Victorian poets

Preface

THE contents of this volume chiefly relate to the design announced at the beginning of the introductory chapter, but I will prefix a brief statement of its scope, and of the principles that underlie its judgment.

Although presented as a book of literary and biographical criticism, it also may be termed an historical review of the course of British poetry during the present reign, — if not a minute, at least a compact and logical, survey of the authors and works that mainly demand attention. Having made a study of the poets who rank as leaders of the recent British choir, a sense of proportion induced me to enlarge the result, and to use it as the basis of a guide-book to the metrical literature of the time and country in which those poets have flourished. It seemed to me that, by including a sketch of minor groups and schools, and giving a connection to the whole, I might offer a work that would have practical value for uses of record and reference, in addition to whatever qualities, as an essay in philosophical criticism, it should be found to possess.

PREFACE.

To this end Chapters VII. and VIII. were written ; sidenotes have been affixed throughout the volume, and an analytical index prepared of the whole. There is much dispute among the best authorities with respect to literary and biographical dates, and a few matters of this sort remain open to doubt ; but in many instances, where the persons concerned are still living, I have been successful in obtaining the requisite information at first hand.

A reference to the notes and index will show what seems to my own mind, after the completion of these essays, their most conspicuous feature. So many and various qualities are displayed by the poets under review that, in writing of their works and lives, I have expressed incidentally such ideas concerning the aim and constituents of Poetry as I have gathered during my acquaintance with the historic body of English verse. Often, moreover, a leading author affords an illustration of some special phase of the poetic art and life. The case of Browning, for example, at once excites discussion as to the nature of poetic expression ; that of Mrs. Browning involves a study of the poetic temperament, its joys and sorrows, its growth, ripeness, and decline. Hood's life was that of a working man of letters ; in Tennyson's productions we observe every aspect of poetry as an art, and the best average representation of the modern time ; while Landor not only affords another study of temperament, but shows the benefits and dangers of culture, of amateurship, and of intellectual versatility as opposed to special gift. In Arnold we find a passion of the

PREFACE. Xl intellect, in Procter the pure lyrical faculty, in Buchanan the force and weakness of transcendentalism, in Swinburne the infinite variety of melodious numbers, and the farthest extreme of rhythm and diction reached at this stage of metrical art. Home, Bailey, Lytton, Morris, and Rossetti are each suggestive of important and varying elements which make up the general quality of recent imaginative song. The different forms of poetry — reflective, idyllic, lyric, and dramatic — successively or in combination pass under review, for the modern era has been no less composite than refined. If not so eminent for poetic vigor as the impetuous Georgian revival which preceded it, nor characterized by dramatic greatness like that of the early and renowned Elizabethan age, it is in its own way as remarkable as either of those historic times, and on the score of complex and technical achievement full of real significance to the lyric artist and the connoisseur.

In pursuing the general subject by an examination of the foremost poets, I have tried to convey a just idea of the career and genius of each, so that any portrait, taken by itself, might seem complete, and distinct from its fellows. In certain cases we are required to observe temperament, — in others, extended lyrical achievements or unusual traits of voice and execution. If my criticism seems more technical than is usual in a work of this kind, it is due, I think, to the fact that the technical refinement of the period has been so marked as to demand full recognition and analysis It is seldom that an earnest reviewer, whether lay or

THE PERIOD.

Illustration oftheformer statement ;

and of the exceptions •which confirm and modify it.

poets overcome all restrictions, create their own styles, and even may determine the lyrical character of a period, or indicate that of one which is to succeed them.

Among authors of less repute we therefore shall find more than one rare and attractive poet hampered by lack of fortune and opportunity, or by a failure to harmonize his genius with the spirit of his time. For example, several persons having the true dramatic feeling arose, but cannot be said to have flourished, during or just before the early portion of the era, and were overborne by the reflective, idyllic fashion which then began to prevail in English verse. These isolated singers — Taylor, Darley, Beddoes, Home, and others like them — never exhibited the full measure of their natural gifts. The time was out of keeping; and why? Because it followed the lead, and listened to the more courageous voices of still greater poets, who introduced and kept in vogue a mode of feeling and expression to which the dramatic method is wholly antagonistic. These successful leaders, no less sensitive than their rivals to the feeble and affected mood which poetry then had assumed, and equally familiar with the choicest models of every age and literature, were more wise "in selecting the ground upon which the expression of their own genius and the tendencies of the period could be brought together. They persisted in their art, gathered new audiences, and fulfilled the mission for which they were endowed with voice, imagination, and the poet's creative desire. This surer instinct, this energy and success, this utterance lifted above opposing voices, are what have distinguished poets like Tennyson, the Brownings, Rossetti, Swinburne, from less fortunate aspirants whose memory is cherished tenderly by our

CULTURE AND SPONTANEITY.

united guild, but who failed to reach the popular heart or to make a significant impression upon the literature of their own time.

It is an open question, however, whether a poet need be conscious of the existence and bearing of the laws and conditions under which he produces his work. It may be a curb and detriment to his genius that he should trouble himself about them in the least. But this rests upon the character of his intellect and includes a further question of the effects of culture. Just here there is a difference between poetry and the cognate arts of expression, since the former has somewhat less to do with material processes and effects. The freedom of the minor sculptor's, painter's, or composer's genius is not checked, while its scope and precision are increased, by knowledge of the rules of his calling, and of their application in different regions and times. But in the case of the minor poet, excessive culture, and wide acquaintance with methods and masterpieces, often destroy spontaneity. They shut in the voice upon itself, and overpower and bewilder the singer, who forgets to utter his native, characteristic melody, awed by the chorus and symphony of the world's great songs. Full-throated, happy minstrels, like Beranger or Burns, need no knowledge of thoroughbass and the historical range of composition. Their expression is the carol of the child, the warble of the skylark scattering music at his own sweet will. Nevertheless, there is no strong imagination without vigorous intellect, and to its penetrative and reasoning faculty there comes a time when the laws which it has instinctively followed must be apparent ; and, later still, it cannot blind itself to the favoring or adverse influences of period and place. Should these forces be

Diverse effects of culture upo?i spontaneity.

THE PERIOD.

The critic's province.

Aspects of the time under review.

restrictive, their baffling effect will teach the poet to recognize and deplore them, and to endeavor, though with wind and tide against him, to make his progress noble and enduring.

In regard to the province of the critic there cai however, be no question. It is at once seen to b< twofold. He must recognize and broadly observe the local, temporal, and generic conditions under whicl poetry is composed, or fail to render adequate judgment upon the genius of the composer. Yet then always are cases in which poetry fairly rises above the idealism of its day. The philosophical critic, then, in estimating the importance of an epoch, also must pay full consideration to the messages that it has received from poets of the higher rank, and must take into account the sovereign nature of a gift so independent and spontaneous that from ancient times men have united in looking upon it as a form of inspiration.

As we trace the course of British poetry, — from a point somewhat earlier than the beginning of the present reign, down to the close of the third quarter of our century, — we observe that at the outset of this period the sentiment of the Byronic school had degenerated into sentimentalism, while for its passion there had been substituted the calm of reverie and introspective thought. Two kinds of verse were marked by growing excellence. The first was that of an art-school, taking its models from old English poetry and from the delicate classicism of Landor and Keats ; the second was of a didactic, yet elevated nature, and had the imaginative strain of Wordsworth for its loftiest exemplar. We see these two combining in that idyllic method which, upon the whole, has distinguished the recent time, and has maintained an atmosphere un-

SUCCESSIVE POETIC PHASES.

favorable to the revival of high passion and dramatic power. Nevertheless, and lastly, we observe that a new dramatic and lyric school has arisen under this adverse influence and brought its methods into vogue, obtaining the favor of a new generation, and therewith rounding to completion the poetic cycle which I have undertaken to review.

The evolution of the art-school, partly from classicism, partly from a renewal of early and natural English feeling, may be illustrated by a study of the life and relics of Landor : first, because Landor, while an intellectual poet, was among the most perfect of those who have excelled in the expression of objective beauty ; again, because, although contemporary with Keats, his career was prolonged into the second half of our era, and thus was a portion of its origin, progress, and maturity. Throughout this time, as in other eras, various phases of metrical art have been displayed by authors who have maintained their independence of the dominant mode. Mrs. Browning wins our attention, as the first of woman-poets, endowed with the rarest order of that subjective faculty which is the special attribute of feminine genius. Hood, Arnold, and Procter may be selected as prominent representatives of the several kinds of feeling and rhythmical utterance that are noticeable in their verse. Elsewhere, as we look around, we soon begin to discover the influence of the eminent founder and master of the composite school. The method of Tennyson may be termed composite or idyllic : the former, as a process that embraces every variety of rhythm and technical effect ; the latter, as essentially descriptive, and resorting to external portraiture instead of to those means by which characters are made unconsciously to depict themselves. Other-

Names which illustrate successive poetic phases.

Outline of a proposed critical sur' vey.

THE PERIOD.

The conditions of the period.

wise, it is suggestive rather than plain-spoken, anc greatly relies upon surrounding accessories for the fuller conveyance of its subtle thought. After som< comparison of the laureate with the father of Greel idyllic verse, — pointing out, meanwhile, the significant likeness between the Alexandrian and Victorian eras — I shall give attention to a number of those minor poets, from whose diverse yet blended rays we can most readily derive a general estimate of the time and its poetic tendency. These may be partially assorted in groups depending upon specific feeling or style ; but doubtless many single lights will be found scattered between such constellations, and each shining with his separate lustre and position. Finally, in recounting the growth of the new dramatic and romantic schools, under the leadership of Browning and Rossetti, we shall find their characteristics united in the verse of Swinburne, — in some respects the most notable of the poets who now, in the prime of their creative faculties, strive to maintain the historic beauty and eminence of England's song.

Before entering upon a citation of the poets themselves, I wish to make what reference may be needful to the conditions of the period. Let us see wherein it has been marked by transition, how far it has been critical and didactic, to what extent poetical and creative. A moment's reflection will convince us that it has witnessed a change in the conditions bearing upon art, as important and radical as those changes, more quickly recognized, that have affected the whole tone of social order and philosophic thought. Our rhythmical expression originated in phenomenal language and imagery, an inheritance from the past \ modern poetry has struggled painfully, even heroically, to cast

POETRY AND SCIENCE.

this off and adjust itself to a new revelation of the truth of things. The struggle is not yet ended, but continues, — and will continue, until the relations between imagination and knowledge shall be fairly harmonized upon a basis that will inure to the common glory of these twin servitors of every beautiful art.

II

It follows that, in any discussion of the recent era, the scientific movement which has engrossed men's thoughts, and so radically affected their spiritual and material lives, assumes an importance equal to that of all other forces combined. The time has been marked by a stress of scientific iconoclasm. Its bearing upon theology was long since perceived, and the so-called conflict of Science with Religion is now at full height. Its bearing upon poetry, through antagonism to the traditional basis of poetic diction, imagery, and thought, has been less distinctly stated. The stress has been vaguely felt by the poets themselves, but they are not given to formulating their sensations in the polemical manner of those trained logicians, the churchmen, — and the attitude of the latter has so occupied our regard that few have paused to consider the real cause of the technical excellence and spiritual barrenness common in the modern arts of letters and design. Yet it is impossible, when we once set about it, to look over the field of late English verse, and not to see a question of the relations between Poetry and Science pressing for consideration at every turn and outpost.

Scientific iconoclasm is here mentioned simply as an existing force : not as one to be deplored, for I have

Modern iconoclasm.

The relations be~ tween Poetry and Science.

THE PERIOD.

No inherent antagonism.

A n early sonnet by E.A. Foe.

faith that it will in the end lead to new and fairer manifestations of the immortal Muse. However irrepressible the conflict between accepted theologies and the spirit of investigation, however numerous the traditions of faith that yield to the advances of knowledge, there is no such inherent antagonism between science and poetry. In fact, the new light of truth is no more at war with religious aspiration than with poetic feeling, but in either case with the ancient fables and follies of expression which these sentiments respectively have cherished. A sense of this hostility has oppressed, I say, the singers clinging to forms of beauty, which long remain the dearest, because loved the first. Their early instinct of resistance is manifest in the following sonnet by a poet who saw only the beginning of the new dispensation : —

" Science ! true daughter of old Time thou art,

Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,

Vulture, whose wings are dull realities ?

How should he love thee ? or how deem thee wise, Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering

To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, - Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing ? Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car,

And driven the Hamadryad from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star ?

Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind-tree ?"

Had this youth lived to the present hour, he would begin, I think, to discern that Poetry herself is struggling to be free from the old and to enter upon the new, to cast off a weight of precedent and phenomenal imagery and avail herself of the more profound

METHOD OF THE POET.

suggestion and more resplendent beauty of discovered truth j and he would not forbid her to light the flames of her imagination at the torch which Science carries with a strong and forward-beckoning hand.

While, therefore, there can be no irreconcilable warfare between poetry and science, we discover that a temporary struggle is under way, and has seriously embarrassed the poets of the era. Let us observe the operation of this contest, or, rather, of this enforced transition to the method of the future.

There are two ways of regarding natural objects : first, as they appear to the bodily eye and to the normal, untutored imagination j second, as we know they actually are, — having sought out the truth of their phenomena, the laws which underlie their beauty or repulsiveness. The former, purely empirical, hitherto has been the simple and poetic function of art; the latter is that of reason, scientifically and radically informed. The one is Homeric, the other Baconian. Up to Coleridge's time, therefore, his definition of poetry, that it is the antithesis of science, though not complete, was true as far as it extended. Let us see how the ideals of an imaginative, primitive race, differ from those of the children of knowledge, who make up our later generations.

The most familiar example will be found the best. Look at the antique spirit as partially revived by a painter of the seventeenth century. The Aurora fresco in the Rospigliosi palace expresses the manner in which it once was perfectly natural to observe the perpetual, splendid phenomena of breaking day. Sunrise was the instant presence of joyous, effulgent deity. A pagan saw the morning as Guido has painted it. The Sun-God in very truth was urging on his fiery-

A temporary conflict.

The poetic and rational methods examined and compared.

•i. The poetic, or phenomenal mode.

THE PERIOD.

The antique spirit.

The mediaveil spirit.

footed steeds. The clouds were his pathway; the early morning Hour was scattering in advance flowers of infinite prismatic hues, and her blooming, radiant sisters were floating in air around Apollo's chariot ; the earth was roseate with celestial light ; the blue sea laughed beyond. Swiftly ascending Heaven's archway the retinue swept on ; all was real, exuberant life and gladness ; the gods were thus in waiting upon humanity, and men were the progeny of the gods. The elements of the , Hellenic idealism, so often cited, are readily understood. It appeared in the blithesome imagery of a race that felt the pulses of youth, with no dogmas of the past to thicken its current and few analytical speculations to perturb it. Youth, health, and simplicity of life brought men to accept and inform after their own longings the outward phenomena of natural things. Heaven lies about us in our infancy. I refer to the antique feeling (as I might to that of the pastoral Hebraic age), not as to the exponent of a period superior to our own, or comparable with it in knowledge, comfort, grasp of all that enhances the average of human welfare, but as that of a poetical era, charged with what has ever, until now, made the excellence of such times, — an era when gifted poets would find themselves^ in an atmosphere favoring the production of elevated poetry, and of poetry especially among the forms of art, since this has seemed more independent of aid from material science than the rest. But there are other types of the poetical age. Pass from the simple and harmonious ideals of classicism to the romantic Gothic era, whose genius was conglomerate of old and new, and the myths of many ages and countries, but still fancy-free, or subject only to a pretended science as crude and wanton as the

REALISM OF THE PRESENT TIME.

II fancy itself; whose imagination was excited by chivalrous codes of honor, brave achievement, and the recurrent chances and marvels of new discovery. Such, for example, the Elizabethan period of our own literature ; such the great Italian period from which it drew its forms. There was a certain largeness of mechanical achievement, and a mass of theological inquiry, in the time of Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch, and in that of Tasso and Ariosto, but all subject to the influence of superstition and romance. The world was only half discovered; men's fancy was constantly on the alert ; nothing commonplace held the mind ; even the lives and ventures of merchants had a wealth of mystery, strangeness, and speculation about them, which might well make an Antonio and a Sebastian the personages of Shakespeare's and Fletcher's plays. Each part of the globe was a phantasmal or fairy land to the inhabitants of other parts. A traveller was a marked man. Somewhere in Asia was the Great Khan ; later, in America, were cities of Manoa paved with gold. Nothing was extraordinary, or, rather, everything was so. The people fed on the material of poetry, and wove laurel-wreaths for those who made their song.

Our own time, so eminently scientific, so devoted to investigation of universal truth, has found such wonders in the laws of force and matter, that the poetic bearing of their phenomena has seemed of transient worth ; enjoyment and excitation of the intellect through the acquisition of knowledge are valued more and more. Thinkers become unduly impressed with the relative unimportance of man and his conceptions. Our first knowledge of the amazing revelations of astronomy — which I take as a most impressive type of the cognate

The modern spirit.

THE PERIOD.

The realistic tendencies of the present time.

sciences — tends to repress self-assertion, and to make one content with accepting quietly his little share of life and action. In earlier eras of this kind, discovery and invention occupied men's minds until, fully satiated, they longed for mental rest and a return to a play of heart and fancy. Too much wisdom seemed folly indeed ; dance and song and pastoral romance resumed their sway; the harpers harped anew, and from the truer life and knowledge scientifically gained broke forth new blossoms of poetic art. But our own period has no exact prototype. It is advanced in civilization ; but the time of Pericles, though also exhibiting a modern refinement, was one of scientific ignorance. There was, as we have seen, a mediaeval spirit of scientific inquiry, but almost wholly guided by superstition. P>en nature's laws were compelled to bow to church fanaticism ; experiments were looked upon with distrust, or conducted in secrecy; and poetry, at least in respect to its cherished language and ideals, had no occasion to take alarm.

But in the nineteenth century, science, freedom of thought, refinement, and material progress have moved along together. The modern student often has been so narrowed by his investigations as to be more unjust to the poet than the latter was of old to the philosopher. Art has seemed mere pastime and amusement, as once it seemed the devil's frippery and seduction to the ascetic soul of the Puritan, aglow with the gloomy or rapturous mysteries of his theology. Also by the multitude whom the practical results of science at last have thoroughly won over, — and who now are impelled by more than Roman ambition to girdle the earth with engineering and conquer the elements themselves, — neither the songsters nor the metaphysicians,

HUXLEY ON EDUCATION.

but the physical investigators and men of action, are held to be the world's great men. The De Lesseps, Fields, Barings, and Vanderbilts, no less than Lyell, Darwin, and Agassiz, wear the bay-leaves of to-day. Religion and theology, also, are subjected to analysis and the universal tests, and at last the divine and the poet, traditionally at loggerheads, have a common bond of suffering, — a union of toleration or half-disguised contempt. Eating together at the side-tables, neither is adequately consoled by reflecting that the other is no more to be envied than himself. The poet's hold upon the youthful mind and sentimental popular emotion has also measurably relaxed ; for a learned professor, who has spoken of poetic expression as "sensual caterwauling," and possibly regards the gratification of the aesthetic perceptions as of little worth, grossly underrated his position when he said that, "at present, education is almost entirely devoted to the cultivation of the power of expression and of the sense of literary beauty." The truth is that our school-girls and spinsters wander down the lanes with Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer under their arms ; or if they carry Tennyson, Longfellow, and Morris, read them in the light of spectrum analysis, or test them by the economics of Mill and Bain. The very tendency of modern poetry to wreak its thoughts upon expression, of which Huxley so complains, naturally follows the iconoclastic overthrow of its cherished ideals, confining it to skilful utilization of the laws of form and melody. Ay, even the poets, with their intensely sympathetic natures, have caught the spirit of the age, and pronounce the verdict against themselves. One of them envies his early comrade, who forsook art to follow learning, and thus in age addresses him : —

Theology.

Huxley on " Scientific Education **i " Apple tons' Jourtia.1"

Aug. 14, 1869.

THE PERIOD.

Whittier's dedication of "Miriam" to President Barnard.

Surrender of the poets.

" Alike we loved The muses' haunts, and all our fancies moved To measures of old song. How since that day Our feet have parted from the path that lay So fair before us ! Rich, from life-long search Of truth, within thy Academic porch Thou sittest now, lord of a realm of fact, Thy servitors the sciences exact ; Still listening, with thy hand on Nature's keys, To hear the Samian's spheral harmonies And rhythm of law

And if perchance too late I linger where The flowers have ceased to blow, and trees are bare, Thou, wiser in thy choice, will scarcely blame The friend who shields his folly with thy name."

The more intellectual will confess to you that they weary less of a new essay by Proctor or Tyndall than of the latest admirable poem; that, overpowered in the brilliant presence of scientific discovery, their own conceptions seem less dazzling. A thirst for more facts grows upon them ; they throw aside their lyres and renew the fascinating study, forgetful that the inspiration of Plato, Shakespeare, and other poets of old, often foreshadowed the glory of these revelations, and neglecting to chant in turn the transcendent possibilities of eras yet to come. Science, the modern Circe, beguiles them from their voyage to the Hesperides, and transforms them into her voiceless devotees.

Every period, however original and creative, has a transitional aspect in its relation to the years before and after. In scientific iconoclasm, then, we have the most important of the symptoms which mark the recent era as a transition period, and presently shall observe features in the structure and composition of its poetry which justify us in thus ranking it. The Victorian

METHOD OF THE PHILOSOPHER.

IS poets have flourished in an equatorial region of common-sense and demonstrable knowledge. Thought has outlived its childhood, yet has not reached a growth from which experience and reason lead to visions more radiant than the early intuitions. The zone of youthful fancy, excited by unquestioning acceptance of outward phenomena, is now well passed ; the zone of cultured imagination is still beyond us. At present, skepticism, analysis, scientific conquest, realism, scornful unrest. Apollo has left the heavens. The modern child knows more than the sage of antiquity.

To us the Sun is a material, flaming orb, around which revolves this dark, inferior planet, obedient to central and centrifugal forces. We know that no celestial flowers bestrew his apparent pathway ; that all this iridescence is but the refraction of white light through the mists of the upper skies. Let me in advance disavow regret for the present, or desire to recall the past : I simply recognize a condition which was inevitable and in the order of growth to better things. " Much of what we call sublime," said Landor, " is only the residue of infancy, and the worst of it." I cannot disbelieve the words of a latter-day writer, that, " so far from being unfriendly to the poetic imagination, science will breathe into it a higher exaltation." In my chapter on Tennyson I shall have occasion to cite the language of Wordsworth, who, with prophetic vision, depicted an era when the poet and the man of science shall find their missions harmonious and united. But the change is none the less severe, and the period has been indeed trying for the votaries of song. True, that already, in our glimmerings of the source and motion of the " offspring of Heaven first-born," in our partial knowledge of the meaning of