The Sun.
London, England, 1865-02-07 00:00:00

LITERATURE,

rAYS.

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton's Poems

Poems. By the Right lion. Sir Edward Bulwer
Lytton, Bart., M.P. A New Edition Revised.
One Vol. Pp. 382. John Murray.
Sir Bulwer Lytton's ambition appears to be in-
satiable. Judging from the graceful, and in one
sense, that is, in the prevailing tone of it, we
might almost say pathetic, Dedicatory Epistle pre-
fixed to the present volume by way of an informal
Preface, our author's ambition remains, even to this
day, unsatisfied ! Meaning, ambition, here, of course,
precisely as the lexicographers define it ; namely, as
an eager desire for preferment, honour, superiority
or power. That desire, in the instance of Sir
Edward Bulwer Lytton, would really, we repeat,
appear, of ter all, to be inordinate. It is still, at the
least, unsatisfied. Yet, surely, if any man has
had reason for being satisfied, it is this very Man-
of-letters—it is this accumulator of so many
seemingly incompatible reputations. Regarding
him distinctly in the general sense as a Man-of-
Letters, he stands just alone—the first, the very
foremost among his contemporaries. And the ad-
mission that he does so, might certainly, as it
appears to us, be conceded not only at once, but
quite fully and unreservedly, without one moment's
arrare pense'e in the way of jealousy or grudging,
by the most eminent even, and the most popular
among all those his rivals and contemporaries.
As the Representative—in the most comprehensive
meaning of that phrase—of our Living Literature,
he might be allowed the pas in the order
of precedence, by right of the variety of his
powers and of the diversity of his achievements.
Not by any means undertaking to enumerate now
even one moiety of his voluminous writings, we
would say that—the Novelist of Eugene Aram,
The Caxtons, and Ernest Maltravers—the Historical
Romancist of Rienzi, the Last Days of Pompeii and
the Last of the Barons—the Dramatist of
The Lady of Lyons, Richelieu, and Money
—the Epic Poet of King Arthur—the
Satirist of The New Timon—the Essayist of
Caxtoniana—might be recognized as holding
within his grasp, by cumulative right, pre-eminence
among his contemporaries. And this as—par
excellence, for these and for a number of other
reasons of a similar character—the Representative
Man of Letters among English Authors of
Nowadays. Alfred Tennyson as a Poet, Charles
Dickens as a Novelist, Lord Macaulay as an
Essayist and Historian, Sheridan Knowles as a
Dramatist, might, individually, and:collectively, and
without any derogation whatever from the impor-
tance or pre-eminence of each in his own distinctive
capacity, have conceded to this indefatigable claim-
ant of honours and distinctions in all the various
departments of literature—himself at once, as we
have said, Dramatist, and Poet, and Novelist, and
Essayist, and so forth—the foremost place as a Man
of Letters, as the one who has won for himself the
most many-sided literary reputation of the age. And it
is not only, as the world knows full well, in the various
" fields and pastures (ever) new " of literature that
Sir Bulwer Lytton has been winning for himself
this great diversity of reputations. He has acquired
other and some of them very conspicuous reputa-
tions quite apart from literature. He has obtained
distinction as one of the great Chiefs of Party ;
as one of the principal Orators in the House of Com-
mons ; as a Ministn of State occupying a seat -in
the Cabinet, or as an ex-Minister occupying one on
the front bench of the Opposition. Yet, with all
these signal attestions of success, together with
their concomitant honours, thick upon him, Sir
Edward's ambition is still, it seems, unappeased, is
still at least unsatiated. Another among the many
cherished aspirations of his life, he tells us now
quite frankly, is yet, according to his view of it,
unattained. And this one, moreover—about the
nearest to his heart, about the most cherished, and
the most beloved. It is the famous aphorism
exemplified. It is the statesman, the legislator,
the administrator saying to the Song-writer—" Let
me make the ballads, and you may make the laws."
It is more than that—it is the epic poet's yearning
to betome the lyrist. It is the author of many
big books—world famous most of them—longing
to be known, especially *and peculiarly, as the writer
of little love songs and snatches of rhythmic melody
—mere trifles seemingly in their way, like that one,
once upon a time, sung by Scrooge's neice by
marriage—" a mere nothing, you might learn to
whistle it in two minutes," yet, when once heard,
haunting you for ever afterwards ! Yearning with
all the intensity of his ardent nature to accomplish
what he apparently regards as in truth the crowning
achievement of his literary life, Sir Edward Bulwer
Lytton has here submitted to public consideration,
has here commended to the candid judgment of
his fellow-countrymen, this (so far at least as his
artistic hand has been in any way enabled to ac-
complish it by infinite care in the labour of emenda-
tion) perfected gathering together within the com-
pass of a single volume, of the more brief and the
more distinctly lyrical among his poetical effusions.
As an Edition of his' Poems"—revised throughout
with exquisite carefulness, and published (in the
mere getting of it up we mean) in a manner so
worthy of the eminent establishment from which it
is issued, that it is virtually an edition de luxe, al-
though purchasable for no morn than half-a-guinea
—the beautiful volume under review comes to us
here, so to speak, freighted with the loving hopes
and aspirations of a whole lifetime. And it is in itself
for the author, simply as an Edition of his " Poems,"
or rather, we will say as the Edition of his " Poems,"
a sort of a literary Euthanasia. It comes
to us, this lyrical argosy, freighted as we have
said with the hopes and aspirations of a whole life-
time. The productions herein collected together—
as the author himself intimates to us in so many
words, through the medium of his dedication, "have
been composed at various intervals." The volume, in
fact, so far has its resemblance to the orange-tree—
bearing confusedly among its leaves, at one and the
same time, the green buddings of spring-time, and
the silver blossoms of summer, with the golden fruit
of autumnal maturity. So confusedly mingled to-
gether are these earlier and later effusions—of course
intentionally—that the very earliest among them
turns out, when we come to look at it more care-
fully, to be about the very latest, as it is also,
without doubt, about the very best in the whole
collection. Meaning, here, that lovely allegorical
poem of " The Boatman," commented upon by us
at some length in these columns of The Sun imme-
diately upon its original publication, a year or two
since, in the pages of " Blackwood's Magazine."
Among all Sir Edward's " Poems," it is still to our
fancy the most consummate as a work of art.
It is, besides that, among them all the
Most eminently typical of his poetic genius
—the most distinctly illustrative of his lead-
ing peculiarities, of his, whole character, of his
very idiosyncracy, so to speak, as a lyrist. Through-
out nearly the entire of these Poems of his, what is
chiefly noticeable to our mind is the combination
within them of thought and sentiment—of tender,
pathetic sentiments—of thoughts subtile and
profound. What they lack chiefly, according to
our view—and strange and marvellous it is that we
should have to say this of poems written alike in
his youth, in his early manhood, and in his maturity
by the impassioned author of _Alice and Ernest
Maltravers—is their almost total lack of sensuous-
ness. Hence the secret of their so slowly winning
their way to anything like a wide popularity. They
are too etherealised, these imaginings of Sir Bulwer
Lytton's muse, to be otherwise, very many of them,
than caviare to the general multitude. The
Egeria wooed by the poet of " The Boatman"
and of the other lyrical effusions that follow,, it,
partakes far more of the nature of a spiritual being
than of warm, roseate, throbbing flesh and blood.
The atmosphere here inhaled, is far more ratified
than the grosser air we have been acculomed to
breathe along the slopes of Olympus : and this
because the earth is here so seldom, as it were,
under our feet—because we are wafted away so
frequently into the regions of Cloudland. It
is the essence rather than the substance of
poetry that we have here to deal with. Sir Edward
Lytton, in his poetic temperament, has qualities far
more akin tothose of Shelley—floating into the em-
pyrean with the Cloud, or with the Skylark—he

himself by the way we find while lingering lovingl
over the thought of—
. . . the balm of a delicious rain,
Pressed from the fleeces of a summer cloud;"
and at an.other moment passing in tenderest 5yn31331
before the caged songster of the " trille-13*
Sir Edward, we say, has far more in his poetic tele;
perament that is akin to the etherealized nature °I.
Shelley, than to the more material, palpable, pa:,
sating, warm-blooded nature of Keats. lie 1
t
insist upon what we have already remarked
wholly without the all-essential qualities nowada.t
to insure to a poet anything like extended 130131'1312
—sensuousness. Of the majority of these." P°'
of his, he might say, as he says in one of them--
" I dream the dream I dreamed." ear
They are dreams of dreams within dreams. TheY
mei
frequently and designedly vague in outline.
are often—using the term in no invidious sells „
visionary in their inner meaning, in the philosop4
they inculcate. About the aptest, as also about{,'i
happiest, illustrations of much that we amber° ills.ng
ing upon might be readily culled from the openilyl e
Poem of the volume—the exquisitely Schiller' nth
allegorical presentment of 11-aman. Life, sung Nv.os
so much lyrical verve and melody in the harmed.flow of the whole poem of " The Boatman." 13ef
ning thus musingly, meditatively, ped
like the babbling forth of a runnel that is des
afterwards to swell into the sweeping ilo°'
broad and resistless river :
Half sleeping still, I stand among
The silvery, trembling sedges,
And hear the river rolling strong,
Through mists that veil its edges.
" Up, Boatman, up ! the moments flee
As on th?, bank I shiver ;
And thou must row me towards the sea
Along this length of river."
Tho Boatman rose and stretched his hand--
" Come in—thou bast far to go ;"
And through the drowsy reeds from land
The boat went soft and slow ;
Stealing and stilly, and soft and slow. a.
And the Boatman looked in my face, and sale,
" Thy lids are yet heavy; sleep on, poor child'
Lulled by the drip
Of the oars I dip,
Measured and musical, sure and steady—
Sleep by my side
While from home we glide."
And I dreamily murmur, " From home alreaj
I awake with a start—on my sight flashes JAY'
" So late, and so little advanced on the way'
Arouse thee, old laggard, and row me faster,
Or never a stiver thou'lt get from me." stet,
" When the voyage is over my pert young Ilir`
Be sure the grey boatmen will earn his feel
But whether I. seem to thee fast or slow,
There is but one speed for the boat I row;
I measure my movements by no man's taste,
Whether ho asks me to halt or haste.
Plish, plash, drop upon drop,
On without hurry, but on without stop;
The clock on yon turret is not so steady."
"If crawl we must at this snail-like panel uore•
Ere the river flow curved to the curving 15
Let me take a last look at my native plane, ~to
And the green of the sedges—one last locos"
Were the home of my birth ?
Is it blotted from earth ? '
Just left, and now lost to my sight alresaY •
Tauntingly answered the Boatman grey
" Not a moment ago
Didst thou call me slow ;
But already's a word thou wilt often sal•
'Tis the change of the shore
Proves the speed of the oar,
Stealing the banks away, stealthy, steady'
The allegory throughout is perfectly well heavier
up to the very climax of it all, when to the
ear there

. . . seems to float,
Down the length of the way—
From the sedges remote,
From th 3 rose-garden. bay,
From the town and the mart,
From the river's deep heart,
From the heart of the land,
From the lips of the bride,
Through the darkness again
Stealing close to my side,
With her hand in my hand,
From the gamesters in vain •
Staking odds on the main
Of the last all-invisible die, ;01
An echo that wails back the wail of my 0.--1,;5,01'
As I murmul-, " The Ocean already''--6
One glimmer of light
From the beacon's lone height,
One look at the shore, and one stroke of ijo
And the river is lost in the ocean alreadY•t boo lof
Neither the poem itself, however, nor o.ljoie
people it, are ought else throughout til° tlOO
this singularly beautiful allegorical P
vague, etherialized, dream-like, visionarle cola of
in fact, is it with most of the Fowls Iletr
together. Even some of the love poeull 'so
those, nevertheless, there are Baer r ti; e
thick with love" that we might sal Aof,
them, in the words of old Burton, A ciaill'yo'
of Melancholy, that " had he not takell `cia so ter
Cupid's wing, he never could hao writtts ch
rously." As to the Edition itself, 1 5 tint
as a Revised Edition—never, perhaps, 115.1 v bor9
Horatian precept been more sedulous II
mind or more conscientiously acted 11P

says—
c; Carmen reprehendite quod 11°°
lta dies et multa litura, coereuit, at e 001')
So
Prtesectum decios non castigavit 0 11'3511perfri
o far as the book could be italleo'
by the author's own scrupulous (often/ 550 v,„?
to us, by reason of the minuteness of
1110101')
dations here adventured upon) over-5er111),,,,,ie,.
sion—the volume under notice has bean r -et, orb,
once, we may say, with a loving, and 1, After"
that, frequently with a pitiless strivilletyl,
provement. Almost the noblest effusion 0 0011;;;.if
collection, to our thinking, is, we wo6l-`OO 6:o
one of the very earliest products of cDei9
Bulwer Lytton, a poem dating back, 181-40
even to his college days at Cl
truly poetic and patriotic celebration 0'07,04
—in verse that, unless we are indeed 9 joy
ri
mistaken, England will not willingly let siiiiie°.oo
the minor poems in the volume, -whiell°,ll,4o,,
there that we could adduce as ni_or°r
beautiful, and at the same time as ftiGt/W 7
and earnest and patheticin its- way, 115 311 a'OP
y at t
, of our author's most dearly cherished bit))
a poet—than the following, written

age of Thirty—
I do confess that I have wished to give
My land the gift of no ignoble lima,
And seen that life, of which the mnoieo
na
Glass'd in the dreams of fame.
Do I lament that roseate youth has 110111.,
-
In the hard labour grudged its niggar'
And cull from far and juster lands alone
Few flowers from many a seed ?
No ! for whoever with an earnest
Strives for some end from this log'
Still upward travels, though he miss the -
And strays—but towards a 09'r*
f
Better than fame is still the wish for a 310:
The constant training for a glorious otricooo
The Athlete nurtured for the Olynritte•
,11
Gains strength, at least, for lil
The wish for Fame is faith in holy th-vv i!.gole tc)fil
That soothe the life, and shall outlis
A reverent listening for some angel Wil3g
That cower above the glonra' 0.00
uti.,/
To gladden earth with beauty, or ntel!itb. treo
To serve with action, cr their souls
toil
These are the ends for which the 114° 11
The iguobler thirsts of youtb• or 0
No, I lament not, though these leaveSer pp.llJ'
From the sered branches on the des
and
Mock'd by the idle winds that waft ,
V 6
1
Life's blooms, its last, in Will
If vain for others, note in vain for rie" tjore; 10
Who builds an altar let hint wors/110
Who needs the crowd? though I°ll°r'
Not hallow'd less the Fille
ooe!oe,
Eno' if haply in the after days, 0t
When by the altar sleeps thefolio:jos to.i
When gone the mists our human Pits" 0,0
And Truth is seen alone :
When causeless Hate can -woundtS ptio:deP
And fawns its late repentance o„e.s, 000
If gentle footsteps from some kiniall glee'
Pause by my narrow' be"'
1
Or if yon children, whose younggale 0,10"'
Float to mine ear the evening'
Recall some echo, in their yor9 t° bt
Of not all-perish'd song ,
Taking some spark to glad the heariTcted
The student lamp, from now 31,.v.it0 )1;
And one sad memory in the sons rs a lit
What—l forgive the 6re ,re 50 of )
Enough, after all that Nye 1103 silac eetciiii°lll',4l
to Sir Bulwer Lyttoll'S gellil-15 a• ca cl,Ol
TICVIS
charm appertaining to this as of
" Poems"—enough if We l'ficilablia
at our heart of that lowly sY
and affecting inspiration. ,