The Press. — London, England, 1858-07-31 00:00:00

THE PRESS, PJuLy 31, 1858. larity with those of Milton. His intellect, robust, composed, and disciplined, can march with the collected energy and halt with the deli berate precision which are necessary to sonnets composed in the grand and severe style which Milton introduced. Shakespeare's sonnets are of quite a different character. They are the " short swallow -flights of song" described by Tennyson, as Macaulay compared those of Milton to the collects of the English Liturgy. Milton's are restricted to fourteen lines because the subject does not call for many words; Shakespeare's be cause the feeling which inspires them is inter mittent. The former are deliberate oracles of the intellect ; the latter, involuntary effusions of the heart. Therefore it is that Milton does not in his sonnets treat the same subject twice; whereas Shakespeare, like Tennyson in the " In Memoriam," lingers on the same subject long. Milton's sonnets are severe, rational, various, like the speech of men; Shakespeare's are passionate, sweet, monotonous, like the song of birds. We have another volume of poems before us which is much more considerable than any of the three which have engaged our attention. Mr. Felix Meldred—who, or some one writing under this nom de guerre, is the author of " Leonilda, a Roman Romance of the Sixteenth Century" (Mit ehell)---is evidently a man of the most respectable talents and of some genuine poetical qualities. We can easily believe the account which, half apologetically, as he ruefully reflects that he has " perpetrated " a poem, he gives us of its genesis. Fifteen years ago he found himself an idle man in Rome, surrounded with much that pleased his eve and kindled his imitative instinct. He tried, gut unsuccessfully, to represent the scenes he ad mired with the pencil. Then it struck him, with the force of a new discovery, that they might be represented in words. The words, as he sum moned them, fell of their own accord into rank and file, and marched with a measured rhyth mical tread. He found himself making verses Sponte awl carmen lumen:Hs veniebat ad aptoa, Et pod tentabat dicere yeraus erat. After this it was in vain that he reasoned against the belief that he was a poet. A faith attested by such a miracle was irresistible. He was soon engaged in the composition of a long narrative poem, founded upon a manuscript romance of the sixteenth century, written in " very choice Italian." This poem is now presented to the world under the title of " Leonilda." We cannot call it a good poem. It has the glaring, the incurable fault, which has spoiled almost all the narrative poems of this age. It is not strictly a narrative poem at all, but a narra tion constantly interrupted by lyrical comments. No one will deny that if narration and poetry are to be united, the match ought to be for the mutual advantage of the parties. The narrative ought to be made more clear, more impressive, more delightful by the poetry, and the poetry ought to have its source and its justification in the inherent interest of the narrative. In the present case, however, these conditions are not only not satisfied, but systematically violated. The story would be perfectly intelligible and highly interesting—if it were in prose ; the poetry would be often charming—if the flow of description and eloquence were not impeded by the story. The cause of this ill-assortment is indicated by the author himself when he tells us that he made his sketches of Italian scenery first, and afterwards worked them into his story. We seem to learn from this statement that the story was never the thing uppermost in his thoughts, but that it is employed for the sake of the de scriptive embellishments, as a thread is used to keep a number of glittering beads together. Young poets are long in learning that the taste for a profusion of paltry ornaments, which hide what they adorn, is barbaric, and that the ugliest squaw is - prettier without her feathers and glass beads than with them. Beyond this principal and fatal fault, by which the poem as such is utterly destroyed, we note other indications that our poet's power is purely descriptive, and that his conceptions of whatever does not affect the senses are vague and indistinct. At the beginning of the second canto We have a description of the great intellectual movement of the sixteenth century. We do not think that it would occur to a true artist to describe this at length in general terms such as an historical essayist might employ. The true artist, we apprehend, would make the spirit of the age apparent throughout the work, without having recourse to a formal dissertation on it. If in that age religion was reformed, knowledge was in creased, geographical discovery made prodigious advances, poetry flourished, and art attained its zenith, all this ought to appear on the artist's picture ; it is a very poor makeshift for the artist himself to appear as showman, and communicate it in the course of a commentary on his work. The fervour and agitation of the age ought to express itself in the conversation of the personages who cross the scene. These, and not the author himself, ought to be the spokesmen of whatever new thoughts disturbed men's minds, whatever new faiths claimed authority over them, what ever new hopes new discoveries inspired, what ever new fancies new schools of art and poetry disseminated. In place of this our author gives us common rhetorical description, such as might be in place in the corner of a provincial newspaper ; e.g.:— And Angelo, who wrought from shapeless stone The giant fancies of his muscled mind ! His grand imagination stands alone In its own majesty and might enshrined. There in his fleshy marble you may find Thought turned to stone; and on his painted wall Pictures thnt will not let Time's eye grow blind : Sublime, impressive, with a charm to call The mind to worship, and a grandeur to appal. The reader will judge from this quotation what poem has been Mr. Meldred's model. Here is all the overstrained language and the gushing young lady's enthusiasm : here, too, is the metre of "Childe Harold." We cannot think that this is a good model for a young poet. Let Byron's merit be what it may, his imitators have cer tainly been a sorry lot. Nor do we think that the Spenserian stanza is fitted for long poems. Spenser understood it better than any of his suc cessors, yet, no doubt, one cause of the tedious ness of the "Faery Queene" is the monotony of the metre, Remodelled by Byron, it has become still more inconvenient for narrative by becom ing more rhetorical. Mr. Meldred will probably go on writing poetry. We think that he has found out some of the secrets of the art, but that he has still more to learn. We think that he may ultimately succeed in producing a good poem, if he can first succeed in persuading himself that to do so a careful training is necessary. This is not perhaps the popular doctrine about poetry, which is com monly supposed to be either absolutely a gift of nature, or, if in part the growth of circum stances, yet rather liable to be injured than im proved by study. Yet skill in painting does not come but by study, though it does not come at all but to the born painter. Systematic and laborious study, we are persuaded, is as necessary to the poet as to any other artist. lie lives in an insensate and inartistic world : sophistries destructive of the sanity of taste are ever ringing in his ears; if he suffer them to gain dominion over his mind, he will pervert his faculty, waste his heaven-given treasure, and leave men more coarse and vulgar, more fantastic and barbarous, than he found them. lie must study, that he may not grow sophistical ; lie must be artistic, that he may not grow artificial. In a primitive age the poet may be safe in following his im pulse; in a philosophical age, his only security is in a learned simplicity. Wyoming : its History, Stirring Incidents, and Romantic Adventures. By George Peck, P.D. London : Sampson Low and Co. Tuts volume is a semi-historical, semi-biographi cal account of the scene of Campbell's famous poem. It contains a succession of pictures of bloodshed and devastation, which by repeated strokes leave us at last with a very permanent impression of the horrors which the inhabitants of the valley underwent. There is a certain grim matter-of-fact simplicity in the style of these narrations which is not without a certain charm ; although the quaintness of American phraseology, and the extraordinary proper names which are everywhere introduced, sometimes excites mirth in us where we do not suppose the author in tended it. The fearful life led by these daring settlers in the proximity of hostile Indians, both before and after the breaking out of the revoln- 729 tionary war, is vividly described ; and the fearful tortures practised by the Indians on their pri soners, rumours of which probably inspired Goldsmith's allusions in "The Deserted Village," and Gray's in his " Fragment on Education." These hardy pioneers were, however, not without many of the qualities required quell the savage rushing from the wood, and frequently inflicted on the red men a severe retaliation. The women, too, of the settlement were of a more masculine growth than the daughters of civilization, and scorned to desert their household goods at an alarm of battle, murder, or fire. Here is a specimen : Mr. liennet had just removed his family into his new house. while it was without, chimney or chinking, when the old troubles between the two classes of settlers were revived. Armstrong and Van Horn, under the authority of the Legislative Council of Pennsylvania, had come en with a company of armed men, taken possession of the fort at Wilkesborre, and proceeded to drive the New Eng land people from the country by force and arms. Cap tain Swift, a Yankee, was wounded in an attempt to fire the fort, and was lodged at the widow Brockway's, at Tuttle's Creek. Many families were driven from their houses. Among them were the widows Shoemaker and Lee, near neighbours to Mr. Bennet. In vein did they plead that their husbands had been slain by the Tories ardi Indians, and they were helpless and defenceless widows, and they could not leave their homes and take a long journey through the wilderness. Go they most, and they made the best of the necessity. They left a portion of their goods with Mrs. Bennet, and were taken to Wilkes blame, and thence, with Esquire Lawrence Myers, Odes Slocum, and many others, were hurried on toward " the swamp." At espouse, Myers and Slocum escaped, but the great mass of the persecuted people had no remedy but to submit to their fats. Mr. Miner says, "About five hun dred men, women, and children, with scarce provisions to sustain life, plodded their weary way, mostly on foot,the road being impassable for waggons. Mothers, carrying their infants, literally waded streams, the water reaching to their armpits, and at night slept on the naked eatth, the heavens their canopy, with scarce clothes to cover them." What a reflection, this, upon Armstrong, Pat terson, Van Horn, and Company! . - Mr. Rennet and Colonel Denison escaped, and went up the river to Wyallusing. Mrs. Rennet stuck by the stuff. She had never yet left the Valley for the Penn makes, and she hail made up her mind that she never would. She was not left, however, in the possession of her home without an effort to drive her sway. Mrs. Myers says, " Van Horn and his posse came np, having pressed a Mr. Roberts, with his team, to carry off our goods. Van Horn ordered mother to clear out, hut she firmly replied that she was in her own hone, and she would not leave it for him or anybody else. He ordered Andrew and me to put things upon the waggon, a service which we refused to render. Some of the men went to the corn house, where there was s quantity of corn ; but mother seized a hoe, and, presenting herself before the door, declared that she wonhl knock the first man down who touched an ear of the corn. They looked astonished, arid left her. They thee began to look about the house, and they found the big cheat belonging to the widows, which was so heavy that they found it hard to lift, and they threatened to break it open with an axe. They carried some of our things out of the house ; but, before tney had commented loailieg up, they became alarmed lest they should be noticed by the Yat'kee boys, a company of whom were at the widow Brockway's, sail they left rather hastily, charging mother to he ready to leave the next morning. When they left Roberts went about his business, and "the boys" came and helped ns return our things to their Appropriate places. The Pennamites gave no no more interruption." A few days after the above events had transpired, Miss Bennet went out to mtlk the cows very earl•—as she says, when she "could see the stirs." John Sstterlee came along, to whom she said, " Satterlee, what in the world are you doing so early 7' He answered, "We have Dave Ogden out here in the woods." " Who has him ?" demanded Miss Bennet. " Bill Slocum," was the answer Said she, "Do let him go; he'll certainly kill you. Is he bound ?" " No," was the answer. " Can you give rue something to eat?" asked Satterlee. " Yes ; but you must not tell where you got it," was the answer. A cold cut was set. before him ; and, after satisfying his hunger, be left smiling. Miss Bennet charged him again and again, while he sat at the table, either to " let Ogden slip away or to bind him fast." Colonel Franklin, the Yankee leader, had l.is head•gnarters at Mill Creek, on the opposite aide of the river, whither Sstterlee and Slocum were bound with their prisoner. They took him into a canoe at the month of Shoemaker's Creek, and pushed off. Ogler) soon asked, " Boys, can you swim?" " No," was the answer. Ogien'a arms were pinioned. hnt his feet were free. He upset the canoe, turned on his back, and easily shoved himself across the river. Slocum hung to the canoe, hat poor Sstterlee went down and was drowned. Ogden and Slocum came out on the bar opposite Forty Fort, anti took different directions. Five of the finest young men in the settlement were killed during these terrible conflicts, among whom was William Smith, a young man of fine character, and much beloved. " The boys " at the widow Brockway's had nearly ea- Imitated their powder. Word came to Colonel Franklin, but it was a difficult matter to convey Across the river the needed anpply. Mrs. Kennedy—an old lady called Mother Kennedy—volunteered to convey the powder to the place where it was wanted. She tied it round her waist, under her Cress, and brought it to Mr. Bennet's, whence it soon found its way up to the widow Brockway's. MN 1 I l