MR. RODEN NOEL'S NEW POEM.*

MR. NOEL'S poem is a plea, to put the matter briefly, for belief,—belief, that is, in the moral government of the world.

His conception of his hero is in itself, it may be said, a potent argument on his side. The Faust of legend was a mortal who bargained away his soul for power and pleasure ; the "modern Faust" is an inquirer whom the troubles and disorders of the world perplex, reinforced as they are in their attacks on his faith by the disturbing forces of his own lower nature. The difference is immense, and it is difference in the sense of an advance. The Evil Spirit may, indeed, use something of the same reasoning to both. He may point out to both the number- less wrongs that go unpunished and nnredressed in human life, as proof that there cannot be One who wills the thing that is right, or that, if he be, he is powerless to effect it ; but he appeals to very diverse feelings and motives in the one and in the other. He who is bargaining for selfish enjoyment is naturally anxious to be convinced that the price he is paying for it is nothing,—for what matters the future of the soul if there is no God P But his successor, if, indeed, he be a suc-

cessor at all, is convinced against his will. He wants to believe in an order of righteousness, though there are moments, known to many besides him, if not to all, when he does not want to believe. His scepticism is essentially unselfish. If he disbelieves, it is mainly because his human sympathies are so intolerably wounded by what he sees and hears of the miseries of his race. Who can doubt that the change which has turned

the old Faust into the new is a movement towards faith P The plan of the poem is this. In the first book we have a picture of the happy, undoubting child ; in the second we see the youth who has seen the cities and thoughts of many men, and who, settling down in a home of his own, is visited by a grievous sorrow in the loss of an only child. Then follow three books, bearing the common title of "Disorder," in which he relates his experiences of life, the miseries and wrongs which he himself witnesses, or which Satan urges upon him, to prove the dreadful thesis that there is no power on the side of good. Finally, in the sixth book, comes the answer. There is an "order" behind and above the disorder. There is a life in which the wrongs of earth are redressed ; and even here, in the faith, devotion, and courage of good men and women, there are witnesses to the power that works for righteousness.

It may well be that such a treatment of the theme as has

been here sketched can hardly be dramatic. Dramatic, cer- tainly, the Modern Faust is not. Indeed, it loses much, we cannot but think, from the want of a distinct personality. The old Faust was at least definite ; his modern representa- tive is a vague being, whom we fail to realise as a human

creature. We catch a glimpie of him in the first book as a child :— " A cherub form, advancing all alone, With golden-curled head, unashamed young face."

The youth is perhaps less clearly figured, though we read how, under the palms,— " He whispered with a beautiful lithe maid,

Who wore red flowers in her hair's dark braid;"

and finally, driven by Fate from this paradise, met with- " A blonder fare, His faithful, life companion, dear And beautiful."

After this he becomes, so to speak, a voice, very eloquent, but not always clearly distinguishable from other Voices around.

The Satan of the poem is, says the author in his preface, "chiefly, though not entirely, the man's worse self." We have some reminiscence of the ruined archangel in these lines :—

* AModernPtut. By the Hon. Roden Noel. London: Kogan Panl, Trench, and Co. MS.

"And still a grandeur outraged, and defiled Sat throned upon the ruin-countenance,

On the large god-front, broadly reared and high. Like some pale crag, some temple wall, shagged over With thickets of dull hair; on loose lewd lips Dwelt Cruelty, Pride, arrogant Disdain,

While hard Hate glared from cavernous green eyes, Unchallenged owner, with immense Despair; Save when some lurid Passion smouldered sullen, Or flared infernal."

But this vision disappears, and we have a "cynic-sneering modern gentleman" who talks very much in the style of the ordinary pessimist, though with far more than ordinary force.

It will easily be believed that the range of topics of which the poet speaks through various voices, good and evil, is nothing less than vast. The miseries of great cities, social inequalities, worldliness in the Church (typified by a happily quite impossible Bishop), socialism, demagogism, the mysterious problem of hereditary evil, are among the subjects discussed, and sometimes with a startling plainness of language. (We have referred to the range of subjects of which the " poet " speaks, but it should be stated that Mr. Noel uses prose when it seems better suited than verse to the subject in hand.) It is even possible that the advocatus diaboli may seem to have more to say than the advocatus Del, and to say it more vigorously. And indeed, it is, in one sense, an in- sufficient answer to the long and terrible indictment that is laid against life, to point to a few conspicuous examples of heroic goodness. The real answer lies in the faith in the unseen, the eternal, once revealed in the Perfect Man, and still to be traced in the more or less perfect after-types of him

"'The God in us, with God who is in the world, Perchance electeth from eternity Time-process, evil relative, for ends Of grander good, beyond us, absolute ; But here we falter,

Grope darkling, and surmise with bated breath : Yet our deep Best will justify the Lord : How strengthen thews of any champion, Save through the powerful antagonist ? Civilisations only fall to ruin,

That richer may be reared from their decay ; From chaos ever nobler order grows.

Who repents Hath God behind him, and the World-Idea, To uplift him when he fails ; a mother holds Her child, who falling, learns at length to walk. Even that awful Shade, that made for Death, Changing resolves itself to Life at length : Trust only in the sound, strong Heart of all! Nor only Reason, Love belongs to God : Our Human sunders; our Divine will blend. Evil and good are complemental; more I know not ; but there is a Deep beyond, In the Abysmal Spirit. . . . Hide your eyes Before the mystery of mysteries !' . . . He shading his, that sought the Infinite, I droop mine, blinded with the blaze of light : Tdethought now all the innocent victim-blood Streamed with the Lord's upon the holy rood: I saw, and worshipped; I believed in God. . . ."

Mr. Noel has done in this poem no small service to the cause which he champions. We cannot leave his volume without expressing our sense of the remarkable beauty of the first of the minor poems, "To my Mother."