Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-02-07
THE TOPICAL TALKER.

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Letter 70 TennysOn-His Grave Beside
CowIey-The Dialect Poet Tribe and
Their Decrease.
THE narrowness and conceit which charac-
terize so many of Browning's admirers
were not to be found in Browning himself.
Browning had proper conception Of the merit
of his own poetry, he ranked it high and did
not EXPECT his audience to be very great be.
cause of the elevated aim of all he wrote. A
pleasant evidence of his appreciation of an
other poets work-and that poet his rival and
cotemporary-is to be found in a letter he
wrote to Lord Alfred Tennyson last summer.
Here is the letter:
o DE WERE GARDENS, W., August S 1889.
MY DEAR Observation-Disclosures is your BIRTH
day-indeed memorable one. Let me say asso-
ciate myself with the universal pride of our coun
try in your glory, and in its hope that for many
and many year we may have your very self
among us-secu re that your poetry will be
wonder and delight to all those appointed TO come
after, And for my own part let me further say,l
have loved you dearly. May God bless you and
yoursI
At no m omeut from first to last of my acquaint-
ance with your works. or friendship with your
SELF have had any other feeling, expressed or
kept SILENT than this which an opportunity allows
me to utter-that am and ever shall be. my dear
Tennyson, admiringly and observation-disclosures,
ROBERT BROWNING.
A.z
TIL somewhat curious that they should have
buried Browning next to the poet Cowley in
the beautiful Poets Corner of Westminster
Abbey. A more uncongenial neighbor, if we
may judge Cowley by his works, could hardly
be discovered IN Hades for the brusque, earnest
Browning Cowley lived in an age when the
pillory and the prison awaited the poet who
spoke unpleasant truths plainly, and he con-
tented himself for the most part with pretty
pettiness of style, subject and treatment.
Browning has always been a radical in all
things; poet who never forgot his manliness
and esteemed it his mission to speak directly
and bluntly the truth as it seemed to him. He
certainly did not admire the Cowley school OF
poetry nor try to obtain fame for framing con-
ceits, or celebrating fashionable sentiments.
A most rational protest is made by an anony-
nous writer in the February Scribner against
the aggravating persistence OF some long
cared gentry-mostly of Boston birth by the way
in approaching Browning's work as though 1t
involved first of all some kind of intellectual
crux-the employment of some other faculties
than those that commonly receive true poetry.
The acceptance of Browning has been cur
tailed undoubtedly by the hue and cry of very
wise men. We have been told so often that
Browning is a schoolmen's poet with an
whose mysticism only the select few could
penetrate, that lots OF US have been frightened
away from the poet who has really appealed
more directly and more humanity to his fellow
men and women than any other writer Of this
century.
~
a CURIOSITY in the poetic way is Tennyson's
return to dialect verse, in his latest book
"Demeter and Other Poems" One OF the
"other poems" is "OI Roa," which is North
Country English for "Old Rover" 1t is a pa
thetic tale of dogs devotion to an old farmer.
But why Tennyson went to the trouble of trans
lating the story into rude unmusical dialect
that is next to unintelligible often to the ave-
rage reader of English passes all understand
ing. There is nothing gained by the use of the
dialect-Tennyson's experience with "The
Northern Farmer years ago ought to have
taught him that
One of the blessings that time has worked for
us is the decay of the dialect story, novel and
poem. In verse and prose the intolerable mis-
spelling of words, without any rule or standard.
obscuring the writer's meaning and tiring the
reaaer's eyes and brain, this curse of literature
is going out of fashion fast praise be to Allah!
The only dialect poems that have seemed to me
worth the trouble of reading are James Whit
comb Riley's In prose Joel Chandler Harris
Charles Egbert Craddock and perhaps couple
of others use dialect with good effect. Their
imitators were legion year ago The editors
axes and the protest of a rebellious reading
public have thinned out the offenders wonder
fully,