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A COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE 
 
 OF 
 
 MODERN ENGLISH POETS 
 

 OF 
 
 atom (Knglis| |) ntts. 
 
 BY 
 
 J. DEVEY, M.A., 
 
 OF THE INNER TEMPLE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 E. MOXON, SON, AND CO., 
 
 i, AMEN CORNER, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 Of THf 
 
 UNIVEBSIT1 
 
 CAurbmb 
 
^<t£to 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IN, ART, . , 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 CLASSIFICATION OF THE POETS . . . -37 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS . . . -56 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 ENGLISH SCHOOLS OF POETRY. .... 65 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 GENERAL FEATURES OF THE LAKE SCHOOL 
 
 8l 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE LAKE POETS I — 
 
 -S WORDSWORTH 
 COLERIDGE. 
 SuUTHEY. . 
 
 *7 
 104 
 112 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CLASSICAL SCHOOL \ — 
 
 GIFFORD . 
 
 ROGERS 
 
 CAMPBELL . 
 
 WALTER SAVAGE LAN DOR 
 
 136 
 H5 
 I 5 6 
 166 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ROMANTIC SCHOOL [ — 
 
 ^ BYRON 
 
 - SCOTT 
 
 MOORE 
 
 184 
 212 
 
 226 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 ^ALEXANDRINE POETS ! — 
 
 S SHELLEY ...... 239 
 
 V KEATS ...... 263 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 THE ART SCHOOL \ — 
 
 ^ TENNYSON ..... 275 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 ANDROTHEIST SCHOOL \ — 
 
 ^U SWINBOURNE . . . . -337 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 POETS OF THE AFFECTIONS '. — 
 
 MONTGOMERY ...... 355 
 
 LONGFELLOW ..... 360 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 REALISTIC SCHOOL : — 
 
 CRABBE . . "... • • 368 
 
 BROWNING ...... 376 
 
* OF THE P\ 
 
 CMIVBBSIT1 \ 
 
 COMPARATIVE ESTIMATE OF MODERN 
 ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IN ART. 
 
 HAZLITT says that the principle of universal suffrage 
 is all very well in matters of political government, 
 which affect the common interests of society, but is not in the 
 least applicable to matters of taste, which can only be decided 
 by the most refined understandings.* But, in the affairs 
 of Parnassus, the judgments of the refined will often be found 
 indisputably wrong, and those of the commonalty as indis- 
 putably right. Quinctilian thought that the " Argonautics " of 
 Apollonius was a performance of a very high order of merit ; 
 but the great mass of his countrymen invariably deemed it, 
 what it unquestionably is, a performance of a very low order of 
 merit. It cannot be denied that Queen Caroline was a lady 
 of strong intellectual predilections ; at least so say Clarke and 
 Leibnitz j yet Stephen Duck was her favourite poet. Akenside 
 and Warton were, probably, the most refined writers of their 
 age. Yet Akenside thought so highly of Dyer's long since 
 forgotten "Fleece," as to accept the light in which it was 
 regarded by the public, as a test of the poetical qualities of the 
 age. The lofty opinion which Warton had of the miserable 
 * "Round Table," vol. ii., p. 260. 
 
2 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Elegiacs of Hammond, was hardly surpassed by his admiration 
 of Gray. It is only the other day a wretched rhymester 
 of Westmoreland was recommended by some of the foremost 
 occupants of the episcopal bench, and two or three noble 
 lords of acknowledged literary taste, to the crown, for a pension, 
 as possessing merit on a level with Burns. We also know 
 that a beardless youth, at the end of last century, succeeded 
 in palming off on the elite of London fashionable society, his 
 stupid " Vortigern," for a genuine play of Shakespeare, until the 
 representation of the piece, when both pit and gallery laughed 
 it out of Covent Garden. Yet, Pye, the laureate of those 
 days, wrote the prologue to the play, and Parr and Boswell, 
 with a host of other literary celebrities, were vouchers for its 
 authenticity. A few years earlier than this freak of young 
 Ireland's, there died in the same year two Scotch poets, whose 
 fame, while living, is now generally admitted to have been in 
 inverse proportion to their merits. One was carried by torch- 
 light, beneath nodding plumes, in solemn state, to Westminster 
 Abbey. The other was laid, by an awkward squad of brother 
 yeomen, beneath a mound of turf in the quiet churchyard of 
 Dumfries. To name Macpherson now as possessing gifts at 
 all akin with the national minstrel of Scotland, would be 
 deemed a sorry exhibition of taste. Yet there cannot be 
 a doubt that, a century ago, Burns was comparatively obscure, 
 while his more fortunate rival blazed in the poetical firmament, 
 as a star of the first magnitude. We are not at all sure that, 
 in the sphere of poetry, had universal suffrage been adopted 
 at the close of last century, it would not have led us to truer 
 results, than a suffrage based upon the possession of a certain 
 quantum of refined judgment in the upper classes of society. 
 For, while Macpherson was feted as a literary genius by the 
 first circles in London, Burns was allowed to pass his best 
 years as a mere gauger of whiskey barrels, in an obscure corner 
 of a Scotch province. 
 
 So far, then, as the reputation ,of a poet is concerned, we 
 
UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IN ART. 
 
 should be even more inclined to rest our judgment on the inde- 
 pendent opinion of the commonalty, than upon that of any 
 distinct section of the upper ten thousand, no matter however 
 refined that section may be. For, poetry is an art connected 
 with the delineation of human passions and feelings ; and of 
 the truth of that delineation, the greater the number of judges, 
 the more likely are we to arrive at a correct result. Moliere is 
 said to have read over his plays to his maid-servant, and always 
 found that her judgment anticipated the degree of success 
 awarded by the public. And we do not doubt he was right. 
 
 Painting requires an educated eye, music a disciplined ear ; 
 but poetry, diving to the bottom of the heart, which each one 
 carries about with him, represents its sorrows and its joys, its 
 hopes and fears. The circle of judges may therefore be pro- 
 portionally enlarged, till it becomes commensurate with all 
 who are in any way masters of the language in which the repre- 
 sentation is conveyed. Those who possess a knowledge of the 
 poet's words, are like the holders of a galvanic wire down 
 which the stream of his thoughts flow, affecting each alike with 
 the impression of his burning images, at least so far as the 
 recipients of the poetic battery are possessed of a common 
 organization. 
 
 " One touch of nature makes the whole world kin ; " 
 
 and the soundest, if not the only practical test, we can have of 
 the genuineness of the touch, is the beating of the general bosom 
 in common sympathy with it. But the opinion of the commonalty, 
 to be of any worth, ought to be exercised upon matters which 
 appeal to the general feelings, and under certain conditions 
 which place its judgments beyond the reach of fashionable 
 coteries or temporary prejudices. It is not so much the nature 
 of the tribunal we would object to, — if the free and unbiassed 
 exercise of its judgment could be obtained, — as its liability to 
 being warped by foreign influence. In some matters, as in 
 the higher walks of satire, its opinions do not seem of much 
 
4 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 weight. There are far more copies, now, in circulation of the 
 " Minstrel," than of " Roscius." Yet, who would take Beattie for 
 a greater poet than Churchill, — the one hardly deserving of the 
 name, and the other the author of the most nervous lines in 
 our language. But Churchill shot his arrows at particular 
 characters of his age, now well-nigh forgotten j and the private 
 recklessness of the man, together with the ephemeral subjects 
 of his muse, has eclipsed his poetical genius in the eyes of a 
 generation which regards moral dignity as one of the first con- 
 stituents of divine poetry. Even upon subjects with which it 
 is competent to deal, the opinion of the commonalty is 
 frequently not an independent opinion, but one adopted on 
 trust at the dictation of literary cliques, or of persons of refined, 
 but conventional, sympathies. For the public, occasionally, 
 with respect to this branch of art, is in an idle mood, and 
 luxuriously reposes upon the judgments manufactured for it 
 by others. Sometimes, the unformed and growing state of a 
 language, at others a perverted taste, will warp its judgment, 
 and invest, as with a haze, the exercise of its critical faculties. 
 At the rise of Greek letters, smooth writing was more esteemed 
 than sublimity, and Simonides carried off the prize from 
 ^Eschylus ; just as, at the origin of Latin comedy, Ennius was 
 much more in repute than Terence or Plautus. But a more 
 refined age reversed these crude decisions. The age of the 
 Restoration was so blinded by political fanaticism and by French 
 levity, as to prefer Sedley to Milton, and the plays of Shadwell 
 to those of Shakespeare. It is, thus, that our ancient temples 
 have occasionally to submit to the indignities of having the 
 most salient beauties of their architecture buried beneath coats 
 of lime-plaster. A generation rises up who sees more ornament 
 in a flat surface of white chalk than in a groined arch, or in a 
 bullioned window, or rich architrave, and who proceed to 
 realize their barbarities, by consigning these triumphs to tem- 
 porary oblivion. If, therefore, we are to rely upon universal 
 suffrage as a guide to a correct discernment of the poetical 
 
UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IN ART. 5 
 
 faculty, in matters falling within its competency, then, to make 
 the test of real value, it must be one based upon the concurrent 
 testimony of two or more ages, in order to eliminate the causes 
 which occasionally interfere with its exercise upon independent 
 and unfactitious grounds. For the past is crowded with bubble 
 reputations, which once filled Europe with their fame. Who 
 would think of citing Davenant and Blackmore, now, as poets, 
 except in the lowest meaning of the term ? Yet in the eyes of 
 their contemporaries, their place was as high as any on the 
 steeps of Parnassus. What poet in his day filled a larger 
 portion of the public eye than Ronsard, or a less portion than 
 Milton ? Yet their generations had no sooner past away, than 
 the renowned was consigned to oblivion, and the obscure was 
 lifted up to greatness. It would, therefore, be a high degree 
 of rashness, to conclude from the present, the future reputation 
 of a poet. His contemporary fame is an earnest of enduring 
 greatness, only so far as his works may be conformable to the 
 canons of sound criticism. If they will not stand this test, 
 his triumph, depending on the breath of' a fleeting multitude, 
 must collapse, when that multitude shall have passed away. 
 
ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS. 
 
 WHAT are the elements of poetry ? Are there any 
 marks or tests by which the higher, may be dis- 
 tinguished from its lower forms, endorsed by the judgment of 
 the past, and likely to meet with so general an acceptance, as to 
 anticipate with reference to contemporary poets, the judgment 
 of the future ? Aristotle tried his hand at elaborating canons of 
 poetical criticism, over twenty-two hundred years ago; but, owing 
 to his fondness for abstract theories, and the narrow area to 
 which his views were necessarily confined, his judgments would 
 not be of much help to us now. How far poetry is an imitative 
 art; what are the different species into which it may be 
 divided ; what construction of plot is most calculated to 
 produce excellence ; what are the functions of the Greek 
 chorus, or the nature of the unities of time and place, — 
 these are all that the master of Greek criticism touches in a 
 theoretical manner, without the slightest psychological analysis, 
 or any objective basis, beyond the literature of his own 
 country. We stand, however, in this respect, in a superior 
 position to Aristotle, having a better method, and a far more 
 enlarged field to furnish a basis for our enquiries, as well 
 as to test the accuracy of any theories which we may form 
 upon the subject. These advantages enable us to go farther 
 than Aristotle, who merely summarized the principles upon 
 which the great poets of Greece acted, as a guide to a 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS. 
 
 correct judgment of the past; whereas, we would summarize 
 the more enlarged principles which our national poets have 
 exemplified, as a guide to the judgment of the future. From 
 the standard by which the poetry of the past has been estimated, 
 we would fashion our opinions as to that of the present, in 
 order to foreshadow as in a mirror the judgment of posterity. 
 
 Here, however, we encounter on the threshold of the subject 
 a difficulty ; that is the variable nature of the organization of 
 each individual to whom we appeal. We can readily agree 
 in making out what constitutes the elements of poetry. But, 
 discord is too apt to arise, when we assign to this writer such 
 a depth of pathos, and to another such an amount of imagination, 
 or sublimity, simply because we have no accurate weights or 
 measures universally recognised, by which the intensity of such 
 spiritual qualities can be tested, as readily as the quantities of 
 material things. Brown, for instance, has a highly sympathetic 
 nature, which only awaits a spark to explode. Jones's nature, 
 on the contrary, is hard as iron, and could not be melted 
 without being cast into a furnace. The poet, who appears to 
 Brown profoundly pathetic, will strike Jones as being entirely 
 wanting in that element. It is this variable organization which 
 colours most of the criticism of the day, and makes art judg- 
 ments so divergent and so conflicting. One critic is lymphatic ; 
 he, therefore, deals very severely with a writer of a highly 
 imaginative character. Another has a very sanguine tempera- 
 ment ; he, consequently, has no patience with a poet of the 
 philosophic class. It is the same with nations as with individuals. 
 The French have a very imperfect conception of the sublime ; 
 and, therefore, Milton and Shakespeare have never been ap- 
 preciated by them, to anything like the full extent of their 
 genius. The Germans have a very inadequate notion of the 
 facetious; and, therefore, the reputations of Hood, Swift, and 
 Butler to them are so many enigmas. The Italians, likewise, 
 lack the spirit of profound introspective analysis, and, there- 
 fore, such writers as Wordsworth and Coleridge are still at a 
 
8 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 discount on the other side of the Alps. It does not, however, 
 follow, on account of these varying standards, that we are un- 
 able to test or gauge the qualities entering into the composition 
 of any individual writer, at least within some definite lirnits of 
 accuracy, any more than we should be unable to measure the 
 dimensions or distances of the stars, on account of the variable 
 haziness of the atmosphere through which they are viewed. We, 
 in England, springing from a mixture of foreign peoples, are, 
 perhaps, more fitted to wield the critical sceptre than any of 
 our neighbours, who are much less composite in their origin. But, 
 as the results of criticism, under the most favourable conditions, 
 cannot be measured by any yard line, or counted upon our ten 
 fingers, they must fail to coerce the irrational, the phlegmatic, 
 and the dull ; and, therefore, at best can only be expected to 
 meet with general, and not universal, recognition. 
 
 The question, as to what constitutes poetry, has been 
 answered in various ways according to the notion uppermost 
 in the writer's mind, rather than with a view to embrace the 
 subject within the limits of a logical definition. Shelley has 
 described poetry, as the language of the imagination, which is 
 only one, though the chief element in it. Byron calls poetry, 
 the feeling of past worlds and future, which is a description of 
 the subject matter about which poetry is mainly, but by no 
 means exhaustively, employed. Aristotle evidently thought 
 he had fathomed the subject, when he told his readers, poetry 
 was an imitative art, and that the things imitated were the pas- 
 sions and the manners of men. But this only reveals one of 
 the modes by which the art manifests itself. Keats has more 
 graphically represented poetry under the figure of a vessel, with 
 invention for its pole star, imagination for the sails, and wit for 
 its rudder. But imagination and invention in poetry are fre- 
 quently only two ways of looking at the same thing. The 
 metaphor, therefore, will not bear analysis. Coleridge, perhaps, 
 has more accurately expressed himself, when he describes good 
 sense as the body of poetry, fancy its drapery, motion its life, 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS. 
 
 and imagination its soul. We need, however, a complete and 
 exhaustive definition of the elements of poetry, and not a loose 
 enumeration of the faculties employed in their manipulation. 
 Such Xeigh Hunt has attempted, in defining poetry as the 
 utterance of a passion for truth, beauty, and power, embodying 
 and illustrating its conceptions by imagination and fancy, and 
 modulating its language on the principle of variety in uni- 
 formity. But this definition would exclude pure thought, and 
 that wide circle of subjects in which feeling is made tributary 
 to it, without manifesting that overmastering energy which 
 imaginative passion would imply. A large portion of, what 
 may be called, pure, descriptive, contemplative, and didactic 
 poetry, would, if Leigh Hunt's definition were accepted, have 
 to be separated from its domain. It is evident that these and 
 other such attempts to enclose within fixed boundaries, all the 
 peculiar region of poetry, only present us with fragments of the 
 subject, which are often, indeed, insisted upon with the sec- 
 tarian spirit of excluding those, from the roll of poets, against 
 whom the framers of such definitions have any antipathy. 
 
 This thrusting the idle figments of the fancy too promi- 
 nently forward, as the grand discriminating criterion of poetry, 
 has been a source of great mischief, in deterring a matter-of-fact 
 age from cultivating a deep acquaintance with a subject so 
 powerfully capable of neutralizing its prosaic tendencies. 
 Society is too much considered, in the present age, under its 
 economic aspects. Men are considered as almost exclusively 
 influenced by motives of gain. All aesthetic feeling, as a motive 
 power, is banished from the world of action, and pinioned to 
 the sphere of sentiment. Hence poetry, as the expression or 
 embodiment of our perception of beauty, is considered as the 
 mere pastime of our leisure hours, leaving no further mark on 
 the world's course, than the last game of billiards, or the next 
 game of croquet. Whereas, what is the fact? The ancient 
 nations fought with desperate energy, for ten years, on account 
 of a beautiful woman, and even in these economic times, two of 
 
io ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 the most advanced races in Europe, have disorganized their 
 social structure, and rushed to exterminate each other, on 
 account of a beautiful river. The Celt and the Teuton, indeed, 
 have been fighting, at intermittent intervals, for the Rhine, 
 during the last 300 years. The crusades, which flung Europe at 
 the throat of Asia, and which have given more colour to modern 
 history than any other event, arose out of feelings connected with 
 man's yearnings for the infinite, and those spiritual aspirations 
 which constitute the essence of poetry. The influence of 
 popular songs upon the multitude is known to all. The "Lilli- 
 bullero" was one of the chief agents in effecting the collapse 
 of the Stuart dynasty, and the Marseillaise, more powerfully 
 than any other cause, contributed to the victories which the 
 armies of the French Republic gained over those of foreign 
 despots. The hymns of the early Christian Church, or those 
 sung by the Albigenses in their mountain fastnesses, acted like 
 a talisman in perpetuating modes of belief destined to fling 
 society upon fresh paths. 
 
 It appears, therefore, so far from the subject of poetry being 
 the mere ebullition of man's transient feelings, or its expression 
 falling like a snow-flake upon the stream of events, no subjects 
 lie so permanently about man's heart, or are more intimately 
 connected with his most serious affairs, or have so definitely 
 moulded the course of history, as those which ordinarily find 
 their useful embodiment in song. But the most favourable idea 
 now entertained of poetry is, that it is a sort of phantom world, 
 a mere region of spectral illusion with which truth has very little 
 to do, beyond engrafting living passion on mimic heroes, and 
 making fictitious characters assume the appearance of reality. 
 This, certainly, embraces a large slice of the poetic territory, but 
 by no means the heart of it. For, the description of actual, falls 
 as much within the function of the poet, as imaginary, suffering. 
 We are liable indeed to be more excited by the narration of real, 
 than simulated, passion. Burns' " Highland Mary" comes much 
 nearer to our feelings than the " Angelica " of Ariosto, and we 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS. n 
 
 are moved more by the every-day realities in Crabbe, than by 
 any of the enchantments in Spenser. It is the province of poetry, 
 to carry us out of ourselves, to make us forget our own petty 
 concerns and selfish views in the sympathy created by the joys 
 and griefs of others ; to make our hearts beat in unison with 
 the general interests of humanity ; and whether the means, by 
 which these results are achieved, have a real or fictitious basis, 
 it amounts pretty much to the same thing as far as the scope 
 of the art is concerned. 
 
 Hence, it appears, that powers of observation and keen 
 analysis of life and character play a distinguished part in 
 poetic composition, and that they may occasionally supply the 
 place of imagination, where they are not, as in fictitious nar- 
 rative, subsidiary to it. Chaucer is generally a favourite poet, 
 with those who accept the purely imaginative element, as the 
 distinguishing feature in poetry. But even in the tales of Chaucer, 
 there are pictures drawn from contemporary life and manners, 
 with which the imaginative element had nothing whatever to 
 do. These pictures entirely arose out of the emotions which 
 certain visual facts excited in his mind. In the above category 
 may be set down the poems of Crabbe, the satires of Dryden 
 and Juvenal, the moral essays and epistles of Pope and Horace. 
 Here, we have external character graphically delineated, social 
 phenomena faithfully reproduced, and both relieved by lively 
 sallies of wit or the softer emotions of pity. Even in the great 
 creative poets, where the imaginative element rules supreme, 
 the inferential and constructive faculties, with philosophic 
 insight into human events, play a most distinguished role, in the 
 evolution of poetic thought j for not only have fabulous per- 
 sonages to be vitalized by human passion, but fictitious nar- 
 ratives have to be constructed, with that logical sequence which 
 always sees the effect in the cause, and reads in a knot of 
 composite phenomena, a few abiding laws and plastic ideas. 
 Unity has to be impressed upon a mass of heterogeneous 
 materials. Divergent parts have to be centralized, and artistic 
 
12 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 design made to wear all the appearance of nature. It is evi- 
 dent, therefore, though a philosopher need not be a poet, that 
 a great poet must be a philosopher. 
 
 As Leigh Hunt defined poetry to be passionate imagination, 
 Ebenezer Elliot, himself a poet of no inconsiderable powers, cha- 
 racterized it as impassioned truth. To this view, John Stuart 
 Mill has more or less subscribed, by denominating poetry, as, 
 the mere influence of the feelings over our thoughts in soli- 
 tude, and the embodiment of the ideas resulting therefrom, in 
 metrical language. But I would guard as much against making 
 all poetry the mere temporary ebullition of the feelings, as the 
 simple product of the imaginative element. Ebenezer Elliot's 
 definition, though good as far as it goes, is, like all those which 
 have preceded it, only fragmentary. For, all truth which awakes 
 within us the feeling of the infinite, whether impassioned or 
 not, I hold to be poetry. Hence, all recondite laws which 
 reveal the foundation of our being, or excite a vivid sensation 
 of the past, or a palpable foreshadowing of the future, consti- 
 tute poetry, in the loftiest sense. What the doctrine of destiny 
 was to the Greek, the abiding permanence of law, as revealed 
 in all social and natural phenomena, is to us. In this light, 
 poetry may be considered as philosophy made sensible. In 
 following Hamlet into the churchyard, we derive an important 
 lesson as to the indestructibility of matter. " Why may not 
 imagination follow the noble dust of Alexander till we find it 
 stopping up a bung-hole ? " When Spenser calls the lily the 
 plant and flower of light, he points to the fact, that there is no 
 substance in the lily to decompose light, and, therefore, it is 
 clad in pure whiteness. In like manner, when Byron tells us, that 
 the mind in love is fevered into false creation, and that neither 
 worth nor beauty exist outside the mind's ideal shape of such,* 
 the poet reveals a psychological truth which might form the 
 basis of a metaphysical theory. When he, also, identifies man's 
 first consummation of love with his fall,f he supplies a her- 
 * " Childe Harold," c. iv., s. 122, 123. t " Don Juan," c. i., v. 127. 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS. 13 
 
 meneutical key to the First Book of Genesis, which the Jews 
 themselves have long admitted the sense of. So when Ten- 
 nyson, in allusion to the religious aspect of humanity, says, 
 
 Our petty systems have their day, 
 
 They have their day and cease to be, 
 
 They are but broken lights of Thee, 
 And Thou, O ! Lord, art more than they:* — 
 
 to what else can the poet refer but the fact, real or assumed, that 
 the character of men's creeds depends upon their state of know- 
 ledge, and that, as their scientific basis shifts, the mode in which 
 they worship the Deity, must vary, according to the insight into 
 His nature which they gain from His works? Again, when Byron 
 speaks of our nature being bound with an electric chain, which, as 
 it is stricken by any casual object, presses past recollections upon 
 us,f he lays bare a fundamental law in connection with the 
 association of ideas. In most of these cases, the exercise of 
 the imagination is common both to the poet and philosopher. 
 But, the man of science subjects the suggestions of that faculty 
 to rigid numerical tests or to the ordeal of experiment, 
 while the poet leaves them in their shadowy state to throw a 
 veil of spirituality over the material world. The one employs 
 the imagination to connect facts with abiding laws, to reveal, 
 by means of general axioms, the mechanism of the universe. 
 The other uses the imagination to reveal the sources of the 
 mechanism itself, and its connection with the infinite. The 
 one seeks to explain certain classes of phenomena by de- 
 finite principles, the other mounts to the causes in which both 
 principles and phenomena have their origin. Hence, it not 
 unfrequently happens that poets, while contemplating the 
 marvels of the universe, hit upon truths which anticipate 
 scientific discoveries, and sometimes, indeed, serve as the basis 
 of scientific progress. The law of gravitation has been found 
 in Dante. Shakespeare revealed the circulation of the blood, 
 
 * " In Memoriam." Prelude. 
 t " Childe Harold," c. iv., s. 23. 
 
14 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 before it was propounded by Harvey.* Goethe, while con- 
 templating plants, hit upon the important law regulating their 
 growth, which has revolutionized botany. It came into the 
 mind of the* same poet, stumbling over some bones in a 
 churchyard, that the spinal sheath was only a prolongation 
 of the development of the skull, an idea of which Owen 
 has made so much in his work on the vertebrae of animals. 
 We all know that the poet Haiiy, while pondering over the 
 beauty of the inorganic world, discovered the great law of 
 the isomorphism of minerals, solving that problem by an 
 effort of the imagination, which had baffled the efforts of a 
 crowd of inductive philosophers. It is, indeed, a function 
 which the poet enjoys in common with the philosopher, 
 to conduct the soul into the interior adyta of the universe, 
 to reveal hidden laws, and to bring to light the host of ana- 
 logies which exist between the spiritual and material order of 
 things. So far, then, is poetry from being opposed to science 
 and philosophy, that it may be regarded as the helpmate to 
 both. It deals primarily with truth, and only with fiction as 
 subsidiary thereto. When the poet wishes to show the play of 
 peculiar passions, under peculiar circumstances, he has recourse 
 to fabulous narrative. But truth is, nevertheless, his object, 
 though it may be derivative. Where the circumstances are 
 not feigned, but real, the truth he aims at is direct. But 
 whether derivative or direct, the poet fulfils his loftiest mission, 
 when the truths which he sets forth assume the dignity of abiding 
 laws, revealing the foundations of man's nature, or laying bare 
 those great principles which blend the mind with the harmonies 
 of the external world, and control his destinies under conflict- 
 ing civilizations. If these truths are oftener intertwined with 
 fable than otherwise, it is to make them more universal or 
 general, to interest the human heart in their evolution, and 
 enable the poet to display them with more unshackled 
 facility. 
 
 * "Coriolanus," Act i., sc. I, — Speech of Menenius Agrippa. 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS. 15 
 
 Truth, then, I would make equally the aim of the poet and 
 the philosopher. But with the man of science, it is truth 
 unconnected with the feelings, truth reduced into system, rising 
 from the ground of numerical tests and of inductive experi- 
 ment; whereas, the poet deals with truth in its deductive 
 range, arising out of his imaginative instincts and connected 
 with his emotional nature. But, while admitting poetic truth 
 to be always suffused with feeling, I would not go as far as 
 Mr. Mill in saying that feeling ought to be the leading element 
 in it.* Just as I would guard the domain of poetry from 
 being unduly monopolized by fiction, so I would guard it from 
 being the arena of vague sentimentality. The loftiest poetry 
 must be tinged with feeling, but never entirely dominated by 
 it. Thought, not mere emotion, must be the guiding principle 
 in it. But Mr. Mill inverts this position. He will have it, that 
 the highest poetry is the mere ebullition of feeling, and that 
 where thought comes in to assume the guiding rein, we realize 
 the distinction between poets of culture, as distinguished from 
 those of nature. He, even, cites Wordsworth, confessedly one 
 of the first poets of this country, as one who allowed thought 
 to guide his feelings, and, therefore, as one who could not 
 derive his poetic lineage from nature. But on this subject, the 
 popular judgment appears sounder than that of the philosopher. 
 For, those are generally esteemed poets of culture who produce 
 nothing strikingly original themselves, but allow the thoughts 
 and phraseology of other writers to dominate their ideas and 
 expressions ; while genuine poets, or, in other words, those 
 not made but born such, derive their heritage from nature, quite 
 independent of the influence of others. They are those who 
 enrich the world with new thoughts, and who only employ feeling 
 to stamp their ideas with that earnestness which blend them 
 with the human heart for ever. The rational and emotional 
 nature have each their proper functions, the one as the guiding, 
 and the other, as the motive, power ; but if the propelling is to 
 * " Poetry and its Varieties : Essays and Dissertations." 
 
 UNIVEBSITI 
 
16 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 usurp the place of the ruling, force, a feminine element is 
 introduced, destructive alike of that lofty conception, of that 
 symmetry of design, of that grandeur of purpose, which we 
 seek in first-class poetry. The elements of poetry are so 
 many, that to embrace them in one concise definition, in such 
 order as to give to each its relative value and significance, 
 is a difficult task, and one in which I shall, doubtless, be con- 
 sidered to fare little better than my predecessors. But though 
 the definition can only be deemed of a tentative nature, I must 
 not here evade the opportunity of attempting it. In accord- 
 ance, therefore, with the views already expressed, poetry may 
 be said to be an art both imitative and inventive, of which 
 truth is the object, whereby is expressed in metrical language, 
 man's conception of the relation between the actual and the 
 ideal, the concrete and the infinite. Here, we have the form 
 of poetry, the two invariable modes by which it manifests 
 itself, and the subject-matter about which it is employed. 
 Imagination and fancy enter more largely into it than any 
 other powers, without, however, excluding reason, both intui- 
 tive and discursive, which, in combination with feeling, 
 occasionally gives birth to lofty poetry, and which invariably 
 forms the chart by which the poet unifies his complex 
 design, and steers his imagination into the haven of truth and 
 reality. 
 
 The powers of the mind are all employed in poetry, but in 
 different degrees, and its subject-matter is the present universe 
 and all possible worlds beyond. This illimitable region is con- 
 tained in the relations between the ideal and the actual. For, 
 in the ideal, we can never lose sight of the actual, but must 
 shape our conceptions in conformity with its types, as the only 
 means of impressing them as active agents upon others j just as 
 in the actual, we must never lose sight of the ideal j otherwise, 
 we gef upon mere matters of fact devoid of genuine truth, and, 
 therefore, containing no poetry whatever. The actual and the 
 ideal refer to pictures of life or historic truth ; the concrete and 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS. 17 
 
 the infinite, to philosophic truth, or those revealing the main- 
 springs of our being, the nature of the soul, and its connection 
 with the universe. With the actual and the concrete in them- 
 selves, emotion may only be occasionally blended, but their rela- 
 tion to the infinite and ideal is the source of that world of feeling 
 which lofty intellectual effort evokes, and which is connected 
 with our joys and our hopes, our aspirations and our sorrows. 
 
 Poetry is commonly divided into five primary species, viz., 
 the epic, dramatic, lyric, didactic, and satiric. In these are 
 included seven derivative forms. The didactic may be viewed 
 as containing the descriptive, the satiric, the poetry of wit and 
 humour. The lyric embraces the elegy, the ode, and the 
 ballad. The epos branches out into the two kinds of narrative 
 poetry, the one complex, or representative, which is a sort of 
 bastard epic, the other simple, as the common or bucolic idyl. 
 The epos and the drama are at the top of the scale, and de- 
 scriptive poetry, and that of mere wit and humour, at the bottom. 
 These two ends are connected in due gradation by the repre- 
 sentative poem, which ranks next after the drama, followed by 
 the two higher forms of the lyric ; then come the didactic and 
 satiric, which are succeeded by the simple narrative poem, the 
 ballad, and the bucolic idyl. I do not know that this order of 
 rank differs materially from any other previously given, unless we 
 adopt Mr. Mill's theory, which makes the lyric and the elegiac 
 the highest species of poetry, as these are supposed to embody 
 more feeling than any other, and places the epic and dramatic 
 at the top of the tree, because they include the lyric and 
 the elegiac as well as all the rest. But as the three greatest 
 epic poems extant comprise no instance of either lyric or 
 elegiac poetry, this view is clearly unmaintainable. We are, 
 therefore, obliged to adopt the order already assigned, by the 
 desirability of preserving a due gradation between the different 
 species of poetry, not according to the test of so unstable a 
 thing as feeling, but according to the degrees of mental strength 
 which each requires for its successful cultivation. 
 
1 8 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 There is this much in the Greek conception of poetry, viz., 
 as something made after the fashion of nature, that it reveals 
 to us the two pivots upon which all genuine poetry turns. 
 Without invention or imitation, no real poetry can be said to 
 exist ; but invention may be exercised beyond the confines of the 
 actual, as well as within it. Invention purely ideal is invention 
 of the loftiest kind. But within the domain of the actual, it 
 may be taken in the higher sense of the invention of great plots 
 or characters, or in the lower, of the devising incidents by which 
 sudden turns or agreeable surprises are prepared to keep alive 
 the attention of the reader. The two higher kinds constitute 
 the soul of epic and dramatic, the last of ballad, elegiac, and 
 lyric poetry. The epos and the drama, however, embrace the 
 lower forms of invention, but the ballad, the elegy, and the ode 
 never comprise the higher. The superiority, therefore, of the 
 epos and drama to the other species of poetry may be said to rest 
 on the greater powers of mind involved in their delineation. 
 
 Imitation is another element of distinction between the same 
 and different species of poetry, a proper consideration of 
 which will help us to fix the rank of each on a psychological 
 basis. Imitation, like invention, has its higher and lower forms ; 
 but only in the latter of these is it taken in its direct and 
 obvious sense. Shakespeare, when he describes a storm, skil- 
 fully paints the effects of certain natural phenomena j but when 
 he introduces us to aerials and to witches, we get types of 
 character beyond the region of nature, which have, however, 
 to be developed according to a certain standard of truthfulness 
 which nature has stamped on our imagination. This is creative 
 imitation. When the characters do not conform to the natural 
 type, the imitation is defective. When they answer all its 
 requirements, the poet succeeds in accomplishing the highest 
 feat of his art — that is, in imitating, while he sublimes, nature 
 into higher forms than are to be met with in actual life. For 
 this is in some respects like enlarging the bounds and multi- 
 plying the objects jrf creation, — a work in which the poet more 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS. 19 
 
 closely than any other being approaches the attributes of the 
 divinity, the sphere of creation being God's peculiar province. 
 
 In this the loftiest region of poetry, imitation, however, has 
 its least palpable function, and may be said to consist as much 
 in the poet's characters not doing anything to shock nature, 
 as acting in conformity with its dictates. In this sense, imi- 
 tation is but the humble handmaid of invention, toiling after 
 her creations, only to be occasionally called in to impart 
 life and animation to the picture. The next step in the 
 descent to a lower ground of imitation is the description of the 
 manners and passions of men ; but this imitation is either 
 particular or generic, according as the poet copies actual cha- 
 racters, or follows' the ideal types of such existing in his own 
 breast. The former is imitation in its natural or objective 
 sense ; the latter is imitation in a minor or derivative sense, 
 and is identical with the representative faculty. In the higher 
 species of poetry, this derivative imitation has wider scope 
 than in the lower, and being more general and complex in its 
 character, has much less tendency to degenerate into objective 
 imitation ; while in poetry of a merely descriptive class, as in 
 the common idyl, the poet is too apt to copy real models, and 
 in proportion as he does so, is entitled to less merit, as his 
 delineations to that extent are wanting in ideal truth. In 
 some degree, imitation in either sense- pervades all forms ot 
 poetry, but in the drama and the complex narrative poem, 
 objective imitation is almost exclusively shut out by the uni- 
 versal and generic character of the subjects, and in the didactic 
 poem and the satire, its range is materially contracted by the 
 discursive faculty, which is only another phase of the inventive 
 element, as by reason and comparison the poet is enabled to 
 put striking thoughts in opposition, and dazzle the mind by 
 flashes of wit, by recondite analogies, and startling antitheses : 
 whereas in the common idyl and descriptive poem, the par- 
 ticular nature of the subject leads the mind to fasten on 
 objective models, and allures it away from the search of ideal 
 
20 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 types in itself. This is particularly the case in descriptive 
 poetry, which chiefly consists of a skilful reproduction of rural 
 objects, such as we meet with in the "Seasons " of Thomson and 
 the " Georgics " of Virgil. But even here, there is large play for 
 invention in its lower forms, by the selection of such masses 
 of colour and groups of objects as are calculated to produce 
 the most startling effects. This artistic combination of natural 
 scenery is sometimes only a framework for the loves of rustic 
 people, the reproduction of which must vary in merit, according 
 to the degree in which it embraces the derivative or objective 
 element of imitation. But the range of pastoral poetry is as 
 confined as the minds of the clowns it would represent, and is 
 too apt, when reproduced in our day, to be a copy of the pictures 
 of others, or, in other words, to manifest nothing but reflex 
 imitation, or imitation of the lowest kind . 
 
 It is this form of imitation which distinguishes poets of 
 culture from poets of nature. For, the modification of other 
 people's thoughts, the domination of their own ideas by 
 hackneyed images or trite phraseology, is consistent with an 
 exquisite sense of harmony, and with a certain degree of refine- 
 ment which, in the eyes of the vulgar, are capable of clothing 
 their possessors with the mantle of divine poetry. But not- 
 withstanding the meretricious gilding with which it may be 
 adorned, this reflex imitation will be found to be nothing 
 less than a reproduction of the experiences and thoughts and 
 stereotyped phrases of others ; and according as it prevails in 
 poetry, the art degenerates, until we arrive, in purely imitative 
 poets, at the weakest echo of divine harmony, or the most 
 washed-out copy of the ethereal image. The two branches of 
 real imitation, objective and reflex, are allied in copying some- 
 thing external to the mind, just as the two ideal branches of 
 imitation, derivative and creative, are allied in adhering to 
 types which are furnished from within; while in the higher 
 walks of the art, in which the poet lays bare the mysteries of 
 the soul, the mainsprings of man's nature, or the more recondite 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS. 
 
 laws of the universe, imitation plays the least important part, if 
 it be not submerged in invention altogether. So far, then, from 
 imitation ruling supreme in every branch of poetry, it would 
 appear that the quality of poetry ranges from the lower to the 
 higher grade, according as imitation, in its plain and obvious 
 sense, is departed from, or its sphere is narrowed by the 
 predominance of invention and the representative faculty. 
 In fact, objective imitation and invention are two spheres in 
 poetry, corresponding to the actual and ideal, which increase 
 and diminish in inverse proportion to each other. In descriptive 
 poetry, we get the maximum of imitation with the minimum 
 of invention. In the epos and the drama, this condition of 
 things is precisely reversed. Equilibrium, however, is never 
 established. In the simple narrative poem, the balance is in 
 favour of the objective ; in the didactic and satiric poem, of 
 the inventive or subjective element. But this may be taken 
 as a truth, that according as the actual is incorporated with the 
 ideal, or mere reflex images blended with those of a derivative 
 character, not only the rank of different species of poetry may 
 be fixed, but the merit of poems of the same species may be 
 determined. A descriptive poem in which there is small, will 
 be inferior to a descriptive poem in which there is great, ideality. 
 A narrative poem in which the imitation is derivative, will be 
 superior to one in which the imitation is reflex or objective. 
 
 In our conceptions of the actual, we are dependent upon 
 thought and feeling ; but we cannot ascend far into the regions 
 of the ideal, without the assistance of fancy and imagination. 
 It is the relation of these two terms to each other, which throws 
 the main light upon the frontier line between the ranks of differ- 
 ent species of poetry. In their origin, Imagination and Fancy 
 were identical, being only two ways, which different nations 
 had, of designating the same subject. What with the Greeks 
 was an appearance, with the Latins was an image. But the 
 tendency of later times has been to desynonomize the two 
 terms, or to erect a barrier of distinction between them. 
 
22 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Imagination, however, we must first recognize, in its secondary 
 poetical sense, as the representative faculty, or the power of 
 reproducing past scenes or events, as they appear to have 
 actually occurred, with which Fancy has little or nothing in 
 common. It is only Imagination in its primary poetical sense 
 which Fancy allies itself with, and frequently seeks to rival ; 
 that is, the power which creates, evokes, or aggregates and 
 combines, which unifies the many into one, or disperses unity 
 into many. For both Imagination and Fancy seek different 
 ends by the same means. Some writers would make Imagina- 
 tion consist in the plastic power of forming distinct images, 
 of detecting hidden links of association j and Fancy in linking 
 these embodiments together. But this is a mere arbitrary 
 distinction, having no foundation in the reason of things. 
 The popular idea appears to be, that Fancy is only an exertion 
 upon a smaller scale, of the same faculty of which Imagination 
 is the higher element. Within certain limits, this may be ac- 
 cepted as true ; for both processes are to some extent identical, 
 though employed upon different objects, or upon bringing the 
 same objects under different laws. Fancy rather deals with fixed 
 and definite quantities, which refuse to be moulded by any plastic 
 energy; Imagination, with the measureless or the indefinite, 
 which can be contracted or expanded to suit the purpose of 
 the poet. Thus the extent of the ocean, which refuses to be 
 grasped by the sense, Milton adroitly minifies, in order to 
 aggrandize the bulk of the 
 
 Leviathan, which God of all His works 
 Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.* 
 
 And again — 
 
 There, Leviathan, 
 Hugest of living creatures, on the deep 
 Stretched like a promontory, sleeps or swims, 
 And seems a moving land, and at his gills 
 Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out, a sea. t 
 
 * " Parad. L.," b. i., 1. 200. t " Parad. L.," b. vii., 1. 410. 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS. 23 
 
 When Dante compares the giants who fought with Jove, rising 
 out of the pit of hell, to the towers of Montereggione looming 
 through the darkness, the impression is one of vagueness and 
 immensity.* But when Shakespeare compares the shape of 
 Queen Mab to an agate-stone on the forefinger of an alderman, 
 we get the exercise of the same faculty upon a scale of 
 circumscribed minuteness. , Milton's personifications of Sin 
 and Death are embodiments of the Imagination ; Shakespeare's 
 Titania, and her fairies, creations of the Fancy. It would, how- 
 ever, be absurd to deny that both are efforts of the same power 
 to give to airy nothings a local habitation and a name. To 
 realize the idea of vastness, Milton, by a lofty effort of imagina- 
 tion, compares Satan, drawn up to his full height, to Atlas or 
 Teneriffe, with stature reaching to the sky. But Spenser, when 
 he would describe the crest of Prince Arthur, compares him 
 to an almond-tree : 
 
 On top of green Selinis all alone, 
 With blossoms brave bedecked daintily, 
 Whose tender locks do tremble every one 
 At every little breath that under heaven is blown ;t 
 
 which is in conception and execution an effort of the Fancy. 
 Milton, in " Samson Agonistes," likens an over-dressed woman, 
 moving with all her toggery spread, to a ship in full sail. 
 This is Fancy. But in describing Satan exploring his way 
 through the air, no less an image will suit him, as a standard of 
 comparison, than a fleet descried afar off at sea, which seems 
 to hang in the clouds. This is Imagination. The description of 
 morning in Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 
 See, the day begins to break, 
 
 And the light shoots like a streak of subtile fire ; 
 
 and in the elder Marston's " Antonio and Melida," 
 
 Is not yon gleam the shuddering morn that flakes 
 With silver tincture the east verge of heaven ? 
 
 are both instances of exquisite Fancy. 
 
 * " Inferno," canto 31, v. 34. + " Faery Queen," b. i., c. 7, st. 32. . 
 
24 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 But Shakespeare's description of the same object : 
 
 The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night, 
 Checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light, 
 And flecked darkness like a drunkard's reels ; * 
 
 and Byron's : 
 
 The morn is up again, the blushing morn, 
 
 With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom, 
 
 Laughing away the clouds with playful scorn ; t 
 
 and Kirke White's : 
 
 Morn, like a traveller girt for travel, comes, 
 And from his tower of mist, 
 Night's watchman hurries down ; 
 
 and Spenser's : 
 
 The joyous day 'gan early to appear, 
 
 And fair Aurora from her dewy bed "S 
 
 Of aged Tithon 'gan herself to rear 
 
 With rosy cheeks, for shame, as blushing red, % 
 
 are each instances of the Imagination. 
 
 When Shakespeare compares the minutes of our lives hastening 
 to their end, with the waves of the sea rushing to the pebbled 
 shore, this is Fancy ; but when he describes the same waves 
 in a tempest : 
 
 Upon the foaming shore 
 The chidden billows seem to pelt the clouds, 
 The wind-shaked surge, with high and monstrous mane, 
 Seeming to cast water on the burning bear, 
 And quench the guards of the ever-fixed pole, 
 
 Imagination is at work, seeking to transfer the hubbub of the 
 elements to our own minds. 
 
 There is also a vitalizing power in imagination — a tendency to 
 clothe inanimate objects with the feelings and affections which 
 
 * " Romeo and Juliet," Act ii., sc. 3. f "Childe Harold," c. iii. 
 
 \ "F. Queen," b. i., c. ii., st. 51. 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS. 25 
 
 dominate our own breasts, as when Cassio would answer for 
 the safety of the Moor's bride : 
 
 Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds, 
 The gutter'd rocks, and congregated sands, 
 Traitors ensteep'd to clog the guiltless keel, — 
 As having sense of beauty, — do omit 
 Their mortal natures, letting go swiftly by 
 The divine Desdemona. 
 
 Occasionally this overmastering effort of passion to bring every 
 neighbouring object within the pale of its influence, would 
 seem to point to kindred associations in nature, as in Burns' 
 Highland Mary : 
 
 The flowers sprang wanton to be prest, 
 The birds sang love on every spray ; 
 
 or in the lines of Berni, which make the grass burst into flower 
 around the sleeping Angelica, and the river at her feet babble 
 of love : 
 
 Parea che l'erba le fiorisse intorno 
 E d'amor razionasse quella riva. * 
 
 But when the affinities or sympathetic links between inanimate 
 objects have no basis in nature, when they are mere figments 
 of the brain, with little or no connection with feeling or passion, 
 they come under the denomination of Fancy, as in the exquisite 
 lines of Herbert : 
 
 Thou lovely day, so calm and bright, 
 Sweet bridal of the earth and sky, 
 The dew shall weep thy fall to-night. 
 For thou must die. 
 
 When Cowper compares Winter to a grisly old man whose 
 beard is " with steel-like ashes filled," we have an exertion of 
 fancy ; but when Coleridge, by a bold metaphor, describes 
 Winter, in February, wearing upon its slumbering face a smile 
 
 * " Orlando Innam.," c. iii., st. 78. 
 
26 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 of Spring, he vitalizes nature, and gives us an offshoot of the 
 imagination. 
 
 In like manner, when Lochiel informs us how he is a seer — 
 
 Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, 
 And coming events cast their shadows before, 
 
 we have a lofty instance of imagination transferring the pro- 
 perty of the sunset to lengthen the shadows of objects, to 
 Lochiel in the evening of his life, who is thus enabled to reveal 
 coming events, before they have invaded man's horizon. But 
 when Aaron, in " Titus Andronicus," bent upon revenge, says, 
 
 My fleece of woolly hair that now uncurls, 
 Even as an adder when she does unrol 
 To do some fatal execution, 
 
 we have an instance of Fancy, or, in other words, an analogy 
 of appearance not founded in nature. The contrary, how- 
 ever, happens when Wordsworth assures us that 'tis his faith 
 that there is not a flower but what enjoys the air it breathes. 
 Here he vitalizes a sympathetic link already existing between 
 the two objects of his thought. But when stretched on his couch, 
 in pensive mood, he recalls a bed of daffodils he had seen 
 fluttering in the breeze, and feels his heart dance with them 
 in one round of pleasure, we have an analogy existing merely 
 in the poet's brain, unvitalized by passion, — that Promethean 
 fire which only can endue lifeless objects with sensuous activity. 
 In like manner, when Keats addresses the moon, 
 
 The booming world of waters bows to thee, 
 And Tellus feels his forehead's cumbrous load, 
 
 we have a ripe instance of Imagination ; but when Ben Jonson 
 bids the moon 
 
 Now the sun is laid asleep, 
 Seated on thy silver chair, 
 
 State in wonted manner keep,* 
 
 * " Cynthia's Revels," Act v., sc. iii. 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS. 
 
 he affords us a good exemplification of Fancy. The nearer 
 the image is to truth, in embodying some law or operation of 
 nature, though less perfect in form, it manifests the imaginative 
 element ; the farther from truth, though more complete in form, 
 the element of the fancy \ thus when Thomson invites Spring 
 to descend, as if she were a nymph, in a shower of roses upon 
 our plains, he manifests Fancy ; but when Byron, in that touch- 
 ing allusion to Howard on the field of Waterloo, sees around 
 him 
 
 The wild field revive 
 With fruits and fertile promise, and the spring 
 Come forth her work of gladness to contrive, 
 With all her reckless birds upon the wing, * 
 
 he furnishes a splendid example of genuine Imagination. It 
 would then appear that Fancy evokes much less feeling and 
 warmth than Imagination, that it embraces fainter and 
 farther-fetched analogies, possesses less truthfulness, and deals 
 with less pliant qr indefinite objects than her elder sister. 
 Fancy is more sportive; Imagination, more saturnine. The 
 more natural sphere of the one is comedy; of the other, tragedy; 
 though both can be grave and gay, according to the occasion 
 upon which they are exercised, or the object calling them forth. 
 Fancy in its lower range is employed in detecting analogies 
 between the artificial creations of society, in sharpening the 
 edge of wit, in enduing the fashions and gaieties of town life 
 with spiritual activity. In its higher range, it is employed about 
 natural objects, and approaches the confines of Imagination. 
 There is, however, a creative fancy as well as an imitative 
 fancy ; and the order of creation, in whatever sphere employed, 
 must always take precedence of that of imitation. With this 
 restriction, the distinction between the higher and lower range 
 of Fancy, may be taken as decisive of that between the merits 
 of poetry of the inferior order ; for the lowest order of poetry is 
 that entirely divorced from imagination in its primary poetical 
 
 Childe Harold," c. iii. 
 
28 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 sense, being the sphere in which wit rules supreme. The next 
 above it, is that in which Fancy is the paramount element 
 combined with sparse flights of Imagination in its secondary- 
 poetical sense. 
 
 The merit of poetry of the higher order may be discriminated 
 in a similar manner, and so marked off from the inferior classes 
 of the lower, by the character of the imaginative element pre- 
 vailing therein. Creative imagination has its broadest range 
 in the highest walks of the epic and dramatic muse. These, 
 therefore, form a class apart. The next order would be that 
 in which the Imagination in its secondary poetical sense, and 
 in the non-creative range of its primary poetical sense, is para- 
 mount ; which embraces second-rate dramas and epics, and the 
 noblest productions of lyric, narrative, didactic, and satiric 
 poetry. 
 
 There is no mark more indicative of genius than the spon- 
 taneous ease with which it mounts to general truths, from the 
 ground of particular facts. The lower class of minds are so 
 wedded to sensible phenomena that they seldom get beyond 
 them. They may seize the features of a landscape, or strike off a 
 particular group of figures with great accuracy, or combine into 
 one piece fragmentary beauties which have struck them in 
 nature. But to generalize from individual details, to rise to 
 great truths from partial illustrations of them in external objects, 
 to strike out of some grand synthetical principle its wide 
 manifestations in individual phenomena, or to interweave the 
 general with the particular in one variegated web of reasoning 
 eloquence, — all this is beyond their competency. Take any play 
 of Mason's or Thomson's, or any piece of Glover's or Southey's, 
 and we may wade through miles of verse without meeting with 
 an instance of the kind. But the pages of Byron and Shake- 
 speare bristle with them. Read, for example, the noble reflections 
 on Venice : 
 
 The Suabian sued, and now the Austrian reigns — 
 An Emperor tramples where an Emperor knelt, 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS. 29 
 
 Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains 
 Clank over sceptred cities ; nations melt 
 From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt 
 
 The sunshine for awhile, and downward go 
 Likelauwine loosened from the mountain's belt: * 
 
 Or see with what facility the same bard sculptures in verse the 
 law which steeps the traditions of the dogeless city in undying 
 freshness : 
 
 The beings of the mind are not of clay ; 
 
 Essentially immortal, they create 
 And multiply in us a brighter ray 
 
 And more beloved existence : That which Fate 
 Prohibits to dull life, in this our state 
 
 Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied, 
 First exiles, then replaces what we hate, 
 Watering the heart whose early flowers have died, 
 And with a fresher growth replenishing the void.t 
 
 Or behold how spontaneously the poet, after describing the 
 ruins of the Imperial mount, rises, at a bound, to the circular 
 theory of history : 
 
 This is the moral of all human tales ; 
 
 'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past, 
 First freedom, and then glory — when that fails, 
 
 Wealth, vice, corruption, barbarism at last. 
 
 And History with all her volumes vast 
 Hath but one page % 
 
 But a still more apposite example may be found in his 
 enumeration of sweets, where he blends first love with the 
 Hebrew account of the fall, and both with one of the sublimes t 
 myths of antiquity : 
 
 It stands alone, 
 Like Adam's recollection of his fall ; 
 
 The tree of Knowledge has been pluck'd, — all 's known, 
 And life yields nothing further to recall 
 
 Worthy of this ambrosial sin, so shown, 
 No doubt in fable, as the unforgiven 
 
 Fire which Prometheus filch'd for us from heaven. § 
 
 * <« 
 
 Childe Harold," c. iv., st. 12. + Ibid, st. 5. 
 
 % Ibid, st. 108. § "Don Juan," c. i., st. 127. 
 
30 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 In the plays of Shakespeare and of the higher dramatists, we 
 are arrested by this felicitous combination of general, with 
 particular truths, at every step. Thus, Hamlet cannot exchange 
 words with Rosencrantz, in a bantering spirit, without enun- 
 ciating a general principle upon which his remarks were 
 founded : 
 
 Ham. Denmark's a prison. 
 
 Ros. Then is the world one. 
 
 Ham. A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and 
 dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst. 
 
 Ros. We think not so, my lord. 
 
 Ham. Why, then, 'tis none to you ; for there is nothing either good or bad, 
 but thinking makes it so. 
 
 Ros. Why then your ambition makes it one ; 'tis too narrow for your mind. 
 
 Ham. O God! I could be bounded in a nut-shell, and call myself king of 
 infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. 
 
 And lower down, he cannot communicate to the same 
 interlocutors the fact that he has abandoned his customary 
 exercise, without soaring into a description which flushes the 
 earth with ethereal radiance, and lifts man to the highest sphere 
 of created intelligence.* 
 
 Even when Hamlet chides his mother, the general and 
 the particular blend their colours in a network of brilliant 
 contrast : 
 
 Assume a virtue, if you have it not. 
 
 That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, 
 
 Of habits evil, is angel yet in this, 
 
 That to the use of actions fair and good 
 
 He likewise gives a frock or livery, 
 
 That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night, 
 
 And that shall lend a kind of easiness 
 
 To the next abstinence : the next more easy ; 
 
 For use almost can change the stamp of nature, 
 
 And master e'en the devil, or throzu him out 
 
 With wondrous potency, f 
 
 An inferior artist, if he had introduced the king interrogating 
 * Act ii., sc. 2. + Act iii., sc. i. 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS. 31 
 
 Hamlet about Polonius, would have simply garnished the 
 interview with angry expostulations on both sides ; but Shake- 
 speare makes this simple incident the occasion of a thesis upon 
 human equality, expressed in a form democratic enough to 
 have suited the taste of a Desmoulins or a Robespierre, by 
 pointing to the chemical affinities which link the king with the 
 beggar, and both with the lowest creatures of the earth.* 
 
 Now, lesser poets never vitalize great principles by connecting 
 them with particular incidents, or infuse philosophy into occa- 
 sional incidents by mounting to the abstract truths from 
 which they derive new force and meaning. The most they do 
 is to start analogies, introduce similes and standards of com- 
 parison, which occasionally beautify and enrich, but afford a 
 poor substitute for those majestic flights of genius which mount 
 to the empyrean through successive cycles of being having 
 their resting-point on earth. Akenside is a poet of tolerable 
 repute. At least, his " Pleasures of the Imagination" is esteemed 
 a British classic. But, though the subject of his poem was 
 peculiarly adapted for flights of this character, he does not 
 afford a single instance of them.t In poets of this class, 
 general truths are always misty and vague, because divorced 
 from their individual manifestations, while these in turn fail to 
 strike the mind with full significance, because they are dis- 
 connected with the vital principle from which they derive their 
 activity. It would appear that inferior poets lack that deep 
 insight into the divine harmony of things which enables their 
 superior brethren to trace back to their source the principles 
 which control human action, or to pass with the sweep of an 
 eagle through the vast immensities of being which connect the 
 highest abstract intelligence with the lowest earthly existence. 
 That ladder of principles, — the ascending and descending range 
 
 * Act iv., sc. 3. 
 
 t Except, indeed, a passage about the optical delusion of two suns in 
 connection with the Newtonian theory of the rainbow, the finest in the 
 poem, which, strange to say, was expunged after the first edition. 
 
32 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 of laws, whose foot is on the earth, but whose summit is in the 
 skies, — can only be mounted by the upper ranks of the poetic 
 hierarchy, affording, in this respect, a remarkable contrast to 
 their weaker brethren who are unendowed with wings to poise 
 themselves above the gross material atmosphere of the earth. 
 
 The sublime is another source of poetic discrimination, but 
 not so much between different species, as between the merits of 
 poems of the same class. For sublimity is more or less common 
 to poems of every species, though, in the higher walks of poetry, 
 it is to be met with more frequently than in the lower. This 
 necessarily arises from the nature of the case, as heroic characters, 
 such as the epos and the drama call into life, require to be invested 
 with grand conceptions, or surrounded with supernatural agents, 
 who can only be represented by images which fill the imagination 
 with terror, or overpower it with the idea of immensity. Homer, 
 when he introduces Juno hurrying on her chariot to battle, con- 
 sidering the awful distance between heaven and earth, is obliged 
 to make her steeds go at a pace which outstrips the lightning, 
 and comprise within two leaps the limits of the physical horizon : 
 
 For as a shepherd, from some point on high, 
 O'er the wide main extends his boundless eye, 
 Through such a space of air, with thundering sound, 
 At one long leap, the immortal coursers bound. 
 
 In the same way Milton, when he would impress the mind 
 with the figure of Satan, puts into his hand a wand "tall as 
 the mast of some high admiral," to support his steps over the 
 burning marie, and gives him a shield as large as the moon, 
 when viewed through a telescope in the most translucent of 
 atmospheres. But when he would describe his hero drawing 
 himself to his full height, nothing less than the tallest of moun- 
 tains will furnish him with a standard of comparison : 
 Satan alarm 'd, 
 
 Collecting all his might, dilated stood, 
 
 Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremoved ; 
 
 His stature reach'd the sky, and on his crest 
 
 Sat horror plumed. 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS. 33 
 
 But the storehouse of the sublime is not confined to the em- 
 ployment of great images. The same feeling may be produced by 
 any combination of thoughts which awakens deep pathos, which 
 stirs the passions from their depths, or places us in connection 
 with the infinite. There may be boldness and grandeur in the 
 conception without any feeling of passion, as in the first two 
 books of " Paradise Lost," just as there may be intense passion 
 without any loftiness of ideas, as in the odes of Sappho. The 
 one impresses the imagination, the other strikes at the heart. 
 The combination of both is the peculiar privilege of the creative 
 poet ; as, for instance, when he makes Orestes see the Furies so 
 palpably, that the reader cannot help seeing them himself: 
 
 Mad Orestes, when his mother's ghost 
 
 Full in his face infernal torches tossed, 
 
 And shook her snaky locks, he shuns the sight, 
 
 Flies o'er the stage surprised with mortal fright, 
 
 The Furies guard the door, and intercept his flight. 
 
 Again, the feeling of the sublime may be produced without 
 any effort of the imagination, but by a simple representation of 
 fact ; as God said, " Let light be, and light was," or as in the 
 noble lines of Pope on the justice of the Deity, — 
 
 Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, 
 A hero perish or a sparrow fall ; 
 Atoms or systems into ruins hurled, 
 And now a bubble burst, and now a world. 
 
 In the lower walks of poetry, the two elements which enter 
 into these combinations of sublimity are commonly met with 
 apart, — the intuitive sublime, which arises from notions of 
 grandeur or immensity, being oftener met with in the descriptive, 
 and the pathetic or emotional sublime, in the elegiac and lyric 
 poet. In the lines of Pope on the death of an unfortunate young 
 lady, and the ode of Gray on the massacre of the Welch bards, 
 we get good exemplifications of the emotional ; in Thomson's 
 description of the descent of the famished wolves from the Alps, 
 on the approach of winter, an exemplification of the intuitive sub- 
 
 3 
 
34 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 lime. But the sublimity of the descriptive genius, at the highest, 
 is inferior to that of the creative genius at the lowest, as the 
 imagination requires to be much more powerfully impressed to 
 realize the mythical than the real. Compare the description of 
 the thunderstorm in Thomson and the tempest in Falconer, with 
 the description of the same phenomenon in " King Lear " and 
 the " Odyssey." The one strikes the mind with the force of the 
 hurricane itself. We are covered with foam. The hail pelts 
 our faces. The thunder deafens our ears. We are driven by 
 the force of the wind to and fro like the trees or masts which 
 crackle above us. The other appears only the description of a 
 picture which we contemplate from an artistic point of view. 
 The creative poet has not only to soar higher, but to keep 
 much longer on the wing. The descriptive poet need not soar 
 at all, and when he does, never to anything like the same height ; 
 and he drops from his airy eminence as quickly as he reached 
 it. The flight of the one is that of the plover, who, cuffing the 
 air with seemingly broken pinion, seldom loses sight of the 
 corn-field in which he has enjoyed his last meal. The flight of 
 the other that of the eagle, who, from some lofty peak in the 
 Andes, dries his feathers in the unrisen sun, while the sleeping 
 earth lies dark below. 
 
 Even where there is neither grandeur in the naked concep- 
 tion, or deep pathos in the feeling, or boldness in the thought, 
 an impression akin to the sublime may be produced by an 
 adroit use of figures of speech, when a metaphor or simile is 
 made to illustrate a character more truthfully than the laboured 
 narration of an entire life. Who does not see in the words 
 Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Brutus, the hot and choleric, 
 yet forgiving temper of the speaker ? — 
 
 Oh, Cassius, thou art yoked with a lamb 
 That carries anger as the flint bears fire ; 
 Who, much enforced, yields a hasty spark, 
 And straight is cold again. * 
 
 * "Julius Czesar," Act iv., sc. 3. 
 
PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS. 35 
 
 Sometimes natural imagery, under the mask of metaphor, is 
 called in to enforce a sentiment, with such elevation of thought, 
 that we cannot refuse to the general effect the epithet of sub- 
 lime. As when Apemantus tells Timon if he has betaken him- 
 self to the country to find flatterers, he has gone to the wrong 
 quarter : 
 
 What, think'st thou 
 That the bleak air, thy boist'rous chamberlain, 
 Will put thy shirt on warm ? Will these moss'd trees, 
 That have outlived the eagle, page thy heels, 
 And skip, when thou point'st out ? Will the cold brook, 
 Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste, 
 To cure thy o'er-night's surfeit ? Call the creatures, 
 Whose naked natures live in all the spite 
 Of wreakful heav'n, whose bare unhoused trunks, 
 To the conflicting elements exposed, 
 Answer mere nature ; bid them flatter thee. * 
 
 It is the infusion of this element of the sublime, in both or 
 either of its two great branches, which distinguishes poetry of 
 the second rank from other species of a lower order of merit, 
 just as the prodigality of the creative element is the badge by 
 which we distinguish poetry of the first order of merit. What- 
 ever poetry is unleavened with the sublime, cannot be included 
 in the second order, any more than poetry can be included in 
 the first order, which has not a large infusion of the creative 
 element. An ode or an elegy may be beautiful ; either may be 
 exquisitely finished ; but if they excite no deep emotional 
 feeling, or fill the mind with no lofty conceptions, we must, 
 if we would observe a just gradation among the subjects of 
 Parnassus, relegate what is merely beautiful without a spark of 
 the creative element, to a third class sphere. The didactic, 
 satiric, and narrative poem we would serve in the same manner, 
 provided they were complete in every other respect except in 
 profuse examples of sublimity. But as they frequently lack this 
 element, with other qualities besides, it is evident the base of 
 * Act iv., sc. 3. 
 
36 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 the poetic ranks cannot rest here. The ode and the elegy may 
 want ideal finish, or objective imitation may be thrust too pro- 
 minently forward, to the detriment of the subjective element, in 
 which case the performance, out of regard to the third class of 
 excellence, must rank beneath it. The other species of poetry 
 in the third rank may be defective from the same cause. We 
 hence get a fourth division, beyond which it would be unwise 
 to go ; for, when the objective element rules paramount, to the 
 exclusion of the subjective, we emerge from the region of poetry 
 into that of fact, which, though invested with all the pomp of 
 versification, remains fact still. The fourth division, therefore, 
 as embracing a portion, though too little, of the ideal element, 
 may be said to rest within the frontier line which divides poetry 
 from the domains of objective reality. We, thus, find ourselves 
 led into the same number of divisions with respect to the 
 merits of poetry, as is frequently adopted for the classification 
 of the poets of antiquity, when they are judged by the standard 
 of the language in which they wrote, and which these poets 
 themselves follow, when they describe epochs according to the 
 degree of innocence or wickedness prevailing therein, as the 
 golden, the silver, the brazen, and the iron age. 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF THE POETS. 37 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF THE POETS. 
 
 ALL poets whose reputations have been fixed by universal 
 suffrage in the most enlarged sense, will be found to have 
 a rank assigned them in one of the four divisions just mentioned, 
 according as the elements which characterize each division pre- 
 dominate in their works. But a poet, to some extent, is as much 
 a product of nature as a plant or a fossil ; and nature never 
 proceeds per saltum. We must, therefore, naturally expect the 
 place of some few to rest on the boundary line, or to hang mid- 
 way between two divisions without taking rank in either. It 
 may also be premised that a poet may be first-class in his own 
 peculiar province, and yet only second or third class when 
 viewed in relation to the first division of poetry. Theocritus 
 and Garcillasso are writers of pastorals of the highest order of 
 merit, but the best pastorals exhibit a lack of creative power 
 and the absence of sublimity. They, therefore, are necessarily 
 excluded from the two first divisions, and can only rank in the 
 third. Collins, again, is a first-class lyric; but as the ode is much 
 inferior to the epic, no one would think, on that account, of en- 
 rolling Collins in the same rank as Shakespeare and Milton, as 
 one of the monarchs of the spiritual universe. Poets of the 
 same class have their place assigned to them in each of the 
 divisions, much on the same principle as the divisions them- 
 selves are constituted, viz., on account of the subservience of 
 the fancy to the imagination, of the imitative to the creative 
 
38 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 element, and of the lower range of each of these to the higher, 
 and the interfusion of the sublime with both. The only differ- 
 ence is, that the distance between the divisions themselves is 
 more marked from the lack of some peculiar quality, than that 
 between poets of the same class, which only arises from the 
 intensity or varying degree of the same quality. No one would 
 place Virgil on a level with Homer, though he really has more 
 grace, simply because there is less vigour and force in his 
 original conceptions, and because he is more imitative in the 
 lower sense ; nor Milton on a par with Shakespeare, for the 
 same reason, although his characters unquestionably have more 
 classical finish and more sustained dignity. But in any society, 
 Milton would be placed above Pope, and Pope far more above 
 Prior or Parnel, than Prior or Parnel is above Darwin or 
 Hailey. And the chief assignable reason would be this, that 
 Milton had more of the creative faculty than Pope, and that 
 Pope familiarizes his readers with every branch of the sublime, 
 while his mere imitators rarely do so with any. Nobody now, 
 therefore, would think of placing either Parnel or Prior in the 
 second division, or conferring upon them high rank in the 
 third. But Collins and Burns each evince natural sweetness, 
 Collins with a sublime imagination, Burns with infinite feeling 
 and passion. They therefore rank in the second division as 
 princes of lyric poetry. The works of Cowper and Thomson 
 occasionally manifest sublimity, though not without apparent 
 effort. Fancy, also, in their works, predominates over imagi- 
 nation, and the poetry of objective, over that of representative 
 imitation. They are, in fact, very high descriptive poets, but 
 this only entitles them to the third rank in their art, being 
 a second remove from Milton and Shakespeare. Goldsmith 
 and Akenside, in the same division, supply the connecting 
 link in the order of merit between Cowper and Thomson on 
 the one side j and such writers as Suckling and Herrick, or 
 Falconer and Parnel, on the other side. The fourth class 
 embraces poets like Glover and Mason, Addison and Ros- 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF THE POETS. 39 
 
 common, in its higher range, and Hailey, Blackmore, and 
 Darwin in the lower, whose works are characterized by the 
 absence of original imagery, and the predominance of reflex 
 imitation. While, if we descend to our laureates — Shadwell, 
 Eusden, Cibber, and Pye — on account of the entire lack of the 
 poetic element, I fear, though they made a considerable noise 
 in their day, that posterity has made up its mind to treat them 
 like a pack of charlatans, and turn them out of the Temple of 
 the Muses altogether. 
 
 The distinction between poetry of these various divisions 
 will be found to lie as much in the difference of subject, as in 
 the successful treatment of it. The best lyric and didactic 
 piece not affording sufficient scope for the creative power, are 
 necessarily excluded from the first division. The best descriptive 
 piece, and the best pastoral, not affording sufficient scope for 
 sublime passion or lofty imagination, are necessarily excluded 
 from the second rank. It would, therefore, naturally follow that 
 a second-rate descriptive poem and pastoral would fall into 
 the fourth rank, and a second-rate lyric or didactic poem in 
 the third rank, and a second-rate drama or epic in the second 
 rank. But as the highest species of poetry, viz., the epos 
 and the drama, combine more poetic elements than the 
 lower, they will be found in every grade according to the 
 powers of invention, imagination, or imitation they manifest, 
 taking rank within the division to which their merit belongs. 
 Massinger, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson by no means exhibit the 
 same plastic power as Shakespeare. Their pieces rank, however, 
 in consistency of parts, in imaginative passion, in lofty instances 
 of sublimity, as far above the plays of Ford, of Peele, of 
 Greene, of Middleton, of Otway, quite as much as the pieces 
 of these dramatists rank above the "Sophonisba" of Thomson, 
 the "Zanga" of Young, or the "Elfrida" and "Caractacus" 
 of Mason. I, therefore, place them, along with Beaumont 
 and Fletcher, in the second class, while I relegate the plays 
 of the two inferior orders of dramatists to the third and 
 
40 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 fourth divisions, according to the degree in which they com- 
 bine imagination with fancy, or mere imitation with the repre- 
 sentative faculty. Peele, Ford, Otway, and Webster have, how- 
 ever, written plays which belong to the third as well as the 
 second order of poetry. They may, therefore, be regarded as 
 waverers between the two divisions. But Greene, Marston, and 
 Shirley belong exclusively to the third order of dramatists, from 
 their lack of passion and imaginative sublimity. While nothing 
 in the nature of plays which Mason, Young, Thomson, or 
 Addison has produced, could rescue them from the lowest rank 
 in the dramatic art, on account of the redundancy they exhibit 
 of reflex imitation. 
 
 The credentials of poets of the highest rank are, perhaps, less 
 exposed to challenge than any other, as the exercise of the 
 creative faculty in its higher range, results in effects so unique 
 as to enchain our admiration for ever. They carry about with 
 them a magician's wand which calls up characters destined to 
 haunt the memories of all coming generations. These are the 
 poets of the creative order. That which to other poets is the 
 model, becomes as it were the slave of their imagination, sup- 
 plying it with types which they transfuse into a higher order of 
 intelligence. Their creations are, also, upon a scale of grandeur 
 which overleaps the bounds of space and time within which 
 the ordinary imagination is confined. Shakespeare, Homer, 
 Dante, and Milton manifest the power of sublime invention in 
 so prominent a degree as to make it the most conspicuous 
 feature in their works. Mankind have therefore been wonder- 
 fully concurrent in placing them in the front rank of the highest 
 division of poetry. In the lower range of the same charmed 
 circle, the three Greek tragedians* have generally found not an 
 unchurlish reception. Though their works have come down 
 to us in a very mutilated state, and though the people who 
 alone could fully appreciate their merits have long since been 
 shattered into dust, the impress which they left upon the 
 * ^Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides. 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF THE POETS. 41 
 
 highly-gifted minds of the most fastidious age of Greece, and 
 the magnificent torsos in which their genius is imperfectly 
 reflected, fully entitle them to that distinction. For their 
 Orestes, Antigones, Clytemnestras, and Pylades still suffuse the 
 world with ancient light, and bring each coming generation 
 within reach of the primitive age, when the cries of the Bacchse 
 startled the nymphs in the groves of Arcady, and mariners 
 encountered the barks of the gods in the ^Egean Sea. In their 
 dramas the creative is the principal element, combined with 
 bold imagination or exquisite pathos. After Homer and Shake- 
 speare, their works are the least tainted in any form with reflex, 
 and abound with the loftiest examples of ideal imitation. They 
 are, therefore, entitled to rank next after the first great masters 
 of creative imagination. In the lowest group of the first division, 
 I would place Virgil, Ariosto, and Tasso. For, though each of 
 these poets is distinguished by sublime inventions, though 
 they afford many superb examples of creative imagination, they 
 each adopt the conceptions of their predecessors to so large 
 an extent, as to place them at a respectable distance from 
 their circle. Virgil, however, notwithstanding his habit of 
 copying Homer whenever he gets an opportunity, is dis- 
 tinguished by exquisite grace, by subtile strokes of passion 
 infusing life and warmth into all his characters, and by the 
 power of calling up marvellous pictures by a few strokes of his 
 pencil. Ariosto and Tasso are generally allowed to bear him 
 company by all who enjoy the pleasure of their acquaintance, 
 without the introduction of such sorry versifiers as Hoole, 
 Fairfax, or Harrington. Ariosto, though most unlike the Greek 
 tragedians in other respects, resembles them in this, that his 
 genius has reproduced an age which can never die as long as 
 his language is understood. If behind the other creative poets 
 in grandeur of conception, he certainly is not surpassed by any 
 in fertility of invention, in depth of passion, or in the fidelity of 
 his portraits to nature. The blending of the grave with the 
 gay, of the comic with the pathetic, — a mode of treatment 
 
42 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 forced upon him by the sceptical spirit of his age, which had 
 lost all belief in the supernatural, — though it subtracts from 
 that terrible earnestness which characterizes the works of his 
 rivals, affords greater scope and variety to his powers, and 
 enables him to strike monotony out of his narrative. To my 
 mind, Tasso is barely within the circle of the great epic poets ; 
 for he stands as much below Dante and Homer as he is above 
 Camoens, and as much above Camoens, as Camoens is above 
 Lucan, or as much as Lucan is above Davenant and Sir 
 Richard Blackmore. At least, such is the position he holds 
 in the general repute, notwithstanding the too eulogistic 
 judgment of Lord Byron, and the too depreciatory judgment 
 of Despreau and Boileau. For he is behind his great com- 
 peers in boldness of conception, in sublimity, as well as in 
 fertility of incident and originality of invention ; though he 
 need not fear comparison with the foremost in delineation 
 of character, and in moulding a fable of heterogeneous 
 parts into the unity of a perfect whole. To test his inferiority 
 to Milton and Dante, the Pandemonium of either should 
 be compared with the infernal council of Pluto. Milton's and 
 Dante's devils are dethroned spirits, fallen meteors flashing 
 through a dark atmosphere, ruined ministers carrying about 
 with them the pomp of their former state, while splashing 
 us with their fiery talk, or hurling defiance at the gates 
 of heaven. But Tasso's devils are contemptible reptiles pro- 
 vided with horns and tails like those drawn by our grandams 
 to congeal us by the winter fire. As a mark of his inferiority 
 to Ariosto, the coquettish manners of Armida may be con- 
 trasted with the voluptuous sensibility of Alcina, and the 
 sanctimonious demureness of Sofronia with the tacit spirituality 
 of Angelica, and the studied proprieties of Clorinda with the 
 passionate tenderness of Olympia. The creative, in Tasso, is 
 not by any means so prominent as the representative faculty, 
 and in the strength of both, he is below his Italian rival. 
 On account of the frequency of his imitations, and the 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF THE POETS. 43 
 
 exquisite finish of his pictures, Tasso more nearly approaches 
 Virgil than any other epic poet, though he rarely attains, 
 even by redundant touches, to that height of the sublime which 
 the Roman reaches by a few masterly strokes. Tasso, however, 
 excels Virgil in discrimination of character, in imparting to his 
 heroes an earnest reality of purpose, as well as in the manipula- 
 tion of his fable, and in sustaining the interest of his narrative 
 to the end. It would, therefore, be unjust to shut the door upon 
 the Neapolitan, where the Mantuan has been admitted. But 
 these are excellences of the narrative rather than the epic poet, 
 for which reason Tasso may be regarded as marking the 
 boundary-line between the representative and creative order of 
 poetry. 
 
 Tasso lies so near the frontier which divides the great creative 
 poets from those of the next, or representative rank, as to afford 
 no room for his imitator, Spenser, to be included in the number. 
 In suffusing a landscape with rosy light so as to mass its colours 
 in startling contrasts, and in imparting to his scenery the grace 
 and harmony of a Claude, the Englishman may be said to 
 surpass his Italian contemporary. He is, also, his superior in 
 that indefinable sweetness which always accompanies ideal 
 beauty ; but in depth of feeling, in animated action, in delinea- 
 tion of character, in the invention of incidents to awaken and 
 keep alive the curiosity of the reader, in making variety in the 
 parts of his fable so cohere as to impart strength and unity to 
 the whole, — in all of these Tasso is unquestionably his master. 
 The "Faerie Queen" presents us with a succession of pictures 
 of great power, tricked out with inimitable charms of grace and 
 sentiment, but without any connecting link sufficiently promi- 
 nent to present them to the reader as members of one grand 
 design. We are charmed with isolated fragments — with that 
 pretty prospective, with this woodland group, with this bewitch- 
 ing etching of an angel supporting a wounded knight, with 
 the voluptuous beauty of that nymph mocking the satyr by 
 plunging into the concealing wave, with that scene of blushing 
 
44 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Diana, hemmed in by her nymphs, when surprised by the wanton 
 Faun at her bath — just as we are horrified by the savage and 
 wild scenery he piles up round this cave of despair, and thai 
 den of slander, with the filthy duessas and toad-like witches 
 he congregates therein ; but amidst all these representations, 
 we are quite oblivious of the poet's fable, simply because 
 he is ignorant of what is the chief art of the creative poet, viz., 
 the keeping alive in the parts of his design the dominant idea 
 which ought to animate the whole. Spenser, therefore, is much 
 praised and little read. There are very few who do not open 
 his volumes at random, but very few who sit down with the 
 resolution to read him through, and still fewer who continue in 
 that resolution to the end. The fact is, the fate of Spenser's 
 characters do not interest us, because they do not wear the sem- 
 blance of living realities, which arises partly from the mistaken 
 idea of making them the embodiment of some abstract con- 
 ception, and piling allegory upon allegory until we are lost in 
 a wilderness of personification. Besides, Spenser has stolen a 
 whole armoury of conceits from Tasso, and plundered Ariosto of 
 entire cantos of his immortal epic, which he deliberately trans- 
 ferred to the "Faerie Queen." Reflex imitation and direct 
 thievery on so extensive a scale are surely not to be ascribed to 
 a genius of the highest order. In Spenser, also, fancy oftener 
 supplies the place of the imaginative element than is her wont 
 with the poet whom he so flagrantly copies. It is for these 
 reasons that I think Spenser ought to be excluded from the 
 last range of creative poets, though his great qualities un- 
 questionably entitle him to a very high place among poets of 
 the succeeding or representative division. 
 
 Chaucer is usually ranked with Spenser, as the forte of each lay 
 in the representative faculty, and both seem to revel in joyous 
 pictures of external nature, as a sort of background to their 
 subjects. But Chaucer, though possessed of greater abilities than 
 Spenser, did not soar higher than the narrative poem, in which he 
 attained perfection. The characters in the " Canterbury Tales " 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF THE POETS. 45 
 
 are drawn with the hand of a master, and placed in advantageous 
 contrast, so as to strike the eye with rich masses of colouring. 
 The nun and the friar, the squire and the lawyer, jogging along 
 with the merchant and the handicraft-man, while they lay bare 
 to its foundations the structure of contemporary society, which 
 the Church had almost rendered communistic, impress our 
 minds as much with the realities of individual life as if the 
 portraits were the same objective copies as his description of 
 the parlour furniture at the Tabard. But in these, as in his 
 other tales, he makes little use of the inventive faculty, their 
 principal merit consisting in portraying lively sallies of cha- 
 racter, instead of surprising the reader by startling creations. In 
 "Troilus and Cresseide" Chaucer had more scope for invention, 
 but he has not availed himself of it. The tale abounds with 
 touches of emotional sublimity, and exquisite descriptions of 
 nature, but is enriched with little incident beyond what is in 
 the original tale itself. Between the story as detailed by 
 Chaucer, and what it subsequently became in the hands of 
 Shakespeare, we may perceive the wide distance which separates 
 the creative from the mere representative poet. But let us be 
 just to the Father of English Poetry. A poet is more or less the 
 product of his age. Had Shakespeare lived in the fourteenth 
 century, his colossal powers would have been, to a great extent, 
 stunted in their growth j and the perfection which Chaucer at- 
 tained, though in a second-class walk of his art, in the infancy 
 of our language, is one of the greatest marvels of literary history. 
 If he has achieved less in the imaginative element than Spenser, 
 or than either of his Italian rivals, the probability is, had he 
 enjoyed the advantages of their training, and been born to the 
 inheritance of free thought which they enjoyed, he would have 
 outshone even the splendour of their genius. 
 
 Spenser excels Camoens in the brilliancy and copiousness 
 of imagery, in the variety, the flow, the energy, and the swell of 
 his versification, in sustained sweetness, and inimitable grace of 
 manner, as far indeed as we would naturally expect a refined 
 
46 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 courtier to surpass a rude soldier in polished ease and elegance ; 
 but the English poet is inferior to his Portuguese contemporary 
 in boldness and originality of invention, as well as in the art of 
 shaping out of diverse materials the structural unity of a grand 
 poem. Camoens, instead of narrating, as an inferior poet 
 would, the events of Vasco de Gama's voyage in their natural 
 sequence, rushes at once into the middle of his subject, opening 
 his epic with the gods assembled in council, and the hardy 
 Lusitanians upon the threshold of a new world. The appalling 
 phantom which arrests the Portuguese fleet at the Cape, and 
 the island which arises out of the African sea, for the solace of 
 the mariners, have excited the imagination of posterity as much 
 as the boldest strokes of invention in Homer and Virgil. But 
 the wearisome recitals of history, and the geographical details 
 with which he crams his two chief episodes, with the want of 
 vraisemblance in his supernatural machinery, must prevent this 
 poet from rising above the second rank in his art, though 
 Schlegel has the hardihood to place him before Tasso. It 
 cannot, however, be denied that Camoens' defects spring not so 
 much from lack of genius as the want of ordinary judgment. 
 The narrative details might easily have been replaced by some 
 device of his powerful imagination; and by keeping the pagan 
 in subordination to the Christian element, his supernatural ma- 
 chinery would not have startled his Catholic readers out of all 
 feelings of propriety. 
 
 The Catholic theology frequently refers the Greek legends to 
 the invention of devils, who, by embodying the passions in 
 sensual forms, sought to keep the human race from the worship 
 of the deity. Camoens himself represents this tradition to the 
 letter, when he introduces Bacchus, in the guise of a Roman 
 Catholic priest, endeavouring to mislead the Christian navi- 
 gators, that they might not interfere with his empire. Had 
 Camoens always employed his pagan characters as the minis- 
 trants of evil, he would have found a legitimate field for their 
 enterprise; but he goes far beyond this in placing the two 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF THE POETS. 47 
 
 systems exactly upon a level. God the Father and Venus 
 can by no freak of the imagination be associated in the same 
 undertaking. Yet the Paphian goddess is represented by 
 Camoens as acting in collusion with Jehovah, in order to in- 
 flame the Nereids with love for the Portuguese, and as em- 
 ploying the arrows of Cupid for the propagation of the true faith. 
 Such a grotesque blending of the voluptuous forms of the old 
 mythology with the austere agents of the Christian faith, is as 
 much at war with nature as the embodiment of abstract passions, 
 and the employment of them as dramatic personages in an 
 heroic poem. Naturalness is the great link which binds the 
 ideal to the actual. Without verisimilitude fiction can take no 
 hold upon the imagination. But what likeness to nature can 
 there be in devices which shock popular belief, and outrage all 
 our notions of reality ? 
 
 The " Henriade" sinks naturally enough deep into the third- 
 rate order of poetry, not simply from its comparative inferiority 
 to the other great epics, but from the lack of invention and 
 the predominance of the imitative, over the creative faculty. 
 All the reader gets in Voltaire's epic is the framework of a 
 great design, which the maker had not the faculty to fill up 
 with anything but buckram personages, who may charm us with 
 fine sentiments, but do not in the least interest us in their 
 actions. It is a fine poem, which presents us with no new 
 combinations, but merely springs out of the novel association 
 of the devices of others. The principal element in the ma- 
 chinery arises from the lowest order of imitations. In fact, all 
 that Voltaire has accomplished in the way of originality is to 
 personify fury, discord, and politics ; who, each in their several 
 spheres, the one in hell, the other in Paris, and the last in 
 Rome, perform the principal feats upon which the action of the 
 poem turns. But the mind can never, by any art, be seduced 
 into the belief that these personages are anything more than 
 abstract passions, and to make them pass for realities, is as 
 difficult a task as to change the cardinal virtues into animals. 
 
48 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Hence, Homer and Virgil showed their sense in keeping such 
 license within proper bounds. Their personification of slander 
 and fame is only to show the extent to which such things grow 
 out of small trifles. They never thrust them forward, like Spenser, 
 into the heart of an action, or make them the moving agents of 
 a plot on which the progress of the piece depends. They are 
 mere figures of speech, and nothing more. Even Milton, with 
 all his genius, and with the forms of monumental sculpture to 
 help him, when he introduces sin and death parleying with Satan 
 at the gates of hell, makes a call upon our imagination to which 
 credulity cannot respond. We, therefore, losa all interest in a 
 piece which employs agents of a more abstract nature as its 
 principal characters, since the actions which they stimulate arise 
 out of causes not conformable with nature. 
 
 Virgil and Tasso, the most imitative of the epic poets, have 
 many inventions which are original. Even the sublime phan- 
 tom which encounters the fleet of Vasco de Gama while 
 doubling the Cape, or the isle of the Nereids arising out of the 
 ocean, in Camoens, have not their prototype in any other poet. 
 But it is impossible to lay a finger upon any of the devices in 
 the u Henriade " which has not its counterpart in some other 
 poet. Henry IV. is detained in the bower of love, as Rinaldo 
 in the gardens of Armida. Henry IV. is conducted into hell 
 like ^Eneas, where he is made to see, as Bradamante in the cave 
 of Merlin, the illustrious progenitors who are to spring from his 
 loins. This injudicious environment of a modern hero with the 
 myths, suited only to legendary history, strikes, as it were, with 
 atrophy the imaginative parts of the poem. Voltaire, like 
 Lucan, had the misfortune to select a subject for an epic too 
 close to the period in which he wrote ; but the Roman showed 
 more discernment than the Frenchman, in keeping his characters 
 out of regions in which they could not appear, without drawing 
 upon their heads the ridicule of a sceptical generation. Lucan 
 is inferior to his French imitator in the artistic manipulation of his 
 fable, because he abounds in objective imitation, or, in other words, 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF THE POETS. 49 
 
 sticks so closely to the world of fact, and intrudes upon his reader 
 so many needless scientific digressions. But there cannot be a 
 doubt, in earnestness of purpose, in pomp of language, in discrimi- 
 nation of character and dignity of sentiment, he is Voltaire's supe- 
 rior. He may also be regarded as his superior in the inventive 
 faculty ; for, while the invention of Voltaire is only shown in 
 throwing into new combinations the images of others, that of 
 Lucan springs from placing old characters in strange situations, 
 so affording scope for novel incidents, and enabling him to bring 
 out their salient features by startling varieties of contrast. In 
 both, however, the descriptions are too melodramatic, the senti- 
 ments too spasmodic for the chaste simplicity of truth. I, there- • 
 fore, set down the " Pharsalia," as well as the " Henriade," in 
 the lower division of the third order of poetry, relegating Glover's 
 " Leonidas " and " Athenaid " to the same division in the fourth 
 order, where their empty stateliness, their lack of original 
 imagery, well befits both to find a place. 
 
 The narrative poem is the evolution of a single skein of fic- 
 tion, as contradistinguished from the epic and dramatic poem, 
 which interweave the thread of several such groups into the 
 unity of one grand design. In passing, then, from epic and 
 dramatic poetry, we necessarily descend into a lower region 
 of art, wherein the best poets must be content to figure 
 as second class, relatively to those who have exercised,, upon 
 a grand scale, the wand of creation with the grasp of a 
 master. Even the moral, lyric, or didactic poet, however 
 excellent his merits, can never expect to attain the same 
 level as a Homer or a Milton. He may have faculties 
 which, as in the case of Chatterton, Chaucer, or Burns, might 
 have enabled him to vie with the loftiest muse in the creative 
 region ; but if circumstances have not favoured their cultiva- 
 tion, his merits cannot be tested by what he has not produced. 
 The " Battle of Hastings " and " Tarn o'Shanter " are narrative 
 poems of the very highest class, which prove their authors to 
 have been in possession of great inventive powers, but as these 
 
 4 
 
50 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 have not been exercised upon any grand scale, both Chatterton 
 and Burns must be excluded from the first walk of their art. 
 Perhaps, no writer of the English language was so competent as 
 Dryden to execute a great epic — at least, if we may judge from 
 the manner in which he has developed some of Boccacio's 
 stories, and amplified what he undertook to recast from Chaucer. 
 But this great poet was doomed to cater to the false taste of 
 the public, by wasting his strength upon wretched rhyming tra- 
 gedies, which were no sooner acted than forgotten. Dryden, 
 then, as well as Chaucer— the one from the necessities of his 
 position, the other from those of his age — may be said to have 
 evinced powers capable of higher things than they achieved ; 
 but this would not justify us in placing them among poets of 
 the first class, except in those departments which they have 
 illustrated by their genius. 
 
 It is for his relative, and not absolute inferiority, that Pope is 
 also excluded from the first division ; for while, from the nature 
 of his subjects, he cannot rank with Milton, he is fairly allowed 
 to be at the head of the moral poets of England. In the heroic 
 comic poem, he certainly has no rival out of Italy. The 
 machinery of his " Rape of the Lock," were it not for the 
 burlesque character of the piece, would go far to establish his 
 pretensions to rank with the loftiest masters of song. Out of 
 the circle of epic and dramatic writers, no poet has tried so 
 many kinds of subjects, and succeeded so well in all. In the. 
 ode, Collins is superior to him j but Collins expended almost 
 .his whole strength on this description of poetry. In slashing 
 strength of satire, he is surpassed by Dryden and Churchill : 
 but Dryden and Churchill choose satire for their peculiar pro- 
 vince ; while Pope, though pre-eminent in satire, has written the 
 best descriptive poem, " Windsor Forest," the first moral, and 
 two of the best didactic poems, in our language, the " Essay on 
 Criticism," and the " Essay on Man." In the pathetic-sublime, 
 the " Epistle of Abelard to Eloisa " has never been surpassed, 
 and rarely, if ever, been equalled. In the intuitive branch of the 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF THE POETS. 51 
 
 sublime, the " Messiah " and the " Essay on Man " afford as 
 many striking examples as any other pieces of equal extent. 
 I, therefore, do not think Pope misplaced where the public have 
 generally agreed to place him, after Chaucer and Spenser, at 
 the head of the poets of the second division of the representa- 
 tive class. After him ranks Dryden ; after Dryden, at least in 
 satire, the unjustly neglected Churchill. 
 
 We have cited frequent examples of the intuitive and 
 emotional-sublime, as the touchstone by which poetry of the 
 second order may be distinguished from that of a lower range. 
 Tried by this test, Pope, Dryden, and Churchill will be found 
 as distinguished as Horace and Juvenal. Many of Shakespeare's 
 dramatic contemporaries and immediate successors soar into 
 the region of the sublime without constrained effort, and 
 Collins, also, evinces no lack of vigour in the same element. 
 But Gray, who is generally classed with him, has not one 
 spark of Collins' exquisite feeling. His imagery is cold and 
 stately, reminding us rather of antique statuary than the 
 animated action of human life. Hence, the intuitive-sub- 
 lime with him, though easily attained, is too definite to be 
 of a high order. His noblest conceptions rather resemble the 
 figures on a Greek frieze than those ideal embodiments which 
 place us in connection with the infinite. On this account, 
 Gray's place is on the boundary line which divides the second 
 from the third class of poets, if he be not actually within it. 
 Lucretius excels in what may be called the discursive-sublime, 
 that arising out of deep reflection, recondite analogies, and 
 brilliant sentiment, his exemplifications of which may vie with 
 anything of the sort in the " Essay on Man." He is the 
 poet of reason in its profoundest sense. Petrarch, Sappho, 
 and Ovid, on the other hand, excel in a branch of the sublime 
 which requires less sustained effort but more natural genius. 
 They are the grand masters of love, both in its spiritual 
 and voluptuous aspects — a passion which is never accurately 
 delineated without stirring the human heart from its lowest 
 
52 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 depths. The second division, therefore, may be said to 
 contain as many groups as the first division contains single 
 poets, each varying in merit, but all bound together by excel- 
 lence in one common quality. Spenser and Chaucer bound 
 the line on the creative frontier, while the base of the division, 
 on the representative frontier, terminates with Gray. 
 
 The best description which can be given of poetry of the 
 third order is that which would identify it with poetry of the 
 second order, were it not for lack of the element of sublimity, 
 and the power of combining particular incidents with general 
 principles. Both classes of poets equally use material objects 
 only as chords to awaken within us the inner harmonies of our 
 spiritual being ; but the higher are led by their subjects into bold 
 flights of imagination, the lower into excursions of fancy. In 
 the same proportion as fancy occupies the place of imagination, 
 external imitation, with poets of the third order, encroaches 
 on the ground of the representative faculty. The poets of this 
 class never stir the passions to any extent, but touch with 
 masterly hand the refined sensibilities of our nature. They 
 are more distinguished for exquisite taste than depth of feeling. 
 I, therefore, denominate them poets of the aesthetic order, in con- 
 tradistinction to poets of the creative and representative order. 
 Such are Cowper, Thomson, and Goldsmith, who stand at 
 the head of this division. Their subjects, as in the "Traveller" 
 and " Deserted Village," generally make up for boldness and 
 originality of conception by a keen sense of beauty and by 
 elaborate finish. But when on a large scale, like the " Task," 
 the treatment is fragmentary, or the tone is unequal, as in the 
 " Seasons," whose beauties, like the spring sun, only shine out 
 by fitful gleams. Their pieces, however, when on a small 
 scale, have the perfection of gems, or painting on enamel. 
 Herrick belongs to the middle group of poets of this class; 
 so do Falconer, Drayton, and Cowley, though in different 
 spheres. Blair and Young, Prior and Parnel, occupy the lower 
 region of it. Gay and Denham bring up the the rear. 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF THE POETS. 53 
 
 The peculiar subjects of this third division are pure descrip- 
 tive, pastoral, and ballad poetry. In pastoral we do not 
 flourish so much as our southern neighbours j for our churlish 
 climate will not allow us to place Amaryllas and Corydons 
 under orange-groves or fig-trees, and our swains appear to 
 bad advantage after the plastic creatures of Greek imagination. 
 Tickell, Mallet, and Shenstone — the two former by their 
 ballads, and the last by a few of his pastoral eclogues and his 
 " Village Schoomistress," — belong to this division of poetry, 
 though the great bulk of their other poems would assign them 
 a place in the fourth class. They therefore, like Gray, rest on 
 the frontier, or like Chaucer, Dryden, Pope, and Burns, may 
 be denominated waverers, or poets who, while they belong to 
 an inferior division, evince talents which, if properly directed, 
 would have raised them to a higher rank. 
 
 The distinction between poetry of the third and fourth order 
 is not difficult to seize. It is in fact the distinction between 
 mixed imagination and fancy, and fancy alone ; between deri- 
 vative and direct imitation j between the spiritual and the 
 material, as confined to those writers who never soar to the sub- 
 lime, but whose merit consists in elegance of expression and 
 accuracy of objective description. The poets of the third 
 rank use the material as an introduction to the spiritual, those 
 of the fourth rank, the spiritual as the handmaid to the material. 
 They may, therefore, be denominated poets of the sensuous 
 order. In the description of the one, the spiritual element is 
 always uppermost, moulding the material to its purposes, till it 
 claims a close kinship with the offsprings of the imagination. 
 In the descriptions of the other, the sensuous predominates ; 
 the poet throwing into prominence the corporeal qualities of 
 objects, rather than seeking to impress the mind through the 
 imagination and the heart. Take as an illustration Herrick and 
 Carew. Both have left us animated portraits of female beauty. 
 But in Herrick, the features are only known through the inner 
 light, which uses them as a vase for the manifestation of its 
 
 US LIBf?^ 
 
 OF 7HF ~ \ 
 
 UNIVERSITY J 
 
54 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 splendour ; while in Carew, we get a combination of material 
 properties only, without any spiritual significance. Poets of 
 this class abound in stereotyped phrases and figures of speech, 
 which have not an atom of originality. Clever city wits 
 like Suckling, Waller, Swift, and Rochester, hold the highest rank 
 among them. The next in order, though in a different sphere, 
 are such writers as Beattie, Glover, and the two Wartons. 
 The middle region is occupied by Addison, Garth, Fenton, 
 and Roscommon; and in the direct boundary line we meet 
 with Hailey and Darwin. All beyond are mere versifiers, of 
 whom we can take no account. If a man chooses to master 
 chemistry, and throw the facts of that science into pleasing 
 pentameters, that does not make him the less a chemist and 
 more of a poet. Empedocles, when he threw his natural his- 
 tory into verse, still remained a naturalist. Otherwise, we 
 should have pedagogues climbing up the hill of Parnassus, with 
 the Latin grammar in rhyme on their back. The metre is but 
 the dress that constitutes the framework of the poet's limbs, 
 and the inner soul which animates them, is the power he possesses 
 of entering into the inner shrine of the universe, and revealing 
 the occult harmonies of the spiritual sphere, which permeate 
 all material forms, and make this great globe itself but the ex- 
 ternal embodiments of its splendour. But in Broome, Ham- 
 mond, Sandys, Pitt, Whitehead, Cumberland, Shadwell, and the 
 Laureates who intervened between the two, and in the whole 
 tribe of Pope's second class imitators, we can discover nothing 
 of the true functions of the poet, but only the external wrapper 
 or form, which can no more exalt prosaic conceptions, than 
 the lion's skin could endue with ferocity the servile beast who 
 clad himself therewith to frighten the denizens of the forest. 
 
 So far, then, it may be taken for an axiom, that where we get 
 great creative power, many-sidedness, and a conjunction of 
 grand conceptions with the emotional sublime, there we have 
 first class poetry, and where any of these qualities are wanting, 
 first class poetry is not. It may also be as readily granted, that 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF THE POETS. 55 
 
 the class of poetry next in order is where there is a lack of 
 creative power, but frequent instances of either of the two 
 sources of the sublime combined with a prominent manifesta- 
 tion of the representative faculty. From this level the next 
 step in the descent to the third or aesthetic order, is the 
 rarity of any instance of the sublime, with great vigour of 
 description, in which the spiritual dominates over the material. 
 The lowest step of all lands us on that ground where we get 
 inferior combinations of the imaginative and representative 
 elements in second-rate descriptive poetry, and where flights of 
 fancy and sallies of wit are substituted for sublime bursts of 
 passion, and the spiritual manifestations of beauty. This is not 
 the sphere of ethereal types, but of material embodiments. 
 Beyond the frontier of this sensuous region, we come in contact 
 with the dreary wastes of the actual, in which most common- 
 place characters are content to spin out the great bulk of their 
 lives. 
 
56 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 WHAT are the relations of genius to the age in which it 
 appears ? How far do they mutually influence each 
 other ? Is it necessary for the production of a great poet 
 that the age in which he lives should be strongly tinctured with 
 romance, or contain within it a dash of the marvellous ? 
 Such are some of the questions which are often arbitrarily 
 decided, or in fact assumed to be solved, upon insufficient 
 grounds. There are two or three generally admitted facts m 
 connection with this matter. Every age, to a greater or less 
 extent, impresses certain marks upon the writers belonging to 
 it. The writers of Queen Anne may be easily distinguished 
 from those of the Restoration, and both in turn from the writers 
 of the Elizabethan period. It has also been noted that, during 
 four or five great world-epochs, the human intellect has appeared 
 in far greater force than at any other times. The great lumina- 
 ries of the intellectual horizon have not been distributed equally 
 over certain even portions of time, but have clustered round 
 periods which have been most distinguished for aesthetic refine- 
 ment, for startling social change, or for grand political culmina- 
 tions. It may, also, be admitted that the poets of the highest 
 creative genius have flourished before science achieved its con- 
 quests, and before men's minds were engrossed by practical 
 
INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS. 57 
 
 pursuits, or disciplined by philosophic thought. When the 
 fields of Nature lay for the most part unexplored, and when 
 men were guided more by their emotions and acute sensibili- 
 ties than by their practical reason, the imagination attained 
 its highest flights into the regions of the unknown. Then 
 were moulded, in the poetic armoury, those shafts which 
 have sunk deepest in the human breast. Homer flourished 
 in the infancy of the ancient, Dante in the infancy of the 
 modern, world. Shakespeare and his dramatic contemporaries 
 preceded, if they did not prepare, the way for those scientific 
 discoveries which culminated in Newton. Ariosto flourished 
 before Galileo, who candidly confesses his obligations to a 
 writer whose pursuits were so opposite to his own. Milton lived 
 at a later period, but his mind was alien to those inductive 
 processes which were then beginning to lay the foundations of 
 modern science. If France and Germany have produced no 
 poets fit to contend with those of England and Italy in the 
 highest walks of creative genius, it would appear because their 
 philosophers had the start of their poets. Descartes pre- 
 ceded Corneille ; and the German metaphysicians, before Goethe 
 or Schiller appeared, had thrown back many of the veils which 
 hide, in their dim, mysterious folds, the arcana of man's spiritual 
 nature. 
 
 Upon some such grounds as these, it has been determined 
 that a writer is but the organic expression of the voice of his 
 age, and that if the times in which he lives be prosaic, his 
 utterances must, in the main, be prosaic also. But a great 
 poet, though to some extent the product of his age, is, by 
 the irresistible attributes of his greatness, raised so far 
 above it as to be regarded as a seer, directing his contempo- 
 raries into the fertile regions of the future, and illuminating his 
 own times with a splendour with which they have little in com- 
 mon. It may, indeed, be a question how far such a mind can 
 expand in an atmosphere spiritually stagnant, in an age which 
 evinces no signs of motion except that of plunging backwards. 
 
58 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 But, unquestionably, a poet born in such an age, who, instead of 
 infusing into it higher instincts, simply reproduces in his works 
 its existing tendencies, can hardly be called "great" in the proper 
 sense of that term. To entitle a writer to that appellation, it 
 is essential that he dominate his age, no matter however high 
 may be its intellectual level. But if that intellectual level be 
 low, the loftier must be the region, the higher the distance at 
 which he soars above it. All poets exemplify the breadth or 
 contraction of their genius, in proportion as they dominate their 
 age, or merely reproduce its elements. The Restoration poets, 
 who reflected the dissolute tendencies of their age, or the 
 poets of James I., who mirrored forth its pedantic conceits, or 
 the poets of Anne, whose pages are merely an echo of the French 
 taste of the time, do not occupy a high shelf in our literature. 
 But Milton stood aloof from the bacchanalian revels of his 
 contemporary brethren, and wrote his great epic with his ears 
 only open to the harmonies of the spheres ; and Shakespeare 
 and his dramatic contemporaries looked down with similar 
 contempt upon the controversial fanaticism which comprised the 
 main intellectual ferment of their day, their vision being absorbed 
 by that insight into the beauty of the spiritual universe 
 with which they have enriched all time. There was nothing 
 in the Georgian era to stimulate the rapture of Collins ; but, on 
 the contrary, an amount of German phlegm and dullness calcu- 
 lated to nip it in the bud. Yet the poet, if we follow the sub- 
 lime bursts of imaginative passion with which he illuminated a 
 blind age, seems to have breathed an atmosphere of fire and 
 air. Burns' brief manhood was surrounded by the blighting 
 spectres of a fanatical religion, but he soared beyond them into 
 the sphere of living reality. His whole existence was a protest 
 against the prosaic conventionalities which attempted to stifle 
 his splendid genius. A great writer may exercise little or no 
 influence over his contemporaries, as they may be too dull or 
 too prejudiced to appreciate or comprehend him ; but if he 
 allows himself to be dominated by them, it is an infallible sign 
 
INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS. 59 
 
 of intellectual weakness. When the age, in which a great poet 
 lives, is filled with striking revolutions which change religions or 
 subvert dynasties, or which overpower the mind by letting 
 loose the floodgates of thought, or fill it with tragic images of 
 terror or pity, he may contemplate the scene in seclusion, and, 
 nevertheless, feel himself carried away by the current. But if 
 the times be stagnantly dull, it rarely, if ever, happens that a great 
 poet can pass his days in retirement, without experiencing such 
 a break in his fortunes, as is calculated to rouse his feelings from 
 their lowest depths. The mind must be profoundly stirred 
 some way that the diapason of melody may be brought to its 
 full height. Either the private man must undergo a series of 
 conflicting shocks, or the times into which he is born must pre- 
 sent the appearance of considerable demolition and reconstruc- 
 tion. Milton lived through the convulsions of the Common- 
 wealth ; Chaucer fled to France after espousing the cause of 
 Bolingbroke ; Dante was exiled by the factions of Florence j 
 Collins was driven mad by the collapsed state of his finances ; 
 Petrarch was crazed by love ; Tasso both by love and fortune. 
 The poets of the Augustan, Leonine, and Elizabethan epochs 
 I place out of the account, as they lived through one of those 
 moral earthquakes which bury religions and dynasties in their 
 devastating career. Gray lived in a dull, stationary age, very 
 quietly on his college foundation, in the dreary flats of Cam- 
 bridgeshire ; but Gray, with the exception of two or three 
 short pieces, is not entitled to preeminence, and cannot, there- 
 fore, be called a great poet in the large sense of the term. The 
 history of literature presents us with hardly a single instance of 
 a first class poet in any eminent branch of his art, living through 
 one of those stagnant levels which may be regarded as the 
 wastes of intellectual existence, in comparative luxury and se- 
 clusion, without a breath of change to ruffle his repose. 
 
 It would, indeed, appear that all great poets have spent 
 their lives in struggle and agitation, the outside world writing 
 its experience on their hearts in characters of flame ; while the 
 
60 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 inferior class have been more prone to rustic retirement, to the * 
 cultivation of the society of tulips rather than man, and to all 
 the solitary blandishments of a country life rather than to the 
 stormy contests of the world. Active life is the oxygen which 
 supplies the flame upon which the subjective element feeds. 
 Periodical contention, in the language of Young, not only 
 
 Defecates the student's stagnant pool, 
 
 but makes solitude more impressive. It is, in fact, the storm 
 arising out of the efforts of a supple intellect to control or over- 
 bear the impetuous torrent of adverse fate, which constitutes one 
 of the chief phases of poetic greatness. Contrast Thomson 
 sauntering in the gardens of the Countess of Dorset, snatching 
 peaches with his lips, being too idle to reach them with his 
 hand, or writing in bed, at noon, on the advantages of early 
 rising, with Chaucer driven away from home and kindred by 
 the storms of rival dynasties, or consuming his great heart in 
 prison walls. Compare Shenstone in his garden, training his 
 orchards or constructing his mimic waterfalls, with Tasso wan- 
 dering over Italy with no rest for the sole of his foot till lodged 
 in the mad-house of Ferrara, or with the vagrant Otway pining 
 for bread, or with Collins shrieking his wild plaints round the 
 walls of Chichester cathedral, or with Milton cuffing with his 
 proud wing like an imperial eagle the storm which shattered 
 his republic into the dust, and drove him into a garret. It 
 would appear as if blighted affection, the sorrows of exile, some 
 dangerous enterprise, or heart-tearing ordeals, were necessary 
 ingredients to the full development of a poet's powers. The 
 happiest efforts of Cowper's muse reflect his retiring disposition 
 and the calm unruffled tenor of his daily life, just as the stormy 
 career of Spenser and Milton has left its traces in the more 
 vigorous and fiery emblazonments of their verse. Spenser's 
 fancy delighted to paint daring feats of chivalry in enchanted 
 forests, or in connection with the frowning battlements and 
 terrific chambers of haunted castles : while Milton, still more 
 
INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS. 61 
 
 magnificently, employed his gorgeous imagination in contrasting 
 the beautiful innocency of Eden with the dark abyss fitfully 
 illumined with the baleful glare of fallen angels. During the 
 composition of these fictions, Spenser resided in the midst of 
 savage insurgents, with the nightly cries of rapine and murder 
 resounding in his ears ; and Milton lived with the avenging 
 sword of the State suspended by a hair over his head. A poet's 
 works necessarily take the impress of the life which he leads, as 
 his faculties are tutored by obstacles which interfere with the 
 attainment of his wishes. In the inimitable grace of Virgil's 
 manner, and the harmonious flow of his versification, we catch 
 the tones of one accustomed to the pomp and luxury of courts ; 
 while the storm and pressure in the " Iliad " recall the blind old 
 bard, whose life was a continual march through cities, which 
 repudiated his existence while living, only to contend for him 
 when dead. Pope and Dryden lived in daily contact with 
 the most polished wits of the capital, through an age pregnant 
 .with dynastic change and political revolutions. There is, 
 however, little hurricane in their verses, simply because there 
 was none in their lives. Had either of these men drank as 
 deeply of the cup of sorrow as Dante, had either like him been 
 driven a houseless wanderer over the earth, it is probable that 
 both would have left behind them some monument which would 
 have equalled his in glory. 
 
 Gray, doubtless, would have proved greater than he really is, 
 had he not passed the prime of his existence in collegiate 
 cloisters, without any reverses to stimulate his genius, alter- 
 nately occupied between the use of the file and the employ- 
 ment of his muse upon objects beneath his powers. For, when 
 a poet has no experiences of his own, he is driven to imitation, 
 by registering the experiences of others. Even the life of Burns, 
 simple as it was brief, is crowded with bitter reverses, with 
 passionate ecstatics of triumph, with blighting repulses, with 
 broken hearts, with keenest anguish over departed loves, breaking 
 in upon the mirth of convivial enjoyment. Had the poet not 
 
62 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 left his plough by the mountain-side for renewed intercourse with 
 humanity, the joys and sorrows of domestic life, the raptures 
 of successful, and the pangs of despised love, could never have 
 been portrayed with such exquisite pathos, or refined sensibility. 
 I very much question whether the two Wartons, who enjoyed 
 more fame than their rustic contemporary, and who either had, 
 or professed to have, the same keen appreciation for the 
 beauties of nature, ever felt the glow of real passion in their 
 hearts. Their lives were passed in scholastic retirement, 
 without any event to discharge the electric shock of grief deep 
 into their souls, and swell their hearts as with the uprising of 
 an earthquake. Their poems are, therefore, tame and conven- 
 tional, not natural plants, flowering the regions of sensibility in 
 which everybody loves to roam, so much as sickly exotics, 
 which cannot flourish out of the hot-house or the drawing- 
 room. It is quite possible that a great mind in troublous times 
 may sequester itself in solitude, deriving its objective nutri- 
 ment from the effects of the moral whirlwind which is con- 
 vulsing society beyond his sphere, and shattering the institution 
 of centuries within an hour. But without feeling or witnessing 
 grand images of terror or pity in others, or experiencing them 
 himself, a poet is obliged to have recourse to second-hand 
 sources for his emotions, to fill up the void in. his own heart 
 with the. creations of others, which deprives his own of that 
 originality so essential to their greatness. 
 
 Another characteristic of great poets is the adoption of some 
 field of thought, or of some region of spirituality peculiar to 
 themselves. In one word, their strong individuality of con- 
 ception stamps upon all their works those peculiar features 
 which make them a distinct intellectual heritage for the human 
 race. In Shakespeare we have all the variegated incidents of 
 romantic life, combined with the general laws of humanity. 
 There is no circumstance, however minute, in his dramas, but 
 assumes a philosophic aspect. It is the union of the particular 
 with the universal. His most trifling details arouse slumbering 
 
INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS. 63 
 
 symphonies by touching the mainspring of the general chords 
 of the human breast. Spenser blends all the romance of chiv- 
 alry with the Greek's refined conception of sensuous beauty; 
 and Milton unites the latter element with the profound spirit of 
 the Hebrew religion. Collins has invested classical forms with 
 the ethereal mantle of spirituality. He has vitalized with the 
 deepest feeling the old stock of poetic imagery, until its most 
 obsolete redundancies strike the mind with the force of new 
 conceptions. Burns opened out a new region by appealing, in 
 an age of shams, to the common feelings which bind men in one 
 brotherhood of humanity. Wordsworth took as his special field 
 the unappropriated domain of the philosophical relationship 
 between man and nature. Byron idealized passion, till all its 
 sensuous traits, while preserving their original fire, were sub- 
 merged in the spiritual feelings which love always awakens in lofty 
 natures. Shelley made his imaginative mind the channel for elec- 
 trifying the heart with the intellect and spirit of the Alexandrine 
 philosophy. Keats transposed into poetry the sentient spirit 
 of the same philosophy, which constructed a religion out of its 
 passion for the beautiful. Thus, every great poet has his special 
 mission. His peculiar idiosyncracies are so strongly marked, 
 as to lead him to appropriate some distinct domain for the 
 exercise of his genius. He, as it were, sets his mark upon it, 
 and claims it for his heritage, without the admission of any 
 copartnership whatever. By crossing hybrid systems, or by 
 enduing ancient ideas with fresh juvenility, or by investing anti- 
 quated beliefs with modern meaning and significance, they 
 perpetually breed new thoughts, keep our nature in the glow 
 of perpetual youth, neutralize the deadening influence of habit, 
 and infuse new blood into the intellectual arteries of the world. 
 We may, therefore, take it for granted that all great poets 
 have either lived in times of startling change, or undergone 
 great revolutions in their private fortunes. It may also be 
 regarded as unquestionable that each has dominated his age, 
 or soared above it, not in a political, but in a moral and 
 
64 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 aesthetic sense. It may, also, be held with the same degree of 
 certainty, that every great poet has carved out for himself some 
 distinct field of thought, or striking region of spirituality as his 
 own peculiar province. Wherever these three great character- 
 istics are found, there is lofty poetry. But where they are 
 wanting, lofty poetry is not. 
 
ENGLISH SCHOOLS OF POETRY. 65 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ENGLISH SCHOOLS OF POETRY. 
 
 POETRY may be viewed not less in relation to the faculties 
 of the mind it calls into operation, or to the subjects 
 selected for its display, than to the_sxu»«es- from which it is 
 derived, and the manner or style of execution. It is with 
 reference to the two lasT lights that the phases of this depart- 
 ment of literature have become so marked as to give rise to 
 distinct schools. 
 
 The peculiar qualities of English poetry may be traced up to 
 three distinct sources. The Oriental or Scriptural represents 
 the attributes of the Deity, as they are manifested in His works. 
 All the operations of nature are set down to the direct interven- 
 tion of an overruling Providence, whose essence is reflected 
 in the soul of man. Hence a kinship is established between 
 God and humanity unknown to the literature of Rome and 
 Greece. Man is withdrawn from the control of the senses, and 
 taught to dive into the mysteries of his own heart: He is treated 
 not simply as a moral agent, but as a child of the Father 
 of the universe, and, as a son, learns to regard the Deity with 
 reverence and filial affection. He looks upon heaven as his 
 natural home, and the angels as his present helpmates and 
 future companions. From this source arises that earnestness 
 of purpose, that profound reflection and purity of feeling, which 
 make the higher order of English poets stand out in advanta- 
 
 5 
 
66 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 geous contrast to the heathen bards of antiquity. In Milton 
 this spirit culminates in startling magnificence, without con- . 
 tracting the intellectual sphere, which it invariably does, in less 
 gifted poets. The whole spirituality of man's nature is laid 
 open to its profoundest depths. We fancy we hear the wheels 
 of Jehovah's chariot thundering above our heads, or feel the 
 sounds of his shouting quires of angels vibrate in our ears. The 
 most impressive poetry of classical antiquity seems cold and un- 
 im passioned, when contrasted with that arising out of the reve- 
 lation of the hidden thoughts which connect man's destinies 
 with the throne of the Eternal. But poetry of this nature, 
 when unassociated with great breadth of intellect, and when 
 exclusively directed to the cultivation of mere devotional 
 feelings, is apt to fall into wearisome repetitions, stereotyped 
 phraseology, and circumscribed views, which generally conspire 
 to deprive the religious school of poetry of a high order of 
 merit. It is only as the ally of the aesthetic element, as 
 freighting the glad spirit of sensuous poetry with serious 
 aims, as reinforcing the objective tendencies of the imagination 
 with profound analytical soundings of the human heart, that 
 the Oriental source has made its influence powerfully felt in 
 our literature. 
 
 The next source is that of the Greek or classical, which sup- 
 plies the element Oriental poetry most lacks — that is, perfection 
 of external form, and that spirit of sensuous beauty which the 
 Hebrews so ruthlessly banished from their homesteads and 
 temples. The body resumed its empire over the soul's concep- 
 tions of the invisible world. The sense of voluptuousness, the 
 power of the passions, the motive agents of the universe, were 
 all invested with human forms of ethereal splendour, until the 
 body became not the dead shell or transient receptacle of the 
 soul, but the everlasting manifestation of spiritual activity. To 
 nurture this spirit of physical beauty, until it actually scaled the 
 sky, and peopled heaven with its creatures, the climate of 
 Greece powerfully contributed. The clear translucent sky of 
 
ENGLISH SCHOOLS OF POETRY. 67 
 
 the peninsula, its blue crystalline seas and glassy lakes, reflect- 
 ing in their quiet depths all the hues of a variegated atmosphere 
 — ever suffusing the earth with flushes of light as brilliant as the 
 tints upon a ringdove's neck, — these, combined with its hill- 
 tops, which seem to step out of the clouds and invite the gods 
 down into the flowery nooks of its sinuous valleys, ever cur- 
 tained with ilex and pine forests, — the influence of all these 
 aggregate charms fostered, in the Greek, that gay and sunny 
 spirit which made him regard the cultivation of his aesthetic 
 nature as the chief end of existence. The perfection of form 
 and distinctness of outline he found in the material types 
 around him, he transferred to art. Hence, in poetry as in 
 sculpture, unity of design, arising out of a proper consideration 
 of parts, exact symmetry of proportion and exquisite finish of 
 detail, combined with the harmonious coherence of the whole, 
 became a necessity of his position. Every production had its 
 nature, and must be regulated by its own specific laws. The 
 plastic powers of the imagination were brought under the rule 
 of an austere simplicity. Improprieties of detail, all minor 
 ornaments which did not fit into the parts of a great structure, 
 were discarded as incongruities. The region of poetry, by the 
 Greeks, became in this way mapped out into distinct compart- 
 ments j and each of these was governed by its own code of 
 formulisms. This makes Greek poetry more national than 
 that of any other nation ; for, with the Greeks, poetry was not a 
 mere plaything : it was the breath of their soul. In the epos 
 and the ode, it animated the outer phases of their sensuou 
 life : in the drama it embodied their religion. When the 
 Greek liberties were destroyed, the genius which vitalized their 
 poetry passed into philosophy. The triumphs of Pindar and 
 yEschylus at Athens, were dimmed by the reverses of Plotinus 
 at Alexandria. But, though the forms of Greek poetry have long 
 since become practically dead, its spirit still survives in the 
 I sense of voluptuous beauty which characterizes the feminine 
 ^creations of Spenser and Shakespeare, and the classical finish, 
 
68 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 the unity of design, and the matchless symmetry which Tasso 
 and Milton were enabled to impart to their great epics. Its 
 effects, however, are destined to be most felt in alliance 
 with that philosophy supposed to have been its. grave ; for 
 Shelley and Keats have made that philosophy instinct with 
 poetic life. While discarding the dead forms of Greek poetry, 
 they have made its spirit animate with its youthful fires the 
 philosophic element in which it subsequently became entombed, 
 and rise like a phoenix from its ashes. 
 
 In startling contrast with the Greek, is the Northern or 
 Gothic source of poetry, which sprang out of the new manners 
 engrafted by the Teuton hordes upon the decaying branches of 
 the Roman Empire, and the refining influence exercised by the 
 Christian faith over their wild feelings and emotions. The 
 conflicting elements of the new social structure impressed 
 themselves upon the art-conceptions to which they gave birth. 
 Lawless irregularity was substituted for the symmetrical develop- 
 ment of Greek unity, and the more horrid embodiments of super- 
 stition, for that magical perfection of form which moulded all 
 the Greek conceptions of the supernatural world. Even the 
 Hebrews avoided giving animated form to the powers of evil. 
 -Satan was with them a mere figure of speech. But the imagina- 
 / tion of the Gothic tribes peopled the air with demons, and 
 \ threw out, into startling prominence, the Persian element of the 
 Christian faith. The gloomy forests, the vast morasses, the wild 
 and inclement regions in which the northern tribes encamped 
 rather than found a home, filled their minds with images of 
 terror. They started dragons in every cave, and encountered 
 spirits in every wood. When the lightning was abroad, 
 careering round the mountain peaks, they imagined monsters 
 were spitting fire at them from the top of every cloud- 
 capped cliff, which assumed, in the distance, the appearance 
 of an enchanted castle. When these people broke in upon 
 the Roman Empire, they infused their melancholy natures 
 and gloomy superstitions and predatory habits into the races 
 
ENGLISH SCHOOLS OF POETRY. 69 
 
 whom they conquered. From the blending of the bar- 
 barous with the Christian element, and of both, with the de- 
 caying embers of antique civilisation, arose that spirit of 
 medieval chivalry, which, in its religious aspect, culminated in 
 the frowning commedia of Dante, and, in its romantic aspect, u 
 in the wild and grotesque inventions of Ariosto. The trouba- 
 dours and the courts of love were but the sentimental phase of 
 that state of society which derived all its activity from tourna- 
 ments and the crusaders. Romantic poetry constituted the 
 very pulsation of medieval life. Its art, its religion, its practical 
 business, its habits of reckless adventure, its knight-errantry, 
 were only so many manifestations of the same spirit. Though 
 most of the extravagancies of these ages have past away, they 
 have left germs behind them, which have moulded, to no incon- 
 siderable extent, the manners and institutions of the present 
 century. The spirit of individual freedom and heroic enter- )-\ 
 prise, the chivalrous devotion to women, the purer moral 
 feelings awakened by every phase of Christianity, the subjective 
 tendencies of modern thought which have grown out of man's 
 deeper communion with his own nature, — all these things have 
 their roots in medieval times, and impart to the romantic 
 poetry of our own day many of its characteristic features. 
 Indeed, this class of poetry is but the stream or mirror in 
 which the medieval age reflects its noblest aspects, and pre- 
 serves its loftiest aspirations. It is the connecting link by 
 which we trace back our lineage, which would otherwise appear 
 to us mysterious and unknown. Though the region of cre- 
 dulity is contracted, though the seer has long since descended 
 from his eyrie, though nature now moves under the guidance 
 of well-defined laws, the romantic poet still loves, on moun- 
 tain and in forest, to commune with the creatures of his own 
 imagination — to coerce beings from the frontiers of the in- 
 visible world, that they may uplift the veil from futurity, or 
 expound to him the mysteries of life and death. But these 
 later manifestations of the Gothic school have not, like the Greek, 
 
70 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 any reference to popular mythology, or recognised philosophical 
 system, but rather seek in strange elements of the supernatural, 
 and daring combinations of design and adventure, new regions 
 for the expansion of the intellect. 
 
 These three sources of poetry, mixed with other elements 
 arising out of the customs and fashions of different epochs, 
 furnish the distinguishing features which separate groups of 
 poets from each other, according to the manner and style of 
 their execution. For the law of reaction is felt as widely in 
 art, as elsewhere. When one style in poetry has been cultivated 
 to excess, men get weary of its repetition. A new generation 
 brings with it fresh habits of thought, or a new range of sym- 
 pathies, and the old system is absorbed in the new birth. In 
 England, these fluctuations have been controlled in a great 
 measure by political events. The Troubadours, who were the 
 first to clothe the spirit of chivalry in a poetic garb, left 
 little impress either upon our manners or our language, both 
 being in their time too rude to mirror the delicate conceptions 
 of female gallantry j though in later days our literature has 
 amply made up for its shortcomings, in this respect, by a crowd 
 of representatives, who allow an overweening devotion to 
 women, to colour all their thoughts. The birth of English 
 poetry, however, was tempered by more masculine elements, 
 the tone of which it has preserved, to a greater or less extent, 
 through the subsequent stages of its growth. It was not till 
 Wickliffe had profoundly stirred the thought of the country, 
 and a discrowned king set loose all those feelings which had 
 looked up to the throne as the seat of divinity, that Chaucer 
 arose to invest the incidents of every-day life with ideal beauty, 
 and stamp the legends of his day with the impress of a natural 
 imagination. Society, after maintaining for centuries something 
 like a Chinese equilibrium, was beginning to move from its bases. 
 He, therefore, dived into the recesses of his own nature, and 
 painted everything, not according to the colours with which 
 superstitious feelings or iron-handed custom had invested them, 
 
ENGLISH SCHOOLS OF POETRY. 71 
 
 but according as they were imaged in the clear depths of his 
 own mind. With Chaucer, then, may be said to have com- 
 menced the natural school which, though frequently eclipsed 
 by the vagaries of taste, has always revived in the crisis of great 
 social convulsions. During the age of Elizabeth, everything was 
 in a ferment. Thought was leavened with new ideas: men's 
 minds agitated with great conceptions, found expression in 
 language of the most natural character. Poets painted man 
 as they found him, not the offspring of a complex system ol 
 society, with artificial tastes and conventional sympathies ; but 
 as a being endued with genuine feelings, and moving under the 
 impulse of his own convictions. But these embodiments, 
 under the iron rule of the Tudors, in order to be free, had to 
 take a dramatic form, in which the natural simplicity of the 
 characters became more transparent from being struck out of 
 the poetic mint, without any foreign models to spoil, with 
 sophisticated tints, the native force of the conception. By 
 steeping their minds in bygone revolutions, the dramatists 
 of the Elizabethan epoch escaped the blemishes of their age, 
 and were enabled to reflect in their productions its freedom of 
 thought unsullied by a taint of its religious ferocity. It was 
 not until James for a while had extended his leaden sceptre 
 over us, that poetry strayed from the pure regions of nature to 
 become scholastic. The foible of the day was verbal disputa- 
 tion and the subtilties of the school divinity. The muse lost 
 herself in a maze of pedantic conceits. It is singular that 
 when physics were first beginning to cast off the quibbling 
 entities of the cloister, the muse should have donned the dis- 
 carded drapery. But such were her courtly propensities during 
 the reign of the earlier Stuarts, that she arrayed herself in 
 scholastic conceits, quite as eagerly as the fine gentleman of the 
 period took to lace and ruffles. We find the fashion more or 
 less predominant in every poet of the epoch, to a rampant 
 degree in Donne and Cowley, in a mitigated form in Waller, 
 Herrick, and Herbert. There were, however, authors who 
 
72 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 strove to give this bent its natural direction, the efforts of whose 
 muse may be said to have resulted in the birth of the didactic 
 poem. When Sir John Davies wrote his piece on the immor- 
 tality of the soul, Drayton his " Polyolbion," and Denham his 
 " Cooper Hill," they were each, in a different style, uncon- 
 sciously laying the foundation of a new department of their 
 art. Johnson has designated all these writers as metaphysical, 
 an unpardonable application of a term frequently condemned 
 for want of meaning. It would be juster to call the former the 
 scholastic, the latter the philosophic school of poets. But the 
 scholastic was only a passing form reflecting the corrupt taste 
 of an ephemeral epoch. The latter, so far as it allied philosophy 
 with nature, is destined to remain an enduring monument. 
 
 The scholastic poets, with all their pedantry, had still a dash 
 of natural imagery at the bottom of their conceptions. They, 
 however, prepared the way, if they did not half advance the 
 nation on the road to a state of things in Which unsophisticated 
 nature was destined to disappear altogether. Up to the end of 
 the Commonwealth, the national muse owed no obligations to 
 any foreign source but the Italian, and in a very secondary 
 degree to the Spanish ; and these were limited to the plots our 
 dramatists used to steal from Calderon, and to Spenser's imita- 
 tions of Tasso, and the quaint conceits the scholastic poets 
 pilfered from Marini. But the star of French dominion was 
 rising, and with it the influence of her literature. While the 
 Puritan government assisted the one, it sedulously erected a 
 bulwark against the incursions of the other. 
 
 At the Restoration the change was felt in rhyming tragedies 
 and the substitution of spasmodic for genuine sentiment^ The 
 muses debauched at Court no longer selected for their themes 
 natural objects, but the refined manners of polished society. 
 Instead of artless nymphs reclining with dishevelled locks by 
 the founts of Helicon, they stepped out of the drawing-room, 
 like conventional belles, glittering with conceits, and bristling 
 with epigram. Bold strokes of invention were abandoned for 
 
ENGLISH SCHOOLS OF POETRY. 73 
 
 mere elegance of language ; sublimity of description for lively 
 sallies of wit ; genuine pathos for refined sentiment ; spiritual 
 analogies of fancy and passionate bursts of imagination for 
 stereotyped figures of speech and elegant antitheses. Man was 
 considered not in relation to the universe of which he is the 
 crowning feature, but as a being whose destinies are pent up 
 within the narrow range of civic life. The picture of humanity 
 was set, not in a magnificent framework of glen, pine forest, and 
 mountain interfused with heaven-reflecting lake and ship- 
 freighted ocean, but cooped up within a far more confined arena, 
 of which the mall, the park, and the exchange constituted the 
 foreground. Love became coquettishness \ passion, rant j and 
 genuine feeling, conventional sympathy. So deeply did the 
 change affect the taste of the period, that the plays of the 
 Elizabethan dramatists could not be endured, and the poems 
 of Chaucer, Spenser, as subsequently those of Milton, were 
 allowed to sleep in oblivion. Even Shakespeare had to be 
 re-written to suit the coarse palate of the epoch. It would 
 appear as if the debauched manners of the Stuarts and the 
 slavish political maxims which their restoration revived, by 
 destroying the germ of free thought, had brought the mind of 
 the nation to the last stage of decrepitude. Genius may with- 
 stand social corruption, while politically free, and even political 
 thraldom, if manners are undebauched by coarse sensualities. 
 But it never yet has been found to survive the corrosive influence 
 of these conjoint forces for two generations together. 
 
 This, which I would call the material, is usually denominated 
 the French school of poetry ; I do not know from what cause, 
 unless it be from the feeling that nothing but what is good can 
 spring from ourselves, and that, if there be any evil, it must 
 be imported from our neighbours. But the fact is, there 
 are two elements in it, the worst of which undoubtedly 
 sprung from that reaction against Puritanism which drove 
 the nation into depraved courses, as a natural protest against 
 the whining austerities by which it had been oppressed. 
 
74 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 The other element is the conventional, which we may ascribe 
 to the French without wounding their too delicate suscepti- 
 bilities ; for, it left legitimate effects permanently behind it, long 
 after the slavish maxims of the Stuarts, and the influence of 
 the Puritan reaction, had passed away. Our Gallic neighbours 
 have always been haunted with the idea that they are the 
 Greeks of the modern world, born to keep alive among man- 
 kind that passion for beauty of form and symmetrical design 
 they inherit from antiquity. Hence, their predilection for 
 Greek subjects in tragedy, and for the forms of the classic 
 drama. The heroic couplet which they falsely led us to adopt 
 in the theatre, when rhyming tragedies went out with the old 
 government, was employed to a much wider extent than ever, 
 as the vehicle of all subjects of an extensive character. It 
 was also the aim of the French school to make up, for the lack 
 of romance in their subjects, by polish and superior finish in the 
 execution of their poems. This aim after perfection of style 
 remained, when the muse once more reverted for topics to the 
 storehouse of creation. These two features, viz. the employ- 
 ment of the heroic couplet and elaborate finish, with a due 
 regard to the unities, constitute the principal features of the 
 classic school, which sprang up after the settlement of our 
 national liberties had imparted a bolder tone of thought to the 
 muse of the country. Milton had himself furnished a splendid 
 example of classical unity and symmetry of proportion, while 
 the anti-Puritan reaction was at its height ; but his merit was 
 not acknowledged till that reaction expired under the new 
 regime, when his works, doubtless, contributed to restore the 
 national muse to the breezy lawns of the country, though 
 shackled by such rules of art as spring from an adhesion to 
 classic models. In Gray and Collins, French elegance of 
 expression and classical correctness were combined with as 
 much sublimity of imagination and genuine pathos as the lyric 
 and elegiac forms admit of. Nature, however, had previously 
 gained her ascendency in Thomson, who may be regarded as 
 
ENGLISH SCHOOLS OF POETRY. 75 
 
 the bold reviver of the natural school of poetry, after nearly 
 every trace of it had been obliterated by the tide of French 
 innovation. Henceforward the two schools, each claiming for 
 itself the same wide range of objects, were destined to act 
 and react upon each other. In the first part of the eighteenth 
 century the classical school ruled supreme. In the middle and 
 latter part of the eighteenth century, the natural vindicated for 
 itself a large share of the public esteem. But the ascendency 
 in point of popularity was with the classical. In Thomson, 
 Cowper, and Burns, the natural culminated; in Dodsley it 
 found its feeblest expositor. Goldsmith, Churchill, and Crabbe 
 were the best cultivators of the classical school ; Darwin and 
 Hailey the worst. 
 
 The material school is closely allied with the classical, as the 
 romantic with the natural. The philosophical is equally seen in 
 conjunction with both. Davies is an example of the one, 
 Akenside of the other. In Pope, the Gallico-classical school 
 triumphed ; in Milton, the Oriento-classical ; in Shakespeare, the 
 natural ; in Spenser, the romantic. The natural school, depending 
 more on the use of the Teutonic, than the Greek element in our 
 language, ought, in combination with the romantic, to constitute 
 our leading school of poetry. It is the only school in accordance 
 with our national characteristics, our primitive traditions, and our 
 historical associations. In the drama, it has generally been in 
 the ascendant, unless during the fitful period of the Restora- 
 tion, when the material school took the stage by storm. In 
 other departments of poetry, down to the seventeenth century, 
 the natural school stood without a rival. But during the last 
 two centuries, its reign has been only intermittent. In the 
 century which followed the Restoration, it lay, comparatively 
 speaking, dead. But the natural school has awoke since with 
 something of its pristine strength, and has at length managed 
 to win back for itself a large portion of the public favour. 
 
 Schlegel divides the schools of poetry into the classical and 
 romantic, taking the latter in a sense peculiar to himself, as the 
 
76 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 school in which the spirit of Christian love predominates. 
 Those poems which represent their heroes emerging from the 
 conflict with evil, purified by the struggle, and raised, as it 
 were, to a higher existence, as the " Prometheus " of Shelley, are 
 romantic. Those, on the other hand, which represent their 
 heroes succumbing in the strife, and descending into the gulf 
 of darkness, with the precipitation of an Orestes, Macbeth, or 
 a Faust, these are pre-eminently classical. Schlegel appears to 
 have been led into this inversion, of the ordinary meaning of 
 these terms, by his theological prepossessions. Classical poetry 
 sprung out of a state of society in which Christianity was not ; 
 it is, therefore, ethnic in scope and purpose. Romantic 
 poetry sprung out of a state of society in which Christianity 
 was the principal element : it is, therefore, evidently moral in 
 its aim and conception. 
 
 Romantic poetry, however, has nothing to do with Christianity 
 as a system, but only with the more variegated hues which it 
 derived from Persian sources, and the fusion of Oriental with 
 Gothic ideas which it threw into the heart of Europe. Hence, 
 romantic poems are formed upon no regular models, but reflect 
 ' in their features the bizarre and confused elements from which 
 they spring. Classical poetry may be said to deify nature, 
 romantic to embody spirit. The one divinizes the human, the 
 other humanizes the divine. The one subordinates the spiritual 
 to the material, the other the material to the spiritual element. 
 Occasionally, however, there is a disparity between the subject 
 selected and the manner of handling it. Blackmore chose a 
 romantic subject, but his treatment of it was eminently 
 classical. In the hands of Ariosto, classical subjects assume a 
 romantic aspect ; in the hands of Tasso, chivalrous and romantic 
 subjects, a classical aspect. In our own Spenser, both 
 romantic subject and the romantic treatment of it are eminently 
 united. Goethe is romantic in " Faust " and " Goetz Berlichingen," 
 but classical in "Tasso" and " Herman and Dorothea." Schiller 
 is romantic in the "Robbers," but classical in his "Iphigeneia of 
 
ENGLISH SCHOOLS OF POETRY. 77 
 
 Tauris." But our dramatists, except in Court masques, are 
 seldom classical, while the French are always so. Shakespeare 
 is romantic in his " Midsummer Night's Dream," and Marlowe 
 in " Faust." These authors, however, reverted to the natural 
 style in " Julius Caesar " and "Edward II." But, when the 
 Elizabethan age expired, all taste for romantic poetry expired 
 along with it. The spirit slept for three centuries, only to 
 revive in the last age with keener force, and under new forms 
 of existence. 
 
 The revolt of Gothic art against classical models, from 
 which, in early times, romanticism sprung, was destined later 
 to blend the term with the spirit of revolt, manifested in poetic 
 conceptions, against existing institutions and all established 
 authorities whatever. Modern romanticism, thus, became a 
 sort of protest against medieval romanticism. The term both 
 in Germany and Italy became identified, as regards all forms 
 of art, with the most unfettered exercise of individual freedom. 
 Christianity, which had largely impregnated the old romanticism 
 with its visions of a posthumous world, was fated to be driven 
 from its sphere by the new romanticism, which hungered after 
 fresh theories of existence. The old sources of the supernatural 
 were exhausted. The machinery seemed worn out. Men craved 
 for something new. Hence, " Faust " and " Manfred " became 
 the exponents of a school, which left the soul to construct out 
 of the ruins of the past, by its own unaided intuitions, a new 
 scheme of the supernatural entirely subversive of the modern 
 framework of society. In despotic countries, the war against 
 existing faiths and established modes of government, could only 
 be carried on by an onslaught upon the literary outworks in 
 which those forms of faith and government found expression. 
 In this manner, the romanticism of the poet became not unfre- 
 quently a cloak for the disguise of the revolutionist. The new 
 romanticism thus assumed a form in direct conflict with its 
 former principles. The old romanticism was credulous, sub- 
 missive, and devout. The new is sceptical, rebellious, and 
 
78 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 profane. The modern offshoot has nothing in common with 
 its parent except irregularity of lineaments and unproportional 
 forms, while the animating spirit within is one of startling 
 paradox, of withering satire, and of an unbridled license sub- 
 versive of all authority. The old romanticism was lifted into 
 the ascendant by the quiet revolution of events. The new 
 romanticism seeks to enthrone itself by force and violence. 
 
 In the nineteenth century the old schools have been much 
 broken up, or found in connection with new combinations. In 
 Wordsworth, the natural school has been combined with the 
 philosophic ; in Southey, with the romantic element. Crabbe 
 has identified realistic subjects with classical, Browning with 
 natural and romantic treatment. Swinburne has divorced the 
 material, from the conventional, school, and allied it with the 
 natural. In Montgomery, classical treatment is combined with 
 the religious element. In Longfellow, the natural is suffused 
 with a tinge of the romantic. The poets of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury have been as much distinguished by an eclecticism with regard 
 to their styles, as its builders with regard to their architecture, 
 or its philosophers with regard to their philosophy. Some of 
 the leading poets have a peculiar style of their own, while those 
 of the inferior classes have sought distinction by adopting a 
 melange so striking as to confound most of the schools which 
 have preceded them. It is the peculiar weakness of the thought 
 of the age not to know what it would be at, to set aesthetic and 
 logical coherence at defiance, to override radical principles, and 
 to imagine it has arrived at a satisfactory solution of conflicting 
 views by blending their contrarieties into one system. Nowhere 
 have these tendencies been so conspicuously displayed as in the 
 poetic arena. It has, therefore, been, in some degree, necessary 
 to group those poets, who depart from, or blend in their treat- 
 ment, the old established divisions, by some leading feature, 
 which their works have in common. In Tennyson and his 
 imitators, who are chiefly of the feminine class, the principles 
 of design largely predominate over those of nature. They may, 
 
ENGLISH SCHOOLS OF POETRY. 79 
 
 therefore, be correctly designated the art school. Montgo- 
 mery and Longfellow are, in common, distinguished for the 
 prominence they give to social life and the domestic affections. 
 They, therefore, form a group apart. Shelley and Keats are 
 equally distinguished for their poetic rendering of the old philo- 
 sophy. They, therefore, fall into the same category. Swinburne 
 more nearly approaches them than any other group. There is, 
 however, this difference, that they devote themselves to the 
 spiritual side of Greek pantheism, while Swinburne almost 
 exclusively worships its material and sensuous aspects. No 
 poets could be more dissimilar than Crabbe and Browning, but 
 they are at one in discarding the fictitious element in poetry, and 
 in confining themselves to the production of the actual. They, 
 therefore, keep each other company. In the case of those 
 writers who have, like Scott and Byron, treated their subjects 
 conformably to the source from which they are derived, I have 
 adopted the old classification, as it does not interfere with the 
 division according to some distinguishing feature in their 
 works. Poets, after all, are a very difficult class of people to 
 place in order, and if Plato banished them from his "Republic," 
 it might have been not so much on the ground of immorality, 
 as out of resentment at their setting anything like philosophical 
 arrangement at defiance. 
 
 But one of the strangest combinations of the century is the 
 alliance of much of the turgid rant and inflated epithets which 
 distinguished the dramatists of the Restoration, with the hybrid 
 mixture of philosophy and religion which distinguishes the poets 
 of our own age. The wild and unbridled use of the fancy has 
 been, heretofore, accompanied with a similar licence in moral- 
 ity. But we have a bevy of poets who, in the rage for novelty, 
 have allied quiet, staid topics of religious, and domestic senti- 
 mentality with a license of rant and bombast which is hardly 
 paralleled by anything in Nathaniel Lee or Colley Cibber. 
 Ambiguity and unmeaningness very much interfere with the 
 merits of this class of writers, who endeavour to make up for 
 
80 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 profound thought and intellectual unity in their works, by strong 
 flashes of fancy and inflated forms of expression. It cannot 
 be denied, however, that their poems contain many beauties, 
 though these are not of such a class as to prevent the name 
 of " spasmodic school " from being fairly applied to them. 
 
 Another class are those who, while living in town, affect a 
 great love for the country — who are supposed to explode into 
 raptures at the sight of a hedge of honeysuckle or a field of 
 turnips. With these gentlemen, Pope and all the classical 
 school of poets are at a sad discount. Hence Byron called 
 them derisively the Cockney school of poets. Their taste, 
 however, is good for what it accepts, and is only bad for what 
 it repudiates. The question whether objects of wit are admis- 
 sible themes for poetry has long since been decided against 
 them. In the Bowles' controversy, Byron showed that a great 
 poet might be a poor critic; but the discussion he started 
 enabled Campbell to prevent the domain of English poetry 
 from being narrowed by sectarian views, and to place its 
 principles upon a catholic foundation. 
 
THE LAKE SCHOOL. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 GENERAL FEATURES OF THE LAKE SCHOOL. 
 
 THE eighteenth century went out amid the throes of social 
 and political revolutions. America had gained her inde- 
 pendence. France, after regenerating herself, was employed 
 upon the singular mission of regenerating Europe. Everywhere, 
 the rights of man were receiving a practical illustration, either 
 from the pen of the theorist, the sword of the warrior, or the 
 axe of the public executioner. All human institutions were 
 shaken to their foundations. In political discussions, men 
 ignored, if they did not repudiate, all past authority. The old 
 system of society was crumbling into ruin, and there was a loud 
 demand for new institutions, with broader and deeper founda- 
 tions than those in which its medieval convictions had reposed. 
 Poetry, among other things, experienced the levelling tendencies 
 of the epoch. As the old rule of kings and priests, the pompous 
 ceremonies of state, the gilded trappings of power were pushed 
 aside as in conflict with the wants of an enlightened people, so in 
 poetry, the tinsel decorations of Greek art, the purple robe and 
 the nodding plume, with the whole storehouse of tropes, allego- 
 ries, and personifications, were discarded for the expression of 
 the genuine feelings of the heart and the affectionate sympathies 
 of nature, which the stately trappings of the muse were sup- 
 posed to impair, if not to extinguish. Society was recalled by th 
 same ardent band of enthusiasts to its original laws, and poetry 
 resolved into its primitive elements as they existed in the 
 
 6 
 
82 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 human heart. Parnassus was to be purified from the false 
 idols, and political government from the unjust principles, 
 which tyranny or a perverted taste had introduced into their 
 respective domains. Nor can it be denied that the one needed 
 as much the pruning-knife of the reformer as the other. The 
 French classical school, after culminating in Pope, and passing 
 through various stages of senility in the works of Parnel and 
 Blackmore, had reached its last gasp in the pages of Pye and 
 Darwin. The Laureate's chair had been occupied by a succes- 
 sion of writers, whom to call poets in any sense of the term, 
 would be a singular inversion of all that we understand by that 
 name. Burns was left to pine in obscurity as a custom-house 
 informer; Cowper, though more in the ascendant, was com- 
 pletely overshadowed by the imperial fame of Macpherson. 
 The public mind not only required to be brought back to the 
 plain masculine simplicity of the Elizabethan age, but to have 
 its sympathies awakened for a new species of poetic excellence 
 radically opposed to the expiring school which had absorbed 
 all its appreciation. 
 
 The men who deemed themselves competent to undertake 
 this task, were possessed of slender pecuniary, but large intel- 
 lectual resources, — of scrupulous rectitude, of unstable political 
 convictions, but of the most unflinching attachment to letters. 
 Southey, Coleridge, and Lovell, the originators of the move- 
 ment, in addition to the bond of congenial tastes and convic- 
 tions, had married three sisters from Bristol, one a school- 
 mistress, the other an actress, and the third a milliner, without 
 any certain prospect in either case of providing for the pressing 
 exigencies of wedded life. The result was a violent conflict 
 with existing institutions, which they regarded as the cause of 
 their own hardships ; and a keen sympathy for the classes 
 below them, whom a still severer fate had condemned to 
 misery and disgrace. These writers subsequently fell in with 
 Wordsworth, whose private means were as slender, and whose 
 political sympathies were as ardent, as their own. Similarity of 
 
THE LAKE SCHOOL. 83 
 
 tastes and feelings led to a warm friendship. This literary- 
 union, which began in Somerset, was further strengthened by 
 the production of literary works in common. Southey and 
 Coleridge wrote and published in Bristol, conjointly, a drama 
 entitled " The Fall of Robespierre," a mushroom production 
 which sprang up in a single night. In the same town, Words- 
 worth published, in conjunction with Coleridge, the " Lyrical 
 Ballads," a work which nobody would buy, and the failure ot 
 which, each was amiable enough to attribute to his partner's 
 wares, selecting those for censure which are indisputably the 
 best parts of the work. To the "Lyrical Ballads" were pre- 
 fixed elaborate prefaces by Wordsworth, explanatory of the new 
 school of poetry, which the reviewers treated with derision. 
 But these poets were alike undismayed by obloquy, and proof 
 against neglect. Their love of nature being as unconquerable 
 as their passion for letters, they abandoned Somerset, the scene 
 of their early failures, and sought out an abiding home among 
 the mountains of Cumberland. Hence, they obtained the 
 name of the Lake School, an appellation which marks out 
 similarity of tastes and convictions, as well as familiar re- 
 lationship, rather than any common principles of poetic doc- 
 trines exemplified in their works. 
 
 There were, however, certain broad features which they agreed 
 to recognize as constituting the essential elements of poetry. 
 Nor were they inclined to show much mercy to any who chose 
 to wander beyond the landmarks they had laid down. They 
 pushed their antipathy to the French classical school of poetry 
 to so great an extent as to exclude Pope and Dryden from the 
 category of poets altogether. Subjects, or illustrations drawn X 
 from art, were, in their view, far inferior to those drawn from 
 nature. They were united in the belief that the natural school, as 
 illustrated by Chaucer and the Elizabethan poets, was the only 
 genuine school of poetry which this country possesses, or of which 
 it ought to be proud. They were also united in asserting that 
 no poetry can be good, even in an aesthetic sense, which is 
 
 / 
 
84 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 divorced from the moral principle, on the ground, I suppose, 
 that no real pleasure, which it is the object of poetry to realize, 
 can be conveyed by depicting the coarser passions, or by any 
 representation which subjects the more delicate susceptibilities 
 of man's nature to the domination of his animal propensities. 
 The Lake poets placed the proper functions of poetry in illus- 
 trating the charities of human life, and humbling the pride ot 
 the intellect at the shrine of the affections, rather than in the 
 delineation of overmastering energy, N or in illustrating that 
 Titanic force which conquers fate by indomitable will. 
 
 Of the blunter joys and passions of human life, they seem to 
 have known nothing. Instead of plunging into the business 
 of the world, and draining to the lees its pleasures and its 
 | sorrows, they held themselves aloof, cultivating the domestic 
 virtues in seclusion, without any knowledge of social phenomena 
 except through the casual reports of visitors, or the pale reflex 
 of newspapers. Hence, as poets, they laboured under a 
 double disadvantage. Excluded from the sphere of passion, 
 they could only feel at home in reflective themes, in illustrating 
 the domestic virtues, or in moralizing upon the vicissitudes of 
 life, or in deriving from the appearances of nature lessons of 
 wisdom, and materials for the display of their imaginative 
 powers. Their knowledge of human affairs became propor- 
 tionally contracted, as they were shut out from the world of 
 practical experience. When, therefore, in their verse they ven- 
 tured upon philosophical speculation, they were at the mercy 
 of abstract theories, arising out of a very imperfect acquaint- 
 ance with the facts to which those theories applied. They 
 were, in reality, incompetent to deal with the world of passion ; 
 and, in the sphere of reflection, narrow prejudices interfered 
 to deprive their loftiest thoughts of the value they would 
 otherwise have possessed. The sincerity of the Lake poets, 
 in abandoning opinions much in advance of their age, for 
 others of an equally retrogressive tendency, has been- often 
 called in question. But the French Revolution, beginning 
 
THE LAKE SCHOOL. 85 
 
 with bright omens for the happiness of the human family, 
 only to have its fair dawn overshadowed by storms of 
 violence and bloodshed, may palliate, if it does not entirely 
 account for, the revulsion of political feeling which marked 
 the outset of their career. It is, however, to be regretted 
 that the change from the extreme of Republicanism to the 
 extreme of Toryism, was made at the time when their 
 private fortunes were undergoing considerable renovation. 
 When a man betters his condition by changing his opinions, 
 some doubt generally arises as to the purity of his motives, 
 especially when his new opinions can claim few solid reasons 
 in their favour. Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, without 
 a sixpence, advocating Radical institutions, and Southey lau- 
 reate, Wordsworth distributor of stamps, Coleridge secretary 
 to the Governor of Malta, advocating the most ultra doctrines 
 in Church and State of the old Tory school, cannot be said to 
 afford no ground for suspicion. But all extreme opinions are 
 only too liable to generate their opposites in fervid minds, who 
 are in nowise apt to base their convictions upon the reasoning 
 principle. And it seems quite natural that, as the first set of 
 opinions were maintained with all the rashness of zeal, the 
 other should have been upheld with all the fervour of in- 
 tolerance. But the question of sincerity, however much it 
 may touch their characters as men, can have little bearing upon 
 their position as poets. Pope, in the controversy upon his 
 poetic merits, was trounced for his peccadilloes with Martha 
 Blount, and his inconstancy to Stewart Wortley, — just as if one 
 sin the more, or one virtue the less, could possibly affect his 
 place in the ranks of Parnassus. Had the opinions of the 
 Lake poets been taken up merely out of selfish interest to serve 
 a party, they hardly would have made them the staple material 
 of works intended for posterity. But these gentlemen are in 
 the unfortunate position, that their candour cannot be defended 
 except at the cost of their intellect. As they introduced these 
 opinions in their poems, the philosophical narrowness or 
 
86 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 unsoundness of such opinions, becomes an element in the 
 appreciation of their productions as works of art. That such 
 opinions excluded them from a catholic sympathy with the 
 human race, that they interposed human formulas of belief 
 which overshadowed to them the spiritual phenomena of the 
 universe, that they introduced conflicting elements in their 
 views, that they narrowed the poetical boundaries of their 
 conceptions, that they caused them to link the domestic sym- 
 pathies with a hybrid philosophy, and to sacrifice to prejudice 
 those talents which ought to have been employed in unriveting 
 its fetters, — all these, and much more, hindered them from 
 attaining that lofty eminence in their art which they vainly 
 imagined would be conceded to them by posterity. 
 
THE LAKE POETS. 87 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE LAKE POETS. 
 
 IT may serve to bring out a salient point of distinction be- 
 tween Wordsworth and those of his predecessors in the 
 natural school, to observe that, while their poles of thought are 
 objective, his is mostly subjective. Cowper and Thomson mostly 
 select for description those objects which strike the spectator 
 with natural beauty or grandeur, and which enable them to pro- 
 duce corresponding impressions in the minds of their readers. 
 Wordsworth, on the other hand, selects such as are mean andf 
 trivial, in order that the attractiveness of his pictures may be' 
 entirely owing to the ideal atmosphere with which he has in-^ 
 vested them. His manner of transforming a withered thorn, a 
 miry pool, or leafless oak into objects of profound interest, shows 
 how little his creations owe to the external subject, and how 
 much to the gorgeous colouring of his own mind. If his fancy 
 sports with flowers, it is not the frail beauties of the garden, 
 but the daisy and celandine that are the objects of his adora- 
 tion. The meanest product of nature has links which connect 
 it with the infinite. It is in revealing these links that his 
 imagination imparts the charm of novelty to the most familiar 
 scenes. To him, 
 
 The bare trees, the mountains bare, 
 The grass in the green fields, 
 
88 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 impart a sense of joy, as if their principle of life beat in mys- 
 terious sympathy with that of his own nature. As the meanest 
 objects are invested with wonder, so the most material become 
 instinct with spirit and intelligence. A bald stone upon an emi- 
 nence seems to him a huge sea-beast crawled forth to sun itself. 
 A tall rock piercing the clouds wears on its crest the appearance 
 of an imperial castle which ruin cannot touch. Wordsworth's 
 mind expands with the greatness of his subject, until the loftiest 
 derive fresh grandeur from its majesty or depth. Skiddaw, 
 clothed with his thoughts, strikes us with greater force than when 
 surveyed in its naked reality; and Helvellyn acquires a grandeur 
 from his conceptions which it fails to derive even from the 
 magnifying influences of cloud and tempest. Even the moral 
 feelings of the poet become identified with the scenes he 
 describes. The flower shrinks from the gaze with the shyness 
 of his nature, the cliff lifts its head with the uprightness of 
 his spirit, and the lake imbibes from his purity a crystalline 
 clearness which is not its own. 
 
 Had Wordsworth displayed the same comprehensiveness in 
 dealing wjth man as with nature, his genius would not have 
 been so long ignored. But in the human sphere, he was ham- 
 pered by theories which cut him off from genuine sympathy 
 with the largest section of humanity. Mont Blanc and Lake 
 Leman he could appreciate as much as any man j but foreign 
 \ manners or institutions he could never understand. Even 
 in his own country, his sympathies were bound up with a 
 trifling fragment of the population. Wordsworth, though 
 a Tory, turned his back upon the great conservative classes of 
 society, as unworthy of his attention. His heart only beat in 
 unison with the rustic poor, with the poor who had no radical 
 leanings, with the poor who regarded the village parson as a sort 
 of tutelary divinity in this lower world. What are called respect- 
 able people, Wordsworth scrupulously avoids. He is only at 
 home when he falls in with a vagrant pedlar, an idiot boy, or a 
 ragged shepherd. With a perfumed haunter of clubs, or, indeed, 
 
THE LAKE POETS. 89 
 
 with any gloved person, he will hold no converse whatever. The 
 upper ten thousand were to Wordsworth poetically worthless; 
 for he imagined that the feelings of the heart were never found 
 in their maturity except in the huts of hinds and society of 
 peasants. There was, however, some object in this exclusive- 
 ness. It would appear that Wordsworth designed, by the 
 instrumentality of the lowest ranks of society, to erect a poetic 
 temple, at the shrine of which the most selfish hearts should be 
 humanized, and a feeling of love kept alive, reciprocating and 
 reciprocated, between the rich and the poor, the politically 
 great and the socially defenceless, for ever. 
 
 Life is the vital energy of love ; 
 
 and as long as the two extremes of society stood looking at each 
 other with feelings of repulsion, the end of existence could not 
 be realised. His verse was to become the medium of identifying 
 the loftiest purposes of his art with the purest aims of Christianity. 
 His theory of the poetic art seems to have fitted in to this view. 
 No language could be poetical which was factitious or conven- 
 tional. (The muse must wear a russet robe, and speak in the 
 plainest style.) Her vocabulary must be that of which lettered 
 halls and academies take no account. No other language 
 but that used by vagrants and peasants could express the 
 genuine sentiments of the heart. The lower, therefore, you de- 
 scend in the social scale, the fitter subjects you find for poetry. 
 His hatred to the Pope school, doubtless, contributed largely 
 to this result. He appears to have taken the Queen Anne 
 poets as embodying every feature which he ought most studi- 
 ously to avoid. Their civic life he repudiates for the society of 
 pedlars ; their drawing-room conventionalities, for the manners 
 of the farm and the cottage j their turgid epithets, for the lan- 
 guage_of simplicity • their phosphorescent display of sparkling 
 wit, for the domination of the affections and the human charities ; 
 their lavish delineation of external objects, for the inner laws of 
 the spiritual universe, and the deep soundings of the infinite 
 
90 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 \ mind. Hence he sweeps away with boundless contempt the 
 decorative pomp of verse, all the jargon of mythological allusion, 
 all the machinery of tropes and figures, as things which had 
 defiled the sacred temple of poetry, in whose aisles nothing 
 .should be heard but the pure voice of the human heart, 
 recording its own joys and sorrows, or communing with the 
 mysteries of the universe. But man in the upper classes is the 
 creature of conventions. It is only in the lower, that he moves 
 under the spontaneous influence of his feelings, or obeys the 
 voice of nature. He, therefore, felt himself restricted to 
 select his heroes from the humblest types of humanity. But 
 vagrants and pedlars belong to a low walk of art, and assum- 
 ing that Wordsworth surrounds these subjects with all the 
 atmosphere of poetic inspiration, this would not by any means 
 lift him to the loftiest rank in poetry. The Eve of Milton, the 
 Una of Spenser, or the Haidee of Byron, belongs to a far 
 higher school of poetic creation than Ellen, Ruth, or Martha 
 Ray, just as the Venus of Titian is a far higher creation of 
 genius than any dairy-maid in the farmsteads of Moreland, 
 or any Flemish weaver's mistress in the rustic revels of Teniers. 
 The exclusiyeness of Wordsworth's theory is founded on the 
 limitations of his own powers. He was incompetent to repro- 
 duce human nature in the broad phase of sensuous joyousness, 
 in any class. He, therefore, held it wrong to divorce poetry 
 from the ethical principle. But the higher products of civiliza- 
 tion, the refined and aesthetic, who have hearts beating beneath 
 their bosoms even more sensitive than those of any drunken 
 waggoner or distressed sempstress, — these, he declared, could 
 afford us few instances of genuine feeling, because he was unable 
 to describe the workings of the affections in combination with 
 refined manners, or delicate breeding. The sensuous phases or 
 the lofty turbulence of passion in any grade of society he could 
 not describe at all, or, at least, if he could, he never attempted it. 
 Wordsworth's exclusion from the tempestuous regions of the 
 I soul confines him to the reflective element. He is a p hilo - 
 
THE LAKE POETS. 
 
 sophica .lj2Q.et, or he is nothing. Even his smallest pieces are 
 written to illustrate some mental phenomenon, or to unveil 
 some striking analogy between the natural and the moral world. 
 His great poem, "The Excursion," was designed to propound 
 his views on man, nature, and society. But what those views were,! 
 he never condescends to tell us, in any of his numerous prefaces, 
 but leaves us to pick them up as well as we can from his 
 poems. He does, however, inform us that the " Prelude," 
 which contains a history of the growth of his own powers, may 
 be considered as an ante-chapel to his great Gothic cathedral, 
 " The Excursion," and all his shorter pieces little shrines or 
 recesses which fit into the same grand structure. But this 
 merely suggests systematic unity of design, without throwing any f 
 light upon its purpose. Now this grand unity of design can be 
 nowhere traced in its works. There are certain isolated principles 
 scattered up and down his pages, but no attempt to concatenate 
 these principles, so as to mark out their mutual relationship, or 
 to form them into a grand system of philosophic truth. The f 
 absence of such a pervading unity, with the conflicting principles | 
 it embodies, is the great blemish of " The Excursion." 
 
 This poem purports to treat of man in his multiform rela- 
 tions to nature and society. As such, the subject-matter was 
 not different from that which Pope had already handled a cen- 
 tury before. The only two philosophical poems of first class 
 merit which had come down to the nineteenth century were the 
 great poem of " Lucretius," and Pope's celebrated essay. Both 
 were characterised by admirable unity of sentiment, precision^ 
 of reasoning, and accuracy of thought. The parts are skilfully 
 dovetailed into each other, blending multiform variety of design 
 with classical unity of purpose. But there is an entire absence 
 of these features in " The Excursion." Instead of unity there is\ 
 dissonance; for precision there is vagueness; for accuracy, confuy 
 sion of thought. It cannot be stated that Wordsworth's theme 
 was too general for minute philosophical discrimination. The sub- 
 ject-matter the poet proposes to treat of, is the very same Pope 
 
92 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 laid out for himself in the "Essay on Man." Wordsworth 
 -embodies his views far more poetically than his predecessor, in 
 a fictitious narrative ; whereas Pope abandoned the concrete 
 form, for abstract principles. But the opposite manner of treat- 
 ment does not constitute the difference. The fact is, Pope 
 thought out his subject before committing it to verse; while* 
 Wordsworth never manipulated his ideas with a view to secure 
 coherency of design, but went on sounding his way, guided by 
 two conflicting charts, which led him through all the mazes of 
 inconsistency. 
 /" If there is one feature more predominant than another in 
 Wordsworth's poetry, it is the feeling of a silent interchange of 
 sympathy between man and the various forms of inanimate 
 nature. For him, 
 
 The meanest flower that blows can give 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 
 
 It seems a fundamental belief with Wordsworth, that every 
 phase of inorganic existence is endued with certain spiritual 
 properties corresponding to its rank in creation, of which, as 
 man is the highest organic being, the human soul is the highest 
 expression. He does not shrink from informing us that — 
 
 It is his faith that every flower 
 Enjoys the air it breathes. 
 
 And his opinion of a dull, carnal-minded man, who has no eye 
 to the hidden mysteries of the material universe, is expressed in 
 " Peter Bell"— 
 
 A primrose by the river's brim 
 A yellow primrose was to him — 
 And it was nothing more. 
 
 The poet cannot encounter in his walk a bed of daffodils 
 fluctuating in the breeze, without describing them as 
 Outvying the waves in glee. 
 
THE LAKE POETS. 93 
 
 And in a nutting expedition he feels a sense of pain from 
 having violated the quiet of the woods : — 
 
 Then up I rose, 
 And dragged to earth both branch and bough with crash, 
 And merciless ravage ; and the shady nook 
 Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower, 
 Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up 
 Their quiet being : and unless I now 
 Confound my present feelings with the past, 
 Even then, when from the bower I turned away 
 Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings, 
 I felt a sense of pain when I beheld 
 The silent trees and the intruding sky ; — 
 Then, dearest maiden, move along these shades 
 In gentleness of heart ; with gentle hand 
 Touch — for there is a spirit in the woods. * 
 
 In his youth, the poet says — 
 
 The sounding cataract 
 Haunted me like a passion. The tall rock, 
 The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood — 
 Their colours and their forms — were then to me 
 An appetite : a feeling and a love 
 That had no need of a remoter chasm, 
 By thought supplied. 
 
 But, later on, this feeling assumed the shape of a moral 
 
 principle : — 
 
 For I have learned 
 To look on nature — not as in the time 
 Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes 
 The still, sad music of humanity, 
 Not hoarse nor grating, though of awful power 
 To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts : a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 
 * Nutting. 
 
94 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man 
 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 
 And rolls through all things. Therefore, am I still 
 
 A lover of the mountains and the woods, 
 
 Well pleased to recognise 
 In nature and the language of the sense, 
 The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, 
 The guide, the guardian of my heart and soul — 
 Of all my moral being. 
 
 Early, says Wordsworth, the Wanderer had learnt to reve- 
 rence the Bible — 
 
 But in the mountains did he feel his faith, 
 Responsive to the writing ; all things there 
 Breathed immortality — revolving life 
 And greatness still revolving. Infinite 
 There, littleness was not ; the least of things 
 Seemed infinite ; and there his spirit shaped 
 Her prospects.* 
 
 ***** 
 What soul was his, when from the naked top 
 Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun 
 Rise up and bathe the world in light ! He looked, — 
 Ocean and earth — the solid frame of earth 
 \ And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay 
 In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched, 
 And in their silent faces did he read 
 Unutterable love. Sound needed none, 
 Nor any voice of joy ; his spirit drank 
 The spectacle. Sensation, soul, and form 
 All melted into him ; they swallowed up 
 His animal being. In them did he live, 
 And by them did he live — they were his life.f 
 
 It was a theory of Malebranche, that we view nature in God. 
 But the doctrine, which Wordsworth appears almost uncon- 
 sciously to have espoused, views God in nature. But the most 
 
 * "Excursion," Book First. f Ibid. 
 
THE LAKE POETS. 95 
 
 glorious manifestation of nature is the human mind. All the 
 divine intelligences with which religion has peopled heaven, or 
 the countless hosts of misshapen fiends which are represented 
 as crowding the lowest pit of Erebus, these the poet views as 
 mere phantoms, which he passes unterrified, — 
 
 All strength, all terror, single or in bands, 
 That ever was put forth in personal form, 
 Jehovah with his thunder, and the choir 
 Of ministering angels, and the empyreal thrones, 
 I pass them unalarmed. 
 
 The poet reserves all his fear and awe for the mind of man, 
 
 To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil. 
 
 That Wordsworth's views, even as to the orthodox sense of the 
 account of the fall in Genesis, were by no means fixed, is 
 evident from a passage parenthetically thrown into the text of 
 " The Excursion : " — 
 
 From these pure heights 
 (Whether of actual vision, sensible 
 To sight and feeling, or that in this sort 
 Have condescendingly been shadow'd forth 
 Communications spiritually maintained 
 And intuitions moral and divine) 
 Fell human kind. 
 
 This allusion to the worship of the Jews is followed by a 
 description of the origin of the worship of the Egyptian, the Per- 
 sian, and the Greek. Now the common principle running 
 throughout all these details is, that these various worships owe 
 their birth to the reverence which nature has inspired in the\ 
 breasts of different races, who gave their spiritual intuitions/ 
 various external embodiments, according to the constitution of 
 their minds. The Jews see, or think they see, angels on their 
 mountain tops. They hear, or think they hear, Jehovah's 
 voice in the thunder or the wind. The Greeks beheld sporting 
 
96 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 oreads in the fleeting sunbeams, and naiads in the rills. The 
 Egyptians beheld in the spangled dome of the sky the residence 
 of Belus, and built towers, on the top of which they erected mag- 
 nificent shrines for his repose. The Persians beheld in the sun 
 earth's universal Lord, and on the peaks of mountains worshipped 
 Him with sacrifices and with hymns. If the difference between 
 these faiths is a matter of mere moral or spiritual intuition, 
 the only distinction between the worship of the Jews and their 
 ] neighbours is, that both adored the same invisible power, only 
 under different external manifestations. Even the poet imagines 
 there is a moral sympathy in nature akin to the moral feeling in 
 man, which is outraged by the wanton violation of moral laws, 
 as in the language of Milton, which he cites as an illustration 
 of the principle : — 
 
 Earth trembled from her entrails, as again 
 
 In pangs, and nature gave a second groan : 
 
 Sky lowered, and muttering thunder, some sad drops 
 
 Wept at completion of the mortal sin. 
 
 The external universe is a temple, of which our poet repre- 
 sents himself as the priest. The wicked at her shrine may 
 have their hearts purified. No one can habitually contemplate 
 natural scenery with a loving spirit, without feeling a shower of 
 holy influences sanctifying his mind. Hence, with Words- 
 worth, this cultivation of nature assumes the appearance of a 
 religion. It is a source of the purest joy — the fount of per- 
 petual and ever-enduring pleasures. The worldly spirit of 
 prudence which tends to neutralize this passion for nature 
 within us, he reprobates to so great an extent, as to prefer the 
 Greek mythology for his creed without the modern system of 
 barter, than any other religion with it : — 
 
 The world is too much with us ; late and soon, 
 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ; 
 Little we see in nature that is ours. 
 We have thrown our hearts away, a sordid boon ! 
 This sea that bares her bosom to the moon, 
 
THE LAKE POETS. 97 
 
 The winds that will be howling at all hours, 
 
 But now are folded up like sleeping flowers, — 
 
 With each and all of these we're out of tune. 
 
 It moves us not. Great God ! I'd rather be 
 
 A pagan suckled in a creed outworn, 
 
 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
 
 Have glimpses which would make me less forlorn, 
 
 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, 
 
 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 
 
 For, in truth, philosophically speaking, there is not much 
 difference between the ancient and modern worshipper of 
 nature. Both in substance believed in a pervading soul,, 
 throwing out external manifestations of beauty. They only 
 differ about the name and the personification of the power. 
 But this difference did not make one less than the other a 
 devotee at the shrine of material spiritualism. The poet evenj 
 tells us that he beat the Greek, in the keen appreciation of 
 the spirit which haunted his visions, and which he most 
 worshipped : — 
 
 Beauty, a living presence of the earth, 
 
 Surpassing the most fair ideal forms, 
 
 Which craft of delicate spirits had composed 
 
 From earth's materials, waits upon my steps, 
 
 Pitches her tents before me as I move, 
 
 An hourly neighbour — Paradise and groves 
 
 Elysian, fortunate fields — like those of old 
 
 Sought in the Atlantic main ; why should they be 
 
 A history only of departed things ? 
 
 Or a mere fiction of what never was ? 
 
 For the discerning intellect of man, 
 
 When wedded to this goodly universe, 
 
 In love and holy passion, shall find these 
 
 A simple produce of the common day. 
 
 This deification of the powers of nature; this attempt to 
 purify the grosser feelings by communing with lake and moun- 
 tain j this belief that Paradise and the Elysian fields were ab- 
 stract conceptions of the same keen insight into the spiritual 
 
 7 
 
98 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 harmonies of the universe, and were not only not dead but 
 might exist for ever, enjoyable and enjoyed upon this earth of 
 ours j this effort to break down the antithesis between mind and 
 matter, and show that they are both only different conceptions 
 of the same substance ; I am at a loss to conceive how these 
 things can be reconciled, I will not say with the Thirty-nine 
 Articles, but with the essential constituents of the Christian 
 faith. The belief in the perfectibility of human nature, or its 
 paradisal felicity on this earth, is utterly at war with the doc- 
 trine of the fall. The Church, also, claims as its special prero- 
 gative the purification of the heart. It would exclude from its 
 bosom as an idolater the man who should worship nature, or 
 declare that the pageantry of the universe constituted the life, 
 the very nutriment of his spiritual being. Yet this language is 
 held of, and by, a character in whose mouth the poet places 
 sentiments which show that — 
 
 Though a heathen in the spiritual part, 
 He was a right good Christian at the heart. 
 
 And the poet does not leave him alone as the exponent of the 
 hybrid mixture of the pantheism of Pythagoras with the doc- 
 trines of Christ, but he represents him as calling in a village 
 clergyman to assist him in the task. This gentleman is in his 
 natural position, when he descants upon the fortunes of the 
 more romantic of his parishioners, whose graves lie at his feet ; 
 but when he is made to endorse the poet's pantheism, and to 
 wind up a poem, whose grand feature is the investiture of the 
 love of nature with the functions of religion, by a conventicle 
 harangue, wherein all the benefits which many people aver 
 ecclesiastical institutions in this country have striven to prevent, 
 are ascribed to their influence, then the poet has succeeded in 
 placing the kerb-stone to the contrarieties which pervade his 
 work, and leaves his readers with very conflicting ideas as to the 
 main scope and object of his poem. The fact is, Wordsworth 
 was both a Chartist and a Tory, a Pantheist as well as a 
 
 
THE LAKE POETS. 99 
 
 Churchman : it is, therefore, not surprising that the work into 
 which he flung all his energies should reflect the contrarieties 
 of his mind. 
 
 This system of viewing the domestic affections and emotional 
 sympathies, to the exclusion of the intellect, as vehicles of in- 
 spiration, appears to have led Wordsworth to the notion that 
 the Deity holds more intimate communication with childhood, 
 when the reason is dead and the feelings paramount, than with 
 any other phase of existence. This creed he has developed in 
 an ode which will last as long as the English language. Here, 
 he says, among other things — 
 
 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
 The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 
 And cometh from afar ; 
 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 
 And not in utter nakedness, 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 
 From God, who is our home : 
 Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 
 Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
 
 Upon the growing boy: 
 But he beholds the light, and whence it flows. 
 
 He sees it in his joy, 
 The youth who daily farther from the east 
 Must travel, still is Nature's priest, 
 
 And by the vision splendid 
 
 Is on his way attended. 
 At length the man perceives it die away. 
 And fade into the light of common day. 
 
 And again, in " The Excursion : " — 
 
 Thou who didst wrap the cloud 
 
 Of infancy around us, that Thyself, 
 
 Therein, with our simplicity awhile 
 
 Might'st hold, on earth, communion undisturbed.* 
 
 This opinion of Wordsworth, so grandly expounded, would 
 * " Excursion," Book Fourth. 
 
ioo ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 seem to derive some confirmation from Comte's theory that the 
 stage of infancy, like that of the youth of the world, is dominated 
 by the theological element. In childhood, everything presents 
 the appearance of the marvellous. We imagine ourselves in 
 direct intercourse with invisible spirits, that angels or demons 
 lurk in every corner, that heaven lies about our housetops. But 
 Comte regarded these impressions as naked delusions — mere 
 infantine dreams, and nothing more ; whereas the poet clings to 
 them as substantial realities, though this belief stands out in 
 glaring contradiction to those Pantheistic views he so earnestly 
 embodies in other portions of his works. This theory is, also, as 
 much in conflict with scientific views, on the one hand, as with 
 theological notions on the other. If the soul of man be but a 
 higher organization of the same element which pervades the 
 inorganic world, how can it be said to flow directly out of 
 heaven ? We are informed by the theologians upon whom our 
 poet relied, that the soul is cut off from all communication with 
 the Deity, from birth upwards, until the baptismal rite has been 
 performed ; and if this be neglected, as it is in the great majo- 
 rity pf the human race, childhood is passed in more or less sub- 
 servience to the devil. But I am not aware that the affections 
 and emotional sympathies are weaker in unbaptised infants 
 than with others. This view, which alone derives support, in 
 a religious sense, from the innocence and guilelessness of 
 children, and from Christ's predilection for their society, hardly 
 forms a consistent basis for a theory, which cuts up the doc- 
 trine of the Fall by the roots, and which makes every step in 
 intellectual expansion a further remove from the influence of 
 the Deity. Take the theory by itself, without any reference to 
 the writer's doctrinal opinions, and it is specious enough ; but fit 
 it as a "little shrine " into a Gothic church or pantheistic temple, 
 and it becomes as utterly incongruous as a baptismal font in 
 a Mohammedan mosque. It is this miscellaneous blending of 
 I conflicting views, which so largely detracts from the merits of 
 Wordsworth's great poem. Detached portions of the piece are 
 
THE LAKE POETS. 101 
 
 splendidly elaborated, and, viewed singly, powerfully impress 
 the imagination. It is only when we link the incongruous 
 assemblage together that we are startled at the conflicting ele- 
 ments — at the jargon of systems presented to us, in the same 
 piece of workmanship, as an instance of harmonious design and 
 unity of purpose. This strange medley of contrary principles 
 was not only at war with Wordsworth's religious opinions, 
 but with the views of everybody else. And when a philosophical 
 poet adopts theories which are contradictory in themselves, and, 
 in their collective embodiment, at war with everybody else's 
 notions on the same subject, he falls into a mistake similar to 
 that of the representative poet who introduces into his work 
 false manners and unnatural sentiments ; for, reason is violated 
 in the one case, quite as much as nature in the other. Yet, 
 despite of these great drawbacks, so preeminent are the beau- 
 ties of the piece in their individual aspects, and so obtuse the 
 national mind to mere philosophic inconsistencies, that " The] 
 Excursion" seems destined to hold its place as one of the firsl/ 
 didactic poems in the English language. 
 
 Wordsworth embodies so much discursive description in his 
 great poem, illustrates so many chance topics, uninformed with 
 any idea of unity, as to bring the " Task " nearer to it than 
 any other poem in our literature. But the " Task," which most 
 nearly approaches it in tone, lacks design, and therefore cannot 
 be said to come within the range of didactic poetry at all; 
 while the "Essay on Man," which resembles it in design, 
 fails in imaginative embodiment anc^poetjc^execjition. £ope 
 uses verse as the vehicle of reason. In his " Essay," he 
 seldom touches the emotional sensibilities. His appeals are 
 always to the intellect. The imaginative faculty is only inci- 
 dentally called in to illustrate argument, and never to awaken 
 sympathy. The whole piece is a discussion upon abstract ethics. 
 With Wordsworth, the heart is much more engaged than the.) ^ 
 head. He does not strive so much to convince the intellect as 
 to enlist the sympathies. Purity of feeling, moral worth, lofty ** 
 
102 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 emotion, and delicate sensibility, if he can win these to his side, 
 he readily abandons to others' dialectic skill, as something 
 extraneous to the vocation of the poet. Cowper, though he 
 addresses himself far more to the general elements of our nature 
 than Pope, dilates upon every casual subject which falls in his 
 way. He has no aim except to blend morality with his 
 multifarious descriptions of external nature. His reflections, as 
 those of Wordsworth, seem called forth by every random object, 
 like the tones of a lyre whose strings are abandoned to the 
 passing gale. Cowper, however, never touches the heart with 
 pity, or ever attempts to spiritualize nature till it assumes the 
 form of ideal existence. But Wordsworth, while thoroughly 
 human, rises completely out of the common-place sphere. 
 The mind, purified from its grosser feelings by keen sympathy 
 with the lowest forms of suffering, is carried by him to ethereal! 
 heights, where nature, glowing with the sun-bursts of Claude, 
 seems endued with a spirituality diviner than that of man. The I 
 essence of nature is viewed as the outward manifestation of the 
 power of which the soul is the interior image. Between both 
 there is mutual kinship, each drawing from the other that 
 which it most wants, until by the blending of spiritual efful- 
 gence with material pomp of imagery, both are incorporated 
 into one dream of ideal existence. The functions of the Greek 
 drama with modern dramatic incidents are thus united to a 
 philosophy which glasses the divine perfections in the universe 
 as in a mirror, and infatuates the soul so much with their beauty 
 as to incline it to mistake the shadow for the reality. 
 / But the exclusion of the higher types of humanity from his 
 pages, the absence of any attempt to depict the deeper phases 
 of passion, or to vitalize the human energies in connection with 
 the lofty themes of war or ambition, or to illumine the darker 
 shades of existence by the soft emotions of love, must keep 
 Wordsworth from occupying so high a position as those who 
 have shown themselves competent to shine in these subjects, 
 and whose muse has ranged at will through all the regions 
 
THE LAKE POETS. 103 
 
 capable of interesting the heart of man. Hence, Wordsworth 
 must be placed below Pope and even Byron, from the fact that 
 though supreme in the didactic poem, he lacks the faculty, 
 which they possessed in an uncommon degree, of storming the 
 breast-works of the heart, by the embodiment of all the phases V 
 of passion. In the delineation of character, in the framing of inci- 
 dent, and in the constructive power of impregnating disjointed 
 materials with one common life, he is likewise lamentably defi- 
 cient. He is also too fond of forcing his individual feelings upon\ 
 the reader, instead of entering fully into the feelings of others.! 
 These negative qualities must exclude Wordsworth from a fore-] 
 most place in the second rank. But he is entitled to as high a 
 position in it as supreme excellence in the reflective faculty, pro- 
 found pathos, and ideal delineation of natural objects can place 
 him. For he has bound man closer to nature by a thousand 
 links of association and feeling, and intertwined the meanest 
 objects of creation with the fibres of the human heart. In 
 this respect he may be said to have placed in our hands a new 
 fulcrum for the elevation of humanity. For the universe be- 
 comes in his verse a temple, through the portals of which man 
 is ushered into the presence of the divinity. It is this inter- 
 fusion of nature and the human soul in the substance of a 
 higher spiritual being, that enables him to hallow the com- 
 monest events with a feeling of the infinite, to move, as it were, 
 in an atmosphere of sublimity by illustrating the splendid ana- 
 logues which bind man with the universe, and merge both in 
 the existence of God himself. 
 
io4 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 ' 
 
 (&altxxb%t. 
 
 WORDSWORTH appears to have derived much of his 
 material spiritualism from Coleridge, as Byron sub- 
 sequently did from Shelley. The two poets who narrowly 
 escaped each other at Cambridge* were thrown much together 
 in later life, and there can be little doubt that the philosophy 
 of Schelling, which Coleridge had mastered in Germany, was 
 made to cast its glittering veil over the thoughts of his com- 
 panion. Of Coleridge's admiration for Wordsworth, the Bio- 
 graphia Literaria is evidence, one half of which is taken up 
 with a panegyric of his works. Of Wordsworth's admiration 
 for Coleridge, the noble passage in the sixth book of the 
 "Prelude" is no less conclusive, which also shows to what 
 extent his companion's dreamy speculations had haunted the 
 writer's mind : — 
 
 Of rivers, fields, 
 And groves I speak to thee, my friend, to thee 
 Who yet a liveried schoolboy in the depths 
 Of the huge city, on the leaded roof 
 Of that wide edifice, thy school's home, 
 Wert used to lie and gaze upon the clouds 
 Moving in heaven ; or of that pleasure tired, 
 To shut thine eyes, and by internal light 
 See trees and meadows, and thy native stream 
 Far distant, thus beheld from year to year 
 
 Of a long tribe 
 
 I have thought 
 
 * See Wordsworth's " Prelude," b. vi. 
 
J 
 
 THE LAKE POETS. 105 
 
 Of thee, thy learning, gorgeous eloquence, 
 
 And all the strength and plumage of thy youth, 
 
 Thy subtle speculations, toils abstruse 
 
 Among the schoolmen, and Platonic forms 
 
 Of wild ideal pageantry, shaped out 
 
 From things well matched or ill, and words for things, 
 
 The self-created sustenance of a mind 
 
 Debarred from Nature's living images, 
 
 Compelled to be a life unto herself, 
 
 And unrelentingly progressed by thirst 
 
 Of greatness, love, and beauty. 
 
 The two companions supplemented each other's verses. 
 They interchanged suggestions. They published poetry in 
 common ; and Coleridge, even more than Wordsworth, viewed 
 the different appearances of nature as so many modifications 
 of the everlasting mind : — 
 
 It were a vain endeavour, 
 
 Though I should gaze for ever 
 
 On that fair light that lingers in the west ; 
 
 I may not hope from outward forms to win 
 
 The passion and the life whose fountains are within. 
 
 O Lady ! we receive but what we give, 
 
 And in our life alone does nature live ; 
 
 Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud.* 
 
 Coleridge, however, repudiated Wordsworth's views respect- 
 ing the baldness of poetic language, and the confining the 
 region of the muse to the hamlet and the smithy. He even 
 soared beyond the sphere of reflection into the higher one 
 of passion, but into passion so etherealized that it may be fairly 
 called the metaphysics of love. There is no voluptuousness, • 
 no swoonings on the breast of his beloved, no absorption of 
 the animal functions in the imperious desires awakened by 
 incarnate loveliness, but at best a dreaming reverie, a melan- 
 choly spirituality, with moonlight as a background, projecting 
 in front the pale shadows of a coy lover and a bashful mistress. 
 
 * Ode to Dejection. 
 
i.o6 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 * Such are his pictures of Genevieve and Christabel — creations 
 which, though of the highest spiritual beauty, seem rather the 
 product of an ethereal fancy refined by abstract theories 
 than the genuine flesh and blood embodiments of our earth. 
 In fact, the ethical views which Coleridge and Wordsworth 
 had intruded into the sphere of art, however suited to the 
 delineation of nature, were quite out of place in the represen- 
 tation of human feelings and passions. The advantage, there- 
 fore, which Coleridge had over Wordsworth in a wider range of 
 subject, he did not turn to much account, while he falls in- 
 finitely below him in developing the many-sided relations of 
 nature to humanity. In contrasting, however, the two men, it 
 is not fair to overlook their widely different positions. Fortune 
 made for the one munificent provision, and gave him health to 
 enjoy it, while poverty and disease continued, like avenging 
 furies, to buffet Coleridge, and drove him a homeless wanderer 
 over the earth. It was, therefore, quite natural that the one 
 should concentrate his mind upon a series of lofty efforts, 
 while the other should only, as it were, take up his harp when 
 the fit was on him, to abandon it when the first glow of 
 heat had subsided, or the struggle for existence called him 
 
 \ away. Yet in the fragments he has left, he has shown greater 
 representative power in dealing with human incident than 
 Wordsworth. He also excels him in the embodiment of 
 character and in lyrical sweetness ; but in genuine simplicity, 
 deep pathos, and the ideal delineation of nature, he is so inferior 
 to Wordsworth that the points in which he stands above him 
 are lost sight of altogether. 
 
 It must, however, be allowed that there was that desultori- 
 
 ' ness in the mind of Coleridge, that disposition to grasp at 
 everything and really master nothing, that love for bewildering 
 digressions, that fluctuation of resolve, inconstancy of purpose 
 in all he undertook, which would have been fatal to pre- 
 eminent success in any branch of art, even had Coleridge 
 been, what assuredly he was not, the spoilt child of Fortune. 
 
THE LAKE POETS. 107 
 
 No sooner had he broken into one subject than it was laid 
 down for another. If one day he was toiling in the labyrinth/' 
 of German metaphysics, the next he was sure to be buried in 
 astrological lore, or in speculations about the millennium, which 
 were in turn destined to be pushed aside for some abstruse 
 theories about Shakespeare's relations to art. There was the 
 same inconstancy in his convictions as in his pursuits, for Cole- 
 ridge was always the victim of the reigning impression domi- 
 nating his mind. By turns he became a visionary republican, 
 a practical socialist, a dreaming theosophist, an inveterate 
 Tory. For the conventicle he gave up the church, and aban- 
 doned both for Spinozism, only to come round to the church 
 again. In such a fluctuating region there was no fixed strata 
 in which the offshoots of poetry could take firm root; for 
 ideas require time to ripen like everything else. Nor will artistic 
 genius ever come to maturity if its productions have to be un- 
 ceasingly plucked up and planted in new soil, or developed 
 under opposing contrarieties of belief. The imagination of a 
 man who changes his convictions with each revolving moon 
 can never be fired; or his conceptions struck out, with that 
 heat which is necessary for the production of grand and 
 striking impressions. These, fixity and earnestness of thought 
 can alone supply. It would have been as reasonable to expect 
 umbrageous oaks to spring up out of a strata of shifting 
 sand as great works from a mind so changeable and fluctuating 
 as Coleridge's. 
 
 This uncertainty of tenure in the poet's intellectual domain, 
 combined with his love for abstract speculation, make his crea- 
 tions seem but the reflex of the broken and disjointed efforts of 
 his life. Nothing is complete ; all is fragmentary and unreal, 
 having little relation with the outside world, and wanting that % 
 coloured variety of woof and warp which destiny had blended 
 in the web of his career. Few pass through so many strange 
 phases of existence as Coleridge, — collegian, soldier, dramatic ' 
 lecturer, moralist, newspaper scribe, preacher, Colonial Secre- 
 
108 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 tary, habitual tourist, and metaphysician. Had one tithe of his 
 experiences in these varied, characters been reproduced in his 
 poems, they would have presented a charming diversity of 
 aspect. But the airy abstractions in which he indulged, and 
 the narcotic which he swallowed as an antidote to bodily 
 infirmities, threw over all his pieces the same silken vei* of 
 dreamy sentimentality. Hence there is little of the ring of 
 
 ' actual life in his poems. We wander in his pages through a 
 hall of magnificent torsos as if by moonlight, but the sense of 
 beauty with which they haunt us is dimmed with the regret 
 that the sculptor did not finish his statues, and bring them out 
 on their pedestals into actual day. " Christabel " contains more 
 genuine poetry, as far as it goes, than anything of the same 
 kind in Scott or Wordsworth. But there it lies, tantalizing us 
 with conjectures which its creator could not solve in any way 
 satisfactory to himself. He therefore left the mystery unex- 
 plained to exercise the ingenuity of critics. In the " Dark 
 Ladie," "Genevieve," "The Three Graves," "Kubla Khan," 
 the "Wanderings of Cain," and " Hymn to the Earth," we find 
 the same fragmentary and visionary treatment. It is hard to 
 believe that one who can execute so well the little he attempts, 
 could not complete the intellectual feast to which he invites us ; 
 but where we are so systematically compelled to content our- 
 selves with fragments, the conclusion is forced upon us of the 
 incompetency of the host to provide a regular entertainment. 
 
 If I were asked to individualize the character of Coleridge's 
 poetry, I should place its distinctive feature in bringing into 
 
 | prominence the relations of man with the spiritual universe. 
 Wordsworth merges man into nature, Coleridge nature into 
 man. The material world in his verses is either lost sight of, 
 or refined away until the spiritual peers through its shell like 
 
 1 the moon through a cloud, deriving fresh lustre from illumining 
 the gauze-like vapours which vainly strive to hide its light from 
 earth. In this branch of his art, the "Ancient Mariner" is un- 
 
 , rivalled. The punishment of man's thoughtlessness in dis- 
 
THE LAKE POETS. 109 
 
 lodging a spirit by shooting the alabatross, the spectre bark and 
 its two skeleton inmates dicing for the possession of the cul- 
 prit, the conversation of the weird powers over the vessel 
 impelled onward by invisible agency, the reanimation of the 
 dead bodies of the sailors by an angelic troupe, who cast them 
 off again to reassume their own bright forms, — all these project 
 the spiritual world so prominently in the foreground as to 
 make the material seem nothing but its fluctuating shadow. 
 ^Again, in " Christabel," we have the substance of a tale repre- 
 senting a lady suffering for the faults of her lover, who is 
 restored to peace by the pains so vicariously endured. But a 
 spirit, in the person of Geraldine, was designed as the instru- 
 ment of the change, through whom, as a flood-gate, the light 
 of the spiritual universe was to stream on material creation. 
 There is something very 1 weird-like and novel in the path 
 Coleridge thus struck out for himself; but to make efforts of 
 this kind powerfully impress the imagination, they must not 
 only be complete in themselves, but definitely connected with 
 the real world. Coleridge's poems, however, from his failure in 
 these two particulars, frequently assume the appearance of 
 dreams. His whole life appears to have been a hunt after 
 material shadows. It is only when he draws creatures from the 
 clouds that he gets among realities. 
 
 Apart from this disposition to sink the material in the spiritual, 
 
 I there is nothing in the poetry of Coleridge that would cha- 
 
 j racterise a writer of pre-eminent rank in those departments 
 
 I which he selected for the exercise of his skill. His muse 
 
 I is rather tender and sweet than pathetic and grand. Fancy in 
 
 ] him struggles with imagination for mastery ; but his imagina- 
 
 ' tion generally embodies the beautiful, and seldom the 
 
 ' sublime. It is rarely informed with lofty images, or fired by 
 
 \ splendid passion. We are always charmed with its strokes, but 
 
 I never absolutely carried off our feet. The music is perfect, the 
 
 imagery is striking, and the execution as far as it goes leaves 
 
 Little on the score of harmony to be desired ; but deep pathos, 
 
i io ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 or startling contrasts, or any whirlwind of emotion, or rapid 
 gusts of feeling, or a quick succession of bold figures, or com- 
 pleteness of conception arising spontaneously out of the 
 structural unity of parts, we look for in vain. Hence, his 
 success in the ode I should hardly call first-rate. And he cuts 
 by no means so good a figure in the drama as he does in the 
 ode. Few only of his fugitive pieces are of a high order of 
 merit j but even were they all so, these would not, from the 
 contemplative element which abounds in them, place him in the 
 front rank. It is upon his position as a narrative poet, and as 
 a narrative poet alone, that Coleridge must rest his principal 
 claim to distinction. But the visionary and disjointed pieces 
 which he has left us in this walk of his art, are not such as 
 to entitle him to a place in the second division of poets, 
 though they display genius which, had they been properly 
 developed and matured, would undoubtedly have done so. 
 It is, therefore, to be regretted that one who appeared so 
 
 * capable of weaving enchanting melodies out of lofty themes, of 
 ennobling man's nature by connecting him with the infinite, of 
 setting right the tortuosities of the lower world by the laws of 
 the higher, who exercised so potent a spell over spiritual forms 
 that he could bring down their images with such effulgence as 
 to dim the actual into shade, should have frittered away the 
 great bulk of his energies in spasmodic effort, or in eking out 
 a scanty provision for the common necessities of nature. Had 
 society been juster to Coleridge, he might have been truer to . 
 himself. As it was, he early lost his sense of manly indepen- 
 dence by having to lean on the bounty of others. This sucked 
 
 . the soul out of poetic inspiration, and drove him, as he sings 
 himself, to seek relief in philosophic studies : — 
 
 There was a time * * * 
 
 When Hope grew round me, like the twining vine, 
 And fruits and foliage, not my own, seemed mine. 
 But now afflictions bow me down to the earth, 
 Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth ; 
 
THE LAKE POETS. in 
 
 But, oh ! each visitation 
 Suspends what nature gave me at my birth, 
 
 My shaping spirit of imagination. 
 For not to think of what I needs must feel, 
 
 But to be still and patient all I can ; 
 And haply by abstruse research to steal 
 
 From my own nature all the natural man : 
 
 This was my sole resource, my only plan, 
 Till that which suits a part infects the whole, 
 And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.* 
 
 Coleridge, then, was driven by sheer force of circumstances 
 to divide his allegiance between poetry and philosophy. He 
 fell between two stools. Both claim him for their own, and 
 both suffered from the too constant intrusion of its rival. 
 Even now among his countrymen, he stands higher as a 
 metaphysician than as a poet. But there can hardly be a 
 doubt that, as philosophy becomes more known, this judgment 
 will be reversed. For an accurate thinker Coleridge was not ; 
 while as a poet, could his imagination have found free vent, 
 could his keen perception have been unassailed by the coarse 
 clamours of material existence, he would probably have left 
 productions behind him second to none of his age. 
 
 * Ode to Dejection. 
 
1 1 2 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH FOE TS. 
 
 THE Lake poets had a decided objection to be classed to- 
 gether as a school. Coleridge remonstrated with Jeffrey 
 on this head, who promised to strike his name out of the firm. 
 "I," he said, "object to Wordsworth's hobbies about child- 
 hood and the rustic nature of poetic language. Why, then, 
 class me as one of his sect ?" Southey was no less remonstra- 
 tive. " I," said the author of " Thalaba," " dislike the lyrical 
 ballads. Besides, two or three of my epics were written before 
 I knew Wordsworth. It is, therefore, a blunder to place me in 
 the same boat with him and Coleridge." These protests were 
 rational enough, so far as regarded the different styles in which 
 each poet worked out the same system. But they could not 
 obliterate the identity of the principles which permeate the 
 entire body of their poetry. Wordsworth is eminently psycho- 
 logical; Coleridge fantastically mystical; and Southey gor- 
 geously objective. But none recognise the sensuous phases of 
 that keen passion which lovers feel for each other; each lay 
 the same stress upon the domestic affections as the great in- 
 strument in the hands of the muse for exalting human nature ; 
 each intrude the ethical principle into every department of 
 their art ; each consider simplicity of language as the form, and 
 love of nature as the soul, of all true poetry; each regarded 
 Pope as one of the lowest, and Cowper as one of the highest 
 names in the English Parnassus. It was this unity of principle 
 which has associated these writers in one class, notwithstanding 
 
THE LAKE POETS. 113 
 
 their clamorous assertions of self-independence and mutual 
 dislike for each other's peculiarities. 
 
 It would seem that this desire of the Lake poets, each to 
 stand upon his own basis, arose more or less from a feeling 
 that they would lose somewhat of that intellectual height which 
 each vainly flattered himself he was about to attain, if he had 
 not reached the loftiest eminence already. For the Lake poets 
 were above any other class of men gifted with a large amount 
 of self-conceit, and with no ordinary sense of their own im- 
 portance. Wordsworth would pull out his pieces with the 
 ostentation of Statius, and exclaim, " If you don't admire that, 
 you can have no discernment of the pure and beautiful in art." 
 He told Crabbe Robinson he could not respect the mother 
 who could read without emotion his poem, 
 
 " Once in a lonely hamlet I sojourned ; " 
 
 and he assured him that any reader who did not appreciate 
 
 11 Two voices are there, one is of the sea," 
 
 must be singularly deficient in intellectual refinement and moral 
 purity. It is rich to hear Coleridge ascribe the first unpopularity 
 of " The Ancient Mariner " to being linked with such stuff as 
 "Peter Bell;" and Wordsworth repay the compliment by 
 ascribing the unpopularity of " Peter Bell " to being weighted 
 with " The Ancient Mariner." But Southey left his two 
 compeers far behind in the vanity of self-adulation. His 
 " History of Brazil " he compared to " Herodotus," and his 
 " Madoc " to the " Odyssey." In one of his laureate odes he 
 thus addresses himself, — 
 
 Thou whom rich nature at thy happy birth, (^ 
 
 Blest in her bounty with the largest dower 
 That Heaven indulges to a child of earth. 
 
 And he subsequently informs his readers that all the good and 
 wis^e admire him. He once kidnapped Shelley into his study 
 
 /*. 
 
1 14 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS, 
 
 at Keswick, under the delusion that he had a fine treat in store 
 for him, and, after he secured the doors, pulled out the 
 voluminous roll of " Madoc," with which he dosed his hearer 
 until the young enthusiast fell asleep under the table.* 
 Southey has left it on record that he considered Scott's poems, 
 in comparison to his own, as the mere offshoots of the cabbage- 
 garden, contrasted in point of durability with the umbrageous 
 oaks of the forest. t It does not speak much for his sincerity 
 that, while expressing such opinions, he should in a letter to Sir 
 Walter, of the same date, congratulate that gentleman on having, 
 together with himself, scaled the highest summits of Parnassus. 
 What Scott thought of the compliment does not appear ; but, 
 from the manner in which he tossed the laureateship to Southey, 
 I fancy, he would have preferred going a little lower down, to 
 sharing so exalted a position with his contemporary. But 
 Scott's nature was chivalric. He had all the humility of a 
 great genius. Instead of exalting himself at the expense of 
 others, he saw so many defects in his own compositions that 
 he could not bear to revert to them. He exclaimed, in the 
 language of Macbeth, 
 
 " I am ashamed 
 To think on what I've done ; look on't again, 
 I dare not. " 
 
 This humiliating feeling is the mark of a great artist who is 
 impressed with the wide chasm existing between his own 
 performances and that ideal type of excellence which is ever 
 haunting his soul. But where we get as its substitute a spirit 
 of self-laudation, a disposition to seize upon every opportunity 
 which presents itself, as a sort of platform for the mountebank 
 exhibition of our own excellences, there the highest style of 
 art cannot exist. 
 
 Though Southey stands much more apart from Coleridge 
 
 * Jefferson Hogg's "Life of Shelley." 
 + " Southey's Letters," in the Correspondence of Rt. Hon. J. W. Croker. 
 
THE LAKE POETS. 115 
 
 and Wordsworth than these do from each other, there is none 
 in whom the principles of the school are more offensively pre- 
 dominant. In subjective poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge, 
 who drew their stores out of their own minds, if was natural 
 that their creations should reflect their own peculiar habits of 
 thought; but Southey was a poet eminently objective. His aim 
 was to reproduce the actual j and, therefore, when he attempted 
 to build up lofty epics, illustrating national characteristics, upon 
 the foundation of one-half of human nature, the result was a 
 successive series of failures. Love is the cardinal passion of the 
 human race. But Southey is at as much pains to keep his 
 pages free from any spontaneous burst of that passion as if his 
 poems, like the Greek plays, were intended as solemn adjuncts 
 to a religious festival. His lovers, therefore, behave as coldly 
 to each other as brother and sister. They are only so many 
 abstract embodiments of the domestic virtues. The conse- 
 quence is that a dreary pall of monotony hangs over most of 
 his poems. His incidents lack variety ; his characters want relief. 
 For sallies of inspiration, we get only amplifications of rhetoric ; 
 for exquisite touches of nature, stilted sentimentality. He is 
 in some measure obliged to be starch, and affected, and ex- 
 travagant j for in making use only of one-half of the elements 
 of our common nature, he has to inflate the other half into 
 undue proportions — to exaggerate a part until it bears some 
 semblance to the whole. 
 
 To reproduce the actual, to make the past live over again 
 in the present, requires a poet of very liberal sympathies, and 
 with some practical acquaintance with the feelings, tenden- 
 cies, and struggles of his own generation. But in both these 
 qualities Southey was singularly deficient. Whether as regards 
 the constructive powers within, or his knowledge, or his appre- 
 ciation, of the real world without, he was about the last man to 
 shape into so many living actualities the events of any spirit- 
 stirring drama. His sympathies were narrow, and his expe- 
 rience of men as confined as his sympathies. The bigoted 
 
1 16 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 unitarianism of his youth was only exchanged for a still more 
 bigoted Calvinism in his mature age. Even Coleridge, en- 
 sheathed as he was in the glittering armour of the German phi- 
 losophies, failed to inoculate his companion's hard mind with 
 any insight into those distinctions which have revolutionized 
 metaphysical science. Out of the contracted circle in which his 
 views were confined, he seldom looked, except to hiss out, in 
 short glittering epigrammatic sentences, his dislikes for the dense 
 bulk of humanity lying beyond his own pale of orthodoxy. 
 That such a man should confine himself to his library, and 
 abandon the great world for books, was strictly in keeping with 
 his mental constitution, and with the exclusive doctrines that 
 constitution had espoused ; but that he should attempt to 
 rival Homer or Dante was a serious blunder. His habits acted 
 upon his temperament, and his exclusive opinions upon both, 
 to generate that state of mind in which any truthful delinea- 
 tion of mankind, engaged upon the broad highways of human 
 action, was a sheer impossibility. 
 
 Southey's strong point is the delineation of natural scenery ; 
 the weakest; the selection of commonplace topics, which, in 
 his epics, he amplifies with such prolixity that the jaded reader 
 abandons the subject through very irksomeness of the flesh. 
 The avoiding all passionate emotions which would conflict 
 with his system of ethics necessarily narrowed the variety of 
 combinations into which he could mould his fable, and threw 
 him upon the upholsteries of his subject. His characters, in 
 consequence of not being brought into positions in which their 
 genuine nature can be developed, are mere pasteboard crea- 
 tions, and cease to interest us in proportion as they are removed 
 from common life. In " Madoc " there were several incidents 
 capable of romantic treatment, but these were ruthlessly thrust 
 aside for embassies, state ceremonials, religious processions, 
 jarring family discords, battles, and marriage. feasts, not having 
 the poor merit of being dovetailed into each other, but stand- 
 ing apart like isolated facts within the memory of a disjointed 
 
THE LAKE POETS. 117 
 
 experience. Madoc himself is one of those perfect cha- 
 racters of whom the reader entertains not the slightest hopes 
 after the first half-dozen pages. His virtues, and those of his 
 companions, whatever merit they might have in a sermon, are 
 irreclaimably stupid in an epic. Southey appears to have 
 laboured under the delusion that he could make prosaic topics 
 interesting by the force of his rhetoric, as Wordsworth made 
 prosaic characters interesting by the force of his genius. 
 
 No poet could ever have a subject embracing more variety of 
 romantic detail than " The Fall of Roderic." The shock of 
 battles, diversified by the tale of innocent and guilty love ; the 
 Christian faith sinking beneath the superior weight of the 
 Mussulman, only to be restored by the rekindled fires of 
 patriotism j the archbishop forsaking his mitre for the turban, 
 in order to satisfy the cravings of voluptuous passion, and the 
 wilder dreams of a regal ambition; the contrast of Moorish 
 costumes with the garb of Spanish mountaineers commingling, 
 either in fight or festive revelry, among the most sublime and 
 picturesque fastnesses of the Asturias; the plotting chieftain 
 and the ascetic monk; the faithless wife who achieves her 
 husband's ruin, that she may consummate her guilty passion 
 in the arms of his Moorish rival ; — all these formed the 
 materials of a series of sensational groupings, which, in the 
 hand of a master, would not have allowed the reader to lay 
 down the book until the whole story had gone through his 
 mind. But in the hands of Southey no interest is awakened ; 
 the theme becomes dull and spiritless. There is not the 
 slightest attempt at construction of plot. By-tales which might 
 have formed agreeable episodes, if treated apart, are confusedly 
 entangled with the main trunk of the story. No character 
 excites our sympathy ; the sequence of no event, our curiosity. 
 We are never made breathless with the untrammelling of con- 
 sequences, or dazed with the electric shocks of passion, till 
 
 ' ' Function is smothered in surmise, 
 And nothing is but what is not : " 
 
1 1 8 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 for the poet has here, as in " Madoc," the unhappy knack 
 of passing over the romantic features of his story, while he 
 reserves all his prolixity for the treatment of its baldest inci- 
 dents, or of such topics as merely afford scope for objective 
 imitation. The loves of Florinda and Roderic; Egelona's 
 desertion of the Goth for the Moor ; the intrigues of Guisla and 
 Oppas, — these hardly come in for a passing glance. But the 
 reader is wearied to death with the pageantry of war, with the 
 ceremony of knighthood, with the pomp of coronations, with the 
 vagabond wanderings of Roderic, and insipid discussions upon 
 free-will and fate, until he closes the book with despair, feeling 
 that a great subject has been lost for want of a great master. 
 
 Southey has shown more ability in "Thalaba , ' and "Kehama" 
 than in " Madoc " or " Roderic." For here his talent for gorgeous 
 scene-painting had fuller scope, and his want of power to 
 reproduce the actual is not so sensibly felt in the delineation 
 of beings who belong to the fairy world of Eastern imagination. 
 But it is this circumstance which must ever prevent these 
 poems from acquiring a strong hold over the popular mind. 
 We are too insulated to take much interest even in fiction 
 intertwined with continental life and manners ; but when we 
 come to tales enveloped in the crust of Indian or Arabian 
 mythologies, stript of the passionate witchery and love intrigues 
 which could alone make them life-like or interesting, our 
 feelings amount to something like revulsion. The wizard 
 tricks and demon enchantments which form the staple material 
 of these poems j the embodiment of the filial virtues in the chief 
 personages, and the complete manner in which the actors ignore 
 all their flesh-and-blood impulses, make these stories suitable 
 intellectual food for the nursery j but the classical and ornate 
 diction in which they are conveyed must always erect an im- 
 passable barrier between them and the juvenile members of 
 the community. 
 
 Southey, it appears, had some idea of embodying the principal 
 mythologies of the world in so many narrative poems, as 
 
THE LAKE POETS. 119 
 
 Homer and Virgil in their epics had embodied the religion 
 of Rome and Greece. Could he have done as much in 
 "Kehama " and "Thalaba" for the creed of the Brahmin or 
 the Mahometan, I readily allow, these epics, under one point 
 of view, would have been natural, as representing the feelings 
 and embodying the convictions of a large section of the human 
 race. We should then have had a standard by which to judge 
 of their propriety, of their truthfulness to nature, and of their 
 adequacy as pictures of the state of society which they attempt 
 to represent. But this is the very point in which the poet 
 breaks down. No man would recognise in Thalaba the cold, 
 austere, moonstruck vagrant, dead to all charms of female 
 voluptuousness, a type of his race, any more than in the 
 chaste Oneiza, one of those seductive houri, the indulgence in 
 whose multiplied society, and not their solitary companionship, 
 constitutes the Mahometan's highest conception of bliss. The 
 fact is, Southey has combined with the external ritual, ablutions, 
 and prayers of Mahometanism, the sombre virtues and rewards 
 of Calvinistic Christianity, — a combination as incongruous as 
 the blending of summer and winter in the same picture. In 
 " Kehama," the same grotesque associations are carried out. 
 Though the Hindoo and Mahometan religions stand out in 
 bold conflict with each other, Southey can see no other points 
 of difference but the omission of the ablutions, and the intro- 
 duction of more supernatural spheres, giving wider scope to 
 pantomimic trick and wizard machinery. There is hardly a 
 character, or combination of incidents, in the one story which 
 has not its counterpart in the other. Kailyal is only another 
 name for Oneiza, and Ladurlad for Moath, as Kehama is for 
 Mohareb, Khawla for the Lorrinite, and Thalaba for Glendoveer. 
 Oneiza is attempted to be ravished by Aloadin, as Kailyal is 
 by Arvalan. The palatial structures of Shedad correspond to 
 those of the submarine city of Baly, and the cave of Dom- 
 daniel to the vaults of Padalon. Where the incidents are varied 
 in " Kehama," it is rather to remove the story to a still farther 
 
120 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 distance from the Hindoo system, than to bring us closer to it. 
 In that system, if one thing be more prominent than another, it 
 is the spirit of caste, excluding anything like an interchange 
 of affection between women and the higher spiritual powers. 
 Yet this intercommunion of sentiment, this equality of feeling, 
 so repugnant to the fundamental notions of the Hindoo 
 religion, is made the cardinal hinge on which the whole poem 
 turns. Kailyal, after going through a series of flirtations with 
 Glendoveer, is transported along with that spirit to the bowers 
 of bliss. This is about as incongruous as if Moore, with a view 
 of illustrating the spirit of Christianity, had made the embrace 
 of his angels* the means of spiritualizing the voluptuous 
 creatures who had drawn them from their spheres, and sent 
 the women back with them to carry on their carnal intercourse 
 in heaven. 
 
 If the loves of Kailyal and Glendoveer are little in accordance 
 with the Hindoo religion, they are as much out of conformity with 
 nature. The style in which they are depicted strongly remind 
 us of what we occasionally hear at burlesques. This arose in 
 some degree from the necessity of the situation, which forced 
 him to represent love in its spiritual aspects, — a task for which 
 he was utterly unfitted, as well as from a feeling that any- 
 thing bordering on the sensuous divorced poetry from the 
 austere ethical views it seems to have been a fundamental 
 principle of the Lake school to inculcate. When, therefore, 
 Southey brings his characters into such a position as to lead 
 his readers to expect a burst of genuine passion, instead of the 
 mixed play of feeling, the infinitely diversified blending of the 
 ethereal with the sensuous which constitutes love, he is obliged 
 to introduce some ridiculous machinery, some prosaic incident, 
 some stage trick to fill up the foreground, which completely 
 mars the effect of the picture, and awakens in his readers no 
 other feelings but those of disappointment. No poet, perhaps, 
 ever had a finer occasion for the display of his powers in this 
 * " Loves of the Angels." 
 
THE LAKE POETS. 
 
 branch of his art than Southey, when he lands the Glendoveer 
 and Kailyal on Mount Mem. The maid was the fairest of 
 the daughters of men. The spirit is described as ethereally 
 accoutred with archangelic wings, in whose face youth smiled 
 celestial, and in whose limbs was agility of strength combined 
 with graceful curvature of beauty. Here an occasion pre- 
 sented itself for eclipsing Byron and Moore on their own 
 ground, by bringing out into bold relief the spiritual traits of 
 this passion, of which they had given us too much of the 
 mere material element. But how does Southey turn it to 
 account ? Instead of marking in the two lovers the dawn of 
 that passion whose growth is as ethereal as the first flashes of 
 light which morning paints upon an Eastern sky, Southey 
 makes Glendoveer first engage the affections of Kailyal by 
 performing a series of aquatic feats in the lake spread out at 
 her feet, at which she gazes with the same amazement as a 
 village girl astounded at the somersaults of a tumbler at a fair. 
 To put an end to this unsatisfactory state of things, Camdeo, a 
 sort of Indian Cupid, is introduced, " riding," as the poet phrases 
 it, " on his Lory." 
 
 " O ye," he cried, " who have defied 
 The Rajah, will ye mock my power ? 
 
 ***** 
 
 Shall ye alone, of all in story, 
 Boast impenetrable hearts ? 
 Hover here, my gentle Lory, 
 Gently hover, while I see 
 To whom has fate decreed the glory, 
 To the Glendoveer or me. " 
 
 While thus ejaculating, Glendoveer 
 
 Moved slowly o'er the lake with gliding flight ; 
 
 Anon, with sudden stroke and strong, 
 
 I» rapid course careering swept along ; 
 Now shooting downward from his heavenly height, 
 Plunged in the deep below ; 
 
122 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Then rising, soared again, 
 And shook the sparkling waters off like rain. * 
 
 At him thus engaged Camdeo let fly, but with no effect, for 
 a man in a cold bath is not likely to be wounded by the fiery 
 darts of love : — 
 
 " Ah, wanton !" cried the Glendoveer, 
 " Go, aim at idler hearts, 
 Thy skill is baffled here ! 
 A deeper love I bear that maid divine — 
 A love that springeth from a higher will, 
 A holier power than thine !" 
 
 Then Camdeo tries his skill upon Kailyal with the same 
 result : — 
 
 " Ah, wanton ! " cried the Glendoveer, 
 " No power hast thou for mischief here ! 
 
 Choose thou some idle breast, 
 For these are proof, by nobler thoughts possest. 
 Go, to thy plains of Matra, go, 
 And string again thy broken bow. "+ 
 
 Now it turns out in the sequel that the Glendoveer and 
 Kailyal were all along deeply in love with each other. This 
 piece of purism is, therefore, as much out of character with 
 nature and the drift of the poem, as it is in keeping with the 
 burlesque imagery and silly language in which it is expressed. 
 
 Southey's strength in these two epics lies in mere objective 
 description. He materializes everything. His imitations are 
 never flushed with the lines of the imaginative element. In 
 painting even his best scenes of love or terror, he copies the 
 outward lineaments of his objects, without imparting any of the 
 fire or Promethean force which kindles the life within. The 
 world of impressions which other poets awaken by a startling 
 metaphor or simile, as Spenser with his 
 
 * " Curse of Kehama," — Mount Meru, b. x., s. 19, 20. 
 t Ibid, b. x., s. 21, 23. 
 
THE LAKE POETS. 123 
 
 Una's angel face, 
 Which made a sunshine in a shady place ; 
 
 or Milton's description of Satan, startling the two fair angels, 
 by springing suddenly into the air like a sudden blaze from the 
 ignition of a heap of gunpowder, we get a mere catalogue of 
 the physical properties which the object of his description makes 
 palpable to the senses. One of the best passages in " Kehama," 
 which aims at spiritual embodiment, is that depicting the horror 
 which Kailyal feels on encountering Arvalan : — 
 
 That spectre fixed his eyes upon her full ; — 
 The light which shone in their accursed orbs 
 Was like a light from hell, 
 ■ And it grew deeper, kindling with the view. 
 She could not turn her sight 
 From that infernal gaze, which like a spell 
 Bound her, and held her rooted to the ground. 
 
 It palsied every power, 
 Her limbs avail'd her not in that dread hour, 
 There was no moving thence ; 
 Thought, memory, sense, were gone : 
 She heard not now the tiger's nearer cry, 
 She thought not on her father now, 
 Her cold heart's -blood ran back, 
 Her hand lay senseless on the bough it clasp'd, 
 Her feet were motionless ; 
 Her fascinated eyes 
 Like the stone eye-balls of a statue fix'd, 
 Yet conscious of the sight that blasted them. * 
 
 But who does not recognise here mere mechanical or routine 
 description, the same effect weakened by iterated strokes, — the 
 form rooted to the ground, the motionless feet, the limbs which 
 would not be moved, the benumbed sense, or if anything more 
 spiritual is attempted, as the light in Arvalan's eyes kindling 
 with the view, and shining like light from hell, who does not 
 perceive in the effort the weakest possible reflex of sublime pas- 
 
 * "The Separation," b. v., s. 12. 
 
124 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 sages, which in the compass of a line and a half compress more 
 thought than Southey could possibly convey in a volume ? The 
 fact is there is little scope for mere objective description in de- 
 lineating the higher phases of feeling or action, and when Southey 
 ventures into this sphere, he has to replace the life-creating 
 thought and consuming fire, which can alone give birth and 
 impart animation to great conceptions, by rhetorical amplitude 
 and spasmodic expression. Hence, in developing human 
 incident, he is generally weak, prolix, and unaffective. His 
 characters seem to move like certain pasteboard figures on 
 wires, and to be jerked into their positions by no governing 
 impulses which human nature can supply. But in tne de- 
 lineation of inanimate nature, in reproducing the material 
 features of imposing scenery — in any combination, in fact, of 
 external objects which does not require the exertion of a lofty 
 imagination or an original fancy to impress upon the mind, 
 there the poet is omnipotent. 
 
 Southey's talent for scene-painting — call it slapdash if you 
 will, yet marvellous of its kind — is splendidly evinced in his 
 description of the ancient sepulchres and submarine city of 
 Baly, which makes us doubly regret that the rest of the poem 
 should not have been executed in the same masterly spirit. For 
 the material splendour of his scenery is out of all character with 
 the mean figures and incidents in the foreground which stand 
 out in wretched contrast with the gorgeous appendages they 
 are supposed to enliven by their presence. The mountains of 
 Cumberland fed his passion for waterfalls, and he always 
 reproduces them in his pages with great force, as in 
 "Thalaba:"— 
 
 Silent and calm the river rolled along, 
 
 And at the verge arrived 
 Of that fair garden, o'er a rocky bed 
 
 Toward the mountain base, 
 Still full and silent, held its even way. 
 But farther as they went its deepening sound 
 
THE LAKE POETS. 125 
 
 Louder and louder in the distance rose, 
 
 As if it forced its stream, 
 Struggling through crags along a narrow pass. 
 And lo ! where raving o'er a hollow course 
 
 The ever-flowing flood 
 Foams in a thousand whirlpools ; there adown 
 
 The perforated rock, 
 Plunge the whole waters ; so precipitous, 
 
 So fathomless a fall, 
 That their earth-shaking roar came deaden 'd up 
 
 "Like subterranean thunders.* 
 
 The' source of the Ganges in "Kehama" could not be passed 
 by without a similar effort, though the researches of Captain 
 Speke, which Southey seems to have anticipated, have some- 
 what dimmed the merit of the discovery : — 
 
 None hath seen its secret fountain ; 
 
 But on the top of Meru mountain, 
 
 Which rises o'er the hills of earth, 
 In light and clouds it hath its mortal birth. 
 
 Earth seems that pinnacle to rear 
 
 Sublime above this worldly sphere — 
 
 Its cradle, and its altar, and its throne ; 
 
 And there the new-born river lies 
 
 Outspread beneath its native skies, 
 
 As if it there would love to dwell 
 
 Alone and unapproachable. 
 
 Soon flowing forward and resign'd 
 
 To the will of the Creating Mind, 
 
 It springs at once, with sudden leap, 
 
 Down from the immeasurable steep. 
 From rock to rock, with shivering force rebounding, 
 
 The mighty cataract rushes — heaven arounding, 
 Like thunder, with the incessant roar resounding, 
 
 And Meru's summit shaking with the sound. 
 Wide spreads the snowy foam — the sparkling spray 
 
 Dances aloft ; and ever there at morning 
 The earliest sunbeams haste to wing their way, 
 
 With rainbow-wreaths the holy stream adorning. 
 
 * " Thalaba," b. vii., s. 6. 
 
26 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 And duly the adoring moon at night 
 
 Sheds her white glory there, 
 
 And in the watery air 
 Suspends her halo-crowns of silver light. * 
 
 The immolation of Arvalan's wives is also vividly depictured, 
 and the contrast between the wild tumult and bacchanalian 
 uproar of the Juggernaut procession and the placid appearance 
 of nature, well brought out : — 
 
 O silent Night, how have they startled thee 
 
 With the brazen trumpet's blare ! 
 And thou, O moon, whose quiet light serene 
 Filleth wide heaven, and bathing hill and wood, 
 Spreads o'er the peaceful valley like a flood, 
 How have they dimm'd thee with the torches' glare, 
 Which round yon moving pageant flame and flare, 
 As the wild rout, with deafening song and shout, 
 
 Fling their long flashes out, 
 That, like infernal lightnings, fire the air.t 
 
 Towards the close of his poem, Southey transports us to the 
 world's end, where souls are described, in a manner which 
 too painfully reminds us of Dante, waiting upon the distant 
 shore, to be transported to the presence of Yamen, the great 
 judge seated upon the confines of hell. Among these are 
 wailing infants, young widows sacrificed at their husbands' 
 funereal piles, and other " victims of offences not their own," 
 whose 
 
 Innocent souls ! thus set so early free 
 From sin and sorrow and mortality, 
 Their spotless spirits all-creating love 
 Received into its universal breast. 
 Yon blue serene above 
 Was their domain ; clouds pillowed them to rest ; 
 
 Curse of Kehama," — Mount Meru, Book x., s. 3. 
 + Ibid. Jaga-Naut, Book xiv. , s. 4. 
 
THE LAKE POETS. 127 
 
 The elements on them like nurses tended, 
 And with their growth ethereal substance blended. 
 Less pure than these is that strange Indian bird, 
 Who never dips in earthly streams her bill, 
 But, when the sound of coming showers is heard, 
 Looks up, and from the clouds receives her fill. 
 Less pure the footless fowl of Heaven, that never 
 Rest upon earth, but on the wing for ever 
 Hovering o'er flowers, their fragrant food inhale, 
 Drink the descending dew upon its way, 
 And sleep aloft while floating on the gale.* 
 
 But all these beauties only refer to material description. 
 Nor are there any passages purely spiritual in the whole poem, 
 except the well-known lines, 
 
 " They sin who tell us Love can die," 
 
 which gleams like a fluted pillar of light upon the cloudy 
 atmosphere by which they are surrounded. I do not, there- 
 fore, think the " Curse of Kehama," which most of Southey's 
 admirers regard as his chef-d'oeuvre, entitled to rank very 
 high as an epic. The performance is unequal, the inci- 
 dents unnatural and grotesque, the characters too monkish 
 for Oriental fiction, and the beauties nearly all appertain to 
 an inferior department of art, that of the lower order of 
 imitation. 
 
 In " Thalaba," the beauties do not belong to a higher class 
 than those in " Kehama," but the poem is free from much of 
 the slipshod writing which disfigures the Indian poem. The 
 absence of rhyme puts the poet on his mettle to express his 
 conceptions in the most forcible manner. His commonplaces 
 are never drest up in that sing-song which reminds us of panto- 
 mimes and theatrical burlesques, but are always couched in 
 sonorous language. The plot is also better constructed. In 
 the " Curse of Kehama," we frequently lose sight of the leading, 
 in the subordinate, characters of the poem ; but in the Arabian 
 
 * " Curse of Kehama,"— The World's End, Book xxi., s. 6. 
 
128 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 story, amid all the windings of the plot and pantomimic change 
 of scenery, Thalaba is ever present, as the central figure to 
 which all the incidents of the piece relates. The attachment 
 between Thalaba and Oneiza is also more naturally developed 
 than that between the Glendoveer and Kailyal, which begins in 
 canting hypocrisy, and ends in cloudy mysticism. Though the 
 poet, in the cottage of Moath, in the gardens of Aloadin, and 
 in the sepulchre, threw away, as is his wont, three grand 
 occasions for pourtraying earthly love in the principal stages 
 of its existence — viz., its birth, its possession of the object, 
 and the death-like eclipse which steeps the heart in the 
 shadows of the grave when that object is withdrawn, — still he 
 gives his reader just enough to make him understand that 
 Thalaba and Oneiza each pine for the other, as that something 
 without which life cannot be realized : 
 
 "Thee first, thee last, thee midst, thee without end." 
 
 It is for these reasons that, as a work of art, I place 
 " Thalaba," as did Shelley and Southey himself, above all his 
 other epics. 
 
 Whatever this poet saw he could group with multiform com- 
 binations into definite pictures, as pleasing and diversified as 
 ever glowed in the imaginations of Poussin or Lorraine ; but 
 whatever was removed from the sphere of actuality was evidently 
 above his reach. Where materialities end, there Southey's 
 difficulties begin. Hence his magicians and his spirits, 
 whether of the good or bad order, so far as their features are 
 not limned from the models of Spenser, are wretched crea- 
 tions. He gets on as miserably in the lofty regions of Swerga, 
 as in the abyssmal vaults of Domdaniel. But in " Thalaba," 
 most of the incidents take place on the earth. We are only 
 transplanted, on one or two of these occasions, beneath the 
 roots of the ocean, to see the plots concocted which are to 
 circumvent Thalaba among the wildest scenery that ever 
 dazzled the imagination of man. The resemblance of the 
 
LAKE POETS. 129 
 
 garden of Aloadin, in its general outline, to the opening scene 
 in " Rasselas," is forgotten in the following picture : — 
 
 It was broad moonlight, and obscure or lost 
 The garden beauties lay, 
 But the great boundary rose, distinctly mark'd. 
 These were no little hills, 
 No sloping uplands lifting to the sun 
 Their vineyards, with fresh verdure, and the shade 
 Of ancient woods, courting the loiterer 
 To win the easy ascent : stone mountains these. 
 Desolate rock on rock, 
 The burthens of the earth, 
 Whose snowy summits met the morning beam, 
 When night was in the vale, whose feet were fix'd 
 In the world's foundations. Thalaba beheld 
 The heights precipitous, 
 Impending crags, rocks unascendible, 
 And summits that had tired the eagle's wing. * 
 
 But the poet is most at home in reproducing the enchantments 
 of his own Cumberland scenery : — 
 
 In mazy windings o'er the vale 
 
 A thousand streamlets stray'd, 
 
 And in their endless course 
 
 Had intersected deep the stony soil, 
 
 With labyrinthine channels islanding 
 
 A thousand rocks, which seem'd 
 Amid the multitudinous waters there 
 Like clouds that freckle o'er the summer sky, 
 The blue ethereal ocean circling each, 
 And insulating all. f 
 
 The following little piece might suit an Academician for his 
 next picture, though he could not give us the charming combi- 
 nation of liquid sounds which make the flowing waters splash 
 music in our ears : — 
 
 Book vii., s. 4. t Book vi., s. 10. 
 
1 30 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 The moonlight lay upon the rocks ; 
 Their crags were visible, 
 The shade of jutting cliffs, 
 And where broad lichens whiten'd some smooth spot, 
 And where the ivy hung 
 Its flowing tresses down. 
 A little way within the cave 
 The moonlight fell, glossing the sable tide 
 That gush'd tumultuous out.* 
 
 In the delight which Thalaba experienced in the gardens 
 of Aloadin, it would be hard to say which sense was most 
 gratified, if we leave touch out of the question. First, the 
 sight — 
 
 Thalaba stood mute, 
 And passively received 
 The mingled joy which flowed on every sense. 
 Where'er his eye could reach 
 Fair structures, rainbow-hued, arose ; 
 And rich pavilions through the opening woods 
 Gleam'd from their waving curtains sunny gold ; 
 And winding through the verdant vale, 
 Went streams of liquid light ; 
 And fluted cypresses reaf'd up 
 Their living obelisks ; 
 And broad-leaved plane-trees in long colonnades 
 
 O'er-arched delightful walks, 
 Where round their trunks the thousand-tendrill'd vine 
 Wound tip and hung the boughs with greener wreaths, 
 
 And clusters not their own. 
 .... Beside him teems the earth 
 With tulips, like the ruddy evening streak'd ; 
 And here the lily hangs her head of snow ; 
 And here amid her sable cup 
 Shines the red-eye spot, like one brightest star, 
 The solitary twinkler of the night ; 
 And here the rose expands 
 Her paradise of leaves.f 
 
 * Book v., s. 22. + Book vi., s. 20. 
 
LAKE POETS. 131 
 
 Then the ear — 
 
 Far music and the distance-mellow'd song 
 From bowers of merriment ; 
 The waterfall remote ; 
 The murmuring of the leafy groves ; 
 The single nightingale 
 Perch'd in the rosier by, so richly toned, 
 That never from that most melodious bird, 
 Singing a love-song to his brooding mate, 
 Did Thracian shepherd by the grave 
 Of Orpheus hear a sweeter melody, 
 Though there the spirit of the sepulchre 
 All his own power infuse, to swell 
 The incense that he loves.* 
 
 And afterwards the, smell — 
 
 And oh ! what odours the voluptuous vale 
 Scatters from jasmine bowers, 
 From yon rose wilderness, 
 From cluster'd henna and from orange groves, 
 
 That with sweet perfume fill the breeze. 
 * * * * * 
 
 Such odours flow'd upon the world, 
 
 When at Mohammed's nuptials, word 
 
 Went forth in Heaven, to roll 
 
 The everlasting gates of Paradise 
 
 Back on their living hinges, that its gales 
 
 Might visit all below ; the general bliss 
 
 Thrill'd every bosom, and the family 
 
 Of man, for once, partook one common joy. + 
 
 To this paradise, whose beauties are distinctly labelled and 
 catalogued under three appropriate heads, Thalaba is admitted 
 in the usual manner through gates which spontaneously open 
 at the sound of a horn suspended, like our modern rustic 
 villa bells, at the entrance. But these gates close in a manner 
 which makes the reader imagine he hears the sound reverbera- 
 
 * Book vi., s. 21. t Book vi., s. 23. 
 
1 32 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 ting behind him, and that he has got in, as well as Thalaba 
 himself : — 
 
 Like a long thunder-peal, 
 From rock to rock rebounding rung the blast, 
 The gates of iron, by no human arm 
 Unfolded, turning on their hinges slow, 
 
 Disclosed the passage of the rock. 
 
 He entered, and the iron gates fell to, 
 
 And with a clap like thunder closed him in.* 
 
 The cave of the giant Zohak, with the two serpents growing out 
 of his shoulders, which supplied Macaulay with his apt illus- 
 tration of the position of England with respect to the Irish 
 and Scotch churches, whoever reads is not likely to forget. 
 Indeed, the whole of the fifth and sixth books, being written 
 in the same graphic style, will make " Thalaba " an acceptable 
 book, when the " Curse of Kehama " is remembered with 
 indifference, and " Madoc " or " Roderic " are forgotten. 
 
 But placing " Thalaba " as high as its splendid imagery and 
 forcible diction will warrant, few of its beauties are of an ideal 
 character. They strike the senses, but seldom reach the heart. 
 No fiction can excite our emotions without verisimilitude. 
 In " Thalaba," however, there is hardly a line that bears any 
 likeness to nature. Contrast, with this epic, the unpretending 
 tale of " Paraguay," the only poem in which Southey kindles 
 genuine pathos. Here the incidents, which are of the simplest 
 kind, the poet details in the simplest manner, but with traits of 
 character so life-like, and with scenic colouring so real, that we 
 feel as keen a sympathy for the Indian family, as if we had been 
 acquainted with the group in their prairie solitude, and saw them 
 wither like pent-up plants in the atmosphere of refinement. 
 But in "Thalaba" the style is as gorgeous as the incidents 
 are grand and complex. Yet we follow the hero through his 
 course with the same unconcern as if he belonged to another 
 sphere ; while in the simpler story, the decline of Mooma and 
 
 * Book vi., s. 1 6. 
 
LAKE POETS. 133 
 
 the visions, which bring down heaven to the bedside of Yeruti, 
 impress the mind with all the appearance of truth. We cannot 
 get it out of our head for a moment that the more pretentious 
 effusion is only a wild freak of the imagination. The most 
 credulous, therefore, remain unaffected by the greatest perils of 
 Thalaba; while the most callous find it difficult to restrain 
 their emotion over the three graves dug by civilization for the 
 denizens of the wilderness. The little poem is spiritual, and 
 therefore mighty; but the great poem is so material that it 
 becomes immaterial. 
 
 I do not know that the scenic beauties of " Thalaba," great as 
 they are, or the construction of the plot, scientific or original as 
 I must allow it to be, ought to go farther, were it not for his 
 ballads, and his metrical tales, than to place Southey at the 
 head of the fourth-class poets. Perfection of scene-painting, 
 when accompanied with imperfect delineation of character, is, 
 after all, not a very high accomplishment j and all Southey's 
 personages had neither the general attributes of a class, nor the 
 peculiar features of an individual. They are either too angelic 
 or too demoniacal for flesh and blood in this world of ours, 
 which generally blends great passions with great virtues, and 
 wherein the best men never appear without some alloy of vice, 
 or the worst, without some gleams of their ethereal nature 
 breaking through the darkness of their crimes. It is this 
 composite character, this halting to indulge two conflicting 
 principles, this following the worse, while approving of the better 
 course, which makes human character so interesting in the hands 
 of the idealist, but which Southey, altogether, has lost sight 
 of in his epics. Kailyal and Oneiga, as well as Thalaba and 
 the Glendoveer, are only fit company for seraphs; Kehama, 
 Arvalan, and Aloadin are only fit company for fiends. Madoc 
 is an angel, David a butchering savage, and Roderic, after his 
 overthrow, a faultless hermit. Natural scenery we have in all 
 its luscious varieties, of lake, mountain, dell, pine forest, myriad- 
 tongued ocean, bold headland, gushing fountain, or sweeping 
 
134 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 river, either reflecting or keeping each other in countenance 
 with their quiet harmonies of light, form, and colour j but we 
 seek in vain for the inhabitants of earth, among the angelic 
 or haggard creatures whom the poet has summoned to people 
 it from other spheres. But in his ballads we get among 
 genuine men and women. The simplicity of the treatment is 
 quite in keeping with that of the subject. Our curiosity is 
 aroused at the commencement, and is kept alive to the end. 
 They combine the perfection of the ballad style, that is, quiet 
 irony intermingled with charming naivete, stirring incident, 
 and deep pathos. Having small canvas for his picture, 
 Southey at once seizes upon the salient features of the subject, 
 and discards the fatal prolixity which mars most of his heavier pro- 
 ductions. The " Maid of the Inn," the " Well of St. Keyne," the 
 "Battle of Blenheim," the "Inchcape Rock," place Southey at 
 the head of the ballad, while his "Madoc" and his "Roderic" 
 place him very nearly at the tail of the epic poets of his country. 
 Southey is the only artist we know whose merits may be said to 
 vary in inverse proportion to the length of his performances. 
 His " Joan of Arc" and " Thalaba" are the shortest and best of 
 his epics. His "Tale of Paraguay" is shorter and better than 
 either. But his ballads, which are shorter still, are the best 
 of all. 
 
 The characteristics of the Lake School may be summed up in a 
 very few words. They each took the love of nature and domes- 
 ticity as imaged in Thomson and Cowper's natural style, as 
 their basis. Upon this Wordsworth grafted a large amount of 
 ideality, the habit of investing the simplest objects with a feel- 
 ing of the infinite, and of analyzing with metaphysical subtilty 
 the spiritual intercommunion between the human mind and the 
 external universe. But Southey applied the Cowperian style to 
 the production of historical poems, in which nothing further 
 was sought than a series of dramatic pictures, with a vivid 
 delineation of material nature as a background, except that in 
 his oriental poems, Cowper is dismissed for Dr. Sayer. We are, 
 
LAKE POETS. 135 
 
 however, in the bulk of Southey's pieces, never taken out of the 
 actual world. The spiritualities sustaining, and giving, in fact, 
 embodiment to external phenomena are never made apparent. 
 Our attention is exclusively engrossed by the material linea- 
 ments of pictures selected, for the most part, from the com- 
 monest phases of humanity. This is the reason why people 
 have all along, perhaps unconsciously to themselves, placed 
 the later laureate very high up in the second division of poets, 
 and his predecessor very low down in the third. I have no 
 wish to disturb that arrangement, unless it be to advance 
 Southey a grade or two in the list, and to rescue his oriental 
 epics from that complete oblivion which appears to be fast 
 settling over them. Coleridge stands midway between his 
 two neighbours. In his earlier pieces he sought to unite the 
 rustic graces of Cowper with the elegiac tenderness of Collins ; 
 in his later, with the mysticism of German metaphysics. We 
 get, therefore, a large amount of ideality in his pieces. The 
 material only serves to illustrate the spiritual, and never, as in 
 Southey, to conceal it. We are constantly in his poetry hover- 
 ing between two worlds. But his indolence, his desultory studies, 
 his fluctuating resolves, his purposeless efforts, his disjointed 
 pursuits and intemperate habits of conversationalizing, hindered 
 him from carrying these advantages so far as to place his name 
 even within the same division as Wordsworth. 
 
136 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 
 
 (Siffjarir* 
 
 THE Classical School seems to have adopted satire as its 
 peculiar province. Hudibras is the only satirical poet 
 who did not wield his lash in the English heroic couplet. All 
 the other leading satirists of our language, Donne, Pope, 
 Dry den, Churchill, Johnson, employed the pentameter. As 
 the follies of mankind are not very obtrusive in the country, as 
 the stage on which they love to display their eccentricities is 
 reserved for large towns, it almost follows as a matter of course 
 that the language should be as artificial as the subjects on which 
 it is employed. It would ill become the Muse, on abandoning 
 the upland or the dell for the Mall or the Row, if she did not 
 exchange her rustic dress for the meretricious ornaments of 
 fashionable life. As the Roman poets, even while cultivating their 
 farms, never lashed the vices of the Suburra except in heroics, 
 the English poets thought they could not do less. But our 
 English satirists have drawn the connection between conven- 
 tional themes and classical treatment closer than was necessary, 
 by making their poems mere paraphrases of Roman satires. 
 The example which Pope set in adopting Horace as his model, 
 was followed by Johnson, who paraphrased Juvenal, and by 
 GirTord, who imitated Perseus. 
 
 It appears that towards the close of last century, a coterie 
 of literary aspirants happened to domesticate themselves at 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 137 
 
 Florence. Mrs. Thrale, the brewer's widow, who betook herself 
 thither after losing caste in England by her marriage with Piozzi, 
 opened her salons for their reception. There, used to congregate 
 Mr. Merry, a son of a country magistrate, who had abandoned 
 the bar for the Muses ; Mrs. Robinson, the seductive actress, 
 who had in turn captivated the heart of the Prince Regent and 
 Charles Fox ; Mrs. Cowley, who was anxious to reinvigorate 
 the waning empire of beauty by an extraordinary display of senti- 
 ment ; and Mr. Parsons, who regarded poetic rapture in woman 
 as a genuine proof of voluptuous sensibility. These people, 
 whom congenial tastes brought together, soon found themselves 
 engaged in addressing amatory poetry to each other. They 
 imagined themselves like the swains and shepherdesses of 
 Fontenelle, to unite in their persons the ingenuous transports 
 of rustic life with the exquisite tastes of polished society. Their 
 effusions were circulated under feigned names, with a view to 
 create, while appearing to elude, public inquiry. Merry signed 
 himself Delia Crusca ; Mrs. Robinson, Julia and Laura Maria ; 
 Mrs. Piozzi, Anna Matilda j Parsons, Carlos. It was at Mrs. 
 Piozzi's reunions that Merry recited, with the gesticulations of 
 Statius, to the delight of a languishing auditory, his great poem, 
 " The Wreath of Liberty," — a philosophical rhapsody in praise 
 of the French Revolution, which was to transmit his name to 
 future generations. From the opening lines it would appear that 
 Merry was only an earlier edition of "Satan" Montgomery : — 
 
 Genius or muse, whoe'er thou art, whose thrill 
 Exalts the fancy or inflames the will ; 
 Bids on the heart sublime sensation roll, 
 And wakes ecstatic fervour in the soul. 
 
 But the tinsel was just of that kind to waken enthusiasm in 
 the hearts of his female admirers, and the celestial Robinson, 
 fresh from the revels of Drury Lane, could thus address her 
 Delia Crusca : 
 
 When amidst ethereal fire 
 Thou strik'st thy Delia Cruscan lyre, 
 
138 KSTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Round to catch the heavenly song, 
 Myriads of wondering seraphs throng. 
 
 And again, — 
 
 thou, to whom superior worth allied, 
 Thy country's honour and thy Muse's pride, 
 Thy genius flows in every classic line, 
 And Nature dictates everything that's thine. 
 
 Merry seems to have been prodigiously gratified with this 
 incense from the altar of beauty, and implored the fair one to 
 
 Let the streaming lightnings fly 
 In liquid peril from her eye : 
 
 But he does not appear to have been of that mood which his 
 name would indicate, for we find him presently exclaiming — 
 
 Conjure up demons from the main, 
 Storm upon storm indignant heap, 
 Bid ocean howl and nature weep, 
 Till the Creator blush to see 
 How horrible His world can be ! 
 While I will glory to blaspheme, 
 And make the joys of hell my theme : 
 
 simply because Mrs. Robinson would not open her eyes. 
 With Anna Matilda, who was equally profuse in his praise, he 
 appears to have got on a little better, though her inexorable 
 correctness made him express his griefs so awkwardly that 
 gaping fiends might think he was triumphing over her virtue :— 
 
 Yes, I will prove that I deserve my fate, 
 Was born for anguish, and was formed for hate, 
 With such transcendent woe will breathe my sigh, 
 That envying fiends will think it ecstasy. 
 
 To which the fair Matilda replied, — 
 
 Ne'er shalt thou know to sigh, 
 Nor on a soft idea die, 
 Ne'er on a recollection grasp 
 Thy arms 
 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 139 
 
 The following lines of Merry were always thought by his fair 
 admirers to eclipse Pope : — 
 
 From a young grove's shade, 
 Where infant boughs but mock the expecting glade, 
 Sweet sounds stole forth upborne upon the gale, 
 Pressed through the air and broke upon the vale, 
 Then silent walked the breezes of the plain, 
 Or soared aloft and seized the hovering strain. 
 
 It will be readily imagined that the little English colony at 
 Florence was too small a theatre for the display of genius so 
 startling, and a cargo of the poetry was shipped to London, where 
 a clique of literary coxcombs, headed by Este, had just started 
 a periodical called "The World." The new wares were just 
 fitted for the vehicle, ready to launch them into notice. Every 
 week there appeared in its columns, with a short eulogistic 
 preface, some nonsense, which Merry, the Anacreon of the 
 party, had addressed to Sappho (Mrs. Robinson), or some 
 strain which Greathead, who assumed the part of Horace, 
 poured into the heart of his Delia (Mrs. Cowley). With the 
 rapidity of flame among dry rushes, the epidemic spread not 
 less among editors, anxious to compete with Este for the 
 honour of introducing this stuff to the public, than among the 
 fat dowagers and sickly sentimentalists, eager to prolong the 
 follies of their youth by enacting the scenes of Mrs. Piozzi's 
 reunions over again. Mr. Bell, of the " Oracle," and Urban, 
 of the "Gentleman's Magazine," besides the "Gazetteer," 
 opened their pages to the new contributors. The strains from 
 Florence were re-echoed in still more foolish ditties by the 
 Julias, the Jerninghams, the Edwins, and Tophams of London. 
 Reuben could thus waft his vows to the stout shepherdess in 
 the " Oracle," who signed herself Anna Matilda : — 
 
 To thee a stranger dares address his theme, 
 
 To thee, proud mistress of Apollo's lyre, 
 One ray emitted from thy golden gleam, 
 
 Prompted by love, would set the world on fire. 
 
i4o ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 To which the stout shepherdess replied, — 
 
 This resuscitating praise 
 Breathes life upon my dying days ; 
 But, bard polite, how hard the task, 
 Which with such elegance you ask ! 
 
 Bell, who made himself a vehicle for this sort of interchange, 
 roundly declared, in his pompous introductory preludes, that 
 much of Greathead's poetry was equal to Pindar's, while he 
 was certain that a sonnet of Mrs. Robinson's, addressed to the 
 Nightingale, could not be touched by Milton. Dr. Tasker, a 
 gentleman who should have known better, thus reinforced the 
 discriminating criticism of Bell : — 
 
 In Ancient Greece two glorious forms were seen, 
 
 Wisdom's stern goddess and Love's smiling queen, 
 
 Pallas presided over arms and arts, 
 
 And Venus over gentle virgins' hearts ; 
 
 But now both powers in one fair form combine, 
 
 And in famed Robinson united shine. 
 
 The result of this systematic 'puffing was, that Harris, manager 
 of Covent Garden, was induced to accept a tragedy of Merry's, 
 called " Lorenzo," which actually made its author, for a 
 few brief nights, the hero of the town. Merry came over to 
 London, and announced himself to his followers by a sonnet. 
 He grew jealous of Greathead's advances with the fair contribu- 
 tors to the " Oracle," and exchanged still more furious vows 
 with Anna Matilda. The fever at last grew to a frenzy. Even 
 the swains and sempstresses of the provinces caught the in- 
 fection, till every periodical in the country resounded with 
 nonsense and Delia Crusca. 
 
 It was to brush this swarm of fools away that Gifford seems 
 to have been sent into the world ; for I do not know that he 
 did anything else worthy of special regard. But the glory of 
 restoring Milton and Pope to the places of which they had 
 been dispossessed by Merry and Topham, appears to have sur- 
 rounded him with a factitious halo out of all proportion to his 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 141 
 
 real merits. The extravagant praises of Byron, who regarded 
 him as a satirist second to none in our literature, have also placed 
 him upon a pedestal to which his works give him no claim. 
 For Gifford was by no means an original genius, even in 
 the poor sense of casting the conceptions of others into the 
 crucible of a fiery imagination, to startle the reader with old 
 thoughts under new combinations. His performances are 
 simply a very good reflex of the favourite authors, in the study 
 of whom he sauntered away his early manhood under the 
 beeches of Eaton Hall. He is tender as well as epigrammatic ; 
 but neither his gushes of passion, nor sallies of wit, are ever so 
 strong as to discard conventional language, and clothe themselves 
 in the imagery of nature. His lines on " Anna," and those ad- 
 dressed to a "Tuft of Early Violets," are mere echoes — the one 
 from Collins, the other from Prior — of feelings and phrases with 
 which these two poets attempted to ally heartfelt, sentiment 
 with classical diction. Even in the " Maeviad," when he rushes 
 into sentimentality, he succeeds hardly better than Prior might 
 have done with similar materials : — 
 
 How oft, O Dart ! what time the faithful pair 
 Walked forth, the fragrant hour of eve to share, 
 On thy romantic banks have my wild strains 
 (Not yet forgot amidst my native plains), 
 While thou hast sweetly gurgled down the vale, 
 Fill'd up the pause of love's delightful tale ; 
 While ever as she read, the conscious maid, 
 By faltering voice and downcast look betrayed, 
 Would blushing on her lover's neck recline, 
 And with her finger point the tenderest line.* 
 
 That Byron could regard such language as this with rapture, 
 can only be accounted for by his reckless adulation of Pope. 
 
 Gifford was disqualified by habit, as well as by nature, from 
 the role of a gieat satirist, who, while having a heart keenly 
 sensitive to wrong, must have sufficient independence to hurl 
 at the perpetrators of it, the lightnings of his indignation. 
 
 * See " Maeviad," pp. 194, 202. 
 
142 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Every chord of his heart must vibrate in unison with nature. 
 Convention, and the victims of its artificial restraints, must 
 arouse in him feelings akin to those felt by the knight-errants 
 of old, when they beheld virtue suffering in the gripe of some 
 savage monster of the woods, and rushed forward to imperil 
 their heart's blood in its release. But all these were qualities 
 which Gifford did not only want, but of which he had the very 
 opposite. He entertained little respect for anything in the world 
 but the artificial creations of rank and fashion. An author who 
 had never been at either of the Universities, or who did not live 
 in the vicinity of May Fair, could expect little mercy from Gifford, 
 except, indeed, he had some peculiar claims upon his party. 
 The writer who took his instructions from Pitt, as to the tenor 
 of his next paper in the Quarterly, or of his next contribution 
 to the Anti-J r acobin, who threw his shield over the worst 
 errors of Lord Liverpool, or the wildest vagaries of Castlereagh, 
 was not the man to array himself in the glittering armour of 
 satire, and hew down in song the complicated blunders, vices, 
 and follies he had defended in other spheres. To break a 
 butterfly on a wheel, to expose a poetaster or some literary 
 charlatan, to scalp a youthful genius of liberal tendencies who 
 evinced talents which might, under proper encouragement, 
 eclipse his own, — these were the things in which he shone, 
 this constituted the petty sphere of his vocation. 
 
 His translations of Juvenal and Perseus, by which he is most 
 known, after his " Baviad" and " Mseviad," are tame and insipid 
 renderings of the originals, except where a jest or a repartee 
 has to be given with force and propriety. The verse falls flat 
 on the ear after the dashing couplets of Dryden. What he 
 gains in correctness, he loses in force. To anglicise Juvenal 
 required every quality which Gifford lacked most, — a mind 
 replete with great fire and energy, a thorough disgust with the 
 vices of the great, and a hearty sympathy with every kind of 
 undeserved oppression. With Perseus he was far more at home. 
 For the stoical poet resembled Gifford in his seeming indiffer- 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 143 
 
 ence to the mass of suffering which political misgovernment 
 threw in his path, and in confining his satire to those obliquities 
 whose exposure would do harm neither to his patrons nor himself. 
 When, therefore, he applied his lash to the Delia Cruscans, 
 Gifford was in his element. Their offences were of that ridiculous 
 character that only could be laughed out of fashion by quiet 
 irony and by that airy banter of which Gifford was perfect master. 
 Had the delinquents been of a graver sort, — had they been 
 eccentric madmen like Charles of Sweden, or social monsters 
 like Chatier, — Gifford's glittering weapon would have fared as ill 
 in dealing with the subject as a fencing rapier in a broad-sword 
 skirmish. When Byron called on the satirist to attack gigantic 
 vice in high places, and make the 
 
 Guilty glare through future time, 
 Eternal beacons of consummate crime, * 
 
 he entirely miscalculated Gifford's powers. For it is one thing 
 
 to demolish a school of wretched poetasters, and another to 
 
 make 
 
 Bad men better, or at least ashamed, t 
 
 And when Gifford tried his hand at the latter, in his epistle to 
 Wolcott, he resembled a child lifting a club he was unable to 
 wield, and earned from his victim a sound horsewhipping. He 
 mistook a string of vituperative abuse for those brilliant touches 
 of satire which makes the spirituality of our common nature act 
 as a foil to project into deeper blackness of guilt those vices 
 which in the lowest or loftiest criminals overshadow its splen- 
 dour. Gifford should have remembered that " monster of turpi- 
 tude," "reptile gorged with bile," "ruffian," and other kindred 
 terms, no more constituted satire than " crashing torrents," 
 " petrifying suns," " hoar hills," and " glassy brooks" constituted 
 pastoral poetry. 
 
 Perseus, on account of the limited range of his sympathies, 
 
 * " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." 
 t Ibid. 
 
144 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 as well as his want of force, is confessedly far below Juvenal ; 
 but Gifford had even a narrower range of mind than Perseus, 
 though he seems to have been possessed .of a tenderness to 
 which the Roman stoic could lay no claim. He stands there- 
 fore in a more inferior relation to Dry den or Churchill than 
 Perseus does to the great master of Roman satire ; for Perseus, 
 with all his deficiencies, was still original, whereas Gifford, 
 like Pope and Johnson, cast the framework of his design in the 
 mouldings of others. Yet even here he suffers by comparison, 
 for Johnson and Pope had somewhat of the fire, the vigour, and 
 the caustic irony of their masters. But in each of these quali- 
 ties Perseus is singularly deficient, and his imitators are far more 
 deficient than Perseus. The state of wretched dependence in 
 which Gifford had been reared, his social thraldom in the Bel- 
 grave family, his disposition to wear the livery and perform the 
 meanest offices of his party for daily bread, must have mate- 
 rially interfered with the development of any talents for satire, 
 in the broad and unfettered arena upon which alone they can be 
 cultivated with success. I cannot, then, do otherwise than place 
 Gifford with Johnson among the second-class satirists; but 
 while placing the sturdy Johnson among the first group in that 
 class, I feel reluctantly compelled to consign Gifford, notwith- 
 standing his Court buckles and Corinthian polish, to the last. 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 145 
 
 i 
 
 THERE is no poet of the nineteenth century whom criticism 
 should delight to honour more than Rogers : a gentle- 
 man of blameless manners, of tender feelings, a princely Maecenas 
 of letters, a virtuoso of rare taste — possessing a keen sympathy 
 with every institution calculated to promote the well-being of 
 his fellow-creatures. But, I fear, the amiability of the man had 
 largely to do with his defects as a poet. He could not feel, 
 and, therefore, could not awaken, passion in others. He was 
 deficient in that nervous sensibility, which, however morose it 
 may make its victim occasionally appear, is a necessary ingre- 
 dient in the production of any great work of art. Nor was he 
 possessed of that frowning imagination which delights in the 
 contemplation of the grand and the terrible, and which in so 
 delighting withdraws its possessor from the sunny gaieties of the 
 outer world. Rogers wanted force of nature and persistency oft 
 will. He was too weak and languid to exercise that concen-| 
 trative energy which is required in the production of a great ! 
 poem. He lived too constantly in the creations of others to 
 flourish very much in his own. Hence he struck out no new 
 line for himself. His "Ode to Superstition" is only a weak 
 reflex of Gray ; his short piece on Loch Long is an imitation of 
 Wordsworth. In his "Epistle on Taste," in his "Human 
 Life," and "Pleasures of Memory," he follows Goldsmith ; but 
 he follows him with such success, that in some respects he may 
 be said to have equalled his master. He, however, lacks his 
 depth of feeling, and that vigour which occasionally rises into 
 
 10 
 
 i 
 
146 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 sublimity. The rich banker had never competed with a clown, 
 for the pennies of a gaping crowd, by standing upon his head ; 
 he had never played a flageolet at a cottage door for a night's 
 lodgings ; he had never looked down from the top of the Alps 
 with blistered feet, and with such ravenous reflection as hungry 
 solitude is calculated to inspire. His experience, therefore, of 
 human suffering was as limited as his acquaintance with the 
 grand and more abrupt features of Nature j and what he could 
 not realize perfectly to himself, he failed to impress upon others. 
 It is very pleasant to be at the head of a large financial estab- 
 lishment ; to have an unlimited power of drawing cheques upon 
 the house ; to never ride abroad except in luxurious carriages, ' 
 with india-rubber springs ; to feel no want without having it 
 promptly supplied; but the atmosphere of beneficent indul- 
 gence is not that in which Genius moults her strongest 
 pinions; and the genius of Rogers was not of such high 
 character as to neutralize, but rather to be impaired by, the 
 disadvantages of his position. Goldsmith could paint from 
 actual experience, familiar as he was with every phase of 
 existence, while Rogers contemplated the most exciting scenes 
 of life, tapestried as in a loom, and then only from the wrong 
 side of the arras. 
 
 It has appeared a marvel to some that Rogers, having pro- 
 duced the " Pleasures of Memory " at the outset of his career, 
 did not produce something greater to fulfil the rich promise he 
 thus gave of a splendid maturity. But, I think, the wonder ought 
 to be, not that he failed to produce anything greater, but that he 
 ever produced anything so good, In the best of his descriptions 
 he never presents anything in a new light ; he never scales the 
 heights of genuine sublimity ; he never wounds the soul with 
 deep emotions of pity, or intoxicates it with the delights of 
 love. In his episode of " Julia and Florio," as in his stories of 
 " Jacqueline " and " Columbus," he had a wide field for the con- 
 struction of plot and the delineation of individual character, but he 
 can hardly be said to attempt the one, as he certainly makes a 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 147 
 
 very faint exhibition of the other. He never startles his reader 
 with any bold reflections. He leaves life, with its mysteries, its 
 problems, and its perplexing enigmas, just where he found it. 
 The whole of his talent consists in recalling, by vivid touches, 
 all those sunnier scenes of existence in which the heart is most 
 interested, and over which Fancy loves most to brood. Sum- 
 moned by his magic pencil, the most charming recollections of 
 the poet troop in palpable array before us, and the mind recurs 
 to them as to a series of pictures interwoven with its own 
 sensations, the fidelity of which has all the stamp of truth. 
 But this talent was not capable of much expansion or variation, 
 Its range was limited; it could not be said to grow. And 
 hence Rogers' genius was like the acacia, which bears a pro- 
 fusion of blossom but no fruit. 
 
 In the " Pleasures of Memory " Rogers was singularly happy 
 in the choice of a subject which just suited the range of his 
 powers ; and it cannot be denied that, with the exception of the 
 wretched episode in the second part, his treatment of it would 
 have done justice to an artist of even greater abilities. To a 
 comprehensive grasp of the subject, he unites skilful delineation 
 of parts and elaborate finish of the minuter points of detail 
 more perfectly than has been accomplished in any other poem 
 of similar compass. He not only invests these recollections 
 with the freshest colours, which time has obscured, but which 
 fancy has endeared to most of us ; but he selects from a wide 
 range of extraneous objects those scenes illustrative of his 
 subject which are most calculated to awaken the purest sympa- 
 thies of our nature. Whether he pourtrays the dove flying 
 homeward to the famished garrison, with its message of deliver- 
 ance tied under its wing, only to be devoured by those to 
 whom it brings unexpected tidings of relief; or the nun in her 
 convent gloom recalling the dearest blandishments of the world 
 she has forsworn; or the Swiss peasant journeying over the 
 Alps, with the storm-cloud under his feet and the prattle of his 
 babes haunting his ear across the roar of the waterfall ; — the 
 
148 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 sketch is drawn with a simplicity and a natural truthfulness 
 which must always enchant the mind : — 
 
 The beauteous maid, who bids the world adieu, 
 Oft of that world will snatch a fond review ; 
 Oft at the shrine neglect her beads, to trace 
 Some social scene, some dear, familiar face : 
 And ere, with iron tongue, the vesper bell 
 Bursts thro' the cypress walk, the convent cell, 
 Oft will her warm and wayward heart revive, 
 To love and joy still tremblingly alive ; 
 The whispered vow, the chaste caress prolong, 
 Weave the light dance, and swell the choral song ; 
 With rapt ear drink the enchanting serenade, 
 And, as it melts along the moonlight glade, 
 To each soft note returns as soft a sigh, 
 And bless the youth that bids her slumbers fly. 
 
 The itinerant Savoyard leaving his native mountains is no less 
 forcibly presented to us : — 
 
 Where the blithe son of Savoy, journeying round 
 With humble wares and pipe of merry sound, 
 From his green vale and sheltered cabin hies, 
 And scales the Alps to visit foreign skies ; 
 Tho' far below the forked lightnings play, 
 And at his feet the thunders die away, 
 Oft, in the saddle rudely rocked to sleep, 
 While his mule browses on the dizzy steep, 
 With Memory's aid, he sits at home, and sees 
 His children sport beneath their native trees, 
 And bends to hear their cherub- voices call, 
 O'er the loud fury of the torrent's fall. 
 
 Even when he describes some abstract operation of memory, 
 he borrows his illustration from attachments, having indeed 
 little, if any, relation with the subject, but which are calculated 
 to touch a sympathetic chord in the dullest breast : — 
 
 Ah ! who can tell the triumphs of the mind, 
 By truth illumined and by taste refined ? 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 149 
 
 When age has quenched the eye, and closed the ear, 
 Still nerved for action in her native sphere, 
 Oft will she rise, with searching glance pursue 
 Some long-loved image vanished from her view ; 
 Dart thro' the deep recesses of the past, 
 O'er dusky forms in chains of slumber cast, 
 With giant-grasp fling back the folds of night, 
 And snatch the faithless fugitive to light. 
 So thro' the grove the impatient mother flies, 
 Each sunless glade, each secret pathway tries ; 
 Till the thin leaves the truant boy disclose, 
 Long on the wood-moss stretched in sweet repose. 
 
 I readily allow that these descriptions do not belong to a 
 very high order of art, that they suggest too many comparisons 
 with Goldsmith, that they only present the most glaring and 
 most easily to be pourtrayed examples of his subjects ; still 
 they have the rare merit of going directly to the heart, and of 
 engaging it to take a lively interest in the simplest objects, 
 unadorned with any tints except those reflected from nature. 
 The charm of material delineation is striking in itself, but this 
 is only made the medium of reflecting back on the soul the 
 sunniest associations of its own existence, sometimes with 
 double force, as mirrored in the experience of others. Rogers 
 had a genuine love for the artistic phase of every sort of 
 existence. Nothing seemed to interest him till it was in- 
 vested with that colouring which made the object rather a 
 spiritual embodiment than a material picture ; but that spiritual 
 embodiment was not derived from the lofty nature of ideal con- 
 ception, but from the quieter affections of the human breast. 
 As such, he is entitled to a place in the same division of poets 
 as Goldsmith; but from his want of imaginative conception, 
 from the predominance of mere fancy in his works, rather 
 combining the thoughts of others than originating any of his 
 own, his position will naturally fall among the lowest group. 
 
 Though Rogers came before the world on five different occa- 
 sions after his "Pleasures of Memory," to challenge attention for 
 
150 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 his muse, it was rather to decrease than enhance his reputation. 
 Indeed, his debut and exit as an author were alike fatal. His 
 "Ode to Superstition" requires a painful effort to read. His 
 "Italy" few would dream of opening, were it not for the divine 
 etchings of Stothardand Turner. In his "Epistle on Taste," 
 published in 1796, and in his "Human Life," written twenty- 
 three years afterwards, we find something like the same vigour 
 as in his great poem j but the public expected to encounter 
 greater beauties ; and when they discovered he had hardly 
 equalled, the intensity of their disappointment led them to 
 believe he had fallen far below, his previous effort. But 
 these two poems evince great merit, simply because the author 
 confines himself within the limited range of his powers, and 
 does not break away from the ground which he occupies with 
 such force in his "Pleasures of Memory." Indeed, these two 
 poems would require very little adaptation to fit into the frame- 
 work of their predecessor. In that on " Human Life," we get 
 hardly anything else than a succession of pictures illustrating 
 the various affections as imaged in the different stages of being 
 which impart to them vitality. He throws no light on the 
 grand problems of existence. On one occasion only does he 
 become psychological, and then merely to dish up a hackneyed 
 argument for the immortality of the soul : — 
 
 Do what he will, man cannot realize 
 Half he conceives — the glorious vision flies. 
 Go where he may, he cannot hope to find 
 The truth, the beauty pictured in the mind. 
 But if, by chance, an object strike the sense, 
 The faintest shadow of that excellence, 
 Passions, that slept, are stirring in his frame ; 
 Thoughts undefined, feelings without a name ; 
 And some, not here called forth, may slumber on, 
 Till this vain pageant of a world is gone ; 
 Lying too deep for things that perish here, 
 Waiting for life, — but in a nobler sphere. 
 
 The picture of the true wife, drawn with more completeness 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 151 
 
 and originality, furnishes a contrast to the mere woman of 
 fashion, in his Epilogue for Mrs. Siddons :— 
 
 His house she enters, there to be a light, 
 Shining within, when all without is night ; 
 A guardian- angel o'er his life presiding, 
 Doubling his pleasures, and his cares dividing ; 
 "Winning him back, when mingling in the throng, 
 From a vain world we love, alas ! too long, 
 To fireside happiness and hours of ease, 
 Blest with that charm, the certainty to please. 
 How oft her eyes read his ; her gentle mind 
 To all his wishes, all his thoughts inclined ; 
 Still subject, ever on the watch to borrow 
 Mirth of his mirth, and sorrow of his sorrow. 
 The soul of music slumbers in the shell, 
 Till waked and kindled by the master's spell; 
 And feeling hearts — touch them but rightly — pour 
 A thousand melodies unheard before ! 
 
 Though this is genuine poetry, it is not of a high class ; but 
 Rogers falls miserably below this standard when he has to 
 describe scenes in which deep passion ought to be evoked. 
 The weak lines exemplifying filial affection in the meeting of 
 Mary Roper with her venerable father on his way to the scaf- 
 fold, are ill redeemed by such verses as the following, even had 
 they the poor merit of originality : — 
 
 To her, methinks a second youth is given, 
 The light upon her face is light from heaven ! 
 An hour like this is worth a thousand passed 
 In pomp or ease. 'Tis present to the last ; — 
 Years glide away untold : 'tis still the same. 
 
 In the psychological argument the execution is better than 
 the conception ; but in the following the conception is better 
 than the execution : — 
 
 Through the wide world he only is alone 
 Who lives not for another. Come what will, 
 The generous man has his companion still : 
 
152 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Even in an iron cage condemned to dwell, 
 The cage that stands within his dungeon cell, 
 He feeds his spider — happier at the worst 
 Than he at large who in himself is curst ! 
 
 It is only when the poet resumes his old task of pourtraying 
 the sunnier aspects of humanity that vigour of thought is united 
 with charm of expression, as in his picture of a mother fondling 
 her baby-boy : — 
 
 As with soft accents round her neck he clings, 
 And cheek to cheek her soothing song she sings, 
 How blest to feel the beatings of his heart ! 
 Breathe his sweet breath, and kiss for kiss impart ; 
 Watch o'er his slumbers like the brooding dove, 
 And, if she can, exhaust a mother's love ! 
 
 The " Epistle on Taste," though a far more unique produc- 
 tion, does not increase our admiration of the poet to anything 
 like the same degree as it raises our estimation of the man. 
 Its principal charm consists in the combination of two con- 
 trasts — that of the lettered ease and rustic enjoyments of a 
 country villa with the bustling importunities of civic strife, in 
 which, indeed, the poet had his model in Horace ; and the other 
 of artistic refinement and aesthetic luxury, rather heightened 
 than impaired by the humble resources of cottage life, which, 
 while it serves to set them off as a foil, imparts to them a 
 zest they would not otherwise possess. Here the poet had no 
 model at all but that supplied by his own good nature, which 
 loved to place itself in a position attainable by most of his 
 fellow-creatures, in order to show them that the most refined 
 pleasures were not the appanage merely of the wealthy, but 
 were like light, ready if not intercepted by the cloud of 
 ignorance, to pour their sunshine on the multitude. With this 
 design the poet lets us peep into his bath, his bedroom, and 
 his study, each, though humble in themselves, embellished with 
 appropriate pictures, which breathe a soul into the silent walls, 
 and with busts which exhibit in their features all the noblest 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 153 
 
 thoughts of the characters they represent. But these orna- 
 ments, not being originals, are inexpensive ; for the poet, 
 instead of littering his rooms with the works of inferior artists, 
 prefers to surround himself with cheap copies of the best 
 masters. By this means the poet enforces the doctrine, which 
 derives double force from the advocacy of a millionnaire, that 
 the perfection of taste consists in producing the greatest effects 
 by the smallest means : — 
 
 Be mine to bless the more mechanic skill, 
 That stamps, renews, and multiplies at will j 
 And cheaply circulates thro' distant climes, 
 The fairest relics of the purest times. 
 Here from the mould to conscious being start 
 Those finer forms, the miracles of art ; 
 Here chosen gems, imprest on sulphur, shine, 
 That slept for sages in a second mine ; 
 And here the faithful graver dares to trace 
 A Michael's grandeur and a Raphael's grace ! 
 Thy gallery, Florence, gilds my humble walls, 
 And my low roof the Vatican recalls ! 
 
 ***** 
 
 Tho' my thatch'd bath no rich mosaic knows, 
 A limpid spring with unfelt current flows. 
 Emblem of life ! which, still as we survey, 
 Seems motionless, yet ever glides away ; 
 The shadowy walls record, with Attic art, 
 The strength and beauty which its waves impart. 
 Here Thetis, bending, with a mother's fears, 
 Dips her dear boy, whose pride restrains his tears ; 
 There Venus, rising, shrinks with sweet surprise, 
 As her fair self reflected seems to rise ! 
 
 The contrast between the pleasures which the poet enjoys 
 in this remote retreat and the bustling importunities of town 
 life, if not brought out with the bold outline and caustic irony 
 of Horace, it is because the silkiness of the poet's nature leads 
 him to avoid the more striking for the quieter lights and 
 shades of the picture : — 
 
154 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Far from the joyless glare, the maddening strife, 
 
 And all the dull impertinence of life, 
 
 These eyelids open to the rising ray, 
 
 And close, when nature bids, at close of day. 
 
 Here, at the dawn, the kindling landscape glows ; 
 
 There, noonday levees call from faint repose. 
 
 Here, the flushed wave flings back the parting light ; 
 
 There, glimmering lamps anticipate the night. 
 
 Rogers thus sketches himself in the fields : — 
 
 When Spring bursts forth in blossoms thro' the vale, 
 And her wild music triumphs on the gale, 
 Oft with my book I muse from stile to stile ; 
 Oft in my porch the listless noon beguile, 
 Training loose numbers, till declining day, 
 Thro' the green trellis shoots a crimson ray ; 
 Till the west- wind leads on the twilight hours, 
 And shakes the fragrant bells of closing flowers. 
 
 With his own quiet pursuits, the author contrasts those of the 
 furred beauty who comes emblazoned with her jewels to startle 
 midnight in Grosvenor Square : — 
 
 There let her strike with momentary ray, 
 As tapers shine their little lives away ; 
 There let her practise from herself to steal, 
 And look the happiness she does not feel ; 
 The ready smile and bidden blush employ, 
 At Faro routs, that dazzle to destroy ; 
 Fan with affected ease the essenced air, 
 And lisp of fashions with unmeaning stare : 
 Be thine to meditate an humbler flight, 
 When morning fills the fields with rosy light ; 
 Be thine to blend, without one vulgar aim, 
 Repose with dignity j with quiet, fame. 
 
 But these by no means present the most startling contrasts 
 which his subject placed within his reach, and which the poet 
 judiciously avoided from his want of sustained force and vigour. 
 Even the sketches he presents in "The Epistle" lack com- 
 pleteness, while those in the poem on human life, though more 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 155 
 
 finished, are arranged without order, as they group themselves 
 in the poet's fancy, without reference to any philosophical prin- 
 ciple whatever. These poems, therefore, only confirm the esti- 
 mate already formed of Rogers' powers, as one possessihg all 
 the catholic tenderness of Goldsmith, without his vigour, and 
 Cowper's keen perception of natural beauties, without his feli- > 
 city of expression. But these qualities were materially enhanced 
 by aesthetic culture and a world-embracing circle of heartfelt 
 sympathies, equally beyond both. It is these sympathies which 
 ennoble the humblest of his performances, and which will obtain 
 for him readers when the works of some of the more ostenta- 
 tious of his contemporaries are neglected. 
 
 Of the minor pieces of Rogers, with the exception of " Loch 
 Long," one or two short ditties, and the charming Epilogue, in 
 which he dashes off with great spirit the five stages in the life of 
 a woman of fashion, I can only say it would have been much 
 better had they not been written ; or, if written, that they had 
 not been flouted in the face of posterity. There is, however, 
 among them, a sonnet to the torso of Hercules, which, in the 
 gardens of the Vatican, had often caught the admiring gaze of 
 Michael Angelo, Raphael, and the two Caracci, and which in 
 turn was destined to inspire the English poet with the noblest 
 lines he ever wrote : — 
 
 And dost thou still, thou mass of breathing stone 
 (Thy giant limbs to night and chaos hurled), 
 Still sit as on the fragment of a world ; 
 Surviving all, majestic and alone ? 
 What tho' the spirits of the North, that swept 
 Rome from the earth, when in her pomp she slept, 
 Smote thee with fury ; and thy headless trunk 
 Deep in the dust 'mid tower and temple sunk ; 
 Soon to subdue mankind 'twas thine to rise 
 Still, still unquelled thy glorious energies ! 
 Aspiring minds, with thee conversing, caught 
 Bright revelations of the good they sought ; 
 By thee that long-lost spell, in secret given, 
 To draw down gods, and lift the soul to heaven ! 
 
156 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 THE chief of the classical poets of the present century is 
 Campbell ; and, judging from the manner in which this 
 school has so completely died out, his sovereignty over it, is not 
 likely to be disturbed during the present generation. But his 
 own pre-eminence is so great, that even were the school in 
 fashion, rivalship, during the next thirty years, would be a thing 
 almost impossible : for poets with the impassioned stateliness 
 of Gray, or with the deep plaintiveness of Collins, seldom appear 
 even once in a century. But how much rarer must the appearance 
 of those be who combine, to a large extent, the excellences of 
 both ? Such was Campbell, who has all Gray's merits, allied to 
 as much of Collins's exquisite pathos as can be detached from 
 spiritual forms and wedded to earthly objects. Campbell's fire 
 and energy raise him above Gray, but his lack of ideality places 
 him below Collins. He has, however, the advantage of being 
 more varied in style, of choosing his subjects from a wider 
 range of objects, and of displaying keener sympathies for his 
 fellow-men than either. A Greek reticence of language, exube- 
 rance of classical imagery, ornate diction so exquisitely polished 
 as to make each word shed a diamond lustre over the thought, 
 .equally characterise the three poets. In Collins, however, this 
 glittering raiment seems the natural expression of his mind, 
 fitting it as closely and tightly as a skin. But in Campbell, as 
 in Gray, the labour of the artist is visible in the artificial con- 
 struction of phrase which occasionally diverts attention from the 
 thoughts to the words in which they are expressed — a defect 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 157 
 
 so much the more serious, because it inverts the functions 
 of language, which ought, like light, to remain hidden while 
 revealing everything else with which it is brought into contact. 
 
 It is this fastidiousness with respect to style that constitutes 
 Campbell's peculiar glory and weakness. All his pieces display 
 perfect elaboration of finish ; but he appears to have sacrificed 
 everything else to obtain it. In his longer poems, the action 
 is as much neglected as the style is polished. Impoverished 
 conception of plan is united with faultless execution of details. 
 There is, however, one advantage arising out of Campbell's 
 fastidiousness, that his pages are perfectly free from what is 
 called waste writing. This is most evident in his lesser poems, 
 hardly a line of which occurs without some beauty. If a stanza 
 did not please him, he drew his pen across it without the slight- 
 est remorse, as I have seen Herbert put his knife through a 
 picture which would have made the fortune of many a younger 
 artist. In this respect Campbell stands out in pleasing contrast 
 to Wordsworth and Southey. If any of their compositions were 
 unsatisfactory, their only resource was to add as many dozen 
 lines more to the peccant part with a view to conceal, if they 
 failed to enliven, its dullness. But Campbell resolutely applied 
 the incision knife, and if the vital organism of the piece was 
 injured thereby, threw the whole away. Wordsworth and 
 Southey most piously treasured up every verse which they 
 composed. But Campbell had a most provoking habit of tear- 
 ing up nearly everything he wrote, and scattering the fragments 
 of paper out of his study window ; whence it came to pass, 
 when the wind blew in one direction, that the cabbages and 
 gooseberry-bushes of his neighbour's garden at Sydenham looked 
 in the dog-days very much as if a theatrical snow-storm had 
 burst over them. The result of this is, that Campbell is now 
 seldom read except as a whole, Wordsworth only in parts, and 
 Southey not at all. 
 
 The "Pleasures of Hope" displays all the ardour and impetu- 
 osity of youthful genius blended with those faults to which most 
 
158 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 young writers are liable, of caring much more for sound than sense, 
 and cumbering immature designs with profusion of florid orna- 
 ments. The description of the shipwreck is powerfully given. 
 The " Siege of Warsaw" still retains its place as the first battle- 
 piece in the language, with that powerful shriek which is des- 
 tined to vibrate through the hearts of patriots for all time. But 
 the effects of hope upon the imagination, and the aspirations 
 of genius, as indeed all that portion of the poem which required 
 calm philosophical treatment, are inadequately pourtrayed. It 
 is on this account that Rogers' "Memory" satisfies the judgment 
 more ; for though immeasurably Campbell's inferior in wielding 
 the lightnings of passion, Rogers evinces far greater skill in meta- 
 physical analysis. His transitions are more distinct, and he 
 passes with greater ease from one topic to another ; whereas 
 in Campbell the transitions are unnatural, and their stiffly arti- 
 ficial character does not always prevent the subjects from run- 
 ning into each other. In Rogers, the language is invariably 
 suited to the thought. But with Campbell it not unfrequently 
 happens, that in proportion to the weakness of the thought, the 
 strength of the language becomes apparent, until we are reminded 
 of the pale, consumptive figure of Ruthven, in Maclise's picture, 
 trying to stand erect beneath the suit of heavy-mailed armour 
 which is dragging him to the ground. This blending of two 
 incongruous elements produces in Campbell a similar effort tc 
 appear stronger than he really is, and to make up for interna 
 stamina by grinding of the teeth and other spasmodic exhibi- 
 tions of muscular violence. But as a work of genius, defective 
 as it is in parts, yet grand in its irregularities, the poem of 
 Rogers must yield the palm to Campbell's, who, in this the 
 greenest of his productions, soars far higher than his con- 
 temporary ever did in the full maturity of his powers. 
 
 From the persistent manner in which the author's name was 
 coupled with the " Pleasures of Hope," it might be thought the 
 author set more value on this poem than on anything else he had 
 ever written. But Campbell's taste was too exquisite to allow 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 159 
 
 him to entertain any such conceit. On the contrary, it was one 
 of the standing annoyances of his life that he should be only 
 known by a performance which evinced all the crudeness and 
 immaturity of youthful genius. But his hatred of the practice 
 could not put it down. Whenever a paper chronicled his 
 arrival in a foreign town, it was always Mr. Campbell, the 
 author of the " Pleasures of Hope." When he was introduced 
 at Court, it was as the author of the "Pleasures of Hope." 
 He was hardly ever pointed out in street, or assembly, with- 
 out the same startling sound, the author of the " Pleasures of 
 Hope." If any toast was coupled with his name at a convivial 
 meeting, down came the fatal affix in defiance of the protesta- 
 tions of the author. Campbell struggled against his destiny in 
 vain. The book-trade would not advertise his poems without 
 the same magic title. As in life, so it was in death. When 
 his coffin was lowered into the vault at Westminster Abbey, 
 the plate was found to contain the inscription, "Thomas 
 Campbell, author of the 'Pleasures of Hope.'" And no 
 sooner was the stone laid over the grave than the attention 
 of the reader was arrested by the same ominous words, 
 coupling his names by iron links with that production for all 
 future generations. 
 
 Campbell always avoided lengthy subjects, which is a sign 
 that he mistrusted his powers. None of his pieces evince much 
 skill, either in delineation of character or construction of plot. 
 His " Gertrude of Wyoming » and " O'Conner's Child " are too 
 short for that purpose. His " Theodoric " is so far below him, 
 that it ought never to have been printed. To call the " Pilgrim 
 of Glencoe " a narrative poem would be absurd. The " Pleasures 
 of Hope," so far as it does not evade analysis, is only a succession 
 ' of pictures, "like pearls upon a thread at random strung/' having 
 no connection beyond the feeling of expectancy which this gay 
 deceiver awakes in the human breast. Ideality, or that quality 
 which invests the universe with ethereal splendour, to which 
 its own sunshine is but a shadow, is not in his works pro- 
 
160 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 minently conspicuous. Part of the scenery of" Wyoming " is 
 drawn with a magical pencil : — 
 
 A valley from the river shore withdrawn, 
 Was Albert's home, two quiet woods between, 
 Whose lofty verdure overlook'd his lawn ; 
 And waters to their resting-place serene 
 Came fresh'ning, and reflecting all the scene : 
 (A mirror in the depth of flowery shelves :) 
 So sweet a spot of earth, you might, I ween, 
 Have guess'd some congregation of the elves, 
 To sport by summer moons, had shaped it for themselves.* 
 
 But we generally find the colouring in the quiet parts of the 
 poem is not sustained, and that the effect is owing to a few 
 fairy tints artistically introduced to brighten up much that is 
 commonplace, rather than to the overflowing prodigality of a 
 gorgeous imagination. These gems stand out more or less 
 isolated, so that the stanzas appear to have been framed as a 
 foil to set off their beauty rather than to carry forward the 
 action of the poem. How tame would be the description of 
 Gertrude hastening home at early morn, were it not for the line, 
 
 While yet the wild deer trod in spangling dew,t 
 
 or of Gertrude herself, were it not for the sunniness of her eyes, 
 
 in which 
 
 Their ninth blue summer shone, % 
 and 
 
 Which seemed to love whate'er they looked upon ; § 
 
 or for the picture of the white boy led by the swarthy Indian, 
 were it not for the simile comparing him to morning brought 
 by night. The reader's taste is rather sharpened than gratified 
 by beauties of this character, which are no sooner introduced 
 than they are lost in the dreariness of commonplace, leaving 
 behind a vain regret that such magic tints should be so tran- 
 sitory, like the gleams of light which are swallowed up by 
 
 * Part 2, st. i. + Part 2, st. viii. \ Part I, st. xii. § Part 2, st. iv. 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 161 
 
 April clouds as soon as they appear, or the perfumes from a 
 tuft of March violets, which no sooner hit the sense than 
 they are carried off by the wind in an opposite direction. 
 
 These spiritual touches are more apt to stamp the mind's 
 features, than those of a material landscape, on his pages, and 
 accordingly Campbell is more effective in his characters than 
 in his scenery. The countenance of Albert is well shaded : — 
 
 And though amidst the calm of thought entire, 
 Some high and haughty features might betray 
 A soul impetuous once, 'twas earthly fire 
 That fled composure's intellectual ray, 
 As Etna's fires grow dim before the rising day. * 
 
 He said — and strain'd unto his heart the boy : 
 Far differently the mute Oneida took 
 His calumet of peace, and cup of joy ; 
 As monumental bronze unchanged his look ; 
 A soul that pity touch'd, but never shook : 
 Train'd from his tree-rock'd cradle to his bier 
 The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook 
 Impassive — fearing but the shame of fear — 
 A stoic of the woods — a man without a tear.f 
 
 But these portraits, while they present the type of a class, lack 
 the features of an individual, and the incidents with which the 
 originals are brought into contact too unfavourably remind 
 us of others to which they are inferior. The character of Oneida 
 is not anything like so minutely developed as that of Chactas, 
 from which it is taken, though his physiognomy possesses 
 qualities more frank and local than Atala's lover, because 
 Oneida had not been half civilized by contact with the inha- 
 bitants of Europe. The infancy and love of Waldgrave and 
 Gertrude too much remind us of the exquisite group of Paul 
 and Virginia ; but Campbell has made no more than a sketch 
 of a subject which in the hands of Bemardin de St. Pierre 
 comprises a finished picture. 
 It would, however, be unjust to Campbell to leave the reader 
 
 * Part i., st. viii. t Part i., st. xxiii. 
 
 II 
 
1 62 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 without the impression that, wherever his subject admitted of 
 it, he could attain the sublime without effort. In the lower 
 region of ideality he seems to have trod with the fear of the 
 critics before his eyes, but in the upper, he seems to have for- 
 gotten that such beings were in existence. Though his imagi- 
 native flights are not frequent, he maintains himself in the loftiest 
 sphere of sublimity with the same ease and dignity as if it were 
 his natural home. The immensity of the ocean is nowhere so 
 adequately imaged as by representing it as a mirror wherein 
 all the stars can see themselves at once, or as that element 
 by which our earth, otherwise opaque, is rendered luminous to 
 distant orbs. And again : 
 
 Earth has not a plain 
 So boundless or so beautiful as thine : 
 The eagle's vision cannot take it in ; 
 The lightning's wing, too weak to sweep its space, 
 Sinks half way o'er it, like a wearied bird. 
 
 The lordliest floods 
 And cataracts are drops of dew 
 To thee, that couldst subdue the earth itself, 
 And brook'st commandment from the heavens alone 
 In marshalling thy waves. 
 
 But it is in his address to the dead eagle that Campbell rises 
 to the elevation of his subject, and makes us regret that his 
 desire of disarming criticism by faultless execution should 
 have deterred him from selecting a theme which would have 
 given wider range to his great powers. With what majesty he 
 invests his subject : — 
 
 Fallen as he is, this king of birds still seems 
 Like royalty in ruins. Though his eyes 
 Are shut, that looked undazzled in the sun, 
 He was the sultan of the sky, and earth 
 Paid tribute to his eyry. It was perch'd 
 Higher than human conqueror ever built 
 His banner 'd fort. Where Atlas' top looks o'er 
 Sahara's desert to the Equator's line ; 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 163 
 
 From thence the winged despot marked his prey, 
 Above the encampments of the Bedouins, ere 
 Their watch-fires were extinct, or camels knelt 
 To take their loads, or horsemen scoured the plain ; 
 And there he dried his feathers in the dawn, 
 Whilst yet the unwakened world was dark below. 
 
 The aeronaut drifts, in his silken vehicle, 
 
 The passive plaything of the winds. Not such 
 
 Was this proud bird : he clove the adverse storm, 
 
 And cuffed it with his wings. He stopped his flight 
 
 As easily as the Arab reins his steed, 
 
 And stood at pleasure 'neath Heaven's zenith, like 
 
 A lamp suspended from its azure dome. 
 
 Whilst underneath him the world's mountains lay 
 
 Like molehills, and her streams like lucid threads j 
 
 Then downwards, faster than a falling star, 
 
 He neared the earth, until his shape distinct 
 
 Was blackly shadowed on the sunny ground ; 
 
 And deeper terror hushed the wilderness 
 
 To hear his nearer whoop. 
 
 ***** * 
 
 His bright eyes were his compass, earth his chart, 
 His talons anchor'd on the stormiest cliff, 
 And on the very lighthouse-rock he perched 
 When winds churned white the waves. 
 
 " The Last Man * we need not quote, as it is in everybody's 
 memory. For instances of the sublime called up by a few 
 graphic touches, it is perhaps unequalled in any language. 
 But these efforts, great as they are, on account of their short 
 and fragmentary character, do not constitute anything like the 
 substance of those claims to distinction on which this poet's 
 reputation rests. 
 
 In what, then, does Campbell's greatness consist, since he 
 holds a place in our literature, both lofty and unique, which could 
 not be filled up with any other bust than his own ? It is un- 
 doubtedly in his command over the feelings, in his exquisite 
 pathos,in his power to stir the breast with martial ardour as with 
 
i6j ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 a trumpet, in the soft emotions he conjures up in his bowers of 
 love, and the red glare he throws over his battle-fields. But 
 Campbell rarely paints love except in contact with death, when 
 it assumes hues which speak to us of heaven. It is not over 
 Armida in her paradisal gardens, the representative of volup- 
 tuousness, but over Waldgrave in the lifeless arms of Gertrude, 
 or the young wife bending over the corpse of her bleeding 
 Hussar, that Campbell loves to linger ; and in scenes of this 
 character it must be confessed he has no master. The sailor 
 ploughing the billowy wave, or the soldier keeping watch " with 
 the sentinel stars in the sky," have no more faithful delineator 
 of their hopes and their fears, their anxious home-yearnings, 
 and the terrible depths of that love which increases in propor- 
 tion to the distance of its object, than Campbell. The passion 
 he loves to portray is not that which satisfies the cravings of 
 the senses, but that which spiritualizes our nature by attuning 
 all its chords to pity. The scenes of the Napoleonic cam- 
 paigns, echoing their thunders daily in his ears, appear to have 
 haunted his imagination, and enabled him to reproduce with 
 tenfold force all the engines of human butchery which 
 ingenuity could devise, in contrast with the softest emotions of 
 the human heart. I know not whether his genius is more 
 evinced in these contrasts, than in the description of the battle 
 itself. His rapid transitions, the quickness with which he 
 hurries us along, recalls the sudden evolutions of troops ; his 
 terse imagery illuminating everything on which it falls, the 
 concentrative flash of lightning, and his sonorous periods, 
 those volleyed peals of thunder with which the artillery of his 
 combatants at intervals tears the heavens. The awful stillness 
 at the close which curtains the dismal havoc, or that unquench- 
 able thirst for freedom, which turns the blood-besprinkled dust 
 of the patriot's death-bed into a couch of glory, is given with 
 a fidelity seldom equalled in poetry, and certainly never sur- 
 passed. Let the reader compare the " Battle of Hohenlinden," 
 or the " Death-struggle at Warsaw," with Montgomery's " Alex- 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 165 
 
 andria," or Scott's " Waterloo," and he will be startled at the 
 difference between the diffusiveness of mere poetic ability and 
 the vigorous strength of genius. It is on account of this fire 
 and energy, enveloped, as it occasionally is in his lyrics, in the . 
 silken veil of plaintiveness, and always expressed in the choicest / 
 language, that Campbell is entitled to a place in the second/ 
 division of poets. I do not know that anybody would dispute 
 his claim to being the first martial lyric poet of his country. 
 Had Burns cultivated this vein more than he did, he would 
 have been obliged, though in other respects his master, in 
 this field at least, to yield precedence to his countryman. 
 Campbell has a distinct speciality as the Tyrtseus of modern 
 England. The keen sympathy which he always felt for the 
 oppressed in every part of the world, the ardour with which his 
 soul always glowed for freedom, imparted a vital intensity to 
 those strains which may fairly challenge for him the proud title 
 of the Bard of National Independence. 
 
1 66 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 SRalter Satrap Santor. 
 
 W T ANDOR was a man of crotchety nature, of liberal but 
 1 v capricious sympathies. His feelings, though deep and 
 capable of great expansion, were never under the control of a 
 comprehensive intellect. He saw into the heart of nothing. 
 He seems to have been born with a mind blurred over with 
 ingrained prejudices, from which he could no more escape than * 
 from his own identity. As such, he would have furnished a 
 very good exemplification of Descartes' doctrine of innate ideas. 
 He also manifested from his cradle upwards a certain querulous- 
 ness, which made him in youth quarrel with his tutors, in middle . 
 life with his tenants and his country, and in old age with his 
 wife and himself. Hence, poor Landor, though blessed with 
 robust health, and with all the luxuries that can make health 
 enjoyable, had a sad time of it during his protracted sojourn 
 amongst us. His life was little better than a battle and a 
 march. He early left England for France, under the impression 
 that its laws afforded no shelter for an honest man ; but tired 
 of France, he tried Italy. After a migratory sojourn in Italy, 
 he came back to England, which he forsook for Italy again. 
 Other poets have been buffeted about by the restless tide of 
 necessity, but Landor^s wanderings had no assignable cause but 
 caprice. He appears to have thoroughly understood nobody, \ 
 and nobody appears to have thoroughly understood him. His 
 heart was not selfish, nor his temperament hypochondriacal. 
 But he had certain abstract notions of right and wrong which he 
 persisted in carrying out, totally regardless of the actual fitness * 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 167 
 
 of things, or the social framework into which he was born. In 
 the same manner, he had certain antique notions of art which 
 he persisted in embodying in his works, without wasting a 
 thought upon the suitability of such notions to the requirements * 
 of modern civilization. Hence, Landor, with a hand always 
 ready to defend, and a purse always open to assist, the helpless, 
 was the most unpopular man of his day ; and with invention 
 and imagination of no mean order, his poems were even less » 
 appreciated than himself. 
 
 The mind of Landor was cast in a mould essentially antique. *- 
 He belonged more to the Rome of Camillus than to any other 
 era of recorded time ; for his habits were simple, his hatred of 
 kings intense, his study of Greek models incessant. The Latin 
 language was as familiar to him as his own, and had his pre- v 
 ference not been interfered with, he would have chosen it as the 
 vehicle of his thoughts to the world. As it is, many of his 
 shorter pieces are written in Latin, which he thought was 
 destined to replace the modern jargons of Europe. The Gothic 
 element, out of which they had arisen, was to Landor essentially 
 barbarous; and nothing like correct taste, until that element- 
 was eliminated, could be established among mankind. Hence, 
 such of his pieces as are not Latin, or, like his Hellenics, direct 
 translations from his Latin poems, wear a certain staid classical % 
 air, just as if Valerius Flaccus had discarded the toga and 
 popped upon us in an English frock-coat and tight waistcoat. 
 There is, in his pages, an absence of genuine bursts of feeling* 
 a statuesque immobility, a serene chilliness, and an utter want 
 of interest to support the reader in deciphering the meaning 
 which constantly eludes his grasp. Yet Wordsworth declared 
 he would sooner be the author of Landor's poems than of any 
 other which had appeared during his time, and Southey 
 averred that Landor nearly rivalled Milton. If Wordsworth 
 was sincere, he was most inconsistent ; for no poet so violently 
 transgressed every precept of the Wordsworthian theory as 
 Landor. But Southe/s praise came direct from the heart. 
 
1 68 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 The opinion he expressed was the quintessence of candour 
 and folly. 
 
 The connection between Southey and Landor constitutes one 
 of the curiosities of literature. The temperaments of the two 
 men were as conflicting as their principles, and their habits as 
 antithetical as either ; yet the extraordinary relish which both 
 manifested for each other's poems became the foundation of a 
 life-enduring friendship. It mattered little to Southey that 
 Landor was a deist in religion, a republican in politics, the • 
 lampooner of his patrons, the defender of measures which 
 Southey believed to be destructive of public morality, — Landor 
 was the author of " Gebir" and "Julian," and as such entitled 
 to the first place in his bosom. It mattered little to Landor 
 that Southey was a bigoted Tory, a red-hot Churchman, the 
 unflinching apostle of every doctrine he loathed, and the stout 
 panegyrist of the men whom he abhorred, — Southey was the 
 author of " Madoc," and therefore entitled to Lander's most 
 cherished affection. By mutual gratulation they persuaded 
 each other to persist in a course which rendered success 
 impossible. Had not Landor volunteered to print Southey's 
 poems at his own expense, his epical career would have been 
 cut short with " Madoc." Had not Southey interposed to find 
 a publisher for " Julian," Landor would have had to consult the 
 taste of his epoch, or to abandon Parnassus. The fascination 
 which Landor's poems had for Southey was hardly surpassed by 
 the fascination which Southey's poems had for Landor. To 
 some extent they bore a family likeness, and each, therefore, in 
 praising the other was only justifying himself. Both were about « 
 the same remove from mediocrity; both constructed their works 
 upon principles which completely override the genuine impulses 
 of nature, and both sought to make up for their lack of dramatic 
 interest, the one by statuesque embodiments of passion, the 
 other by gorgeous scenic descriptions. Both in their poetical 
 capacity failed to interest the age, and both thought that this 
 was their highest badge of merit. It was this identity of the 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 169 
 
 poetical situation which bridged over the gulf which separated 
 their political and religious life, and made two individuals bris- 
 tling with antagonisms, the staunchest associates and friends. 
 So great is the cementing influence of disappointed ambitions ! 
 "Gebir," which always possessed extraordinary fascination 
 for Southey, may be said to be the first piece Landor wrote 01 s 
 any significance. The moral of the story consists in showing 
 how far more sensible and felicitous is a life devoted to the 
 pursuits of love and peace than to those of war and ambition. 
 The hero is king of Gibraltar, who, on some miserable 
 pretence of requiting Egypt for sheltering the enemies of his 
 ancestors, invades that country at the head of ten thousand 
 men. But Charoba, the young Egyptian queen, instead of 
 fighting her assailant, is impelled by her confidant, Dalica, 
 to come to some amicable adjustment with Gebir. The two 
 monarchs very naturally fall in love with each other as soon as 
 they meet. But very unnaturally, Dalica, mistaking her mis- 
 tress's emotions of love for ebullitions of anger, proceeds to 
 consult her witch-sister, Myrthir, as to the best means of 
 extricating Charoba from her embarrassing position. These 
 two people enweave a poisonous robe, which, like the shirt of 
 Nessus, was destined to make very short work of the life of 
 the wearer. But, before Gebir is presented with this bridal 
 garment of death, the reader, on the morning of the day, gets 
 a charming glimpse of Charoba at her morning ablutions : — 
 
 Next to her chamber, closed by cedar doors, 
 A bath of purest marble, purest wave, 
 On its fair surface bore its pavement high : 
 Arabian gold enchased the crystal roof, 
 With fluttering boys adorn'd, and girls unrobed ; 
 These when you touch the quiet water, start 
 From their aerial sunny arch, and pant 
 Entangled 'mid each other's flowery wreaths, 
 And each pursuing is in turn pursued. 
 Here came * * * * 
 
 Charoba : long she lingered at the brink ; 
 Often she sighed ; and, naked as she was, 
 
170 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Sat down, and leaning on the couch's edge, 
 
 On the soft inward pillow of her arm 
 
 Rested her burning cheek : she moved her eyes ; 
 
 She blush'd ; and, blushing, plunged into the wave.* 
 
 Arrayed in costly jewels, the queen unwittingly proceeds to 
 invest Gebir, as he sits enthroned, with the envenomed robe, at 
 a festal gathering of the two nations. Her lover's first pallor, 
 Charoba mistakes for the influences of love, when, to her 
 horror, he expires in agonies of pain, and the two nations, 
 recently reconciled by the alliance between their youthful 
 monarchs, start asunder crowned with the garlands and in the 
 midst of the festivity intended to consummate their union. 
 
 This is the main trunk of the story. But there are two 
 episodes intertwined with it which bring out the opposite side 
 of the contrast. Gebir has a brother engaged in the quiet 
 pursuits of shepherd life. This brother captivates a sea- 
 nymph, who reveals her fondness for him by inviting him to a 
 wrestling-match, in which she proves the victor. The nymph, 
 however, acted with an astuteness hardly to be reconciled with 
 deep affection. For, knowing her power, she allows Tamar to 
 risk one of his sheep as his prize in the contest, against which 
 she has nothing to wager but articles of no appreciable value to 
 a seaside shepherd : — 
 
 But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue 
 
 Within, and they that lustre have imbibed 
 
 In the sun's palace porch, where, when unyoked, 
 
 His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave : 
 
 Shake one, and it awakens ; then apply 
 
 Its polish'd lips to your attentive ear, j 
 
 And it remembers its august abodes, 
 
 And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there. + 
 
 But the nymph, after prostrating her beloved, very selfishly runs 
 off with his sheep, and leaves Tamar gazing after her in very 
 vacant fashion : — 
 
 * Book vii., Is. 81—95. f Bcok i., Is. 159—66. 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 171 
 
 Restless, then ran I to the highest ground, 
 To watch her ; she was gone, gone down the tide, 
 And the long moonbeam on the hard wet sand, 
 Lay like a jasper column half upreared.* 
 
 It is this considerate nymph whom Gebir resolves to consult, 
 that he may baffle the demoniac powers in Egypt, who have 
 razed to the foundations a city which, at the desire of Charoba, 
 he has been vainly endeavouring to build up. By her instruc- 
 tions, he performs certain rites at the place where his half- 
 erected city disappeared, when the earth opens, and Gebir, 
 descending into a yawning chasm, finds himself at once con- 
 fronted by the spirits who have served their time out in the 
 flesh, and with a crowd of others who are waiting to take their 
 turn on the stage of the future. At the entrance he meets 
 Aroar, a weird personage, who is neither alive or dead, but who 
 contrives to amuse himself with politics, and very obligingly 
 offers to be Gebir's guide on the occasion. Dante peopled 
 Hades with his personal enemies ; Ariosto with frigid, over- 
 chaste women ; but Gebir meets no folks there but warriors, or 
 those who have been or are destined to be impelled by the 
 lust of conquest or power. Foremost among these tortured 
 shades are Gebir's own ancestors. The hero then makes the 
 acquaintance of the Stewarts, both father and son, and then is 
 introduced to the immortal William, to whom, according to 
 Southey, we are indebted, not only for our glorious constitution, 
 but for the preservation of Protestantism. But the triumph of 
 the Orange champion, however sacred to his friend, seemed to 
 Landor only fit to be jeered at in the vaults of hell. Among 
 other persons pointed out by the mysterious guide as under- 
 going condign punishment for his crimes, is George III., whom 
 Southey placed in heaven, and held up to his readers as the 
 incarnation of every public and private virtue. Landor, how- 
 ever, takes rather a different view of this monarch, though 
 
 * Book i., Is. 214—17. 
 
1 72 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 the portrait is somewhat disguised, to escape any notice the 
 Attorney-General might have taken of the matter : — 
 
 " Aroar ! what wretch that nearest us ? what wretch 
 Is that, with eyebrows white and slanting brow ? 
 
 ****** 
 He, too, among my ancestors ? " " O king, 
 Iberia bore him ; but the breed accurst, 
 Inclement winds blew blighting from north-east. " 
 
 Gebir wishes to know by what crimes the man with the slanting 
 brow had deserved his fate : — 
 
 " He was a warrior, then, nor fear'd the gods ? " 
 
 To whom Aroar : — 
 
 11 Gebir ! he fear'd the demons, not the gods, 
 Tho' them indeed his daily face adored, 
 And was no warrior ; yet the thousand lives 
 Squander'd as stones to exercise a sling."* 
 
 Leaving George to his fate, Aroar and his companion scramble 
 beyond the boundary of hell to quieter regions, where they 
 are visited by the breezes which scatter perfumes around their 
 path, and the beams which fill with liquid light the groves 
 of the blessed. Heaven and Hades, in the imagination alike of 
 poets and divines, have been separated by a wide gulf of space, — 
 so wide, indeed, that the lightning's wing, after a day's travel, 
 would flag over it like that of a tired bird. But Landor treats 
 the two regions as wings of one compartment, dividing them 
 only by a flaming arch, which parts asunder every two years 
 in order that the damned and the blessed may be refreshed with 
 the sight of each other. They also derive from this ingenious 
 contrivance the knowledge, not very gratifying to either party, 
 that the fires which constitute the misery of the one conduces 
 to the happiness of the other. 
 
 The contrast between the fate of the ambitious and the 
 peaceful is still more fully elaborated in the fortunate issue of 
 * Book hi., Is. 131 — 42. 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 173 
 
 Tamar's affairs as contrasted with the dolorous end of Gebir's 
 over-vaulting aspirations. The sea-nymph conducts Tamar to 
 her ocean grot, triumphant over the waves, surrounded by im- 
 mortals who congratulate the shepherd on his coming happi- 
 ness. But instead of describing the consummation of this rather 
 singular courtship, we are merely introduced to the topography 
 of the situation : — 
 
 First arose 
 To his astonish'd and delighted view 
 The sacred isle that shrines the queen of love ; 
 It stood so near him, so acute each sense, 
 That not the symphony of lutes alone, 
 Or coo serene, or billing strife of doves, 
 But murmurs, whispers,— nay, the very sighs 
 Which he himself had uttered once, he heard. 
 Next, but long after and far off, appear 
 The cloud-like cliffs and thousand towers of Crete, 
 And farther to the right the Cyclades, 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 He saw the land of Pelops, host of gods ; 
 Saw the steep ridge where Corinth after stood, 
 Beckoning the Ionian s with their smiling arts, 
 Into her sun-bright bay. * * * * 
 
 ****** 
 And now the chariot of the sun descends, 
 The waves rush hurried from his foaming steeds, 
 Smoke issues from their nostrils at the gate, 
 Which, when they enter, with huge golden bar, 
 Atlas, and Calpe close across the sea. * 
 
 Thus, like Southey in critical emergencies, Landor is very dis-** 
 appointing : where we expect love-making, we get topographical 
 information ; and while we wait for a description of internal 
 emotion, we are driven to despair by the projection of a frieze. 
 We are left entirely to our own imagination to realize the great 
 bliss which Tamar is enjoying as a counterfoil to the miseries 
 reserved for his unfortunate brother, though the dark side of 
 the picture is minutely portrayed. Horrid warnings assail 
 * End of Book vi. 
 
174 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Gebir on the very morning Tamar is led over the waves to 
 his bridal home. About to snatch his triumph, he is circum- 
 vented by " pain, diseases, death," and all the other evils which 
 
 Stamp on the slippery pavement of the proud, 
 And ring their sounding emptiness through earth. * 
 
 Tamar's happiness involved that of his nymph bride and all 
 their associates. The disasters of Gebir destroyed the peace 
 of Charoba and the fortunes of their subjects : — 
 
 Thus raved Charoba : horror, grief, amaze, 
 Pervaded all the host ; all eyes were fix'd ; 
 All stricken motionless and mute. The feast 
 Was like the feast of Cepheus, when the sword 
 Of Phineus, white with wonder, shook restrain'd, 
 And the hilt rattled in his marble hand. 
 She heard not, saw not ; every sense was gone ; 
 One passion banish'd all : dominion, praise, 
 The world itself was nothing. Senseless man ! 
 What would thy fancy figure now from worlds ? 
 There is no world to them that grieve and love, t 
 
 This poem ought to form the evangelium of the Peace 
 Society, or of the respectable confraternity of Quakers. For 
 vice and virtue are identified in it with ambition and repose ; 
 and war, no matter what its object, earns for its instigator 
 eternal castigation. 
 
 " Gebir " is the most complete of Landor's poems. It also 
 contains more effective passages than any other of his finished 
 productions. Though written on the threshold of manhood, he 
 never surpassed the effort ; in fact, he always seemed loathe to 
 try. Yet " Gebir," though a striking production for a young 
 man, will not place his name very high in the catalogue of 
 poets. There is little imaginative passion in the piece, no flight 
 from the region of incident into that of the abstract, nor is there 
 any philosophy made sensible. The heart remains unmoved, 
 and the understanding is not instructed. The utter improba- 
 
 * Book vi., Is, 210 — ii. + Book vii., Is. 224 — 34. 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 175 
 
 bility of the story, and the absurd motives upon which the 
 cardinal incidents of the piece turn, destroy all appearance 
 of verisimilitude. To talk of deriving pleasure from a poem 
 which one has to sit down to study like a geometrical problem, 
 is out of all question. Hence " Gebir " has never had, nor is 
 likely to have, many readers. Hitherto, few beyond Shelley, 
 De Quincey, and Southey set any store by the volume : Shelley, 
 for its wild radicalism ; De Quincey, for its plastic beauty ; and 
 Southey, for its divine poetry. The two former qualities it 
 possesses in a high degree ; the latter it certainly has not. 
 
 The great fault of " Gebir " consists in inartistic treatment. 
 The most prosaic details of the story are brought out, Southey- 
 like, with painful elaboration j while those, in which the 
 reader might naturally have been led to take an interest, are 
 either summarily disposed of or omitted altogether. Hence 
 the reader moves along on a certain monotonous level, where 
 at one point he ought to scale the Olympian heights of rap- * 
 ture, and at the next to be plunged in the abyss of despair. A 
 bleak air of coldness chills even the warmest portions of 
 the piece ; as if the story had been sculptured in a frieze, and 
 Landor, instead of dealing with flesh-and-blood emotions, was 
 only versifying marble. In " Gebir " — as, indeed, in most of 
 Landor's other pieces — the best descriptions come upon us like 
 a succession of statues or figures in bas-relievo. They are 
 beautifully grouped, and exquisitely finished. They remind us 
 of processions on antique marbles, or bronze mouldings on 
 palace gates. We survey the works of the artist with a full 
 appreciation of their beauty, but without feeling the slightest 
 emotions of sympathy with the feelings they exhibit ; we move 
 through the scenes he depicts as through a hall of statuary, 
 and marvel that the artist who could call up such figures before 
 us, should have lacked the power to endue them with passion 
 and intelligence. 
 
 Landor tried his hand at tragedy; but beyond incidental 
 passages of some power, not to much effect. He regarded plot 
 
176 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 as mere trick. The ancients had not descended to it ; why t 
 should he ? The development of character arising out of the 
 sequence of logical events, which constitutes the backbone of 
 the modern drama, Landor thought unworthy of a sensible man. 
 The stage should represent, not phases of action, but phases of 
 suffering. This was natural enough when the faces of actors 
 were covered with a mask, when a tragedy was a religious 
 ceremony, when a chorus sermonized, at the end of the acts, 
 upon the past, and threw out suggestions which prefigured the 
 future. But to maintain this theory when the state of manners 
 and society which necessitated it had passed away, would have 
 been fatal to the genius of Shakespeare. But to Landor, the 
 consequence has been simple extinction. None of his plays 
 have been produced on the stage ; nor can they, without a 
 considerable amount of tenacity, be mastered in the closet. 
 
 It is remarkable that Landor should have selected for the 
 subject of his first tragedy the downfall of the Spanish Roderic, 
 a theme which Scott and Southey were already brooding over 
 for poetic purposes, and that a subject so teeming with romantic 
 incident should have experienced such scanty justice at their 
 hands. Landor' s tragedy is in reality only a succession of 
 fragmentary conversations divided into scenes which have little 
 apparent connection, unless we imagine the historical situation 
 as the background. There is no plot, no evolution of character, 
 no development of concerted action. Corilla, Julian's daughter, 
 is seduced by Roderic ; Egilona, Roderic's wife, marries 
 Abdalagis. But there are no love entanglements, no expres- 
 sions of attachment from any of the parties, and we are only 
 made aware of these facts, as in a Greek play, by incidental 
 reflection, assuming that they have actually taken place. 
 Moslem armies at the call of a recreant chief overrun Spain; a 
 throne is overturned \ the cross everywhere disappears before 
 the crescent ; austere pontiffs exchange the mitre for the turban, 
 the frigid pursuits of the cloister for the wanton dalliances of 
 love. But with the exception of the invading army, none 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 177 
 
 of these things appear in the tragedy, and the invading 
 army is only introduced as an appendage to Julian, who 
 disappears in a most unsatisfactory manner at the close, leaving 
 the reader with the invading army in a state of embarrassment, 
 the one with a half-completed conquest, the other with a story 
 still more incomplete, which commences in the middle, and 
 suddenly collapses before the end. In fact, Landor's design 
 seems to have been not so much to write a tragedy, which his 
 piece is wrongly named, but to hold up the chief personage in 
 his group, in a position of monumental implacability to the end 
 of time. Everything appears to be sacrificed to the character of 
 Count Julian, who is incessantly produced on the scene as the 
 very incarnation of ahyssmal sorrow 1 who, in the midst of his 
 victories, has no hope either from men in this world, or from 
 God in the next. He feasts on grief, and really seems to enjoy 
 the banquet in proportion to the bitterness of the viands served 
 up to him. The ravishment of his daughter, the desolation of 
 his kindred, the overturning of his creed, the butchery of his 
 family, these are the things which, like the inverted pincushion 
 of Villaneuf, he constantly presses to his heart, feeling no satis- 
 faction but in the increase of his misery. As he has no pity 
 on himself, he is inclined to have as little upon others. Nothing 
 will content him but to have every one made as miserable as 
 himself. The whole world must be involved in his ruin. His 
 country he consigns to invaders, his religion to infidels, his 
 wife and children to assassins, his daughter to exile, Roderic 
 to ignominy, himself to perdition. Perhaps, there is no other 
 example of sublime despair, of imperturbable grief, of lofty 
 impenitence in any literature. But it is unnatural. We cannot 
 conceive the existence of Landor's Julian in the world of fact, 
 and in the world of art only as a monumental myth out of all 
 character with the compatibilities of mediaeval existence. 
 
 Landor was so wedded to classical forms as to dramatize the 
 life of Giovanna of Naples under the form of a trilogy, the 
 first play culminating in the murder of her husband, Andrea 
 
 12 
 
1 78 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 of Hungary ; the second in the trial of the queen before Rienzi 
 at Rome j the third in the fall of Fra Rupert. His design 
 was to rescue the fair queen from the cloud of suspicion under 
 which she labours, conjointly with her Scottish cousin, of 
 having been concerned in the plot which so summarily dis- 
 posed of her husband. But Landor's success was by no means 
 equal to the chivalry of the effort. He would not write for 
 living England, but for dead Athens ; not for the present 
 generation, but for a state of society more than two thousand 
 years consigned to dust. Hence the greatest characters of the 
 eighteenth century — Petrarch, Rienzi, Boccacio — are summoned 
 before us ; kingdoms are revolutionized ; a lovely queen loses 
 her throne, and goes through a succession of adventures, with- 
 out exciting in us the slightest interest. All the characters 
 seem cut out of the same block of granite ; and as they are 
 found at the beginning, they remain to the end. His heroes 
 never shape events : they are simply kicked about by circum- 
 stance, and only speculate upon whatever card that unspiritual 
 god chooses to turn up. 
 
 Everything in the nature of action is supposed to take place 
 behind the scenes. The reader knows nothing of any catas- 
 trophe which may be in course of preparation, until it bursts 
 upon him from the secret laboratory of Fate. By this con- 
 trivance he is relieved of a certain amount of anxious suspense. 
 He is also enabled to get through the most sensational page of 
 the thirteenth century history, without experiencing a single 
 feeling of vulgar interest. This was, to use Landor's phrase, 
 treading down Alfieri at the heel. It was also treading down 
 the patience of his readers. The trilogy, therefore, is the 
 most unreadable portion of Landor's works. It is simply 
 unintelligible without a reference to the history of the period, 
 nor has it any form of dramatic life beyond that of imaginary 
 conversations. 
 
 How far Landor, had he given up his classical theories, 
 I would have been successful in this branch of his art, it is really 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 
 
 impossible to say. He lacks pathos. He also exhibits no % 
 sense of the facetious. His histrionic mask evinces neither 
 tears nor risibility. In particular passages, especially where there 
 is room for statuesque display, he is very effective, as where 
 Julian in the hour of victory confesses his own misery before 
 the ruined Roderic, whom he has dethroned : — 
 
 I stand abased before insulting crime. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 The hand that hurl'd thy chariot o'er its wheels, 
 That held thy steeds erect and motionless 
 As molten statues on some palace-gate, 
 Shakes as with palsied age before thee now.* 
 
 And in his " Andrea of Hungary," where Caraffa gives vent to 
 his passion for what he cannot enjoy : — 
 
 The pagan 
 Who heaves up JEtna. * * 
 
 * * * is better off than I am : 
 He groans upon the bed where lies his torment, 
 
 I very far away from where lies mine.t 
 
 And where the same speaker again avows his love for Giovanna : 
 
 He who thinks little of such perfection, 
 Has left his thoughts among the worms which creep 
 In charnel-houses, among brainless skulls, 
 Dry bones without a speck of blood or thread 
 Of fibre, ribs that never cased a heart. 
 ***** 
 
 Even rocks and stones 
 Would split, if my heart's fire were pent within. J 
 
 In a dramatic sketch intended to reproduce the events 
 connected with the deaths of Cleopatra and Antony, a subject 
 more germane to his taste than the mediaeval subjects he was 
 always attempting to force into Greek frames, there are some 
 
 * Act iv., sc. i. + Act ii., sc. v. J Act ii., sc. vi. 
 
180 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 passages which would do credit to the Elizabethan dramatists, 
 as where Gallus indicates to Csesar his preference for his native 
 country : — 
 
 Give me the banks of Arico, where young Spring, 
 Who knows not half the names of her own flowers, 
 Looks into Summer's eyes, and wakes him up 
 Alert, and laughs at him until he lifts 
 His rod of roses, and she runs away.* 
 
 And again in his description of Cleopatra : — 
 
 Tho' more than thrice seven years have come, and stolen 
 Day after day a leaf or two of bloom, 
 She has but changed her beauty ; the soft tears 
 Fall, one would think, to make it bloom afresh, t 
 
 Equally characteristic is what I may call his bust of Julius 
 Caesar : — 
 
 Well I remember that high-exalted brow, 
 Those eyes of eagle under it, those lips 
 At which the senate and the people stood 
 Expectant for their portals to unclose ; 
 Then speech, not womanly, but manly sweet, 
 Came from them, and shed pleasure as the moon 
 Sheds light. + 
 
 But such passages are rare ; and even were they frequent, 
 still, being discontinuous, insulated, and fragmentary, uncon- 
 nected with any principles of consecutive action or philosophy, 
 they would not entitle their author to a high place among his 
 contemporaries. 
 
 That a writer so constituted as Landor, with fitful emotions 
 and no great depth of intellect, should, like Prior, have 
 amused himself with pelting bits of satire at the men and things 
 which came in his way, and enshrining in verse any incident 
 
 * "Scenes for a Study." + Idem. % Idem. 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 181 
 
 which captivated his attention, from the fall of a fan to the 
 discovery of a planet, was a matter of course. These vers de 
 societe constitute the greater portion of the books entitled 
 "Heroic Idyls" and the "Fruits of an Old Tree," and the 
 complete portion of the work which appeared under the sin- 
 gular name of " Dry Sticks Faggoted." Some of these verses, 
 miscellaneous and fugitive in their nature, will bear comparison 
 with any similar effusions in the language. Occasionally we get 
 the caustic irony of Swift : — 
 
 How soon, alas ! the hours are over, 
 
 Counted us out to play the lover ! 
 
 And how much narrower is the stage, 
 
 Allotted us to play the sage ! 
 
 But when we play the fool, how wide 
 
 The theatre expands ; beside, 
 
 How long the audience sits before us, 
 
 How many prompters ! what a chorus ! 
 
 But the most numerous in the collection enshrine the fleeting 
 feminine attachments which constituted the staple charm of his 
 life :— 
 
 Soon, O Ianthe ! life is o'er, 
 And sooner beauty's heavenly smile : 
 
 Kiss only, and I ask no more, 
 Let love remain that little while. 
 
 And again : — 
 
 It often comes into my head 
 
 That we may dream when we are dead, 
 
 But I am far from sure we do ; 
 O that it were so ! — then my rest 
 Would ever be among the blest, 
 
 For I should ever dream of you. 
 
 But sometimes these occasional verses soar above the region 
 of mere wit, and a tinge of melancholy sinks the thought deep 
 into the heart, as in lines written while sitting in his room, as 
 was his wont, without candles, while night was coming on : — 
 
182 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 My pictures blacken in their frames, 
 
 As night comes on, 
 And youthful maids and wrinkled dames 
 
 Are now all gone. 
 
 Death of the day ! — a sterner death 
 
 Did worse before : 
 The fairest form and balmiest breath 
 
 Away he bore. 
 
 And in the sorrowful lines in which he confesses his incom- 
 petency to renew a past amour : — 
 
 No, my own love of other years, 
 
 No, it must never be ! 
 Much rests with you that yet endears — 
 
 Alas ! but what with me ? 
 
 Could those bright years o'er me revolve 
 
 So gay, o'er you so fair, 
 The pearl of life we would dissolve, 
 
 And each the cup might share. 
 
 You show that truth can ne'er decay, 
 
 Whatever fate befalls ; 
 I, that the myrtle and the bay 
 
 Shoot fresh o'er ruined walls. 
 
 The bitterness of his feelings with regard to his private feuds 
 could not be suppressed even in his address to the place, near 
 Bath, which he had chosen for his last resting-place : — 
 
 Widcombe ! few seek with thee their resting-place, 
 But I, when I have run my weary race, 
 
 Will throw my bones upon thy churchyard turf ; 
 Although malignant waves on foreign shore 
 Have stranded me, and I shall lift no more 
 
 My hoary head above the hissing surf. 
 
 But the merit of the greater portion of these pieces consists 
 not so much in the novelty or beauty of the thought, as in 
 melody of rhythm and aptitude of expression. Had he written 
 nothing else than these, they would have earned for him a very 
 
CLASSICAL SCHOOL. 183 
 
 good place among the fugitive verse writers of his language, 
 but nothing more. 
 
 h Landor's true place among the poets of this century should, 
 therefore, hardly rise above the boundary line which separates 
 the lowest assignable division of his art. In expressing in 
 verse, as a sculptor in marble, any momentary embodiment of 
 passion, or a group of figures in statuesque attitudes, perhaps . 
 no writer has excelled Landor. But poetry has to do, not with ] 
 fixed phases of passion, not with stereotyped forms of beauty 
 limited to points of time and space, but with progressive 
 development of being, which soars beyond the boundaries of 
 the present, and claims past and future worlds for its province. 
 The imagination which would make the fortune of an artist or a 
 sculptor, would form a very poor pittance for a poet. The 
 triumph of the one is confined to fixing one fleeting moment 
 of existence within a certain few inches of space. He is the 
 slave of the clock, and cannot get out of his private room. 
 But the other drags time, with all its baggage, at his chariot- 
 wheels like a conqueror, and finds illimitable space too narrow 
 for his conceptions. His imagination overleaps the walls of 
 creation. The universe is but a scroll in his hands. 
 
 
84 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 o 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 
 
 gjprjr*. 
 
 NE of the great features of the poetry of the eighteenth 
 century was the predominance of words over thoughts, 
 of style over substance, of the mere polish of language over 
 the matter conveyed. Poets did not deal with topics of every- 
 day life, or with those objects which new forms of civilization 
 were constantly bringing into view ; but with the old themes, 
 with which they had no relationship, except through the 
 medium of the fancy, and which they could only clothe with 
 freshness by imparting to them a new dress. Even Thomson 
 cannot describe the approach of Spring without imaging her 
 as a goddess descending like the nymph in a transformation 
 scene, in a galaxy of roses from a cloud ; or so comnion a sub- 
 ject as a pattering spring shower, without anticipating the style 
 of Delia Crusca : — 
 
 At last 
 
 The clouds consign their treasures to the fields, 
 
 And softly shaking on the dimpled pool 
 
 Prelusive drops, let all their moisture flow 
 
 In large effusion o'er the feathered world. 
 
 Cowper, who dealt with some of the commonest incidents ot 
 his life, and who even did not think the knitting-needles of 
 Mrs. Unwin below the subject of his muse, is more remark- 
 able for the raciness and elegant force of his language than for 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 185 
 
 the boldness of his imagination or the newness of his thoughts. 
 His sphere was too confined, his intellectual horizon too 
 restricted, to enable him to do more than merely point out 
 the direction in which the change should be made. The 
 Wartons attempted, on the other hand, to impart a new phase 
 to the poetry of the epoch by an infusion of the Gothic 
 element, but did really nothing more than bring fresh orna- 
 ments to the treatment of the old range of subjects. Poetry 
 never got further with them than Odes to Fancy, Contempla- 
 tions in Solitude, Addresses to Morning, and all those subjects 
 which the poet sports with in his fancy, rather than enters into 
 with his heart. Burns is the only poet who sang as it were 
 out of the necessities of his nature. He extended Cowper's 
 realistic treatment, and sculptured all his experiences in verse. 
 But from his limited culture, he only effected a reform. It 
 needed men of wider range of thought, of more comprehensive 
 sympathy, and more commanding eminence, to achieve a 
 revolution. Wordsworth was the first writer who struck the 
 balance between the naked conceptions and mere verbal 
 or adventitious ornaments of poetry ; and Byron the first poeti 
 who actually inverted the old position of things, by showing 
 how ideas may outstrip language by the very impetuosity of 
 the fountain from which they have their source. On they 
 shoulders of these two men, the mantle of poetry sat as the 
 visible raiment of their souls ; and, perhaps, the history of any 
 literature, certainly that of our own, does not present another 
 instance of two contemporary bards occupying so high an 
 eminence in their art, unconsciously conspiring to effect the 
 same revolution, yet treading in paths so opposite to each other. 
 Byron and Wordsworth, though moving in spheres of thought 
 so divergent, were the resultants of the same forces acting upon 
 different temperaments, in one direction. The French Revo- 
 lution had taught inquiring minds to examine into everything, 
 and irreverent minds to obey the ruling impulse of the hour, 
 with a blind fanaticism. The mere babyism of literature, the 
 
1 86 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 display of tinsel decorations without spiritual substance, could 
 no longer be endured. Wordsworth entered upon his new 
 mission with a strong moral will, every thought repugnant to 
 which was only called up to receive merited castigation ; 
 Byron, with an intensity of passion which could brook no 
 restraint, and which was the more indulged, because he felt the 
 rottenness and insincerity of most of the barriers which society 
 opposed to its gratification. The muse of Wordsworth found 
 a home in sounding the depths of philosophy, in unveiling the 
 analogies which bind the material and the spiritual universe into 
 one system ; that of Byron, in laying bare the intricate mazes 
 of the feelings, in fathoming the darker recesses of the human 
 heart, in displaying nature in its grandest energies, whether as 
 imaged in the sea-storm and mountain tempest, or in the 
 tumults of the soul, aroused from its lethargies by the allure- 
 ments of heroic enterprise or passionate guilt. Society, to 
 Wordsworth, was governed by recondite moral laws ; to Byron, 
 it was the sport of chance. Wordsworth saw in the physical 
 universe the temple of the soul, with all things munificently 
 arranged therein for its security and happiness. Byron, though 
 acknowledging in the material world certain fixed laws, saw 
 little relationship in these laws to man, beyond the product of 
 a large amount of discomfort and misery. Wordsworth in- 
 veighed against human institutions, as the only fount of the 
 evils which afflicted society. Byron went considerably further, 
 including nature in the record, and carrying the arraignment 
 up to the throne of God Himself. 
 
 It is, however, in relation to Christianity that the intellectual 
 discrepancy of the two men is most apparent. Wordsworth 
 regarded the religious institutions of the country as the very ark 
 of humanity ; Byron, as mere spiritual shams, rather obstacles to 
 be removed than levers to help men forward in their progressive 
 course to a nobler future. Wordsworth believed in rites and for- 
 mularies as the outer embodiments of the Christian spirit j Byron 
 seems to have believed that such spirit was dead, and that its 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 187 
 
 rites and formularies were encumbering ground which ought to 
 be taken up with new creations, more germane to that universal 
 brotherhood of love which such formularies tended rather to 
 extinguish than develope. Wordsworth appeared to think that 
 creeds should be estimated by the quantity of abstract or absolute 
 truth they conveyed ; Byron, by their fitness to the wants of the 
 epoch : 
 
 Religions die out every thousand years, 
 
 Or need a new refreshment from the spheres. 
 
 Both held that the outer universe partook in a large degree of 
 the effulgence, if not of the nature, of the Divinity. But 
 Wordsworth expressly maintained that the human soul, pure 
 at its birth, encountered no temptations to evil but those from 
 without ; while Byron regarded it as smitten with disease in 
 its source, and subject to internal impulses to crime which 
 it could not resist. It is singular that Wordsworth, though so 
 persistent a supporter of Christian formularies, should have 
 entertained convictions diametrically at war with them j while 
 Byron, who repudiated such formularies, held opinions which 
 to a great extent afforded them a dogmatic basis ! 
 
 There cannot, I think, be a doubt that the field of Byron's 
 triumphs was much more adapted to the spirit of poetry than 
 that chosen by Wordsworth, since the sphere of passion breathing, 
 the sentiments of the heart, is more capable of being idealized 
 than that of reflection, the province of the brain. Nor can there, 
 I think, be a doubt that Byron displayed in his higher poetical 
 sphere, his superiority to Wordsworth in the limited province 
 within which that poet confined himself. Had Byron in the 
 treatments of his subjects only equalled Wordsworth, he must 
 have evinced greater powers than his contemporary, as his was a 
 higher range of art. But Byron's superiority is evinced by the 
 fact that he frequently combines passion with grand bursts of 
 reflection, while Wordsworth never disturbs the limpid stream 
 of reflection by grand bursts of passion. In "The Excursion" 
 it would be impossible to produce a line which conveys, with the 
 
1 88 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 rapidity of a conductor, electric shocks of feeling to the depths 
 of the heart. But " Childe Harold," while crowded with such 
 passages, exhibits in the last two cantos as much psychological 
 analysis as would furnish a very good chapter of metaphysics. 
 The commanding powers of Byron led him through a much wider 
 range of subjects than Wordsworth, and enabled him to obtain 
 superior excellence in all. Satire was so alien to Wordsworth's 
 nature that he was utterly incapacitated from attempting it ; but 
 satire was a department in which Byron excelled. Wordsworth 
 only tried his hand at one narrative poem, which has the unlucky 
 distinction of being the worst in the language ; * Byron wrote 
 several, and nearly all of first-class excellence. Wordsworth wrote 
 only one play, which has never been acted, and which no one 
 cares to read ; Byron wrote many, which, though only of second- 
 rate merit, had, and still possess, a certain amount of popularity. 
 In lyrical poetry, the comparison is still more to the disadvan- 
 tage of Wordsworth, who can hardly be said to have tried this 
 department of his art, in which Byron covered himself with 
 glory. In the sonnet and reflective poem, I confess Words- 
 worth's superiority; but these belong to a lower range of art than 
 the narrative, the lyrical, and dramatic sphere, in which Byron 
 infinitely distanced his competitor. As reflective poets, the 
 difference between Byron and Wordsworth, to the advantage of 
 the latter, is not half so great as the difference between them, 
 to the advantage of the former, in any of the departments in 
 which Byron pre-eminently excelled. That difference appears 
 to me to consist in this : that, whereas the reflections of Byron's 
 hero are desultory, springing out of the country which Harold 
 visits, and the scenery and monuments with which he is brought 
 in contact, those of Wordsworth's heroes are systematic and 
 introspective — the principles expounded deriving their elucida- 
 tion rather from the general world of man than from the narrow 
 specifications of time and place. Wordsworth's reflections are the 
 product of the mind reposing on the heights of abstract thought, 
 
 * "The White Doe of Rylstone." 
 

 ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 189 
 
 descending occasionally for illustration among the range of 
 material phenomena, upon which it habitually looks as from a 
 lofty eminence ; those of Byron have their mainspring in mate- 
 rial phenomena, though their flights are often so Titanic as 
 to seem to touch the threshold of heaven. They are, taken 
 singly, in point of artistic finish and glowing beauty, grander 
 than anything of a similar character in Wordsworth. But when 
 we consider their straggling nature, and their utter want of sub- 
 servience to a moral aim, the superiority of his rival becomes 
 manifest. Wordsworth moves through the regions of specula- 
 tion self-supporting, with his thoughts revolving on their own 
 axis, shaping his course with a fixed design, regulated by the 
 attraction of the moral law ; Byron, like a meteor which fre- 
 quently returns to its volcanic source to be replenished with 
 light, but shedding a far fuller though a more erratic blaze than 
 his contemporary. But there are so many inconsistencies in 
 Wordsworth, he is so prolix, he pins his faith to so many obso- 
 lete institutions, believes in so many exploded fallacies, that 
 his system of concatenated thought loses much of its ex- 
 cellence even as a work of art ; while the dashing vigour of 
 Byron, the intensity of force arising from his concentrated' 
 earnestness, his absolute freedom from the fetters of prejudice,* 
 his manner of allying feeling with reflection, of illuminating his 
 subjects rather with the flashes of wit than with the slower 
 processes of the reason, — all these go far to make up for the 
 disjointed and fragmentary nature of his reflections, which the 
 structure of his poem, no less than that of his own mental consti- 
 tution, imposed upon him. For Byron appears to have been 
 incapable of digesting his thoughts into a system upon any 
 subject. So far, his inferiority to Wordsworth is immense. 
 Could he have done so, his poetic illustration of his principles 
 would have surpassed even that of his rival. This, however, 
 is the province of the reason preparing the ground for the 
 poet, rather than that of the poet himself. And in all the 
 essential constituents of poetry, apart from its moral end and 
 
190 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 aesthetic completeness, " Childe Harold " need not fear com- 
 parison with "The Excursion." But " Childe Harold " is by 
 no means the most eminent of Byron's productions in the same 
 sense in which " The Excursion " is the first of Wordsworth's 
 productions. Had Byron written nothing else than this poem, 
 he would have been entitled to a place in the same group as 
 Wordsworth, if not upon a higher seat. For no meditative 
 poem, deriving its topics from an objective source, ever 
 accomplished half so much. The hero is brought in contact 
 with every scene which suggests the most stirring events of the 
 antique and modern world, and the cast of his thoughts 
 impart even dignity to the ennobling associations he recalls. 
 The sublimity of Swiss scenery, illumined by the genius of the 
 men who from its quiet recesses revolutionized the spirit of 
 modern society ; the proud chivalry of Spain, peeping, like a 
 landscape behind ruins, through the vista of moral debasement ; 
 the classical sternness of Greece rebuking from her broken 
 Parthenon and rifled Theseus the fantastic barbarism of her 
 invaders ; the solemn grandeur of Rome mocked by the 
 triumphs of Christian art ; the festivities of Venice associating 
 the glories of the middle ages with modern degeneracy j — all 
 these are mirrored forth in the poet's mind with such distinct- 
 ness as to make the pigmy features of the present fade before 
 the mighty phases of the past, and bring those aspects of 
 humanity nearest to us which are most worthy of being re- 
 membered. The fourth canto of " Childe Harold," for what it 
 accomplishes in so small a compass, is indeed a marvel of art 
 unapproached and unapproachable in its abstract grandeur, 
 like that gigantic power the poet attempts to reconstruct, and 
 from the ruins of which he derives his text for the instruction 
 of the nations. For Byron, in this canto, not only etherealizes 
 .some of the most bewitching scenery of Italy, till it assumes 
 the hues of a crystalline landscape, — he not only untombs the 
 ancient crowds of the Capitol, and bids them live again, surging 
 round the forum of the tribune, or awakening with their shouts 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 191 
 
 the sleeping recesses of the Flavian amphitheatre, — he not 
 only invests every phase of that commonwealth which con- 
 quered the world, with a freshness, as if it were present, and 
 with an ideality which retains the material in subservience to 
 its spiritual aspects ; but the poet lays bare with the dissecting- 
 knife of the psychologist all those laws of the mind by which 
 these wonders are accomplished. In this canto Byron is 
 poet, philosopher, historian, artist, moralist, antiquarian, and 
 metaphysician. The soul is thrown back upon itself, its 
 spiritual recesses explored, and the occult links revealed by 
 which external objects arouse its passions or absorb its sympa- 
 thies. When he turns to the objective world, with what power 
 does he strike off in a few lines the spiritual features of Greek 
 art, steeping the productions of the genius of antiquity in the 
 glowing colours of his own mind, until they appear invested 
 with new splendour : — 
 
 There, too, the Goddess loves in stone, and fills 
 The air around with beauty ; we inhale 
 The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils 
 Part of its immortality ; the veil 
 Of heaven is half undrawn ; within the pale 
 We stand, and in that form and face behold 
 What Mind can make, when Nature's self would fail ; 
 And to the fond idolaters of old 
 Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould : 
 
 We gaze and turn away, and know not where, 
 Dazzled and drunk with beauty. * * 
 
 * # * * * * 
 
 Appear'dst thou not to Paris in this guise ? 
 Or to more deeply-blest Anchises ? or, 
 In all thy perfect goddess-ship, when lies 
 Before thee thy own vanquished Lord of War, 
 And gazing in thy face as toward a star, 
 Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn, 
 Feeding on thy sweet cheek ! while thy lips are 
 With lava kisses melting while they burn, 
 Showered on his eyelids, brow, and mouth, as from an urn ! 
 
192 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love, 
 Their full divinity inadequate 
 That feeling to express, or to improve, 
 The gods become as mortals, and man's fate 
 Has moments like their brightest ; but the weight 
 Of earth recoils upon us ; — let it go ! 
 We can recall such visions, and create, 
 From what has been, or might be, things which grow 
 Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below. * 
 
 The conceptions of the sculptor are here again moulded into 
 language with the same force as they are expressed in stone : — 
 
 Or, turning to the Vatican, go see 
 Laocoon's torture dignifying pain — 
 A father's love and mortal's agony 
 With an immortal's patience blending ; — vain 
 The struggle ; vain, against the coiling' strain 
 And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, 
 The old man's clench ; the long envenomed chain 
 Rivets the living links, — the enormous asp 
 Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp. 
 
 Or view the lord of the unerring bow, 
 The god of life, and poesy, and light — 
 The Sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow 
 All radiant from his triumph in the fight ; 
 The shaft has just been shot — the arrow bright 
 With an immortal's vengeance ; in his eye 
 And nostril beautiful disdain, and might, 
 And majesty, flash their full lightnings by, 
 Developing in that one glance the Deity. 
 
 But in his delicate form — a dream of love, 
 Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast 
 Long'd for a deathless lover from above, 
 And maddened in that vision — are expressed 
 All that ideal beauty ever blessed 
 The mind with in its most unearthly mood, 
 When each conception was a heavenly guest — 
 
 * C. iv., sts. 49—52. 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 193 
 
 A ray of immortality — and stood, 
 Starlike, around, until they gathered to a god ! * 
 
 After familiarizing us with the grandest organism in the 
 world of man, he confronts us with the grandest element in 
 the world of nature. The ocean has always been a familiar 
 theme with poets, but surely none has ever risen to the full 
 height of the subject like Lord Byron. It is hardly too much 
 to say, that if the grandeur and dignity of Rome derives 
 increased state and dignity when reflected in the glowing 
 depths of his mind, the sublimity of the ocean derives 
 renewed force from the grandeur of the images with which he 
 has invested it : — 
 
 Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form, 
 Glasses itself in tempests ! * * * 
 
 The image of Eternity — the throne 
 Of the Invisible ; even out of thy slime 
 The monsters of the deep are made ; each zone 
 Obeys thee * * * * 
 
 The armaments which thunderstrike the walls 
 Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, 
 And monarchs tremble in their capitals, 
 The oak leviathans, * * * 
 
 These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, 
 They melt into thy yeast of waves. 
 
 The majesty of Rome among civic structures, as the sublimity 
 of the ocean among earthly elements, is supreme, but Byron 
 has surrounded both with the grandeur of genius which is 
 superior to either. 
 
 There are poets, first-class in their own department, who are 
 not, and never could become, representative poets in any wide 
 sense. Wordsworth could never represent anything out of 
 himself. He seldom gives us the properties of anything he 
 
 * C. iv., sts. 160 — 2. 
 
 13 
 
194 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 describes, but only his own way of looking at it And even of 
 representative poets in a wider sense, some, like Scott, can only 
 represent a peculiar section of the past, and others, like Crabbe, 
 a peculiar feature of the present. They apply their minds to 
 master the groundwork of some segment of humanity, they 
 study the upholstery of their subject, and achieve their results 
 as much by the force of talent as by the strokes of genius. 
 But Byron is a representative poet in the highest sense. He 
 is a more general representative poet of the past than Scott, 
 and a far wider representative poet of the present than Crabbe ; 
 in fact, he is a representative poet in the same sense as 
 Shakespeare was a representative poet, for he represents the 
 past as well as the present, not indeed any partial cutting, but 
 the whole structure of the age he would describe from copestone 
 to base, the sorrows as well as the joys, the laughter and the 
 groans of fleeting generations. In "Werner," we have Germany 
 staggering under the blows of the Thirty Years' war; in 
 " Marino Faliero," the pride of the Italian republic; in "The 
 Two Foscari, , ' the bloody factions of Venice; in "Sardanapalus," 
 Nineveh tottering in the lap of effeminacy; in "Childe Harold,"| 
 Rome stereotyped in all the splendour of her prime, just as the) 
 juicy succulence of her prosperity was mellowing into the first 
 tinge of decay. I readily allow that his dramatic delineations 
 are of an inferior order of merit, just as some of the historical 
 plays of Shakespeare are of an inferior order of merit. But if 
 Byron is beneath many of his rivals in depicting the past, he 
 is superior to any in depicting the present ; for no poet has left 
 behind so faithful and general a portraiture of the lineaments 
 of his age as that which Byron has drawn of the nineteenth 
 century in " Don Juan." 
 
 Chaucer was a representative poet, but he only represented 
 the state of English society contemporary with himself. 
 Dante was a representative poet, but he only represented the 
 religious aspects of his age. Spenser and Ariosto were repre- 
 sentative poets, but only of mediaeval chivalry. Byron is 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 195 
 
 indeed the only one of the class who has extended his canvas 
 over so broad an area as to embrace in one picture the manners 
 of various countries, and of conflicting civilizations : Russia, 
 Turkey, Greece, Spain, England, succeed each other in this 
 wonderful panorama, with the habits and courts of their people 
 so faithfully sketched, that the portraiture bears all the stamp 
 of living reality. Shipwrecks, land sieges and battles, political 
 intrigues, harem strifes, piratical adventures, feminine coteries, 
 love-making without end, fashionable parties, states' embassies, 
 parliamentary ambitions, are each treated in a tone ever 
 changing from grave to gay, facetious banter giving place to 
 biting ridicule, and both alike alternating with exquisite pathos 
 and deep philosophical reflection, till it is really difficult to deter- 
 mine which spirit most prevails, the mocking satire of Swift, the 
 quiet raillery of Steele, the deep reflection of Young, the gushing 
 tenderness of Rousseau, or the grave morality of Johnson. The 
 powers of the poet are not less diversified than the scenes and 
 characters he describes, though these are of every imaginable 
 order. Wherever we move, the stage is always crowded with 
 figures so distinct and palpable, that, though the creatures of 
 the poet's brain, we firmly believe they have their prototypes 
 in the real world around us. For they manifest the same 
 selfishness, the same scepticism, the same voluptuousness, 
 the same ardent spirit oi" inquiry, and the same reckless , 
 adventure which moulds the souls or directs the energies 
 of most of the actors in the nineteenth century. The 
 poet has really held his mirror up to nature — shown 
 "vice her own deformity, virtue her own image, and every 
 circumstance and habit of the time its form and pres- 
 sure." We hardly know. which to admire most, that cordial 
 sympathy with which he enters into every condition and rank^ 
 of life, that world-embracing instinct for the aesthetic and the 
 true, under every sky, to which his conceptions owe much 
 of their inborn fire and energy, or the spontaneous burst of 
 classical language, unsurpassed for its chaste vigour and flexile 
 
196 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 sinuosity of strength, in which those conceptions are enshrined. 
 In reading Spenser, we never get out of the world of 
 ideality and romance. He never impresses us with the 
 reality of his conceptions, and though there is music in 
 his swelling cadences of the loftiest kind, and diversity in 
 his characters, it is a music and diversity which repeat them- 
 selves in one unvarying round. But Byron is ever passing with 
 untired wing from the world of imagination to the world of fact, 
 equally supreme in both spheres; and when the last symphony 
 dies away, or the previous actors disappear, it is only to give pro- 
 minence to still more novel combinations of the ideal and the 
 actual. I do not, therefore, think the critic will be far wrong 
 in placing " Don Juan " on the topmost shelf of English litera- 
 ture, as the grandest representative poem in any language. I feel 
 sure, if Englishmen were asked to select which of their literary 
 treasures they would place first in order, the choice would fall 
 on four or five of the leading dramas of Shakespeare ; and 
 if pressed to point out which they would select next, that 
 work would be "Paradise Lost;" but I feel as sure, if their 
 selection was put to a third proof, their choice would fall on 
 " Don Juan." 
 
 To urge the incompleteness of" Don Juan " as a defect would 
 be pre-eminently unfair, as it was evidently a work in progress, 
 and the four cantos which Byron wrote in Greece were destroyed 
 for fear of wounding the fashionable susceptibilities in whose 
 flesh the shafts of his ridicule had most rankled.* If the poem 
 is purposeless, so far is it true to the age it would represent. 
 
 * The fearful Vandalism of this act, as well as the destruction of the 
 Memoirs, in consenting to which Moore displayed his usual cringing sub- 
 servience to aristocratic influence, is not paralleled in literary history. Can 
 any one contemplate without indignation the chef-d'oeuvre of one of the 
 first geniuses of any age or country ruthlessly truncated, and posterity thus 
 cheated out of one of its chief treasures, in order that the cream of Lord 
 H.'s equanimity may not be ruffled, or Lady K.'s singular notions of 
 propriety may be supported before the world? 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 197 
 
 For what era could be more aimless than the first quarter of 
 the nineteenth century ? The Napoleonic wars had just been 
 concluded, without settling, and without being intended to 
 settle, anything. The English nation had been fooled into 
 spending its best blood, and taxing the energies of myriads 
 yet unborn with hundreds of millions of debt, simply for the 
 extinction of one man. Could anything have been more cruelly 
 purposeless than that ? No spiritual results had been achieved, 
 or indeed so much as aimed at. The highest embodiments of 
 statesmanship were beheld in the Percevals, and the Castle- 
 reaghs, under whom was carried out the great political juggle 
 of the time — the union of England and Ireland, which was 
 supposed to be consummated by the exclusion of nearly the 
 whole of her population from the commonest civil rights. The 
 high-road of national inquiry ended everywhere in the quag- 
 mire of scepticism. Nothing was valued except money, nothing 
 appreciated save pleasure, nothing believed in but success. 
 Those grand iron pathways, yoking steam and fire to the 
 subservience of man's higher destinies, those electric nerves 
 flashing his intelligence under seas, and making the impulses 
 of his will felt almost as soon as they were conceived, at the 
 antipodes, by which the century has done much to redeem its 
 lack of soul, and spiritual remissness, had not arisen. The 
 moral laxity inspired by a protracted war had flung back the 
 energies of the soul, in the absence of any other vent, upon 
 sensuous enjoyments, and the coarsest of these were covered by 
 the thin gauze of conventional propriety, which often presented 
 vice in the garb of religion. To reflect all these inconsistencies, 
 the bard must pursue a course equally erratic with that of the 
 age which he describes. He must appear to have no design 
 beyond what momentary impulse inspires ; he must launch his 
 hero, as it were, upon the wave of chance, and make him the 
 victim of the chapter of accidents, the product of an age which 
 seems to have lost all belief in the control of a superintending 
 Providence. ^ ■ ^ 
 
 f T*' Of ' r \ 
 
 UNIVERSITY J 
 
198 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 But in reality, so far is u Don Juan " from being purposeless, 
 that under its seemingly erratic surface there lies an object of 
 grand significance. The aim of this poem is to unmask hypo- 
 % crisy, to silence superstition, to dethrone the popular idols and 
 the spiritual shams so grossly misleading the people of the day. 
 The object of the poet was to turn a shallow world inside-out, to 
 show the social weaknesses lurking behind its apparent strength, 
 and occasionally to electrify it by glimpses into the infinite depths 
 of the spiritual element of which it was only an empty bubble on 
 the surface. If here a ghostly pretension was exposed, if there 
 a political blunder was laughed out of countenance, — if in one 
 place he transfixed with his shaft the heartlessness of pompous 
 conventionality turning poor human nature shivering out of 
 doors, if in another he derides dogmatic formularies which kill 
 the Christian spirit, of which they affect to be the living exponent, 
 — all this was only to array in more attractive colours the 
 sublimities of man's spiritual nature, and the grandeur of the 
 outer universe beating in symphony with it, a combination of 
 glory upon which God had set His seal, revealing in its effulgent 
 hieroglyphs the high destinies to which man might aspire, could 
 he read his own nature aright, and not be deluded by the 
 wretched scrawls blurred over the divine page by prejudice and 
 custom. Byron does not propound, or appear himself to have 
 formed, any systematic notion of the revelation in the palimp- 
 sest ; but by erasing the absurdities on the surface, here and 
 there, we get flashes of meaning glittering underneath, which 
 shed a baleful glare on the delusions above, as the marble 
 pavement of a Roman bath, when exhumed from the rubbish of 
 centuries, reflects a broader light upon the barbarisms by which 
 it has been concealed. It is these startling contrasts between 
 the loftier yearnings of man's nature and the hollow mockeries 
 of society which constitute alike the object and the charm 
 of " Don Juan." The poet never destroys except to reveal. The 
 outer frivolities of the poem are only a vehicle for the deepest 
 earnestness wherewith the poet arraigns the institutions of his 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 199 
 
 age, and would make their misshapen materials but the stepping- 
 stones on which men might rise to higher things. 
 
 The charge of immorality alleged against this noble poem , 
 seems to me to be founded on a wrong notion of art, which 
 in its representative character is bound to reflect all the 
 features of its subject. It would be trite at this time of day 
 to assert that all unchaste painting must be regarded from 
 the object in view, and if this be not to excite lascivious ideas, 
 but to present human nature in all its aspects, the picture is 
 clearly justifiable. But people who deride conventual notions 
 in real life, do not scruple to espouse such notions with zealous 
 enthusiasm when they enter into the domain of art. Instead of 
 making that domain include the whole of the actual and infinite 
 existences beyond, they would restrict its functions to the 
 representation of such bleak natures as never wandered beyond 
 the walls of gloomy asceticism. If in artistic representation, 
 passion is to be struck out of the heart of man, and he is to be 
 depicted in no scenes except where he is the willing instrument 
 of the virtues or the mere automaton of the intellect, there 
 must be an end of artistic representation altogether; for 
 nothing indeed would then be represented as it is, but every- 
 thing as it is not It is not for the poet, to assume the gown 
 and bands of the moral preacher, when he delineates vice ; nor 
 ought he to dwell any longer on the lascivious than is sufficient 
 for the truthfulness of the representation, or to make such 
 pictures more frequent than is required for the faithful 
 portraiture of his subject. Now Byron was too consummate 
 an artist to overstep the boundaries of nature in any of these 
 particulars, and in the loosest of his pictures he never stoops to 
 those obscene expressions of which we find so many examples 
 in the Elizabethan dramatists, the Georgian novelists, and 
 Leonine poets, although his age cloaked a far greater amount 
 of vice under a deeper garb of sanctity. If the poet, true to the 
 representative character of his poem, laid bare the disguise 
 with too rude a hand, he is no more on that account to be 
 
200 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 denounced as immoral, than Shakespeare is to be stigmatized 
 as immoral for the songs he puts into the mouth of Ophelia, or 
 the picture of lechery he displays in the loves of Edgar, or for 
 the loose language he puts into the mouth of I ago in the 
 opening scenes of " Othello," or of Lucio in the closing scenes 
 of " Measure for Measure." The aim of both was the exhibition 
 of human nature in all its aspects, — to give us actual men and 
 women, not the aspirations of angels mingled with the quint- 
 essence of brutes, not the monstrous abortions of Southey, with 
 all the vices arrayed in one group of characters and all the 
 virtues in the other. But Shakespeare never alludes to the 
 religious features of his subject without the greatest reverence. 
 The privilege is, therefore, extended to him of being as unchaste 
 as the nature of his subject required; whereas Byron, on 
 account of his slighting treatment of religious dogmas, is not 
 allowed to undrape a neck or an ankle without being assailed 
 with a cry of indignant remonstrance. 
 
 Considering Byron as the poet of passion in its intensest sense, 
 considering that there is hardly a poem of any magnitude he ever 
 wrote in which he does not depict love in its most fiery moods, 
 surging the depths of the heart like volcanic lava, and shatter- 
 ing in its throes the restraints of conscience and the sovereignty 
 of the reason j considering, likewise, the temptations of a mind 
 unfettered by religious influences or social restraints, to overleap 
 the boundaries of propriety, it is really wonderful that the poet 
 has thrown so much of his immortal nature into his delineations, 
 that he has succeeded far more powerfully than any other bard 
 in steeping this fiery quintessence of dust in such ethereal light 
 that, though employed upon objects of earth, it seems part of 
 that fire which Prometheus filched from heaven. This is, per- 
 haps, the most characteristic proof that the poet has given us 
 of his grand powers : that, while treating love in its most sen- 
 suous aspects, he has so etherealized the passion as to submerge 
 the corporeal in the spiritual element ; so that we get all the 
 charms of material enjoyment, lit up by the splendours of the 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 
 
 ideal world. Love in the pages of Beaumont and Fletcher, or 
 of Farquhar and Congreve, is a body without soul ; love in 
 the pages of Crashaw or More is a soul without body ; but love 
 in the pages of Byron is that union of both which makes the 
 soul the predominating feature, casting over the fires of its 
 corporeal agent that witchery of colour which leaves them 
 all their vigour while it deprives them of all their coarseness. 
 The loves, in "Lara" and " Conrad " are of an illegitimate* 
 character • but the fervour is so intense, the mutual interlacing 
 of passion is so spiritual, that we feel the body is but the passive 
 agent of the soul, imparting to it the dead aliment which 
 feeds the flame with undying lustre. It is sufficient to recall 
 what Camoens did with his island in the African waters, though 
 his lovers were chivalric seamen and ideal nymphs, and what 
 Byron did with his island in the South Seas, though his lovers 
 were bluff English sailors and the sensuous daughters of Ota- 
 heite, to prove that Byron could etherealize the most sensuous 
 subject, and that the spiritual features of love were those which 
 most dominated his soul. The picture in which we would expect 
 the most refinement has all the coarseness of a Wapping casino; 
 the other, in which we would expect to meet with the roughest 
 sensuality, has all the refinement of a group by Titian. The 
 fact is that the most licentious passion, in Byron's serious deli- 
 neations, assumes an ethereal flush which makes the material 
 element, even in its conquest over the higher powers of the 
 soul, partake of that soul's glorified nature, dispersed though it 
 be in fragmentary gleams ; somewhat like those conquerors who 
 have subjugated a country, only in turn to become the willing 
 slaves of those arts and laws they had shattered into ruin. For all 
 Byron's graver heroes, in their wildest of moods, lean only on one 
 breast. Theirs is an intensity of passion for one object which 
 defies time, or absence, or a multiplied surfeit of beauty, to 
 work any change except that of increased adoration for the form 
 with whose destiny their own is inseparably entwined. One 
 tithe of such devotion would make married life a paradise. 
 
202 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 tByron carries into the heart of what society deems the irregular 
 passions such fervour of spirit, and intensity of affection, as to 
 make his love burn with a light of unquenched ardour to which 
 the flames of conjugal affection are tame in comparison, and of 
 which, if society furnished us with more examples, the stigmas 
 so undeservedly applied to this feature of Lord Byron's poetry 
 would be less inconsistent. If he has sinned in anything, it is 
 in imparting to these attachments the durability and persistency 
 of the virtues. He has thrown around the wild fevers of un- 
 restrained love far more ethereal drapery, far loftier chastity of 
 colouring than the most strait-laced poets impart to the tamer 
 delineations of domestic felicity. The passions of his heroes 
 partake of the infinite. Their yearnings are never cloyed, but 
 increase in intensity as they experience repletion, because they 
 spring from the soul, whose longings after beauty are as unsa- 
 lable as its cravings for the divine source from which it derives 
 its birth. 
 
 Could Byron have grasped the ramifications of a compre- 
 hensive plot, could he have imparted symmetry of design to 
 miscellaneous materials arising out of the development of united 
 action, he might have surpassed Milton. Could he, in addition, 
 have created characters with grand spiritual physiognomies 
 evolved out of the incidents, and not merely panelled into the 
 descriptions of his pieces, he might have equalled Shakespeare. 
 But these were qualities in which Byron was most deficient. As 
 he lacked the power of systematizing his thoughts, he was 
 equally incompetent to melt down a mass of heterogeneous 
 materials in the crucible of his brain, and evolve therefrom 
 some great design, breathing throughout the romantic variety 
 and symmetrical proportion of its parts the grand unity of 
 the whole. The cantos of " Don Juan " are only connected 
 by the thread of the hero's name, which if we sever, all the 
 incidents, like so many beads on a string, would fall asunder 
 into so many pieces of isolated adventure. " Childe Harold " has 
 not even the poor advantage of this slender ligament ; for in 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 203 
 
 the first two cantos the hero is regarded as quite distinct from 
 the writer, and in the last two he is confounded with himself. 
 So in his dramas he seldom strays out of the framework 
 presented to him by history. He appears to have early felt the 
 lack of constructive powers in his purely narrative poems, and ' 
 to have thrown all his subsequent energies upon meditation and 
 description. The outline of the mutiny story is just what an ordi- 
 nary reader fresh from Bligh's narrative would have conceived. 
 The " Giaour " and the " Bride of Abydos," the poet's first at- 
 tempts at the concoction of anything like a plot, are perhaps the 
 worst constructed tales in any language. In the " Corsair " and 
 " Lara " he succeeds much better. But these poems, magnificent 
 as the Herculean torso in their incompleteness, are still only 
 fragments. They have no beginning; they are without an 
 end. The marvel is that Byron, without any sustained interest 
 arising out of the development of his plot, and with so little to 
 satisfy the reader in the denouement of his stories, should have 
 exercised such a spell over the sensational world. 
 
 Byron is more happy with his characters than his plots, 
 though here his success is very limited owing to the lack of 
 variety, and his constitutional tendency to paint nature on the 
 darker side. In the coxcombry of his youth, when surrounded t 
 by the gaieties of London society, he delighted to affect the 
 mysterious misanthrope, half pirate and half noble, who reeked 
 his hatred upon men by deeds of rapine and violence, and 
 evinced his love for women by seducing men's daughters, 
 or running away with their wives. Conrad, Alp, Lara, 
 Hand, and Selim are only so many modifications of this 
 character, differing in some particulars, but all evidently 
 belonging to one family, as so many representatives of the 
 frame of mind in which he loved to indulge. In his incidental 
 characters, Byron was to some extent coerced to go out of 
 himself, and realize his conceptions in the broad field, of 
 nature. Lambro, Juan, Don Pedro, Johnson, and Suwarrow 
 are all creations of lifelike force, imparting a rich diversity of 
 
2o 4 ESTJMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 colouring to the narrative they enliven by their vigour. His 
 Cain and Lucifer belong to the same group of portraits as 
 Milton's, stripped only of that terrific grandeur which dazzles 
 while it oppresses the imagination. In " The Island," the bluff 
 qualities of Ben Bunting and Jack Skyscrape are well con- 
 trasted with the thoughtful effeminacy of Torquil and the hardy 
 nature of the rebellious mutineer. It would seem, then, that 
 the poet's domestic quarrels, which drove him from the bosom 
 of English society, shook out of his nature so much of that 
 cynical affectation as led him in the early stage of his career to 
 identify himself with proscribed outlaws, and paint humanity 
 from its worst models. It is one of the strange inconsistencies 
 of Byron's character, that while petted and feted in society, 
 the only heroes he could paint were cynical pirates who set all 
 its laws at defiance ; and that it was only when society cast 
 him from its bosom, his heart appeared to open to the genial 
 influence of its customs, and he painted men not so much from 
 the monstrous conceits of his imagination, as from the standards 
 of nature. 
 
 I do not, however, think that Byron could portray any mas- 
 culine character, in which his own feelings were not profoundly 
 •interested, with such force as to make it a gallery picture worthy 
 of being ranked in the same class with Shakespeare's, or even 
 with Sir Walter Scott's. There was too much of the cynic in 
 his nature to allow him to enter into characters foreign to his 
 own with such hearty sympathy as to see everything from 
 their own point of view, and thus, as it were, from the bases 
 of their nature to allow the peculiarities of his heroes to spring 
 out of the action of circumstances upon the combination of 
 two or three radical principles. This defect is most con- 
 spicuous in his dramas, where his characters rather declaim 
 than act, where they impress their mental features on the 
 spectators by set speeches rather than by dealing with the 
 course of events. In his feminine embodiments, Byron's re- 
 pulsive egotism did not stand in the way, and the consequence 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 205 
 
 is a group of female portraits not surpassed in their diversity 
 of form and freshness of colour by anything out of dramatic 
 art. Zuleika is all tenderness, Gulbeyaz all fire, Gulnare a com- 
 bination of both. In Haidee, we have the guileless affections 
 of a young Greek islander developed without the fetters of 
 religious restraint; in Donna Julia, the criminal passion ot 
 the matron setting such restraint at defiance. Adeline is a 
 type of the women of ton, with no qualities but such as 
 sparkle in the eyes of society. Medora is a type of a woman 
 who has sacrificed society to an affection which swallows up 
 her entire being. Dudu and Aurora Raby are admirable illus- 
 trations of those feminine natures which combine abyssmal 
 depths of feeling under the quietest Quaker exterior, but the 
 one chastened by Christian feeling, the other sensualized by 
 the voluptuousness of the East. In these portraits we have 
 a mixture of goodness and evil, but the goodness most pre- 
 dominates. Had Byron painted men as he drew women, his 
 hold upon human sympathies would be far more general. But 
 the blighting cynicism of his nature, which marred his mascu- 
 line creations, was not always kept in check by his passion for 
 beauty, or by that impassioned spirit of chivalry which arises 
 out of devotion to the other sex ; for the poet seldom loses 
 an opportunity of jesting at their passions, and turning their 
 foibles into ridicule. Even here, his uncontrollable habit oi. 
 satirizing human weakness prevented him from manifesting 
 that hearty sympathy with his object, so essential to place 
 conceptions of feminine loveliness among the loftiest types of 
 ideal creation. 
 
 It is owing to this cynical spirit in Byron, arising out of i 
 perverted views of humanity, that is to be ascribed much of 
 that mocking spirit which pervades a large portion of his works. 
 and which hindered him from going out of himself, and com- 
 pletely sinking his own idiosyncrasies in the characters he 
 created for others. The feeling which led him to dethrone 
 man from his natural position as the crowning feature of this 
 
206 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 planet, induced him to set himself up as the spirit in whose 
 centre all the conflicting lines of the universe seem to meet. 
 The mistake of exalting the powers of evil over those of good, 
 the casualties of chance over the laws of design, was hardly 
 surpassed by thrusting his own petty interests in front of those 
 of general humanity. It was from these two fountains that 
 most of those waters of bitterness flow which corrode all the 
 conceptions of Byron, which destroy their moral aim, and 
 which prevent him from surrounding humanity with those 
 attributes of sweetness, arising out of the harmonious develop- 
 ment of its faculties. He could not represent man reposing 
 on the basis of his moral nature, who believed him to be the 
 victim of demoniac influences, or the sport of blind chance. 
 That egotism which made him regard self as the be-all and the 
 end-all here, forced him to intrude his narrow subjectivity into 
 most of his works, and circumscribe within its limits all the 
 range of his creations. We turn over all his pages in vain for 
 an adequate representation of the dignity of man, or the 
 angelic purity of woman. If we are treated to the develop- 
 ment of any virtue, such as courage, or hardihood, or con- 
 stancy of affection, it is as furthering the perpetration of some 
 crime which narrows the sensibilities of our nature. Double 
 murder, incest, adultery, incendiarism, piratical violence, 
 treasons, — such are the subjects which the poet has chosen 
 to surround with the magic of his genius, and to invest their 
 perpetrators with all those brilliant qualities which show that, 
 if he did not actually intend them as models to follow, he 
 certainly designed them to provoke our admiration. The con- 
 sequence is that man is not represented in his natural position^ 
 as fitting into the universe of things, but as wrenched out of 
 his sphere, and in conflict with all the elements around him. 
 Turbid misanthropy, the state of feverish excitement in which 
 he lived, his reckless spirit of self-assertion, the feeling of hos- 
 — * tility he manifested to the institutions with which he was 
 brought into contact, are reflected in all his meditations, colour 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 207 
 
 all his views, are more or less conspicuous in every character 
 he conceived and every picture which he drew. Of the world 
 of quiet human nature behind those factitious storms and tem- 
 pests, into which Wordsworth dropped the plummet of his 
 thoughts, and out of which Shakespeare evoked so many 
 divine lineaments, Byron appears to have known little, and 
 cared less. The unquiet passions in the heart of which he 
 made his home, shut him out from the circle of the domestic 
 affections, * and from some of the most interesting features 
 of the social world. They hindered him from realizing the 
 mysterious harmonies between the different faculties of the 
 soul, acting in concert with each other, and the still deeper 
 sympathies in the material universe which exhibit natural 
 phenomena, co-operating together to achieve certain fixed 
 objects by an instinct as divine or more unerring than that in 
 man. Byron, in fact, saw no purpose in the universal fitness 
 of things. The world to him was objectless. Ruin might 
 drive its ploughshare over creation without leaving things 
 much worse than they are. As the universe, so were his works, 
 without an object. They evince no unity of purpose, no moral 
 design. His heroes, like the phenomena of the material world, 
 appear to be driven about very much the sport of blind chance. 
 The poet appears to be the only person who refers everything 
 to his moral consciousness, and raves over that absence of design 
 and beneficence of purpose which he so unceasingly displays 
 himself. There is something sublime in this transfusion of all 
 the social, material, and spiritual phenomena of the universe 
 into the alembic of one mind, and finding all dross ; in. this 
 summoning of the elements which furnish forth the whole of 
 creation to the bar of his individual judgment, and the repu- 
 diation of all as worthless. But this is not the spirit for 
 entering into the soul of things, for appreciating historic events, 
 for weighing human action, or casting characters in the moulds 
 of truth. It would be idle to expect from a state of mind so 
 radically unsound, any ideal glimpses into that state of per- 
 
2o8 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 fection to which man may not unreasonably aspire. Such a 
 class of mind is competent to destroy, but it cannot possibly 
 build up. It may represent with great vigour the darker phases 
 of the past and the present, or the proud and restless agitations 
 of unquiet minds ; but the quieter aspects of humanity are to 
 it a sealed book. The development of any action evolving 
 good out of evil, or the expansion of the social virtues under cir- 
 cumstances calculated to stifle their growth, or the construc- 
 tion of an ideal future exhibiting a practical outlet from the 
 miseries of the present, — of these things it knows nothing. 
 Hence, a wide region of the functions of poetry is excluded 
 from its sphere, though it may be supreme in the rest. Such 
 was the genius of Lord Byron, — of unrivalled ascendency in the 
 embodiment of passion and in the regions of abstract thought 
 and contemplative grandeur, but singularly wanting in moral 
 purpose, in aesthetic completeness, in that breadth of view 
 which loses sight of no elements of human nature, but con- 
 siders every object in its proper sphere, and which, instead of 
 balancing all things upon the narrow axis of self, loses sight 
 of its own existence in the ocean of being by which it is 
 surrounded. 
 
 I am not disposed to lay any stress on Lord Byron's private 
 circumstances, as affording any palliation for the morbid mis- 
 anthropy and reckless egotism in which he indulged. These obli- 
 quities were, doubtless, produced by youthful excesses, and the 
 early feeling of the emptiness of material enjoyment, the only 
 meteor which seemed to guide his steps through the tortuous 
 mazes of this world. His domestic troubles, which just came 
 in time to confirm this tendency, were also of his own creation. 
 The family estates were, doubtless, unequal to support his rank, 
 but his genius was fully adequate to make up the deficiency. 
 Yet, with a deep assurance of such fact, he chose to marry an 
 heiress of temper incompatible with his own, and a strict zealot 
 in the cause of evangelical principles which he repudiated, in 
 order to recruit his finances, while he was bestowing the copy- 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 209 
 
 rights of his works on his friends. Even for a considerable 
 period after his marriage, the poet lived in a style of reckless 
 extravagance, without wasting a thought upon his competence 
 to meet his bills. If a man will so far tread opposite to the 
 paths of prudence, if he will place himself in a position so 
 incompatible with duty and common sense, he has no right, 
 when the reckoning-day arrives, to blame the Fates for the evils 
 he has brought upon himself. Had Lord Byron's fortune been 
 ample, he never would have married Miss Millbank. This was 
 the fons et origo malorum. He took to his arms a person whom 
 he supposed to be a Christian lamb, and he found her a religious 
 termagant. As his inducement was money, the world will ex- 
 claim, he was well punished for his pains. This was the most 
 unpoetical act of his life. But it led to a change of plans 
 and purposes most fruitful in the development of his poetical 
 genius, and the aggrandizement of his fame. It drove him 
 from the allurements of a factitious life into the bosom of 
 nature. It led him to seek out a home among Alpine solitudes, 
 by the lonely ocean, or in cities peopled by the spectres of the 
 past. The change made itself at once felt in pluming his 
 genius for greater flights than it had previously sustained. 
 
 Indeed, so far were the private fortunes of the noble bard from 
 imposing trammels on the healthy development of his faculties, 
 that it would be difficult, had those faculties not been warped 
 by selfish indulgence and turbulent passions, to imagine a set 
 of circumstances better calculated to foster their strength, to 
 stimulate their growth, and mature their powers. A boyhood 
 passed upon the mountains of Aberdeenshire, listening to the roar 
 of the distant ocean, brought out in salient contrast the features 
 of the great public school, to which he was subsequently trans- 
 ferred. Here, was gilded conventionality following hard upon 
 the embraces of genuine nature. But the aesthetic pleasures of 
 rural life might have taught him to distrust, if not despise, the 
 hollow prestige of rank, or those flashy distinctions which mere 
 wealth can alone produce for its possessors. The effect, however, 
 
 14 
 
2 1 o ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POE TS. 
 
 of the display of luxuries which he could not share, was only to 
 sour his disposition, to engender spleen, and to turn his mind 
 upon itself. Cambridge was only a wider Harrow ; but Byron 
 abandoned the intellectual struggles, to drown his cares in the 
 convivialities, of the place. Then came three years of foreign 
 travel through the grandest scenery and most interesting 
 countries in the world ; then three years of London society, — 
 in which he mingled with all classes, from the pugilist and the 
 cock-fighter, to the proudest scions of the aristocracy, — followed 
 by foreign travel again. No career, perhaps, could be imagined 
 better fitted to extend the intellectual horizon of a man, or to 
 lead to any rectification of his aesthetic or moral principles, if 
 he set out with such upon a wrong basis. But Byron does not 
 appear to have availed himself of such experiences to obliterate 
 his misanthropy, or to counteract, to any large extent, that 
 tendency to self-exaggeration, in which he so early indulged. 
 These, though somewhat modified, still continued to be the 
 plague-spots which overshadowed his career, down to his last 
 struggles on the coast of Missolonghi. Neither experience of 
 the world, or converse with nature or himself, could ever check 
 that biting spirit of ridicule, — that sneer at man and his ways, 
 which overflows all his works, and which seem to have been 
 one of the engrained principles of his nature. This precluded 
 him from that logical appreciation of events, the absence of 
 which is so evident in his dramas. It also shut him out from 
 that hearty sympathy with social life, which is the main spring 
 to the successful embodiment of character. The lesson, there- 
 fore, to be gleaned from Byron's career is simply this, that 
 there is a close connection between the moral and intellectual 
 faculties of man, and that, if the heart be wrong, the highest gifts 
 of genius will be warped in their development, if not deprived of 
 a large portion of their heritage. Byron as a poet I hold to be 
 superior to Spenser, yet it is very questionable whether, in his 
 influence over the public mind, he is destined to exercise so 
 much influence as Thomson or Cowper, men of far inferior 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 211 
 
 calibre, but who cultivated the talents they possessed upon a 
 philanthropic basis. Men do not like being told they are hated ; 
 nor are they disposed to submit their necks to establish the 
 empire of a man who regards them as serfs, and himself as the 
 only creature whose destinies are worthy of any consideration. 
 Sovereignty in literature is not like the tyrannies of the lower 
 empire, to be established by force and supported by fear. 
 Praise cannot be extorted. Men will not be coerced into 
 admiration. There can be no passport to permanent and uni- 
 versal masterdom over men's minds, unless that which is raised 
 upon a genuine sympathy with their interests, and a hearty love 
 for their kind. Hence Byron's genius, like Churchill's, is never 
 likely to realize its fair meed of praise. Born with talents fitted 
 to rule mankind, he allowed the sceptre to be grasped by far 
 meaner spirits, who, because they pursued a direct course, have 
 been thought to soar higher, though, in truth, they have not 
 possessed one tithe of his contemplative depth, or his ideal 
 splendour. 
 
212 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 T 
 
 »tntt. 
 
 k Scott belongs the great merit of popularizing poetry, or, 
 at least, of awakening the national mind to its uses, at a 
 time when the practice of the art appeared to be expiring in the 
 odes of Pye, and when men failed to appreciate the broader 
 lights which were gradually revealing the approach of a glorious 
 dawn. Wordsworth was comparatively obscure, Byron bad 
 not appeared, and Campbell was only becoming known, when 
 Scott, diving into the human heart, discovered the secret of 
 gratifying its taste for the mysterious, and interesting all its 
 sympathies in tales of knightly worth, of feudal renown, and 
 perilous adventure, not, indeed, in the hackneyed style of the 
 old romances, but as connected with some decisive event which 
 served to impart an air of reality to his creations. Men saw 
 revived, as in a glass, all the artistic features of the middle 
 ages, just as the last vestige of them had sunk beneath the tide 
 _^ # of modern innovation. It was a startling novelty for the new 
 era to have passed before it, — the kings, priests, and warriors 
 and serfs of the old era, separated by impassable barriers, yet 
 / . jostling each other in promiscuous groups, with living hearts 
 bounding under antiquated armour, with their lavish code of 
 warm fellowship so absurdly illustrated by the blackness of 
 their feuds, with force instead of ' law as an arbiter, with 
 tournaments instead of commerce as a pursuit, and with moated 
 castles instead of undefended streets as dwelling-places. By 
 bringing the new in contact with the old, men were enabled to 
 trace the same bounding hopes and fears, the same hatreds and ^ 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 213 
 
 loves, the same rivalries and aspirations, arrayed in different attire, 
 developed under conflicting institutions, which now actuate them, 
 and animating a social structure they had hitherto vainly striven 
 to piece together from the dry investigations of the lawyer, or 
 the tedious narrative of the historian. The poet himself had 
 been led to strike his shaft into this rich mine of art rather by 
 accident than otherwise. The Countess of Dalkeith, infatuated 
 with the elfin legend of " Gilpin Horner," invited Scott, already 
 noted for his ballad minstrelsy, to try his powers upon it. The 
 rich fragment of " Christabel," with which Scott had just made 
 himself familiar, not only suggested both the treatment and the 
 metre, but also made him keenly alive to the feeling of dis- 
 appointment arising in the reader's mind from applying so 
 splendid a framework to an unfinished subject. The poet, 
 therefore, strove to interweave the magic of his theme with the 
 border feuds of the seventeenth century. The finishing step 
 was to put the whole story into the mouth of an old harper, 
 who, as the last of his race, was supposed to have caught some 
 of the refinements of modern, without losing the simplicity of 
 primitive poetry. Thus sprung into life the " Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel," the first narrative poem which may be said to have 
 taken the English as well as the Scotch public by storm, and 
 which proved as great a favourite in the cottage as in the 
 palace. To the " Lay" succeeded " Marmion " and the " Lady 
 of the Lake," each swelling the triumph of its predecessor. 
 While the epics of Southey lay dead on the shelf, edition 
 after edition of these poems was demanded, with increasing • 
 popularity. But, confined to one field, the ablest genius must 
 soon exhaust its combinations, and fatigue his reader, as a 
 singer, by the repetition of the sweetest melodies, with a sense 
 of monotony. As Scott had turned the treatment and metre 
 of " Christabel " to account, so Byron applied Scott's dashing 
 narrative to incidents of a more modern and cosmopolitan 
 character ; and the decline of " Rokeby " told its author that 
 the fires of his genius must wane before that of the eccentric 
 
214 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 luminary whose blaze was just beginning to flood the horizon. 
 But Scott had fulfilled a double mission. He had not only 
 triumphed himself, but prepared the ground for the triumph 
 of his rivals. His appearance, like that of a meteor, at- 
 tracted the eyes of all his contemporaries to the study of 
 modern poetry, and stimulated the efforts of genius by bringing 
 home to its convictions the fact, that there was an outside 
 public prepared to appreciate its merits and respond to its 
 exertions. 
 
 The poetic genius of Scott, high as it stands, is confined 
 within very narrow limits. He has not the slightest pretension 
 to any merit in the delineation of passion, a sphere in which 
 Byron ruled supreme j neither has he the melting tenderness of 
 Burns, or the fire and animation of Campbell, or the gushing 
 sentimentality of Moore, or the grand abstraction and deep 
 reflectiveness of Wordsworth. In fact, no poet who ever 
 attained eminence, has been so devoid of any of these great 
 characteristics as Scott. Even his most sentimental scenes 
 have a certain hardness of outline, which reminds us of the man 
 who was constantly hammering at the literary anvil, in the 
 bosom of his family, and who never suffered himself to be the 
 victim of any passion which could imperil his worldly sagacity, 
 or his reputation for common sense. With his rivals, poetry 
 was not so much a calling as a vocation. It was part of their 
 nature, which they drunk in with every breath of their life. 
 With Scott it was merely an external mantle, which he put on by 
 accident, and which he cast off when it had served his purpose, 
 and when he found another sphere wherein to reign without a 
 competitor. But, with the millinery of the conventional artist, 
 he has accomplished more than poets of more profound sensi- 
 bility, by massing together large bodies of men in some ani- 
 mating spectacle, and imparting to their leaders those individual 
 traits of character which kindle the scene into life and activity. 
 His pages glow with the multitudinous groups of Frith's 
 canvas ; but, while the painter never gets beyond the material 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 215 
 
 vulgarities of the 19th century, the poet uses the external 
 embodiment of the 16th, only to throw out, into bolder relief, 
 all the ardour, romance, and enthusiasm which distinguished 
 Scotland during this crisis of her fate. Hence, his triumphs 
 are confined, not merely to one chapter in the drama of human 
 events, but to one page in the history of his country. Even 
 his marvellous delineations of scenery rarely cross the 
 Tweed. The truth is, Scott wrote about no subject in which 
 his heart was not profoundly interested, or with the details of ^-"\ 
 which he was not perfectly familiar. This is the real secret of 
 his success. He idolized the wild scenery of his native 
 country, and has described it in imperishable language. His 
 love for the mysterious led him early to haunt ruined castles, 
 and re-people them with the phantoms of their past existence. 
 Hence the study of antiquarian lore became a necessity of his 
 being. He read up old chronicles, devoured legendary tales, 
 tracked to its source every heraldic distinction, studied feudal 
 customs, until chivalry became to him the only real thing in 
 the world which had any meaning. When, therefore, the spark 
 of poetry kindled his soul, it was only to light up, in one 
 effulgent blaze, the knowledge thus acquired. He could sing 
 only of ancient feuds, of magical enchantments, of mailed 
 knights bent upon feats of war or gallantry, of gentle dames 
 and cowled priests crossing each other's paths in the intrigues 
 of love and state craft, of errant damsels in moated castles, 
 perplexed by the claims of rival chieftains ; but this was done 
 with a brilliancy of effect, with a splendour of colouring, with a 
 fidelity to nature down to the most minute detail, which has 
 never been surpassed, and with a truthful accuracy which 
 simulated life in every degree of rank, and which may be said to 
 have generalized history. Had Scott allowed his genius free 
 bridle over a wider field ; had he chosen subjects for his muse 
 from a period in which wandering harpers could find no place, 
 he would have lost rank in Parnassus. It was only by con- 
 centrating his poetic powers upon the subject he knew most 
 
H 
 
 216 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 about, that he was enabled to place his name among the first- 
 class poets of his epoch. 
 
 Scott was too sedulously employed in reconstructing the 
 past, to enlighten the present, or to anticipate the future. 
 The reader will not get from him the slightest glimpse into 
 man's loftier destinies, or the least glimmering of light upon 
 any of the perplexing enigmas which are at present haunting 
 humanity. Scott, like Moore, was too objective to infuse 
 philosophy into any of his themes j but, though each looked at 
 man from opposite poles of political thought, the reflective poetry 
 of both is tinged with the same hues of melancholy. The sad- 
 ness of Moore, however, appears to spring from the decay of 
 ephemeral hopes, and from the fleeting nature of earthly joys ; 
 while the melancholy of Scott is that of the minstrel, who feels 
 that society is entering upon new and untried paths, and 
 breaking up all the old landmarks which connected life with 
 chivalrous feeling and romantic sentiment. The perfection of 
 social existence with Scott, was that presented by the feudal 
 lord surrounded by his band of dependants, who, in return 
 for his protection, returned to him willing service and spon- 
 taneous homage. The study of chivalry appears to have led 
 him to value men according to their heraldic distinctions. He 
 was too aristocratic in his feelings to have much sympathy with 
 the spirit of his age, which was gradually levelling the barriers 
 between the higher and lower ranks of society. Other poets 
 might take waggoners or pirates for their subject, but Scott, in 
 verse, would make a herb of no man who had not an emblazoned 
 scutcheon, or who could not trace his ancestry back to the Con- 
 quest. He moves among courts and camps, with the air of a man 
 born to companion nobles and princes. To him, the great mass 
 of the people seemed only of importance so far as they augment 
 the greatness, and afford scope for the benevolence, of their 
 masters. The poet had a capacious heart as well as a large 
 head, and sought to indulge the generosity, which distinguished 
 his nature, by the same acts which gratified his ambition. 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 217 
 
 Scott, therefore, arrayed the pride of ancestry against the 
 power of intellect. Byron reversed the process. Both poets 
 acted in singular contrariety to the position from which they set 
 out in life. Byron with his proud Norman abbey and lordly 
 escutcheon, seemed never so happy as when he could forget 
 both. The aim of Scott's life was to possess himself of those 
 aristocratic appendages, which his rival, on the threshold of his 
 career, tossed from him with scornful depreciation. Byron 
 snapt asunder the links which bound him to the past, to live in 
 the present ; Scott tore himself from the present, to live in the 
 past. Byron, though an aristocrat, enlisted the fervour of his 
 muse, and even drew his sword, in favour of liberty ; Scott, 
 though a commoner, exhausted all his powers in the embellish- 
 ment of villanage and feudal dependence. It would be idle 
 to expect from one treading so opposite to the tendencies 
 of his times, any light for the guidance of humanity; and 
 Scott's sympathies were too deeply entangled with the old 
 elements of society, to look forward with hope to new com- 
 binations. 
 
 It is only, then, as the reviver of the mediaeval aspects of his 
 country, that Scott, as a poet, is entitled to claim our regard. 
 He is the bard of Scotch chivalry, and nothing more. And 
 even in this limited sphere, his triumphs are confined to narra- 
 tive poetry. As a lyrist, he was too deficient in passion and 
 earnestness of feeling to challenge exclusive attention to his 
 merits ; and he has shown great judgment in interweaving his 
 songs with his narrative, which imparts to them an interest 
 they would not otherwise possess. For Scott always contrived 
 for his lyrics a brilliant setting, in order that they might reflect 
 light upon his scenic delineations, while these, in turn, imparted 
 to them those hues which soften down much of their original 
 harshness. A song scattered from a harp's strings, by moon- 
 light, over the waters of a silver mere, or the ditty of a maiden 
 arresting the steps of her lover in a wild glen, or a refrain in a 
 banditti's cave or baronial hall, foreshadowing the glare of the 
 
f-H 
 
 2 1 8 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 impending strife on the morrow, — each possess an interest to 
 which the isolated lyric can lay no claim whatever. In fact, if 
 the best of Scott's songs be taken out of the magnificent frame- 
 work of his narrative, they will be found far below those of 
 Moore and Campbell on kindred subjects, while a considerable 
 number of them are not much above mediocrity. 
 
 It speaks much in favour of Scott's good sense, that he should 
 have restricted his efforts to that department of poetry in which 
 his faculties best qualified him to shine. Necessity has no law, 
 and men can only succeed in that walk for which nature has 
 fitted them. The poet could only supply his want of abstract 
 grandeur, of mental introspection, of profound pathos, by thrill- 
 ing incident, by startling contrasts of situation, by grand scenic 
 effects, by powerful delineation of character ; and these could 
 not, without the accompaniment of intense feeling, be combined 
 with success except in the narrative poem. To say that Scott 
 combined these qualities in a more effective manner than had 
 been accomplished before, is praise of a high character ; but it 
 is praise to which he is justly entitled. By blending truth with 
 fiction, he has imparted to his pictures an air of reality which, 
 considering their relations to the weird world, surpasses that 
 achieved by any other poet who has ventured to throw aside 
 the curtains of the material universe. 
 
 In intermingling weird superstitions with his narrative, Scott 
 was true to the character of the times he was endeavouring to 
 depict ; but in confounding these with the whole machinery of 
 the supernatural then existing, the poet committed an error 
 which should not be overlooked in any fair estimate of his 
 powers. Scott's intellect, like Byron's, was of that broad cha- 
 racter to require for its exhibition nothing less than the re- 
 production of an age; but Byron had his triumphs in other 
 branches of his art, whereas Scott's merits are to be tried by his 
 success in this sphere exclusively. When, therefore, the poet 
 sacrifices that broad spirit of Christianity permeating all the 
 institutions of chivalry to a few wild legends, he dwarfs the 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 219 
 
 leading element of the age, and substitutes an excrescence, 
 springing out of the luxuriance of belief, for the vital principle 
 generating life-blood at the core. But this mistake the poet 
 was hurried into by the objective bent of his genius. Of the 
 abyssmal depths of religious feeling and the deeper mysteries of 4 
 the human heart, Scott knew very little, and discoursed less. 
 Hence, while the martial tendencies of the age are thrown into 
 glaring prominence, all the glimpses we get of that belief 
 which piled up our huge cathedrals, which threw Europe with 
 unsheathed sabre upon the throat of Asia, which resurrection- 
 ized art in Italy, are one or two monkish processions calculated 
 to call up a smile on the face of the greenest Ritualist by the 
 complete manner in which the prescriptions of the Latin rubric 
 are set at defiance. The velvet-bound breviary and Benedic- 
 tine habit of Lady Clare are but poor exemplifications of that 
 spirit which led a crowd of delicately-trained women to main- 
 tain a constant warfare, behind conventual grills, with their own 
 nature within, and the pomps of life without, cheerlessly wasting 
 upon prison solitudes that beauty intended to illuminate the 
 atmosphere of busy life. In not diving beneath the surface, in 
 giving us a mere travesty of the external embodiment in which 
 this intensity of religious feeling had wrapped itself, Scott so 
 far was untrue to the spirit of the age he would represent. That 
 the poet, however, has raised the ghost of chivalry from the 
 tomb in such a manner as to interest the public in its lineaments, 
 is sufficiently evident from the popularity which his works still 
 command. But the phantom does not glare upon us in its 
 religious aspects, simply because the poet has been too intent 
 upon colouring its integuments rather than making them the 
 medium for flashing forth its soul. It is very rare to find an 
 author who, like Shakespeare, can instruct and amuse in equal 
 proportion ; and Scott, out of an anxious desire to gratify the 
 low standard of the popular taste, stooped from the lofty require- 
 ments of his art. His was not the bold genius which could 
 reconstruct an age, with all that breadth of design and matchless 
 
220 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 symmetry of parts as to lead the public mind to forget its present 
 baubles in the overpowering sense of joy felt in the delineation. 
 
 In construction of plot, Scott's merits are not of the highest 
 order. He was too intent upon the gorgeous contrasts 
 and picturesque grouping of the parts to attend to the com- 
 pleteness of the whole. But merit, which he could only share 
 with the novelist, seemed to him very secondary, compared with 
 the enhancement of the higher qualities which are the exclusive 
 heritage of the poet. Hence, with the single exception of the 
 " Lady of the Lake," the juncture and ligaments of Scott's fables 
 will not bear minute analysis. In " Marmion," the main incidents 
 of the story are treated in a fragmentary fashion, and the reader 
 is left to connect the broken links as he best may, while the 
 interest turns upon a multitude of improbable occurrences, which 
 require the infantine stage of credulity to realize. In the first, 
 as well as in the last of his tales, there are two distinct parts 
 having no natural connection with each other. The achieve- 
 ments of the wizard Scott with the adventures of his magical 
 book, had no more to do with the border feuds of Howard and 
 Douglas, than the perplexing loves of Lord Ronald with the 
 fates of Robert Bruce ; nor has the poet succeeded in moulding 
 the alien elements so closely as to make one spring out of the 
 other, or even had the poor merit of assigning to each a sphere 
 proportionate to its dignity. But in both the "Lay" and the 
 "Lord of the Isles" he has dwarfed the leading event into an 
 episode, and exalted what ought to have been an episode into 
 the leading event. In "Rokeby" we have unity of action, but 
 probability of incident is set more resolutely at defiance, and 
 the thread of the story more hopelessly entangled than in 
 " Marmion." That the poet should make us forget such defects 
 by the magic of his treatment, is one of the triumphs of his art. 
 The individual scenes are so artistically finished, the minor 
 incidents are so elaborated, that we lose sight of the incon- 
 gruities, marring the framework of the design, in the lavish 
 shower of beauties flung with reckless profusion at our feet. 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 221 
 
 It is in the embellishment of his plots by graphic incidents, 
 as well as in his matchless delineation of character, that Scott's 
 powers as a poet are most conspicuous. He knew how to 
 crowd his canvas with those lights and shades which have the 
 effect of conveying the poet's creations, with all their freshness 
 and reality, into the reader's heart. The picture of delicate 
 beauty confronting giant strength, of the quiet repose of nature 
 disturbed with the shaggy panoply of arms, of the silence and 
 darkness of midnight broken by the war-whoop of the trooper 
 or the torch of the incendiary, — these and other kindred 
 points of contrast, the poet brings out with a minuteness of 
 touch which sets up the entire scene with all its gorgeous 
 diversity of colouring before our eyes, while the faintest rever- 
 beration of its sounds echo on the ear. The explorations of 
 Deloraine in Melrose Abbey, the battle-scene in " Marmion," 
 the adventure of Fitz James with Roderic Dhu, and the 
 moonlight etchings of all his pieces, are hardly to be surpassed 
 by anything of the same kind in modern poetry. When, in 
 addition to these excellences, we get a story so faultless in con- 
 struction as the "Lady of the Lake," the author has achieved 
 the highest success that could be attained in a narrative poem 
 embodying the external rather than the internal features of his 
 subject. 
 
 In the delineation of masculine character, Scott leaves 
 few things to be desired ; but he is far more happy in his 
 portraiture of men than in that of women. I suppose we must 
 ascribe it to the gallantry of his nature, that he thought every 
 woman an angel by right of her sex. His heroines from 
 Margaret to Matilda, or from Lady Clare to Isabel, are all 
 perfect in character, and therefore very imperfect in execution. 
 Perhaps, there was some charm in the middle ages which made 
 virtue the never-failing appendage of weakness, and vice of 
 strength. But Matilda was far removed from the times of 
 Margaret or Lady Clare ; yet they only need exchange costumes, 
 to exchange places with each other. The Benedictine gown 
 
222 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POE TS. 
 
 and the breviary would have become Ellen quite as well as the 
 Scotch plaid. Constance is the only one of his heroines who 
 displays a spark of fire ; yet this is in connection with guilt so 
 revolting that imagination shrinks from uniting it with the soft 
 beauty of a delicate woman. Scott would appear to have 
 produced his feminine creations as types for the study of 
 boarding-school girls; and when he went in for goodness or 
 frailty, laid on the colour in order to deter or allure as heavily 
 as possible. Nor am I without a suspicion, from the popu- 
 larity of his works, that the consequent tameness of his hero- 
 ines has not produced its results in much of the mawkish 
 and monotonous insipidity we meet with in many of the women 
 of the present day. How different are the Medoras, the Para- 
 sinas, the Zuleikas, the Haidees of Lord Byron — beings 
 starting into life with all the distinctness which appertain to 
 different climes, yet as true to nature as if they had been 
 chiseled out of a block of granite by Praxiteles, mingling their 
 spiritual essence with the fiery glow of desire, with all that 
 we know of heaven, in their eyes, and all that we feel of 
 voluptuous passion, on their lips. The fact is, no man can 
 paint women who has not a gushing well-spring of tenderness 
 in himself. And the absence of the quality which Scott wanted 
 to make him a first-class lyrist, was painfully evinced, when 
 Scott sat down to limn the features of any of the more in- 
 teresting half of the human race. 
 
 The male characters of Scott have an individuality to which 
 his female embodiments cannot pretend, and the wonder is 
 that he, who drew women so badly, should have sketched men 
 so well. In all his pieces his heroes stand out with a distinct- 
 ness of outline in their bolder features, and with a peculiarity 
 of tinge in the lighter and more evanescent traits of character, 
 which make them not only life-like themselves, but out of the 
 light of their own reality, to shed the quickening beams of 
 animation upon all with whom they are brought in contact. 
 The heavy but daring Deloraine, — the courtly but fearless 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 223 
 
 Cranistoun, — the soldier-monk, whose wan features occasionally 
 gleam with the fires of his crusading days ; — the fiery Dacre, and 
 the pacific Howard, each appear in the " Lay" to act as the 
 counterfoil to the other, while they remain quite distinct from 
 the personages to whom Scott introduces us, anywhere else. 
 The character of Roderick Dhu with its conflicting .traits of 
 savage cruelty in peace, and its delicate susceptibilities of 
 honour during war, is a study in itself. Sensuousness is 
 blended in James, with the silken graces and airy blandish- 
 ments of a king who lives in the gaieties of others ; in "Marmion," 
 with the hardened scepticism and testy disposition of a knight, 
 who lives only in the aggrandisement of himself. These 
 diversities of character, springing out of the same passion, 
 operating upon different temperaments, are not the result of 
 laboured effort. For Scott, though elaborately minute in the 
 specification of the dress and equipage of his heroes, though 
 he will suspend his narrative until he has settled the martlets on 
 their shields, and told us whether the field of their scutcheons 
 is argent, or d'or, when he comes to their character, seizes at 
 once upon the master passion, and, by two or three leading 
 strokes, stamps the man's history on his face, in hues which 
 impart a meaning to the least of his actions. Scott's pains- 
 taking description of articles of attire, which occasionally has the 
 air of an inventory, though frequently censured, was to some 
 extent necessary, to impart an appearance of reality to those few 
 touches on which he relied for breathing animation into figures 
 decorated with so much skill. But here, again, the aristocratic 
 feelings of the poet prevailed over the claims of his art. Scott, 
 rarely wastes his descriptive powers upon any characters, 
 but those who compose the cream of society. A man below 
 the grade of squire is not fit for elaborate notice. He selects, 
 in his poems, for the subject of full length portraiture, none but 
 warriors, knights, princes, abbots, and lords. But it cannot 
 be overlooked that this limited range of selection, which would 
 have been fatal to any artistic representation of modern society, 
 
224 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 is not out of character with the representation of a feudal 
 community, in which the fate of the people was merged in the 
 fortunes of their chiefs. Scott's vassals and retainers, if sum- 
 marily disposed of in his pictures, occupy a position analogous 
 to that which they hold in the state of society he describes ; 
 and the characters of their chiefs are so well delineated, that 
 the age to which both belonged, at least in its martial aspects, 
 though long since calcined to dust, is made to revive again with 
 all the animation of yesterday. 
 
 It is owing to his success in breathing into the martial relics 
 4- — s^-of chivalry the spirit of human life, that Scott is entitled to a 
 high place in narrative poetry. If he wants the passion and fire 
 of Moore and Campbell, his pictures are more true to nature 
 than either. His tales have much more incident, and his 
 heroes stride before us with an earnestness endued with the 
 vitality of history, rather than with the sentimentality which 
 speaks of the atmosphere of romance. Other narrative poets 
 have simply confined their attention to the illustration of some 
 particular virtue, or the development of one definite action. 
 Chaucer, Spenser, Byron, and Scott, have alone endeavoured 
 to reproduce an age, by weaving the tissues of many single 
 destinies into one magnificent delineation of human life. They 
 only have unrolled the myriad-minded tapestry of the Fates 
 before us, in depicting the conjoint lives of a generation. 
 Though Scott's canvas embraces a far greater number of 
 groups than that of any of his three rivals, he is decidedly the 
 last in rank. He is far less ideal than Spenser, less compre- 
 hensive than Byron, less truthful than Chaucer, less original 
 than Crabbe. Even Burns excels him in reproducing, fresh, 
 as it were, from the mint, the lineaments of nature, though 
 " Tarn o'Shanter " is so brief a sketch, that it is hardly fair to 
 Scott to institute a comparison. His words seldom pierce the 
 heart ; the passions never obey his call. If Scott seems, how- 
 ever, to shine with steadier light in narrative poetry than most 
 of his contemporaries, it is because he excels them in creative 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. "225 
 
 , _ ^ 
 
 force, in the breadth of his designs, in the vivid grouping of 
 external objects, in portraying critical phases of character under 
 striking situations, rather than in deep feeling, profound thought, 
 or in those bold flights of imagination which fire the soul with 
 a feeling of sublimity. To Byron and Wordsworth, his general 
 inferiority is beyond question; in respect of genuine poetic 
 fire, he is beneath Burns, Moore, and Campbell, while he is 
 superior to any of his rivals in the creation of incidents, in 
 the manipulation of events, and the grouping of his characters, 
 with a view to secure that dramatic interest so necessary to the 
 success of a narrative poem. If he had not so great a genius 
 as some of his contemporaries, he was possessed, to a greater 
 degree than any, of that hard-working talent which is able in 
 the eyes of the million to magnify genius into thrice its actual 
 dimensions. And nowhere is that talent capable of being 
 turned to more account than in the department on which 
 Scott lavished all his strength. But artistic talent, even here, 
 would not have sufficed to account for Scott's eminence, with- 
 out some creative power, and both combined have equally 
 contributed to place him in the rear of the first group of 
 narrative poets, at some distance from those of the foremost 
 rank, who may, nevertheless, feel proud of his companionship, 
 as the reviver of one of the most interesting fragments in the 
 history of nations. 
 
 15 
 
226 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 IT will be generally found that a poet's social habits, his 
 peculiar disposition, and general conduct furnish a clue to 
 his works. As both derive their colouring from the same source, 
 each reflects light on the other. A man's actions impart their 
 tints to his speculative thoughts in a thousand ways, which are 
 often invisible to himself. They afford a key to the solution 
 of their character. If this is so of other poets, it is especially 
 true of Moore. There was a want of hearty genuineness in the 
 man ; a substitution of conventional feeling for the unaffected 
 simplicity of nature ; a studied urbanity of manner which, out 
 of a vain desire to court the great, led him to damp the fervour 
 of the fires within, — a disposition to play two parts, often 
 mutually repelling, which weakened the spontaneous ebulli- 
 tions of his nature. He was a Catholic, and yet educated his 
 children in the Protestant communion. He was a patriot, self- 
 exiled from his country, which he seldom cared to revisit. He 
 was a father, most loving in his professions of attachment for 
 the domestic hearth, and yet spending all his evenings in the 
 glittering circles of fashionable society. He was a sturdy child 
 of independence, while he accepted a pension, and hankered 
 after place ; * and a generous sympathiser with the best interests 
 
 * " Neither am I sorry for having come to Bermuda. The appointment 
 is respectable, and was considered a matter of great patronage among those 
 who had the disposal of it, which alone is sufficient to make it a valuable 
 step towards perferment." — Letter to Mrs. " Moore's Journal of Cor- 
 respondence," vol. i. p. 151. 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 227 
 
 of his species, while passing his life in the cold shade of the 
 Whig aristocracy. But the poet has enshrined his excuses 
 in the song " Oh, blame not the bard," supposed to be sung by 
 a minstrel of the ninth century, in so plaintive a manner as to 
 make even a Fenian overlook his delinquencies. 
 
 Hence, wherever the poet went, he evinced few congenial 
 sympathies with man out of the pale of polished society. In 
 Bermuda, according to Shakespeare, the birthplace of Ariel, — 
 whither, I suppose, his patrons sent him, because his muse 
 had some resemblance to that flighty and indefatigable 
 sylph, — he was fascinated with the climate, but had little taste 
 for the inhabitants. He found the ladies more lavish of their 
 affections than their charms were calculated to make enjoyable; 
 while he treats their husbands as patient cuckolds, who relin- 
 quished, with good grace, their exclusive right to privileges which 
 were not worth possessing. Hence, the ancient philosopher, who 
 held that, after this life, men are changed into mules, and women 
 into turtles, might have seen this metamorphosis accomplished 
 in Bermuda. But it is in the United States that the peculiar 
 traits of Moore's ' character are most prominently brought out. 
 Burke had seen imaged, in the rising Republic, the future 
 glories of the human race. The poet himself tells us he de- 
 parted for America with the bounding hope of embracing in 
 that State the divinity of a Utopian commonwealth. But he 
 was shocked to find, instead, a loose strumpet distributing her 
 favours, according to the dictates of political corruption, among 
 a mob of coarse barbarians. Even our transatlantic sisters, than 
 whom there are no fairer specimens of feminine beauty, are 
 represented as haggard as the state they inhabit : — 
 
 Like the nymphs of her own withering clime, 
 She is olden in youth, she is blasted in prime. 
 
 America, in the view of the Irish statesman, could have no 
 fairer handmaidens for her spousals with Liberty than Trade 
 and Commerce. But, in the eyes of the Irish poet, industrial 
 
228 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 pursuits had vulgarised the union, and rendered the offspring 
 plebeian. In this flattering manner did Moore speak of the 
 respectable population of America : — 
 
 The motley dregs of every distant clime, 
 Each blast of anarchy, and taint of crime 
 Which Europe shakes from her perturbed sphere. 
 
 The Americans, according to him, had acquired freedom, not 
 on account of any love of independence, but simply to make 
 George III. a bankrupt. The President of the day, who 
 happened to have a favourite negress, gives Moore an oppor- 
 tunity of indulging his peculiar vein : — 
 
 The weary statesman, for repose, has fled 
 From halls of council to his negro's shed, 
 Where blest he woos some black Aspasia's grace, 
 And dreams of Freedom in his slave's embrace. 
 
 The aspirations of the enlightened population of the western 
 continent were merged into the assumed crime of one man, in 
 order that they might be treated as a brute race, without the 
 slightest notions of decency or refinement. 
 
 In fact, Moore dwelt too much on the surfaces of things ; he 
 was too fond of gaudy glitter and ornament to be a deep thinker, 
 capable of diving into the heart of social phenomena, or of 
 interesting himself in any phase of humanity not surrounded 
 with the vulgar pomps of civilization. Want of refinement, 
 with Moore, was a cardinal sin, which cut him off from congenial 
 sympathy with threee-fourths of the human species. With the 
 nymphs of May Fair, with the belles of the drawing-room, with 
 those circles of society which can invest nature with all the 
 resources of art, Moore's heart beat in genuine unison. He 
 could also appreciate, as well as any man, beautiful scenery 
 interspersed with rock and wood gleaming with cascades, — here 
 expanding into lakes, there contracting into rivers, — and even 
 with towering mountains, provided they stood out in dark 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 229 
 
 masses against a roseate sky. But if his fellow-creatures did 
 not deal largely in cosmetics, or if the landscape simply 
 consisted of 
 
 Mountains bare, 
 Bare trees, and the green fields, 
 
 both one and the other were more likely to provoke his censure 
 than elicit his admiration. Nature, as well as society, required ! 
 a brilliant setting to engage Moore's attention. He appears to! 
 have taken an interest in both only in proportion to the amount 
 of gilding with which they were embellished ; and it is to be 
 feared he preferred all the foibles and lying vanities of con- 
 ventional life, entrenched beneath a large array of upholstery, 
 to the humbler virtues, without. It is this lack of clear insight 
 into humanity, that causes the poet to make up for deep touches 
 of nature, by false glitter and overstrained refinement ; it is this 
 incapacity of identifying himself with man's loftiest destinies, 
 which leads him to touch with lame wing the heights of philo- 
 sophy, and to be thoroughly at home in no other region than the 
 wanton bower of love. But this passion has such wide-encircling 
 ramifications, stretches over such an infinity of joys and sorrows, 
 so completely colours with its hues all the objects and vitalizes 
 all the energies of human life, that to be master of its emotions 
 is to be sovereign of a universe. 
 
 It cannot be denied that Moore, in awakening and gratifying 
 the sensuous and more emotional sympathies of our nature, has 
 few rivals, though in this department he is more graceful than 
 energetic, more tender than pathetic, too inclined to sport with 
 imagery caught from the fleeting aspects of nature than to dwell 
 in the reflective regions of the human breast. Hence, the im- 
 pressions he excites are rather evanescent than durable. The 
 structures he builds up are not made of solid and permanent 
 materials, but of filagree-work and decorative ornament, which 
 rather startle the reader by brilliancy of effect than overpower 
 him with emotional grandeur and profound sentiment. There 
 
230 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 is plaintive melancholy, deep tenderness, exquisite sensibility, 
 voluptuous passion, veiled with a spirituality which takes off all 
 its coarseness, and a fancy ever on the wing to ransack nature 
 for illustrations, till the most distant objects are rendered tribu- 
 tary to the brilliant setting of the sentiments he wishes to convey. 
 I know, indeed, no poet so prolific of comparisons calculated 
 to sculpture his ideas on the mind, or so fitted to etherealize 
 the most sensuous images, by the lightness of touch with which 
 they are treated, or the spiritual aspects under which they are 
 introduced. These embellishments being drawn from the most 
 poetic objects in the universe, reflect, in their ever-shifting 
 phases, variegated light upon the sentiments they are intended 
 to illustrate, until in the pictures of the poet, the shadows of the 
 real world are invested with the magical tints of ideal creation. 
 The sparkling freshness of the thought, combined with the per- 
 fect adaptability of the image, like two burnished mirrors, mul- 
 tiply and interfuse each other's hues with such brilliancy, that 
 the spiritual snatches from the material its distinctness of out- 
 line, while the material imbibes from the spiritual that light 
 which dazes the reader with splendour. But as every perfection 
 lavished in excess produces corresponding disadvantages, so this 
 exuberance of fancy cloys from its very monotony of sweetness. 
 It, to a great extent, emasculates the poet's thoughts by breaking 
 their continuity. The shaft of reflection cannot strike deep into 
 the strata of his subject, while the writer is seeking for flowers to 
 adorn the surface. Poverty of conception is frequently hidden 
 under a lavish display of ornament, too often introduced to con- 
 ceal the absence of more substantial appendages j as in those 
 nymphs who endeavour to supply themselves with symmetrical 
 figures by millinery devices, or in those pasteboard creations 
 of Hercules which we meet with on gala-days, when, through 
 a judicious arrangement of drapery and flowers, weakness is 
 arrayed in all the sumptuous prodigality of strength. 
 • In narrative poetry, Moore has succeeded even better than 
 could have been expected from one whose talents lay in the 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 231 
 
 objective and sentimental sphere. " Lallah Rookh " presents 
 the perfection of panoramic scenery, dashed off with the ease 
 of a consummate artist. The imagery is as gorgeous and 
 imposing as the versification is melodious, or as the similes are 
 dazzling and profuse. Feats of daring as heroic as ever 
 tempted a patriot's sword, are combined with scenes of tender- 
 ness as soft as ever melted a lover's breast ; and the whole is 
 pervaded with that languid voluptuousness, which, in the East, 
 is so beautiful as to be allied with spirituality. If, in these 
 regions, he fails to exhibit the sustained sweetness and natural 
 imagery of Burns and Spenser, or the creative genius of Scott 
 or Chaucer, his love scenes have more lusciousness, his land- 
 scapes are lit up with a splendour quite as ideal, while he hurries 
 us along with more dashing vigour and impetuosity. But, 
 even here, the reader cannot but feel the want of human interest, 
 owing to the absence of lifelike portraiture of character, and 
 the attempt to supply the places of natural incident by startling 
 denouements and gorgeous contrasts. It is the misfortune 
 of Moore, that even in the best of his triumphs, by his lavish 
 style of ornament and his deficiency in the subjective element, 
 he reminds us too frequently of the metamorphoses of the 
 stage, and makes us feel he is producing his effects by theatrical 
 display and scenic illusions. Notwithstanding these impres- 
 sions, the "Fire Worshippers," and the "Paradise and the Peri," 
 which are by far the best of the Arabian tales, would be sufficient 
 to entitle Moore to a high place as a narrative poet. In the one, 
 there is great fire and energy ; in the other, exquisite elaboration 
 of detail and enamel perfection of finish. For construction of 
 plot, for the graceful windings and sudden surprises of the story, 
 for the succession of striking tableaux, each increasing in splen- 
 dour, and for the dramatic interest sustained by keeping the 
 figure of Hafed draped to the close, the " Fire Worshippers" may 
 rival any other poem, of similar extent, in the language. The 
 boarding of Zelica's vessel during a tempest, in which the storm 
 of the elements is outrivalled by the fury of man, is matchless 
 
232 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 1 
 
 both in vigour and execution. The description of the Gheber's 
 retreat, for grandeur and sublimity, is also quite equal to any 
 similar picture in the language : — 
 
 Around its base, the bare rocks stood, 
 Like naked giants, in the flood, 
 
 As if to guard the gulf across ; 
 While on its peak, that brav'd the sky, 
 A ruined temple tower'd so high, 
 
 That oft the sleeping albatross 
 Struck the wild ruin with her wing, 
 And from her cloud-rock'd slumbering 
 Started — to find man's dwelling there, 
 In her own silent fields of air I 
 Beneath, terrific caverns gave 
 Dark welcome to each stormy wave 
 That dash'd like midnight revellers in ; — 
 And such the strange, mysterious din, 
 At times throughout those caverns roll'd, — 
 And such the fearful wonders told 
 Of restless sprites imprison'd there, 
 That bold were Moslem, who would dare, 
 At twilight hour, to steer his skiff 
 Beneath the Gheber's lonely cliff.* 
 
 Had Moore only written this poem, he would have been en- 
 titled, on account of the touches of imaginative passion it con- 
 tains, and the ease with which he attains the sublime, to rank in 
 the same class with the first of his contemporaries, though, from 
 the prevalence of the ornamental over the substantial features of 
 narrative poetry, at a respectable distance from the first group. 
 Of the "Veiled. Prophet" and the "Light of the Harem," I 
 cannot say anything like so much. Mokanna's cruelty was too 
 revolting, and Nourmahal's pettishness too trifling, to supply 
 the foundations of a story fit to be arrayed in all the glittering 
 effulgence of the poet's fancy. But, with all the drawbacks of 
 
 * " Fire Worshippers," p. 10. 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 233 
 
 the theme, I do not think Moore has done justice to either. A 
 poet whose invention was more prolific would have made the 
 poverty of his materials only act as a foil for the display of the 
 splendours which such poor materials were destined to assume, 
 when lit up by the flame of his genius. But, if we take away 
 the female portraits, and the exquisite lyrics with which he has 
 enriched these productions, the rest of the piece collapses like 
 those gorgeous sky-cities pellucid with flame, pillared and 
 buttressed upon western clouds, at even, when the light which 
 illumined them has been withdrawn. Moore, skilful jewel- 
 setter as he was, in his smaller pieces, was not competent, 
 Eke Wordsworth, to supply deficiency of incident in narrative, 
 by individual traits of character, or by startling reflections ; 
 and when his footlights do not fall on the scenic effects of 
 melodramatic action, the power of the master is not fully 
 displayed. 
 
 It is this lack of variety of incident, of some common 
 ground-plot to serve as a substratum for weaving the stories into 
 each other, which deprives the u Loves of the Angels " of that 
 brilliancy of treatment which, doubtless, the subject would, 
 otherwise, have received. The separate stories themselves 
 would, as narrative poems, be entitled to high consideration, 
 as the productions of a poet of second class merit in this 
 branch of the art, but coming from Moore, the merits of the 
 narration are lost sight of in the splendour of his Oriental 
 imagery, and in the still more glittering showers of diamond lustre 
 which his lyrics flash upon the world. These stories unite deep 
 pathos with exquisite tenderness to an extent, perhaps, never 
 reached before in our language. But Moore erred in choosing 
 oblique narration for the cast of the two first pieces \ and, as he 
 completely fails in the denouement of each, he leaves the third 
 story without any denouement at all. The monotony of the 
 passion, unrelieved by incidents of a sterner sort, is also unvaried 
 by difference of character in the angels and their lovers, who 
 all appear very much as chips of the same block. Moore, if we 
 
234 BS i IMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 may judge from his female portraits, seems to have adopted the 
 absurd opinion of Pope, 
 
 Most women have no characters at all, 
 
 and to have painted them much after the receipt of Diderot, 
 that is, with a pen dipped in the colours of the rainbow, with 
 the hues softened by the down off butterfly's wings, taking, as 
 the general substratum of the character, Pope's couplet, 
 
 A very heathen in the carnal part, 
 
 And yet a right good Christian at the heart. 
 
 For Moore's Leas, Namas, Lilises, as well as his Hindas, 
 Zelicas, and Nourmahals, while uniting every external perfection, 
 
 comprise 
 
 A union, which the hand 
 
 Of Nature kept for them alone, 
 Of everything most playful, grand, 
 Voluptuous, spiritual, bland 
 In angel-natures and their own. * 
 
 Each indiscriminately may be addressed in the language Rubi 
 applies to his mistress, — 
 
 One in whose love I felt were given 
 
 The mixed delights of either sphere, 
 All that the spirit seeks in heaven, 
 
 And all the senses bum for here, f 
 
 In the same manner he paints Hinda, — 
 
 Fill'd with all youth's sweet desires, 
 Mingling the meek and vestal fires 
 Of other worlds, with all the bliss, 
 The fond, weak tenderness of this. 
 A soul, too, more than half divine, 
 
 Where, through some shades of earthly feeling, 
 Religion's soften'd glories shine, 
 
 Like light through summer foliage stealing. % 
 
 * " Loves of the Angels," second Angel's story. 
 
 t Ibid, 
 
 % The " Fire Worshippers. " 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 235 
 
 * It is this want of individual traits in his portraits, and his making 
 his characters a mere bundle of abstract qualities, which is 
 the cardinal defect of Moore's narrative poetry, and which ap- 
 pears to the greatest disadvantage in the " Loves of the Angels," 
 as this poem has no other element calculated to throw out each 
 story in vivid distinctness. Yet, with all the imperfections that 
 niggard invention, lack of incident, and sameness of character 
 throw over this performance ; the variegated gems of fancy which 
 light up each page ; the subdued melancholy thrown, like a silken 
 veil, over the most voluptuous of the scenes j and, above all, the 
 lyrical charms with which many of those scenes are invested, 
 flooding each with melody which haunts the soul like echoes from 
 a loftier sphere, — all combine to stamp upon these productions 
 the ineffaceable marks of genius. As a whole, they need not fear 
 comparison with Byron's drama upon the same theme, though 
 Byron, as he always does, went in for realistic treatment. In 
 "Heaven and Earth," Byron is inferior to himself. In the 
 " Loves of the Angels," Moore is only inferior to his subject. 
 In the one, all the harsher features of the picture are brought 
 out, till we are repelled by their sternness ; in the other, all its 
 tenderness, till we are cloyed by their sweetness. Byron 
 triumphs in his conception ; Moore, in his execution. The de- 
 scriptions of the latter are too spiritualized ; of the former, too 
 earthy. The angels of Moore are weak libertines, who sacrifice 
 everything to pleasure ; those of Byron, haughty spirits, who, 
 rather than abandon their mistresses, embrace perdition out of 
 a sentiment of honour. In Moore, love is not merely the 
 chief, but the solitary subject of his canvas. In Byron, it is 
 only an episode faintly imaged in the background, while the 
 fore-part of the picture is taken up with man in all his irregular 
 passions, defying the Deity about to inflict upon him the 
 summary chastisement of the deluge. Had not Byron been 
 fettered by his Greek notions of the drama, he would, doubt- 
 less, have kindled the blackness of his picture into lights and 
 shades, before the splendour of whose contrasts even Moore's 
 
236 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 glittering radiance would have paled. But as it is, his perform- 
 ance only commands attention as a work of art ; while the pro- 
 duction of his less gifted contemporary, interlacing itself with 
 the affections, enchains our sympathies as a work of passionate 
 interest. 
 'But it is as a lyrical poet that Moore has achieved his highest 
 triumphs, and he had the good sense to devote the greater part 
 of his energies to a sphere in which nature had most fitted him 
 to shine. To some extent, he was fortunate in belonging to a 
 country, more than any other in Europe, steeped in misfortune, 
 and abounding in popular airs, wherein, as it were, lie en- 
 shrined the records of its joys and sorrows, the triumphs of its 
 wit, the lament over its broken aspirations, the trumpet tones 
 of its victories, and the wail of its defeats. Most of these airs 
 were either adapted to songs previously written, or, as was the 
 case with the early minstrels, both the tune and the words 
 were struck out under the spontaneous impulses of momentary 
 inspiration. But such is the superiority of music over language, 
 that, in a great many cases, posterity found itself in the position 
 of the shepherd in Virgil, who could recall the tune while the 
 words were forgotten : 
 
 Numeros memini si verba tenerem. 
 
 It was to wed these melodies to appropriate words, which were 
 joined to trivial sentiments, or floating about without any, like 
 the ghosts of past songs, that Moore addressed himself; and 
 even envy cannot deny that he executed the task with a 
 grace and a mellifluous ring of versification which makes the 
 tune rather seem a reflex of the words, and not the words an 
 embodiment of the melody. The wide range of sentiment 
 embraced by the poet, enables him to embody, in the compo- 
 sition of a few brief years, the airs which it had taken centuries 
 to accumulate, with a diversity of feeling quite equal to the 
 shifting fortunes of his country, and the ever-varying temper- 
 ament in which the national music had its birth. The tone of 
 
ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 237 
 
 despondency succeeding to that of defiance, the voice of melan- 
 choly mingling with that of gladness, as the freshness of hope 
 brightens into fulfilment or fades into vacuity, the levities 
 of truth and the more permanent realities of sadness, chasing 
 each other with the ever-varying fluctuations of sunlight and 
 shadow ; the violence of passion melting in the embraces of 
 pity ; tumult dying away into the soft languor of repose, and 
 all the alternations of joy or sorrow pouring their confluent 
 tides on the confines of youth and age, and rolling their diversified 
 currents through the lover's heart, or the patriot's breast, — each 
 of these are reflected in the poet's page with an impress which 
 wants nothing of reality, except the removal of that soft tinge 
 of spirituality which surrounds all his productions with a haze 
 of splendour. 
 
 Whether we regard the variety, or extent, or the tenderness, 
 or sweetness, or the united excellence of his lyrics, it would be 
 difficult to name a poet whom Moore does not excel. But 
 conscious where his strength lay, the poet revels in his flights of 
 fancy too far j he indulges in his vein of voluptuousness too 
 much, to impart that chastened simplicity and vigour to his 
 conceptions, which they most needed to set them in their best 
 light. The reckless prodigality with which he scatters his polished 
 gems over Jus thoughts, prevents him from investing them with 
 that depth and individual speciality of colouring, which they 
 frequently want to wing them to the heart. Hence, Burns 
 excels him in intensity of passion, in deep pathos, as well as in 
 those descriptions of character or scenery which bring the 
 mind in contact with the person depicted, or surround it with 
 the objects they would represent. Moore bewails the broken 
 fortunes of his country much like an effeminate Greek of Athens 
 who wants to luxuriate in the palaces of his oppressor j while 
 Burns sings of independence and liberty with the native fervour 
 of a Caledonian, who cares nothing for life beyond his own 
 naked mountains. Moore is seldom an Irishman, Burns 
 always a Scotchman. Both poets — the one in the roadside 
 
238 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 cabaret, the other in the patrician's drawing-room, are supreme 
 in their respective spheres. But, superior as Burns undoubtedly 
 is on his own ground, he sinks somewhat from his height, when 
 his lyrics are merged into the larger circle embraced by the 
 productions of his more artistic successor, who could pass from 
 a devotional hymn, or from an eulogium on Fox, to an imitation 
 of Catullus or to a chorus fit for a bacchanalian revel, and pause 
 on his way to interpose a coarse satire upon legitimacy or 
 priestcraft ; who could, while reclining on the luxurious sofa of 
 a Court beauty, indite a languishing sonnet which might charm 
 the fastidious taste of Madame de Pompadour, and then sud- 
 denly start up with a soul-awakening tribute to liberty, destined 
 to keep for ,ever alive the fires of independence in the breasts 
 of his countrymen. 
 
ALEXANDRINE POETS. 239 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ALEXANDRINE POETS. 
 
 /q* HELLEY is the only poet who appeared to form a theory \ 
 /O of the universe 'perfectly consistent with itself, and to have n 
 acted up to the convictions so formed, in defiance alike of the/ 
 (^warning of his friends, and the menaces of society./ There 
 was no sophistry in his character. He maintained his boyish * 
 ingenuousness, untainted by a single shadow of hypocrisy, all 
 through his life. He wore his heart upon his sleeve for every 
 fool to peck at. His thoughts were reflected in his acts ; and 
 might be scanned through his features as clearly as the tints of 
 the over-arching sky may be traced in the depths of the crystal 
 lakes beneath. As he felt, so he sang. / There was, conseq uently, 
 greater uni ty bet ween,, his inte llectual con victions and his ) 
 : poetry_than ever existed jn any ojherjndiyidua l ; bot h appearing ( 
 
 ggf TSe product of tfr e same striving affpr 1-mth ; flTuj^hl^nrling 
 
 even the feelings of the heart wit h the cold l ight of a spiritual 
 philosophy.y As '~his"~opmions were in conflict with those 
 upon which the principal institutions of society were built, he 
 roused a host of enemies, who left him little rest either day or 
 night, but who were continually galling him with the shafts of 
 poisoned malice. Hence, his life was a scene of perpetual 
 anxiety and struggle. By constitution frail and delicate, he was 
 about the last person fitted to endure the buffets which this 
 throwing down the gauntlet against society brought on himself. 
 But nothing could make Shelley swerve from his course. With 
 
240 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 a sublime impersonation of Promethean will, he was prepared 
 to encounter every form of persecution, in carrying what he 
 believed to be the torch of truth down into the darkest recesses 
 of the human mind, and annihilating, at their source, the mists 
 of prejudice and superstition at once and for ever. 
 
 Astronomers say that if the axis of the earth could be brought 
 upon a line with the equator, instead of being twenty-three-and-a- 
 half degrees removed from it, we should have perpetual spring. 
 Storms would cease, diseases be unknown, and man return to the 
 golden age. Shelley thought that society had equally deflected 
 from the right path, to the great misery of man, and that it 
 — f might be brought back to the unerring line of justice, reason, 
 and love. All his life was an effort in this direction. He 
 sought, by applying the lever of spiritual conviction to the heart 
 of man, to remove the world to its right place again. The evil 
 which Christianity traced to the sin engrafted upon every off- 
 shoot of humanity by the conditions of its birth, was to Shelley 
 an accident which might be expelled from creation, if man 
 would only remain true to the harmonies of his nature. To 
 elicit these harmonies; to show their accordance with the 
 universe of which man was designed as the crowning feature, 
 and not a mere blotch upon its surface ; to demonstrate that 
 evil was factitious and transient, and good alone natural and 
 permanent, was the aim of Shelley's life, and the object of all 
 his writings. If he erred, it was on the side of philanthropy. 
 If he stumbled, it was through excess of love. The light 
 which led him astray was pre-eminently light from heaven. 
 To understand Shelley's principles, and enter into the spirit 
 -*- « of his poetry, the mind must be to some extent imbued with 
 the Alexandrine philosophy. He did not believe in the exist- 
 ence of matter. The external universe to him was a phantasm. 
 All the outward manifestations of sense were spiritual embodi- 
 ments, either alone existing in the mind's ideal sense of such, 
 or as the outward moulds of beings as incorporeal as itself. 
 Space and time were the mere conditions of sensuous intuition, 
 
A 
 
 #*ffi 
 
 ' ^^ALEXANDRINE POETS. 241 
 
 and fell to pieces with the material phenomena to which they 
 fixed the limits of a beginning and an end. We have only to 
 rise above the empirical notions of sense to annihilate such 
 vulgar conceptions as limits, and wander about like disembodied 
 spirits with the whole of immensity for our dwelling-place. If 
 all external forms are an illusion, so is death, which is the com- 
 mencement of a new life, the entrance on another cycle of 
 being, or the mere absorption of the outward embodiments in 
 the folds of another more adapted to the spirit's growth. But 
 presiding over all these plastic shapes of weird creation, ever 
 collapsing and re-clothing themselves with new forms, there was 
 a spirit of beauty directing everything to some fit end, and 
 sustaining, between the relations of each, that law of harmonious 
 development which ought to have its reflex in the moral world. 
 The whole hierarchy of spiritual ministrants, whether endued 
 with self-consciousness or not, employed in the perpetual re- 
 generation of love and beauty in the world, and each working 
 in proper sequence, under agents gradually culminating in the 
 essence or fountain of good, Shelley blended, with all he rea- 
 lized of beauty and truth, in the springs of creation, and in the 
 restorative elements of the universe. In like manner, evil had 
 its wide-spread agencies, ever active for mischief, operating in 
 powerful combination, which it was the duty of man, in unison 
 with the law of love, to banish from creation. Shelley be- 
 lieved himself, what every man ought to be, an apostle for that 
 purpose, and certainly executed his mission in an unflinching 
 spirit. Nearly every line of his poetry, as well as every act of 
 his life, seemed aimed at extinguishing evil among mankind. 
 
 The theory of the perfectibility of the human race led 
 Shelley to make war upon all the elements of society opposed 
 to its realization ; and the animosity which the struggle pro- 
 voked, threw him with ten-fold force back upon the resources 
 of nature. Had Shelley been the lion of social circles, he still . 
 would have worshipped nature with impassioned enthusiasm ; 
 but when nearly every door was slammed in his face, when 
 
 16 
 
242 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 society regarded him as an explosive individual, — a kind of 
 Titanic Sampson, bent upon pulling its framework to pieces, 
 in order that he might bury man beneath its ruins, the marvels 
 of the universe bound his soul with tenfold Circeian spells. 
 His life seems to have been passed in wooing Nature under all 
 her forms. In calm moon-light, in storm and tempest, at the 
 uprising of the dawn, or during the fleeting draperies of twi- 
 light, Shelley, with the eagerness of a painter, watched every 
 changing streak of colour, every purple gleam of light, every 
 nickering attenuation of shadow, as if he were inhaling not breath 
 from the atmosphere, but inspiration. Shelley, indeed, studied 
 natural phenomena so intensely, as if he thought that some 
 deeper glimpse into the mysteries of nature, some further solution 
 of the problem of existence, and of the enigma of life and death, 
 was to be obtained by this zealous scrutiny of her features. 
 He appeared to regard the elemental powers with the eye of an 
 ancient Greek, and drank in their sounds, as if they brought 
 to his soul reliable information from another sphere. At all 
 events, his philosophy assured him there was a kinship between 
 the soul of man and the active forces of nature ; and if we 
 regard his frail tenement and the mighty soul which seemed to 
 rend its shell as lightning tears a cloud, it would seem, to have 
 required little imagination on his part, to have regarded him- 
 self but a short remove from an elemental god. All these 
 characteristics, together with his sense of world abandonment, 
 the poet has described in language unrivalled for force, beauty, 
 and tenderness, in any literature : — 
 
 'Midst others of less note, came one frail form, 
 
 A phantom among men ; companionless • 
 As the last cloud of an expiring storm, 
 
 Whose thunder is its knell ; he, as I guess, 
 Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness 
 
 Actaxm-like, and now he fled astray 
 With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, 
 
 And his own thoughts along that rugged way " 
 Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey. 
 
ALEXANDRINE POETS. 243 
 
 A pard-like spirit, beautiful and swift, — 
 
 A love in desolation masked ; — a power 
 Girt round with weakness ; it can scarce uplift 
 
 The weight of the superincumbent hour. 
 It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, 
 
 A breaking billow ; even while we speak, 
 Is it not broken ? on the withering flower 
 
 The killing sun smiles brightly : on a cheek 
 The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break. 
 
 His head was bound with pansies over-blown, 
 
 And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue, 
 And a light spear topped with a Cyprus cone, 
 
 Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses grew, 
 Yet dripping with the forest's noon-day dew, 
 
 Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart 
 Shook the weak hand that grasped it : Of that crew 
 
 He came the last, neglected and apart, 
 A herd-abandoned deer, struck by the hunter's dart.* 
 
 The passion of other poets for Nature has been more or less 
 of a dilettante character. It has always given way under the 
 strain of much physical inconvenience. Wordsworth never 
 lingered among beautiful scenery, unless the solid comforts of an 
 inn could be found in the immediate neighbourhood. / Moore 
 had an eye for the artistic combination of glen, mountain, and 
 lake, but he must contemplate them from a gilded ottoman with 
 a Brussels underneath his feet. ! With Shelley such things were 
 simply ignored. His whole being was swallowed up in the 
 thought of the divine loveliness before him. His ascetic diet, 
 his absolute scorn of the pleasures of the table, gave him in this 
 respect advantage over his contemporaries. He encountered 
 all weathers, endured every kind of social inconvenience, in 
 order to track the foot-prints of loveliness and grandeur where- 
 ever they could be found. Alpine storms, and sea tempests ; 
 the roar of the ocean upon romantic coasts, where rugged rocks 
 in their wildness emulated the jagged clouds reflecting from 
 their burnished faces the splendours of a Claudean sunset; — 
 these were his home, and he appeared to enjoy them the more, 
 * Adonais. 
 
244 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 as they were shut out from the luxuries of conventional society. 
 When Shelley saw a grand spot, where Nature revelled in 
 majestic and Titanic wonders, it was a matter of very little 
 moment to him that there was no decent habitation in the 
 place. If there was a hut, he could live in that, and if there 
 was not, he could make one. It was in this spirit he pedes- 
 trianised Switzerland, and settled upon some of the wildest parts 
 of the Italian coast, after having familiarized his mind with the 
 beauties of Killarney, the luxuriant valleys of Wales, the wood- 
 encircling lakes of Cumberland, and the beech-covered lawns 
 of Marlow and Windsor. Even when comfortably housed in 
 any of these localities, Shelley did not, like his contemporaries, 
 compose his verse in an easy chair upon a well-carpeted floor, 
 with a curtained window in front of his desk, letting in upon him 
 vistas of beautiful scenery, while excluding the drenching rain 
 or the oppressive glare of the heat ; neither did he compose 
 his sea pictures, like Campbell, in a well-furnished room over- 
 looking the waves, contenting himself with occasional glimpses 
 of Neptune, through the double lens of his telescope. Shelley 
 made his skiff, or the cavern, and when inland, the wood and 
 the hedge copse, his study. Armed with pencil, and a book of 
 blank paper, while a tempest was brewing in the black sky, or 
 Nature lulled asleep in noontide sultriness, he would fling him- 
 self into the heart of her tumult or repose, and dot down his 
 conceptions as they came into his mind. In this manner he 
 composed his " Revolt of Islam," with the Thames rocking his 
 boat under the beeches of Marlow, and the "Witch of Atlas " 
 while out in a pedestrian excursion to San Pelegrino. The 
 " Prometheus Unbound " was similarly written while gazing on 
 the fragments of the Roman world, seated on the plinths of the 
 baths of Caracalla ; and the " Triumphs of Life," while gliding 
 along the purple Mediterranean, or exploring by moonlight in 
 his little shallop, the caves which fringe the rock-bound gulf 
 of Spezia. Hence, Shelley's life was an eminently poetic life, 
 as his philosophy was an eminently poetic philosophy. In the 
 

 ALEXANDRINE POETS. 245 
 
 ardour with which he flung himself into the embraces of his art, 
 in the rapt enthusiasm with which he drank in every aspect of 
 the beautiful and the grand until it became a part of his being, 
 in the yearning devotion with which he idolized Nature, and 
 drenched himself with inspiration at her source, Shelley surpasses 
 every other poet of whom history has left record. Had he 
 lived in more classical times, he might have been sculptured 
 as a tenth muse, with a globe and a lyre symbolizing the 
 mysterious harmonies between the soul and the universe. 
 
 The character of Shelley's poetry is just what might be ex- 
 pected from this interfusion of a poetic life with a poetic 
 philosophy. Of man's way s in society we get little, but of man 
 
 _inrelation to InThigherj testn^s^ and. 01' those aspects~*o~f'The— 
 nrmm r f lowhiPh t hrnyr ljght iipppmg natiirg ifl thtt aJ lklmrl., w e 
 
 v4£eX-jgveivlln£g._J^lley does not appear, in his poetry, to^ 
 
 interest himself much about human concerns in any phase of 
 society, except so far as they served to illustrate his peculiar 
 . views of human perfectibility. To sit down, like Scott, to ver- 
 sify romantic stories for the amusement of his species, seemed 
 to Shelley a degradation of his art. He felt the mantle of the 
 seer and prophet upon him, endowing him with the power, 
 through the instrumentality of the lyre, to awaken man from the 
 depths of his degradation, to the beauty of that higher life which 
 awaited him when escaped from the bonds of prejudice and 
 custom. He obeyed no law, but the dictates of his reason 
 and the pure impulses of his heart. Poetry was to Shelley the -* 
 great lever by which men's minds were to be incited to the 
 accomplishment of their moral regeneration. Hence, his prin- 
 cipal pieces contain an actual foreshadowing of the change, a 
 development of the reason upon which it was to be based, a 
 presentiment of the forces by which it was to be brought about. 
 He seems to have regarded his art, even more than the old 
 Greek dramatist, as a species of revelation, unveiling man's 
 relation with the infinite, and befitting him for the subjugation 
 of evil in others, by the extinction of selfishness in himself. In 
 
246 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 this respect, the only modern poet who approaches him is 
 Wordsworth. But Wordsworth's convictions were singularly 
 wanting in unity of purpose, mingling a little bit of Alexan- 
 drianism here, and a little bit of the Thirty-nine Articles there, 
 dovetailing a strange regard for liberal institutions abroad, with 
 a strong aversion to them at home, until the whole structure of 
 his teaching resembled a piece of tesselated mosaic, rather 
 curious to look at, but utterly unsafe to stand upon. But(Shelley's 
 principles were pre-eminently harmonious and self-coherent. He 
 carried his philosophical system, with logical sequence, into 
 man's social relations, until the universal spirit of love and 
 liberty, pervading all organic laws, became also paramount in 
 the political structures of society^/and these views, interlacing 
 nature and human institutions in one consentaneous framework, 
 he enforced with a flood of poetry so unsurpassingly grand in 
 its effulgence, so abstract and spiritual in its loveliness, that if 
 it failed to enchant all hearts, the defect is to be ascribed to the 
 obtuseness of the popular mind to the metaphysical distinc- 
 tions in which his conceptions were enshrined, and not to the 
 conceptions themselves, or to the shaping of that imaginative 
 power in which he surpassed all his contemporaries. Shelley's 
 unpopularity arose from the fact, not so much that he was 
 obscure, but that the national mind was dull. The old Greek 
 dramatist was a grand intellectual force in his time ; but to the 
 modern reader, the old Greek dramatist, with his views about 
 fate and destiny, his elemental deities, and his abstract personi- 
 fications is about as uninteresting and unintelligible a personage 
 as he can cope with. He is the poet of the past. In the same 
 manner, Shelley imaged a state of society and built his views 
 • upon a system of human perfectibility, which can only be con- 
 templated by an inversion of everything which absorbs the 
 interest of the present. He is the poet of the future. It would, 
 therefore, be manifestly unfair to judge of either in reference to 
 the tastes of an age incapable of fathoming the recesses of their 
 thoughts ; or to test the quality of their genius by any other 
 
ALEXANDRINE POETS. 247 
 
 standard than the fitness of that genius to represent the peculiar 
 views of which they were the exponents. 
 
 The " Revolt of Islam," the only narrative poem Shelley wrote 
 of any length, is invested with an apocalyptic character. An 
 abscess had formed on Shelley's lungs. His physician only 
 gave him a few months to live. He resolved to employ 
 that time on some great work which would convey to pos- 
 terity his own views of how their redemption was to be 
 effected, and in what manner the first apostles of the new 
 scheme of ideal regeneration were to meet their fate. But 
 like all apocalyptic writings, these views are conveyed to us 
 through a series of dreams, or rapt visions, which set the com- 
 prehension of ordinary readers, as well as the rules of art, 
 at defiance. He imagines two lovers in Turkish Greece im- 
 pelling, by the ardour of their genius, the population to cast off 
 the yoke of their tyrants, and inaugurate for their species a 
 new reign of love and benevolence. They momentarily suc- 
 ceed in the attempt, but not before the hero has been left for 
 dead, and the heroine driven to frenzy by the embraces of a 
 master whom she loathed. Their final victory, however, is 
 only achieved to be overthrown by a combination of foreign 
 despots. The lovers, after a few days of ecstatic intercourse, 
 give themselves up to the conquerors, and are burnt alive. 
 Their death, however, is phenomenal only. Shelley introduces 
 them to us in the supernal world, of which this is but a shadow, 
 enjoying the rapturous feast of bliss, a foretaste of which they 
 had struggled to secure for humanity. There is, consequently, 
 a greater unity about the piece than at first sight might appear. 
 It may be regarded as a sort of apocalypse to the Alexandrine 
 philosophy. It opens and it terminates in the ante-natal and 
 posthumous world. The actions of Laon and Cythna are 
 revealed to us in a series of visions, representing the force of 
 intellectual conviction and moral truth over the minds of men. 
 The outside world is phantasmal only, and is dealt with as such. 
 Human action is represented of such stuff as dreams are made 
 
248 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 of. The only abiding realities are spiritual truths, and that 
 fervent mingling of soul with soul which is expressed by the 
 word love. Hence, Shelley's conviction that, against these 
 two breastplates, the tyrants' sword and the bigot's hate were 
 destined early to prove powerless for ever. 
 
 Tried by the ordinary rules of art, perhaps, no poem, in any 
 language, contains so many beauties, mingled with so many 
 preposterous blemishes, as the "Revolt of Islam." The inci- 
 dents are few, and those of a character to shock all notions of 
 reality. Shelley seems to have had an idea that mankind were 
 to be instigated, by a simple discourse, to rise in a body against 
 the whole established structure of society, and overthrow in an 
 hour the building which had taken decades of centuries to 
 construct. A few words from the lips of a vagrant girl were 
 sufficient to make a whole generation rise up against their old 
 habits and prejudices, to break asunder the iron links of pre- 
 scription and usage, out of some fancied dream of realizing, 
 in a moment, the jream of general communism of property 
 and universal brotherhood of love. The French revolution 
 seems to have put into his head fancies of this nature. But 
 the French revolution had its origin in grinding taxation, the 
 oppression of the nobles, the exactions of the court, as well as 
 in the writings of two or three generations of bold spirits, each 
 waxing warmer in tone and more unbridled in expression, 
 until the focus was reached of that fire which lifted society 
 from the foundation upon which it had rested for centuries. 
 But the complex action of these causes was far different from 
 the wild ravings of a woman, to whose simple words the poet 
 attributes efforts for transcending anything ascribed to the 
 apostles of Rome, or the sibyls of Greece. It is no less mar- 
 vellous when whole troops of ferocious men are proceeding to 
 glut their revenge in the blood of their tyrants, that they should 
 be turned aside from the act, by having their minds directed to 
 its inutility ; or to find infuriated slaves, armed to the teeth, 
 changed into docile lambs, by being allowed to escape punish- 
 
ALEXANDRINE POETS. 249 
 
 ment for their crimes. It is unfortunate that Shelley should have 
 reduced into action his Quixotic ideas as to the effect of charity 
 and magnanimity of spirit upon depraved multitudes to so great 
 an extent as to have built up a great poem upon the notion, that 
 the Spanish knight's method of freeing criminals from their 
 chains, and turning them loose on society, was the best way to 
 regenerate his species. 
 
 If Laon's " Experiences " are too visionary for belief, those 
 of Cythna, the heroine of the .story, surpass all the marvels of 
 Arabian fiction. How, in a frenzy, she is transported from the 
 Harem, by a diver who conducts her to a cave beneath the 
 rocks of the sea, where she is fed by an eagle ; and how she is 
 lifted up again by an earthquake, upon a rock in the centre of 
 the bleak ocean, — all this extravagance, I conjecture, must be 
 taken to be nothing but the wild incoherency of her thoughts ; 
 but it is interwoven with the main action of the poem, 
 wherein it only ought to have been mortised as an episode. 
 The child, which is the fruit of the Harem adventure, and 
 which cuts a conspicuous figure in the sea-cave, connects 
 the tyrant of the golden city with Cythna, and forms a 
 further link in the unity of the piece, by committing suicide 
 at the funeral pile of the two lovers, in order to join 
 them in the next world. Poets have a licence to play tricks 
 with nature, whenever they deal in enchantments, or call into 
 action the weird powers. But this interweaving of dreams 
 with imaginative pictures, this piling of vision upon vision, 
 without any solid substratum to support the cloudy fabric, 
 utterly destroys verisimilitude, and with it everything like human 
 interest in the characters of the poem. Could we take the story 
 out of its unreal framework and interweave the actors with a 
 plot of flesh and blood creation, this poem would outshine any 
 other of similar extent in the language. But as it stands, its 
 beauties gleam upon us, across its airy cloud-rack, like the 
 fitful sun-light on an April day. The hopes of freedom's dawn 
 thus shoot their vivid streaks across the night of slavery, which 
 
250 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 is represented as winter wearing upon its slumbering face a 
 dream of spring : — 
 
 ' Such are the thoughts which, like the fires that glare 
 
 In storm-encompassed isles, we cherish yet 
 In this dark ruin. Such were mine even there ; 
 
 As in its sleep some odorous violet, 
 While yet its leaves with nightly dews are wet, 
 
 Breathes in prophetic dreams of day's uprise, 
 Or as ere Scythian frost in fear has met 
 
 Spring's messengers descending from the skies, 
 The buds foreknow their life — this hope must ever rise.' * 
 
 The picture of Cythna who wanders with Laon, 
 
 Where earth and ocean meet 
 Beyond the aerial mountains, whose vast cells 
 
 The unreposing billows ever beat, 
 Through forests wide and old, and lawny dells 
 
 Where boughs of incense droop over the emerald wells, f 
 
 will hold its own against any other in the language : — 
 
 ' She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness, 
 
 A power, that from its objects scarcely drew 
 One impulse of her being — in her lightness 
 
 Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew, 
 Which wanders through the waste air's pathless blue, 
 
 To nourish some far desert ; she did seem 
 Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew, 
 
 Like the bright shade of some immortal dream 
 Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of life's dark stream.' X 
 
 The passion of Laon and Cythna has a radiance flung around 
 it of fiery depth and splendour which reveal all the glowing 
 ardour of the poet's nature : — 
 
 * The meteor showed the leaves on which we sate ; 
 
 And Cythna's glowing arms, and the thick ties 
 Of her soft hair, which bent with gathered weight 
 
 My neck near hers ; her dark and deepening eyes 
 
 * C. vii., st. 37. t C. vi., st. 25. X C. ii., st. 23. 
 
ALEXANDRINE POETS. 251 
 
 Which (as twin phantoms of one star that lies 
 O'er a dim well, move, though the star reposes, ) 
 
 Swam in our mute and liquid ecstasies ; 
 
 Her marble brow, and eager lips, like roses, 
 
 With their own fragrance pale, which Spring but half uncloses. ' 
 
 1 The meteor to its far morass returned : 
 
 The beating of our veins one interval 
 Made still ; and then I felt the blood that burned 
 
 Within her frame, mingle with mine, and fall 
 Around my heart like fire ; and over all 
 
 A mist was spread, the sickness of a deep 
 And speechless swoon of joy, as might befall 
 
 Two disunited spirits when they leap 
 In union from this earth's obscure and fading sleep. ' * 
 
 1 Her lips were parted, and the measured breath 
 
 Was now heard there ; — her dark and intricate eyes 
 Orb within orb, deeper than" sleep or death, 
 
 Absorbed the glories of the burning skies, 
 Which, mingling with her heart's deep ecstasies, 
 
 Burst from her looks and gestures ; — and a light 
 Of liquid tenderness, like love, did rise 
 
 From her whole frame, — an atmosphere which quite 
 Arrayed her in its beams, tremulous, and soft, and bright. ' 
 
 1 She would have clasped me to her glowing frame ; 
 
 Those warm and odorous lips might soon have shed 
 On mine the fragrance and the invisible flame 
 
 Which now the cold winds stole ; — she would have laid 
 Upon my languid heart her dearest head ; 
 
 I might have heard her voice, tender and sweet : 
 Her eyes mingling with mine, might soon have fed 
 
 My soul with their own joy. — One moment yet 
 I gazed — we parted then, never again to meet. ' + 
 
 Beauties of this sort abound in the poem, and when we consider 
 the ethereal light in which even its tamest parts are steeped, 
 and the fire and vigour with which the whole is executed, the 
 
 * C. vi., sts. 34, 35. t C. xi., sts. 5, 6. 
 
252 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 regret is doubly felt that conceptions, which, if united with a 
 better ground-plan, would have been as familiar to us as house- 
 hold words, should, as they stand gilding an unnatural fabric, 
 promise to be the least popular of any in our literature. 
 
 The " Revolt of Islam " represented a defeat, which Shelley 
 believed would be but temporary; for it was no part of his creed 
 that vice and misery would always be in the ascendant in this 
 world, that the great bulk of mankind would be for ever ex- 
 cluded from their inheritance, but that in the end, humanity 
 would rise triumphant over most of the evils by which it is, at 
 present, assailed. Wars would cease, diseases be exterminated, 
 superstition banished, kingcraft abolished, crime annihilated, 
 and man rejoice in the plenitude of moral truth, of paternal 
 concord, and intellectual freedom. This change in the human 
 world would be attended by a sort of paloegenesis, with a cor- 
 responding change in the animal and terrestrial world. Every 
 thing would cast off its evil nature as an outworn garment, 
 and bask in the universal reign of love. Shelley se'ems to 
 have been prepossessed with the idea that man only need to 
 resume his own perfectibility, to ensure the universal triumph 
 of good in the outward universe. The wild and predatory 
 animals would either disappear, or transmute their fierce into 
 gentle natures. Poisonous plants would become healthy, and 
 noxious elements sound. The atmosphere would refuse to 
 suck in pestilence, and no blasts would strike sterility into the 
 womb of the earth. As before the pre-historic period, races 
 existed in harmony with the totally different state of climate, 
 and vegetation then existing; so if man were to undergo a 
 change in his moral faculties, a corresponding change might be 
 expected to follow in his physical condition, and both would 
 necessitate a revolution in the spiritual and physical elements 
 of the universe. As long as man, the highest product of 
 creation, is rotten, the whole structure must be proportionally 
 infirm; but make him sound, and the surrounding elements 
 will partake of the perfection embodied in their loftiest manifesta- 
 
ALEXANDRINE POETS. 253 
 
 tion. At least such is the scheme which the " Prometheus Un- 
 bound * presents to us ) and though the conception of the drama 
 is derived from ^Eschylus, yet so different is Shelley's manner of 
 treatment, to such an extent has he enlarged the boundaries of 
 his subject, that it comes before us with the freshness of an 
 original performance. According to the old story, Prometheus, 
 for endowing the outcast race of men with the possession of 
 the arts, was chained to a rock, and condemned by Jupiter to 
 have his entrails gnawed by vultures, though he had assisted 
 that potentate to usurp the throne of Olympus, from which Jove 
 and Kronos had formerly expelled Saturn. It was evidently the 
 design of ^Eschylus, when Hercules, in the further expansion 
 of the drama, by the order of the Fates, unboudn Prometheus, 
 to reconcile the justice of Jupiter with the punishment he 
 had ungratefully inflicted upon an ally : for the father of God 
 and men, whose usurpation was always represented by the 
 poets as the establishment of order and anarchy, could not 
 be supposed to have been represented, at their religious rites, 
 as a ferocious tyrant. But Shelley seized upon the story as 
 typical of the evils which humanity was undergoing from 
 the rule of the present supposed god of the universe, who 
 had usurped the place of Saturn, that is, of the spirit of 
 universal love actuating the form of intellectual beauty. The 
 usurper, drunk with excess of power, marries Thetis, and she 
 gives birth to a hero who frees the human race, personified 
 in Prometheus, from the numerous hosts of evils preying on his 
 vitals, and restores the golden reign of Saturn with all the 
 paradisal bliss from which man had been so ruthlessly excluded. 
 Such are the outlines of the picture which Shelley has filled up 
 with the most gorgeous poetry. Though the ordinary reader 
 may fail to realize his acute metaphysical distinctions, or 
 to bring the elemental power which he has endued with 
 living forms within the regions of flesh and blood, still it 
 cannot be denied, with all their cloudland dreaminess and 
 shadow, they are more real in their way than the allegorical 
 
254 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 personifications of Spenser, and subserve a more practical 
 purpose as the exponents of a deep philosophy. They are the 
 outward embodiments of vital forces which are intimately 
 blended with the destinies of man. As such, the truthfulness 
 of the conceptions must be tested by a reference to the ideas 
 they are intended to convey, and the functions of those ideas 
 in bringing about the changes they are designed to illustrate. In 
 this respect, there can hardly be a doubt that Shelley ascended 
 to the height of his subject. His embodiments are instinct 
 with life. Their beauty is only such as could be caught by the 
 rapt vision of a poet's eye. The marvellous groupings of his 
 figures would suck the soul out of a sculptor. While their deep 
 tenderness remind us of the faces of Raphael's madonnas, their 
 voluptuous forms are hardly surpassed by the outlines of Titian 
 himself. Nature dawns upon us in a series of spiritual visions, 
 combining regions of fairy loveliness with the broad outlines of 
 a philosophy, which aims at realizing all the magical colouring 
 of the poet's visions, in the sphere of truth. That Shelley in 
 his "Prometheus," as well as in his " Hellas," with reference to 
 the poetry of his subject, and its ground-plan in the region 
 of abstract thought, surpasses ^Eschylus, few, I think, would be 
 disposed to deny j but ^Eschylus wrote for an audience who felt 
 their own fortunes, and the folds of their social and religious 
 life, indissolubly blent with the poet's conceptions, and who, on 
 that account, could grasp them as substantial existences ; but 
 Shelley, for an audience, who regarded his conceptions as the 
 airy phantoms of a dream, never likely to be realized. Hence, 
 while the triumphs of the one are stereotyped in history, those 
 of the other only exist in the mind of the metaphysician. 
 
 Had Shelley never descended into the regions of actual fact, 
 it might have remained doubtful whether he could have con- 
 structed a story appealing powerfully to human interests with 
 any success. But in the " Cenci" he has tested his strength in 
 the highest walk of modern dramatic art, with a result un- 
 equalled since the days of Marlowe and Shakespeare. The 
 
ALEXANDRINE POETS. 255 
 
 interest is powerfully sustained to the end. The action never 
 flags. The characters are as boldly conceived as they are 
 accurately executed. The daring and fiend-like determination 
 of Francesco, the timid and vacillating purposes of the 
 brother, the ruffianism of Orsino, are all so many foils to set 
 off Beatrice, the grand impersonation of sublime despair, whose 
 purity sheds a halo of heroism round the fearful act she nerves 
 others to perform as the only plank of escape from moral 
 pollution. Now these characters are drawn in the most natural 
 manner in the world. They do not rant or mouth fine senti- 
 ments unconnected with natural outburst of passion, or with 
 the development of the plot, simply to show the author's poetic 
 powers. Their words, as well as their acts, are simply such as 
 would be expected from people of similar disposition, sur- 
 rounded by similar circumstances. There is not a line of waste 
 writing in the piece. The writer has made the characters 
 unfold themselves, not from their language, but from their acts, 
 while these are none other than are required for the natural 
 development of the story in crystalline clearness and complete- 
 ness. In the hands of Shakespeare, the plot would have 
 assumed a wider basis. The facetious element would have 
 been introduced, in which Shelley was woefully deficient. 
 There would have been more grandeur in some parts, and 
 more turgidity in others. But I hardly think the story would 
 have been better told, or the characters more truthfully drawn. 
 It is a marvel that Shelley, who never appears to have bestowed 
 any study upon the Elizabethan dramatists, should in this, his 
 first attempt, have equalled all but the foremost of them in that 
 species of composition which he had designedly neglected, but 
 upon which they had concentrated all their genius. 
 
 That Shelley evinced no lack of power in dealing with 
 objects of human interest when he allowed such to enthral his 
 nature, is evinced by many of his smaller pieces, most of 
 which are gems of surpassing beauty, whose lustre is rather 
 likely to be enhanced than to suffer by comparison with any 
 
 ,V 
 
256 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 other kindred productions in the language. For while, in these 
 pieces, the actual is never lost sight of, it is robed with such 
 ideal imagery as makes the material float in the splendours of 
 spiritual creation. A rich light permeates every object, until 
 the substantial form seems but the shadow of an ethereal 
 element. The death of poor Keats, at once struck all the 
 chords of his heart. The result was a monody which, for 
 depth of feeling, for exquisite pathos, for the beautiful embodi- 
 ments of the powers of nature, draped in the hues of a subtle 
 philosophy, is unsurpassed in any literature. The " Adonais " may 
 challenge comparison with "Lycidas," even in plaintive melody, 
 or naive grace and tender simplicity. In every other quality 
 Milton would be the first to admit his rival's superiority. The 
 " Ode to the Skylark," and the lines on " Dejection in the Bay 
 of Naples," evince his power in clothing mere sensations with 
 grand imagery, whether excited by visions of joy, or tossed upon 
 the rack of despair. His love ditties are the incarnation of 
 passionate tenderness suffused with deep melancholy, so that 
 we are perplexed to know which feeling is uppermost, or how 
 so much joy and sadness can be intermingled without destroying 
 each other. In the " Alastor," and the " Epipsychidion," the 
 yearning of the soul after ideal beauty, both in feminine as well 
 as in material creation, is imaged forth, with depth of fervour 
 and a gorgeousness of colouring which presents a true image 
 of the poet's life. Assuredly, if Shelley was wanting so often 
 in making the inconstant play of the passions the burthen of 
 his song, it was not for lack of capacity, but from his conviction 
 that the muse ought to aim at the nobler flight of filching from 
 heaven that light which was to unriddle the mysteries of creation. 
 It can hardly, however, be maintained that Shelley was equal 
 to the production of a grand representative poem, like " Don 
 Juan," for instance, as he wanted the humorous element, with- 
 out which any adequate representation of the conflicting 
 interests of human life is clearly impossible. He also wanted 
 that intimate experience with the world and its affairs, which 
 
— ( 
 
 ALEXANDRINE POETS. 257 
 
 alone can enable men to stereotype its pictures in the vivid 
 imagery of expression. Even this is apparent in his delineation 
 of love, in which the human, is always submerged in the ideal, 
 tints of the passion. Shelley was the child of spirituality. The 
 real world with its conventual forms, and its apparent absence 
 of deep emotional sympathies, was entirely foreign to his 
 nature. He did not take the pains to master it ; it is, there- 
 fore, very much doubted whether he possessed the power. In 
 this respect, he appears in disadvantageous contrast to Lord 
 Byron, who entered into the spirit of social phenomena, and 
 showed the depths of feeling in all their shivering nakedness, 
 which it was the object of conventional forms to conceal. 
 Shelley, doubtless, did not think the follies of society worth 
 unmasking, while there was higher game to fly at. But Byron 
 riots in the process, until the laying bare the manifold hypo- 
 crisies of custom, became the god of his intellectual life. 
 
 Byron and Shelley were, in most respects, the antithesis of each 
 other ; and had they not felt themselves linked together in 
 one common fate, as the victims of the prejudices of their 
 countrymen, as well as by congenial pursuits, the marvel would 
 have been that characters so opposite could have cherished 
 lasting sympathy for each other. Shelley always manifested a 
 universal spirit of love for his kind ; Byron a universal spirit 
 of hatred. The nature of Shelley was all sweetness; that of 
 Byron all bitterness. The one had a logical series of convic- 
 tions, self-coherent and harmonious, which he enforced at all 
 times upon everybody with whom he came into contact ; 
 the other had no belief whatever, but doubted of everything 
 except the existence of evil. Shelley had little satire or face- 
 tiousness in his disposition \ Byron was, by turns, caustic and 
 humourous. Shelley steeped the material world in the colours 
 of the ideal ; Byron, the ideal world in the colours of the 
 material. Shelley believed that everything was pure at 
 its birth, and had gone wrong by accident, but only, in the 
 order of time, to be restored to its original goodness ; Byron 
 
 17 
 
258 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 believed that everything was radically wrong, by evil engendered 
 in its nature, and would so continue to the end of the chapter. 
 Byron exercised his art to amuse or astonish, Shelley to 
 instruct and purify, his species. There can be no doubt in 
 nearly all these points of contrast, the advantage is with 
 Shelley. In poetic power, I do not know, except in the two 
 classes of satire, and the representative poem, that he is inferior 
 to his great contemporary. In the lyrical, as well as historical 
 drama, Byron could not even approach him. If Byron had 
 the advantage in the reproduction of actual passion, Shelley 
 triumphs in self-sustained ideal power. Byron accomplished 
 more, because he lived the longer. But it appears to me that 
 Shelley evinced the grander poetic capacity. It is, also, only 
 fair to consider that Shelley helped Byron to much of his ideal 
 splendour, while his noble friend could not return the gift by 
 inoculating Shelley with his world-wide experience. 
 
 Notwithstanding Byron's hostility to most of the institutions 
 of his country, in his delineations of human passion, and his 
 pictures of human life, he appealed to a large public who re- 
 sponded to his efforts by grand ovations of applause. But 
 Shelley was unsustained by any sympathizing audience : even 
 the most ethereal of his productions fell like dead fruit, un- 
 heeded to the ground. It was not that he enshrined his 
 thoughts in the garb of a metaphysical philosophy ; but he ap- 
 peared to take a pleasure in representing his opinions to be as 
 divergent from the popular creed as possible, as if it were a 
 point with him to encounter the most virulent opposition, — to 
 reap the widest harvest of disgust. His belief in a spirit of 
 beauty and design, impregnating every part of the universe, 
 and pre-determining everything for good, might have saved him 
 from the stigma of atheism which he so resolutely brought upon 
 himself. His view of the perfectibility of man being connected 
 with the perfectibility of the universe, is, after all, but the 
 direct counterpart of the doctrine of the Fall, which represents 
 nature as rising in rebellion against man, as soon as man rose 
 
ALEXANDRINE POETS. 259 
 
 in rebellion against himself. The ardour with which Shelley- 
 looked forward to the extinction of evil, was only another exem- 
 plification of that yearning for the millennium which many 
 enthusiastic divines believe will be brought about by other 
 means. Shelley's views of the moral law, differed little, if 
 anything, from the doctrines of the New Testament. Indeed, 
 it would not be difficult to show that most of the views pro- 
 pounded by Shelley, had some analogy or kinship with those 
 entertained by the orthodox of his day ; the only difference being 
 that both believed in the same agency under varying forms, and 
 sought the final results by the employment of different factors. 
 But Shelley had imbibed with his Alexandrian notions, enough, if 
 not all, of that hostility to Christianity, manifested by the cultiva- 
 tors of the old philosophy to the nascent creed, which first pur- 
 sued that philosophy to temporary destruction, and then applied 
 its dead forms to leaven much of its new spirit. But Shelley 
 was not the man to learn anything from so ghastly a source as 
 history. He therefore encountered Christianity with the same 
 virulence, as if this amalgamation had not taken place, — as if 
 Proclus was still writing the Enneades, and Celsus was still 
 thundering his indignation against Gregory Nazienzen. By 
 this means he not only aroused useless antagonism, but 
 prevented himself from sympathizing with much that was 
 beautiful in the past, and many sources of spiritual loveliness 
 which animated the present. The area of his aesthetic views 
 was narrowed in proportion. Though most lavish in his 
 charities, he appears to have had but a faint conception of 
 the virtues arising from that proper discipline of the passions, 
 which Christianity had impressed upon the world. If the 
 popular belief inculcated a sage restraint in the cultivation 
 of chastity, I fear that would have been reason enough with 
 Shelley for counselling indulgence. 
 
 Shelley's views with regard to the relations which ought to 
 exist between the two sexes, were doubtless imbibed, like most 
 of his other notions respecting society, from Plato's Republic. 
 
260 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Those relations he would have established upon the widest 
 freedom consistent with man's moral development. No union, 
 in his view, was legitimate unless based upon the mutual 
 affection of both parties. When the bond of sympathy was 
 broken, no matter whether on the part of both, or either, the 
 union was dissolved in reality, and ought not to be allowed to 
 drag on, after its soul was dead, a wretched legal existence. 
 All forms of prostitution, all commingling of the sexes, which 
 had mere convenience or lechery for its basis, Shelley regarded 
 with the utmost aversion j but when love had struck root in 
 the tender feelings of the heart, — when it had taken up its home 
 in the recesses of the soul, and generated from thence mutual 
 fires, he was so prepossessed with the notion, of its right to pro- 
 ceed to any length it pleased, in defiance of present responsibili- 
 ties or former engagements, that with his usual disingenuousness, 
 he not only did not scruple to reduce the theory to practice, 
 but introduced it into his domestic establishment. To some 
 such source is to be ascribed those mistakes in his matrimonial 
 connections, which threw such a blight over his subsequent 
 career. His first wife was, doubtless, not so well suited to 
 sympathize with his pursuits as Miss Godwin. Yet it was on 
 this slender ground that Shelley thought himself justified in 
 leaving her in an advanced stage of pregnancy, after she had 
 borne him one child, in order to cohabit with another woman. 
 Had there been a wide-growing estrangement, threatening a 
 breach between the parties, this ungracious step would not 
 have been without some excuse. But dates and documentary 
 evidence are against this supposition. Shelley, after marrying 
 Harriett Westbrook, in Holland, in 1811, went through a 
 second marriage with that lady, in March, 18 14, to legitimate 
 the offspring in the eye of English law. Hardly four months 
 after that act, he left England with Miss Godwin, whose 
 acquaintance he had formed in the interim. From such facts, 
 there can be only one inference, that Shelley thought every man 
 entitled to abandon the partner whom he had apparently 
 
ALEXANDRINE POETS. 261 
 
 selected for life, upon meeting with another more congenial to 
 his tastes ; having, of course, made his first wife a suitable pro- 
 vision for her maintenance. The subsequent suicide which fol- 
 lowed, after the return of the newly-engaged parties to England, 
 when the connection began to assume the firmness of adamant, 
 we are assured, was brought about by causes in which Shelley 
 had no concern whatever. But who can dive into the recesses 
 of a mind distracted with its own sorrows, and pretend to sepa- 
 rate the entangled skein of motives so clearly as to enable him 
 to say, these and these only led to the perpetration of the dire 
 result? 
 
 A direct cause, or the causa causans of the calamity, the God- 
 win connection may not have been, but that it was the indirect 
 cause, that is, one of the agents leading up to it, and without 
 which the mischief could not possibly have happened, no one 
 will be surely bold enough to deny. Such, indeed, appears to 
 have been Shelley's view, as the rash act cast a profound gloom 
 over his closing years, and filled his love strains with that sad- 
 ness which reminds us of Ophelia's love dirge, as she was sink- 
 ing with her rose-wreath into the embrace of death. The " Invo- 
 cation to Misery," the beautiful " Ode to the Future," and some 
 lines of heart-breaking tenderness over a life separation, which 
 Shelley's editors have had the bad taste to inscribe to Harriet 
 Grove, a casual sweetheart of his boyhood, were all written 
 under a keen sense of the misfortune which his levity, or the 
 practical embodiment of his theories, had brought upon him. 
 Could Shelley have foreseen the consequence, he was too feel- 
 ing a man not even to have sacrificed his own happiness, than 
 entail wretchedness upon those whom he had sworn to shelter 
 from its pangs. But with his peculiar convictions, he, doubtless, 
 blamed society rather than himself, for the result, by fostering 
 in woman, through its Draconian marriage laws, that chastity of 
 principle, which regards fixity of tenure in wedlock, as the only 
 foundation of her future happiness. Shelley may have, doubt- 
 less, reasoned himself into the conviction that he was doing his 
 
262 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 wife, no less than society, a service, by overturning a principle 
 in his own person, which both mistook for the corner-stone of 
 their security, but which was to him the perennial source of 
 misery and pollution. He did not, therefore, go the wrong way 
 with the torch pointing out the right way. He erred, as 
 the best of us will assuredly err, when the promptings of the 
 heart assume the guise of intellectual convictions. Unmiti- 
 gated selfishness would never have led Shelley astray, had it 
 not come to him in the form of an angel of light ; and the 
 reader may stand over his grave — as the writer has done, when 
 the violets of the early Roman spring were steeping his dust in 
 living fragrance — with the feeling that humanity has rarely en- 
 shrined a purer or loftier spirit. 
 
ALEXANDRINE POETS. 263 
 
 WITHIN view of Shelley's grave, rests the dust of Keats 
 It seems fitting that men so akin to each other in 
 spirit, should rest side by side. For they were united in the 
 same belief in human perfectibility, in the same antagonism to 
 the public institutions of- their time. They drew their inspira- 
 tion from the same fountain — the undying beauty of the world's 
 youth, as imaged in the creations of antique Greece. The 
 souls of each seemed kindled with flame lit direct from the 
 altar of the gods. Both re-embodied the old divinities. 
 Steeped in the light of their genius, the denizens of Olympus 
 no longer appeared abstract personifications of some par- 
 ticular quality, but actual flesh-and-blood creations, with 
 sympathies as keen, with affections as glowing as our own. 
 The aim of both was to invest earth with the spiritual light 
 of Elysium, to companion man with the divinities, to restore 
 the links of that philosophy which, viewing every atom as 
 a manifestation of spirit, in a higher or lower form, bound 
 up the universe in one reciprocal bond of mutual relation- 
 ship and dependance. To them the old conception of the 
 elemental powers seemed the best expression of the invisible 
 agencies presiding over the destinies of creation. The times 
 for which Julian had sighed, almost appeared to have come 
 back again. The deities of Greece stepped from their pedestals 
 once more to converse with mortals. Heaven appeared a part 
 of earth, as earth appeared the fore-court of heaven. 
 With Wordsworth, poetry was a philosophy. But with 
 
264 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Shelley and Keats it was both a philosophy and a religion. 
 But Shelley seems to have arrived at his results by processes of 
 reasoning, Keats by flights of his imagination. With Shelley, 
 truth always appeared as the spirit of beauty. But Keats saw 
 in beauty the spirit of truth. He had no idea of truth apart 
 from the imaginative element, as something locked up under 
 the control of the logical faculty. The spirit of beauty mani- 
 festing itself in the outer harmonies of things, appeared to him 
 only a reflex of the operations of the same spirit in the invisible 
 sphere ; and he thought its results could be far more easily 
 fathomed by the imagination, than by any ratiocinative process 
 whatever. Indeed, I very much doubt whether Keats did not 
 think forms of reasoning, with respect to their competency to 
 conduct men into the interior labyrinths of the universe, as 
 forms of delusion. The old Greek, therefore, who lent wings 
 to his fancy, when he wanted to account for natural phenomena, 
 appeared to Keats a far more sensible personage than the 
 modern philosopher, who applies the scale and compass to 
 unveil the mysteries of creation. For the one only accounts 
 for the transient and merely apparent action of delusive atoms 
 of matter upon each other, whereas the other seizes hold of 
 principles as permanent as they are real, and embodies them 
 in effulgent forms, to supply and preserve in us the qualities of 
 which they are the living exponents. If these forms did not exist 
 except as symbols of the qualities which animated them, that 
 appeared to Keats a very small matter, so long as their actions 
 shadowed forth the operation of the qualities of which they 
 were the embodiment, in the scheme of the universe. To that 
 extent, at least, to Keats they were true. Now, of these qualities, 
 love appeared the animating principle, as beauty was the exter- 
 nal form j and the object of Keats' chief poem appears to have 
 been to seek out further instances of these symbolised truths, re- 
 vealing still deeper glimpses into this intimate alliance between 
 love and beauty, in the actual relations of things, and thus 
 light up the material with the splendours of the ideal universe : — 
 
ALEXANDRINE POETS. 265 
 
 Ye deaf and senseless minutes of the day, 
 And thou, old forest, hold ye this for true, 
 There is no lightning, no authentic dew 
 But in the eye of love : there's not a sound, 
 Melodious howsoever, can confound 
 The heavens and earth in one to such a death 
 As doth the voice of love : there's not a breath 
 Will mingle kindly with the meadow air, 
 Till it has panted round, and stolen a share 
 Of passion from the heart. * 
 
 That there was a link between the sympathy of the elements 
 for each other, and that existing between human beings, Keats 
 not only believed, but hints that the one could not go on with- 
 out the other : — 
 
 Who, of men, can tell 
 That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell 
 To melting pulp ; that fish would have bright mail, 
 The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale, 
 The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones, 
 The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones, 
 Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet, 
 If human souls did never kiss and greet ? f 
 
 It is when diving deep into those secret relations between 
 the different ranks of creation, free from the conditions under 
 which the laws of intuition are exercised, that we get beyond 
 the cheating appearances of things, and live like disembodied 
 spirits in the very heart of the universe : — 
 
 Wherein lies happiness ? In that which becks 
 
 Our ready minds, to fellowship divine, 
 
 A fellowship with essence, till we shine, 
 
 Full alchemised and free of space. Behold 
 
 The clear religion of heaven ! Fold 
 
 A rose-leaf round thy finger's taperness, 
 
 And soothe thy lips : hist ! when the airy stress 
 
 Of Music's kiss impregnates the free windo, 
 
 * "Endymion," b. iv., Is. 153 — 163. t Ibid, b. i. 
 
266 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 And with a sympathetic touch unbinds 
 Eolian magic from their lucid wombs ; 
 Then old songs waken from enclouded tombs, 
 Old ditties sigh above their father's grave ; 
 Ghosts of melodious prophesyings rave 
 Round every spot where trod Apollo's foot ; 
 Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit, 
 Where long ago a giant-battle was ; 
 And from the turf, a lullaby doth pass 
 In every place where infant Orpheus slept. 
 Feel we these things ? that moment have we stept 
 Into a sort of oneness, and our state 
 Is like a floating spirit. * 
 
 As love with Keats is the great bond which binds together 
 
 the different orders of creation, so in the little world of man, it 
 
 is the only feature which claims eternal remembrance, no less 
 
 in the history of the human race than in the experience of each 
 
 private individual. Battles, sieges, and political or religious 
 
 revolutions, are mere lumber in the chamber of history, being 
 
 completely overshadowed by feats of love, which can alone 
 
 rivet our attention, while deeds of rapine and social convulsion 
 
 fast sink into oblivion : — 
 
 i 
 
 X) sovereign power of love ! O grief ! O balm ! 
 
 All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm, 
 
 And shadowy, through the mist of passed years : 
 
 For others, good or bad, hatred and tears 
 
 Have become indolent ; but touching thine, 
 
 One sigh doth echo, one poor sob doth pine, 
 
 Qne kiss brings honey-dew from buried days 4 
 
 The woes of Troy, towers smouldering o'er their blaze, 
 
 Stiff-holden shields, far-piercing spears, keen blades, 
 
 Struggling, and blood, and shrieks — all dimly fades 
 
 Into some backward corner of the brain ; 
 
 Yet, in our very souls, we feel amain 
 
 The close of Troilus and Cressid sweet. 
 
 Hence, pageant history ! hence, gilded cheat ! 
 
 Swart planet in the universe of deeds ! 
 
 Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds 
 
 * "Endymion," b. i. 
 
ALEXANDRINE POETS. 267 
 
 Along the pebbled shore of memory ! 
 
 Many old rotten -timber'd boats there be 
 
 Upon thy vaporous bosom, magnified 
 
 To goodly vessels ; many a sail of pride, 
 
 And golden keel'd, is left unlaunch'd and dry. 
 
 But wherefore this ? What care, though owl did fly 
 
 About the great Athenian admiral's mast ? 
 
 What care, though striding Alexander past 
 
 The Indus with his Macedonian numbers ? 
 
 Though old Ulysses tortured from his slumbers 
 
 The glutted Cyclops, what care ? Juliet leaning 
 
 Amid her window-flowers, — sighing, — weaning 
 Tenderly her fancy from its maiden snow, 
 Doth more avail than these : the silver flow 
 Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen, 
 Fair Pastorella in the bandit's den, 
 Are things to brood on with more ardency 
 Than the death-day of empires. Fearfully 
 Must such conviction come upon his head, 
 Who, thus far, discontent, has dared to tread, 
 Without one muse's smile, or kind behest, 
 The path of love and poesy. But rest, 
 In chaffing restlessness, is yet more drear 
 Than to be crush'd, in striving to uprear 
 Love's standard on the battlements of song. 
 So once more days and nights aid me along, 
 Like legion'd soldiers.* 
 
 The plot of u Endymion," if, indeed, there is any sequence of 
 events in the poem worthy of that name, brings the Latmian 
 shepherd in contact with the loves of Venus and Adonis, of 
 Alpheus and Arethusa, of Glaucus and Scylla, while the hero 
 himself is pursuing his adventures with Diana. These, for the 
 most part, are given in a series of visions. But the waking ex- 
 periences of Endymion are so wild and romantic, and are so 
 interwoven with his visionary ones, that it is difficult to say 
 where the one ends, or the other begins. He descends into the 
 sparry hollows of the earth, where cupids have the care of sleeping 
 Adonis, whom Venus comes to rouse from his winter sleep, and 
 * "Endymion," b. ii. 
 
268 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 transport into the skies, for summer dalliance. After riding be- 
 tween the wings of an eagle to a jasmine bower, for another 
 dreaming dalliance with Diana, Endymion is transported to the 
 palace of Olympus, upon a fiery courser, where he makes the ac- 
 quaintance of the numerous household of Jupiter. On this j ourney 
 he is accompanied by Diana, who leads him into the belief that 
 she is an Indian waif from the train of Bacchus, and having in that 
 capacity ensnared his affections, she, by some magical slight, 
 appears to him in a vision to tax him with unfaithfulness, while 
 he is couched in the Olympian hall, with the Indian waif whose 
 form she had previously assumed. Endymion, perplexed be- 
 tween the Indian lady and the vision, is relieved from his con- 
 flicting loves by Diana dissolving into thin air. But this adventure, 
 with respect to the marvellous, is surpassed by Endymion's 
 visit to the roots of the ocean, where he assists Glaucus in re- 
 viving the dead bodies whom the waves had entombed, and 
 transforming them into sea ministrants for the service of Nep- 
 tune. As far as wonders go, Endymion's adventures exceed 
 those of Astolfo, but the whole is shrined in so sensuous a phi- 
 losophy, and is so deeply infused with the passion which more 
 than any other engrosses human thought, that the sense of the 
 marvellous is lost in the feeling that the visions of the poet 
 do not transcend in their wildness, the spiritual harmonies of 
 which they are the outward manifestation. 
 
 The "Endymion" contains passages which would do honour 
 to the Elizabethan poets, with much commonplace which would 
 disgrace Blackmore. The address to the moon, in the third 
 book,* is conceived in the loftiest, the address to the muse, in the 
 
 * O Moon ! the oldest shades 'mong oldest trees 
 Feel palpitations when thou lookest in : 
 O Moon ! old boughs lisp forth a holier din 
 The while they feel thine airy fellowship. 
 Thou dost bless everwhere, with silver lip 
 Kissing dead things to life. The sleeping kine, 
 Couch'd in thy brightness, dream of fields divine : 
 
ALEXANDRINE POETS. 269 
 
 fourth book, in the worst spirit of poetry. Wherever Keats has 
 a picture of voluptuous passion, or of gorgeous scenery to paint, 
 there he marvellously succeeds \ wherever he has to produce 
 any conception, which requires high moral truth to animate into 
 life, there he egregiously fails. It would appear that his theory 
 which submerged intellectual into aesthetic truth, exercised some' 
 deadening influence in unfitting him for that sweep through 
 the blue empyrean of thought, by which alone the topmost 
 heights of song can be scaled. For, instead of allowing his 
 imagination to be moulded and guided by his judgment, his 
 judgment takes its bent from the imagination, Fancy is never 
 brought to illustrate reason, but reason is unceasingly employed 
 upon the operations of fancy. Hence Keats, while perfect 
 master of every subject which could be represented through the 
 types of sensuous beauty, while he could condense a picture 
 into a word, or make a line unfold a world of voluptuous 
 thought, cannot advance a step in those regions where the 
 ideal is to be sculptured out of the intellect alone, and where 
 the imagination cannot invest its forms with the shapes and 
 colours of actual creation. Of invention, in the wider sense, 
 Keats affords us few if any striking samples. The time had not 
 yet come when he could abandon his models and strike out 
 new characters for himself. Boccaccio supplied him with the story 
 
 Innumerable mountains rise, and rise, 
 Ambitious for the hallowing of thine eyes ; 
 And yet thy benediction passeth not 
 One obscure hiding-place, one little spot 
 Where pleasure may be sent : the nested wren 
 Has thy fair face within its tranquil ken, 
 And from beneath a sheltering ivy leaf 
 Takes glimpses of thee ; thou art a relief 
 To the poor patient oyster, where it sleeps 
 Within its pearly/house ; — the mighty deeps, 
 The monstrous sea is thine — the myriad sea ! 
 O Moon ! far-spooming ocean bows to thee, 
 And Tellus feels her forehead's cumbrous load. 
 
270 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 of "Isabella ; " andTooke's "Pantheon" with the groundwork of 
 " Endymion." In the poem of " Lamia " he did little more than 
 amplify Burton. His friend Brown supplied him with the plot and 
 characters of the " Tragedy of King Otho." But of invention in 
 the narrower sense, as regards the creation of incidents to fill 
 up the lacunes of a story or of a character, he evinced no lack of 
 power. In pathos also he was deficient. Meek-eyed pity, mother of 
 tears, never extended her wand over Keats. His habit of reposing 
 on delicious sensations, of making his home in the very heart 
 of voluptuous beauty, led him to avoid cultivating the power 
 of imparting a sense of foreign wretchedness to others. The 
 lofty misery, the silken grief of unsated love yearning for an 
 object it could not find, or which but scantily requited its 
 passion, is the only cloud which flits across the sunshine of Keat's 
 page, and then only dimming its brightness with the shadow 
 of beauty always present, and never with the blackness of an 
 aching void. For Keats was too much occupied in blending 
 the sensuous with the ideal, to make the heart sick over the 
 wide chasm existing between the loveliness of its spiritual 
 conceptions and their earthly realizations. Keats has been 
 connected with Chatterton, as the second youthful prodigy in 
 our literature ;* nor is the association unfitting. For the 
 " Endymion," considering the youth of the writer, is as much 
 a marvel as "CElla or the Battle of Hastings. ,, It has as many 
 beauties, though these are encumbered with greater blemishes, 
 springing, perhaps, from the redundancy of that imaginative 
 element in which Keats was undoubtedly superior. But the 
 comparison must not blind us to the fact, that Keats lived five 
 years longer than his rival, and even then proved deficient in 
 invention and pathos in which Chatterton revelled. 
 
 It would be, however, manifestly unfair to test Keats' poetry 
 
 * See Life and Remains by Lord Houghton, whose dispassionate 
 criticism, and warm sympathy with the subject of his labours, have raised 
 for Keats an enduring literary monument. The "Endymion" was inscribed 
 by its author "to the memory of Chatterton." 
 
ALEXANDRINE POETS. 271 
 
 by the principles we would apply to the productions of a writer 
 who had arrived at the maturity of his powers, and in whose 
 future there was no promise to fulfil. As well might we expect 
 the ripe fruits of harvest in spring, as to find in the productions 
 of youth, the mature beauties of later years. In judging of 
 Keats, we must not take the crudities which spring from 
 theories hastily formed, and which would have been as hastily 
 abandoned, to guide our decision. We must take the general 
 tone of his poetry, rather than isolated passages, the new 
 ground which he broke, rather than what he actually accom- 
 plished, as a criterion of his powers. If we regard the spirit of 
 originality he evinced, the lofty models he strove to emulate, 
 and the voluptuous sense of beauty which reigns through all his 
 conceptions, there can be only one opinion, that had he lived 
 as long, he would have ranked as high, as any of his contem- 
 poraries. In the " Eve of St. Agnes," and in his shorter pieces, 
 where the subject fell within the scope of his powers, he rises 
 almost to the perfection of his art. What picture, for instance, 
 in English poetry can surpass his portrait of Madeline ? — 
 
 Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, 
 And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast, 
 
 As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon : 
 Rose-bloom fell on her hands together prest, 
 
 And on her silver cross soft amethyst, 
 And on her hair a -glory, like a saint ; 
 
 She seem'd a splendid angel newly drest, 
 
 Save wings for heaven : — Porpyhro grew faint : 
 She knelt so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint. 
 
 Anon his heart revives : Her vespers done, 
 Of all its wreathed pearls, her hair she frees, 
 
 Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one ; 
 Loosens her fragrant boddice, by degrees 
 
 Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees : 
 Half hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed, 
 
 Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees, 
 In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed, 
 But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled. 
 
272 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest, 
 In sort of wakeful swoon, perplex'd she lay, 
 
 Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppress'd 
 Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away, 
 
 Flown, like a thought, until the morrow day ; 
 Blissfully haven'd both from joy and pain ; 
 
 Clasp'd like a missal, where swart Paynims pray ; 
 Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain, 
 As though a rose should shut and be a bud again. " 
 
 His "Odes to Pysche" and the "Nightingale," and the " Lines 
 on a Greek Vase," if they have not the classical finish of Collins, 
 have as much depth of feeling, and far more luscious sweetness 
 than anything Collins ever wrote. 'Most of his sonnets will not 
 suffer from comparison with the best of Wordsworth's. His 
 " Address to Fancy " only needed a little more sustained power 
 to entitle it to be bound up with the " Allegro " of Milton : — 
 
 Sit thee by the ingle, when 
 
 The sear faggot blazes bright, 
 
 Spirit of a winter's night. 
 
 When the soundless earth is muffled, 
 
 And the caked snow is shuffled 
 
 From the ploughboy's heavy shoon ; 
 
 When the Night doth meet the Moon 
 
 In a dark conspiracy, 
 
 To banish Even from the sky. 
 
 In rich imagination, very few poets have equalled Keats. Every 
 trait, even the most commonplace feature he produces, derives 
 new splendour from being steeped in the gorgeous colours of 
 that faculty. He piles his images one upon the other with 
 glowing hand, like the nectared sweets Porphyro heaped up for 
 his lover, till the dullest objects became impregnated with ideal 
 life and beauty, and human nature is elevated to a sphere of 
 crystalline grace and purity of which we have but few outward 
 manifestations. Where the objective sublime is not interwoven, 
 
 * " The Eve of St. Agnes," sts. 25, 26, 27. 
 
ALEXANDRINE SCHOOL. 273 
 
 as it frequently is, with the body of his subject, he easily 
 attains it with a stroke of his pen, as, 
 
 Scowl on, ye Fates ! until the firmament 
 Outblackens Erebus, and the full cavern 'd earth 
 Crumbles into itself. * 
 
 or, 
 
 or, 
 
 At this with madden'd stare 
 And lifted hands, and trembling lips he stood, 
 Like old Deucalion mountain'd o'er the flood, 
 Or blind old Orion hungry for the morn. + 
 
 I shall die 
 Like a sick eagle gazing on the sky. 
 
 Had the story of Isabella been his own, it would have derived, 
 from Keats' manner of telling it, all the characteristics of a high 
 class narrative poem, wanting, perhaps, nerve and fire, but still 
 tremulous with voluptuous passion and the sad grief which 
 springs from the violent extinction of its object. Isabella's 
 woes, in the pages of the Italian, have an undying fragrance, but 
 the English poet, while preserving all their original freshness, 
 has steeped them in colours as ethereal as Homer ever threw 
 round the deities he winged from heaven. All these excel- 
 lencies in themselves would have sufficed to place Keats in the 
 second rank of his art ; but when we consider the unripe age of 
 the writer, and the divine promise which they manifest, it can 
 hardly be doubted, had his life been protracted, that he would 
 have left few names in that rank above his own. But the great 
 merit of Keats is, that he broke away from the established 
 schools of poetry in his day, and followed the impulse of 
 'his genius in the realization of the beautiful. The antique 
 creations of Greece furnished him with the forms, but the 
 passionate sentiments with which he animated them, and the 
 philosophy of which he made them the exponents, would have 
 been as new to the inhabitants of ancient Greece as they were 
 to those of modern Europe. Love and beauty, — those twin 
 
 * " Endymion," b. iv., s. 122. t Ibid., b. ii., s. 198. 
 
 18 
 
274 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS . 
 
 genii of the ideal world, it was Keats' aim to make the penates 
 of each cottage hearth, — to domesticate permanently in every 
 nook of perishable creation. In his poetry they became the 
 foster guardians of this life, the powers calculated to strike 
 selfishness out of man's nature, and restore the balance warped 
 by Greek art on the side of sensuousness, and by Christian art 
 on the side of dry spirituality, in favour of a union which should 
 combine the perfections of both, without the faults of either. 
 In Keats' pages the world may satiate its thirst for material 
 X. loveliness, and feel that such loveliness is but the shell or outward 
 embodiment of its spiritual purity. In his realm, there is no 
 antagonism as in that of Milton, or of Wordsworth. He writes 
 like one who had penetrated into the mysteries of the universe, 
 who had drawn closer to his embrace the spirit of loveli- 
 ness enshrined in creation, and who could throw back the 
 curtains of gross material custom, and hard encrusted prejudice, 
 to admit his fellows to the shrine of the same divine beauty 
 with which he was intoxicated. With Keats, paradise was 
 continually breaking through the earth in exuberant blossoms, 
 and he would have its breath constitute the atmosphere of 
 man's daily life, until its pleasures became not a future un- 
 certainty, but a present reality. But the paradise of Keats was 
 not a heaven stripped of material loveliness, and refined into 
 spiritual vacuity, or a sensuous harem filled with voluptuous 
 forms, but a sphere presided over by spiritual love as well as 
 material beauty, in which man might sink the coarser elements 
 which degrade and perplex his life, in the harmonious develop- 
 ment of his nature, and posterity may wander with delight for 
 ever. 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 275 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE ART SCHOOL. 
 
 THE law of reaction is as visible and constant in the poetic 
 as in the moral or political sphere. It not unfrequently 
 happens that the change in the one draws after it a revolution 
 in the other. So it has been during the progress of the present 
 century. The French revolution, followed by the Napoleonic 
 wars, was one of these world-shaking epochs calculated to foster 
 poetic genius, and arouse its loftiest energies. The effect was 
 manifest in a crowd of writers constituting such an oasis in our 
 literature as is not to be met with since the Elizabethan period. 
 All that was wild and beautiful, grand or romantic, found 
 gifted exponents and appropriate expression. The world was 
 startled by the appearance of some six or seven poets, each 
 moving in a separate sphere, each dominating their age, each 
 striving with Titanic force to impel the national taste into oppo- 
 site paths, quite different from any trodden or opened out before. 
 But the relapse came. The political ferment of Europe settled 
 down into certain abiding channels. The old institutions were 
 revived again, with a few of their obsolete gables removed. 
 Everything took a stereotyped shape. It appeared as if man's 
 fate was fixed by destiny, and his struggles, like those of Ence- 
 ladtis, only led to the belching of volcanic fires, without ridding 
 him of the incubus that pressed upon his powers. Men grew 
 
276 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 patient of their burdens, and reconciled themselves to the 
 situation. They accepted the philosophy of fortitude, as taught 
 in the school of resignation, and practised by the disciples of 
 despair. They even regarded their miseries in the light of some- 
 thing good, as the disciplinary school of the virtues. Passion, 
 or the yearning after a lofty sensuous ideal, was rebuked. Any 
 notable advance to human perfectibility in this world was treated 
 as the dream of Utopists. As the French, after overflooding 
 Europe with their republican notions, settled down under the 
 petty edifice of constitutional government, so the spirituality 
 which, in the last poets, had overflooded the great ocean of 
 Greek philosophy, quietly subsided into the four corners of the 
 village catechism. The outbranching energies of science, the 
 numerous fields of commercial enterprise, the growth of the 
 mechanical arts, each contributed to materialize men's minds, 
 and to teach them to look to women for the softer influences, 
 the etherealizing effects, formerly derived from aesthetic pursuits. 
 As in the age of feudal violence, men, after the shocks of mailed 
 warfare, leant with renewed trust on women, so after absorption 
 in the fierce struggles of iron-handed competition, a similar 
 submission is gracefully yielded to their supremacy in matters 
 of spiritual interest. The feudal age combined its loftier plea- 
 sures with its duties ; an economic age, with its utilities. But 
 as man's scale in the aesthetic balance goes down, woman's in- 
 variably goes up. Under her influence, music, of the three 
 sister-arts, acquired the greatest pre-eminence. Then followed 
 — -proxima, sed longo inlervallo — painting. Poetry brought up 
 the rear. The consequence is, that poetry began to be valued 
 only as a medium of reflecting the features of her two younger 
 sisters. Poetic conceptions gained in grace and ease what they 
 lost in force and originality. The visions of the bard's brain 
 were considered solely from an artistic point of view. Poetry 
 became the handmaid of painting, not its master : all views 
 inconsistent with cloistered morality or prevailing dogmas 
 vanished. The higher drama, founded much more than people 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 277 
 
 think upon strong metaphysical conceptions, at once disap- 
 peared, and the commonalty, unrestrained by any exercise of 
 better judgment on the part of their superiors, went in for 
 scenic illusions, for gorgeous upholsteries, for hairbreadth 
 escapes, for piratical fires, and sensational denouements. The 
 corruption of the novel followed in the wake of dramatic de- 
 generacy. Both are manifest signs that the organization of art 
 in its higher range is too contracted, its pulsations too weak, to 
 strike deep root among the masses of the community. Of that 
 organization, these are the three great characteristics : first, the 
 mediaeval wail over the necessity of enduring evil as a stepping- 
 stone to good ; second, the intrusion of morality into the do- 
 main of art; third, subjection to women as the etherealizing 
 element. And these three great principles are represented in 
 the poetry of Alfred Tennyson. 
 
 In the infancy and growth of a language, poets may achieve 
 great distinction by the introduction of new metres, or by 
 improving those in being to such an extent as to substitute 
 music for dissonance, and beauty of form for clumsiness of ex- 
 pression. It is for their force of style, for vigour of execution, 
 that Chaucer and Dryden are so distinguished, rather than for 
 the splendour of their conceptions. But when a language has 
 reached the limits of its growth, when its forms are perfected, 
 writers are driven back for distinction upon the grandeur of 
 their matter. Hence, all the poets of the nineteenth century 
 who have achieved greatness have rested their pretensions upon 
 opening out some new region of thought, or for introducing us 
 to a sphere unexplored before. Scott resuscitated chivalry. 
 Wordsworth struck some of the most powerful chords which 
 bind in one chain of harmony t he mind of man w 1 '^ 1 * 1np ex- 
 tenial_univers,e. Byron idealized passion until its sensuous traits 
 dazzled the soul with the effulgence of its own spiritual essence. 
 The mission of Shelley was to substantialize a spiritual philo- 
 sophy, by investing it with the embodiments of his own imagi- 
 nation. But if the age were asked what new world of thought 
 
278 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 has Tennyson explored, what path has he discovered in the 
 regions of mind untrodden or undreamt of before, there 
 would be some difficulty in obtaining an answer. The fact is, 
 Tennyson has produced nothing new to startle his contem- 
 poraries with. He has not dominated the age, but merely, 
 given back to it the modicum of spirituality it possesses, beauti- 
 fully idealized, it is true, and with a melody and a pathos which 
 show he is a genuine poet ; but still, his efforts, on account of 
 their circumscribed range, their lack of the bold imaginative 
 element, are by no means entitled to rank with those of the 
 illustrious group who preceded him. The love-making of refined 
 society, the treating woman as a sort of ethereal being, the tone of 
 Provencal sentimentality, the philosophic enforcement of Chris- 
 tian ethics, the enlivening of early legends with the feelings of 
 modern experience, all these he found in the age, and the age 
 has seen its features reproduced with such freshness and vigour 
 in his page, that, like another Narcissus, it has become infatu- 
 ated with its own conceptions. Tennyson has idealized the ■ 
 thoughts of his contemporaries, and therefore his contem- 
 poraries have come to regard Tennyson as a great poet. His 
 conceptions are colossal, because they are the reflex of their 
 own. 
 
 What then is new in Tennyson will be found, not in the raw 
 material, but in his manner of dealing with the sentiments he . 
 has derived from his age. His thoughts are second-hand, his , 
 treatment only peculiar to himself. Other poets take the re- 
 sults of science, and describe things according to appearances. 
 Not so Tennyson. He remembers we live in a scientific age, 
 and goes into causes with the zeal of a man who views nature 
 from his laboratory, or of a physician who reads in palpable 
 phenomena the secret agents at work in their production. 
 The transmission of life from parent to offspring by means of 
 the umbilical cord is hardly a subject for poetical treatment. 
 But Tennyson has turned the scientific fact to account in a 
 line communicative of very deep feeling : — 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 279 
 
 Hath still'd the life that beat from thee.* 
 
 Shakespeare tells us that dew falls from heaven. He had not 
 the advantage of being acquainted with Well's theory. Tenny- 
 son has, and gives us the benefit of it. In describing the dress 
 of the Princess, he tells us how it hung : — 
 
 Thicker down the front 
 With pearls than the sward with drops of dew, 
 When all night long a cloud clings to the hill, 
 And with the dawn dispersing, lets the day 
 Strike where it clung. 
 
 Tennyson also cannot describe the same lady without connect- 
 ing her with the Copernican theory : — 
 
 All beauty compressed in a female form 
 The Princess ; like to the inhabitant 
 Of some clear planet close upon the sun, 
 Than our man's earth. 
 
 An ordinary poet in describing the coming on of evening 
 would confine himself to effects, as in " Parasina : " — 
 
 And in the heavens a darker blue, 
 And on the leaf a browner hue. 
 
 But Tennyson very scientifically reminds us of Galileo's doc- 
 trine : — 
 
 He fled on, and hill and wood 
 Went ever streaming by him, till the gloom 
 That follows on the turning of the world 
 Darkened the common path ! f 
 
 And again in lines which no reader will weary of repeating : — 
 
 Move eastward, happy Earth, and leave 
 
 Yon orange sunset waning slow, 
 From fringes of the faded eve 
 
 O ! happy planet, eastward go. 
 
 * " In Memoriam," vi. t " Pelleas and Etarre." 
 
28o ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Ah ! bear me with thee, smoothly borne 
 
 Dip forward under starry light, 
 And move me to my marriage morn, 
 
 And round again to happy night. 
 
 Occasionally, Galilean physics is made the source of sublime 
 comparison : — 
 
 Look up, and let thy nature strike on mine, 
 Like yonder morning on the blind half world. * 
 
 And again in the most spirited of his miscellaneous poems : — 
 Not in vain the distant beacons. Forward, forward let us range, 
 Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change ; 
 Thro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day. 
 Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay, t 
 
 Geologists have shown to what extent the bed of the ocean 
 shifts and changes its limits ; and it has also been incontestably 
 proved of late years, that the most violent storms only affect 
 its surface, while they leave the central body of its waters un- 
 touched. Tennyson has embodied these two. facts in his "In 
 Memoriam," — 
 
 There rolls the deep where grew the tree ; 
 
 O earth, what changes thou hast seen, 
 
 There, where the city roars, hath been 
 The stillness of the central sea. J 
 
 Meteorologists explain to us how the morning breezes arise 
 by the cold air contracting, and the warmer being sucked or 
 drawn in to fill up the vacuum. The operation is familiar to 
 Tennyson, and he has given to its mechanism a poetic ren- 
 dering, in a masterly sketch of the dawn : — 
 
 And suck'd from out the distant gloom 
 
 A breeze began to tremble o'er 
 
 The broad leaves of the sycamore, 
 And fluctuate all the still perfume. § 
 
 Most poets would describe wine or grapes with relation to 
 * "The Princess." t "Locksley Hall." % cxxii. § xciv. 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 281 
 
 their effects on the senses of man. But Tennyson goes to the 
 
 root of fermentation : — 
 
 Wines that heaven knows when 
 Had sucked the fire of some forgotten sun, 
 And kept it through a hundred years of gloom 
 Yet glowing in a heart of ruby. * 
 
 Thomson, when he describes a thunderstorm, knew nothing 
 about Franklin's discovery, or Robespierre's application of it 
 to protect buildings, and therefore merely gives the effect as 
 seen by the naked eye. But Tennyson produces the pheno- 
 mena with all the effects of modern discovery : — 
 
 The electric cloud 
 Flaying the roots and sucking up the drains, 
 And shadowing down the champain till it strikes 
 On a wood, and takes and breaks, and cracks and splits, 
 And twists the grain with such a roar, that earth 
 Reels, and the herdsmen cry. f 
 
 In none of these things is there anything original. Other 
 great poets deal with physical truths in their imaginative range, 
 but Tennyson in their scientific aspects. They anticipate the 
 revelations of natural philosophers, but Tennyson merely follows 
 in their wake, and makes poetical capital out of their discoveries. 
 In this he shows his sound sense, rather than his imaginative 
 power. Every link in the chain of scientific law has its poetical 
 side, and one of the peculiar features of Tennyson is to set this 
 forth in terse and expressive language. By this means he awakens 
 responsive echoes in the breasts of a matter-of-fact age. This is 
 certainly merit of a very respectable, but by no means of the 
 highest order, in poetry. 
 
 Another peculiarity in Tennyson is the extent to which 
 he embodies the principles of art in his works. Grand 
 conceptions generally carry the writer out of himself. The 
 poet who rules supreme in the lofty sphere of imaginative 
 passion, who lives in the region of sublimity, never descends 
 * " Golden Supper." f "Princess." 
 
282 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 to the mechanical elements of drawing.* He leaves the painter 
 to toil after him, instead of moving in the wake of the painter. 
 But Tennyson applies the rule and the compass to everything 
 he takes in hand, simply because his conceptions are not of 
 that sort which overpower the mind by their depth or immensity, 
 but which depend for their effect on minuteness of detail and 
 elaborateness of finish. He unceasingly appeals to the eye, 
 as Ruskin occasionally cultivates an ideal acquaintance with 
 the spirit. In this respect the poet and the artist are filchers 
 upon each other's domain : just as the grocer who in our time 
 has invaded the province of the victualler, and the vendor of the 
 fiery spirit who en revanche has turned the tables the other way. 
 Ruskin has poetized drawing, and Tennyson has imported the 
 principles of drawing into poetry. One of these principles is 
 that things in looming through darkness or mist seem to swell 
 out beyond their natural size, and allowance must consequently 
 be made for this in painting. Tennyson seldom loses sight of 
 this feature, as in his description of Pelleas leaving the castle 
 of Etarre, perhaps, the finest in the idyll : — 
 
 And forth he passed, and mounting on his horse ; 
 Stared at her towers that larger than themselves 
 In their own darkness, thronged into the moon, 
 Then crushed the saddle with his thighs, and clenched 
 His hands, and madden'd with himself, and moaned. 
 
 And in the " Passing of Arthur :" — 
 
 But the other swiftly strode from ridge to ridge, 
 Clothed with his breadth, and looking as he walked 
 Larger than human life on frozen hills. 
 
 • «« I know nothing of painting. Depend upon it, of all the arts it is the 
 most artificial and unnatural, and that by which the true sense of mankind 
 is most imposed upon. I never yet saw the picture, or the. statue, which 
 came a league within my conception or expectation, but I have seen many 
 mountains, and seas, and rivers, and views, and two or three women who 
 went as far beyond it." — Byron's Letters. 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 283 
 
 And again in " The Princess :" — 
 
 And twilight gloomed, and broader grown the bowers, 
 Drew the great night into themselves. 
 
 In the " Requiescat " we get the principles of refraction :- - 
 
 Fair is her cottage in its place, 
 
 Where yon broad water sweetly, slowly glides ; 
 It sees itself from thatch to base 
 
 Dream in the sliding tides. 
 
 And in " The Golden Supper," we get the elements of per- 
 spective : — 
 
 Then at the far end of the vault he saw 
 His lady with the .moonlight on her face, 
 . Her breast as in a shadow prison, bars 
 Of black and bands of silver which the moon 
 Struck from an open grating overhead 
 High in the wall, and all the rest of her 
 Drowned in the gloom and horror of the vault. 
 
 Most poets in their descriptions seize upon salient features, 
 and leave the reader's imagination to fill up the rest of the 
 canvas. But Tennyson describes his scenes with a minute 
 particularity which makes us think he had either a coloured 
 picture before him, or drew his sketch on paper, and then pro- 
 ceeded to put it into words. Who does not recognize Constable's 
 painting of The Ford, with Salisbury Cathedral in the back- 
 ground, in the following lines ? — 
 
 A league of grass washed by a slow broad stream, 
 That stirred with languid pulses of the oar, 
 Waves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on 
 Barge-laden, to three arches of a bridge 
 Crowned with the minster's towers. 
 
 The picture of the Gardener's daughter is quite equal to any 
 water-coloured drawing in speciality : — 
 
 One arm aloft — 
 Gowned in pure white, that fitted to the shape, 
 Holding the bush, to fix it back, she stood. 
 
284 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 A single stream of all her soft brown hair 
 
 Pour'd on one side : the shadow of the flowers 
 
 Stole all the golden gloss, and, wavering 
 
 Lovingly lower, trembled on her waist, — 
 
 Ah, happy shade ! — and still went wavering down, 
 
 But, ere it touched a foot, that might have danced, 
 
 The greensward into greener circles, dipt 
 
 And mix'd with shadows of the common ground.* 
 
 Who has not seen in the Dutch pictures at the South 
 Kensington Museum the 
 
 Full sea glazed with muffled moonlight swell 
 On some dark shore, just seen that it was rich : f 
 
 Or the Burial of the Wounded Soldier after the Battle ?— 
 
 Then, because his wound was deep, 
 The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, 
 And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, 
 A broken chancel with a broken cross, 
 That stood on a dark strait of barren land ; 
 On one side lay the ocean, and on one hand 
 Lay a great water, and the moon was full. J 
 
 It would be idle to deny the fineness of touch, the exquisite 
 finish displayed, in most of these artistic pictures, but it is plain 
 that originality cannot be numbered among their merits, as a 
 walk through any of our modern galleries would "show the 
 sources of their inspiration. 
 
 When poets lack substantial materials, they are driven to 
 make up for the want of bold and startling conceptions by an 
 indiscriminate use of embellishments. To some cause of this 
 kind may be attributed that constant use of alliteration and 
 employment of mimetic words forcing the sound to follow the 
 sense, which in other poets is only occasionally resorted to for 
 ornament, but which by Tennyson is woven into the very 
 structure of his poetry. His " Palace of Art " and " Dream of 
 Fair Women " are full of it. 
 
 'Gardener's Daughter." t "The Princess." £ " Passing of Arthur." 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 285 
 
 The golden ^orge of dragons spited forth a fWd of fountain foam. 
 
 Cloisters 
 Echoing all night to that sonorous How of spited fountain fWds. 
 
 Cleopatra, though bearing in her oval features the traces of 
 her Greek descent, is represented as a 
 
 Queen, with swarthy cheeks, and fold £lack eyes, <5row found with 
 burning gold. 
 
 His elegiac poetry is strewn with this mannerism "as thickly 
 as daisies in April grass : — 
 
 On the fold street breaks the blank day.* 
 
 The breaker, breaking on the foach. f 
 
 And east and west, without a breath, 
 . Mixt their dim /ights, /ike /ife and death, 
 To broaden into foundless day.+ 
 
 Here she brought her harp, and flung 
 A ballad to the brightening moon. § 
 
 Ere childhood's flaxen ringlet turned 
 To black and ^rown on kindred brow.\\ 
 
 and elsewhere : — 
 
 The ;/zoan of doves in immemorial elms, 
 And murmvLrings of innumerable bees. IT 
 
 The sea., 
 The j-ilent sapphire .spangled marriage ring of the land.** 
 
 The .Thrill edged shriek of a mother divide the 
 j-huddering night. +t 
 
 Zive /oyal to the /east wish of the Queen. ++ 
 
 The river sloped 
 To plunge in cataract, shattering on 31ack blocks 
 A breadth of thunder. §§ 
 
 * " In Memoriam," vii. U " The Princess. " 
 
 + "The Princess." ** "Maud." 
 
 X " In Memoriam," xciv. +f Ibid. 
 
 § Ibid., lxx. %% "Guinevere." 
 
 |l Ibid., lxxxviii. §§ "The Princess." 
 
286 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 *If to these peculiarities we add a studied reticence, a Saxon 
 simplicity combined with a Greek incisiveness of language 
 occasionally bordering upon that of the old translation of 
 the Bible, and a corresponding gravity of tone, as if the poet 
 even in joyful subjects was moving under a deep sense of moral 
 responsibility, we shall get all the specialities which distinguish 
 the Laureate from his predecessors. These differences do not 
 consist in illuminating any new mines of thought with boldness 
 of invention, with profuse imagery or sublime flights of ima- 
 gination, but in the grave and artistic embellishments, the 
 scientific treatment and vocal formalisms with which he has 
 embodied the spiritual aspirations of his day. His merit lies 
 not so much in the substance, as in the dress of poetry j not in 
 the splendour of his materials, but in their elaborate finish and 
 execution. In little things he is great, in great things little. 
 
 The feminine element in Tennyson assumes startling promi- 
 nence, as we would naturally expect from a mind more capable 
 of remoulding impressions derived from outward objects than 
 impressing its own subjectivity upon others. Woman forms the 
 topic of three-fourths of his earlier poems. His first volume, 
 indeed, hardly consisted of any other subject. The lengthier 
 efforts of his muse are nearly all about woman. " Maud," "The 
 Princess," and the principal Arthurian idylls, — in all these the 
 male characters are mere puppets of a background to bring 
 his heroines into prominence. In the " Holy Grail " and 
 " Pelleas and Etarre," he has brought out the masculine 
 element j but in proportion as he has done so, his Arthurian 
 pictures decline in strength. Now nearly all Tennyson's 
 women are of the Belgravian stamp — delicate greenhouse 
 exotics rather than genuine products of nature. Though he 
 tells us very truthfully that women differ as 
 
 The violet varies from the lily as far 
 As oak from elm, 
 
 all the beauties of his pencil seem cast in [the same golden 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 287 
 
 mint of artistic creation, with sumptuous heads, imperially _ 
 moulded forms, with throats of carven pearl, and ancles whose 
 neatly mortised shape seem better framed for cleaving the air 
 than treading on so gross a thing as earth. They are sur- 
 rounded with gorgeous upholsteries. They move about in 
 pavilioned gardens, in flower-perfumed air, amid glowing sun- 
 lights, either reflected from burnished mirrors, or streaming 
 through rose-festoons and fluctuating vine branches. They are 
 too fairy-like to be real, or too good or wicked to be true. 
 Here again the poet's conceptions are " minted" in the " golden 
 moods of sovereign artists," embodying the conceptions of con- 
 ventionality, but not the genuine features of nature. Every 
 civilized age has a tendency with regard to woman ever 
 working upwards. As it was of old in imperial Rome, so is it 
 now. The age is endeavouring to broaden her culture, to free 
 her from the links of feudal prescription, to assign her new 
 civil duties and legal rights. This tendency has brought 
 woman's mission and functions into greater prominence than 
 ever ; and revived the discussions which took place some two 
 thousand years ago between Plato and Aristotle with respect 
 to her sphere.* Tennyson, as the poetical exponent of his 
 age, was bound to give this movement voice; and he has 
 accordingly' embodied the best feelings of his age with regard 
 to woman's influence and sphere in lines which combine rich 
 musical cadences with strong common sense, terse antitheses, 
 and brilliant poetical imagery: — 
 
 When the man wants weight, the woman takes it up, 
 And topples down the scales ; but this is fixed 
 As are the roots of earth, and base of all. 
 Man for the field, and woman for the hearth : 
 Man for the sword, and for the needle, she-. 
 Man with the head, and woman with the heart ; 
 Man to command, and woman to obey, 
 All else confusion. + 
 
 * Aristotle, tto\i.tikwv ra cia^oixeva /3. + "The Princess." 
 
288 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 For woman is not undeveloped man, 
 
 But diverse : could we make her as the man, 
 
 Sweet Love were slain, whose dearest bond is this, 
 
 Not like to like, but like in difference ; 
 
 Yet in the long years liker must they grow ; 
 
 The man be more of woman, she of man : 
 
 He gain in sweetness, and in moral height, 
 
 Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world ; 
 
 She mental breadth, nor fail in children care : 
 
 Move as the double-natured poet, each : 
 
 Till at the last she set herself to man 
 
 Like perfect music unto noble words. * 
 
 ****** 
 Either sex alone 
 Is half itself, and in true marriage lies, 
 Nor equal nor unequal : each fulfils 
 Defect in each, and always thought in thought, 
 Purpose in purpose, will in will they grow, 
 The single pure and perfect animal, 
 The two-celled heart beating with one full stroke, 
 Life.t 
 
 But these philosophic views, which are as old as the Stagirite, 
 figure in a mock burlesque, while Tennyson's unreal women are 
 reserved for his serious poetry. 
 
 The philosophy of Tennyson, instead of dominating the age, 
 lags indeed behind it. He cannot get further than honest 
 doubt, which he tells us is worth more than half the creeds,! 
 though how he can reconcile his praise of scepticism with the 
 ban that the Scriptures place upon it, would be difficult to con- 
 jecture. When asked for his solution of the enigma of life 
 and death, he candidly avows he has no lights to produce 
 which philosophy would entertain for a moment : — 
 
 If these brief lays, of sorrow born, 
 Were taken to be such as closed 
 Grave doubts and answers here proposed, 
 
 Then, these were such as men might scorn. § 
 
 * "The Princess." \ Ibid. J " In Memoriam" xlvii. § Ibid., xcv. 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 289 
 
 They are rather fortuitous guesses, or ill-connected hints, 
 which cannot be pursued very far without annihilating each 
 other. With him the popular religion still dominates philosophy 
 at one end, while leaving it absolutely free at the other. This 
 is the off-and-on position of the religious rationalist party, from 
 which the present generation derives most of its spiritual cul- 
 ture. They stand upon a bridge one buttress of which rests 
 upon the positivism of Comte, and the other upon the canons 
 of Dort and the Athanasian Creed. I suppose such things are 
 matters of necessity rather than choice, for before philosophy 
 can be free at both ends, it must begin to disentangle itself 
 from one of them. In the process, therefore, the fates of one 
 generation at least must be sacrificed at the shrine of incon- 
 sistency. Of such a generation Tennyson must be taken as 
 the poetical exponent. He combines the doctrine of the Re- 
 demption with the progressive theory of the Encyclopaedists.* 
 He does not, like Mr. Disraeli, go in for the angels. From 
 brute to ape, from ape to man, from man to a higher cycle 
 of being, — such are the stages of progress, t All theological 
 systems are refractions of the divinity, more or less imperfect, 
 none conveying absolute truth, but only such portion as is 
 adapted to man's state, and the development of his intellect, — 
 a very consolatory belief to those who have wedded their faith 
 to any particular school of Christianity. 
 
 Our little systems have their day, 
 
 They have their day, and cease to be ; 
 
 They are but broken lights of Thee, 
 And Thou, O Lord, art more than they. 
 
 The human soul, in its ante-natal state, is a part of the spirit 
 diffused through the universe. By the act of generation it is 
 " drawn from the void and stricken into bounds. "X Hence the 
 first feeling of a child is that of identification with everything it 
 
 Introductory Poem, and cxvii. t "In Memoriam," cxvii. 
 
 + Concluding Poem. 
 
 f UNIVERSITY J 
 
290 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 sees. By experience alone it begins to feel itself a separate 
 being, caged off, as it were, by the body from the elements of 
 which it formed a part.* Of the posthumous state of the soul, 
 his doctrine is more orthodox. It is not sucked back into the 
 spiritual void, but preserves its identity in a higher sphere. t 
 Even this view he does not consistently maintain, but glides 
 back into the Alexandrine doctrine, that the soul at death is 
 absorbed into the ocean of being from which it emanates. J If 
 we suppose this ocean of being to be God, we get the Pantheism, 
 not of Spinoza, but of Shelley, which Tennyson, in his last 
 volume, mingles with the theory of Malebranche :§ 
 
 The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills, the plains, 
 
 Are not these, O soul, the vision of Him who reigns ? 
 
 Is not the vision He ? though He be not which He seems. 
 
 Dreams are true while they last, and so do we not live in dreams ? 
 
 Earth, then solid stars, the weight of body and limb, 
 
 Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him ? 
 
 Dark is the world to thee, thyself art the reason why, 
 
 For is He not all but thou that hast power to feel I am ? I 
 
 Glory about thee without thee, and thou fulfillest thy doom, 
 
 Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendour and gloom. 
 
 It is the jarring dissonance of these various conflicting views, 
 pointing, like the maidens in " Etarre," one this way, and the 
 other that, the consciousness that his philosophy is nothing less 
 than a confused heap of thoughts leaping over each other in 
 the dark, which produces in Tennyson that wail in which he 
 compares himself to 
 
 An infant crying in the night, 
 An infant crying for the light, 
 
 And with no language but a cry. || 
 
 In the " Two Voices" the poet deals with the existence of evil and 
 the enigma of life and death purely upon philosophic grounds, 
 
 * xiv. § "The Higher Pantheism." 
 
 t xlvi., xxxiv. || In "Memoriam," lii. 
 
 t cxxix. 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 291 
 
 but his verses are little more than an English rendering of 
 Goethe's, except that the casual conjectures which the German 
 poet thought worthy of being treated only in a spirit of sportive 
 banter, the English poet has invested with an air of sepulchral 
 solemnity. In a philosophical point of view, we cannot, there- 
 fore, look for any guidance, or the least spark of new light, 
 from Tennyson. He merely reproduces in melodious verse 
 the chaotic and confused notions of his age, which ought to 
 have its inconsistencies consigned to oblivion, rather than 
 embalmed in an artistic urn for the amazement of posterity. 
 The age of Dante was a religious one; that of Lucretius 
 sceptical. The current of thought only ran in one direction, 
 absorbing in one wide , channel all the energies of the soul. 
 Such an age has a right to be heard, to make its voice felt through 
 its poetical exponent for all time. It also, by imparting con- 
 sistent philosophical force to the poet's conceptions, stimulates 
 a great mind to soar into the loftiest regions of imagination, 
 and sustains him in that elevated sphere, who otherwise, 
 wanting a solid basis for his aerial structure, would lack the 
 enthusiastic glow of genius required for its construction, as well 
 as sufficient groundwork for the support of great artistic 
 creations. If we do not seek from the poet an elaborate ex- 
 position of philosophical principles, a judicial summing up of 
 opposite opinions, he ought at least to be an unexceptionable 
 witness, to afford us gleams of light upon the questions at issue; 
 but if he, like Tennyson, attempts to combine systems as con- 
 flicting as those of Dante and Lucretius, he not only puts him- 
 self out of court, but leaves imagination without any ground in 
 objective reality. His muse has no substantial nature, or 
 intelligible functions, and cannot become the channel of lofty 
 inspiration to humanity. 
 
 But if Tennyson in his elegiac poetry, though dealing with 
 some of the sublimest subjects that can be grappled with by 
 man, affords us no light except to confound our way and make 
 our darkness more obscure, he at least scatters over his page 
 
292 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 many pleasing pictures, evokes much profound feeling, and 
 links a world of graceful association with the memory of the 
 dead. Perhaps no other elegiac poet in the language strikes 
 so many chords in the human heart, by touching those latent 
 springs of feeling which bind the various ranks and conditions 
 of life into one common brotherhood of humanity. The 
 description of the change from light to dusk, and of dusk to 
 light, of the physical, as emblematic of the spiritual, dawn;* 
 the thirst after the new year as after a new cycle of existence ;f 
 the identification of others' sorrows with his own, and of both 
 with the bleak aspects of nature ; J the challenge by which Fate is 
 defied to separate him from a soul blent with the elements of all 
 that is good and fair around him ; § the golden reminiscences of 
 intellectual feasts and aesthetic pastimes ;|| the seraphic force 
 of the intellect which has disappeared, foreshadowing the type 
 of the Coming Man ; — all these are rendered, fragmentary it is 
 true, and mixed up with much that is commonplace, yet with a 
 force which will vitalize them and make them sparkle like gems, 
 as long as elegiac poetry occupies a shelf in our literature. But 
 to write a poem of sustained pathos, like the " Lycidas" or the 
 "Adonais," I do not think Tennyson capable. His grief is always 
 called forth by surrounding objects, upon which it leans as a 
 crutch, and without which it could not possibly get along, instead 
 of welling up of itself, existing apart, and only using external 
 images as a gauge of its strength and profundity. In other great 
 elegiac poets, the world within overflows the world without. 
 I / In Tennyson, the world without completely dominates the 
 | world within. We feel nothing of his sorrow except through the 
 I agency of material phenomena. Let the reader compare the 
 lines Bums wrote on the death-day of the Highland Mary, with 
 the best of the pieces Tennyson has written on the commemora- 
 tion of young Hallam's decease,^ and he will find the difference 
 between artistic pictures imaging sadness in gloom and storm, 
 
 * xciv., lxxxv. + vi., xiii., vii. I! lxxxviii. 
 
 + lxxxii. § cxxix. IF lxxi., xcviii. 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 293 
 
 and that pathetic strength which arises out of the mind, dashing 
 its own anguish upon the world with the force of a volcanic fire, 
 and fusing down the objects which it meets until they become lost 
 in the blaze of its own creation. Tennyson's grief, on the other 
 hand, even at its height, is often lost among the objects which 
 has called it forth, and through which alone it becomes apparent. 
 On this account, though always surrounded with artistic effects, 
 it is always straggling and intermittent. I cannot, therefore, 
 place the " In Memoriam " on the topmost shelf of elegiac 
 poetry. Tennyson in this department is far above Shenstone ; 
 but he has not reached the sustained loftiness of Gray, the 
 impetuosity of Shelley, or the tenderness of Milton. 
 
 It is in the simple bucolic idyll that Tennyson may be said 
 to have achieved his early reputation, as affording room for the 
 exhibition of those qualities in which he so much excels, viz.,. 
 exquisite pathos, artistic handling of nature, and that tender 
 love- sentiment in which he revels, whenever an opportunity 
 presents itself. The Queen, some twenty years ago, is reported 
 to have taken up an early volume of his poems, containing 
 " The Miller's Daughter ; " and was so much struck with 
 the homely beauty of the story, that she ordered a copy of the 
 book for the Princess Alice. This first led to Tennyson's 
 reputation in Court circles, and to the foundation of his sub- 
 sequent fame. I think Her Majesty evinced great taste in 
 selecting for her admiration a poem which combines the rustic 
 simplicity of Bloomfield with the passion of Catullus. " The 
 Gardener's Daughter" is a little more artistic, twining the 
 sweetest love-memories round scenes so graphically described 
 as to place the spots before us with the fidelity of a photograph. 
 In " Dora," which belongs to the same group of subjects, the 
 pathetic is attempted by the picture of a father who, at first 
 flinty-hearted and proud, is finally crushed beneath the weight 
 of the domestic affections. In these simple subjects Tennyson 
 achieved early success; and five years ago he carried that 
 success to its highest pitch by the production of " Enoch Arden." 
 
294 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 The great merit of this poem consists in the severe simplicity of 
 the narrative, and the profound pathos the poet succeeds in 
 awakening, by the ungarnished recital of the story, without any 
 of the meretricious ornaments of his art to support him. There, 
 perhaps, never was a poem so perfectly stripped of what are 
 usually called " fine passages," and so effective as a whole. This 
 arises from a deep knowledge of maternal instincts, and a selec- 
 tion of those traits most likely to find their way to the reader's 
 heart. But the poet never wanders out of the four corners of 
 his narrative. He simply contents himself with idealizing a 
 picture of heroic fortitude in a fishing hamlet of the nineteenth 
 century. The characters are few, and of the humblest grade 
 of life. But, however perfect such pictures may be, they do 
 not belong to a high walk of art. Nor, considering the qualities 
 employed in their perfect realization, do I consider their pos- 
 sessor entitled to claim the same rank with those who have 
 evinced a thorough mastery over the representation of society 
 in every phase of life, or who strike with masterly hand all the • 
 sounding chords of passion within the compass of the complex 
 narrative poem. 
 
 The nearest approach to anything of this character Tennyson 
 has undertaken, is "The Princess ;" but the mock heroic mould 
 in which the incidents are cast, removes it from the sphere of 
 serious poetry. The beauties of " The Princess n are those of a 
 descriptive and ornamental character. The defects arise out of 
 the framework of the piece, which lacks both unity of colouring 
 and design. The poem opens in a vein of solemn banter, but the 
 gravity of the writer was too much for him in this field, and he 
 falls at once from the heights of burlesque into connubial philo- 
 sophy. The first half of the story has a nursery air about it ; 
 the last half sounds like a laudatory treatise upon monogamy. 
 We cannot for a moment imagine the plot to be real without 
 striking the feelings of puberty out of our nature. The scenes 
 are so many phantasmagoria, in which the characters dance 
 about like elves in a fairy tale, with no relation to actual exist- 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 295 
 
 ence. But as the grotesque parts of the poem thicken, they 
 become more embedded in splendid ornament : we are abso- 
 lutely pelted with gems of every kind. A shower of apt similes, 
 of brilliant metaphor, is rained down upon us. Artistic touches 
 spring up at every step. It seems a pity that on a story of such 
 feeble pretensions to verisimilitude, so much jewellery should 
 have been wasted, one-half of which would have made the 
 reputation of a far inferior poet. 
 
 The following passage — which refers to the summons of the 
 male intruders into the female college, to the presence of the 
 Princess, after the discovery of their sex, would do credit to 
 Beaumont and Fletcher : — 
 
 They haled us to the Princess, where she sat 
 High in the hall : above her droop 'd a lamp, 
 And made the single jewel on her brow 
 Burn like the mystic fire on a mast-head, 
 Prophet of storm : a handmaid on each side 
 Bow'd towards her, combing out her long black hair, 
 Damp from the river ; close beside her stood • 
 
 Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men, 
 . Huge women, blowzed with health, and wind, and rain, 
 And labour. Each was like a Druid rock ; 
 Or like a spire of land that stands apart, 
 Cleft from the main, and wail'd about with mews. * 
 
 The scene of confusion which ensues when the feminine 
 community hear that they are girt about by a mighty army is 
 no less felicitously painted: — 
 
 A tide of fierce 
 Invective seemed to wait behind her lips, 
 As waits a river level with the dam, 
 Ready to burst, and flood the world with foam. 
 And so she would have spoken, but there rose 
 A hubbub in the court of half the maids 
 Gather'd together ; from the illumined hall 
 Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press 
 
296 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes, 
 
 And rainbow robes, and gems and gem-like eyes, 
 
 And gold and golden heads : they to and fro 
 
 Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale, 
 
 All open-mouthed, all gazing to the light ; 
 
 Some crying there was an army in the land, 
 
 And some, that men were in the very walls, 
 
 And some they cared not ; till a clamour grew, 
 
 As of a new-world Babel, woman-built, 
 
 And worse confounded : high above them stood 
 
 The placid marble muses, looking peace.* 
 
 But the likenesses of the chief actors are rather hit off by 
 some apt simile than fully sculptured out before us from the 
 rough block of circumstances, as the head of Ida, with 
 
 " A single band of gold about her hair, 
 Like a Saint's glory up in heaven, "f 
 
 or that of Melissa, 
 
 • A rosy blonde, in a village gown, 
 
 ****** -with her lips apart, 
 And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes, 
 As bottom agates seem to wave and float 
 In crystal currants of clear morning seas'. J 
 
 The poetry of motion was never combined with higher artistic 
 embellishment than in the portrait of Camilla, sketched in 
 another portion of his works : — 
 
 On her head 
 A diamond circlet, and from under this 
 A veil, that seemed no more than gilded air 
 Flying by each fine ear, an eastern gauze, 
 With seeds of gold : so_with that grace of hers, 
 Slow moving as a wave - against the wind, 
 That flings a mist behind it in the sun. § 
 
 t vii. 
 § " The Golden Supper. 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 297 
 
 As a contrast to this picture may be set that of the Princess : — 
 
 Rising up, 
 Robed in the long night of her deep hair, so 
 To the open window moved, remaining there 
 Fix't like a beacon-tower above the waves 
 Of tempest, when the crimson-rolling eye 
 Glares ruin, and the wild birds on the light 
 Dash themselves dead.* 
 
 The following artistic touch reminds us of Gilbert Forster's 
 best water-colour sketches : — 
 
 Many a little hand 
 Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks, 
 Many a light foot shone like a jewel set 
 In the dark crag : and then we turned ; we wound 
 About the cliffs, the copses out and in, 
 
 * * * * till the sun 
 
 Grew broader towards his death, and fell, and all 
 The rosy heights came out above the lawns. + 
 
 Even feminine sadness cannot be painted without connecting 
 it with a landscape like that in Williams' "Storm," which we 
 have frequently seen on canvas, but never drawn with such 
 colours as Tennyson has put into words : — 
 
 Seldom she spoke, but oft 
 Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for hours : 
 * Void was her look, 
 
 * * * as one that climbs a peak, to gaze 
 O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud 
 Drag onward from the deep a wall of night, 
 Blot out the scope of sea from verge to shore, 
 And suck the blinding splendour from the sand, 
 And quenching lake by lake, and tarn by tarn, 
 Expunge the world ; so fared she gazing there. + 
 
 But the effects of these artistic beauties are to a great extent 
 marred by the absurd story, and by the pale washed-out 
 characters with which they are connected. The poet was 
 
 * iv. + iii., adfinem. X vii. 
 
298 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. « 
 
 evidently only feeling his way. But after being twenty-seven 
 years before the world as an author, it must be confessed that, 
 compared with what was achieved by his immediate prede- 
 cessors in one-half of the time, "The Princess" is not a lofty 
 effort. It lacks the embodiment of the struggle between the 
 lower and the higher instincts of the soul, which affords the 
 widest scope for the imaginative faculty. . Artistic strokes are 
 substituted for bold flights of sublimity. We are charmed with 
 a succession of fairy-like pictures, but never dazed by the 
 natural electricity of passion. And even in the regions of 
 mock burlesque, if "The Princess " should always hold a con- 
 spicuous place, it must not be forgotten that the highest ex- 
 cellence in the mock burlesque, which " The Princess " certainly 
 has not, can only compete with second-rate excellence in the 
 higher walks of poetry. 
 
 About eighteen years after the appearance of " The Princess," 
 Europe was shaken by the clash of arms. England, after the 
 sleep of h alf a century, put forth her might against Russia j 
 Poland and Hungary were in the travail -throes of a new birth. 
 Tennyson had in the interim become Laureate. Here, there- 
 fore, was a great opportunity for exercising his powers. Nor 
 did he shrink from the ordeal. The result was " Maud," con- 
 fessedly one of the weakest of his reflective poems. Of the 
 heroine of this piece we are left without any distinct conception. 
 The poem, however, embodies the whole love story from the 
 winding up to its inception. The poet woos by stealth, as the 
 family of Maud contemplate affiancing her to a much richer suitor. 
 The secret lovers are, however, surprised by Maud's brother 
 and the suitor in question at a trysting gate. A scuffle ensues, 
 which is supposed to end in the death of the brother, and the 
 flight of his assailant to Breton. The uncertainty of Maud's 
 love, at the opening, the scorn with which the poet is treated 
 by her family, the fatal termination of the whole business — 
 each in turn conspire to produce in the poet's mind that 
 disordered state of feeling which is supposed to correspond 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 299 
 
 with the disordered condition of Europe. Disquietude abroad, 
 disorganization at home, afford a sympathetic field for the pent- 
 up indignations which are seething in the poet's breast. But, 
 with the exception of an occasional flash of great power, such 
 as — 
 
 Like the bountiful season bland, 
 When the far-off sail is blown by the breeze of a softer clime, 
 Half lost in the liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea, 
 The silent sapphire-spangled marriage ring of the land ; — * 
 
 or, 
 or, 
 
 And the flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands, drove thro' the air ; — f 
 
 Listening now to the tide in its broad-flung shipwrecking roar, 
 Now to the scream of a madden'd beach dragg'd down by the wave, 
 Walk'd in a wintry wind by a ghastly glimmer, and found 
 The shining daffodil dead and Orion low in his grave :+ 
 
 and these of so rare occurrence as to be entirely lost in the 
 desert of commonplace by which they are surrounded, the 
 Whole character of the piece is hardly up to the level of 
 Ebenezer Eliot. There is a spasmodic strain through the 
 declamatory portions of the poem as if the bard was striving 
 to be indignant and could not— just as if he heard in his narrow 
 circle at Freshwater, that the times were out of joint, and it 
 behoved him, as the perfunctory State poet, to show it. There 
 is very little attempt at sketching character, and no scenic 
 impersonation. The poem, however, is redeemed by the per- 
 fection of its metres, and by one song, which will last as long 
 as delicate love sentiment survives in the heart of a generation 
 capable of appreciating its expression in glowing language. But 
 taking out this song, English literature would lose little by the 
 destruction of the rest of the poem. Now, considering the ex- 
 perience of the author, the length of time in which his faculties 
 had been ripening, and the occasion which called forth this 
 
 * iv. + i., 3. + iii- 
 
3oo ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 exhibition of his fancy, there is hardly any one who will not 
 say that as "The Princess" was only a comparative success, 
 " Maud," with the exception of its musical embellishments, was 
 an absolute failure. 
 
 Tennyson's mind in his later years has continued to obey 
 the impulse first impressed upon it. He has never wandered 
 out of the groove of his early productions. Other poets of any 
 pretensions to greatness have generally struck out into regions 
 undreamt of in their earlier life, emboldened by the expand- 
 ing strength of genius. But Tennyson has been remarkably 
 steadfast to his first conceptions. The Fatimas, the Claribels, 
 the Lillians, the Eleanores, the Madelines, the Orianas of his 
 earlier poems, have found sisterly companions in Maud and 
 the female characters of " The Princess." The English idylls 
 have expanded into " Enoch Arden." The " In Memoriam " 
 has its roots in the second volume of " Miscellaneous Poems " 
 he presented to the public. The germ of his Arthurian idylls will 
 likewise be found among his youthful productions. The heroes 
 of the Holy Grail, with Guinevere and Arthur, figure in the 
 volume he published nearly thirty years since. Nearly forty 
 years ago, Tennyson introduced his readers at Camelot to the 
 Lady of Shalott (Elaine) and Sir Lancelot. He has evidently 
 been ruminating over the heroes of the Round Table all his 
 life. We should, therefore, have been prepared for a fuller em- 
 bodiment of the story than he has given to us. From the first 
 conception of the characters to the final execution, the space 
 embraces two such poetic lives as those of Byron and Shelley. 
 The world, therefore, is entitled to expect a great deal from a 
 writer whose genius by many is considered to be of an epical 
 character. Nor does he seem to have disappointed expectation. 
 But the standard by which narrative poetry is gauged appears 
 about as low as that by which dramatic poetry is estimated. It 
 only remains for Art to set forth her requirements, and show 
 how far Tennyson, after a life -long study of his subject, has 
 fulfilled or fallen beneath them. 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 301 
 
 The feats of Arthur, the character of his Court, and the 
 romantic incidents of his reign, come down to us invested with 
 the magic drapery which the Crusaders imported from the East. 
 To realize the embodiment, however, of the most imaginary 
 stories, some attention to time and circumstance is necessary. 
 If the account of King Arthur, in its general outline, be legen- 
 dary, the myth presents itself to us nailed to a certain frame- 
 work of dates, costume, belief, and manners, from which we 
 cannot dissever it, without interfering with verisimilitude. But 
 Tennyson sets most of these outer envelopes in which the story 
 has shaped itself, at defiance. His process, to say the least 
 of it, is a very easy one. An ordinary artist would have 
 endeavoured to reproduce the Arthurian age. He would have 
 bored himself to death about minute details, to preserve the 
 representative character of the piece. But Tennyson, with a 
 happy indifference to trifles of this character, turns Arthur and 
 his knights into sound Protestants, nearly a century before 
 St. Austin introduced Papal rule into Great Britain. It is 
 universally known that heraldry did not assume the appearance 
 of a system till the twelfth or thirteenth century j but six hundred 
 years before fields d'or or d } argent were heard of, British knights, 
 according to Tennyson, were as punctilious about the quartering 
 of their shields as the most fastidious barons of the old German 
 empire. Jousts and tournaments are of Norman origin ; but 
 Tennyson makes the Knights of the Round Table as familiar 
 with them as if they had formed the body-guard of the last of 
 the Plantagenets. If the old romances have encrusted the story 
 with some of these absurdities, it should have been the duty of 
 the poet not to increase them by absurdities still more glaring, 
 but to winnow away the chaff, and invest the myth with some 
 appearance of reality. 
 
 A poet who produces pictures of legendary life and manners 
 without any other shackles than his own fancy imposes on him, 
 may by flattering the prejudices of his readers achieve a large 
 amount of success j but when those habits and feelings he has 
 
302 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 humoured have passed away, it becomes a question how far 
 his work will stand the test of an age which does not find its 
 ideals reflected there, and which brings to its appraisement other 
 weights and measures. Now this is what Tennyson has done, 
 and this, in a great measure, accounts for his large success. 
 In the " Idylls of the King," he has grafted the moral con- 
 ceptions of the age upon the principal characters, and worked 
 them out just as if the modern swells of Almack's, with their 
 conventional sentiments, were moving about to protect or avenge 
 female honour, in the glittering gewgaws of knight-errantry. In 
 Arthur we have the faultless perfection of a polished gentle- 
 man, whose virtues will not allow him to be jealous of his 
 wife, and who, therefore, becomes a cuckold for his pains. 
 Pelleas is another ideal character of our time, who, after 
 wasting his fortunes upon a thankless woman, and trusting in 
 a friend's promise to obtain her favour, is jilted by the one, 
 and deceived by the other. Lancelot, who is faithful to an un- 
 lawful love, who keeps his vow by cleaving to one only, the age 
 can sympathize with, though it cannot greatly admire; for 
 Tennyson represents his error as intertwined with many and 
 great virtues. Geraint is also a type in whom we recognize an 
 old acquaintance j for who has not met with the man pre- 
 pared to withdraw into rural solitude, to protect the virtue of 
 his wife, and who makes his jealousy the torment of his whole 
 existence ? Merlin is another victim to female influence of the 
 baser sort embodied in the form of angelic beauty. The 
 women are, like the men, each cast in the mould of the nine- 
 teenth century. Guinevere, the faithless wife, who is caught 
 on the sofa with Lancelot, in the usual stereotyped fashion, so 
 constantly revealed by our Divorce Court ; Enid, the simple- 
 hearted pattern of conjugal fidelity, such as mothers are ever 
 holding up before their daughters as the beau-ideal of wifedom ; 
 Vivien, the dissolute, and Elaine, the spotless, maiden, the one 
 living for power and pelf, the other breaking under the incum- 
 bent weight of unrequited love, — all these are common types to 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 303 
 
 be found round our own hearth, but having little relation to 
 an age when woman was considered a chattel, whose rights 
 were to be upheld and whose favours purchased by violence. 
 All these characters are invested, not only with the instincts, 
 the conventional prudery, the ideal sentiments, but the reli- 
 gious belief of our day. For when the guilt of Guinevere is 
 discovered by the King, he reads her a lecture such as an evan- 
 gelical clergyman, might be supposed to deliver to his spouse 
 caught in a similar predicament. What would be thought 
 of an artist who should introduce the polished manners of 
 Belgravian society among the lawless knights of Charlemagne, or 
 who should describe the savages who brought night upon the 
 Roman Empire, doing the honours of the table, and making 
 love in the style of the courtiers who lately used to flock to the 
 salons of the Champs Elysee ? 
 
 The fragmentary treatment of the subject evinces a want of 
 power in the artist to handle the story as a whole, and to strike 
 out of heterogeneous materials the unity of a great poem. All 
 the characters in the ten idylls glance before us like so many 
 isolated figures on a wall, having no connection beyond the 
 common name of Arthurian idylls. Nor is the want of com- 
 pleteness in themselves in any way supplied by reference to a 
 common subject. " Pelleas and Etarre " comprise the sixth bead 
 on the string, but they are never alluded to before, and each 
 coming out of blankness, fade into nothing in the most remark- 
 able fashion, Pelleas spitting fire in the dark, and Etarre in her 
 wizard castle mourning for a love she constantly rejected while 
 under her walls. Merlin and Vivien, Galahad and Perce vale, 
 Tristram and Isolt, "come like phantoms, so depart." In this 
 treatment of his subject, Tennyson has been true to the artistic 
 conception which dominates the rest of his works. If the 
 reader has ever been admitted into the Queen's robing-room, at 
 Westminster, he will have seen the Arthurian story painted in' 
 panels by Dyce, whose -pictures above are elaborately supported 
 by exquisite carvings connected with the same subject, in oak 
 
304 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 panels below. In one design we have Sir Galahad and the 
 vision of the holy cup j in another, the parting of Arthur and 
 Guinevere; here we behold Geraint on his foraging quest 
 with Enid; there we are struck with Merlin's adventure with 
 Vivian, or by Elaine's futile passion for Lancelot. In the same 
 manner Tennyson has panelled his subject. He has treated 
 the story from an artistic point of view, selecting detached 
 groups for his pen, just as if he was working in the interest of 
 the carver or the artist, and shackled by the narrow framework 
 of time and place, instead of soaring with untired wing into the 
 sphere of boundless creation. It is said that in thus tearing up 
 into fragments tales which ought to have constituted episodes 
 converging into one grand trunk of human action, Tennyson has 
 consulted the taste of his contemporaries, who would as soon 
 think of sitting down to an ox, as attacking a whole epic. But 
 surely the popularity of Browning's " Ring and the Book " has 
 dispelled the illusion. To my mind, the epic would have been 
 more readable, and the characters would have gained in force by 
 being weaved into a web of mutual dependence. The tales would 
 have increased in interest, flashing light upon each other, while 
 mingling their currents in the tide which bore the purpose of 
 the writer on to its fulfilment. As the tales at present stand, 
 they are like so many isolated compartments, dark and mys- 
 terious in themselves, but which, had they formed the part of a 
 common ground plan, would have derived splendour and 
 symmetry from each other, as they sprang up into the grace 
 and unity of a whole. But to accomplish so much needed the 
 talents of a great intellectual builder, the mighty force which 
 links to his wheels a series of gigantic characters as agents in 
 a grand design ; and of these qualities Tennyson has yet given 
 no evidence. With some presentiment of his weakness, he 
 selected only such portions of the Arthurian story as enabled 
 him to indulge his talent for the picturesque, and to avoid the 
 great test of success in narrative poetry, — that is, the fidelity of 
 his representations to actual life and manners. The types of 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 305 
 
 ideal excellence he embodies, are in connection with freaks of 
 fancy, not with the great law of human probability. The main 
 trunk of the story being kept out of view, Tennyson not only 
 chose those topics most adapted for the exhibition of his 
 powers, but in the elaboration of which he was most unfettered 
 by the lofty requirements of art A fragmentary treatment was 
 thus forced upon him. With the exception of Guinevere, none 
 of the idylls develop any action which bears the slightest tinge 
 of probability, or which for a moment we can believe to be 
 true. As each has an isolated interest, so each imparts an 
 independent lesson. Tales of fairy land, generally served up 
 in the nursery, steeped in the hues of divine poetry, are each 
 made to reflect the instincts and embody the experience of the 
 nineteenth century. The intellectual banquet generally pro- 
 vided for children, is served before us in the cups and ewers of 
 the gods. 
 
 The story of " Enid " reminds one very much of those we read 
 in our infantine days, in which the hero is a knight who sets 
 out to redress wrong, and just arrives in time to rescue some 
 maiden from distress whom he ultimately marries, and with 
 whom he is happy for the rest of his life. The only difference 
 is that the sequel of the story about overthrowing robbers and 
 taking their horses ought to have been placed in the fore part of 
 the story, and the lady, in the Castle of Doorm, to have made 
 the story perfectly unique with those of our childhood. The 
 poet has done, perhaps, as much as could be effected to render 
 the characters lifelike, where there was room for natural draw- 
 ing and artistic embellishment. His description of Geraint 
 has always struck us as a masterpiece in this way : — 
 
 The new sun 
 Beat thro' the Mindless casement of the room, 
 And heated the strong warrior in his dreams ; 
 Who, moving, cast the coverlet aside, 
 And bared the knotted column of his throat, 
 The massive square of his heroic breast, 
 
 20 
 
306 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 And arms on which the standing muscle sloped, 
 As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone, 
 Running too vehemently to break upon it. 
 And Enid woke, and sat besides the couch, 
 Admiring him, and thought within herself, 
 "Was ever man so grandly made as he?" 
 
 The simple tenderness of Enid, more confiding as it is sorely 
 tried, the Hall of Uniol smiling in its decay, Geraint's intro- 
 duction therein, and the banquet at Doorm's Castle, are given 
 with the exquisite touches of painting on enamel. But when a 
 sick man fainting from loss of blood cuts off at a stroke the head 
 of a strong earl, and scatters his crowd of retainers with a single 
 wave of the arm, we are strongly reminded of the Munchausen 
 business. Now, no amount of descriptive talent can naturalize 
 extravagant incidents ; and plots which violate nature, however 
 artistically embellished, cannot please for any length of 
 time. 
 
 The story of " Elaine n in the old romances, no matter however 
 unskilfully told, has romance enough in it to interest the most 
 prosaic reader. Tennyson has only varied the incidents, and 
 beyond the skilful development of the story, has not had re- 
 course to much artistic embellishment. In this he has shown 
 his sense ; for all stories dealing simply with the affections, if 
 complexly treated, require a hand of first-class power. When 
 the artist has control over the chords of passion only in their 
 simpler keys, the story would lose by any display of pre- 
 tentiousness. Tennyson has narrated the story in a simple 
 manner, relying as usual upon artistic grouping of incidents and 
 character, rather than upon any lofty exhibition of passion. 
 Had Byron or Pope selected such improbable subjects for their 
 muse, what both would have made of them may be judged from 
 the Eloisa of the one, and the Haidee or Medora of the other. 
 But the loftiest exhibition of passion we get from Tennyson, in 
 this story, where two women flung away, the one her life, and 
 the other her honour, for the same man, is the behaviour of 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 307 
 
 Guinevere when her lord expressed a wish that Lancelot may- 
 wed her rival : — 
 
 "Yea, lord," she said, 
 " Your hopes are mine," and saying that she choked, 
 And sharply turn'd about to hide her face, 
 Moved to her chamber, and there flung herself 
 Down on the great King's couch, and writhed upon it, 
 And clerich'd her fingers till they bit the palm, 
 And shriek'd out ' ' Traitor ! " to the unhearing wall. 
 Then flashed into wild tears, and rose again, 
 And moved about her palace, proud and pale.* 
 
 And a second time, when the whisper is going round the 
 royal table, of Lancelot's new love, — 
 
 The Queen, who sat 
 With lips severely placid, felt the knot 
 Climb in her throat, and with her feet unseen 
 Crush'd the wild passion out against the floor 
 Beneath the banquet, where the meats became 
 As wormwood, f 
 
 The love avowal of Elaine to Lancelot is still more simply 
 expressed by a wish on her part to be his wife, and if she 
 cannot be that, to follow [him through the world in any other 
 capacity, when Lancelot sweetens his refusal by the offer of 
 one-half of his fortune, in case she marries a poor knight : — 
 
 She neither blush'd nor shook, but deathly pale 
 Stood grasping what was nearest, then replied, 
 14 Of all this will I nothing ;" and so fell, 
 And thus they bore her swooning to her tower. $ 
 
 All this is effective in its way; but the effect arises from the 
 original conception of Elaine's passion in the old romancers, 
 and not from the artist's treatment, which simply does no more 
 than hold up a glass to their images and reflect the outlines of 
 their picture. How different is Byron's representation of one 
 of his heroines in an analogous situation : — 
 
 * "Elaine." + Ibid. % Ibid. 
 
308 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Nor once did those sweet eyelids close, 
 
 Or shade the glance o'er which they rose, 
 
 But round their orbs of deepest blue 
 
 The circling white dilated grew — 
 
 And there with glassy gaze she stood 
 
 As ice were in her curdled blood ; 
 
 But every now and then a tear, 
 So large and slowly gather'd, slid 
 From the long dark fringe of that fair lid, 
 
 It was a thing to see, not hear ! 
 
 And those who saw, it did surprise, 
 
 Such drops could fall from human eyes. 
 
 To speak she thought — the imperfect note 
 
 Was choked within her swelling throat, 
 
 Yet seem'd in that low hollow groan 
 
 Her whole heart gushing in the tone. 
 
 It ceased — again she thought to speak, 
 
 Then burst her voice in one long shriek, 
 
 And to the earth she fell like stone, 
 
 Or statue from its base o'erthrown. * 
 
 The jealousy of Guinevere is painted as the petulance of a 
 child, but that of Gulbeyaz as the passion of a sensuous woman : 
 
 When he was gone, there was a sudden change : 
 I know not what might be the lady's thought ; 
 
 But o'er her bright brow flash'd a tumult strange, 
 And into her clear cheek the blood was brought, 
 
 Blood-red as sunset summer clouds which range 
 The verge of heaven ; * * * * 
 
 And the deep passions flashing through her form, 
 
 Made her a beautiful embodied storm. + 
 
 In " Vivien" and "Guinevere " we have most sustained bursts 
 of passion, the one in a farewell which may last as long as the 
 language ; the other along the whole line of passes which take 
 place between an old artificer and a wily woman who tries to 
 subject him to her power. The meeting of Sir Tristram and 
 Queen Isolt afforded the poet another outlet for his powers, 
 
 * " Parasina," xiv. 
 
 + " Don Juan," Canto v., verses cviii. and cxxxv. 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 309 
 
 and in the opening, as well as in some momentary flashes of 
 passion during the interview, he is partly equal to the oc- 
 casion ; — 
 
 Down in a casement sat, 
 A low sea-sunset glorying round her hair 
 And glossy throated grace, Isolt the Queen, 
 And when she heard the feet of Tristram grind 
 The spiring-stone that scaled about her tower, 
 Flush'd, started, met him at the doors, and then 
 Belted his body with her white embrace. 
 
 But after the lovers had made up their quarrel, and Isolt had 
 appeased her jealousy, just in the very crisis of the lava out- 
 burst of passion, we were hardly prepared for the following 
 
 bathos : — 
 
 So then, when both were brought to full accord, 
 
 She rose, and set before him all he will'd ; 
 
 And after these had comforted the blood 
 
 With meats and wines, and satiated their hearts — 
 
 Now talking of their woodland paradise, 
 
 The deer, the dew, the fern, the forests, the lawns ; 
 
 Now mocking at the much ungainliness, 
 
 And craven shifts, and long crane legs of Mark. * * * 
 
 The love scenes between Lancelot and Guinevere are none of 
 them brought out in their fulness, but rather hinted at than 
 described. In the last Tournament, the poet had a splendid 
 opportunity of alluding to them; for the elopement is supposed 
 to take place during the action of the poem. But all the 
 glimpse we get of Guinevere is in a very tame picture, most 
 unnatural as applied to a woman whose heart is seized with a 
 guilty passion for another, and who is viewing her husband depart 
 for the last time, while that passion is uppermost in her breast : 
 
 In her high bower the Queen, 
 Working a tapestry, lifted up her head, 
 Watch'd her lord pass, and knew not that she sigh'd. 
 Then ran across her memory the strange rhyme 
 Of bygone Merlin, " Where is he who knows? 
 From the great deep to the great deep he goes ! " 
 
310 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 a question which may be very fairly asked as to Arthur's 
 locality in the poem. Even the last night in which they 
 met is hurried over in two or three lines, and the whole 
 force of the idyll is thrown into the interview between Guine- 
 vere and the King. What ought to have constituted the body 
 of the idyll, is only made introductory to the end of it. Now, 
 splendid as that finish is, it loses somewhat of its force from the 
 want of breadth of treatment in the scenes which lead up to 
 it. The old romancers only send Guinevere to a convent after 
 the death of Arthur in the fight against Modred, in which they 
 are both slain. This is unnatural enough, for it implies that 
 Guinevere only relished her passion for Lancelot so long as it 
 was guilty. But Tennyson, more unnaturally, makes the pair 
 separate immediately upon an event which could have had no 
 other consequence except to glue them more closely together ; 
 for the set purpose of delivering a homily at the finish, and 
 elaborating a farewell picture of great excellence, though the 
 leading embellishments be taken from sources so diverse as 
 Saint Luke and Homer : — 
 
 Then, listening till those armed steps were gone, 
 Rose the pale Queen, and in her anguish found 
 The casement : " Perad venture, " so she thought, 
 14 If I might see his face, and not be seen." 
 And lo, he sat on horseback at the door ! 
 And near him the sad nuns with each a light 
 Stood, and he gave them charge about the Queen, 
 To guard and foster her for evermore. 
 And while he spake to these his "helm was lower'd, 
 To which for crest the golden dragon clung 
 Of Britain ; so she did not see the face, 
 Which then was as an angel's,* but she saw, 
 Wet with the mists and smitten by the lights, 
 The dragon of the great pendragonship 
 Blaze, making all the night a steam of fire. 
 And even then he turn'd ; and more and more 
 
 * "The Acts," c. vi., v. 15. 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 311 
 
 The moony vapour rolling round the King, 
 Who seem'd the phantom of a giant in it, 
 Enwound him fold by fold, and made him gray 
 And grayer, till himself became as mist 
 Before her, moving ghostlike to his doom. 
 
 Somewhat in the same fashion, Homer represents Achilles on 
 the point of setting forth to the ramparts, as the two armies are 
 contending over the dead body of Patroclus : — 
 
 But up Achilles rose, beloved of heaven ; 
 
 And Pallas on his mighty shoulders cast 
 
 The shield of Jove ; and round about his head 
 
 She put the glory of a golden mist, 
 
 From which there burnt a fiery flaming light ; 
 
 And as when smoke moves heavenwards from a town, 
 
 In some far island by fierce foes beset, 
 
 Who all day long with dreadful clangour crowd 
 
 From their own town, soon as the sun was set, 
 
 Thick muffled fires along the turrets gleam. 
 
 Which rushing upward wide illumine the sky, 
 
 And let the neighbours know who may perhaps 
 
 Bring help across the sea ; so from the head 
 
 Of great Achilles light inflamed the air ! * 
 
 Hence this farewell stands out, as it were, the fragment of a 
 fragment. The natural incidents of the idyll are sacrificed to 
 
 * Homer, Book xviii., Is. 203 — 14. See also Diomede, Book v., 1. 4. 
 
 AiVrap ' A7 iX\ei)s &pro Ad<pi\os' ap,<pl d'Adrjvri 
 "Clfxois i<pdLfAoi<TL /3a\' aiylda dvaavoeaaav, 
 'Afupl 5^ 01 K€(pa\rj vicpbs 'iarecpe 5?a deawv 
 ~Kp6<X€ov, iK d'avrov dale, <f>\6ya naiA'pavowaav* 
 'fis S'6're Kairvbs iCov e£ dsreos didip' I'/c^rat, 
 T7]\66ev iK vtjgov, rr\v drjioi dfji^i/xdx^vTai, 
 Ot re iravr]p,4pioi <TTvyep{p Kpivovrai "Aprji 
 "Acrreos e/c crcperepov 'tifta S'^eX/y /caraSiWi 
 TLvpaoi t€ (pXeyedovo-iv faripptfUH i)\p6ae Z'dvyf) 
 Tlyvercu dicraovcra, irepucTLovecrcn tteadai, 
 Et k£v ircos aiiv vr\va\v dpr\% aXuTrjpes 'Ikoovtcli' 
 *fls a7r' 'Ax'XX^os KecpaXrjs aiXas didip Uaveu. 
 
312 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 bring it about that we may get a glimpse of the hero of the 
 story, who otherwise threatened to escape us altogether. Thus 
 when Arthur is summoned into action, it is not to scare his 
 enemies, but to rate his wife ; and we view him, not like other 
 heroes, engaged amid the glitter of spears, and the clangour of 
 arms on the battle-field, but delivering an evangelical discourse 
 preparatory to disappearing amidst a blaze of Roman candles, 
 and the wailing of nuns, in the chequered gloom of the night. 
 
 In "Vivien " there is more sustained power than in any of the 
 idylls. But "Vivien " even as an episode would be incomplete, 
 as it simply is confined to a love parley between two individuals 
 who come we know not whence, and go we know not where. 
 The necromantic art is largely introduced into the piece, which 
 as it stands isolated and unconnected with any phase of real 
 life, assumes an appearance of unreality, notwithstanding the 
 vivid imagery and the exquisite colouring which pervade every 
 line of it. The scenery of the piece streams with crystalline 
 light, not coming out of the sober heavens of our sphere, but 
 tinged with the magic hues of a fairy world. He does not, 
 however, when dealing with the marvellous, powerfully impress 
 us with the reality either of his characters or his incidents, 
 and occasionally he reminds us of the creations of others who 
 do. The following is a cross between Shakespeare's Apothe- 
 cary and the wizard Michael Scott with his magical book : — 
 
 A little glassy-headed, hairless man, 
 Who lived alone in a great wild on grass, 
 Read but one book, and ever reading grew 
 So grated down and filed away with thought, 
 So lean, his eyes were monstrous ; while the skin 
 Clung but to crate and basket, ribs and spine. 
 And since he kept his mind on one sole aim, 
 Nor ever touch'd fierce wine, nor tasted flesh, 
 Nor own'd a sensual wish, to him the wall 
 That sunders ghosts and shadow -casting men 
 Became a crystal, and he saw them thro' it, 
 And heard their voices talk behind the wall, 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 313 
 
 And learnt their elemental secrets, powers 
 
 And forces ; often o'er the sun's bright eye 
 
 Drew the vast eyelid of an inky cloud, 
 
 And lash'd it at the base with slanting storm ; 
 
 Or in the noon of mist and driving rain, 
 
 When the lake whiten'd, and the pine-wood roar'd, 
 
 And the cairn'd mountain was a shadow, sunn'd 
 
 The world to peace again : here was the man. 
 
 And so by force they dragg'd him to the King. 
 
 And then he taught the King to charm the Queen 
 
 In such- wise that no man could see her more, 
 
 Nor saw she save the King, who wrought the charm, 
 
 Coming and going, and she lay as dead, 
 
 And lost all use of life ; but when the King 
 
 Made proffer of the league of golden mines, 
 
 The province with a hundred miles of coast, 
 
 The palace and the princess, that old man 
 
 Went back to his old wild, and lived on grass, 
 
 And vanish'd, and his book came down to me. 
 
 Here, as in a fairy tale, we naturally expect, on turning over 
 the page, an illuminated picture such as makes the design of 
 the narrator palpable to youthful imaginations. But in the 
 analogous creations of Scott, we hold our breath suspended 
 while we read, and see the actors as palpably as if we had 
 been an eye-witness of the scene : — 
 
 " I swore to bury his mighty book, 
 That never mortal might therein look ; 
 
 ****** 
 " It was a night of woe and dread, 
 When Michael in the tomb I laid ; 
 Strange sounds along the chancel pass'd, 
 The banners waved without a blast. " 
 — Still spoke the monk when the bell tolled one : — 
 " I tell you that a braver man 
 Than William of Deloraine, good at need, 
 Against a foe ne'er spurr'd a steed ; 
 Yet somewhat was he chill'd with dread, 
 And his hair did bristle upon his head." 
 
3H ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Slow moved the monk to the broad flag-stone, 
 
 Which the bloody cross was traced upon : 
 
 He pointed to a secret nook ; 
 
 An iron bar the warrior took ; 
 
 And the monk made a sign with his wither'd hand, 
 
 The grave's huge portal to expand. 
 
 With beating heart to the task he went, 
 
 His sinewy frame o'er the grave-stone bent ; 
 
 With bar of iron heaved amain, 
 
 Till the toil-drops fell from his brows, like rain. 
 
 It was by dint of passing strength, 
 
 That he moved the massy stone at length. 
 
 I would you had been there, to see 
 How the light broke forth so gloriously, 
 "Stream' d upward to the chancel roof ; 
 ***** 
 
 It shone like Heaven's own blessed light, 
 
 And issuing from the tomb, 
 Show'd the monk's cowl, and visage pale, 
 Danced on the dark-brow'd warrior's mail, 
 
 And kissed his waving plume. 
 
 Before their eyes the wizard lay, 
 
 As if he had not been dead a day. 
 
 His hoary beard in silver roll'd, 
 
 He seemed some seventy winters old ; 
 
 A palmer's amice wrapp'd him round, 
 
 With a wrought Spanish baldric bound, 
 
 Like a pilgrim from beyond the sea : 
 His left hand held his book of might ; 
 A silver cross was in his right ; 
 
 The lamp was placed beside his knee. 
 High and majestic was his look, 
 At which the fellest fiends had shook ; 
 ***** 
 
 And when the priest his death-prayer had pray'd, 
 
 Thus unto Deloraine he said : — 
 
 " Now speed thee what thou hast to do, 
 
 Or, warrior, we may dearly rue ; 
 
 For those, thou may'st not look upon, 
 
 Are gathering fast round the yawning stone ! " 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 315 
 
 Then Deloraine, in terror, took 
 
 From the cold hand the mighty book, 
 
 With iron clasp'd, and with iron bound : 
 
 He thought, as he took it, the dead man frown'd ; 
 
 But the glare of the sepulchral light, 
 
 Perchance, had dazzled the warrior's sight. 
 
 When the huge stone sunk o'er the tomb, 
 
 The night return'd in double gloom ; 
 
 For the moon had gone down, and the stars were few 
 
 And, as the knight and priest withdrew, 
 
 With wavering steps and dizzy brain, 
 
 They hardly might the postern gain. 
 
 'Tis said, as through the aisles they pass'd, 
 
 They heard strange noises on the blast ; 
 
 And through the cloister-galleries small, 
 
 Which at mid-height thread the chancel wall, 
 
 Loud sobs, and laughter louder, ran, 
 
 And voices unlike the voice of man ; 
 
 As if the fiends kept holiday ; 
 
 I cannot tell how the truth may be ; 
 I say the tale as 'twas said to me. * 
 
 But breadth of conception in Tennyson seems almost incom- 
 patible with perfect elaboration of finish, and everything in 
 "Vivien" is sacrificed to bring out the feminine element in undue 
 prominence. In comparison with Vivien, who alone is sculp- 
 tured to the life, Merlin seems more or less of a puppet used 
 simply to afford occasions for the display of her petulancy. 
 He does not exhibit one spark of the doating passion which 
 old men usually evince in similar situations, but remains 
 throughout a mere talking machine, and is overborne at last, 
 not by the fascinations of the charmer, but by her persistency. 
 But no one can gainsay the truthfulness of Vivien's bursts of 
 passionate sentiment. Though used as means to gain a fiery 
 charm, they have all the force of flesh-and-blood creation : — 
 
 * "Lay of the Last Minstrel," Canto ii., verses 15, 22. 
 
316 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Merlin spoke in words part heard, in whispers part, 
 Half-suffocated in the hoary fell 
 And many- winter 'd fleece of throat and chin. 
 But Vivien, gathering somewhat of his mood, 
 And hearing " harlot " muttered twice or thrice, 
 Leapt from her session on his lap, and stood 
 Stiff as a viper frozen ; loathsome sight ! 
 How from the rosy lips of life and love, 
 Flash'd the bare-grinning skeleton of death ! 
 White was her cheek ; sharp breaths of anger puff 'd 
 Her fiery nostril out ; her hand half-clench'd 
 Went faltering sideways downward to her belt, 
 And feeling ; had she found a dagger there, 
 (For in a wink the false love turns to hate,) 
 She would have stabb'd him ; but she found it not : 
 His eye was calm, # and suddenly she took 
 To bitter weeping, like a beaten child, 
 A long, long weeping, not consolable. 
 Then her false voice made way, broken with sobs : 
 " O crueller than was ever told in tale, 
 Or sung in song ! O vainly lavished love ! " 
 ***** 
 
 She mused a little, and then clapt her hands 
 Together with a wailing shriek, and said : 
 " Stabb'd thro' the heart's affections to the heart ! 
 Seeth'd like the kid in its own mother's milk ! 
 Killed with a word worse than a life of blows ! 
 I thought that he was gentle, being great : 
 
 God, that I had loved a smaller man ! 
 
 1 should have found in him a greater heart. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Farewell ! think kindly of me, for I fear 
 My fate or fault, omitting gayer youth 
 For one so old, must be to love you still. 
 But ere I leave you, let me swear once more 
 That if I schemed against your peace in this, * 
 May yon just heaven that darkens o'er me, send 
 One flash, that, missing all things else, may make 
 My scheming brain a cinder if I lie. " 
 
 * Desiring the charm. 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 317 
 
 Scarce had she ceased, when out of heaven a bolt 
 
 (For now the storm was close above them) struck, 
 
 Furrowing a giant oak, and javelining 
 
 With darted spikes and splinters of the wood 
 
 The dark earth round. He raised his eyes, and saw 
 
 The tree that shone white-listed thro' the gloom. 
 
 But Vivien, fearing Heaven had heard her oath, 
 
 And dazzled by the livid-flickering fork, 
 
 And deafen'd with the stammering cracks and claps 
 
 That followed, flying back, and crying out, 
 
 " O, Merlin, tho' you do not love me, save, 
 
 Yet save me ! " clung to him and hugg'd him close, 
 
 And call'd him dear protector in her fright, 
 
 Nor yet forgot her practice in her fright, 
 
 But wrought upon his mood and hugg'd him close. 
 
 The pale blood of the wizard at her touch 
 
 Took gayer colours, like an opal warm'd. 
 
 She blamed herself for telling hearsay tales ; 
 
 She shook from fear, and for her fault she wept 
 
 Of petulancy ; she call'd him lord and liege, 
 
 Her seer, her bard, her silver star of eve, 
 
 Her God, her Merlin, the one passionate love 
 
 Of her whole life ; and ever overhead 
 
 Bellow'd the tempest, and the rotten branch 
 
 Snapt in the rushing of the river rain 
 
 Above them ; and in change of glare and gloom 
 
 Her eyes and neck glittering went and came ; 
 
 Till now the storm, its burst of passion spent, 
 
 Moaning and calling out of other lands, 
 
 Had left the ravaged woodland yet once more 
 
 To peace ; and what should not have been, had been. 
 
 For Merlin, overtalk'd and overworn, 
 
 Had yielded, told her all the charm, and slept. 
 
 Had " Vivien " been extended into an episode, or mortised 
 into a larger poem executed in a similar spirit, dealing with 
 human action in its broader outline, and not with the feminine 
 phase of a portion of it, Tennyson might have had his claim 
 allowed to a place in the highest niche of narrative poets ; but 
 with fragmentary treatment of unreal subjects, having no refer- 
 ence to actual life, except as veiled in the cloud of symbolical 
 
318 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 meaning, and even then only embodying the love phases of 
 existence among a conventional class, he appears in the posi- 
 tion of a sculptor who can throw off an arm or a leg with 
 graceful finish, but who lacks the Promethean touch of making 
 the block of marble start up with the organic semblance of 
 living reality. 
 
 This fragmentary treatment is still more exemplified in 
 "Pelleas and Etarre " and "The Holy Grail," which are the most 
 wizard-like stories of the series, and exhibit more unequal 
 treatment than any of their predecessors, to which they are. 
 manifestly inferior. In both there are occasional bursts of 
 description, but they come and go like patches of sunlight upon 
 the iron grey of clouds, speaking more of the veriest regions 
 of mist and shadow than of the solid framework of our rock- 
 bound earth. Pelleas, an ingenuous youth just knighted by 
 Arthur, on his way to a tournament (in the sixth century) falls 
 asleep in a wood, when 
 
 Suddenly waken'd with a sound of talk 
 
 And laughter at the limit of the wood, 
 
 And glancing thro' the hoary boles, he saw, 
 
 Strange as to some old prophet might have seemed, 
 
 A vision hovering on a sea of fire, 
 
 Damsels in divers colours like the cloud 
 
 Of sunset and sunrise, and all of them 
 
 On horses, and the horses richly trapt 
 
 Breast high, in that bright line of bracken stood : 
 
 And all the damsels talk'd confusedly, 
 
 And one was pointing this way, and one that, 
 
 Because the way was lost. 
 
 The principal damsel of this group is Etarre, whose bloom 
 bears those crystalline tints common to the rest of the 
 picture : — 
 
 For large her violet eyes look'd, and her bloom 
 A rosy dawn kindled in stainless heavens ; 
 And round her limbs, mature in womanhood, 
 And slender was her hand, and small her shape, 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 319 
 
 And but for those large eyes, the haunts of scorn, 
 
 She might have seem'd a toy to trifle with, 
 
 And pass and care no more. But while he gazed, 
 
 The beauty of her flesh abash'd the boy, 
 
 As tho' it were the beauty of her soul : 
 
 For as the base man, judging of the good, 
 
 Puts his own baseness in him by default 
 
 Of will and nature, so did Pelleas lend 
 
 All the young beauty of his soul to hers, 
 
 Believing her. 
 
 Of course, Pelleas continues fascinated with his new com- 
 panion, and wins for her the prize of the tournament, but on 
 returning home finds the castle doors of the lady by her express 
 instructions slammed in his face. Etarre has attained her 
 object in securing the prize, and despatches her knights to make 
 short work of Pelleas, who, still hankering after her favours, 
 lingers outside the walls. But the muscles and thews of 
 Pelleas are tremendous, and the knights return sorely bela- 
 boured and contused, though bearing Pelleas back with them 
 pinioned, as he consents to be made prisoner on condition of 
 being allowed once more to look upon Etarre. But Etarre is 
 still inexorable, and Pelleas is again ejected, to bemoan his 
 fate outside the walls. A bevy of knights are now charged by 
 Etarre to set on Pelleas all at once, who are just on the point 
 of despatching him, when Sir Gawain interferes, drives his 
 assailants off, and takes upon himself to plead the cause of 
 the injured lover with the flint-hearted Etarre. ( The sequel 
 may be guessed. Instead of pleading his friend's claims, Sir 
 Gawain urges his own, and achieves a conquest. Pelleas, after 
 lingering round the walls during a couple of nights, on the third 
 finds the drawbridge down, and, very unknightlike, sneaks into 
 the castle gardens by stealth, and beholds the guilty couple 
 asleep, surrounded by a slumbering group of knights and ladies. 
 Here there was opportunity for fine description, but Tennyson 
 does not put forth his powers. The most we get, in this way, 
 is the picture of Pelleas's entrance into the pavilion, which, 
 
320 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 though evidently intended to be one of the pet passages of the 
 poem, is beneath what Southey has achieved in introducing 
 Thalaba to the gardens of Aloadin : — * 
 
 Wide open were the gates, 
 And no watch kept ; and in thro' these he past, 
 And heard but his own steps, and his own heart 
 Beating, for nothing moved but his own self, 
 And his own shadow. Then he crosst the court, 
 And saw the postern portal also wide 
 Yawning ; and up a slope of garden, all 
 Of roses white and red, and wild ones mixt, 
 And overgrowing them, went on, and found, 
 Here too, all hush'd below the yellow moon, 
 Save that one rivulet from a tiny cave 
 Came lightening downward, and so split itself 
 Among the roses, and was lost again. 
 
 The upshot of the whole is that Pelleas leaves his naked 
 sword across the throats of the treacherous pair, and flies from 
 the scene distracted to encounter Lancelot, and by this slender 
 thread does he claim admission to rank as an Arthurian hero. 
 The moral is palpable enough. As Vivien represents the doating 
 folly of old men wasting their substance on wily harlots, Etarre 
 reproduces the same lesson for the young. The story is quite 
 of a piece with the rest of the series. It is carved out of cloud 
 land, having no substantial basis in religion or philosophy. The 
 characters, visionary-like, arise out of nothing, and fade into 
 nothing. Their actions outrage all that we know of common 
 life and manners, in order to impart a lesson which we each 
 derive from experience, and which each is little better for 
 knowing. 
 
 The quest for the sacred blood (Holy Grail) is one of those 
 stories combining Persian magic with monkish tradition, so com- 
 mon to the middle ages. The grotesqueness of the legend has not 
 deterred Tennyson from treating it in a serious spirit, by making 
 the quest of the knights for the sacred cup as emblematic of that 
 * "Thalaba," Book vi. 
 

 THE ART SCHOOL. 321 
 
 God-seeking which ought to form the pursuit of every Christian 
 soul. The Persian element of the story is brought out graphic- 
 ally enough. Bat the vague and indistinct fashion in which he 
 has worked out the Christian aspect of the subject, the wild 
 series of incoherent visions ending in nothing, must prove a 
 stumbling-block to the ordinary reader. That some knights by 
 indolence, others by a pretty face, should be turned aside from 
 their task, and that each should succeed in the pursuit in pro- 
 portion to the godlike qualities within him, is natural enough. 
 But to realize this with any force it was hardly necessary to 
 make Sir Galahad disappear altogether phantom-like in a cloud, 
 and Sir Perceval get so far after him, that we hardly see any- 
 thing of him but his feet. The vision of Sir Perceval, doubt- 
 less intended to be the finest portion of the poem, is, to my 
 mind, the worst. It affects the most, and accomplishes the 
 least. The images are incoherent. The poet has no distinct con- 
 ception of his subject, and, therefore, fails to convey any notion 
 of it to his readers. A heap of arches, bridging over gulfs and 
 branching into cloud-land, are huddled together without any 
 definite design beyond forming a sort of gutted pathway to a 
 city of pearl, presumed to be for the habitation of the saints. 
 About the worst device of "Paradise Lost" is the bridge from 
 earth to hell,* of which Milton makes Sin and Death the archi- 
 tects. But as this was a plain macadamized road flung over a 
 cyclopean archway, Tennyson evidently thought the path to 
 heaven was a matter which ought to be attended with graver 
 difficulty. Accordingly, we get a series of archways separated 
 by rivers, each one of which disappears in a clap of thunder as 
 soon as Sir Galahad reaches its successor, until that gentleman 
 is bodily absorbed by a cloud, leaving Sir Perceval in the midst 
 of the wreck of isolated archways to scramble back, as best he 
 might, to communicate the result to his colleagues. Incon- 
 gruous as Milton's bridge is, it looms on our sight with vivid 
 distinctness, one end resting on the jagged rocks of Pandaemo- 
 * Book ii., adfinem. 
 
 21 
 
322 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 nium, and the other on the outer rim of this globe j but Ten- 
 nyson's arches, with no other buttresses than cloud-land, begin- 
 ning and ending in vacancy, seem little better than the product 
 of disordered dreams. In the adventure of Sir Lancelot he 
 succeeds much better, the introductory portion of which is 
 described with Dantesque power and minuteness : — 
 
 Seven days I drove along the dreary deep, 
 
 And with me drove the moon and all the stars : 
 
 And the wind fell, and on the seventh night 
 
 I heard the shingle grinding in the surge, 
 
 And felt the boat shock earth, and looking up 
 
 Behold, the enchanted bowers of Carbonek, 
 
 A castle like a rock upon a rock, 
 
 With chasm-like portals open to the sea, 
 
 And steps that met the breaker ! There was none 
 
 Stood near it but a lion on each side 
 
 That kept the entry, and the moon was full. 
 
 Then from the boat I leapt, and up the stairs. 
 
 There drew my sword. With sudden-flaring manes 
 
 These two great beasts rose upright like a man ; 
 
 Each gript a shoulder, and I stood between ; 
 
 And, when I would have smitten them, heard a voice — 
 
 " Doubt not ; go forward ; if thou doubt, the beasts 
 
 Will tear thee piecemeal." Then with violence 
 
 The sword was dash'd from out my hand, and fell. 
 
 And up into the sounding hall I past ; 
 
 But nothing in the sounding hall I saw, — 
 
 No bench, nor table, painting on the wall, 
 
 Or shield of knight ; only the rounded moon 
 
 Thro' the tall oriel on the rolling sea. 
 
 To get at the meaning of all this we must allegorize. He 
 who would find God must get over the sea of doubt, advance 
 through the castle of belief, and seek the chambers of purity. 
 Lancelot was wanting in the latter quality, and, therefore, 
 though he got safely over the two former, did not realize his 
 search. Sir Galahad did, and was bodily united with it, to the 
 forgetfulness of everything else. Perceval, not being so dis- 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 323 
 
 entangled from earthly things as Galahad, saw the object of his 
 quest, and prepared himself for the final fruition. " The Holy 
 Grail " is thus, by being made emblematic of the struggle for 
 holiness, brought with the other idylls to have a direct refer- 
 ence to the affairs of the day. But Tennyson in the lofty 
 regions of spirituality was out of his depth. The fancy 
 which could idealize a drawing-room group of Belgravian 
 beauties, was terribly at discount when dealing with grand figures 
 clothed with radiance, whose features should have reflected 
 the glories and whose hands dispensed the thunders of the other 
 world. He lacked the bold imagination necessary to crowd 
 space with a succession of sublime shapes and intelligible in- 
 cidents, and, as a substitute for a series of palpable pictures, is 
 obliged to fly to the poor resource of allegory. But a religious 
 poem which cannot be made sensible without reference to 
 allegory, must be in a poor way of acquiring immortality ; and 
 I hardly think, were it not for its connection with " Vivien " 
 and " Guinevere," that this splendid fate would be in store for 
 the later production of the Laureate's pen. 
 
 The last instalment of the Idylls displays the same pictorial 
 power, the same curiosa felicitas of language, the same keen 
 flashing words, casting a diamond glitter round everything they 
 touch, which distinguish him above his contemporaries, and 
 which, in the eyes of many, are mistaken for the more substan- 
 tial embodiment of lofty ideal thought, of splendid passion, and 
 creative imagination. The story of Gareth and Lynette could 
 hardly have been better told. There is a brilliancy of colour, a 
 minuteness of description, and a naivete of expression about 
 every turn of it, which invests the extravagant incidents with 
 an appearance of verisimilitude. But in order to naturalize 
 the characters or impart a rational interpretation to their actions, 
 we must descend to allegory, following the poet himself, who 
 makes these allegorical characters introduce us to a further 
 allegory j so that in " Gareth and Lynette" we get an allegory in 
 an allegory, as in "Hamlet" we are treated to a play in a play. 
 
32 \ ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 For the three warriors yclept Morning-star, Noon- sun, and 
 Evening-star, represent the several stages of existence which 
 the soul has to pass through and overcome, before it en- 
 counters death, — 
 
 The huge man-beast of boundless savagery, 
 
 who, however, turns out to be the weakest antagonist which 
 the soul has to subdue in its progress to a higher stage. That 
 the grim skeleton should vanish, and resolve itself into 
 
 The bright /ace of a blooming boy, 
 i^resh as ayfower new-^orn, 
 
 is only a poetical rendering of a truth of philosophical as well 
 as spiritual significance. The two sisters Lyonors and Lynette 
 may denote the moral and rational part of the soul, and Gareth 
 the lowly virtue of humility, which the proud reason so per- 
 sistently disdains, but which, in spiritual combats, is so puis- 
 sant as to be regarded by religious ascetics as the queen of 
 all the virtues. So the story is left by the poet in its present 
 form as a riddle for wise men to spell out, while, to the great 
 bulk of his readers, who rest content with the exoteric meaning, 
 and do not pierce beneath the outer rind or shell, the piece 
 can only have interest, as some of the fairy tales of Andersen 
 have interest, which we first formed our acquaintance with in 
 the nursery, but which, on account of the novel combination of 
 images, the truthfulness of the pictures, and the piquancy 
 of the narrative, we are glad to renew our acquaintance with 
 in maturer years. 
 
 In the "Last Tournament" the poet gets on natural ground 
 again, and we find ourselves in human company, as we wander 
 with Sir Tristram towards Lyonesse, through the mellowing 
 avenues of the autumn woods. Most of the scenes are painted 
 with vivid distinctness. None of the incidents shock credi- 
 bility. In this respect, the " Last Tournament " may be regarded 
 as the most natural idyll of the series. A befitting sense of 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 325 
 
 melancholy runs through the whole of it, whether we regard 
 the desolate lodge in the forest, 
 
 Or the dfeatri-tffamb autumn Gripping gloom 
 
 which darkens the closing scene ; or the thick rain which 
 drenched both plume and mantle at' the tournament, "that 
 wan day " which 
 
 Brake with a wet wind blowing, 
 and 
 
 Went glooming down in wet and weariness ; 
 
 or whether we regard the withered leaves dancing before the 
 hall in the yellowing autumn-tide ; or the mournful moralizing 
 of the fool Dagonet ; or the occasional glimpse which the poet 
 gives us, along that table shore, of 
 
 The long /ow dune and /azy p/unging sea. 
 
 But all this is only the artistic framework to a series of pictures, 
 which, however vividly coloured, are singularly wanting in 
 those bold strokes of character, which sculpture the history 
 of a life out of the incidents of a page, and make the features 
 haunt the memory for ever. In the opening scenes, the poet 
 had a fine opportunity of representing Lancelot distracted 
 between his passion for the queen, and the severe promptings 
 of reason and conscience. But we get instead a mere paste- 
 board creation of that gentleman, ill at ease and sighing 
 wearily in the double-dragoned chair of Arthur, who has be 
 taken himself to the wars, leaving his faithless knight, in lan- 
 guorous mood, to preside over the jousts in his absence. 
 Lancelot veils his eyes, looks askance at the stately galleries* 
 where ladies with scattered jewels shone, 
 
 Like a bank 
 Of maiden snow mingled with sparks of fire, 
 
 and is only roused out of this unnatural state of listlessness by 
 the appearance of his rival, Sir Tristram, from Brittany, when, — 
 
326 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 His strong hands gript, 
 And dinted the gilt dragons right and left, 
 Until he groaned for wrath : 
 
 for, the jaded umpire, at the sight of his rival, who appears to 
 be the only gentleman who thoroughly enjoys himself, 
 
 Yearn'd to shake 
 The burthen off his heart in one full shock, 
 With Tristram ev'n to death. 
 
 But instead of breaking a lance with Sir Tristram, he is obliged 
 to fling to him, as victor in the jousts, the tourney prize, the 
 carcanet of rubies, which Sir Tristram intends for the neck of 
 Queen Isolt, his adulterous love in Cornwall, whither he pro- 
 ceeds to lay the jewels at her feet 
 
 The characters in the " Last Tournament " are very vaguely 
 pictured. The poet succeeds much better with the fool 
 Dagonet, whom he confronts with Sir Tristram on the morning 
 of his journey, and whose quaint and mournful lessons ad- 
 mirably suit the moral tone and purpose of the idyll. For 
 Dagonet, with the keenness of one of the Greek fates, whose 
 functions he seems to discharge, dives into the heart of what is 
 passing around him, fathoms the follies of Sir Tristram, and 
 does not forbear to fling them in his teeth. In fact, Dagonet 
 serves the purpose of the fool in "Lear," except that the 
 Laureate infuses into his witticisms the lessons of the moralist, 
 and makes him too philosophic for his vocation. For the taunt 
 of Sir Tristram — 
 
 Here be they 
 Who knew thee swine enow before I came, 
 Smuttier than blasted grain— 
 
 only serves to direct the fool's keen introspective glance upon 
 himself : — 
 
 Swine ? I have wallow'd, I have wash'd — the world 
 Is flesh and shadow — I have had my day. 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 327 
 
 The dirty nurse, experience, in her kind 
 Hath foul'd me — an' I wallow'd, then I wash'd — 
 I have had my day and my philosophies — 
 And thank the Lord I am King Arthur's fool. 
 
 But all this only constitutes a very effective background 
 to the piece, and by no means supplies the place of those 
 flashes of genius which we miss in the embodiment of the 
 principal characters of the poem. 
 
 In this piece, we get more glimpses of King Arthur than in 
 any other of the idylls. But these are of so broken and mo- 
 mentary a character, as to impart a shadowy appearance to 
 what ought to be the most substantial feature of the poem. 
 When the features of Arthur are sketched by Sir Tristram, 
 though the portrait is somewhat out of place in his love-scene 
 with Queen Isolt, the poet succeeds, as he always does in his 
 pen-and-ink sketches, to the satisfaction of everybody : — 
 
 Methought, when first 
 I rode from our rough Lyonesse, and beheld 
 That victor of the Pagan throned in hall — 
 His hair, a sun that ray'd from off a brow- 
 Like hill-snow high in heaven, the steel-blue eyes, 
 The golden beard that clothed his lips with light — 
 Moreover, that weird legend of his birth, 
 With Merlin's mystic babble about his end 
 Amazed me ; then, his foot was on a stool 
 Shaped as a dragon ; he seem'd to me no man, 
 But Michael trampling Satan. 
 
 But when we seek for a substantial embodiment of these 
 features in the only exploit of Arthur which the poet records, 
 we are doomed to disappointment. For while Sir Tristram 
 falls asleep in 
 
 The lodge of intertwisted beechen — boughs, 
 Furze-cramm'd and bracken-rooft, the which himself 
 Built for a summer day with Queen Isolt 
 Against a shower — 
 
 and is dreaming of a struggle between Queen Isolt and his 
 
328 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 bride for the tourney prize, the poet draws aside the curtains 
 of space, to present his hero to us in the struggle with the 
 northern marauders, whither he had despatched him at the 
 opening of the poem. But Arthur, instead of performing any- 
 thing worthy of note, is really little more than a powerless 
 spectator of the doings of others : — 
 
 Arthur with a hundred spears 
 Rode far, till o'er the illimitable reed, 
 And many a glancing plash and sallowy isle, 
 The wide-wing'd sunset of the misty marsh 
 Glared on a huge machicolated tower 
 That stood with open doors, whereout was roll'd 
 A roar of riot, as from men secure 
 Amid their marshes, ruffians at their ease 
 Among their harlot brides. 
 
 Upon Arthur's blowing a great horn which hung upon a tree 
 before the tower, the red knight within 
 
 In blood -red armour sallying howl'd to the king, — 
 
 ' ' The teeth of hell flay bare and gnash thee flat ! 
 
 Lo ! art thou not that eunuch-hearted king, 
 
 Who fain had dipt free manhood from the world — 
 
 The woman- worshipper ? Yea, God's curse, and I ! 
 
 Slain was the brother of my paramour 
 
 By a knight of thine, and I that heard her whine 
 
 And snivel, being eunuch-hearted too, 
 
 Sware by the scorpion-worm that twists in hell, 
 
 And stings itself to everlasting death, 
 
 To hang whatever knight of thine I fought 
 
 And tumbled. Art thou king ? Look to thy life ! " 
 
 But Arthur, seeing the knight drunk, 
 
 Deign'd not use of word or sword, 
 But let the drunkard, as he stretch'd from horse 
 To strike him, overbalancing his bulk, 
 Down from the causeway heavily to the swamp 
 Fall, as the crest of some slow-arching wave, 
 Heard in dead night along that table shore, 
 Drops flat, and after the great waters break, 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 329 
 
 "Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves, 
 
 Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud, 
 
 From less and less to nothing ; thus he fell 
 
 Head-heavy, while the knights, who watched him, roar'd. 
 
 The Knights then enter the tower, and, against the wish of 
 Arthur, who cannot make himself heard in the melee, sword 
 the inmates right and left, and fire the building, whose 
 flames red pulsing beat against the sky; when the curtain 
 falls upon Arthur vainly shouting in the midst of this little 
 massacre, and Sir Tristram's sleep having accomplished its 
 purpose, that gentleman resumes his journey, and Arthur once 
 more vanishes into oblivion. 
 
 Now no one can call in question either the fidelity of the 
 picture to nature, or the splendid aptness of the marine illustra- 
 tion, or the beauty of the landscape in which the scene is set ; 
 but as far as the character of the principal actor is concerned, 
 he is simply a very polished but very weak personage, who is 
 jerked up and down like a wire-drawn figure, not so much in 
 accordance with any pyschological traits of character as the 
 necessities of the poet's situation. In striking out novel 
 similitudes, in reproducing natural scenery, or in any other 
 artistic details, Tennyson shows himself complete master of his 
 subject ; it is only when he comes to exhibit any grand bursts 
 of passion, or salient features of character, that he allows his 
 subject to master him. 
 
 Tennyson is decidedly wanting in versatility. His range of 
 power is contracted. In the drama nothing, in epic nothing, 
 in satire and choral poetry nothing. In that form of lyric 
 which idealizes the love sentimentality of patrician life, he is 
 effective, but this is only a corner of the subject, and by no 
 means entitles him to rank with those who, like Burns and 
 Moore, have struck all the chords of amatory song. In elegy 
 he is strong. His exquisite pathos, his artistic touches, the 
 melancholy moodiness of his style, lightened with broken 
 gleams of hope, like gloom furrowed by sunlight, entitle 
 
33° ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 him to rank with Gray as the first English elegiac poet 
 after Shelley and Milton. Gray, indeed, he surpasses in 
 depth ; but the style and execution of Gray more than 
 compensate for this superiority, for Gray has obtained by one 
 effort what Tennyson has failed to compass in two hundred : — 
 at least, I suppose, there is no one who would not rather have 
 written the " Lines in a Country Churchyard " than 
 
 " By night we lingered on the lawn," 
 
 which is the best of the pieces in the " In Memoriam." Among 
 narrative poets his place is high, but certainly not so high as 
 to place him among the first group. His conceptions are 
 always flushed with an exquisite air of ideality ; but this 
 ideality never rises into the region of imaginative passion, or 
 of bold sublimity. He lacks invention and sustained fire and 
 energy, quite as much as he abounds in happy strokes of com- 
 parison, in deep pathos, and in elaborately coloured design. 
 Hence, in heroic narrative, Tennyson's place must always be 
 second class. But in single idyllic subjects, which appeal to 
 the simple feelings of the heart and the tutored instincts of 
 the eye, we have as little difficulty in placing his name among 
 the first. 
 
 Tennyson has only written two odes, and it would have been 
 better for his fame had he not written any. The "Ode to 
 Memory " has long since been consigned to oblivion ; and I am 
 sorry now to exercise an act of memory with regard to it. That 
 on the death of the Iron Duke has been the subject of much 
 eulogy, but it would be difficult to assign any intrinsic reason 
 for it. The ode is simply descriptive of the burial, with rather 
 a prosaic account of the virtues which transformed the warrior, 
 not into a hero by any means, but into a very indifferent states- 
 man. In prose, the thoughts would have been esteemed very 
 flat, and such as the most mediocre rhymester of the day might 
 have accomplished without feeling himself one inch higher on 
 ihat account. What can be tamer than 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 331 
 
 No more in soldier fashion will he greet 
 With lifted hand the gazer in the street. 
 O friends, our chief State oracle is mute : 
 Mourn for the man of long-enduring blood, 
 The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute, 
 While in himself, a common good. 
 Mourn for the man of amplest influence, 
 Yet clearest of ambitious crime, 
 Our greatest, yet with least pretence, 
 Great in council, and great in war, 
 Foremost captain of his time, 
 Rich in saving common sense. 
 
 ****** 
 Hush, the dead march wails in the people's ears ; 
 The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and tears, 
 The black earth yawns : the mortal disappears ; 
 Ashes to ashes, dust to dust ; 
 He is gone who seem'd so great, — 
 Gone ; but nothing can bereave him 
 Of the force he made his own, 
 Being here, and we believe him, 
 Something far advanced in state, 
 And that he wears a truer crown 
 Than any wreath that man can weave him. * 
 
 The only point worthy of any consideration in the poem is 
 the awakening the spirit of Nelson to greet the ashes of his 
 great land compeer, about to be placed by his side — a feature, by 
 the way, very much elaborated by the newspapers of the period, 
 before the ode made its appearance ; and which Tennyson has 
 only rendered in the plainest language : — 
 
 " Who is he that cometh, like an honoured guest, 
 
 With banner and with music, with soldier and with priest, 
 
 With a nation weeping, and breaking on my rest ? " 
 
 ' ' Mighty seaman, this is he 
 
 Was great by land as thou by sea. 
 
 Thine island loves thee well, thou famous man, 
 
 The greatest sailor since our world began. 
 
 Now to the roll of muffled drums 
 
 To thee, the greatest soldier comes ; 
 
 * St. 4 and 9. 
 
332 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 For this is he 
 
 Was great by land as thou by sea ; 
 His foes were thine ; he kept us free ; 
 O give him welcome — This is he." * 
 
 The prelude to this is simply odious. Had the task fallen upon 
 Dryden, or even Campbell, how differently would they have 
 evoked the shades of the two heroes, making the grave luminous 
 with the lightning flashes which defy its terrors, and with the 
 splendour which invests the soul beyond it. But Tennyson con- 
 fronted a mighty subject with the trite conceptions and weak 
 language of Shadwell, and falls not only below his theme, but 
 himself. 
 
 The fact is, odes require very few of those qualities in which 
 Tennyson is most proficient, and very many of those qualities 
 which he entirely wants. Artistic touches, pretty enamel- 
 painting, objective diffuseness, — for these, choral poetry affords 
 little scope. But it demands broad conceptions, great fire and 
 impetuosity in their realization, and that architectonic skill with 
 which the mind out of its own materials erects a gorgeous dome 
 of spiritual creation. None of these qualities has Tennyson 
 displayed in any force. In battle-pieces, he impresses his reader 
 neither with the savage fury of the onslaught, nor the reel and 
 the shock of the resisting column. His martial descriptions 
 assume almost the dry character of a despatch, whereas 
 Campbell and Scott make us spectators of the fray, stifle us 
 with its smoke, dazzle us with its lightnings, and deafen us with 
 its thunders. Let the reader compare Tennyson's " Balaklava 
 Charge" with the "Battle of Hohenlinden;" or the Laureate's 
 account of King Arthur's fights, or of those of the Duke of 
 Wellington's, with the " Vision in Lochiel," and he will realize 
 the difference between the bugle's martial note and that of a 
 child's penny trumpet. Tennyson made another effort in his 
 " Maud " to change his pastoral pipe, in the management of which 
 he is so effective/ for the clarion of Tyrtseus; but the attempt, 
 
 * St. 6. 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 333 
 
 though made with vast effort, was as fruitless as those terrible 
 proclamations which Sir Charles Napier used to address to his 
 fleet in the Baltic, and by which he led us to believe he was on 
 the eve of annihilating the Russian empire. What, for instance, 
 could be more spasmodic and unmeaning than the concluding 
 lines of " Maud," culminating in the absurdity — 
 
 And now by the side of the black and the Baltic deep, 
 And deathful grinning mouths of the fortress, flames 
 The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire ? 
 
 Both Napier's ships and the poet's verses were equally 
 incompetent to produce any impression upon the people for 
 whom they were severally intended. Tennyson's eminence, 
 indeed, in the idyll and simple pastoral subjects, seems to unfit 
 him for the loftier summits of Parnassus. He seems entirely 
 wanting in power to awaken dread, to arouse enthusiasm, 
 or inspire terror. His imagination has not the power to 
 shape awful images into palpable individualities, and flash 
 them on the mind with the impress of truth. These are the 
 grand tests of lofty poetry, when combined with architec- 
 tonic skill j and not delicate sentimentalities, or artistic pictures 
 of humble life, no matter however exquisite or faultless the 
 execution may be. 
 
 Tennyson's place among the poets of his century must be esti- 
 mated according to the nature of the qualities in which he excels, 
 and those in which he falls beneath his predecessors. If he is 
 inferior to Campbell in the war lyric, in sublime flights of imagi- 
 nation, and in lofty and impassioned poetry, he certainly rivals 
 him in exquisite pathos, while he ranks above him in the artistic 
 embellishment and conception of his subjects, in the simple idyll 
 of common life, and in the softer graces of conventional love sen- 
 timent. If Tennyson could never have written the " Mariners of 
 England," or the " Last Man," Campbell could never have written 
 " Enoch Arden," or "The Princess." "Theodora" is one of 
 Campbell's worst productions; in the hands of Tennyson, it 
 
334 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 would have been one of his best. Had Tennyson written " Ger- 
 trude of Wyoming," he would have risen as high above Camp- 
 bell, in the simple idyllic parts of the subject, as he would have 
 sunk below him, in the martial or impassioned parts of it. The 
 question is, which is the superior poet ? perhaps it would appear 
 unjust to either to pronounce an opinion. Both are great in 
 their peculiar line of art. But Tennyson's mind has under- 
 gone more artistic training than the other. Campbell, how- 
 ever, undoubtedly excels in genius, Tennyson in talent. But 
 Tennyson in his pieces always displays his talent, and Camp- 
 bell only occasionally exhibits his genius. If we judge by isolated 
 passages, the superiority would lie with Campbell ; if by the 
 average tenor of their productions, the palm might be awarded 
 to Tennyson. But the rule of criticism is trenchant, and as 
 Campbell succeeds far better than Tennyson in the higher 
 walks of his art, a loftier place must be awarded to him in the 
 English Parnassus. 
 
 Contrasted with the loftier poets of his century, the Laureate 
 will have more difficulty in maintaining his ground. Byron is 
 far above him in every quality except that of moral dignity, and 
 a genuine and more catholic appreciation of the destinies of hu- 
 manity. In graphic dealing with incidents of plot, in construction, 
 in delineation of character, in the broad handling of materials ; 
 in fact, in all the qualities of narrative poetry, except, perhaps, 
 in that of sustained amatory passion and ideal grace and 
 tenderness, Scott will be found eminently his superior. Yet out 
 of complex narrative poetry, in the bucolic idyll, in the artistic 
 embodiment of simple or mythical heroic life, in deep-toned 
 elegy and subdued pathos, Scott must own his inferiority. The 
 question is, whether a deeper, insight into the beauties of the 
 material universe, a persistent effort to realize a broader view 
 of the poet's office, a more multiplied excellence in the lower 
 walks of the art, can balance the marvellous power which 
 Scott has displayed in resuscitating chivalry? I venture to 
 think not. The powers which Tennyson displays, in the minor 
 
THE ART SCHOOL. 335 
 
 sphere of his art, are more than counterbalanced by the qualities 
 which Scott displays in one of the higher branches alone. If 
 Tennyson has elegiac pathos, Scott has fire and martial ardour; 
 if Tennyson excels in artistic conception, Scott surpasses him 
 in delineation of character. If Tennyson is superior in the ideal 
 handling of his subjects, Scott is no less effective in realizing the 
 rich colouring and variegated phases of actual life. In architectonic 
 skill, Tennyson is a child, and Scott is a giant. Hence, as works 
 of art, "Marmion," "The Minstrel," and "The Lady of the 
 Lake," must always rank higher than any of the fragmentary 
 idylls Tennyson has written, notwithstanding that in all of 
 these, there may be glimpses into a higher order of poetic con- 
 ception than was vouchsafed to Scott. The result of this view 
 is, that in power of dealing with a great subject, Scott is far 
 above Tennyson, and in the art of dealing with a little subject, 
 Tennyson is far above Scott. In poetry, the ideal must ever 
 carry it over the real, the breadth of the subject and the mode 
 of treatment being equal. But in Tennyson the ideal is fraction- 
 ized and reproduced in fragments like gleams of light through 
 patched windows; whereas in Scott, the real is reproduced with 
 the solidarity of an unbroken shaft of flame lighting up the 
 whole framework of an age buried in the darkness of oblivion. 
 Tennyson has more kinship with Wordsworth and Shelley 
 than with any other poets of his century. But the advantage 
 he has over the Lake poet in passionate sentiment and in 
 ideal grace, by no means makes up for his lack of the 
 philosophical breadth and deep spirituality which pervade the 
 writings of his great contemporary. Over Shelley, I do not 
 know that the Laureate has the advantage in any one quality, 
 which enters into the composition of the poet. To both these 
 writers he stands in the same relation as a copyist to an 
 original. Indeed, his poetry may be said to be a cross be- 
 tween the rich spirituality of the one, and the mellow plaintive- 
 ness and impassioned fervour of the other. But these two 
 tendencies in Tennyson, instead of imparting to each other 
 
336 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 fuller development, have stunted each other's growth. Shelley's 
 deep passion, his lyrical sweetness, his worship of ideal beauty, 
 lose much of their force, when checked by the double curb of 
 monastic dogma and Wordsworthian ethics, just as the broad 
 sweep of Wordsworth's didactic muse and his homely simpli- 
 city is strikingly impaired by being associated with feminine 
 domination, and the refined sentiment which constitutes the 
 amatory phase of fashionable life. The fact is, the position 
 Tennyson has taken up in art is about as incongruous as the 
 position he has taken up in philosophy. We have love-passion 
 expressed in homiletic language, bald simplicity combined 
 with perfumed conceits, and subjection to feminine influence 
 fonnulated \nto one of the first laws of the philosophic world. 
 His poetry, like that of the architectural fashions and dogmatic 
 views of the day, seems to be the result of a capricious eclec- 
 ticism. But Greek temples with gothic lights in Christian 
 churchyards, or mediaeval gables with Byzantine cupolas, 
 would hardly be more conflicting than the elements Tennyson 
 has endeavoured to blend in the same composition. In this, 
 he has only followed his age, and not endeavoured, like his 
 more gifted predecessors, to dominate it, by inaugurating a new 
 school, or by launching forth startling opinions. But, con- 
 sidering his contracted stand-point, Tennyson, perhaps, has 
 accomplished as much as could be achieved by a poet in his 
 situation, and the age could hardly have produced a better 
 or more exalted representative of its poetical capacity. 
 
 / 
 
ANDROTHEIST SCHOOL. 337 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 ANDROTHEIST SCHOOL. 
 
 THE grave and stately muse of the Laureate has produced 
 a reaction in the pagan and voluptuous verses of Swin- 
 bourne. In Tennyson, the pantheism is incoherently allied 
 with belief in formal Christianity. Swinbourne tramples upon 
 Christian dogmas with the spirit of Celsus, and embraces that 
 form of pantheism which regards man as the highest unit of in- 
 telligence, and which rejects all belief in a future state. * Woman 
 is the favourite theme of both. But in Tennyson, she is the 
 chaste daughter of Heaven, the home of all virtues, the nurse 
 of all tender delight, the one gift by which the labours of 
 life are sweetened, the golden beam gilding the world's 
 tempests and sorrows. In Swinbourne, she is the source 
 of bitterness, made more painful by the sweetness with 
 which the torment is preluded, the subject of blasphemy 
 against the most high gods, the engine of their wrath when 
 they plot the destruction of men, the curse which makes the 
 fruit of life turn to ashes on the lip, the strong note of discord 
 which jars the otherwise rich concert of music, harmonizing the 
 elements of the world. We find the root of this sentiment in 
 
 * And as a man before was from his birth, 
 So shall a man be after among the dead. 
 
 Genesis. 
 22 
 
338 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 " Atalanta," but it is conspicuous in " Chastelard," and over- 
 flows his ballads and poems. The most that can be said is, 
 that these conceptions are new to English literature, though they 
 are by no means in substance original, whatever novelty may 
 be displayed in their treatment, or force in their execution. 
 They are exemplifications in verse of the blase style of the 
 modern school of French novelists, who write like men hun- 
 gering after pleasures of which they feel the bitterness, and 
 who, though panting with desire, regard living voluptuousness 
 as dead, in their sight, as charred ashes ! 
 
 The French sensualism of the restoration-epoch, which 
 found its features reflected in the pages of Rochester and 
 Sedley, surrounded love with lewd mirth and coarse fri- 
 volity. But the school of which Swinbourne and Beau- 
 tielaire are the exponents, drapes its orgies with the funereal 
 appendages of the charnel vault, and the austere sanctities of 
 religion. By the one, Venus is introduced to us as the mother 
 of tavern gaieties, thoughtless of the morrow, scattering 
 flowers and loose jests along her paths ; by the other as a 
 sumptuous courtezan, with her head bound with snakes, and her 
 breasts with poisonous garlands. I think, however, there is 
 little fear of either school domesticating itself among us. 
 Englishmen in general are too saturnine to make love a 
 theme for thoughtless profanity ; and English women embody 
 too many types of beauty, and protract their bloom too long, 
 ever to inspire a sense of satiated languor or jaded reminiscence. 
 I am, therefore, sorry that Mr. Swinbourne has so far wasted his 
 high powers upon a style so little likely to win for him a 
 durable reputation. These powers, judging by what he has 
 given us, if properly directed, ought to win for him a high 
 place in our literature. The lyrical faculty in abundance, 
 perfect ease and skill over the harmonious cadences of the 
 language, plastic force in moulding his conceptions, beauty of 
 description, great fire and dash in his execution, — all these 
 qualities do not constitute poetic greatness in themselves, 
 
ANDROTHEIST SCHOOL. 339 
 
 but are an earnest of that which is to come. When these 
 qualities are accompanied with great earnestness of purpose, 
 with great love of liberty, an intense desire to overthrow the 
 idols of the age, — to enrich its watery veins with the blood of 
 new thoughts and principles, and disperse its mawkish conven- 
 tionalities, by recalling its tastes to the fount of genuine nature, 
 that it may rise, Antseus-like, refreshed with giant strength, 
 after having drank at the well-spring of its mother earth, — the 
 assemblage of all these characteristics, in one mind, announces 
 the first bright gleams of a brilliant future flushing the poetic 
 horizon, like the streaks of morning in a southern latitude, when 
 indicative of a glorious day. But to realize the great hopes of 
 which he gives us the promise, Mr. Swinbourne must get rid of 
 his Gallic predilections, of his airy abstractions, and his anti- 
 Christian virulence. He must recognize in Christianity more 
 good than he is willing to acknowledge, and in Paganism more 
 evil than he is willing to admit. He must universalize his poetry, 
 dealing more with its general elements, as they exist in the 
 human breast, rather than with particular embodiments, as 
 they exist in peculiar coteries, or sectional divisions of society. 
 His productions, up to the present, are caviare to the million. 
 None but the highly educated classes are capable of under- 
 standing them. Hence the foolish outcry which has been 
 raised on the score of their lewdness, which to my mind they 
 are rather calculated to restrain than excite. But it is not the 
 first time that an offence against good taste has been construed 
 into an outrage upon morality. 
 
 But the greatest obstacle in Mr. Swinbourne's path is a certain 
 wordiness, which often outstrips his conceptions, and not 
 unfrequently interferes with the delineation of them. When he 
 has not the sterling ore of sparkling thought, he attempts to 
 palm upon us, as a substitute, mere jingling expression. This 
 vice is not so prevalent in his "Chastelard" as in his "Atalanta," 
 and not so prevalent in his " Atalanta " as in his miscellaneous 
 poetry. It, however, culminates in his " Song for Italy," which 
 
340 EST IMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 is one of the most recent and the most prosy emanation of his 
 muse. Efflorescence may be admitted to be characteristic of 
 youth. But as youthful genius advances to maturity, we ex- 
 pect the mere flower of blossom to decline and the fruit to 
 become manifest. In Swinbourne's case, however , these ex- 
 pectations have only been partially realized. The day has not 
 yet fulfilled the bright promise of the dawn. If he improves as 
 he gets older, the development of force is not so rapid as the 
 earlier exhibitions of his genius led us to expect. It is not that 
 he remains stationary, while his themes advance in interest, but 
 that he deals with his subjects after a fashion which prevents 
 him from doing full justice to his powers. To take Mr. 
 Swinbourne's miscellaneous verses in the order of time, we 
 should, I fear, have to read them, Hebrew fashion, backwards. 
 The last poems in his " Ballads " are doubtless his first, and as we 
 approach the beginning the increase in power is manifest. 
 This is descending to an artifice which we should have been 
 spared. For the merit of the verses in the first half of the 
 volume only makes the reader more devoutly wish that those in 
 the latter part had been committed to the flames. The "Hymn 
 to Proserpine," the "Verses before Dawn," the Interlude, and the 
 Match, had they been less enigmatical, would have been in 
 Goethe's best manner. The " Dolores " evinces great force and 
 rapidity of conception, but the analogies running through it 
 are so profane and unnatural as to countervail the vigour dis- 
 played in its execution. What end can be really served in 
 applying the apostrophes in the catholic litany of the Virgin, 
 with an air of sober sadness, to the orgies of Priapus, except 
 to outrage religious feeling, and disgust a wide section of the 
 community? Nearly all the poems in this volume are upon 
 love; but we get no higher conception of the passion than 
 floats through the brain of a voluptuary when he lies in the 
 arms of a courtezan, or when he rises late, with his brain 
 reeling from the fumes of the last night's debauch. Whatever 
 is against nature cannot be the subject of any lofty emotion or 
 
ANDROTHEIST SCHOOL. 341 
 
 grand exhibition of genius. Love takes its rise in the soul, 
 which hallows the material phases of its enjoyment. But human 
 nature is represented with the wrong end uppermost, when this 
 order is inverted, and when the lower instincts are enthroned 
 in the seat of the spiritual passion. 
 
 Few of Swinbourne's ballads and poems are likely to survive, 
 not so much from the want of power, as from the misdirection 
 of it. An early extinction, I fear, for the same reason is impend- 
 ing over " Chastelard," notwithstanding the force displayed in 
 certain parts of it. The characters are false, the situation 
 unnatural, the plot void of interest. There wants the healthy 
 ring of human action in it. It is impossible to construct a 
 five-act play out of a few sensual love passages between a half- 
 crazed knight and two or three idle Court women. Besides, 
 Mary, Queen of Scots, has not yet become the Clytemnestra 
 of history, however much it may suit the poet's purpose to 
 make her so. Is the highest type of feminine beauty, in Mr. 
 Swinbourne, always to be associated with the Circes of old 
 Rome or mediaeval Italy, who did not leave the victims whom 
 they had snared in the meshes of their beauty, the poor choice 
 between the poison -bowl and the stiletto? Are we, when 
 the poet surrounds us with lovely women, always to have the 
 fable of the Syrens accepted in its literal sense, and the best 
 handiworks of God's creation pourtrayed as banqueting on 
 men's flesh, surrounded with the skulls of one generation, and 
 gloating over the ruin of another ? This is only a corner, — a 
 very waste corner of passion, emblematic of the effects of its 
 unbridled indulgence. Why should it be thrust forward in the 
 foreground, as if it constituted the whole of the picture ? 
 
 There is so much the less excuse for the one-sided develop- 
 ment of "Chastelard," as the author has shown in his " Atalanta" 
 great power of dealing with the broader range of human action, 
 even when trammelled by the narrow rules of Greek art, and 
 has produced a play which will live probably as long as anything 
 of the sort in the language. The plot is worked out and the 
 
342 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 characters conceived with great skill. The choruses are as 
 lyrical as anything in "Manfred" or "Prometheus; " though they 
 may lack the incisiveness of the one, and the sublimity of the 
 other. The boar-slaying is a marvel of description, standing 
 out with bold minuteness, as if the picture had been photo- 
 graphed from the frieze of a Greek temple. But Swinbourne 
 has not yet fulfilled the expectations he raised by this produc- 
 tion, which, taken by itself, would not, on account of its Greek 
 dress and imitative spirit, be calculated to place his name very 
 high in the third rank of our literature. It has no bearing, 
 either metaphysical or allegorical, on the tendencies of the pre- 
 sent time. It lifts up no curtain by which we either unriddle 
 the past, or get a glimpse into the future. The " Atalanta" only 
 interests us as a work of art, and, for a young poet, it is a work 
 of great promise and nothing more. 
 
 Since the " Chastelard," Mr. Swinbourne's muse has confined 
 itself to fragmentary pieces. I do not know whether he mis- 
 trusts his capacity to build up a great constructive poem, but, 
 judging from his last volume, if such a feeling be entertained by 
 himself, it will not be shared by his readers. This, though 
 consisting of a number of detached pieces, is a notable advance 
 upon his previous efforts. The "Songs before Sunrise," which 
 embody the poet's pantheistic views and republican fervour, for 
 force and vigour are unsurpassed, if not unequalled, by any 
 isolated utterances of the same sort in our literature. There 
 is something sublime in the conception of the world being 
 immersed in darkness, of all antecedent developments being so 
 many tentative approaches to the light about to dawn ; and in 
 the picture of men elate with hope, jubilant with joy or de- 
 pressed with fear, according as their interests are likely to be 
 effected by the impending change. But giving the author 
 full credit for all the beauty of form, the graces of expression, 
 the subtle analogies, and the linked music long drawn out, 
 which most of these pieces manifest, it would be extremely 
 hazardous to predict for them a world-wide reputation, on 
 
ANDROTHEIST SCHOOL. 343 
 
 account of the reiterated allegories, the dry abstract concep- 
 tions, and the extreme spirit of personification which they 
 exhibit. There is a lack of human interest in them, an attempt 
 to substitute airy abstractions for tangible realities, which go 
 far to neutralize, if they do not entirely swamp, those high 
 poetic gifts with which they prove their author to be endowed. 
 If these pieces manifest a great increase of poetic power, it is 
 increase in a wrong direction. The political and anti-Chris- 
 tian views which Swinbourne so fearlessly puts forth in this 
 volume, are identical with those of Shelley. He also adopts 
 the metres and imitates the style of his master. But with all 
 Shelley's subtlety of intellect, with all his power of clothing 
 abstract conceptions in musical language, Swinbourne lacks 
 his pathos, his deep tenderness, his imaginative power, and 
 dreamy spirituality. The constructive efforts with which 
 Shelley idealized his doctrines in the " Revolt of Islam," and 
 11 Prometheus Unbound/' Swinbourne does not even attempt to 
 follow; and until he does so, it would be premature to forecast 
 the place he is destined to occupy in the British Parnassus. 
 There is, however, a terribly earnest spirit about each of these 
 fragmentary pieces, as well as one or two leading conceptions, 
 running through the whole of them, which stamp them all with 
 the impress of the same image. The author supposes society 
 in its last phase of darkness, just preceding the first faint streaks 
 of that golden day which is about to dawn on humanity. The 
 old faith in a personal deity is dying out : — 
 
 " Thou art smitten, Thou God, Thou art smitten, Thy death is upon thee, 
 
 O Lord, 
 And the love song of earth, as Thou diest, resounds through the wind of her 
 
 wings." 
 
 And the new belief of man in himself, as the highest incarnation 
 of the godlike, is on the eve of regenerating humanity : — 
 
 " Thou art judged, O judge, and the sentence is gone forth against thee, 
 OGod, 
 
344 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Thy slave that slept is awake, thy slave has slept for a span, 
 Yea, man, thy slave shall unmake thee, who made thee Lord over man. 
 For his face is set to the east, his feet on the past, and its dead, 
 The sun rearisen is his priest, and the heat thereof hallows his head. 
 His eyes take part in the morning ; his spirit outsounding the sea, 
 Asks no more witness or warning from temple or tripod or tree. 
 ***** 
 
 Time's motion that throbs in his blood is the thought that gives heart to 
 
 the skies, 
 And the springs of the fire that is food to the sunbeams are light to his 
 
 eyes. 
 The minutes that beat with his heart, are the words to which worlds keep 
 
 chime, 
 And the thought in his pulses is part of the blood and the spirit of time. 
 Will ye feed him with poisonous dust, and restore him with hemlock for 
 
 drink, 
 Till he yield you his soul up in trust, and have heart not to know or to 
 
 think ? 
 He hath stirred him, and found out the flaw in his fetters, and cast them 
 
 behind, 
 His soul to his soul is a law, and his mind is a light to his mind. 
 The seal of his knowledge is sure, the truth and his spirit are wed, 
 Men perish, but man shall endure ; lives die, but the life is not dead. 
 He hath sight of the secrets of season, the roots of the years and the fruits, 
 His soul is at one with the reason of things that is sap to the roots ; 
 He can hear in their changes a sound, as the conscience of consonant 
 
 spheres, 
 He can see through the years flowing round him, the law lying under the 
 
 years, 
 Who are ye that would bind him with curses, and blind him with vapour 
 
 of prayer? 
 Your might is as night that disperses, when light is alive in the air, 
 The bow of your Godhead is broken, the arm of your conquest is stayed. * 
 
 This new spirit of regenerated manhood, which is stamped 
 in the Mazzinian mould, is to find its ark of safety in a repub- 
 lic, which shall knit together the different nations in one com- 
 mon bond of fellowship and love. In the " Eve of Revolution," 
 ''The Litany of Nations," and the " Mater Triumphalis," each 
 
 * "Hymn of Man." 
 
ANDROTHEIST SCHOOL. 345 
 
 poems of great beauty, the political views of the great Genoese 
 republican find powerful but fragmentary exposition. 
 
 In the "Eve of Revolution," the poet, after the manner of 
 Ezekiel, is commanded by a spirit to arouse the nations from the 
 corners of the earth by the blast of a trumpet, to cast off the 
 torpor which yet benumbs their limbs, and fulfil the glorious 
 destiny for which each has been preparing in the slow night 
 of ages : — 
 
 " I set the trumpet to my lips, and blow — 
 
 The height of night is shaken, the skies break ; 
 The winds and stars and waters come and go 
 
 By fits of breath, and light and sound, that wake 
 As out of sleep, and perish as the show 
 
 Built up of sleep, when all her strengths forsake 
 The sense-compelling spirit ; the depths glow, 
 The heights flash, and the roots and summits shake 
 Of earth, in all her mountains 
 And the inner foamless fountains, 
 And well-springs of her fast-bound forces quake ; 
 Yea, the whole air of life 
 Is set on fire of strife 
 Till change unmake things made, and love remake ; 
 
 Reason and love, whose names are one, 
 Seeing reason is the sunlight shed from love the sun." 
 
 Asia, Greece, Italy, Spain, and the western nations, are thus 
 apostrophised with great power, and represented as shaking off 
 the torpor which has oppressed them in the sleep of ages. 
 Spain and France are repentant ; but Greece and Italy pant 
 for freedom with virginal souls unsoiled by the embraces of 
 tyrants ; while England, overridden by the nightmare of wealth 
 and aristocratic respectability, is the slowest of her sisters to 
 awaken to the new light forcing its way through her eyelids. The 
 poet in addressing Russia had, doubtless, in his ken the late 
 ukase manumitting her serfs. The shapings of his imagination 
 here are, therefore, even more instinct with life than elsewhere, 
 having some solid substratum in actual truth : — 
 
346 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 "I set the trumpet to my lips and blow, 
 
 The night is broken northward ; the pale plains 
 And footless fields of sun-forgotten snow 
 
 Feel through their creviced lips and iron veins 
 Such quick breath labour, and such clear blood flow, 
 
 As summer-stricken spring feels in her pains 
 When dying May bears June, too young to know 
 The fruit which waxes from the flower that wanes ; 
 Strange tyrannies and vast, 
 Tribes frost-bound to their past, 
 Lands that are bound all through their length with chains, 
 
 Wastes where the winds' wings ache, 
 And anguish of blind snows, and rack-blown rains, 
 And ice that seals the white sea's lips, 
 Whose monstrous weights crush flat the sides of shrieking ships.''" 
 
 In the u Litany of Nations," each European commonwealth 
 severally and conjointly call upon their everlasting mother, earth, 
 to cure their woes ; and by the share they already have had in 
 developing the spirit of liberty, to complete the new birth, and 
 usher in the golden day which the poet regards as the millennium 
 of humanity. The republic of the future, in her present aspects, 
 is shadowed forth under the name of mater dolorosa, as one 
 wayworn and besprent with blood and dust : — 
 
 Who is she that sits by the way, by the wild way-side, 
 In a rent-stained garment, the robes of a cast-off bride ; 
 In the dust, in the rainfall, sitting, with soiled feet bare, 
 With the night for a garment upon her, with torn wet hair ? 
 She is fairer of face than the daughters of men, and her eyes 
 Worn through with her tears, are deep as the depth of the skies. 
 This is she for whose sake being fallen, for whose abject sake, 
 Earth groans in the blackness of darkness, and men's hearts break : 
 This is she for whose love, having seen her, the men that were 
 Poured life out as water, and shed their souls upon air : 
 This is she for whose glory their years were counted as foam, 
 Whose face was a light upon Greece, was a fire upon Rome. 
 
 But in the " Mater Triumphalis," this spirit of liberty, identi- 
 fied with that of pantheism, is addressed in language which 
 
ANDROTHEIST SCHOOL. 347 
 
 combines Attic beauty of form, with all the depth and fervour of 
 Hebrew sublimity : — 
 
 Thy face is as a sword smiting in sunder 
 
 Shadows and chains and dreams and iron things ; 
 
 The sea is dumb before thy face, the thunder 
 Silent, the skies are narrower than thy wings ; 
 
 Angels and gods, spirit and sense, thou takest 
 
 In thy right hand, as drops of dust or dew, 
 The temples and the towers of time thou breakest, 
 
 His thoughts and words and works to make them new. 
 
 Thy wings shadow the waters, thine eyes lighten 
 
 The horror of the billows of the night ; 
 The depths of the earth, and the dark places brighten 
 
 Under thy feet, whiter than fire is white. 
 
 We have known thee, and have not known thee, stood beside thee, 
 Felt thy lips breathe ; set foot where thy feet trod, 
 
 Loved and renounced, and worshipped and denied thee, 
 As though thou wert but as another god. 
 
 The night is as a seal set on men's faces — 
 On faces fallen of men that take no light, 
 
 Nor give light, in the deeps of the dark places, 
 Blind things incorporate with the body of night. 
 
 Their souls are serpents winter-bound and frozen ; 
 
 Their shame is as a tame beast at their feet 
 Couched ; their cold lips deride thee, and their chosen, 
 
 Their lying lips made grey with dust for meat. 
 
 Then, when their time is full and days run over, 
 The splendour of thy sudden brow made bare 
 
 Darkens the morning ; thy bared hands uncover 
 The veils of light, and night, and the awful air. 
 
 And the world, naked as a new-born maiden, 
 Stands virginal and splendid as at birth, 
 
 With all thine heaven of all its light unladen, 
 Of all its love unburdened all thine earth. 
 
 
348 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 For the utter earth, and utter air of heaven, 
 
 And the extreme depth is thine, and the extreme height ; 
 
 Shadows of things, and veils of ages riven, 
 Are as men's kings unkingdomed in thy sight. 
 
 Through the iron years, the centuries brazen-gated 
 
 By the ages barred impenetrable doors, 
 From the evening to the morning have we waited, 
 
 Should thy foot haply sound on the awful floors. 
 
 The doors untrodden of the sun's feet glimmer, 
 The star-unstricken pavement of the night ; 
 
 Do the lights burn inside ? The lights wax dimmer 
 On festal faces withering out of sight. 
 
 The crowned heads lose the light on them ; it may be, 
 Dawn is at hand to smite the loved feast dumb ; 
 
 To blind the torch-lit centuries till the day be, 
 The feasting kingdoms till thy kingdom come. 
 
 Shall it not come? deny they or dissemble, 
 Is it not even as lightning from on high 
 
 Now ? and though many a soul close eyes and tremble, 
 How should they tremble who love thee as I ? 
 
 I am thine harp, between thy hands, O mother ! 
 
 All my strong chords are strained with love of thee ; 
 We grapple in love, and wrestle, as each with other 
 
 Wrestle the wind, and the unreluctant sea. 
 
 I am the trumpet at thy lips, thy clarion, 
 
 Full of thy cry, sonorous with thy breath ; 
 The graves of souls born worms, and creeds grown carrion 
 
 Thy blast of judgment fills with fires of death. 
 
 Thou art the player whose organ-keys are thunders, 
 
 And I beneath thy foot the pedal prest ; 
 Thou art the ray whereat the rent night sunders, 
 
 And I the cloudlet borne upon thy breast. 
 
 I shall burn up before thee, pass and perish 
 
 As haze in sunrise, on the red sea line ; 
 But thou from dawn to sunsetting shalt cherish 
 
 The thoughts that led, and souls that lighted mine. 
 
ANDROTHEIST SCHOOL. 349 
 
 This spirit of pantheism unified with that of freedom, is 
 again personified in " Hertha," who is introduced as speaking 
 of herself in a series of stanzas, which for beauty, music, 
 subtilty of conception, and ethical fitness of expression, could 
 hardly have been surpassed by Shelley : — 
 
 I am that which began ; 
 
 Out of me the years roll ; 
 Out of me God and man ; 
 I am equal and whole ; 
 God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily ; I 
 am the soul. 
 
 Before ever land was, 
 Before ever the sea, 
 Or soft hair of the grass, 
 Or fair limbs of the tree, 
 Or the flesh-coloured fruit of my branches, I was, and 
 thy soul was in me. 
 
 First life on my sources 
 
 First drifted and swam ; 
 Out of me are the forces 
 That save it or damn ; 
 Out of me man and woman, and wild beast and bird ; 
 before God was, I am. 
 
 The storm-winds of ages 
 
 Blow through me and cease, 
 The war- wind that rages, 
 The spring- wind of peace, 
 Ere the breath of them roughen my tresses, ere one of 
 my blossoms increase. 
 
 All sound of all changes, 
 All shadows and lights 
 On the world's mountain ranges, 
 And stream-riven heights, 
 Whose tongue is the wind's tongue, and language of storm- 
 clouds, on earth-shaking nights ; 
 
35o ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 All forms of all faces, 
 
 All work of all hands, 
 In unsearchable places 
 Of time-stricken lands. 
 All death and all life, and all reigns, and all ruins, drop 
 through me as sands. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Hast thou known how I fashioned thee, 
 
 Child, underground? 
 Fire that impassioned thee, 
 Iron that bound, 
 Dim changes of water, what thing of all these hast thou 
 known of or found ? 
 
 Canst thou say in thine heart 
 
 Thou hast seen with thine eyes 
 With what cunning of art 
 
 Thou wast wrought, in what wise, 
 By what force, of what stuff, thou wast shapen, and shown 
 on my breast to the skies ? 
 
 Who has given, who has sold it thee 
 
 Knowledge of me? 
 Has the wilderness told it thee ? 
 Hast thou learnt of the sea ? 
 Hast thou communed in spirit, with night ? have the 
 winds taken counsel with thee ? 
 
 Have I set such a star 
 
 To show light on thy brow, 
 That thou sawest from afar, 
 What I show to thee now ? 
 Have ye spoken as brethren together, the sun and the 
 mountains and thou ? 
 
 What is here, dost thou know it ? 
 
 What was, hast thou known ? 
 Prophet, nor poet, 
 
 Nor tripod, nor throne, 
 Nor spirit, nor flesh, can make answer, but only thy mother 
 alone. 
 
 Mother not maker, 
 Born, and not made ; 
 
ANDROTHEIST SCHOOL. 351 
 
 Though her children forsake her, 
 Allured, or afraid, 
 Praying prayers to the God of their fashion, she stirs not for 
 all they have prayed. 
 
 ****** 
 
 children of banishment, 
 Souls overcast, 
 
 Were the lights ye see vanish meant 
 Always to last, 
 Ye would know not the sun overshining, the shadows and 
 stars overpast. 
 
 1 saw where ye trod 
 
 The dim paths of the night, 
 Set the shadow called God, 
 In your skies, to give light ; 
 But the morning of manhood is risen, and the shadowless soul is 
 in sight. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 For his twilight is come on him, 
 
 His anguish is here ; 
 And his spirit gaze dumb on him, 
 Grown grey from his fear ; 
 And his hour taketh hold on him stricken, the last of his 
 infinite year. 
 
 Thought makes him and breaks him, 
 
 Truth slays and forgives ; 
 But to you, as time takes him, 
 This new thing it gives. 
 Even love, the beloved republic, that feeds upon freedom 
 and lives. 
 
 For truth only is living, 
 
 Truth only is whole, 
 And the love of his giving 
 Man's pole-star and pole. 
 Man pulse of my centre, and fruit of my body, and seed 
 of my soul. 
 
 In " Perinde ac Cadaver," the spirity of liberty is repre- 
 sented at the bedside of England, striving in vain to arouse 
 
352 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 that sleepy old lady to the discharge of her duties, who, how- 
 ever, turns upon her couch and seems to loathe the mission 
 which the tutelary goddess of humanity is thrusting upon her. 
 
 She turned and laughed in her dream, 
 
 With grey lips arid and cold ; 
 She saw not the face as a beam 
 Burn on her, but only a gleam 
 
 Through her sleep as of new stamped gold. 
 
 But the goddess with terrible tears, 
 
 In the light of her down-drawn eyes, 
 
 Spake fire in the dulled sealed ears, 
 
 " Thou sick with slumbers and fears, 
 Wilt thou sleep now indeed or arise ? 
 
 " With dreams, and with words, and with light 
 Memories and empty desires, 
 Thou hast wrapped thyself round all night, 
 Thou hast shut up thine heart from the right, 
 And warmed thee at burnt-out fires. 
 ****** 
 " Thy poor lie slain of thine hands, 
 
 Their starved limbs rot in thy sight, 
 As a shadow, the ghost of thee stands, 
 Among men living and lands, 
 
 And stirs not leftwards or right. 
 
 " Freeman he is not, but slave, 
 
 Who stands not out on my side; 
 His own hand hollows his grave, 
 Nor strength is in me to save, 
 
 Where strength is none to abide. 
 
 " Time shall tread on his name, 
 
 That was written for honour of old, 
 
 Who hath taken in change for fame, 
 
 Dust, and silver, and shame, 
 
 Ashes, and iron, and gold. " 
 
 But the respectable old lady who thinks she has done enough 
 for general humanity, is quite satisfied with her comfortable 
 position, and turns a deaf ear to her spiritual monitor. 
 
 The "Watch in the Night" is a spirit-stirring piece, ringing 
 
ANDROTHEIST SCHOOL. 353 
 
 through the heart like a trumpet, in which statesmen, priests, 
 kings, seers, captives, exiles, Christians, warriors, and European 
 nations are each in turn questioned as to what they think, 
 and give their own interpretations, of the signs and tokens 
 of the coming light which chequer their dim horizon. The 
 vigour of the opening is sustained all through the piece : — 
 
 " Watchman, what of the night ? " 
 
 " Storm, and thunder, and rain, 
 Lights that waver and wane, 
 
 Leaving the watch-fires unlit. 
 Only the bale-fires are bright, 
 
 And the flash of the lamps now and then, 
 From a palace where spoilers sit, 
 
 Trampling the children of men." 
 ****** 
 " Master, what of the night ? " 
 " Child, night is not at all, 
 
 Anywhere fallen or to fall, 
 Save in our star-stricken eyes. 
 Forth of our eyes, it takes flight, 
 
 Look we but once nor before, 
 Nor behind us, but straight on the skies, 
 
 Night is not then any more." 
 
 " Exiles, what of the night ? " 
 
 " The tides and the hours run out, 
 
 The seasons of death and of doubt, 
 The night-watches bitter and sore, 
 In the quick sand leftward and right. 
 
 My feet sink down under me, 
 But I know the scents of the shore, 
 
 And the broad-blown breadths of the sea. 
 
 ****** 
 " Christian, what of the night ? " 
 " I cannot tell, I am blind, 
 
 I halt, and hearken behind, 
 If haply the hours will go back, 
 And return to the dear dead light, 
 
 To the watch-fires and stars that of old, 
 Shone where the sky now is black, 
 
 Glowed where the earth now is cold. " 
 
 2 3 
 
354 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 " High-priest, what of the night? " 
 " The night is horrible here, 
 
 With haggard faces and fear, 
 Blood, and the burning of fire, 
 Mine eyes are emptied of sight, 
 
 Mine hands are full of the dust ; 
 If the God of my faith be a liar, 
 
 Who is it that I shall trust ? " 
 
 " Princes, what of the night ? " 
 " Night with pestilent breath, 
 
 Feeds us children of death, 
 Clothes us close with her gloom. 
 Rapine, and famine, and fright, 
 
 Crouch at our feet and are fed ! 
 Earth where we pass is a tomb, 
 
 Life where we triumph is dead." 
 
 The poet, in this poem, puts his readers in his position, and 
 fills them, almost in their own despite, with the fiery ardour 
 with which he looks forward to the coming dawn. The Tenebrae 
 savours too much of Shelley's " Triumphs of Life ; " and the 
 " Lines before a Crucifix" of certain passages in " Queen Mab," 
 to claim the merit of originality. Nor do I think, when luscious 
 poetry is made the vehicle of ribald denunciation of Christianity, 
 even when original, that the author is likely to enhance his 
 reputation thereby. A poet should be lothe to assail with 
 wantonness an institution with which the liveliest feelings of the 
 majority of his readers are associated ; and Swinbourne should 
 have remembered, even from his own point of view, that Christi- 
 anity merited other treatment at his hands from the services she 
 has rendered in crushing slavery — the subject of his abhorrence; 
 in proclaiming human equality — the subject of his adoration, 
 and in bringing society nearer to the boundaries of that — 
 I fear — imaginary millennium the dawn of which he proclaims 
 with so much fervour. 
 
POETS OF THE AFFECTIONS. 355 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 POETS OF THE AFFECTIONS. 
 
 SOME men are capable of having their intellect very much 
 extended by education. There is, however, a class 
 upon whom education generally acts like a convex lens, rather 
 contracting than expanding their mental vision. It is not in 
 any complimentary sense I would rank Montgomery in the 
 former class; for he had essentially a puny intellect, capable, 
 however, of great expansion, under a proper system of training, 
 which he never received. Had Burns or Shakespeare gone 
 through a university course, the probability is their mental 
 force would have been very much impaired. The great powers 
 with which nature had endowed them, would have lost much of 
 their freshness by having their vigour expended upon foreign 
 models, upon dry inventories of fact, or the mere mechanism 
 of language. Had Shakespeare frittered away his youth in 
 obtaining a control over Greek iambics, it is not in the least 
 likely " Macbeth " would have been written. Had Burns 
 devoted his early efforts to mastering the Principia, it is as little 
 likely we should have had " Tarn O'Shanter." The influence 
 of Byron's collegiate learning may be read in his " Hours of 
 Idleness ;" the consequence of his emancipation from it, in 
 his "Manfred" and "Childe Harold." But Montgomery 
 was born with no such creative intellect. He had none of the 
 
356 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 regalities of the spiritual universe about him. His powers were 
 essentially of the imitative order. He caught up the echoes of 
 Goldsmith and Cowper, and repeated their strains very well. 
 His sympathies were with the good of every clime ; his heart 
 was open to the tenderest domestic charities ; his feelings 
 swelled with every generous emotion. But his mind, im- 
 prisoned in the narrow confines of Moravianism, remained 
 Moravian to the end of the chapter. Of philosophy in any 
 sense, either as derived from books or from introspective 
 contemplation, he knew nothing. Doctrinal Christianity, as he 
 found it in the Sunday-school Catechism, he accepted as the 
 explanation of everything. The passionate phases of man's 
 emotional nature were by him regarded as contraband. Lofty 
 poetry on a large scale, under such conditions, was simply 
 impossible. A liberal education for such a mind would 
 have done wonders. But a liberal education the Fates with- 
 held. 
 
 It was, therefore, to some extent a mistake when Montgo- 
 mery wandered into the larger fields of Song. As long as he 
 confined himself to themes in which the elastic sympathies of 
 his heart required no lofty effort of the intellect, the result was 
 a success. His smaller pieces, which merely image pictures of 
 rural love, or which describe his religious feelings, or his 
 passion for the beauties of nature, or his sympathy for natural 
 objects, and for the destinies of common humanity, will bear 
 comparison with the productions of poets of greater intel- 
 lectual calibre than Montgomery. Indeed, it would not be too 
 much to say, that some half-dozen of them, as his exquisite 
 " Tribute to the Genius of Burns," his " Common Lot," his 
 " Night," " The Field Flower," and " The Grave," are not 
 inferior to anything of the same class in the language. In these 
 occasional pieces, his emotions are warmly enlisted, his aesthetic 
 sense finds ample room for its exercise, without making any 
 great demand upon the intellectual forces in which he was so 
 deficient. He, therefore, hits his mark. But when he attempted 
 
POETS OF THE AFFECTIONS. 357 
 
 bolder flights, and constructed elaborate poems of a dozen 
 cantos, the attempt was above his powers. If he cannot be 
 said to have ignominiously failed, neither can he be said to 
 have fairly succeeded. In incidental scenes, where there 
 is play for outbursts of his sympathetic nature, or for good 
 material description, he is effective ; but in sustained power, in 
 recondite or strikingly original views, in the bold manipulation 
 of his subject, in passionate bursts of imagination, in fact, in all 
 those qualities which can alone make a lengthy poem tolerable, 
 Montgomery is simply nowhere. Among the class whose 
 prejudices they flattered, and whose ignorance they suited, his 
 heavy pieces once had a steady sale. But they are fast settling 
 down into the limbo of works which are too indifferent to be 
 read, and yet not bad enough to be entirely forgotten. 
 
 In addition to Montgomery's mental incompetency for any 
 protracted effort, he was wretchedly unfortunate in the choice 
 of his subjects. Who, for example, could possibly care for an 
 antediluvian poem, in ten cantos, on " The World Before the 
 Flood," treated scripturally, in which the prophecy of Enoch 
 is versified, and the story of Cain and Abel diffusively set 
 forth ? There is much more poetry in the curt announcement of 
 the Bible concerning Enoch, viz., " that his spirit walked with 
 God, that Enoch was not, for God took him," than in all the 
 apocryphal books respecting him, which Montgomery has so 
 sedulously followed. The subject of Greenland is not redeemed 
 from its chilliness by the fires which Montgomery's missionaries 
 light up there. But the sudden atmospheric changes this country 
 has undergone afforded him opportunity to indulge his passion 
 for painting catastrophes, which he has certainly turned to ac- 
 count, and "Greenland" is, undoubtedly, the best of his lengthy 
 pieces. Slavery is a trite theme, and Montgomery, in " The 
 West Indies,"did little more than express, in strong pentameters, 
 the popular indignation on the subject. But there is no one who 
 would not rather be the author of Cowper's brief castigation of 
 slavery in " The Task," than the ponderous lines with which 
 
358 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Montgomery has only diluted the withering censure of his master. 
 The "Wanderer in Switzerland," doubtless, owed much of its 
 temporary success to the detestation of the French republican 
 armies, whose oppressions it denounced. For there is nothing 
 in the mere tale of misery inflicted which can interest the 
 general reader, and Montgomery's ballad style of treatment 
 does not fit it for a higher sphere than an ordinary child's 
 reading-book. The formation of earth out of coral-reefs, with the 
 evangelical destiny of man coming in as a pendant to his rise 
 out of a series of megatheria, is about as puerile a conception 
 as could possibly have been conceived. Montgomery doubt- 
 less thought the way to reconcile science with religion was to 
 set both at war with common sense. The " Pelican Island," 
 which embraces this effort, is likewise faulty in metre. Blank 
 verse is a great test of a poet's powers, and Montgomery's 
 blank verse is as weak as any in the language. It is as un- 
 metrical as Browning's, without one atom of Browning's terse- 
 ness and versatility. 
 
 Montgomery never rouses the passions or feeds the intellect, 
 but he frequently reaches the heart. His forte is simply the 
 development of our emotional sympathies in connection with 
 natural objects. This ground, after Herrick and Wordsworth. 
 he cultivates as well as any writer in our language. But this is 
 for the most part accomplished by the use of stereotyped phra- 
 seology, which rather dominates thought than suffers itself to 
 be the vehicle of its manifestation. His verses, therefore, lack 
 freshness. He says in one of his prefaces, that the plot of 
 ground he holds on the British Parnassus is no copyhold, that 
 he borrowed it or leased it from none. But this is a delusion. 
 Every verse he writes is coined in the mint of his predecessors. 
 His images, his metaphors, his style of expression, are all de- 
 rived from poets of the Goldsmith type. But he occasionally 
 informs them with so much fire ; he fuses them so deeply 
 into the glowing furnace of his own sensibility, that they wear 
 all the features of original creation. Like old vases whose 
 
POETS OF THE AFFECTIONS. 359 
 
 figures have been re-cast in deeper moulds, his borrowed con- 
 ceptions sparkle with the brilliancy of new metal. 
 
 Montgomery's powers were contracted. He had neither a 
 brilliant fancy, nor a lofty or passionate imagination. A sombre 
 line of melancholy pervades the most of his productions. He 
 could not have been facetious, had he died for it. But he is 
 always tender, and occasionally pathetic. That quiet brooding 
 over the abyss of the heart, the mirroring of external nature in its 
 depths, for which the Hebrew psalmists were so conspicuous, a 
 religious earnestness of purpose, which imported the poet's 
 heart and brain into everything he wrote, his glowing fervour, 
 the identification of his feelings with all the elevating tendencies 
 of humanity — these are the qualities which have placed some 
 of his occasional pieces on the top shelf of miscellaneous poetry. 
 But while in some of his short pieces he rises above his models, in 
 his lengthy and more pretentious efforts, he falls beneath them. 
 There is a diffusiveness in these compositions which his occa- 
 sional verses did not admit of ; for, where Montgomery had a 
 broad canvas to cover, the defect of early training was con- 
 spicuous in redundant expression, in a wearisome exposition of 
 trifling details, in a lack of that vigorous grasp of a subject which 
 could impress upon its complex branches the simple unity of a 
 whole. The fact is, the miscellaneous verse in which Mont- 
 gomery excelled was the fruit of his own solitary communings 
 with the objects which absorbed his attention ; while the staple 
 materials of his larger pieces were all imported, at second-hand, 
 from books. Hence, while his "Greenland" and his "Westlndies" 
 may rank, though at a respectable distance, in the same class, 
 as the "Traveller" and the "Deserted Village," his three other 
 long poems would rise no higher than a moderate place in the 
 fourth division of poetry, as very good embodiments of reflex 
 imitation. But a poet must be judged by the general arrange- 
 ments of his pieces, and not by the superior excellence of some 
 three or four minor poems ; and, if tested by this standard, 
 Montgomery will rank above Rogers, but beneath Goldsmith. 
 
360 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 BETWEEN Montgomery and Longfellow, the world will 
 probably think there is little in common. The one, 
 spending his life in the acquisition and distribution of know- 
 ledge, in personal intercourse with the most aesthetic minds of 
 European capitals, in habitual oscillation between two hemi- 
 spheres ; the other a shy recluse, imperfectly educated, more or 
 less pinioned to the dusty purlieus of a second-class provin- 
 cial town, and knowing nothing of society, but what he had 
 gleaned from books. In the world of thought, however, there 
 are as many resemblances as their exterior life presents of 
 contrasts. Both leaven their poems very largely with the 
 Christian element ; both are thoroughly in earnest in making 
 poetry permeate, as it were, the very lifeblood of daily existence. 
 The triumphs of both are intertwined with the representation 
 of the domestic affections and the quiet charities of human life. 
 With both, verse is only the medium of genial sympathies and 
 moralizing lessons. Montgomery was deficient in metaphysical 
 analysis; so is Longfellow. Neither could construct a great 
 poem. Both have shown great power in executing short ones. 
 But the superior training of Longfellow is evidenced in a better 
 choice of subjects, and his more independent genius in the 
 original treatment to which he has subjected ideas having little 
 merit on the score of originality. 
 
 In some respects it has been an advantage to Longfellow 
 that he was born an American. In growing up under a state 
 of society alien to that which had coloured the thoughts of the 
 
POETS OF THE AFFECTIONS. 361 
 
 iighteenth-century poets, he was in a great degree withdrawn 
 from their influence. His thoughts were, therefore, left to 
 clothe themselves in their own natural dress. They are never 
 dominated by expression. In this respect, he is the most natural 
 poet of the age. The entirely modern elements of the society 
 by which he was surrounded, threw out the mediaeval world in 
 all its freshness before him. Its chivalries, its childlike faith, 
 its cultivation of the ascetic virtues, its weird superstitions, its 
 ceremonial pageantries, appeared to him in more startling con- 
 trast, with the selfish pursuits of commerce, with the coarsening 
 influence of scepticism, with the material results of industrial 
 development, than to a European observer. Longfellow wan- 
 dered through such old towns as Bruges, Nismes, and Bologna, 
 where the architecture and traditions of the mediaeval age are 
 still rife; or through the castellated cities on the Rhine, where 
 its baronial feuds speak out from each topaz cliff and ruined 
 turret, much with the same feeling as a European scholar paces 
 the banks of the Cephissus or the Capitoline Mount. He saw 
 nothing, in these phantom relics of the past, but its poetry. He 
 was not tutored in a state of society, in which the mediaeval 
 world had left institutions side by side with modern creations, 
 to stifle social development in its growth, as the ivy, with its 
 parasitical weeds, hampers the growth of a new plant. He was, 
 therefore, in a position to appreciate their humanizing elements, 
 without feeling a taste of the miasma which they exhale, 
 where they exist in a stage of social decrepitude. He, accord- 
 ingly, took the mediaeval gauge of the spiritual, as the actual 
 framework of the phenomenal world, and loved to hang his 
 pictures in it. Its representations of the invisible surround 
 and interfuse his poetic creations, not in any narrow doctrinal, 
 but in a wide aesthetic, sense. For the boundless savannahs of 
 America, her wide-rolling rivers, which at their mouth spout forth, 
 as well as drink in, a sea, if they did not nourish in his soul any 
 visions of exquisite beauty, extended her poet's mental horizon and 
 prevented him from entertaining contracted views of anything. 
 
362 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 The " Golden Legend," one' of Longfellow's lengthiest pieces, 
 is, perhaps, one of the least satisfactory. The individual scenes 
 are good ; some of the fancies exquisite. But the absence of 
 anything like a well-developed plot completely strips it of 
 interest. The love of Elsie for Prince Henry is. dealt with 
 as a mere feeling of religious duty. It is, also, in the highest 
 degree unnatural that a prince, under the direct influence of the 
 devil, should, with the devil himself, behave like an upright 
 gentleman. But Longfellow, doubtless, felt the natural develop- 
 ment of the story would have led him to trench on ground 
 already occupied by " Faust ;" and he preferred keeping the 
 morale intact, to provoking a comparison in which he must have 
 felt his great inferiority. The prince and his lover, with Mephis- 
 tophiles, move through a succession of ill-connected scenes, 
 and finally wind up with a marriage, which, as we never look 
 forward to as a result, excites no feeling except astonishment. 
 Marriages without courtship are as tame as love without 
 passion j and both, in the hands of a greater master of song 
 than Longfellow, would have failed to attract admiration. The 
 " Golden Legend," then, as a work of art, excites little feeling 
 beyond regret that a piece which contains so many beautiful 
 passages, which is so far removed from our spasmodic literature 
 by the quiet serenity poured like a flood of mild sunshine 
 through its pages, should have been so much wanting in the 
 sense of unity and completeness. 
 
 The " Spanish Student," which is the most artistic of Long- 
 fellow's productions, will always excite and repay attention. 
 The dialogue is easy, the situations natural, the sparkling 
 ebullitions of fancy incessant ; yet this drama lacks deeply - 
 embodied passion, subjective elaboration of character, and an 
 air of substantial reality. We also feel that the plot was 
 capable of being turned to greater account. Bartolome's 
 character is only half developed, and his sudden fall at the end 
 gives a sketchy and unfinished appearance to the piece. It 
 adds much, however, to Longfellow's reputation that so pleasing 
 
POETS OF THE AFFECTIONS. 363 
 
 a drama, one uniting so many perfections, should have come 
 from his hands. The nineteenth- century poets have not evinced 
 much dramatic vigour, and Longfellow's performance, in the 
 melodramatic sphere, shines forth with the more lustre, from 
 the flatness of the corresponding efforts which have emanated 
 from his contemporaries. 
 
 " Evangeline," which is deservedly one of the most popular 
 poems of the age, manifests deep pathetic force, wonderful 
 power of scene painting, with a perfect adherence to nature, in 
 the development of character, and the manipulation of incident. 
 The tale is simple ; but there is an epic completeness about it 
 which belongs to few of Longfellow's productions. As a story, 
 illustrative of the gigantic force of affection amidst the trials to 
 which it is subjected in this world, the poem is greater than 
 "Enoch Arden." For Longfellow's materials are fewer, and 
 turned to greater account. The pity and emotional sympathy 
 it excites is broader and more profound. The poem is also full 
 of spiritual radiance. The characters, as well as the scenes 
 through which they move, are interfused with light, which 
 springs from a sphere beyond this world of ours. Evangeline 
 herself blends the purity of the sweetest of Raphael's Madon- 
 nas, with the fervour and enduring love of the most tender of 
 Correggio's Magdalenes. Earthly affection in her is radiated 
 with all the splendours of divine love. The pursuit of a human 
 object intensifies the angelic qualities of her nature. It is a 
 natural sequel to such a story that Evangeline does not recover 
 Gabriel until about to wing his flight to the skies. Her love, 
 then, for Gabriel becomes identified with her longing for 
 heaven itself. "Evangeline" may, therefore, be regarded as 
 the apotheosis of human affection. As such, it contains a high 
 moral lesson, and becomes the medium of a deep philosophy. 
 Human nature, from what it contains of the God-like, must 
 always lift us above the perishable. The virgin instincts of the 
 soul defy the revolutions of space and time. Human love, 
 instead of being an obstacle, may become the best preparatory 
 
364 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 school for divine love, into which it may become absorbed, 
 as a river, by the ocean. Longfellow's " Evangeline " ennobles, 
 in the sphere of suffering, the feminine nature, quite as much 
 as Dante's " Beatrice " in that of enjoyment. If it be of a 
 lower order of poetic creation, it is all the more likely to be 
 more generally appreciated, and therefore to become a more 
 practical instrument in the elevation of humanity. 
 
 To this catholic picture of French rusticity, Longfellow has 
 given us a contrast in the courtship of the Puritan Miles 
 Standish j but by no means with the same power. The tale is 
 imperfect. The appearance of the hero at the wedding of 
 Priscilla, after the rumour of his death, is left unexplained ; as 
 also the escape of the village from the impending incursion of 
 the Indians, after the inhabitants had been fluttered by the news, 
 like the occupants of an unroofed and hawk-threatened dovecot. 
 There is also no suffering to harrow up our sympathies. The 
 successful lover does not interest us much ; for he displays no 
 heroism, and his bride only presents a pleasing picture of 
 feminine constancy and magnanimity, upon which the poet 
 longs so much to dwell. Puritanism rather contracts the 
 feminine nature, but develops that of the man. Hence the 
 character of Priscilla is only subsidiary in the piece to that of 
 Miles Standish, who lacks, however, the stern and relentless 
 nature of the type to which he belongs. The piece is full of 
 graphic pictures. But the emotions are not touched. It can 
 be readily seen that the poet's heart was not in his work. With 
 Puritanism, Longfellow had little genial sympathy. He, there- 
 fore, did not ring out of his subject that rich music it would 
 otherwise have yielded up at his bidding. 
 
 The rest of Longfellow's pieces, with the exception of 
 " Hiawatha," are either short pieces or collections of such, under 
 a common name. But many of these are of uncommon beauty, 
 antHiave4on£L since become heirlooms of the language. The 
 ^NormanBaroA," the "Quadroon," and the "Village Blacksmith," 
 each tvpes of opposite elements of being, are thrown off by him 
 
POETS OF THE AFFECTIONS. 365 
 
 with the hand of a master. His ballads, if they have not the 
 elegance of Southey, exhibit far more pictorial power and 
 deeper spirituality. With profound Christian feeling and an 
 exquisite spirit of playfulness, he unites in these compositions 
 the subtle essence of the German philosophy. Indeed, in this 
 respect, Longfellow may be regarded as the Areopagite of poetry. 
 For what Dionysius did for doctrinal Christianity, the poet has 
 accomplished for its moral and artistic spirit. By investing 
 these influences with the air of a scientific spirituality, reared on 
 a rational basis, he has increased their strength and enlarged 
 their comprehensiveness. The union of two such potent 
 spiritualities could not be effected without imparting a sense of 
 freshness to the development of the poet's thought, if it did not 
 enrich his mind with new ideas. It is by no means the least 
 of Longfellow's merits that he combines the beautiful visions of 
 Uhland with the devotional fervour of Montgomery, the mild 
 wisdom of Heber with the deep spirituality of Muller. It is 
 this combination which has stamped such an ineffaceable charm 
 on Longfellow's miscellaneous poetry. 
 
 After Tennyson, Longfellow has been the most popular poet 
 of the day. And, though his later productions have not sup- 
 ported his past reputation, he still maintains that distinction. 
 There even are not wanting people who prefer him to the 
 Laureate. He has certainly written a melodrama and a bucolic 
 idyll equal to, if not above, anything of the same sort that 
 Tennyson has, or probably could, accomplish. He has written 
 many minor pieces which can hardly be rivaled for the 
 combination of exquisite grace and fancy which they exhibit. 
 But here Longfellow's superiority ends. Had Tennyson not 
 written the " Idylls " or the " In Memoriam," his inferiority to 
 his contemporary would have been manifest. But the power 
 Tennyson displays, in these superior walks of his art, places him 
 above any living contemporary. Longfellow's range is purely 
 objective. He never attempts elegy, and if he did would pro- 
 bably fail in it. In the elements necessary for the execution 
 
366 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 of a heroic poem, Longfellow is equally wanting. He lacks I 
 the power of depicting deep passion, or robing purely imaginary | 
 subjects with ideal grace and splendour. All his characters 
 are of the earth, though his heroines invariably reflect in their 
 mien the hues of heaven. Taking, therefore, Longfellow's 
 excellencies in conjunction with his defects, considering his 
 pictorial power, his command of the emotional sympathies, his 
 •sparkling fancy, his comprehensive catholic spirit, the air of ! 
 novelty he has imparted to mediaeval ideas, together with his 
 lack of the imaginative element and of architectonic skill, I 
 think the ends of poetic justice will be served in placing him in 
 the inner circle of the first group of third-class poets. Nor need 
 Longfellow feel, because he has not the genius of a Shelley or a 
 Milton, that his genius is not likely to be as profitable to man- 
 kind. Poets of the first or second-class order generally stir the 
 mind's secret springs too profoundly to be of service to them in 
 a practical point of view. They exalt the imagination by scenes 
 of ideal beauty never likely to be realized, and excite the mind 
 to unprofitable yearning for the unattainable. The passions by 
 them are roused from their depths, and the brain fevered into 
 false creation. The intellectual horizon is extended too often 
 at the expense of the moral element. But by poets of the third 
 order the mental forces are seldom thrown out of their sym- 
 metrical relationship. Among them are to be found the prac- 
 tical instructors of mankind. They enlighten the judgment, 
 while they warm the heart By them the elements of human 
 nature are not disturbed by any spiritual electricity from that 
 natural equipoise which springs from their healthy development. 
 They ripen the intellect and the moral sense simultaneously. 
 They generally keep the passions within the restraints of the 
 reason. By them the domestic virtues are cherished, and 
 morality robed in the garb of a sparkling fancy and a sportive 
 disposition. They habituate us to derive lessons from nature at 
 every step. They train the aesthetic sense within us to extract 
 
POETS OF THE AFFECTIONS. 367 
 
 beauty from commonplace objects, hope from gloom, and sun- 
 shine from sorrow. They ripen our affections until they exhale 
 an aroma, which sweetens the atmosphere of life. Among such 
 teachers, it ought to form a subject of congratulation to Long- 
 fellow, that he will ever hold a foremost place. 
 
368 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 REALISTIC SCHOOL. 
 
 Cralrlr^ 
 
 IT is rarely, when clergymen venture into the regions of the 
 Muses, that they cut a very conspicuous figure there. I only 
 know of two, who, as poets, have left behind them a brilliant 
 reputation, and their triumphs- were achieved in defiance of 
 the cloth which they wore. While Herrick and Churchill 
 wrote their best pieces, they lived in direct hostility with their 
 professional duties. It would seem that the daughters of 
 memory cherish some secret antipathy to theological pursuits, 
 or at least they have no feelings of sympathy with those who, 
 
 To wander round the Muse's sacred hill, 
 Let the salvation of mankind stand still.* 
 
 We all know that Young did not get on very well with them, 
 even when he moralized his song ; and Bowles, in the list ot 
 those who have acquired fame during the present century, is, per- 
 haps, the least entitled to it. Home, who was turned out of the 
 Presbytery for writing dramas, occupies a still lower position. 
 Crabbe, though a poet of far more respectable pretensions, 
 still labours under the disadvantages of his profession. Had 
 he or Young been trained divines, it is probable what little 
 poetical capacity either possessed would have been squeezed 
 
 * Churchill's Satire on Bishop Warburton. 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 369 
 
 Out of them. But both entered the Church in mature 
 age. They brought into the ministry a full knowledge of the 
 world, a practical acquaintance with the miseries of life and 
 vicissitudes of fortune. This experience was the grand store- 
 house of Young's and Crabbe's muse. But they brought to 
 the manipulation of the raw material the contracted views ot 
 their new profession. Human life was painted in all its shiver- 
 ing nakedness. The world outside the Church was the vestibule 
 of hell. The responsibilities of the wealthy made life burden- 
 some, the labours of the poor made life miserable. That spirit 
 of Greek joyousness which casts such broad sunshine over 
 Helicon, hardly illumines a single line they have written. The 
 sense of beauty suffers in them a complete eclipse. There 
 is no outlet from the calamities of existence except spare 
 living, a grave demeanour, reading one's Bible, and keeping a 
 clear look-out against the evils which are always impending 
 over us. The world is a sort of penitentiary, and they con- 
 duct us into its wards, with black staves, in crape bands, with 
 the starch solemnity of decorum, as if they were ushering us 
 into a house of mourning, and nature had no feeling but sorrow. 
 But Crabbe, in addition to the gloom imparted by his pro- 
 fessional bias, allowed his early miseries to impart a peculiar 
 hypochondriac tone to his poetry. The feelings he excites are 
 mentally depressing. He is a mere anatomist of moral 
 diseases. We go through his poems as we would through a 
 lazar-house or hospital. The characters are drawn to the life. 
 But each is the subject of a moral diagnosis. His early prac- 
 tice as a village doctor would seem to have inured his mind to 
 the ^Esculapian habit of probing moral diseases to their root. 
 We admit the truth of the picture, but feel that the poet has 
 drawn his subjects from the darkest side of human life. Crabbe 
 has been called the Hogarth of poets. But this is hardly cor- 
 rect, for he shuns licentious revels. He does not picture vice ' 
 in the acme of enjoyment, but in the agonies of its fall. He 
 surrounds himself with nothing but miseries, and never seems 
 
 24 
 
370 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 so happy as when he is recounting the griefs of his neighbours. 
 The poet has no philosophical opinions or aesthetic views of 
 any kind. The area of his mind might be covered by the 
 village catechism. It is owing to this lack of comprehensive- 
 ness, no less than to the sombre nature of his muse, that 
 Crabbe has long since fallen from the high place he once held 
 among his contemporaries. 
 
 It is, I suppose, in consequence of this contracted range of 
 his thoughts, that Crabbe does not flourish in abstract themes, 
 but only in painting objective individualities. When he 
 generalizes, he becomes trite and heavy. But to his portraits he 
 imparts the finished touches and the marvellous shades of 
 Rembrandt. His "Library" and "Newspaper" are two of 
 his most general, and two of his worst, poems. His " Parish 
 Register " is the most individual, and therefore the best of his 
 productions. He even seems incompetent to deal with specific 
 facts, unless such as are actually floating before his eyes. For 
 nearly all his pictures are the result of visual observation. 
 Perhaps, there is no instance of any other poet, who has risen to 
 greatness, with so contracted a sphere for his muse. Nearly all 
 his poems are so many different photographs of the same subject. 
 His "Parish Register" is only a prolongation of his "Village." 
 His " Borough " is a still further expansion of the same subject. 
 They both consist of masterly analyses of character and 
 delineations of social life, in its most prosaic and repulsive 
 aspects. In the "Tales of the Hall," Crabbe is much more 
 discursive ; but they are all only so many episodes of provincial 
 life. And even here, his lympathic constitution predominates. 
 There is a sickly air of melancholy, and sombre tinge cf 
 cloistered morality over all his narratives. He seems, even 
 upon amatory subjects, to have felt that his whole strength lay 
 in subduing the soul by pity. The purifying tendencies of this 
 feeling, so present to the Greek mind, doubtless led him to 
 think that, in giving his poems this turn, he was employing the 
 Muses as the moral regenerators of mankind. 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 371 
 
 In vivid sketches of individual suffering, drawn from the 
 humbler ranks of life, and in exciting sympathy for such 
 suffering among a class too brazened by affluence and custom 
 to be impressed by the sight of it, Crabbe appears to have 
 found his peculiar mission. Out of such materials he contrives 
 to extract more genuine feeling than any other poet. Words- 
 worth, who closely followed him in this line, certainly did not 
 improve upon his master. The descriptions of Crabbe are 
 more terse, the portraits more life-like, his language more 
 vigorous, his details more striking, and the thorn of sorrow 
 rankles deeper in the heart, when barbed by a man who had 
 himself experienced the miseries which he conveys. In the fol- 
 lowing description of the heroine of a milliner's shop, as in most 
 of his other portraits, the poet seems not to have been drawing 
 from his imagination so much as sketching from real life : — 
 
 And who that poor, consumptive, wither'd thing, 
 Who strains her slender throat and strives to sing ? 
 Panting for breath, and forced her voice to drop, 
 And far unlike the inmate of the shop, 
 Where she, in youth and health, alert and gay, 
 Laugh'd off at night the labours of the day ; 
 With novels, verses, fancy's fertile powers 
 And sister-converse pass'd the evening hours ; 
 But Cynthia's soul was soft, her wishes strong, 
 Her judgment weak, and her conclusions wrong : 
 The morning call and counter were her dread, 
 And her contempt the needle and the thread : 
 But when she read some gentle Juliet's part, 
 Her woe, her wish, she had it all by heart. 
 
 At length the hero of the boards drew nigh, 
 Who spake of love till sigh re-echoed sigh ; 
 He told in honey'd words his deathless flame, 
 And she his own by tender words became ; 
 Nor ring nor license needed souls so fond, 
 Alfonso's passion was his Cynthia's bond : 
 And thus the simple girl, to shame betrayed, 
 Sinks to the grave forsaken and dismayed.* 
 
 * " The Borough Players," Letter xii. 
 
372 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Here the poet produces his results by simply adhering to 
 nature. There is no exaggeration of any kind, no apparent 
 struggle to produce effect. The " Story of Phoebe Dawson "* 
 is still more effective than that of the " Musical Heroine," and 
 the description of the " Miller's Daughter "f is more vigorous 
 than either. " Ruth » { and " Ellen Orford "§ belong to the 
 same gallery of portraits ; yet there is a particularity about them 
 which makes them as individual as the rest. The " History of 
 Thomas, the Consumptive Sailor Boy," who comes back from 
 Greenland to die in the arms of Sally, is, as far as the materials 
 of the tale go, trite enough. But in the hands of Crabbe it is 
 invested with more plaintive tenderness than any other similar 
 story in our language. Throughout all this class of subjects, 
 Crabbe shows himself an easy master of those graphic traits and 
 salient touches which make the individual character walk out, 
 as it were, from the framework of the narrative ; and in using 
 such materials for evoking sympathy he rules supreme. But 
 these qualities alone would not place a man very high in the 
 roll of British poets, and had it not been for adventitious 
 circumstances, this poet would never have occupied that 
 position in the eyes of his competitors. 
 
 Crabbe was singularly fortunate during his life, in reuniting 
 in his favour the suffrages of the two dispensers of poetical re- 
 putation, — Gifford and Jeffrey, who vied with each other in 
 chanting his praises and descanting on his merits. There has 
 been no such union of rival political factions, in setting a poet 
 upon a pedestal, since the days of Addison. Crabbe owed 
 this success not less to the anti-democratic tendencies of his 
 muse than to the solid* advantages which the patronage of 
 Burke conferred upon him. It certainly is another proof of 
 the prescient sagacity of Burke's penetrating mind, that when no 
 editor would receive Crabbe's wares, when all the booksellers 
 
 * " Parish Register," Marriages. t Ibid, Baptisms. 
 
 " Tales of the Hall," b. v. § " The Borough," Letter 22. 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. ' 373 
 
 to a man repudiated his pretensions, when every door was shut 
 against him, Burke recognized his merit, and received the 
 poet into his family, until some provision could enable him to 
 woo the muses without experiencing the fate of an Otway or a 
 Savage. Such was the expansiveness of that great man's heart, 
 that to know Burke was to know the large circle of his acquaint- 
 ance. By him he was introduced to Johnson, and found him- 
 self at the easel of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Thenceforth he shot 
 up like a rocket into the heaven of renown. Booksellers com- 
 peted for the honour of publishing what a few years before they 
 had scornfully rejected. Fox soothed the hours of sickness by 
 turning over the leaves of the " Parish Register," where he read 
 of miseries deeper than his own. Even the tough heart of 
 Thurlow was taught, by the same work, to melt at the sight of 
 others' woe. He gave the poet a benefice. Sir Walter Scott 
 re-echoed the general acclamation. Even the youthful Byron 
 caught the infection so deeply as to place him in the first rank 
 of existing poets : 
 
 This fact in Virtue's name let Crabbe attest ; 
 Though Nature's sternest painter, yet the best.* 
 
 But this general eulogy was too exalted to be sustained. In 
 the next generation Crabbe rapidly declined in favour, and 
 now he is as virtually laid on the shelf as Rogers or Southey 
 himself. But a calm and dispassionate criticism will equally 
 learn to reduce factitious renown to its true value, while it 
 rescues the poet's memory from the injustice of neglect. 
 
 No poet in our literature carved out for himself a more 
 special province than Crabbe, and" adhered to it with more 
 fidelity. This, perhaps, is one of the best proofs of his original 
 genius. While adhering to the old poetical establishment with 
 respect to his style, with respect to his matter, he resolved to 
 
 * "I consider," writes Byron in 1816, "Crabbe and Coleridge as the 
 first of these times in point of power and genius." 
 
374 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 follow nature, to discard the hackneyed poetical commonplaces, 
 — to sing of nothing but the natural results of his own experience. 
 Life must be painted as it actually is, and not as it is depicted 
 by a too heated imagination. As his predecessors revelled 
 with buskined nymphs and swains in Idaean valleys or in Olym- 
 pian groves, he reproduced the outcasts of cellars, the inmates 
 of almshouses, and the victims of depravity, wrestling with 
 misery in the squalid haunts of impoverished towns. No sub- 
 ject was too low for his muse. Every rank and grade of life 
 was ransacked to afford him instances of the miseries and 
 the vices of the class from which he sprung. But these are 
 treated in the elaborate style which the Queen Anne poets ap- 
 plied to a far different kind of subjects. Hence, he has been 
 called Pope in worsted stockings. But this is hardly fair to 
 either poet, for both have distinct peculiarities, which keep 
 them as wide apart as any two poets in our literature. If 
 Crabbe has none of the passion, or sublimity, or recondite 
 thought, or ingenious fancy, he has few of the artificial airs 
 of- his master. He rarely substitutes words for thoughts. If 
 his language is polished, it is always terse, manly, unos- 
 tentatious, — always revealing the matter, never itself. 
 He never attempts to hide prosaic conceptions behind bril- 
 liant antitheses. But we rarely get more than the simple 
 picture of the object which Crabbe presents to us, or if the 
 poet helps us to anything out of his own mind, it simply con- 
 sists of wise saws of prudence, moral hints, and religious ad- 
 monitions. In this respect he is the most objective poet in 
 any literature. 
 
 I must, therefore, set down Crabbe as wanting in all the 
 qualities of first-class poetry. Ideality, passion, constructiveness, 
 invention upon any imposing scale, brilliant fancy, — he has 
 none of these : hence, he rarely attempts any other form 
 of verse except the simple idyll, or any other metre than the 
 pentameter. In extracting pathos out of scenes mainly 
 drawn from humble life, he is unrivaled. Here his strength 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 375 
 
 lay. He is also hardly less successful in graphic delineation 
 of the provincial life with which he was familiar. Crabbe 
 from a boy was a keen observer of everything which passed 
 under his notice. He has drawn his own portrait in this 
 respect in the adventures of Richard,* the poor lad who 
 daily brought to his widowed mother's home the results of 
 his rambles through the neighbouring fishing village, and also 
 contrived, from the quay and the street, from the mechanic's 
 shop and the smuggler's cave, from the fisher's hut and the 
 tavern fireside, from the screaming gulls and the clashing waves, 
 to extract themes for his muse and principles for his guidance, 
 in after life. In reproducing these varied experiences, and 
 in surrounding them with details which imparted to them life 
 and freshness, no poet could have been more successful than 
 Crabbe \ but here his triumph ends. In describing the lower 
 phases of the actual, he distances all his competitors. But when 
 he comes to warmth of colouring, to passionate imagination, 
 to sublime philosophic invention; in fine, to any of those 
 qualities which invest the actual with the ideal, here Crabbe 
 touches ground. It is not that he fails in any of these great 
 qualities, so much as he never attempts to exhibit them. 
 Hence Crabbe's stories can never occupy the top rank of 
 idyllic literature, nor entitle their author to more than a 
 respectable place in the middle group of our third-class 
 poets. 
 
 * "Tales of the Hall," b. iv. 
 
376 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 3}r0fotthi0. 
 
 BROWNING is one of those writers who has achieved 
 success by a series of failures. Nothing could hardly 
 have been more unpromising than his first performances. His 
 plays could neither be tolerated on the stage, nor in the closet.^ 
 His narrative poetry was undecypherable. His lyrics set teeth 
 on edge as effectually as if the sound had forced its jagged way 
 through pipes of scrannel straw. The public stopped its ears. 
 But the poet, doubtless, feeling there was a chink of good 
 metal in his ore, laboured at the literary anvil, until sparks 
 began to gleam, and a glow was struck out which created for 
 him an audience. Twenty years ago Browning was unendu- 
 rable. Now, it would be hardly too much to say that his 
 popularity as a poet is alone overshadowed by the wider renown 
 of Tennyson. For his later poems have reflected back some 
 portion of their glitter on his earlier pieces, and has raised 
 them, as it were, to be joint partners in their success, like 
 the later offshoots of a family who have rescued the elder 
 branches from the obscurity entailed by their individual 
 demerits. This is the unjust incidence of a law which is 
 fair in its general application. A poet who, like Scott, writes 
 his best things first, whatever may be the amount of his early 
 fame, generally fails to steep in its sunshine his later produc- 
 tions, if these are much below the standard of his previous 
 efforts. But if the worst come first, the majority of readers 
 are too apt to think they have been asleep, and eagerly seize 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 377 
 
 upon all that they had shut their eyes to before, as food for 
 an intellectual banquet. 
 
 Genius, of course, is erratic. It is hazardous to formulate 
 its growth under any general law. But this much may be said, 
 at all events, that the world has never seen an example of first- 
 class poetic genius commencing early and labouring all through 
 that long space of life which the Romans included within the 
 period of youth, without producing anything which may be called 
 great, and then, while the physical powers are on the wane, 
 achieving distinction by works of the highest order of merit. 
 Now, Browning's poetic capacities are just of that class from 
 which we would expect long-enduring struggle, terminating in' 
 ever-widening gleams of success, achieved not by any com- 
 manding powers of genius, but by deep observation upon 
 men and their ways, by a happy Carlyleism of expression, and a 
 laboured persistence at the file, so as to pack the greatest 
 amount of thought in the briefest compass of words. He has 
 little pathos. His imagination is at zero. He has no deep 
 well of sensibility springing up in himself. His powers a re all 
 fed and called into action by external objects, to which he 
 brings to bear shrewd good sense and deep reflection, sharpened 
 by a facetiousness which imparts to his thoughts an Attic 
 flavour. But if we look for the lofty elements of poetry in 
 Browning, that is, for those ingredients which constitute ideality, 
 passion, sympathy, and a grand inventive genius, we shall 
 assuredly look in vain. Browning is too practical, cleaves too - 
 much to the outside world to deal in such things. We might 
 as well ask for civet perfume from our fishmonger, or Indian 
 silks at a butcher's shop. 
 
 The earlier efforts of Browning's muse were directed to 
 the embodiment of the lives of theorists who had grown up 
 under the influence of a mad craving for knowledge, love, and 
 power. In " Paracelsus," we have the Swiss empiric, tracked 
 through the strange divagations of his career, and dramatically 
 avouching his belief in the extravagant professions with which 
 
378 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 he astounded the universities of Europe. But even here, the 
 unimaginative nature of the poet is apparent ; for, instead of 
 surrounding his hero with strange adventures, or introducing 
 him to demons exorcised to yield up the secret of other worlds, 
 Browning treats his subject entirely from a psychological point 
 of view, and gives us simply the lofty aspirations of the hero 
 himself, modified by no results unless the failure of his efforts. 
 We view him in Geneva, as well as in Constantinople and 
 Rome, harnessed simply to the common gear of every-day life ; 
 and the reader, after wading through this protracted life-drama 
 of four parts, derives no glimpse beyond the boundary of 
 actual existence. He is, however, refreshed by draughts of in- 
 spiration which allure him onward through these barren regions, 
 though the springs are as rare as gushes of water from the rocks 
 of an African wilderness. When Paracelsus is remonstrated 
 with for leaving all the pleasures of home, in pursuit of wild 
 devices and airy imaginings, he replies : — 
 
 What should I 
 J)o, kept among you all ? * * * * * 
 
 Be sure that God 
 Ne'er dooms to waste the strength He deigns to impart. 
 Ask the gier-eagle why she stoops at once 
 Into the vast and unexplored abyss, 
 What full-grown power informs her from the first 
 Why she not marvels, strenuously beating 
 The silent boundless regions of the sky ! 
 
 * * * * * *Igoto prove my soul ; 
 I see my way, as birds their trackless way. 
 1 shall arrive ! What time, what circuit first, 
 I ask not : but, unless God send his hail, 
 Or blinding fire-balls, sleet or stifling snow, 
 In some time, His good time, I shall arrive : 
 He guides me and the bird. * 
 
 These flights, however, are at the expense of history; for 
 Paracelsus was too reckless a boaster to talk philosophy, and 
 
 * Sc. i. 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 379 
 
 one of his proper names — Bombastus — survives to designate 
 the rant with which he used to drench his contemporaries. 
 But Browning makes him, after the manner of Buckle, formulate 
 the law of progress : — 
 
 5 Tis in the advance of individual minds 
 
 That the slow crowd should ground their expectation 
 
 Eventually to follow ; as the sea 
 
 Waits ages in its bed, till some one wave 
 
 Out of the multitudinous mass, extends 
 
 The empire of the whole, some feet, perhaps, 
 
 Over the strip of sand which would confine 
 
 Its fellows so long time. Thenceforth the rest, 
 
 Even to the meanest, hurry in at once, 
 
 And so much is clear gained.* 
 
 At Constantinople he falls in with Aprile, an Italian poet, as 
 madly in quest of love as Paracelsus is after knowledge, his 
 acquaintance with whose frenzy almost awakens him from his 
 own: — 
 
 Love me henceforth, Aprile, while I learn 
 To love ; and, merciful God, forgive us both ! 
 We wake at length from weary dreams, but both 
 Have slept in fairyland : tho' dark and drear 
 Appears the world before us, we no less 
 Wake with our wrists and ankles jewelled still. 
 I, too, have sought to know, as thou to love, 
 Excluding love as thou refusedst knowledge. 
 Still thou hast beauty and I power. We wake : 
 What penance canst devise for both of us ?f 
 
 Aprile, however, dies, when only his true worth reveals itself to 
 Paracelsus : — 
 
 'Tis only when they spring to Heaven that angels 
 
 Reveal themselves to you : they sit all day 
 
 Beside you, and lie down at night by you, 
 
 Who care not for their presence ; — muse or sleep, — 
 
 And all at once they leave you, and you know them. X 
 
 * Sc. iii. t Sc. ii. % Sc. v. 
 
380 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 The* hero at last is brought to recognise the value of his fellow- 
 creatures, whose shortcomings a too haughty disposition had led 
 him to despise : — 
 
 In my own heart, love had not been made wise 
 To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind, 
 To know even hate is but a mask of love's, 
 To see a good in evil, and a hope 
 In ill- success. To sympathize, be proud 
 Of their half reasons, faint aspirings, dim 
 Struggles for half truths, their poor fallacies, 
 Their prejudices, fears and cares and doubts, 
 Which all touch upon nobleness, despite 
 Their error, all tend upwardly, though weak, 
 Like plants in mines which never saw the sun, 
 But dream of him, and guess where he may be, 
 And do their best to climb and get to him: — 
 All this I knew and failed.* 
 
 He does not expire, however, without a presentiment that his 
 name one day will be in the ascendant : — 
 
 If I stoop 
 Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, 
 It is but for a time ; I press God's lamp 
 Close to my heart ; it's splendour, soon or late, 
 Will pierce the gloom. I shall emerge one day ! 
 You understand me ? f 
 
 The lesson taught by Paracelsus is what some of us learn, 
 like himself, too late : — 
 
 Let men 
 Regard me, and the poet dead long ago, 
 Who once loved rashly ; and shape forth a third, 
 And better-tempered spirit, warned by both. J 
 
 But these beauties hardly repay the reader for the laborious 
 effort of toiling through a performance in which there is no 
 incident to amuse and little philosophy to instruct him, where the 
 
 * Sc. v. f Sc. v. % Sc. v. 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 381 
 
 attention constantly flags from want of sustained interest, and 
 the characters excite no curiosity, their actions emerging out of 
 preconceived pyschological theories rather than from the well- 
 spring of the human heart. 
 
 If " Paracelsus " awakened any expectation of poetic power 
 from Browning, the hope must have been quickly extinguished 
 by the appearance of " Sordello " some five years afterwards, a 
 work which very few people have tried to get through, and out 
 of the handful who have, not one has arrived at the singular 
 felicity of decyphering its meaning. The intention of Browning- 
 was to reveal the growth of a poet's mind in the twelfth century, 
 upon Lombard soil, embodying in its formation all the artistic 
 influences rife at the period, along with the effects of those 
 stormy vicissitudes which the Italian republics of the north 
 underwent in upholding their liberties, at one time against the 
 attacks of the Emperor, at another against the encroachments 
 of the Pope. To trace the influence of new ideas upon national 
 or individual character, especially among such a wild race as 
 these Lombard people, not long caught in the Christian net, and 
 displaying in their public monuments as well as in their riotous 
 acts, all the savage instincts of their pagan ancestors, was indeed 
 a task worthy of a great poet. The history of the period, too, 
 crammed full of romance, might have furnished the writer with 
 many an episode full of love and daring exploit, to arouse the 
 most lagging attention, or satisfy the most gluttonous appetite 
 for sensational novelty. But Browning hit upon a mine, which 
 he could not strike his shaft into, and the riches of which he 
 consequently failed to appreciate. He does not appear to have 
 understood that these Lombardic people were, in the twelfth 
 century, in a mere transition state, with a Christian creed united 
 to pagan manners ; nor comprehended the necessity of fitting 
 the mind of his hero into the corresponding state of things. 
 Indeed, so far as I can make out, "Sordello" is much more the 
 offspring of the nineteenth century than of the splendid savagery 
 which characterized the people among whom his destiny was 
 
382 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 intended to have been moulded. He reveals the features of a 
 refined artist and gentleman growing up among a set of half- 
 civilized barbarians who were constantly knocking each other 
 on the head, when they stood in one .other's way, and who 
 seldom patronized art unless as a medium of transmitting their 
 crimes to posterity. This poem, therefore, by the generality of 
 readers, is fairly given up as a puzzle which is scarcely worth the 
 trouble to solve. Between incongruity and unmeaningness there 
 is hardly an inch of ground on which the critic can plant the sole 
 of his foot. 
 
 The story of Sordello is told in six books ; the first three 
 record his experience as an egoist, comprising the musings of the 
 early part of his life in the castle of Goito, where he was brought 
 up in ignorance of his hereditary claims to the Ghibelline chief- 
 dom, and in lone communings with Nature. The last three are 
 taken up with Sordello's experience as an altruist, in the course 
 of which he attempts to conciliate the leaders of the Ghibellines 
 with those of the Guelfs, whom he imagines to have right on 
 their side, and to rule over the rival factions by the gifts of an 
 Apollo-kingship or a sort of natural divine right, which the 
 Italians, it is supposed, on account of their love for the arts, 
 ought to be the first to yield submission to. A lady, of 
 course, figures in the story, with the appropriate name of 
 Pal ma, of high lineage, who ushers Sordello from his place of 
 obscurity into the presence of the great world. Sordello and 
 Palma entertain a mutual passion for each other, which is 
 subject to the usual ordeals of rival claimants for the lady's 
 hand ; but, before the lovers can be united, Sordello dies, just 
 having discovered that his aspirations to the poet kingship were 
 supported by the more substantial claims of hereditary descent. 
 It would hardly be thought that a theme of this simple charac- 
 ter needed such complex treatment as to render it unintelligible 
 to the ordinary reader. But the poet opens the piece with his ' 
 hero's end, and sets out, therefore, by obliging us to read history 
 backwards. The reader, however, is no sooner bent upon this task 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 383 
 
 than he finds himself transferred to the commencement of the 
 story, which he plods through very much with the feelings of one 
 introduced into a sphere where neither latitude, or chronology, 
 or syntax have any visible recognition whatever. The mere 
 sensuous intuitions of space and time may, doubtless, have their 
 effect upon the outer development of a poet's life. But 
 Browning's task was to account for the growth of his hero's 
 mind, with whose innate strength they have very little to do. 
 He, therefore, thought himself at liberty to make 
 
 Succeeding times shake hands with later, 
 And that, which was before, come after, 
 
 in his efforts to penetrate into the roots of mental phenomena, and 
 reveal the inner shapings of a poet's powers. Hence he starts 
 his story just before Sordello's death-scene, to come round to the 
 same point again ; just as in the recital of Sordello's experience 
 as an egoist and altruist, Browning leaves his hero at the close 
 of each circle very much in the same plight as he found him at 
 setting out. Indeed, so bent is Browning upon revealing the 
 action of pyschological laws in the formation of a poet's charac- 
 ter, that towards the close of his story he regales us with some 
 twelve pages of his own individual experience of poetic develop- 
 ment, in utter defiance of historical unity or of any laws of 
 grammatical construction which govern the speech o"f men. 
 
 It is this love of introspective analysis, this predominance of 
 the mental over the sensuous, of the rational over the emotional if 
 nature in Browning, which has paralysed all his efforts to shine 
 as a dramatist. He writes mostly as if his feelings had to work 
 their way through the heavy folds of the intellect. His cha- 
 racters seem formed to display the effect of some psychological 
 law, rather than to trace the growth of passion in peculiar 
 natures, under certain groups of circumstances. It is not that 
 his personages never die of passion, or kill themselves in despair. 
 These catastrophes happen with Browning as often as with other 
 dramatists. The only difference is, that when they occur else- 
 
384 EST1MA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 where, there is always some explicit reason, some prelusive 
 outburst of feeling, whereas Browning's characters have the trick 
 of falling dead, or becoming delirious without evincing any 
 emotion or premonitory symptoms whatever. In the " Blot of 
 the 'Scutcheon," Lady Mildred, who is anxiously waiting in her 
 chamber for the midnight visit of her lover, receives from her 
 brother Thorold the news, that he, Thorold, has just slain him 
 beneath her window, almost with the same sang-froid as if the 
 speaker had announced truffles for supper : — 
 
 Ah ! this speaks for you. 
 You've murdered Henry Mertoun ! now proceed ! 
 What is it I must pardon ? This and all ? 
 Well, I do pardon you ; — I think I do. 
 Thorold, how very wretched you must be ! * 
 
 Yet, after an hour of this imperturbable talk, Lady Mildred falls 
 dead, and her too impetuous brother, who acts like a madman, 
 but who is supposed to be the only person in the piece under 
 the influence of reason, follows her example. In like manner, 
 Anael, in the " Return of the Druses," falls dead without any 
 presumable cause, just at the very moment she is wanted j and 
 Djabal, her lover, slips out of the world, after her, without any 
 emotion, just as if death was only stripping off one's coat, and life 
 could be resumed as easily as putting it on again. In " Luria," 
 the Moor drinks poison, because he has first gained a victory 
 which has saved Florence, and placed his enemies at his feet. 
 And, to make the denouement more startlingly absurd, a group 
 of people are introduced talking to the dead man, who goes 
 through the agonies of a violent death as calmly as if he were 
 going to sleep. Old King Victor, in the tragedy of that 
 name, also "shuffles off this mortal coil" in the same easy fashion, 
 just as his son is restoring the crown which the old man had 
 come from Chambery to claim. In all these cases, Death steps 
 in at an unseasonable juncture, to tell the actor he is wanted, 
 
 * Act Hi., sc. ii. 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 385 
 
 and an unintelligible life is ended by an exit equally unintelli- 
 gible. Now there may be something in all this beyond our 
 powers of comprehension ; but it cannot be connected with the 
 growth of passion, which constitutes the life-blood of the drama. 
 It need hardly be stated, that action is the very soul of 
 dramatic life. As the Greek term imports, a drama is some- 
 thing to be performed, not a quality to be illustrated, or a set 
 of speeches to be spoken. Sentiments must be subsidiary to 
 acts, and never allowed to usurp their place. Without the pro- 
 gressive development of human action — one group of facts 
 evolving themselves out of another in natural sequence — there 
 can be no such thing as dramatic representation at all. Each 
 scene must keep the spectator in suspense, while it moves the 
 action one step forward to the final result. But in most of 
 Browning's plays, we get neither backward nor forward, but the 
 action appears to oscillate about a certain fixed centre, that is, 
 the metaphysical stand-point he is desirous to illustrate. Any- 
 thing, therefore, like vulgar human interest is set at nought . 
 Hence, action lags, and human incident is buried beneath 
 interminable conversations, designed rather to display some 
 peculiar theory of human nature, than to stimulate the fancy or 
 to warm the heart. In " Luria," the stand-point appears to be 
 heroic magnanimity. The Moor, after pendulating, through five 
 acts, between destroying his enemies or saving the republic, 
 winds up by destroying himself. In the " Return of the Druses," 
 the design of which is to exhibit female disinterestedness, there 
 is no real action till the closing scene, when the incidents of 
 a contorted love and political rebellion are despatched in a 
 few lines, which ought to have been spread over the body of the 
 play. In " King Victor " we have hardly any incidents, certainly 
 none capable of awakening the slightest interest, spun out 
 into the form of a five act drama, seemingly for the sake of 
 showing the influence of a masculine woman over an effeminate 
 man. It is evident that plays constructed after this fashion 
 can neither instruct nor amuse, and I am not, therefore, sur- 
 
 25 
 
386 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 prised to find that the poet, some quarter of a century ago, 
 came to Hamet Benengeli's resolution of laying down his pen 
 and writing no more compositions of this kind for an unap- 
 preciating public. 
 
 Mr. Browning, however, being a man of ability, could execute 
 nothing without manifesting some signs of vigour, and accord- 
 ingly we find scattered up and down his dramas, though at rare 
 intervals, passages of power. Thus, in the " Return of the 
 Druses," Loys de Dreux expresses his love for Anael : — 
 
 Your breathing passes through me, changes 
 My blood to spirit, and my spirit to you, 
 As heaven the sacrificer's wine to it : — * 
 
 And in the same play Djabal very powerfully expresses his 
 determination to slay the tyrant who had shown no mercy to 
 his race : — 
 
 The man must die, 
 
 As thousands of our race have died thro' him. 
 
 One blow, and I discharge his weary soul 
 
 From the flesh that pollutes it ; — let him fill 
 
 Straight some new expiatory form of earth, 
 
 Or sea, the reptile, or some aery thing : — t 
 
 And in the " Blot of the 'Scutcheon," the conventional world, 
 so often shocked at the sequel of true love, is thus rebuked by 
 Mertoun, — 
 
 Die, Mildred ! leave 
 Their honourable world to them, — for God 
 We're good enough, tho' the world casts us out !j 
 
 And in the "Scene in a Balcony," Herbert expresses his 
 passion with electric force, as all the love should be expressed 
 which sheathes itself in the heart : — 
 
 Give my love its way: 
 A man can have but one life and one death, 
 One heaven, one hell. Let me fulfil my fate : — 
 Grant me my heaven now. Let me know you mine, 
 
 * Act Hi. f Act Hi. + Act Hi., sc. i. 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 387 
 
 Prove you mine, write my name upon your brow ; 
 Hold you, and have you, and then die away, 
 If God please, with completion in my soul.* 
 
 But these flashes of genius are momentary, and only serve to 
 throw out into more startling prominence the desert waste of 
 commonplace by which they are surrounded. 
 
 "Colombe's Birthday" is the only one of Browning's plays 
 which, I think, posterity will care about preserving, and that 
 not so much for the stage as for the closet. The characters 
 are more natural than in any other of his performances, and the 
 plot, such as it is, begins to develop itself in the first act, and 
 expands with steady progress till it culminates in the end. 
 The language, too, is at once plastic and forcible, occasionally 
 reminding us of the dramatists of the early Stuarts. Valence, 
 a poor advocate of Clives, who believes that the Duchess 
 Colombe is about to jilt him and barter her heart for pelf and 
 power, thus expresses his indignation : — 
 
 Oh heaven ! this mockery has been played too oft ! 
 
 Once to surprise the angels, — twice, that Fiends 
 
 Recording might be proud they chose not so — 
 
 Thrice many thousand times, to teach the world 
 
 All men should pause, misdoubt their strength, since men 
 
 Could have such chance, yet fail so signally, 
 
 — But ever, — ever — this farewell to heaven, 
 
 Welcome to earth — this taking death for life, — 
 
 This spurning love and kneeling to the world — 
 
 Oh heaven ! it is too often and too old.+ 
 
 But the great defect of the piece is the meagre conception of 
 this Valence, who is represented as a provincial simpleton, and 
 about the last person with whom a grand lady like Colombe 
 could possibly fall in love. We miss also in the Duchess, not 
 only the display of passion, but the steps which lead up to it ; 
 we get occasionally the sentiment, but we lack the fire and the 
 growth of love. The consequence is that the language, as in 
 
 * First Part. f Act v. 
 
388 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 his other plays, seems pitched in the same monotonous key. 
 Everything seems to be reached through the dry abstraction of 
 the intellect rather than the glowing enthusiasm of the heart. 
 Hence, going through one of Browning's plays is travelling 
 through a champaign country, where there is no towering 
 grandeur, no diversified peaks, or richly wooded slopes to re- 
 lieve the eye, but where the traveller only meets with occasional 
 patches of verdure cultivated on the same stagnant level. 
 Where Browning's plays are not defective from lack of incident 
 or progressive evolution of plot, they fail from unintelligibility 
 of motive, or unnatural situation of character. In " Strafford," 
 which is the"most pretentious of his tragedies, the plot moves 
 steadily forward, for this is supplied by history ; but the senti- 
 ments belie nature, and these are supplied by the poet himself. 
 Strafford was a character, the mainspring of whose motives was 
 towering ambition. To seize upon the highest honours in the 
 state, to clutch an earldom, he abandoned his party and risked 
 his neck. But in the play he is represented as impelled along 
 his daring course by his love for the king — 
 
 Him with the mild voice and the mournful eyes. 
 
 Of Pym we know very little. But it is hardly likely that the 
 man who hunted Strafford to the scaffold, would be, as Browning 
 represents him, bound to his victim by chivalrous friend- 
 ship in his early manhood. The closing scene, in which the 
 poet introduces both shaking hands, and looking forward to a 
 renewal of their early affection in another world, is simply an 
 outrage on propriety. Men who have been seeking each other's 
 blood, just at the moment when the desires of one are about 
 to be glutted with the head of his victim, are not so ready to 
 rush into each other's arms and crave instant forgiveness. I 
 do not know if Strafford was ever guilty of the unpardonable 
 folly of making love. At least Browning does not think so, 
 for the only expression of tenderness he has for the unswerving 
 fidelity of Lady Carlisle, escapes him, by addressing her occa- 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 389 
 
 sionally as Lucy. And the lady expresses her passion for her 
 hero with equal frigidity by calling him "noble Strafford." Hence 
 no feelings but those of weariness are awakened by the perform- 
 ance. The buckram platitudes in which the speakers indulge 
 even destroy those feelings of pity which the story of Strafford 
 is calculated to awaken in the roughest minds. Read the 
 facts as they are narrated in history, and we are moved to 
 tears ; but read them in the pages of the dramatist, and we 
 contemplate the tale with indifference. Even when Strafford's 
 children are brought into his prison, we feel no sympathy, 
 simply because the poet has not prepared us for it. The drama- 
 tist, here, is in the situation of the actor. Before he can excite 
 compassion in others he must feel it himself. And Browning, 
 doubtless, thinks it unmanly to give unrestrained scope to his 
 emotional nature. He has accordingly spoiled the materials 
 for a very fine tragedy. " Strafford " for some short period, 
 assisted by the superb presence of Macready, kept possession 
 of the British stage, but when he withdrew his sustaining hand, 
 the play soon slipped out of the public notice. 
 
 Browning, notwithstanding his dramatic failures, is essenti- 
 ally a realistic poet. His sphere lies in the reproduction of the 
 actual. Out of the charmed circle of English life he rarely 
 treads. Yet he is not a representative poet, in the broad 
 sense of the term \ for his characters are too few to embrace 
 any wide section of humanity, and too individual to become 
 the embodiment of the class to which they belong. His 
 sketches are too local and particular in their colouring to be 
 accepted in any lofty sense of generalization. He sticks too 
 closely to fact, to launch out into any views of speculation. 
 He is in poetry what Bacon called himself in physics, the 
 interpreter of nature, the only difference being that the objects 
 to which the poet applies his plummet-line, are not stones and 
 trees, but men and women. And men and women he 
 produces in their fragmentary aspects, just as they are beating 
 out their isolated lives, without any theories, which make 
 
390 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 the few, exponents of the destiny of the many. Hence Brown- 
 ing does not dominate his age in any one feature. He does not 
 even affect to charm it into other paths than those along 
 which it seems driven by the blind impulse of necessity. His 
 is not the task to leap Phaeton-like into the chariot of 
 destiny, and guide the sphere of the earth nearer to the 
 sun. He has no theories to propound, patchwork-fashion 
 or otherwise. The enigma of life and death he does not 
 attempt to meddle with. All Browning's aim is to stereotype 
 some phase of actual life, to catch as it were some stirring 
 incident, or some great character in the act of shaping its par- 
 ticular ends, and mould them in his page, that they may stand 
 out like the tablatures on a Greek frieze in startling prominence 
 for ever. 
 
 Decidedly the cleverest of these pieces is " Bishop Blou- 
 gram's Apology," under which title the poet introduces Cardinal 
 Wiseman justifying his own position, as the very best of all 
 positions in the world for him, to one Gigadibs, a literary 
 man, who affects to despise His Eminence as a mere charlatan 
 playing a masked part. Gigadibs, being one of an influential class 
 entertaining similar feelings, has been invited to dinner, in order 
 to give the prelate an opportunity of reasoning him out of his 
 false impressions, and thereby demolishing a host of opponents 
 to his style and dignity. The bishop sets Gigadibs quite 
 at his ease during dessert, just as a dentist places his victim in 
 an easy chair, before he commences the extracting process ; nor 
 does Gigadibs get off quite clear until every ante-Blougram 
 prejudice has been plucked out of him by the roots. But this 
 is done by a candid avowal of feelings and convictions by no 
 means creditable to Blougram, who declares himself not an 
 absolute believer, though as perfect a one as the age can afford, 
 and who flatly admits he has clutched the foremost prize of the 
 Church, because he saw the object was within his reach, and 
 that this object gave him, in conjunction with the greatest ease 
 and literary leisure, a station of great eminence in the eyes of 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 391 
 
 the world. His guest, however, was a literary hack, with no 
 claim to consideration whatever. For extinguish the con- 
 tributor to Blackwood, and what was Gigadib.s ? Nothing. But 
 Blougram, while he wrote articles, in the Dublin Review, on 
 Etrurian art and on the Roman catacombs, was a primate of the 
 Church, on whom the tiara of the Papacy might fall ; styled the 
 queen his cousin, and had dukes and duchesses kneeling to kiss 
 his ring every day. Gigadibs would, to his dying hour, regard his 
 invitation to Blougram's table as one of the crowning honours 
 of his life. Contrast such a position with the first Napoleon's 
 or Shakespeare's, and, in a worldly point of view, both were con- 
 temptible. All Napoleon's struggles, no sane man would endure 
 for the miserable termination of an Austrian marriage, and the 
 construction of a bran new empire, which was no sooner raised 
 than tumbled down and buried the creator in its ruins. As for 
 the poor bard of Avon, he was always glad to nestle under the 
 protection of people who, had they been alive now, would have 
 •felt it an honour to have had Blougram 's acquaintance. 
 Gigadibs, who does not deny the cogency of this reasoning, 
 quietly hints his suspicions that Blougram cannot believe in all 
 the theological nonsense he expresses, and that, in such a case, 
 the interior conviction that he is a charlatan, merely playing a 
 part, must interfere with that self-respect without which, for 
 a conscientious man, there is little enjoyment in this world. 
 He, Gigadibs, though socially insignificant, has a self-approving 
 conscience to fall back upon, a feeling of candour underlying 
 honest conviction, which gives him the reputation of manliness 
 with his fellows, and keeps the whiteness of his own mind with- 
 out a stain. The crowd frequently exclaim, " Blougram is an 
 impostor ! " But nobody who knows Gigadibs believes that he 
 is other than what he appears — an honest man. Blougram, 
 however, parries this thrust very successfully, by showing 
 Gigadibs his erroneous notions about faith. Absolute, undis- 
 turbed belief in religious dogma in these scientific times is 
 impossible, just as absolute scepticism, undisturbed by religious 
 
392 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 gleams, is impossible. Sceptics occasionally are .devout, as 
 believers have sometimes their moments of scepticism. Giga- 
 dibs is invited to choose between a life of faith diversified by 
 doubt, or a life of doubt diversified by faith. Blougram saw 
 distinctly that the first alternative was the best thing for him, 
 because jt led to a bishopric ; whereas Gigadibs had closed with 
 the latter, which leads to nothing. Herewith, Blougram uses an 
 appropriate simile. Two passengers are introduced going a 
 voyage. One takes furniture exactly suited to his cabin's size, 
 and makes his journey as agreeable as possible; the other 
 orders all kinds of movables, sumptuous and luxurious, without 
 any consideration of the miserable six-feet-by-four berth in which 
 he is to be located. The captain is peremptory in excluding 
 lumber which there is no possible means of using, and the 
 voyager is obliged to sail without any suitable provision at all. 
 This is Gigadibs' position. In aiming at being a high-souled 
 magnate he has spent his best years so far in vain. He would 
 be great without stooping to the means by which greatness is 
 won, or, in other words, he has not suited his furniture to the 
 cabin size ; he has not employed those resources within his 
 reach, as Blougram has done, to make external forces work for 
 him, and so lift him into greatness. The consequence is, that 
 while Blougram is an ecclesiastical potentate, whom kings would 
 be proud to shelter, Gigadibs is living unnoticed in a garret, 
 eking out a precarious existence by the patronage of the 
 monthlies. The picture is, doubtless, overcharged. But to 
 anyone acquainted with the real Blougram, who has had oppor- 
 tunities of fathoming the latent motives of the man from his 
 outward acts, and contrasting both with his public career, 
 Browning's picture, combining in a masterly manner his subtle 
 analytical spirit with his worldly aims and grasping pretensions, 
 will always appear a familiar portrait, destined to become 
 as historical as Raphael's "Julius," which shows the fiery 
 temperament of Mars peering through the lineaments of 
 the Christian monk. But this is hardly the triumph of poetry, 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 393 
 
 so much as of metaphysical skill and acute observation of 
 character. 
 
 Browning has attempted to reproduce Andrea del Sarto 
 and Fra Lippo de Lippi, but by no means with the same 
 success as the portrait of the prelate, whom, I do not doubt, 
 he often had the opportunity of meeting at Mr. Sloan's 
 in Florence. The two great Catholic painters he could only 
 know through " Vasari," and what remains of their art in the 
 Tuscan convents and in the Pitti palace. He had, therefore, 
 to work them out through the ideal, and this he has failed to 
 seize. No Protestant artist can enter into the conceptions of 
 Catholic painters, at least so far as to embody their feelings 
 in dramatic soliloquy. Browning began life as an artist, and, 
 doubtless, selected these subjects, because he thought his 
 acquaintance with their art would enable him to introduce them 
 to his readers with some degree of success. In the familiar * 
 intimacy with their lower life, in which the poet indulges, he 
 misses the lofty conceptions of the two great Florentine painters 
 — those flaming ideals which tortured them in their beds, and 
 rendered them deaf to the praises and slights of their neigh- 
 bours. Andrea is represented as eulogising others at the ex- 
 pense of himself, before his faithless wife, who has her gallant 
 at the window, and who cannot, therefore, be supposed to be 
 very much interested in the fact, that her husband succeeds 
 because he never aims higher than his capacity, and that 
 others fail because they have loftier ideals but lower powers of 
 execution. Lippi is introduced prowling about the streets at 
 night in quest of frail virginities, and coming in contact with 
 the watch, to whom he narrates his history. By his own ac- 
 count, he is a mere beast of burden for the monks, who will 
 not allow him to paint anything but their own religious pictures, 
 after their own peculiar models. He must paint flesh only that 
 he may manifest the soul which animates it. There must be 
 no voluptuousness, no portrayal of flesh as the mere embodi- 
 ment of sensuous beauty. This being the thing the painter 
 
394 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 mostly coveted, Lippi found the monks' designs very difficult 
 to realize. In this way Browning fritters away in coarse 
 materialities, the ethereal instincts which lit up the souls of these 
 men, who had no ideas out of the religious branch of their 
 art, and who were never content except in making it the 
 mirror for flashing upon the disc of this dark sphere the 
 supernal glories of the next. 
 
 One of the shorter pieces of the same series is the bishop 
 ordering his tomb at St. Praxed's church, a portrait which has 
 been praised by Ruskin, as evincing Browning's great famili- 
 arity with the middle ages, and his skill in using this know- 
 ledge to vitalize an ecclesiastical dignitary of the renaissance. 
 But here the incongruity of the poet's notion with the Catholic 
 idea is more startlingly manifest. For who can fancy a Roman 
 bishop, retaining his belief, and within prospects of sudden 
 death, talking in this fashion : — 
 
 And then how I shall lie through centuries, 
 And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, 
 And see God made and eaten all day long, 
 And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste 
 Good strong thick stupifying incense-smoke. 
 
 If Catholicism has more power at one time than another 
 over its votaries, it is at the hour of death, when all the 
 agencies of terror are put into operation, to absorb all the 
 energies of the expiring soul. Yet it is at this hour that the 
 bishop is represented as dwelling upon the charms of his mis- 
 tress, the superb abundance of her breast, and her white marbly 
 limbs, to his bastard sons, as a prelude to dividing between 
 them the property he had clutched from the revenues of his 
 see; an act of simony which would not be tolerated at Rome, 
 and which, in any other country, would deprive the ecclesiastic 
 committing it, of the last rites of the Church, including Catholic 
 burial. Had Browning represented this Roman bishop in the 
 flush of health, painted with the beauty of the Greek mythology, 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 395 
 
 and hungering after the lusts of the flesh ; or had he set the 
 prelate before us as a hardened sceptic on his death-bed, 
 treating religion as a mockery, whatever might have been 
 its truthfulness, the picture would have been consistent with 
 itself. But the incongruity lies here, that while he represents 
 the prelate as a devout believer in his own creed, he makes 
 him perform acts in violent antagonism with its dictates ; and 
 sends him out of the world executing a deed of no effect in 
 the eye of the pontifical law, beyond consigning his soul to ever- 
 lasting perdition. If Ruskin vouches for Browning's know- 
 ledge of religious medievalism, who is to vouch for Ruskin's ? 
 For it is clear that both critic and poet were writing here upon 
 a subject which they could not appreciate, and which they little 
 understood. 
 
 The objectivity of Browning's mind is nowhere so much at 
 discount, as when he attempts to deal with religious convic- 
 tions, whether past or present, as these arise from subjective 
 elements far beyond his ken; and he lacks the power of 
 tracking to its sources that emotional glow which kindles them 
 into enthusiasm. Hence his own religious views have no philo- 
 sophical background, and he can give no further account of 
 them than what might be given by the dullest thinker of the 
 age j while his representation of the religious views of others is 
 nothing else than such a caricature of the outward form as out- 
 rages their inner spirit and vitality. This subject is treated by 
 Browning in two visions, entitled " Christmas Eve" and "Easter 
 Day," through the first of which we arrive at the stupendous 
 idea that God being a pure spirit ought to be worshipped in 
 simplest fashion ; and by the last, at the equally startling result 
 that on judgment-day, men will be condemned to cast in 
 their lot with whatever phantoms they followed in this life, and 
 that none can enter heaven but those whose hearts have been 
 lit up by pure unselfish love. However poetical might be the 
 framework by which such views are inculcated, the views 
 themselves are only patchwork impressions derived from the 
 
 Ot THE r 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
396 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 blunt instincts of the age modifying religious dogmas until they 
 bring them within the appellation of common-sense Christianity. 
 They are neither profound, recondite, nor original, but very 
 commonplace ; and just because they are commonplace, the 
 poet has courted popularity by according to them poetic expres- 
 sion. After " Paracelsus " and " Sordello," something was needed 
 to propitiate the intelligence of the age, and accordingly we 
 find " Christmas Eve " and " Easter Day " arranged sandwich- 
 like between these two productions in the form of a sop to the 
 most popular religious party in England. 
 
 Nor is the poetic embellishment of these views so imposing 
 as to make up for their lack of boldness or originality. That 
 of " Easter Day " hardly contains a line I could select as 
 choice. The poet is caught wrestling with himself about 
 doubt, Christ, the difficulty of belief, when lo ! he is aroused by 
 the sight of judgment itself, and the blue vault above him rapt 
 in flame, with magazines of sulphur and other engines of com- 
 bustion, ready to make a bonfire of the earth. Then occurs the 
 conversation between the poet and the voice, which ends in the 
 poet, after selecting in succession the world, nature, and art, 
 throwing in his lot with love, and being very comfortably ad- 
 mitted into heaven. Nothing to my mind than this could be 
 more puerile. But a certain class of critics were in ecstasies. 
 " Here," they exclaimed, " Mr. Browning admits the doctrine 
 of the Incarnation ; there, that of posthumous rewards and 
 punishments." After this, there could not be a doubt that 
 he was not only a deep thinker, but a great poet. 
 
 In " Christmas Eve," the poetic framework is more artistic 
 in construction, and displays powers of graphic delineation of 
 no common order. The picture of the dissenting chapel and 
 the people assembling for worship, though reminding us too 
 much of the Ingoldsby Legends, appears to have been drawn 
 from personal experience. The poet under the influence of 
 the preaching falls asleep, and after meeting with a lunar rain- 
 bow, and fancying he recognises God in nature, is transported 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 397 
 
 in succession to Rome, where he sees the pompous ceremonies 
 of the Latin Church under the dome of St. Peter's \ and to 
 Gottingen, where he listens to the exposition of a German pro- 
 fessor in goggle spectacles, who attempts to prove Christ a 
 mythical embodiment of certain heroic qualities, all very well 
 for humanity to aim at as its ideal, but too perfect ever to 
 have been a living reality. These scenes are sketched with 
 the same attempt at grotesque facetiousness, and terminate in 
 a still more assured impression of their inadequacy to satisfy 
 an immortal mind. The dreamer is then aroused from his 
 lethargy by a thump of the preacher, and he is obliged to ac- 
 knowledge that worshipping God according to the fashion of 
 these simple folk whom he first scorned, is the most effective 
 way of paying tribute to the divinity. Thus the poet takes us 
 round the world, to show that the simplest form of dissent 
 ought to furnish the most congenial worship to a devout mind, 
 and that religious culture or rational inquiry may very properly 
 be discarded for aesthetic blindness and theological ignorance. 
 Browning, then, can hardly be taken as a deep thinker in 
 religious matters, or the exponent of a lofty spirituality. With 
 him, we get no farther than Jeremiah Bunting's commentaries 
 and Whitefield's doxology. He falls behind the age in his 
 attempt to lead it. He has no solution of the theological 
 puzzle beyond that of the most illiterate of his countrymen. 
 As a poetic seer, therefore, Browning has little claim on our 
 consideration. 
 
 " The Ring and the Book," which is regarded as our poet's^ 
 masterpiece, is a compound of his worst defects and best excel- 
 lences. Prolixity unendurable ; deserts of waste commonplace ; 
 jagged metre, which seems as if ordinary prose had been cut up 
 at random into lines ten syllables each; order and natural 
 sequence utterly paralysed in the treatment of the story • — such 
 are the blotches of the piece, which are, however, frequently 
 relieved by arch humour, pungent description half ludicrous and 
 half pathetic, life-like crayoning of character, where the mind's 
 
398 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 features, at all events, are sculptured with the minuteness of. a 
 photograph, along with dashing sketches of melo-dramatic situ- 
 ations, where the actors are skilfully grouped, and their feelings 
 forcibly delineated. But of passion in its quieter depths, of human 
 nature in its higher and unspasmodic moods, we get no glimpse 
 whatever. The tale itself is ghastly, and the characters more 
 fit for some walhalla, or itinerant Chamber of Horrors, than for 
 a story aspiring to a permanent niche in English literature. 
 Such a niche I feel certain in their present form they will not 
 receive. But could the tale, as it easily might, by the mere with- 
 drawal of its prosaic parts, be compressed within one-fourth of 
 its present bulk, and disentangled from its present confused 
 skein of narrative, it might hold its own against any poetic 
 novel of a similar class, as a work of permanent interest. 
 
 The simple outlines of the story which Browning takes up 
 four volumes to narrate, may be disposed of almost in as many 
 sentences. Count Guido Franceschini, a meagre noble on 
 the wrong side of forty-five, attached t6 the fortunes of a 
 cardinal at Rome, seeks to relieve his shattered estate by an 
 advantageous marriage, and retire into the country. Pietro and 
 Violante, an elderly couple in the Count's neighbourhood, have 
 a foster child, Pompilia, the offspring of a bawd, and surrepti- 
 tiously introduced to the world as their own, in order to save 
 a small life estate, which would otherwise lapse into the hands 
 of strangers. The youth of Pompilia, being only thirteen, her 
 beauty, the possession of an unencumbered property, was the 
 bait at which the Count snapped ; but the crafty pair who landed 
 him, were hoodwinked in return j for they found the Count had 
 nothing but his title, and that instead of a munificent provision 
 for themselves and Pompilia at his house at Arezzo, they got 
 nothing but starvation fare, meagre soup, contumelious treat- 
 ment, and stale candle ends. An explosion under these 
 circumstances naturally takes place. Pietro and Violante, 
 leaving their lamb to be kicked about at the will and pleasure 
 of her husband, fly back to Rome, where, in order to spite the 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 399 
 
 Count, they turn the presumed dowry of Pompilia into smoke, 
 by circulating the rumour that his wife was no child of 
 theirs, but the chance offspring of prostitution. The arrival of 
 this news at Arezzo only subjects Pompilia to worse treatment, 
 which at length becomes so intolerable that she also escapes 
 at night-fall, under the protection of a priest, Caponsacchi, and, 
 in company with her confidante, makes the best of her way to 
 Rome. The pair are overtaken at the last stage of the journey by 
 the husband, who surprises the wife asleep in an inn, with Capon- 
 sacchi in lay clothes standing guard outside, and gives the two 
 in charge to a commissary of police, which leads to the trial of 
 the accused before a tribunal in Rome. Pompilia is sent to a 
 convent of the Convertites, a few miles from the villa of Pietro 
 and Violante, and the Canon, Caponsacchi, to exile at Civita 
 Vecchia, some forty miles from the same spot. Pompilia, 
 however, being advanced in pregnancy, is allowed to return in 
 a few months to the house of her foster parents, where she is 
 delivered of a son. The Count, in his country house at Arezzo, 
 some hundred miles distant, not liking the posture of affairs, 
 and imagining a liaison still carried on between Pompilia and 
 Caponsacchi at the house of Pietro and Violante, stimulates four 
 of his workpeople to aid him in a murderous attack upon the 
 parties, which is made^in the dead hour of the night, on Christmas 
 eve. Pietro had hardly returned to his house from the usual mid- 
 night mass, when a tap was heard at the door, from the bravos 
 outside, who used Caponsacchi's name to effect an entrance. 
 They found inside three of the principal actors, the elderly 
 couple, Pietro and Violante, whom they slew on the spot, and 
 Pompilia, whom they thought they had despatched, but whom 
 they left with a six-clear-days' lease of life. Thus, by a special 
 disposition of providence, Pompilia was enabled by a death-bed 
 deposition to vindicate her own innocence and that of Capon- 
 sacchi, and insure the conviction of the assassins, who were 
 brought to trial immediately after the murder, and were, after 
 appeal to the Pope, condemned, — the Count to decapitation, 
 
400 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 and his accomplices to the gallows. Such is a succinct draught 
 of the story which Browning takes up nearly twenty thousand 
 lines to make palpable to the comprehension of his readers. The 
 " Excursion" is a lengthy poem, but it only takes up one-fourth 
 of the space, and the fate of four dozen distinct personages is 
 exhibited in it. Besides, the poet has given us his theories of 
 morals, of religion, and of nature, in connection with his charac- 
 ters, and, in fact, only puts these forward as the vehicle for the 
 representation of such theories. But Browning deals with no 
 theories of any kind, and strictly confines himself to the story, 
 the simple telling of which constitutes the pith and marrow of 
 four portly octavo volumes. This is leaving the prolixity of the 
 mere novel writer far behind. The great advantage which 
 poetry possesses over prose consists in condensation — in saying 
 a great deal in a very little compass. But Browning seems to 
 think that the peculiar merit of poetry is in saying a very little 
 in a very great compass. 
 
 How so simple a story could be spun out to such an enormous 
 extent might perplex ingenuous readers, who, perhaps, may not 
 be aware that a tale can be told three or four times over, each 
 recital being made from a different stand-point, and revealing 
 some new phase of the case imperfectly developed before- 
 First, we have the story extracted out of the Roman archives, and 
 the way in which the poet intends to deal with it, submitted to. 
 the consideration of the British public. Then we get the 
 vulgar gossip of Rome about it, split into two portions, according 
 as folks espouse one side or the other. But this is not sufficient 
 for Browning, who gives his readers a third version of the story, 
 according to 
 
 What the superior social section, 
 or the aristocracy of Rome, think about it : — 
 
 In person of some man of quality, 
 
 Who, breathing musk from lace-work and brocade, 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. \o\ 
 
 His solitaire amid the flow of frill, 
 Powdered peruke on nose, and bag at back, 
 And cane dependent from the ruffled wrist, — 
 Harangues in silvery and selectest phrase 
 'Neath wax-lights in a glorified saloon, 
 Where mirrors multiply the girandole : 
 Courting the approbation of no mob 
 But Eminence This and All Illustrious That, 
 Who take snuff softly, range in well-bred ring, 
 Card-table-quitters for observance sake, 
 Around the argument, the rational word — 
 Still, spite its weight and worth, a sample speech, 
 • How quality dissertated on the case.* 
 
 Next, we have the Count's defence of himself at the trial, 
 followed by that of Caponsacchi and Pompilia, — whose depo- 
 sitions are read — on the other side. After the principals come 
 their advocates, Dominus Hyacinthus d'Archangelis for the 
 Count, and pious Doctor Bottinius for the lady. For a poet 
 is not supposed to know, that the prisoner's mouth, when he has 
 an advocate, is hermetically sealed. But, in order to swell out 
 % the book, the Count is not only permitted to speak through 
 Hyacinthus, but to make a second elaborate speech in his own 
 defence. After the appeal to the Pope, Innocent XII., has col- 
 lapsed, — who also favours the reader at great length with his view 
 of this bloody piece of business — the whole is wound up with the 
 execution and the last dying words of the assassins, the sermon 
 preached upon the occasion by a certain notable friar, who took 
 for his text, " God is truth, and every man a liar," and the annota- 
 tions and reflections of Dominus Hyacinthus and Bottinius upon 
 their management of the prosecution and defence, and upon the 
 sequel of the entire business. The poet then sings his poean, 
 and retires with the air of a man who has established his repu- 
 tation. But as the poet has taken such liberties with the time 
 of his readers, it is to be feared that Time in the abstract will 
 take corresponding liberties with him. Performances which 
 
 * Vol. i., p. 49. 
 
 26 
 
402 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 take up so much visual space in bulk have little chance of occu- 
 pying permanent space in the eyes of posterity. It is very 
 desirable for a poet to absorb his facts in immensity, but when 
 he fills immensity with his facts that is quite another thing. 
 
 The prolixity of Browning in modelling the general features 
 of the story strangely contrasts with the compression of thought 
 he displays in particular parts of it. Indeed, in some of his 
 descriptions, the ideas are so melted down to realize the most 
 compact solidity of expression, that we are reminded of the 
 force our language exhibited when it sprang into life, Minerva- 
 like, armed and accoutred, from the brain of the Elizabethan 
 dramatists. Thus, in the fewest possible words, Guido and his 
 accomplices are conjured up before us as they entered upon 
 their work of assassination : — 
 
 It was eve, 
 The second of the year, and oh so cold ! 
 Ever and anon there flittered through the air 
 A snow-flake, and a scanty couch of snow 
 Crusted the grass-walk and the garden -mould. 
 All was grave, silent, sinister, — when, ah ? 
 Glimmeringly did a pack of were-wolves pad 
 The snow, those flames were Guido's eyes in front, 
 And all five found and footed it, the track, 
 To where a threshold-streak of warmth and light 
 Betrayed the villa door with life inside ; 
 While an inch outside were those blood-bright eyes 
 And black lips wrinkling o'er the flash of teeth, 
 And tongues that lolled — oh God, that madest man ! 
 They parleyed in their language. Then one whined — 
 That was the policy and master-stroke — 
 Deep in his throat whispered what seemed a name — 
 " Open to Caponsacchi," Guido cried, 
 " Gabriel ! " cried Lucifer at Eden's gate. 
 Wide as a heart, opened the door at once, 
 Showing the joyous couple and their child, 
 The two weeks' mother, to the wolves, the wolves 
 To them.* 
 
 * "The Ring and the Book," vol. i., p. 32. 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 403 
 
 And, again, according to the aristocratic way of looking at 
 it:— 
 
 The five proceed in a body, reach the place — 
 Pietro's by the Paolina, silent, lone, 
 And stupefied by the propitious snow, — 
 At one in the evening : knock : a voice, " Who's there ?" 
 " Friends with a letter from the priest your friend." 
 At the door straight smiles old Violante's self. 
 She falls ; her son-in-law stabs through and through. 
 Reaches thro' her at Pietro ; — ** With your son 
 " This is the way to settle suits, good sire." 
 ****** 
 
 He presently got his portion and lay still. 
 And last, Pompilia rushes here and there, 
 Like a dove among lightnings in her brake, 
 Falls also.* 
 
 The vulgar who espouse the part of the— Count give their 
 view even in more forcible language : — 
 
 " Giuseppe Caponsacchi," Guido cried, 
 And open flew the door : enough again. 
 Vengeance, you know, burst like a mountain- wave 
 That holds a monster in it, over the house, 
 And wiped its filthy four walls free again, 
 With a wash of hell-fire, — father, mother, wife, 
 Killed them all, bathed his name clean in their blood, t 
 
 Pompilia is made to state her own feelings on the occasion 
 with all the fervour of passion : — 
 
 It was the name of him I sprang to meet, 
 
 When came the knock, the summons, and the end. 
 
 " My great heart, my strong hand are back again," 
 
 I would have sprung to these, beckoning across 
 
 Murder and Hell, gigantic and distinct, 
 
 O, the threshold posted to exclude me heaven. $ 
 
 * "Tertiam Quid," vol. ii., p. 60. + "Half Rome,' vol. i., p. 149. 
 $ "Pompilia," vol. iii., p. 87. 
 
404 ESTIMATE OF MODERN EAGLISH POETS. 
 
 The feelings of Pompilia when dying and reviewing her 
 brief life, strike across all this harsh dissonance like a strain 
 of mournful music, drenching us with pathos : — 
 
 One cannot judge 
 Of what has been the ill or well of life 
 The day that one is dying, — sorrows change 
 Into not altogether sorrow-like ; 
 I do see strangeness but scarce misery 
 Now it is over, and no danger more. 
 My child is safe ; there seems not so much pain. 
 It comes, most like, that I am just absolved, 
 Purged of the past, the foul in me washed fair ; 
 One cannot both have and not have, you know, 
 Being right now, I am happy, and colour things. 
 Yes, everybody that leaves life sees all 
 Softened and bettered : so with other sights : 
 To me at least was never evening yet 
 But seemed far beautifuller than its day. 
 For past is past* 
 
 Pompilia' s last thoughts are very naturally directed to the 
 future of her infant son, whom she supposes, when grown up 
 to man's estate, to be curious as to his mother ; — 
 
 And if he asks " what was my mother like ? " 
 People may answer " like girls of seventeen." 
 And how can he but think of this and that, 
 Lucias, Marias, Sofias, who titter or blush 
 When he regards them as such boys may do ? 
 Therefore I wish some one will please to say, 
 I looked already old, though I was young ; 
 Do I not — say if you are by to speak — 
 Look nearer twenty ? No more like, at least, 
 Girls who look arch or redden when boys laugh 
 Than the poor virgin that I used to know 
 At our street-corner in a lonely niche, — 
 The babe that sat upon her knees, broke off, — 
 Thin white-glazed clay, you pitied her the more : 
 . She, not the gay ones, always got my rose.*r 
 
 * " Pompilia," vol. iii., p. 17. + Ibid, p. 4. 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 405 
 
 There is also something very sad in the touching simplicity 
 with which the circumstances are alluded to which determined 
 the choice of Pompilia's son's name. She herself had received 
 five names at her christening, Francesca, Camilla, Vittoria, 
 Angelica, Pompilia. But these had been of little use to her. 
 Her son will grow up without knowing who his father or 
 mother was, besides having 
 
 As good too as no family, no name, 
 
 Not even poor old Pietro's name, nor hers, 
 
 Poor kind unwise Violante, since it seems 
 
 They must not be my parents any more. 
 
 That is why something put it in my head 
 
 To call the boy " Gaetano," — no old name, 
 
 For sorrow's sake ; I looked up to the sky 
 
 And took a new saint to begin anew ; 
 
 One who has only been made saint — how long ? 
 
 Twenty-five years : so, carefuller, perhaps, 
 
 To guard a name-sake than those old saints grow, 
 
 Tired out by this time, — see my own five saints !* 
 
 Pompilia is drawn with a character of child-like simplicity, 
 which she preserves to the end, and which fully entitles her to 
 a distinct niche among feminine poetic creation : — 
 
 All the seventeen years, 
 Not once did a suspicion visit me, 
 How very different a lot is mine 
 From any other woman's in the world. 
 The reason must be, 'twas by step and step 
 It got to grow so terrible and strange : 
 Then strange woes stole on tiptoe, as it were, 
 Into my neighbourhood and privacy, 
 Sat down where I sat, laid them where I lay ; 
 And I was found familiarized with fear 
 When friends broke in, held up a torch and cried — 
 " Why, you, Pompilia, in the cavern thus ! 
 " How comes that arm of yours about a wolf? 
 11 And the soft length, — lies in and out your feet, 
 " And laps you round the knee, — a snake it is." + 
 
 * " Pompilia," vol. iii., p. 6. t Ibid. 
 
406 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 But all Pompilia's goodness must have sprung from nature, 
 or her five guardian saints must have taken particular 
 care that she should extract nothing but virtue out of the 
 poisonous ground in which she had taken root ; for her putative 
 mother, Violante, was one of the most crafty of her sex, and 
 her natural mother one of the drabs of Rome. The history of 
 a life is struck off in a few words, as introductory to the 
 bargain which consigns the infant to Violante. The real 
 mother was 
 
 One of those women that abound in Rome, 
 
 Whose needs oblige them eke out one pure trade 
 
 By another vile one : Her ostensible work 
 
 Was washing clothes, out in the open air, 
 
 At the cistern by Citorio ; but true trade — 
 
 Whispering to idlers, when they stopped and praised 
 
 The ancles she let liberally shine 
 
 In kneeling at the slab by the fountain side, 
 
 That there was plenty more to criticise 
 
 At home, that eve, i' the house where candle blinked 
 
 Decorously above, and all was done 
 
 I' the holy fear of God, and cheap beside. 
 
 Violante now, had seen this woman wash, 
 
 Noticed and envied her propitious shape, 
 
 Tracked her home to her house-top, noted too, 
 
 And now was come to tempt her, and propose 
 
 A bargain far more shameful than the first 
 
 Which trafficked her virginity away 
 
 For a melon and three pauls, at twelve years old. 
 
 Five minutes' talk with this poor child of Eve, 
 
 Struck was the bargain, business at an end — 
 
 " Then, six months hence, that person whom you trust, 
 
 " Comes, fetches whatsoever babe it be ; 
 
 " I keep the price and secret, you the babe, 
 
 " Paying beside for mass to make all straight."* 
 
 But Violante's stratagems did not stop with defrauding, by 
 means of this putative daughter, the heirs of the estate; she 
 must go further — 
 
 * " Giuseppe Caponsacchi, " vol. ii., p. 8. 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 407 
 
 She who had caught one fish, could make that catch 
 
 A bigger still, in angler's policy. 
 
 So with an angler's mercy for the bait 
 
 Her minnow was set wriggling on its barb 
 
 And tossed to the mid-stream ; that is, this grown girl 
 
 With the great eyes and bounty of black hair, 
 
 And first crisp youth that tempts a jaded taste, 
 
 Was whisked i' the way of a certain man, who snapped. * 
 
 This of course was 
 
 Count Guido Franceschini, the Aretine, 
 Descended of an ancient house, though poor, 
 A beak -nosed, bushy-bearded, black-haired lord, 
 Lean, pallid, low of stature, yet robust, t 
 
 The two parties, after the marriage, went to live in the 
 Count's house at Arezzo, and make each other happy. The 
 explosive indignation of the elderly couple on discovering the 
 wealth and style of the man they had thus entrapped was mere 
 smoke in the air, is not without a spice of humour, arising 
 rather out of the raciness of the description than the intention 
 of the author, who in his picture is strictly true to nature : — 
 
 The first week, 
 And fancy strikes fact and explodes in full. 
 " This," shrieked the Comparini, " this the Count, 
 ' ' The palace, the signorial privilege, 
 " The pomp and pageantry were promised us ? 
 " For this have we exchanged our liberty, 
 " Our competence, our darling of a child ? 
 "To house as spectres in a sepulchre 
 " Under this black stone heap, the street's disgrace, 
 " Grimmest as that is of the gruesome town, 
 " And here pick garbage on a pewter plate, 
 " Or cough at verjuice dripped from earthenware ? 
 " Oh, via Vittoria! oh the other place 
 "F the Pauline, did we give you up for this ? 
 " Where's the foregone housekeeping, good and gay, 
 
 * " Half Rome," vol. i., p. 89. t Vol. i., p. 41. 
 
408 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 "The neighbourliness, the companionship, 
 
 " The treat and feast when holydays came round, 
 
 " The daily feast that seemed no treat at all, 
 
 1 ' Called common by the uncommon fools we were ? 
 
 ' ' Even the sun that used to shine at Rome, 
 
 " Where is it ? Robbed, and starved, and frozen too. 
 
 " We will have justice, justice if there be !" 
 
 Did not they shout, did not the town resound ? 
 
 Guido's old lady-mother Beatrice, 
 
 Who since her husband, Count Tommaso's death, 
 
 Had held sole sway i' the house — the doited crone, 
 
 Slow to acknowledge, curtsey, and abdicate, — 
 
 Was recognised of true novercal type, 
 
 Dragon and devil. His brother Girolamo 
 
 Came next in order : priest was he ? The worse ! 
 
 No way of winning him to leave his mumps 
 
 And help the laugh against old ancestry 
 
 And formal habits long since out of date, 
 
 Letting his youth be patterned on the mode 
 
 Approved of where Violante laid down law. 
 
 Or did he brighten up by way of change ? 
 
 Dispose himself for affability ? 
 
 The malapert, too complaisant by half 
 
 To the alarmed young novice of a bride ! 
 
 Let him go buzz, betake himself elsewhere, 
 
 Nor singe his fly-wings in the candle-flame ! 
 
 Four months' probation of this purgatory, 
 
 Dog-snap and cat-claw, curse and counterblast, 
 
 The devil's self had been sick of his own din ; 
 
 And Pietro, after trumpeting huge wrongs 
 
 At church and market-place, pillar and post, 
 
 Square's corner, street's end, now the palace-step, 
 
 And now the wine-house bench — while, on her side, 
 
 Violante up and down was voluble 
 
 In whatsoever pair of ears would perk, 
 
 From goody, gossip, cater-cousin and sib, 
 
 Curious to peep at the inside of things, 
 
 And catch in the act pretentious poverty 
 
 At its wits' end to keep appearance up, 
 
 Make both ends meet ; — nothing the vulgar loves 
 
 Like what this couple pitched them right and left ; — 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 409 
 
 Then their worst done that way, they struck tent, marched ; — 
 
 Renounced their share o' the bargain, flung what dues 
 
 Guido was bound to pay in Guido's face, 
 
 Left their heart's-darling, treasure of the Twain, 
 
 And so forth, the poor inexperienced bride, 
 
 To her own devices, bade Arezzo rot, 
 
 And the life Signorial, and sought Rome once more.* 
 
 The Count, however, has his version of the bargain, and 
 thinks he was the dupe, not them j for they obtained his rank 
 and state, he nothing but the child of a common strumpet to 
 wife : — 
 
 If what I gave in barter, style and state, 
 
 And all that hangs to Franceschinihood 
 
 Were worthless, — why, society goes to ground, 
 
 Its rules are idiot's rambling. Honour of birth, — 
 
 If that thing has no value, cannot buy 
 
 Something with value of another sort, 
 
 You've no reward nor punishment to give 
 
 I' the giving or the taking honour. Straight 
 
 Your solid fabric, pinnacle to base, 
 
 Comes down a-clatter like a house of cards. + 
 
 The proper way of looking at the transaction was that both 
 hoodwinked the other, and got well served out for their pains. 
 The matrimonial market may find its general features imaged in 
 the following statement of a special case : — 
 
 Which bird o' the brace 
 Decoyed the other into clap-net ? Who 
 Was fool, who knave ? neither, and both, perchance. 
 There was a bargain mentally proposed 
 On each side, straight, and plain, and fair enough ; 
 Mind knew its own mind : but when mind must speak, 
 The bargain have expression in plain terms, 
 There was the blunder incident to words, 
 And in the clumsy process, fair turned foul. 
 
 * " Half Rome," vol. i., p. 99. 
 
 f "Count Guido Franceschini, " vol. ii., p. 91. 
 
410 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 The straight backbone-thought of the crooked speech, 
 
 Were just. " I, Guido, truck my name and rank 
 
 ' ' For so much money, and youth, and female charms ; " 
 
 " We, Pietro and Violante, give our child 
 
 11 And wealth to you for a rise i' the world thereby." 
 
 Such naked truth, while chambered in the brain, 
 
 Shocks no wise : walk it forth by way of tongue, — 
 
 Out on the cynical unseemliness ! 
 
 Hence was the need, on either side, of a lie 
 
 To serve as decent wrappage ; so Guido gives 
 
 Money for money, — and they, bride for groom, 
 
 Having, he, not a doit, they, not a child 
 
 Honestly theirs, but this poor waif and stray. 
 
 According to the words, each cheated each ; 
 
 But in the inexpressive barter of thoughts, 
 
 Each did give and did take the thing designed, 
 
 The rank on this side, and the cash on that, — 
 
 Attained the object of the traffic ; so 
 
 The way o' the world, the daily bargain struck 
 
 In the first market ! 
 
 ******* 
 
 Why, you know where the gist is of the Exchange : 
 
 Each sees a profit, throws the fine words in. 
 
 Don't be too hard o' the pair ! Had each pretence 
 
 Been simultaneously discovered, stripped 
 
 From off the body o' the transaction, just 
 
 * * * * balance had been kept. 
 
 No party blamed the other, so, starting fair, 
 
 All subsequent fence of wrong returned by wrong, 
 
 I' the matrimonial thrust and parry, at least, 
 
 Had followed on equal terms. But, as it chanced, 
 
 One party had the advantage, saw the cheat 
 
 Of the other first, and kept its own concealed : 
 
 And the luck o' the first discovery fell, beside, 
 
 To the least adroit and self-possessed o' the pair. 
 
 'Twas foolish Pietro and his wife saw first 
 
 The nobleman was penniless, and screamed, 
 
 " We are cheated ! "* 
 
 The account Pompilia gives of her marriage is terrible in its 
 * "Tertiam Quid," vol. ii., p. 23. 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 4" 
 
 simplicity, graphic in its individual details, and general in its 
 application : — 
 
 "I know that when Violante told me first 
 
 The cavalier, — she meant to bring next morn, 
 
 Whom I must also let take, kiss my hand, — 
 
 Would be at San Lorenzo the same eve, 
 
 And marry me, — which over, we should go 
 
 Home, both of us, without him, as before ; 
 
 And till she bade speak, I must hold my tongue, 
 
 Such being the correct way with girl-brides, 
 
 From whom one word would make a father blush ; — 
 
 I know, I say, that when she told me this, 
 
 — Well, I no more saw sense in what she said 
 
 Than a lamb does in people clipping wool ; 
 
 Only lay down and let myself be clipped. 
 
 And when next day the cavalier, who came, 
 
 * * * proved Guido Franceschini, — old, 
 
 And nothing like so tall as I myself, 
 
 Hook-nosed, and yellow in a bush of beard, 
 
 Much like a thing I saw on a boy's wrist, 
 
 He called an owl, and used for catching birds ; — 
 
 And when he took my hand and made a smile, — 
 
 Why, the uncomfortableness of it all 
 
 Seemed hardly more important in the case 
 
 Than, — when one gives you, say, a coin to spend, — 
 
 Its newness, or its oldness ; if the piece 
 
 Weigh properly, and buy you what you wish, 
 
 No matter whether you get grime or glare ! 
 
 Men take the coin, return you grapes and figs. 
 
 Here marriage was the coin, a dirty piece 
 
 Would purchase me the praise of those I loved : 
 
 About what else should I concern myself? "* 
 
 The portrait of Pompilia herself is also sketched with a minute 
 particularity, as if the artist-poet was executing a drawing from 
 life in mezzotinto : — 
 
 Her brow had not the right line, leaned too much, 
 Painters would say ; they like the straight-up Greek : 
 
 * " Pompilia," vol. iii., p. 19. 
 
412 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 This seemed bent somewhat with an invisible crown 
 Of martyr and saint, not such as art approves. 
 And how the dark orbs dwelt deep underneath, 
 Looked out of such a sad sweet heaven on me ; — 
 The lips compressed a little, came forward too, 
 Careful for a whole world of sin and pain.* 
 
 She is also represented as possessing a soul as perfect as her 
 body, in language which makes the portrait a heirloom of the 
 heart : — 
 
 A faultless nature in a flawless form. 
 
 * * * Oh turn aside, nor dare the blaze 
 
 Of such a crown, such constellations, say, 
 
 As jewels base thy front, humanity ! i 
 
 First, infancy pellucid as a pearl, 
 
 Then childhood — stone which dew-drop at the first 
 
 (An old conjecture) swells by dint of gaze, 
 
 Blue from the sky, and turns to sapphire so : 
 
 Yet both these gems eclipsed by last, and best, 
 
 Womanhood, and wifehood opaline, 
 
 With here and there a tint and hint of flame — 
 
 Desire — the lapidary loves to find. 
 
 The purity of Pompilia is well brought out by Caponsacchi , 
 who, as a priest in the habit of celebrating mass and communi- 
 cating daily, is thus made to associate the influence which she 
 exercised over him with his sacred functions : — 
 
 The glory, I say, 
 And the beauty, I say, and splendour still say I, 
 Who, a priest, trained to live my whole life long 
 On beauty and splendour, solely at their source, 
 God, — have thus recognized my food in one, 
 You tell me, is fast dying while we talk, 
 Pompilia. 
 
 ******** 
 The snow-white soul that angels fear to take 
 Untenderly.f 
 
 * "Giuseppe Caponsacchi," vol. ii., p. 246. 
 t Ibid, p. 166. 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 413 
 
 Up to the time of meeting with Pompilia all Caponsacchi's 
 thoughts were commonplace, but when he came under her 
 influence 
 
 Into another state, under new rule, 
 
 I knew myself was passing swift and sure, 
 
 Whereof the initiatory pang approached, 
 
 Felicitous annoy, as bitter-sweet 
 
 As when the virgin-band, the victors chaste, 
 
 Feel at the end the earthly garments drop, 
 
 And rise with something of a rosy shame , 
 
 Into immortal nakedness : so I 
 
 Lay, and let come the proper throe would thrill 
 
 Into the ecstasy and out-throb pain.* 
 
 And again, — 
 
 That night and next day did her gaze endure, 
 Burnt to my brain, as sunbeam thro' shut eyes, + 
 
 But, notwithstanding this love, Caponsacchi avers : — 
 
 I never touched her with my finger-tip, 
 Except to carry her to the couch, that eve, 
 Against my heart, beneath my head, bowed low, 
 As we priests carry the paten, t 
 
 But Pompilia, though weak and compassionate in suffering, 
 is vividly introduced to us as transformed into a tigress, when 
 overtaken by the Count on her last stage to Rome, whither 
 she was fleeing with Caponsacchi. On this occasion, the 
 commissary, with his officers, having secured the priest, in com- 
 pany with the Count, burst into the chamber where Pompilia 
 slept : — 
 
 She woke, saw, sprang upright 
 I' the midst, and stood as terrible as truth, 
 
 * "Giuseppe Caponsacchi," vol. ii., p. 202. 
 t Ibid, p. 1 80. t Ibid, p. 231. 
 
 The " paten " is the plate upon which the host is laid at mass. 
 
414 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 Sprang to her husband's side, caught at the sword 
 
 That hung there useless, since they held each hand 
 
 O' the lover, had disarmed him properly, 
 
 And in a moment out flew the bright thing 
 
 Full in the face of Guido, — but for help 
 
 O' the guards who held her back and pinioned her 
 
 With pains enough, she had finished you my tale 
 
 With a flourish of red all round it, pinked her man 
 
 Prettily ; but she fought them one to six. 
 
 They stopped that, — but her tongue continued free : 
 
 She spat forth such invective at her spouse, 
 
 O'er-frothed him with such foam of murderer, 
 
 Thief, pander, that the popular tide soon turned, — 
 
 The favour of the very Sbirri, straight 
 
 Ebbed from the husband, set towards his wife ; 
 
 People cried "hands off, pay a priest respect," 
 
 And "persecuting fiend ! " and "martyred saint ! " 
 
 Began to pass from lip to lip.* 
 
 The following is the very graphic account which Pompilia is 
 made to give of the same transaction : — 
 
 Then something like a white wave o' the sea 
 
 Broke o'er my brain and buried me in sleep . 
 
 Blessedly, till it ebbed and left me loose, 
 
 And where was I found but on a strange bed, 
 
 In a strange room like hell, roaring with noise, 
 
 Ruddy with flame, and filled with men, in front 
 
 Whom but the man you call my husband, ay — 
 
 Count Guido once more between heaven and me, 
 
 For there my heaven stood, my salvation, yes — 
 
 That Caponsacchi, all my heaven of help, 
 
 Helpless himself, held prisoner in the hands 
 
 Of men who looked up in my husband's face 
 
 To take the fate thence he should signify, 
 
 Just as the way was at Arezzo : then, 
 
 Not for my sake, but his who had helped me, — 
 
 I sprang up, reached him with one bound, and seized 
 
 The sword o' the felon, trembling at his side, 
 
 "Half Rome," vol. i., p. 128. 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 415 
 
 Fit creature of a coward, unsheathed the thing, 
 And would have pinned him through the poison-bag 
 To the wall, and left him there to palpitate, 
 As you serve scorpions, but men interposed — 
 Disarmed me, gave his life to him again 
 That he might take mine and the other lives, 
 And he has done so.* 
 
 Caponsacchi gives a very graphic description of the same 
 scene, which of its kind may fairly match with anything of the 
 kind in our literature : — 
 
 " Let myself lead the way — 
 " Ere you arrest me, who am somebody, 
 " And, as you hear, a priest and privileged, — 
 " To the lady's chamber. I presume you — men 
 "Expert, instructed how to find out truth, 
 ' ' Familiar with the guise of guilt. Detect 
 " Guilt on her face when it meets mine, then judge 
 " Between us and the mad dog howling there ! " 
 Up we all went together, in they broke 
 O' the chamber, late my chapel. There she lay, 
 Composed as when I laid her, that last eve 
 O' the couch, still, breathless, motionless, sleep's self, 
 Wax-white, seraphic, saturate with the sun 
 O' the morning that now flooded from the front, 
 And filled the window with a light like blood. 
 " Behold the prisoner, the adulteress." 
 " And feigning sleep too ! seize, bind ! " Guido hissed. 
 
 She started up, stood erect, face to face 
 
 With the husband : back he fell, was buttressed there 
 
 By the window all a-flame with morning red, 
 
 He the black figure, the opprobrious blur 
 
 Against all peace and joy, and light and life. 
 
 " Away from between me and hell ! " she cried, 
 
 " Hell forme, no embracing any more ! 
 
 "lam God's ; I love God, God — whose knees I clasp, 
 
 " Whose utterly most just award I take, 
 
 " But fear no more love-making devils : hence ! " 
 
 * "The other Half Rome," vol. i., p. 216. 
 
416 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 I may have made an effort to reach her side 
 
 From where I stood i' the doorway, — any how, 
 
 I found the arms, I wanted, pinioned fast, 
 
 Was powerless in the clutch to left and right 
 
 O' the rabble pouring in, rascality 
 
 Enlisted, rampant on the side of hearth 
 
 Home and the husband, — pay in prospect too ! 
 
 They heaped themselves upon me. — "Ah, and him 
 
 " Also you outrage ? Him, too, my sole friend, 
 
 " Guardian, and saviour? That I baulk you of, 
 
 " Since, — see how God can help at last and worst." 
 
 She sprung at the sword that hung beside him, seized, 
 
 Drew, brandished it, the sunrise burned for joy 
 
 O' the blade ; "Die," cried she, "devil in God's name ! " 
 
 Ah ! but they all closed round her twelve to one, 
 
 — The unmanly men, no woman-mother made, 
 
 Spawned somehow ! Death-white and disarmed she lay. 
 
 No matter for the sword, her word sufficed 
 
 To spike the coward through and through. He shook, 
 
 Could only spit between his teeth.* 
 
 Caponsacchi would have made short work of Guido, had the 
 husband not avoided his gripe, at a respectable distance : — 
 
 During this speech of that man, — well, I stood 
 Away, as he managed, — still, I stood as near 
 The throat of him, — with these two hands, my own, 
 As now I stand near yours, sir, — one quick spring, 
 One great, good, satisfying gripe, and lo ! 
 There had he lain abolished with his lie, 
 Creation purged o' the miscreate, man redeemed 
 A spittle wiped off from the face of God ! t 
 
 How Pompilia escaped from Arezzo is detailed with 
 characteristic minuteness : — 
 
 And on a certain April evening, late 
 
 F the month, this girl of sixteen, bride and wife 
 
 Three years and over, — she who hitherto 
 
 Had never taken twenty steps in Rome 
 
 Beyond the church, pinned to her mother's gown, 
 
 * " Giuseppe Caponsacchi," vol. ii., p. 226. f Ibid, p. 225. 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 417 
 
 Nor, in Arezzo, knew her way through street, 
 
 Except what led to the Archbishop's door, — 
 
 Such an one rose up in the dark, laid hand 
 
 On what came first, clothes and a trinket or two, 
 
 Belongings of her own in the old day, — 
 
 Stole from the side o' the sleeping spouse — who 'knows? 
 
 Sleeping perhaps, silent for certain, — slid 
 
 Ghost-like from great dark room to great dark room, 
 
 In through the tapestries and out again 
 
 And onward, unembarrassed as a fate, 
 
 Descended staircase, gained last door of all, 
 
 Sent it wide open at first push of palm, 
 
 And there stood, first time, last and only time, 
 
 At liberty, alone in the open street, — 
 
 Unquestioned, unmolested found herself 
 
 At the city gate, by Caponsacchi's side, 
 
 Hope there, joy there, life and all good again, 
 
 The carriage there, the convoy there, light there 
 
 Broadening into a full blaze at Rome, 
 
 And breaking small what long miles lay between ; 
 
 Up she sprang, in he followed, they were safe !* 
 
 The particulars of the flight are narrated by Caponsacchi, who 
 makes the reader acquainted with every feature of the journey. 
 Nothing could be more life-like or artistic than his account of 
 the undertaking, which was attended with peril, as Rome was 
 some two hundred miles distant from the Ogre's den at 
 Arezzo : — 
 
 At eve we heard the angelus : she turned — 
 
 " I told you I can neither read nor write. 
 
 1 * My life stopped with the play-time ; I will leam, 
 
 M If I begin to live again. But you — 
 
 " Who are a priest — wherefore do you not read 
 
 " The service at this hour ? Read Gabriel's song, 
 
 " The lesson, and then read the little prayer 
 
 " To Raphael, proper for us travellers." 
 
 I did not like that, neither, but I read. 
 
 When we stopped at Foligno it was dark. 
 
 * " The other Half Rome," vol. i., p. 212. 
 
 27 
 
+ 18 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 The people of the post came out with lights : 
 
 The driver said, — "This time to-morrow, may 
 
 " Saints only help, relays continue good, 
 
 " Nor robbers hinder, we arrive at Rome." 
 
 I urged, " Why tax your strength a second night ? 
 
 " Trust me ; alight here and take brief repose ! 
 
 " We are out of harm's reach, past pursuit : go, sleep, 
 
 " If but an hour ! I keep watch, guard the while 
 
 " Here in the door- way." But her whole face changed, 
 
 The misery grew again about her mouth, 
 
 The eyes burned up from faintness, like the fawn's 
 
 Tired to death in the thicket, when she feels 
 
 The probing spear o' the huntsman. " Oh, no stay," 
 
 She cried, in the fawn's cry, "on to Rome, on, — 
 
 " Unless 'tis you who fear — which cannot be." 
 
 We did go on all night ; but at its close 
 
 She was troubled, restless, moaned low, talked at whiles 
 
 To herself, her brow on quiver with the dream : 
 
 Once, wide awake, she menaced, at arms' length, — 
 
 Waved away something : — " Never again with you, 
 
 " My soul is mine, my body is my soul's ; 
 
 "You and I are divided evermore 
 
 " In soul and body : get you gone ! " Then I, — 
 
 " Why, in my whole life I have never prayed ! 
 
 " Oh, if the God, that only can, would help ! 
 
 " Am I His priest, with power to cast out fiends ? 
 
 " Let God arise, and all His enemies 
 
 " Be scattered.* 
 
 While Browning sticks to the facts of his story, his delinea- 
 tions are striking, life-like, and artistic. At the outset he 
 discards all mystery with regard to the sequel, and makes his 
 public as wise as himself. If the reader, therefore, is carried 
 through the first two volumes with a desire to learn more, the 
 interest solely arises from the poet's graphic manner of narra- 
 ting the leading incidents of the story. But when he gets to the 
 advocates' speeches in the third volume, or to anything like 
 general theorizing, the reader is drenched with commonplace 
 
 * " Giuseppe Caponsacchi," vol. ii., p. 216. 
 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 419 
 
 tirades in lop-sided metre, and closes the book through very 
 weariness of the flesh. Let him fancy, if he can, the effect 
 in the latter half of a story of two hundred of such doggerel 
 lines as the following : — 
 
 A gentlewoman lived in Smyrna once 
 
 Virum etfilium ex eo conceptum, who 
 
 Both husband and her son begot by him, 
 
 Killed, interfecerat, ex quo, because 
 
 Virfilium suum perdiderat, her spouse 
 
 Had been beforehand with her, killed her son, 
 
 Matrimonii primi, of a previous bed. 
 
 Deinde accusata, then accused, 
 
 Apud Dolabellam, before him that sat, 
 
 Proconsul, nee duabm cadibus 
 
 Contaminatam liber are, nor 
 
 To liberate a woman doubly-dyed 
 
 With murder, voluit, made he up his mind, 
 
 Nee condemnare, nor to doom to death, 
 
 Justo dolore impulsam, one impelled 
 
 By just grief, sed remisit, but sent her up 
 
 Ad Areopagum, to the Hill of Mars.* 
 
 The only excuse that can be assigned for this sort of thing is 
 that the poet, in accordance with his plan of treatment, was 
 bound to represent the case in every phase through which it 
 passed. But it may easily be denied that Roman advocates, 
 stupid though they be, could treat the case as if they were 
 reading for the Court the prose translation of an Eton Latin 
 grammar. Besides, the poet has nothing to do with any feature 
 of a story, except such as will both amuse and instruct his readers. 
 He is bound to handle his materials so as to insure both. But 
 in the greater portion of the latter half of the work, Browning 
 appears bent upon doing neither. Persons jealous of the honour 
 of English literature would, doubtless, urge him to discard 
 most of the two last volumes as an excrescence, which serves no 
 purpose except to disfigure what might otherwise be a fine per- 
 
 ' * '* Dominus Hyacinthus," vol. hi., p. 133. 
 
420 ESTIMA TE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS. 
 
 f ormance. It is the duty of the critic to appeal to him to do sOj 
 not only that so short-lived an insect as man may be benefited 
 by his labours, but for the credit of his own reputation. 
 \ The qualities in which Mr. Browning excels are not those 
 which belong to the highest rank of poetry. He is deficient in 
 ideality, in lyrical sweetness and sublimity, in portraying the 
 calmer passions, in the embodiment of quiet sensibility, and in 
 that innate perception of material loveliness, which lifts the soul 
 to the threshold of heaven, only to send it back to earth grasp- 
 ing the emptiness of despair. Of architectonic skill in con- 
 structing or unfolding a story, he knows nothing. If he moves 
 the passions, it is by the erratic representation of visual fact. 
 He knows the world thoroughly, and can reveal the secret 
 springs of character so far as they are emblazoned in outside 
 results, with the hand of a master. Give him also the general 
 features of a story, and he will supply the minor incidents so 
 skilfully that the whole will start into life again with the 
 appearance of reality. But Browning seldom gets beyond the 
 story itself. The phenomena of his subject, both material and 
 spiritual, are depicted very vividly, but these are rarely used as 
 the steps of ascent to a higher order of things. He seldom 
 attempts to generalize, because he has no philosophy, and as 
 little theoretic religion. Hence, he never lifts his readers from 
 the actual into the ideal, and if he resuscitates the past, it is only 
 with the feelings of the present. 
 
 Browning's great forte is in the representation of selfish 
 natures, in the embodiment of those lurking qualities, which, 
 while hidden from the eye of the ordinary observer, constitute 
 the main-spring of the man. But strange to say, this excel- 
 lence is not displayed in his dramas where there was a peculiar 
 field for its exercise, being completely overridden by his 
 singular habit of unfolding a story upon some preconceived 
 theory, only intelligible to himself. But in the " Ring and the 
 Book," and in his " Men and Women," it appears to conspi- 
 cuous advantage. Hence, though Browning cannot be said to 
 
REALISTIC SCHOOL. 42* 
 
 have enriched the life-blood of his age with any new thoughts,, 
 he has carved out for himself a particular department of his art, 
 in which he may be said not so much to have surpassed his 
 contemporaries as to have only thoroughly explored himself. 
 He has unravelled the skein of complex motives. He has 
 exhibited under a glass case the counteracting checks of feeling, 
 volition, and intellect at work in the actions of great characters. 
 He has displayed a wide sympathy with opposite poles of 
 religious thought. He has dominated language by ideas, and 
 realized the maximum amount of energy in the least compass of 
 expression. It is owing to the strength derived from these 
 various sources, that his descriptions, realistic though they 
 be, and his characters, individual as they are, fully entitle Mr. 
 Browning to a respectable place among the third-class poets of 
 our literature. 
 
 " Of TM€ r \ 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Watson & Hazell. Printers, London and Aylesbury. 
 
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