The Sun.
London, England, 1847-06-21 00:00:00

BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS By Mary

LITERATURE.

Howitt.

An elegant and beautiful volume in !xternal ap-
pearance, this collection of fugitive poems by Mary
Howitt is internally rich in elegant verification and
beautiful imaginings. The poetical povers of Mrs.
Howitt have long since been recognised and acknow-
ledged : she has reaped the harvest of appreciation,
and the present book is printed as mud for the gra-
tification of those with whom its contents have been
for years a favourite enjoyment as for tie pleasure of
those who were before unacquainted with its ex-
cellences. The writer, in the prime aid summer of
her life, has already reached the autums of her repu-
tation. She is read in the homesteads of England;
and, sometimes, sung in the homesteads of England;
and we believe, in not a few places. loved in the
homesteads of England ; for Mary Howitt has the
true inspiration. She has the inspiration of sim-
plicity—simplicity of eloquence in the selection of her
language, and simplicity of sentiment in the pensive-
ness and pathos of her muse. Many of Mary Howitt's
smaller poems are things to be got by heart and
carolled in the green fields and the twilight. They
are brimming with the pleasantest associations and
sometimes with the holiest and sublimest
thoughts. There are fragments of verse that
might be transferred to these very columns from this
very book now under consideration which our readers
would treasure up in their memories, and which
would continually blend with their after reveries.
We have not the heart to pilfer thus feloniously all the
rarest jewels from the casket in which they are so
fittingly enshrined. We cannot venture to huckster
in a merely barren catalogue all the dainty passages
that charm as much from the felicitous appropriate-
ness of the context as from their own intrinsic
beauty. We will not condense into a meaningless
prism all the gorgeous colours of this
di . go rdian shape of dazzling hue
Vermillion-spotted, golden, green and blue;
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson-barn d.
In the diversity and exquisiteness of its poetical
dyes the book is assuredly like Lamia: and it is
assuredly like that Athenian serpent, too, in its less
attractive characteristics. Like almost everything
from Mary Howitt or her husband, it has the sting
of egotism. But this merely en passant. We must
make good our assurances as to the delicate charm
which pervades the volume before us by one selection
at least. Here is a song then—The Barley-Mowers
Song—picked out almost hap-hazard. Does it not
breathe of the perfumed country, of the corn-flag and
the bean-blossom ? Has it not the chinking music of
the merry scythe ?
" Barley-mowers here we stand,
One, two, three, a steady band;
True of heart and strong of limb,
Ready in our harvest trim;
All arow, with spirits blithe,
Now we whet the bended scythe.
Rink-a-tink, rink-a-tink, rink-a-tink-a-tink!
" Side by side now, bending low,
Down the swaths of barley go;
Stroke by stroke, as true as chime
Of the bells we keep in time:
Then we whet the ringing scythe,
Standing 'mid the barley lithe.
Rink-a-fink, rink-a-tink, rink-a-tink-a-tink!
" After labour cometh ease;
Sitting now beneath the trees,
Round we send the barley-wine,
Life-infusing, clear and fine;
• Then refreshed, alert and blithe,
Rise we all, and whet the scythe.
Rink-a tink, rink-a-tink, rink-a-tink-a-tink!
" Barley-mowers must be true,
Keeping still the end in view;
One with all, and all with one,
Working on till set of sun;
Bending all with spirits blithe,
Whetting all at once the scythe.
Rink-a-tink, rink-a- tink, rink-a-tink-a-tink!
" Day and night, and night and day,
Time, the mower, will not stay:
We may hear him in our path
By the falling barley-swath;
While we sing with spirits blithe,
We may hear his ringing scythe.
Rink-a- tink, rink-a-tink, rink- a-tink-a- tink
" Time, the mower, cuts down all,
High and low, and great and small:
Fear him not, for we will grow
Ready like the field we mow;
Like the bending barley lithe,
Ready for Time's whetted scythe.
Riak-a-tink, rink-a-tink, rink-a-tink-a-tink!"
With the refrain still ringing in our ears, " Rink-a-
tink, rink-a-tink, rink-a-tink-a-tink I" we can hardly
sober down to the dogged callousness of criticism.
Perforce, however, we must ; and we are especially
driven to the duty by the consciousness of the many
blemishes and failings which mar the very many beau-
ties of these ballads and miscellaneous poems. En-
thusiasts we know there are about Mrs. Howitt, as a
songstress, who will regard such an assertion as little
short of high treason. Yet, despite their convic-
tions, we utter that opinion with all possible distinct-
ness. Numerous blemishes there are in the book,
and conspicuous among them are the blemishes of pla-
giarism. We doubt not for a moment but that most,
if not all of these plagiarisms are unintentional, but
plagiarisms they still remain nevertheless. Opening
the work at random, we will, as a testimony of
our own correctness, enumerate several of the pas-
sages which are manifestly transcripts of former
thoughts, or have been suggested by former fancies.
In Dolores Maris for instance, Mary Howitt depicts
a frozen crew on a vessel in the Northern Ocean,
" And the men—each one is frozen there,
In the place where he did stand :
The oar he pulled, the rope he threw,
Is frozen in his hand."
Those who have ever read the " Ancient Mariner"
will recognise a similarity in the whole ghastly pic-
ture ; sucihnloadokdpreicedtwuurpmeoynasetyhweehsreoartwe Coleridge
tianyg;sea, says—
"l
looked upon the rotting deck,
And there the dead men lay."
But the resemblance becomes more visible as the piece
proceeds—
, . " And there's many a haunted desert rock,
Where seldom ship doth go,
Where unburied men with fleshless limbs,
Are moving to and fro ;
They people the cliffs, they people the eaves,
A ghastly company," &c.
So sings Mary Howitt; and thus had sung, many
years before, Samuel Taylor Coleridge—
" They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes ;
It had been strange even in a dream,
To have seen these dead men rise.
The mariners all 'gan work the ropes,
Where they were wont to do ;
They raised their limbs like lifeless tools—
We were a ghastly crew,"
In the companion ballad, entitled Delieice Math,
Mrs. Howitt says—
" And well I wot it must be so ;
Man parteth evermore
The miser treasures up the earth ;
The sea has all its store."
Evidently borrowing from the famous lines of Shaks-
pere—
the ooze and bottom of the deep,

With sunken wreck and sunless treasury."`
When speaking of the Isles of the Sea Fairies, and
singing—
I dwelt in a hall of silvery pearl,
With rainbow-light inlaid;
I sate on a throne, old as the sea,
Of the ruby coral made.
The old carbuncle lit the dome,
Where I was made a king;
The crown was wrought of pale sea-gold,
So was my fairy ring."
Mrs. Howitt clearly has caught her inspiration from
tho deep sea revelations of ieflyson, where he chaunts
in a kind of syren melody—
" Who would be
A mermaid fair,
Singing alone,
Under the sea
Combing her hair
In a golden curl, with a comb of pearl,
On a throne?"

In the Voyage with the Nautilus again, there is in the
fifth verse a palpable plagiarism from the elfin cries of
Titania in the " Midsummer Night's Dream ;" while
in the eighth verse, when speaking of
" The charmed isle of the Seven Rings,
'Tis a place of wondrous spell,"
she evidently bears in recollection Shelley's
-- little lawnny islet,
By anemone and vi'let,
Like mosaic paven."
Further on in the same poem is a monstrous plagi-
arism from Goethe, which we think Mrs. Howitt
might really have had the delicacy to acknowledge.
pmenoisntgexsqceu
niseiteefand majestic
Faust, and
phantasies of the great German minstrel, as thus—
" And on we went for seven days,
Ipta ra isphtraakseens
Seven days without a night •
We followed the sun still on and on,
forneem otf
h et
h ee
In the glow of his setting light.
Down and down went the setting sun,
And down and down went we ;
'Twas a splendid sail for seven days
On a smooth descending sea."
Within our memory we cannot call to mind a more
flagrant robbery than this one from Goethe. It is
beyond all excuse or palliation, especially as Mrs.
Howitt shows that she lacks not originality, as where
she exclaims—
" It gladdeneth much my very soul
The smallest ship to see,
For I know where'er a sail is spread
God speaketh audibly."
As a final example of the author's plagiarism, we may
mention that " John Anderson" peeps out through
the entire of the " Lyric of Life" called True Love,
beginning—
" There are furrows on thy brow, wife,
Thy hair is thin and grey," 8,0.
Among the extravagances of idea, or, perhaps, we