The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-24 00:00:00

not, observe! among the poetasters merely, who are,

unhappily, nowadays, if anything, more than ever
numerous. "My Beautiful Lady" is itself a complete

ustification for what we are here asserting in re-

gard to its author. He sings in it so very tenderly,
so very melodiously, at times so bewitchingly,
always so gracefully, that he confirms and ex-
tends and advances our reliance upon his intellec-
tual powers. For ourselves Thomas Woolner is a
mere name. We know not what manner of man he
may be. We have no conjecture even as to
his age. We know of him solely through his
productions. We speak of him therefore quite
dispassionately—uninfluenced by any personal
predilection whatever, by any sympathy of
triendship, by any kindliness born of mere
acquaintanceship. But already the name of Thomas
Woolner—though as yet no more than a name to us
—is becoming for us the symbol of an unmistake-
able individuality. The intellectual powers, the
moral sympathies peculiar to this true Poet, to this
true Sculptor, to this genuine Artist, are thrusting
themselves more and more familiarly upon our
recognition—are forcing themseves more and more
upon our earnest and cordial appreciation. The
thought out of which the poem before us
has grown is identically the same thought
that captivated the imagination of Edgar
Poo when he was in quest of a theme
for a short poem, that should at once ad-
dress itself to the hearts and feelings of the
general multitude of readers—the premature death
of some fair beloved : for Poe the .Lenore of " The
Raven," for Woolner—" My Beautiful Lady !" As
the Poet Laureate sings of his dead friend throughout
" In Memoriam"—so the poet here, who is laureated
already by the garland he has woven for himself
with the leaves of this charming volume, sings
of his dead love. He sings of her loveli-
ness, of her purity, her grace, her gentle•
ness, her virginal soul, her luminous intellect,
of her little wayward freaks and fancies,
all of them bewitching. He celebrates her in a
curious variety of measures. He depicts her under
a singular diversity of moods, and aspects, and acci-
dental circumstances. When he is lamenting, to
himself, the inexpressible loss of her, it is thus, for
example, that his emotions articulate themselves
n words :

"No more she hears, where vines adorn
Her windows, on the boughs
Birds chirrup an arouse.
Flies, buzzing, strengthering with the morn,
She will not hear again
At random strike the pane.
No more on grassplat newly shorn
With her gown's glancing hem
Bend down the daisy's stern,
In walking forth to view what flowers are born.
* *
Ah, dearest, shall I never see thy face
Again ; not ever ; never any more ?
I know that fancy was but naught, and one
Born of past hope. I know thy earthly form
Is mouldering in its tomb ; but yet, 0 love I
Thy spirit must dwell somewhere in this waste
Of worlds, that fill the overwhelming heavens
With light and motion; that could never die I
And wilt thou not vouchsafe one beaming look
To ease a lonely heart that beats in pain
For loss of thee, and only thee, 0 love ?
Or halt thou found in that pure life thou liv'st
My soul was an unworthy choice for thine,
And therefore tak'st no count of its despair ?"
While he is brooding over the birth of his exceeding
love for her, he relates with a wonderful and beau-
tiful minuteness, how that love, so to speak, per-
vades and interpenetrates his whole existence. At
the outset he is content simply to ease his heart of
the delicious pang of his love by the mere asser-
tion of it ; as thus—
" I love my lady ; she very is fair ;
Her brow is wan, and bound by simple hair;
Her spirit sits aloof acid high,
But glances from her tender eye,
In sweetness droopingly."
He lingers over the memory of her looks as she
bewitched him—
" Her beauty walks in happier grace
Than lightly moving fawns
O'er old elm-shadowed lawns.
A tenderness shows through her face,
And like the morning's glow
Hints a full day below."
Hera, again, as evidence of the truth of our remark
as to the richness of the colouring thrown into this
poetic picture of the poet's dead and gone beloved—
" Fresh beauties, howsoe'er she moves, are stirred :
As the sunned bosom of a humming-bird
At each pant lifts some fiery hue,
Fierce gold, bewildering green or blue ;
The same, yet ever new."
Couplets there are in the poem that came to us like
echoes from the choicest of the old poets—the great
poets of the Elizabethan age. Instance.—
" My lady walks as I have watched a swan
Swim when a glory on the waters shone."

And what, in its way, could well be sweeter than
this—how like again to the manner of the old
poets, and again, we would say, how rich a
colouring in it!—
" Her mention of a thing, august or poor,
Makes it far nobler than it was before ;
As, where the sun strikes, life will gush,
And what is pale receive a flush,
Rich hues a richer blush."
The moral inculcated by this poem of " My
Beautiful Lady," is as elevated and as pure and true
as that which dictated to Alfred Tennyson the
exquisite thought—
" 'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all."
For as the closing words at p. 149, "Years After,"
Mr. Woolaer sings, in his turn—
" A. ray has pierced me from the highest heaven—
I have believed in worth; and do believe."
Three Parts, the Poem is divided into. The last of
the three being simply and significantly devoted to
the commemoration of " Years After" and of
" Work." The intermediate part, part two, that
is, being subdivided thus, also simply, also signifi•
cantly, " My Lady in Death"—ualy Dream"—
"My Lady's Voice from Heaven." It is
upon the first part that the poet has
lavished all his epithets of admiration upon
his Beautiful Lady—singing of Herself, of her
Glory, of Her Shadow, of Her Garden, of Love,
Dawn, Noon, Night, of Wild Rose, and Tolling
Bell, of Will o' the Wisp, of Given Over, and of
Storm. The book as a first oat breathing of the
poetical faculty is very remarkable. It abounds in
beauties of thought, of feeling, of expression. It
indicates a power in the author that assures us he
may readily, if he lists, produce even more enduring
evidences of his genius with his pen as a Poet
than (rarely gifted though he is in that strangely
contrasting art) he could ever carve out of marble
with his chisel as a Sculptor.

Punch's Pocket Book for 1864. Illustrated by
John Leech and John Tenniel. Pp. 192. Brad-
bury and Evans.
Whatever merit there is this year in the Pocket
Book of our little old friend, " with the slight dorsal
irregularity," as Mr. Thackeray, eut of a charming
delicacy in regard to the feelings of Mr. Punch,
once circuitously expressed it when referring to
the gentleman's rather prononce hump—Whatever
merit there is in Punch's Pocket Book for 1864, be-
longs of right to Mr Tenniel. Not but what Mr.
Leech's coloured frontispiece representing " A
Rather Fast Steeple-chase," is in every way
of that most graceful of all our caricaturists.
dozen more of his already very large family of pre y
worthy
ay
girls, havein that one print been added by graphichise
But,
pencil to our most pleasant remembrance.
a merry helter
chase is, after all, nothing more than
when that is said, all is said—for the per steeple
skelter across the folding
much horseflesh
d jockey-wise, parti-
colouredin
pretty girls, mounted
Whereas, to the
riding-habits.
page of so
; f Mr. Tenniel—for how
twittering Pencil o
of genuine
fun and frolic are
much
not here indebted . Of the letterpress his
wewhimsical hand has condescended to illustrate with
such preposterous extravagance of humour, we have
absolutely nothing to say beyond this—that it seems
to us, in plain terms, just simply comicality in a state
of delirium ! It is a perpetual violation to the reader's
common sense. ft is one of the most deliberate
outrages ever perpetrated in cold blood upon all the
probabilities. Having said which, we turn with a
sense of relief from the profound dejection into which
we have been plunged, by a rash glance at this
astounding exhibition of senile tomfoolery, called
" Britishlion the B3gdificent," to compensate our-
selves with a hearty laugh over the wonderful little
woodci4s, pencilled by John Tenniel, at the head of