In this poetical history of the fortunate--the unfortunate--Jason, Mr.
Morris has written a book of real value. It is some time since we have
met with a work of imagination of so thoroughly satisfactory a
character,--a work read with an enjoyment so unalloyed and so untempered
by the desire to protest and to criticise. The poetical firmament within
these recent years has been all alive with unprophesied comets and
meteors, many of them of extraordinary brilliancy, but most of them very
rapid in their passage. Mr. Morris gives us the comfort of feeling that
he is a fixed star, and that his radiance is not likely to be
extinguished in a draught of wind,--after the fashion of Mr. Alexander
Smith, Mr. Swinburne and Miss Ingelow.
Mr. Morris's poem is ushered into the world with a very florid birthday
speech from the pen of the author of the too famous _Poems and
Ballads_,--a circumstance, we apprehend, in no small degree prejudicial
to its success. But we hasten to assure all persons whom the knowledge
of Mr. Swinburne's enthusiasm may have led to mistrust the character of
the work, that it has to our perception nothing in common with this
gentleman's own productions, and that his article proves very little
more than that his sympathies are wiser than his performance. If Mr.
Morris's poem may be said to remind us of the manner of any other
writer, it is simply of that of Chaucer; and to resemble Chaucer is a
great safeguard against resembling Swinburne.
_The Life and Death of Jason_, then, is a narrative poem on a Greek
subject, written in a genuine English style. With the subject all
reading people are familiar, and we have no need to retrace its details.
But it is perhaps not amiss to transcribe the few pregnant lines of
prose into which, at the outset, Mr. Morris has condensed the argument
of his poem:--
"Jason the son of AEson, king of Iolchos, having come to man's estate,
demanded of Pelias his father's kingdom, which he held wrongfully. But
Pelias answered, that if he would bring from Colchis the golden fleece
of the ram that had carried Phryxus thither, he would yield him his
right. Whereon Jason sailed to Colchis in the ship Argo, with other
heroes, and by means of Medea, the king's daughter, won the fleece; and
carried off also Medea; and so, after many troubles, came back to
Iolchos again. There, by Medea's wiles, was Pelias slain; but Jason went
to Corinth, and lived with Medea happily, till he was taken with the
love of Glauce, the king's daughter of Corinth, and must needs wed her;
whom also Medea destroyed, and fled to AEgeus at Athens; and not long
after Jason died strangely."
The style of this little fragment of prose is not an unapt measure of
the author's poetical style,--quaint, but not too quaint, more
Anglo-Saxon than Latin, and decidedly laconic. For in spite of the great
length of his work, his manner is by no means diffuse. His story is a
long one, and he wishes to do it justice; but the movement is rapid and
business-like, and the poet is quite guiltless of any wanton lingering
along the margin of the subject matter,--after the manner, for instance,
of Keats,--to whom, individually, however, we make this tendency no
reproach. Mr. Morris's subject is immensely rich,--heavy with its
richness,--and in the highest degree romantic and poetical. For the most
part, of course, he found not only the great _contours_, but the various
incidents and episodes, ready drawn to his hand; but still there was
enough wanting to make a most exhaustive drain upon his ingenuity and
his imagination. And not only these faculties have been brought into
severe exercise, but the strictest good taste and good sense were called
into play, together with a certain final gift which we hardly know how
to name, and which is by no means common, even among very clever
poets,--a comprehensive sense of form, of proportion, and of real
completeness, without which the most brilliant efforts of the
imagination are a mere agglomeration of ill-reconciled beauties. The
legend of Jason is full of strangely constructed marvels and elaborate
prodigies and horrors, calculated to task heavily an author's
adroitness.
We have so pampered and petted our sense of the ludicrous of late years,
that it is quite the spoiled child of the house, and without its leave
no guest can be honourably entertained. It is very true that the
atmosphere of Grecian mythology is so entirely an artificial one, that
we are seldom tempted to refer its weird anomalous denizens to our
standard of truth and beauty. Truth, indeed, is at once put out of the
question; but one would say beforehand, that many of the creations of
Greek fancy were wanting even in beauty, or at least in that ease and
simplicity which has been acquired in modern times by force of culture.
But habit and tradition have reconciled us to these things in their
native forms, and Mr. Morris's skill reconciles us to them in his modern
and composite English.
The idea, for instance, of a _flying ram_, seems, to an undisciplined
fancy, a not especially happy creation, nor a very promising theme for
poetry; but Mr. Morris, without diminishing its native oddity, has given
it an ample romantic dignity. So, again, the sowing of the dragon's
teeth at Colchis, and the springing up of mutually opposed armed men,
seems too complex and recondite a scene to be vividly and gracefully
realized; but as it stands, it is one of the finest passages in Mr.
Morris's poem. His great stumbling-block, however, we take it, was the
necessity of maintaining throughout the dignity and prominence of his
hero. From the moment that Medea comes into the poem, Jason falls into
the second place, and keeps it to the end. She is the all-wise and
all-brave helper and counsellor at Colchis, and the guardian angel of
the returning journey. She saves her companions from the Circean
enchantments, and she withholds them from the embraces of the Sirens.
She effects the death of Pelias, and assures the successful return of
the Argonauts. And finally--as a last claim upon her interest--she is
slighted and abandoned by the man of her love. Without question, then,
she is the central figure of the poem,--a powerful and enchanting
figure,--a creature of barbarous arts, and of exquisite human passions.
Jason accordingly possesses only that indirect hold upon our attention
which belongs to the Virgilian AEneas; although Mr. Morris has avoided
Virgil's error of now and then allowing his hero to be contemptible.
A large number, however, of far greater drawbacks than any we are able
to mention could not materially diminish the powerful beauty of this
fantastic legend. It is as rich in adventure as the Odyssey, and very
much simpler. Its prime elements are of the most poetical and delightful
kind. What can be more thrilling than the idea of a great boatful of
warriors embarking upon dreadful seas, not for pleasure, nor for
conquest, nor for any material advantage, but for the simple discovery
of a jealously watched, magically guarded relic? There is in the
character of the object of their quest something heroically
unmarketable, or at least unavailable.
But of course the story owes a vast deal to its episodes, and these have
lost nothing in Mr. Morris's hands. One of the most beautiful--the well
known adventure of Hylas--occurs at the very outset. The beautiful young
man, during a halt of the ship, wanders inland through the forest, and,
passing beside a sylvan stream, is espied and incontinently loved by the
water nymphs, who forthwith "detach" one of their number to work his
seduction. This young lady assumes the disguise and speech of a Northern
princess, clad in furs, and in this character sings to her victim "a
sweet song, sung not yet to any man." Very sweet and truly lyrical it is
like all the songs scattered through Mr. Morris's narrative. We are,
indeed, almost in doubt whether the most beautiful passages in the poem
do not occur in the series of songs in the fourteenth book.
The ship has already touched at the island of Circe, and the sailors,
thanks to the earnest warnings of Medea, have abstained from setting
foot on the fatal shore; while Medea has, in turn, been warned by the
enchantress against the allurements of the Sirens. As soon as the ship
draws nigh, these fair beings begin to utter their irresistible notes.
All eyes are turned lovingly on the shore, the rowers' charmed muscles
relax, and the ship drifts landward. But Medea exhorts and entreats her
companions to preserve their course. Jason himself is not untouched, as
Mr. Morris delicately tells us,--"a moment Jason gazed." But Orpheus
smites his lyre before it is too late, and stirs the languid blood of
his comrades. The Sirens strike their harps amain, and a conflict of
song arises. The Sirens sing of the cold, the glittering, the idle
delights of their submarine homes; while Orpheus tells of the warm and
pastoral landscapes of Greece. We have no space for quotation; of course
Orpheus carries the day. But the finest and most delicate practical
sense is shown in the alternation of the two lyrical arguments,--the
soulless sweetness of the one, and the deep human richness of the other.
There is throughout Mr. Morris's poem a great unity and evenness of
excellence, which make selection and quotation difficult; but of
impressive touches in our reading we noticed a very great number. We
content ourselves with mentioning a single one. When Jason has sown his
bag of dragon's teeth at Colchis, and the armed fighters have sprung up
along the furrows, and under the spell contrived by Medea have torn each
other to death:--
"One man was left alive, but wounded sore,
Who, staring round about and seeing no more
His brothers' spears against him, fixed his eyes
Upon the queller of those mysteries.
Then dreadfully they gleamed, and with no word,
He tottered towards him with uplifted sword.
But scarce he made three paces down the field,
Ere chill death seized his heart, and on his shield
Clattering he fell."
We have not spoken of Mr. Morris's versification nor of his vocabulary.
We have only room to say that, to our perception, the first in its
facility and harmony, and the second in its abundance and studied
simplicity, leave nothing to be desired. There are of course faults and
errors in his poem, but there are none that are not trivial and easily
pardoned in the light of the fact that he has given us a work of
consummate art and of genuine beauty. He has foraged in a
treasure-house; he has visited the ancient world, and come back with a
massive cup of living Greek wine. His project was no light task, but he
has honourably fulfilled it. He has enriched the language with a
narrative poem which we are sure that the public will not suffer to fall
into the ranks of honoured but uncherished works,--objects of vague and
sapient reference,--but will continue to read and to enjoy. In spite of
its length, the interest of the story never flags, and as a work of art
it never ceases to be pure. To the jaded intellects of the present
moment, distracted with the strife of creeds and the conflict of
theories, it opens a glimpse into a world where they will be called upon
neither to choose, to criticise, nor to believe, but simply to feel, to
look, and to listen.