358 Barry Cornwall. necessarily bestow a great deal of attention to it, and regard it in the light of a craft. We hear much about heaven-born poets; but the phrase is an unlucky one, and ere now has led many a promising youth astray. It seems to be a popular idea that the composition of poetry differs from every other kind of known labour, in this respect, that it requires no study or cultivation, but flows from the inspired brain as naturally as water issues from a well. Never was there a greater fallacy. The art of poetry is of all others the most intricate and difficult, requiring constant attention, study, and practice, if a higher result is contemplated than the mere reputation of a versifier or an amateur. So is it with other kindred branches of art. Take two lads with the same natural turn for design, and the same ambition to be painters. Send one to an academy where he receives regular instruction, works hard, studies models, and applies his whole mind to the mastery of drawing and of colour; bind the other apprentice to some regular trade or profession, to which he must necessarily give the greater part of his attention, but allow him full scope and liberty in his leisure hours to indulge his natural propensities. What will be the result at the end of a couple of years? Why, that the first will be rapidly rising as an artist, whereas the second will at best be but a clever botcher. And so in music. If you doubt that, please attend a professional concert, and, after that, one given by amateurs; and unless your ears are as faulty or overgrown as those of King Midas, you will speedily acknowledge the truth of our proposition. We have heard more than one syren warbling at the pianoforte, who might have sung quite as well, or nearly so, as Grisi, provided she had received Grisi's musical education, and had practised as incessantly. But such performances can rarely, with truth, be characterised otherwise than as delightful skirling. In almost every regiment in the British service there is some one captain or lieutenant who has a decided turn for theatrials, and who can convulse an indul t audience at a garrison play, by his drolling in "Box and Cox,"" Pigs [March, and Wigs," or any other of the favourite military stock-pieces. But place the gallant defender of his country on the regular stage beside Buckstone, Lloyd, or Charles Matthews, and the difference is at once apparent. The habitual stiffness of Mars is at once perceptible beneath is it credible that eminence in poetry, the assumed garb of Momus. And which is the highest species of artmanifestation of the human intellect the most exalted as well as subtle -can be attained by intuition? Let us at once dismiss the idea. No man without devoting himself to it as an has ever gained eminence in poetry devoted themselves have failed, is no art. That thousands who have so proof whatever that our proposition is unsound. There may be an ambition far greater than the powerinclination may be mistaken for impulse-enthusiasm may be misconstrued into talent. In all arts, professions, undertakings, and callings, men are apt to form a false estimate both of their capacity and of their deed is the number of those who, at power of endurance; and small inthe close of a laborious life, have rewho do succeed have worked steadily alised their early dreams. But those onwards towards the point which they ment, and have never deviated from saw afar from the very commencetheir course, though they sometimes may have lingered on the way. So settled is our belief upon these points, that, in poetry, we are always chary of pronouncing a positive judgment mature effort. In the great majority upon an early, and it may be an imof cases, poems written by very young men afford no more than indications of genius, which possibly, if well directed and cultivated, may not be accepted with certainty as lead to happy results, but which canpromise for the future. Critics sometimes because they do not give adequate are accused of harshness, because critics have, in reality, if encouragement. That is hardly fair; they are conscientious, a grave duty to perform. Suppose that a critic receives a volume of verses exhibiting a certain amount of poetic sensibility, but without manifesting any thing like power-it is no kindness to the writer to exhort him to make another effort, or to persevere in a course for which he seems obviously unfitted. Is there anything rude, heartless, or unfriendly in advising him to exert his energies in some other direction, instead of following a will-o'-the-wisp which must necessarily lead him into the mire? On the other hand, even supposing the critic should be of opinion, that by indefatigable perseverance, and, as is often the case, by the sacrifice of immediate and substantial results which lie before him in the ordinary path of life, the poetical aspirant has a fair chance of attaining to honour and renown, he ought not, in our opinion, to be extravagant of his praise, or to stimulate too highly the conceit or self-esteem of youth, which is usually sufficiently developed. It is a serious matter to tell a young man, without equivocation or mental reservation of any kind, that he is a poet. Let a competent judge, or one who has the reputation of being so, express a positive and emphatic opinion to that effect, and the new competitor for the laurels, unless he is gifted with enormous powers of self-denial, or extreme Caledonian caution, will throw law, physic, or divinity to the dogs, and betake himself wholly to the manufacture of dactyls. Now dactyls -and the same remark applies to spondees, trochees, anaposts, and every other kind of rhythmical formation - are not articles of manufacture for which there is an extensive, constant, and remunerative demand: and as, in this working and overtaxed world of ours, food and raiment and lodging are things of paramount necessity, it really becomes a moral question whether any one is entitled, upon slight grounds, to advise an unfriended youth to forsake the common walks of industry, and expose himself to the privations and tortures which threw Chatterton into an early grave. As for buttering or belabouring a mere amateur who has a fortune at his back, we count that a matter of perfect indifference. Your rising young man, who ffects to be a poet, with a go rterly allowance, and cham Albany, has of course both friends and foes. If a Tory, the Whigs do their best or worst to put him down; if a Whig- which is a rare instance he receives no Tory applause, save in the columns of Maga, where he is sure of honourable notice, if he is really a man of mettle. But no amount either of puffing or rebuffing will either elevate or lower him permanently from the place which he is entitled to hold. Let him, by all means, go on versifying, whether for amusement or for fame. Such intellectual exercitation will in all probability keep him from worse occupations; and though it is possible that his books may not sell, he is positively doing good, and stimulating industry by giving employment to the printers; who, moreover, constitute no contemptible audience, as, from the nature of their function, they must necessarily peruse his lucubrations. We have known instances of men, who, having in the first instance directed their energies successfully towards the attainment of an honourable independence, have afterwards devoted themselves entirely to the pursuits of literature. Having won the great privilege of leisure, unembarrassed by the necessity of providing for the wants of each succeeding day, through unremitting taskwork, they have availed themselves of it to enter the domain of art; and as persons of this stamp are persevering by force of habit, economical of their time, and possessed of matured judgment, they are not unfrequently successful. Much, however, depends upon the age and previous occupation of the man ; because it is quite certain that a prolonged course of study in any one direction, is not favourable to a change. Others have tried to combine professional distinction with literary eminence, but in most instances they have failed. High success cannot be achieved by bifurcated ambition: one face of Janus bears no proportion to the other. But the course pursued by Mr Procter differs in some material respects from any other which we remember. Thousands of young men have published volumes of verse which have failed 1. Ei JW 22*ni arrini *NEW*ty chamber furnished with paramenta, in which he lay bined for many a year, and be now BANGER Vlore, sk, „ike a rescued prisonor from the Prutile, bearing evident marka of his long and dreary incartration. 13. Labove = the supernatu fa££ times a danger108 MOLINIZ Appended to his 고 tead of Thessaly21 VERY remarkable producDevs Is a Sketch, which wis pety, a point of merit, exet even the most fanatical fancer of rigtmares could attempt to vizate Tartarus; and the real admirers of Mr Procter were sincerely sorry that he should have committed himself by printing anything so ineally absurd. In the volume now before us, we find two dramatic sketches, Pandemonium, and The Temptation, which are, to say the least of them, though it is saying a great deal, quite as bad as Tartarus. The other dramatic scenes, which we now see for the first time, are harmless, but vapid, and deficient in point; so that, with all our regard for the author, we cannot do otherwise than fall back upon his earlier productions in estimating his poetical claims. Barry Cornwall, we must needs ncknowledge, was a much better poet than Bryan W. Procter, the successful legal practitioner. Pleased as we are to see the reappearance of our old friend under any shape or name, om satisfaction would have been much greater if the present beautifully illustrated volume had contained the favourites of our youth, instond of verses which have no great merit beyond being smooth and decorous, and which do not rise much above the level of compositions for ladies' albums, or of dramatic aconca vastly inferior to those which first established his reputation. It la true that we have here six of the old dramatic scenes, two of which, 75 Wag to Conquer and The Nevsky Hong, are perhaps the best pieces that he ever wrote; but we Misa and we are sorry for it, the Novice** N@ (which was a worthy val of Neand "newal Marsan When we say that Mr Procter has an originality of his own, we mean simply to imply that he did not, like many versifiers of the last generation, belong to a particular school, or imitate immediate models, at least in his happiest efforts. Tartarus perhaps never would have been written, had not Lord Byron published his Cain; nor should we have had Guges, but for the previous appearance of Beppo. These things, however, are of little consequence, for no writer, poetical or otherwise, can altogether escape the influence of cotemporaries. Besides, long ago, Tartarus has swallowed Gyges, and Las itself subsided, like a preposterous snapping-turtle, into the mud og obavion. But the best writings of Mr Procter show that he was an andent and diligent student of the aut drematists and poets of the ElizaAulan age, and we are certain that de ... assider it no mean praise de we exess our conviction that, nar that one instance, he has ISISARÁN has models. It is, of course, a much easier thing to write a single good dramatic scene than to construct a regular play; but the early dramatic scenes of Mr Procter are really remarkable, from this circumstance, that they contain in themselves, within a very small space, the whole essence of a drama. They are not fragmentary, or merely episodical. They are complete compositions; and, though not adapted to the stage, two of them which we have already mentioned-The Way to Conquer, and The Broken Heart-are preferable to the most elaborate efforts of either Ford or Massinger. These compositions may hereafter have a value of which the public are not yet aware. It is quite evident that, from divers causes, the reign of old lengthened explanatory tragedy is nearly over. Men will not sit to listen to long plays, and the vaunted virtue of five acts is now regarded as a vice. Dramatic entertainments, if they are to be continued as popular, must be shortened; and we really know of no author who has so well proved that this is possible as Mr Procter. We must yield, even in literary matters, to the spirit of the age, more especially in dramatic representation. "Cut it short!" is not only the cry from the galleries, but the universal feeling; and if, as Mr Procter has shown, the essence of a tragedy can be expressed, and the circumstances understood, within the limits of a single or a duplicate scene, it is possible that the histrionic art, now rapidly decaying, may revive. But beyond this Mr Procter has great merit. One of his dramatic scenes, which we have not yet hitherto noticed, but which we are glad to find included in the present volume, Lysander and Ione, strikes us as being far more beautiful than any of the compositions of Fletcher, although the echo of the "Faithful Shepherdess" may have called it into being. But what of that? The whole poetical life is little more than an echo, articulate or inarticulate; and, in our times, the voice of the present poet must always, more or less, remind us of tound of the past. Exception h been taken to poems, the sub ich are borrowed from th are revivals of the Greek mythology; and certainly it is not to be desired that our young versifiers should deluge the public with crambo borrowed from the choruses of Sophocles. The manner and style of the antique poetry is essentially different from that of our own, and therefore we have invariably discountenanced attempts towards the reproduction of the classical peculiarities in the English tongue. But to decry or broadly to prohibit the use of classical subjects, would be, to our thinking, a fanatical stretch of puritanism. So long as the present system of classical education is pursued-so long as the works of the old masters are made text-books at school and college- so long as a knowledge of Hellenic superstition and fable is recommended and required-we must expect that the early vivid impressions will not only linger on the mind, but manifest themselves in some shape or other, when the mind has attained to maturity. The voyage of the good ship Argo-the enchanted land of Colchis-the rape of Helen the siege of Troy-the woes of Dido-the old classic stories, interwoven as they are with legends of deities, nymphs, and demigods, still continue to exercise a wonderful charm and fascination; and to them, ever and anon, we must expect our poets to recur, as they wander through the fields of imagination. All that we can require is, that the poet shall not, when dealing with such subjects, desert his native and national manner, so as to appear before us as a cold parodist or imitator of the Greeks-that he shall not attempt the old classical metres, in which his attitudes must needs be as awkward as those of the melodramatic malefactor who dances a hornpipe in fetters-and, above all things, that he shall abstain from the introduction of heathen philosophy or ethics. If, in his modern costume of broadcloth, plush, or corduroy, he can successfully woo the Oreads or the Dryads, we see not upon what ground he can be debarred from following them, any more than from enlisting in the regiment of the Queen of Faery. Of course, as the risk is great and the pursuit is a very delicate one, he must expect to incur a vast amount of ridicule in case of failure, which, nine times out of ten, will be the result of the experiment; for nothing can be more preposterously absurd than the spectacle of Bottom the weaver snoring in the midst of the elves, with his asinine head recumbent on the knees of Titania. Mr Procter is one of the few who can walk gracefully, at times, on classic ground; and we consider this sketch, Lysander and Ione, as one of far more than ordinary merit. We are sorry that we cannot be so encomiastic in regard to his artsketches, of which this volume contains two, Michael Angelo, and Raffaelle and Fornarina. It is some time ago since the Germans set the fashion of selecting what they call "Art-Life" as the theme of song; and from Correggio and Salvator Rosa, down to Poussin and Rembrandt, there is hardly a brother of the brush of any renown who has not figured in some play or drama. Of course, when a situation is evolved or imagined, which in itself is fit for dramatic purposes, there can be no reason why painters, any more than other eminent personages, should be excluded. But we object altogether to the Teutonic method of dispensing with some great passion or emotion as the theme of a play, and substituting instead of such, the eidolon of some world-renowned artist, whose fame is assumed to be of itself sufficient to give interest to the composition. The value of a play lies in its conception and plot, not in empty parade of the resuscitated shadows of men of celebrity; nor is it possible to establish an extrinsic interest through the introduction of mere names, even though all the heroes of the earth, from Achilles to Well ington, were to be marshalled in phantom procession biopt in par few cases, the ipsa of witlata dr men of letters do not fuush ado quate material for diamati requisson tation Tha mare and have moved in the domains of thought and ima aduation not in the stirring fields of action, and then conversation, how ever asthetically interesting, is not of a kind suited to arouse enthusiasm when uttered in the form of blank verse upon the stage. If Mr Ruskin were to try his hands at "Turner, a Tragedy," we apprehend that the product would be nearly as bad as that mysterious manuscript poem, from which the late distinguished artist was in the habit of selecting mottoes for his pictures in the catalogues of the Royal Academy Exhibitions. The fact is, that, in Germany as among ourselves, dilettantism is very rampant. Men, whose original powers are of an extremely limited range-who have no invention, little energy, and still less ingenuity-try to establish a reputation for elegance, culture, and acumen, by talking and writing with vague fervour and simulated enthusiasm upon art and its principles-their discourse being all the while about as clear and intelligible as an alchemist's exposition of the formula of the grand arcanum. Mercurius Trismegistus himself was not more dreary, obscure, or empirical than are the bulk of our connoisseurs, who, nevertheless, do contrive, by dint of many words, to get themselves in some measure acknowledged as persons of extraordinary enlightenment. But criticism, especially on subjects relating to high art, is caviare to the million. Even the dupes who believe in the superior intelligence of men who spin interminable yarns about Van Eyck, Cimabue, Giotto, and the painters of the Byzantine period, take no real interest in their talk. A man may achieve notoriety without being either appreciated or understood: witness the great metaphysical writers, whose names are repeated reverentially by thousands who are utterly unable to comprehend the nature of their systems, or indeed to master the meaning of any one sentence that they ever wrote. In like manner, a fellow repolute on gaining credit as a scholiast may succeed, by unremittingly boring his audience with dissertations upon Plotinus, Anaxagoras, or Hegesinus, though, in reality, his sole knowledge of these defunct obscurities consists in the pronunciation of their names. Poets, however, and men of talent, though they may not belong to the first order, should be above such miserable affectation. Starvelings, |