Poems: New and Old Part 28

Room for Sir Edward! now we shall be told Which shrines are tin, which silver and which gold.

'Tis done! and now by life-long habit bound He turns to prosecute the crowd around; Indicts and pleads, sums up the 'pro' and 'con', The verdict finds and puts the black cap on.

"Prisoners, attend! of Queen Victoria's day I am the Glory, you are the Decay.

You cannot think like Tennyson deceased, You do not sing like Browning in the least.

Of Tennyson I sanction every word, Browning I cut to something like one-third: Though, mind you this, immoral he is not, Still quite two-thirds I hope will be forgot.

He was to poetry a Tom Carlyle-- And that reminds me, Thomas too was vile.

He wrote a life or two, but parts, I'm sure, Compared with other parts are very poor.

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Now d.i.c.kens--most extraordinary--dealt In fiction with what people really felt.

That proves his genius. Thackeray again Is so unequal as to cause me pain.

And last of all, with History to conclude, I've read Macaulay and I've heard of Froude.

That list, with all deductions, Gentlemen, Will show that 'now' is not the same as 'then'.

If you believe the plaintiff you'll declare That English writers are not what they were."

Down sits Sir Edward with a glowing breast, And some applause is instantly suppressed.

Now up the nave of that majestic church A quick uncertain step is heard to lurch.

Who is it? no one knows; but by his mien He's the head verger, if he's not the Dean.

"What fellow's this that dares to treat us so?

This is no place for lawyers, out you go!

He is a brawler, Sir, who here presumes To move our laurels and arrange our tombs.

Suppose that Meredith or Stephen said (Or do you think those gentlemen are dead?) This age has borne no advocates of rank, Would not your face in turn be rather blank?

Come now, I beg you, go without a fuss, And leave these high and heavenly things to us; You may perhaps be some one, at the Bar, But you are not in Orders, and we are."

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Sir Edward turns to go, but as he wends, One swift irrelevant retort he sends.

"Your logic and your taste I both disdain, You've quoted wrong from Jonson and Montaigne."

The shaft goes home, and somewhere in the rear Birrell in smallest print is heard to cheer.

And yet--and yet--conviction's not complete: There was a time when Milton walked the street, And Shakespeare singing in a tavern dark Would not have much impressed Sir Edward Clarke.

To be alive--ay! there's the d.a.m.ning thing, For who will buy a bird that's on the wing?

Catch, kill and stuff the creature, once for all, And he may yet adorn Sir Edward's hall; But while he's free to go his own wild way He's not so safe as birds of yesterday.

In fine, if I must choose--although I see That both are wrong--Great Gosse! I'd rather be A critic suckled in an age outworn Than a blind horse that starves knee-deep in corn.

NOTE.--The foregoing parody, which first appeared in 'The Monthly Review' some years ago, was an attempt to sum up and commemorate a literary discussion of the day. On Sat.u.r.day night, November 15, 1902, at the Working Men's College, Great Ormond Street, Sir Edward Clarke, K.C., delivered an address on "The Glory and Decay of English Literature in the Reign of Victoria." 'Sir Edward Clarke, who mentioned incidentally that he lectured at the college forty years ago, said that there was a rise from the {229} beginning of that reign to the period 1850-60, and that from the latter date there had been a very strange and lamentable decline to the end of the reign, would he thought, be amply demonstrated. A glorious galaxy of talent adorned the years 1850-60. There were two great poets, two great novelists, and two great historians. The two great poets were Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning. The first named would always stand at the head of the literature of the Victorian period. There was no poet in the whole course of our history whose works were more likely to live as a complete whole than he, and there was not a line which his friends would wish to see blotted out. Robert Browning was a poet of strange inequality and of extraordinary and fantastic methods in his composition. However much one could enjoy some of his works, one could only hope that two-thirds of them would be as promptly as possible forgotten--not, however, from any moral objection to what he wrote. He was the Carlyle of poetry. By his Lives of Schiller and Sterling, Carlyle showed that he 'could' write beautiful and pure English, but that he should descend to the style of some of his later works was a melancholy example of misdirected energy. . . . Charles d.i.c.kens was perhaps the most extraordinary genius of those who had endeavoured to deal with fiction as ill.u.s.trative of the actual experiences of life.

With d.i.c.kens there stood the great figure of Thackeray, who had left a great collection of books, very unequal in their quality, but containing amongst them some of the finest things ever written in the English tongue. The two great historians were Macaulay and Froude.

To-day we had no great novelist. Would anyone suggest we had a poet?

(Laughter.) After the year 1860 there were two great names in poetry--the two Rossettis. There had been no book produced in the last ten years which could compete with any one of the books produced from 1850 to 1860.'

To this Mr. Edmund Gosse replied a week later at the Dinner of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He reminded his audience that even the most perspicuous people in past times had made the grossest blunders when they judged their own age. Let them remember the insensibility of Montaigne to the merits of all his contemporaries. In the next age, and in their own country, Ben Jonson took occasion at the very moment when Shakespeare was producing his masterpieces, to lament the total decay of poetry in England. We could not see the trees for the wood behind them, but we ought to be confident they were growing all the time.

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Mr. Gosse also wrote to the 'Times' on behalf of "the Profession" of Letters, reminding Sir Edward of the names of Swinburne and William Morris, Hardy and Stevenson, Creighton and Gardiner, and asking what would be the feelings of the learned gentleman if Meredith or Leslie Stephen (of whose existence he was perhaps unaware) should put the question in public, "Would anyone suggest we have an Advocate?"

Sir Edward, in his rejoinder, had no difficulty in showing that Mr.

Gosse's citation of Montaigne and Jonson was not verbally exact. Mr.

Birrell added some comments which were distinguished by being printed in type of a markedly different size.

To the author of these lines, the controversy appears so typical and so likely to arise again, that he desires to record, in however slight a form, his recollection of it, and his own personal bias, which is in no degree lessened by reconsideration after ten years.

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NOTES.

'Drake's Drum'.--A State drum, painted with the arms of Sir Francis Drake, is preserved among other relics at Buckland Abbey, the seat of the Drake family in Devon.

'The fighting Tmraire'.--The last two stanzas have been misunderstood. It seems, therefore, necessary to state that they are intended to refer to Turner's picture in the National Gallery of "The Fighting 'Tmraire' tugged to her Last Berth."

'San Stefano'.--Sir Peter Parker was the son of Admiral Christopher Parker, grandson of Admiral Sir Peter Parker (the life-long friend and chief mourner of Nelson), and great-grandson of Admiral Sir William Parker. On his mother's side he was grandson of Admiral Byron, and first cousin of Lord Byron, the poet. He was killed in action near Baltimore in 1814, and buried in St. Margaret's, Westminster, where may be seen the monument erected to his memory by the officers of the 'Menelaus'.

'The Quarter-Gunner's Yarn'.--This ballad is founded on fragmentary lines communicated to the author by Admiral Sir Windham Hornby, K.C.B., who served under Sir Thomas Hardy in 1827. For an account of Cheeks the Marine see Marryat's 'Peter Simple'.

'Vae Victis'.--See 'Livy', x.x.x., 43; 'Diodorus Siculus', xix., 106.

'Seringapatam'.--In 1780, while attempting to relieve Arcot, a British force of three thousand men was cut to pieces by Hyder Ali. Baird, then a young captain in the 73rd, was left for dead on the field. He was afterwards, with forty-nine other officers, kept in prison at Seringapatam, and treated with Oriental barbarity and treachery by Hyder Ali and his son Tippoo Sahib, Sultans of Mysore. Twenty-three of the prisoners died by poison, torture, and fever; the rest were surrendered in 1784. In 1799, at the Siege of Seringapatam, Major-General Baird commanded the first European brigade, and volunteered to lead the storming column. {232} Tippoo Sahib, with eight thousand of his men, fell in the a.s.sault, but the victor spared the lives of his sons, and forbade a general sack of the city.

'Clifton Chapel'.--Thirty-five Old Cliftonian officers served in the campaign of 1897 on the Indian Frontier, of whom twenty-two were mentioned in despatches, and six recommended for the Distinguished Service Order. Of the three hundred Cliftonians who served in the war in South Africa, thirty were killed in action and fourteen died of wounds or fever.

"Clifton, remember these thy sons who fell Fighting far over sea; For they in a dark hour remembered well Their warfare learned of thee."

'The Echo'.--The ballad was "The Twa Sisters of Binnorie," as set by Arthur Somervell.

'Srahmandazi'.--This ballad is founded on materials given to the author by the late Miss Mary Kingsley on her return from her last visit to the Bantu peoples of West Africa. The song-net, as described by her, resembles a long piece of fis.h.i.+ng-net folded, and is carried by the Songman over his shoulder. When opened and laid before an audience, it is seen to contain "tokens"--such as a leopard's paw, a child's hair, a necklet, or a dried fish--sewn firmly to the meshes of the net. These form a kind of symbolical index to the Songman's repertory: the audience make their choice by laying a hand upon any token which appears desirable. The last of the tokens is that which represents the Song of Dying or Song of Srahmandazi. It is a shapeless piece of any substance, and is recognized only by its position in the net. The song, being unintelligible to the living, is never asked for until the moment of death.

End.