The Press.
London, England, 1858-07-31 00:00:00

THE PRESS, PJuLy 31, 1858.

larity with those of Milton. His intellect,
robust, composed, and disciplined, can march
with the collected energy and halt with the deli-
berate precision which are necessary to sonnets
composed in the grand and severe style which
Milton introduced. Shakespeare's sonnets are of
quite a different character. They are the " short
swallow-flights of song" described by Tennyson,
as Macaulay compared those of Milton to the
collects of the English Liturgy. Milton's are
restricted to fourteen lines because the subject
does not call for many words; Shakespeare's be-
cause the feeling which inspires them is inter-
mittent. The former are deliberate oracles of
the intellect ; the latter, involuntary effusions of
the heart. Therefore it is that Milton does not
in his sonnets treat the same subject twice;
whereas Shakespeare, like Tennyson in the " In
Memoriam," lingers on the same subject long.
Milton's sonnets are severe, rational, various, like
the speech of men; Shakespeare's are passionate,
sweet, monotonous, like the song of birds.

We have another volume of poems before us which
is much more considerable than any of the three
which have engaged our attention. Mr. Felix
Meldred—who, or some one writing under this
nom de guerre, is the author of " Leonilda, a
Roman Romance of the Sixteenth Century" (Mit-
ehell)---is evidently a man of the most respectable
talents and of some genuine poetical qualities.
We can easily believe the account which, half
apologetically, as he ruefully reflects that he has
" perpetrated " a poem, he gives us of its genesis.
Fifteen years ago he found himself an idle man
in Rome, surrounded with much that pleased his
eve and kindled his imitative instinct. He tried,
gut unsuccessfully, to represent the scenes he ad-
mired with the pencil. Then it struck him, with
the force of a new discovery, that they might be
represented in words. The words, as he sum-
moned them, fell of their own accord into rank
and file, and marched with a measured rhyth-
mical tread. He found himself making verses

Sponte awl carmen lumen:Hs veniebat ad aptoa,
Et pod tentabat dicere yeraus erat.

After this it was in vain that he reasoned against
the belief that he was a poet. A faith attested
by such a miracle was irresistible. He was soon
engaged in the composition of a long narrative
poem, founded upon a manuscript romance of the
sixteenth century, written in " very choice
Italian." This poem is now presented to the
world under the title of " Leonilda."
We cannot call it a good poem. It has the
glaring, the incurable fault, which has spoiled
almost all the narrative poems of this age. It is
not strictly a narrative poem at all, but a narra-
tion constantly interrupted by lyrical comments.
No one will deny that if narration and poetry are
to be united, the match ought to be for the
mutual advantage of the parties. The narrative
ought to be made more clear, more impressive,
more delightful by the poetry, and the poetry
ought to have its source and its justification in
the inherent interest of the narrative. In the
present case, however, these conditions are not
only not satisfied, but systematically violated.
The story would be perfectly intelligible and
highly interesting—if it were in prose ; the
poetry would be often charming—if the flow of
description and eloquence were not impeded by
the story. The cause of this ill-assortment is
indicated by the author himself when he tells us
that he made his sketches of Italian scenery first,
and afterwards worked them into his story. We
seem to learn from this statement that the story
was never the thing uppermost in his thoughts,
but that it is employed for the sake of the de-
scriptive embellishments, as a thread is used to
keep a number of glittering beads together.
Young poets are long in learning that the taste
for a profusion of paltry ornaments, which
hide what they adorn, is barbaric, and that
the ugliest squaw is -prettier without her
feathers and glass beads than with them.
Beyond this principal and fatal fault, by
which the poem as such is utterly destroyed,
we note other indications that our poet's power
is purely descriptive, and that his conceptions of
whatever does not affect the senses are vague and
indistinct. At the beginning of the second canto
We have a description of the great intellectual
movement of the sixteenth century. We do not
think that it would occur to a true artist to
describe this at length in general terms such as an
historical essayist might employ. The true artist,

we apprehend, would make the spirit of the age
apparent throughout the work, without having
recourse to a formal dissertation on it. If in that
age religion was reformed, knowledge was in-
creased, geographical discovery made prodigious
advances, poetry flourished, and art attained its
zenith, all this ought to appear on the artist's
picture ; it is a very poor makeshift for the artist
himself to appear as showman, and communicate
it in the course of a commentary on his work.
The fervour and agitation of the age ought to
express itself in the conversation of the personages
who cross the scene. These, and not the author
himself, ought to be the spokesmen of whatever
new thoughts disturbed men's minds, whatever
new faiths claimed authority over them, what-
ever new hopes new discoveries inspired, what-
ever new fancies new schools of art and poetry
disseminated. In place of this our author
gives us common rhetorical description, such as
might be in place in the corner of a provincial
newspaper ; e.g.:—

And Angelo, who wrought from shapeless stone
The giant fancies of his muscled mind !
His grand imagination stands alone
In its own majesty and might enshrined.
There in his fleshy marble you may find
Thought turned to stone; and on his painted wall
Pictures thnt will not let Time's eye grow blind :
Sublime, impressive, with a charm to call
The mind to worship, and a grandeur to appal.
The reader will judge from this quotation what
poem has been Mr. Meldred's model. Here is all
the overstrained language and the gushing young
lady's enthusiasm : here, too, is the metre of
"Childe Harold." We cannot think that this is a
good model for a young poet. Let Byron's
merit be what it may, his imitators have cer-
tainly been a sorry lot. Nor do we think that
the Spenserian stanza is fitted for long poems.
Spenser understood it better than any of his suc-
cessors, yet, no doubt, one cause of the tedious-
ness of the "Faery Queene" is the monotony of
the metre, Remodelled by Byron, it has become
still more inconvenient for narrative by becom-
ing more rhetorical.

Mr. Meldred will probably go on writing
poetry. We think that he has found out some
of the secrets of the art, but that he has still
more to learn. We think that he may ultimately
succeed in producing a good poem, if he can first
succeed in persuading himself that to do so a
careful training is necessary. This is not perhaps
the popular doctrine about poetry, which is com-
monly supposed to be either absolutely a gift of
nature, or, if in part the growth of circum-
stances, yet rather liable to be injured than im-
proved by study. Yet skill in painting does not
come but by study, though it does not come at
all but to the born painter. Systematic and
laborious study, we are persuaded, is as necessary
to the poet as to any other artist. lie lives in
an insensate and inartistic world : sophistries
destructive of the sanity of taste are ever ringing
in his ears; if he suffer them to gain dominion
over his mind, he will pervert his faculty, waste
his heaven-given treasure, and leave men more
coarse and vulgar, more fantastic and barbarous,
than he found them. lie must study, that he
may not grow sophistical ; lie must be artistic,
that he may not grow artificial. In a primitive
age the poet may be safe in following his im-
pulse; in a philosophical age, his only security
is in a learned simplicity.

Wyoming : its History, Stirring Incidents, and
Romantic Adventures. By George Peck, P.D.
London : Sampson Low and Co.

Tuts volume is a semi-historical, semi-biographi-
cal account of the scene of Campbell's famous
poem. It contains a succession of pictures of
bloodshed and devastation, which by repeated
strokes leave us at last with a very permanent
impression of the horrors which the inhabitants
of the valley underwent. There is a certain
grim matter-of-fact simplicity in the style of these
narrations which is not without a certain charm ;
although the quaintness of American phraseology,
and the extraordinary proper names which are
everywhere introduced, sometimes excites mirth
in us where we do not suppose the author in-
tended it. The fearful life led by these daring
settlers in the proximity of hostile Indians, both
before and after the breaking out of the revoln-

729

tionary war, is vividly described ; and the fearful
tortures practised by the Indians on their pri-
soners, rumours of which probably inspired
Goldsmith's allusions in "The Deserted Village,"
and Gray's in his " Fragment on Education."
These hardy pioneers were, however, not without
many of the qualities required

quell the savage rushing from the wood,
and frequently inflicted on the red men a severe
retaliation. The women, too, of the settlement
were of a more masculine growth than the
daughters of civilization, and scorned to desert
their household goods at an alarm of battle,
murder, or fire. Here is a specimen :

Mr. liennet had just removed his family into his new
house. while it was without, chimney or chinking, when
the old troubles between the two classes of settlers were
revived. Armstrong and Van Horn, under the authority
of the Legislative Council of Pennsylvania, had come en
with a company of armed men, taken possession of the
fort at Wilkesborre, and proceeded to drive the New Eng-
land people from the country by force and arms. Cap-
tain Swift, a Yankee, was wounded in an attempt to fire
the fort, and was lodged at the widow Brockway's, at
Tuttle's Creek. Many families were driven from their
houses. Among them were the widows Shoemaker and
Lee, near neighbours to Mr. Bennet. In vein did they
plead that their husbands had been slain by the Tories ardi
Indians, and they were helpless and defenceless widows,
and they could not leave their homes and take a long
journey through the wilderness. Go they most, and they
made the best of the necessity. They left a portion of
their goods with Mrs. Bennet, and were taken to Wilkes-
blame, and thence, with Esquire Lawrence Myers, Odes
Slocum, and many others, were hurried on toward " the
swamp." At espouse, Myers and Slocum escaped, but the
great mass of the persecuted people had no remedy but to
submit to their fats. Mr. Miner says, "About five hun-
dred men, women, and children, with scarce provisions to
sustain life, plodded their weary way, mostly on foot,the
road being impassable for waggons. Mothers, carrying
their infants, literally waded streams, the water reaching
to their armpits, and at night slept on the naked eatth,
the heavens their canopy, with scarce clothes to cover
them." What a reflection, this, upon Armstrong, Pat-
terson, Van Horn, and Company!

. -
Mr. Rennet and Colonel Denison escaped, and went
up the river to Wyallusing. Mrs. Rennet stuck by the
stuff. She had never yet left the Valley for the Penn-
makes, and she hail made up her mind that she never
would. She was not left, however, in the possession of
her home without an effort to drive her sway. Mrs. Myers
says, " Van Horn and his posse came np, having pressed
a Mr. Roberts, with his team, to carry off our goods.
Van Horn ordered mother to clear out, hut she firmly
replied that she was in her own hone, and she would not
leave it for him or anybody else. He ordered Andrew
and me to put things upon the waggon, a service which
we refused to render. Some of the men went to the corn-
house, where there was s quantity of corn ; but mother
seized a hoe, and, presenting herself before the door,
declared that she wonhl knock the first man down who
touched an ear of the corn. They looked astonished, arid
left her. They thee began to look about the house, and
they found the big cheat belonging to the widows, which was
so heavy that they found it hard to lift, and they threatened
to break it open with an axe. They carried some of our
things out of the house ; but, before tney had commented
loailieg up, they became alarmed lest they should be
noticed by the Yat'kee boys, a company of whom were at
the widow Brockway's, sail they left rather hastily,
charging mother to he ready to leave the next morning.
When they left Roberts went about his business, and
"the boys" came and helped ns return our things to
their Appropriate places. The Pennamites gave no no
more interruption."
A few days after the above events had transpired, Miss
Bennet went out to mtlk the cows very earl•—as she says,
when she "could see the stirs." John Sstterlee came
along, to whom she said, " Satterlee, what in the world
are you doing so early 7' He answered, "We have Dave
Ogden out here in the woods." " Who has him ?"
demanded Miss Bennet. " Bill Slocum," was the answer
Said she, "Do let him go; he'll certainly kill you. Is he
bound ?" " No," was the answer. " Can you give rue
something to eat?" asked Satterlee. " Yes ; but you
must not tell where you got it," was the answer. A cold
cut was set. before him ; and, after satisfying his hunger,
be left smiling. Miss Bennet charged him again and
again, while he sat at the table, either to " let Ogden slip
away or to bind him fast." Colonel Franklin, the Yankee
leader, had l.is head•gnarters at Mill Creek, on the
opposite aide of the river, whither Sstterlee and Slocum
were bound with their prisoner. They took him into a
canoe at the month of Shoemaker's Creek, and pushed off.
Ogler) soon asked, " Boys, can you swim?" " No," was
the answer. Ogien'a arms were pinioned. hnt his feet
were free. He upset the canoe, turned on his back, and
easily shoved himself across the river. Slocum hung to
the canoe, hat poor Sstterlee went down and was drowned.
Ogden and Slocum came out on the bar opposite Forty
Fort, anti took different directions. Five of the finest
young men in the settlement were killed during these
terrible conflicts, among whom was William Smith, a
young man of fine character, and much beloved.
" The boys " at the widow Brockway's had nearly ea-
Imitated their powder. Word came to Colonel Franklin,
but it was a difficult matter to convey Across the river the
needed anpply. Mrs. Kennedy—an old lady called
Mother Kennedy—volunteered to convey the powder to
the place where it was wanted. She tied it round her
waist, under her Cress, and brought it to Mr. Bennet's,
whence it soon found its way up to the widow Brockway's.