MR. WARREN'S " REHEARSALS."

MR. WARREN, whom we may be allowed to congratulate on claiming in his own person the honours which he has won under the name of " William Lancaster," expresses with uncommon energy and passion the spirit of " revolt " which is so common among our young poets, we may say, among our young thinkers. They are never weary of protesting, with outcries more or less articulate and rational, in words that sometimes are fall of noble despair, sometimes express nothing better than a base Epicurean philosophy, against the whole order of things, visible and invisible ; against State policies which, vastly prodigal of life and wealth, do nothing to make men better and wiser ; against a social morality which is infinitely burdensome without reaching to anything of purity and elevation, even against a Nature which, in the half at least of its manifestations, seems to be malevolent, and a Deity whom, if only most of his own prophets are right, it would be better for mankind not to have known. It is impossible to read Mr. Warren's "book of verses," to use his own modest description of his work, without seeing in it the expression of such thoughts ; it is equally impossible, however profound the dissatisfaction which we feel with this philosophy of negation and discontent, not to admire the nobleness and purity by which this expression is distinguished.

In Mr. Warren's case this spirit of revolt has a somewhat singular manifestation. It is in the handling of classical subjects that he chiefly delights ; and when he finds himself in classical regions he seems to have no choice but to show himself the partizan of the Titans against Zeus. "Pandora," which we may call the prin- cipal poem in the volume, is a vehement denunciation of perpetual hostility against the new ruler of the gods, with which the wise Titan refuses the treacherous gift which Epimetheus brings to him. " The Fall of the Titans" and the "The Nymph's Protest" con- tinue the same thought, the latter being specially significant as embodying the hostility between the worship of Nature and sys- tems of theology. In " Zeus," again, is expressed the feeling of angry discontent against this unknown ruler, so far away in his invisible distance, so different therefore from the visible tangible powers of earth,—this supreme lord, who is too cruel or too careless to set right the wrongs of the world :—

" And underneath his throne the wail comes up, And now men praise him that he is so great, And now they curse him that he lets them die, And now some blessing feign, dissembling hats, But one and all he lets their wail go by."

It is easy to see, that carefully and intelligently as Mr. Warren has studied his models, the feeling thus expressed may easily be

out of harmony with the true tone of classical poetry. The great drama of lEschylus is, it is true, throughout its length the expres- sion of the human sympathies that look to earth-born rather than to heavenly divinities, while through much of the Greek poetry there runs the thought of powers, whether deities or destinies, that are hostile or but half-benevolent to men. But this thought is expressed with calmness, almost, it may be said, with contentment, anyhow, without the passion, the unrest, the bitterness of com-

plaint which it takes to itself in the mouth of a modern poet. To the ancients fatum, the doom of the unseen powers, however terrible it might be, was always at the same time the fas ; the " must be," was the "ought to be ;" the modern bard revolts with fierce accusations of wrong against that which shocks his con-

science or mars his life. How true, for instance, in much of its phrasing is the fine passage which we quote below to the classical models, but yet how unlike what any Greek or Roman would have written ! It is Prometheus's final refusal of the gift of Zeus

Therefore who sets to cope with Zeus his face, Hath slender hours of pastime, and lays by Love that is born, as some soft flower in dreams, The season lily of a wintry spring;

Must lay love by for ever and a day, And childless gird him braver for the fight, And wage securer onset; if each child Is a new wounding place that he mast guard, • Rehearsals: a Boot of Verses. By John Leicester Warren, Author of Philoctetes." London: Btrahan and Clo. 1870.

A new rift in his harness to defend Against tho subtle vengeance ; keen of eye ;

Finger on bow ; crouched snake-like ; arrows near.

He too that would not bend to save himself Will crawl to save his children; let me gain A lonely glory or a childless fall.

Therefore I do refuse her fair and true, False or unfair, resign her either way. He, who has made her in his craft, may guide Her darkened eyes in roads whore is no light, Nor any song, but noise of smitten breasts, Wrung hands, tear-weeping, hiss and ache of woe.

Is she not then his instrument and blind ?

As we could train her in all gracious ways He will mislead her simple hands to harm, She guileless all the while. 0 brother, fear her ; Blind are her steps, her master terrible, And hungry with the famine of old hate To crush our race out in red fire and gloom."

How essentially modern, too, is this description of the Olympian Gods !- "They laugh or weep not ; what is worth their weeping?

Sweet youth fails not beneath them like a reed, The shadow and the shine are in their keeping.

The large deep flows on under them, the cloud Is strewn along their tables, and the light Is broad about them, when the wind is loud ; And the deep gates of sunset in their sight Barn with the broken day. But these maintain High state as always. Their hands reap and slay, Nor render any reason. They are fain, Because their rule cannot be put away ;

Because their arrows swerve not when they draw,

Because their halls are winter proof, their hate Mighty and fat with store of death, their law Shod with the iron permanence of fate.

Being cruel, they can glut their cruel will ; Wrathful, allow their wrath its utmost way ; Insatiate, can almost lust their fill ; Listless, can drowse on tinted cloud all day, Lulled by the nations wailing as they pray."

But, modern or ancient, it is certainly grand verse.

In another poem, of considerable importance, called "The Strange Parable," the same tendency of thought assumes a different phase. It bears reference to the passage, " When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out ; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there ; and the last state of that man is worse than the first,"—and Mr. Warren treats it in this fashion. The pos- sessed man feels himself free from the evil spirit which has long tormented him :—

" Only a kind of echo-pain remained,

And yet my soul ached with the loss of this, My old abhorrence. It had wrought its roots And worked its fibres round my nature so That I was lost without the thing I loathed."

The dreariness of this vacancy is powerfully described. Soon it drives the man forth. He seeks the solitude of the hills :—

" Weary was I of all my fellows' ways ;

And lonely on the summits I was best. Sometimes a peat-tarn capped the giant chain ; A waste of ice, pale grass, and sodden sedge And rotten fangs of rush ; whose trembling floor Festered in moss, and darkened to decay. Yet here I shuddered, as the star-time came, To see the evil spirits of the fen

Trimming their lamps to lure me. And I sighed, Knowing how fiends had marred the under vales, To find new demons herded in the snows Up in the eternal solitudes of God.

Therefore I wandered on, and still no peace ; And still I paced the uplands dry and drear, And still the curse stung burning at my heart."

These "dry places" of the parable are powerfully pictured, though they are too much of an Alpine character, as, for instance, in this fine description of a glacier,- " The cracks of that dread violet lake Frozen and fast since God created snow," to suit the associations of the original. Here all the Vilii0 past evil in his life haunt him ; death, which he seeks, refuses meet him. At the last he comes back to his house :— " Ay me, returning! This is no return.

The core of desolation, where no rest Shall come for ever, or one eyelid fall In that sweet pure oblivion of the just. Empty and swept and garnished tho' it be,

This is no home, but some sepulchral den

Set round with urn and ashes of the dead;

Death breathes about its chambers like a blight, The hearth is darkened with a phantom curse ; I think no child will play there any more, And I am lonelier here than on the void.

"So went I forth, and took unto my need Seven former comrades in the naked walls ; They came and dwelt there, souls that mock the light, And banter with the melancholy time, Unheeding the to-morrow"

And this is the end :-

"Tho' for a season he may conquer down

And put to flight the traitor legion well, Yet with to-morrow's light they will return ; And if he yield, relapsing to their rale, Relapse is worse perdition to the man, Than to have never left his sin at all.

Ay me, mysterious doom! what help is mine ?"

Now, there is much power of expression in all this, but the first obvious criticism on it is, that Mr. Warren has misread the parable. Manifestly he supposes that the " he " who " wanders through dry places " is the man, whereas it is the evil spirit. There may be, doubtless there is, a terrible truth in his treatment of the subject, and doubtless it is one of the hinted meanings of the parable, though scarcely the chief one. At the same time, the blunder, for it is nothing less, is absolutely inexcusable when a man takes, as the poet takes in such a case, the part of Advocatus Diaboli ; he ought, at least, to be scrupulously correct. It would have been a "strange parable" indeed if the Divine Speaker had represented, as this poem would make us believe that he represented, a mau driven by the sheer sense of desolation, without any hint of fault, into a worse evil than that from which he had been delivered.

We have dwelt on what we think the great blemish of Mr. Warren's poetry,—it suggests nothing but doubts which are only too ready to come to us, makes nothing clearer but the outlines of a darkness which is only too visible. Take these lines, for instance :-

"Arise and take thine ease,

For thou art Lord ; and these Are but as sprinkled dust before thy power.

Art thou the less divine, If they lift hands and whine, Or less eternal since they crawl an hour?

After a little pain to fold their bands, And perish like the beasts that tilled their lands.

" They dug their field and died, Believed thee or denied ; Cursed at thy name, or fed thy shrine with fume.

Loved somewhat, hated more, Hoarded, grew stiff and sore, Gat sturdy sons to labour in their room ; Became as alien faces in their land ; Died, worn and done with as a waste of sand.

"Strong are alone the dead.

They need not bow the head, Or reach one hand in ineffectual prayer.

Safe in their iron sleep What wrong shall make them weep, What sting of human anguish reach them there?

They are gone safe beyond the strong one's reign, Who shall decree against them any pain ?"

What could be more hopeless ? Mr. Warren has in no small measure the gifts of the poet, but we cannot hope or even wish for him the highest success till he can come to believe in Light.