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

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 :