been shown that their gains must have makes your laws." So remote is the highest been enormous ever since the outbreak of order of poetry from ordinary comprehenthe cattle plague; and if wholesome, palat- sion that many years often pass before a able meat can be brought into competition, great poet obtains his just meed of praise. they must choose between losing custom Shelley and Tennyson endured a long peand abating their profits. Mr. Morgan's riod of neglect and contempt before the process will be of use to many who now transcendent beauty of their writing was have to forego meat from reluctance or generally admitted. Wordsworth, with a inability to pay the price demanded. But sage's calm, saw his deep, true, delicate corn beef would not drive butchers' meat thoughts ridiculed as childish by critics who out of the field, and while butchers' meat recognised them as poetry and philosophy has an undisturbed monopoly we are neces- in one when others had let them into the sarily in the hands of the butchers. We secret. Dante, it is true, rose at once into may look to the South American market as the meridian of his fame through the length giving us a chance of rescue from our and breadth of Italy; but there were pecutradesmen, and as opening up a prospect liar circumstances which accounted for this of food for our poorer classes. apotheosis. Generally speaking, the poetry which is destined to live is not appreciated at its birth; it makes its merits known by force, and is immortal because it is not written for the day. Perhaps it would never be understood at all, and certainly not by the majority of readers, if it were not for the minor poets who dilute it and lead up to it. "He strides on so far before you, that he dwindles in the distance," said Coleridge in speaking of Wordsworth to his friend Mackintosh. It is thus with a truly original poet, his very greatness makes him appear small. Eschylus was exiled by his contemporaries, and he inscribed on his poems this indignant dedication — " To Time." Nor did he dedicate in vain. Time avenged him. After his death, Lycurgus decreed him a statue, and Athens raised it; rhapsodists chanted his verses in the festivals with branches of myrtle in their hands. Minor poets had taught the people his merits; they had imitated the Inimitable, and quaffed in their measure at the fountain of inspiration. From the London Review. THE USES OF MINOR POETS. NOTHING is more common than to hear it said: "Poetry must be first rate or it is nothing minor poets are major nuisances: the verses in magazines are but a grade above the poet's corner of a county paper. Such melody has no sweetness and no use. It is but a prostituted ream,' to use Byron's language in reference to Cottle's 'Alfred'; it "May bind a book, may line a box, May serve to curl a maiden's locks;' but that is all it is good for." Now, with these sentiments we do not quite agree. In the social, as in the natural and scientific, In an elegant little poem called "The world, all things are nicely graduated, Flower," the author of "Enoch Arden" has without gaps or breaks. The minor poets described the process by which inferior fill a space necessary for the completeness poets disseminate the best poetry. He tells of society. The music and colouring, the us what they have done with his. He cast fragrance and flavour, of poetry are intended a seed in the ground in a golden hour, and to temper all that is prosaic in the life of a it sprang up the glory of his garden. Some large mass of mankind who are unable to called it a weed some cursed him and his appreciate the higher productions of genius. flower. By night, thieves stole the seed; It often happens that nature has given the they sowed it far and wide, till the cry of uneducated or ill-educated sufficient taste all the people was, "Splendid is the flower." for poetry to throw a charm over their exist- Most can raise it now, for all have the seed. ence and excite in them the tenderest emo And why so? Because those minor poets tions. But the verse which thus affects - beneficent thieves stole it, and scatterthem must be of a simple order a balladed the precious dust abroad with every wind. or a hymn, a snatch of border minstrelsy, or One thief pilfers traits of character from a rude melody innocent of choice language Shakspeare, and another bits of epic grandeur or subtlety of thought. Of such composi- from Milton. Spenser is rifled for allegory; tions it was said: "Give me the making of Pope for point and polish. Mellifluous wisyour popular ballads, and I care not whodom is filched from Cowper, and homely FOURTH SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. III. 36. narrative in verse from Crabbe. The love | Shelley's House at Lerici." To suppose of nature in detail is imbibed from the Lake that such flowers are "born to blush unseen, poets; ideality from Shelley; the poetry of and waste their sweetness on the desert air," love from Moore, of passion from Byron; is contrary to the law of nature which perthe metrical romance from Scott; and the mits neither void nor loss. Even the gentle, resolute avoidance of commonplace from the musical mediocrity of Rosamond Hervey, in Laureate himself. But the robbers are ben her "Duke Ernest and other Poems," is efactors, extracting the several sweets to pleasing. It is Mrs. Hemans reproduced to make honey for general use. a disadvantage; just as Pollock's "Course of Time" is a reproduction of Milton, and the dramas of Alfieri an imitation of Sophocles. We praise the old poets, but for the most part we do not read them. “The manner and the taste change," as Barry Cornwall says. "The armour and falchion of old give place to the new weapons of modern warfare; less weighty, but perhaps as trenchant." Thus the great poets of former days have a twofold immortality. They live in their own writings, and also in the verses of those who unconsciously imitate them by imbibing their ideas and catching their tone. It is worthy of remark, also, that minor poets sometimes rise above themselves, and produce stanzas which perpetuate their fame. The most beautiful collection of poems by various authors ever made in this country is Mr. Palgrave's "Golden Treasury." But in looking through this little volume, and the four epochs into which it is divided, one cannot but be struck by the large number of poets on whose works the editor has drawn. They are no fewer than seventyfour, and of these many, very many, are of inferior order; yet all the poems selected are of the best description. They are not merely specimens of the writings of poets of different epochs, but each one has "a living interest for all time." Addison, Goldsmith, Chatterton, Wolfe, Hogg, Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, and William Cullen Bryant, were all, we suppose, second-rate poets; yet now and then they climbed the heights and sported on the crags, It is not merely, however, to minds of ordinary calibre that such social bees are of use. Their cells are often sought and prized by persons of the most refined understanding and by original poets themselves. Cowper was certainly not a poet of the highest order, yet he was at one time the most popular of English poets then living, and afforded pleasure to the liveliest intellects. Watts and Keble have taken deep hold of the public mind, though they linger midway on the slopes of Parnassus. Many a scholar and poet remembers their lines years after he has forgotten the finest passages of English classics. The proud Byron delighted in Falconer's "Shipwreck," and thought "The Island" the best poem he himself had written. Charles Lamb's admiration of Sir Philip Sidney ran high, and Addison, no less than Ben Jonson, was a professed admirer of "Chevy Chase." Every poetaster has, it may be hoped, his circle of friends, who will read his verses because they are his, and, mediocre as they may be, some true and beautiful thoughts are sure to be found in them; and what are truisms and commonplaces to the learned come often with the power and freshness of revelations to less cultivated minds. Nothing tends more to give precision to a man's thoughts and ease to his diction than the habit of writing verses; and the medium poet, therefore, who is "nine months gone with a volume of odes" must not be considered useless to society. While improving himself, he is, in fact, doing good to others. Poetry is the mirror of the age in which it is written; it reflects the customs of the time, and the culture also. Hence the poems which in one generation are first-rate, would in another be second, and vice versâ. We are far from thinking lightly of modern" When all Thy mercies, oh, my God," Magazine poetry. We discover in it great merit, striking thought, elegant versification. Mr. Mortimer Collins is sometimes exquisite; Fraser's verses are almost always well selected; the Argosy is freighted with gems; and Blackwood has many masterpieces of witty rhyme. Buchanan's "London Poems" are charming; Blanchard Jerrold is clever and touching; and Aubrey de Vere has outdone himself in his "Lines written on "Qua Parnassia rupes Hinc atque hinc patula præpandit cornua fronte Castaliæque sonans liquido pede labitnr unda.” "The Hermit," "Resignation," "Lines on the Death of Sir John Moore," "Bird of the Wilderness," "Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni," "The Grasshopper and the Cricket," and "The Water-fowl," are all (in the order of the above names) monuments of the writers' poetical ability and usefulness to mankind. They are things of beauty, which are "a joy for ever" and whose "loveliness increases." They are not gems of Mr. Palgraves selection, but every lover of poetry has in his own memory a "Golden Treasury" stored with such pieces. It is not by first-rate poets that the love of verse has mainly been diffused and fostered in the United States. Longfellow, indeed, stands high, but feebler bards than he have watered the wastes of human life in America with streams from Helicon. Perhaps at this moment, if we could peer over the shoulder of every reader of poetry, we should find the largest number, though not, of course, the most highly-gifted and cultured, deriving pleasure, instruction, and refined feelings, not from immortal epics and divine tragedies, but from the humbler efforts of minor poets. From the New York Evening Post, Nov. 14. STAND FROM UNDER. THE result of the recent elections begins to show the leaders of the northern democratic party the truth of what the EVENING POST more than once told them during the war, of the inevitable fate of "peace parties." Congress is now settled for three years to come- that is to say, until the 4th of March, 1869. Until then the national legislature is Republican in both branches by a very large majority; and it is certain not to repeal the "test oaths," so-called, unless they should be superseded by the adoption of the Amend ment. The defeat of the democratic party is the most complete it has known. It had the federal patronage to help it; it had all the advantage resulting from divisions among its opponents, and from the vacillating policy of Congress; but in spite of all this, it has been defeated in every northern state, and by such majorities as put not only Congress but every northern state government in the hands of the Republicans. avail any man as a candidate of the federal party. At the election of 1816 they could give their candidate, Rufus King, only the votes of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Delaware. The figures are remarkable. Of two hundred and seventeen votes cast, the Federalists had but thirty four. Of one hundred and seventy-one members chosen to the Fortieth Congress, the present democratic party claim but thirty-three. If the leaders have only as much sense as the old federalists, they will abandon their organization, and merge themselves with the mass of the people, to come forward again under other organizations, formed on other issues, as their merits or their efforts may win anew the public respect and confidence. Such was the result in the case of the old federalists. In the new division of parties which followed the election of John Quincy Adams to the Presidency we find the names of the federal leaders arranged in opposite ranks, and coming forward as candidates or occupants of prominent places, with but slight remembrance of the positions they had occupied during the war. Harrison Gray Otis was elected to Congress in 1817. David Daggett was chosen a judge of the Supreme Court of Connecticut in 1826. Daniel Webster was elected to Congress in 1822, and to the Senate in 1827. James Buchanan was elected to Congress in 1821, senator in 1834, and President in 1856. Not to multiply instances, we may say that democratic men of talents and character might rise again by their merits, just as old federalists did after their party organization was abandoned and forgotten. As an organization, the democratic party had an opportunity directly after the war to obtain forgiveness for its past offences and regain the confidence of the people. To do this it should have made itself the party of constitutional progress; the party of equal rights and equal suffrage for all men; the party of law and order everywhere, and of the largest and most comprehensive liberty. The way was open to it, if its The case of the democratic party now leaders had possessed statesmanship enough is, to all practical purposes, the same to take it. The Republican leaders were in which the old federal party found itself timid, hesitating, divided in counsel and after the second war with Great Britain." distracted by the selfish schemes of a few That party, including in its ranks a large energetic men among them. Their misproportion of the educated and wealthy takes left open to the democratic leaders classes, took the unpopular side against the opportunity to seize upon a true and the war of 1812, and found, on the bold policy of the utmost freedom and return of peace, that the blunder was irre- security to all. They should have demandparable. No amount of talent, experience, ed the strict and rigorous punishment, public service, or tried patriotism, could according to the laws of the land, of the leading traitors, the hanging of a certain | irretrievably mired. Instead of wooing number, and the indictment of all the oth- the people, they courted the President; iner leaders, so as to drive them from the stead of defending liberty, they made haste country; the establishment of equal civil to range themselves on the side of conrights for all, in every part of the country; quered and subjugated privilege; they and the conferring of equal suffrage, as its seized every occasion to show their hatred party platform in every state. They should for the freedmen, their devotion to the have shown themselves the most zealous rebel leaders, their contempt for liberty and and vigilant friends of the oppressed race equal rights, and their zealous desire to rein the South; they should have imperi- establish in the southern states the dominion ously demanded peace and the strictest of a set of politicians whose rule had observance of law and order, and respect brought only ruin upon the southern peofor liberty and for the rights of all, from the ple. southern leaders. In short, the democratic party should have shown itself the real, bold, and vigorous party of progress in the country. It was only by such an aggressive and decided policy as this that they could hope to regain the confidence of the people, which they had lost during the war, and by their blunders before the war. If they had been wise, they would have looked for their allies among the victors, and not among the vanquished; they would have seen that a new era had begun in our politics, that the old stratagems and alliances would no longer succeed; and that a people who had conquered peace, would resent a disturbance of the peace by a renewal of the intrigues between the northern democratic leaders and the southern rebel leaders. On the other hand, they ought to have foreseen that for them to become the standard-bearers of the largest and most equal liberty would itself have convinced the southern leaders that liberty was the order of the day; that to struggle longer against the tide was useless, and that their interest and duty lay in one direction- the speediest and most thorough acceptance of the situation. Thus, had the democratic leaders been wise enough, they had it in their power to confer a real service upon the country, by stifling forever the hopes of the southern leaders; and at the same time to reinstate themselves in power as the leaders of the nation. But they are only a sorry set of blunderheads, who, as soon as the war was over, returned to their stale old tricks, and knew no better than to excite the ambitious passions and hopes of the southern men, and the fears of the northern people, by a scheme for the renewal of the old alliance which had so long misruled the country, and at last brought upon it civil war. They had not even the poor wit to wait and see "how the cat would jump." They jumped themselves, in great haste, and are now, as they richly deserve to be, With such men, so given over to idols which, if they ever had sound life, are now dead and rotten, the country can and ought to have nothing to do. They have had every opportunity for repentance; and they have deliberately rejected all chances. As an organization they have become contemptible as well as hateful to the people, who see that these men would if they could revive all the old wrongs of slavery, and reinstate in power over the nation the very assassins who attempted the nation's life. Whatever good the democratic party might have done had its leaders been wise, must now be achieved in some other way, and by some other organization. From the democratic party no service can be expected; its leaders will probably go on for another quarter-century to come, maundering about a southern alliance, faithfully re-electing the Woods, Seymours and Pendletons; and opposing with all their feebleness every measure of right, justice, liberty and progress -until some day in the next century they wake up, like the good Rip Van Winkle, and discover that there has been a war. From the Examiner. Notes on Poems and Reviews. By Algernon Charles Swinburne. Hotten. MR. SWINBURNE here speaks for himself without personality of any kind, but with much general expression of a scorn which the small critics, in whose eyes he is filthy and a blasphemer, have fairly brought down on themselves. It is to be regretted that a young poet from whom much is to be hoped should be thus forced into explanations that can only humiliate those by whom they were required. Two of Mr. Swinburne's poems have been 66 said to be " especially horrible." Of one | base and degrade them into a viler form. No of them, Anactoria, he writes: one can feel more deeply than I do the inadequacy of my work. That is not Sappho," a I could only reply, "It friend said once to me. is as near as I can come: and no man can come close to her." Her remaining verses are the supreme success, the final achievement, of the poetic art. In this poem I have simply expressed, or tried to express, that violence of affection between one and another which hardens into rage and deepens into despair. The key-note which I have here touched was struck long since by Sappho. We in England are taught, are compelled under penalties to learn, to construe, and to repeat, as schoolboys, the imperishable and incomparable verses of that supreme poet; and I at least am grateful for the training. I have wished, and I have even ventured to hope, that I might be in time competent to translate into a baser and later language the divine words which even when a boy I could not but recognize as divine. That hope, if indeed I dared ever entertain such a hope, I soon found fallacious. To translate the two odes and the remaining fragments of Sappho is the one impossible task; and as witness of this I will call up one of the greatest among poets. Catullus "translated" or as his countrymen would now say "traduced ". the Ode to Anactoria - Eis 'Epwpévav: a more beautiful translation there never was and will never be; but compared with the Greek, it is colourless and bloodless, puffed out by additions and enfeebled by alterations. Let any one set against each other the two first stanzas, Latin and Greek, and pronounce. (This would be too much to ask of all of my critics; but some among the journalists of England may be capable of achieving the not exorbitant task.) Where Catullus failed I could not hope to succeed; I tried instead to reproduce in a diluted and dilated form the spirit of a poem which could not be reproduced in the body. But this, it may be, is not to the point. I will try to draw thither; though the descent is immeasurable from Sappho's verse to mine, or to any man's. I have striven to cast my spirit into the mould of hers, to express and represent not the poem but the poet. I did not think it requisite to disfigure the page with a footnote wherever I had fallen back upon the origi nal text. Here and there, I need not say, I have rendered into English the very words of Sappho. I have tried also to work into words of my own some expression of their effects: to bear witness how, more than any other's, her verses strike and sting the memory in lonely places, or at sea, among all loftier sights and sounds - how they seem akin to fire and air, being themselves "all air and fire; " other ele ments there is none in them. As to the angry appeal against the supreme mystery of oppressive heaven, which I have ventured to put into her mouth at that point only where pleasure culminates in pain, affection in anger, and desire in despair- as to the "blasphemies" * against God or Gods of which here and elsewhere I stand accused, they are to be taken as the first outcome or outburst of foiled and fruitless passion recoiling on itself. After this, the spirit finds time to breathe and repose above all vexed senses of the weary body, all bitter labours of the revolted soul; the poet's pride of place is resumed, the lofty conscience of invincible immortality in the memories and the mouths of men. What is there now of horrible in this? the expressions of fierce fondness, the ardours of Now, the ode Els 'Epwuévav-the "Ode to Anactoria" (as it is named by tradition) the Poem which English boys have to get by heart-the poem (and this is more important) which has in the whole world of verse no com panion and no rival but the Ode to Aphrodite, has been twice at least translated or "traduced." I am not aware that Mr. Ambrose Phillips, or M. Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, was ever im peached before any jury of moralists for his sufficiently grievous offence. By any jury of * As I shall not return to this charge of "blasphepoets both would assuredly have been convict- my," I will here cite notable instance of what does seem permissible in that line to the English reader. ed. Now, what they did I have not done. To (I need not say that I do not question the right, the best (and bad is the best) of their ability, which hypocrisy and servility would deny, of author they have done into " bad French and bad and publisher to express and produce what they please, I do not deprecate, but demand for all men English the very words of Sappho. Feeling freedom to speak and freedom to hear. It is the that although I might do it better I could not line of demarcation which admits, if offence there. do it well, I abandoned the idea of translation be, the greater offender and rejects the less-it is – ἔκων αέκοντί γε θυμῷ. I tried, then, to this that I do not understand.) After many alternate curses and denials of God, a great poet talks. write some paraphrase of the fragment which of Christ veiling his horrible Godhead," of his. the Fates and the Christians have spared us. malignant soul," his "godlike malice," Shelley I have not said, as Boileau and Phillips have, outlived all this and much more; but Shelley Will no Society that the speaker sweats and swoons at sight of wrote all this and much more. for the Suppression of Common Sense-no Com. her favourite by the side of a man. I have ab- mittee for the Propagation of Cant-see to it a stained from touching on such details, for this little? or have they not already tried their hands at reason that I felt myself incompetent to givee words above quoted continues at this day to. it and broken down? For the poem which contains adequate expression in English to the literal and bring credit and profit to its publishers-Messrs.. absolute words of Sappho; and would not de-Moxon and Co. |