edward fitzgerald.
edward fitzgerald (1809-1883), a contemporary at trinity college, cambridge, of thackeray and tennyson, was in later life the friend of both. though he vehemently admired tennyson's poems up to 1842, he never was quite contented with them later; yet detested all the work of both of the brownings, as if jealous of the supremacy of his friend. he was, indeed, a humorous person, and a person "of humours," in ben jonson's sense of the word. he was a great reader, a delicate and sound critic, where prejudice did not interfere; a most interesting letter-writer; and, for the rest, passed away his life with his books, his garden, his boat, and his pipe. nothing of the little that he wrote, for example, translations from ?schylus and calderon, reached the public, nor for long did his very free version of quatrains in the persian, attributed to omar khayyám, an astronomer. it is impossible here to discuss how many of these quatrains are really, by omar, how many are masterless verses assigned to him by tradition, and how much of the merit of the "rubáiyàt" is due to fitzgerald. but it is hardly too bold to say that but for the new music and melancholy of fitzgerald's verse, but for fitzgerald's own contribution of a sad and humorous stoicism under an epicurean wash of colour, omar and his company would never have been known to the general english reader. the slim pamphlet of the "rubáiyàt" (1859) was "a drug in the market" till the set of rossetti and swinburne discovered it and talked about it. then a wider circle of young university men made it an idol; to adore[pg 595] it was a sign of grace; and, in the long run, to admire omar and the old french tale of "aucassin et nicolete" became a substitute for a liberal education. it was no longer necessary to have read anything else. it was not fitzgerald's fault that the saying of the alexandrian philistine in theocritus, "homer is enough for all," became "omar is enough for all". but, though idolised by the worst judges, fitzgerald's little masterpiece remains a very original and, in wordsworth's phrase, "a very pretty piece of paganism". his letters are probably the best and most interesting of any letters much concerned with literature that have been published since those of byron.
george meredith.
as a poet, meredith attained, when he chose (and he often did choose) to a pitch of obscurity no less deserving of admiration, and of interpretative commentaries, than the darkest verses of browning. he did not begin in this manner; his early verses, such as "juggling jerry," "the old chartist," "marian," "love in the valley," have the charm of being fresh, natural, and easily readable by him who runs; while, like most of meredith's verses, they are the poetry of a lover of the earth, with all that she bears and nourishes. many poems read like hymns to earth by an earth-intoxicated pagan. but "modern love"—a long sequence of pieces of sixteen lines, which exceed the sonnet in length without possessing its answering and echoing rhymes—contains a story, and a sad story, of the pangs of two wedded lovers. what that story is, perhaps some commentator has told in prose; if not, the poet needs such a commentary. the preluding sonnet to "modern love" may contain the secret, it closes thus:—
but listen in the thought; so may there come
conception of a newly added chord,
commanding space beyond where ear has home.
in labour of the trouble at its fount,
leads life to an intelligible lord
the rebel discords up the sacred mount.
we "listen in the thought," but conception of a newly added chord does not readily arrive, not where ear has home at all events,[pg 596] and nothing leads us to an intelligible lord, if that means an intelligible poet. persons cultivated enough to love english poetry more obscure than an "unseen" piece of pindar, find much matter in verses like these.
the two lovers, married apparently, in "modern love," are "condemned to do the flitting of the bat," but, in the dark, we lose sight of them, and can only admire luminous breaks of two or three lines here and there, glow-worms in the darkness of the grass. the mystery of byron's "manfred," reckoned fine in its day, the new poet explains as "an after dinner's indigest". byron, no doubt, could have said something not less witty about "the nuptials of attila".
meredith's manner, in short, "is not of the centre". great poets rarely conceal their meaning like hidden wealth; he who does so, values too cheaply the leisure of the reader, or values too highly the reader's industry and ingenuity.
elizabeth barrett browning.
elizabeth barrett, later the wife of the poet robert browning, was born on 6 march, 1806 (died in 1861). her father was a man of considerable wealth and eccentricity; at least he appears to have resented almost as much as queen elizabeth the idea of any one marrying. his daughter had a good education, some knowledge of greek, and wrote verse early. in several of her most pleasing verses, such as "little ellie," and "hector in the garden," we hear echoes of the memories of her childhood. she translated from the greek, and also wrote a kind of romantic ballads (not in the manner of the border ballads) which had abundant life and movement. she took up the cause of children overworked in factories at an age when they should not have worked at all. her health became deplorable, her life that of a valetudinarian, till, in 1846, robert browning married her and took her out of her father's sphere of influence. thenceforth her health improved; at this time her fame and popularity as a poet of great variety and passion far exceeded those of the author of "men and women". her sonnets, really original, though published as "from the portuguese" were not so popular as her lyrics and romances, but her[pg 597] genius, somewhat too eager and careless, especially in her recklessness of correct rhymes, was in need of the formal restraints of the sonnet. her "casa guidi windows" (1851) and other poems displayed her enthusiasm for a free and united italy; her "aurora leigh," a tendenz novel in verse, attracted much attention, if it does not bear the test of time so well as her briefer poems; her "poems before congress" were of somewhat temporary interest. mrs. browning, with miss rossetti, holds the highest place among the women-poets of england, but her muse is neither trimly girdled nor neatly shod; and her manner not infrequently does injustice to the pity and passion of her sympathies, conceptions, and emotions.
christina rossetti.
christina rossetti (1830-1894) as a poet resembled her brother as much as a woman who lived a somewhat fugitive and cloistered life, practising the rites of her religion and in the exercise of good works, could resemble an artist so unapt for self-control as dante rossetti. both felt the same half-exotic influences of a family half-italian; both shared the same early enthusiasm for mediaeval art, and there is a certain sameness in the colour and harmonies of their verse and in their use of words. in 1862 miss rossetti published, in brief, irregular rhymed lines, "goblin market," a tale of the affection of sisters dwelling in a rural england that marches with a country of fantastic malevolent elves, a species of fairy of her own invention. the whole effect is magical yet moral "which is strange," and the moral is not strained or didactic, but natural, and a great part of the charm of this delightful composition. "the prince's progress," in the same way, is suggested by the beautiful tale of "the black bull of norroway," but the suggestion is remote and the bewitched prince comes too late to his bride. the best lyrics of the author are singularly musical with an anticipation of some of swinburne's effects, as in "dreamland".
she left the rosy morn,
she left the fields of corn,
for twilight lone and lorn
[pg 598]and water springs.
through sleep as through a veil,
she sees the sky look pale,
and hears the nightingale
that sadly sings.
"when i am dead, my dearest," is not less musical and melancholy. many of the sacred poems have great sincerity as well as original beauty of form; and some of these, with some of the sonnets, half reveal the sorrow of a life and its religious consolations,—see the sequence of sonnets styled "monna innominata" and "later life". she is, indeed, a true poet of the inner life and of nature. to institute comparisons between her and mrs. browning is apt to cause injustice to either or to both.
dante gabriel rossetti.
while tennyson was in the mid-flush of his fame, there arose a school, in poetry and pictorial art, which, like him, turned to the middle ages for subjects and inspiration, but also reverted to the ideals of the great italian painters who were before raphael. the leader and the eldest of the little brotherhood was dante gabriel rossetti, son of gabriel rossetti, a devout interpreter of dante, and of his wife, a miss polidori, a kinswoman of byron's strange and ill-fated young italian physician. dante was born in 1828, from his earliest days wrote verses and drew, and, after passing through king's college school, became a student of art, and a painter whose colour was undoubtedly excellent, while his subjects were chosen from religion and romance; his portraits being in a high degree romantic, and his mannerisms tending towards the monotonous. they were the paintings of a poet; and his poetry is that of a painter. while some of his poetry, like "the blessed damozel," his most characteristic piece, appeared early in "the oxford and cambridge magazine" (1856) and "the germ," he published no book before 1861, when his translations from the early italian poets gave evidence that, as a translator, he was unique and unapproached. bizarre circumstances, connected with his grief for the death of his wife, delayed the appearance of his collected sonnets and other verses till 1870, when the work excited enthusiasm among all who desired some new thing in poetry; while certain[pg 599] mannerisms of slight importance spoiled the pleasure of others, and the choice of themes in two or three cases offended the precise. indeed, the sonnet has no wide popular appeal, and the sequence styled "the house of life," with its kind of mysticism proved nearly as puzzling, in another way, as the sonnets of shakespeare. the pictorial and visionary beauty and the novel harmonies of the verse, could not but be admired. the ballads were too artificial for the ballad farm, which is nothing if not simple, though the ballads also have rossetti's special note and impress, his colour, passion, mystery, and romance. rossetti, after many years, vexed by insomnia and by sleepy drugs, died in 1882. it is not easy to say whether he was fortunate or unfortunate in that the newness of his manner had been to some extent anticipated, through the delay of his own poems, by the not dissimilar newness of his sister christina, and of swinburne. their works made some aspects of his manner seem not so new, and at the same time not so likely to deter by entire unfamiliarity of tone.
william morris.
a younger associate of rossetti was william morris, educated at marlborough and exeter college, oxford. his muse was "pre-raphaelite" and mediaeval in his early prose stories in "the oxford and cambridge magazine" (1856), and his later fictions, in the same archaic and fantastic manner (there were seven of them between 1889 and 1898), never could wholly recapture the magic of "the hollow land" of his undergraduate days. it is even the author's opinion that morris never, in his voluminous later poetry, reached the same level of original effect as in several poems in his "defence of guenevere," published when his age was 24, in 1858. this opinion can scarcely be the result of "ossification of the intellect," which seldom sets in when the critic is an undergraduate, and is eagerly expecting a new poem from a favourite author. that poem, "the life and death of jason" (1867), was, to some devotees of "the defence of guenevere," a disappointment. the vigour and melancholy of "the haystack in the floods," and "sir peter[pg 600] harpdon's end," and "the sailing of the sword," and the unanalysable magic of "the blue closet" and "the wind," were not in "jason," and could not be, and never will be anywhere again. in the earlier book the young poet had caught a rare element in mediaeval romance and song, a vague but poignant sense of colour and yearning and mystery, not to be defined in prose, and scarcely, except perhaps in "sir galahad," apprehended by tennyson. we were carried again into such chambers as that wherein—
beside the bed there was a stone
corpus christi written thereon;
or we were brought face to face with some forgotten tragedy of the hundred years' war, and saw the true lovers and the parting that they had beside the haystack in the floods, such dull grey floods in a dull green land as shelley saw in fact, and recognized with terror that he had seen before—in vision.
the new poem, "jason," retold, with an approach to chaucer's manner in versification and in mediaeval tone, the immortal pre-homeric story of the adventure of the fleece of gold. the poem, in rhymed decasyllabic couplets, with songs interspersed, should be compared with the ancient poems on the subject, especially with the "argonautica" of apollonius rhodius. morris had succeeded in telling of the love of medea and the adventures of the heroes, in the tone of romance, with "abundant fluency, distinctness, and distinction". he had already in hand many of the tales in "that ocean of the sea of stories," "the earthly paradise" in four volumes (1868-1870). of the twenty-four tales half are from classical, half from romantic sources. to some readers the opening, the adventure of english voyagers of the time of edward iii., who find the earthly paradise, is more congenial, the heroes being men of this world, than the languor which seems to hang over the personages in the tales of lotusland. the tales are more like work in tapestry than in painting; the manner tends to monotony; we need a wind from the wings of the muse of homer. morris called himself "the idle singer of an empty day". no man was more industrious, not[pg 601] only in his great poetic task, but in icelandic studies,—hence the ringing anap?sts of his "sigurd the volsung"—in study of the arts of the middle ages; in manufacture and sale of objects of household decoration, and of furniture, in glass for church windows, and in printing. coming into close touch with artisans and labourers, and being more and more impressed by the hideousness of their modern conditions of life, and by the contrasted mindless luxury of many of the rich, he founded a social democratic league, tersely described as meant "to blow the guts out of everybody". the beauty and happy ?sthetic simplicity of the society which is to follow after this initial process he described in "news from nowhere," and he chanted for the toilers in "poems by the way". not for the people, perhaps, in fact for few, he produced translations of the volsunga saga, combining the fragments from icelandic prose and poetry about that glorious tragic fable; and also rendered the saga of "grettir the strong" and others, into an english of his own, with archaicisms of various ages blended. his verse translation of "beowulf" is obscure, owing to his effort to find living words in the form of their anglo-saxon equivalents. these things, and even the series of his tales, such as "the story of the glittering plain," and "the roots of the mountains," are delightful to the few but "caviare to the general". in things ?sthetic, literary, and revolutionary, the idle singer of an empty day has been a most active and enduring influence.[1]
it has been said of morris that he is "the most homeric" of english poets. despite the excellence of his fighting scenes, as in "the story of sigurd the volsung," and the interest in the details of the arts and crafts which he shares with homer, he has neither the strength nor the simplicity nor the speed of the "iliad" and "odyssey," nor the delicate power in the drawing of character, nor the unconscious magic of the ach?an "father of the rest". indeed no english poetry after "beowulf" is, or in any way could be, homeric.
[pg 602]
swinburne.
algernon charles swinburne, of an old northumbrian family, which, according to the poet's verses, had suffered in the cause of mary stuart and of the last stuarts, was born in 1837, the eldest son of admiral swinburne and lady jane ashburnham. he was educated at eton, where, as he tells us, charles lamb led him to study the early dramatists. when he was aged 12 he composed a tragedy in imitation of cyril tourneur's works ("the atheist's tragedy," "the revenger's tragedy"), but exceeding greatly their average of rapes and murders. the choice of themes, and of the model, argues unsurpassed precocity—among other things. many of swinburne's lyrics
sang themselves to him in class time,
when idle of hand as of tongue.
he went up to balliol, where he took no part whatever in the sports and amusements of the college, and appears to have lived in the society of mr. t. h. green (later the critic of hume, and exponent of hegel), and of mr. john nichol, later professor of english literature in the university of glasgow. swinburne obtained the taylor scholarship in modern languages, open to the whole university, and like shelley and landor, but not for the same sort of reasons, left oxford without entering the final schools. he made the acquaintance at oxford of morris' burne-jones, and dante rossetti, who were painting on the ceiling of the union the romantic pictures which instantly vanished away owing to some defect in the medium employed. swinburne must already have had an extensive and peculiar knowledge of literature. in his last year as an undergraduate he began his play of "chastelard," published in 1865, and he was contributing to "the spectator" some of his poems including "faustine". he must already have been the master of his rapid, ringing, and infinitely varied metres; his blank verse, taste, and manner were already themselves in his neglected volume of two plays, "the queen mother" (catherine de medici) and "rosamund" (fair rosamund) (1860), and he had made an intimate study of the manners and absence of morals at the court of the valois. he had the cruelty to poison chicot,[pg 603] who, in dumas, survives immortally. in 1865 appeared "atalanta in calydon," a small quarto with a decorative white cloth binding. the poem at once swept every young reader off his feet by the wonderfully original and novel metres of the choruses, and by the remarkable beauty of the blank verse, which was entirely independent of the then reigning influence of tennyson. swinburne was indeed an "inventor of harmonies," and if his persons were not strictly greek, the verdict of youth was that they were something much better! the action of the tragedy, the avenging by alth?a of her brothers on their slayer, her son, was more in the germanic than the greek taste, so here we had a "revenger's tragedy" wholly unlike that of cyril tourneur, and dignified by the beautiful figure of the maiden atalanta.
it is probable that "atalanta" remains swinburne's masterpiece in poetry; but, owing to its classical character, it did not achieve the instantaneous popularity of his "poems and ballads" of 1866. here was a nest of singing birds of every note, from the sonorous splendour of "the triumph of time," in a new stanza already employed in "atalanta," to "the garden of proserpine" (in the measure, improved, of keats's "some drear-nighted december") and "the hymn to proserpine" with the surge and reflux of its anap?sts, and "dolores" in a measure which mr. chivers, an american poet, had already used, with a poor ha'porth of sense to a monstrous deal of sound. some of the subjects ("very curious and disgusting") and some of the sentiments (distinctly anticlerical, to state it mildly) were unfavourably criticized, not unnaturally, and the volume was transferred from mr. moxon, long the poets' publisher, to messrs. chatto & windus.[2] but most of swinburne's readers, at oxford at least, were quite-indifferent as to the nature of his opinions and sentiments, which were suspected to be, in lamb's words, "only his fun". he was staunch to them, however, always, both in prose and poetry; indeed, whatever be the subject of his prose, he usually gets in hits at the clergy of all denominations, "the blood on the hands of the king, and the lie on the lips of the priest".[pg 604] he also attacks carlyle, in and out of season, and is severe on a race of reptiles unnamed who haunt his imagination. meanwhile his "chastelard" had not the attraction of his lyrics. "bothwell," the second in the trilogy of queen mary, was of excessive length, though the natural limit of a play is almost as much defined as that of a sonnet; and the last of the trilogy, "mary beaton" was rather too daring in contradiction of historic fact. mistress beaton was not in love with chastelard any more than queen mary was. she did not vengefully pursue her mistress to fotheringay, but married ogilvy of boyne, when lady jane gordon (in love with ogilvy) married the earl of bothwell, who was in love with her, never with the queen.
in his poem of farewell to the queen of scots, swinburne sang of her eyes as "blue," a curious error to make after so many years of study. "songs before sunrise" were often of great technical—beauty, abounding in the old political enthusiasms and aversions; while lovers of poetry almost wished, with all respect, that the applause of victor hugo could be "taken as read," with the panegyrics of babies, and the abuse of "bonaparte the bastard". the tragedy "erechtheus" more closely conformed to the early greek model than "atalanta," but the subject was of inferior interest, and what fitzgerald, speaking of tennyson's later poems, called "the old champagney flavour" was, in the choruses, less exhilarating. narrative was not the poet's forte, he was too ebullient, and neither "tristram" (in rhymed heroic couplets) nor "balin and balan" (in the stanza of'"the lady of shalott") was on a level with the early triumphs. three or four later volumes of verse were marked by the tour de force of using lines of extraordinary length; the skill never failed the poet, what failed more and more was the interest of his readers. the generation which first welcomed him had grown grey, it may be said, and cold to new poetry, but it did not appear that the new generation was warmer. in his delight in the sea, tempest, frost and fire, and all meteoric forces and elemental things, swinburne resembled shelley, but shelley's music is more spontaneous and of a more natural charm than swinburne's, who relied so much on "apt alliteration's artful aid," and on double rhymes. his characters,[pg 605] in play and narrative poetry, do not dwell in the memory like the creations of great tragedians and narrators; they are rather sonorous than sympathetic, more "heroic" than human. queen mary and her maries did not speak in swinburne's tones, but like women of this world. "before his fortieth year," mr. gosse informs us, "there had set in a curious ossification of swinburne's intellect." but this appears merely to mean that he saw no merit in ibsen, stevenson, dostoieffsky. as to ibsen, it was not likely that he should see any merit; as to the others, most ageing men rather shun new novelists, there is nothing "curious" in that; while with his "hostility to zola" it is easy to sympathise. the ossification left him as exuberant as ever in his old tastes, which included all that is best in the literature of the world, and as vehement in the old way on the old themes. but if, by forty, he "had done his do" in cromwell's phrase, the phenomenon is usual among poets, "the new wine is best," with most of them, and perhaps none, save scott, has ever been able to turn with success to an entirely fresh field.
as a critic, swinburne had a transcendent knowledge of literature, and a power of appreciation only rivalled by charles lamb; but whether he loved or hated an author, his language was certainly too violent in praise or dispraise. his essay on wordsworth and byron, and incidentally on matthew arnold, contains many things that are true, and needed to be said, but their truth would not be less apparent if the critic did not speak in the tones of a demoniac, and write sentences longer, and less easily to be construed, than those of clarendon. of his prose works the "george chapman," "essays and studies," "note on charlotte bront?," "study of shakespeare," and "miscellanies," may all be read with pleasure, instruction, and gratitude, though here and there with surprise and regret. the vehemence and turbulence appear almost incompatible with the possession of humour, of which, none the less, whether in shakespeare, scott, dickens, or the bab ballads, swinburne had a very keen appreciation. humour was not conspicuous in his book of parodies, "cap and bells," and memory recalls no amusing comic relief in his tragedies. but he must have meant to-be amusing when he said that "in all things[pg 606] he desired to preserve the golden mean of scrupulous moderation". there is somewhat lacking to that remarkable genius of almost the last true english poet; we can but say "he was born to be so". as english in heart he was as shakespeare, but a patriot need not have insulted the enemies of his country, especially, in one instance, when they were republicans.
one field in which he worked industriously has yet to be mentioned, his punctual and frequent celebration of the recently dead. of his many elegies that on charles baudelaire is perhaps the best, but it attains not unto "lycidas," "adonais," and "thyrsis".
poetic underwoods.
there was, in the age of the great poets of the early nineteenth century, a considerable growth of underwood. among the more conspicuous plants are thomas campbell and thomas moore. campbell (1777-1844) was born and bred at glasgow. his first verses, "the pleasures of hope," in rhyming heroic couplets, appeared in a poetic dearth (1799) and were fair samples of a kind of poetry which was near its death. his "gertrude of wyoming" was pathetic (1809), few have even heard of his "pilgrimage of glencoe," and campbell lives by short spirited things, "hohenlinden," "ye mariners of england," "of nelson and the north," "lochiel, lochiel, beware of the day," and the longer piece which displays the resolution and fortitude of "the last man" in a very pleasing light. campbell lived by ordinary writing, critical and editorial. he was a scrupulous, almost a timid corrector of his own verses. a draft for, one of his great naval songs, in the library at abbotsford, is much longer and not nearly so good as the published version. samuel rogers (1763-1855) was a man of wealth, and the friend of men of letters, especially of byron, through as many generations as nestor reigned over. his "italy" (1822) se sauve sur les planches, on the plates by turner.
thomas moore (1779-1852) had greater intelligence, vivacity, agility, an endearing if trivial lyric note of his own, and plenty of witty banter. his songs were meant to be sung, and were sung to the accompaniment of the piano, or the harp of erin. he was born in dublin, was barely 20 when he translated anacreon, or the poems[pg 607] that were attributed to anacreon, while his "poems by thomas little" were more than anacreontic. a duel with the editor of the "edinburgh review," jeffrey, would have advertised him better if byron had not spoken of the pistols as leadless; byron and he, thereafter, became bosom friends (see byron's correspondence, in which he tells whom he has been kissing). as the biographer of the noble poet, moore's asterisks are not often successful in wrapping the facts in a mystery. by "irish melodies" (1807) moore chiefly lives; "the twopenny postbag," being "topical" and dealing in whig witticisms, cannot be popular with an age in which few have read "the rovers," "the loves of the triangles," and the other classical drolleries of the "anti-jacobin" (mainly by ellis, frere, and canning). not to have read these is to be deficient in liberal education. "lalla rookh," oriental stories in verse, was welcomed almost as eagerly as byron's "giaour," "lara," and similar romances of the land of the cypress and myrtle. the "life of byron" (1830) was also, though hampered by disputes and the burning of byron's memoirs, a great success, but neither then nor now can a complete view of byron's life be given. moore enjoyed his reputation and social opportunities in his own day, but the competition of the great contemporary and of later poets has injured his laurels.
thomas lovell beddoes (1803-1849) was at the opposite pole from moore as a man and a poet. educated at charterhouse and pembroke, oxford, he made poetry his main object in a lonely and dissatisfied life, always struggling with a chaotic tragedy in the most sombre elizabethan manner, "death's jest book, or the fool's tragedy". he could not satisfy himself with it; chaotic it remains, but it contains beautiful passages, and, among other admirable lyrics, he produced—
if there were dreams to sell,
what would you buy?
his letters, though frequently morbid, are often interesting. he died abroad, dubiously sane. what is poetic in the mass of beddoes's writings is true poetry.
it is not possible here to do more than mention thomas hood (1799-1845) whose abundant animal spirits and puns were, and[pg 608] if any one cares to look into his facetious works still are, highly entertaining. his "plea of the midsummer fairies" is in a serious vein, and though it has much charm, it never was appreciated. "the song of the shirt" and "the bridge of sighs" made for him a name by their pathos, while his character, his fortitude, and irrepressible spirits, not to be subdued by hack-work and misfortune, made him an honour to his profession.
winthrop mackworth praed (1802-1839, eton and cambridge) is remembered for his lively and adroit occasional verses, more than for his essay in the grotesque and terrible, "the red fisherman". praed was certainly the foremost writer of vers de société of his day, though he was not a gay or a prior.
[1] see his life by mr. mackail and the admirable biographical "introductions" by his daughter, miss may morris, to each volume of the new edition of his collected works. longmans & co.
[2] on the back of my copy of the original edition i found three superimposed paper tickets with three publishers' names, pickering, moxon, and chatto & windus.