The succession of the Hon. J. Leicester Warren to the barony of De
Tabley was something more than a change in the _personnel_ of the House
of Lords; it amounted to a conspicuous addition to the Chamber's
intellectual power, and especially to the number of its poetic votaries.
The author of 'Philoctetes' and 'Orestes,' of 'Rehearsals' and
'Searching the Net,' is no mere versifier. He has felt the influence of
the old Greek dramatists, and apparently also that of Mr. Swinburne;
but, for all that, his work has undoubted individuality, as well as
solid interest.
It must be admitted that the House of Lords does not at this moment
contain many hereditary peers who are also poets. Lord Tennyson, of
course, is an ennobled commoner, and the Bishop of Derry (Dr.
Alexander), who has written so much excellent verse, both in the
thoughtful and in the imaginative vein, is no longer one of the
spiritual lords. But there is Lord Lytton, there is Lord Southesk, and
there is Lord Rosslyn; and by all of these Lord de Tabley will be
welcomed as a brother in the literary art. What Lord Lytton has done in
poetry, need scarcely be recapitulated. He would be remembered as 'Owen
Meredith' if, since his accession to the peerage, he had not made a new
reputation as the author of 'Fables in Song,' 'Glenaveril,' and other
performances. As 'Owen Meredith' he was, no doubt, more fresh and
spontaneous than he has ever been as Lord Lytton; but his poetic work,
as a whole, is of good quality, and some of it will find its way down
the stream of time. Equally certain may we be that the 'Jonas Fisher' of
Lord Southesk, with its unquestionable vigour, both of satire and of
sentiment, will remain alive, whatever may be the fate of the author's
'Greenwood's Farewell' and 'Meda Maiden.' Lord Rosslyn, it will be
remembered, was one of the most successful of the Jubilee Laureates;
but, even before that, he had made himself esteemed by many trustworthy
judges as the producer of numerous good sonnets.
''Tis ridiculous,' says Selden, 'for a lord to print verses; 'tis well
enough to make them to please himself, but to make them public is
foolish.' He goes on to add that
'If a man in his private chamber twists his band-strings, or plays
with a rush to please himself, 'tis well enough; but if he should
go into Fleet Street, and sit upon a stall, and twist a
band-string, or play with a rush, then all the boys in the street
would laugh at him.'
No doubt they would have done so in Selden's time; and much more readily
would they do so now. But that is scarcely to the point. _Pace_ Master
Selden, there is nothing ridiculous in a lord printing his verses--if
they be but good enough for the process. A peer is not necessarily a
poet, but a poet is none the worse for being a peer. Nay, there are even
certain kinds of verse in which a peer may, other things being equal,
be actually expected to excel. There is nothing to prevent his being--as
Byron was--a poet of passion; there is every reason why, if he have the
requisite literary capacity, he should shine in the poetry of the
library, the _salon_, and the boudoir. He has usually the education for
the first, and the leisure for the other two. He generally has culture,
he always has breeding, he often has gallantry; and, with these
endowments, the poetry _par excellence_ of the peerage is well within
his reach.
Considerable, indeed, would be the loss to English literature if by any
chance the productions of our noble poets should disappear. Apart from
Byron, who, of course, stands a head and shoulders above all his
brethren, there is that Henry, Earl of Surrey, who ranks highest of all
poets between Chaucer and Spenser, and who did so much to popularize in
England both blank verse and the sonnet. But for Surrey both those
accomplishments, since so popular among us, might have been long in
establishing themselves in English poetry. The other poet-peers of the
sixteenth century were admittedly not of the first class. Yet
Buckhurst's share in 'The Mirror for Magistrates' and in the tragedy of
'Gorboduc' was of undoubted value, both intrinsic and relative; and the
world of letters would not willingly let die the work, slight as it was,
of Lord Vaux, the Earls of Essex and Oxford, the Earls of Ancrum and
Stirling, Lord Brooke, and Francis Bacon, although the great Chancellor
wrote but one lyric of any moment--the well-known lines upon 'The
World.' Lord Vaux's 'Of a Contented Mind,' Lord Essex's 'There is None,
O None but You,' Lord Oxford's 'If Woman could be Fair and yet not
Fond,' are among the treasures of our verse; while the tragedies of Lord
Stirling and Lord Brooke, and the sonnets of Lord Ancrum, are at least
curious and interesting, if they are not substantively great.
And when we come to the noble poets of the Stuart and the early Georgian
period, we find that the national indebtedness is not less marked. Who
would be prepared to surrender the spirited effusions of Montrose? And
is there not much to be said for the outcome, flimsy and over-free as it
often was, of that mob of noblemen who wrote with ease--including the
Earls of Roscommon, Dorset, and Rochester, and the Duke of
Buckinghamshire? Had these writers not at least the virtues of lightness
and of brightness? Did not Dorset pen the lines, 'To all you ladies now
on land?' Did not Buckinghamshire produce 'The Election of the
Laureat'--the prototype of Leigh Hunt's 'Feast of the Poets,' and of a
still more recent _jeu d'esprit_ by Mr. Robert Buchanan? The great Lord
Peterborough is even now less remembered for his military triumphs than
for his 'Song by a Person of Quality;' while Chesterfield, if thought of
most frequently in connection with his letters and his essays, still
lives in poetry as the author of some admirable society verses. Horace
Walpole claims mention in the list as Earl of Orford, and room must
fairly be made, too, for Lords Lansdowne, Halifax, Nugent, Lyttelton,
Egremont, and De la Warre, most of whom left behind them a few fugitive
pieces which deserve to be embalmed in poetical collections.
The annals of nineteenth-century song will commemorate, besides Byron,
those agreeable versifiers--Lord Holland, Lord Melbourne, and Lord
Winchilsea, and those cultured translators--Lord Strangford, Lord
Ellesmere, and Lord Derby. It would scarcely be fair to include among
noble poets Lord Macaulay, Lord Houghton, or the first Lord Lytton, for
they, like Lord Tennyson, were created peers, and won their
laurel-wreaths in the character of commoners. In the same way, I have
taken no account of the poetical peeresses, or I should have had to
dwell upon the achievements of such ladies as Sidney's sister, Lady
Pembroke; the Duchess of Newcastle, the Countess of Winchilsea, the
Baroness Nairne, and so on. Enough, indeed, has been said to show how
prominent a part the peerage has played in the history of English
poetry--not, indeed, in the front rank, in which (omitting Lord
Tennyson) it is represented only by Byron, but in the second, where
Montrose (for example) is eminent, and wherever, in short, the
rhetorical, the amatory, and the witty elements are in the ascendant.