On this page
-
Text (2)
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
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.
-
-
Transcript
-
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.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
ship , when the latter are simply contemplated as the be-all and the end-all of the poet ' s songs of love . The total poem , therefore , is a love lyric , commencing at the very beginning of the passion , and ending when ten years of married existence have passed , and when husband and wife are also father and mother . The conception is not entirely new to literature ; but it is a noble one , which had been singularly neglected , and which certainly waited development in the form of a poem worthy of the theme . A finer theme or one appealing more largely to the universal human soul , it would he impossible to find ; and Mr . Patmore has brought to its elucidation the brain and heart of a true poet , profound reverence for his subject , and , manifestly , a large amount of patient labour in thought , phraseology , and construction . On some points , however , we have a few objections to offer , which it may
be as well to explain at once . Our readers are aware of the consistency with which we have opposed the spasmodic style , and will understand the earnestness of our wish to see the poetry of this nineteenth century wisely rescued from the influence of such parching and withering gusts . We must , therefore , needs feel some disappointment at finding a writer , with the desire and the genius to aid in that reform , rather compromising than advancing it by the common error of casting himself into the opposite extreme . Because gaudiness is bad , we are not to adopt Quakerism ; yet something like drab and slate-colour forms the complexion of Mr . Patniore ' s poem . Because it is the fashion to introduce
too many descriptions of natural scenery into our current poetry , and because those descriptions are often inappropriate and overwrought , that is fl . 0 reason , why Mr . Patmore should almost exclude them from his pages , especially when it is evident from the one or two he las given that he can pencil them , "witta a singularly delicate and airy touch . Because some of our living poets overstrain , themselves by pompous phraseology and ideas too vague and far-stretched for any reasonable expression , we are not the better disposed to receive the common-places of every-day conversation , the most f&miliar > topics of ordinary intercourse , ingeniously -wrought up into verse and rhyme , very easy , very natural , very clever after a certain manner , but more fitted for a novel of fashionable life than fora poem . As , for instance , this : - --. ¦ - . ¦ ¦ . , ¦ ¦ . . ' .-¦ ' ¦ '¦ ¦ ' ' . ' ¦ ¦ - ¦¦ ¦ ' - . ¦ ; : . ' ¦ ' : ' ¦ ' ¦ ¦ " ¦ : ¦ ' ¦ ' ¦ Good Mrs . Fife , To my " The Dean , is he at home ?" Said , "No , sir ; but Miss Honor is ;" And straight , not asking if I'd « ome , Announced me , " Mr . Felix , Miss , " To Mildred , in the study . There ¦ We talk'd , she working . We agreed The day was . fine ; the fancy-fair Successful ; " Did I ever read DeGenlis ? " " No . " "I must . Shehadheard I was engaged . " " To whom ? " " Miss Fry . Was it the fact ? " "No ! " "Onmyword ?" " What scandal people talk'd !"" Would I Hold out this skein of silk . " So pass'd I know not how much time away . " Hotw were her sisters ?"" Well . " At last I summon'd heart enough to say , . " I hoped to have seen Miss Churchill too . " " Miss—who ? " laugh'd Mildred ; " what is this ? I said , and so indeed it ' s true , Last night you quarrell'd ? Here she is !"
to make twenty volumes of ordinary calibre ; indeed , the subtletv i , « T kind and a degree quite unknown to these days , though at one timeIZtL * conmion . Observe the following comparison : — n otua-. ¦ . ' ' ¦ . Immeasurable bliss Gains nothing by becoming more ! Millions liave meaning ; ufter this , Cyphers Jbrget tke integer . This is almost equal in subtlety , if not in beauty , to Donne ' s imi drawzi from a pair of compasses , in the lines : — « udge If we be two , we are two so As stiff twin compasses arc two : Thy soul , the fix'd foot , makes no show To more , but doth if th . ' other do ; And , though it in the centre sit , Yet , w ; hen the other far doth roam , It leans and hearkens aft « r it ,
And grows erect as that comes home . And this ( to return to Mr . Patmore ) has something of the manner nf Cowley : — . 0 I Till Eve was brought to Adam , he A solitary desert trod , Though , in the great society Of Nature , Angels , and of God . The following , spoken of the woman ' s consent ^ is very beautiful and original : — That fatal " I am thine " Gomes with alternate gush and check And joltings of the heart * as wine
Pour * d from a flask of narrow neck . Occasionally we find a simile of great delicacy and brightness in itself taken apart from the thing symbolized ; as this : — ' Pure as the permeating fires That smoulder in the opal ' s veins . Or this : — ¦ . . . . ' ' . ¦ : ¦ . . ' T . ... . . : : ¦ ¦ ' ¦ '¦ ¦ ¦;¦ ¦ ''¦¦ ' ' , '¦ But dread , she trusts , will turn to joy , Like sombre smoke to sudden Jlanw . The following is noble , both in conception and expression . The husband is vindicating married love as compared "with the first passion of youth . — " Dear wife , " said he , " a fresh-lit fire Sends forth to heaven great shows of fume , And watchers far a \ va 3 r admire : !'
But , when the flames their power assume , The more they bura the less they sliow ; The clouds no longer smirch the sky ; And then the flames intensest glow When far-off watchers think they die . " Extracts , however , can give only a very incomplete notion of a poem which , as we have remarked , does not seek to startle by individual passages ; for , as the author himself says : — Likeness and proportion both 1 Hence fail , as if a child in glee , Catching the flakes of the salt froth , Cried , •* Look , my mother , here ' s the sea . "
We must , therefore , be content to refer all poetical readers ( but no others , and not even the indolent and frivolous among those ) to the complete poem , confident that , at times tbey diiFer from the author , they-will more often be impressed -with the beauty of his subject , the subtlety of his intellect , and the sincerity of his devotion to his art .
NTo doubt Mr . Patmore would say that he has a meaning in all this , and that , if * we don't find it out , the fault is in ourselves ; but the same thing , we take it , is said of his own production by every author , and it hardly settles the abstract question . At any rate , a writer does not do himself justice by adopting anything which baa even the semblance of unnecessary singularity . Another fault we conceive to be a morbid excess of intellectual analysis . If other living poets err by appealing too much to th& senses , Mr . Patmore we think , errs by a too incessant action of the brain . Judging from a large proportion of his style , we should say he has studied , much in the school of JDonne , Cowley , Crashaw , Quarles , Herbert , and other poets of the first half of the seventeenth century ; and he has often emulated them in the singular subtlety of his ' co ' nceits' and the wonderful ingenuity of his paradoxes . There is no doubt that modern poetry would be the richer and the stronger for an infusion of this element ; but Mr . Patmore persecutes us with riddles . He lays his mind , so to speak , on a metaphysical dissectingtable , and anatomizes it with painful minuteness . The result is a lecture on disease , when , -we want the healthy perceptions of vitality ; the introduction
of a mass of doctrine , to which the reader may or may not assent , and which , therefore , fers a ground for disputation , instead of the universal sympathies of poetry . There is a perpetual intrusion of individual opinion . * ' I think thus ; all wise and good men think the same : if you think differently , it is because you are neither wise nor good ; " some such conception as this is constantly apparent . The large regard , of Nature is thus narrowed into something sectional ; while a iaint mist of Evangelical phraseology substitutes a suggestion of particulsir creeds for the poet's divine Catholicity . We do not mean to accuse Mr . Patmore of the fiercer or more repulsive forms of bigotry ; his volume , indeed , contains many beautiful instances of sweetness , charity , and human love ; neither do we object to any association of earth and heaven which the poet draws out of the natural longings of the human soul , and which he implies in the form of feeling or -emotion ; but we do doubt the advisability of allying poetry with sharply defined doctrine .
Yet , a er all , here is a fine—in many respects a noble—poem . It is not cut , of any want of respect , cither for the author ' s « enius or for the nature of his theme , that we urge these objections ; and , if every one of them be granted , there will still bu left a large demand upon our admiration and sympathy . A . poem-which makes life nobler by fi xing what idle conceit regards as volatile and evanescent—which vindicates the essential holiness or our human affection s , and beholds only one step from the earthly to the divine—must possess the highest elements of moral beauty ; and it is impossible to read Mr . Patmore ' a volume without acknowledging that the author a intellect ia of a raro order . There k subtlety enough in these pages
Untitled Article
A STORY OF MARRIED LOVE AND ITS TROUBLES . Deverell : a Novel . 3 Vola . Chapman and Hall . Devcrell is by the hand of a woman who has known suffering , and has been acquainted Avith the chamber of sickness . These facts are apparent on the fa ce o the book ; they contribute to stamp its particular character , and even account for the defects in the execution of the work . There are oversights , such as slight inconsistencies , or errors in the use of names , which might have been corrected if the work had been revised by the authoress herself . It is a novel in the form of an autobiography , in which the , writer , with a conscientious truthfulness , tells nothing that did not actually come
within her own knowledge . But , although it is a story of the feelings , rather than of events , the uarration is graceful and really interesting The autobiographer is well endowed by nature , but is oppressed by a timidity of character which restrains her from asserting her true position , and leads her into errors . The consequences of those errors form part of the drama of the book . Aline begins with her school friendships , the most conspicuous of which interweaves her life with that of St . George Deverell , the heroine , a girl of great beauty , vehement feelings , intense love of power , and inordinate ambition . Brought up by a mother who constitutes herse a chronic sacrifice to her child , Dcverell soon learns to have her own way , soon is
sees how to make others stepping-stones to her purpose . The character drawn with much power , and the manner in which the young girl gradually develops her schemes , —which have their small beginning in the indu jgeiico of a school-girl love , and end with the enslavement of a nobleman high in the state , —is at once natural and striking . Aline has likewise yielded to the indulgence of a school love ; rather , however , from softness of character than vehemence of feelings ; she lias contracted an early and imprudent marriage ; she conceals it from her friends , from the husband whom she marries after she becomes a widow ; the concealment begets susp icion , ana suspicion estrangement . The scheming : Deverell , who haa a distinct , purpose constantly in view , is able to set tho foibles of one person against another , until all , even those who are far superior to herself , become p laythings in her hands , and instruments for coercing and tormenting euuh other . J- strength comes out more towards the cud ; the earlier portion might , perliap » i have been more compressed with advantage to the ultimate effect . W c j > u * posely abstain , however , from spoiling tho interest of the atory by any oxp nation of the plot . , t Mornl courage ia , perhaps , tho quality which of all others is tho m commonly wanting , and it ia in tho want of this courage that reser
Untitled Article
1098 THE LBiDBB . : [ JSTo . 347 , Satvbdav
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 15, 1856, page 1098, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2167/page/18/
-