_ (Pall Mall Gazette, March 8, 1837.)
A little schoolboy was once asked to explain the difference between prose and poetry. After some consideration he replied, '"blue violets" is prose, and "violets blue" is poetry.' The distinction, we admit, is not exhaustive, but it seems to be the one that is extremely popular with our minor poets. Opening at random The Queens Innocent we come across passages like this:
Full gladly would I sit
Of such a potent magus at the feet,
and this:
The third, while yet a youth,
Espoused a lady noble but not royal,
_One only son who gave him_--Pharamond--
lines that, apparently, rest their claim to be regarded as poetry on their unnecessary and awkward inversions. Yet this poem is not without beauty, and the character of Nardi, the little prince who is treated as the Court fool, shows a delicate grace of fancy, and is both tender and true. The most delightful thing in the whole volume is a little lyric called April, which is like a picture set to music.
The Chimneypiece of Bruges is a narrative poem in blank verse, and tells us of a young artist who, having been unjustly convicted of his wife's murder, spends his life in carving on the great chimneypiece of the prison the whole story of his love and suffering. The poem is full of colour, but the blank verse is somewhat heavy in movement. There are some pretty things in the book, and a poet without hysterics is rare.
Dr. Dawson Burns's Oliver Cromwell is a pleasant panegyric on the Protector, and reads like a prize poem by a nice sixth-form boy. The verses on The Good Old Times should be sent as a leaflet to all Tories of Mr. Chaplin's school, and the lines on Bunker's Hill, beginning,
I stand on Bunker's towering pile,
are sure to be popular in America.
K. E. V.'s little volume is a series of poems on the Saints. Each poem is preceded by a brief biography of the Saint it celebrates--which is a very necessary precaution, as few of them ever existed. It does not display much poetic power, and such lines as these on St. Stephen,--
Did ever man before so fall asleep?
A cruel shower of stones his only bed,
For lullaby the curses loud and deep,
His covering with blood red--
may be said to add another horror to martyrdom. Still it is a thoroughly well-intentioned book and eminently suitable for invalids.
Mr. Foskett's poems are very serious and deliberate. One of the best of them, Harold Glynde, is a Cantata for Total Abstainers, and has already been set to music. A Hindoo Tragedy is the story of an enthusiastic Brahmin reformer who tries to break down the prohibition against widows marrying, and there are other interesting tales. Mr. Foskett has apparently forgotten to insert the rhymes in his sonnet to Wordsworth; but, as he tells us elsewhere that 'Poesy is uninspired by Art,' perhaps he is only heralding a new and formless form. He is always sincere in his feelings, and his apostrophe to Canon Farrar is equalled only by his apostrophe to Shakespeare.
The Pilgrimage of Memory suffers a good deal by being printed as poetry, and Mr. Barker should republish it at once as a prose work. Take, for instance, this description of a lady on a runaway horse:--
Her screams alarmed the Squire, who seeing the peril of
his daughter, rode frantic after her. I saw at once the
danger, and stepping from the footpath, show'd myself
before the startled animal, which forthwith slackened
pace, and darting up adroitly, I seized the rein, and
in another moment, had released the maiden's foot, and
held her, all insensible, within my arms. Poor girl, her
head and face were sorely bruised, and I tried hard to
staunch the blood which flowed from many a scalp-wound,
and wipe away the dust that disfigured her lovely
features. In another moment the Squire was by my side.
'Poor child,' he cried, alarmed, 'is she dead?'
'No, sir; not dead, I think,' said I, 'but sorely
bruised and injured.'
There is clearly nothing to be gained by dividing the sentences of this simple and straightforward narrative into lines of unequal length, and Mr. Barker's own arrangement of the metre,
In another moment,
The Squire was by my side.
'Poor child,' he cried, alarmed, 'is she dead?'
'No, sir; not dead, I think,' said I,
'But sorely bruised and injured,'
seems to us to be quite inferior to ours. We beg that the second edition of The Pilgrimage of Memory may be issued as a novel in prose.
Mr. Gladstone Turner believes that we are on the verge of a great social cataclysm, and warns us that our _cradles_ are even now being rocked by _slumbering volcanoes_! We hope that there is no truth in this statement, and that it is merely a startling metaphor introduced for the sake of effect, for elsewhere in the volume there is a great deal of beauty which we should be sorry to think was doomed to immediate extinction. The Choice, for instance, is a charming poem, and the sonnet on Evening would be almost perfect if it were not for an unpleasant assonance in the fifth line. Indeed, so good is much of Mr. Gladstone Turner's work that we trust he will give up rhyming 'real' to 'steal' and 'feel,' as such bad habits are apt to grow on careless poets and to blunt their ear for music.
Nivalis is a five-act tragedy in blank verse. Most plays that are written to be read, not to be acted, miss that condensation and directness of expression which is one of the secrets of true dramatic diction, and Mr. Schwartz's tragedy is consequently somewhat verbose. Still, it is full of fine lines and noble scenes. It is essentially a work of art, and though, as far as language is concerned, the personages all speak through the lips of the poet, yet in passion and purpose their characters are clearly differentiated, and the Queen Nivalis and her lover Giulio are drawn with real psychological power. We hope that some day Mr. Schwartz will write a play for the stage, as he has the dramatic instinct and the dramatic imagination, and can make life pass into literature without robbing it of its reality.
(1) The Queen's Innocent, with Other Poems. By Elise Cooper. (David Stott.)
(2) The Chimneypiece of Bruges and Other Poems. By Constance E. Dixon. (Elliot Stock.)
(3) Oliver Cromwell and Other Poems. By Dawson Burns, D.D. (Partridge and Co.)
(4) The Circle of Saints. By K. E. V. (Swan Sonnenschein and Co.)
(5) Poems. By Edward Foskett. (Kegan Paul.)
(6) The Pilgrimage of Memory. By John Thomas Barker. (Simpkin, Marshall and Co.)
(7) Errata. By G. Gladstone Turner. (Longmans, Green and Co.)
(8) Nivalis. By J. M. W. Schwartz. (Kegan Paul.) _