MR. TUPPER'S PENSION.
WE do not know that there is anything very ridiculous or reprehensible in the grant of a Pension to Mr. Martin Farquhar Tupper, reported in so many journals. If, indeed, he were rich, and the pension were intended as recognition of his literary claims, the Minister who bestowed it would have given clear proof of total inability to understand what literary power, and more especially poetic power, really mean. There is no trace of poetry in Mr. Tupper'e writings, and scarcely any evi- dence of any idea as to what poetry consists in. His best known book, and the one for which he is said to have been favoured by the Crown, is a string of egregious common- places strung together in a monotonous rhythm, with no melody and very little attractiveness. When analysed, "Proverbial Philo- sophy" is little better than a book of nonsense-verses written by a man entirely deficient in humour, but anxious to do some little good in his generation. These two nonsense-verses,— WE do not know that there is anything very ridiculous or reprehensible in the grant of a Pension to Mr. Martin Farquhar Tupper, reported in so many journals. If, indeed, he were rich, and the pension were intended as recognition of his literary claims, the Minister who bestowed it would have given clear proof of total inability to understand what literary power, and more especially poetic power, really mean. There is no trace of poetry in Mr. Tupper'e writings, and scarcely any evi- dence of any idea as to what poetry consists in. His best known book, and the one for which he is said to have been favoured by the Crown, is a string of egregious common- places strung together in a monotonous rhythm, with no melody and very little attractiveness. When analysed, "Proverbial Philo- sophy" is little better than a book of nonsense-verses written by a man entirely deficient in humour, but anxious to do some little good in his generation. These two nonsense-verses,— "Man sittoth down in his °liar, and to-day is not to-morrow;
Man getteth up from his chair, and to-morrow is not to-day," might easily be mistaken for Mr. Tupper's, and contain at least as much poetry and truth as the majority of his platitudes. If the pension is a decoration, then it is an insult to English litera- ture, scarcely surpassed by Lord Palmerston's famous blunder in giving a pension to Mr. Close because he had heard he was a popular poet, a kind of English Burns, instead of a mere scribbler of attempts at rhyme. Even if the rule regulating the assign- ment of these pensions were, as it ought to be, that no one should receive a share unless poverty were united with a ray of genius, the selection would be most unfortunate, for genius is the exact quality of which Mr. Tupper does not possess the smallest scintilla. But there is a ground upon which he has some claim to his grant, and one which has often been made the excuse, and the sufficient excuse, for such benevolences. If Mr. Tupper is in poverty—which he ought not to be, for his works have outsold everything of any size except a cookery-book or two—and has for many years provided blameless literature from which large classes have derived pleasure, then there is some reason for some small measure of relief, and this, we think, is true. Why the lower middle-class have accepted his platitudes as poetry, and have bought his books to such an extent that there is scarcely a household without them, and have found in them a sort of soporific solace, we are quite unable to imagine, but that they have so done is past all question. We suppose the fact arises from the same feeling as that which in the last generation produced such a demand for goody-books, and for the volumes of solemn fudge called " Sermons,"—a sense of pleasure in the reading of words put together in a rolling* style, with nothing in them to excite thought, and sure to be free from any impropriety that the sharpest of proper governesses could detect. The old woman's idea about "that blessed word Mesopotamia" still affects whole classes of Englishmen, and will affect them, so long as they have no desire to think, no knowledge on which to base thought, and a certain gratification in either hearing or reading what, from its sound and its entire agreement with their own ideas, they suppose to be literature. At ad events, whatever the reason, the middle- class admiration for rubbish is certain, and as the stuff provided has been ample, and is wholly blameless, we do not see why the wish of so very large a class should not be taken into consideration. We prefer the old idea,—that genius, however thin, being incommunicable and invaluable, its possessor, if in poverty, should be relieved by the State, as a much nobler and more invigorating theory ; but still the new one has something to recommend it, and worse selections have been made than that of Mr. Tupper, who, at all events, could not be embalmed in a " Dunciad." Pitch will keep as well as frankincense, but not mere molasses.
We wish somebody would explain the entire absence of any poetry in England capable of attracting either the class which can read the '.Proverbial Philosophy," or the stronger and healthier- minded masses of the people. England has during this genera- tion been the very land of poetry, but we have no popular poet, no poet who has caught the ear either of the small shopkeepers or the workmen. There is nothing in the Eastern-Counties man to distinguish him from the Scot, and his history, if he only knew it—which he does not—is as full of inspiration, for he set up the Commonwealth ; but he has no Burns, any more than he has a Wronger. Mr. Frederick Martin has shown that Clare had genius, and we have no wish to deny his merits, but what ploughman or blacksmith ever heard of Clare? Mr. Hughes says there is an entire Ballad literature completely out of sight of the Respectables, and gives such specimens of it as he can find in Berkshire ; but he acknowledges that the most popular ballads rarely cross the boundaries of their own counties, while the songs imported from London are, for the moat part, inanely silly. The Irish have a complete song-literature ; the Scotch have Burns, and twenty like him, though inferior to him ; and the Welsh maintain a national minstrelsy with infinite care and zeal ; but we poor English, who sustain the Empire, and are just now almost forgotten in it, have absolutely nothing. Dibdin is nearly forgotten, we never had a national war- song, and with the exception of Dr. Mackay's "There's a good time coming 1" have hardly one of any kind which is familiar to every person in the country. Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn-law Rhymer, and in his way a true poet, served his turn, and was then so forgotten that his works are out of print, and in London at least moat difficult to procure. Even his "People's Hymn," which one would have thought would have rel;ived with every popular movement, and which was once sang in Norwich by twenty thousand
voices, has never been heard since the little loaves were taken off the poles. And yet his poetry was steeped in the half-religious, half-democratic spirit which seems to suit the English. We can
still remember, probably inaccurately after thirty years, a few lines, which strike us as having the true ring in them, but they will be as unfamiliar to most of our readers as "Chevy Chase"
When wilt thou save thy people, Lord?
0 God of mercy! when? Not masters, but their toilers, Not kings and priests, but men. Flowers of thy heart, 0 God are they ; Let them not pass like weeds away, Their heritage a sunless day. God save the people !
"Shall crime breed crime for ever, Strength aiding still the strong? Is it thy will, 0 Father, That man should suffer wrong? 'No,' say thy mountains, 'No,' thy skies, Man's clouded sun shall brightly rise, And songs be hoard where now are sighs.
God save the people !"
The songs, however, seem to be far off, for as we said, we scarcely know of one except the Queen's Hymn, which is universally known, and though set to noble music, is a wretched composition. The case is just the same in America, where Mr. White's efforts during the war produced nothing which lived or deserved to live as a national song, or to supersede
"John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave, But his soul is marching on ;"
while as for a popular poet, a genuine poet of the people, the United States search for one with no better luck than ourselves, or with less, for though they have humorous singers in plenty, nothing has become quite so national
among them as one or two of Dibdin's have among our- selves. We suppose the explanation is accidental, that no great poet in England has ever sympathised with his countrymen as Burns sympathised with the Scotch, in all their moods ; but it is a loss to the national life,—a loss made all the worse, when it leaves the place of poet among a huge class to be occupied, as we admit it is occupied, by Martin Farquhar Tupper.
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