We are disposed, moreover, to quarrel with the affected names which he has prefixed to several of his cantos. It would certainly be easy to substitute for 'Beulah,' Sahara,' and 'the "Koh-i-nohr,' titles more akin to familiar associations. 6 Reverting to our introductory observations, our reader will not fail to detect the secret of Mr. Patmore's success in the poetical treatment of modern life. The picture with which he has presented us is not a caricature of the accidents belonging to modern society. Such accidents find their due place, but no more, in his verse; and they are treated with that skill which indicates, by a touch, the latent poetry of which nothing, except moral evil, is wholly deprived. But if the conventionalities of the day admit of being thus introduced, and laid aside, it is because our interest is riveted, throughout the bulk of the poem, by those moral relations and affections which belong to no age and no place in particular, and into the true character of which Mr. Patmore evinces so profound an insight. He appreciates the dignity of the social ties, and thus treading upon firm, unyielding ground, he can afford to sport with the lighter side of his theme. His philosophy of human life claims, as he tells us, no novelty; if it did, it could be little more than the last piece of charlatanism brought up by that great wheel which is ever replacing detected with forgotten quackeries. But truths in themselves not new, become new when they have been forgotten or petrified into truisms. The fancy sometimes acquires a daintiness which loses the fine in the superfine, and can only condescend to touch the honest realities of nature through the intervention of a white kid glove. Hence comes the sentimental school of versifiers, by whom Love is treated as if we lived in a moonlight world, and were too delicate to bear sunshine. The converse evil has yet more fatally debased literature at many periods. We allude to that grosser school which, under the guise of celebrating the passions, sings in reality the triumph of animal instincts thinly veiled. How many a passage in modern verse, if tried in a crucible sufficiently potent, would leave behind a residuum as earthy as the worst passages of Catullus and. Ovid! Such writers have yet to learn that there subsists a humanity which is not clay; and that man was not endowed with reason and free will in order that the former might be the instrument of the appetites, and the latter their dupe and their slave. They need to know that passion, in proportion as it is truly human, is a fire pure as snow itself; that it is lighted from above, if fed in part from below; and that its mere material fuel is transformed as it is consumed. The gnomes of the world poetic are more dangerous than the sylphs; but the cause of their error is the same. They have missed the true philosophy of man. From these blemishes Mr. Patmore's work is entirely free; his Honoria is the Castara of the nineteenth century; her unsullied purity is heightened by the strain of affectionate tenderness pervading the poem; but she attains the utmost refinement without effort and without affectation. In its manly and healthy cheer, the Angel in the House' is an effectual protest against the morbid poetry of the age, as, in its serenity, it dissents from that spasmodic school' which delights in jerks and jolts, and tolerates no music that has not a dash of discord in it. Another attribute of Mr. Patmore's style seems to us yet more remarkable than his descriptive skill. His habit of justly balanced observation and reflection is constantly breaking forth in couplets of quaint and sententious subtlety, thus Or again 'How wise in all she ought to know, How ignorant of all beside!' 'Love in tears too noble is For pity, save of Love in smiles.' Sometimes it is mixed with pathos, as in the description of a disappointment Or again 'His fondness comes about his heart, As milk comes when the babe is dead.' Through passionate duty love flames higher, At other times it is mixed with irony, as 'How able her persuasions are To prove, her reasons to persuade.' In the first edition of the poem this reflective vein presented itself in the more salient form of poetical aphorisms, under the name of The Sentences,' appended to the descriptive passages. These more didactic pieces of philosophy seemed to us the least philosophical part of the book. Poetry refuses to take up more of philosophy than it can hold in solution; all mixtures less perfect cloud and discolour her clear element; and least of all can we be satisfied with the rough incrustation on the chalice or the sediment that lies at the bottom. The present edition is much improved by the rejection of these passages, and would, we think, be further improved by the rejection of some of them which have been allowed to remain in an altered form. As an instance, we might refer to page 227., in which four lines, entitled A Word to the Wise,' express a sentiment already embodied with far more of simplicity and power in other parts of the poem. An analogous fault might perhaps be found with the degree to which the spirit of analysis is occasionally carried. Thus in Canto 1. Book 2., the lovers manage to be at cross purposes just when the reader expects them to be happy, and is prepared to be happy with them. In the following lines a happier method is adopted; and the warfare against both a fantastic and a materialist philosophy is not the less successful for assuming a playful, not a dogmatic form. The fable is as clearly cut as a cameo, and might find its place in the Greek Anthology. THE KITES. I saw three Cupids (so I dreamed), Who made three kites, on which were drawn, In letters that like roses gleamed, 66 Plato," The boy who held by Plato tried His airy venture first; all sail, It heavenward rushed, till scarce descried, That pride of spirit thus should fall, To his kite link'd a lump of earth, Last, my disciple freighted his With a long streamer made of flowers, Rose in the sun and flew for hours.' 6 The Second Part of the Angel in the House,' entitled 'The 'Espousals,' is not less successful than the first in its illustration of everyday things. The Prologue with which it opens is particularly happily touched, more so, we should say, than the Epilogue at the conclusion of Part I. The tale has few incidents; but it is so well told that the reader forgets to look for them. He is contented with watching the skill with which the lover, happy enough to be unboundedly forbearing, pacifies 'Aunt Maude,' who has made up her mind to dislike the match; accompanies him to the County Ball' and the Regatta;' reads his love-letters;' and sympathises with various smaller troubles, some of which are described with much humour. To the latter class belongs the adventure narrated in the canto called 'The 'Friends.' The lover reproaches himself bitterly with having been false to an old friend, formerly his second self, whose un 6 answered letter he accidentally lights upon as it lies in perilous rivalry with a gay blue sash.' The friend soon after arrives; and it turns out that he too has fallen in love, and been no less false to friendship than the penitent himself. Forgiveness is easy under such circumstances, and is interchanged with a laugh. We have next the Wedding,' the adieus, and an accidental meeting of the bride and bridegroom with the sailor-cousin, discarded in Part I. but who has since been promoted, and who entertains his lost love and his rival on board his ship with so frank and manly a bearing, as to excite the gratitude of the former, and the half-envy of the latter. Out of incidents familiar as these the poem is made. This circumstance suggests to us a remark. Novels have been frequently regarded as serious rivals in our day to poetry, stepping as they do into the field of imaginative literature, but demanding from the reader a less sustained exercise of the attention. In the work before us, as in 'Aurora Leigh,' poetry has in turn crossed the border and made reprisals. Nothing can be more slight than the texture of these compositions; but they have a sort of novelty derived from the poetic form they give to well-known objects; and Mr. Patmore's style of versification is remarkable for the qualities of smoothness and refinement in which Mrs. Browning is so lamentably deficient. We trust, however, that he will not allow his poetic talent to degenerate into mannerism; and that if he cherishes the domestic interests and familiar incidents of life, he will not carry these predilections to excess. A chain cannot be kept from trailing, if it be drawn out to too great a length. Mr. Patmore thus describes the object of his poetic ambition: 'I, servant to the Truth in times When gaudy words are more than wit, The truth with truest phrase to fit, Am unsolicitous to earn Mock laurels.' Let him not fear then to be classed with modern mounte'banks of speech ;' for, to conclude with one of his own couplets, we too are 'Sure that the worthless oyster-heap ART. V.-Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox. Edited by Lord JOHN RUSSELL. Vol. IV. London: 1857. THE publication of the last volume of the Memorials and Correspondence of Mr. Fox, from the authentic materials edited by Lord John Russell, affords us an opportunity of reviewing our domestic history, in continuation of former articles which we have devoted to this and other recent works on the events of the period between the American War and the Peace of 1815. In a previous article, we stated fully the evidence collected from different sources, which proves conclusively that the resignation of Mr. Pitt and his colleagues in the beginning of 1801, was caused by the refusal of the King to consent to the measures proposed by the Minister for the relief of the Irish Catholics consequent upon the Union; which event had taken effect on the 1st of January in that year. The policy which dictated this step was so much in advance of the general intelligence of the country, that the true explanation of the grounds of resignation has been generally received with incredulity by the popular historians of the period. During a visit which Sir J. Mackintosh paid to Mr. Dundas in the summer of the same year, the latter remarked that his experience in public affairs had taught him to place little faith in historians. 'For instance,' he said, the motives which I and my colleagues have assigned 'for our resignation, drawn from the Popery question, no his'torian will believe; and, if any mentions it, he will treat it as a mere pretext to cover the real motive; and he will support his representation by very plausible arguments; yet nothing can be more true than that the reason we assigned was the real one.' This anticipation has doubtless been, to a great extent, verified by the event: the documentary evidence published has, however, now manifested the truth, and shown that the distrust which Dundas, like Sir Robert Walpole, entertained for the accounts of historians, is, so far as it rests on this case, unfounded. It is, in our opinion, difficult to exaggerate the loss which the nation sustained in the frustration of Mr. Pitt's intended measure of Irish policy, by the irrational resistance of the King. At that *Ed. Review, vol. ciii. p. 305. Life of Sir James Mackintosh, by his son, vol. i. p. 170. |