force of the serious writing, and to the oddity of the contrast between
that and the flashy passages with which it is interlarded. From the
sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step. You laugh and are
surprised that any one should turn round and _travestie_ himself: the
drollery is in the utter discontinuity of ideas and feelings. He makes
virtue serve as a foil to vice; _dandyism_ is (for want of any other) a
variety of genius. A classical intoxication is followed by the splashing
of soda-water, by frothy effusions of ordinary bile. After the lightning
and the hurricane, we are introduced to the interior of the cabin and
the contents of wash-hand basins. The solemn hero of tragedy plays
_Scrub_ in the farce. This is "very tolerable and not to be endured."
The Noble Lord is almost the only writer who has prostituted his talents
in this way. He hallows in order to desecrate; takes a pleasure in
defacing the images of beauty his hands have wrought; and raises our
hopes and our belief in goodness to Heaven only to dash them to the
earth again, and break them in pieces the more effectually from the very
height they have fallen. Our enthusiasm for genius or virtue is thus
turned into a jest by the very person who has kindled it, and who thus
fatally quenches the sparks of both. It is not that Lord Byron is
sometimes serious and sometimes trifling, sometimes profligate, and
sometimes moral--but when he is most serious and most moral, he is only
preparing to mortify the unsuspecting reader by putting a pitiful _hoax_
upon him. This is a most unaccountable anomaly. It is as if the eagle
were to build its eyry in a common sewer, or the owl were seen soaring
to the mid-day sun. Such a sight might make one laugh, but one would not
wish or expect it to occur more than once![C]
In fact, Lord Byron is the spoiled child of fame as well as fortune.
He has taken a surfeit of popularity, and is not contented to delight,
unless he can shock the public. He would force them to admire in spite
of decency and common sense--he would have them read what they would
read in no one but himself, or he would not give a rush for their
applause. He is to be "a chartered libertine," from whom insults are
favours, whose contempt is to be a new incentive to admiration. His
Lordship is hard to please: he is equally averse to notice or neglect,
enraged at censure and scorning praise. He tries the patience of the
town to the very utmost, and when they shew signs of weariness or
disgust, threatens to _discard_ them. He says he will write on, whether
he is read or not. He would never write another page, if it were not
to court popular applause, or to affect a superiority over it. In this
respect also, Lord Byron presents a striking contrast to Sir Walter
Scott. The latter takes what part of the public favour falls to his
share, without grumbling (to be sure he has no reason to complain) the
former is always quarrelling with the world about his _modicum_ of
applause, the _spolia opima_ of vanity, and ungraciously throwing the
offerings of incense heaped on his shrine back in the faces of his
admirers. Again, there is no taint in the writings of the Author of
Waverley, all is fair and natural and _above-board:_ he never outrages
the public mind. He introduces no anomalous character: broaches no
staggering opinion. If he goes back to old prejudices and superstitions
as a relief to the modern reader, while Lord Byron floats on swelling
paradoxes--
"Like proud seas under him;"
if the one defers too much to the spirit of antiquity, the other
panders to the spirit of the age, goes to the very edge of extreme and
licentious speculation, and breaks his neck over it. Grossness and
levity are the playthings of his pen. It is a ludicrous circumstance
that he should have dedicated his _Cain_ to the worthy Baronet! Did the
latter ever acknowledge the obligation? We are not nice, not very nice;
but we do not particularly approve those subjects that shine chiefly
from their rottenness: nor do we wish to see the Muses drest out in
the flounces of a false or questionable philosophy, like _Portia_ and
_Nerissa_ in the garb of Doctors of Law. We like metaphysics as well as
Lord Byron; but not to see them making flowery speeches, nor dancing a
measure in the fetters of verse. We have as good as hinted, that his
Lordship's poetry consists mostly of a tissue of superb common-places;
even his paradoxes are _common-place_. They are familiar in the schools:
they are only new and striking in his dramas and stanzas, by being out
of place. In a word, we think that poetry moves best within the circle
of nature and received opinion: speculative theory and subtle casuistry
are forbidden ground to it. But Lord Byron often wanders into this
ground wantonly, wilfully, and unwarrantably. The only apology we can
conceive for the spirit of some of Lord Byron's writings, is the spirit
of some of those opposed to him. They would provoke a man to write any
thing. "Farthest from them is best." The extravagance and license of the
one seems a proper antidote to the bigotry and narrowness of the other.
The first _Vision of Judgment_ was a set-off to the second, though
"None but itself could be its parallel."
Perhaps the chief cause of most of Lord Byron's errors is, that he is
that anomaly in letters and in society, a Noble Poet. It is a double
privilege, almost too much for humanity. He has all the pride of birth
and genius. The strength of his imagination leads him to indulge in
fantastic opinions; the elevation of his rank sets censure at defiance.
He becomes a pampered egotist. He has a seat in the House of Lords, a
niche in the Temple of Fame. Every-day mortals, opinions, things are not
good enough for him to touch or think of. A mere nobleman is, in his
estimation, but "the tenth transmitter of a foolish face:" a mere man of
genius is no better than a worm. His Muse is also a lady of quality.
The people are not polite enough for him: the Court not sufficiently
intellectual. He hates the one and despises the other. By hating and
despising others, he does not learn to be satisfied with himself. A
fastidious man soon grows querulous and splenetic. If there is nobody
but ourselves to come up to our idea of fancied perfection, we easily
get tired of our idol. When a man is tired of what he is, by a natural
perversity he sets up for what he is not. If he is a poet, he pretends
to be a metaphysician: if he is a patrician in rank and feeling, he
would fain be one of the people. His ruling motive is not the love of
the people, but of distinction not of truth, but of singularity. He
patronizes men of letters out of vanity, and deserts them from caprice,
or from the advice of friends. He embarks in an obnoxious publication to
provoke censure, and leaves it to shift for itself for fear of scandal.
We do not like Sir Walter's gratuitous servility: we like Lord Byron's
preposterous _liberalism_ little better. He may affect the principles of
equality, but he resumes his privilege of peerage, upon occasion. His
Lordship has made great offers of service to the Greeks--money and
horses. He is at present in Cephalonia, waiting the event!
* * * * *
We had written thus far when news came of the death of Lord Byron, and
put an end at once to a strain of somewhat peevish invective, which was
intended to meet his eye, not to insult his memory. Had we known that we
were writing his epitaph, we must have done it with a different feeling.
As it is, we think it better and more like himself, to let what we had
written stand, than to take up our leaden shafts, and try to melt them
into "tears of sensibility," or mould them into dull praise, and an
affected shew of candour. We were not silent during the author's
life-time, either for his reproof or encouragement (such us we
could give, and _he_ did not disdain to accept) nor can we now turn
undertakers' men to fix the glittering plate upon his coffin, or fall
into the procession of popular woe.--Death cancels every thing but
truth; and strips a man of every thing but genius and virtue. It is a
sort of natural canonization. It makes the meanest of us sacred--it
installs the poet in his immortality, and lifts him to the skies. Death
is the great assayer of the sterling ore of talent. At his touch the
drossy particles fall off, the irritable, the personal, the gross, and
mingle with the dust--the finer and more ethereal part mounts with the
winged spirit to watch over our latest memory and protect our bones from
insult. We consign the least worthy qualities to oblivion, and cherish
the nobler and imperishable nature with double pride and fondness.
Nothing could shew the real superiority of genius in a more striking
point of view than the idle contests and the public indifference about
the place of Lord Byron's interment, whether in Westminster-Abbey or
his own family-vault. A king must have a coronation--a nobleman a
funeral-procession.--The man is nothing without the pageant. The poet's
cemetery is the human mind, in which he sows the seeds of never ending
thought--his monument is to be found in his works:
"Nothing can cover his high fame but Heaven;
No pyramids set off his memory,
But the eternal substance of his greatness."
Lord Byron is dead: he also died a martyr to his zeal in the cause of
freedom, for the last, best hopes of man. Let that be his excuse and his
epitaph!
[Footnote A: This Essay was written just before Lord Byron's death.]
[Footnote B:
"Don Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero
My Leipsic, and my Mont St. Jean seems Cain,"
_Don Juan_, Canto. XI.]
[Footnote C: This censure applies to the first Cantos of DON JUAN much
more than to the last. It has been called a TRISTRAM SHANDY in rhyme: it
is rather a poem written about itself.]
* * * * *
MR. CAMPBELL AND MR. CRABBE.
"Mr. Campbell may be said to hold a place (among modern poets) between
Lord Byron and Mr. Rogers. With much of the glossy splendour, the
pointed vigour, and romantic interest of the one, he possesses the
fastidious refinement, the classic elegance of the other. Mr. Rogers, as
a writer, is too effeminate, Lord Byron too extravagant: Mr. Campbell is
neither. The author of the _Pleasures of Memory_ polishes his lines till
they sparkle with the most exquisite finish; he attenuates them into the
utmost degree of trembling softness: but we may complain, in spite of
the delicacy and brilliancy of the execution, of a want of strength
and solidity. The author of the _Pleasures of Hope_, with a richer and
deeper vein of thought and imagination, works it out into figures of
equal grace and dazzling beauty, avoiding on the one hand the tinsel of
flimsy affectation, and on the other the vices of a rude and barbarous
negligence. His Pegasus is not a rough, skittish colt, running wild
among the mountains, covered with bur-docks and thistles, nor a tame,
sleek pad, unable to get out of the same ambling pace, but a beautiful
_manege_-horse, full of life and spirit in itself, and subject to the
complete controul of the rider. Mr. Campbell gives scope to his feelings
and his fancy, and embodies them in a noble and naturally interesting
subject; and he at the same time conceives himself called upon (in these
days of critical nicety) to pay the exactest attention to the expression
of each thought, and to modulate each line into the most faultless
harmony. The character of his mind is a lofty and self-scrutinising
ambition, that strives to reconcile the integrity of general design with
the perfect elaboration of each component part, that aims at striking
effect, but is jealous of the means by which this is to be produced.
Our poet is not averse to popularity (nay, he is tremblingly alive to
it)--but self-respect is the primary law, the indispensable condition
on which it must be obtained. We should dread to point out (even if we
could) a false concord, a mixed metaphor, an imperfect rhyme in any of
Mr. Campbell's productions; for we think that all his fame would hardly
compensate to him for the discovery. He seeks for perfection, and
nothing evidently short of it can satisfy his mind. He is a _high
finisher_ in poetry, whose every work must bear inspection, whose
slightest touch is precious--not a coarse dauber who is contented to
impose on public wonder and credulity by some huge, ill-executed design,
or who endeavours to wear out patience and opposition together by a load
of lumbering, feeble, awkward, improgressive lines--on the contrary, Mr.
Campbell labours to lend every grace of execution to his subject, while
he borrows his ardour and inspiration from it, and to deserve the
laurels he has earned, by true genius and by true pains. There is an
apparent consciousness of this in most of his writings. He has attained
to great excellence by aiming at the greatest, by a cautious and yet
daring selection of topics, and by studiously (and with a religious
horror) avoiding all those faults which arise from grossness, vulgarity,
haste, and disregard of public opinion. He seizes on the highest point
of eminence, and strives to keep it to himself--he "snatches a grace
beyond the reach of art," and will not let it go--he steeps a single
thought or image so deep in the Tyrian dyes of a gorgeous imagination,
that it throws its lustre over a whole page--every where vivid _ideal_
forms hover (in intense conception) over the poet's verse, which
ascends, like the aloe, to the clouds, with pure flowers at its top. Or
to take an humbler comparison (the pride of genius must sometimes stoop
to the lowliness of criticism) Mr. Campbell's poetry often reminds us of
the purple gilliflower, both for its colour and its scent, its glowing
warmth, its rich, languid, sullen hue,
"Yet sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath!"
There are those who complain of the little that Mr. Campbell has done
in poetry, and who seem to insinuate that he is deterred by his own
reputation from making any further or higher attempts. But after having
produced two poems that have gone to the heart of a nation, and are
gifts to a world, he may surely linger out the rest of his life in a
dream of immortality. There are moments in our lives so exquisite that
all that remains of them afterwards seems useless and barren; and there
are lines and stanzas in our author's early writings in which he may
be thought to have exhausted all the sweetness and all the essence of
poetry, so that nothing farther was left to his efforts or his ambition.
Happy is it for those few and fortunate worshippers of the Muse (not
a subject of grudging or envy to others) who already enjoy in their
life-time a foretaste of their future fame, who see their names
accompanying them, like a cloud of glory, from youth to age,
"And by the vision splendid,
Are on their way attended"--
and who know that they have built a shrine for the thoughts and
feelings, that were most dear to them, in the minds and memories
of other men, till the language which they lisped in childhood is
forgotten, or the human heart shall beat no more!
The _Pleasures of Hope_ alone would not have called forth these remarks
from us; but there are passages in the _Gertrude of Wyoming_ of so rare
and ripe a beauty, that they challenge, as they exceed all praise.
Such, for instance, is the following peerless description of Gertrude's
childhood:--
"A loved bequest--and I may half impart
To those that feel the strong paternal tie,
How like a new existence in his heart
That living flow'r uprose beneath his eye,
Dear as she was, from cherub infancy,
From hours when she would round his garden play,
To time when as the ripening years went by,
Her lovely mind could culture well repay,
And more engaging grew from pleasing day to day.
"I may not paint those thousand infant charms
(Unconscious fascination, undesign'd!)
The orison repeated in his arms,
For God to bless her sire and all mankind;
The book, the bosom on his knee reclined,
Or how sweet fairy-lore he heard her con
(The play-mate ere the teacher of her mind)
All uncompanion'd else her years had gone,
Till now in Gertrude's eyes their ninth blue summer shone.
"And summer was the tide, and sweet the hour,
When sire and daughter saw, with fleet descent,
An Indian from his bark approach their bower,
Of buskin'd limb and swarthy lineament;
The red wild feathers on his brow were blent,
And bracelets bound the arm that help'd to light
A boy, who seem'd, as he beside him went,
Of Christian vesture and complexion bright,
Led by his dusty guide, like morning brought by night."
In the foregoing stanzas we particularly admire the line--
"Till now in Gertrude's eyes their ninth blue summer shone."
It appears to us like the ecstatic union of natural beauty and poetic
fancy, and in its playful sublimity resembles the azure canopy mirrored
in the smiling waters, bright, liquid, serene, heavenly! A great outcry,
we know, has prevailed for some time past against poetic diction and
affected conceits, and, to a certain degree, we go along with it; but
this must not prevent us from feeling the thrill of pleasure when we see
beauty linked to beauty, like kindred flame to flame, or from applauding
the voluptuous fancy that raises and adorns the fairy fabric of thought,
that nature has begun! Pleasure is "scattered in stray-gifts o'er the
earth"--beauty streaks the "famous poet's page" in occasional lines of
inconceivable brightness; and wherever this is the case, no splenetic
censures or "jealous leer malign," no idle theories or cold indifference
should hinder us from greeting it with rapture.--There are other parts
of this poem equally delightful, in which there is a light startling as
the red-bird's wing; a perfume like that of the magnolia; a music
like the murmuring of pathless woods or of the everlasting ocean. We
conceive, however, that Mr. Campbell excels chiefly in sentiment and
imagery. The story moves slow, and is mechanically conducted, and rather
resembles a Scotch canal carried over lengthened aqueducts and with a
number of _locks_ in it, than one of those rivers that sweep in their
majestic course, broad and full, over Transatlantic plains and lose
themselves in rolling gulfs, or thunder down lofty precipices. But in
the centre, the inmost recesses of our poet's heart, the pearly dew of
sensibility is distilled and collects, like the diamond in the mine, and
the structure of his fame rests on the crystal columns of a polished
imagination. We prefer the _Gertrude_ to the _Pleasures of Hope_,
because with perhaps less brilliancy, there is more of tenderness and
natural imagery in the former. In the _Pleasures of Hope_ Mr. Campbell
had not completely emancipated himself from the trammels of the more
artificial style of poetry--from epigram, and antithesis, and hyperbole.
The best line in it, in which earthly joys are said to be--
"Like angels' visits, few and far between"--
is a borrowed one.[A] But in the Gertrude of Wyoming "we perceive a
softness coming over the heart of the author, and the scales and crust
of formality that fence in his couplets and give them a somewhat
glittering and rigid appearance, fall off," and he has succeeded in
engrafting the wild and more expansive interest of the romantic school
of poetry on classic elegance and precision. After the poem we have
just named, Mr. Campbell's SONGS are the happiest efforts of his
Muse:--breathing freshness, blushing like the morn, they seem, like
clustering roses, to weave a chaplet for love and liberty; or their
bleeding words gush out in mournful and hurried succession, like "ruddy
drops that visit the sad heart" of thoughtful Humanity. The _Battle of
Hohenlinden_ is of all modern compositions the most lyrical in spirit
and in sound. To justify this encomium, we need only recall the lines to
the reader's memory.
"On Linden, when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay th' untrodden snow,
And dark as winter was the flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
But Linden saw another sight,
When the drum beat at dead of night,
Commanding fires of death to light
The darkness of her scenery.
By torch and trumpet fast array'd,
Each horseman drew his battle blade,
And furious every charger neigh'd,
To join the dreadful revelry.
Then shook the hills with thunder riv'n,
Then rush'd the steed to battle driv'n,
And louder than the bolts of heav'n
Far flash'd the red artillery.
But redder yet that light shall glow
On Linden's hills of stained snow,
And bloodier yet the torrent flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
'Tis morn, but scarce yon level sun
Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling[B] dun,
Where furious Frank and fiery Hun
Shout in their sulph'rous canopy.
The combat deepens. On, ye brave,
Who rush to glory, or the grave!
Wave, Munich! all thy banners wave!
And charge with all thy chivalry!
Few, few shall part, where many meet!
The snow shall be their winding-sheet,
And every turf beneath their feet
Shall be a soldier's sepulchre."
Mr. Campbell's prose-criticisms on contemporary and other poets (which
have appeared in the New Monthly Magazine) are in a style at once
chaste, temperate, guarded, and just.
Mr. Crabbe presents an entire contrast to