MR. GEORGE MEREDITH'S "MODERN LOVE."* By

CLEVER bold men with any literary capacity are always tempted to write verse, as they can say so much under its artistic cover which in common prose they could not say at all. It is a false impulse, how- ever, for unless the form of verse is really that in which it is most natural for them to write, the effect of adopting it-is to make the sharp hits which would be natural in prose, look out of place-

d in by head and shoulders—and the audacity exceedingly re-

'cut. This is certainly the effect upon us of this volume of verse. r. George Meredith is a clever man, without literary genius, taste, or judgment, and apparently. Mina . at that sort of union of point, sion, and pictorial audacity_ which Byron attained in 'Don Turin." here is, howeveiTKOkind of harmonious concord between his ideas and his expressions ; when he is smart, as he is habitually, the form of versification makes the smartness look still more vulgar, and thejocuz larity jar far more than it would in prose. On the whole the effect-Of the book on us is that of clever, meretricious, turbid pictures, hy4 man of some vigour, jaunty manners, quick observation, and stkag4ctorial skill, who likes writing about naked human passions, 'but does 'lint bring either original imaginative power or true sentiment to the task. The chief composition in the book, absurdly called Modern Love, is a series of sonnets intended to versify the leading conception of Goethes "elective affinities." Mr. Meredith effects this with occasional vigour, bat 'without any vestige of original thought or purpose which...eod excuse' so unpleasant a subject, and intersperses it, moreov‘r, with sardonic grins that have all the effect of an intentional affectation of eyoicieni... This is not quite always the case, however, or we should soon throw.the book contemptuously aside ; for the jocularities are intolerably feeble and vulgar. The best, or one of the best sonnet, describes the concealed tragedy of social life when 'thehero (if he is to be so called)-with his wife and the lady for whom he has since formed a: passiim are walking on the terrace before dinner with a brillialit- party : . •

"Along the garden terrace, under which A purple valley (lighted at ite edge By smoky torch-flame on the long cloud-ledge Whereunder dropp'd the chariot), glimmers rich, A quiet company we pace, and wait The dinner-bell in pre-digestive calm.

So sweet up violet banks the Southern balm Breathes round, we care not if the bell be late : Tho' here and there gray seniors question Time In irritable coughings. With slow foot The low, rosed moon, the face of Music mute, Begins among her silent bars to climb.

As in and out, in silvery dusk, we thread, I hear the laugh of Madam, and discern My Lady's heel before me at each turn.

Our Tragedy, is it alive or dead ?" •

There is considerable vividness in this description, especially of the "grey seniors" who "question Time in irritable coughing's," but the intended poetry is meretricious ; no one who feels truly can help _feel- ing that to speak of "the low, rosed moon" as "the face of Music mute," is a snatch at the. glitter and varnish of apparent, not real poetry. There is no analogy, subtle or otherwise, between the round simplicity of the moothr- face and the spirit of music, which always involves the unity of melodious variety. I true poet has said,

"Slow, slow, fall With indecisive motion eddying down,

The white-winged flakes, calm as the sleep of sound, Dim as a dream '•"

and this is beautiful, for it really translates the language of hearing into the language of sight. But to speak of the moon as "face of Music mute," appeals to no subtle analogy at all, and is a mere un- meaning eulogium on that admirable planet. Such a criticism is doubtless small,—but in these minute touches lies the true distinc- tion between a poet and one "Who hides with ornament his want of Art."

Mr. George Meredith has a sense of what is graphic, but lie never makes an excursion beyond that into what he intends for poetry without falling into some trick of false ornamentation. For one

George Meredith. Chapman and Hall.

more example we will take the most reflective of these sonnets, in which Mr. Meredith is teaching us how to learn from Nature not to attach ourselves irretrievably to any mortal thing. The idea is forcibly expressed till it is intended to rise into a sort of tragic climax at the end, when it soars into an absurd parody of Tenny- soulful metaphor that is a perfect specimen of the foolish-sublime :

play for Seasons ; not Eternities!'

Says Nature laughing on her way. So must All those whose stake is nothing more than dust !'

And lo, she wins, and of her harmonies She is full sure! Upon her dying rose She drops a look of fondness, and goes by, Scarce any retrospection in her eye; For she the laws of growth most deeply knows, Whose hands bear, here, a seed-bag ; there, an urn.

Pledged she herself to aught, 'twould mark her end!

This lesson of our only visible friend, Can we not teach our foolish hearts to learn ?

Yes ! yes ;—but oh, our human rose is fair Surpassingly ! Lose calmly Love's great bliss, When the renew'd forever of a kiss Sounds thro' the listless hurricane of hair !"

What is the "forever of a kiss ?" Is Mr. Meredith trying to dis- tinguish between "the transient" and ".the permanent" in kisses, " das reiue seyn" and " reine nichts" as the German sages say, and to single out the permanent element, that which expresses "the infinite." If this rash suggestion be at all near the mark, we are still painfully in the dark as to the force of the word "renewed." If the renewed forever of a kiss" in any way refers to the renewal of this infinite element, as ordinary people would suppose,—why is this the moment when we are exhorted to "lose calmly love's great bliss " ? If it be a leave-taking the force of the word renewed" on this particular crisis is hid from US. And what are we to say of the last line ?. Surely the "sound" of a kiss is not the true poetic and permanent . element therein? If there is a "forever"—an eternal element, —in these expressive symbolic actions at all, we submit that it is not .in the sound,—that on the contrary the sound is an acci- dental and rather unfortunate adjunct and accident in them. And what can Mr. Meredith mean to suggest by speaking of them as sounding through a "listless hurricane of hair" ? That which is heard through a hurricane—though we will not rashly answer for a "listless" hurricane, hurricanes usually appearing „tog us quite too much in earnest,—is usually a thunderclap and nothing less,--and. if Mr. Meredith really means to be sentimental about a kiss that in any way resembles a thunderclap, we fear few will fall into his mood. Pro- bably the "listless hurricane of hair" was meant as a. gorgeous metaphor addressed to the eye and not to the ear—the hair being a non-conductor of sound, softening or smothering the loud report alluded to, and resembling a "listless hurricane,' only in the tumul- tuous tangle of agitated locks, expressive of the abandon of great grief. But turn it how you will we fear this meretricious piece of fine writing turns out to mean that some very loud sound has been heard in spite of great obstacles—which sound and which obstacles are sup- posed to heighten the anguish of renunciation. We fear there was something of a "listless hurricane" of ideas in the author's mind when he extemporized this very noble language.

, This, it will be said, is verbal criticism ; but that is not so. No clever man who prizes grandiloquent ornament above modest meaning is guilty of a mere verbal negligence, for this goes to the heart of the matter. Mr. Meredith, too (though, so far as we understand the in- tended drift of his Modern Love, we can accuse it of nothing worse than meddling causelessly, and somewhat pruriently, with a deep and painful subject, on which he has no convictions to express), sometimes treats serious themes with a flippant levity that is exceedingly vulgar and unpleasant, and perhaps even unjust to himself:

"You like not that French novel? Tell me why.

You think it most unnatural. Let us see.

The actors are, it seems, the usual three: Husband, and wife, and lover. She—but fie!

In England we'll not hear of it. Edmond, The lover, her devout chagrin cloth share ; Blanc-mange and absinthe are his penitent fare, Till his pale aspect makes her overloud: So, to preclude fresh sin, he tries rosbif.

Meantime the husband is no more abused : Auguste forgives her ere the tear is used.

Then hangeth all on one tremendous If :—

IF she will choose between them! She does choose;

And takes her husband like a proper wife.

Unnatural? My dear, these things are life: And life, they say, is worthy of the Muse."

This is wretched jocularity, as pointless as it is coarse, and though it is certainly the worst sonnet in the series, after reading the whole through several times, there seems to us no more purpose, poetic or moral, to be got out of the series, than out of this single sonnet —the general drift being that there is a good deal of tragic misunderstanding, leading to desperate unfaithfulness in the marriage of proud minds who might have been very happy if they had so chosen ;—a common-place which is illustrated with a freedom that mistakes itself for courage, and is simply bad and prurient taste. The thing has no kind of right to the title Modern Love : "Modern Lust" would be certainly a more accurate though not a true title, there is something of real love, but more of the other embodied in the sonnets.

In the verses which do not hinge on this sort of subject, there is the same confusion between a "fast" taste and what Mr. Meredith mistakes for courageous realism,—poetic pre-Raphaelite- ism. For instance, Mr. Meredith has, in some verses on a scene in the Alps, given us a vision of the spirit of Beauty, whom he proposes in a vehement kind of half-and-half enthusiasm, one half sentiment the other half beer, to introduce to a London cabman. The poem is long and rambling, but we extract such verses as bear upon this great idea. The poet is speaking at first, —as we gather,—of the spirit of poetic beauty :

"She dances, and gleams, now under the wave, Now on a fern-branch, or fox-glove bell ; Thro'ea wreath of the bramble she eyes me grave;

She has a secret she will not tell.

"But if I follow her more and more, If I hold her sacred to each lone spot, She'll tell me—what I knew before !

For the secret is, that she can't be caught !"

"What say you, if; in this retreat, While she poises tiptoe on yon granite slab, man, I introduce her, shy and sweet, To a short-neck'd, many-caped, London cabman? "Ton gasp !—she totters ! And is it too much ? Mayn't he take off his hat to her? hope for a touch ? Get one kind curtsey of aerial grace For his most liberal grimace?"

"A Queen on sufferance must not act My Lady Scornful :—thus presuming, If Sentiment won't wed with Fact, Poor Sentiment soon needs perfuming.

Let her curtsey with becoming tact To cabman caped and poet blooming!—" "Tremendous thought, which I scarce dare blab, man !

The soul she yet lacks—the illumination -

Immortal 1.—it strikes me like inspiration,

She must get her that soul by wedding -the cabman !

"Don't ask me why :—when instinct speaks, Old Mother Reason is not at home,

But how gladly would dance the days and the weeks !

And the sky, what a mirth-embracing dome !

If round sweet Poesy's waist were curl'd The arm of him who drives the World !"

"It takes him doubtless long to peel, Who wears at least a dozen capes: Yet if but once she makes hint feel, The man comes of his multiform shapes.

"To make him feel, friend, is not easy.

I once did nourish that ambition:

But there he goes, purple, and greasy, and wheezy, And waits a greater and truer magician!"

This is not intellectual courage, nor buoyancy of spirit, nor any- thing but a spasmodic ostentation of fast writing. There are moods in which a man of high animal spirits is apt to think that any non- sense which amuses himself in an irrational moment is good enough to amuse the world; and because Mr. George Meredith was amused for the moment with the incongruity of fancying a greasy-coated cab- man with his arm round Calliope, and with his own poor pun on that person's "driving the world," he thought it, we suppose, a mark of in- tellectual pluck to print it. It really is only noisy vulgarity, which, in so clever a man—for he is clever and graphic in his way—is exceed- ingly unworthy. There is a deep vein of muddy sentiment in most men, but they should let the mud settle, and not boast of it to the world. Mr. Meredith evidently thinks mud picturesque, as, indeed, it may be, but all picturesqueness is not poetry. One gains a graphic picture of a good deal of interior mental mud without verse to help us. Mr. Meredith thinks we do not get enough, and the solution given here is sometimes a very thick one indeed. The best thing in the book is "Juggling Jerry," which is not vulgar nor tawdry, as so much of the volume is.