " The Pelican Island ;" as in his descriptions of the formation of the coral reefs, and of the aspect of the southern heaven, with its sparkling constellations, and its emblematic cross — unseen by European poets save in their dreams of the grand and beautiful. " Night, silent, cool, transparent, crowned the day ; The sky receded farther into space. The stai"s came lower down to meet the eye, Till the whole hemisphere, alive with light, Twinkled from east to west by one consent. The constellations round the Arctic pole, That never set to ixs, here scarcely rose, But in their stead, Oi'ion through the north Pursued the Pleiads ; Sirius, with his keen Quick scintillations, in the zenith reigned. The South unveiled its glories ; there the Wolf, With eyes of lightning, watch'd the Centaur's spear ; Through the clear hyaline, the Ship of Heaven Came sailing from Eternity ; the Dove On silver pinions, wing'd her peaceful way ; There, at the footstool of Jehovah's throne, The Altar, kindled from his presence, blazed ; There, too, all else excelling, meekly shone MONTGOMERY'S LYRICS. 157 The Cross — the symbol of redeeming love. The heavens declared the glory of the Lord, The firmament displayed his handiwork." Undeniable, however, as are the merits of Montgo- mery's longer and more ambitious works, and highly- creditable as these are to his enterprise and achieve- ment, it is as a lyrical poet that he has won his freshest laurels, and will be best remembered ; for on these he has the most unreservedly shed the peculiar beauty of his genius. He is there himself, and can be confounded with no other: and few that have read can readily forget his pieces severally entitled " The Common Lot," " Night," " Prayer," " The Grave," " Aspirations of Youth," " Incognita," " Bolehill Trees," " Make Way for Liberty," " A Walk in Spring," and " The Alps, a Reverie." With the exceptions, perhaps, of Moore, Campbell, and Hemans, I doubt indeed if an equal number of the lyrics of any other modern poet have so completely found their way to the national heart, there to be enshrined in hallowed remembrance. Among the very finest of these are " Night" and " Prayer." I give the last : — *' Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, Uttered or unexpressed ; The motion of a hidden fire That trembles in the breast. Prayer is the burden of a sigh. The falling of a tear ; The upward glancing of an eye, When none but God is near. Prayer is the simplest form of speech That infant lips can try ; Prayer, the sublimest strains that reach The Majesty on high. 158 "prater." Prayer is the Chiistian's vital breath, The Christian's native air ; His watchword at the gates of death — * He enters heaven by prayer. Prayer is the contrite sinner's voice, Returning from his ways ; While angels in their songs rejoice And say, ' Behold, he prays.' The saints, in prayer, appear as one, In word, and deed, and mind, When with the Father and his Son, Theu' fellowship they find. Nor prayer is made on earth alone : The Holy Spirit pleads ; And Jesus, on the eternal throne, For sinners intercedes. Oh Thou ! by whom we come to God, The life, the truth, the way ; The path of prayer thyself hast trod — Lord, teach us how to pray." One great merit which may be claimed for James Montgomery is, that he has encroached on no man's property as a poet ; he has staked oj0F a portion of the great common of literature for himself, and cultivated it according to his own taste and fancy. In his appro- priated garden, you find herbs and sweet-smelling flowers — the rosemary, and the thyme, and the mar- joram — the lily, the pink, and the pansy— the musk- rose and the gilly-flower ; but you have no staring sunflowers, no Brobdignag hollyhocks, no flaunting dahlias — for he clings to a simplicity that disdains ostentatious ornament ; and thus many are apt to think MONTGOMERY AS A SACRED POET. 159 tlie stream of his inspiration shallow, simply hecause it is pellucid. It is not easy to characterise his poetry, so as to convey any adequate idea of its excellencies — except by saying, in negatives, that it shuns all glare, glitter, and eccentricity ; and that it cannot be expected to find admirers among those who bow down at the shrines of exaggeration or false taste. Some have asserted — truly most idly — that the fame of Montgomery was founded on, and has been supported by, his sectarianism. If so, the Moravians are a much more potent body than they are generally accredited to be. However the applause of a class may have origin- ally given an impetus to his popularity, from the very first, as his works attest — and they are full of faith, hope, and charity — he wrote not for a section, but for man- kind ; and well has Professor Wilson remarked, in reference to this very topic, that " had Mr Montgomery not been a true poet, all the religious magazines in the world would not have saved his name from forgetful- ness and oblivion. He might have flaunted his day like the melancholy poppy — melancholy in all its ill-scented gaudiness ; but, as it is, he is like the rose of Sharon, whose balm and beauty shall not wither, planted on the banks of ' that river whose streams make glad the citv of the Lord.'" One word, in conclusion, regarding religious poetry — against which there have been some able and conscien- tious objectors. Nor have their reasons been quite groundless. The most sublime poetry, by far, to which the world has ever listened, is that of the Hebrew. It is immea- surably beyond all Greek and all Roman inspiration ; and yet its sole theme is the Great Jehovah, and the ways and wonders of His creation. All is simply grand, nakedly sublime ; and man before his Maker, even in the act of adoration, is there made to put his lips in the dust. So have done the great bards of succeeding times 160 LEGITIMATE AIMS OF POETRY. — Milton, and Young, and Thomson, and Cowper, and Pollok. In approaching the shrine they take off the sandals from, their feet, well knowing that the spot whereon thej stand is holy ground. But all not being great, alas ! all do not so behave ; and hence, in common hands, sacred poetry has become, not without reason, a subject of doubt and discussion ; for in them error has dared to counsel infallibility — ignorance to fathom Omniscience — and narrow- tninded prejudice to circum- scribe the bounds of mercy — the human irreverently to approach the Divine — and " fools to rush in where angels fear to tread." Genius, therefore, is not to be regarded by the gifted as a toy. It is a dread thing. It is like a sharp two- edged sword placed in the hands of its possessor, for much of good or of evil ; and the results are exactly as it is wielded, whether to the right hand or to the left. To claim exclusive moral — say rather immoral — privi- leges for men of genius, as men of genius, is absurd. They ask none, they need none. Eccentricity and error may be coupled with genius, but do not necessarily arise from it — as Shakespeare, Milton, and Scott have lived to illustrate. They spring from quite another source, for they are found a thousand times oftener without such companionship than with it, and verify the epigram of Prior — " Yes ! every poet is a fool, By demonstration Ned can show it : Happy could Xed's inverted rule Prove every fool to be a poet." Not only should the man of genius be measured by a high standard, but exactly in proportion to the extent and elevation of his powers is he doubly or triply ac- countable. We may rest assured that there is no dis- crepancy between the great and the good, for that would be quite an anomaly in the Creator's government of the USE AND ABUSE OF GENIUS. 161 universe. Only the silly and the shallow, the poetaster, the pretender, and the unprincipled, will seek to skulk behind such a transparent bulwark. Almost all the great poets of ancient and modern times (a few rare exceptions only go to strengthen the rule) have been men who reverenced Heaven and respected themselves, nobly fulfilling their destinies : those — in the pleasant valleys opening up innocent fountains of ever-new delight, for solacing the depressed, and refreshing the weary : these — labouring through the defiles of the difficult mountains for flowers of beauty and gems of price, unselfishly and unreservedly to be at once thrown into the general treasury-store of humanity. LECTUEE lY. The succession of Lord Byron to the poetical supremacy. — The energy of his genius, and its different phases. — Childe Harold, Turkish and other Tales. — His Pantheistic views. — Extracts from Prisoner of Chillon ; from Giaour ; from Bride of Ahydos ; from Farasina ; and from Beppo. — Verses to Mary. — BjTon and Burns. — Bishop Heber, Palestine and Hymns. — Dean Milman, Dramatic Poems, and Samor. — Elepiac Verses. — Dr Croly, Paris, Sebastian, Gems from Antique. — Honourable W. Herbert, Icelandic Translations, Helga, and Attila ; specimen, I\orthern Spri7ig. "William Tennant, Anster Fair and other poems: extract, Maggy Lauder. — Frere's Whistlecraft ; specimen. — Barhamand Hood. — Domestic Tragedy from Ingoldsby Legends. — Theodore Hook, his amazing powers of improvisation. — James and Horace Smith,Rejected Addresses. — Thomas Moore. — Anacreon, Odes andEpistles, Satires, Lalla Rookh, Loves of the Angels, Irish Melodies. — lines at Colws. — The Toung May Moon. — Burns and Muore. — Man not cosmopolite ; national poetry. Up to the time at which this Lecture commences, the writings of Wordsworth had been more talked about than read ; the fame of Coleridge was limited to a small circle of affectionate admirers ; the star of Campbell was still in the ascendant — the cynosure of eves with the select ; Crabbewas quietly but industriously cultivating his own homely peculiar field ; while the tide of popu- larity flowed triumphantly along with Scott, whose fresh free song all the aspiring young bards imitated, like a forest of mocking-birds. Open their tomes where you listed, let it have been at page one, or page one hundred, there were nothing but moss-trooper and marauder — baron bold and gay ladye — hound in leash and hawk THE POETIC ORIENTAL DYNASTY. 163 in hood — bastion huge and grey chapelle — henchmen and servitors — slashed sleeves and Spanish boots — steel-barred aventayles and nodding morions — "guns, trumpets, blunderbusses, drums, and thunder." The chivalrous epics of Scott are indeed glorious things — full of vivacity, energy, variet}^, and nature — and will endure while a monument of human genius remains ;b ut their thousand and one imitations have vanished — as I have before mentioned — like the clouds of yesterday. When the mighty master himself, instead of satiating the pub- lic, took to another field, that of prose, and left poetry to younger men, arose the Oriental dynasty, under the prime-viziership of Lord Byron ; and down went Wil- liam of Deloraine, and Wat of Buccleuch, before Hassan and Selim, Conrad and Medora, the Jereed men and the Janissaries, and all the white-turbaned, wide-trou- sered, hyacinthine-tressed, pearl-cinctured, gazelle-eyed, opium-chewing, loving and hating sons and daughters of Mahomet. Every puny rhymester called the moon "Phingari," daggers " Ataghans," drummers " Tambour- gis," tobacco-pipes " Chibouques," and women " Houris." It was up with the crescent and down with the cross ; and in as far as scribbling at least went, every poet was a detester of port and pork, and a renegade from all things Christian. Nay, even something like the per- sonal appearance of Childe Harold was aspired at ; and each beardless bardling, w^hether baker's, butcher's, or barber's apprentice, had his hair cut and his shirt-collar turned down a la Bi/ron. Midshipmen perseveringly strove to look Conrad-like and misanthropic ; lawyers' clerks affected the most melancholious mood ; and half- pay ensigns, contemptuous of county police or the pub- lic safety, — "with the left heel insidiously aside, Provoked the caper that they seemed to chide : " and on hacks, hired by the hour, adventured imitations of Mazeppa at a hand-gallop along the king's highway. 164 LORD byron's early poems. The premature appearance of George Gordon, Lord Byron, a minor, and his crushing b}^ Lord Brougham, in the Edinburgh Review, are matters too \vell known to need anything here beyond mere allusion ; and the "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," his satire in " retort courteous," may be passed over — vigorous and venomous as it was — in an equally summary manner. Even in the early volume, however, mixed up with much crudeness and juvenility, there were undoubted sparkles of that genius which afterwards astonished the world; and in the maturer satire — rash, presumptuous, and ill-judged as it was — indications of an ardent tem- perament and masculine intellect. But these glimpses w^ere heliacal : the true morning of Byron's genius manifested itself in "Childe Harold," — a work of tran- scendent power and beauty, rich in its descriptions, passionate in its tones, majestic in its aspirings, sublime in its very doubts — which at once stamped his reputa- tion as a great and prevailing poet. Its effect was electric — its success was instantaneously recognised. The star of his popularity shot with a burst to the zenith ; and, as he himself expresses it, " I got up one fine morning, and found myself famous." The poetry of Byron may be divided into three great sections ; each pretty distinctly different from the other, in regard alike to subject and to manner. The first, com- mencing with the opening cantos of " Childe Harold," includes "The Giaour," " The Bride of Abydos," " The Corsair," "Lara," the lyrics to "Thyrsa," and some minor pieces. The second comprehends " The Siege of Corinth" and "Parisina," "Mazeppa," the concluding cantos of "Childe Harold," " The Prisoner of Chillon," " The Lament of Tasso," and " Manfred." The third, starting with " Beppo," and comparatively dozing or prosing through the tragedies and mysteries, charac- teristically terminated with "Don Juan." Sad that it should have been so — but " what is writ is writ." THE THREE SECTIONS OF HIS POETRY. 165 In all the works of the first section, we have the his- tory of an individual mind, as regarded in different phases ; — for Harold, the Giaour, Selim, Conrad, and Lara, are all and each the same person, placed in some novel and romantic situation. Nor widely different is the renegade Alp, or the reckless Mazeppa, or the guilty Hugo. But the compositions in which the three last- named characters occur, indicate a transition state between those before mentioned and those which were to follow. Up to this period all the works of Lord Byron were characterised by passionate energy, by indomitable self-will, by point and antithesis — by emphatic sarcasm, and by brief but beautiful descrip- tive touches of men and nature. With much quite his own, we had much to remind us of Burns, of Scott, and of Crabbe ; occasionally also of Campbell, but certainly nothing — not a vestige— of the Lake School. The com- position of the third canto of " Childe Harold," and of " The Prisoner of Chillon," however, opened up a new era in his mental history, — evidently brought about by the writings of Wordsworth, Wilson, and Coleridge. He began to substitute contemplation for action, and the softer affections of humanity for its sterner and darker passions. We had now a keener sensibility to the charms of nature — a love of stars and flowers, and lakes and mountains ; and descriptions which were formerly dashed off in general outline, were now filled up with elaboration, and graced with all the minute- ness of picturesque detail. Take, as an example of this contrast in matter and manner, a stanza from the first, and then another from the third canto of the Childe. " Childe Harold had a mother — not forgot, Though parting from that mother he did shun; A sister whom he loved — but saw her not Before his weary pilgrimage begun. If friends he bad, he bade adieu to none ; Yet deem not thence his breast a breast of steel : 166 CHANGES IN LORD BYRON'S STYLE, They who have known what 'tis to doat upon A few dear objects, will in sadness feel Such partings break the heart they fondly hope to heal." This is the language of passion, and blighted affection, and baffled hope, looking not for, nay disdaining, that consolation which the other afterwards finds in the con- templation of the majestic and beautiful in the material world. " Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends; Where rolled the ocean, thereon was his home ; Where a blue sky and glowing clime extends, He had the passion and the power to roam ; The desert, forest, cavern, breaker's foam. Were unto him companionship ; they spake A mutual language clearer than the tone Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake For Nature's pages glassed by sunbeams on the lake." It is here, and elsewhere, that we observe the brooding influence of the pantheism of Wordsworth — the poet seeming to feel his existence less as an individual of a particular species, than as a portion of an eternal spirit, animating and pervading all things within the dominion of nature. " I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Of human cities torture : I can see Nothing to loathe in Nature save to be A link reluctant in a fleshly chain, Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee, And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain. And thus I am absorbed, and this is life : I look upon the peopled desert past, As on a place of agony and strife, Where, for some sin, to sorrow I was cast, AND MODES OF THOUGHT. 167 To act and suffer, but remount at last With a fresh pinion ; which I feel to spring, Though young, yet waxing vigorous as the blast Which it would cope with, on delighted wing, Spurning the clay-cold bones which round our being cling. Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part Of me, and of my soul, as I of them ? Is not the love of these deep in my heart With a pure passion ? Should I not contemn All objects if compared with these? and stem A tide of suffering, rather than forego Such feelings for the hard and worldly phlegm Of those whose eyes are only turned below, Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts which dare not glow 1 " "Well has Solomon said, " There is nothing new under the sun ;" and if there be anything intelligible in the quasi-new nebulous psychology of Emerson different from what is contained in these stanzas, pray what is it — or in where does it consist ? and " Echo answers — where !" Take another example in the solitude of the Giaour, as opposed to that of the Prisoner of Chillon : the one all anguish and despair, and over- boiling passion — the hyena dashing itself against the bars of its cage ; the other all heavenly benevolence, holy resignation, and tranquil regret. The Giaour is one " whose heart may break, but cannot bend :" his elements are fire and air alone. He spurns sympathy, and will not be comforted. Having lost what he alone prized, he looks on all else as worthless : he is swallowed up in a gloomy and engrossing selfishness. Not so the Prisoner. He turns from his own sorrows to sympathise with and console his brethren. He indulges in no demoniacal ravings — the thought of revenge never enters his gentle heart. Feeding on bitter fruits, he accuses not fate ; and chastens down his spirit to drink without murmuring the cup of bitterness, while all the lights of life are, one 168 "prisoner op chillon." by one, being successively extinguished around him. The milk of his nature turns not to gall— his faith for- bids it ; and even the stones of his dungeon come to be looked upon by him with the regard due to " familiar faces." So, when his chain is broken, so far is it from the love of Nature having been extinguished in his heart, that, with rapturous delight, he scrambles up to the barred lattice — " To bend upon the mountains high The quiet of a loving eye. I saw them, and they were the same, They were not changed like me in frame ; I saw their thousand years of snow On high — their wide long lake below, And the blue Rhone in fullest flow : I heai'd the torrents leap and gush O'er channelled rock and broken bush ; I saw the white-walled distant town. And whiter sails go shimmering down ; And then there was a little isle, Which in my very face did smile, The only one in view. A small green isle — it seemed no more. Scarce broader than my dungeon floor ; But in it there were three tall trees. And o'er it blew the mountain breeze, And by it there were waters flowing, And on it there were young flowers growing. Of gentle breath and hue : The fish swam by the castle wall. And they seemed joyous each and all ; The eagle rode the rising blast, Methought he never flew so fast As then to me he seemed to fly." "We have no trace here of Spenser and Thomson, of Dryden and Crabbe, of Scott and Campbell, as in Byron's earlier productions. " The Prisoner of Chillon" "the giaour." 169 is constructed throughout on the principles of Words- worth, and seems intended to show, by its purity, its pathos, and cahn beauty, how consonant these are with the finest purposes of poetry, Avhen freed from the puerilities, the verbose diffuseness, and the mean pro- lixity of detail, which so frequently mar their etfect, even in the hands of their great promulgator. Let me now take a rapid glance at the Tales on which, after the publication of the opening cantos of " Childe Harold," the fame of Lord Byron was principally grounded — " The Giaour," " The Bride of Abydos," " The Corsair," and " Lara." The soliloquising of the Giaour is in the same tone of baffled, and with even a bitterer spirit of misanthropy than the Childe himself, who, in his milder moods, is only a melancholy moraliser. He is like a caged eagle, the very oracle of impassioned wretchedness. His baffled and blighted love does not die away with the loss of its object, but continues to blaze and burn on with the fierceness and fervour of a volcano. The memory of the past throws forward fiery shadows on the dark sky of the future. He has glutted his revenge on his foes ; he has sought and taken retribution in blood for blood, and has withdrawn to the shades of the cloister, not in humility of heart, but to live on " with naught to love or hate," an idler among the living — breathing the air that has " a vitality of poison," and looking listlessly on the day, whose sunshine brings no cheer- fulness. To him all is a wild mockery, mere " vanity and vexation of spirit." Earth holds nothing like that which he has lost, " or if it doth, in vain for him." The holy calm and the religious feeling around him have no influence. Despising sympathy, he keeps aloof from all ; and it is not till his hair turns grey, and his strength fails, and the shadows of welcome death are hovering over him, that, to the Friar who vainly endeavours to console and soothe him, he pours out the long pent-up 170 '' THE BEIDE OF ABTDOS : " lava-torrent of bis sufferings, " in thoughts that breathe and words that burn." " Think me not thankless — but this grief Looks not to priesthood for rehef; My soul's estate in secret guess. But wouldst thou pity more, say less. When thou canst bid my Leila live, Then will I sue thee to forgive ; Then plead my cause in that high place, Where proffered masses purchase grace. — Go where the hunter's hand hath wrung From forest cave her shrieking young, And calm the lonely lioness ; But soothe not, mock not my distress ! Waste not thine orison : Despair Is mightier than thy pious prayer ; I would not, if I might, be blest — I want no paradise, but rest." Selim, in " The Bride of Abvdos," is merely the Giaour under less exciting circumstances — circumstances that subdued him to despair ; like day-beams breaking in on a captive in his dungeon only to show him that escape from it is impossible. The whole tale is one of gentle affection and chastened beauty. An intellectual sweetness pervades it, and even tones down the bloody catastrophe by Avhich it is wound up. Nothing can be more dramatically fine than the garden scene — a scene that indelibly impresses itself on the heart and fancy. Nature seems to exult in the very luxury of her beauty ; yet a mysterious awe broods over all, and we feel that the lovers are then and there met together for the last time. Selim tells Zuleika of his fears : — " But ere her lip, or even her eye, Essayed to speak or look reply, Beneath the garden's wicket porch Far flashed on high a blazing torch ! Another — and another — and another— ITS HIGH BEAUTIES. 171 Far, wide, through every thicket spread. The fearful lights are gleaming red ; Nor these alone — for each right hand Is ready with a sheathless brand." With a hasty embrace they part for ever : — " One bound he made, and gained the sand : Already at his feet hath sunk The foremost of the prying band, A gaping head, a quivering trunk; Another falls, but round him close A swarming circle of his foes ; From I'ight to left his path he cleft. And almost met the meeting wave ; His boat appears not five oars' length — His comrades strain with desperate strength — Oh, are they yet in time to save? His feet the foremost breakers lave ; His baud are plunging in the bay. Their sabres glitter through the spray ; Wet, wild, unwearied in the stx-and They struggle — now they touch the land ! They come — 'tis but to add to slaughter — His heart's best blood is on the water." Such is the rapid energy of Byron's narrative action ; now for his wild, solemn, yet passionate sentiment : — " By Helle's stream there is a voice of wail ! And woman's eye is wet, man's cheek is pale : Zuleika ! last of Giaffir's race ! Thy destined lord is come too late ; He sees not — ne'er shall see thy face ! Can he not hear The loud Wul-wulleh warn his distant ear ? Thy handmaids weeping at the gate, The Koran chanters of the hymn of fate ! Sighs in the hall, and shrieks upon the gale, Tell him thy tale ! 172 " THE COESAIR " AND " LARA." Thou didst not view thy Selim fall ! That fearful moment when he left the cave Thy heart grew chill : He was thy hope — thy joy — thy love — thine all ! And that last thought of him thou couldst not save Sufficed to kill ; Burst forth in one wild cry — and all was still. Peace to thy broken heart and vii-gin grave ! " The idea of the bird coming at even-tide, and singing above the tomb of Zuleika, is conceived in a fine tone of poetical feeling ; as is also that of the white rose spring- ing up from her virgin ashes. Conrad " the Corsair" is only " the Giaour" exhibited in the bustle of agitated existence. His portrait, how- ever, is not drawn, like that of the other, in bold, rapid master-strokes, but is brought out by elaborate and diligent re-touching. He is delineated physically and morally; and although we are told that he is a man with but " one virtue and a thousand crimes," we know him only as a proud, sullen, unhappy, and impassioned being — miserable in all save his love. Medora is one of Byron's most exquisite personifications of female character — worthy to stand in the same class with the Desdemona, Ophelia, and Imogene of Shakespeare, and the Belvidera of Otway. The parting scene with her husband, and that which brings him back a widower to his silent home, are among the most touchingly pathetical ever conceived in a poet's heart. " Lara" exhibits the same strength of conception, and the same beauty of execution ; but its hues are less varied and more sombre, and its general aspect unin- viting. The finest passage in the poem is the death- scene of the hero. In " the dark page" we recognise Gulnare, but in our remembrance of Medora, can scarcely sympathise with her devotedness. In all these Tales passion and intellectual energy are invariably brought into the foreground ; and description "PARISINA." 173 is made subservient to them. A change became percep- tible in " The Siege of Corinth" and " Paritina ;" and in the former we have not only the glowing morning scene, when the march of the invading army commences, which is all activity and commotion, but the glorious moonlight one, in which Alp and Francesca meet to part for ever — the one to die of a broken heart, and the other to perish in his apostasy. " There is a light cloud by the moon — 'Tis passing, and will pass full soon — If by the time its vapoury sail Hath ceased her shaded orb to veil, Thy heart within thee is not changed, Then God and man are both avenged ; Dark will thy doom be, darker still Thine immortahty of ill." We have the same newly-developed descriptive power in the opening lines of " Parisina," which depicture twilight, and in the sketch of the glowing summer west, when her paramour suffered death. " It is a lovely hour as yet Before the summer sun shall set. Which rose upon that heavy day, And mocked it with his steadiest ray ; And his evening beams are shed Full on Hugo's fated head, As his last confession pouxing To the monk — his doom deploring In penitential holiness, He bends to hear his accent bless With absolution, such as may Wipe our mortal stains away. That high sun on his head did glisten As he there did bow and listen ; And the rings of chestnut hair Curled half down his neck so bare ; 174 But brighter still the beam was thrown JLTpon the axe that near him shone With a clear and ghastly glitter — Oh ! that parting hour was bitter ! Even the stern stood chilled with awe. Dark the crime, and just the law — Yet they shuddered as they saw." It is to be remarked, also, tliat in both of the poems last mentioned there is a freedom and a fearlessness of portraiture — a kind of recklessness even communicating itself to the rhymes — a disdain, as it were, of all pre- paration for appearing at a public tribunal, which were not apparent in Byron's former attempts ; combined with something like a conscious mastery — a confidence in commanding success. The same remarks apply to " Mazeppa," with its nonchalant opening and ending — the card-playing scene being as quaint as if penned by Quarles or Cowley ; while the monarch sleeping over his Hetmau's adventures has a dash of the mock heroic. The whole poetry of the composition centres in the flight across the boundless steppes, with its exquisite episode of the wolves and ravens. In " The Lament of Tasso " we have a gradual veering round to the Wordsworthian style and prin- ciples ; but the conversion was not complete until exhibited in the third canto of the " Childe," and in " The Prisoner of Chillon," which appeared nearly simultaneously. In these we have a complete seces- sion from the misanthropic to the pantheistic feeling ; and an intense love of external nature is mingled with a gentler spirit of humanity. The magnificent drama of " Manfred" is formed of the same elements, thrown into new and even more striking combinations; indeed, it contains more true poetry than all his other dramas put together. At an earlier stage of Byron's career, Manfred would have been only another Lara, or Alp, or Harold ; for, like " DON JUAN " AND " BEPPO." 175 them, " he has no sympathy with breathing flesh ;" but he has such an intense, passionate, ever- craving love for the majesty and beauty of nature, that, to gain communion w^ith the spirits of the elements, he ventures to give up his own. To any who have a lingering doubt of the depth or delicacy of Byron's genius, 1 have only to crave a reference to the scenes on the summit of the Jungfrau, beside the cataract of the Alps, and in the interior of the tower, when the moonlight on the snow-shining mountains recalls the memory of the Coliseum — *' till the place Became religion, and the heart ran o'er With silent worship of the great of old !" Byron, like Burns, was a prodigy of genius ; nor were they at all dissimilar in temperament, although the peer, even from early boyhood, was much more than the other the spoiled child of circumstances. In this respect he approaches nearer to Alfieri and Rous- seau, both of whom, in some strong features, he resembles — in much, certainly, of their wayward daring — their tendency to self-anatomy — and, I fear also, in much of their reckless perversion or disregard of moral principle, as occasions required. In " Don Juan" he seemed to consider himself " a chartered libertine," free to speak out on all subjects unreservedly, heedless of praise or blame — nay, contemptuously disdainful of consequences. Sad that this should have been so ; for that extraor- dinary poem is bright with some of the richest gems of his genius — as the shipwreck in the second canto — the Greek feast in the third — the death of Haidee in the fourth — and the magnificent stanzas on " The Isles of Greece." Putting morality aside, the return-home scene in " Beppo" is also quite inimitable for its com- mixture of light-hearted wit and effervescent frivolity. The parties are a Venetian, who has unexpectedly 176 EXTRACT FROM " EEPPO." turned up after having been long among the Moslem, and his lady, who, in wild and solitary despair, has, for consolation, taken to herself another partner : — " They entered, and for coffee called — it came, A beverage for Turks and Christians both, Although the w&y they make it's not the same. Now Laura, much recovered, or less loth To speak, cries ' Beppo ! what's your Pagan name ? Bless me ! your beard is of amazing growth ! And how came you to keep away so long ? Are you not sensible 'twas very wrong ? And are you really, ti-uly, now a Turk ? Is it true they use their fingers for a fork ? Well — that's the prettiest shawl, as I'm alive ! You'll give it me ? They say you eat no pork, And how so many years did you contrive To — bless me ! did I ever ? No ! I never Saw a man grown so yellow ! how's your liver ? Beppo ! that beard of yours becomes you not ; It shall be shaved before you're a day older : Why do you wear it 1 Oh ! I had forgot — Pray, don't you think the weather here is colder 1 How do I look? You shan't stir from this spot In that queer dress, for fear that some beholder Should find you out, and make the story known. How short your hair is ! Lack ! how grey it's grown ! ' " How different is this, in tone and spirit, from his early verses " To Mary," on paying her a visit after that marriage with another, which, I cannot help thinking, was the star of wormwood that embittered all the after-thoughts of Byron's young heart, blighted its most deeply-rooted hopes of happiness, and left him bankrupt of bliss in life — "a reckless roue." The following stanzas seem the very wringings-out of the agony of affection : — "verses to MARY." 177 " Well ! thou art happy, and I feel That T should thus be happy too ; For still my heart regards thy weal Warmly, as it was wont to do. Thy husband's blest, and 'twill impart Some pangs to view his happier lot ; But let them pass ! — oh ! how my heart Would hate him if he loved thee not ! When late I saw thy favourite child, I thought my jealous heart would break ; But when the unconscious infant smiled, I kissed it for its mother's sake. I kissed it, and repressed my sighs, Its father in its face to see ; But then it had its mother's eyes, And they were all to love and me. Mary, adieu ! I must away : While thou art blest I'll not repine ; But near thee I can never stay ; My heart would soon again be thine. I deemed that time, I deemed that pride Had quenched at length my boyish flame ; Nor knew, till seated by thy side, My heart in all, save hope, the same. Yet was I calm ; I knew the time My breast would thrill before thy look ; But now to tremble were a crime ! We met, and not a nerve was shook. I saw thee gaze upon my face. Yet meet with no confusion there ; One only feeling couldst thou trace — The sullen calmness of despair. M 178 REGINALD HEBEB : Away ! away ! my early dream Remembrance never must awake : Oh ! where is Lethe's fabled stream — My foolish heart, be still, or break ! " It is somewhat remarkable that the two most impas- sioned poets of modern times — Robert Burns and Lord Byron — should each have died at the early age of thirty- seven — as if the blade of such temperaments soon wore through the scabbard. Although so far dissociated by- place in society, their fates and fortunes, as I have hinted, had many common points of resemblance. In the zenith of his dazzling reputation, Byron could not help exclaiming, " I have not loved the world, nor the world me ;" and Burns, doomed to a destiny so irrecon- cilable with his feelings and aspirations, must have often felt, like Southey's Thalaba, that he indeed was — " A lonely being, far from all he loved ! " Light lie the earth on these two glorious human crea- tures ; and let every cloud perish and pass away from their immortal memories ! "We now turn to one who may more particularly be regarded in the light of a sacred poet, and whose life was a beautiful commentary on his writings. The career of Reginald Heber commenced considerably earlier than that of several others whose productions I have already alluded to. His poem entitled " Palestine" — an extraor- dinary effort for one so young, whether we regard its strik- ing imagery, its high-toned sentiment, or its elegant versification — carried off an Oxford prize in 1802 ; and, fine as some of these prize poems have unquestionably been, more especially Porteous's " Death," Glynn's " Day of Judgment," Grant's " Restoration of Learning," and AVrangham's "Holy Land," still it is doubtful whether Heber has been equalled either by any preceding or suc- ceeding competitor. It is admirably sustained through- out ; and indeed the passages relating to the building of HIS POEMS AND HYMNS. 179 the Temple, and to the scenes on Calvary, pass from the magnificent almost into the sublime. His second ap- pearance, " Barope, or Lines on the Present War," in 1809, although more vigorous and elaborate, wants the freshness and the salient points of his earlier one ; and although not derogatory to, did not enhance his reputa- tion. These, together vt'itli a fine fragment, " The Passage of the Red Sea," some free translations from Pindar, and a few miscellaneous verses, were collected together in a volume, published in 1812. While incumbent of Hodnet in Shropshire, Heber had an opportunity of affording the world an illustrious example of the highest intellectual culture, and the finest natural taste, being made perfectly compatible with the most faithful discharge of the humblest reli- gious and moral duties — the instruction of the ignorant, the reproof of the erring, the visitation of the sick, and the consolation of the bereaved ; and, in his leisure moments, he there also took delight in pouring out his feelings in snatches of sacred verse. In after years, the associations connected with home-scenes gave these com- positions somewhat of a greater value in his own eyes ; and, when Bishop of Calcutta, he took a pleasure in revising and collecting them ; but they were not pre- sented to the public until after his premature and lamented death in 1826. These " Hymns " have been by far the most popular of his productions, and deser- vedly so ; for in purity and elevation of sentiment, in simple pathos, and in eloquent earnestness, it would be difficult to find anything superior to them in the range of sacred lyric poetry. They have the home-truth of Watts, but rank much higher, as literary compositions, than the " Moral and Divine Songs " of that great bene- factor of youth ; and all the devotion of Wesley or Keble, without their languor and diffuse verbosity. Heber always writes like a Christian scholar, and never finds it necessary to lower his tone on account of his 180 CHRISTMAS HTMN. subjects. He is ever characterised by fine sensibilities ; by pure natural taste, highly cultivated ; and by a deep sense of the majestic and beautiful. Probably, too, from being extensively acquainted with what had been achieved by the great preceding poets, both of ancient and modern times, he did, not venture to think that he could now startle the world by bold attempts at origi- nality ; but what he did he determined to do well. Several copies of verses, which appeared posthumously in his " Journals," have all the freshness of his earlier compositions, with increased freedom of expression — giving us reason to believe that even greater things might have been expected from him. As it is, the sweet music of his " Thou art gone to the Grave," of his " Lo ! the Lilies of the Field," of his " From Green- land's icy Mountains," and of his " Brightest and best of the Sons of the Morning," will doubtless touch the hearts of many future generations, as it has done the present. How calmly, sweetly solemn is the last -mentioned hymn ! — " Brightest and best of the sons of the morning ! Dawn on our darkness, and lend us thine aid ; Star of the East ! the horizon adorning, Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid ! Cold on his cradle the dew-drops are shining ; Low hes his head with the beasts of the stall ; Angels adore him in slumber reclining — Maker and Monarch and Saviour of all ! Say, shall we yield him, in costly devotion. Odours of Edom, and offerings divine 1 Gems of the mountain, and pearls of the ocean 1 Myrrh from the forest, or gold from the mine ] Vainly we offer each ample oblation — Vainly with gifts would his favour secure ; Richer by far is the heart's adoration ; Dearer to God ai'e the prayers of the poor. HENRY HART MILMAN. 181 Brightest and best of the sons of the morning ! Dawn on ouv darkness, and lend us thine aid ; Star of the East ! the horizon adorning, Lead where the infant Redeemer is laid ! " In turning from Bishop Heber to Henry Hart Milman, Canon of Westminster, perhaps something of the same remarks regarding the chilling influence of scholastic training may be found to hold true. The muse of Milton soared aloft without being seemingly encumbered by its Atlantean burthen of learning — nay, turned, as occasion required, its various stores to presentand happy account; but this was only a proof of its vast native energy and vigour — a roc amid the birds of the air ; for, when " Knowledge was at one entrance quite shut out," all the aspects of nature seemed to keep ever revolving before his mental eye in serene beauty and majesty. Milman's taste and imagination, on the contrary, do not appear to have ever been allowed free scope ; and that his intel- lect was too early put into harness is certain, for it is recorded of him that he carried off the greatest number of College prizes that ever fell to the portion of one individual. Passing over his elegant prize poem, his earliest pro- duction, "Fazio," as being a regular acting drama, does not fall to be considered here ; but his " Fall of Jeru- salem," " Martyr of Antioch," " Belshazzar," and " Anne Boleyn," although cast in a dramatic mould, were never intended for scenic representation, and approach, in most essentials, very closely to the mere poem. As such they have high and peculiar merits. In all there are fine, occasionally remarkable passages ; but they pall from similarity of tone ; and " The Fall of Jerusalem " has been generally thought the best, probably only because it was the first. These compositions are charac- terised by a copious command of high-toned language ; by descriptions occasionally rich, even to gorgeousness ; and above all, by passages of great lyrical beauty, some- 182 FUNERAL ANTHEM. times simply pathetic, as in the funeral anthem, "Brother, thou hast gone before us," in the "Martyr of Antioch," but much more often swelling into organ- toned magnificence — " "With neck in thunder clothed. And long resouuding pace," which Gray allegorically attributes to the march of Drvden's verse, as in the advent hymn, "For thou wert born of Woman ; and in the stanzas commencing — " Even thus, amid thy pride and luxury, Earth, shall that last coming burst on thee ! " with which the " Fall of Jerusalem" so grandly con- cludes. The funeral anthem has always struck me as particu- larly fine ; and its solemn music has often, through many years, haunted my memory. " Brother, thou art gone before us. And thy saintly soul is flown Where tears are wiped from every eye, And sorrow is unknown. From the burden of the flesh, And from care and fear released, Where the wicked cease from troubling, And the weary are at rest. The toilsome way thou'st travelled o'er. And borne the heavy load ; But Christ hath taught thy languid feet To reach his blest abode. Thou'rt sleeping now, like Lazarus, Upon his Father's breast. Where the wicked cease from troubling. And the w^earv are at rest. CHARACTER OF MILMAN'S POETRY. 183 Sin can nevei' taint thee noAv, Ifor doubt thy faith assail, Nor thy meek trust in Jesus Christ And the Holy Spirit fail ; And there thou'rt sure to meet the good Whom on earth thou lovedst best, Where the wicked cease from troubling, And the weary are at rest. * Earth to earth,' and ' Dust to dust,' The solemn priest hath said, So we lay the turf above thee now, And we seal thy naiTow bed ; But thy spix'it, brother, soars away Among the faithful blest, Where the wicked cease from troubling, And the weary are at rest." "Samor, Lord of the Bright City," a heroic poem in twelve books, was the most elaborate and ambitious, but probably the least successful effort of its author, from its deficiency in nature and simplicity. It is over- written, and burthened with ornament and illustration. For eloquence we have redundant fluency, and for in- spiration rhetoric ; and we are too frequently reminded, sometimes seemingly with intention, of the poetry of Greece and Rome, not only in the music, but in the spirit of particular passages. Milman's blank verse is modelled in a great measure on that of Southey ; but he has not attained the natural grace, the flexibility, and varied intonation of that great master. Nor can the subject of the poem be admitted to be happily chosen — the decay of ancient British and the rise of Saxon power — for the heroes and the incidents are all too remote, and undefined, and locally unimportant, to be so re- stored as to re-awaken strong or abiding interest. As a poet, Milman is always sustained, elegant, elo- quent, rhetorical ; but his imagery, though copious, is 184 CHARACTER OF MILMAN'S POETRY. seldom novel. He never startles by an unexpected burst of original power; nor melts by those spontaneous minute touches of nature, which are common alike to the humble sketches of Clare, and the gorgeous page- antry of Coleridge. He overlays with ornament, until even the natural loses its charm, and we look and long in vain for the simple and unadorned : — hence it is that few or none of his lines recur as adages, like those of Burns or Wordsworth. He is continually straining after the grand, nor can it be said that his efforts are often quite unsuccessful, if taken as they stand by them- selves ; but they are comparatively lost in the mass from lack of relief — as a long mountain-chain loses in appa- rent altitude, without the break of some Mont Blanc or Chimborazo, or unless it be here and there intersected by winding valleys and abrupt ravines. His miscellaneous poetry consists in translations from the Greek, from the Italian, and from Oriental sources, all elegant and scholarly; and some "Hymns for Church Service," originally published with those of Bishop Heber. These are all fine, more especially that for Good Friday. As a poet. Dean Milman is deficient in nature and passion, and his imagination has not been allowed to escape with sufficient freedom from the trammels of scholastic rules, and the Procrustes-bed of classicality. We are always impressed with a conviction of his learn- ing, his ability, and his cultivated taste, but are haunted at the same time with the unsatisfactory feeling, that his poetry is rather a clever recasting of fine things already familiar to us, than strikingly fresh and ori- ginal. His ability as a critic, as the historian of the Jews, as the editor of Gibbon — whose baneful errors and assumptions he triumphantly combats — and as the com- mentator on Horace, are well known. With less leaning to authorities, and greater reliance on his own powers and impressions, there can be no doubt that Milman GEORGE CROLY : 185 would have written far finer poetry, and secured a more extended acceptability ; for his more simple strains are, after all, those best remembered, and he could be at times alike natural and pathetic. It is not a little curious that our next two poets should be also distinguished clergymen of the Church of England — Dr Croly and the Honourable William Herbert. George Croly first excited attention as a poet by his "Paris in 1815 ;" which, by its uncommon merits, at once gave him a fixed and distinguished place in litera- ture, and was hailed as a probable harbinger of still greater achievements. This was followed in 1820 by " The Angel of the World," an Arabian, and by " Sebas- tian," a Spanish tale. "The Angel" is a paraphrase of one of the most graceful fictions of the Koran, the fall from heaven of Haruth and Maruth, by the temptations of female beauty and wine. It is written in the Spenserian stanza, and with oriental gorgeousness and grace. But such subjects are too ethereal — they do not stand hand- ling ; in their gossamer fabric they have the frailty of rose-leaves, besides being deficient in the materials which can alone command direct human sympathy. " Sebastian " is a tale of greater length and higher pretensions — finer, as a composition, in some of its parts, as in the description of the Moorish palace of the Alhambra, which vies with those of Washington Irving and Mrs Heraans — and of the taking of the veil by a daughter of the house of Medina Sidonia, which is full of serene and solemn beauty ; but the poem is unequal to a degree that can only be laid to the score of sheer haste or carelessness — pleas which criticism dare not accept. Its faults are not those of poverty, but of redundance ; and originate not from want of soil, or of sun and shower, but of the pruning-knife. To Dr Croly's next productions, " Catiline, a Tragedy," 186 HIS VARIOUS PRODUCTIONS. and " Pride shall have a Fall," a comedy, I allude not farther than to say, that, although the former is in some measure marred by its departure from historical accuracy, both are characterised by that vigorous hand- ling and life-like dialogue which carry attention on with unflagging interest ; and throughout the comedy, some of its author's finest lyrics are gracefully inter- spersed. These productions for the stage were succeeded by a series of illustrative verses to Dagley's ''Gems from the Antique," a con amove task, which he executed to admiration ; these little poems being perhaps the most perfect things Dr Croly has written — although it would be difficult to be very definite or decided on this point, as hundreds of copies of verses from his inde- fatigable pen, some of them of surpassing excellence, lie scattered about — rich bouquets of unowned flowers, — throughout the wide unbounded fields of periodical literature. As a poet, Dr Croly has many great and shining qualities ; a rich command of language, whether for the tender or the serious — an ear finely attuned to musical expression — a fertile and lucid couceptive power, and an intellect at once subtle and masculine. But it strikes me that he has never done full justice to his poetical genius, as none of his productions in verse at all come up to the standard of his undoubted capabilities. Most of his poems are liker efi"usions — mere sybilline leaves — than compositions. Thrown oft^at a heat, they have been given to the world without correction, and without elaboration ; and hence we have passages of mere declamation seasoned with eloquence, and, not unfrequently, rhetoric unhesitatingly substituted for inspiration. Add to this, that his reputation as one of the most brilliant prose-writers of our time may be said to have, in some measure, eclipsed his lustre as a poet ; for it would be difficult to point to any English style, save that of Edmund Burke's, at once so idiomatic HERBERT'S NORSE POETRY. 187 and eloquent, so full of rich variety, and of such unflag- ging spirit. These excellencies he has shown in the many able volumes of his professional writings, as well as in his countless contributions to general literature, in the romance of " Sakthiel," the novel of " Marstou," and the countless other outpourings of his voluminous and versatile pen. The Hon. William Herbert first appeared before the public in a series of elegant and spirited translations from the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, as also, and more particularly, from the Danish and Icelandic. The latter were much admired by Sir Walter Scott and other competent judges, as well from their novelty and real merit, as from the tact with which the author had succeeded in reproducing the Sagas of the Scalds in language at once chastened, rich, and harmonious. There can be little doubt that this went far in deter- mining the bent of the author's mind to the antiquities, language, and literature of Scandinavia ; for, with the exception of a few short but exquisite fragments by Gray, he felt that the field was untraversed, and his own ; and he strenuously exerted himself to do for it what Byron had been doing for the Turkish, and Southey for the Hindoo mythology. As a first result, his "Helga," a poem in seven cantos, appeared in 18J5, and was evidently the fruit of much diligent labour and research, culled from what to most would have been regarded as very unpromising materials. There was less danger in rejecting than in selecting ; but he must have felt that even the best cooked of his illustra- tions of the superstitions, customs, and scenery of Scandinavia, required a considerable dash of classical sauce to fit them for more southern palates ; and they thus lost in Norse raciness what they gained in delicacy. "Helga" can have but slender claims to originality of style or manner, when we know tliat it was written after the " Rokeby " of Scott ; although it may be also 188 CHAEACTEES OF HERBERT'S POETRY. regarded as one of the other few triumphs over what Lord Byron has termed "the fatal facility of the octo- syllabic measure." Herbert wrote with elegance always, and occasionally with power, but we have ever far more art than genius; and from his anxiety to be learnedly correct, he too frequently runs the risk of becoming heavy and monotonous. The story relates to the appearance of a party of wild Berserkars from Denmark, at the palace of King Ingva, their chief, demanding his daughter Helga in marriage ; or, on refusal, to fight his most redoubted champion in single combat. The challenge is accepted by Hialraar, a brave young knight, and the secret admirer of the princess, who defies him to mortal encounter on the island of Samsoe. Meanwhile Helga is conveyed by visions down to " Hela's drear abode," where she learns that the Berserkar is only to be conquered by a falchion, then in the hand of a giant-statue, amid the enchanted mines of the far north. Hialmar determines on posses- sing it, and his adventures are picturesquely described ; but snares being laid for him, after he has succeeded in his enterprise, he falls into these, and poetical justice is decreed. As he is about to enter the fated field, the dread apparitional appearance of the Valkyriur, or Maids of Slaughter, who cross his way, forewarns him of impending doom. The huge Berserkar, indeed, falls beneath his victorious falchion, but from the extent of his own wounds, he speedily bleeds to death ; and meanwhile, as Helga with an anxious heart is awaiting the result, Asbiorn, a disappointed rival, savagely carry- ing on his shoulders the lifeless body of Hialraar, lavs it within her arms, and instantly her spirit passes away in silence, and without a sign. In the management of his materials, Herbert certainly did much to temper, with chaster ornaments, the rude wildness of Scaldic fiction, and to give to its mon- strosities the hues and lineaments of poetry. His "northern spring." 189 descriptions are terse and animated, and he often paints in hues vivid and intense. He seldom offends against good taste, either in his selection of subjects, or his manner of treating them ; and the marks of fine scholar- ship are everywhere apparent in his compositions. " Attila" was the last and most ambitious production of Herbert ; his most laboured, but not his most suc- cessful one. The fire of his youthful enthusiasm had been gradually burning out, and this he endeavoured, but vainly, to atone for, by a strict adherence to Aristo- telian rules, backed by the Galilean codicils of Boileau and Bossu. He stumbles between the cold stateliness of Glover's " Leonidas," and "W'ilkie's " Epigoniad," and the flowery exuberances of Edwin Atherstone and Abraham Heraud. Nature is shut out by art, or perishes under the tyrannous tutelage of refinement and propriety. Striking scenes and situations are occasionally opened up, and judiciously treated ; but there is a lack alike of great beauties and of great faults. Yet Herbert had an eye and a heart for nature, and there are few fresher or finer things in descriptive poetry than his lines in Helga, on the sudden outburst of the Northern spring : — " Testre'en the mountain's nigged brow Was mantled o'er with dreary snow : The sun sat red behind the hill, And every breath of wind was still : But ere he rose, the southern blast A veil o'er heaven's blue arch had cast; Thick rolled the clouds, and genial rain Poured the wide deluge o'er the plain. Fair glens and verdant vales appear, And warmth awakes the budding year. 0, 'tis the touch of fairy hand That wakes the spring of Northern land : It warms not there by slow degrees, With changeful pulse, the uncertain breeze ; 190 WILLIAM TENNANT. But sudden, on the wondering sight, Bursts forth the beam of living light, And instant verdure springs around, And magic flowers bedeck the ground. Eeturned from regions far away, The red-winged throstle pours his lay ; The soaring snipe salutes the spring, While the breeze whistles through his wing ; And as he hails the melting snows, The heath-cock claps his wings, and crows." It would be difficult to point to any single year in the history of our literature so rich and varied in pro- duction as 1812. To it we owe, together with several lesser triumphs, the " Childe Harold" of Byron, the "Rokeby" of Scott, "The Isle of Palms" of Wilson, "The Queen's Wake" of James Hogg, the "Anster Fair" of William Tennant, and the "Rejected Ad- dresses " of Horace and James Smith. The introduction to British literature of the Oitava Rima, long familiar to the readers of the serio-comic conventional poetry of Italy, in the pages of Pulci, Casti, Berni, Tassoni, and Ariosto, most certainly appertains — whether for good or evil — to William Tennant, an almost self-taught genius, at the time an obscure clerk in a merchant's store, in the old, quaint little town of Anstruther in Fife, and at the period of his death a Doctor of Laws, and Professor of Oriental Languages in the University of St Andrews. Tennant's other works were a tragedy on " Cardinal Beaton" — ineffective as a drama, but abounding in passages of high merit and interest; "The Thane of Fife;" and "The Dinging Down of the Cathedral,"— the last written in imitation of the antique style, and in the orthography of the once celebrated Scottish poets, William Dunbar and Sir David Lyndsay. It is wonderful to observe how gaily his Pegasus prances under such a load of grotesque trappings, which, how- WILLIAM TENNANT. 191 ever, were quite unnecessary, and in equivocal taste ; so that the cleverness exhibited may be said in a great measure to have been thrown away. Tennant's latest poetical collection — the " Hebrew Hymns and Eclogues" — showed an evident decline of power ; were deficient in freshness and variety ; and, in as far as fame was concerned, might have been advantageously withheld. Tennant's first w^as, beyond all comparison, also his best poem. The merit of " Anster Fair " consists in its lively eflfervesceuce of animal spirits, and in the varied copiousness of its imagery, drawn alike from the gay and the sententious, from the classical and the romantic, from fancy and from observation. There is a good deal of minute painting throughout, evidently after nature, and in several places it rises not only to the dignity and elevation of true poetry, but possesses one image at least which borders on the sublime. It is where, in enumerating the motley parties flocking, from different parts of the country, to the festivities of the fair, we have these lines — " Comes next from Ross-shire and from Sutherland The horny-knuckled kilted Highlandman : From where, ^lpon the rocJcy Caithness strand, Breaks the long wave that at the Pole began." The following stanzas, descriptive of the personal charms of the heroine, have some of the distinctive beauties just alluded to : — " Her form was as the morning's blithesome star, That, capped with crimson coronet of beams, Rides up the dawning orient in her ear, New waslied and doubly fulgent from the streams — The Chaldee shepherd eyes her light afar, And on his knees adores her as she gleams : 192 JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE. So shone the stately form of Maggy Lauder, And so the admiring clouds pay homage and applaud her. Her face was as the summer cloud, whereon The dawning sun delights to rest his rays ! Compared with it old Sharon's Vale, o'ergrown With flaunting roses, had resigned its praise. For why ? Her face with heaven's own roses shone, Mocking the morn, and witching men to gaze ; And he that gazed with cold unsmitten soul, That blockhead's heart was ice, thrice baked beneath the Pole." It was not till five years after the appearance of "Anster Fair," that Mr Hookham Frere put forth his brochure, so full of clever vv^himsicality and elegant nonchalance, the " Prospectus and Specimen of an Intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft of Stowmarket, in Suffolk, Harness and Collar Makers." With less, perhaps, of real poetical imagination than Tennant, Frere exhibited much more dexterity in the use of his weapons : his wit is more refined and his scholarship more dexterous. To say nothing of the "Beppo" and "Don Juan" of Byron, and the "Ring of Gyges" and "Spanish Story" of Barry Cornwall, a crowd of imitators have since fol- lowed in the same alluring path, but certainly without anyone having quite come up to Whistlecraft in his peculiar eccentric excellencies. To me the following stanzas, with which the third canto opens, have always appeared inimitable in their way : — " I've a proposal here from Mr Murray. He offers, handsomely, the money down ; My dear, you might recover from your flurry ^ In a nice airy lodging out of town, At CroydoD, Epsom, anywhere in Surrey. If every stanza brings us in a crown, I think that I might venture to bespeak A bedroom and front parlour for next week. " WHISTLECRAFT." 193 Tell me, my dear Thalia, what you think; Your nerves have undergone a sudden shock; Your poor dear spirits have begun to sink — On Banstead Downs you'll muster a new stock ; And I'd be sure to keep away from drink, And always go to bed by twelve o'clock. We'll travel down there in the morning stages; — Our verses shall go down to distant ages. And here, in town, we'll breakfast on hot rolls, And you shall have a better shawl to wear; These pantaloons of mine are chafed in holes; By Monday next I'll compass a new pair : Come now fling up the cinders, fetch the coals, And take away the things you hung to air ; Set out the tea-things, and bid Phoebe bring The kettle up. * Arms, and the Monks I sing.' " The following stanzas from " Beppo" are pitched exactly on the same key, and approach the perfection of the nonchalant style of rhymical improvisation : — " Oh that I had the art of easy writing "What should be easy reading ! Could I scale Parnassus, where the Muses sit inditing Those pretty poems never known to fail. How quickly would I print, the world delighting, A Grecian, Syrian, or Assyrian tale ; And sell you, mixed with western sentimentalism. Some samples of the finest orientalism. But I am but a nameless sort of person, (A broken Dandy lately on my travels,) And take, for rhyme to hook my rambling verse on, The first that Walker's Lexicon unravels ; And when I can't find that, I put a worse on, Not caring, as I ought, for critics' cavils; I've half a mind to tumble down to prose, But verse is more in fashion — so here goes." This species of poetry, if we are to dignify it with N 194 THE GINGER-POP SCHOOL. that name — which, like charity, covers a multitude of peculiarities — was characterised more especially by its light humour, by its approximating and blending together seeming incongruities ; by its airy, rapid, picturesque narrative ; by its commixture of the grave, the pathetic, and the majestic, with the frivolous, the farcical, and the absurd ; and bore the same relation to the epic and narrative that ginger-pop bears to cham- pagne, or Grimaldi the clown to John Kemble the tragedian. It was a graft on our indigenous British stock from the Italian ; and was succeeded, in tem- porary popularity at least, by another variety, of which it would be more difficult to point out the original prototype. This last may be characterised as being little else than an adoption of the mere vesture of verse for poetry, the rhymes, or outer garments, being sub- stituted as the prime quality in demand ; and these the more numerous and complex the better. Walker's Rhyming Dictionary was thus made the fountain of Helicon ; the ingenuity of the artificer exhibiting itself in his being able to thread these jingles upon some string of narrative — a labour to be compared only to the Chinese polishing of cherry-stones. The double and tripartite rhymes of Butler were mere occasional exu- berances of his metrical opulence ; but, with the Bar- ham and Hood school, such were made to form the staple commodity in demand. In " The lugoldsby Legends," it is not to be denied, however, that there is a nucleus of real poetry — elements of fancy and pathos ; while the metrical cleverness can only be matched by Southey's " How does the water come down at Lodore ? " and stands in the same relation to horsemanship as the gymnastic legerdemain at Cook's or Franconi's does to the equestrianism of the race- ground or the hunting-field. Here is one of Barham's pictures — a Bacchanalian domestic quarrel, and its consequences : — " A DOMESTIC TRAGEDY." 195 ' Mrs Pryce's tongue ran long, and ran fast; But patience is apt to wear out at last, And David Piyce in temper was quick, So he stretched out his hand, and caught hold of a stick; Perhaps in its use he might mean to be lenient, But walking just then was not very convenient. So he threw it instead, Direct at her head; It knocked off her hat ; Down she fell flat ; Her case, perhaps, was not much mended by that : But whatever it was, whether rage and pain Produced apoplexy, or burst a vein. Or her tumble produced a concussion of brain, I can't say for certain, but this I can. When sobered by fright, to assist her he ran, Mrs Winnifred Piyce was as dead — as Queen Anne ! The fearfiil catastrophe. Named in my last strophe, As adding to grim Death's exploits such avast trophy, Soon made a great noise; and the shocking fatality Ran over, like wildfire, the whole Principality. And then came Mr Ap Thomas the coronei". With his jury to sit, some dozen or more, on her. Mr Pryce, to commence ' His ingenious defence,' Made ' a powerful appeal ' to the jury's ' good sense; ' The world he must defy, Ever to justify- Any presumption of ' Malice prepense.' The unlucky lick From the end of his stick He * deplored,' he was apt to be rather too quick ; But, really, her prating Was so aggravating. Some trifling correction was just what he meant ; all The rest, he assured them, was * quite accidental.' 196 THEODORE HOOK. Then he called Mr Jones, Who deposed to her tones, And her gestures, and hints about 'breaking his bones.' While Mr Ap Morgan, and Mr Ap Rhyse, Declared the deceased Had styled him ' a Beast,' And swore they had witnessed with grief and surprise, The allusions she made to his limbs and his eyes. The juiy, in fine, having sat on the body The whole day discussing the case and gin-toddy. Returned about half-past eleven at night The following verdict, we find—' Sarved her right !' " With this harlequin elasticity of thought — this rail- road velocity of rhyming, and with ability of a certain kind, and in no mean degree admitted, Barhani, after all, as a poetical artist, cannot be said to stand on the same level with Thomas Hood, who really possessed, along with this jugglery, "the vision and the faculty divine ; " and, even in contest on their own peculiar ground — when, like two circus clowns, striving to show which could behave the most grotesquely — the palm must be awarded to Hood, who has contrived, in his " Miss Kilmansegg, with her Golden Leg," not only to outdo "the Ingoldsby Legends " in rich exuberance of rhyming clatter, but to extract from it some excellent moral lessons. The wit and humour of Theodore Hook flashed on another path ; and that alternately as song-writer and satirist — as play-wright and novel-writer — as essayist and biographer. His readiness was miraculous, amount- ing almost to improvisation ; but, as might have been expected from this, his genius wanted depth and con- centration — it dazzled and disappeared like ground- lightning, or the aurora-borealis. He caught his inspi- ration from passing topics, and not from the survey of grand principles ; and thus was liker Gilray than JAMES AND HORACE SMITH. 197 Hogarth — liker H. B. than George Cruickshank. Everything that he attempted was adapted to the meridian of the current day ; he caught its tone, and his success was proportionate. His brochures accom- plished their purpose effectively, and, having done so, left nothing behind but the memory of their exceeding cleverness. The natural talents of Theodore Hook, if not of a very lofty order, were certainly, in their way, quite extraor- dinary ; and his conversational readiness and brilliancy — his sharpness of repartee, and the wit and humour "he wove on his sleeve" — must have verged on the wonderful ere they could have elicited the admiration of, and been attested by, such competent and critical judges as Brinsley Sheridan, S. T. Coleridge, and John Lockhart. As a dramatist and novel-writer, Hook's works are exceedingly voluminous, and are all more or less impressed with the sparkling qualities of his mind — vivid power of description, acute observation, sarcastic point and variety. Doubtless, his wit and humour were apt to degenerate into buffoonery, his pathos into senti- mentality, and his nature into conventionalism ; but his knowledge of city life, in its manners, habits, and language, seemed intuitive, and has been surpassed only by Fielding and Dickens. Many and multifarious, how- ever, as are his volumes, he has left behind him no great creation — nothing that can be pointed to as a triumphant index of the extraordinary powers which he undoubtedly possessed. Brilliant, but far less brilliant in their natural and acquired endowments than Theodore Hook, were the brothers Horace and James Smith — not so the impres- sion they have managed to leave behind them. Their first combined work, "The Rejected Addresses," stood and stands without a parallel in our literature. It is a thing sui generis, and must have high merit ; for, often as its popularity has been attempted to be shaken by 198 HON. W. R. SPENCER. younger hands, and the adaptation of newer themes to similar management, it remains not only unsurpassed, but is literally a first without a second. Written for a temporary purpose in 1812, it still remains a staple production in 1851 ; and probably no better, or at least more truthful and striking, epitome of the greater and smaller authors, whose characteristic excellencies, pecu- liarities, and defects it professes to imitate, can any- where be found than in its lively and ludicrous pages. Among its happiest things are the imitations of Crabbe and Coleridge, by James Smith ; and of Scott and Byron, by Horace. Exquisitely humorous as are the Monk Lewis, the "Wordsworth, the Southey, and the Fitzgerald, they can be regarded merely as travesties, and are consequently far inferior to those mentioned in value. The only other joint production of the Smiths, the " Horace in London," bears many traces of the same cleverness ; but the pieces are very unequal, and are mostly rather indications than expressions of peculiar power ; and the volume is now out of date, from its entirely referring to the current levities, humours, and topics of London life at the time when it appeared. With classical taste, shrewd observation, humour, wit, and feeling, it is a strange fact that James and Horace Smith were alike much more eminent for their imita- tive than for their original powers — a fact demonstrated by those compositions which each respectively gave the world as his own ; and in this point of view they were inferior to another of kindred mind, the Hon. William Robert Spencer, Avhose muse, like theirs, and that of Theodore Hook, was happiest in the dedication of its powers to the enlivenment of the social hour, or in the composition of what the French have termed Vers de Societe. In the ballad of " Beth Gelert," and in one or two of his lyrics, Spencer tried the working of a deeper vein, and not unsuccessfully. His verses, which are generally light and complimentary, have more of the THOMAS MOORE. 199 sparkle and polish of Moore than those of the Smiths ; and bring to mind the paste-diamond conceits of Waller, Cowley, and Crashaw. But all tliree seem to stand much on the same level as poets ; and, indeed, to have adopted the same canons in composition, as well as the same field for their selection of subjects. Nor would it be easy to excel, in its way, either the " Retrospection" or the "Upas Tree" of James Smith, which are pervaded by a tone of rich mellow sentiment ; or the " Verses on the Terrace at Windsor," and the " Address to the Mummy at Belzoni's" of Horace, both full of strikingly graphic touches — the latter especially, which started into an instant popularity, which through thirty years it has maintained, in a degree second only to Wolfe's " Stanzas on the Burial of Sir John Moore." I must now retrace my steps for a good many years backwards, to take up the commencement of the literary career of one who, however, had not even by this time ascended to the culminating point of his reputation — I mean the great poet of Ireland, Thomas Moore. Perhaps one of the best modes of bringing out the peculiar ex- cellencies of his genius would be by contrasting it with that of Lord Byron — to whom, in the externals of poetry, he seemed to bear a stronger affinity than to any other author. But, in truth, Thomas Moore had no relation to Lord Byron, except by the association of contrast ; and when set down beside him, however much they may be thought to assimilate in lyrical flow and fervour, in choice of subjects, and in exquisite har- mony of expression, the marks of Moore's originality are sufficiently distinctive. With a more buoyant, brilliant, and active fancy than the author of " Childe Harold" and "The Corsair," Moore does not possess, in an equal degree, either Byron's intensity of passion or vigour of expression. The current of his thought, al- though more lively, is shallower ; his ideas float more on the surface of his mind. Moore is the poet of sun- 200 moore's "odes and epistles." shine and summer ; Byron of tempest and desolation. The one revels amid the joyful forebodings of yoiithful hope and ardent fancy ; the other broods over the wreck and ruins of the human heart, until it is felt that "'tis something better not to be." The genius of Moore may be compared to the gay peacock, to the radiant rainbow, to the coruscations of the aurora- borealis amid the deep blue of the northern sky ; that of Byron to the chained eagle, to the devastating whirlwind, to the volcano blazing with tyrannic fury through the silence and shadows of midnight — luridly glaring on the affrighted earth, and evolving its sulphu- reous blackness over the starry canopy. Moore's early fancy luxuriated among the classics, and his elegant, spirited, and congenial translation — say rather paraphrase — of Anacreon was the first fruits. It ran through a long series of editions, and was succeeded by the " Odes and Epistles " in 1806, when the author had formed that style, so full of airy gracefulness, which he afterwards stamped as his own. Many of the pieces in this collection he has never since excelled — as the " Lines at the Cohos, or Falls of the Mohawk River," " The Epistle to Lord Strangford," " Peace and Glory," '•'Dead Man's Isle," and the "Canadian Boat-Song;" but it unfortunately includes several also, which, as sin- ning against delicacy and decorum, ought never to have been written, far less to have seen the light of publica- tion. That the late Lord Jeffrey branded these as they deserved redounds to the honour of his memory ; and it should not be withheld, that their author afterwards sincerely regretted such an act of thoughtless levity. As a specimen of Moore's finest early manner, I give the " Lines on the Falls of the Mohawk River." " From rise of morn, till set of sun, I've seen the mighty Mohawk run, And, as I marked the woods of pine Along his mirror darkly shine. "fudge family," "fables," and "rhymes." 201 I Like tall and gloomy forms that pass \ Before the wizard's midnight glass ; And as I viewed the hurrying pace With which he ran his turbid race, Rushing, alike untired and wild, Thro' shades that frowned and flowers that smiled, Flying by every green recess That wooed him to its calm caress, Yet, sometimes turning with the wind, As if to leave a look behind! Oh ! I have thought, and thinking sighed — How like to thee, thou restless tide ! May be the lot, the life of him. Who roams along thy water's brim! Through what alternate shades of woe And flowers of joy my path may go! How many an humble still retreat May rise to court my weary feet, While still pursuing, still unblest, I wander on, nor dare to rest! But urgent, as the doom that calls Thy water to its destined falls, I feel the world's bewildering force Hurry my heart's devoted course From lapse to lapse, till life be done. And the last current cease to run! may my falls be bright as thine — May Heaven's forgiving rainbow shine Upon the mist that circles me, As soft as now it hangs o'er thee ! " Mr Moore next tried his hand at light, lively, and elegant satire, chiefly political — as in his "Twopenny Post-Bag," his " Fudge Family in Paris," his " Fables for the Holy Alliance," and his " Rhymes on the Road." All these are exceedingly clever in their way, and would have been much more pungent, had not the happy tem- per of the author uniformly extracted the sting of each sarcasm by a joke. As compounds of causticity and 202 " LALLA BOOKH." point, with sprightly humour and witty illustration, they are, however, in their way, unexcelled. Before the two latter of these volumes appeared, Moore had begun to turn his genius to a worthier subject — the " Irish Melodies ; " and on the words connected with these, his fame with posterity may be safely permitted to rest. They are by no means so distinctively national as ihey might have been ; but, considered as poetry, it would be difficult to improve on most of them. I must say, however, that I like him in these much better as the amatory than the warlike bard ; and would tot give his " Go where glory waits thee," his " Young May Moon," his " Has Sorrow thy young Days shaded ? " his " Come, rest in this bosom," his " Vale of Avoca," his " When he who adores thee," and his " One fatal Re- membrance," for all the harps that ever rung in Tara's halls, or all the " Golden Collars " that ever Malachi " won from the fierce invader." In his satires Moore wields not the masculine club of Dryden ; nor does he approach to the moral sublime of Pope. His genius has much more resemblance to that of Matthew Prior ; and, indeed, this resemblance is sometimes so strong that whole pieces from either writer might be transposed, without much chance of the barter being detected. Yet I do not remember of having ever seen this similarity of thought, style, and manner, even once prominently alluded to. His lyrical under-tones have much more resemblance to those of Carew, Herrick, Lovelace, and Suckling. Fine as were many things he had done, yet, until the publication of "Lalhi Rookh," in 1817, Moore could be only regarded as a poet of promise. Many of the Irish songs were indeed surpassingly beautiful ; but they were mere snatches of inspiration — short, "like angel visits ; " and perhaps what he intended to be their leading attraction — their frequent allusions to remote Irish tradition — is in truth their greatest blemish, as "lalla rookh." 203 these are often apparently forced into the ranks " like unwilling volunteers ;" although to the patriotic feelings which dictated this trait I bow with sincere admiration and respect. The most beautiful specimens of Moore's "words wed to verse'' are those in which he has un- bosomed sentiments and reflections, loves and longings and regrets, common to the whole of mankind, and which find, accordingly, a sympathetic echo in every bosom. From his versatile and active fancy, combined with a delicate taste and a rich and ever-ready command of language, it is not surprising that he has utterly eclipsed all cotemporary song- writers. Indeed, in this particular department he has no superior within the whole range of poetical literature save one — Robert Burns — who is indeed beyond him and all others, alike in delicacy and depth. Burns and Moore, however, may not unaptly be taken as the typified genii of their respective countries — the latter of Ireland, with its laughing grace, its airy light-heartedness, its gushing eloquence, its harp and its trefoil ; the former of Scot- land, more staid in mood, yet not less deep in passion, with the gathered wild-flowers in one hand, " a' to be a posie for his own dear May," and in the other the bearded thistle, wath its significant emblazon, "Wha daur meddle \\V me ? " After some years of studious retirement, during which Moore, like James Hogg in his " Queen's Wake," had determined to tax all his powers to the utmost for one grand eff'ort, " Lalla Rookh" appeared ; nor did it dis- appoint public expectation. The preliminary reading which it cost its author must have been stupendous ; and the greatest triumph of his genius consists in his having extracted from materials so bulky and so hete- rogeneous, such an unalloyed mass of beauty. Its great charm consists in the romance of its situations and characters, the splendour of its diction and style, and the prodigal copiousness of its imagery. Indeed, its 204 " THE VEILED PROPHET." principal fault is want of repose ; it is overloaded with ornament : you cannot see the green turf for roses ; you cannot see the hlue heaven for stars ; and the narrative is thus clogged, while its interest is marred. Of the four stories of which " Lalla Rookh " is composed, " The Veiled Prophet " is the most ambitious, but the least successful, although it contains some rich and powerful passages ; and the " Fire Worshippers " the most varied in its transitions from tenderness to energy, from minute and delicate to broad and rapid handling. In the versification of " The Veiled Prophet " there is a luxurious laxity, a rich slovenliness, which at first sounds doubtfully in ears accustomed to the majestic energy of Dryden, the mellow sweetness of Goldsmith, or the classic grace of Campbell ; and, without exactly agreeing with Byron, that Moore did not understand the heroic couplet, I certainly think it the least happy of his measures. The tone of the greater part of the poem is imposing and gorgeously magnificent ; and its manners go far beyond even the silken luxury of the East ; but the scenes between Azim and Zelica, which bring us back to realities, are replete with chastened pathetic beauty ; and the conclusion, which is one of gentle repose, breathes over the mind a calm full of sweetness, like the south wind fresh from a bed of violets. To feel that Moore has wandered from his natural demesne in "The Veiled Prophet," we have only to turn to the exquisite fiction of "Paradise and the Peri" — of his happy things by much the happiest. It is dis- tinguished by all his peculiar excellencies of matter and manner; it is "the bright consummate flower " of his genius. Nothing can be finer than the pictures of the beautiful outcast from the celestial regions, bathing her white wings in the sunshine over the ruins of Palmyra — of the patriot expiring on the battle-field with the " THE FIRE WORSHIPPERS." 205 broken blade in his grasp — or of the conscience-stricken prodigal surveying the sports of childhood, and, like " The Robber Moor," reverting with a bleeding heart to the days of innocence. " Ah! happy years ! once more who would not be a boy! " " The Fire Worshippers " deals more in incident than sentiment and action, and, as a narrative poem, thus brings its author more into comparison with his two great rivals, Scott and Byron. Hinda is a beautiful creation, although it would be difficult to find her pro- totype in the living world. She is all love, and belief, and tears — the embodied spirit of confiding tenderness — a thing of semi-celestial elements, walking in an en- chanted circle, and throwing around her a halo of unearthly beauty. The conflict between passion and patriotism in the bosom of her lover, the chief of the Guebirs, is powerfully portrayed ; and his heroic de- termination compels our admiration for himself, and our regret for Hinda. We behold him striking the last blow for his country's liberty, and, when bafiied in the attempt, amid the encompassing shades of night, throw- ing himself upon the funeral pyre, a sacrifice to his faith — the " last of a mighty line." " The Light of the Harem " is all air and fire, mirth and music, love and roses. It is a trifle, to be sure, but such a trifle as was most difficult to get up and manage — the hero a self-willed prince, and the heroine a peevish pouting beauty. The chief merit of the piece lies in the exquisite lyrics interspersed throughout. Every adjunct is to the highest pitch splendid, sparkling, and magnifi- cent ; nothing is to be heard but music ; nothing to be thought of but enjoyment ; nothing to be seen but the dazzling beauties of the East, amid moonlight fountains and groves of fragrance. " The Loves of the Angels " is a great descent from " Lalla Rookh." As a poem it is as the " Odyssey " to the " IHad," as the " Paradise 206 CHARACTER OF MOORE'S GENIUS. Regained" to the "Paradise Lost." In the tales of " The Three Angels " there certainly are some brilliant passages ; but the interest in them is evanescent, and the pageant dies ofif, like pyrotechnic displays^ in mid air, in mere brilliant sparkles. As a moral tale, it may be compared to the cases reported at length in the police courts, that end in a reproof from the judge and the con- viction of the offender, but have from their subjects a doubtful effect on the public mind. " The Epicurean " is illustrated by verse, although substantially in prose. It seems to have been intended by the author for a poem, and commenced as such, but given up on his coming to some unmanageable incidents. It is a powerful and extraordinary performance, and is worthy to stand on the same shelf with " Vathek," although readers of the "Vie de Sethos," and "Les Voyages d'Antenor," may not accord it a pure originality, at least in parts. Many of the ancient fables — as those of Comus, of Orpheus, of Amphion, of Timotheus, of St Cecilia — are nothing more than beautiful allegorical illustrations of the power of poetry and music over the human mind ; and, in our own day, the strains of genuine inspiration have proved themselves to be as irresistible as ever. The poetry of Moore — abstracting the artificial glare and glitter, which are its drawbacks — is of this elevat- ing and ethereal kind, full of harmony, and spirit, and splendour ; of the heroic romantic virtues of man, and the clinging confiding tenderness of woman ; of the beauty of the inferior creatures, and the magnificence of nature. He seems to have drawn in with the first breath of existence the very spirit of gladness, which, operating on fervid sensibilities and a lively imagina- tion, has rendered him acutely alive to impressions from within and without, to all " the impulses of soul and sense." His ever buoyant effervescing spirits will not allow gloomy associations any permanent hold ; HIS "sacred songs." 207 and they are shaken off like tlmnder-drops from the plumage of the swan. He ever rejoices to escape from the tempest into the sunshine, and to look back on the rainbow. He shuns the desolate bleakness of the December landscape, with its snow-wreaths, its frozen streams, its leafless trees, and its whistling wind, that he may luxuriate under summer suns, where nature spontaneously clothes herself with blossoms, spreading her bosom to the south, and offering up a feast to all that lives. His muse is like one of his own Eastern Peris, full of life, light, and beauty — a fro ward and rest- less cherub, too animated to be ever listless, and too full of buoyant gaiety to bestow aught but a transient tear, a passing sigh on the misfortunes, or crimes, or follies of mankind — whose delight is in the witcheries of art and nature ; whose flight is above the damping materialities of the grosser elements — whose thoughts are a concatena- tion of thick-blown fancies, whose syllables are music. The genius of Thomas Moore is essentially lyrical. In mind and manner he is the very antipodes of Crabbe. The author of " The Borough " took a supreme delight in picking his steps through the mire of meanness, and in making sketches of the most unlovely parts of the creation. Moore, on the contrary, preferred sitting with Calypso in her grot, to struggling, like Ulysses, between the Sicilian whirlpools. The " Sacred Songs " exhibit a curious combination of airy elegance of thought, language, and imagery with solemn themes. They share in the general faults of Moore's poetry — too much glitter and too little depth ; ornaments too elaborately studied, and metaphors bor- dering on conceit. The finest — and they are really fine — are " Thou that driest the Mourner's Tear," " There's nothing true but Heaven," and " The Dove let loose in Eastern Skies." I cannot part with Thomas Moore without giving a characteristic specimen of the " Melodies : " — 208 "IRISH MELODY." " The young May moon is beaming, love, The glowworm's lamp is gleaming, love ; How sweet to rove Through Morna's grove While the drowsy world is dreaming, love ! Then awake, the heavens look bright, my dear ! 'Tis never too late for delight, my dear ! And the best of all ways To lengthen our days Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear I Now all the world is sleeping, love, But the sage his star- watch keeping, love ; And I, whose star, More glorious far, Is the eye from that casement peeping, love. Then awake till rise of sun, my dear ; The sage's glass we'll shun, my dear ; Or, in watching the flight Of bodies of light, He might happen to take thee for one, my dear !" To couclude, Thomas Moore has been styled the national poet of Ireland ; and so he is, in the same sense as Tasso is of the Venetians, or Beranger of the French, or Burns of our own Scotland ; for he has patriotically consecrated his finest powers to the exposition and illus- tration of Ireland's peculiar feelings and associations, local, personal, and traditionary. Hence he is beloved by his countrymen, and deserves to be so, beyond all Ireland's other poets — for it is only in the philosophic reveries of the closet that man is a cosmopolite. He never can be any such Utopian monster ; and from a thousand circumstances, it is evident that nature never intended he should be so, looking even at the conformity of colour to climate, and the productions of that climate to its specific wants. A Greenlauder could no more subsist on the rice-aud-water diet of a Hindoo, than the Hindoo could on the oleaginous nutriment essentiallv NATIONAL POETET. 209 necessary for feeding the lamp of animal life in the frost-bound herbless solitude which forms the other's habitat ; and it is the same, in some measure, even with plants and the lower animals. But man is more than these, and has a double nature, his sensibilities sur- rounding him like the fingers of a polypus. The place of birth, the scenes of infancy, the associations of home, — do not these link the heart not only to a particular country on the world's map, but to a particular spot in that country, " on which the tired eye rests, and calls it home ! " Yes, and by a thousand Liliputian ties — each, it may be, like a spider's thread in tenuity, but their united strength is irresistible, making that home the dearest spot in all the world, alike to the poor savage, " whose untutored mind Hears God in storms, and sees Him in the wind, And thinks, admitted to an equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company," and to the modern Greek, who, unforgetful of the ancient glory and greatness of his ancestral country, weeps as he wanders over the field of Marathon. " Give me," said the patriotic Fletcher of Saltoun, strong in his knowledge of man's nature — "give me the making of a nation's songs, and I will leave to others the making of its laws." Nor can this feeling cease to be the same to the end of time, unless man's very nature changes ; for it has been the same in strength through all bypast ages. Jacob directed his bones to be carried up out of Egypt, to the sepulchral cave of his fathers at Machpelah. Euth, as the strongest proof that devoted affection could give to the mother of her deceased husband, exclaimed to Naomi, — " Where thou goest I will go, and thy country shall be my country." Virgil, in the exquisite line, *' Moritur, et moriens dulces reminiscitur Argos," o 210 LOVE OF COUNTRY. makes his flying Greek turn, in latest thought, to the pleasant fields of his nativity ; and, as mentioned in a former lecture, John Leyden, in the delirium of a mortal fever at Java, was heard repeating snatclies of old Border songs. Verstigan mentions that a traveller in Palestine was once startled by a captive Scotswoman singing, as she dandled her baby at the door of one of the Arab tents, — " Oh, Bothwell bank, thou bloomest fair ! " and Mrs Hemans has founded one of the most beautiful of her lyrics on the affecting incident of a poor Indian in the Botanical Garden at Paris melting into tears at the sight of a palm-tree, which, heedless of the crowds around him, he rushed for- ward to and embraced. Rogers has exquisitely depictured the Savoyard boy, lingering ere he leaves the brow of the last hill, which overlooks "the church- yard yews 'neath which his fathers sleep ; " and the Abbe Raynal, in his " History of the West Indies," relates that when the Canadian Indians were asked to emigrate, their touchiiig reply was — " What ! shall we ask the bones of our fathers to arise, and go with us?" Such are the ties which are spun around the heart of humanity, and among the finest of its sensibilities are those of Poetry and Music ; and, if each be so strong when dissociated, their united spell must prove doubly so. Even among the proverbially hireling Swiss, we know that Xapoleon, to prevent desertion from his ranks, found it necessary to prohibit the chanting of the "Ranz des Vaches ;" and Campbell has finely said — and not less truly than finely — that " Encamped by Indian rivei's wild, The soldier, resting on his arms, In Burns's carol sweet recalls The songs that blest him when a child, And glows and gladdens at the charms Of Scotia's woods and waterfalls." BURNS AND MOORE. 211 " One touch of nature," as Shakespeare says, " makes the whole world kin," and what that national music and that national poetry are to the Scots, that national poetry and that national music are to the Irish. Burns and Moore have, therefore, a double guarantee of immortality ; for they have wedded undying lays to undying notes, and thus not only driven the nail of security to the head, but have riveted it on the other side. LECTUEE V, New phases of the poetic mind. — Leigh Hunt ; Story of Rimini and Miscel- lanies. — Specimens, Funeral Procession, and The Glove. — Characteristics of the new school. — John Keats, Endymion, Lamia ; his untutored fancy. — Extracts from Eve of St Agnes, and Ode to Nightingale .- opening of Hyperion. — Percy Bysshe Shelley. — Alastor, Revolt of Islam, the Cenci, Queen Mab, and Miscellanies. — Extracts from Sensitive Plant, A Ravine. — His quasi-philosophy condemned. — Barry Cornwall, Dramatic Scenes, Sicilian Story. — Marcian Colonna, and Songs. — The Bereaved Lover,- a Secluded Dell ; The Pauper's Funeral. — Robert Pollok and Thomas Aird. —The Course of Time; extracts. Autumn Eve, Hill Prospect.— Aiid's imaginative poetry, Tlie Devil's Hream. — William Motherwell; William Kennedy; Ebenezer Elhot, Village Patriarch, and Miscellanies. — Thomas Hood. — Eugene Aram, opening of it ; / remember ; Flight of Miss Kil- mansegg ; Young Ben, a punning ballad. The great original English school of poetry — English in its language, sentiments, style, and subjects — was that commencing with the graphic " Canterbury Tales " of Chaucer ; and including Shakespeare, with the constella- tion of dramatists immediately before and after him — "Webster, Marlow, Massinger, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, and Shirley. The second was that of Dryden, Prior, Swift, and Pope, by which the canons of French criticism were acknowledged ; where art superseded nature ; where, even in dramatic com- positions, rhyme took the place of blank verse ; and in whose subjects the conventionalities of society held a place superior to the great originating principles of human action. The third great school was that whose merits I have just imperfectly discussed ; and which. LEIGH HUNT : 213 finding our literature at the lowest ebb, succeeded in raising it to a pitch of splendour, whether we look to grace or originality, power or variety — at least nearly equalling the first. Its primal seeds, especially in the writings of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Scott, seem traceable to Germany : not so in Crabbe, Moore, Southey, Wilson, or Byron ; and it ripened into a harvest, whose garnered-up riches are destined for the intellectual provender of many succeeding ages. Fos- tered in the shadow of its noonday brilliance, and for a time attracting only secondary notice, a fourth school began to exhibit itself about thirty years ago, and since then has been gradually gaining an ascendancy. Some- what modified since its commencement it may be said to be, that at present existing — we dare not say flourishing, — seeing what we have seen in that which immediately preceded it, when, verily, there were giants in the land ; not influencing merely a class or a coterie, but stirring popular feeling even to its pro- foundest depths, and enthroning poetry for a season above every other branch of literature. The source of this new composite school was at first very distinctly Italian ; next blending itself with the literature of France ; and, lastly, with that of Germany. Such has been its influence that, sad it is to say, but little of the flavour of the original British stock is now perceptible among our risen or rising poets. I do not think we can trace an origin to this school — which soon comprehended among its disciples Keats, Shelley, and Barry Cornwall, with others of less note — farther back than 1816, when it showed itself in full- blown perfection in the " Story of Rimini," by Leigh Hunt — a poem which to this day remains probably the very best exemplar alike of its peculiar beauties and tts peculiar faults. Although previously well known as an acute dramatic critic, and a clever writer of occasional verses, it was by 214 HIS CHARACTERISTICS AS A POET. the production of the " Story of Rimini" that Leigh Hunt put in his successful claim to a place among British poets. That he is himself truly a poet, a man of original and peculiar genius, there can be no possible doubt ; but the fountains of inspiration from which his urn drew much light, were Boccaccio, "he of the hundred tales of love ;" Dante, in whose "Inferno" is to be found the exquisite episode of "Francesca," which he expanded ; and Ariosto, from whose sparkling and sprightly pictures he took many of the gay, bright colours with which he emblazoned his own. With acute powers of conception, a sparkling and lively fancy, and a quaintly curious felicity of diction, the grand characteristic of Leigh Hunt's poetry is word- painting; and in this he is probably without a rival, save in the last and best productions of Keats, who con- tended, not vainly, with his master on that ground. In this respect, nothing can be more remarkable than some passages in "Rimini," and in his collection entitled "Foliage," — much of which he has since capriciously cancelled ; and he also exercised this peculiar faculty most felicitously in translations from the French and Italian, although, in some instances, he carried it to the amount of grotesqueness or affectation. His heroic couplet has much of the life, strength, and flexibility of Dryden — of whom he often reminds us ; and in it he follows glorious John, even to his love for triplets and Alexandrines. Hunt's taste, however, is very capricious ; and in his most charming descriptions, some fantastic or incongruous epithet is ever and anon thrust provokingly forward to destroy the unity of illusion, or to mar the metrical harmony. His landscapes arealike vividly coloured and sharply outlined ; and his figures, like the quaint antiques of Giotto and Cimabue, are ever placed in attitudes sharp and angular — where striking effect is preferred to natural repose. The finest passages in the "Story of Rimini" are the descriptions of the April "story of RIMINI." 215 morning with which canto first opens ; of the Eavenna pine-forest, with its " immemorial trees," in canto second ; and of the garden and summer-house in canto third. Indeed, the whole of the third canto overflows alike with classic elegance and natural feeling ; and it would be difficult anywhere to find, in an English poet, an equal number of consecutive lines so thoroughly ex- cellent. The account of the funeral procession of the lovers, at the conclusion of the poem, is also conceived in a spirit of picturesque beauty, as well as of solemn and deep-toned tenderness : — " The days were then at close of autumn — still, A little rainy, and towards nightfall chill ; But now there was a moaning air abroad ; And ever and anon, over the road, The last few leaves came fluttering from the trees, Whose trunks, bare, wet, and cold, seemed ill at ease. The people who, from reverence, kept at home, Listened till afternoon to hear them come ; And hour on hour went by, and naught was heard But some chance horseman or the wind that stirred. Till towards the vesper hour ; and then, 'twas said, Some heard a voice that seemed as if it read ; And others said, that they could hear a sound Of many horses trampling the moist ground. Still nothing came : till, on a sudden, just As the wind opened with a rising gust, A voice of chanting rose, and, as it spread, They plainly heard the anthem for the dead. It was the choristers, who went to meet The train, and now were entering the first street. Then turned aside that city young and old, And in their lifted hands the gushing sorrow rolled." Of Leigh Hunt's other narrative poems — which are all immeasurably inferior to "Rimini" — it is not necessary to say much. " Hero and Leander" is a version of the old classic legend, in his own simple, 216 LEIGH hunt's miscellanies. earnest, although occasionally mannered style, and with all its peculiar characteristics of quaintness and word- painting. "The Palfrey," a story founded on the antique lay of the minstrel Huon le Roi, is in a lighter and more buoyant strain. " The Feast of the Poets," and " The Feast of the Violets," written with equal gracefulness and spirit, record his critical and candid estimate of the excellencies of those who have recently adorned British poetry, male and female. "Captain Sword and Captain Pen " is a poem denouncing war and exhibiting some good passages, but written in a rambling measure which, like a cork floating on a sea-wave, is ever bumping up and down, in sad discord- ance with the gravity of the subject. Of his miscel- laneous pieces, the finest are, " To T. L. H., six years old, during sickness," which overflows with natural pathos ; the Oriental morceaux entitled " Mahmoud," and "Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel," full of picturesque yet delicate beauty of thought and language ; and several of the translations from the Italian and French ; but it cannot be said that Leigh Hunt has quite fulfilled the promise of his early genius. Instead of concentrating his powers, and setting himself inde- fatigably to the rearing of some great and glorious edifice, combining the poet's invention with the artist's skill, he has contented himself with here a honeysuckle cottage, and there a woodbine grotto. He shunned the solemn and severe, and took to the light and familiar ; and has at all times, and on all subjects, been most uncertain and capricious, alike in selection and in handling. With the most perfect sincerity for the time, with a fine genius, and the most cordial dis- positions, this infirmity of purpose — as it was with Coleridge — has been his drawback and his bane. With all his difiTuseness, with all his occasional languor, and all his provoking conceits, aflfectations, and mannerisms, it may be proudly claimed for Leigh Hunt that he is BALLAD — "the GLOVE." 217 never commonplace ; he could not be, if he so desired it ; and in his happier passages, he delights by his fine tact, his boyish enthusiasm, his impressive imagery, his genial sociality, his unpretending pathos, and his picturesque detail. That Leigh Hunt can at will throw oflf much of his mannerism, the following spirited stanzas sufficiently shovr : — "King Francis was a hearty king, and loved a royal sport, And one day, as his lions fought, sat looking on the court ; The nobles filled the benches, and the ladies in their pride, And 'mongst them sat the Count de Lorge, with one for whom he sighed ; And truly 'twas a gallant thing to see that crowning show, Valour and Love, and a king above, and the royal beasts bebw. Ramped and roared the lions, with horrid laughing jaws ; They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams — a wind went with their paws ; With wallowing might and stifled roar they rolled on one another, Till all the pit, with sand and mane, was in a thunderous smother ; The bloody foam above the bars came whisking through the air ; Said Francis then — ' Faith, gentlemen, we're better here than there.' De Lorge's love o'erheard the king — a beauteous lively dame, "With smiling lips and sharp bright eyes, which always seemed the same : She thought, ' The Count, my lover, is brave as brave could be ; He surely would do wondrous things to show his love for me : King, ladies, lovers, all look on; the occasion is divine; I'll drop my glove to prove his love — great glory will be mine.' 211 JOHN KEA.TS. She dropped her glove to prove his love, then looked at hire and smiled; He bowed, and in a moment leaped among the lions wild : The leap was quick — return was quick — he has regained the place. Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in the lady's face. * By heaven ! ' said Francis, ' rightly done ! ' and he rose from where he sat — ' No love,' quoth he, 'but vanity, sets love a task like that.' " Schiller's version of this striking anecdote is nearer the oi'iginal, copied by St Foix from Brantome ; but Leigh Hunt has certainly improved it in spirit and picturesqueness. It is very evident that John Keats, the greatest of all our poets who have died in early youth — not excepting Michael Bruce, Kirke White, or Chatterton — imbibed in boyhood a sincere admiration for the poetry of Leigh Hunt, and primarily adopted him as his model in style and diction ; although, ere he ventured before the public, he had considerably altered and modified, or rather extended his views on these matters, by a reverential study of the antique English pastoral poets, Drayton, Spenser, and William Browne — the last of whom he especially followed in the selection of his imagery, aud the varied harmony of his numbers. Crude, unsustained, and extravagant as these juvenile attempts in most part are, we have ever and anon indications of a fine original genius. His garden, though unweeded, is full of freshness and fragrance ; the bind-weed strangles the mignonette ; and docks and dandelions half conceal the yellow cowslip and the purple violet ; but we are wooed to this corner by the bud of the moss-rose, and to that by the double wallflower. We feel it to be a wilderness ; but it is a wilderness of many sweets. I allude here more par- ticularly to his first little volume, published in 1817, "endtmion/' a romance. 219 with a head of Spenser on the title-page, and dedicated to Leigh Hunt. Images of majesty and beauty continued to crowd on the imagination of the young poet ; but either his taste in selection was deficient, or he shrank from the requisite labour ; and in the following year appeared his "Endymion," a poetic romance. It would be difficult to point out anywhere a work more remark- able for its amount of beauties and blemishes, inex- tricably intertwined. Its mythology is Greek, and its imagery the sylvan -pastoral — reminding ns now of the pine-flavoured Idyllia of Theocritus, and now of the " bosky bournes and bushy dells " of Milton's " Comus." Preparatory to its composition, he had saturated his mind with the " leafy luxury " of our early dramatists ; and we have many reflections of the ruial beauty and repose pervading "The Faithful Shepherdess " of Flet- cher, and " The Sad Shepherd " of Ben Jonson ; as well as of the early Milton of the " Arcades " and "Lycidas." We are entranced with the prodigal profusion of ima- gery, and the exquisite variety of metres sweeping along with an -^olian harmony, at once so refined and yet seemingly so inartificial. All is, however, a wild luxurious revel merely, where Imagination laughs at Taste, and bids defiance to Judgment and Reason. There is no discrimination, no selection — even the very rhymes seem sometimes to have sug- gested the thoughts that follow ; and whatever comes uppermost comes out, provided it be florid, gorgeous, or glittering. The work is a perfect mosaic of bright tints and graceful forms, despotically commingled, almost without regard to plan or congruity ; so that we often lose the thin thread of story altogether in the fentastic exuberance of ornament and decoration. Ever and anon, however, we come to bits of exquisite beauty — patches of deep, serene blue sky, amid the rolling clouds, which compel us to pause in admir- 220 "lamia," "ISABELLA," ETC. ation — glimpses of nature full of tenderness and truth — touches of sentiment deep as they are delicate. His opening line, "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever," conveys a fine philosophic sentiment, and is the key- note to the whole body of his poetry. Crude, unequal, extravagant, nay, absurd as he sometimes is — for there is scarcely an isolated page in " Endymion " to which one or more of these harsh epithets may not in some degree be justly applied — yet, on the other hand, it would be difficult to point out any twenty lines in sequence unredeemed by some happy turn of thought, some bright image, or some eloquent expression. That all this was the result of imaginative wealth and youthful inexperience, is demonstrated by the last poems John Keats was permitted to give the world, and which are as rich, but much more select, in imagery, purer in taste, and more fastidious in diction, as well as more felicitous and artistic. He had found out that, to keep interest alive, it was necessary to deal less with the shadowy, the remote, and the abstract ; and that without losing in dignity, he might descend more to the thoughts aud feelings — nay, even to the ways, and habits, and language of actual life. From the pure mythological of *• Endy- mion " he attempted a blending of the real with the supernatural in "Lamia," and exactly with the degree of success which might, in the management of such elements, have been expected from him. "Isabella, or the Pot of Basil," his version of Boccaccio's exquisite little story, is much less questionable. We have therein character and incident as well as description ; and to these the last is made subordinate. We there also see, for the first time, that instead of playing with his theme, he has set himself in earnest to grapple with it. The composition is more elaborate, and we have a selec- tion of thoughts and images instead of the indiscrimi- nate pouring forth of all. The faults of affectation and "eve of ST AGNES." 221 quaintness, although not entirely got rid of, are there less glaring and offensive ; and along with the mere garniture of fancy, we have a story of human interest, of love and revenge and suffering, well though pecu- liarly told. In this poem he wonderfully triumphed over his earlier besetting frailties — want of precision and carelessness of style — and exhibited such rapid strides of improvement, as enable us to form some pro- bable estimate of what his genius might have achieved, had he been destined to reach maturer years. His two latest were also his two most perfect com- positions, yet completely opposite in their character — "The Eve of St Agnes," of the most florid Gothic, remarkable for its sensuous beauty ; and " Hyperion," a fragment equally remarkable for its Greek severity and antique solemnity of outline. To the same latest period of his strangely fevered and brief career — for he died at twenty-four — are referable the four exquisite odes, " To a Nightingale," " To a Grecian Urn," " To Melancholy," and "To Autumn," — all so pregnant with deep thought, so picturesque in their limning, and so suggestive. Let us take three stanzas from "The Eve of St Agnes." They describe Madeline at her devotions before lying down to sleep on that charmed night. She has just entered her chamber, when — " Out went the taper as she hurried in ; Its little smoke in pallid moonshine died; She closed the door, she panted, all akin To spirits of the air and visions wide; No uttered syllable, or, woe betide ! But to her heart her heart was voluble, Paining with eloquence her balmy side; As though a tongueless nightingale should swell Her throat in vain and die, heart-stifled in her cell. A casement high and triple-arched there was, All garlanded with carven imageries 222 "ode to a nightingale." Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass, And diamonded with panes of quaint device Innumerable, of stains and splendid dyes. As are the tiger-moth's deep damasked wings ; And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries, And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings, A shielded scutcheon blushed with blood of queens andkings. Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast, As down she knelt in Heaven's grace and boon ; Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest. And on her silver cross soft amethyst, And on her hair a glory like a saint ; She seemed a splendid angel newly drest. Save wings, for heaven ; Porphyro grew faint, She knelt so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint." We have here a specimen of descriptive power luxu- riously rich and original ; but the following lines, from the " Ode to a Nightingale," flow from a far more pro- found fountain of inspiration. After addressing the bird as a " light- winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green and shadows numberless, Singing of summer in full-throated ease," he adds, somewhat fantastically, it must be owned, at first — " Oh, for a beaker full of the warm south, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim. And purple-stained mouth, That I might drink, and leave the world unseen. And with thee fade away into the forest dim. Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget, What thou amongst the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret, Here, where men sit, and hear each other groan ; KEATS' UNTUTORED FANCY. 223 Where Palsy shakes a few sad last grey Lah'S, Where youth grows pale aud spectre-thin, and dies ; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow, And leaden-eyed despairs; Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird ! No hungry generations tread thee down ; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown ; Perhaps the self-same song, that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn ; The same that oft-times hath Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn. Forlorn ! the very word is like a spell To toll one back from thee to my sole self ! Adieu ! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Adieu ! adieu ! thy plaintiff anthem fades Past the near meadow, over the hill stream, Up the hill-side ; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley's glades : Was it a vision or a waking dream 1 Fled is that music ; — do I wake or sleep ? " In his earlier pieces Keats was too extrainundaue — too fond of the visionary. His fancy and feelings rioted in a sort of sun-coloured cloudland, where all was gor- geous and glowing, rose-tinctured or thunderous ; but ever most indistinct, and often incomprehensible, save when regarded as dream-like imaginings — the morning reveries of a young enthusiast. His genius, however, was gradually coming under the control of judgment ; his powers of conception and of expression were alike maturing ; and his heart was day by day expanding to the genial influences of healthy simple nature. A large 224 EXTRACT FROM "HYPERION." portion of what he has left behind is crude, unconcocted, and unsatisfactory, exhibiting rather poetical materials than poetical superstructure ; but his happier strains vindicate the presence of a great poet in something more than embryo. Which of our acknowledged mag- nates, if cut off at the same age, would have left so much really excellent ? Altogether, whether we regard his short fevered life, or the quality of his genius, John Keats was assuredly one of the most remarkable men in the range of our poetical literature ; nor, while taste and sensibility remain in the world, can ever his prediction of his own fate be verified, when he dictated his epitaph as that of one " whose name was written in water." As an example of Keats' severer manner, I give the magnificent portrait of Saturn, with which " Hyperion " opens. In the same fragment we find several other passages equally grand and solemn. " Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of mom, Far from the fiery noon and eve's one star, Sat grey-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair ; Forest on forest hung about his head Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there. Not so much life as on a summer's day Robs not one light seed from the feathered grass, But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more By reason of his fallen divinity Spreading a shade : the Naiad 'mid her reeds Pressed her cold finger closer to her lips. Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went, No further than to where his feet had strayed, And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, Unsceptred ; and his realmless eyes were closed ; While his bowed head seemed Hstening to the eai*th. His ancient mother, for some comfort yet." PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 225 Almost at the identical time with John Keats, two other poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Bryan Waller Proctor, better known as Barry Cornwall, appeared before the world. Shelley took to the bare uplands of imaginative philosophy ; Cornwall, less ambitiously, chose the flowery valleys of fancy and feeling. The subject of "Alastor," Shelley's earliest acknow- ledged poem, and one of his best, is, like that of Words- worth's " Prelude," the development of a poet's mind, but much more vaguely and indefinitely broughtbefore us. Even in this youthful production we have much of the mastery of diction, the picturesqueness of descrip- tion, and the majestic imaginative gorgeousness or grace for which his maturer writings were distinguished. Its general aim is visionary and obscure, unless it may be found in a search after ideal perfection — some unap- proachable and unattainable good — some Utopia of the imagination. Equally peculiar in thought, style, and invention, and even less attractive than " Alastor," from the absence of human interest — however higher as a literary effort — was the allegorical poem, entitled " The Revolt of Islam." It was an unhappy attempt to blend poetry with metaphysics ; — unhappy, as in it the former has been almost sacrificed to the latter, and much fine thought and imagery thus literally entombed. He is anything but lucid or happy in the management of the plot or the arrangement of the incidents ; but where it escapes from its so-called philosophy, which, when com- prehensible, is utterly weak and worthless, the poem exhibits various passages remarkable for high imagina- tive passionate earnestness, or picturesque beauty ; while some of its narrative portions are of almost equal excel- lence, as the early loves of Laon and Cythna — the por- trait of the tyrant Othman sitting alone, with the little child in his palace hall — and the river voyage, towards the conclusion of the last canto. The next production of this wayward, misguided, and 226 TEAGEDT OF "THE CENCI." singular raan was his tragedy of " The Cenci," — in sub- ject, sufficiently indicative of the morbid perversion of his taste — in execution, the most able and elaborate of all his writings. Not only in exquisite description, but in dramatic energy, it may stand comparison with al- most anything recent times have produced ; but these excellencies are rendered literally nugatory, from the repulsive horror with which its successive scenes are approached. To the intellectual sublime, it is what the Newgate Calendar is to the moral sublime; and because sheer monstrosities have been depictured, nay, minutely dwelt on in the grosser writings of former ages, it seems to have been thought that no apology was necessary for transferring them to our own. In the " (Edipus Tyran- nus" of Sophocles to be sure, in the "Hippolytus" of Euripides, in the " Bride of Messina" of Schiller, in the "Mirra" of Alfieri, in the "Manfred" and "Parisina" of Byron, and in one or two of our early dramatists, the same dangerous tract of thought has been glimpsed upon ; but surely these are only as lurid beacons to warn right feeling and tasteful propriety from such a bleak and forbidding territory. No man can plead any better apology for the use of such machinery, for the jnirpose of exciting the tragic emotions of pity or terror, than he could, were he to exhibit the rack and guillo- tine on the stage, and to describe all the horrible minutiae of inquisitorial torture. Except for the diseased state of Shelley's temperament, such things could not possibly have been, even with him — for he also possessed feelings at times apparently totally in opposition to these ; and I can quite agree with Mr Leigh Hunt, when he says of this same tragedy, that — " Otherwise besides grandeur and terror, there are things in it lovely as heart can worship ; and the author showed himself able to draw both men and women, whose names would have become ' familiar in our mouths as household words.' The utmost might of gentleness and of the sweet habitudes THE "PROMETHEUS UNBOUND." 227 of domestic affection, was never more balmily impressed through the tears of the reader, than in the unique and divine close of that dreadful tragedy. Its loveliness, being that of the highest reason, is superior to the mad- ness of all the crime that has preceded it, and leaves nature in a state of reconcilement with her ordinary course." With much of the beautiful and true — with much of Animation and force of passion, and fine touches of nature and picturesque description, the eclogue of " Rosalind and Helen" has the same detracting quali- ties of the perverted in taste and the repulsive as well as the extravagant in incident. The "Prometheus Unbound," a lyrical drama in four acts, was intended, as we are told by Shelley himself, to make his hero " the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature, impelled by the purest and the truest motives to the best and noblest ends." It hence differs from the lost drama of ^Bschylus on the same subject, whose purpose was merely to com- memorate the reconciliation of Jupiter with his victim, on his disclosing the danger threatened to his empire by the consummation of his marriage with Thetis. With much of the simple and severe Greek spirit, and with several splendid soliloquies, descriptions, and lyrical effervescences, it is, for the most part, unsubstantial and wire-drawn, and to me as unintelligible as not a few of the superlatively metaphysical reveries of Plato, Kant, and Coleridge, of which last amiable dreamer, Southey, judging from his own experiences, not unaptly says, in writing to a philosophical inquirer, " If you can get at the kernel of his ' Friend,' and his ' Aids to Reflection,' you may crack peach-stones without any fear of crack- ing your teeth." We have shadows of power, rather than power itself — little that is real or tangible, or ap- pertaining either to the beauty or majesty of physical nature; nothing to touch our hearts, or awaken our 228 SHELLEY'S MINOR POEMS. sympathies. All is mystic, ideal, involved, remote, cloudy, or abstract. We have the sun, but it is hid in rolling vapours — we have the moon, but it shines only on glittering snow. So recondite does Shelley some- times become, that even language itself, of which he was one of the greatest masters — greater, perhaps, than even Thomas De Quincey — occasionally breaks down under him ; and his diction, from being smooth, and pearly, and transparent, gets harsh, perplexed, misty, or mean- ingless ; as if, in his attempts to make his style Orphic and primeval, he passed, even in words, beyond the boundaries of creation and sunshine, into " Chaos and old night." He is, assuredly, the most ethereal of all our poets, alike in imagery and language ; his imagery dealing principally with elemental nature, while his language, in delicate tenuity, seems almost fitted to describe dis- solving views, as they " come like shadows, so depart." The other larger productions of Shelley, his " Queen Mab," his " Adonais," his " Hellas," his " Witch of Atlas," and his " Julian and Maddalo," are all more or less characterised by the same beauties and defects ; and these defects, in my opinion, unfitted him for ever successfully overcoming the difficulties of a long poem. Even now, he is principally remembered by his lesser works — his " Sensitive Plant," his " Skylark," his " Cloud," his " Marianne's Dream," his lines " To a Lady with a Guitar," his " Stanzas written in dejection at Naples," and his " Lines to an Indian Air ;" and it has been well said of him, that " he has single thoughts of great depth and force, single images of rare beauty, detached passages of extreme tenderness ; and that in his smaller pieces, where he has attempted little, he has done most." It would be difficult to excel several isolated stanzas in the " Address to the Skylark ;" but " The Sensitive Plant" and " The Cloud"' are, in my opinion, by far the most exquisite and original of all his conceptions : they approach, as nearly as possible, "the sensitive plant." 229 to what has been somewhat quaintly denominated " pure poetry ;" and are as unique, in their wild ethereal beauty, as the " Kilmeny" of Hogg, or " The Ancient Marinere" of Coleridge. I am aware, that quoting a few stanzas from the " Sensitive Plant " can only call to mind the pedant in the Facetice of Hierocles, who carried about a brick with him in the market-place, as a specimen of the building he had for sale. But we venture on it, and take part of the catalogue of flowers. " A sensitive plant in a garden grew, And the young winds fed it with silver dew ; And it opened its fan-hke leaves to the light, And closed them beneath the kisses of night. And the spring arose on the garden fair, Like the spirit of love felt everywhere. And each flower and herb on earth's dark breast, Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest. The snow-drop, and then the violet Arose from the ground with warm rain wet. And their breath was mixed with fresh odour sent From the turf, like the voice and the instrument. Then the pied wind-flowers, and the tuhp tall, And narcissi, the fairest among them all. Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess, Till they die of their own dear loveliness ; And the JSTaiad-like lily of the vale. Whom youth makes so fair, and passion so pale, That the light of its tremulous bells is seen Through their pavilions of tender green ; And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew Of music so delicate, soft, and intense. It was felt like an odour within the sense ; And the rose, like a nymph to the bath addrest, Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air The soul of her beauty and love lay bare; 230 "a ravine." And the wand-like lily, which lifted up, As a Moenad, its moonlight coloured cup, Till the fiery star, which is its eye, Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky ; And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose, The sweetest flower for scent that blows ; And all rare blossoms, from every clime, Grew in that garden in perfect prime." So much for his taste in the delicate and refined of description : now for his power in the stern and severe : — " I remember Two miles on this side of the fort, the road Crosses a deep ravine ; 'tis rough and narrow, And winds with short turns down the precipice ; And in its depth there is a mighty rock, Which has, from unimaginable years. Sustained itself with terror and with toil Over a gulf, and with the agony With which it clings seems slowly coming down ; Even as a wretched soul, hour after hour. Clings to the mass of life ; yet clinging, leans, And, leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss In which it fears to fall. Beneath this crag, Huge as despair, as if in weariness The melancholy mountain yawns. Below You hear, but see not, the impetuous torrent Raging among the caverns; and a bridge Crosses the chasm ; and high above these grow, With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag, Cedars and yews and pines, whose tangled hair Is matted in one solid roof of shade By the dark ivy's twine. At noonday here 'Tis twihght, and at sunset blackest night." Such were Shelley's powers, when legitimately directed ; but unfortunately it is rarely that he thus writes ; and a much higher place has been claimed for the great mass of his verse than it seems to me to be at Shelley's principles 231 all entitled to. Gorgeous, graceful, and subtle qualities it indeed invariably possesses — and no one can be more ready to admit them than I am ; but he had only a section of the essential properties necessary to constitute a master in the art. The finest poetry is that (whatever critical coteries may assert to the contrary, and it is exactly the same with painting and sculpture) which is most patent to the general understanding, and hence to the approval or disapproval of the common sense of mankind. We have only to try the productions of Shakespeare, of Milton, of Dryden, of Pope, of Gray and Collins, of Scott, Burns, Campbell, and Byron — indeed, of any truly great writer whatever in any language, by this standard — to be convinced that such must be the case. — Verse that will not stand being read aloud before a jury of common-sense men, is — and you may rely upon the test — wanting in some great essential quality. It is here that the bulk of the poetry of Shelley — and not of him only, but of most of those who have succeeded him in his track as poets — is, when weighed in the balance, found wanting. And why? Because these writers have left the highways of truth and nature, and, seeking the by-lanes, have there, mistaking the uncommon for the valuable, bowed down to the idols of affectation and false taste. I make this remark here, because I think that Shelley had much to do in the indoctrinating of those principles which have mainly guided our poetical aspi- rants of late years — sadly to their own disadvantage and the public disappointment. Shelley was un- doubtedly a man of genius — of very high genius — but of a peculiar and unhealthy kind. It is needless to disguise the fact, and it accounts for all — his mind was diseased : he never knew, even from boyhood, what it was to breathe the atmosphere of healthy life, to have the mens sana in corpore sano. His sensibilities were over acute ; his morality was thoroughly morbid ; his 232 AND DOCTEINES. metaphysical speculations illogical, incongruous, incom- prehensible — alike baseless and objectless. The suns and systems of his universe Avere mere nebulae ; his continents were a chaos of dead matter ; his oceans " a world of waters, and without a shore." For the law of gravitation — that law which was to preserve the planets in their courses — he substituted some undemonstrable dream-like reflection of a dream, which he termed intellectual beauty. Life, according to him, was a phan- tasmagoria! pictured vision — mere colours on the sunset clouds; and earth a globe hung on nothing — self- governing, yet, strange to say, without laws. It is gratuitous absurdity to call his mystical speculations a search after truth ; they are no such thing ; and are as little worth the attention of reasoning and respon- sible man as the heterogeneous reveries of nightmare. They are a mere flaring up in the face of all that Revelation has mercifully disclosed, and all that sober Reason has confirmed. Shelley's faith was a pure psychological negation, and cannot be confuted, simply because it asserts nothing ; and, under the childish idea that all the crime, guilt, and misery of the world resulted from — what ? — not the depravity of individuals, but from the very means, civil and ecclesiastical, by which these, in all ages and nations, have been at least attempted to be controlled, he seemed to take an insane delight in selecting, for poetical illustration, subjects utterly loathsome and repulsive ; and which religion and morality, the virtuous and the pure, the whole natural heart and spirit of upright man, either rises up in rebellion against, or shrinks back from instinctively, and with horror. The poetry of Barry Cornwall is of a much less ambitious, but far more genial character than that of Shelley; it clings only to what is lovable in our nature, and hence approximates by at least one-half nearer to that of Hunt and Keats. But, like every BARRY CORNWALL. 233 true poet, however he may be influenced by the lights from without reflected on hiui, he has a path of his own ; and his verse is characterised by definite and distinctive features. His chief models in thought and in tone of feeling, as well as in viewing and describing objects, seem to have been the early Italian writers, more especially Boccaccio with his naive narrative simplicity ; and our older dramatists, Fletcher, Massin- ger, and Ben Jonson, in their tender and gentler moods, and in their lyrical measures quaintly natural, or fantastically pathetic. Nor are indications of the impressions made on him by his contemporaries, Wordsworth, Byron, and Coleridge, quite undiscoverable. For the recondite variations and the exquisite melody of his rhymes and metres, Barry Cornwall has been seldom equalled. We are carried away as it were by the song of the Syrens, or old Timotheus ; and hence it is, that he is one of the very few authors who, by adapting his tone to the chronology and nature of his subjects, reconciles us, "by the consecration and the poet's dream, " to the substitution of pictures, Elysian in their softness and harmony, for actual representations of human life. Wood, water, sky, and ocean, all are invested with the glowing colours of romance ; and human life, under his touch, becomes but a panoramic pageantry of love and beauty, of heroism and gentle- ness ; of sympathetic sorrow and angelic resignation. Almost all his delineations relate either to the mytho- logical eras, or to the chivalrous and romantic ; and in him a taint of mannerism and quaintness seems not only pardonable, but graceful and becoming ; being to his themes as congenial as the wild flavour of heather to mountain honey. "The Dramatic Scenes," his earliest, is in several respects still his best work ; for they were evident overflowings from his feelings and fancy, and are written con amove. Besides this, they had the charm of novelty, 234 "SICILIAN STORY." and bewitched all finer sensibilities by being so thoroughly tinctured with " Elysian beauty, melan- choly grace. " Rich and ornate — nay, almost arabesque — as the language of these dialogues may be said to be, we somehow or other tacitly acquiesce in its dramatic fitness ; and, although aware of being lulled into a kind of half-dream, would rather not be awakened out of it. The three finest are '' The Way to Conquer," " The Two Dreams," and far before either of these, "The Broken Heart," which combines all the richness of an autumnal moonlight with all the softness of a morning reverie ; and which, in tender pathos, was never excelled even by Massinger himself. Nor far behind "The Dramatic Scenes," in the cha- racteristics of gentle but passionate earnestness, of refined sentiment, of picturesque situation, and exquisite har- mony of st\ie, are the " Sicilian Story," "Marcian Col- lonna," and the serious portion of " Diego de Montilla ; " for wit and humour, whatever he may himself think, lie not in our author's way. It is thus that he outlines the sequestration of a bereaved lover — ** He lived in solitude, And scarcely quitted his ancestral home. Though many a friend, and many a lady woo'd, Of birth and beauty, yet he would not I'oam Beyond the neighbouring hamlet's churchyard rude ; And there the stranger still on one low tomb May read ' Aurora ; ' whether the name he drew From mere conceit of grief, or not, none knew. Perhaps 'twas a mere memorial of the past ; Such Love and Sorrow fashion, and deceive Themselves with words, until they grow at last Content with mocks alone, and cease to grieve ; Such madness in its wiser mood will cast, Making its fond credulity believe Things unsubstantial. 'T was— no matter what — Something to hallow that lone burial spot. " RURAL SECLUSION." 235 He grew familiar with the bird, the brute Knew well its benefactor; and he'd feed And make acquaintan.ce with the fishes mute ; And, like the Thracian Shepherd, as we read, Drew with the music of his stringed lute, Behind him winged things, and many a tread And tramp of animal ; and, in his hall, He was a Lord indeed, beloved by all. In a high solitary turret, where None were admitted, would he muse, when first The young day broke ; perhaps because he there Had in his early infancy been nursed. Or that he felt more pure the morning air, Or loved to see the Great Apollo burst From out his cloudy bondage, and the night Hurry away before the conquering light. But oftener to a gentle lake, that lay Cradled within a forest's bosom, he Would, shunning kind reproaches, steal away ; And, when the inland breeze was fresh and free. There would he loiter all the livelong day. Tossing upon the waters listlessly. The swallow dashed beside him, and the deer Drank by his boat, and eyed him without fear. It was a soothing place : the summer hours Passed there in quiet beauty, and at night The moon ran searching by the woodbine bowers, And shook o'er all the leaves her kisses bright, O'er lemon blossoms and faint myrtle flowers; And there the west wind often took its flight, While heaven's clear eye was closing; while above, Pale Hesper rose, the evening light of love. 'Twas solitude be loved where'er he strayed,- No danger daunted, and no pastime drew, And ever on that fair heart-broken maid, (Aurora), who unto the angels flew 236 "a pauper's funeral." Away so early, with grief unallayed He thought ; and in the sky's eternal blue Would look for shapes, till at times before him she Rose like a beautiful reality." Having given from Shelley a landscape sketch of secluded grandeur and magnificence, as indicative of that poet's habits of thought and peculiar manner, I add the following by Barry Cornwall — not by way of contrast, but as a companion picture. The place de- scribed had been a scene of murder. " It was a spot like those romancers paint, Or painted, when of dusky knights they told, Wandering about in forests old, When the last purple colour was waxing faint, And day was dying in the west ; the trees (Dark pine, and chestnut, and the dwarfed oak. And cedar), shook their branches, till the shade Looked like a spirit, and living, as it played, Seemed holding dim communion with the breeze : Below, a tumbling i-iver rolled along, (Its course by lava rocks and branches broke). Singing for aye its fierce and noisy song." Nor can I resist quoting the three following exquisite stanzas as a specimen of Barry Cornwall's very best manner — they are from his poem of " Gyges." " It is a chilling thing to see, as I Have seen — a man go down into the grave Without a tear, or even an altered eye : Oh i sadder far than when fond women rave, Or children weep, or aged parents sigh. O'er one whom art and love doth strive to save In vain : man's heart is soothed by every tone Of pity, saying ' he's not quite alone.' I saw a pauper once, when I was young. Borne to his shallow grave : the bearers trod Smihng to where the death-bell heavily rung ; And soon his bones were laid beneath the sod : 4 i CHARACTER OP CORNWALL'S POETRY. 237 On the rough boards the earth was gaily flung ; Methought the prayer wliich gave bim to his God Was coldly said ; — then all, passing away, Left the scarce coffined wretch to quick decay. It was an autumn evening, and the rain Had ceased awhile, but the loud winds did shriek, And called the deluging tempest back again ; The flag-staff on the churchyard tower did creak, And through the black clouds ran a lightning vein- And then the flapping raven came to seek Its home : its flight was heavy, and its wing Seemed weary with a long day's wandering." During the last quarter of a century — (alas ! for Mr Proctor, and parchments, writs, and affidavits !) — Barry Cornwall has only come before the public in short snatches of song — " Sybilline Leaves," scattered through many tomes, where they have wooed and won their way to the thoughtful hearts of many a wintry hearth ; and some of them wed to music, as " The Sea," " King Death," and " The Stormy Petrel," have attained a popular acceptance scarcely excelled by Moore and Haynes Bayley. Yet, confessedly fine as many of these latter lyrical effusions are, they have for the most part an air of unnatural buoyancy and fantastic jauntiness about them, scarcely quite pleasing or satisfactory, and do not appear to me entitled to rank in excellence with « The Dream," with " Marcelia," " The Sleeping Figure of Modena," and many other of the same author's earlier productions. The precis of this poet's character by Lord Jeffrey I regard as so just and perfect, that I cannot resist quoting it ; more especially as, of late years, there seems to have arisen some unaccountable but futile tendency to under- rate him, for the sake of the glorification of others, un- questionably not more deserving. "If it be the peculiar province of poetry to give delight," says that eloquent critic, " this author should 238 POLLOK AND AIRD. rank very high among our poets ; and in spite of his neglect of the terrible passions, he does rank very high in our estimation. He has a beautiful fancy and a beautiful diction, and a fine ear for the music of verse, and great tenderness and delicacy of feeling. He seems, moreover, to be altogether free from any tincture of bitterness, rancour, or jealousy ; and never shocks us with atrocity, or stiffens us with horror, or confounds us with the dreadful sublimities of demoniacal energy. His soul, on the contrary, seems filled to overflo\ring with images of love and beauty, and gentle sorrows, and tender pity, and mild and holy resignation. The cha- racter of his poetry is to soothe and melt and delight ; to make us kind and thoughtful and imaginative ; to purge away the dregs of our earthly passions by the refining fires of a pure imagination ; and to lap us up from the eating cares of life, in visions so soft and bright as to sink like morning dreams on our senses, and at the same time so distinct, and truly fashioned upon the eternal patterns of nature, as to hold their place before our eyes long after they have again been opened on the dimmer scenes of the world." To this 1 would only add, that if one of the surest tests of fine poetry — and I know no better — be that of impressing the heart and fancy, Barry Cornwall must rank high ; for there are few to whose pages the young and ardent reader would more frequently and fondly recur, or which so tenderly impress themselves on the tablets of memory. Almost totally opposed in style, manner, and subject, to the four poets I have last mentioned, are the two that next follow— PoUok and Aird. The former has gained a popularity far beyond what even his most sanguine admirers could have ventured to anticipate ; the latter most assuredly less than his high genius entitles him to. Much, however, is to be referred to the class of subjects that each has chosen to illustrate. " THE COURSE OF TIME :" 239 The air we have been breathing in the writings of Hunt, Keats, Cornwall, and Shelley, can scarcely be said to appertain to Britain. Their skies have a deep Ausonian blue, and are not vaporous and clouded ; their breezes, instead of being scented by the moun- tain heather, are redolent of myrtle flowers and orange groves. All their associations are with the sunny south — those of Aird and Pollok with the hardy north ; and between them there is not a wider contrast than be- tween the imperial purple robes of Rome, and the plain black cloak of Geneva. Aird and Pollok were personal friends, and, I believe, fellow- students ; and their appearance in the literary world was nearly about the same time — Aird, in his " Religious Characteristics, " Pollok in his "Course of Time " — both of which remarkable works I delight to remember having had the privilege of perusing in manuscript. Shunning companionship, and collating, combining, and nursing his thoughts in rural seclusion, Pollok seemed determinedly to have braced up his mind for one grand literary enterprise which was to signalise his life. Whatever he heard, or read, or savr, or felt, or imagined, was worked up into his materials. It occu- pied his entire man by day, and coloured his very dreams by night. He approached his work on his knees by prayer ; he addressed himself to it as an exercise of devotion. Nor was the product unworthy. " The Course of Time" is a very extraordinary poem — vast in its conception — vast in its plan — vast in its materials, — and vast, if very far from perfect, in its achievement. The wonderful thing is, indeed, that it is such as we find it, and not that its imperfections are numerous. It has nothing at all savouring of the little or conventional about it — for he passed at once from the merely elegant and graceful. With Young, Blair, and Cowper for his guides, his muse strove with unwearied 240 ITS EXCELLENCIES AND DEFECTS. wing to attain the high, severe, serene region of Milton ; and he was at least successful in earnestness of purpose, in solemnity of tone, and in vigour and variety of illus- tration. To briefly characterise " The Course of Time" would be no easy matter, as, in a literary point of view, it has so many points of conceptional excellence united to so many imperfections in mere style and execution ; but I hesitate not to aflirm, that the latter are in a great measure absorbed, and disappear or dwindle away, in the vastness of the general design, and in the copious splendour of particular passages. Pollok was of an enthusiastic temperament. He combined an energetic intellect with a vivid imagination ; and these qualities were exhibited alike in the daring plan and the labo- rious execution of his great poem ; for unquestionably, by the united consent alike of Europe and America, it is entitled to that appellation. Had it been otherwise, it must have been a complete failure ; for he ambi- tiously sought an etherealised region, which "no trite medium knows," and where the waxen wings of a Dagdalus would have instantly betrayed an unautho- rised adventurer. Regarded as a mere poem — as a mere literary performance, in which the objects of na- ture and art are beautified by the heightening glow of imagination — I do not think that it is entitled to rank by any means so high as its general acceptance would entitle us to look for ; but, on the contrary, that very popularity, when we consider the class of its readers and their number, is a sufficient evidence of power of some kind — probably of a lofty kind. Many of its passages, it must be admitted, are more rhetorical than inspired. We are oftener dazzled than delighted ; and if we at one time wonder at the amazing copiousness of Pollok's imagery, we are at another chagrined at the indifferent taste manifested in its selection. Nor can more be said in uniform defence of its language, style, "autumnal eve." 241 or intonation, although tliese occasionally sound like echoes of Milton and Wordsworth — of the former in a solemn music, imitative of the peal of the organ, and the voices of the choir, reverberating among carved cathedral roofs ; of the latter, in strange wild natural cadences — now like the mountain breezes wailing dirge- ful through the dark ravines of the mountains, or the hollow caves on the sea-shore, — and now of the soft light airs dallying in April, with the greening tree-tops. In the celestial part of his subject — in his allusions to the glories of heaven, and the transient vanities of earth, the poet is necessarily — I say necessarily — indebted for much that has been gleaned unequivocally from the sacred record. But he is not less felicitous in the pic- tures of weal or woe drawn from his own observation of actual life — some of which, as those of a sister's death- bed, and of the anxious mother with her children around her, are tinted with a touching beauty ; W'hile others, as those of the groping miser, and the midnight thief, and the satiated voluptuary, are stamped with a stern truth, a severe reality, and a harrowing power. His descriptive talent, although not always judiciously exercised, was of a high grade. Let me instance two sketches. The first speaks for itself, and in his softer manner : — " It was an eve of Autumn's holiest mood ; The corn-fields, bathed in Cynthia's silver light, Stood ready for the reaper's gathering hand ; And all the winds slept soundly. Nature seemed In silent contemplation to adore Its Maker. Now and then the aged leaf Fell from its fellows, rustling to the ground; And, as it fell, bade man think on his end. On vale and lake, on wood and mountain high, With pensive wing outspread, sat heavenly Thought, Conversing with itself. Vesper looked forth From out her western hermitage, and smiled ; 242 " MOUNTAIN PROSPECTS." And up the east, unclouded, rode the naoon, With all her stars, gazing on earth intense, As if she saw some wonder working there." The last line, bv its suggestiveness, raises the passage fii r beyond the scope of mere description. Passing from the gentle to the majestic, here is a picture of another stamp : — " N'or is the hour of lonely walk forgot In the wide desert, where the view was large. Pleasant were many scenes, but most to me The solitude of vast extent, untouched By hand of art, where Nature sowed, herself. And reaped her crops ; whose garments were the clouds ; Whose minstrels brooks ; whose lamps the moon and stars ; Whose organ-choir the voice of many waters : Whose banquets morning dews ; whose heroes storms ; Whose warriors mighty winds ; whose lovers flowers ; Whose orators the thunderbolts of God ; Whose palaces the everlasting hills ; Whose ceiling heaven's unfathomable blue ; And from whose rocky turrets, battled high. Prospect immense spread out on all sides round, Lost now beneath the welkin and the main, Now walled with hills that slept above the storms." It was finely said, I believe, by my friend Thomas Aird, that "'The Course of Time' was the work of a man who had kept himself shy from literature, for a first and great attempt." Pity that it should have been his last ; for, unquestionably, it is the production of a great and original genius — a genius which, whatever were its youthful deficiencies of taste and judgment, has made itself felt wherever the English language is spoken. Poor Pollok gave his manuscript to the press from a dying hand. That manuscript, as I have said, I had at the time the melancholy pleasure of perusing, and re- member well that several of the books had been copied over for him by a female hand, on account of his THOMAS AIRD : 243 increasing debility — a symptom which he vainly tried, even to the last, to conceal from himself. On the 24tli March 1827, " The Course of Time" was given to the world ; and, on the 18th September of the same year, its author was removed from it. But not only had he not lived in vain — the great object of his life had been accomplished in the publication of his poem ; and it is pleasant to know, that the news of the success of " The Course of Time " shed a sunshine around his early death- bed. He was in his twenty-ninth year. The poetry of Thomas Aird deals, still more exclu- sively than that of Pollok, with two grand elements — the majestic and the severely simple. His genius pants after "the vast alone, the wonderful, the wild;" and leaves to others the sighing after " harmony and grace and gentlest beauty." From their deficiency in the genial and the ornate, his writings have thus unfortu- nately failed in acquiring that more general accepta- bility which their merits otherwise deserve. His mind seems too stately and austere to descend to trifling, with the winning ease of a Prior or a Moore ; and he cannot be said to be himself — to be in his element, except when dealing with the majestic in form and idea. The per- vading fault of his compositions will be felt to lie in the circumstance of his being often less in than above or beyond his subject, which he keeps aloof from, and re- gards as much with the eye of a painter as of a poet : thus, in a great measure, excluding it from that sym- pathy which can only be engendered by the complete identification of the author's mind with his productions. Occasionally his conceptions seem vague, and wrapt in a dreamy perplexity, and his language gnarled and in- volved ; but we have ever the feeling of strength and healthy vigour — never of poverty or meanness. His muse shrinks from the commonplace ; and its song is never like an unhappy stream whimpering beside the polluting chimneys of a manufacturing town ; but 244 HIS IMAGINATIVE POETRY. resembles the fresh forceful cataract dashing in diamonds over the mountain rock with its scattered birch-trees, and thundering on in its way downwards, although that may be only to a bleak and sequestered pastoral glen. Aird has seldom ventured on depicturing modes of life, or the varying many-hued manners of society — and rightly ; for the path of his vigour lies in a different direction — in grand outline, not in detail. He is hence less fortunate in his " Captive of Fez," his " Christian Bride," and his " Frank Sylvan ; " although the first has much of the stately march of Dryden's narrative, and the last of the quaint graphic homeliness of Cow- per, than in his more purely imaginative efforts, " The Demoniac," "Nebuchadnezzar," some scenes in the "Tragedy of Wold," "The Churchyard Ghosts," and " The Devil's Dream ; " the last of which especially, for grandeur of conception and the magnificent imagery of particular passages, is scarcely surpassed by anything that I know of in modern poetry. It is thus that the arch-fiend is introduced to us : — " Beyond the north, where Ural hills from polar tempests run, A glow went forth at midnight hour, as of unwonted sun ; Upon the north at midnight hour a mighty noise was heard, As if with all his trampling waves the ocean was imbarred ; And high a grisly terror hung, upstarting from below, Like fiery arrow shot aloft from some unmeasured bow. ' Twas not the obedient seraph's form that bums before the throne. Whose feathers are the pointed flames that tremble to be gone ; With twists of faded glory mixed, grim shadows wove his wing ; An aspect like the hurrying storm proclaimed the Infernal King. And up he went, from native might or holy sufferance given, As if to strike the starry boss of the high and vaulted heaven. I "the devil's dream." 245 Winds rose ; from 'neath his settling feet were driven great drifts of snow ; Like hoary hair from off his head did white clouds streaming go; The gulfy pinewoods far beneath roared surging like a sea : From out their lairs the striding wolves came howling awfully. But now upon an ice-glazed rock, severely blue, he leant, His spirit by the storm composed that round about him went." While in the heart of his expansive dream on the snowy mountains — " At last from out the barren womb of many thousand years, A sound as of the green-leaved earth his thirsty spirit cheers ; And oh ! a presence soft and cool came o'er his burning dream, A form of beauty clad about with fair creation's beam ; A low sweet voice was in his ear, thrilled through his inmost soul. And these the words that bowed his heart with softly sad control : — * No sister e'er hath been to thee with pearly eyes of love ; No mother e'er hath wept for thee, an outcast from above ; No hand hath come from out the cloud, to wash thy scarred face; No voice to bid thee lie in peace, the noblest of thy race ; But bow thee to the God of Love, and all shall yet be well. And yet in days of holy rest and gladness thou shalt dwell. And thou shalt dwell 'midst leaves and rills far from this torrid heat ; And I, with streams of cooling milk, will bathe thy blistered feet; And when the troubled tears shall start to think of all the past, My mouth shall haste to kiss them off, and chase thy sorrows fast; And thou shalt walk in soft white light with kings and priests abroad, And thou shalt summer high in bliss upon the hills of God.' " 246 AIRD AS A PAINTER OP NATURE. And this is the arch-fiend's departure again for his infernal realms : — " Quick as the levin, whose blue forks lick up the life of man, Aloft he sprung, and through his wings the piercing north wind ran ; Till, like a glimmering lamp that's lit in lazar-house by night, To see what mean the sick man's cries, and set his bed aright. Which in the dim and sickly air the sputtering shadows mar, So gathered darkness high the fiend, till swallowed like a star. What judgment from the tempted heavens shall on his head go forth 1 Down headlong through the firmament he fell upon the north : The stars are up untroubled all in the lofty fields of air: The will of God's enough, without his red right arm laid bare. 'Twas He that gave the fiend a space to prove him still the same, Then bade wild hell with hideous laugh be stirred her prey to claim." In his sketches of external nature, Thomas Aird is occasionally eminently happy, — as in portions of his poems entitled " The Summer," and " The Winter Day," which, along with a semi-pastoral character peculiarly their own, combine the grand general out- lines of Thomson with Crabbe's faithful, minute, and microscopic observation. It has often struck me that there is a great family likeness between the genius of the late David Scott, the painter of Vasco di Gama, and that of the author of "The Demoniac" and "The Devil's Dream ; " very many of the same characteristic defects, which marred popularity ; and very many of the same high excellencies, which ought to have com- manded it. In 1832 appeared the collected poems of William Motherwell He had previously made himself known by his " Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern," a collection WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. 247 of Scottish ballads industriously collected and ably- edited ; and there can be little doubt that the setting about such a task gave an increased impetus to his own genius in the path of lyric poetry. He was about equally successful in two departments, — the martial and the plaintive ; yet stirring as are his " Sword Chant of Thorstein Raudi," and his " Battle Flag of Sigurd," I doubt much whether they are entitled to the same praise, or have gained the same deserved acceptance, as his " Jeanie Morrison," or his striking stanzas, commencing " My head is like to rend." Apart from the inimitable genuine antique, it would be diffi- cult to point out many ballad pictures of early love, more purely and simply pathetic than the former of these. Overflowing with nature and pathos, it touches a string to which every heart must vibrate, and would alone entitle Motherwell to a place not unenviable among our poets. He wrote frequently, however, when he ought to have been silent, when his muse was not in the vein ; and, consequently, on such occa- sions we have clever art, not natural feeling ; the form of verse without the animating spirit. His besetting faults were a straining after sentiment, and an assump- tion of morbid pensiveness in his descriptions of nature ; but in his happier efforts, where fancy and feeling went hand in hand, he captivates our sympathies, and carries them along with him. The posthumous additions made to the poems of Motherwell, by the kindly zeal of his friends Mr M'Gonechy and Mr Kennedy, have, I am afraid; like those of Mr Monckton Milnes, in the similar case of Keats, added to their bulk rather than their value ; and yet, somehow, we should not like to have wanted them. The poems of William Kennedy him- self are referable to the same period. His principal poem " The Arrow and the Rose," may be thought deficient in warmth and tenderness ; but it is skilfull)'- and elegantly versified, and possesses passages of un- 248 EBENEZER ELLIOT. common power and beauty. Several of his lyrics also verge on excellence ; but it must be acknowledged of his poetry generally, that ingenious although it be, it rather excites expectation than fairly satisfies it. The same may be said with regard to a large portion of the poetry of Ebenezer Elliot. With much power, much graphic strength, it wants amenity ; and he would have been allowed but trifling damages on that pleasant score by a railway -valuator critic. His landscapes abound with wild-roses and brambles, but both have prickles ; his cherries resemble sloes, and his apples are generally crabs. You have the wallflower and the wood- bine, but you have the foxglove and the nightshade intertwined with them ; and while you listen to the linnet singing gaily from the blooming furze, you have somehow a notion that the subtle hawk is somewhere in ambush near him. His sky never shows the calm, clear, unclouded summer blue ; some speck on the horizon, although no " bigger than a man's hand," ever predicates storm ; and it is impossible to mistake Elliot's moorlands for the Elysian fields. As a depictor of the phases of humanity, his portraits are almost all of one class ; and with that class are identified his entire sympathies. Hence it is that he seems deficient in that genial spirit which characterises more catholic natures ; in those expansive feelings, which embrace society in all its aspects ; in those touches which " make all flesh kin." Ebenezer Elliot was a man of energetic powers ; but it is absurd to mention him, as some have rashly ven- tured to do, in the same breath with Burns. They were utterly unlike each other in everything, save in one principle — intensity. Burns could ascend from " the Mouse's Nest" destroyed by the plough, up to the march that ushered Bruce to Bannockburn ; from the Mountain Daisy gemming the sod, to the last star of that annual morn which recalled his thoughts " to Marv CHARACTER OF ELLIOT's POETRY, 249 in Heaven." He had the rough graphic power which could etch " The Deil and Dr Hornbook," and " The Twa Dogs," and " Tarn O'Shanter ;" but he had also the touch which could pencil with fair delicacy the flowers fit " to be a posie for his ain dear May." It was other- wise with Elliot ; and although his harp could not be said to be monotoned, it was much more unequivocally characterised b}' its chords of power than of tenderness. His history was strange and curious ; and he manfully overcame many obstacles in his difficult, onward, and upward career, which would have dismayed a less ardent spirit in its aspirations after literary excellence. In his lest productions, as " The Village Patriarch," " The Splendid Village," and "The Ranter," as well as in several of his lyrics, he has attained this excellence in no ordinary — nay, in an uncommon degree ; many of his portraits are redolent of breathing life, and not a few of his picturings true to nature. But his taste was the element at fault ; and not unfrequently (like James Hogg and Allan Cunningham in their most unsuccessful moods, and when writing in despite " of gods, men, and columns,") Elliot is harsh and involved — nay, conde- scends to the very confines of doggrel. Of all the Eng- lish poets who have gained a name — and none ever did so without in some measure deserving it — there are only two w^hom, I fear, I have never been able adequately to appreciate — and these are Young and Elliot — although to the better parts of both I think I am sufficiently alive ; and there is something of unhewn power in each not dissimilar. My strictures on Elliot must, there- fore, be taken cum grano sails. Probably I have not been able to make sufficient allowances for the ever- recurring instances of false or indifferent taste conspicu- ous in both, and which has destroyed so much of the delight which their unquestioned vigour of fancy and intellect could not otherwise have failed to produce ; — for that Ebenezer Elliot had excellencies of an uncom- 250 THOMAS HOOD. men kind has been proved by the hold which at least the better portion of his writings have taken of the public mind. Thomas Hood was the complete counterpart of El Hot. The one from manner — and probably from that alone — seemed not able to say even a kind thing graciously ; the other could not say what might even be reckoned an unkind thing without grace. Quicquid tetigit crnavit. With some resemblance to Huut and Keats, Thomas Hood had a manner and style racy, original, and pecu- liarly his own : but it was long ere he discovered this, and he only attained excellence in it in his latter pieces. He erroneously thought, through many years, that his forte lay between the classical and the imaginative, and so wasted his fine powers on " The Plea of the Mid- summer Fairies," on " Lycus the Centaur," ^ Hero and Leander," and similar efforts, which are vague, diffuse, passionless, and ineffective. He was thus like an itinerant street performer, who through half his life- time has been blowing away his lungs on the Pan's- pipes, or cramping his wrist with the liurdy-gurdy, suddenly finding, to his own particular amazement, that he is fit for the concert-room, on the flageolet or the French horn ; and certainly not quite in the position of the witty Harry Erskine's Fife Laird, who, when asked if he could play the violin, made answer, that " he was not very sure, as he had never tried." Hood made sure by trying ; and the result was very different from what must have been predicated of the Laird's first attempt, although it was towards the termination of his career when he felt, for the first time, that his real strength lay in " the homely tragic," of which he soon gave an immortal proof in his " Dream of Eugene Aram," which thus delightfully opens — " 'Twas in the prime of summer time, An evening calm and cool hood's serious poems. 251 And four-and-twenty happy boys Came bounding out of school ; There were some that ran, and some that leapt Like troutlets in a pool. Away they sped with gamesome minds, And souls untouched by sin ; To a level mead they came, and there They drave the wickets in ; Pleasantly shone the setting sun Over the town of Lynn." Xor less successful in a similar style, altliough with a commixture of wilder and more imaginative elements, were " The Haunted House" and " The Elm Tree," in both of which the efiects resulted from a succession of fine and minute touches. Hood possessed also much of tlie genial humour of Addison, Goldsmith, and Charles Lamb ; but his main triumph, as I have just said, lav in the simple pathetic, — and he has established for him- self a name that poetry " may not willingly let die," in " The Song of the Shirt," " The Bridge of Sighs," " The Workhouse Clock," and several other lyrics of exquisite natural beauty and feeling. What heart does not re- spond to the touching associations of the following voluntary : — " I remember, I remember The house where I was born. The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn : He never came a wink too soon, Nor brought too long a day, But now I often wish the night Had borne my breath away ! 1 remember, I remember The roses red and white, The violets and the lily-cups, Those flowers made of light ! 252 HIS COMIC VEIN. The lilacs where the robin built, And where my brother set The laburnum on his birth-day, — The tree is growing yet ! I remember, I remember The fir-trees dark and high — I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky; It was a childish ignorance, But now 'tis little joy To know I'm farther oflF from heaven Then when I was a boy !" For a long time Hood seemed content to take his place as a mere clever rhyming punster : he then showed the " seria mista jocis" and finally came out the high and deep-souled poet. In the transition state, his volubility in rhyming was even more alarmingly wonderful than that of Thomas Ingoldsby or Theodore Hook. The flights of Daedalian Icarus, or Ariosto's HippogrifF, or Chaucer's steed of brass, or Burger's Leonora, or Lunardi's balloon, or Hogg's Witch of Fife, or Byron's Mazeppa, or Cowper's John Gilpin, were scarcely more perilous than that of Miss Kilmansegg through the streets of London, on Banker, " her rich bay," as witness this narrative of it : — " Away, like the bolt of a rabbit, Away went the horse in the madness of fright, And away went the horsewoman, mocking the sight — Was yonder blue flash a flash of blue light, Or only the skirt of her habit ? Away she flies, with the groom behind, It looks like a race of the Calmuck kind. When Hymen himself is the starter : And the maid rides first in the four-footed strife, Riding, striding, as if for her life. While the lover rides after to catch him a wife. Although it's catching a Tartar. ** THE FLIGHT OF MISS KILMANSEGG." 253 Still flies the heiress through stones and dust, Oh ! for a fall, if fall she must, On the gentle lap of Flora ! But still, thank heaven, she clings to her seat, Away ! away ! she could ride a dead heat With the dead who ride so fast and fleet In the ballad of Leonora ! Away she gallops ! It's awful woi-k, It's faster than Turpin's ride to York On Bess, that notable clipper ! She has circled the ring ! she crosses the park ! Mazeppa, although he was stripped so stark, Mazeppa couldn't outstrip her ! The fields seem running away with the folks ! The elms are having a race for the Oaks, At a pace that all jockeys disparages ! All, all is racing ! The Serpentine Seems running past like ' the arrowy Rhine,' The houses have got on a railway line. And are off with the first-class carriages ! She'll lose her life ! She's losing her breath ! A cruel chase — she is chasing death, As female shriekings forewarn her ; And now — as gratis as blood of Guelph — She clears the gate, which has cleared itself Since then, at Hyde Park Corner ! Alas ! for the hope of the Kilmanseggs ! For her head, her brains, her body and legs. Her life's not worth a copper ! Willy-nilly — in Piccadilly A hundred hearts turn sick and chilly; A hundred voices cry, * Stop her ! ' And one old gentleman stares and stands. Shakes his head, and lifts his hands, And says, ' How very improper !' 254 " THE FLIGHT OF MISS KILMANSEGG." On and on ! — what a perilous ran ! The iron rails seem all mingling in one, To shut out the Green Park scenery ; And now the Cellar its dangers reveals — She shudders — she shrieks — she's doomed, she feels, To be torn by powers of horses and wheels, Like a spinner by steam machinery ! Sick with horror, she shuts her eyes — The very stones seem uttering cries. * Batter her ! shatter her ! Throw and scatter her ! ' Shouts each stony-hearted chatterer. ' Dash at the heavy Dover ! Spill her ! kill her ! tear and tatter her ! Smash her ! crash her ! (the stones didn't flatter her !) Kick her brains out ! let her blood spatter her ! Roll on her over and over ! ' For so she gathered her awful sense Of the street in its past unmacadamised tense As the wild horse overran it — His four heels making the clatter of six, Like a devil's tatoo played with iron sticks On a kettle-drum of granite. On ! still on ! she's dazzled with hints Of oranges, ribbons, and coloured prints, A kaleidoscope jumble of shapes and tints. And human faces all flashing, Bright and bi'ief as the sparks from the flints, That the desperate hoofs keep dashing ! On and on ! still frightfully fast ! Dover Street, Bond Street, all are past ! But yes— no— yes ! they are down at last! The Furies and Fates have found them ! Down they go with a sparkle and crash, Like a bark that's struck by a lightning flash — There's a shriek and a sob — and the dense, dark mob Like a billow closes around them ! " hood's miscellanies. 255 Hood's verse, whether serious or comic — whether serene like a cloudless autumn evening, or sparkling with puns like a frosty January midnight with stars — was ever pregnant with materials for thought. In his " Elm Tree" we have a piece of secluded forest scenery, touched with a strange and gloomy power — creating that state of mind in Scotland termed eeriness, and for which I am ignorant of any English synonyrae. This poem has the same reference to Tennyson's " Talking Oak" that a Rembrandt picture, with its deep masses and dark shadows, has to a sunbright Hobbima. Its power, as well as that in " The Haunted House," is effected, as I have said, not by a few bold master-strokes, but by a succession of minute cumulative touches, which make seclusion deepen into awe, and awe to darken into the mysterious gloom of earthquake and eclipse and the shadow of death. " The Song of the Shirt" and " The Workhouse Clock" are only strains preclusive to " The Bridge of Sighs." Throughout these and other lyrics, we have utterances alike deep and high of Hood's genius — a genius resembling that of Charles Lamb, in being at once pleasant and peculiar. His comic vein was equally remarkable, and was almost the only one that he worked through a succes- sion of years. It is only necessary to mention the " Irish Schoolmaster," " The Last Man," the "Ode on a distant view of Clapham Academy," " Faithless Sally Brown," and " Miss Kilmansegg with her Golden Leg," to awaken pleasant remembrances in many a mind. Yet, like every author distinguished for true comic humour, there was a deep vein of melancholy pathos running through his mirth ; and even when his sun shone brightly, its light seemed often reflected as if only over the rim of a cloud. Well may we say in the words of Tennyson, " Would he could have stayed with us ! " for never could it be more truly recorded of any one — in the words of Hamlet characterisins: Yorick — that 256 "sally brown." " he was a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy." I cannot part from Thomas Hood without exhibiting him in one of his most characteristic ballads, wherein we have puns " as plenty as blackberries," — " linen on every hedge." " Young Ben lie was a nice young man, A carpenter by trade ; And he fell in love with Sally Brown, Who was a lady's maid. But as they fetched a walk one day, They met a press-gang crew ; And Sally she did faint away, Whilst Ben he was brought to. The boatswain swore with wicked words. Enough to shock a saint. That, though she did seem in a fit, 'Twas nothing but a feint. * Come, girl,' said he, * hold up your head, He'll be as good as me ; For when your swain is in our boat, A boatswain he will be.' So when they'd made their game of her. And taken oS" her elf, She roused, and found she only was A-coming to herself. ' And is he gone, and is he gone?' She cried, and wept outright : * Then I will to the water-side, And see him out of sight.' A waterman came up to her, ' Now, young woman,' said he, ' If you weep on so, you will make Eye-water in the sea.' " SALLY BROWN." 257 ' Alas ! they've taken my beau Ben, To sail with old Ben-bow ;' And her woe begun to run afresh, As if she had said ' Gee woe ! ' Says he, ' They've only taken him To the tender-ship you see ; ' ' The tender-ship ! ' cried Sally Brown * What a hard-ship that must be Oh ! would I were a mermaid now, For then I'd follow him ; But oh ! I'm not a fish- woman. And so I cannot swim. Alas ! I was not born beneath The Virgin and the Scales, So I must curse my cruel stars And walk about in Wales.' Now Ben had sailed to many a place That's underneath the world ; But in two years the ship came home And all her sails were furled. But when he called on Sally Brown, To see how she got on, He found she'd got another Ben, Whose Christian name was John. * Oh Sally Brown, oh Sally Brown, How could you serve me so ! I've met with many a breeze before. But never such a blow ! ' Then, reading on his 'bacco-box, He heaved a heavy sigh. And then began to eye his pipe, And then to pipe his eye. R 258 "sally brow^'." And then he tried to sing * All's Well,* But could not, though he tried ; His head was turned, and so he chewed His pigtail till he died. His death, which happened in his birth. At forty odd befell : They went and told the Sexton, and The Sexton tolled the bell ! " rare Tom Hood ! LECTUEE YL PART FIEST. Female constellation. — Joanna Baillie, IMetrical Legends. — Love of Fame. — Felicia Hemans. — Historic Scenes, Forest Sanctuary, Records ofWoman, and Miscellanies.— Character of her poetry.— Specimens, Dirge, The Trumpet, and Vaudois Hymn.— Caxo\me Bowles, The "Widow's Tale, Solitary Hours, The Birthday, Robin Hood.— Analysis of The Young Grey Head, with extracts. — Mary Russell Mitford, Maria Jewsbury, Letitia Elizabeth Landon ; Improvisatrice, Venetian Bracelet, Golden Violet, Remains.— Mary Hewitt, the excellence of her ballad poetry: The Spider and the Flt/.—CnToline Norton : The Dream, Child of the Islands, and Songs.— Lady Flora Hastings, Harriet Drury, and Camilla Toulmin. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning, her genius and its imperfect development: Drama of Exile, Cry of the Children.— Professor R, C, Trench.— Elegiac Poems, Justin Marytr, Poems from Eastern Sources, The Suppliant. — Thomas Pringle, John Clare, Bernard Barton, Thomas Haynes Bayley, Alaric A. "Watts. — Specimen, Child blowing Bubbles. — T. K. Hervey.— Rev. Charles AVolfe.— r/te Squire's Pew, by Jane Taylor. — Various other poets of the period. In the same year that Wordsworth and Coleridge brought out the Lyrical Ballads — the first offerings of a new code of poetry, in contradistinction to that of Hay- ley, Darwin, and the Delia Cruscans, Joanna Baillie gave the first volume of her "Plays on the Passions," to a Drama monopolised by the tame conventionalities of Cumberland and Murphy. A^or were their theories widely different ; for, in the Preliminary Dicourse by "which she ushered in that w^ork, "we find her empha- tically maintaining, that " one simple trait of the human heart, one expression of passion, genuine and 260 JOANNA BAILLIE. true to nature, will stand forth alone in the boldness of reality, while the false and unnatural around it fades away on every side, like the rising exhalations of the raorninjo:." Her dramas, both tragic and comic, were forcible illustrations of this code ; and it must be admitted, from published proof, that she thus fore- stalled, or at least divided, the claim to originality indoctrinated in the theory and practice of Words- worth, as shown by his "Lyric Ballads" and their preface. But Joanna Baillie, as the author of " Count Basil" and "De Montfort," is entitled to a much higher place among dramatists, than the author of " Metrical Legends" is among mere poets. With much imagina- tive energy, much observant thought, and great freedom and force of delineation, together with a fine feeling of nature, and an occasional Massingerian softness of dic- tion, it may be claimed for Joanna Baillie that she uniformly keeps apart from the trite and commonplace; yet we cannot help feeling a deficiency of art, and tact, and taste, alike in the management of her themes and the structure of her verse. Her tales, as tales, often want keeping, and their materials are put together by a hand apparently unpractised. Nor even in her emotional bursts, where she ought to have certainly succeeded, is she always quite happy, as a dash of the falsetto is, occasionally at least, not unapparent. Of these " Metrical Legends," three in number — " Sir William Wallace," " Columbus" and "Lady Griseld Baillie," — the last ranks highest in poetical merit ; although all are more or less liable to the objections just stated. In that dedicated to Columbus, the follow- ing spirited lines occur : — " ! who shall hghtly say, that Fame Is nothing but an empty name ! Whilst in that sound there is a charm Tlie nerves to brace, the heart to warm, ( BALLADS AND SONGS. 261 As, thinking of the mighty dead. The young from slothful couch will start, And vow, with lifted hands outspread, Like them to act a noble part ? O ! who shall lightly say tliat Fame Is nothing but an empty name ! When, but for those, our mighty dead, All ages past a blank would be, Sunk in oblivion's murky bed, A desert bare, a shipless sea ? They are the distant objects seen, — The lofty mai^ks of what hath been. ! who shall lightly say that Fame Is nothing but an empty name ! When records of the mighty dead To earth- worn pilgrim's wistful eye The brightest rays of cheering shed, That point to immortality ?" Joanna Baillie is happier in her mere ballads, espe- cially in that entitled " The Ghost of Fadon ; " and several of her songs in the collection of George Thomson — alas ! gone from among us since my last Lecture — as, " The Trysting Tree," and " Welcome Bat and Owlet Grey," as well as in those scattered throughout her dramas, are characterised by simplicity of feeling and freshness of nature. The most generally appreciated among her miscellaneous pieces has been that named " The Kitten," which, under a riant playfulness of tone, conveys many a sober moral, and may even bear com- parison with Wordsworth's well-known verses on the same subject. It cannot be said, however, that Joanna Baillie's poetry has been so framed as to catch the public ear ; for, like Coleridge, Savage Landor, and Aird, she has been much more admired than read. Otherwise has been the fate of Felicia Hemans, by far the most popular of our poetesses, alike at home and beyond the Atlantic : nor do I say undeservedly. She may indeed be said "to have lisped in numbers," as she 262 FELICIA HEMANS : rhymed almost as soon as she read, and her first collec- tion of verses appeared when she was in her fifteenth year. These, as might have been expected, were only wonderful when the author's age was considered ; and her real career may be set down as having commenced in 1817, in her poems, "The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy," and "Modern Greece." From that time, until her lamented death in 1835, she continued to write with untiring zeal and industry, exhibiting a variety and richness of genius which, in my opinion, fairly entitled her to the female laureate-crown. In rapid succession appeared her " Translations from the Spanish and Italian poets," the " Tales and Historic Scenes," "The Sceptic," "Dartmoor," "The Forest Sanc- tuary," "The Records of Woman" (the culminating point of her genius), the " Songs of the Affections," the "Lyrics and Songs for Music," and the "Hymns and Scenes of Life," together with an amazing number of detached pieces in almost every possible variety of style and measure, all far above commonplace in conception and execution, and not a few of matchless and unfading splendour. To Joanna Baillie, Mrs Hemans might be inferior, not only in vigour of conception, but in the power of metaphysically analysing those sentiments and emotions which constitute the groundwork of human action, — to Mrs Jameson, in the critical perception which, from detatched fragments of spoken thought, can discriminate the links which bind all into one distinctive character, — to Letitia Landon, in eloquent facility, — to Caroline Bowles, in simple pathos, — to Mary Howitt, in fresh nature, — and to Mary Mitford, in graphic strength ; — but as a female writer, influencing not only the female but the general mind, she is undoubtedly entitled to rank above all these her cotemporaries, in whatever relation she may be supposed by some to stand to her successor, Mrs Browning ; and this pre-eminence has I HER VARIED EXCELLENCIES. 263 been acknowledged, not only in our own laud, but wherever the English tongue is spoken, whether on the banks of the Eastern Ganges or the Western Mississippi. Her path was emphatically her own, as truly as that of Wordsworth, Scott, Crabbe, or Byron ; and shoals of imitators have arisen alike at home and on the other side of the Atlantic, who, destitute of her animating genius, have mimicked her themes and parodied her sentiments and language, without being able to keep even within compare of her excellencies. In her poetry, religious truth, moral purity, and intellectual beauty ever meet together ; and assuredly it is not less calculated to refine the taste and exalt the imagina- tion, because it addresses itself almost exclusively to the better feelings of our nature. Over all her pictures of humanity are spread the glory and the grace reflected from virtuous purity, delicacy of perception and concep- tion, sublimity of religious faith, home-bred delights, and the generous expansive ardour of patriotism ; while, turning from the dark and degraded, whether in subject or sentiment, she seeks out those verdant oases in the desert of human life, on which the affections may most pleasantly rest. Her poetry is intensely and entirely feminine ; and, in my estimation, this is the highest praise which, in one point of view, could be awarded it. It could have been written by a woman only : for although, in the " Records " of her sex, we have the female character delineated in all the varied phases of baffled passion and of ill-requited affection, of heroical self-denial and of withering hope deferred, of devoted- ness tried in the furnace of affliction, and of " Gentle feelings long subdued, Subdued and cherished long " — yet its energy resembles that of the dove, " pecking the hand that hovers o'er its mate ;" and its exaltation of thought is not of that daring kind which doubts and 264 MBS HEMANS' EARLIER derides, or even questions — for a female sceptic is a monstrous and repulsive excrescence on human nature — but which clings to the anchor of hope, and looks forward to a higher immortal destiny with faith and reverential fear. Mrs Hemans wrote much and fluently ; and, as with all authors in like predicament, her strains were of various degrees of excellence. Independently of this, her different works will be differently estimated as to their relative value by different minds ; but among the lyrics of the English language which can scarcely die, I hesitate not to assign places to " The Hebrew Mother," "The Treasures of the Deep," "The Spirit's Return," "The Homes of England," "The Better Land," "The Hour of Death," " The Trumpet," " The Dirge of a Highland Chief," " The Song of a Captive Knight," and "The Graves of a Household." In these "gems of purest ray serene," the peculiar genius of Mrs Hemans breathes and burns and shines pre-eminent ; for her forte lay in depicting whatever tends to beautify and embellish domestic life, by purifying the passions and by sanctifying the affections, making man an undying, unquenchable spirit, and earth, his abode, a holy place — the gentle overflowings of love and friendship-^" home-bred delights and heartfelt happi- ness," — the glowing associations of local attachment — and the influence of religious feelings over the soul, whether arising from the varied circumstances and situations of life, or from the aspects of external nature. The writings of Mrs Hemans seem to divide them- selves into two pretty distinct portions ; the first com- prehending her " Modern Greece," " Wallace," " Dart- moor," "The Sceptic," "Historic Scenes," and other productions, up to the publication of "The Forest Sanc- tuary ; " and the latter comprehending that fine poem, the " Records of Woman," the " Songs of the Affec- ( AND LATER STYLES. 265 tions," the " Scenes and Hymns of Life," and all her subsequent productions. In her earlier works she follows the classic model, as contradistinguished from the romantic ; and they are inferior in that polish of style, that exquisite delicacy of thought, and that almost gorgeous richness of language which characterise lier maturer compositions. Combined with increased self-reliance and an art improved by practice, it is evi- dent that new stores of thought were latterly opened up \o Mrs Hemans, in a more extended acquaintance with the literature of Spain and Germany, as well as by a profounder study of what was truly excellent in the writings of our greatest poetical regenerator, Words- worth. In illustration of what I have just said, I give short specimens of her early, her transition, and her latest manner ; although, from amid so much general beauty, it is somewhat difficult to make selection : — THE DIRGE OF FERGUS MACIVOR. " Son of the mighty and the free ! Loved leadei" of the faithful brave ! Was it for high-souled chief like thee To fill a nameless grave 1 Oh ! if amidst the valiant slain The warrior's bier had been thy lot, E'en though on red Culloden's plain, We then had moui-ned thee not. But darkly closed thy dawn of fame, That dawn whose sunbeam rose so fair Vengeance alone may breathe thy name, The watchword of Despair ! Yet oh ! if gallant spirit's power Hath e'er ennobled death like thine. Then glory marked thy parting hour, Last of a mighty line ! 266 "the trumpet." O'er thy own towers the sunshine falls, But cannot chase their silent gloom ; Those beams that gild thy native walls Are sleeping on thy tomb ! Spring on thy mountains laughs the while. Thy gi-een woods wave in vernal air, But the loved scenes may vainly smile — Not e'en thy dust is there. On thy blue hills no bu§^e-sound Is mingling with the torrent's roar ; Unmarked, the wild-deer sport around — Thou lead'st the chase no more ! Thy gates are closed, thy halls are still — Those halls where pealed the choral strain- They hear the wind's deep murmuring thrill, And all is hushed agrain. ( I No banner from the lonely tower ' Shall wave its blazoned folds on high ; ' There the tall grass and summer flower Unmarked shall spring and die. No more thy bard for other ear ' Shall wake the harp once loved by thine — Hushed be the strain thou canst not hear, ) Last of a mighty line ! " « These verses I reckon not unworthy even of the | immortal pen that, in the pages of "AVaverley," re- | counted the adventures of the semi-fictitious hero they commemorate. They are exquisitely beautiful, and may be taken as representing Mrs Hemans' best early manner — as they were written in 1815. The following little poem, which, at its conclusion, almost touches the sublime, shows the characteristics of her style ere finally and maturely formed : — " The trumpet's voice hath roused the land — Light up the beacon pyre ! A hundred hills have seen the brand, And waved the sign of fire. "VAUDOIS HYMN." 267 A hundred banners to the breeze Their gorgeous folds have cast — And, hark ! was that the sound of seas ? A king to war went past. The chief is arming in his hall, The peasant by his hearth ; The mourner hears the thrilling call, And rises from the earth. The mother on her first-born son Looks with a boding eye — They come not back, though all be won, Whose young hearts leap so high. The bard hath ceased his song, and bound The falchion to his side ; E'en, for the marriage- altar crowned. The lover quits his bride. And all this change, and haste, and fear, By earthly clarion spread ! — How will it be when kingdoms hear The blast that wakes the dead?" Of their author's last best manner, the finest examples are perhaps " The Hebrew Mother," " The Palm Tree," " The Hour of Romance," " The Treasures of the Deep," and "Despondency and Aspiration." The following stanzas from the " Hymn of the Vaudois Mountaineers" may, however, serve our purpose : — " For the strength of the hills we bless thee, Our God, our fathers' God ! Thou hast made thy children mighty. By the touch of the mountain-sod. Thou hast fixed our ark of refuge Where the spoiler's foot ne'er trod ; For the strength of the hills we bless thee, Our God, our fathers' God ! 268 CAROLINE BOWLES : We are watchers of a beacon Whose light must never die ; We are guardians of an altar Midst the silence of the sky : The rocks yield founts of courage, Struck forth as by thy rod ; For the strength of the hills we bless thee, Our God, our fathers' God ! For the dark, resounding caverns, Where thy still small voice is heard ; For the strong pines of the forests, That by thy breath are stirred ; For the storms, on whose free pinions Thy spirit walks abroad ; For the strength of the hills we bless thee, Our God, our fathers' God ! The royal eagle darteth On his quarry from the height. And the stag that knows no master, Seeks thei'e his wild delights ; ^ But we, for thy communion, Have sought the mountain-sod ; For the strength of the hills we bless thee, Our God, our fathers' God ! " Three years after the "Modern Greece" of Mrs Hemans, appeared the " Ellen Fitzarthur " of Caroline Bowles, afterwards Mrs Southey. To much of the fresh simple nature — the " To-morrow to fresh Fields and Pastures new," of Joanna Baillie, she united not a little of the observant truth and searching pathos of Crabbe, with a delicacy of tact and feeling peculiarly her own. The dawnings of her genius appeared in the production just mentioned, as well as in its successor. " The Widow's Tale ; " but it is in the " Solitary Hours," the " Tales of the Factories," " The Birthday," and her contributions to the volume entitled "Robin Hood" — HER PROFOUND PATHOS. 269 a conjunct of her own and the Laureate's — that we recognise the triumphs of her raaturer genius. We therein find all the varied impulses of a gentle nature, all the finer feelings of a woman's heart. No man could have written such poetry — at least no man has ever yet done so: it breathes of "a purer ether, a diviner air" than that respired by the soi-disant lords of the creation ; and in its freedom from all moral blemish and blot — from all harshness and austerity of sentiment — from all the polluting taints which are apt to cleave to human thought, and its expansive sympathy with all that is holy, just, and of good report — it elevates the heart even more than it delights the fancy. We doubt if the English language possesses anything more profoundly pathetic than Mrs Southey's four tales, "The Young Grey Head," "The Murder Glen," "Walter and William," and "The Evening Walk;" and I envy not the heart-construction of that family group, of which the father could read these compositions aloud to his children either himself with an unfaltering voice, or without exciting their tears. Several of her ballads, as "The Lady's Brydalle," "The Broken Bridge," and "The Greenwood Shrift," are all so admi- rable, full of softness and sweetness and simple nature, like landscapes by Mori and or Gainsborough or Linnel ; while her lyrics in a higher and more sentimental strain, as "The Pauper's Deathbed," "'Tis hard to die in Spring," " The Mariner's Hymn," "There is a tongue in every Leaf," "Sabbath Evening," and "To a Dying Infant,'* are bright with the reflected graces of a harmo- nising fancy and a reflecting spirit. The heart of no Englishwoman was ever more certainly in its right place than that of Caroline Bowles. I cannot resist giving an analysis and specimens of one of the tales alluded to, and select that entitled "The Young Grey Head." It opens with a cottager warning his wife to keep 270 "the young grey head," the children from school that morning, from the signs of impending storm — *' I'm thinking that to-night, if not before, There'll be wild work. Dost hear old Chewton roar ] It's brewing up, down westward ; and look there ! One of those sea-gulls ! — ay, there goes a pair ; And such a sudden thaw ! If rain comes on. As threats, the waters will be out anon. That path by the ford's a nasty bit of way — Best let the young ones bide from school to-day. " Tlie children themselves join in this request ; but the mother resolves that they should set out — the two girls, Lizzy and Jenny, the one five and the other seven. As the dame's will was law, so, " One last fond kiss — 'God bless my little maids,' the father said ; And cheerily went his way to win their bread. " Prepared for their journey, they depart, with the mother's admonitions to the elder, — " ' Now, mind and bring Jenny safe home, ' the mother said. * Don't stay To pull a bough or berry by the way ; And when you come to cross the ford, hold fast Your little sister's hand till you're quite past — That plank's so crazy, and so slippery, If not o'erflowed, the stepping-stones will be. But you're good children — steady as old folk, I'd trust ye anywhere. ' Then Lizzy's cloak (A good grey duffle) lovingly she tied, And amply little Jenny's lack supplied With her own warmest shawL * Be sure,' said she, * To wrap it round, and knot it carefully (Like this) when you come home— just leaving free One hand to hold by. Now make haste away — Good will to school, and then good right to play.'" WITH EXTRACTS. 271 The mother watched them as they went down the lane, o'erburdened with something like a foreboding of evil which she strove to overcome ; but could not during the day quite bear up against her own thoughts, more especially as the threatened storm did at length truly set in. His labour done, the husband makes his three miles' way homeward, until his cottage coming into view, all its pleasant associations of spring, summer, and autumn, with its thousand family delights, rush on his heart : — '•' There was a treasure hidden in his hat — A plaything for his young ones. He had found A dormouse nest ; the living ball coiled round For its long winter sleep ; and all his thought, As he trudged stoutly homeward, was of nought But the glad wonderment in Jenny's eyes, And graver Lizzy's quieter surprise, When he should yield, by guess and kiss and prayer, Hard won, the frozen captive to their care.'' Out rushes his fondling dog Tinker, but no little faces greet him as wont at the threshold ; and to his hurried question, "Are they come ? — 'twas no." " To throw his tools down, hastily unhook The old cracked lantern from its dusty nook, And, while he lit it, speak a cheering word That almost choked him, and was scarely heard, Was but a moment's act, and be was gone To where a fearful foresight led him on. " A neighbour accompanies him ; and they strike into the track which the children should have taken in their way back — now calling aloud on them through the pitchy darkness — and now by the lantern-light scruti- nising "thicket, bole, and nook," till the dog, brushing past them with a bark, shows them that he was on their track : — 272 "the young grey head." " ' Hold the light Low down — he's making for the water. Hai'k ! I know that whine — the old dog's found them, Mark, ' So speaking, breathlessly he hurried on Toward the old crazy foot-bridge. It was gone ! And all his dull contracted light could show Was the black, void, and dark swollen stream below. ' Yet there's life somewhere — more than Tinker's whine - That's sure,' said Mark. ' So, let the lantern shine Down yonder. There's the dog — and hark ! ' ' Oh dear ! ' And a low sob came faintly on the ear, Mocked by the sobbing gust. Down, quick as thought, Into the stream leaped Ambrose, where he caught Fast hold of something — a dark huddled heap — Half in the water, where 'twas scarce knee-deep For a tall man ; and half above it propped By some old ragged side-piles that had stopt Endways the broken plank when it gave way With the two little ones that luckless day ! ' My babes ! my lambkins ! ' was the father's cry — One little xoice made answer, •' Here am I ! ' — 'Twas Lizzy's. There she crouched, with face as white, More ghastly, by the flickering lantern-light, Than sheeted corpse. The pale blue lips drawn tight. Wide parted, showing all the pearly teeth, And eyes on some dark object underneath, Washed by the turbid water, fixed like stone — One arm and hand stretched out, and rigid grown, Grasping, as in the death-gripe, Jenny's frock. There she lay drowned. They lifted her from out her watery bed — Its covering gone, the lovely little head Hung, like a broken snow- drop, all aside, And one small hand. The mother's shawl was tied, Leaving that free about the child's small form. As was her last injunction — ' fast and warm ' — Too well obeyed — too fast ! A fatal hold, Affording to the scrag, by a thick fold That caught and pinned her to the river's bed : EXTRACTS CONCLUDED. 273 While through the reckless water over-head, Her life-breath bubbled up." I pass over the cruel self-iipbraidings of the mother ; for — " * She might have lived, Struggling like Lizzy,' was the thought that rived The wretched mother's heart, when she knew all, ' But for my foolishness about that shawl '" — a torture aggravated by the tones of the surviving cliild, who, half deliriously, kept on ejaculating — " ' Who says I forgot ? Mother ! indeed, indeed I kept fast hold, And tied the shawl quite close — she can't be cold — But she won't move — we slept — I don't know how — But I held on — and I'm so weary now — And it's so dark and cold ! — oh dear ! oh dear ! — And she won't move — if daddy was but here ! ' " From their despair for the lost, the poor parents turned to their almost forlorn hope in the living, as — " All night long from side to side she turned, Piteously plaining like a wounded dove, With now and then the murmur, ' She won't move.' And lo ! when morning, as in mockery, bright Shone on that pillow — passing strange the sight — The young head's raven hair was streaked with white ! " About poetry like this, fresh from the fountain of the heart, " with beaded bubbles yet winking on the brim," there can be no mistake. It is beyond critic's cavils, for it tells ; and I would rather be the author of such — because it will be as good a hundred years hence as now — than of all the statelier philosophic analyses of feeling — the present favourite subjects of a mere fashion, which, when it fades, must be for ever. In this brilliant constellation of female genius, which s 274 LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON. gained its culminating point about twenty-five years ago, and which numbered, With the names already mentioned, those also of Mary Russell Mitford, Maria Jewsbury, and Mary Howitt, Letitia Elizabeth Landon succeeded in obtaining that popularity which was second only to Mrs Hemans. Like her, she was brought out as a juvenile prodigy, with much flourish of critical trum- pets, and, while yet in her teens, produced " The Impro- visatrice," to prove that such encomiums, however exorbitant they might seem, were not altogether mis- placed ; for it unquestionably exhibited a liveliness of fancy, store of poetical ideas, command of language, and an ear attuned to the varied cadences of verse. Its prime fault was difFuseness — a fault of inexperience, and less prominent in her subsequent appearances, " The Troubadour," " The Golden Violet," and " The Venetian Bracelet," which are all distinguished by greater con- centration of thought and style. Her earlier writings exhibited a peculiar constitution of genius. She arrayed her portraitures in the brilliant costume of Moore, and exhibited them against the gloomy background of Byron ; always, at the same time, preserving enough of individuality to make and keep them distinctively her own. Like the former, her earth was too full of roses and singing-birds, and love : like the latter, her skies were too often the theatre of whirlwind, of lightning, thunder-cloud, and storm. She was always in ex- tremes — either in the seventh heaven of ecstasy, or in the lowest depths of hypochondriacal sadness. She " no trite medium knew;" but her walk was her own, although she might be said to differ from some of her cotemporaries less in distinctive excellencies than in distinctive peculiarities. Her deficiency alike in judg- ment and taste made her wayward and capricious, and her efforts seemed frequently impulsive. Hence she gave to the public a great deal too much — a large part of her writings being destitute of that elaboration, care, I MARY RUSSELL MITFOBD. 275 and finish essentially necessary in the fine arts, even Avhen in combination with the highest genius^ to secure permanent success ; for the finest poetry is that which is suggestive — the result as much of what has been studiously withheld as of what has been elaborately given. It is quite apparent, however, that L. E. L. had opened her eyes to these her defects, and was rapidly overcoming them ; for her very last things — those pub- lished in her " Remains," by Laraan Blanchard — are incomparably her best, whether we regard vigorous conception, concentration of idea, or judicious selection of subject. Her faults originated in an enthusiastic temperament and an efllorescent fancy ; and showed themselves, as might have been expected, in an uncurbed prodigality of glittering imagery, — her muse, untamed and untutored, ever darting in dalliance from one object to another, like the talismanic bird in the Arabian story. Alas ! that on such a sunny noon should have instan- taneously descended an eve so dark and so dismal ! " All that we know is — nothing can be known ! " Miss Mitford requires only a passing mention here. Her first claims on the public were no doubt as a poetess, in her early " Sketches," and in her " Christina, the Maid of the South Seas" — a six-canto production of the Sir Walter Scott school, of considerable merit ; but she is chiefly to be remembered as the author of " Our Village," so full of truth and raciness and fine English life; and for her three tragedies — "Julian," "The Vespers of Palermo," and " Rienzi " — the last of which was, I believe, eminently successful in representation. Her latter verses are all able and elegant ; but she is deficient in that nameless adaptation of expression to thought accomplished by some indescribable, some inex- plicable collocation of the best words in their best places, apparently quite necessary for the success of poetical phrase. This power, on the contrary, Mary Howitt 276 MA.RY howitt: possesses in perfection, while she is somewhat wanting in the essential matter — the more solid materials — which Miss Mitford seems to have ever at command. The one is mightiest in facts, the other in fancy. In Mary Howitt's first conjunct volume with her husband — " The Forest Minstrel" — everything had the true flavour of the country. The reader was led en- tranced through " bosky bournes and bushy dells," the air was redolent of fir-cones ; wild roses sprang in every wayside hedge ; and you could not peep into a thicket without discovering a bird's nest. The features of all the hours throughout the varying seasons were marked, and no worshipper ever bowed a more faithful knee at the shrine of nature. " The Desolation of Eyam," also a conjunct volume, followed at no great distance of time, and evidenced distinct improvement in both writers, alike in style, manner, and precision of imagery. To a simplicity of language and feeling almost amounting to the pastoral, were united a taste and elegance generally supposed to characterise compositions of a more ambi- tious aim. In their first publication, the authors seemed to pay a divided worship between Keats and Words- worth. There was much of the deep sense of beauty which enraptured the first, and not a little of that humane philosophic spirit by which the other saw excel- lencies even in the trivial and apparently mean. But they had now come to think for and to express them- selves more independently ; and not a few of the ballads and lyrics accompanying the leading poem were of superior excellence, more especially " The Highland Group," " The Mountain Tombs," " Would I had wist,"' and, above all, " The Two Voyagers," — a most touching theme, exquisitely managed. It was probably her suc- cess in it which led Mary Howitt to the fortress of her main strength, ballad poetry, in which she has few cotemporary rivals, whether we regard her pictures of stern wild solitary nature, or of all that is placid, gentle. HER DESCRIPTIVE POWERS. 277 and benignant in the supernatural. I have only to instance " The Hunter's Linn," and " A Tale of the Woods," as examples of her success in the former walk, and " The Fairies of Caldon Low" in the latter. I hesitate not to say that I like her better in these than in her more ambitious attempt, " The Seven Temp- tations," fine as two of the series of stories are — " The Poor Scholar," and ^' The Sorrow of Theresa." Indeed the more simple, inartificial, and unaspiring that Mary Howitt is in her themes, the truer she ever is to herself and nature ; and hence her success as a writer for the young. Her path there is different from that of the authors of the " Hymns for Infant Minds ;" for her themes are those of natural observation, and innocent mirth, and playful fancy ; and few things better in their way have ever been written than the following stanzas, which, although expressly meant for children, may be pondered over with advantage also " by children of a larger growth :" " ' Will you walk into my parlour ? ' said the spider to the fly, ' 'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy ; The way into my parlour is up a winding stair. And I've got many curious things to show when you are there.' ' Oh no, no,' said the little fly, ' to ask me is in vain, For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again.' ' I'm sure you must be weary, dear, with soaring up so high ; Will you rest upon my little bed ? ' said the spider to the fly ; ' There are pretty curtains drawn around ; the sheets are fine and thin, And if you like to rest a while, I'll snugly tuck you in ! ' ' Oh no, no,' said the little fly, ' for I've often heard it said, They never, never wake again, who sleep upon your bed ! ' Said the cunning spider to the fly — ' Dear friend, what can I do To prove the warm affection I've always felt for you ? 278 "the spider and the fly." I have within my pantry good store of all that's nice ; I'm sure you're very welcome — will you please to take a slice V ' Oh no, no,' said the little fly, ' kind sir, that cannot be, I've heard what's in your pantry, and I do not wish to see.' ' Sweet creature,' said the spider, ' you're witty and you're wise ; How handsome ai'e your gauzy Wings, how brilliant are your eyes ! I have a little looking-glass upon my parlour shelf, If you'll step in one moment, dear, you shall behold yourself/ ' I thank you, gentle sir,' she said, ' for what you please to say, And bidding you good morning now, I'll call another day.' The spider turned him round about, and went into his den. For well he knew the silly fly would soon come back again ; So he wove a subtle web in a little comer sly. And set his table ready to dine upon the fly. Then he came out to his door again, and merrily did sing ' Come hither, hither, pretty fly, with the pearl and silver wing ; Your robes are green and purple — there's a crest upon your head; Your eyes are like the diamond bright, but mine are dull as lead ! ' Alas ! alas ! how very soon this silly little fly. Hearing his wily flattering words, came slowly flitting by; With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew, Thinking only of her brilliant eyes, and her green and purple hue — Thinking only of her crested head — poor foolish thing ! At last, Up jumped the cunning spider, and fiercely held her fast. He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den, Within his little parlour — but she ne'er came out again ! And now, dear little children, who may this story read, To idle, silly, flattering words, I pray you ne'er give heed ; CAROLINE NORTON. 279 Unto an evil counsellor close heai't and ear and eye, And take a lesson fx'om this tale of the spider and the fly." There can be no surer proof of the genuineness of the poetical power possessed by Mary Howitt, than the fact that her finer pieces ever recur again and again to the memories of all imaginative readers. This can be only- owing to their feminine tenderness, their earnest tone, their gentle music, and their simple but genuine nature. Her style is sometimes careless, and her stories inartificially put together; but we readily forget these and other deficiencies in the truth of her home scenes, and the lonely wildness of her moorland land- scapes. The artless simplicity of Mary Howitt is at direct antipodes to the stately elaboration of Mrs Norton : not that the author of " The Child of the Islands," and " The Dream," is an artificial writer, but that her sketches from nature, as well as of life and character, are of a kind totally dissimilar. Mary Howitt was constitution- ally fanciful and imaginative; and the fault of her early ])ictures is, that all her plants have too much flower. When, on the contrary, we look at " The Sorrows of Rosalie," and " The Undying One," and compare these with the more matured and subsequent productions of Mrs Norton, it will be evident that her poetic powers have been greatly ciierished and improved by education and culture, and by a careful study of the best models. In her tenderer moods she pitches on a key somewhat between Goldsmith and Rogers — with here the sunset glow of the first, and there the twilight softness of the latter : in her more passionate ones we have a reflex of Byron ; but it is a reflex of the pathos, without the misanthropy of that great poet. Her ear for the modu- lation of verse is exquisite ; and many of her lyrics and songs carry in them the characteristic of the ancient Douglases, being alike " tender and true." It must be 280 LADY FLORA HASTINGS, ETC. owned, hoTv^ever, that individuality is not the most pro- minent feature of Mrs Norton's poetry. As connected with this section of my subject, it would be unjust to pass over without mention the names of Lady Flora Hastings, of Harriet Drury, and Camilla Toulmin. In Lady Flora's dramatic fragments espe- cially, there is a true power, which, had it continued to be cultivated, might have produced great things ; and many of her original lyrics, as " The Rainbow," " The Cross of Constantine," " The Street of the Tombs," as Avell as her translations from the German and Italian, are replete with spirit and grace. " The Annesley" of Harriet Drury gives indication of poetic capabilities which require only maturer cultivation to secure her that place among the sister poets of England, which is assuredly within her reach : and for Camilla Toulmin may be claimed the praise of having been among the first to endeavour boldly to wed the revelations of modern science and art to the harmonies of verse ; nor has she done this unsuccessfully in her poems, " The Real and Ideal," " Astrology and Alchemy," and ''The Railway Whistle." What Felicia Hemans was to Sir Walter Scott, Eliza- beth Barrett is to Alfred Tennyson. In some degree they are reflexes ; yet each has a high, peculiar, and speculative genius of their own. In her early writings, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was as lucid as Mary Howitt or Caroline Bowles, although her phraseology and style were always careless and disjointed, and her ear, alike for rhythm and rhyme, utterly untuned ; but in her literary progress, she has, like Thomas Carlyle and Emerson, been steadily becoming more and more in- verted and involved, till she has bewildered her thoughts and her English in palpable obscurity and mysticism. To be aware of this we have only to contrast her early " Sonnets" with her later ; or her " Grave of Cowper " with her " Drama of Exile." ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 281 The general eflfect of Mrs Hemans' poetry may be com- pared to that of a Grecian temple perched on a green bill, in the open sunlight, and surrounded by its olive groves — a temple symmetric in its general design, and just in its particular portions, wherein are met elegance and grace and consummate art ; that of Mrs Browning, to a Gothic church, mossy and weather-stained, in a sequestered dell among gnarled old trees, overshading the grey tombstones of its venerable field of graves, with its pointed gables, its quaint niches, its grotesque corbels, and echoing aisles, its fretted worm-bored oak-work, and its faded velvet cushion brocaded with gold. There is much of seriousness, nay, sadness, in the general tone of Mrs Browning's verse, and it abounds with solemn questionings ; but her speculations are for the most part, if not quite objectless, mere gropings and guessings in the dark. She has considerable inven- tiveness, yet without much variety, and almost nothing of art. Hence she has never given us, even for once, anything that can be regarded as either a finished por- trait or picture, although she is always most successful when least ambitious — and her " Little Elie," and her *' Bertha in the Lane," have something like proportion and individuality. She seems to satisfy herself with mere hasty sketches ; and even in them we have want of outline, haziness, or exaggeration. We have occasion- ally the germ of tine things ; but her blossoms, nipped by the canker-Avorm, seldom ripen into fruit. She seems never to dream of elaboration — her structures are mere walls without roofs ; or, if we have these, the window-frames are left unglazed ; shrubs grow in the front plot, but the wicket gate has been carelessly flung open, and the nibbling sheep have managed to make sad work with the flowers and evergreens. Her acquired knowledge is great ; so is her intellectual capa- city : the only faculty imperfectly cultivated is her taste ; for her want of ear seems a natural and incur- 282 MRS BROW>'IXGS GENICS, able defect. Hence it is that she is so capricions and uncertain, not only in the selection and management of lier subjects, but also in her language and style. Her mannerisms amount to affectations ; and too often her thoughts and images are crude, careless, and only half brought out. In her compositions she seems utterly to disregard correctness, combination, and elegance. Mrs Hemans, above all female writers, was distin- guished for her rich tones — the voice at once sweet and full — that carried them to the heart, awakening the feel- ings as well as the imagination. Mrs Browning speaks out in other accents — as of one oppressed with the weight of mortality, of some unutterable grief, and who longs for " the wings of a dove, to flee away and be at rest." Her day knows nothing of summer sunshine rejoicing in its flowers and singing-birds ; it is like that of cheer- less November with its pallid low-hung sky, its drizzly rains, and its yellow leaves eddying in the breeze. Her song, half inarticulate, is often nothing more than a long wild wail, like the " Oolaloo " at an Irish funeral — as in " The Cry of the Children," the most extraordinary and strikingly original of all Mrs Browning's produc- tions ; or than mere iEolian warblings — as the seraphic choruses in the " Drama of Exile." Gifted with a fine and peculiar genius, what Mrs Browning might have achieved, or may yet achieve, by concentration of thought and rejection of unworthy materials, it is im- possible to say ; but most assuredly she has hitherto marred the effect of much she has written by a careless self-satisfaction. Instead of being a comet that " from its horrid hair shakes pestilence and war," she might have been, and I trust is destined yet to be, a constella- tion to twinkle for ever insilver beauty amid the blueser- ene. The materials of poetry seem lying heaped in plenty around her ; but she either will not exert her power, or her skill in putting them together sadly lacks tutoring. This defect many will suppose should have been over- AKD ITS PECULIAEITIES. 283 come by practice and experience. Sorry am I to say it has not been so. On the contrary, her faults, as I liaTe lamented, have been degenerating into system. She has, year after year, been becoming more involved in style more mystical in conception, and more transcendental in speculation. Instead of healthy strength we have morbid excitement, and what were originally mere peculiarities and mannerisms, appear to have grown into settled affectations. The " importunate and heavy load " of the truth of the following stanzas from " The Cry of the Children" weighs on the heart like a nightmare, — on the imagi- nation like a torture-scene by Spagnoletto. " Do you hear the children weeping, oh my brothers ! Ere the sorrow comes with years ? They are leaning' their young heads against their mothers', And that cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, ^ The young birds are chirping in the nesb, The young fawns are playing with the shadoAvs, The yoimg flowers are blowing towards the west ; But the young, young children, oh my brothers ! They are weeping bitterly ! They are weeping in the playtime of the others. In the country of the free. For all day the wheels are droning, turning — Their wind comes in our faces, Till our hearts turn — our heads with pulses burning— And the wails turn in their places. Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling — Turns the long light that droppeth down the wall — Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling — All are turning, all the day, and we with all. 284 RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH. And all day the iron wheels are droning, And sometimes we could pray, * ye wheels, (breaking out in a sad moaning), Stop — be silent for to-day ! ' Ay, be silent ! Let them hear each other breathing For a moment, mouth to mouth ; Let them touch each other's hands in a fresh wreathing Of their tender human youth ! Let them feel that this cold metallic motion Is not all the life God fashions and reveals, Let them prove their inward soiils against the notion That they live in you, or under you, wheels ! Now tell the poor yoimg children, oh my brothers ! To look up to Him and pray, So the Blessed One, who blesseth all the others, May bless them another day." Richard Chenevix Trench, Professor of Divinity in University College, London, has something of Mrs Browning's recondite speculation, and love for the un- common in thought and expression ; but these vagaries with him lie entirely on the surface, and, withal, are so slight, even as conceits, that they never interfere with his conceptions, for he is always eminently per- spicuous. When we gaze into a clear translucent pool, and observe distinctly the sand, shells, and pebbles at the bottom, we are apt to form a very erroneous esti- mate of its depth. It is often so with Mr Trench's poetry, where the profound seems to assume the guise of the simple and unadorned. That he is something of a mannerist is not to be disputed, but seldom disagree- ably so, from a classical eagerness, an over-fastidious anxiety to give his phrases their highest polish; so, from his "Justin Martyr," through his "Elegiac Poems," down to those "From Eastern Sources," his course towards compositional excellence has been i *' THE SUPPLIANT." 285 steady and evident. In the last mentioned volume especially, there are several poems of exquisite beauty, whose music lingers on the memory, and refuses to be forgotten, — as " The Banished Kings," " Orpheus and the Syrens," " Moses and Jethro," and " The Sup- pliant," — above all the last, than which I scarcely know anything finer in its way. " All night the lonely suppliant prayed, All night his earnest crying made, Till, standing by his side, at morn, The Tempter said in bitter scorn, * Oh, peace ! what profit do you gain From empty words and babblings vain ] " Come, Lord — oh come ! " you cry alway ; You pour your heart out night and day ; Yet still no murmur of reply, — No voice that answers, " Here am I." ' Then sank the stricken heart in dust. That word had withered all its trust ; No strength retained it now to pray, While Faith and Hope had fled away ; And ill that mourner now had fared. Thus by the Tempter's art ensnared, But that at length beside his bed His sorrowing angel stood, and said, — * Doth it repent thee of thy love. That never now is heard above Thy prayer, that now not any more It knocks at heaven's gate as before 1 ' ' I am cast out — I find no place. No hearing at the throne of grace, " Come Loi'd — oh come ! " I cry alway, I pour my heart out night and day. Yet never, until now, have won The answer — " Here am I, my son." ' ' Oh, dull of heart ! enclosed doth He In each, " Come, Lord ! " an " Here am I." 286 THOMAS PRINGLE. Thy love, thy longing are not thine — Reflections of a love divine : The very prayer to thee was given, Itself a messenger from heaven. Whom God rejects, they are not so ; Strong bands are round them in their woe ; Their hearts are bound with bauds of brass That sigh or crying cannot pass. All treasures did the Lord impart To Pharaoh, save a contrite heart : All other gifts unto his foes He freely gives, nor grudging knows ; But love's sweet smart and costly pain A treasure to his friends remain.' " Of late years, Professor Trench has greatly distin- guished himself by his theological treatises, said to be among the best and most learned of our age, and to have almost forsaken "the flowery paths of poetry." But the simultaneous cultivation of the intellect and fancy, as he himself well knows, is anything but incom- patible; and an occasional saunter in his early favourite paths might not only be refreshing to himself, but might enable him yet to twine a few more bouquets quite worthy of public acceptance. Along with the "bright particular stars" which illumined our literary hemisphere in the first quarter of the present century, there were many detached ones — less lustrous, perhaps, and dazzling — but which also, in " their golden urns," drew the light of inspir- ation. My limits, however, will not allow of more than a general and cursory notice of these ; and I must even restrict myself to a few of the most prominent, from whose pages the student of poetry may more certainly anticipate delight. Thomas Pringle, the author of the " Autumnal Ex- cursion " and the " African Sketches," possessed con- siderable scholarship, an elegant taste, and a certain JOHN CLARE. 287 racy vigour, occasionally amounting to power. His verses naturally divide themselves into two sections, — those relating to the scenery and traditions, the senti- ments and associations of his native Scotland ; and those composed amid the far-stretching wilds beyond the Cape, where the elephant comes down to drink at the cane-marshes, and where the fox-chase is exchanged for the lion-hunt. For elegance, elevation, and purity of style, it would be difficult to point out many things, in the octosyllabic measure, superior to the " Autumnal Excursion," descriptive of Teviotdale, and of the pastoral and pure associations by which it was linked to the mind of boyhood ; and several of his songs and sonnets breathe alike of the fire and tenderness which hovered over the Border districts, from the days of the old "Flowers of the Forest" and "Johnny Armstrong," down to those of Scott and Leyden ; but his " African Sketches" are maturer in thought and general power; and, besides, are more striking, both from the novelty of the situations depictured, and the imposing grandeur of the scenery described. The finest of these are "The Bechuana Boy," which unites Doric simplicity with classic finish ; and the verses, " Afar in the Desert," whose strange wild music is said to have possessed a charm of fascination even for the ear and heart of Cole- ridge. Although not to the same extent as Burns or Bloom- field, as Hogg or Cunningham, John Clare has also just claims to be regarded as a true poet, — the wild pea being a flower in its way, as well as the statelier moss-rose. His pretensions, however, are of the humblest : he has no imagination, and exceedingly little either of the in- ventive or the constructive facultj', and may be said to stand in much the same relation to an epic poet, that a limner of fruit and dead-game pieces does to an histo- rical artist. But he has nature and observation ; and what he does in his own unpretending way is done 288 BERNARD BARTO^T. accurately and well. We feel ever that he has seen with his own eyes, and that he describes from his own emotions : he gives us nothing at second-hand ; so, if not a high, he is ever a true and an original painter. There is a simple nature about many of his pieces which is exceedingly touching ; and had not something of the true inspiration burned within him, the light of his gentle genius could never have broken through the mass of encompassing darkness which seemed so help- lessly to shroud his early fate, — for the prime of his life was absorbed in toils and privations sufficient to have ground ordinary spirits to the dust. The marvel is, that he did what he has done. " The moving accident was not his trade ; To stir the blood he had no ready arts ; 'T was his alone, reclined in niral shade, To pipe a simple song to thinking hearts ; " and he did so with a true fresh nature, if only with a rustic art. Bernard Barton, like his predecessor John Scott of Amwell, whom he somewhat resembled in genius, first attracted attention principally from the novelty of one of his sober sect giving utterance to his emotions in verse : but he had merit also of a certain kind ; and he continued to sustain the respectable measure of popu- larity acquired by his first Appearance in a series of poems, each characterised by the same observant views of man and nature, the same correct sentiment, and the same mild cheerfulness of tone. Although in the warp and woof of his loom, there might be observed a thread or so of egotism, it was not glaringly obtrusive. His chief fault was diflfuseness. He wrote fluently, and was thereby induced to write a great deal too much ; for had he elaborated more, he would have used the prun- ing-knife with greater freedom. One indication of good THOMAS HAYNES BAYLEY. 289 taste Barton uniformly exhibited, — that of adapting his tone and style to his subject. He is sometimes even striking and picturesque, as in his "Solitary Tomb," his " Evening Primrose, " and the verses to " The Ivy ;" but he is seldom bold or varied, and, in general, rather satis- fies than surprises the reader. He wanted strength and originality to float the succession of volumes which he from time to time unhesitatingly launched forth for public favour ; but from the unweeded garden a bouquet might be culled, sweet in its perfume and varied in its hues of simple beauty. Thomas Haynes Bayley was the disciple of another school, more refined in feeling and sentiment, yet not deficient either in truth or nature — as far, at least, as these appertained to the atmosphere of the drawing- room. His first appearances in "Rough Sketches of Bath, by Q. in the Corner," were little else than clever imitations of Anstey ; and, for several years after, he simply held the reputation of a smart versifier. The power of his delineations and the tone of his senti- ments, however, deepened ; and by his latter composi- tions, remarkable for their taste and elegance, he unquestionably elevated himself into the poetical ranks. So admirably, indeed, did a number of his lyrics harmonise with music, that they attained a popularity second only to those of Burns and Moore. He possessed a playful fancy, a practised ear, a refined taste, and a sentiment which ranged pleasantly from the fanciful to the pathetic, without, however, strictly attaining either the highly imaginative or the deeply passionate ; and it is difi&cult to say in which vein he was the more felicitous — or whether his " Oh, no, we never mention her," or his " I'd be a Butterfly born in a bower," has had the wider circle of admirers. Be- tween these extremes there was a chain of sentiment " in linked sweetness long drawn out," which he not infelicitously festooned with the flowers of song. In T 290 ALARIC A. WATTS. comparison with the general tribe of verse-mongers for music, Bayley might well be regarded as a "Triton among the minnows ;" for I know of nothing so utterly discreditable to British taste as the unmitigated non- sense rhymes, the despicable trash, which night after night seems to be listened to with satisfaction in our drawing-rooms and public places, as poetical accom- paniments to fashionable music. To a taste still more fastidious and elaborate, Alaric A. Watts united a vein of pathos probably deeper and more direct. His poetry lies somewhere between that of Campbell and Mrs Hemans ; but he has his own decided and distinctive marks, whether we look to his mode of regarding subjects, or his style of treating them. He is always elegant and refined, yet natural ; and looks on carelessness, as every man of taste and accomplishment should, as a vice unworthy of an artist ; for poetry assuredly requires the learned skill, intuitive as that may occasionally seem, as well as the teeming fancy. In his "Poetic Sketches," an early work, as well as in his more recent " Lyrics of the Heart," Alaric Watts has given abundant proofs, if not of high creative strength, of gentle pathos, of cultivated intellect, and an eye and ear sensitively alive to all the genial impulses of nature, of " home-bred delights and heartfelt happiness." Xot that we have not occasionally indications of higher powers, which their author could put forth, had he so chosen, but from which he has abstained, and wisely — choosing rather to paint the stream as it passes through pastoral valleys, and by the garden hedges of honey-suckled homesteads, than its foaming descent from the mountain-sides, and its sullen pools amid the gloomy overhanging rocks. Among the finest of the ly- rics of Alaric Watts are "The Death of the First-Born," "To a Sleeping Child," "Kirstall Abbey Revisited," " For Ever Thine,'' and " We met when Life and Love THOMAS K. HERVEY. 291 were New" — although no piece has received the sanc- tion of his publication, unless stamped by some peculiar and characteristic beauty. The following verses "To a Child blowing Bubbles," are about a fair average of his powers : — " Thrice happy babe ! what radiant dreams are thine, As thus thou bid'st thine air-born bubbles soar ? — Who would not Wisdom's choicest gifts resign To be, like thee, a careless child once more ? To share thy simple sports and sinless glee, Thy breathless wonder, thy unfeigned delight, As, one by one, those sun-touched glories flee, In swift succession, from thy straining sight ; To feel a power within himself to make, Like thee, a rainbow whereso'er he goes ; To dream of sunshine, and like thee to wake To brighter visions, from his charmed repose ; — Who would not give his all of worldly lore, The hard-earned fi'uits of many a toil and care, — Might he but thus the faded past restore. Thy guileless thoughts and blissful ignorance share ! Yet life hath bubbles too, that soothe awhile The sterner dreams of man's maturer years ; Love, Friendship, Fortune, Fame by turns beguile. But melt 'neath Truth's Ithuriel touch to tears. Thrice happy child ! a brighter lot is thine ; What new illusion ere can match the first? We mourn to see each cherished hope decline ; Thy mirth is loudest when thy bubbles burst." The genius of T. K. Hervey — for he has genius at once pathetic and refined — is not unallied to that of Pringle and Watts, but with a dash of Thomas Moore. He writes uniformly with taste and elaboration, polish- ing the careless and rejecting the crude ; and had he 292 REV. CHARLES WOLFE. addressed himself more earnestly and unreservedly to the task of composition, I have little doubt, from several specimens he has occasionally exhibited, that he might have occupied a higher and more distinguished place in our poetical literature than he can be said to have attained. His "Australia," and several of his lyrics, were juvenile pledges of future excellence, which maturity can scarcely be said to have fully redeemed. In the lottery of literature — for it seems to be in some respects a lottery as well as life, in so far as immediate success goes — Charles "Wolfe has been one of the few who have drawn the prize of probable immortality from a casual gleam of inspiration thrown over a single poem, consisting of only a few stanzas ; and these, too, little more than a spirited version from the prose of another. But the lyric is indeed full of fervour and freshness ; and his triumph is not to be grudged. The attention of the author was early withdrawn from literature to his clerical duties, to which he unreservedly devoted himself — and he died young ; but there is abundant evidence in his other early verses of a fine genius, which, if it had been continued to be cultivated, could scarcely have failed to have borne other rich fruits. This is sufficiently attested by several short pieces and fragments which he left behind, and more especially by the verses — " If I had thought thou couldst have died, I might not weep for thee," which, in elegance and tender earnestness, are worthy of either Campbell or Byron. The "Ode on the Burial of Sir John Moore " went directly to the heart of the nation, and it is likely to remain for ever enshrined there. The poetical reputation of Herbert Knowles — a pro- tege of Southey's, who died at nineteen, may also be said to rest on one short poem — his " Yerses written in "the squire's pew." 293 the Churchyard of Richmond ; " and so does that of Jane Taylor on her " Squire's Pew," a lyric of exquisite originality and beauty, which I take some credit to myself for having rescued from comparative obscurity. '^ A slanting ray of evening light Shoots through the yellow pane ; It makes the faded crimson bright, And gilds the fringe again ; The window's Gothic framework falls In oblique shadows on the walls. And since those trappings first were new, How many a cloudless day, To rob the velvet of its hue, Has come and passed away ; How many a setting sun hath made That curious lattice- work of shade. Crumbled beneath the hillock green The cunning hand must be, That carved this fretted door, I ween, Acorn, and fleur-de-lis; And now the worm hath done her part In mimicking the chisel's art. In days of yore (as now we call), When the first James was king, The courtly knight from yonder hall His train did hither bring. All seated round, in order due, With broidered suit and buckled shoe. On damask cushions decked with fringe All reverently they knelt ; Prayer-books with brazen hasp and hinge, In ancient English spelt, Each holding in a lily hand Responsive to the priest's command. 294 "the squire's pew." Now, streaming down the vaulted aisle, The sunbeam, long and lone, Illumes the characters a while Of their inscription stone ; And there, in marble hard and cold, The knight with all his train behold. Outstretched together are exprest He and my lady fair, With hands uplifted on the breast, In attitude of prayer ; Long-visaged, clad in armour, he — With rutfled arm and boddice she. Set forth in order as they died. Their numerous offspring bend, Devoutly kneeling side by side, '^<- ^ As if they^ intend For past omissions to atone. By saying endless prayers in stone. Those mellow days are past and dim, But generations new, In regular descent from him, Have filled the stately pew, — And in the same succession go To occupy the vaults below. And now the polished modem squire And his gay train appear. Who duly to the hall retire, A season every year; And fill the seats with belle and beau, As 'twas so many years ago. Perchance all thoughtless as they tread The hollow-sounding floor Of that dark house of kindred dead. Which shall, as heretofore, In turn receive to silent rest Another and another guest : VARIOUS POETS OP THE TERIOD. 295 The feathered hearse and sable train, In all their wonted state, Shall wind along the village lane, And stand before the gate ; Brought many a distant county through, To join the final rendezvous. And when the race is swept away, All to their dusty beds. Still shall the mellow evening ray Shine gaily o'er their heads ; While other faces, fresh and new, Shall fill the squire's deserted pew ! " The same may be said of two beautiful lyrical gems, which many years ago I stumbled on in a stray number of the "Gentlemen's Magazine" for 1809— " The Drip- ping Cupid " from Anacreon, and the carol, " When shall we Three meet again V which have since found a place in school collections, and in a thousand young memories. Did not my limits almost wholly preclude, I should have liked to have here dilated at some length on the merits of not a few poets who justly demand honourable notice, as connected with this particular era ; but I can do no more than emphatically allude to Dale, and Conder, and Keble, and Huie, and Knox, and Edmonstone, and Lyte, who have worthily devoted themselves to sacred sub- jects ; to Charles Swain, whose poems are distinguished by delicacy of feeling, as well as generous and manly sentiment ; to John Malcolm, who always wrote with taste and grace ; to Carrington, whose " Banks of the Tamar," and "Dartmoor," are full of fine descriptive power ; to Sir Martin Archer Shee, whose " Rhymes on Art" were classically elegant ; to Henry Neele, who possessed much of the pathos and sensibility of Kirke White ; to George Darley, whose " Sylva, or May Queen," and "Errors of Ecstacie," were characterised by exube- rant fancy and fine harmony of versification, although 296 VARIOUS POETS OF THE PERIOD, marred by improbability of incident and fantastical views of life ; to Bo wring, whose " many-Ian guaged lore" culled poetical delights for us from all the corners of Europe, and whose own original verses were ever spirited and fine ; to Winthrop Mackworth Praed, the coadjutor of Macaulay in "The Etonian," whose serio- comic legends were coloured with fresh and flowing fancy, and who, in a great degree, anticipated both Hood and Ingoldsby in a peculiar comic vein ; to Charles Chalklin, whose "Ghost of the Oratory," and lyrical themes, overflow with poetic suggestion, and are often of high speculative beauty, sadly defective though they are rendered by redundance of imagery and want of keeping : to Abraham Heraud, whose " Judgment of the Flood," and "Descent into Hell," although over- ambitious in style and language, display power and imagination ; to R. W. Jameson, whose "IS'imrod" is a daring conception, worked out in many passages with vigour and eff'ect ; and to Edwin Atherstone, whose "Last Days of Herculaneum," and "Fall of Nineveh," although poems of amazing copiousness and considerable invention, are not great poems. In them we have intel- lectual pomp rather than intellectual strength — a pro- digality of blossoms, but a scarcity of fruit. Many of Atherstone's pictures, however, taken by themselves, more especially his battle-scenes, are striking and ani- mated ; but he lacks the ideal — the intuitive touch which alone can give strict individuality, and which great masters only possess. I I LECTUEE VII. PAET SECOND. Ballad-historic poetry.— J. G. Lockhart : Spanish ballads : his Napoleon.— T. B. Macaulay ; Lays of Ancient Rome, Lake Regillus.— Professor Aytoun ; Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, Battle of KiUiecrankie. — Mrs Stuart Menteath, Mrs Ogilvy, Miss Agnes Strickland.— Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer : his poems and translations. — Rev. John Moultrie ; stanzas, " M?/ Scottish Lassie." — Scottish and Irish poets of the period. — Dirge by Mrs Downing. — The Metaphysic-romantic school. — Alfred Ten- nyson ; Ballads, Princess, and In Memoriam. — Specimens, Oriana and Stanzas. — R. M. Milnes and Dr Charles Mackay. — Robert Browning ; Paracelsus, Sordello, Bells and Pomegranates. — John Sterling.— Philip James Bayley ; Festus, The Angel World : extract. Dream of Decay. — Mysticism and obscurity the pervading faults of our recent poetry. — Concluding remarks. In some brief introductory remarks on the poetry of Scott, I referred to the earliest forms of national verse — the song and ballad ; the former more particularly relating to sentiment, the latter to action. Indeed, a ballad may be defined to be the simplest shape of narra- tive verse ; nor does it detract much from the perfect strictness of this definition, that the characters should be made occasionally to moralise and reflect. The ballads of one nation necessarily differ widely from those of another in scenery and manners, as well as in prevailing local or natural associations : but, withal, simplicity of style and feeling is a requisite as well as a uniform characteristic. 298 JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART. In 1823, John Gibson Lockhart, previously distin- guished as the author of " Valerius," " Adam Blair," " Reginald Daltou," and " Matthew Wald," published his translations from the ancient Spanish ; and although most of these mediaeval ballads were wonderfully fine in themselves, they certainly lost nothing — as the shield of Martinus Scriblerus is said to have done^ — from being subjected to the tact and skill of modern furbishing. On the contrary, what was tame he inspired ; what was lofty gained additional grandeur ; and even the tender — as in the lay of " Count Alar9os" — grew still more pathetic beneath his touch. The translations consisted of three classes — the Historical, the Romantic, and the Moorish ; and among the most striking are " The Avenging Childe," " The Seven Heads," "The Bull-fight of Granada," " Zara's Ear-rings," and, beyond all, " Count Alarcos and the Infanta Soliza," than which, as rendered by Mr Lockhart, no finer ballad of its kind — more gushingly natural, or more profoundly pathetic — probably exists in the poetry of any nation. These translations derive, as I have said, not a little of their excellence from Mr Lockhart's being himself a poet of fine genius — clear in his conceptions, and mascu- line in execution. His pictures have all the distinctness of an autumn landscape, outlined on the horizon by an unclouded morning sun. What he might have done had he continued scaling the heights of Parnassus, there could have been little difficulty in predicating ; and most assuredly the poetical literature of our age lost much by his desertion of the lyre, who might have been one of its great masters — whether he had chosen to tread in the steps of " Dan Chaucer" or of " Glorious John ;" for he could wield at will the graphic brush of the painter of " Palamon and Arcite," as well as etch with the needle that outlined " Absalom and Achitophel." Many of Lockhart's scattered verses are exquisitely fine, and range from the genially humorous of " Captain "napoleon." 299 Paton's Lament," to the majestically solemn of his " Napoleon" — which latter alone would have for ever stamped their author a poet of a high order : — " The mighty sun had just gone down Into the chambers of the deep ; The ocean birds had upward flown, Each in his cave to sleep ; And silent was the island shore, And breathless all the broad red sea, And motionless beside the door Our solitary tree. Our only tree, our ancient palm, Whose shadow sleeps our door beside, Partook the universal calm, When Buonaparte died. An ancient man, a stately man. Came forth beneath the spreading tree, His silent thoughts I could not scan, His tears I needs must see. A trembling hand had partly covered The old man's weeping countenance. Yet something o'er his sorrow hovered, That spake of war and France ; Something that spake of other days. When trumpets pierced the kindling air, And the keen eye could firmly gaze Through battle's crimson glare. Said I, ' Perchance this faded hand, When life beat high, and hope was young, By Lodi's wave, or Syria's sand, The bolt of death hath flung. Young Buonaparte's battle-cry Perchance hath kindled this old cheek ; It is no shame that he should sigh — His heart is like to break ! He hath been with him young and old : He climbed with him the Alpine snow; He heard the cannon when they rolled Along the river Po. 300 " NAPOLEON. " His soul was as a sword, to leap At his accustomed leader's word ; I love to see the old man weep — He knew no other lord. As if it were but yesternight, This man remembers dark Eylau ; His dreams are of the eagle's flight Victorious long ago. The memories of worser time Are all as shadows unto him ; Fresh stands the picture of his prime — The later trace is dim.' I entered, and I saw him lie Within the chamber all alone ; I drew near very solemnly To dead Xapoleon. He was not shrouded in a shroud — He lay not like the viilgar dead — Yet all of haughty, stern, and proud. From his pale brow was fled. He had put harness on to die. The eagle star shone on his breast, His sword lay bare his pillow nigh, The sword he liked the best. But calm, most calm, was all his face, A solemn smile was on his lips, His eyes were closed in pensive grace — A most serene eclipse ! Ye would have said, some sainted sprite Had left its passionless abode — Some man, whose prayer at morn and night Had duly risen to God. What thoughts had calmed his dying breast (For calm he died) cannot be known ; Nor would I wound a warrior's rest, — Farewell, Napoleon ! " Mr Macaulay's " Lays of Ancient Rome" differed initially from Mr Lockhart's Spanish translations in this, that the latter worked from the native materials, THE RIGHT HON. T. B. MACAULAY. 301 which he refined and improved ; the former simply from the general scope and spirit of ancient legends. Taking it for granted, according to the very probable theory of Niebuhr, that the semi-fabulous traditions of all infant nations must have existed primarily in a metrical form, he re-transferred some of the portions of early Roman history back into the shape which might be supposed to have been their original one ere histo- ricised by Livy, and this with consummate imaginative and artistic ability. He is entirely of the Homer, the Chaucer, and Scott school, his poetry being thoroughly that of action ; and sentiment is seldom ever more than interjection ally introduced — the utmost fidelity being thus shown to the essential characteristics of that species of composition which he has so triumphantly illustrated. The four subjects selected b)^ Mr Macaulay are those of " Horatius Codes," " The Battle of the Lake Regillus," "Virginia," and "The Prophecy of Capys;" and he has clothed them in a drapery of homely grandeur, yet at the same time with a picturesqueness of effect, which carries us back to Homer in his wars of Troy, and in his wanderings of Ulysses. Mr Macaulay has evidently sedulously endeavoured to preserve a thorough distinc- tive nationality, not only in the materials, natural and historical, but in the very spirit of his different legends ; and he has wonderfully succeeded in this delicate, diffi- cult, and laborious task. In vividness of outline, in graphic breadth, and in rapidity of narrative, he approaches the author of " The Lay " and " Marmion " — like the mighty minstrel, unreservedly throwing himself into and identifying himself with his subject. Probably the finest, at least the most poetical, of the four legends, is " The Prophecy of Capys," which breathes the very spirit of antique simplicity, and is encrusted with such a thick-falling shower of local allusions as to stamp it with the air of truth. " The 302 "lays of ancient rome." Battle of the Bridge" is, beyond the others, full of heroic action and energy ; and " Virginia" is touching, from the very simplicity of its majestic sentiment— so childlike and yet so noble. Mr Macaulay is another of the few poets who have written too little by far. The fragment of " The Armada" is like a Torso of Hercules — redo- lent of graphic power ; and " The Battle of Ivry," although scarcely equal to it, is also remarkable for its masculine conception and disdain of petty orna- ment. The following placid descriptive sketch from " The Battle of the Lake Regillus" contrasts finely with the ancient stirring associations of the scene : — " Now on the place of slaughter Are cots and sheepfolds seen, And rows of vines, and fields of wheat, And apple-orchards green : The swine crush the big acorns That fall from Corne's oaks ; Upon the turf, by the fair fount. The reaper's pottage smokes, The fisher baits his angle. The hunter twangs his bow. Little they think on those strong limbs That moidder deep below. Little they think how sternly That day the trumpets pealed ; How, in the slippery swamp of blood, Warrior and war-horse reeled ; How wolves came with fierce gallop, And crows on eager wings, To tear the flesh of captains. And peck the eyes of kings; How thick the dead lay scattered Under the Portiau height; How, through the gates of Tusculum, Raved the wild stream of flight : WILLIAM E. AYTOUN. 303 And how the Lake Regillus Bubbled with crimson foam, What time the Thirty Cities Came forth to war with Rome." Professor Aytoun has selected his ballad themes from striking incidents and from stirring scenes in our mediaeval Scottish history — some remote as the field of riodden, others as recent as that of Drummossie Muir ; and he has thrown over them the light of an imagina- tion at once picturesque and powerful. He has allowed himself a wider range of illustration than either Lock- hart or Macaulay thought consistent with the mere ballad — occasionally ascending from its essential simpli- city into a loftier and more ambitious strain of com- position, midway between the classical and romantic ; and probably the peculiar nature of some of his subjects, for adequate management, entitled him to do so. The jperfervidum ingenium Scotorum — that burning, irrepres- sible energy of character which, whether directed towards good or towards evil, has ever distinguished our country — breathes throughout all his Lays, and lends even stern fact the etherealising hues of fiction. We are carried by them back to the wild and ever- changing and tempest-shrouded days of old, when every man's hand w^as on his sword, and every man's house was his castle ; and we so enter into their daring, adventurous, and reckless spirit, that forgetting Elihu Burritt and universal peace associations, and these prosaic Cobdenish times, we are half inclined, Quixot- ishly, and without weighing the consequences, to exclaim, in the excited spirit of worthy Jonathan Old- buck in "The Antiquary" — " Sound, sound the trumpet, wake the fife, And to a slumbering world proclaim, A single hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name ! " 304 " BATTLE OF KILLIECRA^^KIE." Regarded by themselves, as separate poems, the finest of these " Lays," in my opinion, are the " Edinburgh after Flodden," " The Burial- March of Dundee," and " The Execution of Montrose ;" although it is diffi- cult to conceive anything more touching than the visionary musings of " Charles Edward at A^ersailles," or grander and more animated than the battle-sketch of Killiecrankie. The latter is like a picture by Wouver- mans : — " Burning eye and flushing cheek Told the clansmen's fierce emotion, And they harder drew their breath ; For their souls were strong within them, Stronger than the grasp of death. Soon we heard a challenge-trumpet Sounding in the Pass below, And the distant tramp of horses, And the voices of the foe : Down we crouched amid the braken, Till the Lowland ranks drew near, Panting like the hounds in summer, When they scent the stately deer. From the dark defile emerging, Next we saw the squadrons come, Leslie's foot and Leven's troopers Marching to the tuck of drum ; Through the scattered wood of birches, O'er the broken ground and heath, Woimd the long battalion slowly, Till they gained the field beneath ; Then we bounded from our covert. — Judge how looked the Saxons then, When they saw the rugged mountain. Start to life with armed men ! Like a tempest down the ridges Swept the humcane of steel, Rose the slogan of Macdonald — Flashed the broadsword of Locheil ! " THE VIOLET," FROM GOETHE. 305 Vainly sped the withering volley 'Mongst the foremost of our band — On we poured until we met them Foot to foot, and hand to hand. Horse and man went down like drift-wood When the floods are black at Yule, And their carcasses are whii'ling In the Garry's deepest pool : Horse and man went down before us — Living foe there tarried none On the field of Killiecrankie, When that stubborn fight was done ! " Among the many fine miscellaneous lyrics of Pro- fessor Aytoun, the finest to my taste are "The Old Camp," which has a strange twilight mysterious interest about it ; " CEnone," full of classic feeling and grace ; and " The Buried Flower," most musical, most melan- choly, in its record of sweet and bitter recollections. I have also to mention the excellency of his translations from the ancient and modern Greek, as well as of the minor poems of Goethe, whereof he has admirably managed to preserve the native characteristics, as well as tlie spirit and vitality. The following stanzas, for instance, scarcely read like a transfusion of sentiment from one language into another : — "A violet blossomed on the lea, Half hidden from the eye, As fair a flower as you might see ; When there came tripping by A shepherd maiden fair and young, Lightly, lightly o'er the lea; Care she knew not, and she sung Merrily ! ' Oh were I but the fairest flower That blossoms on the lea, If only for one little hour. That she might gather me — U 306 SIR EDWARD LTTTON BULWER. Clasp me in her bonny breast ! ' Thought the little flower. * Oh ! that in it I might rest But an hour ! ' Lack-a-day ! up came the lass, Heeded not the violet — Trod it down into the grass ; Though it died, 'twas happy yet. ' Trodden down alth ough I lie, Yet my death is very sweet — For I cannot choose but die At her feet ! '" I must here also meution the " Ballads and Lays from Scottish History" by Norval Clyne, a young author, and full of promise ; " The Book of Highland Min- strelsy" by Mrs Ogilvy, in which is beautifully reflected much of the poetry of the Celtic character, and which gives evidence of an imaginative, an energetic, and an accomplished mind, as well as does also her last work, "The Legends of Tuscany;" and the "Lays of the Kirk and Covenant," by Mrs Stuart Menteath, which, although occasionally perhaps too sketchy and unelabo- rate, are pregnant with fancy and feeling — as indicated, more especially, by those entitled "The Child of James Melville," and " The Martyrs of Wigtoun." The " Historic Scenes and Sketches" of Miss Agnes Strickland require also, in justice, to be noticed here. Many of them are fine and spirited ; hurrying on the reader by that glow and animation of style, and that picturesqueness of description, characteristic of the his- torian of the Queens of England and of Scotland. The brilliant fame of Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer as a novelist, and as a dramatic writer, has tended much to eclipse and disparage his appearances as a poet. In the two former departments he ranks deservedly as a magnate ; in the last, his status is more questionable, REV. JOHN MOULTRIE. 307 although, I confess, this is a thing rather to be felt than explained. He constantly touches the confines of suc- cess, and stands before the gate — but the "Open Sesame ! " comes not to his lips. Perhaps it is that, in his themes, we have rather able and eloquent treatment than that colouring glow of imagination which has been termed inspiration. With fine descriptive powers, and with boundless range of illustration, there is a want of reliance on simple nature — of that fusion of the poet in his subject, which can alone give that sub- ject consecration — the poetic art, without the poetic vision ; and this defect is apparent in all his verse, from his early " Weeds and Wildflowers, " " O'Niel the Rebel," " Ismael," and " The Siamese Twins," down to his "Eva, or the Ill-omened Mal-riage," his "Modern Timon," and his more elaborate and ambitious "King Arthur." His translations of the poems and ballads of Schiller are, however, justly held in estimation among scholars, for their spirit and fidelity. The Rev. John Moultrie, a poet of elegant mind and of considerable pathetic power, should have been before mentioned, as more strictly belonging to the time of Heber, Milman, and Croly, and as a coadjutor of Macaulay, and Mackworth Praed in "The Etonian." His "Godiva" is said to have been a great favourite with the late Mr GifFord of the "Quarterly" — a not very lenient judge ; and many of his lyrics overflow with sentiment and feeling. His verses on his "Brother's Grave" are particularly striking ; and I am not aware of any prototype for the following fine fresh stanzas : — " Here's to thee, my Scottish lassie ! here's a hearty health to thee, For thine eye so bright, thy form so light, and thy step so firm and free ; For all thine artless elegance, and all thy native grace, To the music of thy mirthful voice, and the sunshine of thy face ; 308 "here's to thee, my Scottish lassie." For thy guileless look and speech sincere, yet sweet as speech can be — Here's a health, my Scottish lassie ! here's a hearty health to thee ! Here's to thee, my Scottish lassie ! Though my glow of youth is o'er ; And I, as once I felt and dreamed, must feel and dream no more ; Though the world, with all its frosts and storms, has chilled my soul at last. And genius with the foodful looks of youthful friendship Though my path is dark and lonely, now, o'er this world's dreary sea. Here's a health, my Scottish lassie ! here's a hearty health to thee ! Here's to thee, my Scottish lassie ! though I know that not for me Is thine eye so bright, thy form so light, and thy step so firm and free ; Though thou, with cold and careless looks, "vsilt often pass me by, Unconscious of my swelling heaii; and of my wistful eye ; Though thou wilt wed some Highland love, nor waste one thought on me, Here's a health, my Scottish lassie, here's a heai-ty health to thee ! Here's to thee, my Scottish lassie ! when I meet thee in the throng Of merry youths and maidens dancing lightsomely along, I'll dream away an hour or twain, still gazing on thy form As it flashes through the baser crowd, like Hghtning through a storm ; And I, perhaps, shall touch thy hand, and share thy looks of glee, And for once, my Scottish lassie, dance a giddy dance with thee ! i " here's to thee, my SCOTTISH LASSIE." 309 Here's to thee, my Scottish lassie ! I shall think of thee at even, When I see its first and fairest star come smiling up through heaven ; I shall hear thy sweet and touching voice in every wind that grieves, As it whirls from the abandoned oak its withered autumn In the gloom of the wild forest, in the stillness of the sea, I shall think, my Scottish lassie, I shall often think of thee ! Here's to thee, my Scottish lassie ! In my sad and lonely hours, The thought of thee comes o'er me like the breath of dis- tant flowers : Like the music that enchants mine ear, the sights that bless mine eye. Like the verdure of the meadow, like the azure of the sky, Like the rainbow in the evening, like the blossoms on the tree, Is the thought, my Scottish lassie ! is the lonely thought of thee. Here's to thee, my Scottish lassie ! Though my muse must soon be dumb, (For graver thoughts and duties mth my graver years are come,) Though my soul must burst the bonds of earth, and learn to soar on high. And to look on this world's follies with a calm and sober eye ; Though the merry wine must seldom flow, the revel cease for me, Still to thee, my Scottish lassie ! still I'll drink a health to thee ! Here's a health, my Scottish lassie ! here's a parting health to thee ! May thine be still a cloudless lot, though it be far from me i May still thy laughing eye be bright, and open still thy brow, Thy thoughts as pure, thy speech as free, thy heart as light as now ! 310 SCOTTISH AXD IRISH POETS. And whatsoe'er my after fate, my dearest toast shall be — Still a health, my Scottish lassie ! still a hearty health to thee ! " Although the three great portions of the United Kingdom have been gradually amalgamating in lan- guage, customs, and social institutions, and the rough angles of distinctive character, as well as minor diffe- rences and peculiarities, have been steadily and rapidly disappearing, more especially within the last twenty- five 5^ears, yet this process has not hitherto been so complete but that Scotland and Ireland still continue, although at more broken intervals, to pour forth snatches of their own native minstrelsies. Of our own nation, the bards who have been more particularly pro- minent are, James Ballantyne, William Thom, William Nicolson, Alexander Rodger, David Yedder, Joseph Train, Robert Gilfillan, Charles Gray, and Robert Nicol — the last especially a young man of high promise, — all of whom have honourably, and in their degree, contri- buted some beautiful lyrics to the national collection ; while from the immense mass of verse — good, bad, and indifferent — which diversify the pages of the omne- gathenim entitled " Whistlebinkie," it would seem that, in the western shires, at least two per cent of the popu- lation possess the gift of song, and are au fait at express- ing themselves " in numerous verse." Not less distinct in their native character are the ballads and songs of modern Ireland. The best of these — and many of them are full of spirit, wild grace, and passionate beauty, — have proceeded from the pens of Thomas Davis, Gerald Griffin, John Banim, T. J. Callanan, Samuel Ferguson, William Maginn, Clarence Mangan, Edward Walsh, Samuel Lover, and John Anster ; and we have, besides, touching specimens by Mrs Tighe, the Hon. Mrs Price Blackwood, and Mrs Downing. I know of few things so wildly sweet, so profoundly solemn, as the following stanzas by the last-named lady, entitled, " The Grave of "THE GRAVE OF MACAURA." 311 Macaura," a leader who, it seems, fell in fight with the Fitzgeralds iu 1261. " And this is thy grave, Macaura, Here by the pathway lone. Where the thorn-blossoms are bending Over thy mouldered stone. Alas ! for the sons of glory ; Oh ! thou of the darkened brow, And the eagle plume, and the belted clans, Is it here thou art sleeping now ? Oh wild is the spot, Macaura, In which they have laid thee low — The field where thy people triumphed Over a slaughtered foe ; And loud was the Banshee's wailing. And deep was the clansmen's sorrow, When, with bloody hands and burning teai'S, They buried thee here, Macaura ! And now thy dwelling is lonely. King of the rushing horde ; And now thy battles are over, Chief of the shining sword ; And the rolling thunder echoes O'er torrent and mountain free, But alas ! and alas ! INIacaura It will not awaken thee. Farewell to thy grave, Macaura, Where the slanting sunbeams shine, And the brier and waving fern Over thy slumbers twine ; Thou whose gathering summons Could waken the sleeping glen ; Macaura, alas for thee and thine, 'Twill never be heard again !" Mixed Tip with many of the elements used by Words- worth, Hunt, Keats, and Shelley, poetry, about twenty 312 ALFRED TENNYSON : years ago, began to assume something like a new form of manifestation in the verse of Alfred Tennyson, — a man of fine and original, but of capricious and wayward genius. With a delightful manner of his own — one more so this age knoweth not — Tennyson seems strangely desti- tute of self-reliance. This fine peculiar manner he has exhibited in "Locksley Hall," "The Talking Oak," " The Day-dream," " The Moated Grange," " The May Queen," "The Lotos Eaters," and "The Morte d' Ar- thur ; " as also in his ballads of " Oriana," " Lady Clara Vere de Vere," and "The Lord of Burleigh ;" yet, not content with it — seemingly because it is native to his mind, and spontaneous — he is continually making in- felicitous incursions into the chartered demesnes of others, — more especially of the bards just enumerated. This is most unfortunate, and it is wrong, more espe- cially as perfectly unrequired. No one ever mistook a page of Spenser's " Faery Queen " for a page either of Davenant's "Gondibert," or of Fletcher's "Purple Island " — a page of William Shakespeare for a page of John Milton — or even one of Dryden for one of Pope. In all great masters there is — must be — a perfect unity in style and handling, however they may vary their subjects, as Byron did, from " Childe Harold" to " Don Juan." It is so throughout all Crabbe, from his early "Library" and "Village," to his posthumous tales, penned half a century afterwards ; throughout all Scott, from his " Lay " to his " Lord of the Isles." The mind that conceived " Madoc " reigns unaltered, save in the degrees of power, throughout " Thalaba," " Kehama," and " Roderick." " The child being father of the man," the Lyrical Ballads claim kindred with the " Recluse." Even Wilson's juvenile "Verses on James Grahame" only precede in time his maturer " Laiimore." In the one, we have the mountain stream ; in the other, that same stream as the broad lowland river. Far differentlv HIS VARIOUS STYLES. 313 stand matters with Alfred Tennyson. His compositions are as unlike each other as the opposite hues of the rain- bow — as the features of the Goth from the Negro — as Nova Zembla from the Line. He is now a simulacrum of Shelley, as in " The Palace of Sin," " The Vision of Art," and "The Two Voices," — now of Wordsworth, as in " Dora," and " The Gardener's Daughter," — now of Cole- ridge, as in "The Merman and Mermaid," — now of Keats, as in " (Enone," — and now of Quarles, Donne, and Wither combined, in " The Death of the Old Year," " The Deserted House," " Adeline and Claribel," and "The Poet's Mind." Tennyson has thus made his poetry a rich mosaic, exhibiting various styles of excellence ; but it has this certain and pervading virtue, that it is never in any in- stance wire- woven or heavy. In very dread of this, he flies to the exactly opposite extreme, until he almost induces the belief in his readers that he must regard the uncommon as synonymous with the excellent. Over- looking obvious, he hunts for recondite beauties — shuts his eyes on the planet Jupiter, glowing like a sun at the zenith, yet opens them on the Georgium Sidus, glinting like a firefly through the mists of the horizon. Sometimes he is out-and-out fantastic, as in " The Lady of Shallot;" sometimes scholastic, as in "Ulysses;" sometimes monastic, as in "St Simeon Stylites;" and sometimes bombastic, as in " Audley Court," as well as in sundry passages of " The Princess." He shrinks from looking Nature straight in the face : it is against his temperament and his system; although when he has mastered his evident reluctance to do so— as in his "Dora" and "May Queen" — I like him more heartily than in almost any other of his many-sided excellencies. Througliout these two pieces runs a vein of pathos exquisitely simple, and as precious and pure as that prevading the " We are Seven," the " Lucy Gray," and " The Pet Lamb " of Wordsworth — a pathos which goes 314 BALLAD OF OKI ANA. at once to the heart; while, in "The Morte d'Arthur" — to me the highest of all Tennyson's efforts — there is a serenity of solitude and repose, a rude remote magnifi- cence, haunting the imagination with a feeling of dreary sublimity. In the ballad of "Oriana," and in the " Recollections of the Arabian Nights," we have his pic- turesqueness, as viewed from the most opposite quarters — of Eastern sunshine and Arctic frost ; nor would it be easy to which rightly to award the palm. The incidents in both are mere pegs, on which, in the one, he has hung garlands of the most luxurious imagery — rich, warm, and glowing with beauty ; while the other, bleak and wild as an iceberg, is draperied in the gloom of self-accusing guilt, delirious regret, and sullen despair. Take the latter, and perhaps the finer : — " My heart is wasted with my woe, Oriana ; There is no rest for me below, Oriana. "When the long dun wolds are ribbed with snow, And loud the ISTorland whirlwinds blow, Oriana ; Alone I wander to and fro, Oriana. Ere the light on dark was growing, Oriana; At midnight the cock was crowing, Oriana ; Winds were blowing, waters flowing, We heard the steeds to battle going, Oriana; Aloud the hollow bugle blowing, Oriana. In the yew wood black as night, Oriana, Ere I rode into the fight, Oriana, While blissful tears blinded my sight BALLAD OF OKIANA. 315 By star-shine, and by moonlight, Oriana, I to thee my troth did plight, Oriana. She stood upon the castle wall, Oriana : She watched my crest among them all, Oriana : She saw me fight, she heard me call. When forth there stepped a foeman tall, Oriana, Atween me and the castle wall, Oriana. The bitter arrow went aside, Oriana, The false, false arrow went aside, Oriana ; The damned arrow glanced aside, And pierced thy heart —my love, my bride, Oriana ! Thy heart — my life, my love, my bride, Oriana ! Oh ! narrow, narrow was the space, Oriana : Loud, loud rang out the trumpet's brays, Oriana. Oh ! deathful stabs were dealt apace, The battle deepened in its place, Oriana ; And I was down upon my face, Oriana. They should have stabbed me where I lay, Oriana ! How could I rise and come away, Oriana ? How could I look upon the day ? They should have stabbed me where I lay, Oriana. They should have trod me into clay, Oriana. 316 " THE PRINCESS : " Ob ! breaking heart tbat will not break, Oriana; Ob ! pale, pale face, so sweet and meek, Oriana. Tbou smilest, but tbou dost not speak, And then tbe tears I'un down my cheek, Oriana : "What wantest thou 1 whom dost thou seek, Oriana 1 I cry aloud ; none hear my cries, Oriana ; Thou comest atween me and tbe skies, Oriana. I feel the tears of blood arise Up from my heart unto my eyes, Oriana : Within thy heart my arrow lies, Oriana. Oh, cursed hand ! oh, cursed blow ! Oi'iana ! Oh, happy thou that best low, Oriana ! All night the silence seems to flow Beside me in my utter woe, Oriana. A weary, weary way I go, Oriana. When Norland winds pipe down the sea, Oriana; I walk, I dare not think of thee, Oriana. Thou liest beneath the greenwood tree, I dare not die, and come to thee, Oriana : I hear the roaring of the sea, Oriana." Regarding " The Princess," it is no marvel that such a contrariety of opinion Las been expressed by seemingly competent judges. Its beauties and faults are so inex- ITS INCONGRUITIES. 317 tricably interwoven, and the latter are so glaring and many — nay, often apparently so wilful — that, as a sincere admirer of the genius of Tennyson, I could almost wish the poem had remained unwritten. I admit the excellence of particular passages ; but it has neither general harmony of design, nor sustained merit of execution. We have ever and anon scintillations of the true fire, glimpses of rare and genuine beauty, but these are anon smothered by affectations, or vitiated by man- nerisms. Associations utterly incongruous are conti- nually found linked together — the beautiful with the deformed, the majestic with the mean, the masculine with the puerile, Helen of Paris with the Hottentot Venus, Sir Walter Raleigh with Elwes the miser, Harry Hotspur with Justice Shallow ; while in its versifica- tion we have involution and harshness, which, whether the result of carelessness, or designed for the purpose of evading monotony, are equally infelicitous. Xo poetry can be reckoned of high excellence in which are not evinced the capacity to conceive, as well as the capacity to finish — taste governing, moulding, and mo- delling the rough-hewn creations of fancy, dispensing with redundancies, and bringing each separate aspect into harmonious subordination to the general effect. " How much the power of poetry depends on the nice inflections of rhythm alone, can be proved," as James Montgomery beautifully observes, "by taking the finest passages of Milton or Shakespeare, and merely putting them into prose, with the least possible variation of the words themselves. The attempt would be like gather- ing up dew-drops, which appear jewels and pearls upon the grass, but run into water in the hand ; the essence and the elements remain, but the grace, the sparkle, and the form are gone." To this I would add, that congruity of style and management are quite as necessary as congruity of imagery, rhythm, or language. Wordsworth certainly 318 "the princess," a medley. exorbitantly taxes his reader's ideas of consistency when he inculcates the highest lessons of philosophic morality through the medium of a peripatetic pedlar — " a vagrant merchant bending 'neath his load" — one who must be supposed (else he had no business there) this moment measuring out Welsh flannel, and the next riding the high-horse of transcendental metaphysics. But we feel all the while that, nomine mutato, it is not the pedlar, but the poet who speaks, although not in 2^roprid per- sona — the latter making the former his mere puppet mouth-piece. The incongruities of "The Princess" are of a far more inexplicable kind, and lie less on the surface — as they do in " The Excursion" — than in the subject itself, penetrating to the very bones and marrow of the composition. At its commencement the poem is as modern in its machinery as a mechanics' institute, — rejoicing in steam-models, galvanic batteries, and electric telegraphs, and is only wanting in a touch of Dr Darling and electro-biology to bring it down to " this Modern Athens and this hour." In its progress it be- comes first sentimental, then philosophic, then romantic, then downright chivalric ; and, towards its conclusion, issues in a cramhe recocta of all heterogeneous elements — for which it would be difficult to discover a palpable simile, except we find it in a Centaur, " half man and half horse" — or in a Mermaid, "a lovely lady with a fish's tail" — or in a Caliban, or in a "Bottom the weaver," with his innocent ass's mouth " watering for thistles." In short, " The Princess" is veritably what Tennyson has himself termed it, "a medley" — a mixture of the prosaic utilitarianism of modern life with the euphuistic heroism of ancient sentiment — Jeremy Bentham embracing Don Quixote ; of the familiar and conventional with the heightened and ideal — "William Cobbett " how-d'ye-doing " to Marcus TuUius Cicero. Such materials may be brought into juxtaposition, and ordered, like George Colman's Newcastle apothecary's "in memoriam." 319 draught — ''when taken, to be well shaken ;" but oil and water cannot be made to amalgamate. The same un- escapable hodge-podge would have resulted had Shake- speare attempted to blend the high-toned metaphysical reveries of Hamlet with the blustering bladder-blown bravado of Ancient Pistol, and after " To be or not to be, that is the question," had added, " I eat this leek in token of revenge ! " The general impression left on the mind by " The Princess " is therefore, as might have been expected, simply the grotesque. Tennyson's latest volume, " In Memoriam," although far from being an immaculate one, especially in the matter of taste, is alike honourable to his genius and heart, and far more worthy of his reputation than " The Princess." It is a collection of elegiac quatrains dedicated to the memory of a dear personal friend — Arthur Hallam, a son of the celebrated historian, and the affianced of the poet's sister ; and, taking bereave- ment for its key-note, wails on through all the JBolian harmonies of sorrow. Many of these are replete with elemental, truthful beauty ; others are quaint and specu- lative ; while not a few deal too largely in the symbols of imagination to directly influence the heart. In these instances, too, the language is frequently as abstract as the recondite and subtle idea which it is meant to convey ; and the reader has the utmost difficulty in deciphering it. The following stanzas are very beautiful : — " The path by which we twain did go, Which led by tracts that pleased us well, Through four sweet years arose and fell, From flower to flower, from snow to snow ; And we with singing cheered the way, And crowned with all the season lent, From April on to April went, And glad of heart from May to May. 320 THE EXCELLENCIES OP ELEGIAC POETRY. But where the path we walked began To slant the fifth autumnal slope, As we descended following Hope, There sat the Shadow feared of man : Who broke our fair companionship, And spread his mantle dark and cold ; And wrapt thee formless in the fold, And dulled the murmur on thy lip ; And bore thee where I could not see Nor follow, though I walk in haste ; And think that, somewhere in the waste. The shadow sits and waits for me." One of the prominent peculiarities of the " In Memo- riam" is, that all the many separate little pieces of which the book is composed are written in one unvaried measure, and that each, like a sonnet, embodies some one leading idea ; and, as embracing both these charac- teristics, I know of no antetype, save perhaps the son- nets of Petrarch. This pervading thought is in itself generally fine ; and the majority of the individual bits in this composite are highly polished. We have many exquisite descriptive touches, as well as many of those salient sentimental sparks which genius can alone scintillate. Not a few portions, however, are hazy and obscure, alike in thought and expression ; and, having the least conceivable connection with the general theme, look " like orient pearls merely at random strung." What should constitute the soul and essence of elegiac poetry 1 Pathos — the unequivocal, the simple, natural expression of that sorrow wiiich comes from and goes to the heart, and which is, "when unadorned, adorned the most ; " and, judged by that standard, how much have we in the " In Memoriam ? " Milton, to be sure, has his " Lycidas," and Shelley his " Adonais ; " but I RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. 321 doubt much if the ice-cold metaphysical conceits con- tained in either ever drew a tear from an unaeademic eye. Not so wrote King David of Saul and Jonathan : not so in Rama mourned Rachel for her children, " because they were not." The fountain of tears must be moved by a spell, not by an analysis of feeling, criti- cal, recondite, and labelled with the phases and moods of sympathetic emotion. Let it not be for one moment supposed that I am not deeply alive to the excellencies of Alfred Tennyson as a poet, for I regard him as in some points standing at this moment at the very head of our poetical literature. But he is much more apt to be copied in his errors than his excellencies : and what I maintain is, that, although a great artist, he is a very unequal one. Possessed of a rich and rare genius, he is, in a certain walk, and that his own — the imaginative, the quaintly graphic, and the picturesque — unquestionably a master. Above all, his poetry possesses, in an eminent degree, one of the highest attributes — suggestiveness ; and there he will even stand the severe test of old Longinus, who enun- ciates in his tenth section that "we may pronounce that sublime, beautiful, and true, which permanently pleases, and which takes generally with all sorts of men''' The laurel crown of England, "which Dryden and diviner Spenser wore," has, by the recent lamented decease of the great Poet of the Lakes, been transferred to the more youthful brows of Alfred Tennyson. " He won it well, and may he wear it long." The poetry of Richard Monckton Milnes possesses very considerable elegance and taste — a philosophic sentiment and a graceful tenderness, but is deficient in individuality and power ; although perhaps not so much so as might at first seem, for, as in Henry Tay- lor's, the grand pervading element is repose — his sunset X 322 DR CHARLES MACKAY. has no clouds, and his morning no breezes. From his lack of constructiveness and dramatic passion, he appears to most advantage in his serious, his sentimental, and descriptive sketches, many of which are fine and striking, although he often mars the general effect by unnecessary analysis. He may be said to have followed more in the wake of Wordsworth than of any other preceding poet, although his admiration for Keats and Shelley is not seldom unappareut. His narrative is wanting in ra- pidity and action, and is apt to fall into a pleasing monotony and languor, from wliich we are not roused by salient points : the current of his thoughts would be vivified by more frequent breaks and waterfalls. Hence his " Poetry for the People" was a misnomer ; for instead of being circumstantial and palpable, it was abstract, and beyond the reach of their sympathies. About all the productions of Monckton iMilnes there is an artist-like finish ; and his ear is finely attuned to the melodies of verse. With much more of the popular element in his mind, and with a greater dash of spirit and animation, Dr Charles Mackay stands nearly on the same level with Mr Monckton Milnes. His earliest poem, " The Hope of the World," was referable to the school of Goldsmith and Rogers ; his next, " The Salamandrine," leant to- wards Coleridge and Shelley — a circumstance probably to be traced to the nature of the subject ; but in the " Legends of the Isles" he thinks and writes more inde- pendently ; the best of these being " The Death of the Sea King" and " St Columba," which vary from the simple, unadorned ballad style, to the more ambitious one of the lyric ode. In his " Voices from the Crowd,'' and his "Voices from the Mountains," there is even yet more genuine poetical power, especially in the verses headed " The Phantoms of St Sepulchre," and " We are wiser than we know." " Street Companions," in the " Town Lyrics," is also pregnant with thought, and a DRAMATIC POETS. 323 spirit of poetry fine and impressive. We delight to observe the march of progress in an author, and in Dr Mackay, as I have just remarked, this is very apparent ; for "Egeria," his hist, is by far his best poem, whether we regard feHcity of conception, or imaginative and artistic power ; many of its passages, viewed in the light of didactic verse, being of high and rare merit both as to manner and matter. In a clever and spirited introduction, Dr Mackay takes a view quite opposed to my own in reference to the effects of Poetry and Science on each other — nay, he even admits general politics as a legitimate auxiliary element. But he has said nothing which seems in the slightest degree to affect my position ; and I cannot help still regarding Poetry the imaginative and limit- less, and Science the definite and true, as per se anta- gonistic. Equally unsatisfactory is his argument, that the development of abstract truths does not circumscribe the boundaries of fancy's field ; for poetry has ever found " the haunt and the main region of her song," either in the grace and beauty, which cannot be analysed, or in the sublime of the indefinite. JSewton, with his dissection of the "Rainbow;" Anson, with his cir- cumnavigation ; and Franklin with his lightning-kite, were all disenchanters. Angels no longer alight on the Iris ; Milton's " sea-covered sea — sea without shore," is a geographical untruth ; and in the thunder, men hear no more the voice of the Deity. Having throughout these Lectures abstained from whatever might be regarded as pure dramatic literature, I have altogether passed over many writers distinguished for the high poetical excellencies displayed in their com- positions — more especially Maturin, Sheridan Knowles, Marston, White, 'Home, Samuel Brown, Lovell Beddoes, William Smith, Henry Taylor, and Thomas Noon Tal- fourd, each well worthy of separate and especial con- sideration ; but this should have led me into a field of 324 ROBERT BROWNING : examination utterly incompatible M'ith my present necessarily narrow limits. I should have also liked to have been able to add some strictures on the brother poets of America, more especially Henry Longfellow, and William Cullen Bryant, for both of whom I have a high admiration — the one being distinguished for the possession of the very element in which, our recent verse is so deficient — imaginative truth — and the other having preserved, in many of his pictures, the native aboriginal tone, which must hereafter render them invaluable. The merits of our very young rising poets — many of them of high promise — I have pur- posely abstained from discussing, as it would be mere prophecy to assign to them anything like fixed com- parative degrees of rank, although I have great delight in pointing to the names of Burbidge, Cassels, Clough, Westwood, Bennet, Allingham, and Baton. Robert Browning, as a poet of promise, was regarded by some as equalling Tennyson. In his " Paracelsus," from out a cloudy tabernacle were darted tongues of flame ; but the smoke has never cleared away. In it we had much of mysticism, affectation, obscurity, nay, utter incomprehensibility, mixed up with many fine aspirations, and a variety of magnificent outlines, although no separate scene could be said to satisfy. We had abundance of bold rough draughts, some in the manner of Turner, and others in the manner of Martin, all "dark with excessive bright ;" but no single picture filled up and coloured. " Sordello," which followed it, was the strangest vagary ever submitted to the world in the shape of verse, and as incomprehensibly m3'sterious as the riddles of the Sphinx. Some recondite meaning the book probably may have ; but I am not aware that any one has ever been able to discover it, although I think Mr Home, the author of " Orion," once made a guess. At all events its intelligibility does not shine on the surface, nor in any twenty consecutive lines. HIS DEFICIENCY IN POETIC ART. 325 In the "Bells and Pomegranates," we have now and then glimpses of poetic sentiment and description, like momentary sunbeams darting out between rifted clouds ; but straightway the clouds close, and we are left to plod on in deeper twilight. The truth is, that with an ill-regulated imagination, Mr Browning has utterly mistaken singularity for originality — the uncommon for the fine. Style and manner he despises ; indeed, he may be said to have none — for these are with him like the wind blowing where it listeth ; or, as extremes meet, he may be said to have all kinds, from the most composite and arabesque to the most disjointed and Doric. Even in his serious and earnest themes, he thinks nothing of leaping at once from the Miltonic to the Hudibrastic ; and to poetry as an art, such as it was in the hands of Pope and Collins, of Gray and Goldsmith, of Coleridge and Campbell, he seems to have utterly blinded himself, assuming for his motto the boastful lines of old Withers : — " Pedants shall not tie my strains To our antique poets' veins ; Being born as free to these, I shall sing as 1 shall please." Browning never seems to lack materials ; but, huddled together as we find them, they may be denominated cairns — not buildings. The creations of his pen have therefore the snme relation to external nature, and the goings-on of actual life, that day-dreams have to reali- ties, or apparitional castles and cataracts in the clouds to their earthly counterparts. Genius of some kind — it may be of a high kind — Browning must have ; but, most assuredly, never was genius of any kind or degree more perversely misapplied. A small band of transcen- dental worshippers may follow him, as they do Emer- son ; but even these will, I fear, be forced to content themselves with the idea, that surely there must be 326 JOHN STERLING. some thread which might enable them to grope their way through the more than Cretan intricacies of his mystical labyrinth, — if they could only catch hold of it. It is but too evident that German quasi-philosophy — the physics of Oken, and the metaphysics of Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, have been doing for much of ihe poetry of the last twenty years what French propa- gandism did for it at the beginning of the century, when a band of our young bards were pantisocratists. But the delusive colours, Avhich " played in the plighted clouds," died away before the light of their maturer intellects. Among these '■^ Fata Morgana,'" these base- less fabrics of vision, poor Shelley utterly, and Coleridge for a season, bewildered himself ; but the latter happily returned to his better mind, to common-sense, and to Christianity. John Sterling had some high qualities of mind, but he was utterly destitute of the self-reliance necessary to constitute a great poet. The finest of all his produc- tions, as a mere poem, is " The Sexton's Daughter," a striking lyrical ballad produced in early youth, ere he sank into poetic misgivings. His mind seemed perpe- tually passing through new phases, and resting in none. His energy commands our respect, but not more often than its misapplication does our censure or our regret. His anxieties were almost uniformly profitless or mis- applied. As a poet and dramatist, Sterling possessed taste, in- genuity, and a kind of rhetorical inspiration ; but much greater things were expected from him than he ever had the capability to accomplish. Unsettled in all his plans and projects, as well as in his views and feelings, he laboriously frittered away his years, if not in profitless exertion, at least in a way that rendered their results nearly ineffective for good or evil. With considerable power, his mind was, likely Shelley's, fragmentary and incomplete ; and like him he was also at once acute, PHILIP JAMES BAILEY. 327 yet obscure— bold, yet uncertain. He had much of the same metaphysical subtlety, but was far behind him in imagination. In connection with this subject, Mr Gil- fillan eloquent!}^ says: "Sterling, in his wide and trembling sympathies with literary excellence, and in his devoted enthusiasm for the varied expressions of the beautiful, as well as in the hectic heat and eagerness of his temperament, bore a strong likeness to Shelley, although possessing a healthier, happier, and better balanced nature." Alas! even for such health, such happiness, and such intellectual equipoise, Avhich at best can only be compared to Campbell's picture of the Peruvian bridge : — " A wild cane arch, high flung o'er gulf profound, That fluctuates when the storms of El Dorado sound." Of Philip James Bailey, the author of "Festus, and "The Angel World," it is still more difficult to speak ; although, as a poet of actual achievement, I can have no hesitation in placing him far above either Browning or Sterling. His " Festus" is, in many respects, a very remarkable production — remarkable alike for its poetic power and its utter neglect of all the requirements of poetic art. It is such a wilderness of weeds and flowers, its blemishes and its beauties are so inextri- cably interwoven, its combinations of imagery are so perplexed, and its conceptions often so indefinite or abortive, that we can only liken it here to " Chaos come again," and there to Vesuvius during an eruption — bright flames, black smoke, and lava torrents. The germinal idea no doubt originated in Goethe's "Faust," but the poem of the great German is not less distin- guished for its high art as a composition, than for its daring speculative philosophy. "Festus" has no claim to the former attribute, for in point of style it is fre- quently utterly loose and disjointed ; while in the latter it out-Herods Herod, and runs riot among all kinds of 328 " FESTUS." metaphysical exaggerations and absurdities. Its sole redemption lies in the vivid tongues of flame — the lightnings of undoubted genius ever and anon bursting from its dark masses of encompassing smoke — in the grains of gold sparkling amid its lumps of soiling clay. On its metaph3'sics I do not mean to enter, as they seem a strange compound of Christian doctrine and Hegelian transcendentalism ; and all its oracles are enunciated from a cloudy tabernacle. Yet, with all these excesses and defects, we are made to feel that "Festus" is the v/ork of a poet. We cannot be deaf to the utterances of a bold and fervent spirit ; for these speak to us aliTvO in his half-prosaic colloquialisms, and in his imaginative soarings. The great text which he labours to expound, if I can quite make it out, is the ultimate subordination of evil to good, and the infinite love of Heaven to all created things ; but from the main current of the theme a thousand erratic rivulets diverge, running no one knows whither. In "The Angel World," we liave the youthful poet more sobered down ; and the consequent result has been one not exactly to be wished — its beauties and its defects are each alike less prominent. In disciplin- ing his imagination, it has lost much of its force and lustre : and his style, if more subdued and symmetrical, has become more artificial, and has ceased to throw out those wildflowers which hung about it like a natural garland. The scope and tendency of the poem I pre- tend not to decipher. It is of a symbolic character, and seems to involve many mysteries, which a few may de- light to pry into ; but its merit Avill be found to consist entirely in its descriptive passages, and its typification of abstract conceptions by ideal forms — one angel being apparently intended for Faith, another Humility, and a third Human Nature. Alike in this poem and its predecessor, Bailey seems to advocate the doctrine of "a vision of decay." 329 ultimate universal salvation, as also the law of universal necessity. I do not know that I can find any passage more impressed with the mingled grandeur and gro- tesqueness of his manner than the following : it is part of the dream that Elissa relates to her lover Lucifer : — " Methougbt that I was happy, because dead. All hurried to and fro, and many cried To each other — ' Can I do thee any good V But no one heeded ; nothing could avail : The world was one great grave. I looked and saw Time on his two great wings — one night — one day — Fly moth-like right into the flickering sun, So that the sun went out, and they both perished. And one gat up and spoke — a holy man — Exhorting them ; but each and all cried out — ' Go to — it helps not — means not : we are dead.' ' Bring out your hearts before me. Give your limbs To whom ye list or love. My son Decay Will take them : give them him. I want your hearts, That I may take them up to God. ' There came These words amongst us, but we knew not whence. It was as if the air spake. And there rose Out of the earth a giant thing, all earth — His eye was earthy, and his arm was earthy; He had no heart. He but said, * I am Decay ; ' And as he spake he crumbled into earth. And there was nothing of him. But we all Lifted our faces up at the word God, And spied a dark star high above in the midst Of others, mimberless as are the dead, And all plucked out their hearts, and held them in Their right hands. Many tried to pick out specks And stains, but could not ; each gave up his heart. And something — all things — nothing — it was Death, Said, as before, from air — ' Let us to God ! ' And straight we rose, leaving behind the raw Worms and dead gods ; all of us — soared and soared 330 POETRY, AND ITS UTTERANCES. Right upwards, till the star I told thee of Looked like a moon — the moou became a sun ; The sun — there came a hand between the sun and us, And its five fingers made five nights in air. God tore the glory from the sun's broad brow, And flung the flaming scalp off flat to Hell : I saw him do it ; and it passed close by us." Here we have the wild extravagance and the magnifi- ceut imagination blent. We do not know whether more to admire or shudder ; yet we acknowledge the vital presence and power which makes the vision terrible, even after Clarence's dream. Passing at a tangent from the tame, the artificial, the conventional school of Hayley, and the hyperbolical extra-mundane one of Lewis, I am willing to admit that the poetry of Joanna Baillie and William Words- worth may have rested too exclusively on mere simpli- city or naturalness of sentiment and emotion ; that Scott, on the other hand, may have too unreservedly hinged on action and description ; and that the Italian- isms of Hunt, Keats, and Cornwall, no doubt occasion- ally merged into affectation. But it Avas scarcely to be expected, even ere Campbell had passed away from among us, — and who had given us such admirable illustrations of the classical and romantic combined — that he was to see the rise, and shudder over the pro- gress of a school — as 1 know he did — which was to rejoice in poetical conception without poetical execution — which was to substitute the mere accumulation of the raw materials for the triumph of art in their arrange- ment ; — in short, to displace the Parthenon by a Stone- henge. Such, however, has been the case, and such the course of events, to whatever cause the anomaly is to be traced, — whether to the wearing out, or case-harden- ing of the soil by the great masters, who have illumi- nated our age ; or to the main current of the national mind having been diverted into quite another channel THE QUACKERY OF MYSTICISM. 331 — that of physical science — leaviog poetry to harp to the winds or to an audience sparse and select. It would almost seem that there is some shadow of truth in this latter hypothesis ; but instead of poetry having adapted itself to this sobered tone of public feel- ing, and having become more matter-of-fact, more repressed in its enthusiasm, and more graceful in its expositions of philosophical tliought, more genuinely passionate, and more in accordance with what all know and feel to be true and tender, or beautiful or sublime, it has rebelliously kicked up its heels in derision — cry- ing, " A fico for general sympathy and common sense. The man in the moon for ever ! " Thus sowing, it must reap. Simple utterance of feeling — with a mystical com- mentary on such utterance — is all that the purest disciples of this newest of our schools aspire to. Eine images, allegorical symbols — hieroglyphic meanings — speculative thought, we have in superfluity, but no apparent aim, and seldom any attempt at composition. Tares and wheat ar.e allowed to grow up together to one un weeded harvest, and often the bugloss and the poppy, scattered plentifully throughout the field, look very like flowers in their respective blue and scarlet jackets. But who would term this either agriculture or gardening? Even this utterance of thought seems to be designedly left vague and imperfect, to help out the adage omne ignotum pro magnifico ; and although some, nay, occasionally a superabundance, of the materials for poetry, may be observed floating about, it is of as uncer- tain destination as the drift-wood on an autumn-flood. Mysticism in law is quibbling ; mysticism in religion is the jugglery of priestcraft ; mysticism in medicine is quackery — and these often serve their crooked purposes well. But mysticism in poetry can have no attainable triumph. The sole purpose of poetry is to delight and instruct, and no one can be either pleased or profited by 332 OBSCURITY a:n^d exaggeration. what is unintelligible. It ayouM be as just to call stones and mortar, slates and timber, a mansion, or to call colours and canvass a picture, as to call mystical effervescences poetry. Poems are poetical materials artistically elaborated ; and if so, the productions of this school, from Emerson to Browning, cannot be allowed to rank higher than rhapsodical effusions. It is necessary for a poet to think, to feel, and to fancy ; but it is also necessary for him to assimilate and com- bine — processes which the pupils of this transcendental academy seem indeed to wish understood either that they totally overlook, or affect to undervalue as worth- less. Results — products — conclusions — not ratiocina- tions, are expected from the poet. "His heart leaps up when he beholds a rainbow in the sky ;" but the laws of refraction producing this emotion he leaves to be dealt with as a fit subject for science. It is the province of the poet to describe the western sunset sky "dying like a dolphin" in its changeful hues, not the optical why and wherefore of twilight. In short, his business is with enunciations, not with syllogisms. The poet springs to conclusions not by the logic of science, but by intuition ; and whosoever, as a poet, acts either the chemist, the naturalist, or the metaphysician, mistakes the object of his specific mission. Philosophy and poetry may, in most things, not be incompatible ; but they are essentially distinct. Metaphysical analyses cannot be accepted as substitutes either for apostrophes to the beautiful, or for utterances of passion. I hold them to be as different from these as principles are from products, or as causes from effects. I have only two or three ^'ords more to add to this, regarding another set of new poetical aspirants, who will not look upon nature with their own unassisted eyes, but are constantly interposing some favourite medium — probably a distorting medium. They see motes between them and the sun, have a horror of foul THE BANES OF OUR RECENT POETRY. 333 air, and filter the living crystal of the fountain in their repugnance to animalciilse — which they are yet restless until they discover. When they sneeze, instead of blessing themselves, according to ancient and innocent custom, they search out a physiological reason ; and when they encounter a child crying, they have no sympathetic desire to pat it on the head, but would fain analyse its tears. They are either making mon- strous growths out of the green grass on the lap of mother earth, or making new stars from the nebulous fire-mist in the blue abysses of space above their heads. They turn from the obvious and unmistakable, and are off like "wild huntsmen" of imagination, in search of spectral essences ; for they flatter themselves with the belief that their reveries are realities ; and dream- ing that whatever is not, is ; and that whatever is, is not, their "series of melting views" is christened trans- cendental philosophy : poetry thus resolving itself into a negation of judgment — into a mere " fancy i?? nubibus," an entire absorption of intellect in imagina- tion — sunshine playing on morning mists — soon to dislimn in nothingness. Bailey and Sterling stand, wdth relation to Tennyson and Mrs Browning, very much as Shelley did with Keats. Tlieir ambition was to sail " with ample pinion," not only " through the azure fields of air, " but also through all the mists and clouds that came in their way, instead of dealing with the ways and works of men, with the passions and associations of humanity. It is thus that their aspirations, although lofty, are ever indefinite ; that their reasonings seem always in a circle, and with no apparent goal. They would fain " dally with the sun, and scorn the breeze ; " but they get be- wildered, and are drifted away amid the Himmalayas of cloudland. One grand object of the school to which they belong seems to be — if it indeed have any one dis- tinct and leading principle — to regard the species and 334 THE BANES OF OUR RECENT POETRY. not the individual ; to generalise, and not to particu- larise ; to sink the national even in the cosmopolitan : a vision likely to be realised only when man has thrown off all the sloughs of his present nature. Add to this, that, as disciples of Fichte and Schelling, they attribute to the human mind powers that far overpass the boun- daries of mere sensation. But where is this to end ? — when we remember that, proceeding in the same vague tract, by no means a new one, Schiller succeeded in convincing Goethe that his view of the morphology of plants was the result, not of observation, but of an idea ; and that Oken broached a theory, which I believe Pro- fessor Owen is not disinclined to adopt, that the classes of animated nature are mere representations of the organs of the senses. That the latter-day poets have high aims and objects, however indefinite and difficult to be deciphered these may appear to the uninitiated, I never doubted. These seem principally to be a desire to exhibit the influence of physical nature on the ope- rations of the fancy and intellect ; and we have, in consequence, simply their gropings amid the arcana of mind, in search of those hidden links of mystery which connect the seen to the unseen. But this, as the general subjective material, can scarcely be termed poetry ; or, if so, why stop short of versifying Ja^^ob Behmen ? In Shakespeare, in Milton, in Akenside, in Wordsworth, in Byron, and in Coleridge, we have, it is true, grand casual aspirations after ideal good, and man's perfectibility, and the knowledge of his whence and wherefore ; but, to make such the main staple of poetry is a vain attempt at constructing what would be all spirit and no body — a mere twisting of the sea-sand into ropes — for even ghosts should be invisible without the sem blance of a corporeal from ; and yet these things are selected to form everlasting themes of profitless specula- tion, to the exclusion of all pictorial effect, and all exercise of the practical understanding. POETRY INEXTINGUISHABLE. 335 But although poetry is at present prostrated, it must revive — because it ever has been, and ever must be, a necessary aliment of our human nature. It is evident that literature, from an agglomeration of many concur- rent causes, seems destined to accomplish certain specific cycles. We know what occurred on the extinction of the Homeric Chaucer — what followed the passing away of Shakespeare and Milton — how the brilliances of Dry- den and Pope waned dim in their disciples. Could it be otherwise in our own age, after the setting of such luminaries as "Walter Scott, Lord Byron, and "William "Wordsworth 1 But the Occleves and Lyddgates of the first era, the Donnes and Henry Mores of the second, and the Mallets and Tickells of the third, had each their glimmering hour. A brighter poetic day must anon come, Avith its healthy exhilarating sunshine ; and poetry shall again awake in renovation, to exhibit a child-like nature united with a giant's power — the majestic imagination wedded to the masculine intellect. THE END. PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH. WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS BAVJS LATELY PUBLISHED— THE POETICAL WORKS OF THOMAS AIRD. A New Edition, complete in One Vol. small octavo, 6s. Twenty-Second Edition, foolscap octavo, price 7s. 6d, THE COURSE OF TIME. A POEM IN TEN BOOKS. By Robert l^oUok, A.3MI. " Of deep and hallowed impress, full of noble thoughts and graphic conceptions — the production of a mind alive to the great relations of being, and the sublime simplicity of our religion." — Blackwood's Magazine, LAYS OF THE SCOTTISH CAVALIERS, AND OTHER POEMS. By "VT. Bdmondstoune Aytoun, Professor of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres in the University of Edinburgh. Ninth Edition, foolscap octavo, 7s. 6d. " Finer ballads than these, we are bold to say, are not to be found in the language." — Times. * ' Professor Ay toun's ' Lays of the Scottish Cavahers ' — a volume of verse which shows that Scotland has yet a poet. 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