A MASQUE OF TRANSATLANTIC POETS.*

IF it be the manner which distinguishes the literary artist, it is

the matter which proves the poet, as our age understands poetry._ There would be less of futile and irritated criticism, if critics would accept new and abundant thinking as the chief greatness of modern poetry. Perfection of manner belongs to an age when the language was quick ; its life has long been written out. Our day inherits English which has the fault of all modern life,— inevitable ornament. Emerson says that " every word was once a brilliant poem ;" the process which converts brilliant poems into dead words is not completed, but continuous; a thou- sand pens are at work upon it daily.

Poems, therefore, which aim- solely at beauty and finish of language are difficult and doubtful, at the best, in our day,— that is, if the beauty and finish aimed at be pure in style ; it is possible, certainly, to follow Mr. Swinburne in the pursuit of poetry which, while indigent in thoughts, is affluent in words, in captivating and sweet words, as well as in a small studio- slang of tricky adjectives. But external beauty of the classic, chaste kind is hardly now attainable in such perfection as to make amends for the absence of fresh and beautiful thoughts.. Missing these, and missing, on the other hand, the pleasant,

cynical lightness which makes good vers de societe. charming to our generation, the collection of anonymous poems published

as A Masque of Poets, in the " No Name " series, takes a difficult middle line, and fails to interest greatly. The poetry is very small poetry, at the best, and is introduced with an insistent anonymity which is hardly justified by the importance of the secret. America is determined to have a school of poets quand

911eille, and indeed, she has now so fair an array of singers that she need no longer sound the fanfaronnade which formerly hailed the appearance of so feeble a declaimer as Percival, for

instance. Nor can she fail, in the course of things, to bring forth something as great as other nations have produced and will produce again. Her fault has been an impatience which has cried wolf too often.

One of the most favourable specimens of pretty writing in the book is the following song:— "My heart, I cannot still it, Is a nest with song-birds in it ; And when the last shall go, The dreary days, to fill it, Instead of lark or linnet Will bring dead leaves and snow. And were they sparrows only, Without the passion stronger Of joy that soars and sings, Woe's me, I shall be lonely, When I can feel no longer The impatience of their wings !"

The thought, or rather the fancy, here is small enough, yet it ha

• A Masque of Poets. Boston: Roberta Brothers.

freshness ; and the proportions of this little group of words are quite artistic and right. As might be expected from the work of many hands, the execution throughout the volume is very unequal; in a piece entitled "One Hundred and One," it is below a certain mark which ought to be reached by published poems ; elsewhere, as in the rhymed novelette, " Guy Vernon," it has a remarkable facility. This story is written in heroic stanzas, modified from the Spenserian ; the rhymes are generally -dissyllabic, or those trisyllabic rhymes which are as rightly con- fined to comic verse in English as are the monosyllabic in Italian, and they are managed by the anonymous writer with a great deal of skill; even doggrel, however (and this is not doggrel), has its laws, and no laws would pass " Florida " and " torrider." Oliver Wendell Holmes somewhere speaks of the "in- evitable Cockney rhymes, dawn ' and 'morn," but here we have a far worse vulgarism in uncorrupted American. Elsewhere (in " A Robin's Song "), occurs the rhyme of " gone " and " forlorn." 'These are slips which, being impossible to persons of' education, ought certainly not to appear in a volume produced with pre- tension. The story of " Guy Vernon " is flimsy, and too easily guessed. In the style, a faint, reflected glitter from Dm Juan would have been best avoided. "The Marshes of Glynn" is one of the few poems which show signs of power; it has an air of youth about it,—and we should recommend the writer to beware of adjectives ; let his substantives be strong, his adjectives few and quiet, and he will gain in effec- tiveness. One poem, and one only—" Jasper Oakes "- is of the Bret Harte school, and the lines are good and to the purpose. We do not mean that the style or matter is distinctly imitative. Some of the most detestable tricks of the modern pen are the imitations of Bret Harte at second and third hand, which have lately sprung up in a rank crop in America; nevertheless, that fine genius could not fail to found legitimately a little school. Perhaps the most serious and finished piece in the volume is "A Mood of Cleopatra," of which we quote the opening :—

" Cleopatra, when the chilling fear Of ruin touched her soul at ease, When turbid sounds, blown over seas, Would speed on rumour's rapid path, From the hot lips of Roman wrath, Straight to her own Egyptian ear,— Then, even at some grand feast of hers, Would seem to feel the joy struck dumb Of citherns, harps, and dulcimers, With rumbling prelude, harsh to hear, Of that which must in time become Disaster, slavery, Actium !

Then she, that mighty and mystic queen, Round whom her vassals crawled in awe, Whose lifted finger was a law, Whose smile an edict, and whose frown A darkness on the land between Arabian wave and Libyan dust ;

Cleopatra, couched, at feast, even she Would quiver with a sudden sigh, And one imperious hand would raise, That bade the exultant music die, And made, along its mighty maze Of columned galleries, grandly high, A silence as of death to come On all the vast triclinium."

The author of this study has kept creditably clear of the easily mastered vocabulary of Mr. Swinburne's disciples, a vocabulary the mere free use of which seems to confer a certain title to poetical honours in England just now. Indeed, we have en- joyed a sensible pleasure while reading the Masque of Poets, in finding verses which, though falling short of originality, are yet free of the echoes of Shelley, Rossetti, and Swinburne, which are all but inevitable here.

What strikes us in American work, literary and artistic, is the evidence that though the nation is young, the race is old. American apologists always account for the failings of their country, and explain her virtues, by the barbaric, uncouth, and vital character of a young people. But, in fact, those merits are the merits of age, those faults, in politics, in social life, and in the liberal arts, are the faults of corruption. Emerson is perhaps the subtlest thinker, Lowell the most exquisitely elaborate composer of prose, and the most finished critic of the time. So in the fourth and fifth-rate work of Americans, we have never found signs of the untaught and living growth of a young race.