from pictures in oil or water-colours--from mezzotintoes or
line-engravings--but from the free open face of day, or the dim retiring
face of eve, or the face, "black but comely," of night--by sunlight or
moonlight, ever Nature. Sometimes he gives us--Studies. Small, sweet,
sunny spots of still or dancing day-stream-gleam--grove-glow--
sky-glimpse--or cottage-roof, in the deep dell sending up its smoke to
the high heavens. But usually Allan paints with a sweeping pencil. He
lays down his landscapes, stretching wide and far, and fills them with
woods and rivers, hills and mountains, flocks of sheep and herds of
cattle; and of all sights in life and nature, none so dear to his eyes
as the golden grain, ebbing like tide of sea before a close long line of
glancing sickles; no sound so sweet as--rising up into the pure
harvest-air, frost-touched though sunny--beneath the shade of
hedgerow-tree, after their mid-day meal, the song of the jolly reapers.
But are not his pictures sometimes too crowded? No. For there lies the
power of the pen over the pencil. The pencil can do much, the pen
everything; the Painter is imprisoned within a few feet of canvass, the
Poet commands the horizon with an eye that circumnavigates the globe;
even that glorious pageant, a painted Panorama, is circumscribed by
bounds, over which imagination, feeling them all too narrow, is uneasy
till she soars; but the Poet's Panorama is commensurate with the soul's
desires, and may include the Universe.
This Poem reads as if it had been written during the "dewy hour of
prime." Allan must be an early riser. But, if not so now, some forty
years ago he was up every morning with the lark,
"Walking to labour by that cheerful song,"
away up the Nith, through the Dalswinton woods; or, for anything we know
to the contrary, intersecting with stone-walls, that wanted not their
scientific coping, the green pastures of Sanquhar. Now he is familiar
with Chantrey's form-full statues; then, with the shapeless cairn on the
moor, the rude headstone on the martyr's grave. And thus it is that the
present has given him power over the past--that a certain grace and
delicacy, inspired by the pursuits of his prime, blend with the creative
dreams that are peopled with the lights and shadows of his youth--that
the spirit of the old ballad breathes still in its strong simplicity
through the composition of his "New Poem"--and that art is seen
harmoniously blending there with nature.
We have said already that we delight in the story; for it belongs to an
"order of _fables_ grey," which has been ever dear to Poets. Poets have
ever loved to bring into the pleasant places and paths of lowly life,
persons (we eschew all manner of _personages_ and _heroes_ and
_heroines_, especially with the epithet "_our_" prefixed) whose native
lot lay in a higher sphere: for they felt that by such contrast, natural
though rare, a beautiful light was mutually reflected from each
condition, and that sacred revelations were thereby made of human
character, of which all that is pure and profound appertains equally to
all estates of this our mortal being, provided only that happiness knows
from whom it comes, and that misery and misfortune are alleviated by
religion. Thus Electra appears before us at her Father's Tomb, the
virgin-wife of the peasant Auturgus, who reverently abstains from the
intact body of the daughter of the king. Look into Shakespeare. Rosalind
was not so lovable at court as in the woods. Her beauty might have been
more brilliant, and her conversation too, among lords and ladies; but
more touching both, because true to tenderer nature, when we see and
hear her in dialogue with the neat-herdess--ROSALIND and _Audrey_! And
trickles not the tear down thy cheek, fair reader--burns not the heart
within thee, when thou thinkest of Florizel and Perdita on the Farm in
the Forest?
Nor from those visions need we fear to turn to Sybil Lesley. We see her
in Elvar Tower, a high-born Lady--in Dalgonar Glen, a humble bondmaid.
The change might have been the reverse--as with the lassie beloved by
the Gentle Shepherd. Both are best. The bust that gloriously set off the
burnishing of the rounded silk, not less divinely shrouded its
enchantment beneath the swelling russet. Graceful in bower or hall were
those arms, and delicate those fingers when moving white along the rich
embroidery, or across the strings of the sculptured harp; nor less so
when before the cottage door they woke the homely music of the humming
wheel, or when on the brae beside the Pool, they playfully intertwined
their softness with the new-washed fleeces, or when among the laughing
lasses at the Linn, not loth were they to lay out the coarse linen in
the bleaching sunshine, conspicuous She the while among the rustic
beauties, as was Nausicaa of old among her nymphs at the Fountain.
We are in love with Sybil Lesley. She is full of _spunk_. That is not a
vulgar word; or if it have been so heretofore, henceforth let it cease
to be so, and be held synonymous with spirit. She shows it in her
defiance of Sir Ralph on the shore of Solway--in her flight from the
Tower of Elvar; and the character she displays then and there, prepares
us for the part she plays in the peasant's cot in the glen of Dalgonar.
We are not surprised to see her take so kindly to the duties of a rustic
service; for we call to mind how she sat among the humble good-folks in
the hall, when Thrift and Waste figured in that rude but wise Morality,
and how the gracious lady showed she sympathised with the cares and
contentments of lowly life.
England has singled out John Clare from among her humble sons (Ebenezer
Elliott belongs altogether to another order)--as the most conspicuous
for poetical genius, next to Robert Bloomfield. That is a proud
distinction--whatever critics may choose to say; and we cordially
sympathise with the beautiful expression of his gratitude to the Rural
Muse, when he says--
"Like as the little lark from off its nest,
Beside the mossy hill, awakes in glee,
To seek the morning's throne, a merry guest--
So do I seek thy shrine, if that may be,
To win by new attempts another smile from thee."
Now, England is out of all sight the most beautiful country in the whole
world--Scotland alone excepted--and, thank heaven, they two are one
kingdom--divided by no line, either real or imaginary--united by the
Tweed. We forget at this moment--if ever we knew it--the precise number
of her counties; but we remember that one and all of them--"alike, but
oh! how different"--are fit birthplaces and abodes for poets. Some of
them, we know well, are flat--and we in Scotland, with hills or
mountains for ever before our eyes, are sometimes disposed to find fault
with them on that ground--as if nature were not at liberty to find her
own level. Flat indeed! So is the sea. Wait till you have walked a few
miles in among the Fens--and you will be wafted along like a little
sail-boat, up and down undulations green and gladsome as waves. Think ye
there is no scenery there? Why, you are in the heart of a vast
metropolis!--yet have not the sense to see the silent city of mole-hills
sleeping in the sun. Call that pond a lake--and by a word how is it
transfigured? Now you discern flowers unfolding on its low banks and
braes--and the rustle of the rushes is like that of a tiny forest--how
appropriate to the wild! Gaze--and to your gaze what colouring grows!
Not in green only, or in russet brown, doth nature choose to be
apparelled in this her solitude--nor ever again will you call her dreary
here--for see how every one of those fifty flying showers lightens up
its own line of beauty along the plain--instantaneous as dreams--or
stationary as waking thought--till, ere you are aware that all was
changing, the variety has all melted away into one harmonious glow,
attempered by that rainbow.
Let these few words suffice to show that we understand and feel the
flattest--dullest--tamest places, as they are most ignorantly
called--that have yet been discovered in England. Not in such did John
Clare abide--but many such he hath traversed; and his studies have been
from childhood upwards among scenes which to ordinary eyes might seem to
afford small scope and few materials for contemplation. But his are not
ordinary eyes--but gifted; and in every nook and corner of his own
county the Northamptonshire Peasant has, during some twoscore years and
more, every spring found without seeking either some lovelier aspect of
"the old familiar faces," or some new faces smiling upon him, as if
mutual recognition kindled joy and amity in their hearts.
John Clare often reminds us of James Grahame. They are two of our most
artless poets. Their versification is mostly very sweet, though rather
flowing forth according to a certain fine natural sense of melody, than
constructed on any principles of music. So, too, with their imagery,
which seems seldom selected with much care; so that, while it is always
true to nature, and often possesses a charm from its appearing to rise
up of itself, and with little or no effort on the poet's part to form a
picture, it is not unfrequently chargeable with repetition--sometimes,
perhaps, with a sameness which, but for the inherent interest in the
objects themselves, might be felt a little wearisome--there is so much
still life. They are both most affectionately disposed towards all
manner of birds. Grahame's "Birds of Scotland" is a delightful poem; yet
its best passages are not superior to some of Clare's about the same
charming creatures--and they are both ornithologists after Audubon's and
our own heart. Were all that has been well written in English verse
about birds to be gathered together, what a sweet set of volumes it
would make! And how many, think ye--three, six, twelve? That would be
indeed an aviary--the only one we can think of with pleasure--out of the
hedgerows and the woods. Tories as we are, we never see a wild bird on
the wing without inhaling in silence "the Cause of Liberty all over the
world!" We feel then that it is indeed "like the air we breathe--without
it we die." So do they. We have been reading lately, for a leisure hour
or two of an evening--a volume by a worthy German, Doctor Bechstein--on
Cage Birds. The slave-dealer never for a moment suspects the wickedness
of kidnapping young and old--crimping them for life--teaching them to
draw water--and, _oh nefas!_ to sing! He seems to think that only in
confinement do they fulfil the ends of their existence--even the
skylark. Yet he sees them, one and all, subject to the most miserable
diseases--and rotting away within the wires. Why could not the Doctor
have taken a stroll into the country once or twice a-week, and in one
morning or evening hour laid in sufficient music to serve him during the
intervening time, without causing a single bosom to be ruffled for his
sake? Shoot them--spit them--pie them--pickle them--eat them--but
imprison them not; we speak as Conservatives--murder rather than immure
them--for more forgivable far it is to cut short their songs at the
height of glee, than to protract them in a rueful simulation of music,
in which you hear the same sweet notes, but if your heart thinks at all,
"a voice of weeping and of loud lament," all unlike, alas! to the
congratulation that from the free choirs is ringing so exultingly in
their native woods.
How prettily Clare writes of the "insect youth."
"These tiny loiterers on the barley's beard,
And happy units of a numerous herd
Of playfellows, the laughing Summer brings,
Mocking the sunshine on their glittering wings,
How merrily they creep, and run, and fly!
No kin they bear to labour's drudgery,
Smoothing the velvet of the pale hedge-rose,
And where they fly for dinner no one knows--
The dewdrops feed them not--they love the shine
Of noon, whose sons may bring them golden wine.
All day they're playing in their Sunday dress--
When night repose, for they can do no less;
Then to the heathbell's purple hood they fly,
And like to princes in their slumbers lie,
Secure from rain, and dropping dews, and all,
In silken beds and roomy painted hall.
So merrily they spend their summer-day,
Now in the cornfields, now in the new-mown hay.
One almost fancies that such happy things,
With colour'd hoods and richly-burnish'd wings,
Are fairy folk in splendid masquerade
Disguised, as if of mortal folk afraid.
Keeping their joyous pranks a mystery still,
Lest glaring day should do their secrets ill."
Time has been--nor yet very long ago--when such unpretending poetry as
this--humble indeed in every sense, but nevertheless the product of
genius which speaks for itself audibly and clearly in lowliest
strains--would not have passed by unheeded or unbeloved; nowadays it
may, to many who hold their heads high, seem of no more worth than an
old song. But as Wordsworth says,
"Pleasures newly found are sweet,
Though they lie about our feet;"
and if stately people would but stoop and look about their paths, which,
do not always run along the heights, they would often make discoveries
of what concerned them more than speculations among the stars.
It is not to be thought, however, that the Northamptonshire Peasant does
not often treat earnestly of the common pleasures and pains, the cares
and occupations, of that condition of life in which he was born, and has
passed all his days. He knows them well, and has illustrated them well,
though seldomer in his later than in his earlier poems; and we cannot
help thinking that he might greatly extend his popularity, which in
England is considerable, by devoting his Rural Muse to subjects lying
within his ken, and of everlasting interest. Bloomfield's reputation
rests on his "Farmer's Boy"--on some exquisite passages in "News from
the Farm"--and on some of the tales and pictures in his "May-day with
the Muses." His smaller poems are very inferior to those of Clare--but
the Northamptonshire Peasant has written nothing in which all honest
English hearts must delight, at all comparable with those truly rural
compositions of the Suffolk shoemaker. It is in his power to do
so--would he but earnestly set himself to the work. He must be more
familiar with all the ongoings of rural life than his compeer could have
been; nor need he fear to tread again the same ground, for it is as new
as if it had never been touched, and will continue to be so till the end
of time. The soil in which the native virtues of the English character
grow, is unexhausted and inexhaustible; let him break it up on any spot
he chooses, and poetry will spring to light like clover from lime. Nor
need he fear being an imitator. His mind is an original one, his most
indifferent verses prove it; for though he must have read much poetry
since his earlier day--doubtless all our best modern poetry--he retains
his own style, which, though it be not marked by any very strong
characteristics, is yet sufficiently peculiar to show that it belongs to
himself, and is a natural gift. Pastorals--eclogues--and idyls--in a
hundred forms--remain to be written by such poets as he and his
brethren; and there can be no doubt at all that, if he will scheme
something of the kind, and begin upon it, without waiting to know fully
or clearly what he may be intending, before three winters, with their
long nights, are gone, he will find himself in possession of more than
mere materials for a volume of poems that will meet with general
acceptation, and give him a permanent place by the side of him he loves
so well--Robert Bloomfield.
Ebenezer Elliott (of whom more another day)[A] claims with pride to be
the Poet of the Poor--and the poor might well be proud, did they know
it, that they have such a poet. Not a few of them know it now, and many
will know it in future; for a muse of fire like his will yet send its
illumination "into dark deep holds." May it consume all the noxious
vapours that infest such regions--and purify the atmosphere--till the
air breathed there be the breath of life. But the poor have other poets
besides him--Crabbe and Burns. We again mention their names--and no
more. Kindly spirits were they both; but Burns had experienced all his
poetry--and therefore his poetry is an embodiment of national character.
We say it not in disparagement or reproof of Ebenezer--conspicuous over
all--for let all men speak as they think or feel--but how gentle in all
his noblest inspirations was Robin! He did not shun sins or sorrows; but
he told the truth of the poor man's life, when he showed that it was, on
the whole, virtuous and happy--bear witness those immortal strains, "The
Twa Dogs," "The Vision," "The Cottar's Saturday Night," the sangs voiced
all braid Scotland thorough by her boys and virgins, say rather her lads
and lasses--while the lark sings aloft and the linnet below, the mavis
in the golden broom accompanying the music in the golden cloud. We
desire--not in wilful delusion, but in earnest hope, in devout
trust--that poetry shall show that the paths of the peasant poor are
paths of pleasantness and peace. If they should seem in that light even
pleasanter and more peaceful than they ever now can be below the sun,
think not that any evil can arise "to mortal man who liveth here by
toil" from such representations--for imagination and reality are not two
different things--they blend in life; but there the darker shadows do
often, alas! prevail--and sometimes may be felt even by the hand;
whereas in poetry the lights are triumphant--and gazing on the glory
men's hearts burn within them--and they carry the joy in among their own
griefs, till despondency gives way to exultation, and the day's darg of
this worky world is lightened by a dawn of dreams.
[Footnote A: _Professor Wilson's Works_, vol. vi., page 224.]
This is the effect of all good poetry--according to its power--of the
poetry of Robert Bloomfield as of the poetry of Robert Burns. John
Clare, too, is well entitled to a portion of such praise; and therefore
his name deserves to become a household word in the dwellings of the
rural poor. Living in leisure among the scenes in which he once toiled,
may he once more contemplate them all without disturbance. Having lost
none of his sympathies, he has learnt to refine them all and see into
their source--and wiser in his simplicity than they who were formerly
his yoke-fellows are in theirs, he knows many things well which they
know imperfectly or not at all, and is privileged therein to be their
teacher. Surely in an age when the smallest contribution to science is
duly estimated, and useful knowledge not only held in honour but
diffused, poetry ought not to be despised, more especially when
emanating from them who belong to the very condition which they seek to
illustrate, and whose ambition it is to do justice to its natural
enjoyments and appropriate virtues. In spite of all they have suffered,
and still suffer, the peasantry of England are a race that may be
regarded with better feelings than pride. We look forward confidently to
the time when education--already in much good--and, if the plans of the
wisest counsellors prevail, about to become altogether good--will raise
at once their condition and their character. The Government has its
duties to discharge--clear as day. And what is not in the power of the
gentlemen of England? Let them exert that power to the utmost--and then
indeed they will deserve the noble name of "Aristocracy." We speak not
thus in reproach--for they better deserve that name than the same order
in any other country; but in no other country are such interests given
to that order in trust--and as they attend to that trust is the glory or
the shame, the blessing or the curse, of their high estate.
But let us retrace our footsteps in moralising mood, not unmixed with
sadness--to the Mausoleum of Burns. Scotland is abused by England for
having starved Burns to death, or for having suffered him to drink
himself to death, out of a cup filled to the brim with bitter
disappointment and black despair. England lies. There is our gage-glove,
let her take it up, and then for mortal combat with sword and
spear--only not on horseback--for, for reasons on which it would be idle
to be more explicit, we always fight now on foot, and have sent our high
horse to graze all the rest of his life on the mountains of the moon.
Well then, Scotland met Burns, on his first sunburst, with one exulting
acclaim. Scotland bought and read his poetry, and Burns, for a poor man,
became rich--rich to his heart's desire--and reached the summit of his
ambition, in the way of this world's life, in a--Farm. Blithe Robin
would have scorned "an awmous" from any hands but from those of nature;
nor in those days needed he help from woman-born. True, that times
began by-and-by to go rather hard with him, and he with them; for his
mode of life was not
"Such as grave livers do in Scotland use,"
and as we sow we must reap. His day of life began to darken ere
meridian--and the darkness doubtless had brought disturbance before it
had been perceived by any eyes but his own--for people are always
looking to themselves and their own lot; and how much mortal misery may
for years be daily depicted in the face, figure, or manners even of a
friend, without our seeing or suspecting it! Till all at once he makes a
confession, and we then know that he has been long numbered among the
most wretched of the wretched--the slave of his own sins and sorrows--or
thralled beneath those of another, to whom fate may have given sovereign
power over his whole life. Well, then--or rather ill, then--Burns
behaved as most men do in misery,--and the farm going to ruin--that is,
crop and stock to pay the rent--he desired to be, and was made--an
Exciseman. And for that--you ninny--you are whinnying scornfully at
Scotland! Many a better man than yourself--beg your pardon--has been,
and is now, an Exciseman. Nay, to be plain with you--we doubt if your
education has been sufficiently intellectual for an Exciseman. We never
heard it said of you,
"And even the story ran that he could gauge."
Burns then was made what he desired to be--what he was fit for, though
you are not--and what was in itself respectable--an Exciseman. His
salary was not so large certainly as that of the Bishop of Durham--or
even of London--but it was certainly larger than that of many a curate
at that time doing perhaps double or treble duty in those dioceses,
without much audible complaint on their part, or outcry from Scotland
against blind and brutal English bishops, or against beggarly England,
for starving her pauper-curates, by whatever genius or erudition
adorned. Burns died an Exciseman, it is true, at the age of
thirty-seven; on the same day died an English curate we could name, a
surpassing scholar, and of stainless virtue, blind, palsied, "old and
miserably poor"--without as much money as would bury him; and no wonder,
for he never had the salary of a Scotch Exciseman.
Two blacks--nay twenty--won't make a white. True--but one black is as
black as another--and the Southern Pot, brazen as it is, must not abuse
with impunity the Northern Pan. But now to the right nail, and let us
knock it on the head. What did England do for her own Bloomfield? He was
not in genius to be spoken of in the same year with Burns--but he was
beyond all compare, and out of all sight, the best poet that had arisen
produced by England's lower orders. He was the most spiritual shoemaker
that ever handled an awl. The "Farmer's Boy" is a wonderful poem--and
will live in the poetry of England. Did England, then, keep Bloomfield
in comfort, and scatter flowers along the smooth and sunny path that led
him to the grave? No. He had given him by some minister or other, we
believe Lord Sidmouth, a paltry place in some office or other--most
uncongenial with all his nature and all his habits--of which the shabby
salary was insufficient to purchase for his family even the bare
necessaries of life. He thus dragged out for many long obscure years a
sickly existence, as miserable as the existence of a good man can be
made by narrowest circumstances--and all the while Englishmen were
scoffingly scorning, with haughty and bitter taunts, the patronage that
at his own earnest desire made Burns an Exciseman. Nay, when Southey,
late in Bloomfield's life, and when it was drawing mournfully to a
close, proposed a contribution for his behoof, and put down his own five
pounds, how many purse-strings were untied? how much fine gold was
poured out for the indigent son of genius and virtue? Shame shuffles the
sum out of sight--for it was not sufficient to have bought the
manumission of an old negro slave.