The Press. — London, England, 1855-06-23 00:00:00

liCittraturt. CONTEMPORARY POETRY. 111. Ti certain axioms of criticism which have been broached of late be sound in principle, the nomenclature of poetry ought to be enlarged to admit a new genus. As we have the Elegiac and the Epic, the Didactic and the Dramatic, so, under this proposed arrangement, we should have what we will venture to call the Youthful. We admit that the title is a little vague, and likely at first sight to mislead the unthinking public. It might be supposed that by Youthful poetry was meant poetry relating to youth ; as by Pastoral poetry is clearly meant poetry relating to sheep and cows. This supposition may be easily seen to bu erroneous by a familiar analogy. When we say Ancient poetry nobody imagines we mean poetry about elderly people. On the contrary, it is very well understood that the term is applied to poetry that is itself old. In the same way the Youthful genus obviously implies poetry that is young—i.e., written in youth. There is some difficulty, no doubt, in form ing a distinct genus out of a characteristic common to all genera. Essential differences are indispensable to mark and distinguish one genus from another ; and as it is certain that every kind of poetry must have been young at one period, so this peculiarity—which is, in fact, no peculiarity at all—does not justify a separate classification. We acknowledge the force of that objection. But critics, like naturalists, will not always subscribe to estab lished laws, and will sometimes insist upon ignoring them to make room for new ones. This is a case in point. Our Youthful poetry is not separated from the other orders by any conditions inherent to itself, as in the ve getable and animal kingdoms, but by a declaratory law set up for the convenience of criticism. The law is this : that young poetry is not to be judged by the rules of taste, grammar, or common sense. To people of an ordinary way of thinking it may seem that we have not stated the canon accurately. If they have any doubts on the subject, however, they may at once clear them up by turning to some of the opinions pronounced upon a volume of poems recently published under the nom de plume of Owen Meredith.* They will there find it authoritatively promulgated. When a young poet does something very eccentric ; when he takes upon himself, for example, to exercise an unlimited jurisdiction over the " parts of speech," the rhythm of verse, and the current meaning of words, and, by the employment of a fantastical diction, dresses up baby ideas to make them look full grown, we are to understand that these are the faults of youth which time will mend, and that the very wilfulness which spurns the restraints of language, art, and reason is evidence of a genius which, like wine, wants nothing but keeping to make it fit for use. This was not exactly the argument employed by Pitt, in answer to an opponent who taunted him with his youth. He said that youth was a fault which every day would mend ; but he did not say that the faults of youth were proofs of an inspired intelligence. Could skill in poetry, without even making any stipulations about natural requisites, be acquired by dint of practice, there might be some hope that industry in the making of rhymes would be crowned with its usual rewards. hut, we fear, the old adage is irre versible. The poet must be born to his voca tion. You cannot bring up a promising youth to the fabrication of metres as you would to the making of shoes. You cannot bind him'prentice to the Muses. Unless Nature has given him some qualifications, it is worse than a waste of time to try to make a poet of him; you will only spoil him for an honester calling. The greatest of human calamities is to discover, when the evil is past remedy, that we have mistaken our course in life; and of such mistakes, which are common enough, that of settling down in a Fool's Paradise of verse is most to he de- I Ear/4 Return, the Arket, and other Poem.. London; Chapman and Hall. By Owen liii, THE PRESS. plored. This lamentable error is generally committed at an early age, and should be cor rected at once, just as you would correct any other idle and injurious propensity; for those golden hours, upon the direction of which the whole sequence of life depends, can never be retrieved. What Ben Jonson, in his Epiccene, says of the youth of women applies with equal significance to the youth of poetasters : " Ladies should be mindful of the approach of " age, and let no time want its due use. The " best of our days pass first. We are rivers " that cannot be called back." That the faults—or, more properly, the in surrectionary spirit—of the young poet should be regarded as the manifestation of powers which time will mellow into excellence is, therefore, a particularly mischievous canon. Under such critical encouragement time is likely to do nothing of the kind ; and the only effect that can be rationally anticipated from its influence is that of confirming the aberra tions which prevent the young writer from making any advance towards excellence. He would do well then to look to his eccentrici ties and affectations, his coinages and modern Euphuisms, his distortions of the vernacular and his tinsel sentiment, before these things have grown up into mental habits. Let him remember that no great poetry ever sprang from a base origin. It is not produced, like the butterfly, from a grub. The notion that poetry is a work of culture, and that he who begins ill may end well, is contradicted by a " cloud of witnesses." All poets of mark and likelihood in the world—with such rare exceptions as are barely sufficient to establish the rule—were at their best at the very opening of their career, or gave clear and unmistakeable indications of what their best would be. Shakspeure pro duced nine plays before he was twenty-nine years of age, and amongst them two of his greatest comedies. Milton was only twenty six hen he wrote Comas. What has been called the " vernal fertility " of Cowley was the precursor in kind and quality of every thing he afterwards accomplished. Pope's boy verses had the impress of the manner and the matter which manhood only made more perfect and thoughtful. Waller's first verses were as good as his last, and were marked by precisely the same characteristics. Shelley was only eighteen when he wrote " Queen Mab " ; and Keats, whose rich imagination places him next to Spenser, accomplished everything he did at a period of life when other men's powers are hardly in their dawn. All experience concurs in showing that youth is the season for the development of the poetical intellect, and that if original power be not exhibited then it is hopeless to look for it afterwards. The graver faculties that expand under the culture of observation and study may be expected to disclose themselves late in life; but to look to maturity for imagination, fancy, and passion cf which youth has given no promise, except in forms of counterfeit or imitation, is simply a fallacy, which may be classed with the auriferous delusions of the alchemists, or the ingenious experiment of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. The hopes which may be reasonably founded on Mr. Meredith's volume are not to be re ferred to those peculiarities in which he outrages custom and common sense, but to the occasional gleams of nature and earnest ness which struggle out in spite of them. The evidences of a poetical temperament are much more obvious than the display of a poetical capacity—a distinction of so much importance to the future career of the writer that he may be urgently advised to reflect upon its bearings Eccentricities of manner and expression run wild through the poems, and are clustered so thickly amongst delicate indications of genuine feeling that it would be impossible by any process of revision to clear them out. In attempting to get rid of the weeds you must pluck up the flowers. Mr. Meredith, in common with some other writers who substitute the sign for the nub stance, seems to think that the vigour of antiquity may be obtained by the adoption of its forms. This is as palpable an hallucina• tion as if we were to print a history of the Peninsular war in black letter under the expectation of imparting to it the interest of SATURDAY, an old. chronicle. It would be difficult to dis cover the magic that lies in obsolete ortho graphy, such as crusht, toucht, dropt, forkt. Nobody can be deceived into a notion that the words carry a quainter significance by being presented in a shape long since discarded, or that the revival of modes which passed into disuetude a century ago is justified by a whim. A poet might as rationally revert to the phraseology of Chaucer, and write in a compound of Saxon and Anglo-Norman. If these fantastical tricks were permitted to pass with impunity, there would be no possibility of keeping the language pure, and regulating the principles of its progress towards fixity. Thus also we have constantly in this volume tho' and thro' for though and through ; and the page becomes disfigured by marks which appear to imply elisions where there are, in fact, no elisions whatever either of vowels or syllables. Why not give the words honestly at full length, no object of any kind being gained by lopping them of their proper pro• portions? There is another class of words subjected to a similar process of reduction with quite as little justification ; but in these Mr. Meredith has merely followed a general usage. Thus whirled, poured, praised are in variably printed whirled, pour'd, praild. There is no conceivable pretence upon which this typographical deformity can be defended. The words are pronounced exactly in the same way, and contain exactly the same quantity, with and without the vowels. The deviation from the universal pronunciation would con sist in converting them into dissyllables ; and deviations alone should be marked. If it were the custom to pronounce whirled whirled, there would be an obvious reason for cutting away the vowel ; but to deform the word with out necessity is vicious and absurd. An objection of a different kind lies against Mr. Meredith's employment of the diaeresis. This can be shown only in examples : In many a dark Gethseman I seem'd to stand where Thou - hadst stood— Or in Amphitrite's grot— Slow•moving in his fired place-- As we take it for granted that Mr. Meredith is aware of the legitimate use of the direresis, we must conclude that it is resorted to in these and similar instances under the impres sion that it gives increised emphasis to the syllabification. If such had been the design it should have been explained, for most read ers will be puzzled to penetrate the author's intention in employing an old sign in a new signification. These are slight matters, but not altogether unimportant as illustrations of that tendency towards novelty and innovation which is exhibited still more strikingly in the language and structure of the poems. One of Mr. Meredith's specialities is the frequent use of full periods in places where the sense is left incomplete, or where the resolution of the entire meaning of a passage requires connec tion and continuity to the close. Here is an example : Let me think—my head is aching. I have little strength to think. And I know my heart is breaking. Yet, 0 love, I will not shrink ! In his look was inch sweet sadness. And he fix'd that look on me. was helpless—call it madness, Call it guilt—but it must be. This may be described as a kind of hysterical poetry ; a sort of poetry that must be read in sobs and spasms to give due effect to the punctuation. Yet the meaning of each stanza clearly demands that it should be read con tinuously as a whole. As here printed, the first stanza consists of four distinct proposi tions, having no sequence or dependence on each other; and the second of two, the first of which is left unfinished, concluding with a result broken off from its antecedents. In each a full period is placed before a conjunc tion, so that in these few lines we have instances of sentences with their heads and tails cut off. New laws of grammar would be necessary to make good English of this style of punctuation. Of metrical irregularities there are several examples. A few will be sufficient : i.;