THE NEW ARCADIA.*

MISS ROBINSON, as she presents herself in this her latest volume of verse, may be classed as an (esthetic pessimist. Like most of the younger generation of versifiers, she has come under the artistic spells of Mr. D. G. Rossetti; and the gloomy fascina- tions of the builder of The City of Dreadful Night have not been without power over her. We believe that Miss Robinson has a certain amount of individuality ; but just at present it is concealed by so thick a veil that its outlines are with difficulty discernible, and The New Arcadia strikes us as the product of a school rather than of a person. Only the free spirit of strong original genius can entirely emancipate a writer from the bondage of the fleeting literary fashions of his time, but he surely need not wind the chains around him with his own hands ; and yet this act of self-fettering is gone through in more than half the pages of the volume before us, with such results as might be anticipated. Some years ago Miss Robinson contributed to Mr. T. H. Ward's delightful English anthology an estimate of the poetry of Mrs. Hemans, which consisted of an almost amusing mixture of patronage and depreciation. Now-a-days, of course, every one can recognise the vein of somewhat thin common-place which runs through the verse of the once popular poetess, and it was merely the critic's manner that was irritating; but we cannot help thinking that some of our younger versifiers of both sexes—Miss Robinson among the number—might with advantage devote a few of their days and eights to the study even of the despised Mrs. Hemans. She, at any rate, did write because she had something to say, not because she wanted to say something; and what she had to say she said with sim- plicity, directness, lucidity, and entirely without strain. The poets of our latest school have some things—valuable and the reverse—in which Mrs. Hemans was altogether deficient; but their work, instead of being simple, direct, lucid, and unstrained, • The New Arcadia, and other Poems. By A. Mary F. Robinson. London : Rills and White.

is elaborate, allusive, obscure, and pitched throughout in a false falsetto.

The New Arcadia is the title, not of a poem, but of a group of poems, and is plainly ironical. We might call the separate poems idylls, dealing as they do with the country and the dwellers therein, were it not that the idyll has been defined by an accomplished critic as "a little picture-poem, with nature in the background, and in the foreground men and women of primitive and simple nobleness ;" and though Miss Robinson's " picture-poems " certainly have nature in the background, the figures in front are for the most part characterised by simple but hardly primitive brutality. The rural life of England is not arcadian. Damon has often too much of the lout, and Phyllis too much of the slattern, to be imaginatively satisfying ; but we are bound to say that the pestilential Inferno presented to us in these poems is the mere nightmare of a morbid fancy. Now, the imagination may—as in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales —deal with the facts of the real world, or it may—as in

Spenser's Faery Queen—create a world of its own with a new order of facts which are, in their way, as real and homogeneous as the others. In both cases there is clear vision, and conse-

quently there are directness and spontaneity of treatment; but when the imagination reflects the actual only to distort it, there is no clear vision, and the distorted reflection can only make itself realisable by stress and strain, by artifice and exaggera- tion. When Hood wrote his "Song of the Shirt," and Mrs. Browning her "Cry of the Children," the imaginations of these poets were in vital contact with reality; in each case the poem was born rather than made ; and it im- presses us as the facts themselves would have impressed us, had we possessed the poet's pure sensibility. In reading many of Miss Robinson's poems, our experience is the direct reverse of this ; they are the elaborate work, not of one who feels, but who is trying to feel and to make others feel. We select the first three stanzas in the volume,—the opening of the "Pro- logue ":—

" Not only in great cities dwells great crime ;

Not where they clash ashore, and break and moan Are waters deadliest ; and not in rhyme, Nor ever in words the deepest heart is shown.

But, lost in silence, fearful things are known To lonely souls, dumb passions, shoreless seas, And he who fights with Death may shrink from these.

Alas ! not all the greenness of the leaves, Not all their delicate tremble in the air, Can pluck one stab from a fierce heart that grieves.

The harvest moon slants on as sordid care As wears its heart out under attio eaves, And though all round those folded mountains sleep, Think you that sin and heart-break are less deep ?

You see the shepherd and his flocks afield, Hanger and passion are present there no less. Fearful ! when suddenly stands forth revealed Man's soul, nnneighboured in its hideousness,— Man's darker soul, a memory to possess Henceforth, by which all nature pales and dies, As a city suddenly wan under sunset skies."

We do not think that any unsophisticated reader can fail to feel the strain in these verses,—a strain which manifests itself in a refusal to say simple things in a simple way, and in a deliberate choice of metaphor and language whose very far- fetchedness and exaggeration seem meant to conceal the want of body in the thought and emotion beneath. That crime and misery and all evil things in human life do exist not only in smoky cities, but in the very presence of free and fair nature, is true and sad enough ; and because the truth is all too recognisable, and the sadness all too real, the statement gains nothing and loses much by investiture in spasmodic rhetoric and fantastic imagery. In the first of these stanzas, the opening metaphor, which in itself is strong and impressive, leads absolutely to nothing, and in the concluding lines it is impossible to find even a meaning ; while the second stanza is ruined by the ridiculous third line, which might have come straight out of Aytoun's Firmilian, and by the affected use of the word " slants," which has apparently been chosen because such a word as " shines " would have been obvious, plain, and, therefore, we suppose, Philistinish. The third stanza, still more spasmodic and hysterical, culminates in a line of which it is difficult to say whether its metre or its metaphor be the worse; and the whole passage is a terrible example of the lengths to which the following of a prevalent affectation may lead even a writer of culture and real poetic facility.

That Miss Robinson is such a writer cannot, we think, be doubted. She has now been some little time before the public, and we have seen work of hers both in verse and prose which has been frequently graceful; sometimes in the true sense of the word imaginative; and often noteworthy for that dainty ex- quisiteness of utterance which, though not the literary summum bonum that some writers think it, must always be a delightful and attractive thing. In this very volume there are poems to which we can give unreservedly such praise as may fitly be given to work which lacks nothing but the salt of individuality, and it may seem ungracious to dwell as we have dwelt exclusively upon Miss Robinson's faulty performances. Why, it may be asked, should we confine ourselves to criticisms which, howsoever valid against such poems as " The Bothers," " Cottar's Girl," "The Wise Woman," and others we might name — studies which are at once unreal and revolting—have no application to such pieces as "Church-going Tim," "The School-children," and "Love and Vision" ? Our reply to this very reasonable query is that we have simply followed Miss Robinson's lead, and devoted ourselves to that portion of her work which she herself evidently considers most important. She has grace, byt she is enamoured of power, and apparently labours under the very common error that power will come at call to any writer who can find subjects sufficiently abnormal and repellent. "When- ever I hear that a book is powerful," said an intelligent man in our hearing, " I know that means it is disgusting ;" and really the saying was only an exaggerated way of putting an obvious fact. Unpleasant impressions are on the whole more vivid than pleasant ones, and in the poems which give tone and character to The lfew Arcadia, Miss Robinson has deliberately chosen to gain this vividness by the sacrifice of truth, beauty, and health. We will not, however, let our final word be a word of dis- paragement. There are poems in this volume that are sweet and.

simple and tender,—which prove that Miss Robinson can make her work beautiful when she abandons the attempt to make it "powerful." We have not space for an entire poem, so we take the following sonnet from the piece entitled "Apprehension ":—

" 0 foolish dream, to hope that such as I

Who answer only to thine easiest moods, Should fill thy heart, as o'er my heart there broods The perfect fullness of thy memory !

I flit across thy soul as white birds fly Across the untrodden desert solitudes : A moment's flash of wings; fair interludes That leave unchanged the eternal sand and sky.

Even such to thee am I; but thou to me As the embracing shore to the sobbing sea, Even as the sea itself to the stone-tossed rill. But who, but who shall give such rest to thee ? The deep mid-ocean waters perpetually Call to the land, and call unanswered still."