Lectures on the English Poets Part 15

Mr. Campbell in altering the expression has spoiled it. "Few," and "far between," are the same thing.

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Tom Moore is a poet of a quite different stamp. He is as heedless, gay, and prodigal of his poetical wealth, as the other is careful, reserved, and parsimonious. The genius of both is national. Mr. Moore's Muse is another Ariel, as light, as tricksy, as indefatigable, and as humane a spirit. His fancy is for ever on the wing, flutters in the gale, glitters in the sun. Every thing lives, moves, and sparkles in his poetry, while over all love waves his purple light. His thoughts are as restless, as many, and as bright as the insects that people the sun's beam. "So work the honey-bees," extracting liquid sweets from opening buds; so the b.u.t.terfly expands its wings to the idle air; so the thistle's silver down is wafted over summer seas. An airy voyager on life's stream, his mind inhales the fragrance of a thousand sh.o.r.es, and drinks of endless pleasures under halcyon skies. Wherever his footsteps tend over the enamelled ground of fairy fiction--

"Around him the bees in play flutter and cl.u.s.ter, And gaudy b.u.t.terflies frolic around."

The fault of Mr. Moore is an exuberance of involuntary power. His facility of production lessens the effect of, and hangs as a dead weight upon, what he produces. His levity at last oppresses. The infinite delight he takes in such an infinite number of things, creates indifference in minds less susceptible of pleasure than his own. He exhausts attention by being inexhaustible. His variety cloys; his rapidity dazzles and distracts the sight. The graceful ease with which he lends himself to every subject, the genial spirit with which he indulges in every sentiment, prevents him from giving their full force to the ma.s.ses of things, from connecting them into a whole. He wants intensity, strength, and grandeur. His mind does not brood over the great and permanent; it glances over the surfaces, the first impressions of things, instead of grappling with the deep-rooted prejudices of the mind, its inveterate habits, and that "perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart." His pen, as it is rapid and fanciful, wants momentum and pa.s.sion. It requires the same principle to make us thoroughly like poetry, that makes us like ourselves so well, the feeling of continued ident.i.ty. The impressions of Mr. Moore's poetry are detached, desultory, and physical. Its gorgeous colours brighten and fade like the rainbow's.

Its sweetness evaporates like the effluvia exhaled from beds of flowers!

His gay laughing style, which relates to the immediate pleasures of love or wine, is better than his sentimental and romantic vein. His Irish melodies are not free from affectation and a certain sickliness of pretension. His serious descriptions are apt to run into flowery tenderness. His pathos sometimes melts into a mawkish sensibility, or crystallizes into all the prettinesses of allegorical language, and glittering hardness of external imagery. But he has wit at will, and of the first quality. His satirical and burlesque poetry is his best: it is first-rate. His Twopenny Post-Bag is a perfect "nest of spicery"; where the Cayenne is not spared. The politician there sharpens the poet's pen.

In this too, our bard resembles the bee--he has its honey and its sting.

Mr. Moore ought not to have written Lalla Rookh, even for three thousand guineas. His fame is worth more than that. He should have minded the advice of Fadladeen. It is not, however, a failure, so much as an evasion and a consequent disappointment of public expectation. He should have left it to others to break conventions with nations, and faith with the world. He should, at any rate, have kept his with the public. Lalla Rookh is not what people wanted to see whether Mr. Moore could do; namely, whether he could write a long epic poem. It is four short tales. The interest, however, is often high-wrought and tragic, but the execution still turns to the effeminate and voluptuous side.

Fort.i.tude of mind is the first requisite of a tragic or epic writer.

Happiness of nature and felicity of genius are the pre-eminent characteristics of the bard of Erin. If he is not perfectly contented with what he is, all the world beside is. He had no temptation to risk any thing in adding to the love and admiration of his age, and more than one country.

"Therefore to be possessed with double pomp, To guard a t.i.tle that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper light To seek the beauteous eye of heav'n to garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess."

The same might be said of Mr. Moore's seeking to bind an epic crown, or the shadow of one, round his other laurels.

If Mr. Moore has not suffered enough personally, Lord Byron (judging from the tone of his writings) might be thought to have suffered too much to be a truly great poet. If Mr. Moore lays himself too open to all the various impulses of things, the outward shews of earth and sky, to every breath that blows, to every stray sentiment that crosses his fancy; Lord Byron shuts himself up too much in the impenetrable gloom of his own thoughts, and buries the natural light of things in "nook monastic." The Giaour, the Corsair, Childe Harold, are all the same person, and they are apparently all himself. The everlasting repet.i.tion of one subject, the same dark ground of fiction, with the darker colours of the poet's mind spread over it, the unceasing acc.u.mulation of horrors on horror's head, steels the mind against the sense of pain, as inevitably as the unwearied Siren sounds and luxurious monotony of Mr.

Moore's poetry make it inaccessible to pleasure. Lord Byron's poetry is as morbid as Mr. Moore's is careless and dissipated. He has more depth of pa.s.sion, more force and impetuosity, but the pa.s.sion is always of the same unaccountable character, at once violent and sullen, fierce and gloomy. It is not the pa.s.sion of a mind struggling with misfortune, or the hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind preying upon itself, and disgusted with, or indifferent to all other things. There is nothing less poetical than this sort of unaccommodating selfishness. There is nothing more repulsive than this sort of ideal absorption of all the interests of others, of the good and ills of life, in the ruling pa.s.sion and moody abstraction of a single mind, as if it would make itself the centre of the universe, and there was nothing worth cheris.h.i.+ng but its intellectual diseases. It is like a cancer, eating into the heart of poetry. But still there is power; and power rivets attention and forces admiration. "He hath a demon:" and that is the next thing to being full of the G.o.d. His brow collects the scattered gloom: his eye flashes livid fire that withers and consumes. But still we watch the progress of the scathing bolt with interest, and mark the ruin it leaves behind with awe. Within the contracted range of his imagination, he has great unity and truth of keeping. He chooses elements and agents congenial to his mind, the dark and glittering ocean, the frail bark hurrying before the storm, pirates and men that "house on the wild sea with wild usages." He gives the tumultuous eagerness of action, and the fixed despair of thought. In vigour of style and force of conception, he in one sense surpa.s.ses every writer of the present day. His indignant apothegms are like oracles of misanthropy. He who wishes for "a curse to kill with,"

may find it in Lord Byron's writings. Yet he has beauty lurking underneath his strength, tenderness sometimes joined with the phrenzy of despair. A flash of golden light sometimes follows from a stroke of his pencil, like a falling meteor. The flowers that adorn his poetry bloom over charnel-houses and the grave!

There is one subject on which Lord Byron is fond of writing, on which I wish he would not write--Buonaparte. Not that I quarrel with his writing for him, or against him, but with his writing both for him and against him. What right has he to do this? Buonaparte's character, be it what else it may, does not change every hour according to his Lords.h.i.+p's varying humour. He is not a pipe for Fortune's finger, or for his Lords.h.i.+p's Muse, to play what stop she pleases on. Why should Lord Byron now laud him to the skies in the hour of his success, and then peevishly wreak his disappointment on the G.o.d of his idolatry? The man he writes of does not rise or fall with circ.u.mstances: but "looks on tempests and is never shaken." Besides, he is a subject for history, and not for poetry.

"Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread, But as the marigold at the sun's eye, And in themselves their pride lies buried; For at a frown they in their glory die.

The painful warrior, famoused for fight, After a thousand victories once foil'd, Is from the book of honour razed quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd."

If Lord Byron will write any thing more on this hazardous theme, let him take these lines of Shakspeare for his guide, and finish them in the spirit of the original--they will then be worthy of the subject.

Walter Scott is the most popular of all the poets of the present day, and deservedly so. He describes that which is most easily and generally understood with more vivacity and effect than any body else. He has no excellences, either of a lofty or recondite kind, which lie beyond the reach of the most ordinary capacity to find out; but he has all the good qualities which all the world agree to understand. His style is clear, flowing, and transparent: his sentiments, of which his style is an easy and natural medium, are common to him with his readers. He has none of Mr. Wordsworth's _idiosyncracy_. He differs from his readers only in a greater range of knowledge and facility of expression. His poetry belongs to the cla.s.s of _improvisatori_ poetry. It has neither depth, height, nor breadth in it; neither uncommon strength, nor uncommon refinement of thought, sentiment, or language. It has no originality.

But if this author has no research, no moving power in his own breast, he relies with the greater safety and success on the force of his subject. He selects a story such as is sure to please, full of incidents, characters, peculiar manners, costume, and scenery; and he tells it in a way that can offend no one. He never wearies or disappoints you. He is communicative and garrulous; but he is not his own hero. He never obtrudes himself on your notice to prevent your seeing the subject. What pa.s.ses in the poem, pa.s.ses much as it would have done in reality. The author has little or nothing to do with it.

Mr. Scott has great intuitive power of fancy, great vividness of pencil in placing external objects and events before the eye. The force of his mind is picturesque, rather than _moral_. He gives more of the features of nature than the soul of pa.s.sion. He conveys the distinct outlines and visible changes in outward objects, rather than "their mortal consequences." He is very inferior to Lord Byron in intense pa.s.sion, to Moore in delightful fancy, to Mr. Wordsworth in profound sentiment: but he has more picturesque power than any of them; that is, he places the objects themselves, about which _they_ might feel and think, in a much more striking point of view, with greater variety of dress and att.i.tude, and with more local truth of colouring. His imagery is Gothic and grotesque. The manners and actions have the interest and curiosity belonging to a wild country and a distant period of time. Few descriptions have a more complete reality, a more striking appearance of life and motion, than that of the warriors in the Lady of the Lake, who start up at the command of Rhoderic Dhu, from their concealment under the fern, and disappear again in an instant. The Lay of the Last Minstrel and Marmion are the first, and perhaps the best of his works.

The Goblin Page, in the first of these, is a very interesting and inscrutable little personage. In reading these poems, I confess I am a little disconcerted, in turning over the page, to find Mr. Westall's pictures, which always seem _fac-similes_ of the persons represented, with ancient costume and a theatrical air. This may be a compliment to Mr. Westall, but it is not one to Walter Scott. The truth is, there is a modern air in the midst of the antiquarian research of Mr. Scott's poetry. It is history or tradition in masquerade. Not only the crust of old words and images is worn off with time,--the substance is grown comparatively light and worthless. The forms are old and uncouth; but the spirit is effeminate and frivolous. This is a deduction from the praise I have given to his pencil for extreme fidelity, though it has been no obstacle to its drawing-room success. He has just hit the town between the romantic and the fas.h.i.+onable; and between the two, secured all cla.s.ses of readers on his side. In a word, I conceive that he is to the great poet, what an excellent mimic is to a great actor. There is no determinate impression left on the mind by reading his poetry. It has no results. The reader rises up from the perusal with new images and a.s.sociations, but he remains the same man that he was before. A great mind is one that moulds the minds of others. Mr. Scott has put the Border Minstrelsy and scattered traditions of the country into easy, animated verse. But the Notes to his poems are just as entertaining as the poems themselves, and his poems are only entertaining.

Mr. Wordsworth is the most original poet now living. He is the reverse of Walter Scott in his defects and excellences. He has nearly all that the other wants, and wants all that the other possesses. His poetry is not external, but internal; it does not depend upon tradition, or story, or old song; he furnishes it from his own mind, and is his own subject. He is the poet of mere sentiment. Of many of the Lyrical Ballads, it is not possible to speak in terms of too high praise, such as Hart-leap Well, the Banks of the Wye, Poor Susan, parts of the Leech-gatherer, the lines to a Cuckoo, to a Daisy, the Complaint, several of the Sonnets, and a hundred others of inconceivable beauty, of perfect originality and pathos. They open a finer and deeper vein of thought and feeling than any poet in modern times has done, or attempted. He has produced a deeper impression, and on a smaller circle, than any other of his contemporaries. His powers have been mistaken by the age, nor does he exactly understand them himself. He cannot form a whole. He has not the constructive faculty. He can give only the fine tones of thought, drawn from his mind by accident or nature, like the sounds drawn from the AEolian harp by the wandering gale.--He is totally deficient in all the machinery of poetry. His _Excursion_, taken as a whole, notwithstanding the n.o.ble materials thrown away in it, is a proof of this. The line labours, the sentiment moves slow, but the poem stands stock-still. The reader makes no way from the first line to the last. It is more than any thing in the world like Robinson Crusoe's boat, which would have been an excellent good boat, and would have carried him to the other side of the globe, but that he could not get it out of the sand where it stuck fast. I did what little I could to help to launch it at the time, but it would not do. I am not, however, one of those who laugh at the attempts or failures of men of genius. It is not my way to cry "Long life to the conqueror." Success and desert are not with me synonymous terms; and the less Mr. Wordsworth's general merits have been understood, the more necessary is it to insist upon them. This is not the place to repeat what I have already said on the subject. The reader may turn to it in the Round Table. I do not think, however, there is any thing in the larger poem equal to many of the detached pieces in the Lyrical Ballads. As Mr. Wordsworth's poems have been little known to the public, or chiefly through garbled extracts from them, I will here give an entire poem (one that has always been a favourite with me), that the reader may know what it is that the admirers of this author find to be delighted with in his poetry. Those who do not feel the beauty and the force of it, may save themselves the trouble of inquiring farther.

HART-LEAP WELL.

The knight had ridden down from Wensley moor With the slow motion of a summer's cloud; He turned aside towards a va.s.sal's door, And, "Bring another horse!" he cried aloud.

"Another horse!"--That shout the va.s.sal heard, And saddled his best steed, a comely gray; Sir Walter mounted him; he was the third Which he had mounted on that glorious day.

Joy sparkled in the prancing courser's eyes: The horse and horseman are a happy pair; But, though Sir Walter like a falcon flies, There is a doleful silence in the air.

A rout this morning left Sir Walter's hall, That as they galloped made the echoes roar; But horse and man are vanished, one and all; Such race, I think, was never seen before.

Sir Walter, restless as a veering wind, Calls to the few tired dogs that yet remain: Brach, Swift, and Music, n.o.blest of their kind, Follow, and up the weary mountain strain.

The knight hallooed, he chid and cheered them on With suppliant gestures and upbraidings stern; But breath and eye-sight fail; and, one by one, The dogs are stretched among the mountain fern.

Where is the throng, the tumult of the race?

The bugles that so joyfully were blown?

--This chase it looks not like an earthly chase; Sir Walter and the hart are left alone.

The poor hart toils along the mountain side; I will not stop to tell how far he fled, Nor will I mention by what death he died; But now the knight beholds him lying dead.

Dismounting then, he leaned against a thorn; He had no follower, dog, nor man, nor boy: He neither smacked his whip, nor blew his horn, But gazed upon the spoil with silent joy.

Close to the thorn on which Sir Walter leaned, Stood his dumb partner in this glorious act; Weak as a lamb the hour that it is yeaned; And foaming like a mountain cataract.

Upon his side the hart was lying stretched: His nose half-touched a spring beneath a hill, And with the last deep groan his breath had fetched The waters of the spring were trembling still.

And now, too happy for repose or rest, (Was never man in such a joyful case!) Sir Walter walked all round, north, south, and west, And gazed, and gazed upon that darling place.

And climbing up the hill--(it was at least Nine roods of sheer ascent) Sir Walter found, Three several hoof-marks which the hunted beast Had left imprinted on the verdant ground.

Sir Walter wiped his face and cried, "Till now Such sight was never seen by living eyes: Three leaps have borne him from this lofty brow, Down to the very fountain where he lies.

I'll build a pleasure-house upon this spot, And a small arbour, made for rural joy; 'Twill be the traveller's shed, the pilgrim's cot, A place of love for damsels that are coy.

A cunning artist will I have to frame A bason for that fountain in the dell; And they, who do make mention of the same From this day forth, shall call it HART-LEAP WELL.

And, gallant brute! to make thy praises known, Another monument shall here be raised; Three several pillars, each a rough-hewn stone, And planted where thy hoofs the turf have grazed.

And, in the summer-time when days are long, I will come hither with my paramour; And with the dancers, and the minstrel's song, We will make merry in that pleasant bower.

Till the foundations of the mountains fail, My mansion with its arbour shall endure;-- The joy of them who till the fields of Swale, And them who dwell among the woods of Ure!"

Then home he went, and left the hart, stone-dead, With breathless nostrils stretched above the spring.

--Soon did the knight perform what he had said, And far and wide the fame thereof did ring.

Ere thrice the moon into her port had steered, A cup of stone received the living well; Three pillars of rude stone Sir Walter reared, And built a house of pleasure in the dell.

And near the fountain, flowers of stature tall With trailing plants and trees were intertwined,-- Which soon composed a little sylvan hall, A leafy shelter from the sun and wind.

And thither, when the summer-days were long, Sir Walter journeyed with his paramour; And with the dancers and the minstrel's song Made merriment within that pleasant bower.

The knight, Sir Walter, died in course of time, And his bones lie in his paternal vale.-- But there is matter for a second rhyme, And I to this would add another tale."

PART SECOND.

"The moving accident is not my trade: To freeze the blood I have no ready arts: 'Tis my delight, alone in summer shade, To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts.

As I from Hawes to Richmond did repair, It chanced that I saw standing in a dell Three aspens at three corners of a square, And one, not four yards distant, near a well.

What this imported I could ill divine: And, pulling now the rein my horse to stop, I saw three pillars standing in a line, The last stone pillar on a dark hill-top.

The trees were gray, with neither arms nor head; Half-wasted the square mound of tawny green; So that you just might say, as then I said, "Here in old time the hand of man hath been."