BOOKS.

MRS. WEBSTER'S POEMS.*

'TILE noisy critic who has lately been telling us that Mr. Browning is no poet will probably deny the title to Mrs. Webster. She belongs to the same school of writers, though she has such very marked and distinctive excellences of her own that it would be wholly unjust to call her an imitator ; she has in particular the great merit which Mr. Browning seems, of late, at all events, to have deliberately cast away, the merit of a careful and melodious expression. But it is clear that she does not hold to the principle of "art for art's sake ;" she seeks to give utterance to the thoughts and feelings of the day, to its faiths and doubts, to the aspects under which life presents itself to its children ; and she finds verse to be the most serviceable and powerful form which this utterance can take. It was in protest against this same tendency that Jeffrey greeted Wordsworth's Excursion with the memorable words, "This will never do!" But the tendency was strong enough utterly to falsify the prediction. The poetry which distinctively belongs to this generation as its peculiar product—for there are other forms of poetry which are common to this, as to all ages—is certainly " philosophy in verse." Such philosophy has, of course, been written at other times, but the De Rerum Naturei of Lucretius is not characteristic of the great age of Latin poetry, nor is Pope's Essay on Man characteristic of the " Augustan " period of our own. And even in these the philosophy is not so much of the essence of the poem as it is now- a-days. Take away that element from what Mr. Tennyson has written, or Mr. Browning, or Mrs. Browning, or Mr. Matthew Arnold, and you have taken away the very substance. These poets do not so much choose metaphysical or ethical subjects for their poems, as give a poetical expression to metaphysical or ethical thought.

The plan of "Portraits" lends itself with especial readiness to this kind of writing. The volume is a series of soliloquies, in which a number of men and women, good and bad, utter their thoughts about themselves and about the world. The plan has the conspicuous advantage that an author is not hampered with the limitations from which he can scarcely set himself free when he speaks in propria persona; that he sets forth different attitudes of mind and phases of feeling with an unrestricted fullness and force. It has a disadvantage in the difficulty, we may almost say the impossibility, of giving to the various utterances a really dramatic variety. A sense of incongruity is produced when thoughts and feelings as wide apart as the poles are expressed in similar Ian- • Portrait:. By Augusta Webster. London and Cambridge: Macmillan. 1870.

guage, with the same peculiarities, we may almost say tricks, of style. Mrs. Webster struggles with the difficulty, and if she does not entirely overcome it, it is because that would be an achieve- ment which it would almost repire a Shakespeare's powers to accomplish.

The first two " Portraits" are classical subjects, "Medea " and "Circe." We like them, on the whole, less than any of the others. We can understand the fascination which such a theme as Medea would exercise on a mind familiar with what is one of the greatest conceptions of classical art. But Mrs. Webster, who has herself translated with no little skill the great drama of Euripides, must be perfectly aware how different her Medea is from the heroine of the Athenian dramatist. It was a great temptation to tell what was left untold of so wondrous a tale, but perhaps it would have been well to have resisted it. Nothing is more remarkable than the simplicity, the straightforwardness, so to speak, of the character of the classical Medea ; the complexities of motive, the intricate self-questionings which we find in the Medea of the " Portraits" is out of harmony not only with the original conception, but generally with the tone of Greek thought in such matters. Their women loved and hated, it may be struggled passionately against love and hatred, but they never doubted whether it was love or hatred to which they submitted or against which they rebelled. The dominant idea, too, of " Circe," the woman waiting for the worthy love which is to master her, is essentially modern ; but here, more perhaps than in the " Medea," there are passages of such force and beauty that we should have regretted to have had the poem excluded from any lack of conformity with classical models. Such are the lines wherein the goddess describes her own beauty :—

" 0 sunliko glory of pale glittering hairs,

Bright as the filmy wires my weavers take To make me golden gauzes ; 0 deep oyes, Darker and softer than the bluest dusk Of August violets, darker and deep Like crystal fathomless lakes in summer noons ; 0 sad sweet longing smile ; 0 lips that tempt My very self to kisses ; 0 round cheeks, Tenderly radiant with the oven flush Of pale smoothed coral ; perfect lovely face, Answering my gaze out from this ti

0C-088 pool ;

Wonder of glossy shoulders, chiselled limbs ; Should I be so your lover as I am,

Drinking an exquisite joy to watch you thus In all a hundred changes through the day, But that I love you for him till he comes, But that my beauty means his loving it?"

If we do not speak of what is the longest, and probably in the author's intention the principal poem of the volume, " A Cast- Away," it is not for any want of admiration for the truth and genuine purity of the manner in which the subject is treated, but because it must be studied as a whole,—because extracts, of which the justice is always doubtful or imperfect, would here be abso- lutely unjust. In obvious contrast to this poem, which is some- times terrible in its force, stands one which is the most delightful in the volume, and which indeed it would not be very easy to match elsewhere, "The Happiest Girl in the World." Here we have the thoughts of a newly-engaged maiden, questioning herself how she came to love, doubting whether her love is worthy of what seems to be the mightier love that called it forth, but feeling all the while a marvellous content and confidence. What could be prettier than these lines ?—

" The small green spikes of snowdrop in the spring Are there one morning ore you think of them ; Still we may tell what morning they pierced up: Since rosebuds stir and open stealthily, And every new-blown rose is a surprise ; Still we can date the day when ono unclosed But how can I tell when my love began?

Oh ! was it like the young pale twilight star That quietly breaks on the vacant sky, Is sudden there and perfect while you watch ; And, though you watch, you have not seen it dawn, The star that only waited and awoke."

Another fine poem, of a different kind, is "Tired." A man,

wearied of the conventionalities of the life about him, has sought something unconventional in the life below hint, has married a girl in whom he thought that he had found simplicity and free- dom from artificial restraint, and then discovers what a mistake he has made. She never had been unconventional, though her conventions had not been the same as his ; as lie says,- " She lived by rules How to be as her neighbours, though I, trained To my own different course, disco, tied it not (Mistaking other laws for lawlessness, Like raw and hasty travellers)."

And then he turns upon himself. Is lie not also conventional ? does be not exed from her certain manners and observances? is he not shocked when she fails in rendering them ? All this is admirably put. There is a real Shakespearian tone in the following lines, especially in those which we have italicized :—

,‘ Why what a score of small observances, Mere fashionable tricks, are to my life The butter on the bread, without which salve The bit's too coarse to swallow ; what a score Of other small observances and tricks, Worn out of fashion, or not yet come in, Reek worse than garlic to my pampered taste, Making the wholesomest food too difficult ! And that which in an ancient yesterday LVas but some .oreat man's humour is to me Duty by rote to-day."

We think that it would have been as well if the author had contented herself with working out this idea, which, indeed, she does admirably ; the passionate declamation in the latter part of the poem against the evils of the day, though not incongruous to the character of the speaker, detracts from the unity, and so from the force of the poem. There is not one of the " Portraits " on which we would not willingly dwell, but we must pass hastily on, though we cannot refrain from quoting the capital little epilogue in which " A Dilettante " defends his love of the beautiful:— "Selfish, you call mo ? callous? Hear a tale.

There was a little shallow brook that ran Between low banks, scarcely a child's leap wide, Feeding a foot or two of bordering grass, And, hero and there, some tufts of water flowers And creases, and tall sedge, rushes and reeds; And, where it bubbled past a poor man's cot, He and his household came and drank of it, And all the children loved it for its flowers, And counted it a playmate made for them : But, not far off, a sandy arid waste Where, when a winged seed rested, or a bird Would drop a grain in passing, and it grew, It presently must droop and die athirst, Spread its scorched silent leagues to the fierce sun : And once a learned man came by and saw, And ' Lo!' said he, what space for corn to grow, Could we send vivifying moistures here.

And look, this wanton misdirected brook Watering its useless weeds!' So had it turned, And made a channel for it through the waste : But its small waters could not feed that drought, And, in the wide unshadowed plain, it lagged, And shrank away, sucked upwards of the sun And downwards of the sands. So the new bed Lay dry, and dry the old ; and the parched reeds

Grew brown and dwinod, the stunted rushes drooped,

The creases could not root in that slacked soil, The blossoms and the sedges died away, The greenness shrivelled from the dusty banks, The children missed their playmate and the flowers, And thirsted in hot noon-tidos for the draught Grown over-precious now their mother wont A half-mile to the well to fill her pails ; And not two ears of corn the more were green."

And this charming landscape

For lo ! we, lying on this mossy knoll, Tasting the vivid musk of sheltering pines, And balm of odorous flowers and sweet warm air ; Feeling the uncadenced music of Blow leaves, And ripples in the brook athwart its atones, And birds that tall each other in the brakes With sudden questions and smooth long replies, The gossip of the incessant grasshoppers, And the contented hum of laden bees;

We, knowing (with the easy restful eye

That, whichsoever way it turns, is filled With unexacting beauty) this smooth sky, Blue with our English placid silvery blue, Mottled with little lazy clouds, this stretch Of dappled wealds and green and saffron slopes, And near us these gnarled elm-trunks barred with gold, And ruddy pine-bolls, where the slumbrous beams Have slipped through the translucent leafy net To break the shimmering dimness of the wood ; We who, like licensed truants from light tasks Which lightly can bo banished out of mind, Have all ourselves to give to idleness, Wore more unreasoning, if wo make moan Of miseries and toils and barrenness, Than if we Bitting at a feast told tales Of famines and for the pity of them starved."

In the last piece of the volume, "The Manuscript of St. Alexius," Mrs. Webster passes to new ground,—the struggles of the ascetic against nature, Alexius, only "son of Euphemianus, senator," feels himself called of the Lord to the religious life. His friends oppose, and he yields ; even when they find a wife for him, he flatters himself that the familiar beauty of a maiden whom he has known from childhood will not trouble him, thinking,— " My soul shall still be spared me, consecrate

Virgin to God But in the hour When all the rite was done, and the new bride Come to her home, I sitting half apart, My mother took her fondly by the hand And drew her, lagging timidly, to me, And spoke, 'Look up, my daughter, look on him ; Alexins, shall I tell you what I have guessed, How this girl loves you?' Then she raised her head A moment look and looked; and I grew white, And sank back sickly. For I suddenly Knew that I might know that which men call love."

So he flies, hiding himself in a chapel, where he hears his wife pray for him—a finely-wrought scene—and finally escaping over the sea.

There he wanders for years, visited by some thoughts of home, as when be kisses a weed that was on the hem of his wife's veil when he last saw her, but at last growing wholly callous. But with the love of man dies out the love of God :—

" My prayers were words

Like trite good-morrows when two gossips meet, And never look for answers."

He feels that he has need of " quickening pains ;" and so he goes back to his old home, being so broken and changed that he cannot be recognized. How he lives on, watching the old life of home, changed as it has been by his absence, his father grown stern and silent, his mother half childish, Claudia his wife developed into an exquisite womanly tenderness, and bears it all under the mastering sense of a higher duty, is described with great force. At last he dies, sending in his last hour for Pope Innocent, to whom he gives a scroll with the story of his life. The Pope sends for the three, and shows them the corpse as one they should know. Here is the end :—

" Then Innocent bade peace, and read the scroll : Euphemianus with his face bid down Between his hands, listened and never stirred ; And Claudia listened, weeping silently; But Aglaia whispered always, 'Is it true ? Is it the tale of Lazarus, or my boy ? I cannot understand.' And when 'twas read, Euphemianus gazed upon his son.

Yet did he well?' he said, he was our son, Ho was her husband: how could it be well? For look upon his mother, what she is.' But Claudia rose up tearless and replied, Alexius did all well: lid knew God called: And Innocent, not tearless, raised his band And spoke, She answers wisely : he obeyed ; He knew, being a very saint of God: Let us bless God for him.' And they all knelt. But still Aglaia could not understand."