Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 407, September, 1849

Even at the present moment, chartism is active in Wales: Mormonites and Latter-day Saints still preach and go forth from the Principality to the United States, (fortunately for this country;) and unprincipled itinerant lecturers on socialism, chartism, and infidelity, are now going their circuits in Wales, and obtaining numerous audiences.18

Most of the leading gentry and nobility of Wales are, strange to say, dabblers in Whiggism and amateur radicalism; many of the M.P.s are to be found on the wrong side in the most disgraceful divisions: the corporations of the country are of an unsatisfactory character, and disaffection prevails extensively in many of the chief towns. We believe that a great deal of all this has arisen from the folly, the neglect, the bad example, and the non-residence of the natural leaders of the Principality. Welsh landlords, like Irish – though not so bad as the latter – are uncommonly unwilling to loosen their purse-strings, except for their own immediate pleasures. Scores of parishes have no other representative of the upper classes in them than a half-educated and poorly paid resident clergyman: agents and lawyers ride it roughly and graspingly over the land; the people have few or no natural leaders within reach; they pay their rents, but they get little back from them, to be spent in their humble villages. Their only, and their best friend, as they imagine, is their preacher – one of themselves, elected by themselves, deposable by themselves. They come in contact with a sharp lawyer, a drunken journalist, a Chartist lecturer, a Latter-day Saint – can the result be wondered at?

As long as the patriotism of the Welsh gentry and clergy consists, as it now, too often, does, in frothy words, and an absence of deeds – in the accepting of English money and in abusing England – in playing the Aristocrat at home, and the Whig-radical-liberal in public – so long will disaffection continue in the Principality, and the social condition of the people remain unimproved. The only thing that preserves Wales from rapidly verging to the condition of Ireland, is the absence of large towns with their contaminating influences, and the purely agricultural character of the greatest portion of the people. But even the mountaineer and the man of the plain may be corrupted at last, and he may degenerate into the wretched cottier – the poor slave, not of a proud lord, but of a profligate republic. It is from this lowest depth that we would wish to see him rescued; for in the peasantry the ultimate hope of the country is involved quite as much as in the upper classes; and until the latter set the example, by actually putting their shoulders to the wheel, throwing aside their political tamperings with the worst faction that divides the state, and especially by encouraging the introduction of English settlers into all corners of the country, – we shall not see the social and moral condition of Wales such as it should be. Let the nobles and gentry spend their incomes in the country, not out of it; let them live even amid their mountains, and mix with their people; let them improve the towns by introducing English tradesmen as much as possible; let them try to get up a spirit of industry, perseverance, and cleanliness throughout the land; – so shall they discomfit the Chartists, and convert the democrats into good subjects. Let the clergy reform the discipline of the Welsh church; let them alter the financial inequalities and abuses that prevail in it, to an almost incredible extent; and let them, by their doctrines and practice, emulate the good qualities of their professional opponents; – so shall they empty the meeting-houses, and thaw the coldness of Independentism or Methodism into the warmth of union and affectionate co-operation. Let every Welshman, while he maintains intact and undiminished the real honour of his country, join with his Saxon neighbour, imitating his good qualities, correcting his evil ones by his own good example; and let their children, mingling in blood, obliterate the national distinctions that now are mischievously sought to be revived; – so shall the union of Wales with England remain unrepealed, and the common honour of the two countries, distinct yet conjoined, be promoted by their common weal.

THE STRAYED REVELLER.19

The other evening, on returning home from the pleasant hospitalities of the Royal Mid-Lothian Yeomanry, our heart cheered with claret, and our intellect refreshed by the patriotic eloquence of M'Whirter, we found upon our table a volume of suspicious thinness, the title of which for a moment inspired us with a feeling of dismay. Fate has assigned to us a female relative of advanced years and a curious disposition, whose affection is constantly manifested by a regard for our private morals. Belonging to the Supra-lapsarian persuasion, she never loses an opportunity of inculcating her own peculiar tenets: many a tract has been put into our hands as an antidote against social backslidings; and no sooner did that ominous phrase, The Strayed Reveller, meet our eye, than we conjectured that the old lady had somehow fathomed the nature of our previous engagement, and, in our absence, deposited the volume as a special warning against indulgence in military banquets. On opening it, however, we discovered that it was verse; and the first distich which met our eye was to the following effect: —

"O Vizier, thou art old, I young,Clear in these things I cannot see.My head is burning; and a heatIs in my skin, which angers me."

This frank confession altered the current of our thought, and we straightway set down the poet as some young roysterer, who had indulged rather too copiously in strong potations, and who was now celebrating in lyrics his various erratic adventures before reaching home. But a little more attention speedily convinced us that jollity was about the last imputation which could possibly be urged against our new acquaintance.

One of the most painful features of our recent poetical literature, is the marked absence of anything like heartiness, happiness, or hope. We do not want to see young gentlemen aping the liveliness of Anacreon, indulging in praises of the rosy god, or frisking with supernatural agility; but we should much prefer even such an unnecessary exuberance of spirits, to the dreary melancholy which is but too apparent in their songs. Read their lugubrious ditties, and you would think that life had utterly lost all charm for them before they have crossed its threshold. The cause of such overwhelming despondency it is in vain to discover; for none of them have the pluck, like Byron, to commit imaginary crimes, or to represent themselves as racked with remorse for murders which they never perpetrated. If one of them would broadly accuse himself of having run his man through the vitals – of having, in an experimental fit, plucked up a rail, and so caused a terrific accident on the South-Western – or of having done some other deed of reasonable turpitude and atrocity, we could understand what the fellow meant by his excessively unmirthful monologues. But we are not indulged with any full-flavoured fictions of the kind. On the contrary, our bards affect the purity and innocence of the dove. They shrink from naughty phrases with instinctive horror – have an idea that the mildest kind of flirtation involves a deviation from virtue; and, in their most savage moments of wrath, none of them would injure a fly. How, then, can we account for that unhappy mist which floats between them and the azure heaven, so heavily as to cloud the whole tenor of their existence? What makes them maunder so incessantly about gloom, and graves, and misery? Why confine themselves everlastingly to apple-blossoms, whereof the product in autumn will not amount to a single Ribston pippin? What has society done to them, or what can they possibly have done to society, that the future tenor of their span must be one of unmitigated woe? We rather suspect that most of the poets would be puzzled to give satisfactory answers to such queries. They might, indeed, reply, that misery is the heritage of genius; but that, we apprehend, would be arguing upon false premises; for we can discover very little genius to vindicate the existence of so vast a quantity of woe.

We hope, for the sake of human nature, that the whole thing is a humbug; nay, we have not the least doubt of it; for the experience of a good many years has convinced us, that a young poet in print is a very different person from the actual existing bard. The former has nerves of gossamer, and states that he is suckled with dew; the latter is generally a fellow of his inches, and has no insuperable objection to gin and water. In the one capacity, he feebly implores an early death; in the other, he shouts for broiled kidneys long after midnight, when he ought to be snoring on his truckle. Of a morning, the Strayed Reveller inspires you with ideas of dyspepsia – towards evening, your estimate of his character decidedly improves. Only fancy what sort of a companion the author of the following lines must be: —

"TO FAUSTAJoy comes and goes: life ebbs and flows,Like the wave.Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men.Love lends life a little grace,A few sad smiles: and then,Both are laid in one cold place,In the grave.Dreams dawn and fly: friends smile and die,Like spring flowers.Our vaunted life is one long funeral.Men dig graves with bitter tears,For their dead hopes; and all,Mazed with doubts, and sick with fears,Count the hours.We count the hours: these dreams of ours,False and hollow,Shall we go hence and find they are not dead?Joys we dimly apprehend,Faces that smiled and fled,Hopes born here, and born to end,Shall we follow?"

It is impossible to account for tastes; but we fairly confess, that if we thought the above lines were an accurate reflex of the ordinary mood of the author, we should infinitely prefer supping in company with the nearest sexton. However, we have no suspicion of the kind. An early intimacy with the writings of Shelley, who in his own person was no impostor, is enough to account for the composition of these singularly dolorous verses, without supposing that they are any symptom whatever of the diseased idiosyncrasy of the author.

If we have selected this poet as the type of a class now unfortunately too common, it is rather for the purpose of remonstrating with him on the abuse of his natural gifts, than from any desire to hold him up to ridicule. We know not whether he may be a stripling or a grown-up man. If the latter, we fear that he is incorrigible, and that the modicum of talent which he certainly possesses is already so perverted, by excessive imitation, as to afford little ground for hope that he can ever purify himself from a bad style of writing, and a worse habit of thought. But if, as we rather incline to believe, he is still a young man, we by no means despair of his reformation, and it is with that view alone that we have selected his volume for criticism. For although there is hardly a page of it which is not studded with faults apparent to the most common censor, there are nevertheless, here and there, passages of some promise and beauty; and one poem, though it be tainted by imitation, is deserving of considerable praise. It is the glitter of the golden ore, though obscured by much that is worthless, which has attracted our notice; and we hope, that by subjecting his poems to a strict examination, we may do the author a real service.

It is not to be expected that the first essay of a young poet should be faultless. Most youths addicted to versification, are from an early age sedulous students of poetry. They select a model through certain affinities of sympathy, and, having done so, they become copyists for a time. We are far from objecting to such a practice; indeed, we consider it inevitable; for the tendency to imitate pervades every branch of art, and poetry is no exception. We distrust originality in a mere boy, because he is not yet capable of the strong impressions, or of the extended and subtile views, from which originality ought to spring. His power of creating music is still undeveloped, but the tendency to imitate music which he has heard, and can even appreciate, is strong. Most immature lyrics indicate pretty clearly the favourite study of their authors. Sometimes they read like a weak version of the choric songs of Euripides: sometimes the versification smacks of the school of Pope, and not unfrequently it betrays an undue intimacy with the writings of Barry Cornwall. Nor is the resemblance always confined to the form; for ever and anon we stumble upon a sentiment or expression, so very marked and idiosyncratic as to leave no doubt whatever of its paternity.

The same remarks apply to prose composition. Distinctions of style occupy but a small share of academical attention; and that most important rhetorical exercise, the analysis of the Period, has fallen into general disregard. Rules for composition certainly exist, but they are seldom made the subject of prelection; and consequently bad models find their way into the hands, and too often pervert the taste, of the rising generation. The cramped, ungrammatical style of Carlyle, and the vague pomposity of Emerson, are copied by numerous pupils; the value of words has risen immensely in the literary market, whilst that of ideas has declined; in order to arrive at the meaning of an author of the new school, we are forced to crack a sentence as hard and angular as a hickory-nut, and, after all our pains, we are usually rewarded with no better kernel than a maggot.

The Strayed Reveller is rather a curious compound of imitation. He claims to be a classical scholar of no mean acquirements, and a good deal of his inspiration is traceable to the Greek dramatists. In certain of his poems he tries to think like Sophocles, and has so far succeeded as to have constructed certain choric passages, which might be taken by an unlettered person for translations from the antique. The language, though hard, is rather stately; and many of the individual images are by no means destitute of grace. The epithets which he employs bear the stamp of the Greek coinage; but, upon the whole, we must pronounce these specimens failures. The images are not bound together or grouped artistically, and the rhythm which the author has selected is, to an English ear, utterly destitute of melody. It is strange that people cannot be brought to understand that the genius and capabilities of one language differ essentially from those of another: and that the measures of antiquity are altogether unsuitable for modern verse. It is no doubt possible, by a Procrustean operation, to force words into almost any kind of mould; a chorus may be constructed, which, so far as scanning goes, might satisfy the requirements of a pedagogue, but the result of the experiment will inevitably show that melody has been sacrified in the attempt. Now melody is a charm without which poetry is of little worth; we are not quite sure whether it would not be more correct to say, that without melody poetry has no existence. Our author does not seem to have the slightest idea of this, and accordingly he treats us to such passages as the following: —

"No, no, old men, Creon I curse not.I weep, Thebans,One than Creon crueller far,For he, he, at least by slaying her,August laws doth mightily vindicate:But thou, too bold, headstrong, pitiless,Ah me! honourest more than thy lover,O Antigone,A dead, ignorant, thankless corpse.""Nor was the love untrueWhich the Dawn-Goddess boreTo that fair youth she erst,Leaving the salt-sea bedsAnd coming flush'd over the stormy frithOf loud Euripus, saw:Saw and snatch'd, wild with love,From the pine-dotted spursOf Parnes, where thy waves,Asopus, gleam rock-hemm'd;The Hunter of the Tanagrœan Field.But him, in his sweet prime,By severance immature,By Artemis' soft shafts,She, though a goddess born,Saw in the rocky isle of Delos die.Such end o'ertook that love,For she desired to makeImmortal mortal man,And blend his happy life,Far from the gods, with hers:To him postponing an eternal law."

We are sincerely sorry to find the lessons of a good classical education applied to so pitiable a use; for if, out of courtesy, the above should be denominated verses, they are nevertheless as far removed from poetry as the Indus is from the pole. It is one thing to know the classics, and another to write classically. Indeed, if this be classical writing, it would furnish the best argument ever yet advanced against the study of the works of antiquity. Mr Tennyson, to whom, as we shall presently have occasion to observe, this author is indebted for another phase of his inspiration, has handled classical subjects with fine taste and singular delicacy; and his "Ulysses" and "Œnone" show how beautifully the Hellenic idea may be wrought out in mellifluous English verse. But Tennyson knows his craft too well to adopt either the Greek phraseology or the Greek rhythm. Even in the choric hymns which he has once or twice attempted, he has spurned halt and ungainly metres, and given full freedom and scope to the cadence of his mother tongue. These antique scraps of the Reveller are farther open to a still more serious objection, which indeed is applicable to most of his poetry. We read them, marking every here and there some image of considerable beauty; but, when we have laid down the book, we are unable for the life of us to tell what it is all about. The poem from which the volume takes its name is a confused kind of chaunt about Circe, Ulysses, and the Gods, from which no exercise of ingenuity can extract the vestige of a meaning. It has pictures which, were they introduced for any conceivable purpose, might fairly deserve some admiration; but, thrust in as they are, without method or reason, they utterly lose their effect, and only serve to augment our dissatisfaction at the perversion of a taste which, with so much culture, should have been capable of better things.

The adoption of the Greek choric metres, in some of the poems, appears to us the more inexplicable, because in others, when he descends from his classic altitudes, our author shows that he is by no means insensible to the power of melody. True, he wants that peculiar characteristic of a good poet – a melody of his own; for no poet is master of his craft unless his music is self-inspired: but, in default of that gift, he not unfrequently borrows a few notes or a tune from some of his contemporaries, and exhibits a fair command and mastery of his instrument. Here, for example, are a few stanzas, the origin of which nobody can mistake. They are an exact echo of the lyrics of Elizabeth Barrett Browning: —

"Are the accents of your luringMore melodious than of yore?Are those frail forms more enduringThan the charms Ulysses bore?That we sought you with rejoicings,Till at evening we descry,At a pause of siren voicings,These vext branches and this howling sky?Oh! your pardon. The uncouthnessOf that primal age is gone,And the kind of dazzling smoothnessScreens not now a heart of stone.Love has flushed those cruel faces;And your slackened arms foregoThe delight of fierce embraces;And those whitening bone-mounds do not grow.'Come,' you say; 'the large appearanceOf man's labour is but vain;And we plead as firm adherenceDue to pleasure as to pain.'Pointing to some world-worn creatures,'Come,' you murmur with a sigh:'Ah! we own diviner features,Loftier bearing, and a prouder eye.'"

High and commanding genius is able to win our attention even in its most eccentric moods. Such genius belongs to Mrs Browning in a very remarkable degree, and on that account we readily forgive her for some forced rhyming, intricate diction, and even occasional obscurity of thought. But what shall we say of the man who seeks to reproduce her marvellous effects by copying her blemishes? Read the above lines, and you will find that, in so far as sound and mannerism go, they are an exact transcript from Mrs Browning. Apply your intellect to the discovery of their meaning, and you will rise from the task thoroughly convinced of its hopelessness. The poem in which they occur is entitled The New Sirens, but it might with equal felicity and point have been called The New Harpies, or The Lay of the Hurdy-Gurdy. It seems to us a mere experiment, for the purpose of showing that words placed together in certain juxtaposition, without any regard to their significance or propriety, can be made to produce a peculiar phonetic effect. The phenomenon is by no means a new one – it occurs whenever the manufacture of nonsense-verses is attempted; and it needed not the staining of innocent wire-wove to convince us of its practicability. Read the following stanza – divorce the sound from the sense, and then tell us what you can make of it: —

"With a sad majestic motion —With a stately slow surprise —From their earthward-bound devotionLifting up your languid eyes:Would you freeze my louder boldness,Humbly smiling as you go?One faint frown of distant coldnessFlitting fast across each marble brow?"

What say you, Parson Sir Hugh Evans? "The tevil with his tam; what phrase is this —freeze my louder boldness? Why, it is affectations."

If any one, in possession of a good ear, and with a certain facility for composing verse, though destitute of the inventive faculty, will persevere in imitating the style of different poets, he is almost certain at last to discover some writer whose peculiar manner he can assume with far greater facility than that of others. The Strayed Reveller fails altogether with Mrs Browning; because it is beyond his power, whilst following her, to make any kind of agreement between sound and sense. He is indeed very far from being a metaphysician, for his perception is abundantly hazy: and if he be wise, he will abstain from any future attempts at profundity. But he has a fair share of the painter's gift; and were he to cultivate that on his own account, we believe that he might produce something far superior to any of his present efforts. As it is, we can merely accord him the praise of sketching an occasional landscape, very like one which we might expect from Alfred Tennyson. He has not only caught the trick of Tennyson's handling, but he can use his colours with considerable dexterity. He is like one of those second-rate artists, who, with Danby in their eye, crowd our exhibitions with fiery sunsets and oceans radiant in carmine; sometimes their pictures are a little overlaid, but, on the whole, they give a fair idea of the manner of their undoubted master.

The following extract will, we think, illustrate our meaning. It is from a poem entitled Mycerinus, which, though it does not possess the interest of any tale, is correctly and pleasingly written: —

"So spake he, half in anger, half in scorn,And one loud cry of grief and of amazeBroke from his sorrowing people; so he spake,And turning, left them there; and with brief pause,Girt with a throng of revellers, bent his wayTo the cool regions of the grove he loved.There by the river banks he wandered on,From palm-grove on to palm-grove; happy trees,Their smooth tops shining sunwards, and beneathBurying their unsunn'd stems in grass and flowers;Where in one dream the feverish time of youthMight fade in slumber, and the feet of JoyMight wander all day long and never tire:Here came the king, holding high feast, at mornRose-crown'd; and ever, when the sun went down,A hundred lamps beam'd in the tranquil gloomFrom tree to tree, all through the twinkling grove,Revealing all the tumult of the feast,Flush'd guests, and golden goblets, foam'd with wine,While the deep burnish'd foliage overheadSplinter'd the silver arrows of the moon."

This really is a pretty picture; its worst, and perhaps its only fault, being that it constantly reminds us of the superior original artist. Throughout the book indeed, and incorporated in many of the poems, there occur images to which Mr Tennyson has a decided right by priority of invention, and which the Strayed Reveller has "conveyed" with little attention to ceremony. For example, in a poem which we never much admired, The Vision of Sin, Mr Tennyson has the two following lines —

"And on the glimmering limit, far withdrawn,God made himself an awful rose of dawn."

This image is afterwards repeated in the Princess. Thus —

"Till the sunGrew broader toward his death and fell, and allThe rosy heights came out above the lawns."

Young Danby catches at the idea, and straightway favours us with a copy —

"When the first rose-flush was steepingAll the frore peak's awful crown."

The image is a natural one, and of course open to all the world, but the diction has been clearly borrowed.