Maturin’s opinions of poetry, as of every thing else, were to be
inferred rather than gathered. It was very difficult to draw him into
literary conversation: like Congreve, he wished to be an author only in
his study. Yet he courted the society of men of letters when it was to
be had; but would at any time have sacrificed it to dally an hour in the
drawing-room, or at the quadrille. Sometimes, however, amongst friends
(particularly if he was in a splenetic mood) he freely entered into a
discussion upon the living authors of England, and delivered his
opinions rapidly, brilliantly, and with effect. On one occasion a
conversation of this description took place, in which I had the pleasure
of participating. I will recall the substance of it as well as I can. Do
not expect from Maturin the turgidity of Boswell’s great man, or the
amiable philosophy of Franklin: you will be disappointed if you
anticipate any thing profound or speculative from him; for at the best
of times he was exceedingly fond of mixing up the frivolity of a
fashionable conversazione with the most solid subjects.
I met him in the county of Wicklow on a pedestrian excursion in the
autumn; a relaxation he constantly indulged in, particularly at that
season of the year. It was in that part of the vale of Avoca, where
Moore is said to have composed his celebrated song: a green knoll forms
a gradual declivity to the river, which flows through the vale, and in
the centre of the knoll there is the trunk of an old oak, cut down to a
seat. Upon that venerable trunk, say the peasants, Moore sat when he
composed a song that, like the Rans de Vache of the Swiss, will be sung
amidst those mountains and valleys as long as they are inhabited.
Opposite to that spot I met Maturin, accompanied by a young gentleman
carrying a fishing-rod. We were at the distance of thirty miles from
Dublin; in the heart of the most beautiful valley in the island;
surrounded by associations of history and poetry, with spirits subdued
into tranquillity by the Italian skies above, and the peaceful gurgling
of the waters below us. Never shall I forget Maturin’s strange
appearance amongst those romantic dells. He was dressed in a crazy and
affectedly shabby suit of black, that had waxed into a “brilliant
polish” by over zeal in the service of its master; he wore no cravat,
for the heat obliged him to throw it off, and his delicate neck rising
gracefully from his thrice-crested collar, gave him an appearance of
great singularity. His raven hair, which he generally wore long, fell
down luxuriantly without a breath to agitate it; and his head was
crowned with a hat which I could sketch with a pencil, but not with a
pen. His gait and manner were in perfect keeping; but his peculiarities
excited no surprise in me, for I was accustomed to them. In a short time
we were seated on the banks of the Avoca, the stream cooling our feet
with its refreshing spray, and the green foliage protecting us from the
sun.
“Moore is said to have written his song in this place.”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” replied Maturin. “No man ever wrote
poetry under a burning sun, or in the moonlight. I have often attempted
a retired walk in the country at moonlight, when I had a madrigal in my
head, and every gust of wind rang in my ears like the footsteps of a
robber. One robber would put to flight a hundred tropes. You feel uneasy
in a perfectly secluded place, and cannot collect your mind.”
“But Moore, who is a poet by inspiration, could write in any
circumstances?”
“There is no man of the age labours harder than Moore. He is often a
month working out the fag-end of an epigram. ’Pon my honour, I would not
be such a victim to literature for the reputation of Pope, the greatest
man of them all.”
“Don’t you think that every man has his own peculiarity in writing, and
can only write under particular excitements, and in a particular way?”
“Certainly. Pope, who ridiculed such a caprice, practised it himself;
for he never wrote well but at midnight. Gibbon dictated to his
amanuensis, while he walked up and down the room in a terrible passion;
Stephens wrote on horseback in a full gallop; Montaigne and
Chateaubriand in the fields; Sheridan over a bottle of wine; Molière
with his knees in the fire; and lord Bacon in a small room, which he
said helped him to condense his thoughts. But Moore, whose peculiarity
is retirement, would never come here to write a song he could write
better elsewhere, merely because it related to the place.”
“Why omit yourself in the list? you have your own peculiarity.”
“I compose on a long walk; but then the day must neither be too hot, nor
cold; it must be reduced to that medium from which you feel no
inconvenience one way or the other; and then when I am perfectly free
from the city, and experience no annoyance from the weather, my mind
becomes lighted by sunshine, and I arrange my plan perfectly to my own
satisfaction.”
“From the quantity of works our living poets have given to the public, I
would be disposed to say that they write with great facility, and
without any nervous whim.”
* * * * *
“But lord Byron--he must write with great ease and rapidity?”
“That I don’t know; I never could finish the perusal of any of his long
poems. There is something in them excessively at variance with my
notions of poetry. He is too fond of the obsolete; but that I do not
quarrel with so much as his system of converting it into a kind of
modern antique, by superadding tinsel to gold. It is a sort of mixed
mode, neither old nor new, but incessantly hovering between both.”
“What do you think of Childe Harold?”
“I do not know what to think of it, nor can I give you definitively my
reasons for disliking his poems generally.”
“You have taken up a prejudice, perhaps, from a passage you have
forgotten, and never allowed yourself patience to examine it.”
“Perhaps so; but I am not conscious of a prejudice.”
“No man is.”
* * * * *
“And which of the living poets fulfils your ideal standard of
excellence?”
“Crabbe. He is all nature without pomp or parade, and exhibits at times
deep pathos and feeling. His characters are certainly homely, and his
scenes rather unpoetical; but then he invests his subject with so much
genuine tenderness and sweetness, that you care not who are the actors,
or in what situations they are placed, but pause to recollect where it
was you met something similar in real life. Do you remember the little
story ‘Delay is Danger?’ I’ll recite you a few lines describing my
favourite scene, an autumn-evening landscape:--
“On the right side the youth a wood survey’d,
With all its dark intensity of shade;
Where the rough wind alone was heard to move,
In this, the pause of nature and of love,
When now the young are rear’d, and when the old,
Lost to the tie, grow negligent and cold--
Far to the left he saw the huts of men
Half hid in mist that hung upon the fen;
Before him swallows, gathering for the sea,
Took their short flights, and twitter’d on the lea
And near the bean-sheaf stood, the harvest done,
And slowly blacken’d in the sickly sun;
All these were sad in nature, or they took
Sadness from him, the likeness of his look,
And of his mind--he ponder’d for a while,
Then met his Fanny with a borrow’d smile.”
“Except Gray’s Elegy, there is scarcely so melancholy and touching a
picture in English poetry.”
“And whom do you estimate after Crabbe?”
“I am disposed to say Hogg. His Queen’s Wake is a splendid and
impassioned work. I like it for its varieties, and its utter simplicity.
What a fine image is this of a devoted vessel suddenly engulfed at sea:
“Some ran to the cords, some kneel’d at the shrine.
But all the wild elements seem’d to combine;
’Twas just but one moment of stir and commotion,
And down went the ship like a bird of the ocean!”
“But do not altogether take me at my word in what I say of Crabbe and
Hogg. They have struck the chord of my taste; but they are not, perhaps,
the first men of the day. Moore is a writer for whom I feel a strong
affection, because he has done that which I would have done if I could:
but after him it would be vain to try any thing.”
* * * * *
“Is it your opinion that the swarm of minor poets and writers advance
the cause of literature, or that the public taste would be more refined
and informed, if those who administered to it were fewer and better?”
“I object to prescribing laws to the republic of letters. It is a free
republic, in which every man is entitled to publicity if he chooses it.
The effect unquestionably of a swarm of minor poets is the creation of a
false taste amongst a certain class; but then that is a class that
otherwise would have no taste at all, and it is well to draw their
attention to literature by any agency. In the next age their moral
culture will improve, and we shall go on gradually diminishing the
contagion.”[199]
[199] New Monthly Magazine.
* * * * *
[Illustration: “Sixpence a pound, fair cherries!”]
[Illustration: “Troop, every one!”
~Old London Cries~, No. II.]
We have here a print of the cherry-woman of a hundred years ago, when
cherries were so little grown, that the popular street cry was double
the price of the present day. Readers of the _Every-Day Book_ may
remember the engraving of the “London barrow-woman,” with her
cherry-cry--“round and sound”--the cherry-woman (that _was_) of our own
times--the recollection of whose fine person, and melodious voice, must
recur to every one who saw and heard her--a real picture to the mind’s
eye, discoursing “most excellent music.”
The man blowing a trumpet, “Troop, every one!” was a street seller of
hobby-horses--toys for the children of a hundred years ago. He carried
them, as represented in the engraving, arranged in a partitioned frame
on his shoulder, and to each horse’s head was a small flag with two
bills attached. The crier and his ware are wholly extinct. Now-a-days
we give a boy the first stick at hand to thrust between his legs as a
Bucephalus--the shadow of a shade:--our forefathers were better natured,
for they presented him with something of the semblance of the generous
animal. Is a horse now less popular with boys than then? or did they, at
that time, rather imitate the galloping of the real hobby-horse in the
pageants and mummeries that passed along the streets, or pranced in the
shows at fairs and on the stage? Be that as it may, this is a pretty
plaything for “little master;” and toymakers would find account in
reviving the manufacture for the rising generation. They have improved
the little girl’s doll, and baby-house: are they ignorant that boys, as
soon as they can walk, demand a whip and a horse?
* * * * *