improvised, on one indignant impulse after another, but there is always, as in a Dutch picture, atmosphere. The actual 'Corn-Law Rhymes,' after which Ebenezer Elliott is commonly named, are only fifteen in all, and only one or two of them are among his best work. The song, 'Child, is Thy Father dead?' can be compared with Hood, but just fails to touch us so much or so completely to satisfy the ear. The 'Battle Song' has justly found its way into anthologies, though too Byronic in its emphasis for really fine kind of lyric poetry. But there are other pieces, which might be called labour poems, in which there is sometimes a quality that has analogies both with Hood and with Wordsworth; as in the lines called 'Sabbath Morning,' which bring a clear, ringing, exultant melody out of the mere appeal to a 'young mechanic' to go into the open air on a Sunday. "Then let me write for immortality he prayed; and there is an ardour in the honesty of many of his shorter pieces which lifts them out of mere oratory, even when they are concerned with matters of politics, and oddly decorated with words like 'Free Trade. A poem of twelve tiny lines, like that which ends, "Then, the thoughtful look for thunder,' has gnomic weight, like some rhymed saying of the Middle Ages. Thought is hammered by emotion into poetry. The fact is, that he is only concerned with a few great rights and wrongs, and that these temporary names are mere labels for them. His feeling is fierce and swift, and often snatches up a wild open-air poetry as it goes, or drops to a deep, thrilling note, as in the strange poem 'A Shadow,' in which thought shudders on unknown verges. This particular quality is seen at its best in a haunting poem, written on one rhyme, and with the refrain of 'the land which no one knows,' a poem which is marred only by the intrusion of one uncouth, moralising stanza, where the prose of the thought naturally brings with it the single jarring inversion in an otherwise delicately modulated harmony. 'I am sufficiently rewarded,' he said, 'if my poetry has led one poor despairing victim of misrule from the alehouse to the fields'; and the chief quality which goes, in his verse, with a fierce indignant sympathy with the poor is a continual sense of nature, very simply apprehended, and coming to us like the bright refreshing air of English lanes. English landscape is felt as perhaps no one else has quite felt it, for the rest and solace that it can give; so that the last lines which he dictated before dying were a prayer that the autumn primrose and the robin's song might come back to him. There is much in Ebenezer Elliott's work which is merely spasmodic, merely oratorical, merely prose of one kind or another. But his poetical impulse is unquestionable, and there is in it a solid part of individuality, in which tenderness and irony are combined. He can find in 'rain, steam, and speed? not indeed all that Turner found in them, but that 'Streams trade with clouds, seas trade with heaven, And he can concern himself with many subtle riddles, finding poetry in the dark corners of conduct and conscience. Sometimes we are reminded of Donne, sometimes of crabbed and coloured ingenuities of the later Elizabethans, in these strangely assorted compositions. And, in spite of his many earnest purposes, his best verse has an accidental character, comes from and renders a mood, as lyrical verse is rarely allowed to be or seem by poets who are fighters for ideas. WILLIAM NICHOLSON was the son of a Galloway carrier, and he turned pedlar, and had many ups and downs, until, under the advice of Hogg and other good friends, he printed his own poems and took them about in his pack. He went to fairs as singer and piper; then took to drink, and a new gospel, which he wanted to preach to the king; but, coming back unsatisfied, became a drover. Three editions have appeared of his 'Tales in Verse and Miscellaneous Poems'; the first with a preface of his own, the two others with memoirs. There is a rough swing in his verses, and some hearty matter for the rhymes of them. He can turn a phrase sometimes as neatly as this: 'Ilk is in its season sweet; So love is, in its noon.' ANN TAYLOR (1782-1866), AND JANE TAYLOR (1783-1824) 2 THESE sisters both wrote poems of great charm and simplicity for 'infant minds,' which have absorbed and not yet let go such treasures of song as 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,' the most eminent and irresistible of them. Their simple elegance and friendly feeling for the young gave them a more enviable 1 Tales in Verse and Miscellaneous Poems, descriptive of Rural Life and Manners, 1814, 1828, 1878. 'Jane Taylor wrote Essays in Rhyme, 1816; and Contributions of Q. Q., 2 vols. in prose and verse, 1824. Ann Taylor, The Wedding among the Flowers, 1808. Their other books were written together, namely: (1) Original Poems for Infant Minds by Several Young Persons, 1804. (2) Rhymes for the Nursery, 1806. (3) Poetical Works, 1807. (4) Limed Twigs to catch Young Birds, 1808. (5) Hymns for Infant Minds, 1810. (6) Signor Topsy-Turvey's Wonderful Magic Lantern, 1810. (7) Original Hymns for Sunday Schools, 1812. place than that of most of their more florid and famous feminine contemporaries. The talents of Jane were more considerable than those of Ann. She is something what Longfellow would like to have been; but her art is far above his. Look at 'The Squire's Pew,' with its imaginative touches, as where the carven sons and daughters on a tomb kneel devoutly — 'As though they did intend For past omissions to atone By saying endless prayers in stone.' What esprit and good sense and telling rhythm in the poem on Accomplishment,' with its fine ending: 'Then Science distorted, and torn into bits, Art tortur'd, and frighten'd half out of her wits, In portions and patches, some light and some shady, And what technique, what ironical tenderness, in the sketch of the little town, with its gaieties and sorrows, ending with the query, May we not see those faces now? and the answer: "Then hither turn — yon waving grass And mould'ring stones will show; Is it not Wordsworth who is rebuked in these lines: 'Now, let the light of nature-boasting man, Watch the light clouds o'er distant hills that pass, And what neatness in the turn of such a couplet as this! 'And 't is but here and there you may descry REGINALD HEBER, LORD BISHOP OF CALCUTTA (1783-1826) 1 1 It is difficult to see why Bishop Heber had, in his day, a certain reputation. He had a real sense of parody, and some of his rhymes in 'Blue Beard' 'Was your father a wolf? was your nurse an opossum, That your heart does not melt her distresses to view?' anticipate Mr. Gilbert and the 'Bab Ballads.' He wrote doggerel verses in several languages, and translated, in rather an episcopal way, some poems from Eastern sources and six of the odes of Pindar. 'Southey and Pindar,' he said, 'might seem to have drunk at the same source.' He left fragments of various calm attempts at romantic work, and of a 'World before the Flood,' with other biblical narratives, which he completed, in the manner of the time. He also wrote a number of hymns, not nearly as good as Montgomery's, though some of them have remained popular in all the churches. 'From Greenland's Icy Mountains' is not the best, but it is the best known, and can hardly have been forgotten by any one who had heard it sung repeatedly in his youth. I cannot see that there is any resemblance to poetry even in the famous: 'Though every prospect pleases which would have pleased Cowper. Personally I prefer the ballad-like effect of 'God is gone up with a merry noise,' though the remainder is less profane than might be conjectured from the commencement. But I do not see that any of the hymns pass from the condition of hymn to that of poem. 1 1 (1) Palestine, 1807. (2) Poems, 1812. (3) Poetical Works, 1841. |