|
Edmund C. Stedman
Poet and critic (1803-1908) |
THE choral leaders are few in number, and it is from a blended multitude
of voices that we derive the general tone and volume, at any epoch, of a nation's poetic song. The
miscellaneous poets, singly or in characteristic groups, give us the pervading quality of
a stated era. Great singers, lifted by imagination, make style secondary to
thought; or, rather, the thought of each assumes a correlative form of expression. Younger or
minor contemporaries catch and reflect the fashion of these forms, even if they fail to
create a soul beneath. It is said that very great poets never, through this process, have
founded schools, their art having been of inimitable loftiness or simplicity;
but who of the accepted few, during recent years, has thus held the
unattainable before the vision of the facile English throng?
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AT the beginning of the present reign
Tennyson was slowly obtaining recognition, and his influence had not yet established the
poetic fashion of the time. Wordsworth shone by himself, in a serene and luminous
orbit, at a height reached only after a prolonged career. The death of Byron closed
a splendid but tempestuous era, and was followed by years of reaction, —almost of
sluggish calm. At least, the group of poets was without a leader, and was composed of
men who, with few great names among them, utilized their gifts,—each after his
own method or after one of that master, among men of the previous generation, whom he most affected. A kind of
interregnum occurred. Numbers of minor poets and scholars survived their former compeers,
and wrote creditable verse, but produced little that was essentially new. Motherwell
had died, at the early age of thirty-eight, having done service in the revival of Scottish
ballad-ministrelsy; and with the loss of the author of that exquisite lyric, "Jeanie Morrison," of "The Cavalier's Song," and "The
Sword-Chant of Thorstein Raudi," there passed away a vigorous and sympathetic
poet. Soutbey, Moore, Rogers, Frere,
Wilson, James Montgomery, Campbell, James and Horace Smith, Croly, Joanna Baillie,
Bernard Barton, Elliott, Cunningham, Tennant, Bowles, Maginn, Peacock, poor John
Clare, the translators Cary and Lockhart,—all these were still alive, but had outlived
their generation, and, as far as verse was concerned, were more or less superannuated. What Landor, Hood, and Procter were doing already has passed under review.
Leigh Hunt continued his pleasant verse and prose, and did much to popularize
the canons of art exemplified in the poetry of his former song-mates, Coleridge,
Shelley, and Keats. Milman, afterward Dean of St. Paul's, a pious and conventional poet who dated his literary career from the success of
an early drama, "Fazio," still was writing plays that did credit to a churchman
and Oxford professor. Talfourd's "Ion" and "The Athenian Captive" also had made a stage-success; the poets had not yet discovered that a stage which the talent of
Macready exactly fitted, and a histrionic feeling of which the plays of Sheridan
Knowles had come to be the faithful expression, were not stimulating to the production
of the highest grade of dramatic poetry. Various dramas and poems, by that cheery,
versatile authoress, Miss Mitford, had succeeded her tragedies of "Julian" and "Rienzi." It must be owned that these three
were good names in a day of which the fashion has gone by. At this distance we see plainly that they were minor poets, or
that the times were unfriendly to work whose attraction should be lasting. Doubtless,
were they alive and active now, they would contend for favour with many whom the
present delights to honour.
Meanwhile a few men of genius, somewhat out of place in their
generation, had been essaying dramatic work for the love of it, but had little
ambition or continuity, finding themselves so hopelessly astray. Darley, after his first effort,"Sylvia,".—a crude but poetical study in the sweet pastoral manner
of Jonson and Fletcher,—was silent, except for
some occasional song, full of melody and strange purposelessness. Beddoes, a stronger spirit, author of "The Bride's Tragedy" and
"Death's Jest-Book," wandered off to Germany, and no collection of his wild and powerful verse was made until after his
decease. Sir Henry Taylor, whose noble intellect and fine constructive powers were early affected by the teachings of
Wordsworth, entered a grand protest against the sentimentalism into which the Byronic
passion now had degenerated. He would, I believe, have done even better work, if this
very influence of Wordsworth had not deadened his genuine dramatic power. He saw
the current evils, but could not substitute a potential excellence or found an original
school. As it is, "Philip van Artevelde" and "Edwin the Fair" have gained a place
for him in English literature more enduring than the honours awarded to many popular
authors of his time.
The sentimental feeling of these years was nurtured on the
verse of female writers, Mrs. Hemans and Miss Landon, whose deaths seemed to have given their work,
always in demand, a still wider reading. It had been fashionable for a throng of
humbler imitators, including some of gentle blood, to contribute to the "annuals" and
"souvenirs" of Alaric Watts, but their summer time was nearly over and the chirping
rapidly grew faint. The Hon. Mrs. Norton, styled "the Byron of poetesses," was at the
height of her popularity. A pure religious sentiment inspired the sacred hymns of
Keble. Young Hallam had died, leaving material for a volume of literary remains; if he did not live to prove himself great, his memory was to be the cause of greatness in
others, and is now as abiding as any fame which maturity could have brought him. Besides the comic verse of Hood, noticed in a previous chapter, other jingling trifles,
like Barham's "Ingoldsby Legends," a cross between Hood's whimsicality and that of
Peter Pindar, were much in vogue, and serve to illustrate the broad and very obvious
quality of the humour of the day. Lastly, Praed, a sprightly and delicate genius, soon
to die and long to be affectionately lamented, was restoring the lost art of writing
society-verse, and, in a style even now modem and attractive, was lightly throwing off
stanzas neater than anything produced since the wit of Canning and the fancy of Tommy
Moore. All this was light enough, and now seems to us to have betokened a shabby,
profitless condition. From it, however, certain elements were gradually to crystallize
and to assume definite purpose and form. The influence of Wordsworth began
to deepen and widen; and erelong, under the lead of Tennyson, composite groups
and schools were to arise, having clearer ideas of poetry as an art, and
adorning with the graces of a new culture studies after models derived from the
choicest poetry of every literature and time.
II.
THE cyclic aspect of a nation's literary history has been so frequently observed that
any reference to it involves a truism. The analogy between the courses through which
the art of different countries advances and declines is no less thoroughly understood. The country whose round of being, in every department of effort, is most sharply defined
to us, was Ancient Greece. The rise, splendour, and final decline of her imaginative literature constitute the fullest paradigm of a nation's literary existence and of the
supporting laws. I have more than once compared the recent British era to that active,
critical, and learned Alexandrian period, which succeeded to the three creative stages of Hellenic song. I have said that during this
historical epoch the Hellenic spirit grew elaborately feeble; what was once so easily
creative became impotent, and at last entirely died away. Study could not supply
the force of nature. A formidable circle of acquirements must be formed before one
could aspire to the title of an author. Verbal criticism was introduced; researches
were made into the Greek tongue; antique and quaint words were sought for by the
poets, and, to quote from Schoell, "they sought to hide their defects beneath singularity of idea, and novelty and extravagance
of expression; while the bad taste of some displayed itself in their choice of subjects
still more than in their manner of treating them."
In modem times, when more events are crowded into a decade than formerly occurred in a century, and when civilization
ripens, mellows, and declines, only to repeat the process in successively briefer periods,
men do not count a decline in national literature a symptom that the national glory is
approaching its end. Still, more than one recurring cycle of English literature has its
analogue in the entire course of that of Ancient Greece. And, when we come to the
issue of supremacy in poetic creation, the question arises whether Great Britain has
not recently been going through a period similar to the Alexandrian in other respects
than the production of a fine idyllic
poet—some years ago, in a criticism of a few recent poets, the writer pointed out the analogy between
these two refined eras. The reference is here made available for a consideration of the broader field now
under review. It is difficult to estimate our own time, so
insensibly does the judgment ally itself to the graces and culture in vogue. Take up
any well-edited selection from English minor poetry of the last thirty years, and our first
thought is,—how full this is of poetry, or at
least of poetic material! What refined sentiment! what artistic skill! what elaborate
metrical successes! From beginning to end, how very readable, high-toned, close, and
subtle in thought! Here and there, also, poems are to be found of the veritable
cast,—simple, sensuous, passionate; but not so
often as to give shape and colour to the whole. With the same standard in view, one could not cull such a garland from the
minor poetry of any portion of the last century; nor, indeed, from that of any interval
later than the generation after Shakespeare, and earlier than the great revival, which
numbered Burns, Wordsworth, Byron, and Keats among the leaders of an awakened chorus of natural English minstrelsy.
That revival, in its minor and major aspects, was truly glorious and inspiring. The poets who sustained it were led, through the disgust following a hundred years of false
and flippant art, and by something of an intellectual process, to seek again that full and
limpid fountain of nature to which the Elizabethan singers resorted intuitively for their
draughts. But the unconscious vigour of that early period was still more brave and
immortal than its philosophical counterpart in our own century. Ah, those days of
Elizabeth! of which Mrs. Browning said, in her exultant, womanly way,—that "full were
they of poets as the summer days are of birds. Never since the first nightingale brake voice in Eden arose such
a jubilee-concert; never before nor since has such a crowd of true poets uttered true
poetic speech in one day. Why, a common man, walking through the earth in those days, grew a poet by position."
Now, have freshness, synthetical art, and sustained imaginative power been the
prominent endowments of the recent schools of British minor poets? For an answer
we must give attention to their blended or distinctive voices, remembering that
certain of the earliest groups have recruited their numbers, and prolonged their
vitality, throughout the middle and even the latest divisions of the period
under review.
III.
THE tone of the first of these divisions upon the whole was suggested by
Wordsworth, while the poetic form had not yet lost the Georgian simplicity and
profuseness. Filtered through the intervening period of which we have spoken, its eloquence had grown tame, its simplicity
somewhat barren and prosaic. Still, both tone and form, continuing even to our day, are
as readily distinguished, by the absence of elaborate adornment and of curious nicety
of thought, from those of either the Tennysonian or the very latest school, as the
water of the Mississippi from that of the Missouri for miles below their confluence. The poets of the group before us are not inaptly thought to constitute the Meditative
School, characterized by seriousness, reflection, earnestness, and, withal, by religious
faith, or by impressive conscientious bewilderment among the weighty problems of
modern thought.
The name of Hartley Coleridge here may be recalled. His poetry, slight in force and
volume, yet relieved by half-tokens of his father's sudden melody and passion, is cast
in the mould and phrase of his father's lifelong friend. This mingled quality came by
and early association. The younger Coleridge (whose beautiful child-picture by Wilkie adds a touching interest to his
memoirs) inherited to the full the physical and psychological infirmities of the elder,
with but a limited portion of that "rapt one's" divine gift. The atmosphere of his
boyhood was full of learning and idealism. He had great accomplishments, and had
the poetic temperament, with all its weaknesses and dangers, yet without a coequal
faculty of reflection and expression. Hence the inevitable and pathetic tragedy of a
groping, clouded life, sustained only by piteous resignation and faith. Several
moralistic poets date from this early period,—
Mitford, Trench, Alford, and others of a like religious mood. Archbishop Trench's work
is careful and scholarly, marked by earnestness, and occasionally rises above a didactic
level. Dean Alford's consists largely of Wordsworthian sonnets, to which add a poem
modelled upon "The Excursion;" yet he has written a few sweet lyrics that
may preserve his name. The devotional traits of these writers gave some of them a
wider reading, in England and America, than their scanty measure of inspiration really deserved. Gradually they have fallen
out of fashion, and again illustrate the truth that no ethical virtue will compensate us in
art for dullness, didacticism, want of imaginative fire. Aubrey de Vere, a later disciple of the Cumberland school, is of a
different type, and has shown versatility, taste, and a more natural gift of song. This gentle poet and scholar, though hampered by
too rigid adoption of Wordsworth's theory, often has an attractive manner of his own. Criticised from the artistic point of view, a few studies after the antique seem very terse
when compared with his other work. A late drama, "Alexander the Great," has strength of language and construction. The
earnestness and purity of his patriotic and religious verses give them exaltation, and,
on the whole, the Irish have a right to be proud of this most spiritual of their
poets,— one who, unlike Hartley Coleridge, has improved upon an inherited endowment. Returning on our course, we see in the verse of Thomas Burbidge another reflection of
Wordsworth, but also something that reminds us of the older English poets. As a whole, it is of middle quality, but so correct
and finished that it is no wonder the author never fulfilled the dangerous promise of his
boyhood. He was a school-fellow of Clough, and I am not aware that he ever published
any volume subsequent to that by which this note is suggested, and which bears the
date of 1838. The relics of Sterling, the subject of Carlyle's familiar memoir, like
those of Hallam, do not of themselves exhibit the full ground of the biographer's
devotion. The two names, nevertheless, have given occasion respectively for the most characteristic poem and the finest
prose memorial of recent times. A few of Sterling's minor lyrics, such as "Mirabeau,"
are eloquent, and, while defaced by conceits and prosaic expressions, show flashes of
imagination which brighten the even twilight of a meditative poet. Between the deaths
of Sterling and Clough a long interval elapsed, yet there is a resemblance between
them in temperament and mental cast. It may be said of Clough, as Carlyle said of Sterling, that he was "a remarkable
soul, who, more than others, sensible to its influences, took intensely into him such tint and shape of feature as the
world bad to offer there and then; fashioning himself eagerly by whatsoever of noble
presented itself." It may be said of him, likewise, that in his writings and actions
"there is for all true hearts, and especially for young noble seekers, and strivers toward
what is highest, a mirror in which some shadow of themselves and of their immeasurably complex arena will profitably present
itself. Here also is one encompassed and struggling even as they now are." Clough
must have been a rare and lovable spirit, else he could never have so wrapped himself
within the affections of true men. Though he did much as a poet, it is doubtful whether
his genius reached anything like a fair development. Intimate as he was with the Tennysons, his style, while often reflective, remained entirely his own. His fine original
nature took no tinge of the prevailing influences about him. His free temperament
and radical way of thought, with a manly disdain of all factitious advancement, made
him a force even among the choice companions attached to his side; and he was valued as much for his character and for
what he was able to do, as for the things he actually accomplished. There was
nothing second-rate in his nature, and his "Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich," which bears the
reader along less easily than the billowy hexameters of Kingsley, is charmingly
faithful to its Highland theme, and has a Doric simplicity and strength. His shorter pieces
are uneven in merit, but all suggestive and worth a thinker's attention. If he could
have remained in the liberal American atmosphere, and have been spared his untimely taking-off, he might have come to
greatness; but he is now no more, and with him departed a radical thinker and a living
protest against the truckling expedients of the mode.
The poetry of Lord Houghton is of a modern contemplative type, very pure, and
often sweetly lyrical. Emotion and intellect blend harmoniously in his delicate,
suggestive verse, and a few of his songs—among
which "I wandered by the brookside" at once recurs to the memory—have a
deserved and lasting place in English anthology. This beloved writer has kept within his limitations. He has the sincere
affection of men of letters, who all honour his free thought, his catholic taste, and his generous devotion to authors and the literary
life. To the friend and biographer of Keats, the thoughtful patron of David Gray, and
the progressive enthusiast in poetry and art, I venture to pay this cordial tribute,
knowing that I but feebly repeat the sentiments of a multitude of authors on either side of
the Atlantic.
Dr. Newman has lightened the arduous labours and controversies of his distinguished
career by the composition of many thoughtful hymns, imbued with the most devotional
spirit of his faith. As representing the side of obedience to tradition these "Verses of Many Years" have their significance. At
the opposite pole of theological feeling, Palgrave, just as earnest and sincere,
seems to illustrate the laureate's saying:
"There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds." |
Nevertheless, in "The Reign of Law," one of his best and most characteristic pieces,
he argues himself into a reverential optimism, that seems, just now, to be the
resting place of the speculative religious mind. He may be said to represent the latest attitude of the meditative poets, and in this
closely resembles Arnold, of whom I have already spoken as the most conspicuous and
able modern leader of their school. Indeed, there is scarcely a criticism
which I have made upon the one that will not apply to the other. Palgrave, with less objective
taste and rhythmical skill than are displayed in Arnold's larger poems, is in his lyrics
equally searching and philosophical, and occasionally shows evidence of a musical
and more natural ear. The Biblical legends and narrative poems of Dr. Plumptre are
simple, and somewhat like those of the American Willis, but didactic and of a kind
going out of vogue. His hymns are much better, but it is as a classical translator that
we find him at his best. Among the later religious poets Myers deserves notice for
the feeling, careful finish, and poetic sentiment of his longer pieces. A few of his
quatrain-lyrics are exceedingly delicate; his sonnets, more than respectable. From the
resemblance of the artist Hamerton's descriptive poetry to that of Wordsworth, I refer,
in this place, to his volume, "The Isles of Loch Awe and Other Poems," issued in
1859. This dainty book, with its author's illustrations, is interesting as the production
of one who has since achieved merited popularity both as an artist and prose
author,— in either of which capacities he probably is
more at home than if he had followed the art which gave vent to the enthusiasm of
his younger days. He may, however, be called the tourist's poet; his book is an
excellent companion to one travelling northward; the poems, though lacking terseness
and force, and written on a too obvious theory, are picturesque, and, as the author
claimed for them in an appendix, "coherent, and easily understood."
Regarding Palgrave and Arnold, then, as advanced members of the contemplative
group, I renew the question concerning the freshness and creative instinct of this recent
school. The unconscious but uppermost emotion of both is one of doubt and indecision: a feeling, I have said, that they were born too late. They are awed and
despondent before the mysteries of life and nature. As to art, their
conviction is that somehow the glory and the dream have left our bustling
generation for a long, long absence, and may not come again. Palgrave's
"Reign of Law," after all, is but making the best of a dark matter. It
reasons too closely to be highly poetical. The doubts and refined
melancholy of his other poetry reflect the sentiment of the still more subtle
Arnold, from whose writings many a passage such as this may be taken, to show a
dissatisfaction with his mission and the time:
"Who can see the green Earth any more
As she was by the sources of Time?
Who imagine her fields as they lay
In the sunshine, unworn by the plow?
Who thinks as they thought,
The tribes who then lived on her breast,
Her vigorous, primitive sons
* *
* *
What Bard,
At the height of his vision, can dream
Of God, of the world, of the soul,
With a plainness as near,
As flashing as Moses felt,
When he lay in the night by his flock
On the starlit Arabian waste?
Can rise and obey
The beck of the Spirit like him?
* *
* *
And we say that repose has fled
Forever the course of the River of Time," etc. |
Great or small, the meditative poets lack that elasticity which is imparted by a true
lyrical period,—whose very life is gladness, with song and art for an undoubting,
blithe—some expression. The better class, thus
sadly impressed, and believing it in vain to grasp at the skirts of the vanishing Muse,
are impelled to substitute choice simulacra, which culture and artifice can produce, for
the simplicity, sensuousness, and passion, declared by Milton to be the elements of
genuine poetry. They are what training has made them. Some of the lesser names were cherished by their readers, in a mild
and sterile time, for their domestic or religious feeling,—very few really for their imagination or art.
At last even sentiment has failed to sustain them, and one by one they have been
relegated to the ever-in-creasing collection of unread and rarely cited
"specimen" verse.
IV.
So active a literary period could not fail to develop, among its minor poets, singers of a more fresh and genuine order. Here
and there one may be discovered whose voice, however cultivated, has been less
dependent upon culture, and more upon emotion and unstudied art. One of the finest
of these, unquestionably, is Richard Hengist Home, author of "Cosmo de' Medici,"
"Gregory the Seventh," "The Death of Marlowe," and "Orion." I am not sure that in natural gift he is inferior to his most
famous contemporaries. That he here receives brief attention is due to the disproportion between the sum of his productions
and the length of his career,—for he still is
an occasional and eccentric contributor to letters. There is something Elizabethan in
Home's writings, and no less in a restless love of adventure, which has borne him
wandering and fighting around the world, and breaks out in the robust and virile,
though uneven, character of his poems and plays. He has not only, it would seem,
dreamed of life, but lived it. Taken together, his poetry exhibits carelessness, want
of tact and wise method, but often the highest beauty and power. A fine erratic genius,
in temperament not unlike Beddoes and Landor, he has not properly utilized his birthright. His verse is not improved by a
certain transcendentalism which pervaded the talk and writings of a set in which he
used to move. Thus "Orion" was written with an allegorical purpose, which luckily
did not prevent it from being one of the noblest poems of our time; a complete, vigorous, highly imaginative effort in blank verse,
rich with the antique imagery, yet modern in thought,—and full of passages that are
not far removed from the majestic beauty of "Hyperion." The author's "Ballad Romances," issued more lately, is not up to the
level of his younger work. While it seems as if Home's life has been unfruitful, and
that he failed—through what cause I know not—to conceive a definite purpose in art,
and pursue it to the end, it must be remembered that a poet is subject to laws over which we have no control, and in his external relations is a law unto himself. I think
we fairly may point to this one as another man of genius adversely affected by a period
not suited to him, and not as one who in a dramatic era would be incapable of making
any larger figure. He was the successor of Darley and Beddoes, and the prototype of
Browning, but capable at his best of more finish and terseness than the last-named
poet. In most of his productions that have reached me, amid much that is strange and
grotesque, I find little that is sentimental or weak.
Lord Macaulay's "Lays ofAncient Rome" was a literary surprise, but its poetry is the
rhythmical outflow of a vigorous and affluent writer, given to splendour of diction and
imagery in his flowing prose. He spoke once in verse, and unexpectedly. His themes were legendary, and suited to the
author's heroic cast, nor was Latinism ever more poetical than under his thoroughly
sympathetic handling. I am aware that the lays are criticised as being stilted and
false to the antique, but to me they have a charm, and to almost every healthy young
mind are an immediate delight. Where in modern ballad-verse will you find more
ringing stanzas, or more impetuous movement and action? Occasionally we have a noble
epithet or image. Within his range—little as one who met him might have surmised
it—Macaulay was a poet, and of the kind which Scott would have been first to
honour. "Horatius" and "Virginius," among the Roman lays, and that resonant battle-cry
of "Ivry," have become, it would seem, a lasting portion of English verse. In the
work of Professor Aytoun, similar in kind, but more varied, and upon Scottish themes,
we also discern what wholesome and noteworthy verse may be composed by a man who, if not a poet of high rank, is of too
honest a breed to resort to unwonted styles, and to measures inconsonant with the
English tongue. The ballads of both himself and Macaulay rank among the
worthiest of their class. Aytoun's "Execution of Montrose" is a fine production. In "Bothwell,"
his romantic poem in the meter and manner of Scott, he took a subject above his powers,
which are at their best in the lyric before named. Canon Kingsley, as a poet, had a
wider range. His "Andromeda" is an admirable composition,—a poem laden with the
Greek sensuousness, yet pure as crystal, and the best-sustained example of English
hexameters produced up to the date of its composition. It is a matter of
indifference whether the measure bearing that name is akin to the antique model,
for it became, in the hands of Professor Kingsley and Dr. Hawtrey (and of our own Longfellow and Howells), an effective and congenial form
of English verse. The author of "Andromeda" repeated the error of ignoring such quantities as do obtain in our prosody, and
relying upon accent alone; but his fine ear and command of words kept him musical,
interfluent, swift. In "St. Maura," and the drama called "The Saint's Tragedy," the
influence of Browning is perceptible. Kingsley's true poetic faculty is best expressed in
various sounding lyrics for which he was popularly and justly esteemed. These are
new, brimful of music, and national to the core. "The Sands o' Dee," "The Three Fishers," and "The Last Buccaneer" are
very beautiful: not studies, but a true expression of the strong and tender English
heart.
Here we observe a suggestive fact. With few exceptions, the freshest and most independent poets of the middle
division—those who seem to have been born and not made—have been, by profession and reputation,
first, writers of prose; secondly, poets. Their verses appear to me, like their humor,
"strength's rich superfluity." Look at Macaulay, Aytoun, and Arnold,—the first an
historian and critic, the others essayists and college professors. Kingsley and Thackeray
might have been dramatic poets in a different time and country, but accepted the romance and novel as affording the most dramatic methods of the day. Walter Thornbury is widely known by his prose volumes, but has composed some of the most fiery
and rhythmical songs in the English tongue. His "Ballads of the New World" are inferior to his "Songs of the Cavaliers and
Roundheads," and to his other lyrics of war and revolution in Great Britain and France,
which are full of unstudied lyrical power. Some of these remind us of Browning's
"Cavalier Tunes;" but Browning may well be proud of the pupil who wrote "The Sally
from Coventry" and "The Three Scars." He is hasty and careless, and sometimes coarse and
extravagant; his pieces seem to be struck —off at a
heat,—but what can be better than "The Jester's Sermon," "The
Old Grenadier's Story," and "La Tricoteuse"? How unique the "Jacobite
Ballads"! Read "The White Rose over the Water." "The Three Troopers," a ballad
of the Protectorate, has a clash and clang not often resonant in these piping
times:
"Into the Devil tavern
Three booted troopers strode,
From spur to feather spotted and splashed
With the mud of a winter road.
In each of their cups they dropped a crust,
And stared at the guests with a frown;
Then drew their swords and roared, for a toast,
'God send this Crum-well-down!'" |
I have a feeling that this author has not been fairly appreciated as a ballad-maker. Equally perfect of their sort are "The Mahogany-Tree," "The Ballad of Bouillabaise,"
"The Age of Wisdom," and "The End of the Play,"—all by the kindly hand of Thackeray, which shall sweep the strings of melody
no more; yet their author was a satirist and novel-writer, never a professed poet. Nor
can one read the collection made, late in life, by Doyle, another Oxford professor, of
his occasional verse, without thinking that "The Return of the Guards," "The Old
Cavalier," "The Private of the Buffs," and other soldierly ballads, are the modest effusions of a natural lyrist, who probably has
felt no great encouragement to perfect a lyrical gift that has been crowded out of
fashion by the manner of the latter-day school.
The success of these unpretentious singers again illustrates
the statement that spontaneity is an essential principle of the art.
The poet should carol like the bird:
"He knows not why nor whence he sings,
Nor whither goes his warbled song;
As Joy itself delights in joy,
His soul finds strength in its employ,
And grows by utterance strong." |
The songs of minstrels in the early heroic ages display the elasticity of national youth. When verses were recited, not written, a pseudo-poet must have found few listeners.
In a more cultivated stage, poetry should have all this unconscious freshness,
refined and harmonized with the thought and finish of the day.
V.
MANY of the novelists have written verse,
but usually, with the foregoing exceptions, by a professional effort rather than a born
gift. The Brontë sisters began as rhymsters, but quickly found their true field.
Mrs. Craik has composed tender stanzas resembling those of Miss Procter, and mostly of a
grave and pleasing kind. George Eliot's metrical work has special interest, coming
from a woman acknowledged to be, in her realistic yet imaginative prose, at the head
of living female writers. She has brought all her energies to bear, first upon the
construction of a drama, which was only a succès d'estime, and recently upon a new
volume containing "The Legend of Jubal" and other poems. The result shows plainly
that Mrs. Lewes, though possessed of great intellect and sensibility, is not, in respect to
metrical expression, a poet. Nor has she a full conception of the simple strength and
melody of English verse, her polysyllabic language, noticeable in the moralizing pas sages of "Middlemarch," being very ineffective in her poems. That wealth of
thought which atones for all her deficiencies in prose does not seem to be at her
command in poetry. "The Spanish Gypsy" reads like a second-rate production of the
Byronic school. "The Legend of Jubal" and "How Lisa loved the King" suffer by comparison with the narrative poems, in
rhymed pentameter, of Morris, Longfellow, or Stoddard. A little poem in blank verse,
entitled "O may I join the choir invisible!" and setting forth her conception of the
"religion of humanity," is worth all the rest of her poetry, for it is the outburst of an
exalted soul, foregoing personal immortality and compensated by a vision of the growth
and happiness of the human race.
Bulwer was another novelist-poet, and one
of the most persistent. During middle age he renewed the efforts made in his youth to
obtain for his metrical writings a recognition always accorded to his ingenious and varied
prose romance; but whatever he did in verse was the result of deliberate intellect and culture. The fire was not in him, and his
measures do not give out heat and light. His shorter lyrics never have the true
ring; his translations are somewhat rough and pedantic; his satires were often in poor
taste, and brought him no great profit; his serio-comic legendary poem of "King Arthur" is a monument of industry, but never
was labour more hopelessly thrown away. In dramas like "Richelieu" and "Cromwell"
he was more successful; they contain passages which are wise, eloquent, and effective,
though rarely giving out the subtle aroma which comes from the essential poetic principle. Yet Bulwer had an honest love for
the beautiful and sublime, and his futile effort to express it was almost pathetic.
Many of his odes and translations were contributed, I think, to "Blackwood's
Magazine." This suggests mention of the ephemeral groups of lyrists that gathered
about the serials of his time. Among the Blackwood writers, Moir, Aird,—a Scotsman
of some imagination and fervour,—Simmons, and a few greater or lesser lights, are still
remembered. "Bentley's" was the mouth-piece of a rollicking set of pedantic and witty rhymsters, from whose diversions a book of common ballads has been compiled. "Fraser's," "The Dublin University," and
other magazines, attracted each its own staff of verse-makers, besides receiving the frequent assistance of poets of wide repute. I
may say that throughout the period much creditable verse has been produced by studious men who have given poetry the second
place as a vocation. Among recent productions of this class, the historical drama
of "Hannibal" by Professor Nichol, of Glasgow, may be taken as a type and a fair
example.
With respect to poetry, as to prose, the coarser and less discriminating appetite is
the more widely diffused. Create a popular taste for reading, and an inferior article
comes to satisfy it, by the law of supply and demand. Hence the enormous circulation
of didactic artificial measures, adjusted to the moral and intellectual levels of commonplace,
like those of Hervey, Tupper, and Robert Montgomery; while other poets of the early
and middle divisions, who had sparks of genius in them, but who could not adapt themselves to either the select or popular
markets of their time, found the struggle too hard for them, and have passed out of general sight and mind. At the very
beginning of the period Thomas Wade gave promise of something fine. A copy of his
"Mundi et Cordis" lies before me, dated 1835. It is marked with the extravagance
and turgidity which soon after broke out among the rhapsodists, yet shows plainly
the sensitiveness and passion of the poet. The contents are in sympathy with, and like,
the early work of Shelley, and various poems are of a democratic, liberal stripe, inspired by
the struggle then commencing over Europe. As long ago as 1837 Alfred Domett was contributing lyrics to "Blackwood" which
justly won the favour of the burly editor. From a young poet who could throw off a
glee like "Hence, rude Winter, crabbed old fellow!" or "All who've known each other
long," his friends had a right to expect a brilliant future. But he was an insatiable
wanderer, and could "not rest from travel." His productions were dated from every portion of the
globe; finally he disappeared altogether, and ceased to be heard from, but his memory was kept green by Browning's
nervous characterization of him,—"What's
become of Waring?" After three decades the question is answered, and our vagrant
bard returns from Australia with a long South Sea idyl, "Ranolf and Amohia,"
—a poem justly praised by Browning for varied
beauty and power, but charged with the diffuseness, transcendentalism, defects of art
and action, that were current among Domett's radical brethren so many years ago. The world has gone by him. The lyrics of his youth, and chiefly a beautiful "Christmas Hymn," are, after all, the best fruits, as they
were the first, of his long and restless life. But doubtless the life itself has been a full
compensation. There also was Scott, who wrote "The Year of the World," a poem commended by our Concord Brahmin for
its faithful utilization of the Hindoo mythology. The author, a distinguished painter
and critic, is now one of the highest authorities upon matters pertaining to the arts of
design—William Bell Scott has now collected his miscellaneous ballads, studies from nature,
etc. (many of them written years ago) in a volume to which his own etchings, and those of Alma Tadema,
give additional beauty.
There were women too; among them, Mrs. Sarah Flower Adams, author of remembered hymns, and of that forgotten
drama of "Vivia Perpetua," a creature whose beauty and enthusiasm drew around her the
flower of the liberal party; the friend of Hunt and Carlyle and W. J. Fox, and of
Browning in his eager youth. Of many such as these, in whom the lyrical aspiration was
checked by too profuse admixture with a passion for affairs, for active life, for arts of
design, or for some ardent cause to which they became devoted, or who failed, through
extreme sensibility, to be calm among the turbid elements about them,—of such it may
be asked, where are they and their productions, except in the tender memory and honour
of their early comrades and friends? Art is a jealous mistress: she demands life,
worship, tact, the devotion of our highest faculties; and he who refuses all of
this and more never can be, first, and above his other attributes, an eminent or
in any sense a true and consecrated poet.
VI.
WE come to a brood of minstrels scattered numerously as birds over the meadows of
England, the rye-fields of Scotland, and the green Irish hills. They are of a kind which
in any active poetic era it is a pleasure to regard. They make no claims to eminence. Their work, however, though it may be faulty and uneven, has the charm of freshness, and
comes from the heart. The common people must have songs; and the children of a generation that had found pleasure in the
lyrics of Moore and Haynes Bayley have not been without their simple warblers. One
of the most lovable and natural has but lately passed away: Lover, a versatile artist, blitheful humorist and poet. In writing of Barry Cornwall I have referred to the essential nature of the song, as distinguished from
that of the lyric, and in Lover's melodies the former is to be found. The office of such
men is to give pleasure in the household, and even if they are not long to be held of
account (though no one can safely predict how this shall be), they gain a prompt
reward in the affection of their living countrymen. We find spontaneity, also, in the
rhymes of Allingham, whose "Mary Donnelly" and "The Fairies" have that intuitive
grace called quality,—a grace which no amount of artifice can ever hope to produce,
and for whose absence mere talent can never compensate us. The ballads of Miss
Downing, J. F. Waller, and MacCarthy, all have displayed traces of the same
charm; the last-named lyrist, a man of much culture and literary ability, has produced still more
attractive work of another kind. Bennett, within his bounds, is a true poet, who not
only has composed many lovely songs, but has been successful in more thoughtful efforts. A few of his poems upon infancy
and childhood are sweetly and simply turned. Dr. Mackay, in the course of a long and
prolific career, has furnished many good songs. Some of his studied productions have merit, but his proper gift is confined to
lyrical work. Among the remaining Scottish and English song-makers, Eliza Cook, the Howitts, Gilfillan, and Swain, probably
have had the widest recognition; all have been simple, and often homely, warblers,
having their use in fostering the tender piety of household life. Miller, a mild and amiable poet, resembling the Howitts in his love
for nature, wrote correct and quiet verse thirty years ago, and was more noticeable
for his rural and descriptive measures than for a few conventional songs.
It will be observed that, as in earlier years, the most characteristic and impressive songs
are of Irish and Scottish production; and, indeed, lyrical genius is a special gift of the
warm-hearted, impulsive Celtic race. Nations die singing, and Ireland has been a
land of song—of melodies suggested by the political distress of a beautiful and unfortunate country, by the poverty that has
enforced emigration and brought pathos to every family, and by the traditional loves,
hates, fears, that are a second nature to the humble peasant. All Irish art is faulty and
irregular, but often its faults are endearing, and in its discords there is sweet sound. That was a significant chorus which broke out during the prosperous times of "The
Nation," thirty years ago, and there was more than one tuneful voice among the patriotic contributors to the Dublin
newspaper press. Griffin and Banim, novelists and poets, flourished at a somewhat earlier
date, and did much to revive the Irish poetical spirit. Read Banim's "Soggarth Aroon;" in fact, examine the mass of poetry, old and recent, collected in Hayes's
"Ballads," with all its poverty and riches, and, amid a great amount of rubbish, we find
many genuine folk-songs, brimming with emotion and natural poetic fire. Certain ballads of Lady Dufferin, and such a lyric
as McGee's "Irish Wife," are not speedily forgotten. Among the most prominent of
the song-makers were the group to which I have referred—Ingram, Davis, Duffy, Keegan, McGee, Linton (the English Liberal),
Mrs. Varian, Lady Wilde, and others, not forgetting Mangan, in some respects the
most original of all. These political rhymers truthfully represented the popular feeling of
their own day. Their songs and ballads will be the study of some future Macaulay,
and are of the kind that both makes and illustrates national history. Their object was
not art; some of their rhymes are poor indeed; but they fairly belong to that class
of which Fletcher of Saltoun wrote: "If a man were permitted to make all the ballads,
he need not care who should make the laws of a nation."
Here, too, we may say a word of a contemporary tribe of
English democratic poets, many of them springing from the people, who kept up
such an alarum during the Chartist agitation. After Thom, the "Inverury
poet," who mostly confined himself to dialect and genre verses, and
young Nicoll, who, at the beginning of our period, strayed from Scotland down to
Leeds, and poured out stirring liberal lyrics during the few months left to him—after
these we come to the bards of Chartism itself. This movement lasted from 1836 to
1850, and had a distinct school of its own. There was Cooper, known as "the
Chartist poet." Linton, afterward to become so eminent as an artist and en
graver, was equally prolific and more poetical,—a
born reformer, who relieved his eager spirit by incessant poetizing over the
pseudonym of "Spartacus," and of whom I shall have occasion to speak
again. Ebenezer Jones was another Chartist rhymer, but also composed erotic
verse; a man of considerable talent, who died young. These men and their
associates were greatly in earnest as agitators, and often to the injury of
their position as artists and poets.
MINOR VICTORIAN POETS
by Edmund C. Stedman
IN TWO PARTS: PART II.
FEW of the minor poets belonging to the
middle division of our period have been of the healthy and independent cast of
Home, Kingsley, Thackeray, Thornbury, or Aytoun. Some have servilely followed
the vocal leaders, or even imitated one another,—the law of imitation
involving a lack of judgment, and causing them to copy the heresies rather than
the virtues of their favourites; and we are compelled to observe the devices by
which they have striven, often unconsciously, to resist adverse influences, or
to hide the poverty of their own invention.
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THE Chartist or radical poets, of whom we have just
spoken, were the forerunners of a more artistic group, whose outpourings the
wits speedily characterized by the epithet "spasmodic." Their work
constantly affords examples of the knack of substitution. Mention of Aytoun
reminds us that he did good service, through his racy burlesque, "Firmilian,"
in turning the laugh upon the pseudo-earnestness of this rhapsodical school. Its
adherents, lacking perception and synthesis, and mistaking the materials of
poetry for poetry itself, aimed at the production of quotable passages, and
crammed their verse with mixed and conceited imagery, gushing diction,
interjections, and that mockery of passion which is but surface deep.
Philip James Bailey was one of the most notable of this
group, and from his earliest production may be termed the founder of the order. "Festus" certainly made an impression upon a host of readers, and is
not without inchoate elements of power. The poet exhausted himself by this one
effort, his later productions wanting even the semblance of force which marked
it and established the new emotional school. The poets that took the contagion
were mostly very young. Alexander Smith years afterward seized Bailey's mantle,
and flaunted it bravely for a while, gaining by "A Life Drama" as
sudden and extensive a reputation as that of his master. This poet wrote of
"A
Poem round and perfect as a star,"
but the work from which the line is taken is not of that sort. With much
impressiveness of imagery and extravagant diction that caught the easily, but
not long, tricked public ear, it was vicious in style, loose in thought, and
devoid of real vigour or beauty. In after years, through honest study, Smith
acquired better taste and worked after a more becoming purpose. His prose essays
were charming, and his "City Poems," marked by sins of omission only,
may be rated as negatively good. "Glasgow" and "The Night before
the Wedding" really are excellent. The poet became a genuine man of
letters, but died young, and when he was doing his best work. Gerald Massey,
another emotional versifier, came on (like Ernest Jones,—who went out more
speedily) in the wake of the Chartist movement, to which its old supporters
vainly sought to give new life with the hopes aroused by the continental
revolutions of 1848. He made his sensation by cheap rhetoric, and the
substitution of sentiment for feeling, in an otherwise laudable championship of
the working classes from which he sprang. Sympathy for his cause gained his
social verses a wide hearing; but his voice sounds to better advantage in his
songs of wedded love and other fireside lyrics, which often are earnest and
sweet. He also has written an unusually good ballad, "Sir Richard Grenville's Last Fight."
The latest of the transcendental poets is George MacDonald,
who none the less has great abilities as a preacher and novelist, and in various
literary efforts has shown himself possessed of deep emotion and a fertile,
delicate fancy. Some of his realistic, semi-religious tales of Scottish life are
admirable. "Light," an ode, is imaginative and eloquent, but not well
sustained, and his poetry too often, when not commonplace, is vague, effeminate,
or otherwise poor. Is it defective vision, or the irresistible tendency of race,
that inclines even the most imaginative North-Country writers to what is termed
mysticism? We have seen that a "Celtic glamour" is vailing the muse
of Buchanan, so that she is in danger of confusing herself with the forgotten
phantoms of the spasmodic school. The touching story and writings of poor David
Gray—who lived just long enough to sing his own dirges, and died with all his
music in him—reveal a sensitive temperament unsustained by coordinate power. Possibly we should more justly say that his powers were undeveloped, for I do
not wholly agree with those who deny that he bad genius, and who think his work
devoid of true promise. The limitless conceit involved in his estimate of
himself was only what is secretly cherished by many a bantling poet, who is not
driven to confess it by the horror of impending death. His main performance,
"The Luggie," shows a poverty due to the want of proper literary
models in his stinted cottage home. It is an eighteenth-century poem, suggested
by too close reading of Thomson and the like. Education, as compared with
aspiration, comes slowly to low-born poets. The sonnets entitled "In the
Shadows," written during the gradual progress of Gray's disease, are far
more poetical, because a more genuine expression of feeling. They are, indeed, a
painful study. Here is a subjective monody, uttered from the depths, but rounded
off with that artistic instinct which haunts a poet to the last. The self-pity,
struggle, self-discipline, and final resignation are inexpressibly sorrowful and
tragic. Gray had the making of a poet in him, and suffered all the agonies of an
exquisite nature contemplating the swift and surely coming doom.
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AFTER the death of Wordsworth the influence of Tennyson
and that of Browning had more effect upon the abundant offerings of the minor
poets. In the work of many we discover the elaboration and finesse of an art
method superadded by the present laureate to the contemplative philosophy of his
predecessor; while not a few, impressed by Browning's dramatic studies, assume
an abrupt and picturesque manner, and hunt for grotesque and medieval themes. Often the former class substitute a commonplace realism for the simplicity of
Tennyson's English idylls, just as the latest aspirants, trying to cope with the
pre-Raphaelite leaders, whose work is elevated by genius, carry the treatment
beyond conscientiousness into sectarianism, and divide the surface of nature
from her perspective, laying hold upon her body, yet evaded by her soul. Balzac
makes a teacher say to his pupil: "The mission of Art is not to copy
Nature, but to express her. You are not a vile copyist, but a poet! Take a cast
from the hand of your mistress; place it before you; you will find it a
horrible corpse without any resemblance, and you will be forced to resort to the
chisel of an artist, who, without exactly copying it, will give you its movement
and its life. We have to seize the spirit, the soul, the expression, of beings
and things." Many of Blake's aphorisms express the same idea. "Practice and opportunity," he said, "very soon teach the
language of art. Its spirit and poetry, centred in the imagination alone, never
can be taught; and these make the artist. Men think they can copy Nature as
correctly as I copy the imagination. This they will find impossible. Nature and
Fancy are two things, and never can be joined; neither ought any one to attempt
it, for it is idolatry, and destroys the soul."
Coventry Patmore, not fully comprehending these truths, has
made verses in which, despite a few lovely and attractive passages, the
simplicity is affected and the realism too bald. A carpet-knight in
poetry, as the younger Trollope latterly is in prose, he merely photographs
life, and often in its poor and commonplace forms. He then falls short of
that aristocracy of art which by instinct selects an elevated theme. It is
better to beautify life, though by an illusive reflection in a Claude Lorraine
mirror, than to repeat its every wrinkle in a sixpenny looking-glass, after the
fashion of such lines as these:
"Restless, and sick of long exile
From those sweet friends, I rode to see
The church repairs; and, after a while,
Waylaying the Dean, was asked to tea.
They introduced the Cousin Fred
I'd heard of, Honor's favourite: grave,
Dark, handsome, bluff, but gently bred,
And with an air of the salt wave.
He stared, and gave his hand, and I
Stared too," etc. |
This is not the simplicity of Wordsworth in his better moods,
nor of the true idyllists, nor of him who was the simplest of all poets, yet the
kingliest in manner and theme.
Sydney Dobell, a man of an eccentric yet very poetic
disposition, had the faults of both the spasmodic and realistic modes, and these
were aggravated by a desire to maintain a separate position of his own. His
notes were pitched on a strident key, piping shrill and harsh through all the
clamour of his fellow-bards. "Balder" is the very type of a spasmodic
drama. "The Roman" is a healthier, though earlier, production, at
least devoid of egotism and gush. His lyrics constantly strive for effect. In
"How's My Boy?" and "Tommy's Dead," he struck pathetic,
natural chords, but more often his measures and inversions were disagreeably
strange, while his sentiment was tame and his action slighted. "Owen
Meredith,"— what shall be said of the author of "The Wanderer,"
"Clytemnestra," and "The Apple of Life"? Certainly not that
"Chronicles and Characters," "Orval," and others of his
maturer poems are in advance upon these early lyrics which so pleased young
readers half a generation ago. They are not open to criticism that will apply to
"The Wanderer," etc., but incur the severer charge of dullness, which
must preclude them from the welcome given to his first books. "Lucile," with all its lightness, remains his best poem, as well as
the most popular; a really interesting, though sentimental, parlour-novel,
written in fluent verse,—a kind of production exactly suited to his gift and
limitations. It is quite original, for Lytton adds to an inherited talent for
melodramatic tale-writing a poetical ear, good knowledge of effect, and a taste
for social excitements. His society-poems, with their sensuousness and affected
cynicism, present a later aspect of the quality that commended "Ernest Maltravers" and "Pelham" to the young people of a former day. Some of his early lyrics are tender, warm, and beautiful; but more are filled
with hot-house passion,—with the radiance, not of stars, but of chandeliers
and gas-lights. The Bulwers always have been a puzzle. Their cultured talent and
cleverness in many departments have rivalled the genius of other men. We admire
their glittering and elaborate structures, though aware, of something hollow or
stuccoed in the walls, columns, and ceilings, and even suspicious of the floor
on which we stand. Father and son,—their love of letters, determination,
indomitable industry, have commanded praise. The son, writing in poetry, as
naturally as his father wrote in prose, has the same adroitness, the same
unbounded ambition, the same conscientiousness in labour and lack of it in
method. In his metaphysical moods we see a reflection of the clearer Tennysonian
thought; and, indeed, while interesting and amusing us, he always was something
of an imitator. His lyrics were like Browning's dramatic stanzas; his
blank-verse appropriated the breaks and cadences of Tennyson, and ventured on
subjects which the laureate was long known to have in hand. The better passages
of "Clytemnestra" were taken al most literally from Æschylus. Those
versed in Oriental poetry have alleged that his wanderings upon its borders are
mere forays in "fresh woods and pastures new." His voluminous later
works, in which every style of poetry is essayed, certainly have not fulfilled
the promise of his youth, and those friends are disappointed who once looked to
him for signs of a new poetical dawn.
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THE merits and weakness of the idyllic method as compared
with that of a time when a high lyric or epic feeling has prevailed, can best be
studied in the productions of the laureate's followers, rather than in his own
verse; for the latter, whatever the method, would derive from his intellectual
genius a glory and a charm. The idyll is a picturesque, rather than an
imaginative, form of art, and calls for no great amount of invention or passion. It invariably has the method of a busy, anxious age, seeking rest rather than
excitement. Through restrained emotion, music, and picturesque simplicity, it
pleases, but seems to betoken absence of creative power. The minor idyllists
hunt for themes,—they do not write because their themes compel them; they
construct poems as still-life artists paint their pictures, becoming thorough
workmen; but at last we yearn for some swift heroic composition whose very
faults are qualities, and whose inspiration fills the maker's soul.
Frederick Tennyson, for example, treats outdoor nature with
painstaking and curious discernment, repeating every shadow; but the result is a
pleasantly illustrated catalogue of scenic details. It is nature refined by a
tasteful landscape-gardener. Few late poets, however, have shown more elegance
in verse-structure and rhythm. An artistic motive runs through his poems, all of
which are carefully finished and not marred by the acrobatism of the rhapsodic
school. Charles Turner (another of the Tennyson brothers) is utterly below the
family standard. His sonnets do not conform to either the Italian or English
requirements and have little poetical value. Edwin Arnold's verse is that of a
scholarly gentleman. The books of Roden Noel may pass without comment. "My
Beautiful Lady," by Thomas Woolner, is a true product of the art-school,
with just that tinge of gentle affectation which the name implies. It has a
distinct motive,—to commemorate the growth, maintenance, and final
strengthening by death, of a pure and sacred love, and is a votive tribute to
its theme; a delicate volume of such verse as could have been produced in no
other time. William James Linton's "Claribel and Other Poems," 1865,
distinctly belongs to the same school, and is noteworthy as an early specimen of
a method frequently imitated by the latest poets. At the date of its appearance,
this pretty volume was almost unique; the twofold work of the author, as artist
and poet, and dedicated to William Bell Scott, a man of sympathetic views and
associations. We have seen that Linton's early writings were devoted to liberal
and radical propagandism. The volume before me is a collection of more finished
poetry, imbued with an artistic purpose, and with beauty of execution and
design. Few men have so much individuality as its author, or are more versatile
in acquirements and adventure. He is a famous engraver, and his work as a
draughtsman and painter is full of meaning. These gifts are used to heighten the
effect of his songs; fanciful and poetical designs are scattered along the
pages of this book; nor can it be said that such aids are meretricious, in
these latter days, when poetry is addressed not only to the ear but also to the
eye. Some of the verse requires no pictures to sustain it. A
"Threnody" in memory of Albert Darasz is an addition to the few good
and imaginative English elegiac poems; and it maybe said of whatever Linton
does, that, if sometimes eccentric, it shows a decisive purpose and a love of
art for its own sake. Thomas Westwood's "The Quest of the Sancgreall"
marks him for one of Tennyson's pupils. His minor lyrics are more pleasing. All
these poets turn at will from one method to another, and may be classed as of
the composite school. George Meredith's verse is a further illustration; he is
dramatic and realistic, but occasionally ventures upon a classical or romantic
study. He often fails of his purpose, though usually having one. The "Poems
of the English Roadside" seem to me his most original work, and of them
"Juggling Jerry" is the best. Thomas Ashe is one of those minor poets
who catch and reflect the prevailing mode: he belongs to the chorus, and is not
an independent singer. His "Poems," 1859, are mildly classical and
idyllic; but in 1867 he gave us "The Sorrows of Hypsipyle,"—after
"Atalanta in Calydon" had revived an interest in dramatic poetry
modelled upon the antique.
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OF those patrician rhymes which, for want of an English
equivalent, are termed vers de société, the gentle Praed, who died
at the commencement of the period, was an elegant composer. In verse under
this head may also be included, for the occasion, epigrammatic couplets,
witty and satirical songs, and all that metrical badinage which is to other
poetry what the feuilleton is to prose. During the first half of our
retrospect it was practiced chiefly by scholarly and fluent wits. In the
form of satire and parody it was cleverly employed, we have seen, by Aytoun,
in his "spasmodic tragedy" of "Firmilian;" merrily, too, by Aytoun
and Theodore Martin in the "Bon Gualtier" ballads; by Thackeray in
"Love-Songs made Easy," "Lyra Hibernica," the ballads of
"Pleaceman X.," etc.; by Hood in an interminable string of mirth and
nonsense; and with mock-heroic scholarship by the undaunted Irish wit, poet,
and Latmist, "Father Prout," and the whole jovial cohort that
succeeded to the foregoing worthies in the pages of the monthly magazines. But with the restrained manners of the present time, and the finish to
which everything is subjected, we have a revival of the more select order
of the society-verse. This is marked by an indefinable aroma which elevates it
to the region of poetic art, and owing to which, as to the imperishable
essence of a subtle perfume, the lightest ballads of Suckling and Waller
are current to this day. In fine, true vers de société is marked
by humour, by spontaneity, joined with extreme elegance of finish, by the quality
we call breeding,—above all, by lightness of touch. Its composer holds a place
in the Parnassian hemicycle as legitimate as that of Robin Goodfellow in
Oberon's court. The dainty lyrics of Frederick Locker not infrequently
display these characteristics: he is not strikingly original, but at times
reminds us of Praed or of Thackeray, and again, in such verses as "To my
Grandmother," of an American,—Dr. Holmes. But his verse is light, sweet,
graceful, gaily wise, and sometimes pathetic. Charles Stuart Calverley and
Austin Dobson are the best of the new farceurs. "Fly-Leaves," by
the former, contains several burlesques and serio-comic translations that
are excellent in their way, with most agreeable qualities of fancy and thought. Dobson's "Vignettes in Rhyme" has one or two lyrics, besides lighter
pieces, equal to the best of Calverley's, which show their author to be not
only a gentleman and a scholar, but a most graceful poet,—titles that
used to be associated in the thought of courtly and debonair wits. Such a
poet, to hold the hearts he has won, not only must maintain his quality, but
strive to vary his style; because, while there is no work, brightly
and originally done, which secures a welcome so instant as that accorded to
his charming verse, there is none to which the public ear becomes so
quickly wonted, and none from which the world so lightly turns upon the arrival
of a new favourite with a different note.
Society-verse, then, has been another symptom of cultured and
refined periods,— of the times of Horace, Catullus, Theocritus, Waller, Pope,
Voltaire, Tennyson, and Thackeray. The intense mental activity of our own era is
still more clearly evinced by the great number of recent English versions of the
poetic masterpieces of other tongues. Oxford and Cambridge have filled Great
Britain with scholars, some of whom, acquiring rhythmical aptness, have produced
good work of this kind. Modern translations differ noticeably, in their
scholastic accuracy, from those of earlier date,—among which Chapman's are the
noblest, Pope's the freest, and those by Hunt, Shelley, and Frere, scarcely
inferior to the best. The theory of translation has undergone a change, the old
idea having been that, as long as the spirit of a foreign author was reproduced,
an exact rendering need not be attempted. But to how few it is given to catch
that spirit, and hence what wretched versions have appeared from time to time!
Only natural poets worked successfully upon the earlier plan. The modern school
possibly go too near the extreme of conscientiousness, yet a few have found the
art of seizing upon both the spirit and the text. The amount produced is
amazing, and has given the public access, in our own language, to the choicest
treasures of almost every foreign literature, be it old or new.
In the earlier division, Sir John Bowring was the most
prolific, and he has also published several volumes of a very recent date. His
excursions into the fields of continental literature have had most importance;
but his versions, however valuable in the absence of better, rarely display any
poetic fire. The elder Lytton was a fair type of the elegant Latinists and minor
translators belonging to the earlier school. His best performance was a recent
version of Horace, in meters resembling, but not copied from, the original —a
translation more faithful than Martin's paraphrases, but not approaching the
latter in elegance. Theodore Martin's Horace has the flavour and polish of
Tennyson, and plainly is modelled upon the laureate's verse. Of all classical
authors Horace is the Briton's favourite. The statement of Bulwer's preface is
under the truth when it says: "Paraphrases and translations are still more
numerous than editions and commentaries. There is scarcely a man of letters who
has not at one time or other versified or imitated some of the odes, and
scarcely a year passes without a new translation of them all. "Upon Homer,
also, the poetic scholars have expended immense energy, and various theories as
to the proper form of measure have given birth to several noble
versions—distinguished from a multitude of no worth. Those of Wright, Worsley,
Professor Newman, Professor Blackie, and Lord Derby, may be pronounced the best;
though admirable bits have been done by Arnold, Dr. Hawtrey, and the laureate. I
do not, however, hesitate to say—and believe that few will deny—that the
ideal translation of Homer, marked by swiftness, simplicity, and grandeur, has
yet to be made; nor do I doubt that it ultimately will be, having already stated
that our Saxon-Norman language is finely adapted to reproduce the strength and
sweetness of the early Ionic Greek. Professor Conington's Virgil, in the measure
of "Marmion," was no advance, all things considered, upon Dryden's,
nor equal to that of the American, Cranch. Some of the best modern translations
have been made by women, who, following Mrs. Browning, mostly affect the Greek. Miss Anna Swanwick, and Mrs. Augusta Webster, among others, nearly maintain the
standard of their inspired exemplar. Maurice Purcell Fitz-Gerald's versions of
Euripides, and of the pastoral and lyric Greek poets, may be taken as specimens
of the general excellence now attained, and I will not omit mention of
Calverley's complete rendition of Theocritus, —undoubtedly as good as can be
made by one who fears to undertake the original meters. Among medieval and
modern writers, Dante and Goethe have received the most attention; but
Longfellow and Taylor, in their translations of the Divine Comedy and of
Faust—and Bryant, in his stately version of the Iliad and the Odyssey—bear
off the palm for America in reproduction of the Greek, Italian, and German
poems. Of Rossetti's exquisite presentation of the Early Italian Poets, and
Morris's Icelandic researches, I have spoken elsewhere, and can only make a
passing reference to Denis Florence MacCarthy’s extended and beautiful
selections from Calderon, rendered into English asonante verse. Martin has made
translations from the Danish, and,together with Aytoun, of the ballads of
Goethe. Of modem Oriental explorations, altogether the best is a version of the
grave and imaginative Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, by Edward Fitz-Gerald,
who has made other successful translations from the Persian, as well as from the
Spanish and the Attic Greek.
The foregoing are but a few of the host of translators; but
their labours fairly represent the richness and excellence of this kind of work
in our time, and are cited as further illustrations of the critical spirit of an
age in which it would almost seem as if the home-held were exhausted, such
researches are made into the literature of foreign tongues. I again use the
language of those who describe the Alexandrian period of Greek song: men “of
tact and scholarship greatly abound,” and by elegant studies endeavour to
supply the force of nature. Early and strictly non-creative periods of English
literature have been similarly characterized,— notably the century which
included Pitt, Rowe, Cooke, West, and Fawkes, among its scholars and poets.
In glancing at the lyrical poetry of the era, its hymnology
should not be overlooked. Religious verse is one of the most genuine forms of
song, inspired by the loftiest emotion, and rehearsed wherever the instinct of
worship takes outward form. Written for music, it is lyrical in the original
sense, and representative, even more than the domestic folk-songs, of our common
life and aspiration. We are not surprised to find the work of recent British
hymn-writers displaying the chief qualities of contemporary secular poetry, to
wit, finish, tender beauty of sentiment and expression, metrical variety, and
often culture of a high grade. What their measures lack is the lyrical fire,
vigour, and passionate devotion of the earlier time. Within their province they
reflect the method of Tennyson, and, with all their polish and subtlety of
thought, write devotional verse that is somewhat tame beside the fervid strains
of Watts, at his best, and the beautiful lyrics of the younger Wesley. In place
of strength, exaltation, religious ecstasy, we have elaborate sweetness,
refinement, emotional repose. Many hymn-writers of the transition period have
held over to a recent time, such as James Montgomery, Keble, Lyte, Edmeston,
Bowring, Milman, and Moir, and the stanzas of the first-named two have become an
essential portion of English hymnody. The best results accomplished by recent
devotional poets—and this also is an outgrowth of the new culture—have been
the profuse and admirable translations of the ancient and medieval Latin hymns
by the English divines, Chandler, Neale, and Caswall—the last-named being the
deftest workman of the three, although the others may be credited with equal
poetic glow. Among the most successful original com- posers, Dr. Bonar should be
mentioned, many of whose hymns are so widely and favourably known; Faber, also,
is one of the best and most prolific of this class of poets, notable for the
sweetness and beauty of his sacred lyrics. Others, such as Dr. Newman, Dean
Trench, Dean Alford, Palgrave, and Mrs. Adams, have been named elsewhere. I will
barely refer, among a host of lesser note, to Miss Elliott, that pure and
inspired sibyl; to Dr. Wordsworth, Dean Stanley, and Baring-Gould. Bickersteth,
whose longest poem, like the writings of Tupper, has had a circulation strictly
owing to its theme and in inverse proportion to its poetic merits, has composed
a few hymns that have passed into favour. Excellent service also has been
rendered by those who work the German field, and it is noticeable that, while
the strongest versions from the Latin have been made by the divines before
named, the most successful Germanic translators have been women. Among them,
Miss Winkworth, who in 1855 and 1858 published the two series of the “Lyra
Germanica;” Miss Cox, editor of “Sacred hymns from the German,” 1841;
and the Bothwick sisters, whose “Hymns from the Land of Luther” appeared in
several series, from 1854 to 1862. Edward Massie, translator of “Luther’s
Spiritual Songs,” 1854, has been the chief competitor of these skilful and
enthusiastic devotees. With respect to English hymnology, I may add that
probably there never was another period when the sacred lyrics of all ages were
so carefully edited, brought together, and arranged for the use and enjoyment of
the religious world.
The success of the dialect-poets is a special mark of an
idyllic period. Thenovel and pleasing effect of the more musical dialects often
has been used to give an interest to mediocre verse, and close attention is
required to discriminate between the true and the false pretensions of lyrics
composed in the Scotch, that liquid Doric, or even in the rougher phrases of
Lancashire, Dorsetshire, and other counties of England. Several Scottish bards,
of more or less merit,—Thom, James Ballantine, Alexander Maclagan,—figured
early in the period. More lately, Professor John Campbell Shairp's highland and
border lyrics, faithful enough and painstaking, scarcely could be ranked with
natural song. In England, Lancashire maintains her old reputation for the number
and sweetness of her provincial songs and ballads. Edwin Waugh is by far the
best of her recent dialect-poets. To say nothing of many other little garlands
of poesy which have their origin in his knowledge of humble life in that
district, the "Lancashire Songs have gained a wide reception by pleasing,
truthful studies of their dialect and themes. Rev. William Barnes, an idyllic
and learned philologist, has done even better work in his bucolic poems of Dorsetshire, and his "Poems of Rural Life" (in common English) are
very attractive. The minor dialect-verses of England, such as the street-ballads
and the sea-songs of many a would-be Dibdin, are unimportant and beyond our
present view.
__________________________________
LEAVING the specialists, it is observable that the voices
of the female poets, if not the best-trained, certainly are as natural and
independent as any. Their utterance is less finished, but also shows less of
Tennyson's influence, and seems to express a truly feminine emotion, and to come
from the heart. As the voice of Mrs. Browning grew silent, the songs of Jean Ingelow began, and had instant and merited popularity. They sprung up suddenly
and tunefully as skylarks from the daisy-spangled, hawthorn-bordered meadows of
old England, with a blitheness long unknown, and in their idyllic underflights
moved with the tenderest currents of human life. Miss Ingelow may be termed an
idyllic lyrist, her lyrical pieces having always much idyllic beauty, and being
more original than her recent ambitious efforts in blank verse. Her faults are
those common to her sex—too rapid composition, and a diffuseness that already
has lessened her reputation. But "The High Tide on the Coast of
Lincolnshire" (with its quaint and true sixteenth-century dialect), "Winstanley,"
"Songs of Seven," and "The Long White Seam," are lyrical
treasures, and their author especially may be said to evince that sincerity
which is poetry's most enduring warrant. The gentle stanzas of Adelaide Anne
Procter also are spontaneous, as far as they go, but have had less significance
as part of the literature of the time Yet it is like telling one's beads, or
reading a prayer-book, to turn over her pages,—so beautiful, so pure and
unselfish a spirit of faith, hope and charity, pervades and hallows them. These
women, with their melodious voices, spotless hearts, and holy aspirations, are
priestesses of the oracle. Their ministry is sacred; in their presence the most
irreverent become subdued. I do not find in the lyrics of Isa Craig, the
Scottish poetess, anything better than the ode in honour of Burns, which took
the Centenary prize. Christina Georgina Rossetti demands closer attention. She
is a woman of genius, whose songs, hymns, ballads, and various' lyrical pieces
are studied and original. I do not greatly admire her longer poems, which are
more fantastic than imaginative; but elsewhere she is a poet of a profound and
serious cast, whose lips part with the breathing of a fervid spirit within. She
has no lack of matter to express; it is that expression wherein others are so
fluent and adroit which fails to serve her purpose quickly; but when, at last,
she beats her music out, it has mysterious and soul-felt meaning. Another
woman-poet is Mrs. Webster, already mentioned as a translator. For many poetic
qualities this lady's work is nearly equal, in several departments of verse, to
that of the best of her sister artists; and I am not sure but her general level
is above them all. She has a dramatic faculty unusual with women, a versatile
range, and much penetration of thought; is objective in her dramatic scenes and
longer idylls, which are thinner than Browning's, but less rugged and obscure;
shows great culture, and is remarkably free from the tricks and dangerous
mannerism of recent verse.
__________________________________
THE minor poetry of the last few years is of a strangely
composite order, vacillating between the art of Tennyson and the grotesqueness
of Browning, while the latest of all illustrates, in rhythmical quality, the
powerful effect Swinburne's manner already has had upon the poetic ear. We can
see that the long-unpopular Browning at length has become a potent force as the
pioneer of a half-dramatic, half-psychological method, whose adherents seek a
change from the idyllic repose of the laureate and his followers. With this
intent, and with a strong leaning toward the art-studies and convictions of the Rossetti group, a Neo-Romantic [the remainder of this section is damaged
- Ed.]
In order to test the new method, let us study it when carried
to an extreme. This is done by Theophile Marzials, whose poems are the result of
Provencal studies. In "The Gallery of Pigeons and Other Poems," he
turns his back upon a more serene deity, and vows allegiance to the Muse of
Fantasy, or (as he prefers to write it) "Phantasy." At first sight
his volume seems a burlesque, and certainly would pass for as clever a satire as
"Firmilian." How else can we interpret such a passage as this, which is
neither more nor less affected than the greater portion of our author's work?
"They chase them each, below, above,—
Half maddened by their minstrelsy,—
Thro' garths of crimson gladioles;
And, shimmering soft like damoisels,
The angels swarm in glimmering shoals,
And pin them to their aurioles,
And mimick back their ritournels." |
The long poem of which this is a specimen is aptly named
"A Conceit." Then we have a pastoral of "Passionate Dowsabella,"
and her rival "Blowselind". Again, "A Tragedy," beginning,
"Death!
Plop.
The barges down in the river flop,"
and
ending,
"Drop
Dead.
Plop, flop.
Plop." |
Were this written by a satirist, it would be deemed the wildest caricature. Read
closely, and you see that this fantastic nonsense is the work of an artist;
that it has a logical design, and is composed in serious earnest. Throughout the
book there is melody, colour, and much fancy of a delicate kind. Here is a
minstrel, with his head turned by a false method, and in very great danger, I
should say. But lyrical absurdities are so much the fashion just now in England,
that reviewers seem complacently to accept them. It is enough to make us forgive
the Georgian critics their brutality, and cry out for an hour of Jeffrey or
Gifford! To see how these fine fellows plume themselves! They intensify the
mannerism of their leader, but do not sustain it by his imagination, fervour,
and tireless poetic growth.
Every effort is expended upon decoration rather than
construction, and upon construction rather than invention, by the minor
adherents of the romance school. In critical notices, which the British
publishers are wont to print on the fly-leaves of their books of verse, praise
is frequently bestowed upon the contents as "excellent scholar's work in
poetry. ''Poetry is treated as an art, not as an inspiration. Moreover, just as
in the Alexandrian period, researches are made into the early tongue;
"antique and quaint words" are employed; study endeavours to supply
the force of nature, and too often hampers the genius of true poets. Renaissance, and not creation, is the aim and process of the day.
__________________________________
IN the foregoing review of the course of British minor
poetry during the present reign I have not tried to be exhaustive, nor to
include all the lesser poets of the era. The latter would be a difficult task,
for the time, if not creative, has been abundantly prolific. Of modern
minstrels, as of a certain class of heroes, it may be said, that "every
year and month sends forth a new one;" the press groans with their issues. My effort has been to select from the large number, whose volumes are within my
reach, such names as represent the various phases considered. Although I have
been led insensibly to mention more than were embraced in my original design,
doubtless some have been omitted of more repute or merit than others that have
taken their place. But enough has been said to enable us to frame an answer to
the questions implied at the outset: The spirit of later British poetry—is it
fresh and proud with life, buoyant in hope, and tuneful with the melody of
unwearied song? Again; has the usage of. the time eschewed gilded devices and
meretricious effect? Is it essentially simple, creative, noble, and enduring?
Certainly, with respect to what has been written by poets of
the meditative school, the former question cannot be answered in the
affirmative. With much simplicity and composure of manner, they have been tame,
perplexed, and more or less despondent. The second test, applied to those guided
by Tennyson, Browning, and Swinburne,—and who have more or less succeeded in
catching the manner of these greater poets,—is one which their productions
fail to undergo successfully. It may be said that the characteristics of the
early Victorian schools—distinguished from those of famous poetic
epochs—have been reflective, sombre, metaphysical, rather than fruitful,
spontaneous, and joyously inspired; while those of the later section are more
related to culture and elegant artifice, than to the interpretation of nature or
the artistic presentation of essential truth. The minor idyllists, romancers,
and dramatic lyrists have possessed much excellence of expression, but do not
subordinate this to what is to be expressed. They laboriously, therefore, hunt
for themes, and in various ways endeavour to compromise the want of virile
imagination. Ruskin, who always has made an outcry against this frigid,
perverted taste, established a correct rule in the first volume of "Modern
Painters," applying it to either of the fine arts: "Art," he
said, "with all its technicalities, difficulties, and particular ends, is
nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the vehicle of
thought, but by itself nothing. Rhythm, melody, precision, and force are, in the
words of the orator and poet, necessary to their greatness, but not the tests of
their greatness. It is not by the mode of representing and saying, but by what
is represented and said, that the respective greatness either of the painter or
writer is to be finally determined. It is not, however, always easy, either in
painting or literature, to determine where the influence of language stops and
where that of thought begins. But the highest thoughts are those which are least
dependent on language, and the dignity of any composition and the praise to
which it is entitled are in exact proportion to its independency of language or
expression." Ruskin's own rhetorical gifts are so eminent, formerly leading
him into word-painting for their display, that he pronounces decisively on this
point, as one who doe penance for a besetting fault. He might have added that
the highest thought naturally finds a noble vehicle of expression, though the
latter does not always include the former. To a certain extent he implies this,
in his statement of a difference (which frequently confronts the reader of these
late English poets) between what is ornamental in language and what is
expressive: this distinction "is peculiarly necessary in painting; for in
the language of words it is nearly impossible for that which is not expressive
to be beautiful, except by mere rhythm or melody, any sacrifice to which is
immediately stigmatized as error." Upon this point Arnold well calls
attention to Goethe's statement that "what distinguishes the artist from
the amateur is architectoniké in the highest sense; that power of
execution which creates, forms, and constitutes not the profoundness of single
thoughts, not the richness of imagery, not the abundance of illustration."
The rule of architecture may safely be applied to
poetry,—that construction must be decorated, not decoration constructed. The
reverse of this is practiced by many of these writers, who are abundantly
supplied with poetical material, with images, quaint words, conceits, and dainty
rhymes and alliteration, and who laboriously seek for themes to constitute the
ground-work over which these allurements can be displayed. Having not even a
definite purpose, to say nothing of real inspiration, their work, however
curious in technique, fails to permanently impress even the refined reader, and
never reaches the heart of the people,— to which all emotional art is in the
end addressed. Far more genuine, as poetry, is the rude spontaneous lyric of a
natural bard, expressing the love, or patriotism, or ardour, to which the common
pulse of man beats time. The latter outlasts the former; the former, however
acceptable for a while, inevitably passes out of fashion,—being but a
fashion,—and is sure to repel the taste of those who, in another age, may
admire some equally false production that has come in vogue.
Judged by the severe rule which requires soul, matter, and
expression, all combined, does the character of recent minor poetry of itself
give us cause to expect a speedy renewal of the imaginative periods of British
song? To apply another test, which is like holding a mirror up to a drawing,
suppose that the younger American singers were wholly devoted to work of the
scholastic dilettante sort, would not their poetry be subjected to still more
neglect and contumely than it has received from English critics? On the whole,
our poets do not occupy themselves with medieval and classical studies, with
elaborate alliterations, curious measures, and affected refrains. Yet they have
a perfect right to do this,—or, at least, every right that an English poet
possesses, under the canon that the domain of the artist is boundless, and that
the historic themes and treasures of all ages and places are at his disposal. America has no traditional period, except her memories of the motherland. She
has as much right to British history, antedating Queen Anne's time, as the
modern British poet. Before that. epoch, her history, laws, relations, all were
English, and her books were printed across the sea. The story of Mary Stuart,
for instance, is as proper a theme for an American as for the author of "Bothwell."
Yet even our most eminent poets do not greatly avail themselves of this
usufruct, and the minor songsters, who are many and sweet, sing to express some
emotion aroused by natural landscape, patriotism, friendship, religion, or love. There is much originality among those whose note is harsh, and much sweetness
among those who repeat the note of others. And the notes of what foreign bard do
they repeat with a servility that merits the epithet of
"mocking-birds," applied to them by a poet whom I greatly admire, and
often hinted at by others? There is far less imitation of Tennyson, Browning,
and Swinburne in the minor poetry of America than in that of Great Britain; the
former always has sweetness, and often strength, —and not seldom a freshness
and simplicity that are the garb of fresh and simple thoughts. America has been
passing through the two phases which precede the higher forms of art: the
landscape period, and the sentimental or emotional; and she is now establishing
her figure-schools of painting and song. A dramatic element is rapidly coming to
light. The truth is that our minor poetry, with a few exceptions, is not well
known abroad; a matter of the less importance, since this is the country, with
its millions of living readers, to which the true American bard must look for
the affectionate preservation of his name and fame. After a close examination of
the minor poets of Britain during the last fifteen years, I have formed, most
unexpectedly, the belief that an anthology could be culled from the
miscellaneous poetry of the United States equally lasting and attractive with
any selected from that of Great Britain. I do not think that British Poetry is
to decline with the loss of Tennyson, Arnold, Browning, and the rest. There is
no cause for dejection, none for discouragement, as to the imaginative
literature of the motherland. The sterility in question is not symbolical of the
over-ripening of the historical and aged British nation; but is rather the
afternoon lethargy and fatigue of a glorious day,—the product of a critical,
scholarly period succeeding a period of unusual splendour, and soon to be
followed by a new cycle of lyrical and dramatic achievement. England, the mother
of nations, renews her youth from her children, and hereafter will not be
unwilling to receive from us fresh, sturdy, and vigorous returns for the gifts
we have for two centuries obtained from her hands. The catholic thinker derives
from the new-born hope and liberty of our own country the prediction of a
jubilant and measureless art-revival, in which England and, America shall labour
hand to hand. If we have been children, guided by our elders, and taught to
repeat lispingly their antiquated and timorous words, we boast that we have
attained majority through fire and blood, and even now are learning to speak for
ourselves. I believe that the day is not far distant when the fine and sensitive
lyrical feeling of America will swell into floods of creative song. The most
musical of England's younger poets—those on whom her hopes depend—are with
us, and inscribe their works to the champions of freedom and equality in either
world. Thus our progress may exert a reflex influence upon the mother country;
and to the land from which we inherit the wisdom of Shakespeare, the rapture of
Milton, and Wordsworth's insight of natural things, our own shall return themes
and forces that may animate a new-risen choir of her minstrels, while neither
shall be forbidden to follow melodiously where the other may be inspired to
lead. |