[Illustration: AUSTIN DOBSON]
At first thought it seems difficult to consider Austin Dobson as
belonging to the Victorian period, so entirely is he saturated with
the spirit of the eighteenth century. A careful study of his verse
reveals the fact that the Georgian era, seen through the vista of his
poetic imagination, is divested of all that is coarse, dark, gross,
and prosaic. The mental atmosphere and the types and characters that
he gives, express only beauty and charm.
One approaches the poems of Austin Dobson as one stands before a rare
collection of enamels, fan-mounts, jeweled snuff-boxes, and delicate
carvings in ivory and silver; and after delighting in the beauty and
finish of these graceful curios, passes into a gallery of paintings
and water-colors, suggesting Watteau, Fragonard, Boucher, Meissonier,
and Greuze. We also wander among trim box-hedges and quaint gardens of
roses and bright hollyhocks; lean by sun-dials to watch the shadow of
Time; and enjoy the sight of gay belles, patched and powdered and
dressed in brocaded gowns and gypsy hats. Gallant beaux, such as are
associated with Reynolds's portraits, appear, and hand them into
sedan-chairs or lead them through stately minuets to the notes of
Rameau, Couperin, and Arne.
Just as the scent of rose-leaves, lavender, and musk rises from
antique Chinese jars, so Dobson's delicate verse reconstructs a life
"Of fashion gone, and half-forgotten ways."
He is equally at home in France. Nothing could be more sympathetic and
exquisite than 'A Revolutionary Relic,' 'The Cure's Progress,' 'Une
Marquise,' and the 'Proverbs in Porcelain,' one of which is cited
below.
In the 'Vers de Societe,' as well as his other poetry, Dobson fulfills
all the requirements of light verse--charm, mockery, pathos, banter,
and, while apparently skimming the surface, often shows us the
strange depths of the human heart. He blends so many qualities that he
deserves the praise of T.B. Aldrich, who says, "Austin Dobson has the
grace of Suckling and the finish of Herrick, and is easily master of
both in metrical art."
Henry Austin Dobson, the son of Mr. George Clarisse Dobson, a civil
engineer, was born in Plymouth, England, January 18th 1840. His early
years were spent in Anglesea, and after receiving his education in
Beaumaris, Coventry, and Strasburg, he returned to England to become a
civil engineer. In 1856 he entered the civil service of Great Britain,
and ever since that date he has held offices in the Board of Trade.
His leisure was devoted to literature, and when Anthony Trollope first
issued his magazine St. Paul's in 1868, he introduced to the public
the verse of Austin Dobson. In 1873 his fugitive poems were published
in a small volume entitled 'Vignettes in Rhyme' and 'Vers de Societe.'
This was followed in 1877 by 'Proverbs in Porcelain,' and both books,
with additional poems, were printed again in two volumes: 'Old World
Idylls' (1883), and 'At the Sign of the Lyre' (1885). Mr. Dobson's
original essays are contained in three volumes: 'Four Frenchwomen,'
studies of Charlotte Corday, Madame Roland, the Princess de Lamballe,
and Madame de Genlis (1890), and 'Eighteenth-Century Vignettes' (first
series 1892, second series 1894), which touch upon a host of
picturesque and fascinating themes. He has written also several
biographies: of Hogarth, of Fielding, of Steele (1886), of Goldsmith
(1888), and a 'Memoir of Horace Walpole' (1890). He has also written
felicitous critical introductions to many new editions of the
eighteenth-century classics.
Austin Dobson has been most happy in breathing English life into the
old poems of French verse, such as ballades, villanelles, roundels,
and rondeaux; and he has also written clever and satirical fables,
cast in the form and temper of Gay and Prior, with quaint obsolete
affectations, redolent of the classic age of Anne.
So serious is his attitude towards art, and so large his audience,
that the hope expressed in the following rondeau will certainly be
realized:--
In after days, when grasses high
O'er-top the stone where I shall lie,
Though ill or well the world adjust
My slender claim to honored dust,
I shall not question nor reply.
I shall not see the morning sky,
I shall not hear the night-wind sigh;
I shall be mute, as all men must,
In after days.
But yet, now living, fain were I
That some one then should testify,
Saying--_He held his pen in trust_
_To Art, not serving shame or lust._
Will none?--Then let my memory die
In after days!
[Illustration: Signature (Esther Singleton)]