The Sun.
London, England, 1846-10-02 00:00:00

DUBLIN UNIVERSITY.

So little is thought of contemporary poets, when in
reality they generally deserve so much consideration,
that we are rejoiced to see a series of critical articles
devoted to them commenced in the October number
of the Dublin University. Much as we may mourn
over the decadence of poetical genius now-a-days, there
is, nevertheless, a group of aspirants for the bay
garland still among us, many individuals of which
group are not wholly undeserving of such a coronal.
First and foremost among our young poets stands
Alfred Tennyson, and about his pedestal is a motley
and interesting throng—Robert Browning, Elizabeth
Barrett, B. Simmons, Ebenezer Elliot, Barton, R. H.
Horne, and a swarm of other songsters. Many of them
have given evidence of the possession of faculties worthy
of true bards ; very fe w—searcely a single one indeed—
has produced anything capable of ensuring him (or
her as the case may be) anything but a very transitory
celebrity. It is fitting, then, that they should occa-
sionally receive a gentle, and sometimes even a churl-
ish, reminder of their shortcomings. Some intellects
of extraordinary promise have ere now been dwarfed
and nullified by their possessors deluding themselves
into a belief that they have performed enough to
entitle them to immortality, or that they have con-
ferred sufficient benefactions upon their fellow-
creatures, or, in plainer language, that they can with
impunity " repose upon their laurels." Criticism, if
incapacitated from performing any greater service, has
still the power and the opportunity of overruling
these fallacious convictions. Such a description of
beneficent and utilitarian criticism is the one we
welcome in the present number of this magazine.
"Evenings with our Younger Poets" will be a serial
calculated to perform very excellent service in lite-
rature. It will " beat up the bushes" round the base
of Parnassus, and may rouse into song some slumber-
ing bird of poetry who might otherwise exhaust life
in inglorious indolence. The younger poets selected
for disquisition on the preliminary evening are five—
Currer, Ellis, Acton Bell, Camilla Toulmin, and R.
H. Horne. When we call to recollection the fero-
cious onslaught made upon the last-mentioned by the
ebony crutch of Christopher North and remember at
the same moment the solemn delight we have our-
selves derived from the perusal of Mr. Horne's re-
markable epic of " Orion," we are really gratified to
observe that the critic in this Dublin periodical is
more inclined to do justice to the intellectual
powers possessed by the author of that farthing
poem. Mr. Horne is not gifted with a geniu.s of a gi-
gantic order, but still it would be frivolous to deny
him the possession of a genius; it would be frivolous
after having studied his writings. There is a trans-
parency in his dreamings, and a richness in his illus-
trations of a thought, such as mere art could scarcely
produce. Here is a description of the heroic giant
musing on the sea beach :
O'ersteeped in bliss; prone on its ebbing tide;
With hope's completeness vaguely sorrowful,
And sense of life-bounds too enlarged; his thoughts
Sank faintly through each other, fused and lost,
Till his o'er-satisfied existence drooped,
Like fruit boughs heavily laden above a stream,
In which they gaze so closely on themselves,
That, touching, they grow drowsy, and submerge,
Losing all vision."
Nevertheless, it is the very evidence of superior
capacities in Mr. Horne that makes us inclined to quar-
rel with him for the mal-employment of those
capacities. His history of Napoleon is too jejune
to survive its author very long; and his "New Spirit
of the Age," though a pleasant book enough, is little
less than one of the ephemerides of literature. It is
only by a vigorous and
.apposite employment of his
time that Mr. Horne can carve his name upon the
threshold of immortality. The river-hunting con-
tributor to the Dublin University continues his
lucubrations about the Shannon with much spright-
liness ; he paints landscape so delicately in pen-and-
ink, that he seems to have studied jointly under
Turner and Minasi. " Commerce—Ancient and
Modern," is a thoughtful and instructive review of
the very valuable work recently published by
W. Torrens M'Cullagh. The reviewer justly
regards Mr. M‘Cullagh as reprehensible for
imitating such a style of composition as
that peculiar to Thomas •Carlyle, but when
he presumes to call that style " the absurd manner of
writing in which Mr. Carlyle mystifies both himself
and his readers," he wholly overlooks the time-ho-
noured adage—"chaeun a son gout." Alison and
divers others have written upon taste," and have
endeavoured to systematise that aerial endowment of
the human mind ; but almost every successive day
testifies that nothing scarcely could be more futile
than such an endeavour. Of this Thomas Carlyle
thousands upon thousands are worshippers, so to
speak ; his voice has that in it most akin to eloquence
in their regard; he is to them the prophet of grand
truths, the teller of deep mysteries ; his
" Sartor Resartus" is their Alcoran. Nor are these
men any blunderers in so doing; Carlyle never
speaks without a purpose ; the riches of his book are
like the riches of that fountain in the tropics into
which, when a bucket is cast to draw water, a sedi-
ment of gold dust is discovered at the bottom. If
this reviewer find nothing worth the gathering in
Carlyle, let him go his way, as Gilfillan has said,
" the book has nothing to do with him, nor he with
it 1" Of the style of Carlyle, it may be said that it is
a rude jangle of words to those who look not to the
meaning, but filled with glorious and thrilling
tones to those who do. Carlyle has an
office higher than that of phrase-turning ; he utters
his thoughts in the first natural and vigorous
language that presents itself, instead of pottering
over the littlenesses of composition. A likeness and
memoir of Sir Henry Pottinger is introduced into the
"Portrait Gallery," and a worthier subject could
scarcely have been selected. "A Visit to Milo" is
strangely interesting; the " Black Prophet" is pro-
ceeded with by Carleton ; and a survey of the " Life
and Correspondence of John Foster,' though after-
date, forms an excellent conclusion to an excellent
collection of contributions.