THE
FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE. SATURDAY,
FEBRUARY 21, 1852.
JOHN MILTON, HIS LIFE AND GENIUS.
BY
GERALD
MASSEY.
MILTON! thou should'st be living at this hour,
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again,
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart,
Thou had'st a voice whose sound was like the sea,
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So did'st thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
WORDSWORTH. |
FOR ever hallowed be the names of the mighty spirits
of yore, the star of whose lives so often set in darkness, in tears, and
in blood, to rise again in immortal glory! Thanks, eternal thanks to
the martyrs for liberty and the patriot friends of man, who held on in the
dark and desolate day, and bravely bore the banner of Freedom through
battle, storm, and strife, holding on to exile and even to death.
Blessings be upon the gallant hearts that have quivered on the rack, and
cracked in the furnace flame! And blessings on the noble heads that
have laid them down upon the tyrant's bloody block for their last pillow,
heroically preferring death in their present, that the future might go
free. They have done all this, and suffered and bled for principles,
the reward, and fruition of which could not be reaped for ages. Aye,
blessings on them all, all who have fought for Liberty, and written their
words and deeds upon the world's memory in letters of electric light, and
left their patriot names as watchwords for us in the day of battle.
They set our hearts yearning with the true Promethean fire. There is
no cause in the world richer in heroes and martyrs, than this cause of
English Freedom, in which we combat to-day. Then let us gather up
their glorious words with loving hands, and treasure up their proud names
with loving hearts.
In this phalanx of the Free, there is no nobler name than
that of John Milton. "John Milton, and the men of the Commonwealth!"
What a martial ring there is in the words as of the clash of swords! and
how they start a thousand stirring memories, a thousand throbbing hopes.
How bravely John Milton walked the world; and what a sublime life he
lived! He has written, that a Poet should be in his life and
person a true poem, that is, a composition of the best and noblest things;
and how grandly he realised his conception!
Magnificent as is the poetry of "Paradise Lost," there
is more eloquent poetry in the life of the stern Republican, the poetry of
noble actions and deathless deeds. Of all our Poets, the life of
Milton was the grandest, the man-fullest, and the completest.
Shakspeare's was melodious and equable; mellowing into a life rich as a
summer sunset going down in glory. Coleridge's s was dreamy and
wierd-like. Byron's had all the lonely gloom and grandeur of the
tempest. His poetry sprang out of him like fruit forced from the
heated sides of Etna. Burns' was the "ower true tale" of life with
the fatal termination. And Keats' was the song of the
nightingale heard in the rich still summer night, pouring her passionate
soul out on the air in silver throbs of music, singing you into tears, as
though the old fable were true, which averred that she sang with a thorn
in her bosom. But the life of Milton was a colossal Epic poem, and
complete in all its parts. In his youth he was a model of purity, no
less than of beauty. In his manhood the stern and valiant warrior in
the Republican camp, the friend and coadjutor of Hampden and Cromwell, the
heroic defender of Freedom, whenever and wherever attacked. And in
his age, when he had battled and wrestled for his cause till he was blind,
when the Revolution was thwarted by treachery and exhaustion, and the
royal lecher Charles II, had returned, with his pimps and prostitutes, to
make the English Court a beastly brothel; when the martyrs had gone
headless down to death in bloody shrouds; when his compeers Ireton and
Bradshawe were dragged from their tombs to rot upon way-side gibbets,
still we find the immortal old man, brave as his own Michael, "bating no
jot of heart or hope," still battling an in the good old cause, true as
ever to his principles, firmly as ever the Republican, writing down prelacy and kingcraft, and all kinds of absolutism and arbitrary power, in
despite of Despot, Death, and Devil! "Do you not think your loss of
sight is a judgment of God upon you, Mr. Milton, for the murder of my
father?" asked the Duke of York, afterwards James II. "If I have lost my
eyes, your father lost his head," replied the dauntless old man. In his
old age and blind, he wrote "Paradise Lost," the greatest fruit of the
Revolution. Milton was essentially the man of his time, not more the
creation than the creator of that time; but like his age, he was terribly
in earnest, mighty, holy, and heroic! It seems to us that he was the
greatest among those great hearts whose thunder-throbs sent the pulse of
Freedom through all the world, and through all time. He was the strongest
personality and the greatest individuality of that period. The force of
his personality is remarkable through all his works. In Shakspeare you
cannot identify the individual being, feeling, or sentiments, of the
author. Like the Creator of the Universe, he is invisible. But John Milton
is in every line he wrote. Shakspeare is greatest, doubtless; he is
nearest to the Creator; but on that account he is isolated from us—we
cannot climb to where he sits, and clasp him as a brother, as we can John
Milton, who comes home to our hearts in his own personality.
Milton must stand next to Shakspeare as a genius! He was a whole and
complete man—full developed in body and brain, and all his faculties
fitly harmonised. He had a sublime imagination, understanding the most
subtle, reasoning powers, will and eloquence, wit, rhetoric, and
invective. He shone in all kinds of literature, epical, dramatic,
pastoral, in the elegy and the masque, in the hymn and the sonnet, in song
and satire, in discussion—historical, political, and religious; he could
do figuratively what Dr. Johnson denied; he could hew the colossus from
the rock, and carve heads upon cherry-stones. Milton has been too
generally looked upon as the Poet merely; he was a great prose writer as
well. The works he wrote in English and Latin prose, number forty-eight. And he was a man in whom patriotism was as heroical a passion as poesy. His prose works have been too long ignored. The greatest of them, such as
the "Speech on the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing," his "Defence of the
People of England," and his "Eikonoclastes," are among the finest
specimens of prose writing in our language; truly "the precious
life-bloods of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up to a life
beyond life."
We shall only have space to jot down a few details of his life. Properly
speaking, there is no life of Milton at all worthy of the name; there
have been many inadequate attempts, principally by his enemies, who have
each flung a stone upon the place where he lies, until it has become a
cairn, and that which was intended to obliterate, has become his monument. John Milton. was born in Bread Street, City of London, within the shadow
of St. Pauls', on the 9th of December, in the year 1608. His father was a
scrivener, and distinguished for his classical attainments. John received
his early education under a clergyman of the name of Young, and was
afterwards placed at St. Paul's school, whence he was removed, in his
seventeenth year, to Christ Church, Cambridge, where he distinguished
himself for the facility and beauty of his Latin verses. It is uncertain
whether he ever passed the famous Pons asinorum,* although it is certain
that he was whipped for a juvenile contumacy, and that he never expresses
any gratitude to his Alma Mater. He originally intended to have entered
the church, but early formed a dislike to subscriptions and oaths, as
requiring what he calls an "accommodating conscience;" and this dislike
he retained to the last. The true man is sure to gravitate towards his
work, and the church was not for Milton. Fancy the Rev. Mr. Milton!
Meanwhile, his father had retired from business to Horton, in
Buckinghamshire, where the young Milton spent five years in solitary
study. Of these years little is known, but it was there he lived deep in
himself, and gathered from all parts of the earth knowledge of all kinds
that would feed the fire of his mighty genius. It was then he brought out
the thews and sinews which were to enable him to go forth to wrestle with
prelate and king, and to throw them. It was then he gave the eagle-wings
to his spirit, on which, in after time, it soared to the dizzy pinnacle of
his lofty fame. It was at this period of his life he composed those
exquisite minor poems, which alone ought to place his name side by side in
glory with the sons of immortality. "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso,'' "Comus,"
and "Lycidas."
At the age of thirty he began his travels, and visited Paris, Florence,
Rome, and Naples. In Italy he met and became acquainted with Galileo, "the
starry Galileo with his woes," whom he describes as "now grown old, a
prisoner in the Inquisition, for thinking in Astronomy, otherwise than as
his Franciscan and Dominican censurers would have him." How interesting to
contemplate the meeting of two such men as Milton an Galileo! How sublime
their conversation! The old man must have descanted eloquently upon his
wrongs and persecutions; for we know what manner of man he was by his
proud and deathless "It moves for all that," when released from the rack. What grand conjectures of liberty in the future those two must have nursed
up between them. And how the heart of young Milton fed on the deep fire
burning in the old man's eyes—adding fresh intensity to his zeal for the enfranchisement of thought.
In Italy the Poet grew and strengthened beneath its sunny, ripening
influence. At this time occurred a little romantic incident. In his youth
Milton, like the "eternal child" Shelley, was exceedingly beautiful; so
fair and comely that he was called the lady of his College. When in Italy
he had lain down to repose in the heat of the day, in the fields, under
the grateful shadow of some trees. A lady of noble rank passing was
greatly struck with the appearance of the slumberer. She wrote a few lines
in praise of his beauty, laid them at his side, and went her way. When
Milton awoke, he found the lines, but the angel-visitant was gone. It is
further stated that he sought for her some time, but in vain, while she
followed him to England; and was so mortified at finding him by this time
married, that she died for love, with a broken heart.
Milton had intended to extend his tour to Sicily and Greece, but the state
of affairs in England drew him home. "I deemed it dishonourable," he said,
"to be lingering abroad, even for improvement, while my fellow-citizens
were contending for liberty at home." In those words out-spoke the true
heart of brave John Milton. The Civil War had broken out, and he was not
the man to live in a state of inglorious quiet, while his countrymen
fought for their lives and liberties. So he came home and fought the good
fight with his pen, not because he shunned the sword, for he was an
admirable swordsman, and brave as Hector, but because he could aid the
popular cause best by the pen. He taught a school for his living, and was
afterwards Latin Secretary to Cromwell. He was three times married, and
but once happy in his wife, and that was the one selected for him, and
not by him. He defended the execution of Charles I, and the government of
Cromwell in several treatises. His dream of a Republic was a Commonwealth
based on the models of antiquity. In all matters of Church and State his
convictions were in accordance with the doctrines of the extreme
Republicans. On the return of Charles II. persecution fell upon Milton. His name was proscribed, and his books burned; he was compelled to
abscond, and it was a miracle that the god-likest head then lifted to
brave the tyrant, did not roll from the scaffold-block. But "Man is
immortal till his work be done," and Milton could not die so long as God
had need of him. So he escaped, and his enemies took counsel and said, "We will let him break his heart in silence, we will neglect him; he is
poor, blind, and solitary, and the silence of the world, that has so
often rung with his fame, will crush him." But little did they know the
man. He struggled on manfully, and survived the crisis. The barque in
which he had shipped had gone to pieces at sea; but he was a strong,
daring swimmer, and won the shore, where he has built himself an
everlasting monument as the "Ebenezer" of his Deliverance—"Paradise
Lost." Who shall estimate how much his baffled hopes of the revolution
contributed to that name and subject? "Paradise Lost" was sold to the
publisher for five pounds. Between its publication and his death but
little occurred, save the production of "Samson Agonistes," "A System of
Logic," and a few other minor, but noble works.
In November, 1674 Milton expired. His health hall been declining fast;
"but such was the strength of his mind," says Aubrey, "that even in the
paroxysms of his fell disease, he would be very cheerful and his
dissolution was so easy that it was unperceived by the persons in the
bed-chamber."
There is a description of the death of Goethe in Longfellow's Hyperion, so
beautiful and so applicable to that of Milton, that we are compelled to
quote it.
"His majestic eyes looked for the last time on the light of a pleasant
spring morning; calm, like a god, the old man sat, and, with a smile,
seemed to bid farewell to the light of day, on which he had gazed for more
than eighty years. Books were near him, and the pen which had just dropped
from his dying fingers. 'Open the shutters, and let in more light.' were
his last words. Slowly stretching forth his hand, he seemed to write on
the air; and as it sank down again and was motionless, the spirit of the
old man was gone."
|
Thus died John Milton, a man in whom there was no guile, and "one in whom
the elements were so well mixed," that Nature might well say, "here is a
man." After a life of incessant toil the grand old warrior went to his
rest unrewarded by the world he strove to bless, and unappreciated by
the nation he strove to emancipate. But the same world that stones and
crucifies the martyrs, also builds their sepulchres and monuments. "O,
world, a brave world art thou, with thy SCORN and
GALL for the bleeding
heart, and thy crown for the corpse's brow.
"Milton thou should'st be living at this hour,
England hath need of ye!" |
Sings Wordsworth, and indeed she hath need that the spirit of Milton were
effervescing in the hearts of thousands, for the grand and splendid
purpose or his magnificent Era was drowned in blood and tears, like that
of the French Revolution, and yet remains to be accomplished. It was to us
and to the men of the coming time, the men of commonwealth entrusted their
infant cause, as they, its parents, sank with up-lifted hands, and the
tide of destruction swept over them. It was to us they bequeathed the
battle of freedom, as our proud heritage, when they sank covered with
wounds, and the mingling stouts of victory and defeat rang in their
dying ears. And are we traitors to the glorious trust we bear? Have the
countless host of martyrs met death with smiling rapture in vain? Has all
that seed of blood, and tears, and prayers, and deeds, been sown in vain? Lives there no spark of the olden
fire, that the breath of freedom may
kindle into flame? Are our hearts all
too cold to quicken the sovereign seed they sowed into a generous harvest? Is the earnest heroic faith that throbbed in the hearts of the puritan
commonwealth, as with a Titan-pulse for ever
dead?
They were few, those hero hearts of old
Who played the peerless part!
We are fifty-fold, but the gangrene gold,
Hath eaten out Milton's heart!
With their faces to danger like freemen they fought
With their daring all heart and hand,
And the thunder-deed followed the lightning-thought
When they stood for their own good land. |
But we sneak and skulk about this England of ours as though we had no part
or lot in it, but to toil on, and suffer in silence. Englishmen have
become
soulless slaves at home, and despised nonentities abroad; and the state is
so rotten that a good blast of the commonwealth men would shake it into a
fit of dissolution. Arouse ye dwellers in the land of Milton and Cromwell!
for we are on the brink of another such a struggle as that of English
Puritanism. The trumpet of Time gives no uncertain sound. Amid
all the troubles of the dark days that fall upon us, let us not forget our
mission, the establishment
of the establishment of the Republic Democratic and Social. This is
the grand idea labouring into birth which e causes the mighty workings
of the present. It is the motive impulse of all the commotions of our
age, and it hastens to a sure fulfilment. And while the nations are
stirring in the cause of right for the accomplishment of this great purpose,
shall we be found lagging in the wake of the world? No! No! The true
of heart will leap up at the sound of coming battle, put on the panoply
that is stronger than steel, and join the people in their holy warfare
against universal tyranny. We cannot be Milton, my brothers, but we may
strive to imitate his devotedness, his earnestness, manliness, purity,
and patriotism; and there is none so mean and humble but may do something
to hasten on the time of which we dream, that shall crown long years of
blood, and tears, and misery, and degradation, when the poor man's heart
shall leap for gladness, and the desert of his life shall blossom as the
rose.
We may each and all do something toward revolutionising the tides and
currents of old England's heart, and to break the kingly and priestly
chains the men of the commonwealth so effectually loosened. We may each
and all do something toward winning back the Republic pure and noble as
that which Milton dreamed of, and happy as the old Roman, one described so
eloquently by the Poet:—
When none was of a party,
But all were for the State,
The rich man helpt the poor man,
And the poor man loved the great
When lands were fairly portioned,
And spoils were fairly sold,
And the Romans were like brothers,
In the brave days of old. |
* Ed.—in Mediaeval schools, the fifth proposition
in Euclid was used to weed out dunces. It was regarded as a narrow bridge
from the first four self-evident propositions to the beginning of real
geometry. |
____________________________________
THE
FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE. FEBRUARY 22,
1852.
CO-OPERATION THE IMMEDIATE NECESSITY.
FOR eighteen hundred years have the disciples of
Christianity been crying aloud up and down the world. They have
suffered countless sufferings and murderous martyrdoms. By hundreds
and by thousands have they braved the rack and the stake, and let out
their noble lives in the dungeons of infernal inquisitions, or expired
with the triumph-cry of faith on their lips, and with up-thrust hand,
quivering through the furnace-flame. How many noble hearts have gone
down; how many heroic lives have bled out in darkness and in tears!
From that time to this they have gone on preaching and teaching,
announcing the redeemer not yet come, and the redemption that is scarcely
yet begun; and to-day they are preaching with forty myriad parson-power
in this England of ours; and yet we have little more of true and practical
Christianity welded into our life, individual, and national, than existed
in old Rome, Jerusalem, or Babylon. Good they have done, for they
were the pioneers who beat out the old roads to freedom, and their
bleached bones have filled up many a terrible chasm which we have had to
pass, and their footprints are planted indelibly deep up many a steep
ascent which we have had to climb, leaving a blessing in their track, so
that those who followed after, with tears of joy, have sung the names of
those who had gone before. Yet the result is miserably mean compared
with the the outlay of blood and tears, labour and life—and with what
might brave been. And this it appears to me is because they have
merely gone on preaching and teaching, praying and talking, and have not
set about any practical realization of the redemption they prophesied.
These have always sought to inculcate Christianity instead of so arranging
the social machinery, and so moulding humanity, that Christianity should
have been developed as the out-come of a natural growth! They
have simply reversed the old pagan doctrine, of nursing the flesh, at the
expense of the spirit, and anathematise and curse the flesh that the
spirit may aspire—plunging the body into hell-fire to burn the soul out
pure for heaven, forgetting that spirit and flesh must be developed
harmoniously, and that both are good, and that both have to be saved.
They have not made Christianity into a system of human education, which
should have made it as much an imperative necessity to do good and to be
good, as the present makes it compulsory to do evil and to be evil.
Now it appears to me that the advocates of the Charter, have pursued the
same course of talking everlastingly, talk, talk, nothing but talk these
last twenty years, save countless martyrdoms and endless sufferings; and
never was Chartism at so low an ebb as at present; never did we appear
farther from obtaining the Charter than now. After years and years
of toil and struggle, of wrestling and hoping, and frequent despairs, here
we are stranded in the middle of the nineteenth century, with no more
energy, heart, or brotherly trust, in each other than in the beginning of
the century, and little more done for the practical realization of our
principles. Let us, the working -classes, distinctly understand our
position. We all admit that political power is only the means to an
end, that end, as I take it, is to become the masters of our own
productions, and the distributors thereof.
That at once places our interests in a clear, broad light,
distinct from the other interests, and all other Classes. It is the
producers of wealth against all who live on them, by buying and selling,
and every other species of roguery curried on by force or fraud. The
producers against the world! that is our position. We have to
produce for ourselves, instead of paying to society eight hundred per
cent. to be allowed to produce. We have to re-constitute society on
such principles as shall render the fruit of a man's labour the natural
reward for his toil; and this, I maintain, can only be done on the
principle of co-operation, that is, of mutual help, or all for each and
each for all, instead of the present creed of hell, of each for himself,
and devil take the hindmost. Bear that in mind, working-men—we must
become the masters of our own labour and its produce. There lies the
root of the matter; and all your panaceas that do not probe to that depth
are not worth your consideration or agitation. While all the helps
that conduce to such an end are truly acceptable.
Before I proceed to discuss the relative aid the franchise
would bring us in this matter, let us see who are the real masters of the
situation, the rulers of the world. The most important power that
crushes us now in England, is not that of king-craft. The right
divine of kings to perpetrate wrongs was exploded when our ancestors
abbreviated that champion of all despotism, Charles the First. And
so little do we care for royalty as a nation, that it only exists
by virtue of its nonentity. Even the middle-class reformers would go
for a republic rather than touch the present relations of capital and
labour if they were guaranteed an immense reduction in the taxation.
Nor do the aristocracy possess this power; they are very fast being
swamped by the middle-class; half their lands are IN
mortgage, and the other half would scarcely pay their enormous debts.
The power THEN that stands in the most direct
antagonism to us and to our interests, is the moneyed power of the
middle-class. Between us and them there is war to the death.
It is the liberty of labour, pitted against the despotism of gold.
And this despotism is as deadly and damnable as that of
feudalism. It is more prolific of misery than feudalism, for that
only crushed humanity in the gross mass; this despotism crushes us in
detail, man by man, woman by woman, and child by child. By giving
unlimited sway to capital in its murderous warfare with labour, labour
must be continually beaten—the weakest must go to the wall; it is a
battlefield where it is death to the weak, and triumph to the strong!
And labour is ever the weak, capital ever the mighty!
Again: under the iron regime of feudalism the crushed
slaves could make common cause, for they were one in their misery!
They could unite against their oppressors with a kind of mutuality.
But this is impossible with the tyranny we are bending our necks to! for
with unlimited competition, which is the beau ideal of middle-class
liberty, every man's hand is against his brother, and all our interests
are rendered antagonistic. They can buy us like cattle in the
world's market, because we are compelled to undersell each other, and
"needs must when the devil drives." And then, as though it were not
competition enough for the married man without offspring to work cheaper
and undersell the man with,—for the unmarried man to work cheaper still,
and undersell both—and lastly, for the children to work cheapest of all,
and undersell all adult labour—they pit flesh and blood to compete with
steam and fire—bone and muscle to compete with iron shafts and
never-tiring wheels, heedless of how much humanity must sink and be
scarified in the horrible strife. It is this power that sets man
against man, woman against woman, child against child in unnatural
warfare. Truly it is the "consecration of cannibalism." Thus
it menaces, uses, and conquers us, for it has all the organized forces of
society at its disposal; and thus, while it sets at work its million
engines of torture to rack and wound, to pinch and peel, statecraft and
law support it, the priest blesses it, and the soldier enforces its
inexorable decrees.
Thus, working-men, we stand face to face with this mammoth
tyranny, which, like Aaron's rod, swallows up all others; and all that we
do, is to struggle and scramble to get a little farther back from its
devouring jaws, our destruction being only a question of time.
Friends and brothers fall at our side and are torn from us to-day, and our
turn comes to-morrow.
From the foregoing remarks, our readers will see how little
sympathy we have with middle-class reformers. We fight a distinct
battle to theirs. They only seek further political power, to enable
them to stave off the social revolution which is inevitable. We only
seek political power, to enable us to consummate the social revolution,
which must follow. "Free trade" or "Protection" are no watchwords
for working-men, while they have not the power to ensure to themselves the
fruits of either. And now having made the necessary preliminary
remarks, I will, in future papers, endeavour to show the immediate
necessity of Co-operative Associations as a means of fighting the battle
of labour versus competition and monopoly, of the true enfranchisement of
our class, and of the realization of Freedom, Equality, and Brotherhood.
GERALD
MASSEY.
* I see, by the last No. of Mr. Ernest Jones'
Notes of
Exclamation to the People, that he has fallen foul of what I said
in a previous article.
He urges that we shall have to pay this eight-hundred per cent. to society
still, and the 4 per cent. interest beside. A miserable fallacy! seeing
that our first step in Co-operative Association recovers to its the
profits of Capital, and previous cash of Mastership, which, as every one
knows, is as much, or more, than that of all the workmen together. Thus,
WE RECOVER ABOUT CENT PER CENT
OF THE EIGHT HUNDRED
which, I calculate, Labour pays to society at present; but, more of this
hereafter.
|
____________________________________
THE
FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE. MARCH 6,
1852.
PIERRE JEAN DE BÉRANGER,
HIS LIFE AND GENIUS.
BY
GERALD MASSEY.
|
Pierre-Jean de Béranger
(1780 - 1857) |
THE Poet of the People must be a lyric poet. Where
the epic poem is read once, the song is read and sung a thousand times. It
is more immediately appreciated—it does its work at once—while at the same
time, if it possess the true, immortal stuff, each repetition brings out
richer beauty, and adds to its power and popularity. The People's
Poet—"Song-writer," if you will—what nobler aspiration can there be? To
be crowned by the People as their Laureate of Song—Does not such a man
stand peerless among peers, and kingliest among kings? We had rather be
such a one, than author of the world's three great epics. What a glorious
thing to possess the magic to make the people laugh from very fullness of
joy, and the poor man's heart to break into singing! To call up sweet
tears into the eyes of those who seldom weep, and make the rocky nature
gush with the living waters of love. To kindle in the cold, crusht being
of the masses a sense of the beauty and grandeur of this world of wondrous
loveliness, with its rich over-brimming of plenty and poetry, its eternal
mountains laughing up in the face of the sky, its glorious greenery, its
spring-time and harvest, its budding merry mornings, and tender starry
midnights, its beautiful woman and brave men, to accredit and reveal, the
better nature that underlies so much roughness, rudeness, and rockiness—to
hymn the people's prayer for nobler growth and development—to retouch and
rekindle the defaced image of God in the worn face of humanity, by calling
forth the lineaments of heavenly beauty—to sing the holy faith that—
There is no hearts so earthy, but at times
Hath eager leaps to clutch at nobler life,
And some blind gropings after better things.
That smiles of God live in the darkest being,
And soul-light glimmers ev'n on helot-brows,
Like mellow moonlight, silvering thro' a cloud! |
To trim the divine lamp of poetry in the hearts and hones of the poor,
and elevate the standard of humanity for all—to war with all oppressions
that retard the reign of love and the bond of brotherhood—to utter the
people's social and political aspirations—to turn the mask that Falsehood
wears into crystal, so that its hideous features may be seen—to tear down
the veil from all established shame and grinning hypocrisies that sit in
high places—such is the work of the People's Poet! And such a poet
is Béranger, the greatest Lyrist of the age—Béranger, the poet, patriot,
and philosopher.
In writing of Béranger, one is compelled to speak of Burns, and Moore, as
song-writers, to illustrate the position which Béranger occupies in French
song. They are all three recognised national Poets; they have written
volumes of national songs, and won imperishable fame. Between Burns and Béranger, the likeness is very striking. They have the same withering
contempt of mere wealth and state; both find inspiration in dear woman's
charms; both evince the same hearty and keen zest for conviviality. They
have both the same rich humour, and Shaksperian strokes of satire, and
both have the requisite power for song-writing; that lyrical bubbling of
the soul into song, which is the most essential inspiration. But, Béranger
had no such "advantages" as Burns, who wrote his immortal lyrics to tunes
which in themselves are half battles for immortality! Those thrilling
strains of olden melody which had for ages wailed, and yearned, about his
native land for spousal words. Eloquent with the memories of a proud past,
and hallowed by the smiles, and tears of bye-gone generations. He caught
up these harmonies which have a power in their very tone, to make tears
start in the eyes, and which tremble among the heart-strings, and make
them ring out fresh and melodious, today, as ever rang the harp-strings,
beneath the hands of the ancient harpers. Burns had many a glorious
starting-line, and many a deathless chorus, which gathered up, and held
the hopes and aspiration of a nation, snatches of minstrelsy, in which the
alarm of battle, the Covenanter's Hymn, the Wail of the Martyrs, the
Coronach, and the Song of Victory, mingled and rolled in thunder-music
adorn the centuries on which the Poet seated himself as in a chariot of
fire, and went up in glory.
Béranger had no such aids, there were no fine fragments of national
minstrelsy already intensely dear to the popular heart, to which he could
wed his verse. He had no such secondary cause of imperishable fame. His
lyric measures are his own, and he had to trust, solely to the inherent
force of his own genius, and the spontaneous sougfulness of his Chansons,
to win their widening way to the hearts of the People, and to the
inheritance of everlasting life. But he possessed the genius, the fiery
zeal, the untiring heart, and the indomitable energy necessary to the
accomplishment of his splendid purpose, of becoming the People's Poet, and
he surmounted all barriers, and conquered all hindrances.
Moore is by no means worthy of being classed with Burns and Béranger, as a
national poet, or people's song-writer. The golden lyre of giant-hearted
Robert Burns, and that of the rough-and-ready Republican Béranger, do not
accord with the elegant little musical snuff-box of the Bard of Erin,
which is made of brass, and rings best on the drawing-room table. He
has no claim to the title of National Poet, and he never won his diploma
in the school of the poor, which must ever be earned by the People's
Song-writer. Where shall we look for the consuming fire of earnestness
which attends the patriotic passion in his songs? The bravest of them, and
the dearest to our hearts, are only taken as pegs to hang his splendid
raiment upon, a good investment of his cleverness, safe subjects, in which
he could expend his drawing-room patriotism. We know he did not feel what
he sung, that he had not the aspiration he simulated, and his severe
reprobation of Rousseau, in those lines on the hypocrisy of genius, and
its power of feigning, is his own condemnation. Has he not written in the
Appendix to the splendid illustrated edition of the "Irish Melodies," "It
has been said that the tendency of this publication is mischievous, and
that I have chosen those airs but as the vehicle of dangerous politics,
as fair and precious vessels from which the wine of error may be
administered. I beg of those respected persons to believe that there is no
one who deprecates more sincerely than I do, any appeal to the passions of
an ignorant and angry multitude. But it is not through that gross and
inflammable region of society, a work of this nature ever could have
intended to circulate. It looks much higher for its audience and readers. It is to be found on the pianofortes of the rich and educated. Of those
who can afford to have their national zeal a little stimulated without
exciting much dread of the excess into which it may hurry them." O, but
you're a humbug Tommy Moore! So you repudiate the people? Well they can
do without you. Byron said you dearly loved a lord—and he knew you. How
grand old Béranger would scorn such snobbish flunkeyism as that. We
should not say anything more about the Bard of Erin, but that he
continually provokes comparison with Béranger in his choice of the same
themes and we cannot but remark the difference of their handling.
Moore has written drinking songs, happy, smart and of cunning workmanship.
But he lacks the roistering roaring, rollicking of the genuine
Bacchanalian—its only a sniggering intoxication, and any Lilliputian could
get as drunk as that! Béranger is jolly and unctuous as
Falstaff. The wine of his song effervesces and sparkles, and the
bubbles burst, each tipping you the wink of invitation, as he sends all
care to the devil with his hearty abandonment. Convivial lyrics are
no favourites of ours; but we mention this difference, to illustrate the
natures of the two singers. Moore merely brings out the pretty
conceits of the man, while Béranger goes straight to the heart, and opens
it to you, rich and generous as a ripe pomegranate cut right down the
middle. Moore has written love-songs. Many of them are
exquisitely beautiful, true, and tender things; but he seldom gives forth
the sapphic yearing "as of a god in pain," the deep earnestness of divine
love, whose very wounds flow with celestial ichor. He is in love
with his muse's form and face, rather than with the underlying and
informing soul. He sings what he thinks he ought to feel and see,
rather than simply records what he does feel and see. He is not
inspired, and is continually telling it, by his arduous make-believe, as
fatally as a man babbling in his sleep. He has few of those
home-touches which reach the universal heart of humanity. But it is
in the political songs that the grand difference is manifested.
Moore's politics are a sham. He does not dip his pen in the inkstand
of his heart—he dips it in rose-water, so that he may not stain his white
kid-gloves. He does not stir the blood nor rouse the heart as with
the sound of a trumpet. His songs have not the stuff in them that
wakes a nation, and sends a people to battle for liberty, with eyes
weeping and burning, and hearts beating defiance to all despotism.
He does not sing of Liberty, who cometh terrible as a Nemesis and glorious
as an army with banners, her footsteps red with the blood of the
oppressor, and yet with a smile in her eyes that lights up a divine
radiance in the hearts and homes of the poor! His is only a
speculative freedom, and we feel that one burst of heart like "Who
fears to speak of Ninety-eight," is worth all his tinsel, and glitter, and
rhetoric. Béranger is the true "Mountain of Light" on the
ground-floor of the World's Exhibition, with its subtle sparkle of inner
life-light in the pure depths of it. Moore is the radiant imitation,
mounted up there in the gallery, very brilliant, beautifully set, large
and lustrous, but not diamond after all, only cut-glass. In his
political songs, Béranger is the dauntless champion of the poor, the
oppressed, and down-trodden victims of social and political tyranny.
He has slung them into the camp of the tyrants, as they rushed from the
furnace of his mind, like bolts of steel welded white hot; and they have
been as deadly and devastating as the old GREEK FIRE.
He has spoken the words that despots quake to hear. The dwellers in
the world's high places, and the occupants of the thrones of power have
placed their ears to the ground, and trembled, as they have caught the
sound of the mustering of the long-oppressed, and the march of the poor's
grand army, timed to the music of Béranger's songs, and hurrying to give
them battle. The wrongs and persecutions of the people never had
fitter utterance than in his noble lyrics: they have no vile conceits,
tawdry trash, or stale-drunk sentimentalism. They are sound, honest,
and practical. He felt what he wrote, it sprung from the living
heart of the man, and went straight to the heart of the people, whom he
loved. He had their aspirations, and lived their life, he hoped
their hopes, wept their tears, was one with them in their sorrows and
their joys, their defeats and their victories. And they have taken
him for ever and—aye, to live in the hearts of the people. "The
People," says he, "that is my muse. They wanted a man to speak them
the language they love and understand, and who would create imitators to
vary and multiply versions of the same text. I have been that man."
Again he remarks, "When I say the people, I mean the mob—I mean if you
like the populace of the lowest grade. It is not sensible to the
blandishments of wit, nor to the delicacies of taste; Granted. But
for that reason it obliges authors to conceive the more strongly, more
grandly, to captivate attention. Adapt then to its robust nature,
both your subjects and your developments. It is neither abstract
ideas nor types they require of you. Show them the naked human
heart. I am persuaded that if there be any sense of poetry left
in the world, it is in their ranks we must go to seek for it. Let as
then try to make it for them, but to succeed in this we must study the
people." Brave advice that! the truth of which has been well
attested by the poet himself. But we must pass on to the life of the
poet. He himself says, "My songs are myself," his life is written
there; and one ought to be able to quote many of his songs which
illustrate various phases of his life, but we shall have to confine
ourselves to an outline of his personal history. It is not very
romantic, and has few startling incidents, but it is a proud record of a
grand man, who lived his own heroism, carried his head loftily in spite of
poverty, and bore himself bravely through the world, and like Massena on
the field of battle, when the fight went sorest against him, he rose with
the circumstance, was most himself and went forth a conqueror, clad in the
robes of victory!
Peter John de Béranger was barn in Paris on the 19th of
August, 1780, in the domicile of his poor old grandfather—his mother's
father—a tailor. This is recorded in one of his songs, and he loves
to dwell upon his connexion with the kind and honest old tailor, who
stitched hard to keep the poor, ricketty child in pap. It was a poor
prospect, notwithstanding a fairy did visit the poet in his cradle, and
endow him with the gift of song. This he also tells us in rhyme in
his "Tailor and the Fay." His father was born at Flamin cour, near
Peronne. He was a scapegrace, eccentric sort of man and led a life,
which, like Joseph's coat, was of many colours. The father was proud
of the name of Béranger, and in his stupid vanity, would fain have founded
some pretensions to a noble ancestry. This the son sternly
repudiated. "Eh! what?" he exclaims in one of his songs, "Me
noble? No, no—I am low born—very low." Until he was nine years
of age he remained with the old tailor at Paris. He was then removed
to Peronne (the revolution raging in all its fury), where his father's
mother kept a small inn. Here he fell in with some books, odd
volumes of Telemachus, and of the world-famous works of Racine and
Voltaire, and he thus gained an introduction to miscellaneous literature.
When about twelve, he was struck with lightning on his
grandmother's doorsill, in spite of the holy water, with which, on the
approach of the storm, the venerable old dame had besprinkled him and the
house. At fourteen he was bound apprentice to a printer, named
Laisné, who was a good fellow, and whom Béranger has accordingly made
immortal. The honest printer was wont to write verses, and he, too,
encouraged the boy. "Sing, poor little one—sing," which, according
to the poet, was the fiat of the Creator at his birth—"Chante, chante,
panvre petit." His best practical education was at a primary school,
at Peronne, founded upon a plan of Rousseau. The children were
dressed and drilled as soldiers, and cultivated for philosophers.
Béranger was the most distinguished leader and orator of this school, and
enlightened citizens Tallien and Robespierre with many a patriotic address
from self and playfellows. This course of life continued up to
eighteen, about which time he began to rhyme,—albeit he had to chirp many
a year before he realized the fullness of the good Fairy's gift.
He now returned to Paris, and for the first but not the last
time, did not know what to do for a dinner. Poetic influence now
began to operate on him in downright earnest; he is said to have burst
into tears the first time he heard the Marseillaise Hymn sung. His
sensitiveness was at all times the keenest. He now worked at "the
case" as a printer, and tried his hand at all kinds of poetry. He
attempted a drama, but on reading a few pages of Moliere, found it was no
go for him, and consequently gave up in despair. He next commenced
an epic poem of which Clovis was to be the hero! Summary
condemnation of this was the verdict of the future song writer. In
the midst of his glorious dreams of poetic fame, work failed, and Béranger
endured the bitterest suffering; and privations of want. He thought
of going to try his fortunes in Egypt; he remembered the same notion had
occurred to Napoleon when good dinners were scarce things with him; "all
great reputations come from the East," quoth he, and Béranger endorsed the
sentiment. He was, however, dissuaded, and he held on at Paris, to
suffer, study, love, and to triumph. At the age of 23 he had written
a large mass of verses, and beaten his music out a little more clearly.
But what to do with them? he was too poor to print them and destitute of
all resources, wearied with broken hopes, versifying without object or
encouragement, without instruction and without advice, he conceived the
notion of putting his poems in an envelope and addressing them by post to
Lucien Bonaparte, brother to the future emperor. After a lapse of
three days Lucien sent for him, and generously gave him advice and
assistance. He presented Béranger with a small pension which he drew
from the French Institute; a means of support the poet enjoyed till 1812.
He also became a copying clerk in the University, where he toiled for
twelve years, at a salary of £80. He was expelled from this post by
the Bourbons on the publication of his first volume of songs. The
first collection was printed in 1815. Some of these first offspring
caught the popular ear and dwelt there. He was especially happy in
the burden or chorus of his songs. Music and meaning were bound up
in the refrain, like the knot tied at the whip's end to enhance the smack
of it. These songs were principally light and joyous, mere caprices
of a vagabond spirit; but political events began to influence his mind and
to give him another element to mould in his poetry, and gradually his
songs became more serious. This was very apparent in the second
collection, written between 1815 and 1821, in which some of his finest
songs appear. In these he speaks words of cheer and consolation to
the poor and afflicted; the epoch was sorrowful, and the poet's song
became serious, even sad. Béranger was bitterly disappointed at the
restoration of the Bourbons, not that he was a thorough Bonopartist, for
says he, "not all my admiration for his genius could ever blind me to the
crushing despotism of the empire.'' But he shed bitter tears at the
sight of the allied armies entering Paris, and bled at heart that the
Cossack should thrust back the Bourbons upon them. Song after song
rang out, boiling over with scathing scorn, and stinging irony, burning,
and maddening to the sensitive French, as the red-hot sand, flung from the
beleaguered walls of Tyre, which pierced to the bone and marrow of the
besiegers.
In 1821, Béranger published his second collection of songs,
10,000 copies were subscribed for, and the impression was immediately
sold. The writer was at once pounced upon by the government, which
had long waited the opportunity. His political songs had been
floating about for a long time, and had wrought an immense influence with
the people; but heretofore he had not owned his paternity to the songs
which he now did, by publishing them with his name.
Three months in prison was the government award. A
series of satires and lampoons still more biting and piercing than the
last was the fruit of his imprisonment. These were published so as
to defy the Censorship, being circulated from hand to hand, and sung in
the streets, and under the windows of his persecutors. The
government and the Jesuits were driven frantic, and at length he was again
imprisoned, this time it was for nine months with a fine of 10,000 francs,
which was subscribed by the people. With the revolution of July, his
friends came into power, and pension and place were offered him, which he
refused, preferring to remain poor and independent. His last
collection of songs was published in 1833, and he then avowed his
intention of writing no more. "He retired," he said "from the field
while he had strength to leave it; often toward the evening of life we
permit ourselves to be to be surprised by sleep in our arm-chair; better
go wait its visit in bed. I haste to betake me to mine, even tho' it
be a rather hard one." When the revolution of 1848 burst forth,
Béranger was not forgotten by the people of France. He was elected a
member of the new legislature which honour he declined in a characteristic
letter, rich in kindly feeling.
Béranger has won that fame which is accorded to but few—a
reputation so difficult to acquire, to be read and be loved at the same
time, in the salons of the rich and great, and in the huts of the
peasantry. His songs have taken possession of the national voice,
the national ear, and the national heart. His lyrics are upon every
lip; they are heard in the convivial gathering, the circle of the learned,
the workshop of the ouvrier, and the barracks of the soldier: they are
sung in the palace and the cabaret; the mansion and the
guinguette; in the street and the field—throughout the length and
breadth of France. Never was there popularity so fervid and so
general. In his capacity as song-writer he has exercised more sway
over France than any writer or ruler ever has, or peradventure ever will
again. At the birth, the bridal, and the bier, his strains are
chaunted. Young maidens, standing in the rosy light of first-love's
everlasting dawn; and aged dames, sitting at the doors of their
cottage-homes, singing and knitting in the sun; the sailor before the
mast, and the soldier marching to liberty or death—each and all find
musical utterance for their varied feelings, in a song of Béranger.
He has been accused of licentiousness in his earlier songs; but the most
outré of these produce laughter; and as Mr. Shandy says in his letter to
Uncle Toby, "Thou knowest, dear Toby, there is no passion so serious as
lust." He has written love-songs, joyous songs, witty songs,
satirical songs, political songs, comic songs, and ironical songs; he has
written philosophical songs, which soar into the sublime; patriotic songs,
which have roused the hearts of thirty million people, like the drum which
beats the charge of battle. In short, we should say that he is the
world's unparalleled song-writer and lyric poet. He combines the
buoyancy and grace of Anacreon; the startling fire of Pindar, the polished
keenness of Horace, the stern vivacity of Juvenal, the sublime earnestness
of Moore, and the passion of Burns; while in largeness of heart, in
development of his own intellectual being, in his reading and study of the
human heart, in depth of insight, and in dramatic power, he is akin to our
own Shakespeare. He is the Shakespeare of France. O, for one
arrow of fire from his battle-bow, to pierce between the joints of the
armour of this Napoleon the Little, when he lifts his murderous arm to aim
a blow at liberty.
But the bird of song is silent, and in the dearth of winter
one swallow would not make a summer. The Poet is way-worn and weary;
let him rest. He has done his work. He has lived his life—a
noble life, simple and philosophic as that of any sage of ancient Greece.
After he had borne the burthen in the heat of the day; after his sorrows,
struggles, self-sacrifices and sufferings, he retired to the modest little
cottage at Passy, where he has lived in seclusion, only broken when, on
some fete-day, his countrymen have insisted on drawing his carriage home,
with harness of twined flowers, garlanded by the fair hands of his
countrywomen. If ever there was a true man, and a genuine, sincere
patriot, it is Pierre Jean de Béranger. The last songs we have seen
of his were written, one in 1847. With the true prophetic
inspiration, he saw, as by instinct, the deluge that was coming, as he sat
watching from his mountain, where he dwells apart, and sang, "Poor
kings, they shall all be engulphed in the flood." And they were too!
only the foolish, tender-hearted peoples wouldn't let them drown.
Poor things! like the farmer who took up the up frozen viper, and nestled
it in his bosom to restore it, and to was stung for his compassionate
pains, THEY'LL KNOW BETTER NEXT TIME. The
other song, we believe the Poet's last, was the "First Song to the New
Republic," addressed to his dead friend, the old Republican, "Manuel."
Béranger is said to be compiling an historical dictionary,
where under the head of each notable name, he will record his various
remembrances, political and literary, with his own judgments of persons
and circumstances. It would be unpardonable to pass over the life of
Béranger without a review of his songs, but this we must do in some future
paper, probably in a very early number. Meanwhile, let us express a
hope that the grey hairs of the brave old Bard may not go down in sorrow
to the grave, while his dear land is polluted by the scamp Napoleon, and
his rabble rout, but that he may yet live to see the veritable Republic,
and, like Simeon of old, clasp in his arms, the "Christ that is to be,"
and bless his eyes with the sight, before they close in peaceful death. VIVE
BÉRANGER.
|
____________________________________
THE
FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE. SATURDAY,
MARCH 27, 1852.
WAS THOMAS MOORE A "HUMBUG?"
______________
SIR.—I take a very different view of
the character and genius of Thomas Moore to that expressed by Mr. G.
Massey in No. 5 of your journal. Béranger may be all your
correspondent asserts, and Thomas Moors be yet an honest man. Is it
necessary in order to exalt the character of one man that another should
be traduced? Is that an enviable fame which is built upon the ruins
of another man's reputation? Béranger's own genius is based broad
enough upon which to build a world-wide renown.
Why "Moore is by no means worthy to be classed with Burns and
Béranger as a national poet, or people's song-writer," I cannot tell;
unless it be that he was not unfortunate enough to be born in poverty and
wretchedness. Though never in poverty himself, Moore could
nevertheless fill the hearts of the humblest of his countrymen with
aspirations a liberty and virtue. He has displayed a devotion and
love for his native land in nearly every poem that has emanated from his
pen, which entitle him to rank among the most ardent advocates for
national freedom. What greater claim to being a national poet can a
man have than writing for all classes? In being read by the
"rich and educated" as well as by the poorest labourer in the land?
The poor alone are not a nation, any more than the wealthy.
That very expressive phrase, "a humbug," is applied to the
friend and associate of the ill-fated patriot, Robert Emmet, because he
deprecated any appeal to the "passions of an ignorant and angry
multitude." Will any man who wishes well to his country appeal to
the passions of any multitude, and least of all an ignorant one?
Then why apply an opprobrious epithet to Moore for not doing that which
every wise and good man would condemn? A multitude at any time is a
dangerous thing to deal with; and he who rouses its passions is as likely
to be swept away by it's fury as passions those against whom he wishes to
direct its rage.
Your correspondent remarks of Moore—"Byron said you dearly
loved a lord, and he knew you.'' It is true Byron did know Moore,
and entertained for him a respect amounting almost to affection. It
is also true that Moore loved a ''lord;" he loved Lord Byron, probably
Lord Bacon, and doubtless many others; but is he any the worse for that?
There have been lords better than many plebeians. What proof is
there in Moore's writings that he loved a lord for his title merely?
If he was fond of rank, why did he not obtain it for himself? Surely
a man man so popular as Moore in the days of George IV. might easily have
obtained a title for a little servile cringing, if he had felt desirous of
the "distinction." He was never even poet-laureate.
Moore is blamed for not being so "jolly and unctuous" in his
Bacchanalian songs as Béranger. I think the weaker a song of that
nature is the better—in fact, better none at all. Many a one, has
been made a drunkard because some great man has been a "jolly fellow;"
just as many a young politician has become vapid and incoherent because
some popular leader has indulged in extravagant expressions.
"Convivial lyrics are no favourites of ours" says your correspondent; yet,
by a strange inconsistency, he prefers the most "roaring, rollicking," &c.
I do not believe in the assertion that "Moore's politics were
a sham," and that he did not feel what he wrote. Moore, if
judged by his writings, will be found to be as sincere as any man who ever
wrote for the people. His whole soul seemed thoroughly imbued with
the spirit of liberty; and how he mourned over the sad fate of his unhappy
country is amply testified by the many appeals he has made on her behalf
to the hearts of his countrymen.
AUSTIN
HOLYOAKE.
TO AUSTIN HOLYOAKE.
SIR,—I object to the mode of your putting the
question, "Was Thomas Moore a humbug?" from I which it might appear that I
have laboured to prove him such. I was not speaking of the general
character of Moore, when I remarked, "O, but you're a humbug, Tommy
Moore." I had been quoting Moore's own words, which seemed to me to
contain unmitigated humbug and I would refer to those same words for my
justification. I have not "traduced him", nor "ruined his
reputation." Why "Moore is by no means worthy of being classed with
Burns and Béranger as a national poet or a people's song-writer," is,
because he was never catholic among the population of his native country
as Béranger is; in vain has Mc. Hale turned his songs into choice Irish,
the peasantry don't know them, don't sing them, or care for them, and not
because "he was not unfortunate enough to be born in poverty and
wretchedness," though I believe the poet of the poor must be born
poor there, in support of which opinion I am happy to quote from a letter
of a dear friend of mine, the of author of the "Saint's Tragedy," who
remarks upon this subject: "I was speaking with Chevalier Bunsen a short
time since on the effects of the beautiful song-literature of Germany,
when he urged me to devote my powers to writing songs for the people; and
I answered him then, as I tell you now, they must write them for
themselves." Moore has not written for all classes; I quote his own
words: "But it is not through that gross and inflammable mass a work of
this nature could have been intended to circulate. It looks much
higher for its audience." He repudiates what we call the people.
How, then, should he be compared to Burns and Béranger as a national poet?
"That very expressive phrase," a humbug, "was not applied to Moore
because he deprecated any appeal to the passions of an angry and ignorant
multitude," but because he made such appeal in such verse as—
Then onward the green banner rearing,
Go flash every sword to the hilt!
On our side is virtue and Erin,
On theirs, is the Saxon and guilt. |
And many others, especially in the lecherous tomtittery of the amorous Mr.
"Little," and then perpetrated such sneaking flunkeyism, as I quoted.
All who have read Byron's words, where he says, "Tommy Moore dearly loved
a lord," will know that he meant a lord in the titular sense, rather then
the natural one. I did not "blame" Moore for not being so jolly and
unctous as Béranger in his bacchanalian songs. I expressly stated
that convivial lyrics were no favourites of mine, and that I merely
noticed the difference, to illustrate the natures of the two singers.
I made no preference. I believe in no man's patriotism, or love of
country, who will take office under its enslavers, and go cheek by jowl
with its oppressors. Neither did I intend any insidious attack upon
Moore or his writings. I will yield to none in admiration of much
that he has written. He is still the melodious Moore, many of his
songs will live while the English language lasts. But for all that,
he may not be a national poet in the sense we speak of Béranger, and he
may be a "humbug" to the be extent with which I charged him.
GERALD
MASSEY. |
____________________________________
THE
FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE. SATURDAY,
MARCH 20, 1852.
SIDNEY SMITH AND CO-OPERATION.
______________
IT is written, "whom the gods intend to destroy,
they first drive mad;" and surely it was the unseen work of Destiny, that
the Masters of the Iron Trades should choose Sidney Smith for the exponent
of their opinions, and the defender of their faith. How could they be so
lamentably blind as to place their
cause in the hands of a man who, by the very force of his own ambition to
write smartly and vigorously, would be impelled to place the darkest side
of their tyranny in the clearest light. They should have sought to veil
their odious despotism and their cold-blooded economics in the most
exquisite sophistry; outspoken language is terribly fatal to them; but
they have chosen him for their champion, as "whom the gods intend to
destroy they first drive mad." It is
generally known that Sidney Smith "does" the articles headed "History and
Politics," which appear on the first page of the Weekly Dispatch. And
therein he has been fighting the battle of the masters against the men (in
the Engineers' strike now pending,) more strenuously than any other
pen-bludgeoned ruffian
of the profligate Press.
Let working men remember they have no greater enemy than the sham-liberal
Dispatch. It is as changeable a weathercock as the Times. It is red-hot
Republican when revolutions are rife, and to-day it is the staunch
adherent of the most damnable tyranny in the world. Any working man who
purchases it, or countenances the house where it is taken, without a
protest, is a traitor to his order. But, for the present, we have to do
with Sidney Smith. He has taken up the cudgels against "Industrial
Association and its Prophets," meaning thereby the promoters of working men's associations. Now, Sidney Smith is acknowledged to he a master of
the epileptic style, a perfect Elihu Burritt of slang-patois, in
vituperation, coarse abuse, and in the use of big, blatant, and-blasting
epithets, he soars into the Billingsgate sublime, and is unrivalled in his
almighty power of lying. His pen is like the tomahawk, and his words like
the war-whoop of a wild Indian. He has a most extensive vocabulary of such
words as "hullabaloo," "Catawampus," "Buggeroo," &c., and strings them
together with a facility an irate fish-fag might envy. But every one must
be aware that this low and miserable trick comes as easy to the practised
hand as
the shamming of fits does to those wretched impostors who torture
themselves by the way-side for pity and for pence, and who, from constant
habit, can do it to the life, or beat Nature hollow. This may be all very
effective where all that is necessary is to declaim, denounce, and damn,
safe subjects, such as Sidney Smith generally chooses to annihilate; but
it fails miserably and utterly in a discussion of the principles of
Socialism. These must be examined and debated with calm reflection and
wise forethought, as they have to be tested and wrought out in the light
of all past experience. All inflated farrago and bombastic balderdash
fails here, and dies out with the death of its own sound and fury. We have
had all too much of it, it's used up, a "departed coon," or, as Sidney
Smith himself might say, "That cock won't fight." He seems to be aware of
this, and is evidently paralyzed at finding his old tactics ineffectual. He has much less bounce and swagger than usual; the most decisive thing he
dares, is to say, "We must put down Socialism, or it will put down us." But he does not spring upon it with one of his electro-biological yells,
grapple with it, and dispatch it with his wonted swift success. He dodges
stealthily round about it, reminding one of the Battersea Bantam sparring
at the Brummagem Bruiser, and industriously squaring the circle of a very
safe distance, evidently with no intention of hitting his giant-ship, for
very obvious reasons. But, not being able to refute the principles, or
give them battle, it is still open to Sidney Smith to malign and belie
them, and to cast odium upon their advocates, and at this dastardly work
he is as much at home as any dirty scion of London alleys, dabbling in the
mud of his native gutter. He flings it profusely, on the principle that by
throwing plenty some must stick. Pointing to France, he says, "We have
seen what these execrable principles have ended in, under a speculative
politician dexterous enough to take advantage of the antipathies which
these theories have engendered in all intelligent and reflective friends
of order and constitutional government. From such principles it will be
seen all thinking men have fled into the flinty bosom of a hard but
orderly despotism." We presume he alludes to what has been falsely called
Louis Blanc's organization of labour in the national workshops, a scheme
avowedly got up by certain members of the Provisional Government, to
frustrate the plans of M. Louis Blanc, and to disgust the mass of the
people with Socialism. Sidney Smith knows this as well as we do, and it
must have required all his rhetorical audacity and shameless mendacity to
have resuscitated the ghost of such a dead-and-damned Lie for a bugbear
to frighten the timid and timeserving slaves of capital. He also asserts
that the French co-operative workshops have been found such a nuisance,
that such of them as had not already expired, were, with universal
approbation, recently suppressed. Why, the fact is, that out of the
thousand that existed throughout France, there was scarcely one in a
hundred but was successful, and that almost the whole thousand had to be
shut up. Of course they were a nuisance to the Bourgeoisie! He next
threatens us, that "if we attempt to carry out any such theories here; it
will end in the entire disfranchisement of the working classes," a result
very awful to contemplate. Sidney Smith is evidently "flabbergasted" to
find that the working classes do not eagerly substitute the tyranny of the
middle classes, and their chartered bully competition, in lieu of the
despotism of feudalism and aristocracy. This was why they combated for
the "poor man's cheap loaf," and battled for Freedom of Trade, not that
they loved freedom, but that they hated the landed interest. The people
having swallowed that gilded pill, Sidney Smith's mind was made up that
the age, yclept "golden," was to be ushered in upon us while bowing down
to them, the golden calves! instead of degrading ourselves, as at present,
by the impious allegiance to more queens, and lords, and priests. But no,
with us it is not a mere change of tyrants. We shall not willingly
inaugurate and establish the régime of the Moneyocracy. We know them; we
have weighed them, and have no faith in them. Moneygrubs, with the
brains at the back of their heads! they have no generosity or
self-sacrifice in them the almighty L. S. D. is their god. They do not comprehend the
meaning of those sublime words, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity;" nor
the misery expressed in those bitter ones, "Employers and Employed." Love
has no altar in their hearts; and their canting respectability is a gilded
hypocrisy. Not in their hands will we place the destiny of Labour, who do
not comprehend the problem we seek to solve. Out upon ye, hollow shams,
and living lies, and promulgators of a system that kills so slowly; men
do not call it murder. Ah, thank God! your principle of competition is a
double-edged sword, and cuts both ways, tyrants and slaves; it effaces the
image of God from heart and brow, and grinds the manhood out of both. But
not for a mere change of tyrants do we work; we seek the emancipation of
Labour, so that it may become master of the world. We demand the
practical realization of Brotherhood; we claim the Suffrage as a
birth-right, and demand to have the brand-mark of slavery effaced from our
brows, so that we may uplift them in human nature's nobleness, as sons of
the same Father, brothers of the same Christ, and children in the same
family.
GERALD MASSEY
(To be concluded in No. 8)
______________
THE
FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE. SATURDAY,
MARCH 27, 1852.
SIDNEY SMITH AND CO-OPERATION.
______________
(Concluded from No. 7.)
ONE of the first acts of the French Revolution, was
to abolish capital punishment; one of the first of ours would be to
abolish labour punishment. We would legislate to fetter human
misery, by destroying this proletariat, or speculation in man by man.
Nor do working-men accept the assistance of such men as Mr. Ludlow, Mr.
Vansittart Neale, Professor Maurice, the Rev. Charles Kingsley, and
others, because they intend, in return, to further the interests of the
landed aristocracy. We do not give them the hand of fellowship, because
the one proclaims himself a Monarchist and the other a Conservative. Nothing of the kind. We meet them on the common ground of humanity. They
recognize the oneness and equality of human nature. They acknowledge that
it is the same nature with their own that is degraded and trodden down by
the vice and misery of the present societary system, which fact, the mass
of their fellows are loathe to admit, until we clutch them in the ghastly
arms of cholera and death; and prove our title to kinship by killing them
with the same disease.
We respect, love, and work with them, because they stretch forth a helping
hand to aid our own efforts of self-help for our deliverance. They have
nobly come forth from their class and its selfish interests, the ten men
that are to be found, to save our modern Gomorrah, to take their stand in
the ranks
of Labour, to combat for justice and right. In doing this they have
braved the falling off of friends and the persecutions of enemies; and we
shall not listen in
silence while they are being attacked, maligned, and misrepresented by
Sidney Smith, or any other unprincipled scribe. Doubtless, we look upon
co-operation from a very different point of view to that of these men. We do
not look upon it merely as the substitute for political power; on the
contrary, we
believe that political power is essential to consolidate or even to give
fair vantage ground to co-operative associations. Furthermore,
we believe that few working-men see the necessity of political power so
clearly as those engaged in association. This is one of the first lessons
taught, to
learn which, if for no other reason, we would have men associate. Are we
not declared illegal
at the outset? The laws of the country do not afford us protection from
robbery; therefore, we must have the power of making and enforcing laws
of
our own. Let not our friends of the working-class imagine that the men now
engaged in co-operation are raw enthusiasts, without foresight and experience. This movement, if ever there was one, is essentially an honest
one. It is manned and worked by men tried and true—old Chartists and
Socialists,
farther-seeing and farther-reaching than the men who have attacked it;
indeed, it contains the flower and chivalry of English democratic
workingmen, who with hearts not yet fossilized by political stagnation,
have determined to apply the means within their immediate reach for the
elevation of
their order, and the advancement of their freedom. Sidney Smith assures us
that Socialism cannot take root here; it must result in utter
discomfiture. We
never thought it would become a religious faith with Englishmen as with
Frenchmen; they have not the enthusiasm to kindle. John Bull won't climb
the
greasy pole for mere emulation; there must be the leg of mutton a-top. Neither can you electro-biologize him into the belief that it is there;
he must
see it with his eyes and touch it with his hands. But we always believed
that if you reduced it to a simple, tangible beginning, like that of
associations for production and distribution, it would be grasped easily
and eagerly. And such has been the case. Association has taken root, and
spread
far and wide, throughout the length and breadth of the land. We have given
the world a grand practical illustration of what working-men may do, if
they will
but unite, and work for each other, instead of working against each other. We have made the Utopia of yesterday the common-place practicability of
to-day. We can now say to our opponents, combat association in theory and
on paper, as you may, association in successful practice is a far
different
thing. Now combat that. We have replied to your taunts and sneers, by
silently working out our much-maligned, but glorious principles. You
have laboured assiduously to prove we could not
succeed;
but this little pointed interrogation "Have we been successful?" pierces
the wind-bag of your inflated sophistries, and the answer brings you down
to sudden collapse—"We have been eminently successful." Look around for
the fruit of this experiment. It is not arrogated that an association here
and there, if successful, will save the world. But their rise and
progress has been anxiously marked by deeply interested thousands, and the
name of association has become a magic word of talismanic influence.
It has been a rallying sign for those who have long waited in doubt and
darkness,
looking for a sign; and day by day, has the tide set in our favour,
gone surging and surging onward, and swift success has crowned our
efforts. Day
by day has new strength been added to the movement, not only in town and
city, but in the obscure nooks of village and hamlet. This is success which
cannot be contravened. These co-operative associations and
stores may yet
go down, but the lesson learned by those who have worked in them can
never be forgotten; the insight obtained into the practical working of self-government—the glimpse they have caught of the beauty and blessing
of
brotherhood—can never be effaced. They will have learned that the man who
is a slave in his own heart, and a tyrant in his own household, would be
a
slave and a tyrant still, even though social and political thraldom were
abolished to-morrow, an experience which can never be lost, while the
fact of such
associative success, in the face of such difficulties, must live on as a
matter of history, bearing proud testimony to
the truth and vitality of our principles. Of course, the associative tree,
like other fruit-trees, has not borne all ripe and sound fruit for its
firstlings; it has
had its bitter crabs and rotten windfalls; but this we may say, that its
worst and rottenest fruit has not been the result of natural growth, but
of pernicious
grafting, in spite of which it has yielded a generous harvest.
GERALD MASSEY.
|
____________________________________
THE
FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE. APRIL 10, 1852.
REVIEWS.
______
THE PROSE AND POETICAL WORKS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE.
3 Vols. John Chapman, London.
AMID the many conflicting theories on the origin of
Man, we still hold with a firm conviction to our own. We believe man
to be the offspring of some inferior animal, begotten by some superior
inhabitant of the fore-world. And does not the strange compound he
is made up of warrant us in this belief? "The piebald miscellany
Man," is he not, at best, composed of "great bursts of heart, and slips in
sensual mire?" At one moment he is all that the most exalted nature
could imagine or desire, and the next he is akin to the beasts that
perish, and frequently lower than they. Now, he is the strong,
soaring Intelligence, whose clear spiritual ken makes him the Seer of the
universal mystery, and the astronomer of the world's glorious destiny,—he
stands with one foot on sea, and one on land, and grasps and wields the
vassal elements to his purpose. And again he is a Sampson shorn of
his strength. He gropes blindly in the mists of passion—the soul's
starry garments are trailed in the mud of the earth—and the being, lately
but "little lower than the angels,'' revels and wallows in the bestial
delights of the brute. Many illustrative instances of this twofold
nature have been witnessed, as in the persons of Sheridan, Edmund Kean,
and others, but never more mournfully and painfully than in the case of
Edgar Allan Poe. He was a poet of the finest perception, and had the
greatest imagination of all the American poets. He had a head of the
true Shakespearian mould, and was gloriously endowed by Nature, but he
lacked the courage and strength of hand to rein in the PASSIONS—those
proud beasts of FORCE, which, properly controlled,
constitute a man's glory, and are the coursers of the soul, which draw the
chariot of Genius up the steep and rugged mount of Immortality;—but once
the curb is loosened, and the governance lost, turn, and rend in pieces,
and devour the driver. He was as great a dreamer as Coleridge, whose
dreaming and projecting capacity, and lack of persistency in
fulfilling his magnificent intentions, was never better summed up than in
the words of Charles Lamb, who says, "Coleridge is dead, and is said to
have left behind him above forty thousand treatises on metaphysics and
divinity—ONE OF THEM COMPLETED." Poe lacked
the persistency necessary to the carrying out of his glorious dreams, and
we reckon INDUSTRY to Constitute some
THREE-FOURTHS of what is termed genius. He appears to have
possessed a power which might have made—at least, it gave promise of
making—his name and fame coeval with that of Shelley, and he has left but
a few fragments, and a most melancholy history. We had contemplated
giving a review of his poetry and his prose works, and shall still give a
quotation from his "descent into the Maelstrom," described with such weird
and wondrous power; but we have certainly been taken aback at seeing two
issues of shilling books, containing some of his thrilling tales, and
several of his poems—the one issued by Vizetelley, of Fleet-street, is by
far the best, contains most, and is very decently illustrated. Poe
is almost totally unknown here, and this "Readable Book" is in every way
welcome. We give the following beautiful allegory, which is of
HIMSELF, as, indeed, is most of his poetry; though,
unlike Byron, he does not immortalize the personal pronoun "I."
Still, all he writes is very intimate with him, and eloquent of him, and,
as in the "Raven," gives forth an echo of his personal history. So
with the "Haunted Palace," in which he symbols his happy beautiful
boyhood, and the broken-down miserable age, and the change twixt now and
then:—
THE HAUNTED PALACE.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace—
Radiant palace—reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion,
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair!
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow,
(This—all this—was in the olden
Time, long ago,)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odour went away.
Wanderers in that happy valley,
Through two luminous windows, saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-tuned law,
Round about a throne where, sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state, his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate.
(Ah, let us mourn!—for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
And travellers, now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see—
Vast forms, that move fantastically,
To a discordant melody;
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out for ever,
And laugh—but smile no more. |
We will give a short sketch of his history and have done for the present.
Edgar Allan Poe was born at Baltimore, in the United, States, in January,
1811. His father, David Poe, was a lawyer, and while very young, he
became enamoured of an English actress, named Elizabeth Arnold. An
elopement was the result, followed by marriage. He left the law, and
went on the stage with his wife; this profession they followed for some
few years, and then died within a short period of each other, leaving
behind them three young children in a state of utter destitution.
Edgar the eldest, was then about six years of age, a child of great beauty
and precocious wit. A Mr. John Allan, a merchant of large fortune
and liberal heart, who had been intimate with his parents, and having no
children of his own, adopted him, and intended to make him his heir.
In 1816, he accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Allan to England, and after visiting
various places, passed four or five years in a school kept by the Rev. Dr.
Bransby, at Stoke Newington, near London. At the end of this period,
he returned to the United States, and entered the University at
Charlottesville, where he led a very dissipated life, although he
manifested brilliant mental gifts, and was in the first rank of the
scholarship, he was the most reckless student in the University, and was
at length expelled for gambling, intemperance and other vices. He
quitted this place in debt, although his allowances of money had been
large and liberal. Mr. Allan refused to pay some of his debts in
gaming, upon which he wrote him an abusive and insulting letter.
Soon after he left the country, with the intention of joining the Greeks,
then in the midst of their struggle with the Turks. He never reached
his destination; and the next we hear of him is at St. Petersburg, in
Russia, where the American minister is one morning summoned to a court of
justice, to save him from the penalties incurred in a drunken midnight
debauch. Through the ambassador's intervention, he was set at
liberty, and enabled to return to the United States. Mr. Allan did
not receive him very cordially, but still willing to assist him, he
procured his admission into the Military Academy. For a time all
went on very well, but his old habits of dissipation were soon renewed,
and in ten months he was cashiered. He was once more received into
the family of Mr. Allan, but it soon became necessary that he should close
his doors against him for ever; the reason urged if true, throws a very
dark shade on the quarrel, and very ugly light upon the character of Poe.
Whatever it may have been, they parted in anger, and never met again.
Mr. Allan died in the spring of 1834, and did not leave Poe a single
dollar.
He now published a volume of poems, which was so favourably
received, that he determined to devote himself to literature. His
contributions to the Journals, however, brought but little fame and less
money. He next enlisted in the army, and deserted. We next
hear of him as the competitor for a prize for the best tale, and another
for the best poem, in which contests he won both.
This success led to a literary engagement; he was sought out,
and found in misery, rags, dirt, and destitution, and placed once more in
a decent position. But his fatal habits continually thwarted all the
kind efforts of his numerous friends. We have not space to follow
Mr. Griswold through the sickening series of biographical details, and a
succinct and well-written memoir will be found in the Shilling volume of
"Readable books," to which we have previously alluded.
We now come to his life's melancholy termination. On
Thursday, the 4th of October, he set out for New York, to fulfil a
literary engagement, and to prepare for his second marriage.
Arriving at Baltimore, he gave his trunk to a porter, and went into a
tavern to get some refreshment. Here he met old acquaintances who
invited him in to drink; all his resolutions and duties were forgotten,
and in a few hours he was in a beastly state of intoxication. After
a night of insanity and exposure, he was carried to a hospital, where on
the evening of Sunday the 7th of October, 1849, be died at the age of 38
years. We recently saw it stated in a contemporary publication,
distinguished for its crochets for the people, and its indiscriminate
intrepidity of assertion, that "Poe like Burns, Shelley, and Chatterton,
died broken-hearted, maligned, and neglected." We leave our readers
to judge of the correctness of that remark. Meanwhile, we shall sing
no Jeremiad over the wreck of genius, nor pitch into the world on the
score of neglect and indifference. We know that men of such vivacity
of temperament, have a thousand posterns open for the ingress of the
serpent sin, which the mass of men have not, but we do not think they err
because of their excess of genius, but because they have not genius
enough, for the most illustrious men have demonstrated that the greatest
genius is compatible with self-respect and common sense.
G. M.
EDGAR ALLEN POE
AND HIS ACCUSERS.
A response by ERNEST JONES,
published in NOTES TO THE PEOPLE.
In a recent
No. of "The Friend of the People," Mr. Gerald Massey has thought proper
amid some invectives against the "Notes," to malign the character of the
great and unfortunate American poet, Edgar Poe. The life of the
latter, with illustrative selections from his writings, was given in No.
34, page 668, of the "Notes."
It will there be seen who Mr. Allan was, why Mr. Allan "cut
him off with a shilling," —and what was the cause of difference between
them. Mr. Massey has evidently been fishing in the dirty water of
America—tittle-tattle, wherein the hireling pen of a sordid scribe has
tried to darken the reputation of one he could never hope to emulate.
It is sad to see the names of great men the prey of any petty vanity or
ignorant pique. Mr. Poe had his faults—but (and we say it
advisedly,) his virtues far outweighed them—and if the reader wants to
estimate aright the character of the departed bard, let him read the
splendid refutation of the base calumnies urged against him, a refutation
contained in the article by the editor of "The Home Journal," and let him
read the life of Poe, by Thomas Powell, the eminent dramatist, poet, and
essayist, in his well-known work, entitled "The Living Authors of
America", first series, New York, Stringer and Townsend, 222, Broadway,
1850, and especially the part comprised within pages 120 and 133.
No one paid a more noble tribute to his virtues, than his
mother-in-law, Mrs. Clem.
For the rest, we would advise the critic to see whence he
gets his information, and what
it is worth, and to pause with reverence before he assails the illustrious
and martyred dead.
Let him study the following lines from the famous monody by
the great Byron, written in reference to similar, though far better
founded accusation.
ERNEST
JONES
(1819-69) |
"—Should there be, to whom the fatal blight
Of failing wisdom yields a base delight,
Those who exult when minds of heavenly tone
Jar in the music which was born their own,
Still let them pause—ah! little do they know
That what to them seemed vice might be but woe.
Hard is his fate on whom the public gaze
Is fixed for ever to detract or praise,
Repose denies her requium to his name,
And FOLLY loves the martyrdoms of FAME.
The secret enemy whose sleepless eye
Stands sentinel—accuser—judge—and spy,
The foe—the fool—the jealous and the vain;
The envious, who but breathe in others' pain,
Behold the host! delighting to deprave.
Who track the steps of glory to the grave,
Watch every fault that daring genius owes,
Half to the ardour which its birth bestows,
Distort the truth, accumulate the lie,
And pile the pyramid of calumny!
These are his portion—but if joined to these
Gaunt poverty should league with deep disease,
If the high spirit must forget to soar,
And stoop to strive with misery at the door,
To soothe indignity—and face to face
Meet sordid rage—and wrestle with disgrace,
To find in hope but the renewed caress,
The serpent-fold of further faithlessness,—
If such may be the ills which men assail,
What marvel if at last the mightiest fail?" |
|
____________________________________
THE
FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE. APRIL 17, 1852.
REVIEWS.
______
THE POETICAL WORKS
OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.—Moxon.
How true it is that the eyes see only that which they bring
with them the power of seeing; thus, a Sunset, seen in the glorious vision
of a Claude or Turner, and transmuted on the canvass in all their
gorgeousness of colour, and more than rainbow richness of mingling
shifting, glancing, sweeping beauty, into a picture, must remain
unappreciated by the mass of men, as not akin to their common sunsets.
Does not this explain how it is that one person may find the charm of
beauty in the very face and form that all the world passed by unnoticed?
the eyes seeing only that which they bring with them the power of seeing.
Thus it is with our reading, we only appreciate that which yields us our
written experiences; all beyond, is blank to us; and written in a foreign
tongue. To understand more, we must first live, get further
experience, and thus widen and deepen our natures. This is why Poets
like Eliza Cook, and Charles Mackay, have their audience of hundreds of
thousands, while Wordsworth has only his tens of thousands. The two
former who are not poets at all, and have not an atom of the Creative
power, not a pulse of divine inspiration, yet, fill the measure of their
experience for the mass, who have not learned to distinguish the voice of
the mocking-bird, from that of the true bird of song; the Brummagem
pinchbeck from fine gold; Parisian paste from the real gem. While
the great poet of nature, Wordsworth, with his grand revelations of
beauty, his glorious dower of the faculty divine, whose musical rhythm of
language, is like the stately march of a conqueror, and whose human
tenderness is large as love, and tremulous to tears, is comparatively a
sealed fountain to the People. Yet, suppose one came with the report
that Wordsworth is essentially a poet, the People should hear about, and
read that his lamp is of the true fire from heaven, with which he has gone
down into the lowliest human heart, and read the inscription which God has
written on its narrow, dark, chamber-walls, and proclaimed to the world
that signs of beauty and gleams of light, still illumine its darkness,
that he more than any other poet of all time, has called up the hidden
beauty and the subtle soul into the face of nature, as the chosen one
calls up a beauty in the face of the beloved one, which none other of the
world could awaken there—who would not listen to his words? Well,
all this has Wordsworth done, and more.
Unlike Byron, Wordsworth does not chronicle any particular
set of impulses, he does not ape the manners of the time to its face, and
by his contortions, move it to hatred, laughter, or tears. He is
neither local or temporary, indeed the next age will have to make grand
progress to come up with him, yet, to me, he appears as a magnificently
large mirror, akin to the grand old skies, and the ocean in its summer
calm, which, as we stand before it, serenely smiles back our antics and
our apeishness; our frivolities and follies being itself unmoved.
There is a gigantic calmness about Wordsworth, as of magnificence
dreaming! or of sublime architecture, such as Schlegel characterizes
as "frozen music." There is no blind hurry, no fanatical enthusiasm;
yet he has enthusiasm devoted and deathless; as, for instance, in his love
for his art, and his noble bravery in bearing and living down the scorn,
the opposition, the obloquy and the hatred that was heaped upon him for
half a century;—but it works in silence. People say Wordsworth can
never be a popular poet. True, he cannot compete with Byron in
rapidity and interest of narrative, in exciting and stimulating the
passions; not that he would underrate the value of such stimulus, it has
its mission in the work of development. But he is the poet of a life
beyond that: the intellectual life; and although animalism has by no means
done its work in the world, yet, if their be any perfectibility in men,
they must become less animal and more intellectual, and in proportion to
this growth, must Wordsworth become popular. And after youth's grand
poetic debauch in the poetry of Byron, how healthfully invigorating is the
poetry of Wordsworth. It is like the embrace of mountain air, and
the draught of mountain springs; and it makes the blood blush with health
in the cheek, where late the flush of Hectic burned. Wordsworth's
principal characteristics are perfect simplicity, love, and truthfulness;
the subtlest penetration, great analytical power, the most pathetic
tenderness, a piercing persuasion of eloquence, and that unequalled calm
grandeur of greatness. He does not so much idealize and imprint his
own inner beauty upon all outward things, as most poets do, and thus
endeavour to exalt them; but he reveals the' innermost meaning of things;
and finds enough of beauty in themselves; in this, he fulfils the old
meaning the ancients attached to the word Poet whom they called a "finder."
Wordsworth is a finder.
He does not sketch and design, but shows the great Design,
even in the mean and the flow. To him, a simple flower will bring
"thoughts that lie too deep for tears." We have said, he is not the
poet of passion, this was in accordance with his organization, he has the
very smallest animal power. If the portrait in this edition of his
works be like, and we do not doubt that it is, as it is so much in
accordance with his poetry, where he has written his life, he has little
or no amativeness, combativeness, and destructiveness; while his
perceptive faculties, his reflective powers, and the moral region, are the
largest we ever saw combined, saved in the head of Shakespeare. This
absence of passion, and impulse, and the preponderance of reflective
faculty, must render him too tranquil and philosophic for the young, he is
not the poet of youth. His song is the deep "still music of
Humanity" not a gay and giddy measure, his dance is in the thought, not in
the blood. His sympathies are for the mature. He does not look
on the conflict of life through tears, but with an eye of patient faith.
But, let us not spurn his teachings, because he is not hot and impulsive
as we are, let us listen as to the holy voice of a Father. The words
of wisdom often seem to fall on the heart of youth, so warm of pulse, and
so rich of colour, cold and chilling , but we shall appreciate them better
bye and bye, when we have looked upon this mystery of life from other than
its enchanted side.
There is a suggestive power in the poetry of Wordsworth,
which surges the whole circle of our being, and goes on widening and
widening for ever. It cannot be gauged by its immediate effects.
It does not contain in itself the sum total of what it sings, but by
subtle hints of mighty meaning stimulates us to do and dare, and work out
for ourselves.
Wordsworth ought, always, to win a welcome from the people,
as the great revolutionist in modern literature. He first maintained
that the people were the source of poetry, that their simple, Saxon
speech, was the proper language of poetry, and for twenty years was he
pelted and hounded by all the hireling scribes of the press for his
innovation, which he maintained in spite of all odds, and now, there is
not a first-rate poem written but bears triumphant acknowledgment to the
truth of his doctrine. His influence on the literature of the
nineteenth century is wonderful—incalculable. He has done more than
any other man, towards curing fine-writing, and word-mongering.
There is a power and soul of beauty in some words that they constitute a
greater charm than the thought they are intended to symbolize, even as the
beautiful form and winning lineaments of one's love may sometimes eclipse
the charms of her mind, and a man thus led away will, in time, become a
mere word-painter, he will aim at being too rapturous, and magniloquent,
which is always a false strength, and the most profound, equally with the
most delicate thought, is most fittingly expressed in the most simple
Saxon words. This great fact Wordsworth proclaimed, demonstrated,
and rendered victorious. But it is time for us to conclude our
abstract remarks, and return to the poetry to justify in some small
measure, the praise we have, accorded to it; but this we must defer until
our next number.
G.M. |
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