BOOKS.
ALARIC WATTS.*
THERE are some lives—like John Sterling's, for example,—which • there was no intrinsic reason for writing, and which might in- deed well, or even better, so far as regards any intrinsic claim on public notice, have been left in the region of "no-biography and silence," that, nevertheless, when well written by the right man, give as much pleasure, and confer as much -benefit, as the biographies of the greatest of men. Carlyle's life of Sterling is delightful reading because Qarlyle made it a peg on which to hang some of his best descriptions of men and of opinions describable by no one but Carlyle in the humorous fashion in which he described them. But other not very important lives have been so pictured as to be full of in- terest without being the products of genius, and, on the whole, we regard the present book as one of these. Mr. Alaric Watts might have made his study of his father's life better even than it is. He would have done so, if he had made it simpler, if he had omitted the long lists of pic- tures which his father bought and of the acquaintances whom his father made ; if he had omitted the chapter on the United Service Gazette, of Mr. Watts's work on which it gives no adequate conception ; if he had shortened very considerably the correspondence even of eminent men and women concerning their contributions to the antmals,—what interest is there in having -the exact words in which Wordsworth declined or sent a contribu- tion, or in which Southey promised one P—and if he had dilated less on the three periods discernible in his father's verse, where he obviously refines too much about poetry which, at the best, is only good poetry of a third-rate order—poetry on which it would have been wiser to lay but a light stress. Mr. Watts would • Atari° Waite: a Narrative of his Life. By his goo, Alm% Alfred WWI. With Portraits. 2 vols. London : Bentley and Bon. also have done well to eschew the occasional pedantry of such words as "obtemperate," which will hardly be known to any Englishman of the present generation at all,—it is excluded from the latest edition of Johnson's Dictionary, though it is to be found in the old Johnson,—and "exuberate," which give an air of artificiality to a generally very pleasant book. We believe that if Mr. Watts had given us one volume instead of two, he might have made this a delightful book ;—if the letters which are inserted only for their signatures, and the formal notices of business of little interest, and the over- careful analysis of what would have pleased better if it had been more carelessly displayed, had been mercilessly shorn away. Still, in spite of all deficiencies, the book is a very pleasant one, and portrays a character of a good deal of charm. The late Mr. _Marie Watts, populariser of "Album "poetry and " Forget- me-Not " engravings though he was, was by no means a breathing piece of human ormolu. There was nothing un- manly in him. He was a little given to artificial wants, no doubt' i was a little too fond of expressing "nice " feelings, with- out force or fire in them ; was a little finikin in his tastes, a little wanting in strong fibre. But he could fight like a man when he thought himself wronged ; he could make sacrifices such as few have made in this world, when true charity called upon him to make them ; he had many sound tastes, though, perhaps, over-soft ; he had very genuine dignity, when it was put to the test. Moreover, he was a man of keen insight, and the sketches which his son gives us of his few unique acquaintances are so good and lively, that we heartily wish there had been more of them. His pictures of Mr. Colton,— the author of Lacon,—and of "Walking Stewart" are full of vivacity ; he brings Lady Holland before us almost more vividly than Carlyle ; and only fails, we think, in one figure, the figure of Beckford, the author of Vatkek, whom we do not see at all more clearly for what the late Mr. Watts tells us of him. Take as a specimen this account of the author of Luzon :— " wag in the year 1816,' my father continues, that I made the acquaintance, at one of Mr. Stewart's soirees, of Colton, the author of "Lacon ; or, Many Things in a Few Words," a work which en- joyed great popularity in its day, and, indeed, long after, for it has been often reprinted, and will continue a favourite with persons of literary discrimination, so long as forceful thoughts, expressed in brilliant and epigrammatic language, shall retain their value amongst us. I well remember the occasion on which the vener- able philosopher introduced me to a military-looking gentleman, whom he described as Mr. C. C. Colton, author of a remarkably clever work (this was " Lacon," as yet unpublished), portions of which he had read with much interest. The gentleman to whom I was presented I felt at once to be no ordinary man. His keen, cold, grey eye was occasionally overshadowed by a corrugation of the brow, almost amounting to a scowl, indicative, however, as it seemed to me, less of any absolute severity of disposition than of habitual intensity of thought, a view in which I was confirmed when I knew him better. His complexion was saturnine, and of unvarying paleness. Even when excited by his recitations of passages from some of his finest poems, his face exhibited no trace of increased animation. In- deed, I never saw features so perfectly impassive ; it seemed as though nothing could discompose them. His nose was hooked, like the beak of a bird ; his cheek-bones high and prominent. His month was singularly variable in expression, although the satirical element predominated. His forehead was by no means remark- able, either for its expansiveness or phrenological beauty. It wanted, if I remember aright., both breadth and height. His eye was cold and crafty, and the thickness of his lips seemed to denote sensuousness and an absence of deep feeling. Its shrewdness of ex- pression was indicative rather of extraordinary astuteness than of high mental intelligence. His chin was what Lavater would have characterised as an intellectual chin. One of his arms had been shattered by the bursting of a fowling-piece. His voice was of great volume and melody, and he read poetry with much effect. His cos- tume was a frock-coat, then seldom worn by clergymen, richly braided, and he wore a black stock. In short, his general appearance had much in it of a military character. The eloquence of Mr. Colton's conversation inspired me with an earnest desire to cultivate his acquaintance, and as our route lay in the same direction,—I was residing at the time in the Belgrave Road, Pimlico,—we agreed to continue our conversation in walking home together. On onrsepara- tion at a small street at the top of Grosvenor Place, be tendered me his card (writing on it an address in pencil), begging that I would breakfast with him on the following morning. I repaired in due time to the address given, when I was puzzled and surprised to find WM the number in the street corresponding with it was a squalid and poverty-stricken-looking marine-store shop, at which old iron, rags, glass bottles, and kitchen-stuff were advertised, for sale and pur- chase, by a bill in the dirty window. I felt clear that there must be some mistake, and, after inquiring fruitlessly at every other house in the street, I came to the conclusion that Mr. Colton had, in fact, been mystifying me; and returned home breakfastless, not by any means pleased at having been made the object of, as it seemed to me, so very witless a practical joke. It was not very long before, at another of Mr. Stewart's soirees, I found myself again in the same room with Mr. Colton, and, while I was debating in what terms I should address
him, if at all, he came straight up to me, and began to reproach me, not without asperity, for not having fafilled my engagement. On my retorting upon him the expression of my surprise that he should have made an appointment with me at a rag-and-bone shop, when profess- ing to invite me to his residence to breakfast, he laughed very good- humouredly, replying, "Why, my young friend, it was all right ; that is my castle ! I live there. I composed there the poems you profess so highly to admire ; and if you could have made up your mind to put into your pocket, for once, your supersensitive delicacy, you would have found, I hope, a comfortable breakfast, and I am sure a cordial reception." ' "
The visit was made, and Mr. Colton returned it, and inspected Mr. Watts's library, as Mr. Watts had inspected his At length, as evil hap would have it, he came on his own " LaCOD," with which he had presented me, and which I had in my turn de- stined for my wife that was to be, for whose benefit I had annotated it rather copiously and very freely. The book opened, as it chanced, upon an eloquent passage of the writer's in reprobation of avarice, to which I had appended the following note :—" It would scarcely be conceived that the author of this axiom is one of the most avaricious of men." He observed, good-humouredly, "You don't flatter your friends ; nor are you on this occasion entirely accurate, because you have confounded penuriousness with avarice. If, as you perhaps observe, I think well in some particulars to live in a style which may seem to you scarcely in accordance with my means, and what you may be pleased to regard as my position in society, it is rather be- cause I am a philosopher than a miser, and care not to expend money on matters which afford me no gratification. But let us turn to matters on which we are better agreed." ' "
The picture which is given us in these volumes of a man with considerable power of organising, but too fastidious to be willing to come to businesslike terms on what concerned his own in- terests ; full of tenderness, and yet liable to periodic outbreaks of unreasonable passion ; of fastidious and even somewhat superfine tastes, yet full of large sympathies and dauntless courage when he could aid the miserable ; dreading any inroad on his domestic peace with a poet's shrinking nerves, and yet calmly facing death, not only for himself, but for all he loved, rather than leave to their cruel fate a friend's widow and children, when, in that fatal year of cholera, 1832, he had just seen the father and husband perish in agony before his eyes ; sensitive as a woman to personal discourtesy, and yet eager for the fray when once his wrath was fairly roused ; apparently caring more for art than for poetry itself, and yet foremost to vindicate as the highest that side of poetry which derives more from Nature than from art ; full of artificial needs, and yet ever loving simplicity, as the very essence of what is admirable ; this is a picture which is intrinsically impressive, and which is vividly painted for us in these volumes.
Nor is the picture of Mrs. Alaric Watts—Priscilla Maden Wiffen—in itself at all less interesting. To tell the truth, we have felt in reading these volumes that in her character there was even more strength and hardly less intellectual insight than in her husband's. The calm decision with which she faced the displeasure of her mother and the excommunication of the Society of Friends rather than give up the man she loved,—the reticence with which she helped him in his literary work,—and the steadiness with which she did what was in her power to restrain his extravagances, while never sacrificing what was more important than influence in order to exert that influence,— the tranquillity of her judgment and the lucidity of her sketches of character, all attract us even more strongly to the wife than to the husband himself. What can be better, for instance, than this picture of Wordsworth ?— " We made the acquaintance of Mr. Wordsworth on the occasion of a visit to Miss Jewsbury at Manchester, in the year 1824 or 1825. Of the various portraits which have been published of him, one painted by Mr. Carruthers, and engraved for Galignani's edition of his poems, issued in Paris in 1828, reminds me more of the poet, as I remember him, than any other. I recall an evening passed in his society on this occasion in which we discussed poetry, and he repeated to me, at my request, some of his sonnets. I happened to quote some lines from Coleridge's " Christabel." He did not dissent from my expressions of admiration of this poem, but rather discom- posed me by observing that it was an indelicate poem, a defect which it had never suggested itself to me to associate with it. I was, per- haps, the less prepared for a censure of such a description on his friend Coleridge, as he had just before been talking of Burns, to some of whose writings it might certainly have applied, in terms of cordial admiration. From this, and some other characteristics of his criticism, I could not forbear the impression that his sympathies were rather with his predecessors than his contemporaries in the gentle art. I observed that he rarely left a commendation of the latter wholly unqualified ; so that the effect of his criticism seemed to be rather to qualify mercy with justice than, as I should rather have preferred, to temper justice with mercy. I could have imagined him born, like Charles Lamb's Hester,— " Of those who held the Quaker rule, That doth the human feelings cool,
Though he was trained in Nature's school, And Nature blessed him,"
for he reminded me not infrequently of some of the older male mem- bers of the Society of Friends whom I had known in my youth. Of
his own poems he expressed himself with a confidence not unlikely to be misunderstood by strangers, whom he might not have had the opportunity of impressing (as a very short conversation would ensure- his doing) with the entire singleness and sincerity of his nature. He asked me what I thought the finest elegiac composition in the language, and, when I diffidently suggested " Lycidas," he replied, "You are not far wrong. It may, I think, be affirmed that Milton's '1.p:sides' and my Laodamia ' are twin Immortals." I admired " Laodamia," and was quite willing that so it should be. Indeed, it was difficult to differ from him on any question of poetical criticism. He delivered judgment on such matters as one having authority,. reasoning, as it seemed to me, from some clearly defined principle in his mind, with which the opinion was in accord, so as to be beyond question, and as though it were his daty to lay down the law as he found it, without fear, favour, or affection. I was much struck by the spirit of rectitude which seemed to animate the expression of every opinion he uttered. He spoke always as though he were upon oath. He was a patient and courteous listener, paying the most scrupulous attention to every word, never interrupting, and with a certain fixedness of his clear grey eyes which made one feel that, whatever one's opinion might be, one must be prepared to give a substantial reason for it, and, in doing so, to discard all that might appear fanciful, and not to be readily explained.'" And what happier than this glimpse of Paris life ?— " On our return we paid a visit to St. Cloud to witness a fête, the peasants and their families dancing with all the grace and gaiety imaginable. Here were four or five hundred people, but no- quarrelling or drunkenness. All was propriety and decorum. Indeed, the middle and lower classes of French people are in every way superior, in externals, to the English. The women all seem ladies, and look so very nice. Printed muslin' with white pelerine, and a smart bonnet, is the universal dress of the middle class. No silk! All simple and tasteful ; none of that exaggerated style of dress so common in London. No enormous sleeves; the petticoats rather short, but not ungracefully so the hair always neat, and the ceinture evidently the great object of rivalry. The languid air, deemed comme ii faut in England, is here unknown ; and a certain sprightli- ness prevails, to me very captivating. They flatter, too, very adroitly. I shall not gratify my vanity by recounting the agreeable things said of myself; but one illustration of their instinctive skill and readiness in the practice and use of this fine art, of which Alaric was the hero, will, I think, amuse thee. He was complaining somewhat angrily, —he is a little impetuous, my goodman,—of some neglect or inatten- tion at our hotel, and poured forth his grievances in French with astonishing vigour and volubility. Madame (it is always madame here' you understand; monsieur is quite the drone in the hive) threw into her face a look of mingled wonder and admiration, raised her eyebrows and shoulders (you cannot conceive the eloquence of the shoulders of a Frenchwoman), with a scarcely definable motion, and then, with a smile absolutely disarming, replied, "Male, monsieur, pourquoi no parlez-vous pas toujonrs en colere ! Mon Dieu! comme vous vous exprimez bien. " "
If we should have advised a good deal of abridgment in that part of the book which concerns Mr. Watts's occupations, we would gladly have had some extension of the letters and notes of Mrs. Watts.
The author is himself evidently an accomplished writer, so that we are the more astonished at his occasional man- nerisms and affectations. Is it affectation, or is it careless- ness, when he speaks of his father's "impetuous character" as "wedded to an active and energetic nature and a tender and generous heart "? This is not, as might be supposed, the nature and heart of Mrs. Watts, but the nature and heart of Mr. Watts himself, so that his "impetuous character" is conceived of as ex- cluding his " naturp " and his "heart." A more confusing and confused conception we have never met with. We suppose the " character " is here used as denoting the will alone, but even if that were correct,—which it is not, for character includes much more than will,—impetuousness should never have been at- tributed to it, for impetuousness is not a quality of will, but of nature, and might be controlled by will. On the whole, we should say that Mr. Watts has written a good book, but one which he might easily have made twice as good as it is, by the exercise of a little more terseness, a little more judgment, and a little more fastidiousness of taste.
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