I ask you by our love to promise this that probably no man ever gained so early | before writing this I have not the dimmest and kept so long such high literary rank idea of what really happens. Theodric on the strength of so small a literary per- makes love to two young women, a most formance. In the very year of his reach- reprehensible though not uncommon pracing man's estate the "Pleasures of Hope" tice, and they both die. One is named seated him at once on the treasury bench Constance and the other Julia; and the in the contemporary session of the poets, last lines of Constance's last letter to and unlike most occupants of treasury Theodric are rather pretty. She bids him benches, he was never turned off. Many not despair: far greater poets appeared during the nearly fifty years which passed between that time and his death; but they were greater in perfectly different fashions. That what may be called his official, and what may be called his real titles to his position were not the same, may be very freely granted. But he had real titles. The curious thing is that even the official titles were so very modest in volume. Setting his "Specimens of the British Poets" aside, all his literary work (which is not in itself very large outside the covers of his poems) is as nearly as possible valueless. The poems themselves, the work of a long lifetime, do not fill three hundred small Even when we come to the shorter pages, and those of them which are really poems almost endless exclusions and alworth much, would not, I think, be very lowances have to be made. Campbell has tightly packed in thirty. The " Pleasures left some exceedingly pretty love-songs, of Hope" itself is beyond doubt the best not I think very generally known, the best of that which I should not include. It is of which are "Withdraw not yet those one of the very best school exercises ever Lips and Fingers," and How Delicious written; it has touches which only a is the Winning." But there is no great schoolboy of genius could achieve. But originality about them, and they are such higher than a school exercise it cannot be things as almost any man with a good ear ranked. The other longer poems are far and an extensive knowledge of English below it. "Gertrude of Wyoming" has poetry could write nearly as well. Almost several famous and a smaller number of everything (I think everything) of his that excellent lines; but it is as much of an is really characteristic and really great is artificial conglomerate, and as little of an comprised in the dozen poems as his works original organism as the "Pleasures of are usually arranged (I quote the Aldine Hope," and the choice of the Spenserian Edition) between "O'Connor's Child" and stanza is simply disastrous. "Iberian "The Soldier's Dream," with the addition seemed his boot," -the boot of the hero of the translated song of Hybrias the to the eyes of the heroine. To think that Cretan and, if anybody likes, "The Last a man should, in a stanza consecrated to Man." Even here the non-warlike poems the very quintessence of poetical poetry cannot approach the warlike ones in merit. -a stanza in which, far out of its own The fighting passages of "O'Connor's period and in mid-eighteenth century, Child" itself are much the best. "GleThomson had written the "Castle of In-nara (which by the way ends with a line of dolence," in which, before Campbell's own death, Mr. Tennyson was to write the "Lotus Eaters," deliver himself of the phrase," Iberian seemed his boot!" 66 extraordinary imbecility) is not a very great thing except in the single touch, Each mantle unfolding a dagger displayed. "The Exile of Erin" is again merely pretty, and I should not myself care to preserve a line of "Lord Ullin's Daughter," except the really magnificent phrase, And in the scowl of Heaven each face As a whole the "Lines written on Revisiting a Scene in Argyleshire," with their admirable picture of the forsaken garden, seem to me the best thing Campbell did out of the fighting vein. But in that vein how different a man he was! 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 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, 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 subjects 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 overpowered, 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), 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 immortal three "Hohenlinden," "The Battle of the Baltic," and "Ye Mariners of England." 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 Parker, king of the ballad-mongers of England, that (as a certain kind of critic is never tired of telling us) there is not so much as a vestige of a wild and stormy 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 if you choose. There is not one, at least pick out something to laugh or to cavil at 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 lan 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, (where the last line except with much good will to help it is sheer and utter nonsense) and other things in "The Battle of the Baltic." Moreover the concerted music of its rolling metre is unsurpassed. The triplets of each stanza catch up and carry on the sweep of the fourth line of the preceding in a quite miraculous manner; and that mixed poetic and pictorial touch which has been noted in Campbell appears nowhere so well. Although to me, as to everybody, it has been familiar ever since I was about seven years old, I never can get over my surprise at the effect of so hackneyed a word as "artillery." Indeed I knew a paradoxer once who maintained that this was due to the inspiration which made Campbell prefix "red;" "For," said he, “we are accus tomed to see the Artillery in blue." minor, such as Wolfe of the not undeservedly 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 quite touch Campbell in fire, and though they have never surpassed Drayton in a sort of buoyant and unforced originality which excludes all idea of the mere literary copy of verses. One of the earliest and certainly one of the best of them in this kind (for Peacock's immortal "War Song of Dinas Vawr" is too openly satirical) was Macaulay. I wish I had space here to destroy once for all (it could easily be done to the satisfaction of any compe tent tribunal) the silly prejudice against Macaulay's verse which, as a result of an exaggerated following of the late Mr. Arnold by criticasters, is still, among criticasters, 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, lar 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 66 When the crew with eyes of flame brought the 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. 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 perfectly right note in respect of form "The Island of the Scots "not pass unno- and spirit. There is plenty of excellent ticed here. Lord Tennyson, whose future stuff of the sort in a book which some critics will be at least as much struck affect to despise, Mr. William Morris's by the variety as by the intensity of his "Defence of Guinevere" plenty more poetical talent, is excellent at it. Some in his later work. Charles Kingsley ought otherwise fervent admirers of his are, I to have left us something perfect in the believe, dubious about "The Charge of manner, and though he never exactly did, the Light Brigade;" I have myself no "The Last Buccaneer," that excellent doubt whatever, though it is unequal. ballad where 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 They wrestled up, they wrestled down, the opening of Evil sped the battle-play 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 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 au guage can show anything at all approach- GEORGE SAINTSBURY. The fact is, that every one goes to the Alps too late or too early. The perfect months are May (running on into June) and October (counting in a little of September); and of the two May is the more perfect. True, the weather is then a little uncertain; but, in August also, the weather can be bad, and when it is bad it is very bad. True, also, the "Alpine rose" is not yet in bloom. But, if there is none of its "rubied fire," neither is there any crowd of vulgarians to put it out. Mr. Ruskin describes somewhere how he was staying once at the Montanvert to paint Alpine roses, and had fixed upon a faultless bloom beneath a cirque of rock, high enough, as he hoped, to guard it from rude eyes and plucking hands. But he counted without the tourist horde. Down they swooped upon his chosen bed; "threw themselves into it, rolled over and over in it, shrieked, hallooed, and fought in it, trampled it down, and tore it up by the roots; breathless at last, with rapture of ravage, they fixed the brightest of the remnant blossoms of it in their caps, and went on their way rejoic ing." That, of course, must have been in August. In May, the less flaunting Alpine flowers, the verdure, the clear atmosphere 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 |