VICTORIAN POETS.*
Miss SHARP has put together, in a useful and unpretending little book, a series of studies in contemporary poetry, intended primarily as an introduction to the wider and more advanced instruction which is supplied by the University Extension system of lectures. The somewhat elementary character of the criticism contained in the volume is probably intentional, and due to a desire to attract students who have not much acquaintance with the poetical work of the period. But if we find nothing very strikingly new or suggestive in Miss Sharp's work, at least it discloses an appreciative and careful judg- ment, free from obtrusive favoritism, and sensible, modest, and useful in its methods. It is not easy to overrate the dimness of insight and absence of any true literary standard in many readers as they first approach the study of poetry ; readers who yet are not without natural taste, and are ready for teaching and responsive to it. To such minds a book of this kind, which teaches simply and straightforwardly and without fear of uttering commonplaces, some of the first principles by which an appreciative and discriminating judgment may be obtained, will be of truer assistance than much more advanced and original criticism. The least satisfactory chapter in the book is that dealing with the minor poetry of the period. Here Miss Sharp's treatment of her subject seems to us somewhat rambling and inadequate : distinctive characteristics are insufficiently marked, attention and emphasis are capriciously bestowed. It is an error of poetical instinct which can allot a page of laudatory criticism to Mrs. Hamilton King whilst the beautiful poems of Archbishop Trench are dismissed with a colourless phrase, and the name of Mr. Coventry Patmore is not even mentioned.
A book of this kind, reminding us how near we now are to the close of a poetical period, naturally suggests some reflection as to the more general features which give to the poetry of the Victorian era its distinctive character. We owe to its teaching an added insight into beauty, with a quickened sense of its power and mystery, as well as a wider range of interest in motive and character and situation. But nowhere, perhaps, do we touch more closely and suggestively on the signs of a common purpose and a common inspiration than when we attempt to trace the influence upon the poetry of the period of that strange sense of discouragement and disappointment—the result, at least in part, of intellectual disquiet and slackened hope, of a clearer insight into the limitations attending even the noblest enterprises, of a keener sensitiveness to pain and suffering—which has been so marked a feature of our modern life. The influence of this undercurrent of sadness—this " something which infects the world "—on the poetical writers of the day may be widely discerned, though in very different ways and degrees. To some it has come as a challenge, to be met and measured and replied to ; to others as an inevitable and tragic fact, to be accepted with patient endurance, or turned from in despair of remedy or explanation. The touch of it may even be dis- cerned on the work of those to whom it can only have come as an unwelcome and uncongenial disturbance of their poetical world. It seems sometimes to add a shadow to the melancholy which hangs over the strange and rich and imaginative beauty of Rossetti's work. It has avowedly led Morris, " the idle singer of an empty day," to turn away from the per- plexities and problems of modern life to construct a world, full indeed of grace and delicate beauty, but remote from the touch of living passion and from the hopes and fears that we know. If in Swinburne we find an exception, it is because, for all the rush of his eloquence and passion, he has refused to respond to the pressure of actual and importunate questions, or has answered them only with scorn and vehement protest. It is more curious to discover, in a sensitive nature like Mrs. Browning's, so little recognition of this special form of discouragement. The seclusion imposed upon her by ill-health seems to have acted as a protection, and to have sheltered her from the additional depression which might have been inspired by a too keen realisation of failing hope and saddened lives.
• Victorian Poets. By Amy Sharp. London : Methuen and Co. But it is in Arnold and Clough that one feels the full power with which this characteristic of our times—known in direct and personal experience—tells upon the poetic faculty. To them the hesitation and questioning as to the security-of their grounds of faith, the failures of will and courage and hope, of which they are so conscious, are matters of absorbing concern. It would be hard to conceive their poetry without this element, to which it owes so much of its prevailing character. Frankly, regret- fully, beautifully, they express their sense of the burden which weighs upon them, shadowing all anticipations with sadness, and threatening to rob action of its spring and confidence. There are moods when their poetry seems to say the last word on a hopeless mystery. Their sincerity and earnestness can- not be questioned ; had they done nothing more, they would have at least given us a true measure of what such a loss of faith must bring with it. But to both we owe something beyond a noble picture of minds beset by discouragement and doubt, yet losing nothing of honesty and unworldiness. In the beautiful lines called " Morality," Arnold. gives, with a thrill of purpose and courage not often found in him, an encouragement to a braver perseverance and steadier effort. And from Clough, as a fitting parallel to them, come the verses —written with the hand of death upon him—" Say not, the struggle naught availeth," the final utterance of one who had known much suffering. and who had sought truth with a loyalty and singleness of aim that only dreaded dishonouring it by half-hearted or inadequate service.
In Tennyson and Browning, the recognition of this shadow across men's lives, though for the most part it is indirect, is not less real or less serious. " In Memoriam " itself is the expression, with all the vivid realisation which a personal sorrow brings, of the oppressing sense of a shaken faith, of a possible failure of the springs of hope and love, of a despair which grows in strength as the soul discovers how widely the loneliness reaches that death has brought. But it records, too, the gradual return of courage to a mind " schooled by the shadow of death," which has faced its trial, and has attained to clearer insight and a steadier courage through its discipline. And in studying Tennyson's creation of an ideal figure, high and pure in aim, and loyal to an appointed service, we do not under- stand fully the power and significance of the character until we watch it in the day of defeat and overthrow, alone amidst the loss and disloyalty of friends, and the breaking up of a great cause. It is no triumph, but bitter defeat, which meets and rebukes our poorer aims and weakened endurance.
From Browning we scarcely look for direct personal dis- closures. His deepest convictions, what he most hoped and held to and believed, are, for the most part, expressed in- directly through the characters fashioned by him. But the eager interest and wide range of sympathy which made him enter into the thoughts and feelings of widely differing natures, gave him insight into their needs ; and his response is unfailing and characteristic. He meets discouragement and lagging effort, not only with the confidence of a naturally hopeful nature, but on its own ground. His most individual work is concerned with the trial and measure of character through failure and disappointment, and baffled hopes and delayed achievements. The thought which inspired " Sordello " and "Paracelsns," and which is interpreted more fully in " Rabbi ben Ezra," the paradox of a failure bringing with it the promise of a nobler success, is worked out over and over again in ever-varying examples. It lies at the root of his deepest thoughts that the sacrifices and ventures which are made with the risk of failure, the disappointments, the incom- pleteness and limitation which attend all that men attempt and take the heart out of so much that they succeed in, the " joy three parts pain " that is all most of us can hope for from life, are the true training and preparation of character for a higher and more perfect service. And to refuse this discipline, to turn away discouraged in effortless despondency, is to imperil the hope of freedom from a weight of paralysing discourage. ment, and to lose a key which might solve the mystery of pain and failure. This is the answer given by those who have faced most steadily the feeling of " the sick fatigue, the languid doubt," and the " sad patience too near neighbour of despair," with which so many are familiar; and it is the answer of minds which, while they acknowledge inevitable conditions, still retain, in relation to those conditions, their proper great- ness and royalty.
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