Blackwood's Magazine/Volume 56/Issue 347/Poems by Coventry Patmore
POEMS BY COVENTRY PATMORE.[1]
This is certainly an age of very merciful tendencies. The severity of the criminal laws has been greatly abated; and, in conformity with the views of the legislature, we have, of late years, been gradually relaxing the stringency of our critical code. Yet we question whether the change has been productive of good, and whether the result can be said to have answered the expectations either of government or of ourselves. We doubt whether crime has diminished in consequence of the legislative clemency; and, in our own humble department, we are now convinced that the mild method is not the best way of bringing singers to repentance. The experiment has been fairly tried, and the numerous trashy publications put forth by the young writers of the day, particularly in the poetical line, convince us that our mercy has been misplaced; and that a little well-timed severity, and a few examples held up in terrorem, might have greatly benefited the literary wellbeing of England. The “spirit of the age” might have been different from what it is, if the just sentence of the law had been more frequently carried into effect. Our timely strictures might not have kindled into song any masculine intellect, but they might have prevented the temple of the Muses from being desecrated. They might have prevented the appearance of such a publication as this. In the days of the knout, we believe that no such volume as Mr Coventry Patmore’s could have ventured to crawl out of manuscript into print. While we admit, then, that we have to blame our own forbearance in some degree for its appearance, we think it our duty to take this opportunity of amending our code of criticism, and shall try the volume simply as it stands, and somewhat according to the good old principles of literary jurisprudence.
We are further instigated to this act of duty by the laudatory terms in which the volume has been hailed by certain contemporary journalists. Had Mr Patmore’s injudicious friends not thought proper to announce him to the world as the brightest rising star in the poetical firmament of Young England, we would probably have allowed his effusions to die of their own utter insignificance. But since they have acted as they have done, we too must be permitted to express our opinion of their merits; and our deliberate judgment is, that the weakest inanity ever perpetrated in rhyme by the vilest poetaster of any former generation, becomes masculine verse when contrasted with the nauseous pulings of Mr Patmore’s muse. Indeed, we question whether the strains of any poetaster can be considered vile, when brought into comparison with this gentleman’s verses. His silly and conceited rhapsodies rather make us sigh for the good old times when all poetry, below the very highest, was made up of artifice and conventionalism; when all poets, except the very greatest, spoke a hereditary dialect of their own, which nobody else interfered with—counted on their fingers every line they penned, and knew no inspiration except that which they imbibed from Byssh’s rhyming dictionary. True that there was then no life or spirit in the poetical vocabulary—true that there was no nature in the delineations of our minor poets; but better far was such language than the slip-slop vulgarities of the present rhymester—better far that there should be no nature in poetry, than such nature as Mr Patmore has exhibited for the entertainment of his readers.
The first poem in the volume, entitled “The River,” is a tale of disappointed love, terminating in the suicide of the lover. Poor and pointless as this performance is, it is by far the best in the book. As Mr Patmore advances, there is a marked increase of silliness and affectation in his effusions, which shows how sedulously he has cultivated the art of sinking in poetry; and that the same adage which has been applied to vice, may be applied also to folly, "Nemo repente fuit stultissimus." Never was there a richer offering laid on the shrine of the goddess Stultitia than the tale of Sir Hubert, with which the volume concludes. But our business at present is with “The River.”
The common practice of writers who deal with stories of love, whose “course never did run smooth,” is to make their heroes commit suicide, on finding that the ladies whom they had wooed in vain were married to other people. But in the poem before us, Mr Patmore improves upon this method; he drowns his lover, Witchaire, because the lady, whom he had never wooed at all, does not marry him, but gives her hand (why should she not?) to the man who sues for it. Did Witchaire expect that the lady was to propose to him? The poem opens with some very babyish verses descriptive of an "old manor hall":—
“Its huge fantastic weather-vanes
Look happy in the light;
Its warm face through the foliage gleams,
A comfortable sight."
And so on, until we are introduced to the lady of the establishment:—
That lady loves the pale Witchaire,
Who loves too much to sue:
He came this morning hurriedly,
Then out her young blood flew;
But he talk'd of common things, and so
Her eyes are steep’d in dew."
The lady, finding that her lover continues to hang back, dries her tears, and very properly gets married to another man. During the celebration of the ceremony, the poet recurs to his hero, who has taken up his position in the park—
"Leaning against an aged tree,
By thunder stricken bare.
"The moonshine shineth in his eye,
From which no tear doth fall,
Full of vacuity as death,
Its slaty parched ball
Fixedly, though expressionless,
Gleams on the distant hall."
Witchaire then goes and drowns himself, in a river which "runneth round" the lady’s property—a dreadful warning to all young lovers "who love too much to sue."
On a fine day in the following summer, the poet brings the lady to the banks of this river. His evident intention is, to raise in the reader's mind the expectation that she shall discover her lover's body, or some other circumstance indicative of the fatal catastrophe. This expectation, however, he disappoints. The only remarkable occurrence which takes place is, that the lady does not find the corpse, nor does any evidence transpire which can lead her to suppose that the suicide had ever been committed; and with this senseless and inconclusive conclusion the reader is befooled.
The only incident which we ever heard of, at all rivaling this story in an abortive ending, is one which we once heard related at a party, where the conversation turned on the singular manner in which valuable articles thrown into the sea had been sometimes recovered, and restored to their owners—the ring of Polycrates, which was found in the maw of a fish after having been sunk in deep waters, being, as the reader knows, the first and most remarkable instance of such recoveries. After the rest of the company had exhausted their marvellous relations, the following tale was told as the climax of all such wonderful narratives; and it was admitted on all hands that the force of surprise could no further go. We shall endeavour to versify it, à la Patmore, conceiving that its issue is very similar to that of his story of "The River."
The Ring and the Fish.
A lady and her lover once
Were walking on a rocky beach:
Soft at first, and gentle, was
The music of their mutual speech,
And the looks were gentle, too,
With which each regarded each.
At length some casual word occurr'd
Which somewhat moved the lady's bile;
From less to more her anger wax'd—
How sheepish look'd her swain the while!—
And now upon their faces twain
There is not seen a single smile.
A ring was on the lady's hand,
The gift of that dumb-founder'd lover—
And flung it far the waters over—
Far beyond the power of any
Duck or drag-net to recover.
Remorse then smote the lady’s heart
When she had thrown her ring away;
She paceth o’er the rocky beach,
And resteth neither night nor day;
But still the burthen of her song
Is, “Oh, my ring! my ring!” alway.
Her lover now essays to soothe
The dark compunctious visitings,
That assail the lady’s breast
With a thousand thousand stings,
For that she had thrown away
This, the paragon of rings.
But all in vain; at length one day
A fisher chanced to draw his net
Across the sullen spot that held
The gem that made the lady fret,
And caught about the finest cod
That ever he had captured yet.
He had a basket on his back,
And he placed his booty in it;
The lady’s lover bought the fish,
And, when the cook began to skin it,
She found—incredible surprise!—
She found the ring—was not within it.
The next tale, called “The Woodman’s Daughter,” is a story of seduction, madness, and child-murder. These are powerful materials to work with; yet it is not every man’s hand that they will suit. In the hands of common-place, they are simply revolting. In the hands of folly and affectation, their repulsiveness is aggravated by the simpering conceits which usurp the place of the strongest passions of our nature. He only is privileged to unveil these gloomy depths of erring humanity, who can subdue their repulsiveness by touches of ethereal feeling; and whose imagination, buoyant above the waves of passion, bears the heart of the reader into havens of calm beauty, even when following the most deplorable aberrations of a child of sin. Such a man is not Mr Patmore. He has no imagination at all—or, what is the same thing, an imagination which welters in impotence, far below the level of the emotions which it ought to overrule. The pitfalls of his tale of misery are covered over with thin sprinklings of asterisks—the poorest subterfuge of an impoverished imagination; and besotted indeed is the senselessness with which he disports himself around their margin. Maud, the victim, is the daughter of Gerald, the woodman; and Merton, the seducer, is the son of a rich squire in the neighbourhood. Maud used to accompany her father to his employment in the woods.
“She merely went to think she help’d;
And whilst he hack’d and saw’d,
The rich squire’s son, a young boy then,
For whole days, as if aw’d,
Stood by, and gazed alternately
At Gerald and at Maud.
“He sometimes, in a sullen tone,
Would offer fruits, and she
Always received his gifts with an air,
So unreserved and free,
That half-feign’d distance soon became
Familiarity.
“Therefore in time, when Gerald shook
The woods at his employ,
The young heir and the cottage-girl
Would steal out to enjoy
The music of each other’s talk—
A simple girl and boy.
“They pass’d their time, both girl and boy,
Uncheck’d, unquestion’d; yet
They always hid their wanderings
By wood and rivulet,
Because they could not give themselves
A reason why they met.
—It may have been in the ancient time,
Before Love’s earliest ban,
Psychëan curiosity
Had broken Nature’s plan;
When all that was not youth was age,
And men knew less of Man;—
“Or when the works of time shall reach
The goal to which they tend,
And knowledge, being perfect, shall
At last in wisdom end—
That wisdom to end knowledge—or
Some change comes, yet unkenn’d;
“It perhaps may be again, that men,
Like orange plants, will bear,
At once, the many fine effects
To which God made them heir—
Large souls, large forms, and love like that
Between this childish pair.
“Two summers pass’d away, and then—
Though yet young Merton’s eyes,
Wide with their language, spake of youth’s
Habitual surprise—
He felt that pleasures such as these
No longer could suffice.”
What the meaning of the three stanzas beginning with—
“It may have been in the ancient time,”
may be, we are utterly at a loss to conjecture. We seek in vain to invest them with a shadow of sense. Perhaps they are thrown in to redeem, by their profound unintelligibility, the shallow trifling of the rest of the poem. But it was not enough for young Merton that the girl accepted the fruits which he offered to her in a sullen tone. He had now reached the age so naturally and lucidly described as the period of life when the “eyes, wide with their language, speak of youth’s habitual surprise,” and he began to seek “new joys from books,” communicating the results of his studies to Maud, whose turn it now was to be surprised.
“So when to-morrow came, while Maud
Stood listening with surprise,
He told the tale learnt over night,
And, if he met her eyes,
Perhaps said how far the stars were, and
Talk’d on about the skies.”
The effect of these lucid revelations upon the mind of Maud was very overpowering.
“She wept for joy if the cushat sang
Its low song in the fir;
The cat, perhaps, broke the quiet with
Its regular slow purr;
’Twas music now, and her wheel gave forth
A rhythm in its whirr.
“She once had read, When lovers die,
And go where angels are,
Each pair of lover’s souls, perhaps,
Will make a double star;
So stars grew dearer, and she thought
They did not look so far.
“But being ignorant, and still
So young as to be prone
To think all very great delights
Peculiarly her own,
She guess’d not what to her made sweet
Books writ on lovers’ moan.”
And so the poem babbles on through several very sickly pages, in which the following descriptive stanza occurs:—
“The flat white river lapsed along,
Now a broad broken glare,
Now winding through the bosom’d lands,
Till lost in distance, where
The tall hills, sunning their chisell’d peaks,
Made emptier the empty air.”
During one of their ramblings, Maud becomes visibly embarrassed.
“But Merton’s thoughts were less confused:
‘What, I wrong ought so good?
Besides, the danger that is seen
Is easily withstood:’
Then loud, ‘The sun is very warm’—
And they walk’d into the wood.”
The wood consisting of a forest of as shady asterisks as the most fastidious lovers could desire.
“Months pass’d away, and every day
The lovers still were wont
To meet together, and their shame
At meeting had grown blunt;
For they were of an age when sin
Is only seen in front.”
The father, however, who was also of an age to see sin in front, suspects that his daughter is with child, and taxes her with it. Maud confesses her shame; upon which, as we are led to conjecture, old Gerald dies broken-hearted—while the girl is safely delivered under a cloud of asterisks. She is deterred from disclosing her situation to Merton, the father of the child—and why? for this very natural reason, forsooth, that
“He, if that were done,
Could hardly fail to know
The ruin he had caused, he might
Be brought to share her woe,
Making it doubly sharp.”
So, rather than occasion the slightest distress or inconvenience to her seducer, she magnanimously resolves to murder her baby; and accordingly the usual machinery of the poem is brought into play—the asterisks—which on former occasions answered the purpose of a forest and a cloud, being now converted into a very convenient pool, in which she quietly immerses the offspring of her illicit passion. And the deed being done, its appalling consequences on her conscience are thus powerfully and naturally depicted—
“Lo! in her eyes stands the great surprise
That comes with the first crime.
“She throws a glance of terror round—
There’s not a creature nigh;
But behold the sun that looketh through
The frowning western sky,
Is lifting up one broad beam, like
A lash of God’s own eye.”
Were we not right in saying that there is nothing in the writings of any former poetaster to equal the silly and conceited jargon of the present versifier? Having favoured us with the emphatic lines in italics, to depict the physical concomitants of Maud’s guilt, he again has recourse to asterisks, to veil the mental throes by which her mind is tortured into madness by remorse: and very wisely—for they lead us to suppose that the writer could have powerfully delineated these inner agitations, if he had chosen; but that he has abstained from doing so out of mercy to the feelings of his readers. We must, therefore, content ourselves with the following feebleness, with which the poem concludes:—
“Maud, with her books, comes, day by day,
Fantastically clad,
To read them near the poor; and all
Who meet her, look so sad—
That even to herself it is
Quite plain that she is mad.”
“Lilian” is the next tale in the volume. This poem is an echo, both in sentiment and in versification of Mr Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall;” and a baser and more servile echo was never bleated forth from the throat of any of the imitative flock. There are many other indications in the volume which show that Mr Tennyson is the model which Mr Patmore has set up for his imitation; but “Lilian,” more particularly, is a complete counterpart in coarsest fustian of the silken splendours of Mr Tennyson’s poem. It is “Locksley Hall” stripped of all its beauty, and debased by a thousand vulgarities, both of sentiment and style. The burden of both poems consists of bitter denunciations poured forth by disappointed and deserted love; with this difference, that the passion which Mr Tennyson gives utterance to, Mr Patmore reverberates in rant. A small poet, indeed, could not have worked after a more unsafe model. For while he might hope to mimic the agitated passions of “Locksley Hall,” in vain could he expect to be visited by the serene imagination which, in that poem, steeps their violence in an atmosphere of beauty. Even with regard to Mr Tennyson’s poem, it is rather for the sake of its picturesque descriptions, than on account of its burning emotions, that we recur to it with pleasure. We rejoice to follow him to regions where
“Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag,
Slides the bird o’er lustrous woodland, droops the trailer from the crag.”
It is rather, we say, on account of such lines as these (no picture of tropical loveliness ever surpassed, in our opinion, the description printed in italics) that we admire “Locksley Hall,” than on account of the troubled passions which it embodies; knowing as we do, that poetry has nobler offices to perform than to fulmine forth fierce and sarcastic invectives against the head of a jilt; and if, as Mr Tennyson says, “love is love for evermore,” we would ask even him why he did not make the lover in “Locksley Hall” betray, even in spite of himself, a more pitiful tenderness for the devoted heroine of the tale? How different the strain of the manly Schiller under similar circumstances! His bitterness cannot be restrained from breaking down at last in a flood of tenderness over the lost mistress of his affections.
“Oh! what scorn for thy desolate years
Shall I feel! God forbid it should be!
How bitter will then be the tears
Shed, Minna, oh Minna, for thee!”
But if it be true that “Locksley Hall” is somewhat deficient in the ethereal tenderness which would overcome a true heart, even when blighted in its best affections, it was not to be expected that its imitator should have been visited with deeper glimpses of the divine. The indignant passions of his unrequited lover are, indeed, passions of the most ignoble clay—not one touch of elevated feeling lifts him for a moment out of the mire. The whole train of circumstances which engender his emotions, prove the lover, in this case, to have been the silliest of mortal men, and his mistress, from the very beginning of his intercourse with her, to have been one of the most abandoned of her sex. “Lilian” is a burlesque on disappointed love, and a travestie of the passions which such a disappointment entails. We know not which are the more odious and revolting in their expression—the emotions of the jilted lover, or the incidents which call them into play.
The poem is designed to illustrate the bad effects produced on the female mind by the reading of French novels. We have nothing to say in their defence. But the incongruity lies here—that Lilian, who was seduced by means of these noxious publications, was evidently a lady of the frailest virtue from the very first; and her lover might have seen this with half an eye. Her materials were obviously of the most inflammable order; and it evidently did not require the application of such a spark as the seducer Winton, with his formidable artillery of imported literature, to set her tinder in a blaze—any other small contingency would have answered equally well. All that she wanted was an opportunity to fall; and that she would soon have found, under any circumstances whatsoever. The lover, however, sees nothing of all this, but relates the story of his unfortunate love-affair with as much simplicity as if he had been mourning the fall of the mother of mankind from paradise.
The lover relates his tale to his friend, the author. He begins by entreating him to
“Bear with me, in case
Tears come. I feel them coming by the smarting in my face.”
And then he proceeds to introduce us to this Lilian, the immaculate mistress of his soul—
“She could see me coming to her with the vision of the hawk;
Always hasten’d on to meet me, heavy passion in her walk;
Low tones to me grew lower, sweetening so her honey talk,
"That it fill’d up all my hearing, drown’d the voices of the birds,
The voices of the breezes, and the voices of the herds—
For to me the lowest ever were the loudest of her words.”
“Heavy passion in her walk!”—what a delicate and delectable young lady she must have been! Then, as to the fact so harmoniously expressed, of her accents drowning “the voices of the birds, the voices of the breezes, and the voices of the herds,” we may remark, that the first and second never require to be drowned at all, being nearly inaudible at any rate, even during the most indifferent conversation—so that there was nothing very remarkable in their being extinguished by the plaintiveness of the lady’s tones; while, with regard to the voices of the herds, if she succeeded in drowning these—the cattle being near at hand, and lowing lustily—she must indeed have roared to her lover “like any nightingale.”
The description of her is thus continued—
“On her face, then and for ever, was the seriousness within.
Her sweetest smiles (and sweeter did a lover never win)
Ere half-done grew so absent, that they made her fair cheek thin.
“On her face, then and for ever, thoughts unworded used to live;
So that when she whisper’d to me, ‘Better joy earth cannot give’—
Her lips, though shut, continued, ‘But earth’s joy is fugitive.’
“For there a nameless something, though suppress’d, still spread around;
The same was on her eyelids, if she look’d towards the ground;
When she spoke, you knew directly that the same was in the sound;”
By and by, a young gentleman, of the name of Winton, comes to visit Lilian and her father:—
“A formerly-loved companion—he was fresh from sprightly France,
And with many volumes laden, essay, poem, and romance.”
He, and his pursuits after leaving school, are thus elegantly described:—
“When free, all healthy study was put by, that he might rush
To his favourite books, French chiefly, that his blood might boil and gush
Over scenes which set his visage glowing crimson—not a blush.”
This gentleman and Lilian’s lover strike up a strong friendship for one another, and the latter makes Winton his confidant. As yet no suspicions arise to break the blind sleep of the infatuated dreamer.
“Delights were still remaining—hate—shame—rage—I can’t tell what,
Comes to me at their memory; none that, more or less, was not
The soul’s unconscious incest, on creations self-begot.”
He still continues to doat on Lilian.
“Oh friend, if you had seen her! heard her speaking, felt her grace,
When serious looks seem’d filling with the smiles which, in a space,
Broke, sweet as Sabbath sunshine, and lit up her shady face.
“Try to conceive her image—does it make your brain reel round?
But all of this is over. Well, friend—various signs (I found
Too late on rumination) then and thenceforth did abound,
“Wherefrom—but that all lovers look too closely to see clear—
I might have gather’d matter fit for just and jealous fear.
From her face, the nameless something now began to disappear.
“What I felt for her I often told her boldly to her face;
Blushes used to blush at blushes flushing on in glowing chace!
But latterly she listen’d, bending full of bashful grace.
“It was to hide those blushes, I thought then, but I suspect
It was to hide their absence.”
How great this writer is on the subject of blushing we shall have another opportunity of showing.—(See Lady Mabel’s shoulders, in the poem of Sir Hubert.) Meanwhile, the fair deceiver is now undergoing a course of French novels, under the tuition of young Winton. The consequence was,
“Her voice grew louder”—no great harm in that—
“Her voice grew louder—losing the much meaning it once bore,
The passion in her carriage, though it every day grew more,
Was now the same to all men—and that was not so before.”
We suppose that there was now “heavy passion in her walk,” whoever the man might be that approached her.
“And grosser signs, far grosser I remember now; but these
I miss’d of course, and counted with those light anomalies,
Too frequent to disturb us into searching for their keys.”
These misgivings, which might have ripened into suspicions, are suddenly swept away by a stroke of duplicity on the part of his mistress, inconceivable in any woman except one inclined naturally, and without any prompting, to practise the profoundest artifices of vice.
“Even the dreadful glimpses now began to fade away,
And disappear’d completely, when my Lilian asked one day,
If I knew what reason Winton had to make so long a stay
“In England—‘For,’ said Lilian, with untroubled countenance,
‘Winton of course has told you of the love he left in France.’
I seized her hand, and kiss’d it—joy had left no utterance.”
Winton, according to the account of the false Lilian, having a love in France, could not, of course be supposed to be paying court to her. Thus the lover is thrown off the scent, and his doubts are entirely laid asleep. He is again in the seventh heavens of assured love, and continues thus:— "Another calm so perfect I should think is only shed
On good men dying gently, who recall a life well led,
Till they cannot tell, for sweetness, if they be alive or dead.
“I’ll stop here. You already have, I think, divined the rest.
There’s a prophetic moisture in your eyes:—yet, tears being blest
And delicate nutrition, apt to cease, too much suppress’d,
“I’ll go on; but less for your sake than my own:—my skin is hot,
And there’s an arid pricking in my veins; their currents clot:
Tears sometimes soothe such fever, where the letting of blood will not.”
At length his eyes are opened, and the whole truth flashes upon him, on overhearing an acquaintance ask Winton whether his suit with Lilian has been successful. Upon this he writes out his opinion of the lady’s behaviour, presents it to her, and watches her while she peruses it, occupying himself at intervals as follows:—
“I turn’d a volume, waiting her full leisure to reply,
The book was one which Winton had ask’d me to read, and I
Had stopp’d halfway for horror, lest my soul should putrify.”
When Lilian has finished the perusal of the document, she endeavours at first to stand on the defensive,—
“She stood at bay, depending on that crutch made like a stilt,
The impudent vulgarity wherewith women outstare guilt.”
But she finally succumbs under the influence of the following refined vituperation:—
“Don’t speak! You would not have me unacquainted with what led
To this result? No! listen, and let me relate what bred
Thy tears and cheapen’d chasteness—(we may talk now as if wed.)
“This book here, that lay open when I came in unaware,
Is not the first—I thought so!—but the last of many a stair
Of easy fall. Such only could have led you to his lair.
“These drugs, at first, had scarcely strength to move your virgin blood;
They slowly rose in action, till they wrought it to a flood,
Fit for their giver’s purpose, who—who turn’d it into mud!”
The lover then leaves Lilian to her own meditations, and commences to rant and rave against her seducer in good set terms, of which the following is a specimen:—
“Pardon, Heaven! that I doubted whether there was any hell.
Oh! but now I do believe it! Firmly, firmly! I foretell
Of one that shall rank high there: he’s a scoffer, and must dwell
“Where worms are—ever gnawing scoffers’ hearts into belief;
Where weepings, gnashings, wailings, thirstings, groanings, ghastly grief,
For ever and for ever pay the price of pleasures brief;
“Where Gallios, who while living knew but cared for none of these,
Now amazed with shame, would gladly, might it God (Fate there) appease,
Watch and pray a million cycles for a single moment’s ease.”
After having thus breathed his passion, in a diatribe which beats in abomination any slang that was ever ranted out of a tub by a mountebank saint, he harps back upon the prodigious attractiveness of his mistress, in the following pathetic, though not very consistent terms—
“Ah but had you known my Lilian! (a sweet name?) Indeed, indeed,
I doted on my Lilian. None can praise her half her meed.
Perfect in soul; too gentle—others’ need she made her need;
“Quite passionless, but ever bounteous-minded even to waste;
Much tenderness in talking; very urgent, yet no haste;
And chastity—to laud it would have seem’d almost unchaste.
"Graced highly, too, with knowledge; versed in tongues; a queen of dance;
An artist at her playing; a most touching utterance
In song; her lips’ mild music could make sweet the clack of France.”
Amid such outpourings of feculent folly, it is scarcely worth our while to take notice of the minor offences against good taste that abound in these poems; yet we may remark, that the writer who here condescends to use such a word as clack, and who, on other occasions, does not scruple to talk of a repeat and a repay, instead of “a repetition,” and “a repayment,” does not consider the word watch-dog sufficiently elevated for his compositions. Whenever he alludes to this animal, he calls him a guard-hound—a word which we do not remember ever to have encountered either in conversation or in books, but which, for ought we know, may be drawn from those “pure wells of English undefiled,” which irrigate with their fair waters the provincial districts of the modern Babylon.
The author of “Lillian” evidently piques himself on the fidelity with which he has adhered to nature in his treatment of that story. But there are two ways in which nature may be adhered to in verse; and it is only one of these ways which can be considered poetical. The writer may adhere to the truth of human nature, while he elevates the emotions of the heart in strains which find a cordial echo in the sentiments of all mankind. Or, if his whole being is sicklied over with silliness and affectation, he may adhere to the truth of his own nature, and while writing perfectly naturally for him, he may unfold his delineations of character in such a manner as shall strip every passion of its dignity, and every emotion of its grace. Now, it is only by reason of their adherence to the latter species of nature, that “Lillian” and the other compositions of Mr Patmore can be considered natural, and, viewed under this aspect, they certainly are natural exceedingly.
The story of “Sir Hubert” finishes the volume. This tale is versified from Boccacio’s story of the Falcon, with which many of our readers may be acquainted; if not, they will find it in the fifth day, novel ninth, of the Decameron. We can only afford space for a short outline of its incidents, and shall substitute Mr Patmore’s names for those of the personages who figure in Boccacio’s story. This will save both ourselves and readers the trouble of threading the minutiæ of Mr Patmore’s senseless and long-winded version of the tale. A few specimens will suffice to exhibit the manner in which he deals with it. Sir Hubert is a rich gentleman, who squanders almost all his substance in giving grand entertainments to the Lady Mabel, whom he makes love to without meeting with any return. Finding his suit unsuccessful, and his money being all spent, he retires to a small and distant farm, having nothing left but one poor hawk, upon which he depends for his means of subsistence. Meanwhile, the Lady Mabel marries, and has a son. After a time, (her husband being dead,) she comes to reside in a castle in the neighbourhood of Sir Hubert’s cottage, where her son, who has often remarked the prowess and beauty of the above-mentioned hawk, falls sick, assuring his mother that nothing can save his life except the possession of the bird. The lady very reluctantly pays a visit to Sir Hubert, and tells him that she has a request to proffer, which she will make known to him after dinner. Though Sir Hubert is delighted to see her, the mention of dinner throws him into a state of great perplexity, as he has nothing in the house which they can make a meal of. Going out of doors, “he espies his hawk upon the perch, which he seizes, and finding it very fat, judges it might make a dish not unworthy of such a lady. Without further thought, then, he pulls his head off, and gives it to a girl to dress and roast carefully.”
This being done, the lady and her admirer sit down to dinner, and make an excellent repast. When their meal is over, then comes the éclaircissement. The lady proffers her petition for the hawk; and discovers from Sir Hubert’s answer, and to her own consternation, that she has eaten the very article she came in quest of, and which she had expected to carry home alive; as the only means of saving the life of her son. The young gentleman dies on finding that he cannot obtain what he wants; and Mabel marries Sir Hubert, and settles upon him all her possessions, as a reward for his magnanimity in sacrificing that which (next to herself) he held dearest in the whole world, rather than that she should go without a dinner.
Such is a short sketch of Boccacio’s tale of the Falcon—a good enough story in its way; and more creditable than many that were circulated among the loose fish, male and female, that play their parts in the Decameron. This novel has been versified by Mr Patmore, and versified (as our specimens shall show) as he alone could have versified it. The following is his description of the much-longed-for, but sorely-ill-treated, hawk of Sir Hubert.
“It served him, too, of evenings:
On a sudden he would rise,
From book or simple music,
And awake his hawk’s large eyes,
(Almost as large as Mabel’s)
Teasing out its dumb replies,
“In sulky sidelong glances,
And reluctantly flapp’d wings,
Or looks of slow communion,
To the lightsome questionings
That broke the drowsy sameness,
And the sense, like fear, which springs
“At night, when we are conscious
Of our distance from the strife
Of cities; and the memory
Of the spirit of all things rife,
Endues the chairs and tables
With a disagreeable life.”
A Scotch lyrist, who, we are told, sings his own songs to perfection, has also recorded the very singular fact of various articles of household furniture (not exactly tables) being occasionally endued “with a disagreeable life.” One of his best ballads, in which he describes the bickerings which, even in the best-regulated families, will at times take place between man and wife, and in which various domestic missiles come into play, contains the following very excellent line—
“The stools pass the best o’ their time i’ the air”—
than which no sort of life appertaining to a stool can be more disagreeable, we should imagine—to the head which it is about to come in contact with. We doubt whether Mr Patmore’s, or rather Sir Hubert’s, chairs and tables ever acquired such a vigorous and unpleasant vitality as that. What may have happened to the “stools” after Mabel was married to Sir Hubert, we cannot take it upon us to say. At any rate, we prefer the Scotch poet’s description, as somewhat the more pithy, and graphic, and intelligible of the two. The coincidence, however, is remarkable.
After Sir Hubert has retired to his farm, the state of his feelings is described in the following stanzas. We suspect that the metaphysical acumen of Boccacio himself would have been a good deal puzzled to unravel the meaning of some of them.
“He gather’d consolation,
As before, where best he might:
But though there was the difference
That he now could claim a right
To grieve as much as pleased him,
It was six years, since his sight
“Had fed on Mabel’s features;
So that Hubert scarcely knew
What traits to give the vision
Which should fill his eyes with dew:—
For she must needs, by that time,
Have become another, who,
“In girlhood’s triple glory,
(For a higher third outflows
Whenever Promise marries
With Completion,) troubled those
That saw, with trouble sweeter
Than the sweetest of repose.
“It, therefore, was the business
Of his thoughts to try to trace
The probable fulfilment
Of her former soul and face,—
From buds deducing blossoms.
For, although an easy space
“Led from the farm of Hubert
To where Mabel’s castle stood,
Closed in, a league on all sides.
With wall’d parks and wealthy wood,
No chance glimpse could be look’d for,
So recluse her widowhood.
“Hence seasons past, and Hubert
Earn’d his bread, but leisure spent
In loved dissatisfaction,
Which he made his element
Of choice, as much as, till then,
He had sought it in content.”
If the verses above would have baffled the sagacity of the father of Italian literature, what would he have thought of the following, in which the interview between Sir Hubert and Mabel is described, when the lady comes to negotiate with him about the hawk? She accosts him, “Sir Hubert!” and then there is presented to our imaginations such a picture of female loveliness, as (thank Heaven!) can only be done justice to in the language which is employed for the occasion.
“ ‘Sir Hubert!’—and, that instant,
Mabel saw the fresh light flush
Out of her rosy shoulders,
And perceived her sweet blood hush
About her, till, all over,
There shone forth a sumptuous blush—
“ ‘Sir Hubert, I have sought you,
Unattended, to request
A boon—the first I ever
Have entreated.’ Then she press’d
Her small hand’s weight of whiteness
To her richly-sloping breast.”
At first we thought that it should have been Hubert, and not Mabel, who saw “the fresh light flush out of her rosy shoulders”—particularly if the blush extended, as no doubt it did, to the lady’s back: but on further consideration we saw that we were wrong; for Sir Hubert could not have perceived “her sweet blood hush about her”—this hushing of the blood about one being, as all great blushers know, a fact discernible only by the person more immediately concerned in the blush. The propriety, therefore, of making Mabel perceive the blush, rather than Sir Hubert, is undeniable. The writer must either have left out the hushing altogether, which would have been a great blemish in the picture, or he must have written as he has done. How profoundly versed in the physiology of blushing he must be! We are doubtful, however, whether the costume of the picture is altogether appropriate; for we question very much whether the Italian ladies of the thirteenth, or any other century, were in the habit of paying forenoon visits in low-necked gowns; and whether Mabel could have walked all the way from her castle to Sir Hubert’s cottage, in an attire which revealed so many of her charms, without attracting the general attention of the neighbourhood. She had no time, be it observed, to divest herself of shawl or mantilla in order to show how sumptuously she could blush—for her salutation is made to Sir Hubert, and its roseate consequences ensue the very first moment she sees him. But let that pass. We should have been very sorry if such a “splendiferous” phenomenon had been obscured by envious boa or pelisse, or lost to the proprieties of costume. The Lady then
“Said that she was wearied
With her walk—would stay to dine,
And name her wishes after.”
Meanwhile the poet asks—
“How was it with Sir Hubert?
—Beggarly language! I could burst
For impotence of effort:
Those who made thee were accurst!
Dumb men were gods were all dumb.
But go on, and do thy worst!—
“His life-blood stopp’d to listen—
Her delivering lips dealt sound—
Oh! hungrily he listen’d,
But the meaning meant was drown’d;
For, to him, her voice and presence
Meaning held far more profound.
“He gave his soul to feasting,
And his sense, (which is the soul
More thoroughly incarnate,)
Backward standing, to control
His object, as a painter
Views a picture in the whole.
“She stood, her eyes cast downwards,
And, upon them, dropp’d halfway,
Lids, sweeter than the bosom
Of an unburst lily, lay,
With black abundant lashes,
To keep out the upper day.
“A breath from out her shoulders
Made the air cool, and the ground
Was greener in their shadow;
All her dark locks loll’d, unbound,
About them, heavily lifted
By the breeze that struggled round.
“As if from weight of beauty,
Gently bent—but oh, how draw
This thousand-featured splendour—
Thousand-featured without flaw!—
At last, his vision reveling
On her ravishing mouth, he saw
“It closed; and then remember’d
That she spoke not.—‘Stay to dine,
And name her wishes after’—
To these sounds he could assign
A sense, for still he heard them,
Echoing silvery and divine.”
Sir Hubert having reveled on her ravishing mouth, and having, by a strong effort of intelligence, mastered the meaning of the very occult proposition which issued therefrom, namely, that the lady would “stay to dine, and name her wishes after;” and, moreover, having seen—“It closed”—he shortly afterwards saw it opened, for the purpose of eating his hawk, which, as the reader knows, he had felt himself under the necessity of killing for the fair widow’s entertainment. We pass over the relation of the circumstances which, as the lady discovers, render her mission fruitless, and which are detailed in a strain of the most vapid silliness—and proceed to the interview which brings about the union of Mabel and Sir Hubert. The latter, some time after these occurrences, pays a visit to the castle.
“Half reclined
Along a couch leans Mabel,
Deeply musing in her mind
Something her bosom echoes.
O’er her face, like breaths of wind
“Upon a summer meadow,
Serious pleasures live; and eyes
Large always, slowly largen,
As if some far-seen surprise
Approach’d,—then fully orb them,
At near sound of one that sighs.”
Her eyes having recovered their natural size, a good deal of conversation ensues, the result of which is given in the following stanza, which forms a fit conclusion for the story of such a passion—
“Her hands are woo’d with kisses,
They refuse not the caress,
Closer, closer, ever closer,
Vigorous lips for answer press!
Feasting the hungry silence
Comes, sob-clad, a silver ‘yes.’”
There are several smaller poems interspersed throughout the volume. Mr Tennyson has his “Claribels,” and “Isabels,” and “Adelines,” and “Eleanores”—ladies with whom he frequently plays strange, though, we admit, by no means ungraceful vagaries; and Mr Patmore, as in duty bound, and following the imitative bent of his genius, must also have his Geraldine to dally with. The two following stanzas of playful namby-pambyism, are a specimen of the manner in which this gentleman dandles his kid:—
“We are in the fields. Delight!
Look around! The bird’s-eyes bright;
Pink-tipp’d daisies; sorrel red,
Drooping o’er the lark’s green bed;
Oxlips; glazed buttercups,
Out of which the wild bee sups;
See! they dance about thy feet!
Play with, pluck them, little Sweet!
Some affinity divine
Thou hast with them, Geraldine.
“Now, sweet wanton, toss them high;
Race about, you know not why.
Now stand still, from sheer excess
Of exhaustless happiness.
I, meanwhile, on this old gate,
Sit sagely calm, and perhaps relate
Lore of fairies. Do you know
How they make the mushrooms grow?
Ah! what means that shout of thine?
You can’t tell me, Geraldine.”
Our extracts are now concluded; and in reviewing them in the mass, we can only exclaim—this, then, is the pass to which the poetry of England has come! This is the life into which the slime of the Keateses and Shelleys of former times has fecundated! The result was predicted about a quarter of a century ago in the pages of this Magazine; and many attempts were then made to suppress the nuisance at its fountainhead. Much good was accomplished: but our efforts at that time were only partially successful; for nothing is so tenacious of life as the spawn of frogs—nothing is so vivacious as corruption, until it has reached its last stage. The evidence before us shows that this stage has been now at length attained. Mr Coventry Patmore’s volume has reached the ultimate terminus of poetical degradation; and our conclusion, as well as our hope is, that the fry must become extinct in him. His poetry (thank Heaven!) cannot corrupt into any thing worse than itself.
- ↑ London: Moxon. 1844.