TUPPERIDES.

T is strange, or, as Mr. Tupper would teach us to say, "passing 1 strange," that the news that Mr. Tupper is likely to transmit the torch of his genius, divided into three brilliant tapers, to the hands of his own fair descendants, the three Tupperides, "Mary-Frances," "Ellin-Isabelle," and " Margaret-Elenora," had not sooner run like lightning through the literary world. Yet here is "a new edition" of this Heaven-descended (or more precisely Tupper- descended) triad's poems brought before us by Mr. Moxon, and we find that during the whole life of the old edition, whatever life it may have bad, we have been ignorant of news so stimulating to the heart and imagination. Perhaps this circumstance explains an ingenious heraldic device which has been prefixed now for some little -time to Mr. Moxon's catalogue of poetic publications, the hu- mour of which we have often admired. On a conical hill or gigantic haycock, emblematic no doubt of Parnassus, a number of wild and troubled figures in all attitudes, comprehending stout old gentlemen resting, students in caps and gowns with the gowns flying wildly in the air, one acute and weatherbeaten old day-labourer on the top of a ladder (alas ! too short to reach to the summit), and we fancy one lady in dishabille peeping round the side of the haycock, pant, or recover their breath, on their way towards a Temple of Fame on the top inhabited by four figures, one man and three women. We have always hitherto had a difficulty about these four only triumphant figures, but we now think that there cannot be a doubt but that they represent the great family from whom English poetry will take a fresh Inspi. ration,—Tupper and the Tupperides, Martin-Farquhar, Mary- Frances, Ellin-Isabelle, and Margaret-Elenora. The three ladies stand in modest retirement inside the very diminutive Temple of . Fame, which seems licensed to carry four passengers inside and one out, and no mere (the one outside being, we need not say, Fame herself, with her trumpet),—but Tupper, the generous an& the just, leans out from between the Corinthian pillars, at infi- nite risk to his own valuable life, to beckon upwards with a wave' of his helpful hand the various heated and bewildered figureil still on the ascent,—the only discouraging circumstance being, as we have explained, that those who do reach the siunmit can only obtain entrance by storming the small building and precipitating the garrison over the precipice,--a result which even the lion-hearted author of the Proverbial Philosophy can scarcely intend to invite. We must return, however, from this ingenious legend of Mr. Moxon's, of which it is quite possible that we may have discovered only one very earthly inter- pretation, to the great fact which we are quite sure that British literature has not yet adequately realized, that Tupper's geniut# will not die without offspring,—nay, that there is every prospect of its being radiated forth to future generations in as un- diminished a magnitude as are the rays of the sun to the volt sphere of space,—being at every remove from the source spread over a wider sphere, but still remaining in collective power the same. At the first step indeed the Tupperia.n genius has divided into three distinct streams of light, and at the next generation, it may be, it will take nine poetic descendants of the great poet to represent the sum total of his present poetic influence on the world. Still, to think that the daughters inherit, as coparceners at least, the great poetic heritage, and may transmit it to their children, so that the influence of Tupper's spirit, even when subdivided, will be spread as widely over the earth as the waters of the sea, is an animating and delightful thought. That the daughters of Tupper recognize gratefully the fountain of their inspiration their title- page, with its prominent inscription, "Dedicated to their father, Martin F. Tupper," sufficiently shows. And their poems show it also, though it is clear that even these three graceful poets have not as yet divided among them all the wealth of Tupper's manly wisdom. No doubt as his sun sets they will gather its light more and more on to their own crystal surface,—the moon cannot be bright when the sun is still above the horizon.

It is hard to select any one among a triad so graceful as merit- ing the distinction of resembling our own Tupper more than the rest. We should say, however, that none of them can as yet at all compare with their father, either for homely breadth of philo- sophic insight or for richness of metaphor, but that Mary-Frances bids fair to have most of, his vigorous sense of truth, Ellin- Isabelle most of his child-like innocence and serenity, and perhaps Margaret-Elenora most of his bold imaginative flights. , Not one of them has anything so large and nutritive as 'such thoughts as these (for instance) of their father's :— •

" Content is the true riches, for without it there is no satisfying, But a ravenous, all-devouring hunger, guaweth the vitals of the soul."

But that is the kind of thought one does not look far from young people. We wait for it till "old experience dothattain to sour- what of prophetic strain,"—and the Tupperides scarcely ventfire as yet with their father's courage into the world of abstract truth. Yet there are ideas of Mary-Frances here and there that bid us hope for a level in her not much short of her father's.., Thus, for example, there is a courage in the following announcement of truth in a poem on" Hofer" that makes us look almost as high for her in the future, on this side of her poetic attainments, as her father :—

" ANDREA. Honta.

"An eagle on his rocky throne,

The patriot stood—he could notfiy--

Waiting unguarded and alone, That death he did not fear to die.

To die? Ah yes he knew full well They came to kill the Tyrol's Tell."

This is very promising. To recall home-truths without fearing the empty charge of want of originality has always been our Tupper's great distinction. The woman applies the same courage to the concrete rather than to the abstract world. Still, how much it adds to the simplicity of the portrait of Hofer to be reminded that he stood where he did because he could not fly, though, in mind and spiritual endowments, aquiline ! So, again, of Pompeii :—

" How these sounds of mirth and gladness All were silenced in a day! Nothing moved; for gloom and sadness _Reigned were all was once so gay ;

"Till again, in later ages,

In those chambers steps were heard ; But Pompeii s youths and sages Never more from slumber stirred."

Mary-Frances clearly understands how, with something of her father's aplomb, to 'take her stand right on a fact, and feed upon it, and let otheraleed upon it, regardless of any reproach that it is obvious. Whit firmness and certainty of stroke in the last two lines of the latter verse ! There is, however, a beginner's had in the last two lines of the first ;—it can scarcely be assigned as a reason why nothing moved in Pompeii after every one was dead that "gloom and sadness reigned where all was once so gay." Mary-Frances has put her cart before her horse. Surely she meant to say—surely her father would have said—that nothing moved because there was nothing alive to move ;—that would have been real and satisfying. Mary-Frances, too, is perhaps in advance of her sisters in that noble and simple kind of poem, almost proper to their father, which consists of a plain statement of facts accompanied by a few remarks, such as this of his :— " A child was playing in a garden, a merry little child, Bounding with triumphant health, and full of happy fancies ;

For I said, Surely, 0 life ! thy name is happiness and hope ; • Thy days are bright, thy flowers are sweet, and pleasure the condition of thy gift.

A youth was walking in the moonlight, walking not alone, For a fair and gentle maid leant on his trembling arm," &c., dre.

Mary-Frances has equal genius for beautiful statement of this sort, but then instead of summing up each paragraph with her own reflections, she, as a woman, modestly refers to a fictitious guardian angel, of which hypothesis she is very fond Atm.

"There was a little curtain'd room, And scarcely visible for gloom; An infant form was seen at rest, His soft cheek on the pillow prest, And on his dull, unconscious ear, Fell the sad sounds he could not hear:

• His widow'd mother's life had flown; And he, they said, was left alone : But, all unseen to mortal eye, A guardian spirit linger'd nigh, Who, bending o'er the tiny bed, Breathed blessings on the little head.

"Years pass'd away; and for the child Many green Springs in beauty smiled; And many Autumns, fading by, Pointed to changeless things on high : Yet not alone did blissful days Around him cast their sunny rays, For nothing here on earth is fair, But has its touch of blight or care ; Bat, all unseen to mortal eye, That guardian spirit still was nigh ; On either side a radiant arm Stretch'd out to keep him safe from harm.

"Years still rolled on : no more a boy. His glad heart felt a lover's joy," &c.

And we need not say that the guardian angel recurs at each periodic stage of his life. The magnum opus of Mary-Frances is a tale of an Indian girl called Morning-Dew, who is floated down some rapids as an offering to a river-god by her tribe, and of the grief of Lion-Heart, her lover, on that unfortunate occasion. But here, as Dr. Newman says of the worship of the Virgin, we cannot quite follow her. It strikes us that Mr. Tupper would scarcely see the strong impress of his genius on this tale. His fancy is, indeed, light and graceful, but it prefers hopping about moral subjects, subjects like "Prodigality hath a sister, Meanness, his fixed antagonist heart-fellow,"

to treating of Indian girls with curious seeds round their ancles.

Ellin-Isabellels perhaps the quietest in sentiment, and has most of her father's composure. She has "hill-top thoughts," and they are very proper thoughts for a hill-top; they dwell a good deal on the fact that there is a view in sight, and then diverging to the fact that, besides herself on the hill-top, there is also a chapel there, they settle by a very natural and justifiable association of ideas on the chapel, and proceed smoothly thus :—

" For there is a chapel standing On the summit of the hill, All the country round commanding— Wood and valley, pond and viii:

Here on each returning Sunday Come the villagers to prayer;

Here, too, many of them one day Shall lie resting free from care.

"No one knoweth now the story Why this ancient church was built ;

Whether saints went here to glory, Or to expiate some guilt:

But so long as men are living, And its tower points on high, May God's Word, the true life-giving, Lead our hopes above the sky."

The last verse has a good deal of her father, though whether his maturer theology -would admit that going to chapel could, in any ease, have been conceived as "going to glory" we are not quite sure. If it would, the allusion is probably to some tenets with which we are not acquainted. But the hope that the chapel may lead men's hopes above the sky "so long as men are living" is a limitation conceived quite in his spirit. Ellin-Isabelle is as yet the meagrest of the three poets, and is kindly sheltered between the two of more prolific feeling. She may eventually show more of the repose of Mr. Tupper's genius than either of the others,—but as yet she has scarcely blossomed.

Undoubtedly the most turbid as yet, the one whose soul has most of her father's boldness of conception, least of his quietude of spirit, is Margaret-Elenora. She begins with "Lighthouse Musings," and asks the waves to clasp her in their " tawny arms." She sympathizes with Wallace; her chief idea on Leith Hill is not the view, but the larch woods which hide the view; she wishes to swim in Sherborne pond with the trout ; she is in favour of the ocean because it drowns people, and sings dirges over them ; and altogether she is as yet a somewhat unchastened Tupper. Still she has the bold Tupper imagination, and sometimes turns it into the true Tupper channel, as in the following reflection on Garibaldi's reception in London :— "And so this mighty welcoming sublime, This loyal, deep heart-reverence greeting thee, What is it, in its vastness, full and free, But Virtue's Triumph in the End of Time?'

That is grand and trumpet-like,—and putting Ginibaldi's recep- tion here a year or two ago, in "the End of 'lime," is a fine vigorous flight of moral feeling. Had we space we could produce other passages in the true Tupperian strain.

Altogether literature has never had a more pleasing surprise than in this discovery of the true transmissibility of the genius of a Tupper. We cannot say that this beautiful triad, even taken together, gives us any measure of his full-orbed power. Still we

may say of them, that-

" These three made unity so sweet, My frozen breast began to beat With something of its ancient heat."

Tapper cannot perish,—even in that limited sense in which other poets perish. When that great spirit leaves us, though dead he will yet speak, not only in his own immortal Proverbial Philosophy, but with living voices adapted to the changes of our future civilization in those who share his spirit,—in the strong realism of Mary-Frances, in the tender innocence of Ellin-Isabelle, in the vigorous metaphor of Margaret-Elenora.—and we may. trust, after this triple proof of transmissibility, with the voice also of generations yet unborn of their descendants.