BOOKS.

VICTORIAN POETS.*

Mn. STEDMAN is an American, and his position as a foreigner gives him, perhaps, in some respects, an advantage over British critics in his estimate of Victorian poetry. He has undertaken a wide subject, and has treated it with great ability and competent knowledge. When we differ from his judgment, we are forced to respect it ; and we may add that his volume, although one of pure criticism, is likely to attract all readers who regard poetry as something better than an " idle trade." It is impossible to follow step by step a writer whose theme is so extensive, and who undertakes to discuss the merits of one hundred and fifty poets who belong to the last forty years of our literary history. One * Victorian Poets. By Edmund Clarence Stedman. London : Chatto and Windus. 1816. hundred and fifty poets ! the reader will exclaim ; who are they, and what have they done ? Is it possible that poetry, the rarest of literary products, has flourished so vigorously in this age of scepticism and science ? Moreover, his surprise may be increased, on recollecting that the period lying between the years 1835-1875 does not, with one or two exceptions, embrace the splendid poets who flourished in the early days of the century. When Queen Victoria ascended the throne, Coleridge had been dead one year, Byron eleven years, Shelley thirteen, Keats four- teen, and Scott three years ; Crabbe, who seems to be- long to a still earlier period, for he published his Village seventeen years before the death of Cowper, died in 1832, a few months only before Scott. Rogers lived for twenty years of this reign, and Campbell died in 1844 ; but these poets belong to a past era, their influence is unfelt in our time, and their names are merely mentioned incidentally. Even Words. worth, great as his power over this age has been, and although he is said to have " shaped the mind of the idyllic Victorian school," lies too far back, in Mr. Stedman's judgment, to claim a distinct place in his survey.

It need scarcely be said, therefore, that Mr. Stedman's examina- tion of Victorian poetry is not confined to the works of genuine poets. He notices with a few lines, indeed, and often with a word of comment, a vast number of mere versifiers, on others he bestows far more attention than they merit, and thus his pages are encumbered with a good deal of useless lumber. At the same time, several genuine singers are overlooked, and after noting the measure of apace bestowed on fourth-rate versifiers, one is sur- prised to observe no mention of such writers, as William C. Roscoe, the Hon. Julian Pane ; Mr. William Davies, whose "Shepherd's Garden" has the sweetness and freshness of spring- flowers ; Mr. Ross Neil, the most powerful by far of recent dramatists ; and Mr. Alfred Austin, whose ambitious and to a large extent successful achievements demand some kind of con- sideration from a critic so comprehensive as Mr. Stedman.

In the introductory chapter, the writer has some remarks on the intellectual character of our age, which, if they be true of his own country, are certainly not true of ours. Science, he avers, has for a season taken precedence of poetry ; neither poets nor meta- physicians, but physical investigators and men of action, are held to be the world's great men ; the divine and the poet, traditionally at loggerheads, have now a common bond of suffering,—a union of toleration or half-disguised contempt. Even women are in- fected with the passion for scientific inquiry, and "our school- girls and spinsters wander down the lanes with Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer under their arms, or if they carry'rennyson, Longfellow, and Morris, read them in the light of spectrum analysis, or test them by the economics of Mill and Bain." Let us hope that Mr. Stedman was enjoying a laugh at his young countrywomen when he penned this passage. Assuredly the girls who would prefer Mr. Spencer's solid, but somewhat heavy, works to the music of the Poet- Laureate will not readily be found in England. Moreover, Mr. Stedman's volume is in itself a proof, if proof he needed, that poetry, which is " immortal as the mind of man," has not fallen out of favour, despite the manifold theories of scientific men and the practical. results of science. The writer thinks that there are signs of the approaching harmony of Poetry and Science, and observes that " the essays of Tyndall and Spencer are, the ques- tion of form left out, poems in themselves." To which the ready answer is, that to poetry the form is as essential as the matter. Verse is as closely linked to poetry as the body to the soul ; life, as we know it, requires the union of the two, and the man whose thoughts shape themselves in prose instead of clothing themselves in metrical form may possess a fine imagination, but it is not the imagination of the poet. As well might you call a man an artist who cannot paint, as call the most highly-endowed man a poet who lacks the voice of song. Indeed this common-place truth seems to be acknowledged elsewhere by Mr. Stedman, in his remarks on George Eliot.

The writer in his survey gives the first place to W. S. Landor, who was born only five years later than Wordsworth, and " whose most imposing poem was given to the world at a date earlier than the first consulate of Napoleon," on the plea that his style, thought, and versatility were Victorian rather than Georgian, and " are now seen to belong to that school of which Tennyson is by eminence the representative." This statement is, we think, open to question, if it implies that the Poet-Laureate followed in any way the leading of Landor ; indeed the dates of their respective publications may suffice to settle this question, for although " Gebir " appeared in 1798, the larger portion of his work, as the writer is careful to point out, "saw print long after Tennyson -began to compose." Mr. Stedman's high admiration of Landor

has, perhaps, disturbed his judgment with regard to his influence on the age. He writes of him with a glow of enthusiasm and an evident sincerity of language with which Landor's admirers, and they are growing in number, cannot fail to sympathise. One paegel'ge out of several equally eulogistic we must find space to

quote :—

" Lowell has said of him that, excepting Shakespeare, no other _writer has furnished as with so many delicate aphorisms of human nature; and we may add, that he is also noticeable for universality of contemplation and the objective treatment of stately themes. In literature his range is unequalled by that of Coleridge, who was so .opulent and suggestive ; in philosophy, history, and art, Goethe is not - wiser or more imaginative, though often more calm and great ; in learning, the department of science excepted, no writer since Milton has been more thoroughly equipped. We place Landor—who was greater, even as a prose-writer—among the foremost poets, because it _-was the poet within the man that made him great. His poetry belongs to a high order of that art, while his prose, though strictly prosaic in form—he was too fine an artist to have it otherwise—is more ima- --rinative than other men's verses There are persons who might . ;clad without emotion much of Dickens's sentiment and humour who would feel every fibre respond to the exquisite beauty of Landor's ' Pericles and Aspasia,'—persons whom only the purest idealism can strongly affect. But this is human also. Shall not the wise as well as the witless have their poets? There is an idea current that art is natural only . when it appeals to the masses, or awakens the simple, untutored emotions of humble life. In truth, the greater should include the less ; the fine, if need be, the coarse ; the composer of a symphony has, we trust, melody enough at his command. Stage presentation has done much to popularise Shakespeare ; his plays, moreover, are relished for their -dories, as the Pilgrim's Progress and Gulliver's Travels are devoured by children, without a thought of the theology of the one or the measureless satire of the other. Landor's work has no such vantage-ground, but he -is none the less human, in that he is the poet's poet, the artist's artist, the delight of high, heroic souls."

Thomas Hood, a poet of a very different character, receives also generous treatment from Mr. Stedman. He laments, as every .one must, the necessity that forced Hood to expend so much

-Tabour on inferior and frivolous work, and he laments it all the more, since much of that work, fit only to raise a smile on its day 'or publication, has been reprinted as if of permanent value. Hood's mirth and humour are sometimes of the rarest quality, and his best pieces of this kind are as deserving of preservation as any of the serious poems. All, however, that is of value in Hood's humorous poetry might be compressed within a small volume, and -readers who care most for this genuine poet will endorse the

following remarks made by Mr. Stedman :-

- "There is no more sorrowful display of metrical literature—a tribute .extorted from the poet who wrote for a living—than the bulk of his comic verses brought together in the volumes of Hood's remains. It was a sin and a shame to preserve it, but there it lies, with all its wretched Tuns and nonsense of the vanished past, a warning to every succeeding 'writer ! To it might be added countless pages of equally valueless and trivial prose."

The chapter that represents Hood contains also criticisms on "Barry Cornwall" and Mr. Matthew Arnold. Three poets who -stand more widely apart it would be difficult to find, and the ad- vantage of thus placing them together is not evident, unless it be to make the contrast the more striking. There is little to object to and much to praise in these criticisms, and we do not know that Procter has ever received such enthusiastic praise from any English critic as Mr. Stedman lavishes upon him. Mr. Stoddard, another American writer, and known also as a poet, considers -Procter the most consummate master of lyrical poetry in modern -days, and questions "whether all the early English poets ever .produced so many and such beautiful songs as Barry Cornwall." Passing on rapidly, as we needs must, we may notice as especially remarkable a chapter on Mrs. Browning, whom Mr. Steadman terms -"the most inspired woman, so far as known, of all who have com- posed in ancient or modern tongues, or flourished in any land or time." Writing of this " ethereal creature," Mr. Stedman observes that here was the daughter Milton should have had, but in another place he says, and the statement will probably be new to most of us, that "the English love to call her Shakespeare's Daughter."

Much labour seems to have been bestowed, and by no means a'ainly, on the exquisite -workmanship of Mr. Tennyson, and the chapter entitled "Tennyson and Theocritus " shows the service rendered by the great pastoral poet of Sicily to the modern "master of the idyllic school." Heartily does the writer acquit

the Laureate of plagiarism in thus enriching his verse, and quotes -Emerson's saying, " Genius borrows nobly."

Mr. Stedman sees a resemblance between Stirling and Clough, which, if it be true as regards some points of their character, is assuredly not to be found in their verse. Stirling's poetry is the fruit of literary culture, and has already passed from the regard of men. Clough's is the precious and lasting fruit of a genius which, though it had not time fully to ripen, displayed some of the finest qualities which we look for in the poet. To this original writer and thinker the critic devotes only one page, but his estimate, so far as it goes, exhibits an appreciation of his peculiar powers :—

"Intimate as he was," writes Mr. Stedman, " with the Tennysons, his style, while often reflective, remained entirely his own. His fine, original nature took no tinge of the prevailing influences about him. His free temperament and radical way of thought, with a manly dis- dain of all factitious advancement, made him a force, even among the choice companions attached to his side • and he was valued as much for his character, and for what he was able to do, as for the things he actually accomplished. There was nothing second-rate in his nature, and his 'Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich; which bears the reader along less easily than the billowy hexameters of Kingsley. is charmingly faithful to its Highland theme, and has a Doric simplicity and strength. His shorter pieces are uneven in merit, but all suggestive, and worth a thinker's attention."

The fantastic school of poetry, that has allured many young disciples in our time, is accurately described by Mr. Stedman. Ballads with amazing burdens, lyrics daubed, as it were, with patches of colour, grotesque in thought and irregular in metre ; sonnets erotic in character, in which the animal appetite obtains as much regard as the spiritual affection, but which are saved from doing mischief by being almost wholly unintelligible,—these- are some of the marks of a school that, in spite of its absurdities, has attracted some young poets who, it may be hoped, will live- long enough to laugh at the follies of their youth.

It is fitting that a volume of criticism which opens with the name of Walter Savage Landor should close with that of Mr. Swinburne, who, with Mr. Buchanan, Mr. Rossetti, and Mr.

Morris, holds a place among the "Latter-day Singers." On these poets, Mr. Stedman's criticism is marked by soundness of judg- ment and careful discrimination ; indeed, the whole volume will be found judicious and sympathetic. Mr. Stedman has treated a subject of great interest, in a manner which is as attractive to- the reader as it is just to the poets whom he has undertaken. to criticise.