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April 19,,. 1S5S.] T H| ^EfAjD jj f 3^
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LATTER DAY POETRY. Nothing is more remar...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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New Editions. Robert Blake, Admiral And ...
ries—a question that must not die out " because theHussian War is past , though one that cannot be settled until a maritime conflict arises , and " some great admiral" brings oak and stone to pistol shot proximity . The prevailing idea is , at this time , what it was when Blake went out with the English fleet ; for no man but he believed that ships could successfully attack batteries . He did attack them , and the illusion of Jericho disappeared under his round shot . He pitted his frigates against the fortress of St . Mary ' s , and St . Mary ' s fell , and people at home began to wonder . Then he bombarded Port Ferino , and naval captains of an older school were curious to know how far this audacious system of warfare could be safely developed . Lastly , he ' went in' under the tremendous batteries of Santa Cruz , and his contemporaries called him a madman who ought to have failed , while , as Clarendon says , his enemies thought him a devil . Mr . Dixon quotes an , interesting passage from Clarendon : —
He was the first man that declined the old track , and made it manifest that the science might be attained in less time than was imagined ; and despised those rules -which had long been in practice , to keep his ship and his men out of danger , which bad been held in former times a point of great ability and circumspection , as if the principal art requisite in the captain of a ship had been to be sure to come home safe again . He was the first man who brought the ships to contemn castles on shore , which had been thought ever very formidable , and were discovered by him only to make a- noise , and to fright those who could rarely be hurt by them . He was the first that infused that proportion of courage into the seamen , by making them , see by experience what mighty things they could do if they were resolved , and taught them to fight in fire as well as upon water : and though he hath been very well imitated and followed , he was the first that drew the copy of naval courage , and bold and resolute achievement . The royalist Bates , also quoted in this interesting preface , says : —
He found the harbour m shape of a crescent , defended by seven forts lying round it , and two castles placed at the points , with seventeen ships riding therein , their heads standing towards the mouth of the harbour , that they might fire with greater certainty upon those that offered to enter : nor could the governor forbear to jeer and flout at the English . Blake , therefore , entering the mouth of the harbour with his frigates , thunders broadsides and small shot against the castles , till the soldiers flying from thence , he manned his boats with seamen and sent them in , who burnt , and destroyed all the Spanish ships that were there . .
• ' Lord Dundonakl has assisted Mr . Dixon by revising the naval part of his narrative ^ He considers that Blake acted coolly , and upon well-eonsidered scientific principles . Mr . Dixon ' s new preface is , therefore , an interesting contribution to the argument in favour of bringing fleets to the attack of land fortifications . Of course he does not imply that Santa Cruz was , in all respects , equal to Crbnstadt , or that the Baltic strongholds are not peculiarly situated , and defended by the adapted accidents of nature ; but he says , bring a ship fairly before a stone wall , and the stone wall is not more formidable than the ship .
Selections from the Writings of Archbishop WTiately . ( Bentley ) . —Tliis second volume of selections is better tlian the first . It takes a larger range , andis more diversified . Instead of a crude surfeit of ecclesiastical apothegms , a procession of surpliced thoughts , it isacabinet of epigrams , liberal and wise , yet not always without the pungency of satire , on arts , letters , and philosophy , on social haMts and popular illusions . Dr . Wliately has a peculiar aptitude for epitomising his theories j lie is , therefore , a very quotable writer . His style is invariably clear , sharp and full , his meaning always plain , his philosophy always practical . Though not addicted to the use of imagery , he possesses a rare faculty of illustrative comparison , as when he compares sophistry to poison , -which is given most effectively in small doses , or a spouting orator "to the lion inPyramus and Tliisbe , " who " does it all extempore , for it is nothing but roaring , " And how true is this : —
For one person who is overbearing you on account of his knowledge of technical terms , you will find five or six still more provokiiagly impertinent with their common sense and experience . Their common sense will be found nothing more than common prejudice ; and their experience will be found to consist in the fact that they have done a tiling wrong very often , and farcy they have clone it right . And , in opposition to the pedantry of practical experience , what force in this application of a proverbial saj'ing : — The looker-on often sees more of the game than the players . Now , the lookevon is precisely ( in Greek 9 e < opi > c ) the theorist . Drf Whateley deals , by a very summary method , with certain maxims in coupkts , which have received a large popular acceptation : — The poet ' s remedies for the dangers of n . little learning , " Drink deep , or tasto not , ' are both of them impossible . Noaie can drink deep enough to bo anything more than very superficial 5 and every human being , that is not a downright idiot , must taste .
In the same manner—For forms of Government lot fools contest , That which is boat administered is best ; and ft hundred other pretentious imitations of philosophy might be disposed of . On literary topics we have ( some of the happiest illustrations . Dramatists will make a note of the following : — It is no fool that cau describe fools well . To invent indeed a conversation full of wiadotn or of wit , requires that the writer should himself possess ability ; bub the converse doea not hold good . Many who have succeeded protty well in painting superior diameters , hnvo failed in giving individuality to those weaker ones , which it in neoesBftiy to introduce in order to give a faithful roprosentatioa otroftl lito ; tUoy exhibit to us uxero folly in the ubatmot , forgetting that to the eye ot a Hkiltul naturalist , the insects ou a leaf prcaout us wide differences m exist between tho otanluuit and tho lion . Slendw , and Shallow , and Agucchook , us Shftlcsporo has painted thorn , though orally foola , roaemblo owe anotkur no more than Richard , and Mnoboth , aucl Julius Crosar
His analysis of tho words , " contingent , " " tendency / ' " presumption , " expect and tho expressions " matter of fact , " " matter of opinion , " will lend the literary student beyond his ordinary limits . Speaking of ' limits "—to tnalce nn Irish transition , —the following must not foa passed over ; — It ia curious to obaoryo tho old limitation * of power , in those who aoom despotic , anil yot cannot do whnt soom little thing *; c . < j ., when tho Roman * ' took pOMeselon of kgypt , tho people fmbmittocl , without tho least rotdatanoo , to faave
their lives and property at the mercy of a foreign nation . But one of the Roman soldiers happening- to kill a cat in the streets of Alexandria , they rose on him . aaad tore him from limb to limb ; and the excitement was so violent that the generals overlooked the outrage for- fear of insurrection !—Claudius Caesar tried to introduoe a letter which was wanting hi the Raman Alphabet ; the consonant "V as distinct from U , they having but one character for both . He ordained that £ ( an F reversed ) should be that character . It appears on some inscriptions in hia time ; but he oould not establish it ; though , he could kill or plunder his subjects at pleasure I So can the Emperor of Russia ; but he cannot change the style . This is idle gleaning , but it makes up a sample . Though a volume o £ selections is seldom adapted for conthmons reading , and is scarcely ever edited with judgment , these from Dr . Whately ' s writ ings are obviously the choice of one who knows and loves his author .
April 19,,. 1s5s.] T H| ^Efajd Jj F 3^
April 19 ,,. 1 S 5 S . ] T H | ^ EfAjD jj f 3 ^
Latter Day Poetry. Nothing Is More Remar...
LATTER DAY POETRY . Nothing is more remarkable in . the present day than the devotion , of a countless number of persons to the thankless labours of poetry- The age itself , with regard to its outward manifestations , is not poetical ; the English people , as a people , are not imaginatively sensitive ; no great rewards attend upon the cultivation of verse , than which the rearing of cabbages is far more profitable ; no poet is ever known to gam a seat in the House of Lords by reason of his fine frenzies j nor are the modern Petrarchs ever crowned in the Capitol or at the Mansion-house . Yet day after day they start forth , irom . " the intense inane ;" . day after day , some fresh victim is found ready to cast his whole life passionately , sacrineially , into the fiery furnace of poetical ema > - tion , to sing an unregarded measure , to l > ear cheerfully the expenses of his unsold foolscap octavo -volume , to wait smilingly for the Future which will never come , and to write angry letters to liis dull , spiteful , or envious critic in the public prints , " who can ' t , or won ' t , appreciate him . Surely , poetry must be its own exceeding great reward , for in these sordid times it finds none other .
We have good reasons for such observations , for we are forced to stand a perpetual fusilade of small volumes of verse ; paper pellets for ever rattling about our critical head ; a Very shower of hailstones out of the clouds that brood over the summit of our modern . Parnassus . Here they lie before usa confused heap of little tomes , in red covers , blue , covers , green covers ., yellow covers , purple covers , slatey covers , and drab covers — for variety of hue a very rainbow , and as evanescent . We clear the in offby shovels-full ; but they gather again . We crack and open them like filberts in < rapid succession ; but the stock seems undiminished . They rise out of an . energy with which there is no keeping pace ; and , as a cyclopaedia is always obsolete in some respects even before it is completed ( events and discoveries being quicker than the pensthat chronicle them ) , so are we for ever in arrears with the tremendous ereativeness of those who liave drunk of Helicon .
And the strangest part of the business is , that in all this mass of crude and undigested matter , and in the substance of this steain-en-gine , wrought-iron age , there is a great deal of real poetical tendency , and yet no true poet nor true poem ; excellent materials , but no architect ; anvils and hammers in plenty , hut no Tubal . Cain to strike music from them , drawing celestial " harmonies out of swart strength and roughness . If , from the various volumes of verse whicli we receive , some master mind , with a genius for the creative and the orderly , could squeeze whatever is quintessential and vital , could sort element with element , and arrange the wandering and purposeless energies into a shapely total ,
we might have a poem worthy of the age , and really adding something to the stock . But no such mind has yet declared itself among the young men of our day . What may be the reason of this strange want—whether it he that our proper business at present is to destroy , and not to erect , that we are in some feverish state of . aspiration and desire , and have yet to reach the repose of ascertained truth—is a question of too weighty a character to be here discussed . Indeed , the volumes now lying before us hardly warrant our even mooting it ; and we can only plead having been led inadvertently into this train of thought , which the reader may choose to pursue for himself , out of love for a noble art which threatens to be extinguished for a time , for want of the polarity of one master mind .
And so from generalities to particulars . The first book that comes to our hand is called Rhymes by a Republican ( London : Marbrow and Co . — Burtonupon-Trent : J . Whitehurst ) . —This is a thin volume in blue , which ought rather to have been red , judging from the colour of the " Republican . " He begins with " Vive la Republique ! " and ends with a fierce denunciation of " l , " who is described as a " liberal spoken , narrow-minded knave . ' * Between these two extremities , there is plenty of hard hitting for priests and lards , who are all described as possessing a perfect infallibility of vice and folly ; and there is an attack upon " a certain exulted and illustrious personage , " as Mr . Jenkins of the Morning Post would say , of so outrageous a character that we would certainly not undertake the responsibility of quoting it , as a specimen of the " Republican ' s " faculty . For faculty , in truth , lie has—a coarse , defiant , intolerant sort of faculty , but genuine . We arc not quarrelling with his political or religious tendencies , but we cannot avoid regretting that , a man with so much real
sympathy ( as we feel sure it is ) for the happiness and advancement of the human species , should be so reckless in scattering the merest vituperation ( sometimes in . not very decent language ) on all who do not move within the circle of his own theories . He should leave such flowers of rhetoric to the cultivation of the Bishop of Bangor . In . the meanwhile , he has a hearty , open , manly love for what is pure and lioncst ; and hia plain-speaking , aa long as it keeps on this side ot invective , ia refreshing after tho drawing-room prettincsscs of feebler poetasters . God knows , wo have plenty to reform , and honest utterance is half the battle j Imt the misgoyernora are themselves the victims of bad arrangements , and through nil possible mistakes arc still our humun . brothers , ana not likely to bo reformed by the bastinado . Besides ^ tlic ' Republican" has better elements than bitterness . In the midst oi common-place , he has tenderness and feeling , as well as a decided faiculty foi satire and the painting of manners . Hia measures , moreover , have impulse , character , and tune—showing the true lyrical power . To tho same general class of poetry belongs a little collection of verses
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), April 19, 1856, page 19, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_19041856/page/19/
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