116

THE POETS-BURNS.

[1784-1820.

that of an excise-gauger." We turn from the "base ephemera" of past journalism to Robert Burns "the excise-gauger," the greatest name in that era of our literature that immediately preceded the French Revolution.

From the first publication in 1786 of a volume of Poems, chiefly in the Scottish dialect, by Robert Burns, which was printed in the town of Kilmarnock, Scotland felt that a great spirit had arisen to shed a new lustre on the popular language and literature. The immediate and widespreading reputation of Burns was produced by something much higher than the wonderment that an unlettered ploughman should have been able to produce verses not only of such commanding strength, but of such unlaboured refinement. The Scottish dialect which, to a certain extent, was almost obsolete for the purposes of literature, became, in the bands of this peasant, the vehicle of thoughts and descriptions which, whether impassioned or humorous, tender or satirical, received a new charm from the simplicity of the language whose ordinary use was vulgarized by the illiterate. Burns had not the creative power of the highest order of poets; but in describing his own emotions with a warmth equal to the energy with which he plunged into his loves or friendships; in delineating with the frankest unreserve the errors from which his manly sense and his natural veneration for what is of good report could not preserve him; in painting with the most admirable truth the appearances of nature or the social characteristics which presented themselves to his observation,-few poets have approached him. In his occasional impurities of thought and diction, which were the outbreak of a reckless levity, we always see a noble nature beneath the display of the wildest licence. The mode in which Burns "unlocked his heart" has nothing in it of that inordinate self-love which exhibits itself in touches of glaring vanity or affected modesty, each intended to challenge admiration. In his manly pride there is no peevish misanthropy. In his violations of decorum there is no desire to make proselytes to immorality. The egotism of Burns may be compared with the egotism of the most popular English poet of the succeeding generation. In the morbid introspection and the capricious hatreds of one who "woke one morning and found himself famous," we look in vain for the innate nobleness of character of the rustic, who, having gone from his plough to become the spoiled child of Edinburgh society, fell afterwards into habits of intemperance, and yet, in the grossest errors of his life, never exhibited a mean spirit. What Burns produced under all the disadvantages of imperfect education, of continuous labour, of uncongenial employment, of corrupting society, made him emphatically the national poet of Scotland in the twelve years which were allotted to his life after his first publication. It has been affirmed-and we are not disposed to question the truth of the opinion-that the influence of Burns upon the popular mind of Scotland "has been all for good, enlarging, elevating, and refining the national heart, as well as awakening it. The tendency of some things, both in the character of the people and their peculiar institutions, required such a check or counteraction as was supplied by this frank, generous, reckless poetry."

Whilst Scotland is producing her Burns, whose inspiration was the bracing air of his own rivers and hills, and whose imagery was derived from the

• Craik, "English Literature," vol. ii. p. 424.

1784-1820.]

THE POETS-DARWIN.

117

living or inanimate nature around him, England has her Darwin, who deemed
it the office of a poet to penetrate beneath the surface of natural appearances,
and to exhibit the mysteries of physiology in sonorous rhyme. The physician
of Derby is almost forgotten. "The Loves of the Plants" are less popularly
known than Canning's imitation, "The Loves of the Triangles." The attempt
of Darwin to marry Science to Poetry was the mistake of a man of real talent
and knowledge. The material spirit of his age pressed heavily upon him.
The applications of scientific discovery to the great works of industry filled his
fancy with incongruous imagery. He saw in Physics a world of grandeur
and beauty not yet appropriated by Imagination; and he contrived that
unnatural alliance of Fact and Fiction which, however admired in his own
day, has made his analogies and similes now appear simply ludicrous. The
fantastic machinery by which he attempts to connect the laws of vegetable
and animal life, and the operations of art, with the presence of invisible
beings, is to make the sylphs, which hovered round Pope's Belinda in their
tricksy beauty, very poor substitutes, in Darwin's hard unrealities, for human
interests. Poetry has better materials to work upon, even in the mortal
toilers by the side of the steam-engine, than the "Nymphs," who "in
simmering cauldrons played." Darwin is poetical when he becomes prophetic :
"Soon shall thy arm, unconquered Steam, afar
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car.'

The prophecy is accomplished. But steam has another work to do:

"Or, on wide waving wings expanded bear
The flying chariot through the fields of air."

The specific levity of air, he explains, being too great for the support of great burdens by balloons, "there seems no probable method of flying conveniently, but by the powers of steam, or some other explosive material, which another half-century may probably discover." The aërial journey in the steam-car is to be not only safe but joyous; there will probably be an intended emigration to the moon, when

66

"Fair crews triumphant, leaning from above,

Shall wave their fluttering kerchiefs as they move."

A poetical revolution was at hand. A little before the beginning of the convulsions of France, and during the first year or two of the war, there was a swarm of gaudy insects fluttering in the sunshine of fashion, whose painted wings, bearing them from flower to flower, were more admired than the ample pinion" of the true Poet. This school, called Della Cruscan, originated with an English coterie at Florence. The sonnets, canzonets, elegies, epigrams, epistles of the Anna Matildas, Laura-Marias, Orlandos, Cesarios, were long poured out unceasingly. William Gifford, who destroyed the tribe by his "Baviad" and his "Mæviad," says "the epidemic malady was spreading from fool to fool;" and " from one end of the kingdom to another all was nonsense and Della Crusca." Gifford not improperly lauds the work which he had done in clearing the gardens of the Hesperides from this deadly blight. "Pope and Milton resumed their superiority." He might have added that he did something to make room for another school,-for Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey. In spite of the "This will never do" of the great

t

118

THE POETS-WORDSWORTH-SOUTHEY-COLERIDGE.

[1784-1820. northern critic, the Lake School, so called, which this illustrious trio founded, has survived, and will survive.

If the estimates of writers by their contemporaries are not always true, they are at least curious as illustrations of the prevailing taste. In 1809 there appeared a satire, by an anonymous author, entitled "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." Some of this early production of Lord Byron is personal spite, and much is false criticism. In after years he suppressed the poem, having moderated his anger and matured his judgment. Yet, if the poetical critic had not, to some extent, reflected the popular opinion, he would not have described "the simple Wordsworth,"

"Who, both by precept and example, shows

That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose ;”

nor characterized "gentle Coleridge "

"To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear."

Southey comes off better:

"Let Southey sing, although his teeming muse,
Prolific every spring, be too profuse."

It may be consolatory to neglected poets to know, that the two greatest of the Lake Poets have won their freshest laurels from a generation that succeeded the doubters and scoffers of their early period. It was not merely the dull and the acrimonious who spoke slightingly of Wordsworth and Coleridge, even as recently as 1811. Leigh Hunt, in most cases a generous critic, in his "Feast of the Poets" makes Apollo look pleased upon "Bob Southey;" but Apollo "turned without even a look" for the " three or four others " who had entered with him:

"For Coleridge had vexed him long since, I suppose,
By his idling, and gabbling, and muddling in prose;
And as to that Wordsworth! he'd been so benurst,
Second childhood with him had come close on the first."*

Apollo having cried, "Laurels for four," the honoured guests of the God are Campbell, Southey, Scott, and Moore. Crabbe is to be recreated "down

stairs :"

"And let him have part of what goes from the table."

Wordsworth had appeared as a writer of verse in 1793. The first volume of the "Lyrical Ballads" was published in 1798. In the second volume, published in 1800, he was associated with Coleridge. Of "Joan of Arc," the first poem. which Southey gave to the world, in 1796, a portion was contributed by Coleridge. The relative value of the three friends, as poets, has been somewhat differently adjudged in the present time from the early estimate of their peculiar powers. Southey, the most voluminous, is now little read, and has certainly not produced an enduring influence upon our poetical literature. Coleridge, who, of the trio, has written the smaller amount of verse, is generally held to be the most exquisite artist, although least fitted to be popular. Wordsworthdescribed by Hazlitt as the most original poet living; but one whose writings were not read by the vulgar, not understood by the learned, despised by the

* We quote from the first edition of this clever poem, published in "The Reflector."

1784-1820.]

THE POETS-SCOTT.

119

great, and ridiculed by the fashionable-lived to see his writings universally read by learned, great, fashionable, and even "the vulgar." "the vulgar." His power was slowly won, but it was enduring; for he looked beyond the classes that were once deemed to be alone sufficiently elevated for the purposes of didactic or descriptive verse. The great objection to his writings was, "the wilfulness. with which he persists in choosing his examples of intellectual dignity and tenderness exclusively from the lowest ranks of society." The Edinburgh Reviewer wanted Mr. Wordsworth, "instead of confining himself almost entirely to the society of the dale-men, and cottagers, and little children, who form the subjects of his book, to condescend to mingle a little more with the people who were to read and judge of it."* The poet had his reward in the fact that the exceptional class of the lower ranks became his readers and admirers. He survived till the era of diffused education.

It was the complaint of the author of " English Bards," that a new reading public had arisen to buy books according to their own tastes.

"Each country book-club bows the knee to Baal,

And, hurling lawful genius from the throne,

Erects a shrine and idol of its own."

It was a grievance, that out of this new demand authors were to be paid at a rate far beyond that of the exclusive periods of the commerce of literature. For this was Byron indignant in his days of innocence, when he could spurn Scott as "Apollo's venal son," deeming it a sin against the dignity of verse that the booksellers had agreed to pay for " Marmion" at the rate of "halfa-crown a line." In a year or two Byron was as greedy a worshipper of "stern Mammon as any "hireling bard." The Circulating Library and the Book Club had, to some extent, superseded the comparatively small number of private book-buyers. To this more numerous body of readers did the publishers of "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," of "Marmion," of "The Lady of the Lake," and of Scott's other romances in verse, address themselves, when they reprinted his inconveniently splendid and dear quartos in more modest and cheaper octavos. "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" was published in 1805, and "Marmion" in 1808. Byron designated these poems as stale romance." With them commenced the new era of narrative poetry, which has almost wholly superseded the merely didactic and descriptive orders of verse, and which is not incompatible with the most refined and most subtle revelations of poetical feeling. Never was a greater mistake than the designation of Scott's narrative poems as "stale romance." He had the most ample knowledge of all the romances of chivalry, and especially of the legendary lore of his native land. His critical devotion to this most seductive of the pursuits of antiquarianism was exhibited in his "Minstrelsy of the Scottish. Border," originally published in 1802 and 1803. The young Edinburgh Advocate had previously cultivated an acquaintance with the Literature of Germany, of which new well of thought and diction other poets were drinking so freely. But he saw at home a waste ground of imagination ready for his profitable culture. The quaint and sometimes tedious simplicity of the old romance was to be superseded by a rush of easy and glowing narrative which the imperfectly cultivated mind could enjoy; and of which

Jeffrey's "Essays," vol. ii. p. 508.

120

THE POETS-BYRON.

[1784-1820. the critical faculty could scarcely deny the charm, however it might sneer at mountain spirits and river sprites, the goblin page and the wizard's grave. There are two critical notices of Scott's Poems, reprinted in juxta-position by their accomplished author, which sufficiently indicate the triumphs which Scott had achieved in a few years. That on "The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” written in 1805, concludes thus: "The locality of the subject is likely to obstruct its popularity; and the author, by confining himself in a great measure to the description of manners and personal adventures, has forfeited the attraction which might have been derived from the delineation of rural scenery." The critique on "The Lady of the Lake," written in 1810, opens thus: "Mr. Scott, though living in an age remarkably prolific of original poetry, has manifestly outstripped all his competitors in the race of popularity, and stands already upon a height to which no other writer has attained in the memory of any one now alive." +

The popularity of Walter Scott as a narrative poet was equalled, if not exceeded, by that of lord Byron, when he reluctantly turned from satire and the comparatively tame Cantos I. and II. of " Childe Harold," to write verse Romances, of which the scenes were Oriental, and the heroes were modelled from his own likeness. Byron was almost universally held as the first of living poets. There were some, it is true, who doubted the reasonableness of the universal homage; some who ascribed his extraordinary fame to causes of a more temporary and artificial nature than the power of his genius; who thought that the multiplication of his own portrait was no indication of a real knowledge of the human heart; who upheld the faith that a truly great poet could not be impressed with the grandeur and beauty of the external world without an abiding sense of the Creator's presence, nor could survey mankind in the spirit of an insane contempt of his country, and of malignant hatred of classes and individuals amongst whom he had lived. In the poem which, considered in a merely literary point of view, is his greatest production, " Don Juan" is the intensification of the sensual attributes of the poet's own character, dressed up with marvellous ability for no other end than to dazzle and corrupt. A higher taste, and a more prevalent sense of decency, has done more to consign this poem to partial neglect than Lord Eldon's refusal to give it the protection of the law of copyright. One of the most popular of our living novelists has depicted an East Indian officer, who, having returned, after long absence to his native country, quite unfamiliar with the more recent judgments of English society on matters of literature, is scandalized at the critical opinions of his son's friends-opinions which were not of Colonel Newcome's time. What! Lord Byron not one of the greatest poets of the world! Sir Walter a poet of the second order! That reverence for Mr. Wordsworth, what did it mean? Mr. Keats, and the young Mr. Tennyson of Cambridge, the chief of modern poets! Such were the mutations of opinion between the last years of King George III. and the first years of Queen Victoria.

Whilst Byron was in the full blaze of his reputation, and Wordsworth was slowly establishing an enduring influence upon the popular mind, two young poets appeared, who, for a time, had to endure as much obloquy and