The Sun.
London, England, 1864-02-11 00:00:00

Atherstone, Taylor, and Browning.

The Poetical Works of Henry Taylor, D.C.L.
Three Vols. Chapman and Hall.
There are three among the more thoughtful
Poets of the present Age who, although essentially
different in their genius, stand about upon a par in
the exent of their popularity. Two of them are

veterans as illustrators of our national literature.

The youngest of the three has more enthusiastic

admirers than any who have ever clustered about his
two elder contemporaries. These three meditative

poets it was hardly necessary, indeed, to have parti-
cularised by name : their identity must, otherwise, at
once have been conjectured. The youngest of the
three is, it will be understood instantly, quite

as a matter of course, no other than Robert

Browning Author (beyond all his writings
to us) of "Pippa Passes." Edwin Atherstone—
Author of the most Miltonic Poem of his day,

of the stately and resplendent poem, that is, of
"Nineveh"—is another of this select Triumvirate.
The one last to be here mentioned, because the one
now more immediately coming under our considera-
tion, being Henry Taylor—Author chiefly and dis-
tinctively of " Philip Van Artevelde." Compara-
tively speaking, the popularity enjoyed by each one
of these three gifted writers, is of a peculiarly
restricted character. Even, if it is to be called
popularity at all! It is among the more highly
educated that they alone find their audience. And
there, even among that class of the more highly
educated, merely a select few have in any one
instance, in regard to Atherstone, in regard to
Taylor, even in regard to Browning, been kindled
into anything like a semblance of fervid admiration.
Apart altogether from the distinguishing pecu-
liarities inherent in the genius of each of these
three poets—peculiarities sufficient of themselves,
perhaps, to account for their readers being the re-
fined and even fastidious few, instead of the varied
many—there has been a recognisable material
reason, if one may so call it, why they have failed
in winning for themselves anyiwide-spread popu-
larity. Our meaning, when we have so expressed
ourselves, being simply this, that they, each of them,
for the utterance of their thoughts, have carefully
selected a medium distinctly precluding them, as it
appears to us, from gaining the ear, from extorting
the admiration, from alluring to and concentrating
upon themselves the observation, of the great con-
course of the general public. Atherstone, for ex-
ample—a poet gifted with a most gorgeous and
effluent imagination—has in an Age of Railways
and Telegrams, when people read not only as the
old prophet Habbakuk has it "running," but lite-
rally flying and whirling over the earth's surface at
the tail of the fiery dragon of the steam engine—
Atherstone has so far (if we may venture to speak
thus with a noble work like Nineveh upon our
bookselves) mistaken his epoch, as to write poems
extending over two huge volumes, and these two
volumes subdivided into a great many highly elabo-
rated cantos. Browning and Taylor, on the other
hand, have still more flagrantly blundered, as it
seems to us, in the selection of the vehicle for the
display, or the putting forth, of their respective
imaginings—their vehicle being one, their imagin-
ings how different ! namely, in the deliber-
ate choice by each of them, by Henry Taylor and
by Robert Browning, of not merely the unacting,
but the unactable Drama. Hence it is, mainly at
least, we cannot but think, that popularity, genuine,
unmistakeable popularity, has evaded the grasp of
these three rarely-gifted men—no more than a choice
cluster of readers being enabled, as yet, justly to ap-
preciate, at their real worth, the elevated intellects,
and, here and there, the exquisite performances—(as
in many glorious passages of Nineveh, as in all the
lovely scenes of Pippa Passes, as in nearly the whole
of the two lofty historical dramas, together going by
the name of Philip Van Artevelde)—the ambitious
•werks and the unquestionable genius of Henry
Taylor, of Robert Browning, of Edwin Atherstone.
And what is more—when we have said this—we
doubt very much, indeed, whether it would be prac-
ticable,by any means,for the powers and the writings
of these three remarkable men to be forced into
anything like mere factitious popularity. Even,
though it were by doing, in regard to them all, what
has been recently done in regard toßobert Browning
—namely, by grouping together the pick of his effu-
sions in a single volume of comparatively small
dimensions. It is in the nature of things in respect to
each of them, we believe, that their audience should
be fit and few. That they have this select body of
readers and of earnest aumirers, there cannot be a
doubt. They do indisputably enjoy among
all those who are in any way qualified to appre-
ciate them, a full and 'a most unaffected fervour
of appreciation. In Browning's instance it is an
appreciation, as we have said, that has even risen
in some quarters to the height of a genuine, and,
certainly, a most ingenuous, enthusiasm. Among
the writings of the three, there are—whatever may
be the narrowness of the popularity attained
by these writers as poets—works that " the
world will not willing let die." As will have
already been intimated by our foregoing remarks—
indubitable evidence of this may be found, as we
conceive, very readily, indeed, in Atherstone's
Nineveh, in Browning's Pippa Passes, in Taylor's
Philip Van Artevelde. Having said which, we
have now but to add that the comparatively select
few who already enjoy the privilege of knowing
and appreciating, at their true value, that last-men-
tioned poet and that last-mentioned masterpiece,
will rejoice, as we have rejoiced, at the appearance
(in so very charming a form as the present
edition, in three volumes) of the collected and
carefully revised Poetical Works of Henry Taylor—
works including among them not o his opus
magnum of "Philip Van Artevelde," nly
but, together
with that, " A Sicilian Summer." " St. Clement's
Eve," "Edwin the Fair" (in the drift of which we
have, by the way, no sympathy whatever), " Isaac
Commenus" and Minor Poems, leading off with
" The Eve of the Conquest." The edition before
us, in truth, just as it now stands may be pronounced,
as we for one do not hesitate for an instant to pro-
nounce it—an acquisition to any library in the land,
even to those libraries which are the most rigidly
and the most fastiduously selected.