"It may have been in the ancient time,"
may be, we are utterly at a loss to conjecture. We seek in vain to
invest them with a shadow of sense. Perhaps they are thrown in to
redeem, by their profound unintelligibility, the shallow trifling of the
rest of the poem. But it was not enough for young Merton that the girl
accepted the fruits which he offered to her in a _sullen_ tone. He had
now reached the age so naturally and lucidly described as the period of
life when the "eyes, wide with their language, speak of youth's habitual
surprise," and he began to seek "new joys from books," communicating the
results of his studies to Maud, whose turn it now was to be surprised.
"So when to-morrow came, while Maud
Stood listening with surprise,
He told the tale learnt over night,
And, if he met her eyes,
_Perhaps_ said how far the stars were, _and
Talk'd on about the skies_."
The effect of these lucid revelations upon the mind of Maud was very
overpowering.
"She wept for joy if the cushat sang
Its low song in the fir;
The cat, _perhaps_, broke the quiet with
Its regular slow purr;
'Twas music now, and her wheel gave forth
A rhythm in its whirr.
"She once had read, When lovers die,
And go where angels are,
Each pair of lover's souls, _perhaps_,
Will make a double star;
_So stars grew dearer, and she thought
They did not look so far._
"But being ignorant, and still
So young as to be prone
To think all very great delights
Peculiarly her own,
She guess'd not what to her made sweet
_Books writ on lovers' moan_."
And so the poem babbles on through several very sickly pages, in which
the following descriptive stanza occurs:--
"The flat white river lapsed along,
Now a broad broken glare,
Now winding through the bosom'd lands,
Till lost in distance, where
The tall hills, sunning their chisell'd peaks,
_Made emptier the empty air_."
During one of their ramblings, Maud becomes visibly embarrassed.
"But Merton's thoughts were less confused:
'What, _I_ wrong ought so good?
Besides, the danger that is seen
Is easily withstood:'
Then loud, 'The sun is very warm'--
_And they walk'd into the wood_."
The wood consisting of a forest of as shady asterisks as the most
fastidious lovers could desire.
"Months pass'd away, and every day
The lovers still were wont
To meet together, and their shame
At meeting had grown blunt;
_For they were of an age when sin
Is only seen in front_."
The father, however, who was also of an age to see sin _in front_,
suspects that his daughter is with child, and taxes her with it. Maud
confesses her shame; upon which, as we are led to conjecture, old Gerald
dies broken-hearted--while the girl is safely delivered under a cloud of
asterisks. She is deterred from disclosing her situation to Merton, the
father of the child--and why? for this very natural reason, forsooth,
that
"He, if that were done,
Could hardly fail to know
The ruin he had caused, he might
Be brought to share her woe,
Making it doubly sharp."
So, rather than occasion the slightest distress or inconvenience to her
seducer, she magnanimously resolves to murder her baby; and accordingly
the usual machinery of the poem is brought into play--the
asterisks--which on former occasions answered the purpose of a forest
and a cloud, being now converted into a very convenient pool, in which
she quietly immerses the offspring of her illicit passion. And the deed
being done, its appalling consequences on her conscience are thus
powerfully and naturally depicted--
"_Lo! in her eyes stands the great surprise
That comes with the first crime_.
"She throws a glance of terror round--
There's not a creature nigh;
But behold the sun that looketh through
The frowning western sky,
Is lifting up one broad beam, _like
A lash of God's own eye_."
Were we not right in saying that there is nothing in the writings of any
former poetaster to equal the silly and conceited jargon of the present
versifier? Having favoured us with the emphatic lines in italics, to
depict the physical concomitants of Maud's guilt, he again has recourse
to asterisks, to veil the mental throes by which her mind is tortured
into madness by remorse: and very wisely--for they lead us to suppose
that the writer could have powerfully delineated these inner agitations,
if he had chosen; but that he has abstained from doing so out of mercy
to the feelings of his readers. We must, therefore, content ourselves
with the following feebleness, with which the poem concludes:
"Maud, with her books, comes, day by day,
Fantastically clad,
To read them near the poor; and all
Who meet her, look so sad--
That even to herself it is
Quite plain that she is mad."
"Lilian" is the next tale in the volume. This poem is an echo, both in
sentiment and in versification of Mr Tennyson's "Locksley Hall;" and a
baser and more servile echo was never bleated forth from the throat of
any of the imitative flock. There are many other indications in the
volume which show that Mr Tennyson is the model which Mr Patmore has set
up for his imitation; but "Lilian," more particularly, is a complete
counterpart in coarsest fustian of the silken splendours of Mr
Tennyson's poem. It is "Locksley Hall" stripped of all its beauty, and
debased by a thousand vulgarities, both of sentiment and style. The
burden of both poems consists of bitter denunciations poured forth by
disappointed and deserted love; with this difference, that the passion
which Mr Tennyson gives utterance to, Mr Patmore reverberates in rant. A
small poet, indeed, could not have worked after a more unsafe model. For
while he might hope to mimic the agitated passions of "Locksley Hall,"
in vain could he expect to be visited by the serene imagination which,
in that poem, steeps their violence in an atmosphere of beauty. Even
with regard to Mr Tennyson's poem, it is rather for the sake of its
picturesque descriptions, than on account of its burning emotions, that
we recur to it with pleasure. We rejoice to follow him to regions where
"Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag,
_Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland_, droops the trailer from
the crag."
It is rather, we say, on account of such lines as these (no picture of
tropical loveliness ever surpassed, in our opinion, the description
printed in italics) that we admire "Locksley Hall," than on account of
the troubled passions which it embodies; knowing as we do, that poetry
has nobler offices to perform than to fulmine forth fierce and sarcastic
invectives against the head of a jilt; and if, as Mr Tennyson says,
"love is love for evermore," we would ask even him why he did not make
the lover in "Locksley Hall" betray, even in spite of himself, a more
pitiful tenderness for the devoted heroine of the tale? How different
the strain of the manly Schiller under similar circumstances! _His_
bitterness cannot be restrained from breaking down at last in a flood of
tenderness over the lost mistress of his affections.
"Oh! what scorn for thy desolate years
Shall I feel! God forbid it should be!
How bitter will then be the tears
Shed, Minna, oh Minna, for thee!"
But if it be true that "Locksley Hall" is somewhat deficient in the
ethereal tenderness which would overcome a true heart, even when
blighted in its best affections, it was not to be expected that its
imitator should have been visited with deeper glimpses of the divine.
The indignant passions of his unrequited lover are, indeed, passions of
the most ignoble clay--not one touch of elevated feeling lifts him for
a moment out of the mire. The whole train of circumstances which
engender his emotions, prove the lover, in this case, to have been the
silliest of mortal men, and his mistress, from the very beginning of his
intercourse with her, to have been one of the most abandoned of her sex.
"Lilian" is a burlesque on disappointed love, and a travestie of the
passions which such a disappointment entails. We know not which are the
more odious and revolting in their expression--the emotions of the
jilted lover, or the incidents which call them into play.
The poem is designed to illustrate the bad effects produced on the
female mind by the reading of French novels. We have nothing to say in
their defence. But the incongruity lies here--that Lilian, who was
seduced by means of these noxious publications, was evidently a lady of
the frailest virtue from the very first; and her lover might have seen
this with half an eye. Her materials were obviously of the most
inflammable order; and it evidently did not require the application of
such a spark as the seducer Winton, with his formidable artillery of
imported literature, to set her tinder in a blaze--any other small
contingency would have answered equally well. All that she wanted was an
opportunity to fall; and that she would soon have found, under any
circumstances whatsoever. The lover, however, sees nothing of all this,
but relates the story of his unfortunate love-affair with as much
simplicity as if he had been mourning the fall of the mother of mankind
from paradise.
The lover relates his tale to his friend, the author. He begins by
entreating him to
"Bear with me, in case
Tears come. _I feel them coming by the smarting in my face_."
And then he proceeds to introduce us to this Lilian, the immaculate
mistress of his soul--
"She could see me coming to her with the vision of the hawk;
Always hasten'd on to meet me, _heavy passion in her walk;_
Low tones to me grew lower, sweetening so her honey talk,
"That it fill'd up all my hearing, drown'd the _voices of the birds_,
The _voices of the breezes_, and the _voices of the herds_--
For to me the lowest ever were the loudest of her words."
"Heavy passion in her walk!"--what a delicate and delectable young lady
she must have been! Then, as to the fact so harmoniously expressed, of
her accents drowning "the voices of the birds, the voices of the
breezes, and the voices of the herds," we may remark, that the first and
second never require to be drowned at all, being nearly inaudible at any
rate, even during the most indifferent conversation--so that there was
nothing very remarkable in their being extinguished by the plaintiveness
of the lady's tones; while, with regard to the voices of the herds, if
she succeeded in drowning these--the cattle being near at hand, and
lowing lustily--she must indeed have roared to her lover "like any
nightingale."