POETS AND POETRY.
BY-WAYS ROUND HELICON.* Ma. Imo Wrra-rams's By-Ways Bound Helicon is the offspring of an agreeable erudition. It is an anthology with a running commentary, and concerns itself only with eighteenth-century poets. Mr. Williams will have none of your Popes and Drydens and Grays, for with their works we all think ourselves familiar :- "Fishing for tiddlers is a time-honoured and absorbing sport, and I have deliberately excluded from the scope of this littlo anthology (or whatever it may be) any poet with pretensions to greatness."
Not that he has kept very strictly to this plan, for we can hardly call Somerville a " tiddler," and certainly Mr. Williams has rescued him from no oblivion. And yet, though we may approach this chapter with a certain feeling of superiority • By-Ways Round Balloon. By lalo A. Williams. London : liCeinammani [7s. 6d.4 (" It is no good his thinking he can introduce Somerville to me !"), yet, for all our arrogance, he can tell us something fresh, if not about The Chase, at least about its author. He quotes a moat amusing letter of Shenstone's :- • " Our old friend Somerville is dead. I did not imagine I could have been so sorry as I find myself on this occasion. I can now excuse all his foibles. Alas 1 that a man of such high spirits, conscious of having generally pleased the world, should be plagued and harassed by wretches that are low in every sense ; to be forced to drink himself into pain of the body in order to get rid of the pains of the mind."
They were financial " pains " and produced a misery of which Shenstone says he can well conceive, for he confesses himself his equal " in point of economy," as his correspondent " kindly hinted to me at 12 o'clock at the Feathers.' "
It is delightful to come across Charlotte Smith again, and a propos of a sonnet of hers to the Earl of Egremont, Mr. Williams tells a ridiculous but agreeable anecdote :—
" 'Tis not thy splendid domes, where science loves To touch the canvas, and the bust to raise ; Thy rich domains, fair fields, and spreading groves ; 'Tis not all these tho Muse delights to praise ! "
- • • • • • • " I remember (if I may for an instant digress) that when, as a very small boy, I first read Gray's ' Elegy' (my ordinary reading at that time being chiefly comic papers) I could only imagine that his ' animated bust ' was some obscure reference to the glories of bank holiday."
But why is Anne. Seward not included ? And where are the poems of Pitt, of whom his epitaph makes the immortal remark that he was noted "for his candour and primitive simplicity of manners " However, though—as every caviller will point-out to him— Mr. Williams has made a few omissions, he should really be thanked for the agreeable and almost inaccessible matter that he has in so pleasant a manner placed before his readers.
He has been particularly happy in his resuscitation of humor- ous verse. As an example of this, we may give the delightful piece which he quotes among graver verse from Duck—one of the first of the " labourer " poets whom the eighteenth century was so fond of discovering. It is an imitation, he tells us, of poem of Prior's :- " Dear Madam, did you never gaze
Thro' Optic-glass on rotten Cheese
There, Madam, did you ne'er perceive A crowd of dwarfish Creatures live The little Things, elate with Pride, Strut to and fro, from Side to Side : In tiny Pomp, and pertly vain, Lords of their pleasing Orb, they reign ; And, fill'd with harden'd Curds and Cream,
Think the whole Dairy made for them.
So Men, conceited Lords of all, Walk proudly o'er this pendent Ball, Fond of their little Spot below, Nor greater Beings care to know ; But think those Worlds, which deck the Skies,
Were only form'd to please their Eyes."
The plan of the book has been executed with skill and a light touch. By-Ways Round Helicon is one of the least fatiguing and most agreeable books it is possible to imagine. We are always given just as much gossip as we want, and just the parallel passages which will set off the often modest merits of the author in question. There is an introduction by Mr. Squire, which is just and penetrating. The volume would be a charming holiday companion.
A. Witaxams-Eraas.
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