THE MINOR POETS, 1830 to 1850.
The view presented in the last chapter is that even Tennyson in his early
works displays the qualities to be expected in a time of lowered energy,
and gradually, by native force, rises superior to its limits. If this view
be sound we should expect the characteristics in question to be much more
prominent in lesser men. And this we find to be the case. Besides Tennyson
himself and his brothers, the principal poets who had begun to write
before 1830, and who may be taken as representative of the early years of
the period, were: Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Mrs. Hemans, Elizabeth Moulton
Barrett, Thomas Hood, Henry Taylor, and William Motherwell. We may include
also Winthrop Mackworth Praed, for, though his poems were not collected
and published till long afterwards, a number of them were written before
this date. The _Poems_ of Hartley Coleridge came a little later; and in
the last year of the decade then beginning Philip James Bailey won by the
long and ambitious poem of _Festus_, a great reputation which has for many
years been fading away.
These writers are unusually hard to classify, because of the absence of
any dominant note or of any absorbing interest. The two women first named,
Mrs. Hemans and 'L. E. L.,' belong rather to the preceding period, though
they overlap this. Both are sentimentalists, and time has taken from
their work the charm it once possessed. Mrs. Hemans is now unduly
depreciated, but the difference between the most favourable and the least
favourable critic can only be with regard to the degree of weakness
charged against her. L. E. Landon (1802-1838), who became by marriage Mrs.
Maclean, was in her own day even more popular than Mrs. Hemans, but she
has since been much more completely forgotten. Even the mystery of her
death, which was believed by many to be due to foul play, but which in all
probability occurred through misadventure, has failed to keep alive the
interest in her. Yet, though her verse is of little value, she is one of
the best examples of the tendencies of the time. She followed Byron as far
as her talents and the restraints of her sex would allow. Her longer poems
are on the whole poor; some of her shorter pieces are very readable, but
they are chargeable with the fault of an excess of rhetoric. Such as she
was in poetry, her work was mostly done before 1830. After that date she
wrote some mediocre prose stories, but was comparatively inactive in
verse.
[Sidenote: Charles Tennyson Turner (1808-1879).]
Both of Tennyson's brothers, Charles and Frederick, were, like himself,
poets. It has but recently become known that Frederick as well as Charles
had a share in the _Poems by Two Brothers_. Except for this the eldest
brother's publications were of much later date; but Charles Tennyson,
afterwards Charles Tennyson Turner, followed up the joint venture with
another of his own, a slim volume of _Sonnets and Fugitive Pieces_,
published in 1830. This attracted the attention of Coleridge, who bestowed
warm but discriminating praise upon the sonnets. Both as to fame, and
probably as to his own productiveness, Charles Tennyson Turner was
crushed, as it were, under his greater brother. He wrote little more,
though he carefully revised and in some respects decidedly improved his
sonnets. It is by virtue of them that he takes his place among English
poets. They are graceful and sweet, but the substance is not always worthy
of the form. They reveal everywhere the interests and the pursuits of the
Vicar of Grasby, and they are honourable to his peaceful piety. It is
evident that both Charles and Frederick Tennyson, and especially the
latter, might have been disposed to adapt to themselves the humorous
complaint of the second Duke of Wellington, and exclaim, 'What can a man
do with such a brother?' Though the eldest of the three, Mr. Frederick
Tennyson belongs by the date of his publications rather to the period
after than to the period before 1870.
Of the other writers, Praed, accomplished and exceedingly clever, but
never impelled to do anything really great, may be regarded as a victim of
the prevalent want of purpose. So may Hood, in respect of that section of
his works which naturally goes along with those of Praed. Hood, it is
true, was too great a man to be dismissed as merely a writer of the
transition; yet, just because of his greatness, his history shows better
than that of any other man how earnestness was discouraged and triviality
fostered. Seldom have so great poetic gifts been so squandered--with no
dishonour to Hood--on mere puns. The poet, as an early critic pointed out,
was a man of essentially serious mind; but he had to earn bread for
himself and his children, and as jesting paid, while serious poetry did
not, he was compelled to jest.
[Sidenote: Thomas Hood (1799-1845).]
Thomas Hood inherited from a consumptive family a feeble constitution, and
the latter part of his life was a gallant but painful struggle against
disease. His literary life began in 1821, when he was made 'a sort of
sub-editor' of the _London Magazine_. _Lycus the Centaur_, a boldly
imaginative piece for so young a man, appeared in 1822. _The Plea of the
Midsummer Fairies_, a fine specimen of graceful fancy deservedly ranked
high by himself, and the powerful and terrible _Eugene Aram's Dream_, were
likewise early pieces. The latter may be contrasted for its treatment of
crime with Bulwer Lytton's well-known novel on the story of the same
murderer. The advantage in imaginative force and insight, as well as in
moral wholesomeness, is all on the side of Hood.
These pieces prove that the vein of serious poetry was present from the
first in Hood. The vein of jest and pun was equally natural to him. Jokes
of all kinds, practical and other, enlivened and sometimes distracted his
own household. This liking for fun inspired the _Odes and Addresses to
Great People_, written in conjunction with John Hamilton Reynolds, the
_Whims and Oddities_, and the succession of _Comic Annuals_, the first of
which appeared in 1830. The presence of such a light and playful element
in a great man's work is by no means to be regretted; but in Hood's case,
unfortunately, there was for many years little else. Hood was blameless,
for he had to live. With characteristic modesty he seems for a time to
have been persuaded that the public were right, and that nature meant him
for a professional jester. It was fortunate that he lived to change this
opinion, for much of his finest poetry belongs to his closing years.
Perhaps the most original fruit of Hood's genius is _Miss Kilmansegg_,
which conceals under a grotesque exterior deep feeling and effective
satire. It has been sometimes ranked as Hood's greatest work; and if
comparison be made with his longer pieces only, or if we look principally
to the uniqueness of the poem, the judgment will hardly be disputed; but
probably the popular instinct which has seized upon _The Song of the
Shirt_ and _The Bridge of Sighs_, and the criticism which exalts _The
Haunted House_, are in this instance sounder. The grotesque element cannot
be employed freely without damage to the pure poetic beauty of the piece
in which it occurs; and _Miss Kilmansegg_ certainly does suffer such
damage.
The _Song of the Shirt_ and _The Bridge of Sighs_ are by far the most
popular of Hood's poems. They have the great merit of perfect truth of
feeling. Handling subjects which tempt to sentiment, and even to that
excess of sentiment known in the language of slang as 'gush,' they are
wholly free from anything false or weak or merely lachrymose. Pity makes
the verse, but it is the pity of a manly man. _The Haunted House_, first
published in the opening number of _Hood's Magazine_, stands at the head
of the writer's poetry of pure imagination. Few pieces can rival it for
eeriness of impression, and few exhibit such delicate skill in the choice
of details in description. The centipede, the spider, the maggots, the
emmets, the bats, the rusty armour and the tattered flags, all help to
deepen the sense of desolation and decay. This piece, with the more
serious ones already mentioned, and a few others, such as _Ruth_ and _The
Death-Bed_, are Hood's best title to fame. The growth in their relative
number as time went on, the increasing wealth of imagination and the
greater flexibility of verse, all show that Hood was to the end a
progressive poet. If he had lived longer and enjoyed better health his
fame might have been very great. He was the victim of the transition, and
through tardiness of recognition and the want of any influence to draw him
out, he failed to leave a sufficient body of pure and great poetry to
sustain permanently a high reputation. As the author of a few pieces with
the unmistakable note of poetry he can never be quite forgotten.
[Sidenote: Laman Blanchard (1804-1845).]
Passing mention may be accorded along with Hood to Laman Blanchard, a very
minor poet, who showed the same combination of seriousness with fun. He
was an agreeable writer, but not, even at his best, a distinguished one.
[Sidenote: Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802-1839).]
The man of closest affinity to Hood was Winthrop Mackworth Praed, who
began by contributing at school to _The Etonian_, and continued at
Cambridge to write for Knight's _Quarterly Magazine_. He entered
Parliament, and if he had lived he would probably have risen to eminence
there. Praed belongs to the class of writers of _vers de societe_ of which
Prior is the earlier and Locker-Lampson the later master; and it is not
too much to say that he surpasses both. It is a species of verse well
adapted to such a period as that in which Praed lived. Great earnestness
is not required, and is even fatal to it. The qualities essential to
success are culture, good-breeding, wit and lightness of touch. Praed had
them all. The cleverness and wit and delicacy which nature had given him
were all increased by the influence of his school and university, where he
acquired all the grace of scholarship without any of the ponderosity of
learning. But Praed had one more gift, without which his verses must have
taken a lower place--the gift of a refined poetic fancy. It is this that
gives his wit its special charm, and it is this too that saves his verse
from being that merely of a very clever and refined jester. The well-known
character of _The Vicar_ is one of the best examples of this combination
of feeling with lightness. Herein we detect the difference between Praed's
wit and the wit of Hood. The latter commonly separated jest from earnest,
and gave himself wholly over to one or the other. He is far the more
pronounced punster. The pleasant surprises of Praed's verse usually arise
from some delicate turn of thought rather than from a twisting of words.
Hood's fun is sometimes almost boisterous, Praed's is never so. As regards
the lighter verse, the advantage on comparison is all on the side of the
younger man. But there is no other aspect to Praed. Notwithstanding the
undertone of seriousness, notwithstanding too the strange power of that
masterpiece of the grotesque, _The Red Fisherman_, it remains doubtful
whether he had the capacity to be more than what he is, the prince of
elegant and refined writers of light verse. Hood is indubitably a poet.
[Sidenote: Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton (1809-1885).]
It is likewise as a writer of _vers de societe_ that Richard Monckton
Milnes, Lord Houghton, is best known, and is happiest. But though he
shines as a writer of what may be called, without disparagement, poetical
trifles, there is also a serious strain by no means contemptible in his
verse. _Strangers Yet_ is a fine specimen of pathos. In _Poems, Legendary
and Historical_, however, Houghton is less successful, and the best of
them do not bear comparison with Aytoun's _Lays of the Scottish
Cavaliers_, which belong to the same class. Houghton's critical work in
prose is on the whole more valuable than his verse, for there his culture
told, and the lack of high imagination is less felt.
[Sidenote: Richard Harris Barham (1788-1845).]
Richard Harris Barham represents a type of humour much broader than that
of Praed. His _Ingoldsby Legends_ have enjoyed a popularity wider,
probably, than that of any other humorous verse of the century. They are
clever, rapid in narrative, and resourceful in phrase and in rhyme. Yet a
certain want of delicacy in the wit and of melody in the verse is evident
when we compare them with the work of Hood and Praed, or that of such
later humorists as Calverley, or J. K. Stephen, or Lewis Carroll.
Barham's last composition, 'As I laye a-thynkynge,' contains the promise
of success if he had written serious poetry.
[Sidenote: Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849).]
Hartley Coleridge was a poet of a totally different type; and we must
ascribe the fact that he never redeemed his early promise to hereditary
weakness of will rather than to any adverse influence of the time. Against
the latter he had a defence that did not in the same measure shield any
other contemporary. He was the special inheritor of the great traditions
of the so-called Lake school; and he was cradled in poetry. His infancy
and childhood are celebrated both by his father and by Wordsworth. Derwent
Coleridge tells a story of his brother, which shows that Wordsworth
accurately described Hartley as one 'whose fancies from afar are brought,'
and who made 'a mock apparel' of his words. 'Hartley, when about five
years old, was asked a question about himself being called Hartley. "Which
Hartley?" asked the boy. "Why! is there more than one Hartley?" "Yes," he
replied, "there's a deal of Hartleys." "How so?" "There's Picture-Hartley
(Hazlitt had painted a portrait of him) and Shadow-Hartley, and there's
Echo-Hartley, and there's Catch-me-fast Hartley"; at the same time seizing
his own arm very eagerly.' Evidently this boy lived in a world of
day-dreams, in a 'perpetual perspective.' The problem of the education of
such a young idealist is a difficult one; but it seems clear that its
principle ought to have been a judicious, not a harsh or pedantic,
regularity. His father's aspiration of 'wandering like a breeze' was not
for him. But instead, Hartley's actual education was irregular and
desultory. Nothing was done to improve his natural defect and to
discipline his will; and weakness of will wrecked his life. The
fellowship he had won at Oriel College was forfeited for intemperance, and
he never conquered the habit, but sank from depth to depth, a pitiable
example of genius gone to waste.
Though Hartley Coleridge wrote prose as well, his name is now associated
only with his poems. A volume of these was published in 1833. It was
marked Vol. I., but no second ever appeared. The poems however were
re-edited, with additions, by Derwent Coleridge, in 1851. Hartley
Coleridge nowhere shows the supreme poetic gift his father possessed; but
as in sheer genius the elder Coleridge was probably superior to any
contemporary, so Hartley seems to have been the superior by endowment of
any poet then writing, Tennyson and Browning alone excepted. Weakness of
will, unfortunately, doomed him to excel only in short pieces, and to be
far from uniform in these. It would have been wiser to omit the section of
'playful and humorous' pieces. But the sonnets are very good, and some of
them are excellent. A few of the songs take an equally high rank,
especially the well-known _She is not fair to outward view_, and _'Tis
sweet to hear the merry lark_. There are many suggestions of Wordsworth,
but Hartley Coleridge is not an imitative poet. Without any striking
originality he is fresh and independent. His verse betrays a gentle and
kindly as well as a sensitive character. He evidently felt affection for
all living things, and especially for all that was weak, whether from
nature, age, or circumstance. Some of this feeling turns back, as it were,
upon himself, in the numerous and often pathetic poems in which he appears
to be contemplating his own history. He is of the school of Wordsworth in
his love for and his familiar communion with nature; and here at least he
gathered some fruit from the 'unchartered freedom' of his existence.
[Sidenote: Sara Coleridge (1802-1852).]
Hartley Coleridge belonged to a family unique in its power of
transmitting genius. His sister Sara likewise inherited intellectual and
imaginative gifts probably little if at all inferior to his; but
circumstances prevented her from making a great name. She married another
Coleridge of genius, her cousin, Henry Nelson, whose untimely death threw
a burden upon her, as editor of her father's literary remains, that
absorbed her time and energies. Her only book is _Phantasmion_, a fairy
tale, whose lyric snatches prove her worthy of remembrance among English
poetesses.
[Sidenote: William Motherwell (1797-1835).]
Of the other poets who have been named, William Motherwell was the least
considerable both in achievement and in gifts. He had a taste for research
in old popular poetry, but he took such liberties that his versions are
not to be trusted. He also allowed the pseudo-antique to mar some of his
own work, especially the fine _Cavalier Song_. He is happiest in the vein
of pathetic Scotch verse, of which the best specimen he left is his
_Jeanie Morison_. He had the feeling and sensibility of a minor Burns, but
not the force. Contemporary with Motherwell and, on the Scotch side of his
work, not dissimilar, was William Thom (1798-1848), 'the weaver poet,'
best known for _The Blind Boy's Pranks_. Dialect alone unites with these
two George Outram (1805-1856) a man little known out of Scotland, but, in
his best pieces, one of the most irresistibly humorous of comic poets.
Nothing but unfamiliarity with the legal processes and phrases on which
the wit frequently turns, prevents him from being widely popular. For rich
fun _The Annuity_, his masterpiece, has seldom been surpassed.
[Sidenote: Henry Taylor (1800-1886).]
Henry Taylor lifts us once more into a higher sphere of art. He lived an
even and unruffled life, the spirit of which seems to have passed into his
works. The son of a country gentleman, he procured an appointment in the
Colonial office, gradually rose in it, was knighted, and after nearly half
a century of service, retired in 1872. The comfortable and easy life of
office permitted Taylor to develop his powers to the uttermost. For a
greater man its very smoothness might have been damaging. Great poetry
requires passion: either the passion of the emotional nature, or that
passion of thought which, as Mr. William Watson has lately reminded the
world, is no less valuable for the purposes of art. Official life fosters
neither; but it would seem that Sir Henry Taylor's nature contained the
germ of neither. Hence perhaps, in part, his disapproval of the school of
Byron. His practice would have been as excellent as his theory had he been
one of those who know
'A deeper transport and a mightier thrill
Than comes of commerce with mortality.'
But he was wanting in the second kind of passion, as well as in the first.
His work is like his life, smooth, calm, unchargeable with faults; but it
is not the kind that animates mankind.
Sir Henry Taylor wrote prose as well as verse, in particular a very
readable autobiography. It is however chiefly as a dramatist that he is
memorable. His plays are the closet studies of a cultured man of letters,
who knew little and cared little about the conditions of the stage. _Isaac
Comnenus_ (1827) was followed by his masterpiece, _Philip Van Artevelde_
(1834). _Edwin the Fair_ appeared in 1842, and his last play, _St.
Clement's Eve_, in 1862. He also wrote one other piece, _A Sicilian
Summer_, a kind of comedy, not very successful.
_Philip Van Artevelde_ is so clearly Taylor's best work that his literary
faculty may be judged, certainly without danger of depreciation, from it
alone. It is a historical drama, and the title sufficiently indicates the
age and country in which the scene is laid. The whole drama is long, and
the slow movement adapts it rather for reading than for representation. It
is composed of two parts, separated by _The Lay of Elena_, a lyrical piece
in which may be detected echoes both of Wordsworth and Coleridge, with an
occasional suggestion of Scott. The weakest element of the drama is the
treatment of passion. Taylor's incapacity to comprehend it is strikingly
illustrated in the passage where Philip, immediately after his declaration
of love to Elena, reflects upon the caprice of a woman's fancy which
'Takes no distinction but of sex,
And ridicules the very name of choice.'
The thought is a little trite, and the words are extraordinary in the
mouth of a newly-accepted lover. We may confidently look to Taylor for
careful and workmanlike delineation of character, but we shall find in him
no profound insight. Philip proses about the burden he takes up and the
cares he endures. But notwithstanding defects, the interest is fairly well
sustained, some of the situations are impressive, and the verse is
frequently lit with flashes of imaginative power. A man of talent with a
touch of genius, Taylor saw clearly what the poetry of his time needed,
but for want of the 'passion of thought' he failed to supply it.
[Sidenote: Philip James Bailey (1816-1902).]
One contemporary at least showed by his practice that he agreed with
Taylor as to the necessity of setting poetry on a philosophical basis.
Philip James Bailey published _Festus_ in 1839. It has been the work of
his life, for though he wrote other pieces afterwards, most of them have
been incorporated, wholly or in part, with _Festus_. The consequence is
that the poem, long originally, has grown to enormous dimensions. It is an
ambitious attempt to settle all the fundamental problems of the universe,
and it was once hailed with a chorus of praise that would almost have
sufficed for Homer or Milton. This praise remains one of the curiosities
of criticism for later days to marvel at. _Festus_ is not profound
philosophy, and still less is it true poetry. The thought when probed is
commonplace. A vigorous expression here and there is hardly enough to
redeem the weak echoes of Goethe and Byron. Frequently the verse is
distinguishable from prose only by the manner of printing. 'Swearers and
swaggerers jeer at my name' is supposed to be an iambic line. We are told
that a thing is in our 'soul-blood' and our 'soul-bones;' and we hear of
'marmoreal floods' that 'spread their couch of perdurable snow.' Yet this
passes for poetry, and _Festus_ has gone through many editions in this
country, and still more in America. The aberration of taste is not quite
as great as that which raised Martin Farquhar Tupper and his _Proverbial
Philosophy_ to the highest popularity, but it is similar in kind.
[Sidenote: Richard Hengist Horne (1803-1884).]
A more interesting and far superior example of the class of thoughtful
poets was Richard Henry, or, as he called himself in later life, Richard
Hengist Horne. Horne was a man of versatile talent who, after an
adventurous youth in which he saw something of warfare and passed through
many adventures on the coasts of America and, at a later date, in the
Australian bush, settled down to a literary life. His first memorable
works were two tragedies, _Cosmo de' Medici_ and _The Death of Marlowe_,
both published in the year 1837. A third tragedy, _Gregory VII._, appeared
in 1840. Horne's dramas are thoughtful, and they have the vigour which
marked his own character. Yet Horne seems to have felt that there was
something not wholly satisfactory in his dramatic work, and, except _Judas
Iscariot_ (1848), his more noteworthy writings in later days are either
prose, or lyrical verse, or epic blank verse. He is best known by _Orion,
an Epic Poem_ (1843). It is an epic with a philosophic groundwork,
'intended,' as the author himself explains, 'to work out a special design,
applicable to all time, by means of antique or classical imagery and
associations.... Orion, the hero of my fable, is meant to present a type
of the struggle of man with himself, _i.e._, the contest between the
intellect and the senses.' Horne sarcastically hinted his sense of the
improbability that such a poem would find a sale by publishing the first
three editions at a farthing, with the explanation that he did so 'to
avoid the trouble and greatly additional expense of forwarding
presentation copies.'
_Orion_ is Horne's masterpiece. The philosophic thought clogs the epic
movement, but the thought is weighty enough, and expressed with sufficient
terseness and force, to be worthy of attention for its own sake. The verse
is almost always good and sometimes excellent. Horne is indebted more to
Keats than to anyone else. Sometimes he appears to echo him consciously;
at other times the reminiscence is probably unconscious. But as Horne was
always a bold and original thinker his discipleship was altogether good
for him. The sonorous quality of his verse is partly due to his model; the
meaning remains his own.
[Sidenote: William Barnes (1801-1886).]
Another true poet whose work belongs largely to this early period was
William Barnes, author of _Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect_.
This collection, published in 1879, and embracing the work of more than
forty years, may be said to sum up his literary life; for, though he
wrote prose as well as poetry, it is only by his verses in dialect that he
has any chance to be remembered. Barnes began writing his Dorset poems in
1833, and continued to do so at intervals all through his life. The great
charm of his poetry is its perfect freshness. The Dorset poems are
eclogues, wholly free from the artificiality which commonly mars
compositions of that class; they are clear, simple, rapid and natural.
There is no affectation of profound thought, and no straining after
passion, but a wholly unaffected love for the country and all that lives
and grows there. The vital importance of language to poetry is nowhere
more clearly seen than in Barnes, for all the spirit of the Dorset poems
evaporates, and all the colour fades from the specimens the poet was
induced to publish in literary English.
There were numerous inferior writers, a few of whom claim a passing
notice. James Clarence Mangan (1803-1849) is one of those Irishmen with
regard to whose work a wide difference of opinion exists between his
countrymen and English critics. He had certainly an ear for verse and a
gift for making it, and if his equipment of ideas had been proportionate
he would have been a great poet. His weakness is that, while he can say
things pleasantly, he has but little to say. Charles Whitehead (1804-1862)
was one of those who attempted dramatic composition, but his best work was
_The Solitary_ (1831), a reflective poem in the Spenserian stanza,
thoughtful but slow in movement, and as a whole somewhat tiring. Thomas
Wade (1805-1875) was likewise a mediocre dramatist, whose name is now
associated only with _Mundi et Cordis Carmina_, a book which bears many
traces of the influence of Shelley.
Ebenezer Jones (1820-1860) also, though much younger than these men,
falls, by reason of his principal work, _Studies of Sensation and Event_
(1843), within the same period. Jones was crushed by circumstances and the
want of appreciation, otherwise his sensitive nature might have produced
good, though hardly great poetry.