10 NOVEMBER 1855, Page 15

BAILEY'S zrzerrc:* As, after a reasonable expenditure of patience and

effort, we do not understand The Mystic, we shall not pretend to give any ac- count of it, or to pass any judgment upon it beyond what is in- volved in 'this statement of fact. ,,And when we say that we do not understand it, we do not mean'that its purpose merely is ob- scurely indicated, its general plan confused a .passage here and there of doubtful meaning or relevance; but thatpurpose, plan, and detail, are alike without meaning to our mind. The words are for the most part English ; the measure is a halting blank verse ; the grammatical constreotion approximates to the usages of our own tongue. Beyond •this, -we have-a vague notion that the poem is intended to shadow forth the passage of a soul through many existences ; and there are lines occasionally which, apart from their context, we might probably attach a •definite meaning to. This, as we said, is not intended for criticism—for the first condi- tion of criticism is to place oneself on the author's standing- point, and this we are unable to do except on the, supposition that the author is insane ; in which case, by persisting in attempting to understand his poem, we should before long find ourselves; but this we should consider too high a price. We have.no-objection to dive for Truth even to the lowest depths of her well:; but to seek her in the penetralia of Bedlam we decline. Such language may be treated as,petulant exaggeration : to those who think it so, we can only say that it is the exactest ,expresaion of the effect left upon onr mind by attempting to read The Mystic. The volume contains two other poems, " A Spiritual Legend," and "A Fairy Tale." 'The latter is a feeble rechauffd of scenery, incident, and persons, -which the genius of -true poets has often-in- vested with a charm that triumphs over unreality and disbelief. In Mr. Bailey's hands, the elfin grace and lightness are crashed and withered ; nothing'remains but poor versification and unreal imagery. "The Spiritual Legend' is more intelligible than "The Mystic." It is a Gnostic account of the creation ofthe world and the salvation of man. A great poet might perhaps "have treated the Gnostic machinery of mons, etcetera, with picturesque effect, and certainly would have managed to interweave into his frame- work some noble stuff of thought and imagination, if he had by cruel destiny been tempted to engage his genius in such an at- tempt. A student of human systems of cosmogony and morale, an amateur of the delusions which men of all ages have passed upon themselves for profound truths, may find in the Gnostic schemes ample scope for ingenuity and reflection. What Mr. Bailey has done .seems to us to smack neither of poetry nor phi- losophy. We speak with hesitation, because even there the ele- ment of no-meaning preponderates, and "true no-meaning puzzles more than wit." But the greater part of the poem is occupied with lists of mountains, rivers, Islands and lakes, deserts, plains, plants, fruit-trees, foreste, iowers, fountains, caverns, me- tals and minerals, fishes, reptiles, birds, insects, animals. Then man is created, and corresponding lists of cities, religions, and philosophies follow; till at last Christ 'comes, and does something or other by his death, which our theologic lore is inadequate to decipher—something of course gnostical, and therefore consider- ably unintelligible to the modern mind. Let not our readers sup- pose that in talking of lists we are using a contemptuous expression for attempts, at description. -They are lists of names, some with and some without qualitative additions; and are fashioned von the model of some of those magnificent passages of Milton and other epic .poets, in which, for a few lines together, they midi mainly for effect to the associations of their readers with prelpek names and to the mysterious power of sound. But fancy an,ep% made up of such passages as the following ! " The angels wrought the mountains, bulk by bulk, And chain by chain, serrated or escarped, Or coal-red burning from vulcanian forge; Hekla and Mouna Boa and Auvergne; Tuxtla ; and Tongarari, Southwards isled ; By savages beset, who deem when dead Their chieftain's eyes translated into stars; Andes and Himalaya's heavenly heights; Dhawalaghiri's pinnacle supreme, • The Mystic and other Poems. By Philip James Bailey, Author of " Pettus." Published by Chapman andMall.

And Chuquibamba's cone of roseate snow ; The hill Altaic named the almighty god, By Tchudic tribelets of the age of mounds; Higher than lark can soar, or falcon fly, Cloudlet or visible vapour scud it stands ; Oural and Balkan ; Alp and Alp pennine The magnet mountain which directeth earth, Brainlike, ensconced beneath her snowy crown ; Lupata's mighty spine ; Lamalmon's pass, O'ertoppLing; Abbe Yaret's glittenngyeak ; Ankobar's, Medra's ranges : all that ring The desert heart of slave-land, or thence stretch

To the Cape of Storms, and lion of the Bea ;

And Erebus antarctic, fenced with ice. Marmoreal mountains, by their radiant hand Polished to white perfection, so to prove A beauty beyond use, the angels piled ; Kailasa, and the retherial mount Meru, Dazzling the sun with gems ; Larnassus green ; And Athos, and Montserrat, holy heights, Mountains of monks, and hills of eremites; And that Kropakbian, wonder-mountain named, Without, within ; whose central fount obeys With an obsequious volume the moon's wane Or increment ; and that funereal spur Of dark black marble that beglooms the air ; Or, walling earth, the spirit-haunted Kaf, With many a mythic marvel crowned of eld ; That crystal mount (cloud crested, once it stood In Western Tucuman) with bright reply Answering the solar messages of light As equal equal ; deep below its base, O'erarched a navigable river runs, Rumbling its rock-pent breakers, white with wrath ; Or where, mid central isthmus (on each hand Pacific and Atlantic tides) is built Coy Iximaya and the precipitous gates Of that recondite capital, haply doomed To vanish into cloudland ; the idol rock Mackinaw vaunts, where red braves, worshiping, Prophetic murmurs of oracular shell, Shnned in its ark, hearkened ; and holy Tor In many a land to deity devote ; Divine Alborz, the holy mountain named, Where, nunlike, the Simorgh, all-wise, abode, Moon-peaked ; or mount oracular of the gods, Olympus blest ; and either sacred Ide ; In that bright isle where Rama reigned, the peak Whereon the print of Bouddha's foot (esteemed

The last of gods) or Adam's, first of men,

Hallows the land to pilgrims of all creeds ; And thee dread Sakhrat, pendent once in air, Now fixed ; once soft as heart of man to grasp Prophetic ; 'neath whose saturated roots All fountains rise; plomb underneath the new City of God ; upon whose crest shall stand The stern archangel when with judgment-trump He hails the generations of our race, Those living, those whom hollow Hades holds ; All these and countless more the angels wrought, While dear they were to God and kind to earth."

The poem consists of these lists of names, except when it be-

comes simply unintelligible ; as, for instance— "Thus earth, embraced of heaven, and core of space,

Was plenisbed, furnished, finished ; and that all Both reasons and results of things might see Of those creative, arbitrative now High in the unconditioned infinite, God set the crowned and dominant laws of life, In everlasting senate there to wield The jurisdiction of the universe ; Impersonate yet abstract; and from the first, Fixed in the super-solar skies, to all Existence as exemplars;—being, cause, Substance, size, quality, action, passion, mode, Form, order, change, and harmony, and rest ; Duration, timeous and interne, and space ; Motion, development, vital energy ; Will, intellect, perception, various sense; The bounded and the infinite. Progress, there, Majestic compensation, royal right,

Affection, instinct, reason, virtue, bliss;

Tall-sceptred law, and loin-girt liberty ; For as defect is, so is freedom ; fate ; Perfection pure and death-enduring life; The purgatorial strife, love-closed ; the war Whose end is Heaven's inviolable peace ; All summed, self-seen and sanctified, in soul, Whose union with the unity divine Creator and created conciliates, Concluding all things in its boundless curve.

Night, Nature's rule, and great exception, light, Prone gravity, and vast inertia grown One with her seat; attraction, with the smile Fadeless ; repulse, death-destined; ill and good, Arch-gerents of God's throne, surrounded all."

We should not have given space for either these extracts or a word of comment on this monstrous abortion called a volume of poems, but for the spurious reputation Mr. Bailey acquired by the publication of Festus. The case is altogether one of the most striking instances of the mischief that literary men may do by allowing their good-nature to dictate their judgments of books. Mr. Bailey had a right to consider Festus a great poem by the verdict of the most eminent literary men of the time. Tennyson and Bulwer wrote him letters of rapturous compliment, and his second edition came out garnished with as many recommendatory notices from men of note as a corn-cutter's orquack doctor's advertise- ment. What could the deluded young man do better than cultivate the qualities which won applause from those whose applause is fame P He did so, and in his two succeeding volumes has descended lower and lower into the abyss of nonsense and bombast, gradually losing the lyrical power which flashed out here and there from the dreary talk of Festus, and now writing page after page of gibbering drivel, from which no gleam of sense can be elicited by the most patient and instructed intellect—no picture, no thought, no feeling—no- thing but a sounding flood of words, such as a maniac who had in his sane days read poetry would howl to himself, making night hideous, and sending the owls silent and shuddering to their cran- nies. And while this melancholy case ought to be a lasting warn- ing to persons of eminence against indiscriminate laudation, let it be also a warning to those numerous young persons, not of emi- nence, who have taken the first step on the descent at the bottom. of which poor Mr. Bailey lies weltering in his own words. Let the authors of Balder, of Night and the Soul, of Edenor, pause before nonsense has become automatic with them ; and if they will write, let them remember that words are the representatives of thoughts, thoughts the representatives of things, and that sen- tences which yield to no analysis the smallest residuum of mean- ing will not constitute human speech, much less poems, which are the consummate flower of human speech.