The Press. — London, England, 1854-08-05 00:00:00

t 1 L 736 M. Gautier very candidly states that during the whole of his residence in Constantinople he met with but one very slight adventure, though he indicates in a paragraph whole volumes of Eastern romance : Nothing is more charming in an Eastern tale than to read how an old woman in a deserted street made you a sign to follow her cautiously and at a dis'Ance, and intro duced you by a secret door into an apartment heaped with all the luxuries of the Orient, where, reclining upon a superb divan, a sultana gleaming with jewels, which, how. ever, paled beside her superb loveliness, impatiently awaited your coming, and received yon with smiles of tenderness and welcome. In due course, the adventure should terminate by the sudden arrival of the master, who scarcely leaves you time to fly by the back-door ; unless, indeed, a more tragical climax is attained, by a contest from which you barely escape with life, and the plunge into the Bosphorus, at dead of night, of a sack which bears some vague resemblance to the human form. Such adventures have in general no better origin than an Armenian intrigue : For this it suffices to have an old woman, who arranges her plans with a pretty young A rnienian coquette, a rather credulous and romantic young man, and a rendezvous in a lonely house. Vanity does the rest, and the adventure generally terminates in the extortion of a sum of money, an insignificant circumstance, omitted from the subsequent narrative of the deluded *our, who imagines in his heroine at least a favourite slave of a pacha, if not one of the harem of the Grand Seignior himself. Our author's own adventure was simple enough. Riding one evening through the im mense cemetery which stretches from the Seven Towers to the hills of Eyoub, he observed a young girl, veiled with a transparent yach mack, and wrapped in a feredge of green, sitting beside a tomb with flowers in her hand. As the stranger approached she raised her head, revealing through her transparent veil a face of surpassing loveliness, and with timid grace offered him a rose from her bouquet. At the moment our author was joined by his companion, who had lagged behind, and to him the like grace was accorded ; then some attendants of the beauty came up, and she was lost in an instant in the shade of overhang ing cypresses. " Thus," says M. Gautier, pathetically, thus terminated the only conquest I can boast among the Turkish fair ones. But I have never forgotten those luminous black eyes with their rich drooping lashes ; and I still preserve with care the rose she gave me, and which I shall ever guard as a precious relic. In fact, Turkish ladies are so carefully watched, and such intense jealousy is mani fested at the approach of a giaour, that a stranger, however gallant his disposition, has not the slighest chance of gratifying it. A Moslem resents the slightest allusion to his harem as an insult; and a French ambassa dress who wished to make the favoured ladies of Redschid Pasha a present of some superb Lyons silk sent it to him with the brief inti mation :—" Pray accept some silks, which you " will know better than any one how to use." It is likely enough, however, that Turkish ladies, in spite of their seclusion, may conduct intrigues after a strictly Turkish fashion little known to us. It would be strange, indeed, if all those stories of love and faithlessness which have descended to us from the days of the Arabian nights downwards were void of foundation. This amusing volume is marked through. out by picturesque description. The author makes some strange mistakes in his allusions to English life, but the general tenor of his narrattve is as faithful as it is animated. The translation, by Mr. Gould, is more than com monly spirited, and the volume is illustrated by plates from photographic pictures. The Poetical Works of Gray, Collins. Parnell, T. Warton, and Green. 1 vol. Edited by the Rev. R. A. Willmott. London : Rout ledge and Co. THIS is a very pleasing volume, containing some works that, though small in space, will be lasting in time. It is edited, with copious notes, by Mr. Willmott, who is thoroughly familiar with his authors, and has illustrated the text with criticisms for the most part graceful and judicious. He is sometimes too lenient as a critio and too prone to yield his enthusiasm, and he overestimates the merits of the purely academical in style. He looks at nature through a literary atmosphere, and likes that authors should be strictly orthodox in not violating the traditional canons. v. ' • vor vlr• . • TrIE PRESS. -------- Like many other accomplished men of the age, his tendency is towards autho rity in criticism and to prescriptive forms in style. We have ourselves been so often offended with mock genius and the spurious original that we cannot find heart to blame the cautious school of criticism of which Mr. Willmott is an example. The poets in this volume have a generic affinity. They wrote in the eighteenth cen tury, and, even when most affecting the su blime, they studiously laboured for the correct. They sought to unite the emotional with the exact, and to express raptures without one semitone too much of vehemence. They did not so much love the beautiful and grand as shrink from any expression that might possi bly have suggested aught that was capable of being turned into ridicule. They wrote as authors, rather than sung like poets, and com posed with fastidious elegance if they did not create with the inventive faculty of sublime genius. We feel that verse was with them a brilliant accomplishment rather than a daily inspiration. They had not that "mighty " hunger of the heart " which in every age has driven forward the great poets to live only for their sublime privilege of evoking tones of divine melody from the harp. Their strains are sweet, rich in cadences, and quaintly orna mented with many devices of art ; but we feel that the artificial picturesque was constantly before them, and the sublime grandeurs, as well as the simpler graces, of nature were beyond such melodious mechanicians. It would be impossible to conceive of the period when English poetry could be read and Gray's " Elegy" forgotten. Through all vi cissitudes of taste it has held its popularity : it fascinates upon a first reading, and con tinues to please while intellect and memory remain. Though often made a school task, it reads with freshness in after life. It contains single lines which are poems by themselves. What sonnet was ever so suggestive as the verse, The breezy call of incense•breathing morn, or where he alludes to evening, And drowsy tiuklings lull the distant folds. But verbal felicity and musical sweetness, though it abounds in both, are far from being the best merits of the "Elegy." It contains a variety of poetical ideas, sometimes pathe tic and sometimes picturesque, occasionally uniting both qualities, and appealing at once to fancy and feeling. Thus, Na children run to lisp their sire's return, And climb his knees the envied kiss to share, touches a chord in every nature. Then we have the sentimental in feeling, and the poe tical graphic realised at once in the vivid pic ture : - - His listless length at noontide would he stretch, And pore upon the brook that babbles by. None but a poet could produce such lines. A mere rhetorician would jingle through a vo lume of verse without giving us such a sense of the ideal as some single lines of Gray. Word-painting was not the only resource which he employed to produce his effects. Several of his stanzas are instinct with human feeling. Thus, after noting the texts in the churchyard, That teach the rustic moralist to die, how finely he bursts forth For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind. One is almost surprised that a poet who could produce such verses did not give us more of them. But Gray blotted every verse that he thought was mediocre. Thus he omitted the following from the " Elegy," as they did not please him sufficiently : Hark ! how the sacred calm that breathes around Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease ; In still small accents whisperinc from the ground, A grateful earnest of eternal peace. Him have we seen the greenwood-side along, While o'er the heath we hied, our labour done, What time the woodlark piped her farewell song, With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun. There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen are showers of violets found; The redbreast loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps lightly print the ground• SATURDAY, These stanzas are sweet in themselves, and the last two lines are prettily touching; but we do not concur with Mr. Willmott, who " supposes that every reader numbers them " amongst the treasures of his memory." Placed beside the context of the rest of the "Elegy," they would appear indistinct in ideas, and rather tame in utterance. Goldsmith was right in tracing the influ ence of Spenser over the mind of Gray. Many passages in " The Faerie Queene " are in spired by that " divine despair " which has filled the greatest poetical natures. The quaint and variously-fashioned ornaments of Spenser, and the richness of his diction, were especially calculated to charm Gray. The melancholy that occasionally is heard in his verse is of a philosophical rather than poetical nature. Mr. Willmott deals tenderly with Gray's religious character. After citing some consolatory remarks, written as a Deist might utter them, Mr. Willmott says: — These are the consolations of a philosopher, the richest gleams of Deism on its side of glory. Did Gray go beyond it ? And was there before his eyes the one shadow of the cross over life ? In want of direct evidence, we can only look at his works, and their voice gives an uncertain sound. \Vise lessons, tender morals, pathetic pictures, instruct and enchant us ; but we discover no angel in his churchyard, sitting on a tomb. He pursues the insect through its summer day, sees time and grief spoiling its wings of the fair colours, and leaves it with a sigh in the dust. The fact is, that theology was the element of learning in which Gray was weak. Mason could never persuade him to read Jeremy Taylor. As we have intimated, Gray wanted potion to be a truly great poet. Sensibility alone will not give power in any mental pursuit unless there be sustained intensity and strong reality of purpose. We are thankful for what Gray has given us, and it would be impossible to unite such exquisite felicity of execution with prolific variety of design. The late Isaac D'lsraeli compared his poems to a rich tissue woven on the frames and with the gold threads of others. To us they are rather suggestive of an Italian garden, in which ancient and modern art are combined to rival nature ; where old statues and classical arbours with mosaic pavements divert the eye from the flowers and verdure, and yet where only the peevish critics could disparage the beautiful ingenuity of the artist presiding over the scene. Collins, often confounded with the school of Gray, belonged to a different class of mind. He had far less reach of understanding than Gray, who was a profound thinker and va riously-learned scholar in the strictest sense of the terms. But, with less attainment and inferior mastery over language, Collins had more natural intensity of genius. He was not great enough to conquer circumstances. The teasing vulgarities of a narrow sphere of life stifled his intellect. To some sensitive minds poverty is as bad as a gaol. Its tyranny is felt to degrade them in the opinion of their neighbours, who are "the world" to them; and its effect is still worse when its victims, in some respects, have, like Collins, brought it on themselves. It is only charitable to con clude that the madness which afflicted the closing scenes of the life of Collins had in fected him in earlier years. We know nothing more disheartening in literary history than the fact that Collins died before his fame had begun to dawn on the public ; and there is scarcely another instance in which produc tions of genius like his excellent odes re ceived such a cheerless reception. It seems strange that the " Ode to the Passions" did not at once commend the author to ap plause. Amidst the few fragments bequeathed to us by his hapless genius we can discern the union of the contemplative with the intense. We have lately been wearied with reading the endless landscapes on paper drawn by some of our rhetorical verse-makers. Let us see how real genius, with a few magic words, unfolds a vast landscape to the eye. There is some thing truly admirable in these verses from the " Ode to Evening " : Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene; Or find some ruin, 'midst its dreary dells, Whose walls more awful nod By thy religious gleams. Or, if chill blustering winds, or driving rain, Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut, That, from the mountain's side, Views wilds, and swelling floods,