The Sun.
London, England, 1852-12-25 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

WELLINGTON.-POETICAL TRIBUTES..

Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington. By

Alfred Tennyson. Moxon.
According to an ancient if not honoured cus-
tom, a barrel of wine is (at least nominally)
annually supplied to the Poet Laureate of
England by the reigning Sovereign. The in-
spiring liquor, however, is only Malmsey—and
not a draught " full of the true, the blushful
Hippocrene." It would seem, indeed, from a ra-
ther sad experience,lhat the bay garland is neither
to be culled in Downing-street, nor pilfered from
among the bow-pots of Mayfair. We all recollect,
or many of us at any rate recollect, how the lyre of
Wordsworth jangled as discordantly as the tinkling
wires of Boileau when the Prince Consort was
elected by Cambridge University to the high post
of Academic Chancellor. Death called Alfred Ten-
nyson to the position vacated by the author of
" The Excursion." Death may be said, moreover,
to have first elicited a court-offering from the poet
of "In Memoriam." For we pass over as of no
account the incidental and almost parenthetical
" Dedication," by Tennyson, of the seventh edition
of his " Poems" to " Revered Victoria :" the dedi-
cation in which the bard, addressing himself to the
Queen, says, with the metaphor of a housemaid
" Take, Madam, this poor book of song ;
For though the faults are thick as dust
In vacant chambers, I could trust
Your sweetness."
Death, then, we repeat, first woke the voice of the
celebrant of " The Princess" to the fulfilment of his
office as Poet Laureate—the Death of the Duke of
Wellington. Alfred Tennyson has in the " Ode"
now familiar to the multitude of his admirers
scarcely justified what might have been expected
from one of his deservedly eminent reputation.
We say this distinctly and regretfully—distinctly,
because we are very grievously disappointed—re-
gretfully, because we are among the number of
those who regard with unaffected and affectionate
admiration the more exquisite outpourings of his
sensibility. Blind we are not to his faults ; but we
yield to no one in his regard in the fulness of appre-
ciation. We are too grateful for the pleasure his
muse has yielded us during so many years past, to
be indifferent to that meed of praise which is his
due. We cannot forget the " May Queen," any
more than we can lose a recollection of the " Gar-
dener's Daughter." We listen always with a kind
of rapture to the tones of the " Talking Oak," as
with a kind of awful joy to the passionate lamenta-
tions of " St. Simeon. Stylites." We remember
how deliciously our writer's tongue has repeated
the oft-told tales of the " Sleeping Beauty," and of
the " Lady Godiva ;" and if we recognise too much
affectation in the " Lady of Shaloti;," we linger
with delight over the record of the romantic for-
tunes of " Lord Burleigh." Has he not sung
among the pine woods and the everlasting snows of
the north the dirge of " Oriana," and among
the spice-gardens of the beautiful south the
glories of the " Good Haroun Alraschid,"
and can we read either without a renewal
each time of all our early enthusiasm ? Enough,
however. It is sorrowingly, as among those who
look upon very many of his exquisite writings with
a warm and genuine admiration—that we express
our deliberate opinion that in all respects this
" Ode" is unworthy of Alfred Tennyson. Its non-
success appears to be another instance of the fatality
attendant upon the effusions of a Poet Laureate.
Several fine phrases and melodious lines there are
in it, of course—that was inevitable. But, taken
as a whole, it is, to our thinking, utterly unsatis-
factory. There is a pathos in the allusion to the
" good grey head," and a certain vague sublimity
(though fantastic and Tennysonian withal) in the
recommendation that for the name of the departed
warrior we should ever
" Preserve a broad approach of fame,
And ever-ringing avenues of song."
Undoubtedly the best passage in the " Ode" is the
following
" Not once or twice in our rough island-story
The path of duty was the way to glory.
He that walks it, only thirsting
For the right, and learns to deaden
Love of self before his journey closes,
He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting
Into glossy purples, which outredden
All voluptuous garden-roses.
Not once or twice in our fair island-story,
The path of duty was the way to glory.
He, that ever following her commands,
On with toil of heart and knees and hands,
Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won
His path upward, and prevail'd,
Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled
Are close upon the shining table-lands
To which our God Himself is moon and sun."

Yet all that about thistles " bursting into glossy
purples," that " outredden all voluptuous garden-
roses," loveLy though it undoubtedly is as a meta-
phor, is, surely, strangely, glaringly inappropriate
in a funereal memento of the Duke of Wellington !
It is like playing on the castanets over the tomb of
Achilles. Better, because grander, and, there-
fore, more ,apposite to the subject is the
mention of the " shining tale lands to
which our God himself is moon and sun"—clos-
ing the above quotation. There is, scattered
through the " Ode," an iteration of—
" Honour, honour, honour, honcur"—

intended, no doubt, to be lyrical, bit which to us
is little short of being simply ridictlous. Again,
however, in brief, we would here content ourselves
with saying that Tennyson has failed, utterly and
distressingly failed, in his ostentatiois but empty
commemoration of Arthur, Duke of Wellington.

and

The Hero's Fun3rci. A Poem. By Robert
Montgomery. Routledhe.
Considerably better are the verses here pre-
sented. to the public by one of the most suc-
cessful writers of our generaion. " The
Christian Life,"
now in its fotrth edition ;
cc Luther," now in its sixth, ;" cc OZord," now in
its eighth; "
Woman," now in its 3ighth ; " The
Messiah," now in its eighth; " Satan," now in its
twelfth; and " The Omnipresence of the Deity,"
now in its twenty-fifth—the latter, indeed, having
run through four more editions the even one of
the most triumphant effusions of the age, we mean
" The Course of Time," by Robert Pollok—suffi-
ciently evidence the estimation in which are held by
many thousands the abilities of Robert Montgomery.
From his indisputable popularity will. this very nu-
merous class of admirers, we doubt not but this
" Poem " the latest of his many productions, will
compete with the most fortunate of its predecessors
in circulation-r-the more so, unquestionably, from
the extraordinary attraction of its theme at the
present moment, namely, the funeral obsequies of
the nation's hero, Wellington. The production—
and more cannot be said of it—is in every way
worthy of it. 3 author, worthy of the author of
" Satan," worthy of the Rev. Robert Montgomery.
Upon the title-page are aptly inscribed those ma-
jestic words from Handers Anthem,—
His body is hinted in peace,
But his name liveth evermore,"
words which resounded so sublimely on the 18th
of last November, of St. Paul's
under the dome
Cathedral. Upon the fly-leaf, moreover, are tran-
scribed those touching and appropriate passages
from Holy Writ, from Iniah and. Samuel—the
first" The Man, and ;he Man of War,
Th mightyeJudgeand the Prohet, and the Prudent
And the Ancient and tie Honourable Man."
(Is. iii. 2 & 3.)

The second
The King lifted up his voce and wept at the grave of
Abner, and all the people 'welt And the King said unto
his servants Know ye not ttat there is a Prince and a
great man fa' llen this day in Israel ?"—(2 Sam. iii. 32-38.)
It must be observed, likewise' that the effusion
is gracefully dedicated by the writer thus :
" To her, who numbers morE than twenty relations, near
and dear, that have fought auc served under Arthur, Duke
of Wellington, the following *tempt is affectionately in-
scribed by her husband.
Different from Mr. Tenayson's (which is
It has the form-
less), there is construction
ik the production of Mr.
Mon
Montgomery beginning, the middle,
and the end, as recommenthd by Aristotle. After
a solemn " Introduction," wherein our author
commemorates the debt,—
" A shielded Empire to her ,aviour owes
When grey-haired Glory Ads its last repose
Under the crypt, where storied banners wave
Their drooping pageant o'er some public grave :"
there coiner a " comparison' of the two mightiest
of the warrior sons of England, where it is happily
said :
" The first became the Nelson of a was,
The second proved our Welli, by sea ;
And both were weapon'd by Almighty hands,
To guard the island-fortress of the free :
Nor when the bomb-shell blazed, and rolled the culverin
From iron lips of death its thunder and its din."
Afterwards are described "Night Scenes on No-
vember 17," then " Midnight, then " Dawn,"
then " Morning ;" and so, by a natural sequence,
we arrive at the hour when " Therrocession Forms."
Speaking of " The Charger," Mr. Montgomery,
after a little colloquialism about " the boot and
spur," has a very felicitous expression, as may be
perceived from the subjoined
" A groom-led Charger, riderless,
Comes drooping in its loneliness,
As though the meek-eyed Creature felt
Funereal sorrow through it melt.
And, who that saw the boot and spur,
And did not feel his life-blood stir,
When that denuded steed a typo was made to be
How glory is the garb earth puts on vanity ! "
Then comes "The Military Scene," then the
" Funeral Car," then " A Living Spectacle,"
then " European Homage," then " Veterans and
Mourners,"—in which last-mentioned division of
his theme the writer epitomises with admirable
succinctness the most memorable of the great