MR. BUCHANAN'S POETICAL WORKS.*

THESE are the first two volumes of an edition (to be completed in five) of Mr. Buchanan's poetical and prose works, of which we trust that the poetical, either both in form and in essence, or at least in essence if not in form, will make up five-fifths of the whole, for Mr. Buchanan seems to us a different man when be is writing under the glamour of poetic impulse, and when he is expressing himself without the imaginative spell upon his insight and judgment. His account, nominally in prose, of his voyage in the Hebrides, for instance, is poetry not completely bound by the restraints, and therefore not completely penetrated by the stimulus, of verse. But when he criticises, he seems to us to be set free from the fine spell which compels him to see more or less truly ; and he then differs from other critics chiefly in the waywardness and vehemence with which he presses home's one-sided view. There cannot be a better test of a true poet than to discover that the poetical mood is for him an additional security for serenity, lucidity, and complete sanity of view. In Mr. Buchanan this certainly is so. We could pick out not a few passages, indeed, from amongst his poems which seem to us feverish and morbid, and not informed by the highest spirit, but we could pick very much fewer from his poems than from his prose essays, though of the latter we know far less than of the former. Nay, in his poetry,—humorous or otherwise,—he is not unfrequently a fine critic ; while his prose criticism seems generally to lack that wholeness and sobriety which the mere necessity for imaginative condensation and luminousness often ensures him. However, at present we have only to deal with his poems, with which, of course, these two first volumes are exclusively occupied, so that for the present we are rather going beyond our beat in even mentioning his prose. We may say of the edition that it seems to have every requisite of a perfect edition,—admirable print and almost fascinating ribbed paper,—except that the dates of the first composition of the various poems are not given. These would for various reasons be full of interest, but Mr. Buchanan only now and then approximately as- signs a clue to them in a note. It is clear that he is not following in any degree a chronological order in his arrangement of the poems, and it is not very easy to discover any other principle in that arrangement. Probably this is not a matter of much importance. Let poets do what they will in the matter of arrangement, they usually waste their pains. Wordsworth took the most elaborate trouble in the classification of his poems, but we never heard of any reader feeling either helped or even impressed by his rather artificial ticketing of his compositions into various classes. In what- ever order Mr. Buchanan had given us his poems, every separate reader would have read them in his own order, many of the poems many times, some of them a few times, and some probably not even once, after reading enough to be sure that their drift and tendency had no fascination for him. But we would urge on Mr. Buchanan to give us as nearly as he can the date of the composition of each poem in the next edition. It is of the greatest interest even to a casual reader to learn whether a poem was of early or late birth. To a critic the advantage is invaluable. Mr. Buchanan feels this so clearly as to volunteer the information as to not a few of his earlier pieces. Why not have told us approximately the date of every piece ?

Mr. Buchanan makes a sort of apology for the ' hard outline' of some of his early realistic poems,—" Willie Baird," " John," " Poet Andrew," and others, written, he tells us, " in or about my twentieth year, when I tried, with somewhat mistaken concep- tions, to disregard all adornment, and rely on simple realistic substance. Strong earnestness in the artists is the sole justification of pictures so hard in outline ; and whatever I lacked, I was terribly in earnest." We do not think the apology is needed. There is no doubt, in some of the poems,—bit to our mind neither "Willie Baird" nor "Poet Andrew" belongs to the number,—a certain disposition to paint a riddle in a half - interrogative fashion, which touches no chord quite deep enough to make the incomplete attempt a poem. This seems to us certainly true of "The Widow Mysie," and more or less true of the poem on the half-natural " John,"—a poem which needs the ending which Mr. Buchanan intimates he would like to have written, but has not dared to try, to give it full artistic significance. But for the most part, the last thing we should accuse Mr. Buchanan of is a hard and objective realism. That may fairly be attributed to Crabbe, but Mr. Buchanan is at the opposite end of the scale of poets from Crabbe. His hardness, when he is hard, is not the hardness of dry fact unmellowed by reflection and meditation, but the hard-

• The Poetical Works of Robert Buchanan. Vol. I. Ballads and Romances : Ballads and Poems of Life. Vol. IL Ballads and Poems of Life, Lyrical Pieces, &c. London : Henry S. Ring and Co.

ness of a certain peremptoriness and impatience which labours at, and breaks off from, a subject before the theme has matured in his mind, or which sometimes shapes a poem by grafting, vi et armis, a moral doctrine of the author's upon what he has observed. These two volumes are rich in the knowledge of life, and contain not a few poems that are as full of harmony and unity as they are of insight. But not a few of the pictures of life are not so much poems as studies for poems, and resemble rather the hasty outlines in a painter's sketch-book than finished pictures. Such are "The Widow Mysie," " Barbara Gray," " Tom. Dunstan, or the Politician,'' " John," and others. And again, of the ideal poems, there are not a few in which there is a certain excess of physico-moral excitement which might remind one of Victor Hugo. "The Ballad of Judas. Iscariot," which has, in its own way, a great force, seems to us one of these, the physical or sensuous excitements quite over- powering in it the moral elements meant to be painted, except in the last few verses, where, again, infinite pity, rather than in- finite purity, seems to us to be delineated. And "The Last of the Hangmen" has, to our minds, some of the faults of both classes of pieces,—a horrible unloveliness and ugli- ness of theme, hardly made tragic by the fine close, and a pre- dominance of excitement of feeling over thought in that dose which is hardly just when we realise that the true intent of the latter portion is to appeal solemnly, in the name of society, from penal law to self-sacrificing love,—whereas, even if we were to abolish penal laws altogether, society could never, qua society, substitute for penal laws the subduing personal love to which appeal is made. Here and there, then, especially in "Judas Iscariot," in this poetical protest against penal law, and in the somewhat crude poem called " Tiger Bay," we recognise in "Mr. Buchanan something of sentimental idealism so far removed from a hard realism as to approach much more closely to the imperious passion of Victor Hugo.

But if there be signs of impatient work and impatient and even morbid passion here and there in Mr. Buchanan's poems, there

are plenty of poems without a trace of either fault. To those who know him chiefly by his London Lyrics, it will be a great and new pleasure to study the very beautiful triad of poems called " Pan," "The Last Song of Apollo," and " Pan : Epilogue." Here the subject is chiefly ideal, but is worked out with singular force and beauty. In the first poem, we have the delineation of the pathetic yearnings of that half-animal spirit diffused through Nature which was identified of old.with the god Pan, towards a purer, higher,. and more lovely form,—the upward straining of a Nature which had at once something much larger and richer in it than the old Greek idea of divinity, and yet something much less distinct, deli- cate, and radiant in its conception,—namely, the humble, inarti- culate, and earth-born, yet sweet, rich, and pathetic sense of large- possibilities, growth, and unappeasable aspirations. Mr. Buchanan gives a musical voice to the prophecy of Pan that this widely- diffused spirit of the springing life of Nature should grow and grow till it overthrows the narrow, though beautiful conceptions which usurped the worship of huinanity in ancient Greece :— " In the time unborn,—in years

Across whose waste I wearily impel

These ancient, blear'd, and humble-lidded eyes,— Some law more strong than I, yet part of me, Some power more piteous, yet a part of me,

Shall hurl ye from Olympus to the depths,

And bruise ye back to that great blackness whence Ye blossom'd thick as flowers ; while I—I, Pan—

The haunting shadow of dim nether-earth, Shall slough this form of beast, this wrinkled length, Yea, cast it from my feet as one who shakes A worthless garment off; and lo ! beneath, Mild-featured manhood, manhood eminent, Subdued into the glory of a god, Sheer harmony of body and of soul, Wondrous, and inconceivably divine."

Then follows an exquisite poem, which we will extract completely, on a text suggested by Heine :-

" TIM LAST SONG Of APOLLO.

All at once there approached, panting, a pale Jew, with blood-drops on his brow, a thorn-erown on his head, and a huge cross on his shoulders; and he cast the cross. on the banquet-table of the gods, eo that the golden cups trembled, and the gods grew dumb and pale, and even paler, till they finally dissolved away into mist.'—HIGNK'S. Reisebilder.

"0 LYRE! 0 Lyre

Strung with celestial fire !

Thou living soul of sound that answereth These fingers that have troubled thee so long, With passion, and with beauty, and with breath

Of melancholy song,—

Answer, answer, answer me, With thy mournful melody I For the earth is old, and strange Mysteries are working change, And the Dead who slumber'd deep Startle sobbing in their sleep, And the ancient gods divine, Wan and weary o'er their wine, Fade in their ghastly banquet-halls, with large eyes fixed on mine!

Ah me! ah me!

The earth and air and sea Are shaken: and the great pale gods sit still, The roseate mists around them roll away :- Lo ! Hobe falters in the act to fill, And groweth wan and gray ; On the banquet-table spread, Fruits and flowers grow black and dead, Nectar cold in every cup Gleams to blood and withers up; Aphrodite breathes a charm, Gripping Pallas' bronzed arm ; Zeus the father clenches teeth, While his 0%nd-throne shakes beneath ; The passion-flower in Here's hair molts in a snowy wreath!

Ah, woo ! oh, woo!

One climbeth from below,— A mortal shape with pallid smile doth rise,

Bearing a heavy Cross and crown'd with thorn.—

His brow is moist with blood, his strange sweet eyes Look piteous and forlorn: Hark ! oh hark ! his cold foot-fall Breaks upon the banquet-hall!

God and goddess start to hear, Earth, air, ocean, moan in fear ; Shadows of the Cross and Him Make the banquet-table dim, Silent sit the gods divine, Old and haggard over wino, And slowly to my song they fade, with large eyes fixed on mine!

0 Lyre ! 0 Lyro !

Thy strings of golden fire Fade to their fading, and the hand is chill

That touches thee ; the once glad brow grows gray— I faint, I wither, while that conclave still

Dios wearily away !

Ah, the prophecy of old

Sung by Pan to scoffers cold!—

God and goddess droop and die, Chilly cold against the sky, There is change and all is done, Strange look Moon and Stars and Sun!

God and goddess fade, and see !

All their large eyes look at me!

While woe! ah, woe! in dying song, I fade, I fade, with thou !"

And the triad is completed by the subtle and extremely beautiful -poem called " Pan : Epilogue," in which the prophecy of Pan is verified in a certain sense by Mr. Buchanan's own muse,—for in it the poet traces the upward-straining spirit of Nature into iuman hearts, and finds it reappearing in the spirit which flits about dull streets, softening men's feelings, almost their merely creaturely feelings, with a deep natural compassion for misery and misfortune of all kinds. He regards this spirit as identical in kind with the old upward-striving spirit which the Greeks found in the sighs of the natu- ral world beneath them, but which now makes itself heard most distinctly on a higher level, though it still speaks the same language, the language of half-articulate yearning, of pathetic cry to be something higher than itself, and indeed of confident prophecy that it shall reach that higher stage. Nor has this voice of dumb, wistful yearning in man towards something bigher,—of yearning such as the animal creation seemed to show in the Greek period towards the human,—found as yet any interpreter equal to Mr. Buchanan. We cannot extract the whole of this fine poem, but take enough to illustrate its drift :—

" 0 piteous one !—In wintry days

Over the City falls the snow, And, where it whitens stony ways, I see a Shade flit to and fro ;

Over the dull street hangs a cloud—

It parts, an ancient Face flits by, 'Tis thine! 'tis thou! Thy gray head bowed, Dimly thou flutterost o'er the crowd, With a thin human cry.

Ghost-like, 0 Pan! thou glimmerest still.

A spectral Face, with sad, dumb stare ; On rainy nights thy breath blows chill In the street-walker's dripping hair ; Thy ragged woo from street to street Goes mist-like, constant day and night; But often, where the black waves beat, Thou bast a smile most strangely sweet For honest hearts and light !"

Such poems as these show how finely Mr. Buchanan can treat an ideal subject. Nevertheless, probably no one will put them in power and interest on a level with such poems as " Liz " and "Nell," especially the former, where the ruggedness and wretched- ness of city life are glorified with a kind of passion perfectly appro- priate to them, and yet of course thrown into form and touched with fire by the poet himself. Nothing is more difficult in such poems

than to strike the true mean between the naked realism of fact, and the imaginative idealism of fancy, so as to get something much truer (morally and intellectually) than either. Of course no real London girls would talk like " Liz " and " N ell,"— which is only saying that they would not talk poetry at all, and would not have by any means even all the thoughts which the poet has given them. Of course not ; but why, then, some one will ask, attribute to them faults of grammar which are realistic, without being at all adequate to the delineation of their true speech ? We should reply, ' Be- cause such faults of expression are requisite to suggest to our imagination their true condition,—the neglect and desolation of their lives ; and so far as they answer this purpose, the poet is not only justified, but required to introduce such faults of expres- sion.' To our minds, after long knowledge of these poems, they seem to us nearly perfect of their kind, realistic and idealistic alike in the highest sense,—realistic in this, that all the effects are real,— idealistic in this, that they are all produced by the power of an im- aginative spirit which never confines itself to the real, when by doing so it must fail to convey the truth as the poet has con- ceived it. 44 Meg Blane " is in some respects superior even to "Liz" and " Nell."

But these poems of Mr. Buchanan's are so well known that we need not give any example of their beauties. There are some quite their equals, we think, as works of art, in which humour rather than pathos,—pathetic humour no doubt, but pathos more instinct with the sense of inconsistency and paradox, than of mere tragedy,—is the medium of expression. " The Starling " is probably the best known and perhaps the finest of these poems, but " The Wake of Tim O'Hara" is almost its equal, and there are many others in which the creative influence of Mr. Buchanan's humour is almost as striking.

There are two narrative poems in these two volumes of exqui- site warmth and beauty, even as stories—" The Northern Woo- ing" and "The Scaith o' Bartle "—the former almost the only one of Mr. Buchanan's poems which is not tragic, but on the con- trary, full of an abundant happiness. Why is this element of beauty, —sunniness,—so rare in Mr. Buchanan? He is not deficient in the elements for it. His catastrophes are, with a few rare exceptions, always so artistically toned,—in other words, the cloud's silver lining is so skilfully painted,—that we can always bear the pain. Why, then, has he, as yet, so rarely given us the genuinely poetic feeling of the summer of the heart, as well as that of the mellow, though melancholy autumn ? We are sure that he has still much —and perhaps his best work—to give us. Let us hope that his latest poems will include the richest and most genial, as well as the most powerful, of his productions.