Chapter 15

"Great spirits now on earth are sojourning; He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake, Who on Helvellyn's summit, wide awake, Catches his freshness from Archangel's wing: _He of the rose, the violet, the spring, The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake_: And lo!--whose steadfastness would never take A meaner sound than Raphael's whispering. And other spirits there are standing apart Upon the forehead of the age to come; These, these will give the world another heart, And other pulses. _Hear ye not the hum Of mighty workings?---- Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb._"

The nations are to listen and be dumb! and why, good Johnny Keats? because Leigh Hunt is editor of the Examiner, and Haydon has painted the judgment of Solomon, and you and Cornelius Webb, and a few more city sparks, are pleased to look upon yourselves as so many future Shakespeares and Miltons! The world has really some reason to look to its foundations! Here is a _tempestas in matula_ with a vengeance. At the period when these sonnets were published Mr Keats had no hesitation in saying that he looked on himself as "_not yet_ a glorious denizen of the wide heaven of poetry," but he had many fine soothing visions of coming greatness, and many rare plans of study to prepare him for it. The following we think is very pretty raving.

"Why so sad a moan? Life is the rose's hope while yet unblown; The reading of an ever-changing tale; The light uplifting of a maiden's veil; A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air; A laughing school-boy, without grief or care, Riding the springing branches of an elm.

"O for ten years, that I may overwhelm Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed That my own soul has to itself decreed. Then will I pass the countries that I see In long perspective, and continually Taste their pure fountains. First the realm I'll pass Of Flora, and old Pan: sleep in the grass, Feed on apples red, and strawberries, And choose each pleasure that my fancy sees. Catch the white-handed nymphs in shady places, To woo sweet kisses from averted faces,-- Play with their fingers, touch their shoulders white Into a pretty shrinking with a bite As hard as lips can make it: till agreed, A lovely tale of human life we'll read. And one will teach a tame dove how it best May fan the cool air gently o'er my rest; Another, bending o'er her nimble tread, Will set a green robe floating round her head, And still will dance with ever varied ease, Smiling upon the flowers and the trees: Another will entice me on, and on Through almond blossoms and rich cinnamon; Till in the bosom of a leafy world We rest in silence, like two gems upcurl'd In the recesses of a pearly shell."

Having cooled a little from this "fine passion," our youthful poet passes very naturally into a long strain of foaming abuse against a certain class of English Poets, whom, with Pope at their head, it is much the fashion with the ignorant unsettled pretenders of the present time to undervalue. Begging these gentlemens' pardon, although Pope was not a poet of the same high order with some who are now living, yet, to deny his genius, is just about as absurd as to dispute that of Wordsworth, or to believe in that of Hunt. Above all things, it is most pitiably ridiculous to hear men, of whom their country will always have reason to be proud, reviled by uneducated and flimsy striplings, who are not capable of understanding either their merits, or those of any other _men of power_--fanciful dreaming tea-drinkers, who, without logic enough to analyze a single idea, or imagination enough to form one original image, or learning enough to distinguish between the written language of Englishmen and the spoken jargon of Cockneys, presume to talk with contempt of some of the most exquisite spirits the world ever produced, merely because they did not happen to exert their faculties in laborious affected descriptions of flowers seen in window-pots, or cascades heard at Vauxhall; in short, because they chose to be wits, philosophers, patriots, and poets, rather than to found the Cockney school of versification, morality and politics, a century before its time. After blaspheming himself into a fury against Boileau, &c. Mr Keats comforts himself and his readers with a view of the present more promising aspect of affairs; above all, with the ripened glories of the poet of Rimini. Addressing the manes of the departed chiefs of English poetry, he informs them, in the following clear and touching manner, of the existence of "him of the Rose," &c.

"From a thick brake, Nested and quiet in a valley mild, Bubbles a pipe; fine sounds are floating wild About the earth. Happy are ye and glad."

From this he diverges into a view of "things in general." We smile when we think to ourselves how little most of our readers will understand of what follows.

"Yet I rejoice: a myrtle fairer than E'er grew in Paphos, from the bitter weeds Lifts its sweet head into the air, and feeds A silent space with ever sprouting green. All tenderest birds there find a pleasant screen, Creep through the shade with jaunty fluttering, Nibble the little cupped flowers and sing. Then let us clear away the choaking _thorns_ From round its gentle stem; let the young _fawns_, Yeaned in after times, when we are flown, Find a fresh sward beneath it, overgrown With simple flowers: let there nothing be More boisterous than a lover's bended knee; Nought more ungentle than the placid look Of one who leans upon a closed book; Nought more untranquil than the grassy slopes Between two hills. All hail delightful hopes! As she was wont, th' imagination Into most lovely labyrinths will be gone, And they shall be accounted poet kings Who simply tell the most heart-easing things. O may these joys be ripe before I die. Will not some say that I presumptuously Have spoken? that from hastening disgrace 'Twere better far to hide my foolish face? That whining boyhood should with reverence bow Ere the dreadful thunderbolt could reach? How! If I do hide myself, it sure shall be In the very fane, the light of poesy."

From some verses addressed to various amiable individuals of the other sex, it appears, notwithstanding all this gossamer-work, that Johnny's affections are not entirely confined to objects purely etherial. Take, by way of specimen, the following prurient and vulgar lines, evidently meant for some young lady east of Temple-bar.

"Add too, the sweetness Of thy honied voice; the neatness Of thine ankle lightly turn'd: With those beauties, scarce discern'd, Kept with such sweet privacy, That they seldom meet the eye Of the little loves that fly Round about with eager pry. Saving when, with freshening lave, Thou dipp'st them in the taintless wave; Like twin water lilies, born In the coolness of the morn O, if thou hadst breathed then, Now the Muses had been ten. Couldst thou wish for lineage _higher_ Than twin sister of _Thalia_? At last for ever, evermore, Will I call the Graces four."

Who will dispute that our poet, to use his own phrase (and rhyme),

"Can mingle music fit for the soft _ear_ Of Lady _Cytherea_."

So much for the opening bud; now for the expanded flower. It is time to pass from the juvenile "Poems," to the mature and elaborate "Endymion, a Poetic Romance." The old story of the moon falling in love with a shepherd, so prettily told by a Roman Classic, and so exquisitely enlarged and adorned by one of the most elegant of German poets, has been seized upon by Mr John Keats, to be done with as might seem good unto the sickly fancy of one who never read a single line either of Ovid or of Wieland. If the quantity, not the quality, of the verses dedicated to the story is to be taken into account, there can be no doubt that Mr John Keats may now claim Endymion entirely to himself. To say the truth, we do not suppose either the Latin or the German poet would be very anxious to dispute about the property of the hero of the "Poetic Romance." Mr Keats has thoroughly appropriated the character, if not the name. His Endymion is not a Greek shepherd, loved by a Grecian goddess; he is merely a young Cockney rhymester, dreaming a phantastic dream at the full of the moon. Costume, were it worth while to notice such a trifle, is violated in every page of this goodly octavo. From his prototype Hunt, John Keats has acquired a sort of vague idea, that the Greeks were a most tasteful people, and that no mythology can be so finely adapted for the purposes of poetry as theirs. It is amusing to see what a hand the two Cockneys make of this mythology; the one confesses that he never read the Greek Tragedians, and the other knows Homer only from Chapman; and both of them write about Apollo, Pan, Nymphs, Muses, and Mysteries, as might be expected from persons of their education. We shall not, however, enlarge at present upon this subject, as we mean to dedicate an entire paper to the classical attainments and attempts of the Cockney poets. As for Mr Keats' "Endymion," it has just as much to do with Greece as it has with "old Tartary the fierce;" no man, whose mind has ever been imbued with the smallest knowledge or feeling of classical poetry or classical history, could have stooped to profane and vulgarise every association in the manner which has been adopted by this "son of promise." Before giving any extracts, we must inform our readers, that this romance is meant to be written in English heroic rhyme. To those who have read any of Hunt's poems, this hint might indeed be needless. Mr Keats has adopted the loose, nerveless versification, and the Cockney rhymes of the poet of Rimini; but in fairness to that gentleman, we must add, that the defects of the system are tenfold more conspicuous in his disciple's work than in his own. Mr Hunt is a small poet, but he is a clever man. Mr Keats is a still smaller poet, and he is only a boy of pretty abilities, which he has done everything in his power to spoil.

[Quotes almost two hundred lines of _Endymion_ with brief interpolated comment.]

And now, good-morrow to "the Muses' son of Promise;" as for "the feats he yet may do," as we do not pretend to say, like himself, "Muse of my native land am I inspired," we shall adhere to the safe old rule of _pauca verba_. We venture to make one small prophecy, that his bookseller will not a second time venture L50 upon any thing he can write. It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr John, back to "plasters, pills, and ointment boxes," &c. But, for Heaven's sake, young Sangrado, be a little more sparing of extenuatives and soporifics in your practice than you have been in your poetry.

Z.

--_Blackwood's Magazine_.

ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

_Timbuctoo: a Poem, which obtained the Chancellor's Medal at the Cambridge Commencement_, _by A. Tennyson, of Trinity College, Cambridge._

We have accustomed ourselves to think, perhaps without any good reason, that poetry was likely to perish among us for a considerable period after the great generation of poets which is now passing away. The age seems determined to contradict us, and that in the most decided manner, for it has put forth poetry by a young man, and that where we should least expect it, namely, in a prize-poem. These productions have often been ingenious and elegant, but we have never before seen one of them which indicated really first-rate poetical genius, and which would have done honour to any man that ever wrote. Such, we do not hesitate to affirm, is the little work before us; and the examiners seem to have felt about it like ourselves, for they have assigned the prize to its author, though the measure in which he writes was never before (we believe) thus selected for honour. We extract a few lines to justify our admiration.

[Quotes fifty lines beginning:--

"A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light! A rustling of white wings! the bright descent," etc.]

How many men have lived for a century who could equal this?--_The Athenaeum_.

_Poems by Alfred Tennyson_. pp. 163. London. 12mo. 1833.

This is, as some of his marginal notes intimate, Mr. Tennyson's second appearance. By some strange chance we have never seen his first publication, which, if it at all resembles its younge[r] brother, must be by this time so popular that any notice of it on our part would seem idle and presumptuous; but we gladly seize this opportunity of repairing an unintentional neglect, and of introducing to the admiration of our more sequestered readers a new prodigy of genius--another and a brighter star of that galaxy or _milky way_ of poetry of which the lamented Keats was the harbinger; and let us take this occasion to sing our palinode on the subject of 'Endymion.' We certainly did not[O] discover in that poem the same degree of merit that its more clear-sighted and prophetic admirers did. We did not foresee the unbounded popularity which has carried it through we know not how many editions; which has placed it on every table; and, what is still more unequivocal, familiarized it in every mouth. All this splendour of fame, however, though we had not the sagacity to anticipate, we have the candour to acknowledge: and we request that the publisher of the new and beautiful edition of Keats's works now in the press, with graphic illustrations by Calcott and Turner, will do us the favour and the justice to notice our conversion in his prolegomena.

Warned by our former mishap, wiser by experience, and improved, as we hope, in taste, we have to offer Mr. Tennyson our tribute of unmingled approbation, and it is very agreeable to us, as well as to our readers, that our present task will be little more than the selection, for their delight, of a few specimens of Mr. Tennyson's singular genius, and the venturing to point out, now and then, the peculiar brilliancy of some of the gems that irradiate his poetical crown.

A prefatory sonnet opens to the reader the aspirations of the young author, in which, after the manner of sundry poets, ancient and modern, he expresses his own peculiar character, by wishing himself to be something that he is not. The amorous Catullus aspired to be a sparrow; the tuneful and convivial Anacreon (for we totally reject the supposition that attributes the [Greek: Eithe lure chale genoimen] to Alcaeus) wished to be a lyre and a great drinking cup; a crowd of more modern sentimentalists have desired to approach their mistresses as flowers, tunicks, sandals, birds, breezes, and butterflies;--all poor conceits of narrow-minded poetasters! Mr. Tennyson (though he, too, would, as far as his true love is concerned, not unwillingly 'be an earring,' 'a girdle,' and 'a necklace,' p. 45) in the more serious and solemn exordium of his works ambitions a bolder metamorphosis--he wishes to be--_a river_!

SONNET.

'Mine be the strength of spirit fierce and free, Like some broad river rushing down _alone_'--

rivers that travel in company are too common for his taste--

'With the self-same impulse wherewith he was thrown'--

a beautiful and harmonious line--

'From his loud fount upon the echoing lea:-- Which, with _increasing_ might, doth _forward flee_'--

Every word of this line is valuable--the natural progress of human ambition is here strongly characterized--two lines ago he would have been satisfied with the _self-same_ impulse--but now he must have _increasing_ might; and indeed he would require all his might to accomplish his object of _fleeing forward_, that is, going backwards and forwards at the same time. Perhaps he uses the word _flee_ for _flow_; which latter he could not well employ in _this_ place, it being, as we shall see, essentially necessary to rhyme to _Mexico_ towards the end of the sonnet--as an equivalent to _flow_ he has, therefore, with great taste and ingenuity, hit on the combination of _forward flee_--

'doth forward flee By town, and tower, and hill, and cape, and isle, And in the middle of the green _salt_ sea Keeps his blue waters fresh for many a mile.'

A noble wish, beautifully expressed, that he may not be confounded with the deluge of ordinary poets, but, amidst their discoloured and briny ocean, still preserve his own bright tints and sweet savor. He may be at ease on this point--he never can be mistaken for any one else. We have but too late become acquainted with him, yet we assure ourselves that if a thousand anonymous specimens were presented to us, we should unerringly distinguish his by the total absence of any particle of _salt_. But again, his thoughts take another turn, and he reverts to the insatiability of human ambition:--we have seen him just now content to be a river, but as he _flees forward_, his desires expand into sublimity, and he wishes to become the great Gulfstream of the Atlantic.

'Mine be the power which ever to its sway Will win _the wise at once_--

We, for once, are wise, and he has won _us_--

'Will win the wise at once; and by degrees May into uncongenial spirits flow, Even as the great gulphstream of Flori_da_ Floats far away into the Northern seas The lavish growths of southern Mexi_co_!'--p. 1.

And so concludes the sonnet.

The next piece is a kind of testamentary paper, addressed 'To ----,' a friend, we presume, containing his wishes as to what his friend should do for him when he (the poet) shall be dead--not, as we shall see, that he quite thinks that such a poet can die outright.

'Shake hands, my friend, across the brink Of that deep grave to which I go. Shake hands once more; I cannot sink So far--far down, but I shall know Thy voice, and answer from below!'

Horace said 'non omnis moriar,' meaning that his fame should survive--Mr. Tennyson is still more vivacious, 'non _omnino_ moriar,'--'I will not die at all; my body shall be as immortal as my verse, and however _low I may go_, I warrant you I shall keep all my wits about me,--therefore'

'When, in the darkness over me, The four-handed mole shall scrape, Plant thou no dusky cypress tree, Nor wreath thy cap with doleful crape, But pledge me in the flowing grape.'

Observe how all ages become present to the mind of a great poet; and admire how naturally he combines the funeral cypress of classical antiquity with the crape hat-band of the modern undertaker.

He proceeds:--

'And when the sappy field and wood Grow green beneath the _showery gray_, And rugged barks begin to bud, And through damp holts, newflushed with May, Ring sudden _laughters_ of the jay!'

Laughter, the philosophers tell us, is a peculiar attribute of man--but as Shakespeare found 'tongues in trees and sermons in stones,' this true poet endows all nature not merely with human sensibilities but with human functions--the jay _laughs_, and we find, indeed, a little further on, that the woodpecker _laughs_ also; but to mark the distinction between their merriment and that of men, both jays and woodpeckers laugh upon melancholy occasions. We are glad, moreover, to observe, that Mr. Tennyson is prepared for, and therefore will not be disturbed by, human laughter, if any silly reader should catch the infection from the woodpeckers and the jays.

'Then let wise Nature work her will, And on my clay her darnels grow, Come only when the days are still, And at my head-stone whisper low, And tell me'--

Now, what would an ordinary bard wish to be told under such circumstances?--why, perhaps, how his sweetheart was, or his child, or his family, or how the Reform Bill worked, or whether the last edition of his poems had been sold--_papae_! our genuine poet's first wish is

'And tell me--_if the woodbines blow_!'

When, indeed, he shall have been thus satisfied as to the _woodbines_, (of the blowing of which in their due season he may, we think, feel pretty secure,) he turns a passing thought to his friend--and another to his mother--

'If _thou_ art blest, my _mother's_ smile Undimmed'--

but such inquiries, short as they are, seem too common-place, and he immediately glides back into his curiosity as to the state of the weather and the forwardness of the spring--

'If thou art blessed--my mother's smile Undimmed--_if bees are on the wing_?'

No, we believe the whole circle of poetry does not furnish such another instance of enthusiasm for the sights and sounds of the vernal season!--The sorrows of a bereaved mother rank _after_ the blossoms of the _woodbine_, and just before the hummings of the _bee_; and this is _all_ that he has any curiosity about; for he proceeds:--

'Then cease, my friend, a little while That I may'--

'send my love to my mother,' or 'give you some hints about bees, which I have picked up from Aristaeus, in the Elysian Fields,' or 'tell you how I am situated as to my own personal comforts in the world below'?--oh no--

'That I may--hear the _throstle sing_ His bridal song--the boast of spring.

Sweet as the noise, in parched plains, Of bubbling wells that fret the stones, (_If any sense in me remains_) Thy words will be--thy cheerful tones As welcome to--my _crumbling bones_!'--p. 4.

'_If any sense in me remains!_'--This doubt is inconsistent with the opening stanza of the piece, and, in fact, too modest; we take upon ourselves to re-assure Mr. Tennyson, that, even after he shall be dead and buried, as much '_sense_' will still remain as he has now the good fortune to possess.

We have quoted these first two poems in _extenso_, to obviate any suspicion of our having made a partial or delusive selection. We cannot afford space--we wish we could--for an equally minute examination of the rest of the volume, but we shall make a few extracts to show--what we solemnly affirm--that every page teems with beauties hardly less surprising.

_The Lady of Shalott_ is a poem in four parts, the story of which we decline to maim by such an analysis as we could give, but it opens thus--

'On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and _meet the sky_-- And _through_ the field the road runs _by_.'

The Lady of Shalott was, it seems, a spinster who had, under some unnamed penalty, a certain web to weave.

'Underneath the bearded barley, The reaper, reaping late and early, Hears her ever chanting cheerly, Like an angel singing clearly....

'No time has she for sport or play, A charmed web she weaves alway; A curse is on her if she stay Her weaving either night or day....

'She knows not'--

Poor lady, nor we either--

'She knows not what that curse may be, Therefore she weaveth steadily; Therefore no other care has she The Lady of Shalott.'

A knight, however, happens to ride past her window, coming

----'from Camelot;[P] From the bank, and _from_ the _river_, He flashed _into_ the crystal _mirror_-- "Tirra lirra, tirra _lirra_," (_lirrar_?) Sang Sir Launcelot.'--p. 15.

The lady stepped to the window to look at the stranger, and forgot for an instant her web:--the curse fell on her, and she died; why, how, and wherefore, the following stanzas will clearly and pathetically explain:--