'There is delight in singing, though none hear
Beside the singer: and there is delight
In praising, though the praiser sit alone,
And see the praised far off him, far above.'
--W.S. LANDOR.
It has been said, with more of truth than flattery, that literature of
any kind which requires the reader himself to think, in order to
enjoy, can never be popular. The writings of Mr Henry Taylor are to be
classed in this category. The reader of his dramas must study in order
to relish them; and their audience, therefore, must be of the fit,
though few kind. Goethe somewhere remarks, that it is not what we take
from a book so much as what we bring to it that actually profits us.
But this is hard doctrine, caviare to the multitude. And so long as
popular indolence and popular distaste for habits of reflection shall
continue the order of the day, so long will it be difficult for
writers of Mr Taylor's type to popularise their meditations; to see
themselves quoted in every provincial newspaper and twelfth-rate
magazine; to be gloriously pirated by eager hordes at Brussels and New
York; or to create a furor in 'the Row' on the day of publication, and
turn bibliopolic premises into 'overflowing houses.' The public asks
for glaring effects, palpable hits, double-dyed colours, treble X
inspirations, concentrated essence of sentiments, and emotions up to
French-romance pitch. With such a public, what has our author in
common? While _they_ make literary demands after their own heart, and
expect every candidate for their _not_ evergreen laurels to conform to
their rules, Mr Taylor calmly unfolds his theory, that it is from
'deep self-possession, an intense repose' that all genuine emanations
of poetic genius proceed, and expresses his doubt whether any high
endeavour of poetic art ever has been or ever will be promoted by the
stimulation of popular applause.[2] He denies that youth is the poet's
prime. He contends that what constitutes a great poet is a rare and
peculiar balance of all the faculties--the balance of reason with
imagination, passion with self-possession, abundance with reserve, and
inventive conception with executive ability. He insists that no man is
worthy of the name of a poet who would not rather be read a hundred
times by one reader than once by a hundred. He affirms that poetry,
unless written simply to please and pamper, and not to elevate or
instruct, will do little indeed towards procuring its writer a
subsistence, and that it will probably not even yield him such a
return as would suffice to support a labouring man for one month out
of the twelve.[3] Tenets like these are not for the million. The
propounder they regard as talking at them, not to them. His principles
and practice, his canons of taste, and his literary achievements, are
far above out of their sight--his merit they are content to take on
trust, by the hearing of the ear, a mystery of faith alone.
Perhaps men shrewder than good Sir Roger de Coverley might aver that
much is to be said on both sides--that there may be something of
fallacy on the part of poet as well as people in this controversy. It
is possible to set the standard too high as well as too low--to plant
it on an elevation so distant that its symbol can no longer be
deciphered, as well as to fix it so low that its folds draggle in mire
and dust. If genius systematically appeal only to the initiated few,
it must learn to do without the homage of the outer multitude. For
its slender income of fame, it has mainly itself to thank. These
remarks apply with primary force to that class of contemporary poets
who delight in the mystic and enigmatical, and whose ideas are so apt
to vanish, like Homer's heroes, in a cloud--among whom Robert Browning
and Philip J. Bailey are conspicuous names; and in a secondary degree
to that other class, lucid indeed in thought, and classically definite
in expression, but otherwise too scholastic and abstract for popular
sympathies--among whom we may cite Walter Savage Landor and Henry
Taylor. Coleridge[4] tells us that, to enjoy poetry, we must combine a
more than ordinary sympathy with the objects, emotions, or incidents
contemplated by the poet, consequent on rare sensibility, with a more
than ordinary activity of the mind in respect of the fancy and
imagination. This more than ordinary mental activity is especially
demanded from the readers--say rather the students--of _Philip van
Artevelde_ and its kindred dramas. Those who are thus equipped will
commonly be found to agree in admiring the writings of this author;
among them he is unquestionably 'popular,' if it be any test of
popularity to send forth a second edition three months after the
first. Scholarship can appreciate, pure intellect can find nutriment
in, his reflective and carefully-wrought pages. His heroes and
heroines, cold and unimpassioned to the man of society, are classic
and genial to the man of thought. A Quarterly Reviewer observes, that
the blended dignity of thought, and a sedate moral habit, invests his
poetry with a stateliness in which the drama is generally deficient,
and makes his writings illustrate, in some degree, a new form of the
art. In all that he writes he stands revealed the true English
gentleman, 'that grand old name,' as Tennyson calls it,
Defamed by every charlatan,
And soiled with all ignoble use.'
_Isaac Comnenus_--in which a recent critic discovers much of that
Byronian vein upon which Mr Taylor is severe in his own
criticisms--being little remarkable in itself, as well as the least
remarkable of his dramatic performances, need not detain us. The
career of _Philip van Artevelde_ belongs to an era when, as Sir James
Stephen remarks, the whole of Europe, under the influence of some
strange sympathy, was agitated by the simultaneous discontents of all
her great civic populations--when the insurgent spirit, commencing in
the Italian republics, had spread from the south to the north of the
Alps, everywhere marking its advance by tumult, spoil, and bloodshed.
'Wat Tyler and his bands had menaced London; and the communes of
Flanders, under the command of Philip van Artevelde, had broken out
into open war with the counts, their seigneurs, and with their
suzerain lord, the Duke of Burgundy. On the issue of that attempt the
fate of the royal and baronial power seemed to hang in France, not
less than in Flanders.'[5] The drama composed by Mr Taylor to
represent the fortunes of the 'Chief Captain of the White Hoods and of
Ghent,' consists of two plays and an interlude--_The Lay of
Elena_--and being, as he says in his preface, equal in length to about
six such plays as are adapted to the stage, was not, of course,
intended to solicit the most sweet voices of pit and gallery,
although it has since been subjected to that ordeal at the instance of
Mr Macready. Historic truth is said to be preserved in it, as far as
the material events are concerned--with the usual exception of such
occasional dilatations and compressions of time as are required in
dramatic composition. And notwithstanding the limited imagination and
the too artificial passion which characterise it, _Philip van
Artevelde_ is in very many respects a noble work, as it certainly is
its author's chef-d'oeuvre. It has been pronounced by no mean
authority the superior of every dramatic composition of modern times,
including the _Sardanapalus_ of Lord Byron, the _Remorse_ of
Coleridge, and the _Cenci_ of Shelley. The portraiture of Philip is
one of those elaborate and highly-finished studies which repay as well
as require minute investigation. He is at once profoundly meditative
and surpassingly active. His energy of brain is only rivalled by his
readiness of hand. In him the active mood and the passive--the
practical and the ideal--the objective and the subjective--are not as
parallel lines that never meet, but are sections of one line,
describing the circle of his all-embracing mind. His youth has been,
that of a dreamy recluse, the scorn of men of the world. 'Oh, fear him
not, my lord,' says one of them to the Earl of Flanders:
--'His father's name
Is all that from his father[6] he derives.
He is a man of singular address
In catching river fish. His life hath been
Till now, more like a peasant's or a monk's,
Than like the issue of so great a man.'
Similarly the earl himself describes him as 'a man that as much
knowledge has of war as I of brewing mead--a bookish nursling of the
monks--a meacock.' But when the last scene of all has closed his
strange eventful history, the testimony of a nobler, wiser foe,[7]
ascribes to him great gifts of courage, discretion, wit, an equal
temper, an ample soul, rock-bound and fortified against assaults of
transitory passion, but founded on a surging subterranean fire that
stirs him to lofty enterprise--a man prompt, capable, and calm,
wanting nothing in soldiership except good-fortune. Ever tempted to
reverie, he yet refuses, even for one little hour, to yield up the
weal of Flanders to idle thought or vacant retrospect. Having once put
his hand to the plough of action, with clear foresight, not blindfold
bravery, his language is--'Though I indulge no more the dream of
living, as I hoped I might have lived, a life of temperate and
thoughtful joy, yet I repine not, and from this time forth will cast
no look behind.' The first part of the drama leaves him an exultant
victor, an honourable prosperous, and happy man. The second
part--which alike in interest and treatment is very inferior to the
first--finds him falling, and leaves him 'fallen, fallen, fallen, from
his high estate.' His sun, no longer trailing clouds of glory, sets in
a wintry and misty gloom. And yet in the act of dying he emits flashes
of the ancient brightness, and we feel that so dies a hero. The other
_dramatis personæ_ pale their ineffectual fires before his central
light.
After a silence of nearly ten years--characteristic of Mr Taylor's
deliberative and disciplined mind--he produced (1842) _Edwin the
Fair_, of whose story the little that was known, he observes, was
romantic enough to have impressed itself on the popular memory--the
tale of _Edwy and Elgiva_ having been current in the nursery long
before it came to be studied as a historical question. In illustrating
this tale he borrows from the bordering reigns 'incidents which were
characteristic of the times,' though some are of opinion, that his
deviation from historical truth has rather impaired than aided the
poetical effect of the drama. With artistic skill, and often with
sustained energy, he develops the career of the 'All-Fair' prince, and
his relation to the monkish struggle of the tenth century; the hostile
intrigues and stormy violence of Dunstan; the loyal tenacity and Saxon
frank-heartedness of Earl Leolf and his allies; the celebrated
coronation-scene, and 'most admired disorder' of the banquet; the
discovery and denunciation of Edwin's secret nuptials; his
imprisonment in the Tower of London; the confusion and dispersion of
his adherents; the ecclesiastical finesse and conjuror-tricks of
Dunstan; the king's rescue and temporary success; the murder of
Elgiva, and Edwin's own death in the essay to avenge her. It is around
Dunstan, the representative of spiritual despotism, that the interest
centres. The character of this 'Saint,' like that of Hildebrand and à
Becket, has been made one of the problems of history. Mr Taylor's
reading of the part is masterly, and we think correct. His Dunstan is
not wholly sane; he believes himself inspired to read the alphabet of
Heaven's stars, and to behold visions beyond the bounds of human
foresight; one of the few to whom, 'and not in mercy, is it given to
read the mixed celestial cypher: not in mercy, save as a penance
merciful in issue.' His mischievous influence over the popular mind is
sealed by the partial and latent degree of his insanity, for 'madness
that doth least declare itself endangers most, and ever most infects
the unsound many.' His great natural powers are tainted by the one
black spot; his youth has been devoted to books, to the study of
chemistry and mechanics; his manhood to observing 'the ways of men and
policies of state' in the court of Edred; 'and were he not pushed
sometimes past the confines of his reason, he would o'ertop the
world.' Next to him in interest comes Earl Leolf, from whose lips
proceed some of the finest poetry in the play, especially that
exquisite soliloquy[8] on the sea-shore at Hastings. Athulf, the
brother of Elgiva, is another happy portrait--a man bright and jocund
as the morn, who can and will detect the springs of fruitfulness and
joy in earth's waste places, and whose bluff dislike of Dunstan is
aptly illustrated in the scene where he brings the king's commands,
and is kept waiting by the monks during Dunstan's matutinal
flagellation:--
_'Athulf._ But, sirs, it is in haste--in haste extreme--
Matters of state, and hot with haste.
_Second Monk_. My lord,
We will so say, but truly at this present
He is about to scourge himself.
_Athulf_. I'll wait.
For a king's ransom would I not cut short
So good a work! I pray you, for how long?
_Second Monk_. For twice the _De Profundis_, sung in slow time.
_Athulf_. Please him to make it ten times, I will wait.
And could I be of use, this knotted trifle,
This dog-whip here has oft been worse employed.'
In his recent play, _The Virgin Widow_ (1850), Mr Taylor declines from
the promise of his earlier efforts. The preface suggests great things;
but they are not forthcoming. There is much careful finish, much
sententious rhetoric, much elegant description; but there is little of
racy humour (the play is a 'romantic comedy'), little of poetical
freshness, little of lively flesh and blood portraiture, and more of
melodramatic expedience than dramatic construction. Neither comedy nor
melodrama is our author's _forte_.
In 1836 Mr Taylor published _The Statesman_, a book which contained
the 'views and maxims respecting the transaction of public business,'
which had been suggested to its author by twelve years' experience of
official life. He has since then allowed that it was wanting in that
general interest which might possibly have been felt in the results of
a more extensive and varied conversancy with public life.[9] In 1848
he produced _Notes from Life_, professedly a kind of supplemental
volume to the former, embodying the conclusions of an attentive
observation of life at large. The first essay investigates in detail
the right measure and manner to be adopted in getting, saving,
spending, giving, taking, lending, borrowing, and bequeathing 'money;'
and a weighty, valuable essay it is, with no lack of golden grains and
eke of diamond-dust in its composition. The thoughts are not given in
the bullion lump, but are well refined, and having passed through the
engraver's hands, they shine with the true polish, ring with the true
sound. In terse, pregnant, and somewhat oracular diction, we are here
instructed how to avoid the evils contingent upon bold commercial
enterprise--how to guard against excesses of the accumulative
instinct--how to exercise a thoroughly conscientious mode of
regulating expenditure, eschewing prodigality, that vice of a weak
nature, as avarice is of a strong one--how to be generous in giving;
'for the essence of generosity is in self-sacrifice, waste, on the
contrary, comes always by self-indulgence'--how to withstand
solicitations for loans, when the loans are to accommodate weak men in
sacrificing the future to the present. The essay on _Humility and
Independence_ is equally good, and pleasantly demonstrates the
proposition, that Humility is the true mother of Independence; and
that Pride, which is so often supposed to stand to her in that
relation, is in reality the step-mother by whom is wrought the very
destruction and ruin of Independence. False humilities are ordered
into court, and summarily convicted by this single-eyed judge, whose
cross-examination of these 'sham respectabilities' elicits many a
suggestive practical truth. There is more of philosophy and prudence
than of romance in the excursus on _Choice in Marriage_; but the
philosophy is shrewd and instructive, uttering many a homely hint of
value in its way: as where we are reminded that if marrying _for_
money is to be justified only in the case of those unhappy persons who
are fit for nothing better, it does not follow that marrying _without_
money is to be justified in others; and again, that the negotiations
and transactions connected with marriage-settlements are eminently
useful, as searching character and testing affection, before an
irrevocable step be taken; and again, that when two very young persons
are joined together in matrimony, it is as if one sweet-pea should be
put as a prop to another. The essay on _Wisdom_ is elevated and
thoughtful, like most of the essayist's papers, but somewhat too heavy
for miscellaneous readers. With his wonted clearness he distinguishes
Wisdom from understanding, talents, capacity, ability, sagacity,
sense, &c. and defines it as that exercise of the reason into which
the heart enters--a structure of the understanding rising out of the
moral and spiritual nature. Then follows a section on _Children_,
which explodes not a few educational fallacies, and propounds certain
articles of faith and practice wholesome for these times, though it
will probably wear a prim and quakerish aspect to the admirers of Jean
Paul's famous tractate[10] on the same theme. The concluding paper in
this series, entitled _The Life Poetic_, is the liveliest, if not the
most valuable of the six: it has, however, been charged, with
considerable show of justice, with a tendency to strip genius of all
that is individual and spontaneous, or to accredit it only 'when it
moves abroad sedately, clad in the uniform of a peculiar college.' Mr
Taylor's 'solicitous and premeditated formalism' of poetical doctrine
is, it must be confessed, a little too strait-laced. The true poet is
born, not made. Still, in their place, our author's dogmas have their
use, and might, if duly marked and inwardly digested, annually deter
many aspirants who are _not_ poets from proving so incontestably to
the careless public that negative fact.
_Notes from Books_ followed within a few months, but met with a less
cordial reception. Of the four essays comprised in this volume, three
are reprinted contributions to the _Quarterly Review_, being
criticisms on the poetry of Wordsworth and Aubrey de Vere; and
worthily do they illustrate--those on Wordsworth at least--Mr Taylor's
composite faculty of depth and delicacy in poetical exposition. Of
Wordsworth's many and gifted commentators--among them Wilson,
Coleridge, Hazlitt, De Quincey, Lamb, Moir, Sterling--few have shewn a
happier insight into the idiosyncrasy, or done more justice to the
beauties of the patriarch of the Lakes. With Wordsworth for a subject,
and the _Quarterly Review_ for a 'door of utterance,' Mr Taylor is
quite in his element. The fourth essay, on the _Ways of the Rich and
Great_, is enriched with wise saws and modern instances. Its
_matériel_ is composed of ripe observation and reflective good sense;
but the manner is objected to as marred by conceits of style--a sin
not very safely to be committed by so stern a censor of it in others.
His authoritative air in laying down the law is also occasionally
unpleasing to some readers; and great as his tact in essay-writing is,
he wants that easy grace and pervading _bonhomie_ which imparts such a
charm to the works of one with whom he has been erroneously
identified--the anonymous author of _Friends in Council_. But, after
all, he is one of those writers to whom our current literature is
really indebted, and whose sage, sententious, and well-hammered
thoughts may be profitably, as well as safely, commended to every
thinking soul among us.
* * * * *