Chapter VIII: Part 8

"But when the council broke, I rose and past
Through the wild woods that hang about the town;
Found a still place, and pluck'd her likeness out:
Laid it on flowers, and watch'd it lying bathed
In the green gleam of dewy-tassell'd trees:
What were those fancies? wherefore break her troth?
Proud look'd the lips: but while I meditated
A wind arose and rush'd upon the South,
And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks
Of the wild woods together; and a Voice
Went with it 'Follow, follow, thou shalt win!'"

Almost in juxtaposition with these beauties, we find one of the disagreeable blots, so offensive to good taste, which disfigure the poem. The travellers are interrogating the host of an inn close to the liberties where the princess holds her petticoated sway:--

"And at the last--
The summer of the vine in all his veins--
'No doubt that we might make it worth his while.
For him, he reverenced his liege-lady there;
He always made a point to post with mares;
His daughter and his housemaid were the boys.
The land, he understood, for miles about
Was till'd by women; all the swine were sows,
And all the dogs'"--

This is too bad, even for medley; but proceed we into the interior of the grand and luxurious feminine institution, where their sex is speedily discovered, but for certain reasons concealed by the discoverers. Lectures on the past and what might be done to accomplish female equality, and description of the boundaries, the dwelling place, and the dwellers therein, fill many a page of mingled excellence and defects. Here is a sample of both in half a dozen lines:--

"We saw
The Lady Blanche's daughter where she stood,
Melissa, with her hand upon the lock,
A rosy blonde, and in a college gown
_That clad her like an April daffodilly_
(Her mother's colour) with her lips apart,
And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes,
_As bottom agates seem to wave and float
In crystal currents of clear morning seas_."

Curious contradictions in mere terms, also occasionally occur. Thus, of a frightened girl, we are told that--

"_Light_
As flies the _shadow_ of a bird she fled."

Events move on. The prince reasons as a man in a colloquy with the princess, and speaks of the delights of maternal affections, and she replies--

"We are not talk'd to thus:
Yet will we say for children, would they grew
Like field-flowers everywhere! we like them well:
But children die; and let me tell you, girl,
Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die:
They with the sun and moon renew their light
Forever, blessing those that look on them:
Children--that men may pluck them from our hearts,
Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves--
O--children--there is nothing upon earth
More miserable than she that has a son
And sees him err:"

A song on "The days that are no more," seems to us to be too laboured, nor is the other lyric introduced, "The Swallow," much more to our satisfaction. It is a mixture of prettinesses: the first four triplets run thus, ending in a poetic beauty--

"O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South,
Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves,
And tell her, tell her what I tell to thee.

"O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each,
That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,
And _dark_ and true and tender is the North.

"O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light
Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill,
And _cheep and twitter twenty million loves_.

"O were I thou that she might take me in,
And lay me on her bosom, _and her heart
Would rock the snowy cradle till I died_."

The prince saves the princess from being drowned, when the secret explodes like a roll of gun cotton, and a grand turmoil ensues. The rival kings approach to confines in battle array, and the princess resumes the declaration of war:--

"A tide of fierce
Invective seem'd 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 illumin'd hall
Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press
Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes,
And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes,
And gold and golden heads; they to and fro
Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, same pale,
All open-mouth'd, 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."

She denounces the perils outside and in--

"I dare
All these male thunderbolts: what is it ye fear?
Peace! there are those to avenge us and they come:
If not,--myself were like enough, O girls,
To unfurl the maiden banner of our rights,
And clad in iron burst the ranks of war,
Or, falling, protomartyr of our cause,
Die: yet I blame ye not so much for fear;
Six thousand years of fear have made ye that
From which I would redeem ye: but for those
That stir this hubbub--you and you--I know
Your faces there in the crowd--to-morrow morn
We meet to elect new tutors; then shall they
That love their voices more than duty, learn
With whom they deal, dismiss'd in shame to live
No wiser than their mothers, household stuff,
Live chattels, mincers of each other's fame,
Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown,
The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks of Time,
Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels,
But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum,
To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour
For ever slaves at home and fools abroad."

Ay, just as Shakspere hath it--

"To suckle fools and chronicle small beer."

The hero also meets the shock, at least in poetic grace:--

"Upon my spirits
Settled a gentle cloud of melancholy,
Which I shook off, for I was young, and one
To whom the shadow of all mischance but came
As night to him that sitting on a hill
Sees the midsummer, midnight, Norway sun,
Set into sunrise."

It is agreed to decide the contest by a combat of fifty on each side--the one led by the prince, and the other by Arac, the brother of the princess. And clad in "harness"--

"Issued in the sun that now
Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth,
And hit the northern hills."

To the fight--

"Then rode we with the old king across the lawns
Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings of Spring
In every bole, a song on every spray
Of birds that piped their Valentines."

The prince and his companions are defeated; and he, wounded almost to the death, is consigned at her own request to be nursed by the princess:--

"So was their sanctuary violated,
So their fair college turn'd to hospital;
At first with all confusion; by and by
Sweet order lived again with other laws;
A kindlier influence reign'd; and everywhere
Low voices with the ministering hand
Hung round the sick."

The result may be foreseen--

"From all a closer interest flourish'd up.
Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these,
Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears
By some cold morning glacier; frail at first
And feeble, all unconscious of itself,
But such as gather'd colour day by day."

And the agreement is filled up:--

"Dear, but let us type them now
In our lives, and this proud watchword rest
Of equal; seeing 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-cell'd heart beating with one full stroke
Life"

"O we will walk this world,
Yoked in all exercise of noble end,
And so through those dark gates across the wild
That no man knows. Indeed I love thee; come,
Yield thyself up; my hopes and thine are one;
Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself
Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me."

Who will question the true poetry of this production, or who will deny the imperfections, (mostly of affectation, though some of tastelessness) which obscure it? Who will wonder at our confessed wavering when they have read this course of alternate power, occasionally extravagant, and feebleness as in the long account of the _emeute_? Of the extravagant, the description of the princess, on receiving the declaration of war, is an example:--

"She read, till over brow
And cheek and bosom brake the wrathful bloom
As of some fire against a stormy cloud,
When the wild peasant rights himself, and the rick
Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens."

The heroine, it must be acknowledged, is much of the virago throughout, and the prince rather of the softest; but the tale could not be otherwise told. We add four examples--two to be admired, and two to be contemned, in the fulfilment of our critique.

"For was, and is, and will be, are but is,"

is a noble line; and the following, on the promised restoration of a child to its mother, is very touching--

"Again she veiled her brows, and prone she sank, and so
Like tender things that being caught feign death,
Spoke not, nor stirr'd."

Not so the burlesque eight daughters of the plough, the brawny ministers of the princess' executive, and their usage of a herald. They were--

"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 clang'd about with mews."

And they--

"Came sallying through the gates, and caught his hair,
And so belabour'd him on rib and cheek
They made him wild."

Nor the following--

"When the man wants weight the woman takes it up,
And topples down the scales; but this is fixt
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. Look to it; the gray mare
Is ill to live with, when her whinny shrills
From tile to scullery, and her small goodman
Shrinks in his arm-chair while the fires of Hell
Mix with his hearth; but take and break her, you!
She's yet a colt. Well groom'd and strongly curb'd
She might not rank with those detestable
That to the hireling leave their babe, and brawl
Their rights or wrongs like potherbs in the street.
They say she's comely; there's the fairer chance:
_I_ like her none the less for rating at her!
Besides, the woman wed is not as we,
But suffers change of frame. A lusty brace
Of twins may weed her of her folly. Boy,
The bearing and the training of a child
Is woman's wisdom."

--_The Literary Gazette_.

ROBERT BROWNING

_Paracelsus_. By Robert Browning.

There is talent in this dramatic poem, (in which is attempted a picture of the mind of this celebrated character,) but it is dreamy and obscure. Writers would do well to remember, (by way of example,) that though it is not difficult to imitate the mysticism and vagueness of Shelley, we love him and have taken him to our hearts as a poet, not _because_ of these characteristics--but _in spite_ of them.--_The Athenaeum_.

_Sordello_. By Robert Browning. London: Moxon. 1840.

The scene of this poem is laid in Italy, when the Ghibelline and Guelph factions were in hottest contest. The author's style is rather peculiar, there being affectations of language and invertions of thought, and other causes of obscurity in the course of the story which detract from the pleasure of perusing it. But after all, we are much mistaken if Mr. Browning does not prove himself a poet of a right stamp,--original, vigorous, and finely inspired. He appears to us to possess a true sense of the dignity and sacredness of the poet's kingdom; and his imagination wings its way with a boldness, freedom and scope, as if he felt himself at home in that sphere, and was resolved to put his allegiance to the test.--_The Monthly Review_.

_Men and Women_. By Robert Browning. Two Volumes. Chapman and Hall.

It is really high time that this sort of thing should, if possible, be stopped. Here is another book of madness and mysticism--another melancholy specimen of power wantonly wasted, and talent deliberately perverted--another act of self-prostration before that demon of bad taste who now seems to hold in absolute possession the fashionable masters of our ideal literature. It is a strong case for the correctional justice of criticism, which has too long abdicated its proper functions. The Della Crusca of Sentimentalism perished under the _Baviad_--is there to be no future Gifford for the Della Crusca of Transcendentalism? The thing has really grown to a lamentable head amongst us. The contagion has affected not only our sciolists and our versifiers, but those whom, in the absence of a mightier race, we must be content to accept as the poets of our age. Here is Robert Browning, for instance--no one can doubt that he is capable of better things--no one, while deploring the obscurities that deface the _Paracelsus_ and the _Dramatic Lyrics_, can deny the less questionable qualities which characterized those remarkable poems--but can any of his devotees be found to uphold his present elaborate experiment on the patience of the public? Take any of his worshippers you please--let him be "well up" in the transcendental poets of the day--take him fresh from Alexander Smith, or Alfred Tennyson's _Maud_, or the _Mystic_ of Bailey--and we will engage to find him at least ten passages in the first ten pages of _Men and Women_, some of which, even after profound study, he will not be able to construe at all, and not one of which he will be able to read off at sight. Let us take one or two selections at random from the first volume, and try. What, for instance, is the meaning of these four stanzas from the poem entitled "By the Fireside"?--

My perfect wife, my Leonor,
Oh, heart my own, oh, eyes, mine too,
Whom else could I dare look backward for,
With whom beside should I dare pursue
The path grey heads abhor?

For it leads to a crag's sheer edge with them;
Youth, flowery all the way, there stops--
Not they; age threatens and they contemn,
Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops,
One inch from our life's safe hem!

With me, youth led--I will speak now,
No longer watch you as you sit
Reading by fire-light, that great brow
And the spirit-small hand propping it
Mutely--my heart knows how--

When, if I think but deep enough,
You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme;
And you, too, find without a rebuff
The response your soul seeks many a time
Piercing its fine flesh-stuff--

We really should think highly of the powers of any interpreter who could "pierce" the obscurity of such "stuff" as this. One extract more and we have done. A gold medal in the department of Hermeneutical Science to the ingenious individual, who, after any length of study, can succeed in unriddling this tremendous passage from "Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha," the organist:--

First you deliver your phrase
--Nothing propound, that I see,
Fit in itself for much blame or much praise--
Answered no less, where no answer needs be:
Off start the Two on their ways!

Straight must a Third interpose,
Volunteer needlessly help--
In strikes a Fourth, a Fifth thrusts in his nose,
So the cry's open, the kennel's a-yelp,
Argument's hot to the close!

One disertates, he is candid--
Two must dicept,--has distinguished!
Three helps the couple, if ever yet man did:
Four protests, Five makes a dart at the thing wished--
Back to One, goes the case bandied!

One says his say with a difference--
More of expounding, explaining!
All now is wrangle, abuse, and vociferance--
Now there's a truce, all's subdued, self-restraining--
Five, though, stands out all the stiffer hence.

One is incisive, corrosive--
Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant--
Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive--
Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant--
Five ... O Danaides, O Sieve!

Now, they ply axes and crowbars--
Now they prick pins at a tissue
Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar's
Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue?
Where is our gain at the Two-bars?

_Est fuga, volvitur rota!_
On we drift. Where looms the dim port?
One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota--
Something is gained, if one caught but the import--
Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha!

What [with] affirming, denying,
Holding, risposting, subjoining,
All's like ... it's like ... for an instance I'm trying ...
There! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining
Under those spider-webs lying?

So your fugue broadens and thickens,
Greatens and deepens and lengthens,
Till one exclaims--"But where's music, the dickens?
Blot ye the gold, while your spider-web strengthens,
Blacked to the stoutest of tickens?"

Do our readers exclaim, "But where's poetry--the dickens--in all this rigmarole?" We confess we can find none--we can find nothing but a set purpose to be obscure, and an idiot captivity to the jingle of Hudibrastic rhyme. This idle weakness really appears to be at the bottom of half the daring nonsense in this most daringly nonsensical book. Hudibras Butler told us long ago that "rhyme the rudder is of verses;" and when, as in his case, or in that of Ingoldsby Barham, or Whims-and-Oddities Hood, the rudder guides the good ship into tracks of fun and fancy she might otherwise have missed, we are grateful to the double-endings, not on their own account, but for what they have led us to. But Mr. Browning is the mere thrall of his own rudder, and is constantly being steered by it into whirlpools of the most raging absurdity. This morbid passion for double rhymes, which is observable more or less throughout the book, reaches its climax in a long copy of verses on the "Old Pictures of Florence," which, with every disposition to be tolerant of the frailties of genius, we cannot hesitate to pronounce a masterpiece of absurdity. Let the lovers of the Hudibrastic admire these _tours de force_:--

Not that I expect the great Bigordi
Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, bellicose;
Nor wronged Lippino--and not a word I
Say of a scrap of Fra Angelico's.
But you are too fine, Taddeo Gaddi,
So grant me a taste of your intonaco--
Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye?
No churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco?

* * * * * * *

Margheritone of Arezzo,
With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret,
(Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so,
You bald, saturnine, poll-clawed parrot?)
No poor glimmering Crucifixion,
Where in the foreground kneels the donor?
If such remain, as is my conviction,
The hoarding does you but little honour.

The conclusion of this poem rises to a climax:--

How shall we prologuise, how shall we perorate,
Say fit things upon art and history--
Set truth at blood-heat and the false at zero rate,
Make of the want of the age no mystery!
Contrast the fructuous and sterile eras,
Show, monarchy its uncouth cub licks
Out of the bear's shape to the chimaera's--
Pure Art's birth being still the republic's!

Then one shall propose (in a speech, curt Tuscan,
Sober, expurgate, spare of an "_issimo_,")
Ending our half-told tale of Cambuscan,
Turning the Bell-tower's altaltissimo.
And fine as the beak of a young beccaccia
The Campanile, the Duomo's fit ally,
Soars up in gold its full fifty braccia,
Completing Florence, as Florence, Italy.

How really deplorable is all this! On what theory of art can it possibly be defended? In all the fine arts alike--poetry, painting, sculpture, music--the master works have this in common, that they please in the highest degree the most cultivated, and to the widest extent the less cultivated. _Lear_ and the _Divine Comedy_ exhaust the thinking of the profoundest student, yet subdue to hushed and breathless attention the illiterate minds that know not what study means. The "Last Judgment," the "Transfiguration," the "Niobe," and the "Dying Gladiator" excite alike the intelligent rapture of artists, and the unintelligent admiration of those to whom art and its principles are a sealed book. Handel's _Israel in Egypt_--the wonder of the scientific musician in his closet--yet sways to and fro, like a mighty wind upon the waters, the hearts of assembled thousands at an Exeter Hall oratorio. To take an instance more striking still, Beethoven, the sublime, the rugged, the austere, is also, as even Mons. Jullien could tell us, fast becoming a popular favourite. Now why is this? Simply because these master minds, under the divine teaching of genius, have known how to clothe their works in a beauty of form incorporate with their very essence--a beauty of form which has an elective affinity with the highest instincts of universal humanity. And it is on this beauty of form, this exquisite perfection of style, that the Baileys and the Brownings would have us believe that they set small account, that they purposely and scornfully trample. We do not believe it. We believe that it is only because they are half-gifted that they are but half-intelligible. Their mysticism is weakness--weakness writhing itself into contortions that it may ape the muscles of strength. Artistic genius, in its higher degrees, necessarily involves the power of beautiful self-expression. It is but a weak and watery sun that allows the fogs to hang heavy between the objects on which it shines and the eyes it would enlighten; the true day-star chases the mists at once, and shows us the world at a glance.

Our main object has been to protest against what we feel to be the false teachings of a perverted school of art; and we have used this book of Mr. Browning's chiefly as a means of showing the extravagant lengths of absurdity to which the tenets of that school can lead a man of admitted powers. We should regret, however in the pursuit of this object to inflict injustice on Mr. Browning. This last book of his, like most of its predecessors, contains some undeniable beauties--subtle thoughts, graceful fancies, and occasionally a strain of music, which only makes the chaos of surrounding discords jar more harshly on the ear. The dramatic scenes "In a Balcony" are finely conceived and vigorously written; "Bishop Blougram's Apology," and "Cleon," are well worth reading and thinking over; and there is a certain grace and beauty in several of the minor poems. That which, on the whole, has pleased us most--really, perhaps, because we could read it off-hand--is "The Statue and the Bust," of which we give the opening stanzas:--

[Quotes fourteen stanzas of _The Statue and the Bust_.]

Why should a man, who, with so little apparent labour, can write naturally and well, take so much apparent labour to write affectedly and ill? There can be but one of two solutions. Either he goes wrong from want of knowledge, in which case it is clear that he wants the highest intuitions of genius; or he sins against knowledge, in which case he must have been misled by the false promptings of a morbid vanity, eager for that applause of fools which always waits on quackery, and which is never refused to extravagance when tricked out in the guise of originality. It is difficult, from the internal evidence supplied by his works, to know which of these two theories to adopt. Frequently the conclusion is almost irresistible, that Mr. Browning's mysticism must be of _malice prepense_: on the whole, however, we are inclined to clear his honesty at the expense of his powers, and to conclude that he is obscure, not so much because he has the vanity to be thought original, as because he lacks sufficient genius to make himself clear.--_The Saturday Review_.

NOTES

THOMAS GRAY

When Gray's _Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard_ appeared in 1751, the _Monthly Rev._, IV, p. 309, gave it the following curious notice:--"The excellence of this little piece amply compensates for its want of quantity." The immediate success and popularity of the _Elegy_ established Gray's poetical reputation; hence his _Odes_ (1757) were received and criticized as the work of a poet of whom something entirely different was expected. The thin quarto volume containing _The Progress of Poesy_ and _The Bard_ (entitled merely Ode I and Ode II in that edition) was printed for Dodsley by Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill, and was published on August 8, 1757. Within a fortnight Gray wrote to Thomas Warton that the poems were not at all popular, the great objection being their obscurity; a week later he wrote to Hurd:--"Even my friends tell me they [the Odes] do not succeed ... in short, I have heard nobody but a player [Garrick] and a doctor of divinity [Warburton] that profess their esteem for them." For further comment, see Gray's _Works_, ed. Gosse, II, pp. 321-328.

Our review, which is reprinted from _Monthly Rev._, XVII (239-243) (September, 1757), was written by Oliver Goldsmith, and is included in most of the collected editions of his works. Although it was practically wrung from Goldsmith while he was the unwilling thrall of Griffiths, it is a noteworthy piece of criticism for its time--certainly far superior to the general standard of the _Monthly Review_. While recognizing the scholarly merit of the poet's work, Goldsmith showed clearly why the Odes could not become popular. A more favorable notice of the volume appeared in the _Critical Rev._, IV, p. 167.

In reprinting this review, the long quotations from both odes have been omitted. This precedent is followed in all cases where the quotations are of inordinate length, or are offered merely as "specimens" without specific criticism. No useful end would be served in reprinting numerous pages of classic extracts that are readily accessible to every student. All omissions are, of course, properly indicated.

1. _Quinault_. Philippe Quinault (1635-1688), a popular French dramatist and librettist.

2. _Mark'd for her own_. An allusion to the line in the Epitaph appended to the _Elegy_: "And Melancholy marked him for her own."

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

Goldsmith's _Traveller_ (1764) was begun as early as 1755--before he had expressed what Professor Dowden calls his "qualified enthusiasm" and "official admiration" for Gray's _Odes_. In criticizing Gray, he quoted Isocrates' advice--_Study the people_--and properly bore that precept in mind while he was shaping his own verses. The _Odes_ and the _Traveller_ are respectively characteristic utterances of their authors--of the academic recluse, and of the warm-hearted lover of humanity.

The review, quoted from the _Critical Rev._, XVIII (458-462) (December, 1764), is from the pen of Dr. Samuel Johnson. Apart from its distinguished authorship and the strong words of commendation in the final sentence, it possesses slight interest as literary criticism. It is, in fact, little more than a brief summary of the poem, enriched by a few well-chosen illustrative extracts. The fact that Johnson contributed nine or ten lines to the poem (see Boswell, ed. Hill, I, p. 441, n. 1, and II, p. 6) may account partly for the character of the review. Johnson's quotations from the poem are not continuous and show several variations from authoritative texts.

WILLIAM COWPER

Cowper stands almost alone among English poets as an instance of late manifestation of poetic power. He was over fifty years of age when he offered his first volume of _Poems_ (1782) to the public. This collection, which included _Table-Talk_ and other didactic poems, appeared at the beginning of the most prosaic age in the history of modern English literature; yet the critics did not find it sufficiently striking in quality to differentiate it from the level of contemporary verse, or to forecast the success of _The Task_ and _John Gilpin's Ride_ three years later.

The notice in the _Critical Rev._, LIII (287-290), appeared in April, 1782. While the same poems are but slightly esteemed to-day, it must be recognized that the attitude of the reviewer was severe for his time. The age had grown accustomed to large draughts of moralizing and didacticism in verse, and the quality of Cowper's contribution was assuredly above the average. The _Monthly Rev._, LXVII, p. 262, gave the _Poems_ a much more favorable reception.

10. _Non Dii, non homines, etc._ Properly, _non homines, non di_, Horace, _Ars Poetica_, l. 373.

10. _Caraccioli_. _Jouissance de soi-meme_ (ed. 1762), cap. xii.

11. _There needs no ghost, etc._ See _Hamlet_, I, 5. 110.

ROBERT BURNS

The Kilmarnock edition (1786) of Burns' _Poems_ was published during the most eventful period of the poet's life; the almost universally kind reception accorded to this volume was the one source of consolation amid many sorrows and distractions. Two reviews have been selected to illustrate both the Scottish and English attitude toward the newly discovered "ploughman-poet." The _Edinburgh Magazine_, IV (284-288), in October, 1786, gave Burns a welcome that was hearty and sincere; though we may smile to-day at the information that he has neither the "doric simplicity" of Ramsay, nor the "brilliant imagination" of Ferguson. Besides the poems mentioned in brackets, the magazine published further extracts from Burns in subsequent numbers. The _Critical Review_, LXIII (387-388), gave the volume a belated notice in May, 1787, exceeding even the Scotch magazine in its generous appreciation. With the generally accepted fact in mind that all of Burns' enduring work is in the Scottish dialect, and that his English poems are comparatively inferior, it is interesting to note the _Critical Review's_ regret that the dialect must "obscure the native beauties" and be often unintelligible to English readers. The same sentiment was expressed by the _Monthly Review_, LXXV, p. 439, in the critique reprinted (without its curious anglified version of _The Cotter's Saturday Night_) in Stevenson's _Early Reviews_.

There is perhaps no other English poet whose fame was so suddenly and securely established as Burns'. At no time since the appearance of the Kilmarnock volume has the worth of his lyrical achievement been seriously questioned. The _Reliques_ of Burns, edited by Dr. Cromek in 1808, were reviewed by Walter Scott in the first number of the _Quarterly Review_, and by Jeffrey in the corresponding number of the _Edinburgh_. Both articles are valuable to the student of Burns, but their great length made their inclusion in the present volume impracticable.

14. _Rusticus abnormis sapiens, etc._ Horace, Sat. II, l. 3.

15. _A great lady ... and celebrated professor_. Evidently Mrs. Dunlop and Professor Dugald Stewart, who both took great interest in Burns after the appearance of the Kilmarnock volume.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

The thin quartos containing _An Evening Walk_ and _Descriptive Sketches_ were published by Wordsworth in 1793. The former was practically a school-composition in verse, written between 1787-89 and dedicated to his sister; the latter was composed in France during 1791-92 and was revised shortly before publication. The dedication was addressed to the Rev. Robert Jones, fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, who was Wordsworth's companion during the pedestrian tour in the Alps. Though _An Evening Walk_ was published first, the _Monthly Review_, XII, n.s. (216-218), in October, 1793, noticed both in the same issue and naturally gave precedence to the longer poem. Specific allusions in the text necessitate the same order in the present reprint.

The impatience of the reviewer at the prospect of "more descriptive poetry" was due to the fact that many such productions had recently been noticed by the _Monthly_, and that the volumes then under consideration evidently belonged to the broad stream of mediocre verse that had been flowing soberly along almost since the days of Thomson. These first attempts smacked so decidedly of the older manner that we cannot censure the critic for failing to foresee that Wordsworth was destined to glorify the "poetry of nature," and to rescue it from the rut of listless and soporific topographical description. Both poems, in the definitive text, are readable, and exhibit here and there a glimmer of the poet's future greatness; yet it must be borne in mind that Wordsworth was continually tinkering at his verse, to the subsequent despair of conscientious variorum editors, and that most of the absurdities and infelicities in his first editions disappeared under the correcting influence of his sarcastic critics and his own maturing taste.

A collation of the accepted text with the _Monthly Review's_ quotations will repay the student; thus, the twelve opening lines quoted by the reviewer are represented by eight lines in Professor Knight's edition, and only four of these correspond to the original text. The reviewer confined his remarks to the first thirty lines of the poem and very properly neglected the rest. He followed, with moderate success, the method of quotation with interpolated sarcasm and badinage--a method that was afterwards effectively pursued by the early Edinburgh Reviewers and the Blackwood coterie. There are few examples of that style in the eighteenth century reviews, but some noteworthy specimens of a later period--_e.g._, the _Edinburgh Review_ on Coleridge's _Christabel_ and the _Quarterly_ on Tennyson's _Poems_--are reprinted in this volume.

The review of _An Evening Walk_ is simply an appended paragraph to the previous article. Wordsworth evidently appreciated the advice conveyed in the reviewer's final sentence and found many of the lines that "called loudly for amendment." More favorable notices of both poems will be found in _Critical Review_, VIII, pp. 347 and 472.

_Lyrical Ballads_

The _Lyrical Ballads_ by Wordsworth and Coleridge were published anonymously early in September, 1798--a few days before the joint authors sailed for Germany. Coleridge's contributions were _The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_, _The Foster-Mother's Tale_, _The Nightingale_, and _The Dungeon_; the remaining nineteen poems were by Wordsworth. As the publication of this volume has been accepted by most critics as the first fruit of the new romantic spirit and the virtual beginning of modern English poetry, the reception accorded to the _Lyrical Ballads_ becomes a matter of prime importance. It is well known that the effort was a failure at first and that the apparent triumph of romanticism did not occur until the publication of Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ (1805); but a contemporary blindness to the beauty of two of the finest poems in English literature cannot be permitted to figure in the critics' dispassionate investigation of causes and influences.

There were four interesting reviews of the first edition of the _Lyrical Ballads_, namely, (1) _Critical Rev._, XXIV, n.s. (197-204), in October, 1798, which is reprinted here; (2) _Analytical Rev._, XXVIII (583-587), in December, 1798; (3) _Monthly Rev._, XXIX, n.s. (202-210), in May, 1799, reprinted in Stevenson's _Early Reviews_; (4) _British Critic_, XIV (364-369) in October, 1799.

The article in the _Critical Review_ was written by Robert Southey under conditions most favorable for such a malicious procedure. The publisher, his friend Cottle, had transferred the copyright of the _Lyrical Ballads_ to Arch, a London publisher, within two weeks of the appearance of the volume, giving as a shallow excuse the "heavy sale" of the book. Both Wordsworth and Coleridge were in Germany. Southey had quarreled with Coleridge, and was probably jealous of the latter's extravagant praise of Wordsworth. He accordingly seized the opportunity to assail the work without injuring Cottle's interests or entailing the immediate displeasure of the travelling bards.

He covered his tracks to some extent by referring several times to "the author," although the joint authorship was well known to him. While severe in most of his strictures on Wordsworth, Southey reserved his special malice for _The Ancient Mariner_. He called it "a Dutch attempt at German sublimity"; and in a letter written to William Taylor on September 5, 1798--probably while he was writing his discreditable critique--he characterized the poem as "the clumsiest attempt at German sublimity I ever saw." Southey's responsibility for the article became known to Cottle, who communicated the fact to the poets on their return a year later. Wordsworth declared that "if Southey could not conscientiously have spoken differently of the volume, he ought to have declined the task of reviewing it." Coleridge indited an epigram, _To a Critic_, and let the matter drop. Shortly afterwards he showed his renewed good-will by aiding Southey in preparing the second _Annual Anthology_ (1800).

The subsequent reviews of the _Lyrical Ballads_ adopted the tone of the _Critical_ (then recognized as the leading review) and internal evidence shows that they did not hesitate to borrow ideas from Southey's article. The _Analytical Review_ also saw German extravagances in _The Ancient Mariner_; the _Monthly_ borrowed Southey's figure of the Italian and Flemish painters, and called _The Ancient Mariner_ "the strangest story of a cock and bull that we ever saw on paper ... a rhapsody of unintelligible wildness and incoherence." The belated review in the _British Critic_ was probably written by Coleridge's friend, Rev. Francis Wrangham, and was somewhat more appreciative than the rest. For further details, consult Mr. Thomas Hutchinson's reprint (1898) of the _Lyrical Ballads_, pp. (xiii-xxviii). Despite the unfavorable reviews, the Ballads reached a fourth edition in 1805 (besides an American edition in 1802), thus achieving the popularity alluded to by Jeffrey at the beginning of our next review.

_Poems_ (1807)

Wordsworth's fourth publication, the _Poems_ (1807), included most of the pieces written after the first appearance of the _Lyrical Ballads_. It was likewise his first venture subsequent to the founding of the _Edinburgh Review_. Jeffrey had assailed the theories of the "Lake Poets" (and, incidentally, coined that unfortunate term) in the first number of the _Review_, in an article on Southey's _Thalaba_, and three years later (1805), in criticizing _Madoc_, he again expressed his views on the subject. Now came the first opportunity to deal with the recognized leader of the "Lakers"--the poet whose work most clearly illustrated the poetic theories that Jeffrey deemed pernicious.

The article here reprinted from the _Edinburgh Rev._, XI (214-231), of October, 1807, and Jeffrey's review of _The Excursion_, in _ibid._, XXIV (1-30), are perhaps the two most important critiques of their kind. No student of Wordsworth's theory of poetry, as set forth in his various prefaces, can afford to ignore either of these interesting discussions of the subject. (For details, see A.J. George's edition of the _Prefaces_ of Wordsworth, Gates' _Selections_ from Jeffrey, Beers' _Nineteenth Century Romanticism_, Hutchinson's edition of _Lyrical Ballads_, etc.) It was undoubtedly true that Jeffrey, although an able critic, failed to grasp the real significance of the new poetic movement, and to appreciate the influence wrought by the doctrines of the Lake Poets on modern conceptions of poetry. Yet he was far from wrong in many of his criticisms of Wordsworth. While deprecating the latter's theories, it is clear that Jeffrey regarded him as a poet of great power who was being led astray by his perverse practice. The popular conception of Jeffrey as a hectoring and blatant opponent of Wordsworth is not substantiated by the review. The impartial reader must agree with Jeffrey at many points, and if he will take the trouble to collate Jeffrey's quotations with the revised text of Wordsworth, he will learn that the poet did not disdain to take an occasional suggestion for the improvement of his verse.

We recognize Wordsworth to-day as the most unequal of English poets. There is little that is common to the inspired bard of _Tintern Abbey_, the _Immortality Ode_ and the nobler _Sonnets_, and the unsophisticated scribe of _Peter Bell_ and _The Idiot Boy_. Like Browning, he wrote too much to write well at all times, and if both poets were capable of the sublimest flights, they likewise descended to unimagined depths; but the fault of Wordsworth was perhaps the greater, because his bathos was the result of a deliberate and persistent attempt to enrich English poetry with prosaically versified incidents drawn at length from homely rural life.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

The first part of Coleridge's _Christabel_ was written in 1797 during the brief period of inspiration that also gave us _The Ancient Mariner_ and _Kubla Khan_--in short, that small group of exquisite poems which in themselves suffice to place Coleridge in the front rank of English poets. The second part was written in 1800, after the author's return from Germany. The fragment circulated widely in manuscript among literary men, bewitched Scott and Byron into imitating its fascinating rhythms, and, at Byron's suggestion, was finally published by Murray in 1816 with _Kubla Khan_ and _The Pains of Sleep_. It is probable that the high esteem in which these poems were held by Coleridge's literary friends led him to expect a favorable reception at the hands of the critics; hence his keen disappointment at the general tone of their sarcastic analysis and their protests against the absurdity and obscurity of the poems. The principal critiques on _Christabel_ were:--(1) _Edinburgh Rev._, XXVII (58-67), which is here reprinted; (2) _Monthly Rev._, LXXXII, n.s. (22-25), reprinted in Stevenson's _Early Reviews_; (3) _The Literary Panorama_, IV, n.s. (561-565); and (4) _Anti-Jacobin Rev._, L (632-636).

It is evident that Coleridge was eminently successful in the gentle art of making enemies. We have seen that Southey's attack on the _Lyrical Ballads_ was a direct result of his ill-will toward Coleridge; the outrageous article in the _Edinburgh Review_ was written by William Hazlitt under similar inspiration, and was followed by abusive papers in _The Examiner_ (1816, p. 743, and 1817, p. 236). There was no justification for Hazlitt, and none has been attempted by his biographers. Judged by its intrinsic merits, the Edinburgh article is one of the most absurd reviews ever written by a critic of recognized ability. Hazlitt followed the method of outlining the story by quotation with interspersed sarcasm and ironical criticism. As a coarse boor might crumple a delicate and beautifully wrought fabric to prove that it has not the wearing qualities of a blacksmith's apron, Hazlitt seized upon the ethereal story of _Christabel_, with its wealth of mediaeval and romantic imagery, and held up to ridicule the incidents that did not conform to modern English conceptions of life. It requires no great art to produce such a critique; the same method was applied to _Christabel_ with hardly less success by the anonymous hack of the _Anti-Jacobin_. Whatever may have been Hazlitt's motives, we cannot understand how a critic of his unquestioned ability could quote with ridicule some of the very finest lines of _Kubla Khan_, and expect his readers to concur with his opinion. The lack of taste was more apparent because he quoted, with qualified praise, six lines of no extraordinary merit from _Christabel_ and insisted, that with this one exception, there was not a couplet in the whole poem that achieved the standard of a newspaper poetry-corner or the effusions scratched by peripatetic bards on inn-windows. An interesting discussion between Mr. Thomas Hutchinson and Col. Prideaux concerning Hazlitt's responsibility for this and other critiques on Coleridge in the _Edinburgh Review_ will be found in _Notes and Queries_ (Ninth Series), X, pp. 388, 429; XI, 170, 269.

The other reviews of _Christabel_ were all unfavorable. Most extravagant was the utterance of the _Monthly Magazine_, XLVI, p. 407, in 1818, when it declared that the "poem of Christabel is only fit for the inmates of Bedlam. We are not acquainted in the history of literature with so great an insult offered to the public understanding as the publication of that r[h]apsody of delirium."

Hazlitt's primitive remarks on the metre of _Christabel_ are of little interest. Coleridge was, of course, wrong in stating that his metre was founded on a new principle. The irregularly four-stressed line occurs in Spenser's _Shepherd's Calender_ and can be traced back through the halting tetrameters of Skelton. Coleridge himself alludes to this fact in his note to his poem _The Raven_, and elsewhere.

Coleridge's earlier poetical publications were received with commonplace critiques usually mildly favorable. For reviews of his _Poems_ (1796) see _Monthly Rev._, XX, n.s., p. 194; _Analytical Rev._, XXIII, p. 610; _British Critic_, VII, p. 549; and _Critical Rev._, XVII, n.s., p. 209; the second edition of _Poems_ (1797) is noticed in _Critical Rev._, XXIII, n.s., p. 266; for _Lyrical Ballads_, see under Wordsworth; for the successful play _Remorse_ (1813), see _Monthly Rev._, LXXI, n.s., p. 82, and _Quarterly Rev._, XI, p. 177.

ROBERT SOUTHEY

_Madoc_, a ponderous quarto of over five hundred pages and issued at two guineas, was published by Southey in 1805 as the second of that long-forgotten series of interminable epics including _Thalaba_, _The Curse of Kehama_, and _Roderick, Last of the Goths_. These huge unformed productions were not poems, but metrical tales, written in a kind of verse that could have flowed indefinitely from the author's pen. In short, Southey was not a poet, and the whole bulk of his efforts in verse, with but one or two exceptions, seems destined to oblivion. As poet-laureate for thirty years and the associate of Wordsworth and Coleridge in the "Lake School," Southey will, however, remain a figure of some importance in the history of English poetry.

The review of _Madoc_ reprinted from the _Monthly Rev._, XLVIII (113-122) for October, 1805, was written in the old style then fast giving way to the sprightlier methods of the _Edinburgh_. Here we find a style abounding in literary allusions and classical quotations, and evincing a generally patronizing attitude toward the author under discussion. Most readers will agree with the sentiments expressed by the reviewer, who succeeded in making his article interesting without descending to the depths of buffoonery. No apology is necessary for the excision of the reviewer's unreasonably long extracts from the poem. _Madoc_ was also reviewed at great length in the _Edinburgh Review_ by Francis Jeffrey.

61. _Ille ego, qui quondam, etc._ The lines usually prefixed to the _AEneid_.

61. _Prorumpere in medias res_. Cf. Horace, _Ars Poetica_, l. 148.

61. _Macklin's Tragedy_. _Henry VII_ (1746), his only tragedy, and a failure.

61. _Toto carere possum_. Cf. Martial, _Epig._ XI, 56.

61. _Camoens_. The author of the Portuguese _Lusiad_ (1572) which narrates the adventures of Vasco da Gama.

62. _Milton_. Quoted from Sonnet XI.--_On the Detraction which followed upon my writing certain Treatises_.

63. _Snatching a grace, etc._ Pope's _Essay on Criticism_, l. 153.

CHARLES LAMB

Most of Lamb's earlier poetical productions appeared in conjunction with the work of other poets. Four of his sonnets were printed with Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_ (1796), and he was more fully represented in _Poems by S.T. Coleridge. Second Edition_. _To which are now added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd_ (1797). In the following year appeared _Blank Verse_, by Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb. For new and interesting material concerning the three poets, see E.V. Lucas' _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_ (1899). Lloyd (1775-1839) wrote melancholy verses and a sentimental, epistolary novel _Edmund Oliver_, but nothing of permanent value. However, in 1798, he was almost as well known as Coleridge, and was hailed in some quarters as a promising poet.

The _Monthly Rev._, XXVII, n.s. (104-105), in September, 1798, published the critique of _Blank Verse_ which is here reprinted. Its principal interest lies in the scant attention shown to Lamb, although the volume contained his best poem--the tender _Old Familiar Faces_. Dr. Johnson's characterization of blank-verse as "poetry to the eye" will be found at the end of his _Life of Milton_ as a quotation from "an ingenious critic."

Lamb's drama, _John Woodvil_ (1802), written in imitation of later Elizabethan models, was a failure. It was unfavorably noticed in the _Monthly Rev._, XL, n.s., p. 442 and at greater length in the _Edinburgh Rev._, II, p. 90 ff.

Many years later (1830) Lamb prepared his collection of _Album-Verses_ at the request of his friend Edward Moxon, who had achieved some fame as a poet and was enabled (by the generous aid of Samuel Rogers) to begin his more lucrative career as a publisher. Three years after the appearance of _Album-Verses_, he married Lamb's adopted daughter, Emma Isola. The _Album-Verses_, like most of their kind, were a collection of small value; the _Literary Gazette_, 1830 (441-442), consequently lost no time in assailing them. The _Athenaeum_, 1830, p. 435, at that time the bitter rival of the _Gazette_, published a more favorable review, and a few weeks later (p. 491) printed Southey's verses, _To Charles Lamb, on the Reviewal of his Album-Verses in the Literary Gazette_, together with a sharp commentary on the methods of the _Gazette_. Several times during that year the _Athenaeum_ assailed the system of private puffery which was followed by the _Gazette_ and eventually caused its downfall. There is a reply to the _Athenaeum_ in the _Literary Gazette_, 1833, p. 772.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

Landor was twenty-three when he published _Gebir_ anonymously in 1798--the year of the _Lyrical Ballads_--and he lived until 1864. The nine decades of his life covered an important period of literature. He was nine years old when the great Johnson died, yet he lived to see the best poetic achievements of Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold. However, he did not live to see _Gebir_ a popular poem. Southey gave it a favorable welcome in the _Critical Review_, and became a life-long admirer of Landor; but our brief notices reprinted from the _Monthly Rev._, XXXI, n.s., p. 206, and _British Critic_, XV, p. 190 of February, 1800, represent more nearly the popular verdict. Both reviewers complain of the obscurity of the poem, which, it will be remembered, had been originally written in Latin, then translated and abridged. Notwithstanding the fact that Landor declared himself amply repaid by the praise of a few appreciative readers, he prepared a violent and scornful reply to the _Monthly Review_, and would have published it but for the sensible dissuasion of a friend. Some interesting extracts from the letter are printed in Forster's _Life of Landor_, pp. (76-85). He protested especially against the imputed plagiarisms from Milton and gave ample evidence of the pugnacious spirit that brought him into difficulties several times during his life. See also the _Imaginary Conversation_ between Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor, wherein the reception of _Gebir_ is discussed and Southey's poetry is praised at the expense of Wordsworth's. Landor's first publication, the _Poems_ (1795) was noticed in the _Monthly Rev._, XXI, n.s., p. 253.

SIR WALTER SCOTT

The successful series of metrical tales which Scott inaugurated with the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ (1805) had for its second member the more elaborate _Marmion_ (1808). From the first, Scott's poems and romances were favorably received by the reviews and usually noticed at great length. There was always a story to outline and choice passages to quote. As suggested in the Preface, these paeans of praise are of comparatively little interest to the student, and need hardly be cited here in detail.

The critique of _Marmion_, written by Jeffrey for the _Edinburgh Rev._, XII (1-35), had the place of honor in the number for April, 1808. It was chosen for the present reprints partly as a fitting example of Jeffrey's fearlessness in expressing his opinions, and partly for its historic interest as the article that contributed to Scott's rupture with the Edinburghers and to his successful founding of a Tory rival in the _Quarterly Review_. Although the article has here been abridged to about half of its original length by the omission of six hundred quoted lines and a synopsis of the poem, it is still the longest of these reprints. Jeffrey evidently felt that a detailed account of the story was necessary in order to justify his strictures on the plot.

An author of those days could afford to ignore the decisions of the critical monthlies, but the brilliant criticism and incisive diction of the _Edinburgh Review_ carried weight and exerted far-reaching influence. Jeffrey's article was practically the only dissonant note in the chorus of praise that greeted _Marmion_, and Scott probably resented the critic's attitude. Lockhart, in his admirable chapter on the publication of _Marmion_, admits that "Jeffrey acquitted himself on this occasion in a manner highly creditable to his courageous sense of duty." The April number of the _Edinburgh_ appeared shortly before a particular day on which Jeffrey had engaged to dine with Scott. Fearing that under the circumstances he might be an unwelcome guest, he sent the following tactful note with the copy which was forwarded to the poet:--

"Dear Scott,--If I did not give you credit for more magnanimity than any other of your irritable tribe, I should scarcely venture to put this into your hands. As it is, I do it with no little solicitude, and earnestly hope that it will make no difference in the friendship which has hitherto subsisted between us. I have spoken of your poem exactly as I think, and though I cannot reasonably suppose that you will be pleased with everything I have said, it would mortify me very severely to believe I had given you pain. If you have any amity left for me, you will not delay very long to tell me so. In the meantime, I am very sincerely yours, F. Jeffrey."