We entreat our readers to note how, even in this little trifle, the singular taste and genius of Mr. Tennyson break forth. In such a dear little room a narrow-minded scribbler would have been content with one sofa, and that one he would probably have covered with black mohair, or red cloth, or a good striped chintz; how infinitely more characteristic is white dimity!—'tis as it were a type of the purity of the poet's mind. He proceeds—

'For I the Nonnenwerth have seen, And Oberwinter's vineyards green, Musical Lurlei; and between The hills to Bingen I have been, Bingen in Darmstadt, where the Rhene Curves toward Mentz, a woody scene.

'Yet never did there meet my sight, In any town, to left or right, A little room so exquisite, With two such couches soft and white; Nor any room so warm and bright, Wherein to read, wherein to write.'—p. 153.

A common poet would have said that he had been in London or in Paris—in the loveliest villa on the banks of the Thames, or the most gorgeous chateau on the Loire—that he has reclined in Madame de Stael's boudoir, and mused in Mr. Roger's comfortable study; but the darling room of the poet of nature (which we must suppose to be endued with sensibility, or he would not have addressed it) would not be flattered with such common-place comparisons;—no, no, but it is something to have it said that there is no such room in the ruins of the Drachenfels, in the vineyard of Oberwinter, or even in the rapids of the Rhene, under the Lurleyberg. We have ourselves visited all these celebrated spots, and can testify in corroboration of Mr. Tennyson, that we did not see in any of them anything like this little room so exquisITE.

The second of the lighter pieces, and the last with which we shall delight our readers, is a severe retaliation on the editor of the Edinburgh Magazine, who, it seems, had not treated the first volume of Mr. Tennyson with the same respect that we have, we trust, evinced for the second.

'To CHRISTOPHER NORTH. You did late review my lays, Crusty Christopher; You did mingle blame and praise Rusty Christopher.

When I learnt from whom it came I forgave you all the blame, Musty Christopher; I could not forgive the praise, Fusty Christopher.'—p. 153.

Was there ever anything so genteelly turned—so terse—so sharp—and the point so stinging and so true?

'I could not forgive the praise, Fusty Christopher!'

This leads us to observe on a phenomenon which we have frequently seen, but never been able to explain. It has been occasionally our painful lot to excite the displeasure of authors whom we have reviewed, and who have vented their dissatisfaction, some in prose, some in verse, and some in what we could not distinctly say whether it was verse or prose; but we have invariably found that the common formula of retort was that adopted by Mr. Tennyson against his northern critic, namely, that the author would always

—Forgive us all the blame, But could not forgive the praise.

Now this seems very surprising. It has sometimes, though we regret to say rarely, happened, that, as in the present instance, we have been able to deal out unqualified praise, but never found that the dose in this case disagreed with the most squeamish stomach; on the contrary, the patient has always seemed exceedingly comfortable after he had swallowed it. He has been known to take the 'Review' home and keep his wife from a ball, and his children from bed, till he could administer it to them, by reading the article aloud. He has even been heard to recommend the 'Review' to his acquaintance at the clubs, as the best number which has yet appeared, and one, who happened to be an M.P. as well as an author, gave a conditional order, that in case his last work should be favourably noticed, a dozen copies should be sent down by the mail to the borough of ——. But, on the other hand, when it has happened that the general course of our criticism has been unfavourable, if by accident we happened to introduce the smallest spice of praise, the patient immediately fell into paroxysms—declaring that the part which we foolishly thought might offend him had, on the contrary, given him pleasure—positive pleasure, but that which he could not possibly either forget or forgive, was the grain of praise, be it ever so small, which we had dropped in, and for which, and not for our censure, he felt constrained, in honour and conscience, to visit us with his extreme indignation. Can any reader or writer inform us how it is that praise in the wholesale is so very agreeable to the very same stomach that rejects it with disgust and loathing, when it is scantily administered; and above all, can they tell us why it is, that the indignation and nausea should be in the exact inverse ratio to the quantity of the ingredient? These effects, of which we could quote several cases much more violent than Mr. Tennyson's, puzzle us exceedingly; but a learned friend, whom we have consulted, has, though he could not account for the phenomenon, pointed out what he thought an analogous case. It is related of Mr. Alderman Faulkner, of convivial memory, that one night when he expected his guests to sit late and try the strength of his claret and his head, he took the precaution of placing in his wine-glass a strawberry, which his doctor, he said, had recommended to him on account of its cooling qualities: on the faith of this specific, he drank even more deeply, and, as might be expected, was carried away at an earlier period and in rather a worse state, than was usual with him. When some of his friends condoled with him next day, and attributed his misfortune to six bottles of claret which he had imbibed, the Alderman was extremely indignant—'the claret,' he said, 'was sound, and never could do any man any harm—his discomfiture was altogether caused by that damned single strawberry' which he had kept all night at the bottom of his glass.—The Quarterly Review.

[Footnote O: See Quarterly Review, vol. XIX, p. 204.]

[Footnote P: The same Camelot, in Somersetshire, we presume, which is alluded to by Kent in 'King Lear'—

'Goose! if I had thee upon Sarum plain, I'd drive thee cackling home to Camelot.' ]

The Princess; a Medley. By Alfred Tennyson. Moxon.

That we are behind most even of our heaviest and slowest contemporaries in the notice of this volume, is a fact for which we cannot satisfactorily account to ourselves, and can therefore hardly hope to be able to make a valid excuse to our readers. The truth is, that whenever we turned to it we became, like the needle between positive and negative electric poles, so attracted and repelled, that we vibrated too much to settle to any fixed condition. Vacillation prevented criticism, and we had to try the experiment again and again before we could arrive at the necessary equipose to indicate the right direction of taste and opinion. We will now, however, note our variations, and leave them to the public judgment.

The first lines of the prologue were repulsive, as a specimen of the poorest Wordsworth manner and style—

"Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun Up to his people: thither flock'd at noon His tenants, wife and child, and thither half The neighbouring borough with their Institute Of which he was the patron. I was there From college, visiting the son,—the son A Walter too,—with others of our set."

The "wife and child" of the tenants is hardly intelligible; and the "set" is but a dubious expression. Nor can we clearly comprehend the next line and a half—

"And me that morning Walter show'd the house, Greek, set with busts:"

Does this mean that Sir Walter Vivian inhabited a Greek house, and that the college "set" were guests in that dwelling "set with busts"? To say the least, this is inelegant, and the affectations proceed—

"From vases in the hall Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names, Grew side by side."

Persons conversant with the botanical names of flowers will hardly be able to realize (as the Yankees have it) the idea of their loveliness; the loveliness of Hippuris, Dolichos, Syngenesia, Cheiranthus, Artocarpus, Arum dracunculus, Ampelopsis hederaca, Hexandria, Monogynea, and the rest.

A good description of the demi-scientific sports of the Institute follows; but the house company and inmates retire to a ruined abbey:—

"High-arch'd and ivy-claspt, Of finest Gothic, lighter than a fire."

This is a curious jumble in company, two lights of altogether a different nature; but the party get into a rattling conversation, in which the noisy babble of the College Cubs is satirically characterized: we

"Told Of college: he had climb'd across the spikes, And he had squeez'd himself betwixt the bars, And he had breathed the Proctor's dogs; and one Discuss'd his tutor, rough to common men But honeying at the whisper of a lord; And one the Master, as a rogue in grain Veneer'd with sanctimonious theory."

The dialogue happily takes a turn, and the task of writing the Princess is assigned to the author, as one of the tales in the Decameron of Boccaccio. A neighbouring princess of the south (so the story runs as the prince tells it) is in childhood betrothed to a like childish prince of the north:—

"She to me Was proxy-wedded with a bootless calf [?] At eight years old."

Both grew up, the prince, all imaginative, filling his mind with pictures of her perfections; but she turning a female reformer of the Wolstencroft [sic] school, resolved never to wed till woman was raised to an equality with men, and establishing a strange female colony and college to carry this vast design into effect. In consequence of this her father is obliged to violate the contract, and his indignant father prepares for war to enforce it. The prince, with two companions, flies to the south, to try what he can do for himself; and in the disguise of ladies they obtain admission to the guarded precincts of the new Amazonian league. He, meanwhile, sings sweetly of his mistress—

"And still I wore her picture by my heart, And one dark tress; and all around them both Sweet thoughts would swarm as bees about their queen."

And of his friend—

"My other heart, My shadow, my half-self, for still we moved Together, kin as horse's ear and eye."

His evasion is also finely told—

"But when the council broke, I rose and past Through the wild woods that hang about the town; Found a still place, and pluck'd her likeness out: Laid it on flowers, and watch'd it lying bathed In the green gleam of dewy-tassell'd trees: What were those fancies? wherefore break her troth? Proud look'd the lips: but while I meditated A wind arose and rush'd upon the South, And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks Of the wild woods together; and a Voice Went with it 'Follow, follow, thou shalt win!'"

Almost in juxtaposition with these beauties, we find one of the disagreeable blots, so offensive to good taste, which disfigure the poem. The travellers are interrogating the host of an inn close to the liberties where the princess holds her petticoated sway:—

"And at the last— The summer of the vine in all his veins— 'No doubt that we might make it worth his while. For him, he reverenced his liege-lady there; He always made a point to post with mares; His daughter and his housemaid were the boys. The land, he understood, for miles about Was till'd by women; all the swine were sows, And all the dogs'"—

This is too bad, even for medley; but proceed we into the interior of the grand and luxurious feminine institution, where their sex is speedily discovered, but for certain reasons concealed by the discoverers. Lectures on the past and what might be done to accomplish female equality, and description of the boundaries, the dwelling place, and the dwellers therein, fill many a page of mingled excellence and defects. Here is a sample of both in half a dozen lines:—

"We saw The Lady Blanche's daughter where she stood, Melissa, with her hand upon the lock, A rosy blonde, and in a college gown That clad her like an April daffodilly (Her mother's colour) with her lips apart, And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes, As bottom agates seem to wave and float In crystal currents of clear morning seas."

Curious contradictions in mere terms, also occasionally occur. Thus, of a frightened girl, we are told that—

"Light As flies the shadow of a bird she fled."

Events move on. The prince reasons as a man in a colloquy with the princess, and speaks of the delights of maternal affections, and she replies—

"We are not talk'd to thus: Yet will we say for children, would they grew Like field-flowers everywhere! we like them well: But children die; and let me tell you, girl, Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die: They with the sun and moon renew their light Forever, blessing those that look on them: Children—that men may pluck them from our hearts, Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves— O—children—there is nothing upon earth More miserable than she that has a son And sees him err:"

A song on "The days that are no more," seems to us to be too laboured, nor is the other lyric introduced, "The Swallow," much more to our satisfaction. It is a mixture of prettinesses: the first four triplets run thus, ending in a poetic beauty—

"O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South, Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves, And tell her, tell her what I tell to thee.

"O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each, That bright and fierce and fickle is the South, And dark and true and tender is the North.

"O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill, And cheep and twitter twenty million loves.

"O were I thou that she might take me in, And lay me on her bosom, and her heart Would rock the snowy cradle till I died."

The prince saves the princess from being drowned, when the secret explodes like a roll of gun cotton, and a grand turmoil ensues. The rival kings approach to confines in battle array, and the princess resumes the declaration of war:—

"A tide of fierce Invective seem'd to wait behind her lips, As waits a river level with the dam Ready to burst and flood the world with foam: And so she would have spoken, but there rose A hubbub in the court of half the maids Gather'd together; from the illumin'd hall Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes, And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes, And gold and golden heads; they to and fro Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, same pale, All open-mouth'd, all gazing to the light, Some crying there was an army in the land, And some that men were in the very walls, And some they cared not; till a clamour grew As of a new-world Babel, woman-built, And worse-confounded: high above them stood The placid marble Muses, looking peace."

She denounces the perils outside and in—

"I dare All these male thunderbolts: what is it ye fear? Peace! there are those to avenge us and they come: If not,—myself were like enough, O girls, To unfurl the maiden banner of our rights, And clad in iron burst the ranks of war, Or, falling, protomartyr of our cause, Die: yet I blame ye not so much for fear; Six thousand years of fear have made ye that From which I would redeem ye: but for those That stir this hubbub—you and you—I know Your faces there in the crowd—to-morrow morn We meet to elect new tutors; then shall they That love their voices more than duty, learn With whom they deal, dismiss'd in shame to live No wiser than their mothers, household stuff, Live chattels, mincers of each other's fame, Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown, The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks of Time, Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels, But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum, To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour For ever slaves at home and fools abroad."

Ay, just as Shakspere hath it—

"To suckle fools and chronicle small beer."

The hero also meets the shock, at least in poetic grace:—

"Upon my spirits Settled a gentle cloud of melancholy, Which I shook off, for I was young, and one To whom the shadow of all mischance but came As night to him that sitting on a hill Sees the midsummer, midnight, Norway sun, Set into sunrise."

It is agreed to decide the contest by a combat of fifty on each side—the one led by the prince, and the other by Arac, the brother of the princess. And clad in "harness"—

"Issued in the sun that now Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth, And hit the northern hills."

To the fight—

"Then rode we with the old king across the lawns Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings of Spring In every bole, a song on every spray Of birds that piped their Valentines."

The prince and his companions are defeated; and he, wounded almost to the death, is consigned at her own request to be nursed by the princess:—

"So was their sanctuary violated, So their fair college turn'd to hospital; At first with all confusion; by and by Sweet order lived again with other laws; A kindlier influence reign'd; and everywhere Low voices with the ministering hand Hung round the sick."

The result may be foreseen—

"From all a closer interest flourish'd up. Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these, Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears By some cold morning glacier; frail at first And feeble, all unconscious of itself, But such as gather'd colour day by day."

And the agreement is filled up:—

"Dear, but let us type them now In our lives, and this proud watchword rest Of equal; seeing either sex alone Is half itself, and in true marriage lies Nor equal, nor unequal: each fulfils Defect in each, and always thought in thought, Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow, The single pure and perfect animal, The two-cell'd heart beating with one full stroke Life"

"O we will walk this world, Yoked in all exercise of noble end, And so through those dark gates across the wild That no man knows. Indeed I love thee; come, Yield thyself up; my hopes and thine are one; Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me."

Who will question the true poetry of this production, or who will deny the imperfections, (mostly of affectation, though some of tastelessness) which obscure it? Who will wonder at our confessed wavering when they have read this course of alternate power, occasionally extravagant, and feebleness as in the long account of the emeute? Of the extravagant, the description of the princess, on receiving the declaration of war, is an example:—

"She read, till over brow And cheek and bosom brake the wrathful bloom As of some fire against a stormy cloud, When the wild peasant rights himself, and the rick Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens."

The heroine, it must be acknowledged, is much of the virago throughout, and the prince rather of the softest; but the tale could not be otherwise told. We add four examples—two to be admired, and two to be contemned, in the fulfilment of our critique.

"For was, and is, and will be, are but is,"

is a noble line; and the following, on the promised restoration of a child to its mother, is very touching—

"Again she veiled her brows, and prone she sank, and so Like tender things that being caught feign death, Spoke not, nor stirr'd."

Not so the burlesque eight daughters of the plough, the brawny ministers of the princess' executive, and their usage of a herald. They were—

"Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men, Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain And labour. Each was like a Druid rock; Or like a spire of land that stands apart Cleft from the main, and clang'd about with mews."

And they—

"Came sallying through the gates, and caught his hair, And so belabour'd him on rib and cheek They made him wild."

Nor the following—

"When the man wants weight the woman takes it up, And topples down the scales; but this is fixt As are the roots of earth and base of all. Man for the field and woman for the hearth; Man for the sword and for the needle she; Man with the head and woman with the heart; Man to command and woman to obey; All else confusion. Look to it; the gray mare Is ill to live with, when her whinny shrills From tile to scullery, and her small goodman Shrinks in his arm-chair while the fires of Hell Mix with his hearth; but take and break her, you! She's yet a colt. Well groom'd and strongly curb'd She might not rank with those detestable That to the hireling leave their babe, and brawl Their rights or wrongs like potherbs in the street. They say she's comely; there's the fairer chance: I like her none the less for rating at her! Besides, the woman wed is not as we, But suffers change of frame. A lusty brace Of twins may weed her of her folly. Boy, The bearing and the training of a child Is woman's wisdom."

—The Literary Gazette.



ROBERT BROWNING

Paracelsus. By Robert Browning.

There is talent in this dramatic poem, (in which is attempted a picture of the mind of this celebrated character,) but it is dreamy and obscure. Writers would do well to remember, (by way of example,) that though it is not difficult to imitate the mysticism and vagueness of Shelley, we love him and have taken him to our hearts as a poet, not because of these characteristics—but in spite of them.—The Athenaeum.

Sordello. By Robert Browning. London: Moxon. 1840.

The scene of this poem is laid in Italy, when the Ghibelline and Guelph factions were in hottest contest. The author's style is rather peculiar, there being affectations of language and invertions of thought, and other causes of obscurity in the course of the story which detract from the pleasure of perusing it. But after all, we are much mistaken if Mr. Browning does not prove himself a poet of a right stamp,—original, vigorous, and finely inspired. He appears to us to possess a true sense of the dignity and sacredness of the poet's kingdom; and his imagination wings its way with a boldness, freedom and scope, as if he felt himself at home in that sphere, and was resolved to put his allegiance to the test.—The Monthly Review.

Men and Women. By Robert Browning. Two Volumes. Chapman and Hall.

It is really high time that this sort of thing should, if possible, be stopped. Here is another book of madness and mysticism—another melancholy specimen of power wantonly wasted, and talent deliberately perverted—another act of self-prostration before that demon of bad taste who now seems to hold in absolute possession the fashionable masters of our ideal literature. It is a strong case for the correctional justice of criticism, which has too long abdicated its proper functions. The Della Crusca of Sentimentalism perished under the Baviad—is there to be no future Gifford for the Della Crusca of Transcendentalism? The thing has really grown to a lamentable head amongst us. The contagion has affected not only our sciolists and our versifiers, but those whom, in the absence of a mightier race, we must be content to accept as the poets of our age. Here is Robert Browning, for instance—no one can doubt that he is capable of better things—no one, while deploring the obscurities that deface the Paracelsus and the Dramatic Lyrics, can deny the less questionable qualities which characterized those remarkable poems—but can any of his devotees be found to uphold his present elaborate experiment on the patience of the public? Take any of his worshippers you please—let him be "well up" in the transcendental poets of the day—take him fresh from Alexander Smith, or Alfred Tennyson's Maud, or the Mystic of Bailey—and we will engage to find him at least ten passages in the first ten pages of Men and Women, some of which, even after profound study, he will not be able to construe at all, and not one of which he will be able to read off at sight. Let us take one or two selections at random from the first volume, and try. What, for instance, is the meaning of these four stanzas from the poem entitled "By the Fireside"?—

My perfect wife, my Leonor, Oh, heart my own, oh, eyes, mine too, Whom else could I dare look backward for, With whom beside should I dare pursue The path grey heads abhor?

For it leads to a crag's sheer edge with them; Youth, flowery all the way, there stops— Not they; age threatens and they contemn, Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops, One inch from our life's safe hem!

With me, youth led—I will speak now, No longer watch you as you sit Reading by fire-light, that great brow And the spirit-small hand propping it Mutely—my heart knows how—

When, if I think but deep enough, You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme; And you, too, find without a rebuff The response your soul seeks many a time Piercing its fine flesh-stuff—

We really should think highly of the powers of any interpreter who could "pierce" the obscurity of such "stuff" as this. One extract more and we have done. A gold medal in the department of Hermeneutical Science to the ingenious individual, who, after any length of study, can succeed in unriddling this tremendous passage from "Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha," the organist:—

First you deliver your phrase —Nothing propound, that I see, Fit in itself for much blame or much praise— Answered no less, where no answer needs be: Off start the Two on their ways!

Straight must a Third interpose, Volunteer needlessly help— In strikes a Fourth, a Fifth thrusts in his nose, So the cry's open, the kennel's a-yelp, Argument's hot to the close!

One disertates, he is candid— Two must dicept,—has distinguished! Three helps the couple, if ever yet man did: Four protests, Five makes a dart at the thing wished— Back to One, goes the case bandied!

One says his say with a difference— More of expounding, explaining! All now is wrangle, abuse, and vociferance— Now there's a truce, all's subdued, self-restraining— Five, though, stands out all the stiffer hence.

One is incisive, corrosive— Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant— Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive— Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant— Five ... O Danaides, O Sieve!

Now, they ply axes and crowbars— Now they prick pins at a tissue Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar's Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue? Where is our gain at the Two-bars?

Est fuga, volvitur rota! On we drift. Where looms the dim port? One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota— Something is gained, if one caught but the import— Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha!

What [with] affirming, denying, Holding, risposting, subjoining, All's like ... it's like ... for an instance I'm trying ... There! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining Under those spider-webs lying?

So your fugue broadens and thickens, Greatens and deepens and lengthens, Till one exclaims—"But where's music, the dickens? Blot ye the gold, while your spider-web strengthens, Blacked to the stoutest of tickens?"

Do our readers exclaim, "But where's poetry—the dickens—in all this rigmarole?" We confess we can find none—we can find nothing but a set purpose to be obscure, and an idiot captivity to the jingle of Hudibrastic rhyme. This idle weakness really appears to be at the bottom of half the daring nonsense in this most daringly nonsensical book. Hudibras Butler told us long ago that "rhyme the rudder is of verses;" and when, as in his case, or in that of Ingoldsby Barham, or Whims-and-Oddities Hood, the rudder guides the good ship into tracks of fun and fancy she might otherwise have missed, we are grateful to the double-endings, not on their own account, but for what they have led us to. But Mr. Browning is the mere thrall of his own rudder, and is constantly being steered by it into whirlpools of the most raging absurdity. This morbid passion for double rhymes, which is observable more or less throughout the book, reaches its climax in a long copy of verses on the "Old Pictures of Florence," which, with every disposition to be tolerant of the frailties of genius, we cannot hesitate to pronounce a masterpiece of absurdity. Let the lovers of the Hudibrastic admire these tours de force:—

Not that I expect the great Bigordi Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, bellicose; Nor wronged Lippino—and not a word I Say of a scrap of Fra Angelico's. But you are too fine, Taddeo Gaddi, So grant me a taste of your intonaco— Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye? No churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco?

* * * * * * *

Margheritone of Arezzo, With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret, (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so, You bald, saturnine, poll-clawed parrot?) No poor glimmering Crucifixion, Where in the foreground kneels the donor? If such remain, as is my conviction, The hoarding does you but little honour.

The conclusion of this poem rises to a climax:—

How shall we prologuise, how shall we perorate, Say fit things upon art and history— Set truth at blood-heat and the false at zero rate, Make of the want of the age no mystery! Contrast the fructuous and sterile eras, Show, monarchy its uncouth cub licks Out of the bear's shape to the chimaera's— Pure Art's birth being still the republic's!

Then one shall propose (in a speech, curt Tuscan, Sober, expurgate, spare of an "issimo,") Ending our half-told tale of Cambuscan, Turning the Bell-tower's altaltissimo. And fine as the beak of a young beccaccia The Campanile, the Duomo's fit ally, Soars up in gold its full fifty braccia, Completing Florence, as Florence, Italy.

How really deplorable is all this! On what theory of art can it possibly be defended? In all the fine arts alike—poetry, painting, sculpture, music—the master works have this in common, that they please in the highest degree the most cultivated, and to the widest extent the less cultivated. Lear and the Divine Comedy exhaust the thinking of the profoundest student, yet subdue to hushed and breathless attention the illiterate minds that know not what study means. The "Last Judgment," the "Transfiguration," the "Niobe," and the "Dying Gladiator" excite alike the intelligent rapture of artists, and the unintelligent admiration of those to whom art and its principles are a sealed book. Handel's Israel in Egypt—the wonder of the scientific musician in his closet—yet sways to and fro, like a mighty wind upon the waters, the hearts of assembled thousands at an Exeter Hall oratorio. To take an instance more striking still, Beethoven, the sublime, the rugged, the austere, is also, as even Mons. Jullien could tell us, fast becoming a popular favourite. Now why is this? Simply because these master minds, under the divine teaching of genius, have known how to clothe their works in a beauty of form incorporate with their very essence—a beauty of form which has an elective affinity with the highest instincts of universal humanity. And it is on this beauty of form, this exquisite perfection of style, that the Baileys and the Brownings would have us believe that they set small account, that they purposely and scornfully trample. We do not believe it. We believe that it is only because they are half-gifted that they are but half-intelligible. Their mysticism is weakness—weakness writhing itself into contortions that it may ape the muscles of strength. Artistic genius, in its higher degrees, necessarily involves the power of beautiful self-expression. It is but a weak and watery sun that allows the fogs to hang heavy between the objects on which it shines and the eyes it would enlighten; the true day-star chases the mists at once, and shows us the world at a glance.

Our main object has been to protest against what we feel to be the false teachings of a perverted school of art; and we have used this book of Mr. Browning's chiefly as a means of showing the extravagant lengths of absurdity to which the tenets of that school can lead a man of admitted powers. We should regret, however in the pursuit of this object to inflict injustice on Mr. Browning. This last book of his, like most of its predecessors, contains some undeniable beauties—subtle thoughts, graceful fancies, and occasionally a strain of music, which only makes the chaos of surrounding discords jar more harshly on the ear. The dramatic scenes "In a Balcony" are finely conceived and vigorously written; "Bishop Blougram's Apology," and "Cleon," are well worth reading and thinking over; and there is a certain grace and beauty in several of the minor poems. That which, on the whole, has pleased us most—really, perhaps, because we could read it off-hand—is "The Statue and the Bust," of which we give the opening stanzas:—

[Quotes fourteen stanzas of The Statue and the Bust.]

Why should a man, who, with so little apparent labour, can write naturally and well, take so much apparent labour to write affectedly and ill? There can be but one of two solutions. Either he goes wrong from want of knowledge, in which case it is clear that he wants the highest intuitions of genius; or he sins against knowledge, in which case he must have been misled by the false promptings of a morbid vanity, eager for that applause of fools which always waits on quackery, and which is never refused to extravagance when tricked out in the guise of originality. It is difficult, from the internal evidence supplied by his works, to know which of these two theories to adopt. Frequently the conclusion is almost irresistible, that Mr. Browning's mysticism must be of malice prepense: on the whole, however, we are inclined to clear his honesty at the expense of his powers, and to conclude that he is obscure, not so much because he has the vanity to be thought original, as because he lacks sufficient genius to make himself clear.—The Saturday Review.



NOTES

THOMAS GRAY

When Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard appeared in 1751, the Monthly Rev., IV, p. 309, gave it the following curious notice:—"The excellence of this little piece amply compensates for its want of quantity." The immediate success and popularity of the Elegy established Gray's poetical reputation; hence his Odes (1757) were received and criticized as the work of a poet of whom something entirely different was expected. The thin quarto volume containing The Progress of Poesy and The Bard (entitled merely Ode I and Ode II in that edition) was printed for Dodsley by Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill, and was published on August 8, 1757. Within a fortnight Gray wrote to Thomas Warton that the poems were not at all popular, the great objection being their obscurity; a week later he wrote to Hurd:—"Even my friends tell me they [the Odes] do not succeed ... in short, I have heard nobody but a player [Garrick] and a doctor of divinity [Warburton] that profess their esteem for them." For further comment, see Gray's Works, ed. Gosse, II, pp. 321-328.

Our review, which is reprinted from Monthly Rev., XVII (239-243) (September, 1757), was written by Oliver Goldsmith, and is included in most of the collected editions of his works. Although it was practically wrung from Goldsmith while he was the unwilling thrall of Griffiths, it is a noteworthy piece of criticism for its time—certainly far superior to the general standard of the Monthly Review. While recognizing the scholarly merit of the poet's work, Goldsmith showed clearly why the Odes could not become popular. A more favorable notice of the volume appeared in the Critical Rev., IV, p. 167.

In reprinting this review, the long quotations from both odes have been omitted. This precedent is followed in all cases where the quotations are of inordinate length, or are offered merely as "specimens" without specific criticism. No useful end would be served in reprinting numerous pages of classic extracts that are readily accessible to every student. All omissions are, of course, properly indicated.

1. Quinault. Philippe Quinault (1635-1688), a popular French dramatist and librettist.

2. Mark'd for her own. An allusion to the line in the Epitaph appended to the Elegy: "And Melancholy marked him for her own."

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

Goldsmith's Traveller (1764) was begun as early as 1755—before he had expressed what Professor Dowden calls his "qualified enthusiasm" and "official admiration" for Gray's Odes. In criticizing Gray, he quoted Isocrates' advice—Study the people—and properly bore that precept in mind while he was shaping his own verses. The Odes and the Traveller are respectively characteristic utterances of their authors—of the academic recluse, and of the warm-hearted lover of humanity.

The review, quoted from the Critical Rev., XVIII (458-462) (December, 1764), is from the pen of Dr. Samuel Johnson. Apart from its distinguished authorship and the strong words of commendation in the final sentence, it possesses slight interest as literary criticism. It is, in fact, little more than a brief summary of the poem, enriched by a few well-chosen illustrative extracts. The fact that Johnson contributed nine or ten lines to the poem (see Boswell, ed. Hill, I, p. 441, n. 1, and II, p. 6) may account partly for the character of the review. Johnson's quotations from the poem are not continuous and show several variations from authoritative texts.

WILLIAM COWPER

Cowper stands almost alone among English poets as an instance of late manifestation of poetic power. He was over fifty years of age when he offered his first volume of Poems (1782) to the public. This collection, which included Table-Talk and other didactic poems, appeared at the beginning of the most prosaic age in the history of modern English literature; yet the critics did not find it sufficiently striking in quality to differentiate it from the level of contemporary verse, or to forecast the success of The Task and John Gilpin's Ride three years later.

The notice in the Critical Rev., LIII (287-290), appeared in April, 1782. While the same poems are but slightly esteemed to-day, it must be recognized that the attitude of the reviewer was severe for his time. The age had grown accustomed to large draughts of moralizing and didacticism in verse, and the quality of Cowper's contribution was assuredly above the average. The Monthly Rev., LXVII, p. 262, gave the Poems a much more favorable reception.

10. Non Dii, non homines, etc. Properly, non homines, non di, Horace, Ars Poetica, l. 373.

10. Caraccioli. Jouissance de soi-meme (ed. 1762), cap. xii.

11. There needs no ghost, etc. See Hamlet, I, 5. 110.

ROBERT BURNS

The Kilmarnock edition (1786) of Burns' Poems was published during the most eventful period of the poet's life; the almost universally kind reception accorded to this volume was the one source of consolation amid many sorrows and distractions. Two reviews have been selected to illustrate both the Scottish and English attitude toward the newly discovered "ploughman-poet." The Edinburgh Magazine, IV (284-288), in October, 1786, gave Burns a welcome that was hearty and sincere; though we may smile to-day at the information that he has neither the "doric simplicity" of Ramsay, nor the "brilliant imagination" of Ferguson. Besides the poems mentioned in brackets, the magazine published further extracts from Burns in subsequent numbers. The Critical Review, LXIII (387-388), gave the volume a belated notice in May, 1787, exceeding even the Scotch magazine in its generous appreciation. With the generally accepted fact in mind that all of Burns' enduring work is in the Scottish dialect, and that his English poems are comparatively inferior, it is interesting to note the Critical Review's regret that the dialect must "obscure the native beauties" and be often unintelligible to English readers. The same sentiment was expressed by the Monthly Review, LXXV, p. 439, in the critique reprinted (without its curious anglified version of The Cotter's Saturday Night) in Stevenson's Early Reviews.

There is perhaps no other English poet whose fame was so suddenly and securely established as Burns'. At no time since the appearance of the Kilmarnock volume has the worth of his lyrical achievement been seriously questioned. The Reliques of Burns, edited by Dr. Cromek in 1808, were reviewed by Walter Scott in the first number of the Quarterly Review, and by Jeffrey in the corresponding number of the Edinburgh. Both articles are valuable to the student of Burns, but their great length made their inclusion in the present volume impracticable.

14. Rusticus abnormis sapiens, etc. Horace, Sat. II, l. 3.

15. A great lady ... and celebrated professor. Evidently Mrs. Dunlop and Professor Dugald Stewart, who both took great interest in Burns after the appearance of the Kilmarnock volume.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

The thin quartos containing An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches were published by Wordsworth in 1793. The former was practically a school-composition in verse, written between 1787-89 and dedicated to his sister; the latter was composed in France during 1791-92 and was revised shortly before publication. The dedication was addressed to the Rev. Robert Jones, fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, who was Wordsworth's companion during the pedestrian tour in the Alps. Though An Evening Walk was published first, the Monthly Review, XII, n.s. (216-218), in October, 1793, noticed both in the same issue and naturally gave precedence to the longer poem. Specific allusions in the text necessitate the same order in the present reprint.

The impatience of the reviewer at the prospect of "more descriptive poetry" was due to the fact that many such productions had recently been noticed by the Monthly, and that the volumes then under consideration evidently belonged to the broad stream of mediocre verse that had been flowing soberly along almost since the days of Thomson. These first attempts smacked so decidedly of the older manner that we cannot censure the critic for failing to foresee that Wordsworth was destined to glorify the "poetry of nature," and to rescue it from the rut of listless and soporific topographical description. Both poems, in the definitive text, are readable, and exhibit here and there a glimmer of the poet's future greatness; yet it must be borne in mind that Wordsworth was continually tinkering at his verse, to the subsequent despair of conscientious variorum editors, and that most of the absurdities and infelicities in his first editions disappeared under the correcting influence of his sarcastic critics and his own maturing taste.

A collation of the accepted text with the Monthly Review's quotations will repay the student; thus, the twelve opening lines quoted by the reviewer are represented by eight lines in Professor Knight's edition, and only four of these correspond to the original text. The reviewer confined his remarks to the first thirty lines of the poem and very properly neglected the rest. He followed, with moderate success, the method of quotation with interpolated sarcasm and badinage—a method that was afterwards effectively pursued by the early Edinburgh Reviewers and the Blackwood coterie. There are few examples of that style in the eighteenth century reviews, but some noteworthy specimens of a later period—e.g., the Edinburgh Review on Coleridge's Christabel and the Quarterly on Tennyson's Poems—are reprinted in this volume.

The review of An Evening Walk is simply an appended paragraph to the previous article. Wordsworth evidently appreciated the advice conveyed in the reviewer's final sentence and found many of the lines that "called loudly for amendment." More favorable notices of both poems will be found in Critical Review, VIII, pp. 347 and 472.

Lyrical Ballads

The Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge were published anonymously early in September, 1798—a few days before the joint authors sailed for Germany. Coleridge's contributions were The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The Foster-Mother's Tale, The Nightingale, and The Dungeon; the remaining nineteen poems were by Wordsworth. As the publication of this volume has been accepted by most critics as the first fruit of the new romantic spirit and the virtual beginning of modern English poetry, the reception accorded to the Lyrical Ballads becomes a matter of prime importance. It is well known that the effort was a failure at first and that the apparent triumph of romanticism did not occur until the publication of Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805); but a contemporary blindness to the beauty of two of the finest poems in English literature cannot be permitted to figure in the critics' dispassionate investigation of causes and influences.

There were four interesting reviews of the first edition of the Lyrical Ballads, namely, (1) Critical Rev., XXIV, n.s. (197-204), in October, 1798, which is reprinted here; (2) Analytical Rev., XXVIII (583-587), in December, 1798; (3) Monthly Rev., XXIX, n.s. (202-210), in May, 1799, reprinted in Stevenson's Early Reviews; (4) British Critic, XIV (364-369) in October, 1799.

The article in the Critical Review was written by Robert Southey under conditions most favorable for such a malicious procedure. The publisher, his friend Cottle, had transferred the copyright of the Lyrical Ballads to Arch, a London publisher, within two weeks of the appearance of the volume, giving as a shallow excuse the "heavy sale" of the book. Both Wordsworth and Coleridge were in Germany. Southey had quarreled with Coleridge, and was probably jealous of the latter's extravagant praise of Wordsworth. He accordingly seized the opportunity to assail the work without injuring Cottle's interests or entailing the immediate displeasure of the travelling bards.

He covered his tracks to some extent by referring several times to "the author," although the joint authorship was well known to him. While severe in most of his strictures on Wordsworth, Southey reserved his special malice for The Ancient Mariner. He called it "a Dutch attempt at German sublimity"; and in a letter written to William Taylor on September 5, 1798—probably while he was writing his discreditable critique—he characterized the poem as "the clumsiest attempt at German sublimity I ever saw." Southey's responsibility for the article became known to Cottle, who communicated the fact to the poets on their return a year later. Wordsworth declared that "if Southey could not conscientiously have spoken differently of the volume, he ought to have declined the task of reviewing it." Coleridge indited an epigram, To a Critic, and let the matter drop. Shortly afterwards he showed his renewed good-will by aiding Southey in preparing the second Annual Anthology (1800).

The subsequent reviews of the Lyrical Ballads adopted the tone of the Critical (then recognized as the leading review) and internal evidence shows that they did not hesitate to borrow ideas from Southey's article. The Analytical Review also saw German extravagances in The Ancient Mariner; the Monthly borrowed Southey's figure of the Italian and Flemish painters, and called The Ancient Mariner "the strangest story of a cock and bull that we ever saw on paper ... a rhapsody of unintelligible wildness and incoherence." The belated review in the British Critic was probably written by Coleridge's friend, Rev. Francis Wrangham, and was somewhat more appreciative than the rest. For further details, consult Mr. Thomas Hutchinson's reprint (1898) of the Lyrical Ballads, pp. (xiii-xxviii). Despite the unfavorable reviews, the Ballads reached a fourth edition in 1805 (besides an American edition in 1802), thus achieving the popularity alluded to by Jeffrey at the beginning of our next review.

Poems (1807)

Wordsworth's fourth publication, the Poems (1807), included most of the pieces written after the first appearance of the Lyrical Ballads. It was likewise his first venture subsequent to the founding of the Edinburgh Review. Jeffrey had assailed the theories of the "Lake Poets" (and, incidentally, coined that unfortunate term) in the first number of the Review, in an article on Southey's Thalaba, and three years later (1805), in criticizing Madoc, he again expressed his views on the subject. Now came the first opportunity to deal with the recognized leader of the "Lakers"—the poet whose work most clearly illustrated the poetic theories that Jeffrey deemed pernicious.

The article here reprinted from the Edinburgh Rev., XI (214-231), of October, 1807, and Jeffrey's review of The Excursion, in ibid., XXIV (1-30), are perhaps the two most important critiques of their kind. No student of Wordsworth's theory of poetry, as set forth in his various prefaces, can afford to ignore either of these interesting discussions of the subject. (For details, see A.J. George's edition of the Prefaces of Wordsworth, Gates' Selections from Jeffrey, Beers' Nineteenth Century Romanticism, Hutchinson's edition of Lyrical Ballads, etc.) It was undoubtedly true that Jeffrey, although an able critic, failed to grasp the real significance of the new poetic movement, and to appreciate the influence wrought by the doctrines of the Lake Poets on modern conceptions of poetry. Yet he was far from wrong in many of his criticisms of Wordsworth. While deprecating the latter's theories, it is clear that Jeffrey regarded him as a poet of great power who was being led astray by his perverse practice. The popular conception of Jeffrey as a hectoring and blatant opponent of Wordsworth is not substantiated by the review. The impartial reader must agree with Jeffrey at many points, and if he will take the trouble to collate Jeffrey's quotations with the revised text of Wordsworth, he will learn that the poet did not disdain to take an occasional suggestion for the improvement of his verse.

We recognize Wordsworth to-day as the most unequal of English poets. There is little that is common to the inspired bard of Tintern Abbey, the Immortality Ode and the nobler Sonnets, and the unsophisticated scribe of Peter Bell and The Idiot Boy. Like Browning, he wrote too much to write well at all times, and if both poets were capable of the sublimest flights, they likewise descended to unimagined depths; but the fault of Wordsworth was perhaps the greater, because his bathos was the result of a deliberate and persistent attempt to enrich English poetry with prosaically versified incidents drawn at length from homely rural life.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

The first part of Coleridge's Christabel was written in 1797 during the brief period of inspiration that also gave us The Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan—in short, that small group of exquisite poems which in themselves suffice to place Coleridge in the front rank of English poets. The second part was written in 1800, after the author's return from Germany. The fragment circulated widely in manuscript among literary men, bewitched Scott and Byron into imitating its fascinating rhythms, and, at Byron's suggestion, was finally published by Murray in 1816 with Kubla Khan and The Pains of Sleep. It is probable that the high esteem in which these poems were held by Coleridge's literary friends led him to expect a favorable reception at the hands of the critics; hence his keen disappointment at the general tone of their sarcastic analysis and their protests against the absurdity and obscurity of the poems. The principal critiques on Christabel were:—(1) Edinburgh Rev., XXVII (58-67), which is here reprinted; (2) Monthly Rev., LXXXII, n.s. (22-25), reprinted in Stevenson's Early Reviews; (3) The Literary Panorama, IV, n.s. (561-565); and (4) Anti-Jacobin Rev., L (632-636).

It is evident that Coleridge was eminently successful in the gentle art of making enemies. We have seen that Southey's attack on the Lyrical Ballads was a direct result of his ill-will toward Coleridge; the outrageous article in the Edinburgh Review was written by William Hazlitt under similar inspiration, and was followed by abusive papers in The Examiner (1816, p. 743, and 1817, p. 236). There was no justification for Hazlitt, and none has been attempted by his biographers. Judged by its intrinsic merits, the Edinburgh article is one of the most absurd reviews ever written by a critic of recognized ability. Hazlitt followed the method of outlining the story by quotation with interspersed sarcasm and ironical criticism. As a coarse boor might crumple a delicate and beautifully wrought fabric to prove that it has not the wearing qualities of a blacksmith's apron, Hazlitt seized upon the ethereal story of Christabel, with its wealth of mediaeval and romantic imagery, and held up to ridicule the incidents that did not conform to modern English conceptions of life. It requires no great art to produce such a critique; the same method was applied to Christabel with hardly less success by the anonymous hack of the Anti-Jacobin. Whatever may have been Hazlitt's motives, we cannot understand how a critic of his unquestioned ability could quote with ridicule some of the very finest lines of Kubla Khan, and expect his readers to concur with his opinion. The lack of taste was more apparent because he quoted, with qualified praise, six lines of no extraordinary merit from Christabel and insisted, that with this one exception, there was not a couplet in the whole poem that achieved the standard of a newspaper poetry-corner or the effusions scratched by peripatetic bards on inn-windows. An interesting discussion between Mr. Thomas Hutchinson and Col. Prideaux concerning Hazlitt's responsibility for this and other critiques on Coleridge in the Edinburgh Review will be found in Notes and Queries (Ninth Series), X, pp. 388, 429; XI, 170, 269.

The other reviews of Christabel were all unfavorable. Most extravagant was the utterance of the Monthly Magazine, XLVI, p. 407, in 1818, when it declared that the "poem of Christabel is only fit for the inmates of Bedlam. We are not acquainted in the history of literature with so great an insult offered to the public understanding as the publication of that r[h]apsody of delirium."

Hazlitt's primitive remarks on the metre of Christabel are of little interest. Coleridge was, of course, wrong in stating that his metre was founded on a new principle. The irregularly four-stressed line occurs in Spenser's Shepherd's Calender and can be traced back through the halting tetrameters of Skelton. Coleridge himself alludes to this fact in his note to his poem The Raven, and elsewhere.

Coleridge's earlier poetical publications were received with commonplace critiques usually mildly favorable. For reviews of his Poems (1796) see Monthly Rev., XX, n.s., p. 194; Analytical Rev., XXIII, p. 610; British Critic, VII, p. 549; and Critical Rev., XVII, n.s., p. 209; the second edition of Poems (1797) is noticed in Critical Rev., XXIII, n.s., p. 266; for Lyrical Ballads, see under Wordsworth; for the successful play Remorse (1813), see Monthly Rev., LXXI, n.s., p. 82, and Quarterly Rev., XI, p. 177.

ROBERT SOUTHEY

Madoc, a ponderous quarto of over five hundred pages and issued at two guineas, was published by Southey in 1805 as the second of that long-forgotten series of interminable epics including Thalaba, The Curse of Kehama, and Roderick, Last of the Goths. These huge unformed productions were not poems, but metrical tales, written in a kind of verse that could have flowed indefinitely from the author's pen. In short, Southey was not a poet, and the whole bulk of his efforts in verse, with but one or two exceptions, seems destined to oblivion. As poet-laureate for thirty years and the associate of Wordsworth and Coleridge in the "Lake School," Southey will, however, remain a figure of some importance in the history of English poetry.

The review of Madoc reprinted from the Monthly Rev., XLVIII (113-122) for October, 1805, was written in the old style then fast giving way to the sprightlier methods of the Edinburgh. Here we find a style abounding in literary allusions and classical quotations, and evincing a generally patronizing attitude toward the author under discussion. Most readers will agree with the sentiments expressed by the reviewer, who succeeded in making his article interesting without descending to the depths of buffoonery. No apology is necessary for the excision of the reviewer's unreasonably long extracts from the poem. Madoc was also reviewed at great length in the Edinburgh Review by Francis Jeffrey.

61. Ille ego, qui quondam, etc. The lines usually prefixed to the AEneid.

61. Prorumpere in medias res. Cf. Horace, Ars Poetica, l. 148.

61. Macklin's Tragedy. Henry VII (1746), his only tragedy, and a failure.

61. Toto carere possum. Cf. Martial, Epig. XI, 56.

61. Camoens. The author of the Portuguese Lusiad (1572) which narrates the adventures of Vasco da Gama.

62. Milton. Quoted from Sonnet XI.—On the Detraction which followed upon my writing certain Treatises.

63. Snatching a grace, etc. Pope's Essay on Criticism, l. 153.

CHARLES LAMB

Most of Lamb's earlier poetical productions appeared in conjunction with the work of other poets. Four of his sonnets were printed with Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects (1796), and he was more fully represented in Poems by S.T. Coleridge. Second Edition. To which are now added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd (1797). In the following year appeared Blank Verse, by Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb. For new and interesting material concerning the three poets, see E.V. Lucas' Charles Lamb and the Lloyds (1899). Lloyd (1775-1839) wrote melancholy verses and a sentimental, epistolary novel Edmund Oliver, but nothing of permanent value. However, in 1798, he was almost as well known as Coleridge, and was hailed in some quarters as a promising poet.

The Monthly Rev., XXVII, n.s. (104-105), in September, 1798, published the critique of Blank Verse which is here reprinted. Its principal interest lies in the scant attention shown to Lamb, although the volume contained his best poem—the tender Old Familiar Faces. Dr. Johnson's characterization of blank-verse as "poetry to the eye" will be found at the end of his Life of Milton as a quotation from "an ingenious critic."

Lamb's drama, John Woodvil (1802), written in imitation of later Elizabethan models, was a failure. It was unfavorably noticed in the Monthly Rev., XL, n.s., p. 442 and at greater length in the Edinburgh Rev., II, p. 90 ff.

Many years later (1830) Lamb prepared his collection of Album-Verses at the request of his friend Edward Moxon, who had achieved some fame as a poet and was enabled (by the generous aid of Samuel Rogers) to begin his more lucrative career as a publisher. Three years after the appearance of Album-Verses, he married Lamb's adopted daughter, Emma Isola. The Album-Verses, like most of their kind, were a collection of small value; the Literary Gazette, 1830 (441-442), consequently lost no time in assailing them. The Athenaeum, 1830, p. 435, at that time the bitter rival of the Gazette, published a more favorable review, and a few weeks later (p. 491) printed Southey's verses, To Charles Lamb, on the Reviewal of his Album-Verses in the Literary Gazette, together with a sharp commentary on the methods of the Gazette. Several times during that year the Athenaeum assailed the system of private puffery which was followed by the Gazette and eventually caused its downfall. There is a reply to the Athenaeum in the Literary Gazette, 1833, p. 772.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

Landor was twenty-three when he published Gebir anonymously in 1798—the year of the Lyrical Ballads—and he lived until 1864. The nine decades of his life covered an important period of literature. He was nine years old when the great Johnson died, yet he lived to see the best poetic achievements of Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold. However, he did not live to see Gebir a popular poem. Southey gave it a favorable welcome in the Critical Review, and became a life-long admirer of Landor; but our brief notices reprinted from the Monthly Rev., XXXI, n.s., p. 206, and British Critic, XV, p. 190 of February, 1800, represent more nearly the popular verdict. Both reviewers complain of the obscurity of the poem, which, it will be remembered, had been originally written in Latin, then translated and abridged. Notwithstanding the fact that Landor declared himself amply repaid by the praise of a few appreciative readers, he prepared a violent and scornful reply to the Monthly Review, and would have published it but for the sensible dissuasion of a friend. Some interesting extracts from the letter are printed in Forster's Life of Landor, pp. (76-85). He protested especially against the imputed plagiarisms from Milton and gave ample evidence of the pugnacious spirit that brought him into difficulties several times during his life. See also the Imaginary Conversation between Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor, wherein the reception of Gebir is discussed and Southey's poetry is praised at the expense of Wordsworth's. Landor's first publication, the Poems (1795) was noticed in the Monthly Rev., XXI, n.s., p. 253.

SIR WALTER SCOTT

The successful series of metrical tales which Scott inaugurated with the Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) had for its second member the more elaborate Marmion (1808). From the first, Scott's poems and romances were favorably received by the reviews and usually noticed at great length. There was always a story to outline and choice passages to quote. As suggested in the Preface, these paeans of praise are of comparatively little interest to the student, and need hardly be cited here in detail.

The critique of Marmion, written by Jeffrey for the Edinburgh Rev., XII (1-35), had the place of honor in the number for April, 1808. It was chosen for the present reprints partly as a fitting example of Jeffrey's fearlessness in expressing his opinions, and partly for its historic interest as the article that contributed to Scott's rupture with the Edinburghers and to his successful founding of a Tory rival in the Quarterly Review. Although the article has here been abridged to about half of its original length by the omission of six hundred quoted lines and a synopsis of the poem, it is still the longest of these reprints. Jeffrey evidently felt that a detailed account of the story was necessary in order to justify his strictures on the plot.

An author of those days could afford to ignore the decisions of the critical monthlies, but the brilliant criticism and incisive diction of the Edinburgh Review carried weight and exerted far-reaching influence. Jeffrey's article was practically the only dissonant note in the chorus of praise that greeted Marmion, and Scott probably resented the critic's attitude. Lockhart, in his admirable chapter on the publication of Marmion, admits that "Jeffrey acquitted himself on this occasion in a manner highly creditable to his courageous sense of duty." The April number of the Edinburgh appeared shortly before a particular day on which Jeffrey had engaged to dine with Scott. Fearing that under the circumstances he might be an unwelcome guest, he sent the following tactful note with the copy which was forwarded to the poet:—

"Dear Scott,—If I did not give you credit for more magnanimity than any other of your irritable tribe, I should scarcely venture to put this into your hands. As it is, I do it with no little solicitude, and earnestly hope that it will make no difference in the friendship which has hitherto subsisted between us. I have spoken of your poem exactly as I think, and though I cannot reasonably suppose that you will be pleased with everything I have said, it would mortify me very severely to believe I had given you pain. If you have any amity left for me, you will not delay very long to tell me so. In the meantime, I am very sincerely yours, F. Jeffrey."

There was but one course open to Scott; accordingly to Lockhart, "he assured Mr. Jeffrey that the article had not disturbed his digestion, though he hoped neither his booksellers nor the public would agree with the opinions it expressed, and begged he would come to dinner at the hour previously appointed. Mr. Jeffrey appeared accordingly, and was received by his host with the frankest cordiality, but had the mortification to observe that the mistress of the house, though perfectly polite, was not quite so easy with him as usual. She, too, behaved herself with exemplary civility during the dinner, but could not help saying, in her broken English, when her guest was departing, 'Well, good night, Mr. Jeffrey. Dey tell me you have abused Scott in de Review, and I hope Mr. Constable has paid you very well for writing it.'"

Jeffrey's article apparently had little influence on the sale of Marmion, which reached eight editions (25,000 copies) in three years. In October, 1808, the Edinburgh Review published an appreciative review of Scott's edition of Dryden, and afterwards received with favor the later poems and the principal Waverley Novels.

78. Mr. Thomas Inkle. The story of Inkle and Yarico was related by Steele in no. 11 of the Spectator. It was afterwards dramatized (1787) by George Colman.

LORD BYRON

The twentieth number of the Edinburgh Review contained Jeffrey's long article on Wordsworth's Poems (1807); the twenty-second contained his review of Scott's Marmion; and the twenty-first (January, 1808) contained a still more famous critique, long attributed to Jeffrey—the review of Byron's Hours of Idleness (1807). It is reprinted from Edinburgh Rev., XI (285-289) in Stevenson's Early Reviews and forms Appendix II of R.E. Prothero's edition of Byron's Letters and Journals. We know definitely that the article was written by Henry Brougham. (See Prothero, op. cit., II, p. 397, and Sir M.E. Grant Duff's Notes from a Diary, II, p. 189.)

It is hardly within the province of literary criticism to deal with hypothetical conditions in authors' lives; but it is at least a matter of some interest to conjecture whether Byron would have become a great poet if this stinging review had not been published. It is evident that the Hours of Idleness gave few signs of promise, and the poet, fully intent upon a political career, himself expressed his intention of abandoning the muse. Many an educated Englishman has published such a volume of Juvenilia and sinned no more. But a nature like Byron's could not overlook the effrontery of the Edinburgh Review. The proud-spirited poet was evidently far more incensed by the patronizing tone of the article than by its strictures: what could be more galling than the reiterated references to the "noble minor," or the withering contempt that characterized a particular poem as "the thing in page 79"? Many years later, Byron wrote to Shelley:—"I recollect the effect on me of the Edinburgh on my first poem; it was rage, and resistance, and redress—but not despondency nor despair." (Prothero, V, p. 267.)

There was method in Byron's "rage and resistance and redress." For more than a year he labored upon a satire which he had begun even before the appearance of the Edinburgh article. (See letter of October 26, 1807, in Letters, ed. Prothero, I, p. 147.) In the spring of 1809, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers was given anonymously to the world. The publication of this vigorous satire virtually decided Byron's career. Not only did he abuse Jeffrey, whom he believed responsible for the offending critique, but he flung defiance in the face of almost all his literary contemporaries. The authorship of the satire was soon apparent, and in a flippant note to the second edition, Byron became still more abusive toward Jeffrey and his "dirty pack," and declared that he was ready to give satisfaction to all who sought it. A few years later he regretted his rashness in assailing the authors of his time. He also learned of the injustice done to Jeffrey and had ample reason to feel embarrassed by the tone of the eight reviews of his poems that Jeffrey did write for the Edinburgh. (See the list in Prothero, II, p. 248.) In Don Juan (canto X, xvi), he made the following retraction:—

"And all our little feuds, at least all mine, Dear Jeffrey, once my most redoubted foe (As far as rhyme and criticism combine To make such puppets of us things below), Are over. Here's a health to 'Auld Lang Syne!' I do not know you, and may never know Your face—but you have acted, on the whole, Most nobly; and I own it from my soul."

The other reviews of Hours of Idleness are of little interest. The Monthly and the Critical both praised the book; the Literary Panorama, III, p. 273, said the author was no imbecile, but an incautious writer.

98. [Greek: thelo legein],—Anacreon, Ode I. ([Greek: thelo legein Atreidas, k. t. l.])

98. [Greek: mesonyktiois, poth' horais],—Anacreon, Ode III. ([Greek: mesonyktiois poth' horais, k. t. l.])

100. Sancho,—Sancho Panza in Don Quixote. The proverb is of ancient origin. See French, Latin, Italian and Spanish forms in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.

Childe Harold

Shortly after the appearance of the second edition of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Byron left England and travelled through the East, at the same time leisurely composing the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Their publication in 1812 placed him at the head of the popular poets of the day. Henceforth the reviews gave extensive notices to all his productions. (For references, see J.P. Anderson's bibliography appended to Hon. Roden Noel's Life of Byron.) Childe Harold was reviewed in the Edinburgh Rev., XIX (466-477), by Jeffrey; in the Quarterly, VII (180-200), by George Ellis; in the British Review, III (275-302); and Eclectic Review, XV (630-641).

The article here reprinted from the Christian Observer, XI (376-386), of June, 1812, is of special interest as an early protest from conservative, religious circles against the immoral and irreverent tone of Byron's poetry. As literary criticism, it is almost worthless, in spite of the elaborate allusions and quotations with which the critic—evidently a survivor of the old school—has interlarded his remarks. Little can be said in defense of an article which insists that the chief end of poetry is to be agreeably didactic and which (in 1812) cites Southey as the greatest of living poets. However, it probably represents the attitude of a large number of worthy people of the time, who recognized that Byron had genius, and wished to see him exercise his powers with due regard for the proprieties of civilized life. As Byron's offences grew more flagrant in his later poems, the criticisms in the conservative reviews became more vehement. For Byron's controversy with the British Review, which he facetiously dubbed "my grandmother's review" in Don Juan, see Prothero, IV, pp. (346-347), and Appendix VII. The ninth Appendix to the same volume is Byron's caustic reply to the brutal review of Don Juan in Blackwood's Magazine, V, p. 512 ff.

101. Lion of the north, Francis Jeffrey. The usual agnomen of Gustavus Adolphus. Cf. Walter Scott, the "Wizard of the North."

105. Faiery Queen will not often be read through. Hume's History of England, Appendix III.

106. Qui, quid sit pulchrum, etc. Horace, Epis. II (3-4).

106. Rursum—quid virtus, etc. Horace, Epis. II (17-18).

107. Our sage serious Spenser, etc. Milton's Areopagitica, Works, ed. Mitford, IV, p. 412.

107. Quinctilian. See Quintilian, Book XII, Chap. I.

107. Longinus. On the Sublime, IX, XIII, etc.

108. Restoration of Learning in the East. A Cambridge prize poem (1805) by Charles Grant, Lord Glenelg (1778-1866).

109. Thersites. See Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.

109. Caliban. See Shakespeare's The Tempest.

109. Heraclitus. The "weeping philosopher" (circa 500 B.C.).

109. Zeno. The founder (342-270 B.C.) of the Stoic School.

109. Zoilus. The ancient grammarian who assailed the works of Homer. The epithet Homeromastix is sometimes applied to him.

113. The philosophic Tully, etc. See the concluding paragraph of Cicero's De Senectute.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

It is doubtful whether any other poet was so widely and so continuously assailed in the reviews as Shelley. Circumstances have made certain critiques on Byron, Keats, and others more widely known, but nowhere else do we find the persistent stream of abuse that followed in the wake of Shelley's publications. The Blackwood articles were usually most scathing, and those of the Literary Gazette were not far behind. Fortunately, the poet spent most of his time in Italy and thus remained in ignorance of the great majority of these spiteful attacks in the less important periodicals.

Alastor, which appeared in 1816, attracted comparatively little attention. The tone of the brief notice reprinted from the Monthly Rev., LXXIX, n.s., p. 433, shows that the poet was as yet unknown to the critics. Blackwood's Magazine, VI (148-154), gave a longer and, on the whole, more favorable account of the poem. In the same year, Leigh Hunt published his Story of Rimini, most noteworthy for its graceful rhythmical structure in the unrestricted couplets of Chaucer. This departure from the polished heroics of Pope, which were ill-adapted to narrative subjects in spite of his successful translation of Homer, was hailed with delight by the younger poets. Shelley imitated the measure in his Julian and Maddalo, and Keats did likewise in Lamia and Endymion. Hunt was soon recognized by the critics as the leader of a group of liberals whom they conveniently classified as the Cockney School. Shelley's ill-treatment at the hands of the reviewers dates from his association with this coterie. His Revolt of Islam (1818) was assailed by John Taylor Coleridge in the Quarterly Review, XXI (460-471). The Cenci was condemned as a horrible literary monstrosity by the scandalized critics of the Monthly Rev., XCIV, n.s. (161-168); the Literary Gazette, 1820 (209-10); and the New Monthly Magazine, XIII (550-553). The review here reprinted from the London Mag., I (401-405), is comparatively mild in its censure.

One would naturally suppose that the death of Keats would have ensured at least a respectful consideration for Shelley's lament, Adonais (1821); but the callous critics were by no means abashed. The outrageous article in the Literary Gazette of December 8, 1821, pp. (772-773), is one of the unpardonable errors of literary criticism; but it sinks into insignificance beside the brutal, unquotable review which Blackwood's Magazine permitted to appear in its pages. In the same year Shelley's youthful poetical indiscretion, Queen Mab, which he himself called "villainous trash," was published under circumstances beyond his control, and forthwith the readers of the Literary Gazette were regaled with ten columns of foul abuse from the pen of a critic who declared that he was driven almost speechless by the sentiments expressed in the poem. Well could the heartless reviewer of Adonais write:—"If criticism killed the disciples of that [the Cockney] school, Shelley would not have been alive to write an elegy on another."

115. Eye in a fine phrenzy rolling. Shakespeare's Midsummer-Night's Dream, V, 1, 12.

115. Above this visible diurnal sphere. Milton's Paradise Lost, Book VII, 22.

116. Parca quod satis est manu. Horace, Odes, III, 16, 24.

116. Lord Fanny. A nickname bestowed upon Lord Hervey, an effeminate noble of the time of George II.

117. O! rus, quando ego te aspiciam. Horace, Satires, II, 6, 60.

117. Mordecai. See Book of Esther, V, 13.

118. Last of the Romans. Mark Antony in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, III, 2, 194.

120. Full fathom five. Shakespeare's The Tempest, I, 2, 396.

126. Ohe! jam satis est. Horace, Satires, I, 5, 12-13.

126. Tristram Shandy. The excommunication is in vol. III, chap. XI.

133. Put a girdle, etc. See Shakespeare's Midsummer-Night's Dream, II, 1, 175.

JOHN KEATS

The history of English poetry offers no more interesting case between poet and critic than that of John Keats. The imputed influence of a savage critique in hastening the death of the poet has given the Quarterly Review an unenviable notoriety which clings in spite of the efforts of scholars to establish the truth. To many students, Keats, Endymion, and Quarterly are practically connotative terms; and this is a direct result of the righteous but misguided indignation of Shelley—misguided because his information was incomplete and the more guilty party escaped, thus inflicting upon the Quarterly the brunt of the opprobrium of which far more than half should be accredited to Blackwood's Magazine.

Endymion was published in April, 1818. One of the publishers (Taylor and Hessey) requested Gifford, then editor of the Quarterly Review, to treat the poem with indulgence. This indiscreet move probably actuated Gifford to provide a severe critique; at any rate, in the belated April number of the Quarterly, XIX (204-208), which was not issued until September, appeared the famous review. A persistent error, which has crept into W.M. Rossetti's Life of Keats, into Anderson's bibliography, and even into the article on Gifford in the Dictionary of National Biography, attributes this article to Gifford himself; but it is known to be the work of John Wilson Croker. (See the article on Croker in Dict. Nat. Biog. From the article on John Murray (ibid.) we learn that Gifford was not wholly responsible for a single article in the Quarterly.)

Meanwhile, Blackwood's Magazine, III (519-524) had made Endymion the text of its fourth infamous tirade against the Cockney School of Poetry. The signature "Z" was appended to all the articles, but the critic's identity has not yet been discovered. Leigh Hunt thought it was Walter Scott, Haydon suspected the actor Terry, but it is more probable that the honor belongs to John Gibson Lockhart. One account attributes the entire series to Lockhart; another attributes the series to Wilson, but holds Lockhart responsible for the Endymion article. Mr. Andrew Lang, in his Life and Letters of Lockhart, dismissed the matter by saying that he did not know who wrote the article.

The Quarterly critique was reprinted in Stevenson's Early Reviews, in Rossetti's Life of Keats, in Buxton Forman's edition of Keats' Poetical Works (Appendix V) and elsewhere. From a critical point of view, it is, as Forman terms it, a "curiously unimportant production." The student will at once question its power to cause distress in the mind of the poet; as for malignant severity, there are several reviews among the present reprints that put the brief Quarterly article to shame. When we turn to what Swinburne calls the "obscener insolence" of the Blackwood article, we find an unrestrained torrent of abuse against both Hunt and Keats that amply justified Landor's subsequent allusions to the Blackguard's Magazine. The Quarterly critique was captious and ill-tempered; but the Blackwood article was a personal insult.

It is impossible to consider in detail the vexed question of the influence which these reviews had upon Keats. In Mr. W.M. Rossetti's Life of Keats, pp. (83-106) there is a full discussion of the evidence on the subject. Within a few months after the appearance of the articles, Keats wrote:—"Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic of his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without comparison beyond what Blackwood or The Quarterly could possibly inflict." Some weeks later he wrote that the Quarterly article had only served to make him more prominent among bookmen. After some time he expressed himself less confidently and deprecated the growing power of the reviews, but there is no evidence that he fretted over the critiques. Haydon tells us that Keats was morbid and silent for hours at a time; but it is quite likely that the consciousness of his physical affliction—hereditary consumption—was oppressing his mind. His death occurred on February 23, 1821—about two and a half years after the appearance of the Endymion critiques.

Shelley had gone to Italy before the reviews were published. He heard of the Quarterly article, but knew nothing of Blackwood's while writing Adonais; hence in both poem and preface, the former review is charged with having caused Keats' death. Shelley declared that Keats' agitation over the review ended in the rupture of a blood vessel in the lungs with an ensuing rapid consumption. These statements, which Shelley must have had indirectly, have not been substantiated. We are forced to the conclusion now generally accepted—that Keats, although sensitive to personal ridicule, was superior to the stings of review criticism and that the distressing events of the last year of his life were sufficient to assure the early triumph of the inherent and unconquerable disease.

141. Miss Baillie. Joanna Baillie (1762-1851) authoress of numerous forgotten plays and poems which enjoyed great popularity in their day.

142. Land of Cockaigne. Here means London, and refers specifically to the Cockney poets. An old French poem on the Land of Cockaigne described it as an ideal land of luxury and ease. The best authorities do not accept Cockney as a derivative form. The Cockney School was composed of Londoners of the middle-class, supposedly ill-bred and imperfectly educated. The critics took special delight in dwelling upon the humble origin of the Cockneys, their lack of university training, and especially their dependence on translations for their knowledge of the classics.

142. When Leigh Hunt left prison. Hunt had been imprisoned for libel on the Prince Regent (1812).

146. Vauxhall. The Gardens were a favorite resort for Londoners early in the eighteenth century and remained popular for a long time. See Thackeray's Vanity Fair (chap. VI). The implication in the present passage is that the Cockney poet gets his ideas of nature from the immediate vicinity of London.

147. East of Temple-bar. That is, living in the City of London.

150. Young Sangrado. An allusion to Doctor Sangrado, in Le Sage's Gil Blas (1715).

ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

Tennyson's first poetical efforts, which appeared in Poems by Two Brothers (1827) attracted little critical attention. His prize-poem, Timbuctoo (1829) received the interesting notice here reprinted from the Athenaeum (p. 456) of July 22, 1829. Timbuctoo was printed in the Cambridge Chronicle (July 10, 1829); in the Prolusiones Academicae (1829); and several times in Cambridge Prize-Poems. The use of heroic metre in prize-poems was traditional; hence the award was an enviable tribute to the blank-verse of Timbuctoo.

Tennyson's success was emphasized by the remarkable series of reviews that greeted his earliest volumes of poems. The Poems, chiefly Lyrical (1830) were welcomed by Sir John Bowring in the Westminster Review, by Leigh Hunt in the Tatler, by Arthur Hallam in the Englishman's Magazine, and by John Wilson in Blackwood's Magazine. The Poems (1833) were reviewed by W.J. Fox in the Monthly Repository, and by John Stuart Mill in the Westminster Review. This array of names was indeed a tribute to the poet; but the unfavorable review, was, as usual, most significant. The article written by Lockhart for the Quarterly Rev., XLIX (81-97), has been characterized as "silly and brutal," but it was neither. Tennyson's fame is secure; we can at least be just to his early reviewer. It is true that the poet winced under the lash and that ten years elapsed before his next volume of collected poems appeared; but Canon Ainger is surely in error when he holds the Quarterly Review mainly responsible for this long silence. The rich measure of praise elsewhere bestowed upon the volume would leave us no alternative but the conclusion that Tennyson was childish enough to maintain his silence for a decade because Lockhart took liberties with his poems instead of joining the chorus of adulation. We know that there were other and stronger reasons for Tennyson's silence and we also know that the effect of Lockhart's article was decidedly salutary. When the next collection of Poems (1842) did appear, the shorter pieces ridiculed by Lockhart were omitted, and the derided passages in the longer poems were altered.

We may, without conscientious scruples, take Mr. Andrew Lang's advice, and enjoy a laugh over Lockhart's performance. Its mock appreciations are, perhaps, far-fetched at times; but there are enough effective passages to give zest to the article. It has been said in all seriousness that Lockhart failed to appreciate the beauty of most of Tennyson's lines, and that he confined his remarks to the most assailable passages. Surely, when a critic undertakes to write a mock-appreciation, he will not quote the best verses, to the detriment of his plan. The poet must see to it that his volume does not contain enough absurdities to form a sufficient basis for such an article. There is a striking contrast to the humor of Lockhart in the little-known review of the same volume by the Literary Gazette, 1833, pp. (772-774). The latter seized upon some crudities that had escaped the Quarterly's notice, and, with characteristic brutality, decided that the poet was insane and needed a low diet and a cell.

Although the reception accorded to Poems (1842) was generally favorable, the publication of The Princess in 1847 afforded the critics another opportunity to lament Tennyson's inequalities. The spirit of the review of The Princess here reprinted from the Literary Gazette of August 8, 1848, is practically identical with that of the Athenaeum on January 6, 1848, but specifies more clearly the critic's objections to the medley. It is noteworthy that Lord Tennyson made extensive changes in subsequent editions of The Princess, but left unaltered all of the passages to which the Literary Gazette took exception. The beautiful threnody In Memoriam (1850) and Tennyson's elevation to the laureateship in the same year established his position as the leading poet of the time; but the appearance of Maud in 1856 proved to be a temporary check to his popularity. A few personal friends admired it and praised its fine lyrics; but as a dramatic narrative it failed to please the reviews. The most interesting of the critiques (unfortunately too long to be reprinted here) appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, XLI (311-321), of September, 1855,—a forcible, well-written article, which, incidentally, shows how much the magazine had improved in respectability since the days of the lampooners of Byron, Shelley, and Keats. The authorship of the article has not been disclosed, but we know that W.E. Aytoun asked permission of the proprietor to review Tennyson's Maud. (See Mrs. Oliphant's William Blackwood and his Sons.) The publication of the Idylls of the King (1859), turned the tide more strongly than before in Tennyson's favor, and subsequent fault-finding on the part of the critics was confined largely to his dramas.

153. Catullus. See Catullus, II and III—(Passer, deliciae meae puellae, and Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque).

153. [Greek: Eithe lyre, k. t. l.] Usually found in the remains of Alcaeus. Thomas Moore translates it with his Odes of Anacreon (LXXVII), beginning "Would that I were a tuneful lyre," etc. Lockhart proceeds to ridicule Tennyson for wishing to be a river, which is not what the quoted lines state. Nor does Tennyson "ambition a bolder metamorphosis" than his predecessors. Anacreon (Ode XXII) wishes to be a stream, as well as a mirror, a robe, a pair of sandals and sundry other articles. See Moore's interesting note.

155. Non omnis moriar. Horace, Odes, III, 30, 6.

156. Tongues in trees, etc. Shakespeare's As You Like It, II, 1, 17.

157. Aristaeus. A minor Grecian divinity, worshipped as the first to introduce the culture of bees.

164. Dionysius Periegetes. Author of [Greek: periegesis tes ges], a description of the earth in hexameters, usually published with the scholia of Eustathius and the Latin paraphrases of Avienus and Priscian. For the account of AEthiopia, see also Pausanias, I, 33, 4.

167. The Rovers. The Rovers was a parody on the German drama of the day, published in the Anti-Jacobin (1798) and written by Frere, Canning and others. It is reprinted in Charles Edmund's Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin. The chorus of conspirators is at the end of Act IV.

169. The Groves of Blarney. An old Irish song. A version may be seen in the Antiquary, I, p. 199. The quotation by Lockhart differs somewhat from the corresponding stanza of the cited version.

170. Corporal Trim. In Sterne's Tristram Shandy.

173. Christopher North. John Wilson, of Blackwood's Magazine.

ROBERT BROWNING

The reviews of Browning's poems are singularly uninteresting from a historical standpoint. There is usually a protest against the obscurity of the poetry and a plea that the author should make better use of his manifest genius. For details concerning these reviews, see the bibliography of Browning in Nicoll and Wise's Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century. The list there given is extensive, but does not include several of the reviews mentioned below.

The early poems were so abstruse that the critics were unable to make sport of them as they did in the case of Wordsworth, Byron, Tennyson, and the rest; and when Browning finally deigned to write within range of the average human intellect, that particular style of reviewing had lost favor. His earliest publication, Pauline (1832) was well received by W.J. Fox in Monthly Repository, and in the Athenaeum. Tait's Edinburgh Magazine called it a "piece of pure bewilderment." See also the brief notice in the Literary Gazette, 1833, p. 183. Paracelsus (1835) had a similar experience; the reprint from the Athenaeum, 1835, p. 640, is fairly characteristic of the rest, among which are the articles in the Monthly Repository, 1835, p. 716; the Christian Remembrancer, XX, p. 346, and the reviews written by John Forster for the Examiner, 1835, p. 563, and the New Monthly Magazine, XLVI (289-308).

Neither the favorable review of Sordello (1840) in the Monthly Rev., 1840, II, p. 149, nor the partly appreciative article in the Athenaeum, 1840, p. 431, seems to warrant the well-known anecdotes relating the difficulties of Douglas Jerrold and Tennyson in attempting to understand that poem. The Athenaeum gave the poet sound advice, especially in regard to the intentional obscurity of his meaning. That this admonition was futile may be gathered from the Saturday Review's article (I, p. 69) on Men and Women (1855) published fifteen years after Sordello. The critic reverted to the earlier style, and produced one of the most readable reviews of Browning. Whatever may be the final verdict yet to be passed upon Browning's poetic achievement, the fact remains that the contemporary reviews from first to last deplored in his work a deliberate obscurity which was wholly unwarranted and which precluded the universal appeal that is essential to a poet's greatness.