Poets and poetasters—Major Roche’s extraordinary poem on the battle of
Waterloo—“Tears of the British Muse”—French climax of love—A man’s age
discovered by his poetry—Evils of a motto—Amorous feelings of
youth—Love verses of a boy; of a young man—“Loves of the
Angels”—Dinner verses of an Oxonian—“The Highlander,” a poem—Extracts
from the poetical manuscripts of Miss Tylden, &c.
There cannot be a juster aphorism than “Poeta nascitur, non fit:” the
paucity of those literary productions which deserve the epithet of
poetry, compared with the thousand volumes of what rhyming authors call
poems, forms a conclusive illustration.
A true _poet_ lives for ever; a _poetaster_, just till a new one
relieves him in the circulating libraries, or on toilets, being used in
private families to keep young ladies awake at night and put them to
sleep in the morning.
There may possibly be _three_ degrees of excellence in true poetry, but
certainly no more. A _fourth_-rate _poet_ is, in my idea, a mere forger
of rhymes; a _blacksmith_ of versification: yet if he minds his prosody,
and writes in a style either “vastly interesting,” “immensely
_pathetic_,” or “delightfully _luxurious_,” he will probably find
readers among the fair sex from fifteen to forty-five: the _measure_ he
adopts is of no sort of consequence, so that it be _tender_.
Major Roche, an Irishman, who in 1815 printed and published at Paris a
full and true hexameter account of the great battle of Waterloo, with
his own portrait emblazoned in the front, and the Duke of Wellington’s
in the rear, must certainly be held to exceed in ingenuity all the poets
and poetasters, great and small, of the present generation.
The alphabetical printed list of subscribers to Major Roche’s poem sets
forth the name of every emperor, king, prince, nobleman, general,
minister, and diplomatist—Russian, Prussian, Austrian, German, Swedish,
Danish, Dutch, English, Irish, Scotch, Hanoverian, Don Cossack, &c. &c.
Such an imperial, royal, and every way magnificent list was in fact
never before, nor ever will be again, appended to any poem, civil,
political, military, religious, or scientific: and as the major thought
very truly that a book so patronised and garnished must be worth vastly
more than any other poem of the same dimensions, he stated that “a few
copies _might still_ be procured at _two guineas_ each.” He succeeded
admirably, and I believe got more money at Paris than any one of the
army did at Waterloo, and I am glad of it.
His introduction of the Duke of Wellington in battle was well worth the
money:—he described his grace as Mars on _horseback_ (new!), riding
helter-skelter, and charging fiercely over every thing in his headlong
course; friends and foes, men, women, and children, having no chance of
remaining perpendicular if they crossed his way; his horse’s hoofs
striking fire even out of the regimental buttons of the dead bodies
which he galloped over! while swords, muskets, bayonets, helmets,
spears, and cuirasses, pounded down by his trampling steed, formed as it
were a turnpike-road, whereupon his grace seemed to fly, in his
endeavours to _catch_ Buonaparte.
I really think Major Roche’s idea of making Lord Wellington Mars was a
much better one than that of making him Achilles, as the ladies have
done at Hyde-Park-Corner. Paris found out the weak point of Achilles,
and _finished_ him: but Mars is immortal; and though Diomed knocked him
down, neither his carcase nor character is a jot the worse. Besides,
though Achilles killed Hector, it certainly was not Lord Wellington who
killed Buonaparte.
A remark of mine which, though of no value, is however rather a curious
one, I cannot omit—namely, that every man who has been in the habit of
scribbling rhyme of any description, involuntarily betrays his _age_ and
decline by the nature of his composition. The truth of this observation
I will endeavour to illustrate by quotations from some jingling couplets
written at different periods of life by a friend of mine, merely to show
the strange though gradual transitions and propensities of the human
mind from youth to maturity, and from maturity to age. I was brought up
at a school where poetry was cultivated, whether the soil would bear a
crop or not: I early got, however, somehow or other, an idea of _what_
it was, which boys in general at that age never think of. But I had no
practical genius, and never set up for it. Our second master, the son of
the principal one, was a parson, and, as he thought, a poet, and wrote a
thing called “The Tears of the British Muse,” which we were all obliged
to purchase, and repeat once a month. In fact, of all matters, prosody
was most assiduously whipped into us.
Love is the first theme of all the poets in the world. Though the French
do not understand that matter a bit better than other folks, yet their
language certainly _expresses_ amatory ideas far more comprehensively
than ours. In talking of love they do not speak of refinement: I never
knew a Frenchwoman tie them together fast: their terms of gradation
are—L’AMOUR _naturel, bien sensible, très fort, à son goût, superbe_:
finishing the climax with _pas nécessaire encore_. (There certainly is a
touch of despondency in the last gradation.) This classing of the
passion with the palate is a very simple mode of defining its varieties.
However, the state of the feelings and propensities of men is much
regulated by the amount of their years (ladies in general stick to their
text longest). In early youth, poetry flows from natural sensation; and
at this period verses in general have much modesty, much feeling, and a
visible struggle to keep in with refinement.
In the next degree of age, which runs quite close upon the former, the
scene nevertheless sadly alters. We then see plain amatory sonnets
turning poor _refinement_ out of company, and showing that it was not so
very pure as we had reason to suppose. Next comes that stage wherein
sensualists, wits, ballad-singers, gourmands, experienced lovers, and
most kinds of poetasters, male and female, give their varieties. All the
organs of craniology swell up in the brain and begin to prepare
themselves for development: this is rather a lasting stage, and gently
glides into, and amalgamates with the final one, filled by satirists,
psalmists, epigrammatists, and other specimens of antiquity and
ill-nature. But I fancy this latter must be a very unproductive line of
versification for the writer, as few ladies ever read such things till
after they begin to wear spectacles. Few persons like to see themselves
caricatured; and the moment a lady is convinced that she ceases to be an
object of _love_, she fancies that, as matter of course, she at once
becomes an object of _ridicule_: so that she takes care to run no chance
of reading to her own mortification till she feels that it is time to
commence _devotee_.
I recollect a friend of mine writing a poem of satire so general, that
every body might attribute it to their _neighbours_, without taking it
to _themselves_. The first edition having gone off rapidly, he published
a second, announcing improvements, and giving as a motto the words of
Hamlet:—
“To hold the mirror up to _Nature_.”
This motto was fatal; the idea of holding up the _mirror_ condemned the
book: nobody would venture to _look into_ it; and the entire impression
is, I dare say, in the act of dry-rotting at the present moment.
One short period is the true Paradise of mortals, that delicious dream
of life, when age is too far distant to be seen, and childhood fast
receding from our vision!—when Nature pauses briefly between refinement
and sensuality—first imparting to our wondering senses what we are and
what we shall be, before she consigns us to the dangerous guardianship
of chance and of our passions!
That is the crisis when lasting traits of character begin to bud and
blossom, and acquire sap; and every effort should _then_ be made to crop
and prune, and train the young shoots, while yet they retain the
principle of ductility.
During that period the youth is far too chary to _avow_ a passion which
he does not fully comprehend, satisfied with making known his feelings
by delicate allusions, and thus contriving to disclose the principle
without mentioning its existence. All sorts of pretty sentimentalities
are employed to this end:—shepherds and shepherdesses are pressed into
the service; as are likewise tropes of Arcadian happiness and
simplicity, with abundance of metaphorical roses with thorns to
them—perfumes and flowers.
A particular friend of mine, who, when a young man, had a great
propensity to fall in love and make verses accordingly, has often told
me his whole progress in both, and says positively that he should
ascertain in a moment a man’s _decimal_ from his versification. He
entertained me one morning by showing me certain memorandums which he
had from time to time made upon this subject, and from which he
permitted me to take extracts, as also from some of his own effusions
which he said he had kept out of curiosity.
It appears that at the age of fifteen he fell in love with a Miss Lyddy
St. John, who was herself a poetess of fourteen, and the most delicate
young _Celestial_ he had ever seen. The purity of her thoughts and
verses filtered all his sentiments as clear as spring water, and did not
leave an atom of grossness in the whole body of them.
Before he left school he wrote the following lines on this young lady,
which he has suffered to stand as the poetical illustration of his
boyhood: