PAST AND PRESENT CONDITION OF BRITISH POETRY. HOGG has told an amusing anecdote amuse. Poets, where are they? Is poetry extinct among us, or is it only dormant? Is the crop exhausted, and must the field lie fallow for a time? Or is it that, in this commercial nation of ours, where every thing is weighed in Rothschild's scales of pecuniary excellence, that we have no good poetry because we have no demand for it? We falter while we Poets we still have, and poetry at times of a rich and novel, but not a cultivated flavour. Hardly a week elapses that does not give birth to as many different volumes of verses as there are days in the week. But then there is little that is good; much that was imagination, and much that might have passed for poetry when verse was in its infancy among us. Much of that clock-work tintinabulum of rhyme that cuckoo kind of verse which palls upon the mind and really disgusts you with verse of a higher character. But now we look, and justly too, for something more. Whilst we imitate others we can no more excel than he that sails by others' maps can make a new discovery. All the old dishes of the ancients have been new heated and new set forth usque ad But we forbear. People look for something more than schoolboy commonplaces and thoughts at second-hand, and novelties and nothing more, without a single grain of salt to savour the tun of unmeaningness which they carry with them. It is no easy matter to become a poet, "Consules fiunt quotannis, et novi proconsules, Solus aut rex aut poeta non quotannis nascitur;" or, as the old Water-poet phrased it, "When Heaven intends to do some mighty thing He makes a poet, or at least-a king." South was of opinion that the composition of an epigram was the next great difficulty to an epic poem. "And South beheld that master-piece of man." Coxcombs who consider the composition of a song an easy matter should set themselves down, as Burns says, and try. Ask Tommy Moore how many days and nights he has given to a single stanza in an Irish melody? Ask Sam Rogers how long he has spent over the composition of a couplet in An Epistle to a Friend; or Wordsworth how long he has laboured with a sonnet; or Bowles--yes, ask the Vicar of Bremhill, if he does not owe the bright finish of his verse as much to pains as happiness? Dryden toiled for a fortnight over his Alexander's Feast, and yet he wrote with ease-not the ease of the mob of gentlemen ridiculed by Pope, but with great fluency of idea and great mastery of expression. Good things are not knocked off at a heat-for a long jump there must be a very long run, and a long preparatory training too. There is no saying, "I will be a poet." Only consider not the long apprenticeship alone, but the long servitude which the muse requires from those who would invoke her rightly. "In a poet no kind of knowledge is to be overlooked; to a poet nothing can be useless. Whatever is beautiful and whatever is dreadful must be familiar to his imagination; he must be conversant with all that is awfully vast or elegantly little. The plants of the garden, the animals of the wood, the minerals of the earth, the meteors of the sky, must all concur to store his mind with inexhaustible variety, for every idea is useful for the enforcement or decoration of religious truth, and he who knows most will have most power of diversifying his scenes and of gratifying his reader with remote allusions and unexpected instruction." Every one remembers (poets themselves perhaps excepted) the long course of study and preparation which Milton laid down for himself before he stripped for the Paradise Lost. And yet one would hardly think, on first reflection, that any course of preparation was necessary for the poet of Comus, and Lycidas, and the Hymn on the Nativity of Christ. But Milton fully understood the height of his great argument, and how unequalled with every lengthened preparation he must be to record it rightly. But people (not poets) start epics nowadays without any kind of consideration. No subject is too great for them. Satan, Chaos, The Messiah, The Omnipresence of the Deity, the Fall of Nineveh, The World before the Flood. One shudders at the very idea of subjects so sublime taken up as holyday recreations by would - be poets, without the vision and the faculty divine, or any other merit (if merit it may be called) than the mere impudence of daring:- "When will men learn but to distinguish spirits, And set true difference 'twixt the jaded wits That run a broken pace for common hire, And the high raptures of a happy muse, Borne on the wings of her immortal thought, That kicks at earth with a disdainful heel, And beats at heaven's gates with her bright hoofs ?"-BEN JONSON. way Benjamin West, the painter, trafficked with subjects of the same sublime description. And in what ? "Without expression, fancy, or design;" without genius and without art. People forget, or choose to forget, that subject alone is not sufficient for a poem. Look at But Burns's "Mouse" or Wordsworth's "A work," says Milton, "not to be And yet Murray and Moxon are troubled once a-week, at the least, with the offer of a new epic, for a certain sum-so run the terms-or, in case of declining that, for half profits. As if epics were blackberries, and men sought fame as Smith O'Brien seeks reputation-by an impertinent folly of their own! But "Fools rush in," and there will still be poetasters-Blackmore and his brethren-in spite of critics, hard words, and something harder still— contemptuous neglect. Few live to see their fame established on a firm and unalterable foundation. The kind criticisms of friends conspire at times to give a false position to a poem, or the malice of enemies unite to obtain for it one equally undeserved. Who now reads Hayley? How many are there in the position of Gascoigne and Churchyard as described by old Michael Drayton ? "Accounted were great meterers many a day, But not inspired with bravefire; had they Lived but a little longer they had seen Their works before them to have buried been." That "lived but a little longer!" It is well they didn't. How will it be with the poets of the past generation two hundred years from this? They cannot possibly go down "complete." There must be a weeding. Fancy Sir Walter Scott in twelve volumes, Byron in ten, Southey in ten, Moore in ten, Wordsworth in six-to say nothing of Campbell in two volumes, Rogers in two, and Shelley in four. The poets of the last generation form a library of themselves. And if poetry is multiplied hereafter at the same rate, we shall want fresh shelves, fresh patience, and a new lease of life, for threescore and ten of scriptural existence is far too short to get acquainted with the past and keep_up our intimacy with the present. The literature of the last fifty years is a study of itself-Scott's novels, Scott's poetry, Scott's Miscellanies, and Scott's Life! Then of the present, there are the daily papers, the weekly journals, the monthly magazines, the quarterly reviews, all of which we * Lord Roscommon. are expected to have a fair passing acquaintance with. There is Mr. Dickens's last book on the table, which I have not as yet had time to read, and old Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy by its side, coaxing me to renew a youthful acquaintance with its pages; and there are Tristram Shandy, and Humphrey Clinker, and dear delightful Amelia, which I fain would read again, but cannot, I fear, for want of time. Only observe the dust on that fine Froissart on my shelves, and that noble old copy of Ben Jonson's works in folio, with a mark, I could swear, in the third act of the Alchemist or the Silent Woman. There is no keeping pace with the present while we pay any thing like due attention to the past. I pity that man who reads Albert Smith who never read Parthenissa; but perhaps he pities me because I am indifferently up in the writer he admires. How people are cut off from the full literary enjoyments of this life who never read "Munro his Expedition," or the Duchess of Newcastle's Life of the Duke her husband, or Tom Brown, or Ned Ward, or Roger L'Estrange, or Tom Coryat, or "the works sixty-three in number" of old John Taylor, the sculler on the Thames! We wish for poets who will write when Nature and their full thoughts bid them, and are not exacting when we look for more than one sprig of laurel to grace a garland. We have already enough of would-be poets— Augustus Cæsar, King James I., Cardinal Richelieu, the great Lord Clarendon, the celebrated Lord Bolingbroke, the famous Lord Chatham; but poetry is what old George Chapman calls it,-a flower of the sun, which disdains to open to the eye of a candle. "No power the muses favour can command. What Richelieu wanted Louis scarce could gain, And what young Ammon wish'd, and wish'd in vain." Your "rich ill poets are without excuse."* "Your verses, good sir, are no poems, they'll not hinder your rising in the state."† ""Tis ridiculous for a lord to print verses; 'tis ↑ Ben Jonson. But this one word "accomplishment" implies a good deal more than mere dexterity and ease-culture and the inspiring aid of books, "Pauses, cadence, and well-vowell'd words, And all the graces a good ear affords." For words are in poetry what colours are in painting, and the music of numbers is not to be matched or done without. Look at Donne. Would not Donne's Satires, which abound with so much wit, appear more charming if he had taken care of his words and of his numbers? Whereas his verse is now-if verse it may be called “A kind of hobbling prose, Which limps along and tinkles in the close." There goes much more to the composition of even a third-rate poet than rhymesters at first are willing to allow, for to nature, exercise, imitation, study, art must be added to make all these perfect,―ours Quais inain γίνεται τεχνης ατέρ, ούτε παν τεχνη μη φυσιν κεκτεμένη- Without art nature can never be perfect, and without nature art can claim no being. One of Boswell's recorded conversations with the great hero of his VOL. XXXIII. NO. CXCVII. admiration was on the subject of a collection being made of all the poems of all the English poets who had published a volume of poems. "Johnson told me," he says, "that a Mr. Coxeter, whom he knew, had gone the greatest length towards this, having collected about 500 volumes of poets whose works were little known; but that upon his death Tom Osborne bought them, and they were dispersed, which he thought a pity, as it was curious to see any series complete, and in every volume of poems something good may be found." This was a kindly criticism, uttered in the good nature of an easy moment, hardly applicable to the volumes of verse we see published now. Surely there are many put forth without a redeeming stanza or passage to atone for the dry desert of a thousand lines through which the critic is doomed to wander in quest of beauties which he fain would find. Surely Coxeter's collection contained a very large number of one-idea'd volumes! We could have helped him from our own shelves to a very fair collection of verse printed before 1747, when this "curious" collector died, full of the most trivial nothingnesses. For a little volume of verse of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, said to be unique, or nearly so, Mr. Miller has been known to give twenty guineas or more, and think himself lucky that he has been let off thus easily. Some of these twenty-guinea volumes we have had the curiosity to look into. Poetry there is none; nothing more, indeed, than the mere similitude of verse. Songs, differing from sonnets because the lines are shorter, and sonnets, only to be recognised as such from the fourteen lines which the writer, in compliance with custom, has prudently confined them to. Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old; It is the rust we value, not the gold." It is curious, however, to see any collection complete; and Mr. Miller is to be praised for his unceasing endeavours to make his collection of English poetry (literally so called) as complete as possible. * Selden's Table-Talk, 3 A The poet of the Irish Melodies made an observation when at Abbotsford, too curious to be passed over in a paper of this description, when we consider the merit of the remark itself, the rank of the poet who made it, and the reputation of the poet who responded to its truth:— "Hardly a magazine is now published," said Moore, "that does not contain verses which, some thirty years ago, would have made a reputation.' Scott turned with a look of shrewd humour on his friend, as if chuckling over his own success, and said,- "Ecod, we were in the luck of it to come before these fellows!" and added, playfully flourishing his stick. as he spoke," we have, like Boabdil, taught them to beat us at our own weapons." There cannot be a doubt but that the poetry of the present day is of that mediocre level of description which neither pleases nor offends; and that much of it, if published sixty years ago, or even thirty years ago, would have secured for more than one writer a high reputation at the time, and possibly a place in Chalmers' collected edition of our British Poets. Such a reputation as Miss Seward achieved, or Hayley, or Oram, or Headley, or Hurdis: "Fame then was cheap, and the first comers sped; And they have kept it since by being dead."-DRYDEN. There was a time when a single poem, nay, a decent epigram, procured a niche for its writer in the temple of our poetry; but these times are gone by, inundated as we now are with verses of one particular level of merit, as flat as the waste of Cumberland, and equally unprofitable; so that the poet, ambitious of a high reputation in our letters, must make it upon something that is completely novel; and there, as Scott remarked, will rest the only chance for an extended reputation. Poetry has become an easy art, and people have been taught to pump for poetry without a Gildon or a Bysshe to aid their labours. Wakley can laugh in the House of Commons at the poetry of Wordsworth, and treat the senators who surround him with a happy imitation of the great poet of his time. Verse has become an extempore kind of art, a thing to be assumed when wanted; and O'Connell can throw off at a heat a clever parody upon Dryden's famous epigram; as if, like Theodore Hook, he had served an apprenticeship to the art of happy imitation. That the bulk of the so-called poetry of the present day—"nonsense, well tuned and sweet stupidity"-is injurious to a proper estimation of the true-born poets who still exist, there cannot be a doubt; that it is injurious, moreover, to the advancement of poetry among us, is, I think, equally the case. Poetry, in the highest sense of the word, was never better understood, though never, perhaps, less cultivated than it is now. Criticism has taken a high stand; and when the rage for rhyme has fairly exhausted itself, nature will revive among us, and we shall have a new race of poets to uphold, if not to eclipse, the glories of the old. There are many still among us to repeat without any kind of braggart in their blood : When poetry was all but extinct among us, Cowper and Burns came forward to revive the drooping Muse, and shew us, unmistakeably enough, that men and studies may decay, but Nature never dies. There is little reason to suppose that the great poet of the Excursion is likely to remain more than a few years among us; for though, thank God, in health and vigour, and as fond of poetry as ever, he has outlived by the period of an apprenticeship, the threescore years and ten, the Scriptural limitation of the life of man. When Wordsworth dies, there will be a new Session of the poets for the office of poet-laureate. To whom will the lord-chamberlain assign the laurel, honoured and disgraced by a variety of wearers? To whom will the unshorn deity assign it? There may be a difference of opinion between the poet's God and |