ESSAY ON DE VERE'S POEMS.

(First published in 1843, incorporated with one first published in 1864.)

Ir was once observed in conversation by the eldest of our living poets * that there is in the poetry of the young a charm of youthfulness which, however far it may be from compensating for youth's imperfections, is still not to be met with in the poetical products of the maturer mind. It may be added that there is also a knowledge to be derived from the poetry of a rising generation which other poetry cannot yield. We know from the general cast and character of it what spirit is abroad amongst our literary and meditative youth-amongst the many who, though not gifted with any poetical utterance of their own, are nevertheless one in spirit with those who are. And this is an important class to be acquainted with for those who would look a little before them and anticipate the flower and the fruit which this

* Wordsworth, living in 1843.

bud of poetry may seem to promise-the influence over literature and society likely to be exercised by the spirit which dictates this poetry when it shall have passed on to maturity.

Those who have thought it worth while to observe the nascent poetical spirit of the last few years will have perceived that it is very different from that which ruled the poetical youth of twenty years ago. At that period there was not only a want of moral and spiritual truth in our juvenile poetry, but also an absence of moral and spiritual doctrine, whether true or false. There seemed to be no consciousness on the part of the aspirant that either his reader or himself was to have any share in the higher interests or the deeper nature of man. Superficial beauty and sentimental passion filled up the circle of his aims: the Thalassian Venus did not, according to the apologue, bring him to the Uranian; and invoking the former deity only, she heard him according to her kind; she " gave him his desire and sent a leanness into his soul withal." These effeminacies, if not altogether extinct, have at all events ceased to be the prevailing characteristic. The sorry sensibilities of twenty years ago have given place to higher moods and worthier endeavours

"For now 'tis stale to sigh, to weep and groan,
So woe hath wearied woe, moan tired moan. ""*

Middle age has overtaken the aspirants who had nothing

to show us but the complexion of youth; and from the juvenile poets who are succeeding to them, perhaps the last thing that we should look for is the merely erotic effusion, the love-elegy, or

66 serenate which the starved lover sings

To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain."*

A love of the unearthly is what takes its place in Mr. de Vere's earliest poetry, and especially in "The Fall of Rora," of which, though the volume in which it was published has been suppressed, some portions are republished now :—

"There was silence in the heavens

When the Son of Man was led
From the Garden to the Judgment;
Sudden silence, strange and dread!
All along the empyreal coasts
On their knees the immortal hosts
Watched with sad and wondering eyes
That tremendous sacrifice.

"There was silence in the heavens

When the priest his garment tore :

Silence when that twain accursed

Their false witness faintly bore.

Silence (though a tremor crept

O'er their ranks) the Angels kept

While that judge, dismayed though proud,

Washed his hands before the crowd."

These are the first two stanzas of an ode which takes itself off the earth altogether; but other poems

* Milton.

of this earlier date remind us of those old works of the sister art, which are divided into two compartments-one terrestrial, the other celestial-the one representing the solid earth and certain of her sons and daughters with faces upturned-the other representing the firmament with groups of glorified spirits which wing the air or tread the clouds. Neither in Mr. de Vere's poems, nor in those of any other poet, nor in the paintings, is it possible to be entirely satisfied with the upper or celestial compartments. Milton may be called up to confront this contention; but even he, though rising with a glory round his head, will be incompetent to confute.it. His great work is a continued struggle with insuperable difficulties, and the victory gained is a victory, not over the difficulties, but independently of them—a victory in which the faults of the design stand out unsubdued in the execution; and the triumphs achieved are those of unrivalled powers of intellect, diction, and rhythm, affording a thousand compensations for the faults, but not in any degree abating, not even disguising them. Admire and applaud as we may, we cannot but be painfully sensible, as often as the supernatural agencies occur, that the artist has set out in a fallacious plane and elevation from the first; and that in mounting the flying steed and presuming into the Heaven of Heavens, he has unduly slighted the warning to which he himself alludes, and has in sad truth "fallen on the Aleian field, erroneous there to wander." And the more relief and

delight we find in the parts of the poem which are bound "within the visible diurnal sphere," and the more we find of surpassing excellence in the discursive and collateral passages, the more we lament the error of the poet in adopting a scheme so utterly impracticable,-exalting our imagination at the outset only to abase it as we proceed —a scheme of such celestial dignity in its aim and scope that every detail is in derogation of it and every realization felt to be false to the ideal. The example of the 'Paradise Lost,' is no evidence therefore of the claim of supernatural machinery to be admitted as a principal constituent into the highest works of art; and it may be said of its author, as Lord Bacon has said of the alchemist,* that he has endowed mankind with great treasures of invention, disclosed incidentally and obiter, whilst prosecuting a project which it was not in human art to accomplish.

But if it be asked whether to refuse to art in its highest efforts every glimpse of an excursion, however rapid and transitory, beyond the borders of nature, the answer is that there is a region beyond those borders, seen as through a glass darkly, into which art in its highest moods may well be allowed to deviate, provided there be no notion indulged of dwelling in it, describing it, and making it cognizable by the senses. There are supernatural agencies of a spiritual kind, which, in the way of occasional visitations, the highest art may well be *Novum Organum,' i. 85.