The Press. — London, England, 1854-09-16 00:00:00

iitraturt. The Annotated Edition of the English Poets. Edited by Robert Bell. Poetical Works of ,Sir Thomas Wyatt. London : J. W. Parker and Son. As was anticipated by those conversant with literary affairs, the progress of the struggle in the East has distracted the attention of the reading public, and consequently damped the enterprise of the great bibliopoles, except in books illustrative of our " foreign affairs." The season which has just closed has, there fore, been barren of novelties in our domestic literature, and some important works have been held back from publication until a more favourable period. It results, by a necessary consequence, that some of the serial editions of the time have attracted more notice than would have been given to them. With a great scarcity of original works issuing from the press, and owing also to merits of its own, " The Annotated Edition of the English Poets " is just now an object of considerable interest. The want of such a work has long been felt. The public do not require an expensive edition with wire-wove paper, brilliant typography, and splendid binding ; the wealthy do not need any collected edition of the poets, as they can fill their library-shelves with the expen sive copies of our standard classics ; but a good popular edition of the poets, superin tended by an experienced author and pub lished at a moderate price, is really a great boon to general readers. We have from the first watched with interest the progress of this " annotated edition." As our readers are aware, we have praised it liberally, and we have freely censured also when we thought that there was imperfection. In doing both we were animated by no personal prejudice, and, as the terms of our notices show, our comments were made with the entire inde pendence that we trust will always be our rule. In the praise which we accorded we are happy to find that we have been seconded by some of our ablest contemporaries (amongst whom we may mention the Examiner), and we again specially advert to this publication, as we are sorry to see that a most unfair and ungenerous attack has been made on it in an organ whose censure ought to be more discriminately be stowed in proportion to its great respon sibility. The competence of an editor for a great serial undertaking like that before us is to be Measured in reference to the whole publication, and not upon detached portions of the work. Petty verbal scholarship, and minute correc tions of the press, would not compensate for the absence of acute comments, manly criti cism, and apposite illustrations. These latter, also, must be written with terseness, and must not be a merely idle parade of far-sought but irrelevant knowledge. Mistakes must be ex peeted in any prolonged work, and it would be hard to exact that, in so burdensome an un dertaking as that of issuing monthly volumes, Mr. Bell's pen should be free from those errors which meet our eyes in the pages of Bentley's Milton and Johnson's Shakspeare. The last great name, indeed, suggests the necessity of our being reasonable in our ex pectations from " editors " of books. We respect the talents and attainments of Mr. Collier and Mr. Charles Knight, but we would decline to accept the literary dictum of either of those gentlemen on the value of his fellow commentator's labours ; and we may observe that a recent and most able American writer On Shakspeare, Mr. Grant White, has told us to look for an accurate text of the great poet only to the Rev. Alexander Dyce ! Now, we should be sorry to assail any of the accom plished " editors " just named for those mis takes incidental to undertakings where even the profoundest research and the most perse vering industry are often found at fault. And why should a different rule be applied to Mr. Bell ? Are we to expect that his edition of the poets, brought out every month, requiring Various kriowledgo to illustrate writers of different eras, is to be entirely free from lite rary blt,mishee, when Pope, Hanmer, Warbur- _ THE PRESS. ton, Johnson, Steevens, Malone, Ritson, Mason, Harness, Collier, Knight, have unde niably Made several and serious mistakes in their editions of a single author? Small, in deed, is that critical perspicacity which re joices to assail Mr. Bell for printing " Marcus Junius " for " Marcus Tullius," and for over looking a superfluous i in another proper name. But, passing over such fifth-form criti cism, we must indicate the unfairness of the attack. After two columns of elaborate dis paragement, there appears the following sen tence at the end of the notice :—" In many " respects these volumes (of the annotated " edition) have great value and interest." Then why invidiously assail a work in two columns of disparagement, where " great value" in " many respects " is furtively confessed at the conclusion? In that sentence the critic has reversed his previous verdict. If the last opinion which we have cited be just (and we concur in it), then his whole criticism was pitched in a wrong key, and is open to the serious objection of its being inconsistent with itself. More we should be tempted to say, but we really dislike reviewing our contemporaries. So much, only, has been drawn from us because we fear that Mr. Bell has been made to pay the penalty of small literary jealousies, insepara ble from a life devoted to critical labours. We should be sorry that one of his tried talents, vigorous mind, and various scholarship, should be unjustly assailed when he is exe cuting a work of really great importance, in which he ought to be aided by literary sym pathy. But from these considerations, which have been forced upon us, we gladly turn to the newest volume of this valuable work. Wyatt's poetry is of little t value save as marking a step in the progress of English literature. He had no original genius, but he had a sympathetic mind, and, catching the tone of the warmer temperament and higher civilisation of Italy, be transposed them, with some melody, into verse of his own. But what in poets of the south was passion, in him was mere gallantry. In his love there is no reality; his raptures and his sufferings are equally feigned ; and it does not appear probable, from what we know of his history, that his verse was ever more than a conventional ex pression of fictitious sentiment. The pastime of his leisure, it glitters only with artificial' fire. The supposition that there was any attachment between him and Anne Boleyn is unsupported by evidence. He seems to have been married when about seventeen, and, from what we know of his shrewd and worldly-wise character, he was very unlikely to let his amorous fancies take a dangerous direction. Mr. Bell has judiciously summed up the quali ties of his poetry : Attempts to extract autobiographical suggestions from the love sonnets of an age when gallantry was cultivated as an art, like poetry itself, should be received with caution. Under such conditions the reality of the sentiments can not be implicitly depended upon, and external evidence is necessary to justify us in regarding them in any more re sponsible light than as exercises of the imagination. To paint the ecstasies of the happy lover or the sorrows of the unfortunate, to heap up images of delight or distress, to pursue a passion through the vicissitudes of hope and deli pair, were the common themes of all the poets who fol lowed the Italian models, and reflected the characteristics of chivalry. Wyatt especially must be judged by this standard, because his imitations are obvious and extensive, and the love he depicts bears manifest traces of being drawn from the same source as his verse. Artifice and effect are everywhere visible ; and we may reasonably con clude that there was as little of genuine emotion as of ori ginality of inspiration in his poetry. Wyatt was born two hundred years later than his great poetical model Petrarch ; and, glancing back over that wide interval, it ap pears strange that the English mind should — as regards imaginative arts and studies—have remained in so sluggish a state. When Petrarch was penning his sonnets to Laura, our people, fighting the battles of Cressy and Poictiers, cared little for song ; but, in the succeeding reign, Chaucer, catching the best attributes of both the Norman and Saxon races, blended them together, and formed a genuine school of English poetry, which one might have supposed would have proved fertile in works, but which yet, amid the increasing light of " the revival of letters," continued to slumber until the Reformation. The invasion of France by Henry V., and the r _ s_ SATURDAY, desperate warfare consequent on it, with the desolating and exhaustive civil wars which immediately succeeded, may in some degree account for this mental torpor; yet it is strange that the return of poetical taste should have been marked by reference to the earlier and exotic rather than to the later and native development Mr. Bell conceives that, taking into con sideration the age in which Wyatt wrote, and the sources from which he borrowed, he was " singularly free from conceits." We can scarcely allow this, even with the large allow ances claimed. Certainly we should be puz zled where to look for a purer example of " conceit " than is supplied by the following sonnet : THE LOVER'S LIFE COMPARED TO THE ALPS. Like unto these unmeasurable mountains Is my painful life, the burden of ire; For of great height they be, and high is my desire ; And I of tears, and they be full of fountains; Under craggy rocks they have barren plains : Hard thoughts in me my woful mind doth tire ; Small fruit and many leaves their tops attire : With small effect great trust in me remains ; The boisterous winds oft their high boughs do blast: Hot sighs in me continually be shed; Wild beasts in them, fierce love in me is fed: Immovable am I and they steadfast; Of restless birds they have the tune and note : And I always plaints passing thorough my throat. The "Rondeaux" of Wyatt are, in our judgment, among his most on and hap piest efforts, but Mr. Bell selects for parti cular commendation the subjoined ode as "a charming piece," and the " most perfect of his compositions " THE LOVER COMPLAINETH THE UNKINDNESS OF HIS LOVE. My lute, awake ! perform the last Labour that thou and I shall waste; And end that I have now begun: And when this song is sung and past, My lute! be still, for I have done. As to be heard where ear is none ; As lead to grave in marble stone, My song may pierce her heart as soon ; Should we then sing, or sigh, or moan? No, no, my lute ! for I have done. The rock doth not so cruelly Repulse the waves continually, As she my suit and affection : So that T am past remedy; Whereby my lute and I have done. Proud of the spoil that thou bast got Of simple hearts thorough Love's shot, By whom, unkind, thou hest them won ; Think not he bath his bow forgot, Although my lute and I have done. Vengeance shall fall on thy disdain, That makest but game of earnest pain ; Trow not alone under the sun I.lnguit to cause thy lovers plain ; Although my lute and I have done. May chance thee lie withered and old In winter nights, that are so cold, Plaining in vain unto the moon ; Thy wishes then dare not be told : Care then who list, for I have done. And then may chance thee to repent The time that thou has lost and spent, To cause thy lovers sigh and swoon: Then shalt thou know beauty but lent, And wish and want, as I have done. Now cease, my lute ! this is the last Labour that thou and I shall waste, And ended is that 1 begun : Now is this song both sung and past; My lute l be still, for I have done. In his verse Wyatt was so essentially imi tative and affected that we can scarcely catch glimpses of the true man, but we fancy that in these next lines his mind found honest ex pression ; and one would hope that here at least, abjuring all feigned pretences of " hot sighs " and " painful life,' and " tears and plaints," he dipped his pencil inhomcly colours, and drew a sweet chaste portrait from his own fireside : A DESCRIPTION OF SUCH A ONE AS HE WOULD LOPE• A face that should content me wondrous well, Should not be fair, but lovely to behold ; Of gladsome chere, all grief for to expel; With sober looks so would I that it should Speak without wards, such words as none can tell: Her tress also should be of crisped gold. With wit, and these, perchance I might be tied, And knit °gam the knot that should not slide. Another short composition certainly origin ated in personal feeling. In one of his terms of imprisonment, caused by the capri cious tyranny of Henry VIII., he wrote : 880 limo