Ilya. RIDOLFO also meets with his deserts, in an effective but rather melodramatic scene. Of course, in a fantastic drama like this, probability can be outraged with impunity; but it does tax our indulgence to the utmost to listen to such unlikely language as this, addressed by a rude wooer to a countrywoman in an Alpine valley: "Nay, fair one, fly not, for thou canst not be A Daphne if I follow; better, too, Live like a woman, warm with living blood, Than a cold tree beneath the unpitying sky. 'Tis vain, I tell thee-then, Apollo-like, But more successful than the god-I chase Thy fruitless flight!"—p. 66. 66 Persian, by his friend, George Maxwell Batten, which, we regret, we have not space to introduce. They are both very beautiful, and make us join with Mr. Scott in lamenting the premature death of one who had evidently such taste and capacity for the illustration and translation of oriental poetry. We regret that the author of "Lelio" has thought proper to publish " HERVOR," the second poem in his volume. Jokes which have neither wit nor originality to recommend them, about "Chisholm Anstey's Speeches," and Joseph Hume's head, and illustrations drawn from the Duke of York's column in Regent-street, and the "Jack Robinson" of schoolboys (vide p. 104), seem very much out of place after the dignity, elevaIf Mr. tion, and pathos of "LELIO." Scott had sent us "HERVOR" in MS. we, perhaps, might have relished it as an unpretending squib; but, why publish it? You are capable of better things, Mr. Scott, so "no more of that, an' thou lovest us." "Poems, Legendary and Histori cal,"* form the next group in our Summer garland. They are remarkable, at least, for the sort of literary partnership to which they owe their birth— an arrangement which is less common and much less successful in our time than in "the brave days of old," when Beaumont and Fletcher, those "two noble kinsmen" (by the consanguity of kindred genius), merely carried to a greater and more successful issue a practice common among their cotemporaries, and which the greatest of them all did not think it beneath him to adopt. It is wonderful to think how these old but glorious poets-we mean the entire constellation of dramatists, from the morning-star of Marlow, flashing and glittering in the unoccupied sky, a portent and a prophecy, to the mild vesper light with which it faded away with Shirley—it is a wonder, we say, what a uniformity of richness and vigour characterised all those writers. With the exception of one great luminary, in whose supreme effulgence they were for a time entirely lost, and by whose light they are now only descried by many-with that ex Poems, Legendary and Historical." By Edward A. Freeman, M.A., late Fellow, and the Rev. George W. Cox, S.C.L., Scholar of Trinity College, Oxford. London: Longman and Co. ception, it would be difficult, supposing many of their plays to have been pub. lished anonymously, to assign them to their proper authors. How separate Dekkar from Webster, Peele from Greene, Marlow from Chapman? How, in the plays which several of these writers wrote conjointly, give each his peculiar share? Even with Shakspeare himself this difficulty has been felt. Critics have fought, as only rival critics can fight, as to what portions of "Pericles," "Titus Andronicus," and "The Two Noble Kinsmen," were written by the great master, and what by an inferior hand. It is not easy satisfactorily to account for the decadence of this practice, once so rich in glorious and immortal results. Perhaps it was owing to the want of mere personal vanity or literary lionism that characterised these old giants; or, perhaps, they looked on dramatic authorship as a mere profession, and troubled their heads no more about getting credit for their separate contributions to whatever work was required in the market, than Messrs. Barnwell and Cresswell, or Adolphus and Ellis, do for their distinct shares in their useful reports. But, whatever the cause, the gentlemen of the long robe are the only persons who successfully and profitably keep alive this friendly coalition abandoned by the gentlemen of the sock and buskin-the tragic drama of the law superseding the legitimate drama of the stage. With the modern poets, the joint production of any elaborate work has been seldom attempted. In shorter poems, and humorous squibs, more instances occur. Southey and Coleridge united their rythmical forces to effect "The Fall of Robespierre," and more successfully, to extend "The Devil's Walk," while James and Horace Smith will go down together to posterity with their "rejected addresses," addresses which posterity will not reject. As it is with kindred genius, so is it with kindred dulness or mediocrity. Sternhold and Hopkins may be the representatives of the one class, Messrs. Freeman and Cox of the other. Their large and elegant volume, so well printed, so correctly written, so instructive as a graceful commentary on the classical and historical works which seem to have suggested the materials of their ballads, in the same way that Lockhart or Macaulay seem to have supplied the us. former, is a positive embarrassment to As skilfully versified narratives, founded on picturesque or striking incident, Grecian, Hispano- Moorish, or Saxon history, they will be welcome to the more cultivated class of students in those several departments; but as BALLADS, we fear it will be a long time before they stir the heart of any Sir Philip Sidney of our time, "as with the sound of a trumpet." What recalled to our mind the ancient dramatic partnerships, was the level uniformity, and somewhat prosaic similarity, to which both the writers have reached. The poems of each certainly require the initial letters that are appended to their contributions, without which it would be impossible for those who feel an interest in the subject, to be satisfied of their identity. The reason seems to be that neither of the gentleman are POETS, in any high sense of the term; they are men of learning and taste, with a talent for correct and harmonious, if somewhat monotonous versification, acquirements and faculties sufficient to ensure enjoyment, obtain respect, but not to win immortality. It is difficult to find any passage s esufficiently brief or striking for quotation; but in justice to our authors, we must give one. Perhaps the commencement of the following Saxon ballad is as good a choice as we could make; it is by Mr. Freeman: "WALTHEOF AT YORK. I saw this day, o'er Humber's flood, King Sweyn hath sent to rescue us, A goodly host and brave, And the decks were thick with mighty men, All armed to set us free. I ween the host, on England's coast, Earl Waltheof, haste amain, Our men are flocking to the strand, And send thy bodes amain, And round the castle wall, And trembles every hour, As the shout of freedom louder swells To battle follow thee; And Northumberland is free. The Bastard still in Winchester A little space may reign, But York hath owned her lawful lord, Of the old and kingly strain," &c., &c. This is open and advised speaking, beyond all question, which, if historically true, ought certainly to have attracted the notice of the Norman attorneygeneral of that day. When we state, however, that there are about five hundred lines following those we have quoted, it may account for that eminent functionary not having filed a criminal information. * "Poems, by W. C. Bennett,' are entitled to a very honourable place in our cluster of wild flowers; indeed if this were not a monster bouquet (to suit the prevailing diseased taste for monsters of all sorts, there being monster exhibitions, monster houses, of glass as well as otherwise, monster balloons, monster telescopes, monster microscopes, and last of all, monster table-cloths), this book would supply a sufficient quantity of these "earliest offerings of the spring." The return of that beautiful season, so full of present delight and future hope, that time when "After the slumber of the year, The woodland violets re-appear," is its perpetually recurring theme and inspiration. That a genuinely poetic nature and temperament break out in these utterances, must be freely granted to Mr. Bennett. No affectation would lead a writer to those perpe tual repetitions those ever-recurring praises of the common sights and sounds of nature, things which, to ordinary minds, are seen without wonder, and felt without enjoyment, but which are beautifully-enfolded mysteries and never-dying ravishment to the poet's senses. The poet praises, because he loves; and if he have "the faculty divine," he sings, because he would make other hearts feel the beauty that so delights his own. We speak of Mr. Bennett's poetical nature, not of his poetical works. As there are poets "Who have never penned Their inspiration-- so there are poets who have penned their semi-inspirations too frequently, and of this latter class is Mr. Bennett. His poetry is the reverse of Tennyson's line "You cannot see the grass for flowers "as the latter are choked and hid beneath the rank vegetation of verbiage that surrounds them. Diffuseness is the curse of modern literature; bad enough when met in the awful shape of a three-volumed novel, or a tale in twenty monthly parts; but even far worse, in what should be the concentrated essence of thought, feeling, and harmony-a lyric. In our modern songs the "linked sweetness" is, alas! too "long drawn out." Instead of the rich, valuable, imperishable ore of an earlier day, we have the gossamer, attenuated gold leaf, which shines for a moment and is seen no more. Hear what a true critic says of a true lyrist, Walter Savage Landor of Percy Bysshe Shelley. "I would rather," he says, "have written his "Music, when soft voices die,' than all Beaumont and Fletcher ever wrote, together with all their cotemporaries, excepting Shakspeare."† This may be exaggeration, but the poem referred to contains just eight lines! Into how many would most of our living versifiers have diluted them? Into what innumerable, small, pretentious, shining trinkets would they have broken up this poetical Kooh-i-noor, this unrivalled mountain of light? Poems. By W. C. Bennett. London: Chapman and Hall. VOL. XXXVIII.—NO. CCXXIII. D Mr. Bennett's poems, beside the defect of diffuseness, have others that may not be so obvious to the general reader. He too often seems to sing, not from the direct inspiration of his theme, but from the treatment of the same subject by other writers. This is apparent in many of the poems. "The Dressmaker's Thrush," is but a weak paraphrase of Hood's ghastly "Song of the Shirt," the very keynote being the same in both. In his lines" To the Skylark," he not only has the temerity to recall to mind Shelley's immortal" Ode,” but absolutely to adopt, without acknowledgment, some of its most striking figures. Thus, for Shelley's "Scorner of the ground," we have "Spurner of the earth's annoy," and for his " Singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest," the refrain of every verse of Mr. Bennett, "Soar and sing." In "An Autumn Conceit in Greenwich Park," Keats is laid under contribution. What is "Sad sobber through September, Perchance thou dost remember The bursting of the rustling leaf in April's tearful time," but a different reading or echo of Keats' "In a drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy tree; Thy branches ne'er remember Their green felicity," &c. When Mr. Bennett speaks for himself he speaks well, and perhaps best of all in the sonnet form. To poets of his discursive nature, it is all the bettter "To be bound, Within the sonnet's scanty plot of ground." Here is one to the memory of Adonais: 66 SONNET TO KEATS. "O NIGHTINGALE, thou wert for golden Junes, Not for the gusts of March! Oh, not for strife With wind and tempest was thy summer life, Mate of the sultry grasshopper, whose tunes Of ecstacy leap faint up steaming noons, Keen in their gladness as the shrilling fife; With smiles not sighs thy days should have been rife With quiet, calm as sleep's 'neath harvest moons; Thee, nature fashioned like the belted bee, Sunned in the gladness that thou camest to give!"-p. 98. Or this well-deserved tribute to Leigh Hunt, marred though it be by ungraceful elisions :— SONNET TO LEIGH HUNT. 'Spring flowers-spring flowers'—all April's in the cry; Not the dim April of the dull grey street, But she of showers and sunbursts whom we meet On dewy field-paths, ere the daisy's dry, And breezy hill-sides when the morning's high. 'Spring flowers- spring flowers'-the very cry is sweet With violets and the airs that stay the feet, The showery fragrance of the sweet-briar nigh; Yet all and more than in that cry is found, Rises before us with thy pleasant name, LEIGH HUNT; with the dear gladness of the sound, Into my close room all the country came; Deep lanes and meadow-streams rose with the word, Aud through the hush of woods, the cuckoo's call I heard."--p. 156. Mr. Bennett is fond of the refrain or burden line, but is singularly unfortunate in the selection. Who on earth could read a number of Stanzas each concluding with "My box of mignionette "-p. 51, or this, of which the following is a specimen : "Wan brightener of the fading year, Rough teller of the winter near, without laughing? On the whole, the two little poems we are about quoting please us better than anything else in the volume; and next to these some of the graceful little "Epitaphs for Infants." "THE SEASONS. A BLUE-EYED child that sits amid the noon, O'erhung with a laburnum's drooping sprays; Singing her little songs, while softly round Along the grass the chequered sunshine plays. "All beauty that is throned in womanhood, Pacing a summer garden's fountained walks; That stoops to smooth a glossy spaniel down, To hide her flushing cheek from one who talks. "A happy mother with her fair-faced girls, In whose sweet spring again her youth she sees, With shout, and dance, and laugh, and bound, and song, Stripping an autumn orchard's laden trees. "An aged woman in a wintry room; Frost on the pane-without, the whirling snow; Reading old letters of her far off youth, Of pleasures past and griefs of long ago."-p. 15. The lime is a favourite tree of Mr. Bennett's, as it deserves to be. He has several poems to its praise. One of them in this metre, the last line being kept up all through as a refrain: "Pleasant is its sight to me, That lime before my window."-p. 202. We do not know how it is, but we never can read this poem without humming it to the air of "The Rakes of Mallow," a combination rather injurious to its serious effect. The following is fortunately not so suggestive. With it we shall take leave of Mr. Bennett, hoping and certain of meeting him soon again. "Lime-golden lime! Yes-thou in thought shalt come when gloomy gusts are shrilling Along the wan white snows in winter's hueless time, The chill and pallid day with autumn glory filling: Lime-golden lime."-p. 103. a "The Children of Nature: Poem," is a small, but interesting publication; unpretending and modest in its external appearance, and pub. lished anonymously. It is a modern Idyl, with much of the pastoral beauty of older specimens, but having allusions to philosophical and religious questions specially appertaining to the passing century. In both respects it reminds us occasionally of "Rosalind and Helen;" a resemblance which seems more than accidental, from the names of two of the characters, "Rosina" and Helen" being almost identically the same; while the frank avowals of Ernest sound very like the free sentiments of "Lionel" in Shelley's poem. The scene is laid principally in the county of Wicklow, and some very pleasing, if not accurate, descriptions of its romantic scenery are given, which contrast well with the author's reminiscences of Switzerland and Germany. In the following lines several scenes, well known to many of our readers, are introduced; but the pronunciation given to the name of the most famous locality mentioned, not being "racy of the soil," betrays the secret, that the author is not a genuine native. "See how yon yellow moonbeams play Without stopping to object to the adjective "ghastlier," which is quite inappropriate to the place, what, we venture to ask, would King O'Toole or St. Kevin say to this modern mispronunciation of the name of their city of the Seven Churches. It would, we Edinburgh: T. Constable, Printer to her |