The Press. — London, England, 1856-09-27 00:00:00

930 for poetry seems to progress in proportion to the decrease of poets. Whether it is that true genius shrinks from contention with the ruck of writers, fearful of being thrown out of the race by a bad start, or is too proud to run the risk of being catalogued with the versifiers of the passing day— from whatever cause it arise, the absence of any glimmer of real poetic inspiration in some fifty or sixty volumes of rhyme and blank verse which are now before us is a most melancholy and remarkable fact. That many of these are written by persons of taste and education cannot be disputed, and they sometimes succeed in pleasing us by touches of genuine feeling and happily chosen phrases de• scriptive of natural objects ; but there is not one of them in whom the composition of some hundreds of pages of poc try with a view to publication is not it sad waste of mental power, which would have been 1 ix better employed on the study of a profession, the improvement of a family, or the acquisition of fresh k iowledge. If there he ono volume among those we have enu merated below towards which these observations may possibly sound harsh or unjust, it is Mr. Ailing ham's. We cannot certainly concede that in The Music Master, and Day and Night Songs,* is to be found any evidence of poetry in its true sense. But there is in the former a good deal of descriptive writing which exhibits the highest degree of clever. ness, and the story in itself is simple and affecting, though it may be doubted how far the extreme diffi dence of Gerald is true to nature. The young music-master is in love with one of his pupils, a girl of sixteen. When his father dies, he resolves to emigrate, because he dare not tell his love to the maiden who is all the time dying for him. He goes, and while abroad hears of her death three years after his departure, and the poem ends with his return to visit her grave. The picture of a summer's day in a village is beautifully executed. The follow ing stanza contains two most ingenious expressions:— From little cottage gardens you almost Smell the fruit ripening on the sultry air. Opprest to silence, every bird is lost In cave and hedgerow; save that here and there, With twitter swift, the sole unquiet thing, Shoots the dark lightning of a swallow's wing. The elder-tree also is well touched off:— The writhen elder spreads its creamy bloom. Mr. Allingham is a very agreeable verse-writer, and it is with unfeigned self-denial that we say anything which may tend to put him out of conceit with his own performances ; but they are not poetry, nor do we think that if his ambition lie i❑ attaining the fame of a poet he will be able to escape disappoint ment. In the meantime he is the best judge of his own prospects, and we are very willing to be enter tained by his musical stanzas as long as it suits him to manufacture them. fin Mr. Leigh's Garlands of Verse+ we meet with some genuine pathos, and some felicitous and natural thoughts. One expression struck us as especially delicate and thoughtful. The writer is in the first period of mourning for his lost wife. Everything around seems clmfortless, dull, and gloomy. Nature, however, and the birds and beasts still rejoice, as of old, and are still as beautiful. Then he says : But all accept their joy, and bless The giver in some voice; Oh, Alice, shall I lore Thee less, / Lou can rejoice? This is a beautiful expression of the truest and deepest feeling, so deep, in fact, as seldom to find expression in words.: Mrs. Ogilvie's Poems of Ten Years: evince a careful study of good writers, and display very con siderable imitative powers. The poem of " Bona and Piero " is written with well-sustained rhythm, and in a bold style. The following stanzas are a specimen : Next day at dawn the helmsman cried " Behold yon far off streak, It is our bright Calabria, And Mondragone's peak, And Tiber . / waters to the north The blue Tyrrhenean seek." She came, she gazed upon her land, Gazed northward o'er the sea, Where underneath the morning clouds She knew her home must be, With all the sunny seething plains Of warm moist Lombardie. She gazed, and down her eyelids dropped Upon her withered cheek, No word she said to answer them IN'ho hailed the shining streak, Anti of their kindred's welcoming arms bid passionately speak. No word she said, her lips were pale, They saw her eyelids close, For she had owned the mastery Of death, her last of foes; And after all her sufferings Had f mud the end of woes. • &' stter, ass Day and Night S,,figa. By William Allingliatn. Routledge and Co. + Garlands 4 Verse. By Thomas Leigh. Smith and Elder. Poem of Tea ]'cars. By Mrs. Ogilvie. Thomas Bosworth. . Lm,,.. vw a rft 1 CUTII. 07 All THE PRESS. They bore her body o'er the sea To her own Valteline, They laid her at her mother's side Beneath the churchyard pine ; But ah, no more her brother sang, When digging round the vine ! The " Four Winds " also displays great proficiency. In The Maid of Messene§ we recognise some youthful spirit, and a praiseworthy endeavour after classical excellence. It is a first-rate school exercise, but as a tragedy written for the world the less said about it the better. But some of the other poems in the volume are of a higher order. The " Charge of the Light Brigade "is vigorous without being affected or tumid ; and the verses on Sebastopol are creditable to the writers powers of versification, if not to his military genius'. Mr. Archer Gurney's volumed is the last on our list that we shall notice separately. This gentleman has long been recognised as a man of great ability and extensive acquirements; but, not satisfied with this, he has all his life been advancing claims to the reputation of a bard, which the would has been very loth to acknowledge. A small circle of friends and admirers have assured him of his right to the title, and he has not, unfortunately, displayed the same sense and modesty as Virgil's shepherd in disbeliev ing them. We feel, however, that Mr. Gurney could not easily write trash. Much of the present volume gives evidence of intellectual power, and it shows great earnestness and warmth of devotion. We blame no one for giving expression to such feelings in verse. We only warn them against the self-deceit which would lead them to Imagine themselves poets. We quote a few lines of Mr. Gurney's, which afford a favorable example of his powers : Still thy broad leaves are growing, E'en as they bloom'd, old tree, When 1, through the greenwood going, My dearest met by thee; The breezes as then are blowing, From over the mountains free. I dreamt in my love-sick fancies Thy trunk might be bare and hoar, That the sun scarce woul l waste his glances On the spot where she roatu'd no more, Nor that song which all hearts entrances, Flom the nightingale heav'nward soar, But earth has no thought even fleeting For the woes of our mortal race ; The sunshine which beam'd on our greeting, Still smiles on the old tryst-place ; But lonely this heart is beating, And death doth my love embrace. Of the remaining volumes on our list we can only say that, printed for private circulation, such verses would no doubt be considered elegant and pretty ; but they really give the writers no claim whatever to the position of authors. If all the young ladies' albums in this country were to be ransacked by some lunatic publisher, and their contents given to the world in neat red and green volumes with gilt letters on the back, it would be rather hard upon the unfor tunate tribe of journalists to expect them to say something distinctive about every single authoress. We confess we cannot undertake a very similar task. We have read the volumes in question ; they are on an average below the ordinary run of the Newdegate prize poems, and scarcely up to the standard which most educated and cultivated minds could attain if verse-writing were made their pursuit. This incon tinence of rhyme is beginning to be a national disease. When will the physician appear ? THE SOCIAL USES OF FICTION. TO TILE EDITOR OF " THE PRESS." Sir,—Amongst the arguments by which the secret friends of transatlantic slavery seek to weaken the effect of Mrs. Stowe's recent publication, none is more specious and yet less tenable if thoroughly scrutinise 1 than the objection, endorsed by the A the nteum, that social questions are, as such, without the province of the novelist. In your last issue you placed the points of difference on this topic, and the conclusions (generally adverse to the dictum of the Athenaum) to which your examination of the respec tive arguments had led you, before your readers. Perhaps you will allow me, without trenching on that part of the subject to which you promise to return hereafter, to make a few observations on the case made out by the unfriendly reviewer of " Dred." As you remark, his dicta are far too sweeping and generalised. "Serious social questions are not fit or legitimate subjects for art." This, the refrain of the whole article, is dogmatic enough, but commands neither our constrained assent, as such nrlvitylry The Maid of liessene, and Other Poems. I.ly r.. 11. Student of Christchurch, Oxford. Longtime. Sotujs of Early Summer. By Archer Gurney. Longmans. Poems. By Isa. 'Backwoods. Waters of Comfort. By the Author of " Visiting my Relations." Cambridge : Macmillan and Co. Poems. By Mrs. Mitchell. .1. W. Parker and Son. I Too. By Beelzebub. Townsend anti Co. Poems. By Sheldon Chadwick. David Bogue. The Sea, and Other Poems. By the Scald. hope and Cu. SATURDAY, decisions ought to do at least, nor even our partial concurrence. Admit, as every one must, that fiction has a higher mission than the supply of so many thousand volumes per annum to satisfy the cravings of the literary (!) appetites of the customers at the circulating library; admit that it has the power, as it undoubtedly has, of rivetting the attention and in.. fluencing the judgment, and that this power is greater the more truly life and manners are depicted; and it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that fiction is not destined only to exercise a mighty influence on domestic life and character, but that it is an agent whose aid may be fitly employed in order to approach, under the guise of art, and to impress, by the agency of dialogue and the portrayal of character, the many who would turn with disgust from social statistics, and listen without interest to incontrovertible moral essays. What if a novel cannot adequately treat t f a broad social question, or furnish a complete solu tion of a complex political difficulty ! It does not follow that it may not throw much, and diffuse still more, light upon it ; that it may not assist in the discovery of the solution, whilst preparing the popular mind for the acknowledgment and acceptance of the true principles of an equitable settle ment, long delayed by the uncompromising spirit of party and hidden beneath the misrepresentations of prejudice. Is the novel the only branch of litera ture which is liable to be onesided and exaggerated? 1)o party predilections, personal antipathies, straining after rhetorical effects and striking contrasts, never lead the historian to propagate as truth coloured and distorted or partial views of events and persons ? How few poets, again, are there who do or can give au unbiassed expression of sentiment on those questions of the day on which they feel strongly, and entertain decided convictions ! No blame to them. Those who hold catholic opinions on either art, or litera ture, or politics, or religion, are few, even in an age like the present, when toleration is comparatively in the ascendant ; and I doubt whether these large minded men are best qualified to carry great measures, or to infuse their own spirit into others. I think it is better to hear the different impressions which the same things make on equally conscien tious minds; and to have cx parte statements, rather than, in an age of inquiry which tries and tests all things, to forbid their discussion in any form (whether the essay, the history, the poem, or the novel), because those who conduct the case will be more or less advocates. If we have not a judge who can sift the evidence for us, and lay down the prin ciples which must guide our verdict, better to hear the case on both sides expounded and shown to us in its strength and its weakness, than to leave the issue open and evade the responsibility of forming an opinion. It is very true that (as the Athenceum argues) a foreigner might draw from the evidence of our police courts a picture of English life, in which the exception was described as the rule, and an entirely false idea given of our manners and charac ter ; but he may do the same in an essay or a history just as well as in a novel. If it is answered that in the latter case his testimony will be overthrown by more reliable witnesses, I answer, so will it in the former; truth and simplicity will prevail there also over falsehood and exaggeration. Works like " Napo leon le Petit" quickly find their level; those of such writers as Montalembert, Guizot, and Remusat float above such rubbish, because there is the buoyancy of truth to keep them up ; and RO the only novels of the present day which treat of manners that are likely to live are such as Lytton's "My Novel " and " The Caxtons," and Thackeray's " Vanity Fair," " Pendennis," and " New comes "—works which, in depicting modern life, rest their claims, not merely on striking incident and skilfully-developed plot, or brilliant dialogue —as most other popular writers do—but which descend beneath the surface of society, and hold up to view its inner life. In like manner Bulwer, Disraeli, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs. Stowe—the forerunners of a large school of fictionists, who will hereafter find, in the illustration of current public questions, a sphere in which they can do good service to society, whilstin creasing their literary tame—will continue to influ ence the world for good, when the less talented end less honest publications of others on the same sul jects are buried in merited oblivion. A great re former said it was a shame to let the Devil have all the best tunes; I say that, for the same reason, it would be a shame to debar to the propagation of social truth the readiest means for conveying it to "the many." We have no infallible authority on these, no more than on religions, matters; no index expurgatorius, in which to place obnoxious rooks ; and we only punish blasphemous and immoral put lications—moral poisons —on the same grounds a , ' I suppose, at some time or other, we shall place a legislative check on the unlicensed sale of vegetable and mineral poisons. Free discussion and liberty of opinion on any controverted subject is what we al claim ; some of us, perhaps, enunciate very shallow, bigoted views, but they only go for what they are worth. We justly hold that this privilege of speech contains in itself the means of correcting its ex- .........0