The Sun.
London, England, 1851-06-13 00:00:00

LITERATURE

'OEMS. By Georze Meredith. 1 T7'ol. John

Par per trzd Sort.

According to ft n ingenious writer in Fraser's Ma-
gazine, the " prevailing epidemic" is—not the cholera,
or the influenzl, but—poetry. Every one has heard
reiterated during the last lustre the assertion that the
present is a very prose and matter-of-fact generation.
And yet in this year of grace 1851, with more steam-
engines than ever clattering over the railroads of the
three kingdoms, with electric telegraphs almost mo-
Luentarily flashing from London to Manchester and
from Manchester to Glasgow, in the age of the !Din-
ning jenny and the printing press, when most of us
are thirsting more eagerly after a glass of sherry
cobbler than after the lymph of the Hippocrene, when
the Graces of the Popular Temple are very sedate
and homely graces indeed—X. S. D. being our Aglaia,
Thalia, and Euphrosyne—a critic is found bold
enough to aver that poetry, of all things in the
world, is the prevailing epidemic ! Experience tells
us, moreover, that the assertion, strange though it
may appear to the uninitiated, is, to some extent, at
least, not altogether incorrect. As reviewers, we have
long become conscious of an ambition for the bay
garland having manifested itself among a great
variety of aspirants. There have come tumbling in
upon our table of late, to speak truth, a multiplicity
of volumes in verse, for the most part sufficiently
diminutive to tempt even the surliest curmudgeon of
a critic to a glance, and in the majority of instances,
too, sufficiently innocent in their tendencies to smooth
he wrinkles out of the brow even of a literary Ina -
dam inthus. Volumes as pink as the carnation, as
ellow as their gilding, as blue as the skies apostro-
phized in their pages, and as brown as the studies in
which they had very likely originated, books in short
of all colours, and sizes, and subjects, and aspira-
tions—the fruits, no doubt, rather of hopes for fame
than of dreams of profit. Now, for our own part,
we never could understand that because a man pub-

lished a book, especially a book of verses, he was,
therefore, to be arraigned as a felon and vilified as a
malefactor. Many there are, of course—their exis-
tence has long been a matter of notoriety—who ap-
pear to look upon any indulgence in rhythm as
nothing less criminal than larceny. Day-dreaming,
to them, is an atrocity in every unfortunate wight
now-a-days, no matter what it may have been here-
tofore to their predecessors. Not thus is it with
ourselves. Instead of being predisposed to tomahawk,
we are rather inclined to cherish and welcome every
new adventurer in the realms of imagination. It
has consequently been with delight rather than dis•
satisfaction that we have observed the variety of re-
cent noviciates in versification. Their effusions,
though, it is true, most frequently yielding dis-
appointment, have seldom failed to give us
some few glimpses at least of the beautiful.
Several indeed have extorted from us a more than
moderate weed of approbation ; for at any rate there
has been displayed a veritable boldness of enterprise in
several of their more conspicuous productions, from
the " Go6the" of Mr. Kenealey to the " Abd-el-
Kader" of Lord Maidstone. Occasionally also we
have rejoiced to hear voices of real melody singing
to us through the din and dust of that common high-
way the Age, when we have lingered over the
" Roman" of Sydney Yendys, or the miscellaneous
" Poems" of Mr. Allingham. Simply and unostenta-
tiously calling his book by the same suggestive dis-
syllable, the author of the productions here sub-
mitted to our consideration has contented himself at
the outset of his career in poetry with a collection of
detached and what are termed fugitive compositions.
In these he has displayed, however, facility and
sweetness as a versifier, touching the strings of his
lyre to almost every measure, and cbaunting of
love and of nature to the pulse of the spondee
and the dactyl, sometimes in a joyous and sometimes
in a dolorous rhythm. What appears to us the most
charming piece in the volume is the subjoined
" Requiem,
an exquisite and touching lament, which
we quote thus early and entire as, perhaps, the most
favourable specimen we could give of the powers of
Mr. Meredith :

" Where faces are hueless, where eyelids are dewless,
Where passion is silent and hearts never crave;
Where thought hath no theme, and where sleep hath no
dream,
In patience and peace thou art gone—to thy grave!
Gone where no warning can wake thee to morning.
Dead tho' a thousand hands atretch'd out to save.
" Thou cam'st to us sighing, and singing and dying.
How could it be otherwise fair as thou wert?
Placidly fading, and sinking and shading,
At last to that shadow, the latest desert;
Wasting and waning, but still, still remaining.
Alas for the hand that could deal the death hurt!

" The summer that brightens, the winter that whitens,
The world and its voices, the sea and the sky,
The bloom of creation, the tie of relation,
All—all is blank to thine ear and thine eye;
The ear may not listen, the eye may not glisten,
Nevermore waked by a smile or a sigh.
" The tree that is rootless must ever be fruitless;
And thou art alone in thy death and thy birth;
No last loving token of wedded love, broken,
No sign of thy singleness, sweetness and worth;
Lost as the flower that is drown'd in the shower,
Fall'n like a snowflake to melt in the earth."
Whether regarded as to the harmony of the stanza or
as to the gentleness of the sentiment, we take these
verses to be in every way beautiful. They reveal a
tender nature and a fine ear, with all a poet's sensi-
bility. Not so " The Rape of Aurora," which is as
artificial in manner as it is to our thinking gross and
even licentious in character. The writer in it appears
to have mistaken the sensual for the sensuous, and

for once to have overstepped that modesty of bearing
which best becomes the bard even when rapt in Saphic
fury or Pindaric enthusiasm. Deliberate reflection must
convince Mr. Meredith himself, we are satisfied, that

the efusio❑ specified had better have been expunged
than published. Our opinion that such must be the
case ultimately is confirmed by the circumstance that
elsewhere in these pages we discern the tokens of a
chastened taste and a delicate susceptibility.
" Daphne," it is true, is marred by a somewhat similar
indecorum of style, but, than the following, what can
be more charmingly pure and graceful?—
" Under yonder beech-tree standing on the greea sward,
Couch'd with her arms behind her little head,
Her knees folded up, and her tresses on her bosom,
Lies my young love sleeping in the shade.
had I the heart to slide one arm beneath her!

Press her dreaming lips as her waist I folded slow,
Waking o❑ the instant she could not but embrace me—
Ali! would she hold me, and never let me go?"
In that single stanza we have a perfect picture, and
one not undeserving of illustration. Sometimes we
cannot but think our author over-venturous, as
where he addresses the " Nightingale," already
apostrophised by Keats, and the " Skylark," already
hymned by Shelley. Gladly, however, can the most
fastidious forgive the daring of the attempts in con-
sideration of such vigorous effusions as " The Ship-
wreck of Idomeneus." In the " Will o' the Wisp "
we cannot but detect a certain resemblance to those
quaint nursery rhymes of Mr. Allingham—
" Up the rushy mountain,
Down the reedy glen,
We daren't go a hunting
For fear of little men.
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping altogether;
Green jacket, red cap,
And grey cock's feather."

It is but seldom that we find Mr. Meredith tripping
in his rhymes, yet at moments we come upon such
words as " lamps " and " swamps " (p. 46.), or as
" thrush " and " bush " (p. 77.). Our author has
mastered much of our noble language, compacting
poetry into the very sound of some of his lines, ex. gr.—
" With pictures of a warmth, and frozen glow
Spread over endless fields of sheeted snow;
And white untrodden mountains shining cold,
And rnifffled footpaths winding thro' the wold,
O'er which those wintry gusts cease not to howl and blow.'
There is a strange force to us in the effect of the close
vowels, in that line which we have marked in italics.
On occasion, our author is apt to repeat himself un-
awares ; one phrase, especially, is of somewhat fre-
quent recurrence, thus—
" Their prophet harmony of leaves."—p. 41.

Again—

" One prophetic water rolls
Its gas•lit surface for their souls."—p. 76.

Again—

41 The blossom sheds its loveliness divine;
Its mission is to prophecy the fruit."—p. 118.
While we are enumerating the few and scattered ex-
ceptions which force themselves on our consideration,
we may observe that the phraseology seems now and
then affected, as where at page 44 we hear of " bosky
tanglery," and that the expressions introduced are
sometimes even intensely unpoetic, as where in page
45 we come upon—" All a muddle," and at page 146,
find mention of the robin's "fadeless waistcoat.
With such minute blemishes, nevertheless, there are
blended graces of real, and at times bewitching
beauty. How much loveliness of imagery there
isin
those two brief, but suggestive, lines in "Daphne"—
"And in vain the listening Dryad
Shells her hand against her ear 1"
What power of painting, too, in that delicious frag-
ment from the " Pastorals"—
" I rise and drink the fresh sweet air!
Each draught a future bud of spring;
Each glance of blue a birth of green;
I will not mimic yonder oak
That dallies with dead leaves e'en while the primrose
pc eps l"
From these scanty examples alone it will be per-
ceived that we are not without finding reason to
wel-
come
Mr. George Meredith among the number of our
young poetic aspirants. With one lamentable ex-
mayancommend ex-
ception, already particularised, we
volume of poems to thosehis
evidences of a love for nature, and
who have affection fore
moreover, with a really who sympathise,
impassioned and emotional
temperament.

Major Bisset, Major Rogge, and Mr. Owen, had an
interview yesterday with Earl Grey at the Colonial-
office.

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IP Ar

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