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MOST disquisitions on
poetry begin with an attempted definition of what poetry is, or a
rejection of all definitions that have been previously attempted; in
either case the result is generally unsatisfactory. A thousand
hints have been given, each of which shadow forth a portion of truth;
and no one definition can ever compass, and, as it were, crystallise an
explanation into some sparkling epigram, any more than the meaning and
mystery involved in the word Life could be thus briefly unriddled.
Approximately, we can arrive at some understanding of the subject by
watching the forces of poetry in operation. The poet is, or should
be, more of a seer and translator of what God has already created, than
a creator in the workshop of his own mind. The Mediævals called
the poet a "finder," rather than a creator. He is a seeker and a
finder of the truth and beauty that lie in realities around him, rather
than a producer of beauty out of the deeps of his own personality;—which
beauty, as many imagine, he confers on outer Objects. And this has
been the mental attitude of the greatest poets. They have sought
for those things which are hidden from the mass of men by some dimness
of sight, or film of familiarity; and, finding these, they become the
translators to men of all this truth and loveliness, which is written in
the hand-writing of the Creator everywhere throughout His creation,
whether flaming on the walls of space, smiling in flowers from the green
earth, or inscribed on the red leaves of the human heart. Hence it
has been said, that the poet gives us apparent pictures of unapparent
natures.
There are two worlds in which human existence moves:
the world of thought, and the world of feeling. The world of
feeling is more or less common to all. The highest and the lowest
can meet on this ground, and enter into this bond of human relationship.
But it is different in the world of thought. Many cannot pass from
the world of feeling into that of thought at will, and but few are
fitted to translate their feeling into thought—which is the spiritual
apparition of feeling—and thus reproduce any past experience in such
shape as shall give pleasure to the beholder in the contemplation
thereof. This is the work of the poet. He translates from
the world of feeling into that of thought, and thus enables us to
realise in thought what we may have once experienced in feeling.
And often, when these reproductions are made by the greatest poets in
their happiest moments, they seem quite familiar to us, because we have
possessed them before in feeling, only we were unable to translate them
into thought. When the poet has given us this new rendering of
some old experience, it strikes us with the force of a greater reality
than did that experience itself, when we were living it. Hence, we
believe, has arisen one of the errors respecting the functions of the
Imagination. We do not think that the poet adds to the reality, or
transcends it in his translation of it, so much as that we ourselves are
unaware of all that is contained in the reality, while we are passing
through it in feeling. For this reason, while we are in a state of
suffering, or enjoyment, we do not speculate upon it in thought; we live
it in feeling. Indeed, the more perfect in feeling, the more
unconscious are we in thought. But when, by the poet's aid, we
come to re-live this feeling in thought, every faculty we turn upon it
is now alive with consciousness; and this secondary phase of joy or
sorrow often appears more real than the first, because we obtain a
conscious interpretation of much that we before experienced
unconsciously.
The Poetry of Chaucer and Shakespeare.
For the time
being, then, we shall look upon the poet as a translator of realities
which do already exist, and only a creator so far as he shapes an
artistic body through which the life is operative; because, by looking
upon him in this light we shall be able to see all the more clearly how
poetry is coloured by the age in which it is produced, and takes its
tints from the various influences that surround it, quickening its life,
fostering its strength, or stunting its growth. For not only is
the poet a translator of the inner life of man, with its wonder world of
thoughts and feelings—its unspeakable love and sorrow, its hopes and
aspirations, temptations and lonely wrestlings, darings and doubts, grim
passions and gentle affections, its smiles and tears—which, in their
changeful lights or gloomy grandeur, play out the great drama of the
human heart, but he also translates into his poetry and reflects for us
the very spirit of his time. The poetry of every age and epoch
comes to us with the likeness of that age or epoch stamped upon it, in
features ranging from the heroic type of the noble Elizabethan time, to
the sensual cast given by the Merry Monarch and his Circean Restoration.
See how Chaucer gives us the inner life that men lived in his acre, and
clothes it with external history! With what crystal clearness his
poetry, in its simple heart-home directness and passionate sincerity,
homely strength and contentedness with a few pleasures—its gaiety and
gravity, both as of childhood—its overflows of animal spirits—its
naïve way of getting at the truth, lying, as it does, nearer to
nature—possessing perfect innocency of eye, and unperplexed in its frank
expression,—with what crystal clearness, we say, his poetry images the
freshness and sweetness of the morning time, and the lustihood of young
life that was then filling England, and breaking into a new dawn of
thought! In Chaucer's poetry we see the young unconscious strength
of a people that would yet have a grand awakenment, and become conscious
of its power and prowess in action, and that receptive condition of
faith which was to embody the fresh spirit of freedom found in the purer
truth of the Reformers, together with the conquering courage that would
bear witness for it in the furnace-flames, and carry it in triumph over
the world. In a time like that of Chaucer, when the life is
simpler, and evolves itself in its happy, unconscious way—when there is
not so much knowledge of life as boundless capacity for living, and life
itself is a going forth in the very spirit that conquers, and in which
all greatest things have been done,—then, the influences of the
age which affect the poet, and colour his poetry, will be of good help
to him; they will strengthen him with their strength, and make his verse
vital with their silent surge of new vigour and affluent life.
It is the same in the Elizabethan age.
Shakespeare walked every day among heroes and mighty men, and saw around
him such magnificence of individual and national life—such constellated
wit, lofty thought, and majesty, as have seldom been in this world in
one country, and at the same time. He saw the very men who wrought
the great deeds, bore the burthen of great events, and worked the grand
deliverance for his own beloved land, when it was encompassed with
perils, and made her tower again triumphantly over her enemies; and,
high as she towered in her added strength and stature to look over the
surrounding seas, she beheld no rival left upon them! The men that
lived, and the life that was lived by a nation, and ran from its heart
through arms and hands in tides of triumph,—these were translated by
Shakespeare and his play-fellows into those wonderful dramas, which,
from that little Globe Theatre, have gone forth and filled the great
globe theatre of the world. And here, again, we shall find the
influences of the age in which the Elizabethan poets lived and wrote,
with its tug of war, and wrestle of stern passions; its quickening
spirit of enterprise called forth by the dazzling dawn of that New World
which rose upon it, and bade Old England become supreme master over the
seas that lay between them, offering itself as the prize of victory;—all
these influences were mighty in helping to carry the poet out of
himself, and all conscious cankering thoughts about self,—which is the
greatest thing to be done. For the poet is a medium; and the most
perfect condition for conveying the truest image of things, is that in
which self is lost in a larger life, and all the spiritual pores are
open portals for this larger life of the aggregate humanity. The
greatest poet must feel most as others feel—draw most upon the common
human heritage. The Elizabethan time, with its buoyant life and
outlet of action, was a happy and fruitful time for poetry, and reacted
on the poet in fresh forces of life that influenced him in many
invisible ways.
Milton, again, has most assuredly gathered up the
greathearted efforts and solemn strength, the wasted bravery and the
fiery fervour, of the Puritans, and treasured them for their earthly
immortality in his Paradise Lost. How like is that work to the
endeavours of the purged and purified heart, that has had its earthly
tabernacles overthrown, and all its human efforts baffled, trying to
build for itself a dwelling-place in the heavens, a house not made with
hands, far above the shocks and storms of change, in which the soul can
rest serenely, although the head lie down upon a prison pillow, or the
tyrant's bloody block!
The play-wrights of the Restoration, too, translate
certain influences of their time into their poetry; with what result we
all know. Let us hope, however, for the honour of humanity, that
no true poet can be the puppet and plaything of such outward
circumstances; and that poetry indignantly scorned her wooers in verse,
and took refuge with the great divines, who were also great poets, only
they had not the musical faculty dominant, or else they despised the
tricks of verse, because of the antic apes they saw around them.
Still, there can be no doubt but that, in the absence of virtuous public
life for poets to translate into their poetry, there will be found
poetasters, who will translate courtly vices, and make a fashion of
royal depravity; just as the courtiers of James the First went about,
and stood in his presence as knock-kneed as they could, because their
monarch was also knock-kneed, and thus art followed nature.
We cannot tell how far the life of courts or of
nations influence the poet himself; but it is noticeable that, in the
following century—the Augustan age, which is one of the meanest and
least natural in English history—the poetry of the time not only sharply
defines its mean features, but it would also seem to show that the poet
himself strove to reflect its manners and externals, its sharp
selfishness, spite, and scandal, its envy and jealousies, barren
artificiality, and utter want of generous heart and noble life.
Naturalism of Burns—Cowper and Wordsworth.
In briefly
noticing how the poet translates historical influences into poetry, we
have now arrived at the great rebellion in poetry when Robert Burns
strode in among the crowd of the selfenthroned, who sat trying to
conjure up the spirit of beauty, by repeating the words of the grand
magicians who had passed away, and carried the secret of their
enchantment with them, and passed right through them, scattering their
fluttering artificialities and sparkling shallownesses on his way back
to unsophisticated Nature. With one or two wistful looks at Pope
and Shenstone, he turned to the old ballads, with their sinewy strength,
smiting tenderness, lilting music, and flashes of feeling. And
Cowper, in England, went back all he could to the primal simplicities of
Nature, for he had an out-of-doors heart; and when shut indoors from the
garden, and fettered there so often by sickness, he would still feel his
way back to the woods and fields, and the common human heart, which he
touched with so natural a knack that it would be thought a rare feat of
genius, had he not done it so easily.
Then came William Wordsworth, who said, Let us go
back to Chaucer, sit down beside him and his darling daisy, and learn of
him what wealth of meaning there is in the things that lie about our
feet; what strength and savour there is in simple speech; and how the
poet may rise, Antæus-like, invincible in strength, so long as he keeps
his footing on the common earth. It will do poetry good, said
Wordsworth, to take it back, so that it may breathe in new life from the
native air of its childhood. Here, then, was a special appeal made to
external nature, as a means of getting fresh food for the inner life of
man. And a comparatively new influence emanates from this appeal, which
mingles largely with all subsequent poetry. Wordsworth becomes the
great translator of this influence into his poetry; and after the first
flush of the red-rising dawn of the French Revolution, which dazzled his
young eyes also, has deepened into blood, he seeks to bring himself and
his readers more and more under this influence, and to get further and
further away from the sound of the strife, and the smoke of the
conflict; because, instead of the Goddess Liberty coming with healing to
the nations, he sees a wild Virago dancing round a guillotine, to the
sound of the Carmagnole, in wet, red shoes; and he shrinks away, and
seeks to dwell apart with a nature that is more beneficent and
beautiful, in her grandeur of storm, or blessing of calm. And so,
in comparative solitude, he falls back upon those elements which are the
very ground-roots of poetry, and attains, in a confused and bewildering
time, to that repose in which the bright particles of knowledge are
slowly precipitated, and shaped into the larger growth and oneness of
accumulated wisdom, instead of their being kept in constant whirl by
many disturbing causes, and never becoming anything more than the bright
particles of scattered knowledge.
The French Revolution had an incalculable influence
in bringing forth the great band of poets that came into being, as it
were, through the rents made by the outburst of that Revolution, and
produced such a quickening motion of mind, as issued in a very, budding
and flowering time of poetry. But much of this influence had an
effect on the ordinary current of human life, which runs through the
poet's mind as well as through the mind of others, similar to that of
the tributary torrents that rush down in thunder, and the swollen
strength of storm, to the river, which they quicken in speed, and
increase in size, but also make it muddy in colour, and heap it with
driftage. In Shelley , for example, we see the disturbing
influence at work most manifestly. He tries to translate the
French Revolution into verse, and is so perplexed with the problem, that
he nearly loses his wits. The power that he grappled with lifts
him off his feet, and bears him away like a weak child, striking blindly
with vain blows. The shock unsettles him for the rest of his life.
Byron rises up from the smoke and ashes of that Revolution, not
altogether unlike Milton's image of Satan, rising up from the fiery bed
of the lower lake, towering with passion, distended with pride, and
threatening high Heaven with future vengeance. He brings into
poetry the wail of the wounded, the doubts of the sceptical, the
defiance of the daring; he rises into blasphemy with the boldest, and
sinks into bestiality with the most sensual. Byron does not translate
these revolutionary influences, as Shelley did, from earliest sympathy
of his soul with others' suffering, and real yearning of spirit for the
reign of right, so much as from a desire to be seen fiddling while Rome
is in flames, and from his love of astonishing people, and of
frightening them now and then, which he knows is so easily done in such
startling times. Keats laid himself down among the sweet wild
English flowers, under the murmuring leafy trees, stopped his ears to
the din of battles, shut his eyes on the struggles of politics and the
shows of statecraft, and dreamed his dream of the old Greek Beauty.
Tennyson, in his greatest song, sets himself to wrestle with the doubts,
bear the burden of the fears, and ring out clear in music the troubled
hopes which were bequeathed to us by that time of mighty deeds, and
mighty men, and mighty blunders; and this he does by a firm reliance on
those few intuitions of feeling which were given us at the beginning.
Tennyson's is the last song that rises up calmly, and rings out clearly
with its melodious beauty, in spite of the pressure of our complex time,
and the stress of its adverse influences. After him comes that deluge
let loose upon us by what has been called the "Spasmodic School."
Subjective Tendencies of Modern Poets.
We fancy there
is more meaning and applicability in the name of "Spasmodic," given to
so much of the poetry which has been produced of late years, than the
first givers of that name saw in it. It is frequently the special
characteristic of a nickname, that it shall be too vague and intangible
to be seized upon and proved to be false; and so it lives, just because
it cannot be caught and put to death. Here, however, the name
might be demonstrated as true to the nature. For what constitutes
spasm, but weakness trying to be strong, and collapsing in the effort?
And what result could be looked for more naturally, than that a good
deal of current poetry should be spasmodic, if we carry on into the
present time our consideration of the external causes that influence
poetry? When the giants of genius shall free themselves from
the Etna that now hides them, they may come and make it possible to
transmute into poetry those influences which are at present only a
hindrance to others, making their own new laws, and breaking old ones,
surprising the whole world with most magical results; but, till then,
poetry, in the hands of our present writers, is driven into narrower
bounds, and left with more limited means of freeing itself. The
greatest poetry, always finds its main source of sustenance in a few
common universal elements, which are to it what the elementary
substances are to chemistry. It deals with simple powers.
Trust, for example, we would call one of the simple powers of poetry.
Doubt, on the contrary, we should call a compound, made up of perplexed
thought and uncertain feeling; and, being a compound, it can be divided
and destroyed. Now, many tendencies of the time are at war with
the simple powers, and are in favour of the compounds. The
out-flowing tides of feeling are checked and forced back upon the poet,
so that he feels compelled to turn his eyes within in self-analysis,
until, instead of living, he gets bewildered at the mystery of life,
which he cannot solve, and dazzled with the new knowledge, which he
cannot assimilate; instead of telling us what time it is by the face of
the clock, he pores over the problem of the wheels, and for every gain
of curious insight he loses some intuition of more precious value, until
at length the conscious intellect is enthroned in the seat of that
unconscious child-like spirit, in which all that is most human meets
with what is most divine, even as the little children came near and were
taken into the arms of Christ of old. Our spasmodists, in a great
measure, are dealers in compounds. And not only are they driven
out of the great poet's path by force of many outward circumstances, and
have not sufficient knowledge or grasp of the simple powers by which
poetry is brought home to our business and bosoms, but, in some
instances, they wilfully turn from the simple powers to try their
experiments with the compounds, and their only ambition appears to be
how to puzzle us with the subtlety by which they can work for our
perplexity and their remote result. Shelley, in the Cenci, says
with great truth,
|
It is a trick of this same family
To analyse their own and other minds.
Such self-anatomy shall teach the will
Dangerous secrets, for it tempts our powers. |
The first
condition of being a poet, is to be a man speaking to men. He who
is to image humanity, must at least be able to stand on a common level
with it, and by his many sympathies enrich his special experience with
all that is universal; thus losing the poverty of the individual in the
wealth of the species. But it is the evident predilection of our
spasmodists toward that "abstruse research'" among morbid phenomena,
which "tends to steal from his own nature all the natural man," and the
habit of their minds to move in the involution of thinking, instead or
the evolution of thought. Also, it is their fatal fault to seek
for that which is rare and peculiar, and to be afraid of that which is
common, and timid of matter-of-fact and mere flesh and blood. If
they do not do this intentionally, then so much the worse is it for the
class of mind that is so limited and perverse as to take this direction
instinctively. Either they seem not to share our ordinary feelings
and plain humanities of thought and speech, or they cannot grasp
ordinary realities; for the emotion to be sung, or the character to be
painted, must have branched off far from the ordinary channel of human
affairs, and run into an isolated and particular experience, before it
is fitted for their poetic purpose. They refine upon reality till
it becomes the faintest shadow, and only attempt to grasp it at the
stage in which it cannot be laid hold of.
Now, if a poet possesses his manhood in common with
the rest of us, shares our thoughts and has feelings in tune, and has
truly a genius for transmuting and translating these into poetic forms,
he cannot keep too much on broad human grounds. The charm will be
in the common human experience being rendered in his subtler light, and
coloured in the prism of his own personality. If he have
sufficient genius, it is in universal experience that he will find
his greatest strength, —out of it he will draw the universal success; if
he have not sufficient genius, then all the seeking in the world, or out
of it, for that which is remote and uncommon, will be but of little
avail in disguising his weakness. Our spasmodists appear to take
for their text, and apply it at all times and in all places, the words
of Ecclesiasticus, "A man's mind is sometimes wont to tell him
more than seven watchmen that sit above in an high tower." They
forget that this is only sometimes so, when the darkness of night shuts
in the view, for example; and so they will not avail themselves of what
the seven watchmen may see when the broad light of day lies on the land,
and reveals the many features of the landscape. Hence their
tendency to look with an introverted vision alone, instead of looking
out with wide open eyes, and deriving advantage from the experience of
others, as do the great objective writers. It is here, in this
respect, as it is in the moral world, those who are wise will benefit by
the lives and experience of others, and those who are foolish will only
be taught by their own.
We admit the great difficulty, in dealing with much
poetic material of the present time, deprived as the poet necessarily is
of many resources open to the great poets of the past. There is so
much more knowledge current among men; and this not only tends to lessen
his authority and increase his personal difficulty, but it possibly
leaves much less simple feeling among those who of old would have given
themselves up with implicit faith and honest sympathy to his utterances.
But, all the more reason why the poet should stedfastly, abide by the
true elements of poetry, and all those positive influences which yet
live in our human nature; and, holding fast by these, resist the
negative and perplexing influences of our peculiar time, and bring
poetry and the readers of poetry back to nature, by touching that nature
which runs through the hearts of all.
Robert Browning.
The band of young poets who have come before the public during the last
few years, have been called the "Spasmodic School," though there is not
oneness of principle in their efforts sufficient to give consistency to
them, and bind the writers together in any educational brotherhood.
Certainly they include almost every variety of spasm; but there are many
spasmodic writers, in both prose and verse, beside those who have been
denominated as the Spasmodic School. On the other hand, it would
be somewhat difficult to point out any great master as the founder of
this school. It appears to us that Robert Browning is, in a sense,
one of the greatest spasmodists, so far as a wilful delight in remote
and involved thinking, abrupt and jerking mental movements, and
"pernickitieness" of expression, working, in the higher regions of
genius , can constitute a spasmodist. And but for certain
spasmodic peculiarities which seem inherent to Mrs Browning, "Aurora
Leigh" might have been the greatest poem of our time. In her case,
the spasm is manifested in her sudden transitions from thought to
thought and from thing to thing. Descending to a very low point
for illustration, we might also undertake to show in "Bothwell" some of
the meanest possible specimens of Surrey-sublime spasm; all the
meaner, because it is the spasm of weakness collapsing, without having
to beat any burthen of thought or feeling. Going back
as far as Byron, we shall find the spasmodic element in a large portion
of his poetry. His punctuation was composed of the marks made by
spasm, palpably as the dots made by a wooden leg on a soft soil.
It was often by spasmodic affection that he astonished so many people,
set their hair on end, and made them believe that the epilepsy of his
Muse was the motion of the Pythoness when receiving her immortal
messages, and shaking with the shocks of spiritual electricity.
This love of astonishing and of exciting popular wonder constituted a
great part of Byron's success with the multitude. The power to
startle and surprise is always loudly welcomed in this world, because
there are always so many waiting with mouths wide open to be startled
and surprised, and these, in their ignorance, mistake the appeal to
their wonderment for an appeal to their poetic sympathy; and so they
wonder, and shout in their wonder, and make a nine days ' jubilee ' on
behalf of their wonder. As in Byron's case, this love of exciting
wonder will degrade a writer, and make him descend to the lowest depths
for food wherewith to sustain it, until every moral feeling is violated
by the poet, and blasphemy is tolerated by the public, if not applauded.
Following Byron, it appears to us that Lovell Beddoes
brings other spasmodic influences into modern verse of a different kind.
Beddoes has much in common with the recent revival in poetry, which is
somewhat akin to the latter renaissance in painting and architecture,
and in which the bacchante is often dearer than the saint. There
is, too, more luxuriance of foliage and bloom on their trees than
redundancy of fruit. He has the same love of colour, and fondness
for all that is striking; he sets upon the banquet-table the same rich
feast of words, and his expression is mostly at the same pitch of
extravagance. He also sprung into full blossom at an early period
of youth, and went the way which other spasmodists have gone and are
going; his spring blossoms fell in the frosts, and there was no autumn
fruitage. His poetry largely possesses a quality which
is, perhaps, the most common firmer reliance. But he was all too
wise, and left that for Milton to do, when God had laid the shadow on
his outer eyes, and freed the inner from earthly scales, contenting
himself with giving those hints that flash upon us in the high and
mystic moods of thought.
Sydney Dobell.
Of all the spasmodists, Mr Dobell is the most original thinker and
coherent writer. In some high gifts of the poet, he is
magnificently endowed. He gives us in his pages many glimpses of
the most subtle loveliness ever opened up by the vision of poetry; much
deep thought, expressed with a quiet majesty of speech; and often his
poetry touches a depth of tenderness that reaches down to the hidden
springs of tears. And yet, for want of a few common
but very necessary qualities, Mr Dobell fails, and we fear will fail, to
bring home his poetry to any considerable number of people. He
possesses a large and shaping imagination, which often flows with such
serious and subtle sweetness as to leave the reader only half aware of
its tide of strength; only, this imagination is left without sufficient
material to work upon, for want of action and character in the subject.
This necessitates its working more apart in some peculiar domain of
poetry. It is comparatively seldom that the pursuit of what is
common leads the poet and the artist astray, it is this pursuit of what
is uncommon and peculiar that becomes so fatal; and this, either from
instinctive necessity or wilful choice, perhaps both, is the great bane
of Mr Dobell. He appears to select his subject, and the point of
treatment, for their remoteness from all ordinary reality, and then to
refine upon these until they are intangible to us.
Given some genius, the great difficulty often still
remains, how to bring it to bear upon the minds of men with simple
power, without much wandering in useless ways, and waste of scattered
effort. We often fancy that the difference betwixt a born poet and
a born fool is quite as slight as the partition that is said to divide
genius from madness. Frequently, from the undue prominence of some
one faculty, or the want of another, years and lives are spent, and the
anticipated result is never gained. The most striking cases of
this kind occur in poetry, where there is considerable poetic faculty,
so-called, power of fancy or imagination, with a lamentable want of the
few qualities which may be found doing the business of the day and the
ordinary work of the world, which are generally summed up as common
sense. For, after all, this common sense is the main ground to
begin on as a basis of higher operations. It is upon this ground
that the mass of men can mingle; and if they can meet the poet here,
they will trust him and try to follow him, when he leads them on, and
lures them up into the higher regions of thought. As inhabitants
of this earth, we must feel the ground under our feet if we are to walk.
The common sense qualities constitute our intellectual earth; and if you
cut this ground from under the feet of those who have no wings, it is
little wonder if they fall, and cannot fol low. For lack of this
common meeting ground, many, otherwise rarely gifted, fail in part, or
altogether, to bring their gifts home to the mass of men. Beside
which, we invariably recur to the works of the great creative minds to
find how solid has been their common sense capacity, and how much of
their life overflowed in universal feeling. They could go to
market with Pegasus and bring back daily bread for us, as well as return
with food from the loftiest realms of imagination. We find also
that the poetry produced by these master minds will stand the test of
value when the touchstone is the heart of the people. The greatest
poets can stand this test; but there is a manifest desire in those who
work in very limited and special regions to shun and to undervalue this
standard of appeal, and to think too much of the "fit audience, though
few." We would insist on this test, and apply it to the
spasmodists, because of their evident tendency to avoid it, and in every
way to overshoot the mark.
"Balder" and "The Roman."
Peculiarity of choice and subtlety of treatment constitute Mr Dobell's
spasmodic claim, else he is seldom, if ever, spasmodic in expression.
But so peculiar is he in choice of subject, that he has written
"Balder," a poem of some seven thousand lines, which nothing less than
re-writing altogether, on a new and better plan, can make anything else
of than a vast mistake. And so subtle is he, that he will hide the
most precious gems of poetry where it is impossible that they can ever
be found. With regard to "Balder" as a subject, we think that the
more successful its treatment, according to the author's apparent idea,
the more repulsive it must be; beside which, we doubt whether the poetic
representation of such a character, which is intended as a warning, can
be half so effective as an embodiment of a good example, because, for
one reader who can go through this poem, and perceive its negative
intention from intellectual insight, there are a hundred who might have
been bettered unconsciously through their sympathy with what is good.
It is past all human patience to feel a sustained interest in such a
person; and long before the end of his self-exhibitory monologues, we
wish him hanged in the whole seven thousand lines. Shakespeare, who
could make a character unfold the secret of a life in an hour, when he
gives us a self-involved and self-introverted one like Hamlet, even he
can only afford to let him stand in the centre, think and soliloquise,
because there is so much interest in the group of life that revolves
around him in dramatic relationship; but Mr Dobell lets "Balder" go
maundering on and on, with no variety of interest, and with no sense of
the lapse of time. In the "Roman" he has a clearly conceived
character, which has something of a living embodiment in the life of
Mazzini; and here, as well as in several of the lyrics in "England in
time of war," he comes much nearer to the common understanding, and
treads on broader human ground with greater success. There is more
simple power of genius, more promise for the future, in such a ballad as
the following, than in many magnificent pages of magniloquent blank
verse:—
|
HOW'S MY BOY?
"Ho, sailor of the sea!
How's my boy—my boy?"
"What's your boy's name, good-wife,
And in what good ship sail'd he?"
"My boy John—
He that went to sea—
What care I for the ship, sailor?
My boy's my boy to me.
"You come back from sea,
And not know my John?
I might as well have ask'd some landsman
Yonder down in the town.
There's not an ass in all the parish
But he knows my John.
"How's my boy—my boy?
And unless you let me know,
I'll swear you are no sailor,
Blue jacket or no,
Brass buttons or no, sailor,
Anchor and crown or no!
Sure his ship was the Jolly Briton."
"Speak low, woman, speak low!"
"And why should I speak low, sailor,
About my own boy, John?
If I was loud as I am proud,
I'd sing him over the town!
Why should I speak low, sailor?"
"That good ship went down."
"How's my boy—my boy?
What care I for the ship, sailor?
I was never aboard her.
Be she afloat or be she aground,
Sinking or swimming, I'll be bound
Her owners can afford her!
I say, how's my John?"
"Every man on board went down,
Every man aboard her."
"How's my boy—my boy?
What care I for the men, sailor?
I'm not their mother—
How's my boy—my boy?
Tell me of him, and no other!
How's my boy—my boy?"
|
The way in which that poor mother wrestles down every suspicion with
her love stronger than death, and in which her heart fights with such
terrible earnestness to keep the fatal knowledge from her mental
apprehension, as she pursues the old sailor question after question, and
will not understand his answer, is surely very true and touching.
We might select from Mr Dobell's books many fine
things, if that were desirable, and our space would permit,—not merely
striking illustrations, but full and sustained descriptions, passages of
exceeding power, images, of surpassing beauty, and flowers fragrant with
a womanly purity;—many gentle touches like this, which expresses very
happily the feeling of one whose hold on life has been so lovingly
loosened, that the weariness glides easily into content:—
|
"I feel two worlds: one ends and one begins.
Methinks I dwell in both; being much here,
But more hereafter: even as when the nurse
Doth give the babe into the mother's arms,
And she who hath not quite resign'd, and she
Who hath not all received, support in twain
The single burden; nevertheless the babe
Already tastes the mother." |
And like that in which the poet
speaks of standing by a deathbed "with such forgiveness as we bring to
those who can offend no more."
The spasmodic character of much of the "Life Drama"
is well known. Our readers will remember the full discussion of Mr
Smith's claims in the thirth-eigth number of this Journal, and the
advice then tendered to him on the score of ideal ex aggeration.
This makes it unnecessary that we should now devote much space to his
works. In his second volume Mr Smith is much less exaggerated.
He has, too, attained at times to a quiet continuity of thought, and
sustained strength of coherent utterance, such as we could not find in
the first book. He startles us less with the spasmodic sublime,
and gives us many passages that sound the deeps of feeling, and leave us
satisfied with their sweetness. We see many signs that the author
is trying to do his best; and if there is not much new growth, he has
been shedding the old, so that the new may come in season. We are
led to hope that his exaggerations were only a "passing spasm."
True Basis of Poetry.
We see no reason for going further into detail on the subject of the
"Spasmodic School," and we trust that some of our remarks may have gone
near enough to the root of the matter, to obviate any necessity for our
doing so. On the one hand, we can scarcely undertake to prescribe
in the precise language of science for the specialties of the given
disease, and the idiosyncrasies of the individual patients in each
particular case; and, on the other, we have no wish to give an answer as
ex cathedra. We urge a return to the lasting and true
subject-matter of poetry, and a firmer reliance on primal truths; for it
is this which has so often given fresh life to both poetry and painting
in the past. Crowded as the ground may have been, there is still
room for great poets to walk here. Anything that has in it a
genuine human interest is sure to win its way to the heart, so
irresistible is the touch of real truth. This is the vital and
enduring element of the Dutch painters. Their genuine statement of
truth is sufficient to keep alive their pictures, though that truth be
never so obvious and commonplace. And this is why those books are
so successful that treat of the coarser passions. They have in
them a real human interest, because they make their appeal to feelings
which do exist. We are not here arguing in favour of Dutch
pictures or French novels; but for that realty which is the basis of all
poetry, and that truth which is the basis of all beauty. As
Realists, we do not forget that it is not in the
vulgarity of common things, nor the mediocrity of average
characters, nor the familiarity of familiar affairs, nor the
everydayness of everyday lives, that the poetry consists,—not the
commonnesses of a common man, but those universal powers and passions
which he shares with heroes and martyrs, are the true subjects of
poetry. Though we advocate that all beauty must be true, we are
not responsible for the converse of the proposition, that assumes all
truth therefore beautiful, and that, consequently, "twice two are four"
constitutes poetry. Like the consecrated banner of a
Cortez, wherein the enthusiastic churchman may see the cross, and the
ambitious patriot the crown, but which, to the eyes of the rabble in
their train, is merely a waving absolution, this cry for common sense,
matter-of-fact, and everyday life, may be followed by some, not for the
right in which it originates, but for the wrong to which it may be
perverted; but if it be so, they can never arrive at results more
lamentable than the crowd who have followed the formulas of "high art"
and the "ideal." And if poetry is to get home to us with its
better influences, to hearten us in the struggles of life, beguile us of
our glooms, take us gently from the dusty high-road, where we have borne
the burden in the heat of the day, into the pastures where the grass is
green and grateful to the tired feet, the air fragrant, and the shadows
are refreshing, and draw us delicately up to loftier heights of being,
we must have songs set to the music of the faithful heart,—we must have
poetry for men w ho work, and think, and suffer, and whose hearts would
feel faint and their souls grow lean if they fed on such fleeting
deliciousness and confectionary trifle as the spasmodists too frequently
offer them,—we must have poetry in which natural emotions flow, real
passions move, in clash and conflict—in which our higher aims and
aspiration are represented, with all that reality of daily life ,which
goes on around us, in its strength and sweetness, its sternness and
softness, wearing the smiles of rejoicing, and weeping the bitter tears
of pain—weaving the many-coloured woof of Time, and working out the
hidden purposes of Him that "sitteth in the heavens."
GERALD MASSEY.
Ed.―see also ALEXANDER
SMITH on
SYDNEY
DOBELL. |
