The Sun.
London, England, 1852-03-31 00:00:00

THOEarE:peTeltiatiClo!
811
iltiSrETegall;
regard
rr
dthlet‘
oSUtrittba
eyEin;Axgel. A Poem.
By James Grton (" Alastor"), Autltor of " Excelsior."
William L'ickering.
of " Alastor" have been more speedily, nifetinonatl capacities
enitns
com-
pletely,i realised than we predicted upon the compara-
tively recent occasion when we criticised his first lite-
rary production entitled " Excelsior." Although" The
Enthusiast" is little else than the outline of a more
comprehensive poem to be produced, if we may believe
the assurance of the author in his preface, when it has
germinated sufficiently in his imagination, it affords us
adequate assurance that he is possessed of intellectual
attributes originative of something nobler than mere
skill in versification. What renders ns in a measure
grateful to Mr. Orton at the very outset of
his effusion is the circumstance that it is
not only lofty and definite in purpose, but original, and,
to a certain extent, also symmetrical in construction.
We acknowledge to having long since become tired of
metrical mysticism, meted out in a dramatic form, so as
to be mere imitations, or iterations, or re-duplications of
" Faust." Every one has not the " faculty divine" as re-
splendently as the writer of " Festue," and the tempt 4.
tion of treating the holiest themes with a sort of
diabolic irony—an irony resulting from the fact
of his Satanic Majesty wearing the buskins for the
nonce as the evil-hero of the narrative—has not
saved even the refined genius of Longfellow from
giving utterance in his " Golden: Legend" tb "the ob-
scene and the blasphemous. Scarcely more endurable
indeed have been these ambitious tributes to the master-
mind of Gathe than those morbid tales, replete with
lachrymose passion and affected sentiment, which
poured from the press of France, of England, and of
Germany shortly after the tender-hearted suicide Wet-
ter first described the children eating slices of bread and
butter round the white muslin and she pink ribbont of
the incomparable Charlotte. Another and possibly
more wearisome school of poetry, rendered in some
measure popular of late years by the delicate and attrac-
tive charms of the muse of Mr. Tennyson, may be &nig:,
nated not incorrectly the eccentric. The majority
those, however, who have ventured to emulate the
Laureate in a course that from its very singularity alto-
absolutely, that we may at length look forward to the
fy ro o
babfitlhitye
of
Adventurers
sgrgaemattheiedri dnireetfit ierd emulation, have failed so grievously and
onp
sqi
eitie edinnt
tt
oo ognise
e ff orl t
her
e inmot
excursive regions
the peculiarity of those novel and bewitching excellenees
c
which tended in spite of its being " a medley" to redeem
""The Princess" from degenerating into nothing better
yalni
idyllic
havek se these hs
than a literary extravagance. They have not perceived
how much the pardon of the more fastidious critics was
propitiated towards that very singular composition by
the beauties with which it was somewhat plentifully
adorned—the inimitable description of the Princess Ida,
the graceful thoiagh fantastic delineation of the ladle-
college with its inmates, the impassioned energy of the
pecan, the ravishing sweetness of the idyll, and the match-
less and pathetic simplicity of the verses beginning—
"" Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears they may be of some divine despair," &c.
Instead of these we have had horrid celebrations
of men afflicted with wens,—as in " Christmas
Day and Easter Day," or as in " Casa Guidi
Windows," page after page of political dulness
and republican rhodomontade. Inasmuch as the author
of the present volume has adventured upon, an enter-
prise entirely different in its character from either of
those above particularised, he would be entitled to no
indifferent commendation. But happily his poem is not
simply devoid of blemishes such as those here repro-
bated, but is starred here and there with beauties of no
inconsiderable splendour and originality. The purport
of " The Enthusiast" he intimates in a very charming
and muslhal prelude, thus:—
" It is not a tale of common mould;
It is not the song of an idle hour;
It tells of a spirit in mortal fold,
Who stood in his antenatal bower,
Who saw, and heard, through his walls of clay,
The sights and sounds of his primal day."
Written for the most part in blank verse, the poem opens
with a description of an oriental sunset, and the subse-
quent twilight gathering round the watchtower of the
Enthusiast—a venerable seer who recounts to a traveller
the beatified dream in which he was admitted into the
arcane of the " universe of things," beholding the ce-
lestial spirits, being for a while .one amongst them
(again) himself, and learning from the lips of
an angelic being the revelation of some of
the abstrussr mysteries of creation, when he
has penetrated even into ono of the sublime vesti-
bules of heaven. The flight is consequently sufficiently
during to daunt the boldest Icarus in modern literature.
Yet " Alastor" betrays no weakness in his adventure.
Soaring to such altitudes be never once drops into
bathos, but in the course of his rhythmic* wanderings
evidences abundantly those poetic powers of whichove
are more than ever sanguine of beholding the more per-
fect development. Among the many forceful lines in
the narrative, are these two burning verses—
" I saw that demons once had hoof'd the world
Which after rolled a human hell thro' space."

Speaking of the loves of the Enthusiast and his bride,
" Alastor" says very gracefully—

Parted were;re.for many a weave day,
And tom asunder oft, our hearts grew sick—
Like clinging woodbine when its clasp is &A-tied."
Throughout, he everywhere betrays a passion for the
nobler features of Creation—speaking now of the sea-
shore as the spot
" Where Nature grandly hymns Eternity;"
and now of that maze of golden worlds in the night•sky
which he designates exquisitely
_ "The star-encrusted ceil of Space." . _

The Colosseum at Rome would seem to have about it
some inspiring influence incapable of being exhausted by
the superb stanzas of Lord Byron. We well remembered
that noble passage in " The Roman," by Sydney
Yendys. in which the young poet celebrated anew the
glories of that gigantic and venerable edifice;, and here
again ilia " The Enthusiast" we meet with the following
beautiful midnight glimpse of Roman scenery:—
" And many a night, when thro' some ruin huge,
The moon shed down her soft and holy light,
Like some fair maiden on her savage lord,
Casting her smile,—till his dark soul grows bright,
And grisly thoughts pat on an angel face,
We sweetly lingered and sad pleasure found."

Mere expressions of exceeding grace, scattered through
the volume, lend their charm to its pages as supplemen-
tary decorations: as when it is asked—
" Why slowly tell each separate bead of life,
Which softly fell from Time's red rosary ?"
Or, as when the supernal structure is delineated, it is
said—

"Pillars of gem-encrusted gold flew up,
And buoyed the azure dome, with gold stars boseed."
Or, yet more, where the variegated beams thrown by
stained-glass are thus deliciously defined—
" Thro' richest oriels coloured light fell in,
And filled dim halls with floating gorgeousness."
Perhaps the loveliest metaphor in the book is the sub-,
joined—

as when a gem of dew,
Sky fallen, drops upon a tiower-tipp'd mound,
And thro' the root, and stem, of some bright bloom,
It onward thrills its darkened, upward course.
36, as a foot-note.
Till Heaven beholds it in the fragrant cup.'
With the theogony of the author we shall have nothing
whatever to say beyond this, that we do not regard it as
strictly compatible with the,Athanasian Creed—although
a portion of that creed is subjoined to the text at page
appertaining to the
Trinity co-eternity is one equal/Y .•
ace, and
three Divine Persons—as omnipotence,
reoligisconley of the
omnipresence. Returning from
thextise the germ of the
poem to the poem itself, we recognise
whole idea in tile exclamation (p•
en has vaguely haunted me.
" Past greatnew.ttli
poets, bearing on the main idea
Excerpts from
favourirethe Straying Angel," are given at
of "The
isEnthusiast
the formo
of an appendix—including ex-
tractsits conclusion
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Tennyson, Kent,
Awoug au sstrwuces of the Holy
from
d Shelley, followed by a boase quotation
Mackay, an dty in succeeded caustic and
n is, again ,
chapter entitled " Critics Criticised." Upon a
sarcastic of the volume—which, by the wax
at the close
flyleaf charmingly replete with external as well as in-
to most -- • b that another poem,
I embellishments—we o serve a
terns
by the same author, to be called " The Caves of
the Hidden Revealed," is announced to
Phantasy ; or
in preparation. We shall await its appearance with
be in
interest, believing more securely, after our parasol
of
.‘ The Enthusiast" —brief and sketchy though it iar—
than after our perusal of "Excelsior,' that James Ortoi,
or, as he delights to call himself, " Alastor," possesses
powers only needing time and proper cultivation for
their development.
from Dickens, a .

CRIM. Cox.—At the Liverpool Assizes, the case of
" Harding v. Middleton" came on for trial on the Nth inst.
The defendantils a clergyman of the Established Church.
The Attorney-General (Sir Frederick Thesiger), ill/. Ather-
ton, Q.C., and Mr. Cowling, appeared for the plaintiff; and
Mr. Sergeant Wilkins, Mr. Hill, Q.C., and Mr. Mogi:, for
the defendant. The Attorney-General opened the ease for
the plaintiff, and after the examination of several vcitipesses,
which took up the entire day, Mr. Sergeant Wilkins, on the
sitting of the court next morning, replied for the defendant,
in a very eloquent speech. His Lordship then summed up
with great care, and the jury, after deliberating for five
hours, returned a verdict for the defendant.

POST-OFFICE NOTICE.—On and after the Ist of
April, the Receiving-office for letters at St. John's-wood will
be open for the issueand
money-order offices will be opened at Bethesda, Carnarvon-
payment of more orders. Minor ey
shire, on the Ist of April; and at Rawtenstall, Lancashire,
and Corsham, Wiltshire, on the Gth of April. The issue and
payment of money- orders have been discontinued at the
minor money-order office at Bidford, warwikshire; post-
masters must, therefore, cease to draw orders for payment at
-
that place, and must erase is name from the printed lists
accordingly.

LEEDS AND THIRSIK. RAILWAY.
—Negotiations had
been going on between this company and the Berwick and
York and North hlidllnd Railways, the object of the Think
which has Dot“
being to get the last two to take the Thirek on a guarantee.