Poems. By George Howard, Earl of Carlisle. (tIoxon.)—The Oxford Prize
Poem on "Paestum " with which this volume commences is a type of all its contents. Lord Carlisle wrote to perfection the sort of verse which is suggested when one thinks of a Newdigate. He had taste feeling, and culture. He could handle the heroic couplet with a skill that surpassed all but the very best imitators of Pope. But his verse, even when it is most sonorous or most graceful, never seems to have the ring of true poetry. The keenest critic, it is tree, could hardly find in this volume a single fault of expression or of rhythm ; but it would be just as difficult to find a striking thought, or even a striking line. Nor can we trace any signs of growth in what he wrote. The poem which won the Newdigate Prize in 1821 is not perceptibly inferior to verses which bear a date forty years later. He early learnt to imitate the style of his great master, and there was little to be done in acquiring the art more perfectly. The one point, in fact, in which his taste shows itself at fault is a subject in which he was most manifestly influenced by Pope. Nothing in the "Iliad" could be more unlike Homer than this is unlike to 2Eschylus. It is a paraphrase of part of the first chorus in the "Agamemnon."
"To Greece she left the javelin and the shield, Th' embattled navy, and the tented field: While to ill-fated Ilion's war-girt tower She bore perdition for her bridal dower: Light thro. the ported see the frail one glide, Each tie neglected and each law defied."
This was, we suppose, an early work, but the paraphrase of the eighth chapter of Daniel, published in 1858, is equally open to the .same criticism. Take these lines, for instance :—
"The turbaned hordes of Araby advance, Urge the fleet barb, and hurl th' unerring lance. Mid Egypt's temples, and o'er Bsrca's sands, Copt. Moor, and Goth, uplift submissive hands: On Xeres' bank. and Andalusia's plain, Cowers all the recreant chivalry of Spain: Wealth sits enthroned 'mid Cordova 's high towers. And Science dwells in soft Granada's bowers. Nor less where Eastern ethers brightly smile, To the chill Oxus from the sultry Nile,
The dusky tribes receive the Prophet's law, And to his Caliphs bend with prostrate awe."
Could anything be more curiously unlike Hebrew prophecy ? But most of Lord Carlisle's verses are very good in their way. Here are some lines, "On a Tree planted by the Countess of St. German's ":-
"Poor tree, a gentle mistress placed thee here, To be the glory of the glade around, Thy life has but survived one fleeting year, And she, too, sleeps beneath another mound.
"But mark what different terms your fates allow, Though like the period of your swift decay, Thine are the withered branch and sapless bough, Hers the green memory and immortal day."
The volume is a pleasant memorial to one of the most amiable and accomplished of men.
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