The Express.
London, England, 1860-05-03 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, MAY 3, 18130.

LITERATURE.

St. Stephen's. A Poem. Originelly published in
Bld's Magazine. Blackwood and Sons.
A Vision of Barbaroesa, and other Poems. By
WILLIAM STIOANS. Chapman and HaIL
Lyrics and Legends of Rome. With a Prologue
and Epilogue. By Ines. Chapman and Hall
The style of Pope is one of the easiest to imitate,
and generally one of the most unsatisfactory when
imitated. It is very doubtful whether we shall
ever again have • genius inch as his, which be-
longed essentially to a condition, not merely of
literature, but of society, that has now passed
away ; and, without the genius, the mere form is
unpleasant, because insincere. We do not deny to
the author of "St. Stephen's" credit for a certain
facility and smartness, and for • power of imitation
which would make the fortune of • Chinaman ; but
we have found his poem very dreary reading. For
one felicitous couplet there are twenty peen of
false declamation and tawdry platitude ; and, with
• great affectation of terseness, the style is really
diffuse and pour, as every style must necessarily be
which results, not from the love of truth, but from
the love of effect. The terseness, in fact, is a mare ,1
trick of manner, derived from a prodigal use of
arbitrary and violent antitheses—from a laboured
balancing of one half of the line against the other.
The present age is too much in earnest to be'.
satisfied with such " cuckoo-song verses " as the
author of "St. Stephen's" has here put forth, and
will not accept as a truthful utterance what the
author himself evidently but half believes in.
Imagine 136 pages made up after this fashion :
Apart from what is mid and whet is done,
There is a force by which the world is woe,
Born in men's destin'd ruler !—Reasou halt.
To gauge the merits or assess the faults,
While forth itignamfd magnetic influence flows,
Attracts they or annerree the foes.
Of St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, we read :
Sighing for ease, yet ever kern for strife,
leno's Au creed, yet Aretin's his life ;
With Protean grace through every change he sports,
Now siring senates, now perplexing courts ;
A soul of Same, though both • brand and torch,
Firing the camp or elaseling from the porch.
Behold him sow, not in his autumn day,
But the full flowerig of his dainty May ;
Not Pope's sad Mead, and soul-deceiving guide,
Bat CU 111Mds's darling aid the Chererride.
How the foie sweet, en a sound rend,
=Tthe path for the melodious word ;
each gesftre force with ease allied,
And sunk posies with patricide pride;
And oh, that style! so stately, sweet, and strong,
Which, tamely read, ham all the charm of
What meet its power o'er beating hearts haavalstesa,
The gears speaking while the man was seen,
A man of genius would have rolled all this up
in a line, or half a line ; but your " terse " style
of writing imperiously demands antithesis—and
antithesis, when not employed by the hand of a
master, such as Cowley, Dryden, or Pope, is only
a synonym for verbiage. Here is another spe-
cimen :
Gay time and strange, when George the Fourth war young,
By Gilroy pointed, and by Hanlerry sang ;
When peers, six-bottled, talk'd as Marat reek,
And Devon's kiss seduced a blacksmith's rote,—
Paine and Petronitta equally in vogue,
Des Juan in the wile of demagogue.
Make sure of your antithesis—no matter how
obvious or how inapplicable—and the thing is done.
Take care to balance Gihsy against Hanbury,
talking against writing, kissing against voting, Paine
against Petronius—and see bow witty you are, at
how small a wet of brains ! You may spread the
merest grain of idea over half a dozen pages, and
get credit for being marvellously compact and sen-
tentious. The experienced reader thinks there
must needs be a whole orb of thought wheeling on
that nicely-balanced pole of " Paine and Petro-
nius," and admires accordingly. Well, to all such
we commend this poem of "St. Stephen's." They
will find in it some clever writing of the flashy
order we have indicated, and some few couplets of
a better kind ; but the thing is false, and, like other
falsehoods, has no chance of living.
Mr. Stigant'e volume is of varying merit. The
find of his poems—" A Vision of Barbaroesa in the
Mountains of Salzburg"—war composed on the
occasion of the Austrian Concordat, and is "based
on the legend of the Emperor Barbaroesa, who is
said with all his knights to be shut up in the
mountains around Salzburg, and to send forth his
page from time to time, to see if the ravens are
still abroad. The ravens are symbolical of the
Papal power. When the page shall return with •
favourable reply, Barbarous& will come trium-
phantly forth with his host, to inaugurate a new
era." This is like the old British legend of King
Arthur, who is to return some day from the
mysterious " island valley of Avilion." We
cannot say that Mr. Stigant has glorified the one
legend, as Tennyson has glorified the other. The
" Vision of Barbels:ism " is not worthy of the sub-
ject nor is it worthy of Mr. Stigiuit's own powers.
The description of the enchanted region in the
mountains is splendid, but overwrought, and in its
heaped-up gorgeousness is rather too like the con-
cluding scene of a Lyceum burlesque. The style,
moreover, is youthful and immature. Of • far
higher mood is " Samson and Delilah," which con-
tains some noble writing, and would be worthy of
the greatest praise were it not so like in manner to
some of Tennyson's blank verse poems, erkq
the legend of Merlin and Vivien in the "
though, here and there, in the excessive rich-
ness of the imagery, we are reminded of Keats.
The reader shall have • specimen :
Here, as she gutted, Samson rats, sad came
And glued his arm shoat her wait, and looked
Down tenderly upon hr. With simile
Upon her glittering lips, she bast herself
From Samson's arm away, and drooped her bead ;
Then swayed herself, and threw her soft bore arm—
Her round and queenly alabaster ann—
Bound Samson's neck, and hid her face upon
His shoulder, and there hung, sad spoke no word ;
Only her ample shoulders' whiteness pulsed,
As though with hid emotion. Samson said,
Four moons, fair Dahlah, have bluely run,
Sines first I saw thee at the haltinglilace
Where the three roads meet, at the rocky way
Of Etam. I bad panned you with your train,
A little ere the great square hostel gate :
I strode along—look'd not to right, to left,
For I was hast'ning to my midday rut ;
But all your troop shrunk from me as I pmee.l,
And push'd across the road. I heard the news
With fearful whisper go from mouth to mouth,
' Room, room for Samson ! keep well from his path !'
All looked askant and palely u I passed.
Th' arcaded caravanserai! I reached,
And took a pitcher from a maiden's lurid
Who stood there at the well, and drank full deep,
For I had milled that day from early dawn.
My crust and olives then into the shade
I took and ate, and threw me on the ground,
And in a moment was quite sound asleep ;
For 1 fear'd God, and had no other fear,
Knowing Hr would protect me as I slept.
When I awoke the sun was shining slant,
Three hours past midday, 'twee the Mu to stir,
And I arose. Before me were thy train
lading stain their camels, horses, mules,
Whose bells rang jingling pily for the start.
Thu first I notic'd thee as thou didst rise
From off thy cushion'd carpet where the noon
Thou hadst repos'd and when I saw thee look
I felt saham'cl, beholding all the sheen
And wealthy brilliance which beset thee round."
Mr. Stigant writes with a generous sympathy for
all outraged truth, which gives his poems a double
charm. We anticipate for him a future of excel-
lence, if he will industriously do his best.
The last of the three poems on our list is • feeble
attempt at Byrosian wit and humour. The subject
is very hackneyed now-a-days ; and as " Idea"
has no ideas of his own on the subject, but is only
heavily flippant, we fear that most of his readers
will do as wo have found ourselves compelled to
do--set the volume aside long before it is finiahed.
Bad joking is the most depressing thing under
Heaven : end this appears to us to be the staple of
these " Lyrics and Legends of Rome."