The Sun.
London, England, 1860-03-28 00:00:00

THE NEW POEM.

St. Stephen's. A Poem. Blackwood and Sons.

We accept this anonymous Poem at once
as--illustrated by examples— ttie lie Oratore
of English literature. As we took occasion

to intimate immediately upon the commence-
ment of its original publication in Blackwood's
Magazine, there can hardly be an instant's doubt
as to the authorship. The very radiance of the
writer's trenchant weapcu, hi sile*--shines
upon the features that he would seemingly fain
keep concealed, teveahng, almost at a glance. his
identity. It is the thought of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning in her new volume, where, with a lumi-
nous touch of her pencil, she depicts the emanci-
pating French under " Napoleon 111. in Italy"
(Poems before Congress, p. 9), where-
-4,— Each man stands with his face in the light

Of his own drawn sword."
Yet as it is still the pleasure of the recognised
author of " St. Stephen's " to withhold his name
from the title page, we shall affect to regard him,
even now, as inscrutably anonymous. It would
hardly be extravagant to say, after a careful re-
examination of these pages, that—

" Here Butler's wit, Pope's numbers, Prior's ease,
With all that Fancy can invent to please,
Adorn the polished periods as they fall."
The three parts are thickly sown with terse and har-
monious couplets, that only lack, what they are
certain to obtain, the advantage of frequent quota-
tion to render them " household words "—"familiar
in the mouths" of the lettered population. The work is
essentially national in its character. It is peculiarly
patriotic in its inspiration. It appeals with a persua-
sive eloquence, and with a most elevating tendency
to the popular sympathies. It is the production of
one Eclectic in Taste as well as in Polities, one who
appreciates with equal readiness the nobler attri-
butes of the conscientious Liberal and of the
conscientious Conservative. Above all, it is
penned throughout (we feel it in the ring of every
melodious syllable) by an earnest, large-hearted
Englishman. As a whole, the Poem is an admi-
rable exemplar in verse of what is termed in music
the emseendo. It increases in power, and vigour,
and melody up to its close—the last (Sir Robert
Peel) being incomparably the best, to our thinking,
among its many most felicitous portraitures. It
may be said to illustrate thus upon a loftier scale
the perfection of the sonnet, as defined by Keats—
"— swelling loudly
Up to its climax, and then dying proudly."
We are glad to see eliminated from the effusion in
its present collective reprint those explanatory
words in prose introducing it to the readers of
Maya upon its first and piecemeal appearance.
They were superfluous. They were worse than
superfluous—they sounded incongruously : as
though we were hearkening to the 0 yea ! 0 yez !
of the Crier of a Law Court, before the trumpet
notes of a Herald in the lists. The introductory
Part, or Canto, is chiefly remarkable for the deli-
neation of Henry St. John, the great Lord Boling-
broke, here admirably called " our English
Alcibiades." From the first line to the last of this
exquisite delineation the whole sketch is as near
as one could wish it to perfection. Three months
ago we quoted it entire from the pages of Black-
wood. Admirable also are many fragmentary pas-
sages in the limning of Dean Jonathan Swift—here
with an aptness of similitude worthy of Mirabeau,
designated " Half Rousseau and half Rabelais." In
a kindred mood, the Right Hon. Joseph Addison
is called in another part, the " Pope of Prose" and
the " Virgil of Humourists." And, in the grand
full-length portraiture of the great Earl of
Chatham, we have that Patrician-Tribune finely
termed "the lEschylus of Speech." Witty,
sparkling, capital, are many of the touches
in the outline of the bluff features of
Sir Robert Walpole. Not the least adroit
of these being the very reticence—suppressing
as applied to Walpole the three first words
of the couplet closing Cowper's tribute to his friend
Joseph Hill—
" An honest man, close buttoned to the chin,
Broadoloth without, and a warm heart within."
There is, by the way, a sort of a catechetieal
colloquialism, as we may term it, disfiguring some
portions of the poetical effusions of the same de-
lightful English writer, which seems to us to be
occasionally echoed unacceptably from the other-
wise almost flawless numbers of the author of " St.
Stephen's." Thus, at the close of his allusions to
Hampden, he writes—
" So pass, 0 pure Idsal of the free
True star to stem by whoreso'er the sea
Linking the cause that gives the world its breath—
Irith Cromwell' s triumph ? No, with _Hampden's death."
Quite as quaint, this self-question self-answered—
almost as grotesque—as that whimsical couplet in
Cowper's now nearly forgotten poem of Truth—
" The Frenchman, first in literary fame,
(Mention him if you please. Voltaire ?—The same)."
Thus in a minor degree is it in " St. Stephen's"—we
might almost say passim. While we are thus
hypercritically scanning these lines as it were with a
microscope, let us for a moment object to the closing
distich of the brief passage relating to Sarah,
Duchess of Marlborough—
" Whose aim is despot's, and whose sense a doll's—
Whose pride Roxana's, and whose language Poll's."
Suggested, unconsciously, no doubt, at the moment,
but quite obviously in the retrospect, by Garrick's
epitaph on Goldsmith—
" Hers lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll,
Who wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll."
Forgetting the faculw, forgetting the macula) upon
the disc of " St. Stephen's," let us look now gratefully
rather to the pervading warmth and sheen of its
glowing eloquence. It treats throughout of oratory,
and it is throughout in itself oratorical—it is the
utterance of an orator upon orators. For the fire,
and the verve, and the terseness which are among
the most conspicuous of its charms, glance
however cursorily down the memorial verses
dedicated to the memory of Chatham.
Abundantly scattered through which verses are
samples of what are in truth the chief sources of
this volume's instant, and, we believe, abiding fas-
cination. Extracting but a few of these clustered
graces from the memento of Chatham, we may
readily thus sprinkle our comments with an abun-
dance of nervous couplets in the way of the merest
casual quotation : ex. gr.:—
" Our fathers tell us what their fathers told,
How from those lips the glorious cataract rolled.
Learned he from Roscius in what folds to bring
The imperial purple ?—was he less the king
Actor you call him ; yes, with inborn ease
What labour made divine Demosthenes ;
Tones with the might of music at their choice
The front august, the eye itself a voice.
Was it a fault if cowering senates shook,
Thrilled by a whisper, spell-bound by a look ?
' *
To colder lips he left the words that teach ;
He awed and crushed—the dEsehylus of speesh."

Throughout these storied and almost, we
might call
them, pictorial pages of " St. Stephens"--we pass
onward as though amongst the altar-like and colos-
sal pedestals upon which stand enshrined the effi-
gies of the eternal habitants of a Walhalla. Sar-
castic not unfrequently, even humorous at times,
the writer at intervals gives evidence of higher
and loftier capacities than those appertaining to
the mere satirist or to the mere eulogist; mani-
festing even, whenever the subject admits of it, at
rarer intervals, the possession of what Wordsworth
has nobly termed in the first book of his Excur•
sion—(" The Wanderer")—
"The vision and the faculty divine I"
Although we are tempted to enter into a detailed
scrutiny of this trilogy of Parliamentary com-
memorations, we conceive that it will be preferable
after contenting ourselves with a very few more
illustrative quotations, to refer our readers to the
work itself in its entirety—satisfied that they will
hardly fail to be lured on to a perusal of the whole
Three Parts, from the Ist page to the 136th, upon
a glance down one or two of the brief excerpts
hereinafter introduced. The intermediate or second
part of the Poem is chiefly remarkable for four very
masterly portraitures—those of Sheridan and
Burke, but more especially of Fox, and pre-
eminently of Pitt. More lightly pencilled though
the profile outlines here given, are of Wilberforce
and Dundas, of Windham and the Gronvilles—
each is traced with a few rapid touches of facile,
almost careless ease, yet:touches, that prove in every
instance when more carefully examined that they
have been guided by a master hand, with a keen, an
unerring, we might even say an instinctive, preci-
sion. Amongst these comparatively minor sketches
there are introduced incidentally—very charmingly
but very incongruously—a cluster of admirable
silhouettes (not in the least Parliamentary) of
Johnson and Garrick, Sir Joshua, Boswell, and,
Goldsmith. But the glory of Part Two is incom-
parably above all—beyond the limnings of Sheridan,
of Burke, or even of Fox, superb though the last
two are in themselves—the grand and lofty effigy
here furnished to us of the younger Pitt. Hearken
to the memorial of the mere style, and manner, the
contemporary effect and influence of Pitt's oratory,
penned thus in resounding verse by., the Author
of " St. Stephsn's :"
t 4 If read the orations, and forgot the age,
Words that breathed fire are ashes on the page.
Oh to have heard them in the breathless hall,
When Europe paled before the maddening Gaul;
When marts resounded at the trumpet's blare,
Fleets on the deep and banners in the air ;
What time the dire Religion, stripp'd of God,
Shook tower and temple to the dust she trod,
And left the ruins dark beneath the from,*
Of Him whose bolt she mimick'd and drew down
Then did the purpose (lost in calmer days)
Inspire with patriot life the purple phrase,

* Query—,Stylus; Prtgß' Doyil.