The evening times., 1895-11-05

tne WrlulnSS OF tne time tnlS JOurhdi Sdiu.
when 1t comes, however, todevis:ng aditty
for the next appendix to the Guelph family,
Henley win wish to hand the text over to
Alfred Austin. AS sign writer on Mount
Parnassus to the royal family Of England
Austin has already proved himself inimita-
ble." The sign writer is now declared to be
poet laureate.
1t is time to confess, apparently, that Al
fred Austin is more to the government
than to the world; more to be subject OF
friendly curiosity now than he has been the
subject OF friendly eyes heretofore; for, al
though born In 1888 and framed in book
covers nearly thirty years ago, his face and
his voice are alike obscure in these parts.
Like Gosse andHenley, Watson and Morris,
he has had to spend good part OF his time
looking after bread and butter In plain prose.
Muses. have known to thrive ION little
oatmeal but the varied diet OF the more
comfortable and less spiritual journeyman
journalist is not calculated to induce ethe-
real visitations.
1.-THE most active principle In our mind"
as Steele has said, ais the imagination"
and the faculty the journalist is most Sc
verely cautioned to keep well in check Is
that principle. He must have memory;
he must have power Of classification; he
must be quick to seize upon facts and slow
to open the door to fancy.
Alfred Austin might have been something
of a poet had he not been chained to jour
naism and the tory wagon. All toryism Is
spuriousness.
Sincerity implies liberty and cOnserva-
tism mea ms keep rything as 1t Is. Every
thing that is is right would have Choked
even TennysOn, who, on occasion, forgot
his paymasters and went broadening prece-
dents-those tax titles OF conservatism
and impelling nations away from dynas-
ties into parIiancnts OF men and fedora
tions of the world.
The reason why so few otherwise really
great English poets never sang for liberty
is that too many of them lived when Ed
mund Burke took up the French revolution
and shook its CORY locks In their faces.
They never recovered from the shock.
Austin studied" with Wordsworth and
Tennyson. There are people who deny that
Words worth knew nature when he met her
IN his walks around Rydal. Lowell says
he did not know the difference between
truth, which is the breath OF the muses. nos
tril, and, in fact, which suffocatcs her.
Tennyson liked nature-in park, that is.
He vas enamored OF gardens. His Maud
was "a bud" and his subinIities were po-
sizes for the most part. Thus bred, Aus
tIa has written some fair verse about ma
ture. Acquiring from browning the truth
IN the abstract that there may be- great
dramas that are wholly unactable as Ten
nyson himself demonstrated. Austin turned
tins truth into a personal Illusion, namely
that drama, If long enough and unaciable.
is also great; and SO he has written long
dramatic comm onplace, which has the
merit over Browning of being easily in
telligible to everybody at first reading, II
1t be intelligible at all.
For one may get Austin in half q dozen
different vol from the booksc Her
and none of them show exhaustive demand
for a leaf cutter after the first score
of pages.
1t seems to be passing fad to attribute
the poets power to everybody who loves
nature and tries to string her on a rhyni-
ing thread or lay her out stark in blank
verse. AS If everybody who loves concord
ofsweet sound can write. IL he tries, onatas,
or as If making butter patties ia modest
proof OF divine call TO model in clay
for marble OF bronze. Even an epicure
is not credited with the cooks genius, but
as to nature and poetry the fallacy prevails.
So Austin is Il poet, If ruminaiing. like
sweet-breathcd cows, is making poetry
about nature.
Austin's short poems contain much that
shows his reading and that echoing rhythm
of poetry which has been sounding in the
ear of the world since first old ocean rolled
and forests sang. But one seeks in vain
one fresh trope, one novel glimpse. There is
neither fire nor frenzy nor pol ish nor recess;
only the fragments OF others worked over
as II, instead of lapidary skill in arranging
gems ana wealth in having them, one
should be content with III king bits Of old
china and setting them in mosaic, dream
ing this were indeed gem having and gem
arranging.
But, TO be frank and to conclude, 1t was
the following poem, perhaps never before
printed in this country, tina has ndou btedly
led to the appointment OF Austin as laure-
ate. and that it was n strictly personal
"royaT appointment will scarcely be de-
MED after reading theverses. There is some
thing like hollow mockery of death, awful
fiouting at humanity itself. in the assumed
Glove talk ard mourning when one re-
calls how speedily the funeral baked meats
furnished coldly forth an almost unnatural
wedding feast:
ALBERT VICTOR.
Duke of Clarence and Avondale. b. Jan. 8,
1864: d. Jan. Il, 1892.
But Love. the boon OF lord and clown,
Love had he made his own,
Love. jeweled beyond any crown,
Loftier than any throne,
Had found maiden fond and fair,
Who, trembling on his heart, wept her glad
weakness there.
Alas for herl the graced, the good,
Forever doomed 10 wear
The mockery of widowhood
About her maiden hair,
Scarce had she time To ach and clasp
The gifts of Love but they were ashes in
her grasp.
Oh! if she could exchange her lot,
And now were free TO choose,
With one who in some whitewaShed cot
Over her baby COOS,
Ind tend the humblest hearth that burns,
To whose awaiting smile the cherished one
returns.
1t remained for Balzac to say that Gus
toms are the hypocrisies of nations. Has
IL not come TO pass that the custom of max
ing poets laureate in modern days amounts
now TO making hypocrites of poets?-Chi-
caUo Times Herald