admirable picture of the forsaken garden,
seem to me the best thing Campbell did
out of the fighting vein.

was!

66

the hackneyed but admirable " All plaided
and plumed in their tartan array," the
"coming events" that a man may admire
but hardly now quote these and other
things would save any copy of verses.
But still nothing can touch the immor-
tal three- Hohenlinden," "The Battle
of the Baltic," and "Ye Mariners of En-
gland." What does it matter that no one
of them is without a blemish, that "Ye
Mariners" is almost a paraphrase of a
good old ballad by good old Martin Par-
ker, king of the ballad-mongers of En-
gland, that (as a certain kind of critic is
never tired of telling us) there is not so

But in that vein how different a man he As a mere boy he had tried it, or something like it, feebly enough in "The Wounded Hussar;" and he showed what he could do in it, even when the subject did not directly touch his imagination, by his spirited paraphrase of the hybrias fragment. His devotion to the style (which appears even in pieces ostensibly devoted to quite different subjects such as the "Ode to Winter "), is all the more remarkable that Campbell was a staunch member of that political party in England which|much as a vestige of a wild and stormy hated the war. But it was a clear case of over-mastering idiosyncrasy. It is an odd criticism of the late Mr. Allingham's (to be matched, however, with several others in his remarks on Campbell) that his selection of Thomas Penrose's poem beginning,

Faintly brayed the battle's roar,
Distant down the hollow wind,
Panting terror fled before,

Wounds and death were left behind,

shows "how tolerant a true poet like
Campbell could be of the most frigid and
stilted conventionality of diction." Most
certainly he could be so tolerant; but his
tolerance here had clearly nothing to do
with the style. He was led away, as nearly
everybody is, by his sympathy with the
matter. Indeed before long Mr. Allingham
recollects himself, and says, " Battle sub-
jects always took hold on him." They
certainly did.

I do not care much for "The Soldier's
Dream" as a whole. Most of it is trivial
and there is an astonishing disregard of
quantity throughout, any three syllables.
being apparently thought good enough to
make an anapæst. But the opening stanza
is grand :-

Our bugles sang truce, for the night-cloud had
lowered,

And the sentinel stars set their watch in the
sky;

And thousands had sunk on the ground over-
powered,

The weary to sleep and the wounded to die.
Pictorially and poetically both, that is
about as good as it can be. "Lochiel's
Warning" has no single passage as good;
but it is far better as a whole, despite
some of the same metrical shortcomings.
The immortal "Field of the dead rushing
red on the sight," the steed that" fled
frantic and far "(and inspired thereby one
of the finest passages of another Thomas),

steep at Elsinore, that to say "sepulchree as we evidently must in "Hohenlinden " is trying if not impossible? Campbell, who is in prose a little old-fashioned perhaps and slightly stilted, but on stilts with the blood in them if I may say so, who gave his reasons for thinking the launch of a line-of-battle ship "one of the sublime objects of artificial life," deserved to write "The Battle of the Baltic." And he did more, Sempronius, he wrote it. There is not a stanza of it in which you may not pick out something to laugh or to cavil at if you choose. There is not one, at least

in its final form, which does not stir the blood to fever heat. "Ye Mariners of England" is much stronger in the negative sense of freedom from faults, only the last stanza being in any serious degree vulnerable; and the felicity of the rhythm is extraordinary. The second and third stanzas are as nearly as possible faultless.

Matter and manner could not be better

wedded, nor could the whole fire and force of English patriotism be better managed so as to inform and vivify metrical language.

But I am not certain that if I were not

an Englishman I should not put "Hohenlinden" highest of the three. It is less important "to us," it appeals less directly to our thought and sentiment, it might have been written by a man of any country, always provided that his country had such a language to write in. Also it has a few of Campbell's besetting slips. "Scenery" is weak in the second stanza, and I could witness the deletion of the seventh altogether with some relief and satisfaction. "Sepulchre " is so exceedingly good in itself that the sense that we ought to call it " sepulchree," as aforesaid, is additionally annoying, though by the way Glorious John would have called upon us to do the same thing without the slight est hesitation. But the poem is imitated

from nothing and so stands above "Ye Mariners; its blemishes are trifling in comparison with the terrible

Then the might of England flushed

To anticipate the scene,

minor, such as Wolfe of the not unde servedly famous "Burial of Sir John Moore," a battle-piece surely rather than a mere dirge. The Epigoni of the great school of 1800-1830 have been on the whole more fruitful than that school itself, though nothing that they have done can (where the last line except with much quite touch Campbell in fire, and though good will to help it is sheer and utter non- they have never surpassed Drayton in a sense) and other things in "The Battle of sort of buoyant and unforced originality the Baltic." Moreover the concerted mu- which excludes all idea of the mere litersic of its rolling metre is unsurpassed. ary copy of verses. One of the earliest The triplets of each stanza catch up and and certainly one of the best of them in carry on the sweep of the fourth line of this kind (for Peacock's immortal "War the preceding in a quite miraculous man- Song of Dinas Vawr" is too openly satirner; and that mixed poetic and pictorial ical) was Macaulay. I wish I had space touch which has been noted in Campbell here to destroy once for all (it could easily appears nowhere so well. Although to be done to the satisfaction of any compeme, as to everybody, it has been familiar tent tribunal) the silly prejudice against ever since I was about seven years old, I Macaulay's verse which, as a result of an never can get over my surprise at the ef- exaggerated following of the late Mr. Arfect of so hackneyed a word as "artillery."nold by criticasters, is still, among critiIndeed I knew a paradoxer once who maintained that this was due to the inspiration which made Campbell prefix "red;" "For," said he, "we are accustomed to see the Artillery in blue."

casters, common. In Mr. Arnold himself I suspect the prejudice to have been partly mere crotchet (for great critic as he was in his day he was full of crotchets), partly perhaps due to some mere personal dislike Nearly a hundred years, more fertile in of the kind which Macaulay very often good poetry and bad verse than any simi- excited in clever and touchy young men, far period in the history even of England, but partly and also perhaps principally to have passed since in the course of a few the fact that Mr. Arnold belonged to a months Campbell sketched, if he did not generation which affected to look on war finish, all his three masterpieces. The as a thing barbarous and outworn, and poetry and the verse both have done their that he himself had no liking for and share of battle-writing. Of the great po- was absolutely unskilled in war verse. ets who were Campbell's contemporaries "Sohrab and Rustum" is in parts, and and superiors none quite equalled him in especially in its famous close, a very fine. this way; though Scott ran him hard, and poem indeed; but of the actual fighting Byron, never perhaps writing a war-song part I can only say "its tameness is shockof the first merit, abounded in war-poetry ing to me." Still if Mr. Arnold really of a very high excellence. Scott could do disliked the "Lays of Ancient Rome " he it better than he could do almost anything was quite right to say so; it is not easy to else in verse; and if volume and degrees be equally complimentary to those who of merit are taken together the prize must affect to dislike them because they think be his. Nothing can beat the last canto it the right thing to do. Tried by the of "Marmion as narrative of the kind; standard of impartial criticism Macaulay few things can equal the regular lyrics, of is certainly not a great poet, nor except in which "Bonnie Dundee " if not the best this one line. a poet at all. Even in this is the best known, and the scores of bat-line his greatness is of the second not of tle-snatches of which Elspeth Cheyne's the first order, for the simple reason that version of the battle of Harlaw may rank it is clearly derivative. "No Sir Walter, first. The Lakers were by temperament no Lays" is not a critical opinion; it is a rather than by principle unfitted for the demonstrable fact. Granting so much, I style; though if Coleridge, in the days of do not see how sane criticism can refuse "The Ancient Mariner," had tried it we high, very high, rank to the said lays, and should have had some great thing. Shel- the smaller pieces of the same kind such ley, though a very pugnacious person, as "Ivry" and "Naseby," and those much thought fighting wicked; and Keats, less known but admirable verses which though he demolished the butcher, did not tell darkly what happened sing of war. Moore is not at his best in such things. In fact they have a knack of being written by poets otherwise quite

When the crew with eyes of flame brought the
ship without a name
Alongside the Last Buccaneer.

For the test of this kind of verse is much | mous Cavalier tunes already mentioned, simpler and more unerring than that of "Give a Rouse" is the only one I care any other. If in the case of a considera- much for; the two others are artificial ble number of persons of different ages, with anything but cavalier artificiality. educations, ranks, and so forth, it induces "Hervé Riel" is not quite a war-song a desire to walk up and down the room, to (albeit the art of judicious running away is shout, to send their fists into somebody no small part of war) but has more of the else's face, then it is good and there is no true spirit. Through the Metidja more more to be said. That it does not cause still (for all its mannerism, it is the only these sensations in others is no more successful attempt I know to give the very proof of its badness than it is a proof that sound and rhythm of symbols in English a match is bad because it does not light verse), and perhaps Prospice," though when you rub it on cotton wool. only metaphorically a fighting-piece, most of all. For, let it be once more repeated, it is the power of exciting the combative spirit in the reader that makes a war-song.

66

The still common heresy on the subject has make it necessary to dwell a little thereon. The great mass of Victorian war-poetry it is only possible to pass as it We shall find this power present abunwere in review by way rather of showing dantly in many poets during these last how much there is and how good than of days. In hardly any department perhaps criticising it in detail. Aytoun's "Lays is Mr. Swinburne's too great facility in of the Scottish Cavaliers," admirable in allowing himself to be mastered by inspirit, too often fall, so far as expression stead of mastering words more to be goes, into one or other of two great pit- regretted, for no one has ever excelled him falls, sing-song and false notes. More- in command both of the rhythms and the over they are deeply in debt, not merely language necessary for the style. Even to Scott, but to Macaulay himself. Yet as it is the "Song in Time of Order" hits should "The Heart of the Bruce," and "The Island of the Scots "not pass unnoticed here. Lord Tennyson, whose future critics will be at least as much struck by the variety as by the intensity of his poetical talent, is excellent at it. Some otherwise fervent admirers of his are, I believe, dubious about "The Charge of the Light Brigade;" I have myself no doubt whatever, though it is unequal. Still more unequal are "The Revenge and "Lucknow." But the quasi-refrain of the latter,

And ever upon the topmost roof our banner

of England blew,

is surpassed for the special merit of the kind by no line in the language, though it is run hard by the passage in the former beginning

the perfectly right note in respect of form
and spirit. There is plenty of excellent
stuff of the sort in a book which some
affect to despise, Mr. William Morris's
"Defence of Guinevere "- plenty more
in his later work. Charles Kingsley ought
to have left us something perfect in the
manner, and though he never exactly did,
"The Last Buccaneer," that excellent
ballad where

They wrestled up, they wrestled down,
They wrestled still and sore,

the opening of

Evil sped the battle-play

On the Pope Calixtus' day,

and the last lines of the "Ode to the North-East Wind" have all the right touch, the touch which has guided us through this review. That touch is to be And the sun went down, and the stars came found again in Sir Francis Doyle's "Re

out far over the summer sea.

There are flashes and sparks of the same fire all over the laureate's poems, as in the splendid

Clashed with his fiery few and won

turn of the Guards," his "Private of the Buffs," and most of all in his "Red Thread of Honor," one of the most lofty, insolent, and passionate things concerning this matter that our time has produced.

But here we are reaching dangerous ground, the ground occupied, and some.

of the ode on the death of the Duke of times very well occupied, by younger liv. Wellington, or the still finer distich,

And drunk delight of battle with my peers Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy, and the first stanza of “Sir Galahad" and a score of others. Of Mr. Browning's fa

ing writers. It is better to decline this and close the survey. It has shown us some excellent, and even super-excellent things, some of surpassing and gigantic badness, a very great deal that is good and very good. I do not think any other lan

66

From The Cornhill Magazine. CHAMONIX IN MAY.

CHAMONIX," said Mr. Ruskin many years ago disdainfully, "is rapidly being turned into a kind of Cremorne Gardens." Mr. Ruskin's disgust is shared by many of those judicious travellers who go abroad in search of peaceful beauty, and do not care to find the society and tastes of a London suburb translated to an Alpine valley. Even thirty years ago complaints were rife of the spoiling of Chamonix, and many who knew the place in the old days are now afraid of revisiting it. The railway is supposed to have completed its destruction; and it is credibly reported that "Apollo and all the Muses" have fled the valley before the advance of the railway fiend from Geneva to Cluses. But, in the epilogue to the most recent edition of "Modern Painters," Mr. Ruskin records that he had been there again and found himself inspired as of old by its "cloudless peace." When he wrote about ChamonixCremorne, he must have been there in August. When he penned his epilogue two years ago, he must have been at Chamonix in the early spring or the late autumn.

guage can show anything at all approaching it, excluding of course Spanish and other ballads. Despite the excellence of Old French in this kind, and despite the abundant military triumphs of the modern nation, the modern language of France has given next to nothing of merit in it. The Marseillaise" itself, really remarkable for the way in which it marries itself to a magnificent tune is, when divorced from that tune, chiefly rubbish. The Germans, with one imperishable thing in the pure style, Körner's "Schwertlied (sometimes sneered at by the same class of persons who sneer at Macaulay), and a few others, such as Heine's "Die Grenadiere" in the precincts of it-have little that is very remarkable. In these and other European languages, so far as I know, you often get war-pictures rendered in verse not ill, but seldom the war-spirit rendered thoroughly in song or snatch. Certain unpleasant ones will tell us that as the fighting power dies down, so the power of singing increases, that "poets succeed better in fiction than in fact," as Mr. Waller, both speaker and hearer being persons of humor, observed to his Majesty Charles II. on a celebrated occasion Luckily, however, that "Ballad to the The fact is, that every one goes to the Brave Cambro-Britons and their Harp "Alps too late or too early. The perfect and "The Battle of the Baltic" will settle months are May (running on into June) this suggestion. It will hardly be con- and October (counting in a little of Septended that the countrymen and contempo- tember); and of the two May is the more raries of Drayton, that the contemporaries perfect. True, the weather is then a little and countrymen of Campbell, had lost the uncertain; but, in August also, the weather trick of fighting. Look, too, at Le Brun can be bad, and when it is bad it is very (Pindare) and his poem on the "Vengeur," bad. True, also, the " Alpine rose is not a very few years earlier than "The Battle yet in bloom. But, if there is none of its of the Baltic" itself. Le Brun belonged "rubied fire," neither is there any crowd to very much the same school of poetry of vulgarians to put it out. Mr. Ruskin as the author of "The Pleasures of Hope," describes somewhere how he was staying and I do not know that on the whole he once at the Montanvert to paint Alpine was a very much worse poet. The ficti- roses, and had fixed upon a faultless bloom tious story of the "Vengeur" on which he beneath a cirque of rock, high enough, as wrote, and which he not at all improb- he hoped, to guard it from rude eyes and ably believed (as most Frenchmen do to plucking hands. But he counted without this day) was even fresher than Copenha- the tourist horde. Down they swooped gen to Campbell, and far more exciting. upon his chosen bed; "threw themselves Yet scarcely even those woful contempo- into it, rolled over and over in it, shrieked, raries of Corporal John, from whom I hallooed, and fought in it, trampled it down, have unfilially drawn the veil, made a and tore it up by the roots; breathless at more hopeless mess of it than Le Brun. last, with rapture of ravage, they fixed the The spirit of all poetry blows where it brightest of the remnant blossoms of it in listeth, but the spirit of none more than of their caps, and went on their way rejoicthe poetry of war. Let us hold up our ing." That, of course, must have been in hands and be thankful that it has seen fit August. In May, the less flaunting Alpine to blow to us in England such things as flowers, the verdure, the clear atmosphere Agincourt," as "Scots Wha Hae,' as "Ye Mariners of England," and a hundred others not so far inferior to them.

GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

all are in perfection. Indeed, the valley of Chamonix is in May practically deserted. Those who only know it as thronged by the cosmopolitan crowds of

August and September would then hardly | the pleasant society of their English recognize it, so quiet and peaceful is it. friends. But it is pleasant, also, to be The hotels have just opened, and there are to be enjoyed all the advantages due to the tourist hordes with none of the drawbacks. You are not crowded out into a little back bedroom over the stables, but are given a spacious and parqueted apartment, with a splendid view on to Mont Blanc. You are not obliged to look at the fire from a respectful distance behind a surly, sleepy crowd in the salon, but have a pile of logs set alight solely on your own behalf by an obsequious waiter. All your movements are not reconnoitred through a telescope, and you do not find the summit of every near hill covered with broken ginger-beer bottles and sandwich papers. The fat landlord stands smiling in the doorway to receive you, instead of bustling you aside to make way for some titled grandee, as would very probably happen later on. He welcomes you as we welcome the early spring birds, heralds of summer, and, taking you aside, informs you, rubbing his hands cheerily, that "it is well monsieur has come, for the chef de cuisine has just arrived yesterday from Turin for the season." You realize this important fact when, half an hour later, you sit down to a triumph of the gastronomic art. Lucky mortal!- and all this grandeur is for you, and only you u!

abroad at a time when there is a chance of meeting others than the friends whom you can see every day at home. Sometimes you meet no other travellers at all; but with the last week of May, two couples arrived at our Chamonix hotel one American, the other French. The Americans were from Philadelphia, and were very typical of their kind. They were making "the grand tour" for the sake of the husband's health. Poor fellow! he had been forty years at his business with never a holiday or even a "day off," and he had, in consequence, lost all his hair, so that he now wore a luxuriant black wig. His wife informed us in a cheerful manner that "the medical men said he'd go silly if he stayed at his desk much longer, so they'd now come away for a year's holiday, and had left the son-in-law to manage the 'business.' They'd come out, bound to see everything. There was nothing they were going to shirk now that they were over in Eu-rope." The husband was a bright, eager little man, with sharp, beady eyes. Except for the effect of his wig, he looked remarkably youthful. He was enraptured with Switzerland. They had just left Interlaken. "We've seen the Jung-fraw," he said. "Mont Blank can hardly beat that." They had only half a day to spare So it is worth while to go to Chamonix for Chamonix, and were going on by the in May if only for once in a lifetime Tête Noire in the afternoon. So, in the to feel "monarch of all one surveys." morning, they went out for a five minutes' But there is another and stronger induce- walk. "We've seen it," said husband and ment. All nature is then at her best. wife triumphantly, coming back. So ChaThe low-lying pastures are not burnt up monix was ticked off from the list, and by the sun's rays; the cascades are more they wended their way further. "For abundant; the air is clearer; the freshly these good people," we thought, even fallen snow gleams more brightly; while the grand new elevator railroad up the the flowers are innumerable, and the but-Jung-fraw' will be superfluous." The terflies also. The droning hum of the French couple were of a quite different grasshoppers makes a kind of sleepy song, type. The man was an almost exact copy to the accompaniment of "the sound of of" Tartarin," and his wife was a little, fat many waters." It must surely have been woman, who dressed for mountaineering in May or early June that the poet wrote: excursions in the extreme of Parisian fashion. These stayed only two days, and their most formidable excursion was on mules to the Glacier des Bossons. Their "start" on this occasion was very comic. The husband wore an enormous Panama hat, exactly like his wife's, trimmed with a wreath of woollen roses; he got wildly excited, and whacked his poor little mule unmercifully. Two guides, with wild cries, ran after the couple, as their montures tore along with them up the road.

In that thin air the birds are still,
No ringdove murmurs on the hill
Nor mating cushat calls;
But gay cicalas singing sprang,
And waters from the forests sang
The song of waterfalls.

The poor victims of the public schools cannot, of course, get away so early; that is their one privation in exchange for many greater benefits their Polycrates's ring, forfeited to assuage Fate. But those who can do so should take their holiday early. It is true that the early-comers lose

These were our only foreign friends at Chamonix in May. But, foreigners being absent, you have a chance of making