The Press.
London, England, 1855-05-12 00:00:00

CONTEMPORARY POETRY.

IF the divine afflatus could be computed by
weight, we have an excellent opportunity just
now of submitting it to that test. Upwards
of fifty volumes of verse, or thereabouts, the
produce of the last few months, are piled up
on our table; and this collection, prodigious
as it is, only partially represents the recent
activity of the poetical element amongst us.
It may be doubted whether any other depart
ment of literature, singly considered, was
equally prolific in the same peiiod. Put into
the scales even against the novels—making
a reasonable allowance for the typographical
expansion of that branch of industry—we
suspect the verse-books would kick the beam.
But neither the influence, nor the intrinsic
merits, of any species of intellectual produc-
tion can be estimated by quantity. Nor is it
a decisive evidence of the existence of a par-
ticular mania for music that such a vast
number of singers should burst out into full
chorus simultaneously, like birds at the ap-
proach of spring. They may have misunder-
stood the signs of the season ; they may have
mistaken Juliet for the east. Poetry, like
much commoner things, is subject, more or
less, to the laws of political economy, and
must be ultimately regulated by the principle
of supply and demand. There may be an
over-supply of poetry, as of indigo or cotton.
Inspiration, like speculation, may have its
warehouses filled with unsaleable goods. And
this consideration conducts us at once to the
peculiar case of the poet, which, in some
respects, differs from that of all other pro-
ducers.

In the first place, it should be remembered
that it is not by the number of books that are
printed, but by the number of books that are
read, the tendency of the age in a special
direction can be determined. Publishers
thorotighly understand this. The ledger is an
infallible commercial thermometer of the
fluctuations of the popular taste ; and hence
it generally happens that when the demand
for a particular class of works falls off, the
whole class insensibly disappears. Thus it
was with the romances of the Ratcliffe school,
to select a familiar example. The most con-
summate art could not now revive an interest
in them; and, therefore, nobody makes the
attempt. But the poet is not governed,
guided, or instructed by the admonitions of
experience. His eyes are fixed on the stars,
and he walks straight into the mantling pool
of instantaneous oblivion at his feet. He
prints whether he is read or not. He re-
fuses to accept contemporary judgment as a
criterion of the prudence of inviting its ver-
diet, die hail a way of appealing to posterity

453

which renders him indifferent to present
failure. If he be neglected by his own age, he
has the comfortable consolation of knowing
that the next age will do him justice. Conse-
quently, the great accumulation of verse must
be accounted for on grounds wholly inap-
plicable to any other kind of books. It is a
crop quite independent of the ordinary laws
of vegetation and culture. It requires neither
sunshine, nor favorable soils, nor preparatory
tillage. It springs up in the night, anywhere,
and anyhow, with a luxuriance more remark-
able for fecundity than vigour or usefulness ;
and it has also the peculiar property of the
cockle, that its growth cannot be checked, in
spite of all the efforts of the husbandmen—
that is to say, the critics—to clear it out from
the corn.

To what extent any of the poems before us
have been, or are likely to be, read, we cannot,
of course, pretend to predicate ; but it is
evident that the publication of the bulk of
them may be referred, not to the reliance of
the booksellers on present cash returns, but
to the happy faith of the authors in future
laurels. The dainty care bestowed on the
garniture of most of them—the immense dis-
proportion between the cost of the outside
and the value of the inside—and the elabora-
tion of the external ornaments, like those of
mummies destined for posterity, betray that
inextinguishable belief in a distant public
which is certainly not one of the foibles of
the Row.

It would be impossible to found upon these
poems any satisfactory theory concerning the
poetical development of the•present age. We
cannot collect from them any suggestions
towards such a speculation. No particular
style predominates amongst them ; no para-
mount idea, or purpose, animates this band of
straggling musicians. They seem to sing, for
the most part, out of mere idleness, or the
vagrant pleasure of making a noise, just as
turbulent little boys 'whistle through the
streets. There are some few exceptions,
which we shall note in passing ; but fur the
rest, the nineteenth century might be a period
of energetic action or bucolic repose, of
chivalry and romance or calculation and shop-
keeping, for any light they threw upon it—
with the exception of the single topic of the
war. This subject, indeed, occupies a con-
siderable share of the attention of the poets,
and they exhibit upon it the same sort of zeal
with which certain indefatigable minstrels
diffuse through the metropolis the triumphs
of a popular air. These writers may be con
sidered as forming a distinct class, and as
being entitled to precedence by virtue of the
seasonableness of their theme. We will,
therefore, begin with them, and then proceed
to the consideration of the miscellaneous
residue.

It will strike the most casual reader of
modern heroics that battles and victories are
no longer approached with the careful prepa-
ration displayed by former poets on similar
occasions. We look in vain for a plan, for
large pictures, or even expressive details. The
utmost that appears to be accomplished is a
sudden burst of verse, in which the writer
gives vent to a few hasty images, without
stopping to put them in order, or to shape
them into a whole. It is as if a worker in
metals were to aim at no farther results than
the sparks he strikes out of the anvil. This
was not the way in which the " Annus Mira-
bilis " was wrought, in which Waller celebrated
the defeat of the Turks, or Addison sang the
glories of Marlborough—