delightful productions. It presents an exceedingly pretty picture of the
bright external side of ancient Greek life, and tells how a handsome
young Tanagrian left his home for the sake of art, and returned to it for
love's sake--an old story, no doubt, but one which gains a new charm from
its new setting. The historical characters of the book, such as
Praxiteles and Phryne, seem somehow less real than those that are purely
imaginary, but this is usually the case in all novels that would recreate
the past for us, and is a form of penalty that Romance has often to pay
when she tries to blend fact with fancy, and to turn the great personages
of history into puppets for a little play. The translation, which is
from the pen of the Baroness von Lauer, reads very pleasantly, and some
of the illustrations are good, though it is impossible to reproduce by
any process the delicate and exquisite charm of the Tanagra figurines.
M. Paul Stapfer in his book Moliere et Shakespeare shows very clearly
that the French have not yet forgiven Schlegel for having threatened
that, as a reprisal for the atrocities committed by Napoleon, he would
prove that Moliere was no poet. Indeed, M. Stapfer, while admitting that
one should be fair 'envers tout le monde, meme envers les Allemands,'
charges down upon the German critics with the brilliancy and dash of a
French cuirassier, and mocks at them for their dulness, at the very
moment that he is annexing their erudition, an achievement for which the
French genius is justly renowned. As for the relative merits of Moliere
and Shakespeare, M. Stapfer has no hesitation in placing the author of Le
Misanthrope by the side of the author of Hamlet. Shakespeare's comedies
seem to him somewhat wilful and fantastic; he prefers Orgon and Tartuffe
to Oberon and Titania, and can hardly forgive Beatrice for having been
'born to speak all mirth, and no matter.'
Perhaps he hardly realises that it is as a poet, not as a playwright,
that we love Shakespeare in England, and that Ariel singing by the yellow
sands, or fairies hiding in a wood near Athens, may be as real as Alceste
in his wooing of Celimene, and as true as Harpagon weeping for his money-
box; still, his book is full of interesting suggestion, many of his
remarks on literature are quite excellent, and his style has the
qualities of grace, distinction, and ease of movement.
Not so much can be said for Annals of the Life of Shakespeare, which is a
dull though well-meaning little book. What we do not know about
Shakespeare is a most fascinating subject, and one that would fill a
volume, but what we do know about him is so meagre and inadequate that
when it is collected together the result is rather depressing. However,
there are many people, no doubt, who find a great source of interest in
the fact that he author of The Merchant of Venice once brought an action
for the sum of 1 pound, 15s. 10d. and gained his suit, and for these this
volume will have considerable charm. It is a pity that the finest line
Ben Jonson ever wrote about Shakespeare should be misquoted at the very
beginning of the book, and the illustration of Shakespeare's monument
gives the inscription very badly indeed. Also, it was Ben Jonson's
stepfather, not his 'father-in-law,' as stated, who was the bricklayer;
but it is quite useless to dwell upon these things, as nobody nowadays
seems to have any time either to correct proofs or to consult
authorities.
One of the most pleasing volumes that has appeared as yet in the
Canterbury Series is the collection of Allan Ramsay's poems. Ramsay,
whose profession was the making of periwigs, and whose pleasure was the
making of poetry, is always delightful reading, except when he tries to
write English and to imitate Pope. His Gentle Shepherd is a charming
pastoral play, full of humour and romance; his Vision has a good deal of
natural fire; and some of his songs, such as The Yellow-hair'd Laddie and
The Lass of Patie's Mill, might rank beside those of Burns. The preface
to this attractive little edition is from the pen of Mr. J. Logie
Robertson, and the simple, straightforward style in which it is written
contrasts favourably with the silly pompous manner affected by so many of
the other editors of the series.
Ramsay's life is worth telling well, and Mr. Robertson tells it well, and
gives us a really capital picture of Edinburgh society in the early half
of the last century.
Dante for Beginners, by Miss Arabella Shore, is a sort of literary guide-
book. What Virgil was to the great Florentine, Miss Shore would be to
the British public, and her modest little volume can do no possible harm
to Dante, which is more than one can say of many commentaries on the
Divine Comedy.
Miss Phillimore's Studies in Italian Literature is a much more elaborate
work, and displays a good deal of erudition. Indeed, the erudition is
sometimes displayed a little too much, and we should like to see the lead
of learning transmuted more often into the gold of thought. The essays
on Petrarch and Tasso are tedious, but those on Aleardi and Count
Arrivabene are excellent, particularly the former. Aleardi was a poet of
wonderful descriptive power, and though, as he said himself, he
subordinated his love of poetry to his love of country, yet in such
service he found perfect freedom.
The article on Edoardo Fusco also is full of interest, and is a timely
tribute to the memory of one who did so much for the education and
culture of modern Italy. On the whole, the book is well worth reading;
so well worth reading, indeed, that we hope that the foolish remarks on
the Greek Drama will be amended in a second edition, or, which would be
better still, struck out altogether. They show a want of knowledge that
must be the result of years of study.
(1) The Master of Tanagra. Translated from the German of Ernst von
Wildenbruch by the Baroness von Lauer. (H. Grevel and Co.)
(2) Moliere et Shakespeare. By Paul Stapfer. (Hachette.)
(3) Annals of the Life of Shakespeare. (Sampson Low, Marston and Co.)
(4) Poems by Allan Ramsay. Selected and arranged, with a Biographical
Sketch of the Poet, by J. Logie Robertson, M.A. 'Canterbury Poets.'
(Walter Scott.)
(5) Dante for Beginners. By Arabella Shore. (Chapman and Hall.)
(6) Studies in Italian Literature. By Miss Phillimore. (Sampson Low,
Marston and Co.)
A CHEAP EDITION OF A GREAT MAN
(Pall Mall Gazette, April 18, 1887.)
Formerly we used to canonise our great men; nowadays we vulgarise them.
The vulgarisation of Rossetti has been going on for some time past with
really remarkable success, and there seems no probability at present of
the process being discontinued. The grass was hardly green upon the
quiet grave in Birchington churchyard when Mr. Hall Caine and Mr. William
Sharp rushed into print with their Memoirs and Recollections. Then came
the usual mob of magazine-hacks with their various views and attitudes,
and now Mr. Joseph Knight has produced for the edification of the British
public a popular biography of the poet of the Blessed Damozel, the
painter of Dante's Dream.
It is only fair to state that Mr. Knight's work is much better than that
of his predecessors in the same field. His book is, on the whole,
modestly and simply written; whatever its other faults may be, it is at
least free from affectation of any kind; and it makes no serious pretence
at being either exhaustive or definitive. Yet the best we can say of it
is that it is just the sort of biography Guildenstern might have written
of Hamlet. Nor does its unsatisfactory character come merely from the
ludicrous inadequacy of the materials at Mr. Knight's disposal; it is the
whole scheme and method of the book that is radically wrong. Rossetti's
was a great personality, and personalities such as his do not easily
survive shilling primers. Sooner or later they have inevitably to come
down to the level of their biographers, and in the present instance
nothing could be more absolutely commonplace than the picture Mr. Knight
gives us of the wonderful seer and singer whose life he has so recklessly
essayed to write.
No doubt there are many people who will be deeply interested to know that
Rossetti was once chased round his garden by an infuriated zebu he was
trying to exhibit to Mr. Whistler, or that he had a great affection for a
dog called 'Dizzy,' or that 'sloshy' was one of his favourite words of
contempt, or that Mr. Gosse thought him very like Chaucer in appearance,
or that he had 'an absolute disqualification' for whist-playing, or that
he was very fond of quoting the Bab Ballads, or that he once said that if
he could live by writing poetry he would see painting d---d! For our
part, however, we cannot help expressing our regret that such a shallow
and superficial biography as this should ever have been published. It is
but a sorry task to rip the twisted ravel from the worn garment of life
and to turn the grout in a drained cup. Better, after all, that we knew
a painter only through his vision and a poet through his song, than that
the image of a great man should be marred and made mean for us by the
clumsy geniality of good intentions. A true artist, and such Rossetti
undoubtedly was, reveals himself so perfectly in his work, that unless a
biographer has something more valuable to give us than idle anecdotes and
unmeaning tales, his labour is misspent and his industry misdirected.
Bad, however, as is Mr. Knight's treatment of Rossetti's life, his
treatment of Rossetti's poetry is infinitely worse. Considering the
small size of the volume, and the consequently limited number of
extracts, the amount of misquotation is almost incredible, and puts all
recent achievements in this sphere of modern literature completely into
the shade. The fine line in the first canto of Rose Mary:
What glints there like a lance that flees?
appears as:
What glints there like a _glance_ that flees?
which is very painful nonsense; in the description of that graceful and
fanciful sonnet Autumn Idleness, the deer are represented as '_grazing_
from hillock eaves' instead of gazing from hillock-eaves; the opening of
Dantis Tenebrae is rendered quite incomprehensible by the substitution of
'my' for 'thy' in the second line; even such a well-known ballad as
Sister Helen is misquoted, and, indeed, from the Burden of Nineveh, the
Blessed Damozel, the King's Tragedy and Guido Cavalcanti's lovely
ballata, down to the Portrait and such sonnets as Love-sweetness,
Farewell to the Glen, and A Match with the Moon, there is not one single
poem that does not display some careless error or some stupid misprint.
As for Rossetti's elaborate system of punctuation, Mr. Knight pays no
attention to it whatsoever. Indeed, he shows quite a rollicking
indifference to all the secrets and subtleties of style, and inserts or
removes stops in a manner that is absolutely destructive to the lyrical
beauty of the verse. The hyphen, also, so constantly employed by
Rossetti in the case of such expressions as 'hillock-eaves' quoted above,
'hill-fire,' 'birth-hour,' and the like, is almost invariably
disregarded, and by the brilliant omission of a semicolon Mr. Knight has
succeeded in spoiling one of the best stanzas in The Staff and Scrip--a
poem, by the way, that he speaks of as The Staff and the Scrip (sic).
After this tedious comedy of errors it seems almost unnecessary to point
out that the earliest Italian poet is not called Ciullo D'Alcano (sic),
or that The Bothie of Toper-na-Fuosich (sic) is not the title of Clough's
boisterous epic, or that Dante and his Cycle (sic) is not the name
Rossetti gave to his collection of translations; and why Troy Town should
appear in the index as Tory Town is really quite inexplicable, unless it
is intended as a compliment to Mr. Hall Caine who once dedicated, or
rather tried to dedicate, to Rossetti a lecture on the relations of poets
to politics. We are sorry, too, to find an English dramatic critic
misquoting Shakespeare, as we had always been of opinion that this was a
privilege reserved specially for our English actors. We sincerely hope
that there will soon be an end to all biographies of this kind. They rob
life of much of its dignity and its wonder, add to death itself a new
terror, and make one wish that all art were anonymous. Nor could there
have been any more unfortunate choice of a subject for popular treatment
than that to which we owe the memoir that now lies before us. A pillar
of fire to the few who knew him, and of cloud to the many who knew him
not, Dante Gabriel Rossetti lived apart from the gossip and tittle-tattle
of a shallow age. He never trafficked with the merchants for his soul,
nor brought his wares into the market-place for the idle to gape at.
Passionate and romantic though he was, yet there was in his nature
something of high austerity. He loved seclusion, and hated notoriety,
and would have shuddered at the idea that within a few years after his
death he was to make his appearance in a series of popular biographies,
sandwiched between the author of Pickwick and the Great Lexicographer.
One man alone, the friend his verse won for him, did he desire should
write his life, and it is to Mr. Theodore Watts that we, too, must look
to give us the real Rossetti. It may be admitted at once that Mr.
Watts's subject has for the moment been a little spoiled for him. Rude
hands have touched it, and unmusical voices have made it sound almost
common in our ears. Yet none the less is it for him to tell us of the
marvel of this man whose art he has analysed with such exquisite insight,
whose life he knows as no one else can know it, whom he so loyally loved
and tended, and by whom he was so loyally beloved in turn. As for the
others, the scribblers and nibblers of literature, if they indeed
reverence Rossetti's memory, let them pay him the one homage he would
most have valued, the gracious homage of silence. 'Though you can fret
me, yet you cannot play upon me,' says Hamlet to his false friend, and
even so might Rossetti speak to those well-intentioned mediocrities who
would seem to know his stops and would sound him to the top of his
compass. True, they cannot fret him now, for he has passed beyond the
possibility of pain; yet they cannot play upon him either; it is not for
them to pluck out the heart of his mystery.
There is, however, one feature of this book that deserves unstinted
praise. Mr. Anderson's bibliography will be found of immense use by
every student of Rossetti's work and influence. Perhaps Young's very
powerful attack on Pre-Raphaelitism, as expounded by Mr. Ruskin
(Longmans, 1857), might be included, but, in all other respects, it seems
quite complete, and the chronological list of paintings and drawings is
really admirable. When this unfortunate 'Great Writers' Series comes to
an end, Mr. Anderson's bibliographies should be collected together and
published in a separate volume. At present they are in a very second-
rate company indeed.
Life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. By Joseph Knight. 'Great Writers'
Series. (Walter Scott.)
MR. MORRIS'S ODYSSEY
(Pall Mall Gazette, April 26, 1887.)
Of all our modern poets, Mr. William Morris is the one best qualified by
nature and by art to translate for us the marvellous epic of the
wanderings of Odysseus. For he is our only true story-singer since
Chaucer; if he is a Socialist, he is also a Saga-man; and there was a
time when he was never wearied of telling us strange legends of gods and
men, wonderful tales of chivalry and romance. Master as he is of
decorative and descriptive verse, he has all the Greek's joy in the
visible aspect of things, all the Greek's sense of delicate and
delightful detail, all the Greek's pleasure in beautiful textures and
exquisite materials and imaginative designs; nor can any one have a
keener sympathy with the Homeric admiration for the workers and the
craftsmen in the various arts, from the stainers in white ivory and the
embroiderers in purple and fold, to the weaver sitting by the loom and
the dyer dipping in the vat, the chaser of shield and helmet, the carver
of wood or stone. And to all this is added the true temper of high
romance, the power to make the past as real to us as the present, the
subtle instinct to discern passion, the swift impulse to portray life.
It is no wonder the lovers of Greek literature have so eagerly looked
forward to Mr. Morris's version of the Odyssean epic, and now that the
first volume has appeared, it is not extravagant to say that of all our
English translations this is the most perfect and the most satisfying. In
spite of Coleridge's well-known views on the subject, we have always held
that Chapman's Odyssey is immeasurably inferior to his Iliad, the mere
difference of metre alone being sufficient to set the former in a
secondary place; Pope's Odyssey, with its glittering rhetoric and smart
antithesis, has nothing of the grand manner of the original; Cowper is
dull, and Bryant dreadful, and Worsley too full of Spenserian
prettinesses; while excellent though Messrs. Butcher and Lang's version
undoubtedly is in many respects, still, on the whole, it gives us merely
the facts of the Odyssey without providing anything of its artistic
effect. Avia's translation even, though better than almost all its
predecessors in the same field, is not worthy of taking rank beside Mr.
Morris's, for here we have a true work of art, a rendering not merely of
language into language, but of poetry into poetry, and though the new
spirit added in the transfusion may seem to many rather Norse than Greek,
and, perhaps at times, more boisterous than beautiful, there is yet a
vigour of life in every line, a splendid ardour through each canto, that
stirs the blood while one reads like the sound of a trumpet, and that,
producing a physical as well as a spiritual delight, exults the senses no
less than it exalts the soul. It may be admitted at once that, here and
there, Mr. Morris has missed something of the marvellous dignity of the
Homeric verse, and that, in his desire for rushing and ringing metre, he
has occasionally sacrificed majesty to movement, and made stateliness
give place to speed; but it is really only in such blank verse as
Milton's that this effect of calm and lofty music can be attained, and in
all other respects blank verse is the most inadequate medium for
reproducing the full flow and fervour of the Greek hexameter. One merit,
at any rate, Mr. Morris's version entirely and absolutely possesses. It
is, in no sense of the word, literary; it seems to deal immediately with
life itself, and to take from the reality of things its own form and
colour; it is always direct and simple, and at its best has something of
the 'large utterance of the early gods.'
As for individual passages of beauty, nothing could be better than the
wonderful description of the house of the Phoeacian king, or the whole
telling of the lovely legend of Circe, or the manner in which the pageant
of the pale phantoms in Hades is brought before our eyes. Perhaps the
huge epic humour of the escape from the Cyclops is hardly realised, but
there is always a linguistic difficulty about rendering this fascinating
story into English, and where we are given so much poetry we should not
complain about losing a pun; and the exquisite idyll of the meeting and
parting with the daughter of Alcinous is really delightfully told. How
good, for instance, is this passage taken at random from the Sixth Book:
But therewith unto the handmaids goodly Odysseus spake:
'Stand off I bid you, damsels, while the work in hand I take,
And wash the brine from my shoulders, and sleek them all around.
Since verily now this long while sweet oil they have not found.
But before you nought will I wash me, for shame I have indeed,
Amidst of fair-tressed damsels to be all bare of weed.'
So he spake and aloof they gat them, and thereof they told the may,
But Odysseus with the river from his body washed away
The brine from his back and his shoulders wrought broad and mightily,
And from his head was he wiping the foam of the untilled sea;
But when he had throughly washed him, and the oil about him had shed
He did upon the raiment the gift of the maid unwed.
But Athene, Zeus-begotten, dealt with him in such wise
That bigger yet was his seeming, and mightier to all eyes,
With the hair on his head crisp curling as the bloom of the daffodil.
And as when the silver with gold is o'erlaid by a man of skill,
Yea, a craftsman whom Hephaestus and Pallas Athene have taught
To be master over masters, and lovely work he hath wrought;
So she round his head and his shoulders shed grace abundantly.
It may be objected by some that the line
With the hair on his head crisp curling as the bloom of the daffodil,
is a rather fanciful version of
[Greek text]
and it certainly seems probable that the allusion is to the dark colour
of the hero's hair; still, the point is not one of much importance,
though it may be worth noting that a similar expression occurs in
Ogilby's superbly illustrated translation of the Odyssey, published in
1665, where Charles II.'s Master of the Revels in Ireland gives the
passage thus:
Minerva renders him more tall and fair,
Curling in rings like daffodils his hair.
No anthology, however, can show the true merit of Mr. Morris's
translation, whose real merit does not depend on stray beauties, nor is
revealed by chance selections, but lies in the absolute rightness and
coherence of the whole, in its purity and justice of touch, its freedom
from affectation and commonplace, its harmony of form and matter. It is
sufficient to say that this is a poet's version of a poet, and for such
surely we should be thankful. In these latter days of coarse and vulgar
literature, it is something to have made the great sea-epic of the South
native and natural to our northern isle, something to have shown that our
English speech may be a pipe through which Greek lips can blow, something
to have taught Nausicaa to speak the same language as Perdita.
The Odyssey of Homer. Done into English Verse by William Morris, author
of The Earthly Paradise. In two volumes. Volume I. (Reeves and
Turner.)
For review of Volume II. see Mr. Morris's Completion of the Odyssey, page
215.
A BATCH OF NOVELS
(Pall Mall Gazette, May 2, 1887.)
Of the three great Russian novelists of our time Tourgenieff is by far
the finest artist. He has that spirit of exquisite selection, that
delicate choice of detail, which is the essence of style; his work is
entirely free from any personal intention; and by taking existence at its
most fiery-coloured moments he can distil into a few pages of perfect
prose the moods and passions of many lives.