THE ILLUSTRIOUS OBSCURE[44]

"Existence lean, in sky dead greyWithholding steadily, starved it away."

"Existence lean, in sky dead grey

Withholding steadily, starved it away."

If the pathos in these poems is almost "too deep for tears," it is gentler in the second and third of the lyrics, which are as exquisite as they are affecting. The idea in the linesTo Milton Blind, is worthy of Milton's own sublime conceit, that the darkness which had fallen on his eyes was but the shadow of God's protecting wings. The whole poem, indeed, is a beautiful paraphrase of the noble passage in theSecond Defence of the People of England: "For the Divine law"—we give it in the English translation—"not only shields me from injury, but almost renders me too sacred to attack, not indeed so much from the privation of my sight as from the overshadowing of those heavenly wings which seem to have occasioned this obscurity; and which, when occasioned, he is wont to illuminate with an interior light more precious and more pure."

InThe Lily, which is a little obscure—a fault against which Mr. Phillips would do well to guard, for he frequently offends in this respect—we have the note of Petrarch, but Petrarch would not have ended the poem so flatly. Tennyson is recalled, too nearly perhaps, in "By the Sea," but it is a poem of great charm and beauty.The New De Profundisis, unhappily, the key to Mr. Phillips' characteristic mood; it reminds us of the curse imposed on the worldling in Browning'sEaster Day, before he has learned the use of life and doubt.

Mr. Phillips' two most ambitious poems areChrist in HadesandMarpessa. InChrist in Hadeshe fails, as Mrs. Browning failed inThe Drama of Exile. He attempts a theme—a stupendous theme—to which his genius is not equal, and which could only have been adequately treated by such poets as Dante and Milton, in the maturity of their powers. It has neither basis nor superstructure. It is what the Greeks would call "meteoric" as distinguished from "sublime." It is a weird, wild, and chaotic dream; and yet for all this its appeal to the heart and the imagination is piercing and direct. Like Tennyson, Mr. Phillips has the art of unfolding the full significance of a few suggestive words in a great classic; and nothing could be more effective than the use to which he has applied the famous lines which Homer places in the mouth of Achilles. Poetry has few things more pathetic than Homer's picture of Hades and the dead, and that pathos Mr. Phillips has given us in quintessence, as few would question after reading the lines which describe Persephone yearning for her return to the spring-illumined world, the speech of the Athenian ghost, and the woman's address to Christ. If the world depicted has something of Horace's artistic monster, or, to change the image, something of the anarchy of dreams in its composition, the vividness and picturesqueness with which particular figures and scenes are flashed into light and definition is extraordinarilyimpressive. It is so with the central figure, Christ; it is so with Prometheus; and the contrast between these martyrs for man has both pathos and grandeur.

There is more originality, more power inChrist in Hadesthan inMarpessa, butMarpessahas more balance, more sanity, more of the stuff out of which good and abiding poetry is made, than its predecessor. The one savours of the spasmodic school, the productions of which have rarely been found to have the principle of life, however rich they may have been in promise; the other is a return to a school in which most of those who have gained permanent fame have studied. And we are glad to find a young poet there.

But it would be doing Mr. Phillips great injustice not to note that, though he has had many predecessors in the semi-classical, semi-romantic re-treatment of the Greek myths, notably Keats inHyperion, Wordsworth inDionandLaodamia, Landor in hisHellenics, and Tennyson inÆnoneandTithonus, he has treated his theme with a distinction which is all his own, and has impressed on it an intense individuality. In comparison with these masters he may bepauper, but he ispauper in suo ære.

It would be easy to point to faults in Mr. Phillips' work. His sense of rhythm, even allowing for what are plainly deliberate experiments in discord, seems often curiously defective. Howstiff and limping, for example, is the following:—

"O pity us,For I would ask of thee only to lookUpon the wonderful sunlight and to smellEarth in the rain. Is not the labourerReturning heavy through the August sheavesAgainst the setting sun, who gladly smellsHis supper from the opening door—is heNot happier than these melancholy kings?How good it is to live, even at the worst!God was so lavish to us once, but hereHe hath repented, jealous of His beams."

"O pity us,

For I would ask of thee only to look

Upon the wonderful sunlight and to smell

Earth in the rain. Is not the labourer

Returning heavy through the August sheaves

Against the setting sun, who gladly smells

His supper from the opening door—is he

Not happier than these melancholy kings?

How good it is to live, even at the worst!

God was so lavish to us once, but here

He hath repented, jealous of His beams."

Lines, again, like "Pierced her, and odour full of arrows was," "Realizes all the uncoloured dawn," "Yet followed a riddled memorable flag," are, no doubt, extreme instances, but they are typical of many bad lines. Occasionally he falls flat on some harsh prosaic phrase, like "beautiful indolencewas on our brains." Nor is he always happy in his attempts at novelty in phraseology, as in his employment of the words "liable," "inaccurate," "pungent"; and these faults in rhythm and diction are the more remarkable, as the really subtle mastery over rhythmic expression which he exhibits at times, and his singularly felicitous epithets, turns, and phrases are among his most striking gifts. Take a few out of very many: "A bleak magnificence of endless hope," "That common trivial face, of endless needs," "The mystic river, floating wan," "And the moist evening fallow, richly dark," "That palest rose sweet on the night of life." How noble is the rhythm and imagery of the following:—

"All the deadThe melancholy attraction of Jesus felt:And millions, like a sea, wave upon wave,Heaved dreaming to that moonlight face, or ranIn wonderful long ripples, sorrow-charmed.Toward him, in faded purple, pacing cameDead emperors, and sad, unflattered kings;Unlucky captains, listless armies led:Poets with music frozen on their lipsToward the pale brilliance sighed."

"All the dead

The melancholy attraction of Jesus felt:

And millions, like a sea, wave upon wave,

Heaved dreaming to that moonlight face, or ran

In wonderful long ripples, sorrow-charmed.

Toward him, in faded purple, pacing came

Dead emperors, and sad, unflattered kings;

Unlucky captains, listless armies led:

Poets with music frozen on their lips

Toward the pale brilliance sighed."

And it would be easy to multiply illustrations fromMarpessaandBy the Sea. Occasionally there is a certain incongruity between the form and the matter. A poem so essentially, so intensely realistic asThe Wifeshould not have such quaintnesses as "palèd in her thought." Nor should we have

"The constable, with lifted hand,Conducting the orchestral Strand";

"The constable, with lifted hand,

Conducting the orchestral Strand";

nor should a railway station be described as a "moonèd terminus." Nothing is so disenchanting as affectation.

One cannot but add that these poems, welcome as they are, would have been more welcome still, had they been less profoundly melancholy. Their monotonous sadness, the persistency with which they dwell on all those grim and melancholy realities which poetry should help us to forget, or cheer us in enduring, is not merely their leading, but their pervading characteristic. This note will, we hope, change. Leopardi is immortal, and could not be spared; but one Leopardi is enough for a single century.

[44]West Country Poets: Their Lives and Works, etc.Illustrated with Portraits. By W. H. Kearley Wright, F.R.H.S. London: Elliot Stock. 1896.

Some nineteen hundred years ago Horace observed that there was one thing which neither gods, nor men, nor bookstalls would tolerate in a poet—and that was mediocrity. The verdict of gods, men, and the bookstalls is probably still what it was then; but to such tribunals the rhymesters of our time can afford to be quite indifferent. Paper and printing are cheap; small poets and small critics are now so numerous that they form a world, and a populous world, in themselves; and, well understanding the truth of the old proverb, "Concordiâ, parvæ res crescunt," they mutually manufacture the wreaths with which they crown each other's modest vanity. There are hundreds of "poets" and "critics" of whom the great world knows nothing, who are thus enabled, in their little day, to taste all the sweets of fame, and "walk with inward glory crown'd." To wage serious waragainst such a tribe as this would be as absurd as to break butterflies upon a wheel; but we really think it high time that some protest should be made against the indefinite multiplication of the rubbish for which these people and their patrons are responsible, and still more against its importation into what purports to be a contribution to serious literature. As long as these geniuses confine themselves to their proper sphere, the poets' corners of provincial newspapers, we have nothing to say. But it becomes quite another matter when the skill of an ingenious projector enables—we are really sorry to have to speak so harshly—a rabble of poetasters to figure side by side with poets of classical fame, and to appear in all the dignity of contributors to a national anthology. Yet such is the design of this volume, which was, it seems, published by subscription, the subscribers being for the most part the various candidates for poetical fame, who have obligingly sent their portraits and their biographies for insertion in Mr. Kearley Wright's "monumental work." As Mr. Kearley Wright's collection begins with the fifteenth century, and includes the really eminent poets who happen to have been born in the West of England, many of his worthies are naturallyapud plures, but the majority, in whose honour the anthology appears to have been compiled, adorn the living. And very gratifying it must be for these gentlemen, and for Mr.Kearley Wright himself—for he also has a niche—to find themselves side by side with Sir Walter Raleigh, Herrick, Gay, and Coleridge.

Mr. Kearley Wright's "company of makers" is certainly a motley one. First comes among his living bards an inspired porter at the Teignmouth railway station, who asks in rapture,—

"Along the glitt'ring streets of gold,Amid the brilliant glare,Shall we God's banner there unfold,His righteous helmet wear?"

"Along the glitt'ring streets of gold,

Amid the brilliant glare,

Shall we God's banner there unfold,

His righteous helmet wear?"

At no great distance follows, with a portrait looking intensely intellectual, "the manager of the Bristol and South Wales Railway Waggon Company, Limited," whose poems are described as "lacking here and there logical sequence and literary method," but "evincing undoubtedly a great poetical disposition and philosophical drift." The two poems which illustrate this poet's genius afford very little proof either of "a great poetical disposition" or of "a philosophical drift," but painfully conclusive proof that much more is lacking than "logical sequence and literary method," the lack of which may certainly be conceded as well. Next comes Mr. Jonas Coaker, "the landlord of the Warren House Inn," whose verses "disclose a poetic spirit, and, had he possessed the advantages of education, would doubtless have attracted some attention." Mr. Coaker is in the main autobiographical.

"I drew my breath first on the moor,There my forefathers dwelled;Its hills and dales I've traversed o'er,Its desert parts beheld.*****It's oft envelop'd in a fog,Because it's up so high."

"I drew my breath first on the moor,

There my forefathers dwelled;

Its hills and dales I've traversed o'er,

Its desert parts beheld.

*****

It's oft envelop'd in a fog,

Because it's up so high."

And Mr. Coaker continues in the same strain further than we care to transcribe. Then we have Mr. John Goodwin, "formerly a coach-guard, who sung of the days when there was such a thing, if we may so phrase it, as the poetry of locomotion." In his poetry, we are told, "there is a genuine ring," as here, for example:—

"I mind the time, when I was guard,The lord, the duke, or squireWould travel by the old stage-coach,Or post-chaise they would hire."

"I mind the time, when I was guard,

The lord, the duke, or squire

Would travel by the old stage-coach,

Or post-chaise they would hire."

Mr. Charles Chorley, who is, we are informed, submanager of the Truro Savings Bank, in verses which are presumably a parody of Sir William Jones'Imitation of Alcæus, inquires, not without a certain propriety, "What constitutes a mine?" On a par with all these are the verses of the bard who "in summer hawked gooseberries and in winter shoelaces," and those of the "uneducated journeyman woolcomber."

Now, we need hardly say that the humble vocations of these poets are neither derogatory to them nor in any way detrimental to meritwhere merit exists; but there is no merit whatever in the poems assigned to them in this volume; they are simply such poems as hawkers, woolcombers, railway porters, and submanagers of provincial banks—"who pen a stanza when they should engross"—might be expected to write. The same may be said of almost every copy of verses, produced by amateurs, to be found in this collection. We have scarcely noticed a single poem which rises above mediocrity; a very large proportion are below even a mediocre standard—they are simply rubbish. In one poet only, among those whose names were not before known to us, do we discern genius, and that is in Mr. John Dryden Hosken, whose poem, entitledMy Masters, is really excellent.

The editor of this anthology is plainly incompetent, both in point of taste and critical discernment, and in point of knowledge, for the task which he has undertaken. The first is proved by the extracts which he has selected from the works of well-known poets. Coleridge, for example, is represented by two comparatively inferior poems,The Devil's ThoughtsandFancy in Nubibus; Thomas Carew, by two short poems, one of which is probably the worst he ever wrote; Herrick, by two of his very worst; Praed, by two of the feeblest and least characteristic of his poems; Walcot, by mere trash. It is quite possible that their less illustrious brethren may have suffered from the deplorable inability ofthis editor to discern between what is good and what is bad. Certainly Capern, who was a poet with a touch of genius, suffers, for the lyric given is very far indeed from representing or illustrating his best or even his characteristic work. In giving an account of Alexander Barclay, who, by the way, is called Andrew in the Preface, Mr. Wright says nothing about his most important poems—his Eclogues. If Eustace Budgell is included among the poets, why are not his poems specified and represented? Of Aaron Hill it is observed that "neither his reputation as a poet nor his connexion with the county of Devon is sufficient to warrant more than a mere notice of his name." Aaron Hill was the author of more than one poem of conspicuous merit. The verses attributed on page 488 to Sir William Yonge were written by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. But these are trifles. What we wish to protest against is the foisting of such volumes as these on our libraries; and it is appalling to learn that it is the intention of Mr. Kearley Wright, if he is sufficiently encouraged by subscribers, to follow this with another similar collection. If poets like these wish to gratify their vanity, let them not gratify it to the detriment of serious literature; for, if the few can discriminate, the many cannot, and the multiplication of works like these must infallibly tend to lower the standard of current literature, by furthering the disastrous "cult of the averageman." In our opinion criticism can have no more imperative duty than to discountenance and discourage in every way such projectors as Mr. Kearley Wright and such poets as those for whose merits he and critics like him stand sponsors.

[45]The Eclogues of Virgil.Translated into English Hexameter Verse by the Right Hon. Sir George Osborne Morgan, Bart., Q.C., M.P. London.

Sir George Osborne Morgan has served his generation in much more important capacities than those of a scholar and a translator of Virgil, and had this little work, therefore, been less meritorious than it is, no critic with a sense of the becoming would deal harshly with it. But it challenges and deserves serious consideration, not only as an attempt to solve a problem of singular interest to students of classical poetry, but as a somewhat ambitious contribution to the literature of translation. Sir Osborne Morgan is, however, mistaken in supposing that in translating Virgil into his own metre he "has undertaken a task which has never been attempted before." In 1583 Richard Stanihurst published a translation of the first four books of theÆneidin English hexameters; and, if Sir Osborne will turn to Webbe'sDiscourse of English Poetrie, published as early as 1586, he will find versions in Englishhexameters of the First and Second Eclogues, while Abraham Fraunce, in a curious volume, entitledThe Countess of Pembroke's Ivy Church, which appeared in 1591, has, among the other hexameters in the collection, given a version of the Second Eclogue in this measure. But Sir Osborne Morgan has been more immediately anticipated in his experiment. In 1838 Dr. James Blundell published anonymously, under the title ofHexametrical Experiments, versions in hexameters of the First, Fourth, Sixth, and Tenth Eclogues, and to this translation he prefixed an elaborate preface, vindicating the employment of the hexameter in English, and explaining its mechanism to the unlearned. Indeed, Blundell arrived at the same conclusion as Sir Osborne Morgan, that the proper medium for an English translation of hexametrical poems in Greek and Latin is the English hexameter. We may, however, hasten to add that Sir Osborne has little to fear from a comparison with his predecessors, who have, indeed, done their best to refute by example their own theory. It may be observed, in passing, that the translations of Virgil into rhymed decasyllabic verse are far more numerous than Sir Osborne Morgan seems to suppose. He is, he says, acquainted only with two—the version by Dryden and Joseph Warton—not seeming to be aware that Warton translated only theGeorgicsandEclogues, printing Pitt's version of theÆneid. Thewhole of Virgil was translated into this measure by John Ogilvie between 1649-50, and by the Earl of Lauderdale about 1716, while versions of theÆneid, theGeorgics, and theEclogues, in the same metre, have abounded in every era of our literature, from Gawain Douglas's translation of theÆneidprinted in 1553, to Archdeacon Wrangham's version of theEcloguesin 1830.

It is no reproach to Sir Osborne Morgan that, in the occupations of a busy political life, his scholarship should have become a little rusty, but it is a pity that he should so often have allowed himself to be caught tripping, when a little timely counsel in the correction of his proof sheets might have prevented this. In the First Eclogue the line

"Non insueta graves temptabunt pabula fetas"

is translated

"Here no unwonted herb shall tempt the travailing cattle."

What it really means is, no change of fodder, no fodder which is strange to them, shall "infect" or "try" the pregnant cattle, "insueta" being used in exactly the same sense as in Eclogue V. 56, "insuetummiratur limen Olympi," and "temptare" as it is used in Georg. III. 441, and commonly in classical Latin. It is, to say the least, questionable whether in the couplet—

"Pauperis et tuguri congestum cæspite culmen,Post aliquot, mea regna videns, mirabor aristas?"—

"Pauperis et tuguri congestum cæspite culmen,

Post aliquot, mea regna videns, mirabor aristas?"—

the last line can mean

"Gaze on the straggling corn, the remains of what once was my kingdom."

"Aristas" is much more likely to be a metonymy for "messes,"i.e."annos," likeαροτουin Sophocles'Trachiniæ, 69,τον μεν παρελθοντ' αροτον, a confirmative illustration which seems to have escaped the commentators; but it is difficult to say, and Sir Osborne has, it must be owned, excellent authority for his interpretation. In Eclogue III. the somewhat difficult passage

"pocula ponamFagina....Lenta quibus torno facili superaddita vitisDiffusos hedera vestit pallente corymbos"—

"pocula ponam

Fagina....

Lenta quibus torno facili superaddita vitis

Diffusos hedera vestit pallente corymbos"—

i.e."where the limber vine wreathed round them by the deft graving tool is twined with pale ivy's spreading clusters,"—is translated:

"Over whose side the vine by a touch of the graving tool addedMantles its clustering grapes in the paler leaves of the ivy."

"Over whose side the vine by a touch of the graving tool added

Mantles its clustering grapes in the paler leaves of the ivy."

This is quite wrong. "Corymbos" cannot possibly mean clusters of grapes, but clusters of ivy berries, "hederâ pallente" being substituted, after Virgil's manner, for "hederæ pallentis." In Eclogue IV. 24 there is no reason for supposing that the "fallax herba veneni" ishemlock; it is much more likely to be aconite. In line 45 "sandyx" should be translated not "purple" but "crimson," vague as the colour indicated by "purple" is. In Eclogue V.

"Si quos aut Phyllidis ignes,Aut Alconis habes laudes, aut jurgia Codri"

"Si quos aut Phyllidis ignes,

Aut Alconis habes laudes, aut jurgia Codri"

is not

"Phyllis's fiery loves you would sing or the quarrels of Codrus,"

but "your passion for Phyllis, your invectives against Codrus," "ignes" being used far more becomingly for a man's love than for a woman's. So, again, "pro purpureo narcisso" cannot mean what nature never saw, "purple daffodil," but the white narcissus. In Eclogue VIII. "Sophocleo tua carmina digna cothurno" is turned by what is obviously alapsus calami, "worthy of Sophocles' sock." A scholar like Sir Osborne Morgan does not need reminding that the "sock" is a metonymy for Comedy, as Milton anglicizes it inL'Allegro, "if Jonson's learned sock be on." In the exquisite passage in Eclogue VIII. 41—

"Jam fragiles poteram ab terrâ contingere ramos"—

to translate "fragiles" as "frail" is to miss the whole point of the epithet. What Virgil means is, "I could just reach the branches from the ground andbreak them off"; if it is to be translated by one epithet, it must be "brittle." Again in the Ninth Eclogue the words

"quâ se subducere collesIncipiunt, mollique jugum demittere clivo,"

"quâ se subducere colles

Incipiunt, mollique jugum demittere clivo,"

do not mean "where the hills with gentle depression steal away into the plain," but the very opposite:i.e."Where the hills begin to draw themselves up from the plain," the ascent being contemplated from below. In Eclogue IX., in turning the couplet

"Nam neque adhuc Vario videor, nec dicere CinnâDigna, sed argutos inter strepere anser olores,"

"Nam neque adhuc Vario videor, nec dicere Cinnâ

Digna, sed argutos inter strepere anser olores,"

the translator has no authority for turning the last verse into "a cackling goose in a chorus of cygnets," for there is no tradition that cygnets sang, and goose should have been printed with a capital letter to preserve the pun, the allusion being to a poetaster named Anser. Unfortunately for the English translator, our literature can boast no counterpart to "Anser"totidem literis, but Goose printed with a capital is near enough to preserve, or suggest the sarcasm. There is another slip in Eclogue X.: "Ferulas" is not "wands of willow" but "fennel."

Occasionally a touch is introduced which is neither authorized by the original, nor true to nature. There is nothing, for instance to warrant, in Eclogue I. 56, the epithet "odorous" as applied to the willow, nor does "salictum" mean a "willow" but a "willow-bed or plantation." To translate "ubi tempus erit" by "when the hour shall have struck" reminds us of Shakespeare's famous anachronism inJulius Cæsarand is as surprising in the work of a scholar as the lengthening of the penultimate in arbutus, "Sweet is the shower to the blade, To the newly weaned kid the arbutus." As a rule, the translator turns difficult passages very skilfully, but this is not the case with the couplet which concludes the "Pollio":—

"Incipe, parve puer: cui non risere parentesNec deus hunc mensâ, dea nec dignata cubili est";

"Incipe, parve puer: cui non risere parentes

Nec deus hunc mensâ, dea nec dignata cubili est";

that is, the "babe on whom the parent never smiled, no god ever deemed worthy of his board, no goddess of her bed"—in other words, he can never enjoy the rewards of a hero like Hercules; but there is neither sense nor skill, and something very like a serious grammatical error, in

"Who knows not the smile of a parent,Neither the board of a god nor the bed of a goddess is worthy."

"Who knows not the smile of a parent,

Neither the board of a god nor the bed of a goddess is worthy."

But to turn from comparative trifles. No one who reads this version of theEcloguescan doubt that Sir Osborne Morgan has proved his point, that the English hexameter, when skilfully used, is the measure best adapted for reproducing Virgil's music in English. The following passage (Ec.VII. 45-48) is happily turned; let us place the original beside the translation:—

"Muscosi fontes et somno mollior herba,Et quæ vos rarâ viridis tegit arbutus umbrâ,Solstitium pecori defendite: jam venit æstasTorrida, jam læto turgent in palmite gemmæ."

"Muscosi fontes et somno mollior herba,

Et quæ vos rarâ viridis tegit arbutus umbrâ,

Solstitium pecori defendite: jam venit æstas

Torrida, jam læto turgent in palmite gemmæ."

"Moss-grown fountains and sward more soft than the softest of slumbers,Arbutus tree that flings over both its flickering shadows,Shelter my flock from the sun. Already the summer is on us,Summer that scorches up all! See the bud on the glad vine is swelling."

"Moss-grown fountains and sward more soft than the softest of slumbers,

Arbutus tree that flings over both its flickering shadows,

Shelter my flock from the sun. Already the summer is on us,

Summer that scorches up all! See the bud on the glad vine is swelling."

Again (Ec.X. 41-48):—

"Serta mihi Phyllis legeret, cantaret Amyntas:Hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata, Lycori,Hic nemus: hic ipso tecum consumerer ævo.Nunc insanus amor duri me Martis in armisTela inter media atque adversos detinet hostes:Tu procul a patriâ—nec sit mihi credere tantum!—Alpinas, ah dura, nives et frigora RheniMe sine sola vides."

"Serta mihi Phyllis legeret, cantaret Amyntas:

Hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata, Lycori,

Hic nemus: hic ipso tecum consumerer ævo.

Nunc insanus amor duri me Martis in armis

Tela inter media atque adversos detinet hostes:

Tu procul a patriâ—nec sit mihi credere tantum!—

Alpinas, ah dura, nives et frigora Rheni

Me sine sola vides."

"Phyllis would gather me flowers and Amyntas a melody chant me;Cool is the fountain's wave and soft is the meadow, Lycoris;Shady the grove! Here with thee I would die of old age in the greenwood.Mad is the lust of war, that now in the heart of the battleChains me where darts fall fast, and the charge of the foemen is fiercest,Far, far away from your home—Oh, would that I might not believe it—Lost amid Alpine snows or the frozen desolate Rhineland,Lonely without me you wander."

"Phyllis would gather me flowers and Amyntas a melody chant me;

Cool is the fountain's wave and soft is the meadow, Lycoris;

Shady the grove! Here with thee I would die of old age in the greenwood.

Mad is the lust of war, that now in the heart of the battle

Chains me where darts fall fast, and the charge of the foemen is fiercest,

Far, far away from your home—Oh, would that I might not believe it—

Lost amid Alpine snows or the frozen desolate Rhineland,

Lonely without me you wander."

Many other felicitous passages might be quoted; indeed, there is no Eclogue without them; but the translator is not sure-footed, and, if he occasionally illustrates the hexameter in its excellence, he illustrates, unhappily toooften, some of its worst defects. Two qualities are indispensable to the success of this measure in English. Our language, unlike the classical languages, being accentual and not quantitative, if the long syllable is not represented where the stress naturally falls, and the short syllables where it does not fall, the effect is sometimes grotesque, sometimes distressing, and always unsatisfactory. Nothing, for example, could be worse in their various ways than the following:—

"Wept when you saw they were given the lad, and had you not managed.""Let not the frozen air harm you.""Scatter the sand with his hind hoofs.""The pliant growth of the osier.""Worthy of Sophocles' sock, trumpet-tongued through the Universe echo.""Own'd it himself, and yet he would not deliver it to me."

"Wept when you saw they were given the lad, and had you not managed."

"Let not the frozen air harm you."

"Scatter the sand with his hind hoofs."

"The pliant growth of the osier."

"Worthy of Sophocles' sock, trumpet-tongued through the Universe echo."

"Own'd it himself, and yet he would not deliver it to me."

A very nice ear, too, is required to adjust the collocation of words in which either vowels or consonants predominate, and the relative position of monosyllabic and polysyllabic words, the predominance of the former in our language increasing enormously the difficulty. No measure, moreover, so easily runs into intolerable monotony—a monotony which Clough sought to avoid by overweighting his verses with spondees, and which Longfellow illustrates by the cloying predominance of the dactylic movement. Sir Osborne Morgan tells us that he took Kingsley as his model.Kingsley's hexameters are respectable, but they have no distinction, and he had certainly not a good ear. Longfellow's are far better, and are sometimes exquisitely felicitous, as in a couplet like the following, which, with the exception of one word, is flawless:—

"Men whose lives glided on like the rivers that water the woodlands,Darken'd by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of Heaven."

"Men whose lives glided on like the rivers that water the woodlands,

Darken'd by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of Heaven."

Probably the best hexameters which have been composed in English are those in William Watson'sHymn to the Seaand those in which Hawtry translated Iliad III. 234-244, and the parting of Hector and Andromache in the Sixth Iliad, models—these versions—not merely of translation, but of hexametrical structure. There are, however, certain magical effects, particularly in the Virgilian hexameter, produced by an exquisite but audacious tact in the employment of licences, which can never be reproduced in English.

Such would be—

"Nam neque Parnassi vobis juga, nam neque PindiUlla moram fecere, neque Aonie Aganippe.Illum etiam lauri, etiam flevere myricæ;Pinifer illum etiam solâ sub rupe jacentemMænalus et gelidi fleverunt saxa Lycæi."

"Nam neque Parnassi vobis juga, nam neque Pindi

Ulla moram fecere, neque Aonie Aganippe.

Illum etiam lauri, etiam flevere myricæ;

Pinifer illum etiam solâ sub rupe jacentem

Mænalus et gelidi fleverunt saxa Lycæi."

Milton, and Milton alone among Englishmen, had the secret of this music, but he elicited it from another instrument.

[46]The Poetical Works of James Thomson.A New Edition, with Memoir and Critical Appendices, by the Rev. D. C. Tovey. 2 vols. London.

"Jacob Thomson, ein vergessener Dichter des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts"—a forgotten poet of the eighteenth century—such is the title of a recent monograph on the author ofThe Seasonsby Dr. G. Schmeding. Dr. G. Schmeding is, however, so obliging as to pronounce that, in his opinion, this ought not to be Thomson's fate; that there remains in his work, especially inThe Seasonsmerit enough to entitle him to be "enrolled among poets," and to find appreciation, at all events in schools and reading societies. Dr. Schmeding may rest assured that Thomson's fame is quite safe. It has no doubt suffered, as that of all the poets of the eighteenth century has suffered, by the great revolution which has, in the course of the last ninety years, passed over literary tastes and fashions. But during the present century there have been no less than twenty editions of hispoems, to say nothing of separate editions ofThe Seasons; while his works, or portions of them, have been translated into German, Italian, modern Greek, and Russian. Only two years ago M. Léon Morel, in hisJ. Thomson, sa vie et ses œuvres, published an elaborate and admirable monograph on this "forgotten poet." And now Mr. Tovey, who, we are glad to see, has been appointed Clarke Lecturer at Cambridge, has given us a new biography of him and a new edition of his works, making, if we are not mistaken, the thirty-second memoir of him and the twenty-first edition of his works which have appeared since the beginning of the century. This is pretty well for a forgotten poet!

Mr. Tovey's name is a sufficient guarantee for accurate and scholarly work. But it might naturally be asked, what is there to justify another edition of this poet, when so many editions are already in the field and so easily accessible? We have little difficulty in answering this question. The special features of Mr. Tovey's edition are as important as they are interesting. In the first place, he has given us a much fuller biography than has hitherto appeared in English; in the second place, he has thrown much interesting light on the political bearing of Thomson's dramas; and, in the third place, he has given, what no other editor of Thomson has given, a full collation of Thomson's own MS. corrections, preserved in Mitford's copy, now deposited in theBritish Museum. The critical notes have cost him, he says, and we can quite believe it, much time and labour, and in his preface he half apologizes for what may seem "a ridiculous travesty of more important labours." There was no necessity for such an apology: he observes justly that he has "not spent more pains on Thomson's text than so many of our scholars bestow upon some Greek and Latin poets whose intrinsic merit is no greater than Thomson's."

To serious readers these critical notes will constitute the most valuable part of Mr. Tovey's labours; they are, in truth, the speciality of this particular edition, and will make it indispensable to all students of this most interesting poet. And now Mr. Tovey will, we trust, forgive us if, with due deference, we point out what seem to us to be defects in his work. The first thing that might have been expected from so learned and careful an editor of Thomson was an adequate discussion of the great problem of the authorship ofRule Britannia, and the second an exposure of one of the most extraordinary "mare's-nests" to be found in English literature. But nothing, we regret to say, can be more perfunctory and inadequate than the two notes in which the first question is hurried over with references toNotes and Queries, and nothing more irritating than the confusion worse confounded in which Mr. Tovey leaves the second. Weshall therefore make no apology for entering somewhat at length intoboth these questions.

And first for the authorship ofRule Britannia. The facts are these. In 1740 Thomson and Mallet wrote, in conjunction, a masque entitledAlfred, which, on 1st August in that year, was represented before the Prince and Princess of Wales at Clifden. It was in two acts, and it contained six lyrics, the last beingRule Britannia, which is entitled an "Ode," the music being by Dr. Arne. In 1745 Arne turned the piece into an opera, and also into "a musical drama." By this time the lyric had become very popular, but there is no evidence to show that it had been definitely attributed to either of the coadjutors. In 1748 Thomson died. In 1751 Mallet re-issuedAlfred, but in another form. It was entirely remodelled, and almost entirely re-written, and, in an advertisement prefixed to the work, he says: "According to the present arrangement of the fable I was obliged to reject a great deal of what I had written in the other: neither could I retain, of my friend's part, more than three or four speeches, and a part of one song." Now, of the parts retained from the former work, there were the first three stanzas ofRule Britannia, the three others being excised, and their place supplied by three stanzas written by Lord Bolingbroke. If Mallet is to be believed, then, "part of one song" must refer, either to a song in the third scene of the secondact, beginning "From those eternal regions bright," or toRule Britannia, for these are the only lyrics in which portions of the lyrics in the former edition are retained.Rule Britanniais, it is true, entitled "An Ode" in the former edition, and the other lyric "A Song," so that Mallet would certainly seem to imply that what he had retained of his friend's work was the portion of the song referred to, and notRule Britannia. But, as Mallet was notoriously a man who could not be believed on oath, and was an adept in all those bad arts by which little men filch honours which do not belong to them, if he is to be allowed to have any title to the honour of composing this lyric, it ought to rest on something better than the ambiguity between the word "Ode" and the word "Song."

There is no evidence that, while both were alive, either Thomson or Mallet claimed the authorship; but this is certain, it was printed at Edinburgh, during Mallet's lifetime, in the second edition of a well-known song book, entitledThe Charmer, with Thomson's initials appended to it. It is certain that Mallet had friends in Edinburgh, and it is equally certain that neither he nor any of his friends raised any objection to its ascription to Thomson. In 1743, in 1759, and in 1762 Mallet published collections of poems, but in none of these collections does he lay claim toRule Britannia, and, though it was printed in song-books in 1749, 1750, and 1761, it is inno case assigned to Mallet. None of his contemporaries, so far as we know, attributed it to him, and it is remarkable that, in a brief obituary notice of him which appeared in theScots Magazinein 1765, he is spoken of as the author of the famous balladWilliam and Margaret, but not a word is said aboutRule Britannia. A further presumption in Thomson's favour is this: in all probability Dr. Arne, who set it to music, knew the authorship, and he survived both Thomson and Mallet, dying in 1778. The song had become very popular and celebrated, so that if Mallet had desired to have the credit of its composition, it is strange that he should not have laid claim to it, had his claim been a good one. But if his claim was not good, he could hardly have ventured to claim the authorship, as Dr. Arne would have been in his way. It is quite possible that the ambiguity in the advertisement to the recension of 1751 was designed; it certainly left the question open, and we cannot but think there is something very suspicious in what follows the sentence in Mallet's advertisement, where he speaks of his having used so little of his friend's work. "I mention this expressly," he adds, "that, whatever faults are found in the present performance, they may be charged, as they ought to be, entirely to my account." A vainer and more unscrupulous man than Mallet never existed; and, while it is simply incredible that he shouldnot have claimed what would have constituted his chief title to popularity as a poet, had he been able to do so, it is in exact accordance with his established character that he should, as he did in the advertisement of 1751, have left himself an opportunity of asserting that claim, should those who were privy to the secret have predeceased him, and thus enabled him to do so with impunity.

The internal evidence—and on this alone the question must now be argued—seems to us conclusive in Thomson's favour. The Ode is simply a translation into lyrics of what finds embodiment in Thomson'sBritannia, in the fourth and fifth parts ofLiberty, and in his Verses to the Prince of Wales. Coming to details, there can be no doubt that the third stanza—

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