The Sun.
London, England, 1854-01-09 00:00:00

tribirb UVitions

SUN OFFICE, Six o'clock.

TATTERSALL'S.

(THIS EVENING.)

LIVERPOOL STEEPLECHASE.
100 to 7 agst Half and Half.
15 to 1 agst The Colonel (taken).

CHESTER CUP.
50 to 1 agst Aldford (taken).
66 to 1 agst Catspaw (taken).
66 to 1 agst Duchess of Lorraine (taken).
66 to 1 agst Typee (taken).

DERBY.
6to 1 agst Autocrat (taken).
9 to 1 lagst King Tom (taken).
30 to 1 agst Acrobat (taken).
33 to 1 agst Andover (taken).
50 to 1 agst Old Noll (taken).
80 to 1 agst Dr. O'Toole (taken).
100 to 1 agst The Early Bird (taken).
OAKS.
4to 1 agst Meteora (taken).

BULWER LYTTON'S POETRY.

The Poetical and Dramatic Works of Sir Edward
Bulwer Lytton, Bart.. Vols. 111. and IV.
Chapman and Hall.
Quoting the holy words with all reverence—it
has occurred to us that never, perhaps, since the
creation downwards, has THE POET been more per-
fectly, more accurately, or more exquisitely
described than by the inspired lips of Saul of Tarsus,
in one divine sentence of his, that one divine,
majestic, and most touching utterance :—" OC EV
• rats tapatc rim trapcog avrov, aEqffEec re cat tcerqpiac
irpoc rov avvaluvov cro)2'Etv avrov sic Oavarov, µEra
tcpaorig taxvpac (3acpvcov irpoo-evercac, at evict-
xovcreetc airo rng evXaPetac " According to the elo-
quent version of the old vulgate—" Qui in diebus
- earns sum, preces supplicationesque ad eum, qui
.possit ilium salvum facere a morte, cum clamore
valido et lacrymis offerens, exauditus est pro sua
• Teverentia." Or, for the benefit of the unlettered,
in our own tongue—" Who in the days of his flesh,
with a strong cry and tears, offered up prayers and
supplications to him that was able to save him from
death, was heard for his reverence." It is The Poet.
Speaking with a kindred reverence, we here trap-
' scribe, and would ever repeat, that passage as one
that entirely defines The Poet, as one that consti-
tutes (Allis whole character, and genius, and being,
• and victory, the most complete delineation. It
matters nothing to us that some might charge us
with pedantry or affectation in giving these re-
markable words as we have given them, at once in

the Greek text, in the Latin vulgate, and in our
own language. It matters little that some might
mistakenly regard the allusion as an indecorum.
The sentence is here advisedly reiterated in three •
versions simply with a view to the stronger and
more direct enforcement of its application. It
is transcribed by us altogether too rever-
ently to be in any way indecorous as a quo-
tation. And, as it is transcribed, so let it be
read. Considered in this light, we believe that
every scholar must perforce recognise the justness,
the accuracy, and the all-sufficiency of these divine
words, regarded thus as the limning or portraiture
of The Poet. Meaning, of course, when we say
Poet, a true Poet, a great Poet, one worthy of
that glorious designation. One—observe who
in the days of his flesh, with a strong cry and tears"
[has not Shelley himself sung of these Poets ?
"They learn in suffering what they teach in song"]
has " offered up prayers and supplications" [all the
loftiest and truest poetry being literally, it may be
indirectly, prayer or adoration] "to him that Was
able to save him from death" [mark the ultimate
consummation of success] "was heard for his
reverence." Heard !—the 'benignant response of
the Muse. And for what ?—for his " reverence !"
Now, humanly speaking, there could be
little possibility of profanation in the re-
ference by us of this memorable passage to the
Poet's delineation—when it is added that we can
find it in our conscience to apply that lofty title
merely to some eight, or ten, or twelve names out
of the whole catalogue of aspirants recorded in the
history of profane literature. Dignifying with the
glorious rank of Poet in its strictest signification,
only such giants as Dante and Milton, as Homer
and Shakspere. Numerous others there have
been, gifted only with glimpses of the " faculty
divine"-..throbs of the cestrum—thrills of the
afflatus. Poets, it may be, in innate capacity, but
certainly not in complete realisation. Talking of
the distribution of destinies and characters among
mankind, Lamartine has nobly said somewhere in
his " Jocelyn:"—

"Dieu, qui de ses desseins connait seul le mystere,
A partage la ta,che aux enfants de la terre :
Aux tins le sol a femtre of des champs semer,
Aux autres des enfants, des femmes pour aimer,
A ceux-15, le plaisir d'un monument qu'on fonde
A ceux-ci le grand bruit de leur pas dans le monde."
Happily, no doubt, for the world itself, these last
are, of all, the least numerous—and least nu-
merous among the least numerous, the Demigods
of Poetry. According to Schiller, indeed, the poet
was, from the dawn of creation, a kind of surplus
minim of humanity—his destiny little else than an
after-thought of Omnipotence. However this
might be, the great Bards of the earth have re-
vealed themselves only at distant intervals in the
lapse of generations. Kindred to them, neverthe-
less, in genius and in aim, though not wholly, be it
said, in achievement, there have been others who
have disclosed in occasional utterances the passion,
and the soul, and the vitality of the poet in their
43ompositions. The " strong cry" has been he ard,
l sere and there, through the more equable flow of
;;heir rhetoric—the " tears" have, now and then,
1 Sparkled down on their pages, and become eter-
i aised. These, generally speaking, are the men most
1 3eloved among the intellectual benefactors of the
ri.la we multitude. Dantes and Miltons are regarded with
t.lis.e and with a sort of reverential admiration ; but
se poets (so-called) are admitted to the affections
az ad into the hearts of the population. Their writ-
in
writ-
ings—to employ that phrase which (now 4, familiar
in. our mouths as household words ") was first
ut ;ed by Lord Bacon in his Dedication of the ninth
edition of his "Essays" to the Duke of Bucking-
lawn. " come home to mew's businesso and
bosomes." They become, at last, the mental lares
arid literary penates of our hearths—not poets as
en
W 4 3 have said in the strict, and large, and lofty '
of that great title, but akin to poets, or, if sense
Lid.
th emselbves, poets only by snatches
interjec-
ti onally.
Conspicuous among these in our
English r Own days—
* hatever the adverse dictum of the little cliques
as id coteries of the Victorian Age of
lite-
rs ,ture—must be ranked the author of the volumes
In .entioned at the head of this criticism, and of so
in any others, and those others so various in their
character ! Mr. Disraeli once said, very happily
-if we recollect rightly, the remark occurs in his
pi 3ychological romance of " Contarini Fleming"—.
tl iat the Poet of the present epoch is the Novelist.
S it Edward Bulwer Lytton has a double claim,
tl ierefore, in this respect upon our consideration.
I f he has written the most ambitious epic of the
o entury—the only epic, indeed, possessing
really
:rand, and national, and historical pretensions—'h°
Il ins written also the most diversified and admirable
romances of our generation. He has chaunted in
t aelodious and often majestic numbers the legendary
1 aories of "King Arthur :" but, besides this, his facile
Pen has called into being that long procession of
fictitious creatures, attesting, in his character as a
novelist
the scope and fecundity of his imagination.
eerting our attention as much as possible, how-
ever
) from. his fame as a novelist, disregarding for
a While the
tehaxqtuißsinitewceol
ingenious
suggestion of "Vivian Grey,"
we may
accept the work's here reprinted in a really
tial or rLytton
edition, as sufficient testimony
divine desi is, in truth, a poet in the reservedpar-
sense alreildy applied by us to that
the days or
haition. A Poet ! for his voice, "in
"with a stroll:
that breathes
flesh," rises, indeed, (at times)
than of the spirit
in rythm ears"—rises (at intervals)
f,less of intellectual artifice
unfrequently while ' prayer and supplication." Not
might say of him as turning over these leaves we
of Rubin; _ wit Was once said said so deliciously
Especially in referenceavail les
in Vol. 111 , immediately larmes dans la mix.
to the miscellaneous pieces
" King Artliur"--il e ately following the close of
particularly the minorti "Earlier
poems i n P
twoo erahs
0, ' •
0'
kbsu t more
charm-
ingly
entitled " Corn Flowers."
graceful imagining, be-
cause, in our author'sSo entitled
agining, Song is