MART HOWITVE BALLADS AND MISCELLANEOUS POEMS: AUNT CARRY'S BALLADS FOR

CHILDREN.

THE first of these handsome volumes, with its handsome frontispiece in the form of a portrait of the authoress, contains a selection from the fugi-

tive poetry of Mary Howill ; with some new pieces. The collection is di- vided into three parts,—ballads, miscellaneous poems, and translations; though the first and second divisions were almost superfluous, as miscel- laneous • • .4ns may be found among the ballads, if no ballads are to be suet wi in the miscellaneous pieces. Something of the weakness of affection may have induced this classification ; for it is clear from her pre- face that Mrs. Howitt is not only an ardent admirer of the old ballads, but partial to their reproduction in modern guise. In this imitation of the provincial ancients, Mary Howitt has avoided

the error we lately noticed in Mr. Sheldon's Minstrelsy of the English Border. She has eschewed all violence of incident, coarseness of deed

or language, and obsolete words or phrases : but in escaping one class of Emits she has fallen into another. With the grossness and rudeness of the older ballad she has lost the strength. Some of her poems have scarcely a subject. They are stories without an end : the persons do nothing but talk, and their dialogues convey little information, rather describing than discoursing. Some of the ballads are more distinctly narrative ; but in sinking the coarseness of the feudal times they also sink their character, not only losing the traits of men in the middle ages, but colouring everything with a modern spirit. Such is the case with "Willie o' Wyburn," — a peasant youth who becomes an eminent scholar, and exhibits a Quaker-like spirit of meekness ; and a "Forest Beene in the Days of Wickliffe,"—which, however pretty, is scarcely accordant with the then possibilities of life. In ballads whose inci-

dents are placed in modern times, Mrs. Howitt succeeds better; and

such topics, after all, are perhaps the most fitting themes for the ballad- writer. They can be varied by the use of popular superstitions and adventurous professions,—as in Mallet's "William and Margaret," the first, we think, of the kind; and the effects of remoteness may be given by placing the scene in distant countries,—as Mrs. Howitt has done in "Ellen Gray." Such misery as the following is not, indeed, likely to have occurred to a respectable emigrant, whose husband died in the street, in a new city like that described ; but the distress is possible, and the picture powerful.

" Ah me I I by his body sate, Stupid, as if I could not break The bonds of that affliction's thrall: Nor had I roused my soul at all, But for my little children's sake.

"Want, total want of daily bread, Caine next. My native pride was strong; And yet I begg'd from day to day, And made my miserable way Throughout the city's busy throng.

"I felt that I was one debased, And what I was I dared not think; Even from myself I strove to hide My very name: an honest pride Made me from common beggary shrink.

"Oh misery ! My homeless heart Grew mac of life. I wander'd out With my two children, far away Into the solitudes that lay The populous city round about.

"The mother in my soul was strong, And I was ravenous as the beast;

Man's heart was hard: I stole them bread,

And while I pined the children fed, And yet each day our wants increased.

"I saw them waste, and waste away; I strove to think it was not so: At length one died—of want he died ! My very brain seemed petrified: I wept not in that bitter woe!

"I took the other in my arms, And day by day, like one amazed By an unutterable grief, I wander'd on: I found relief In travel, but my brain was crazed.

"How we were fed I cannot tell.

I pull'd the berry from the tree, And we lived on: I knew no pain, Save a dull stupor in my brain,

And I forgot my misery.

"I joy'd to see the little stars;

I joy'd to see the midnight moon; I felt at times a wild delight, I saw my child before my sight As gamesome as the young racoon.

" 'Twas a strange season; and how long It lasted, whether days or years, I know not: it too soon went by :

I woke again to agony—

But ne'er again to human tears."

Some of the poems inserted in the first part are scarcely ballads at all. The "Dolores Maria," a description of the darker wonders of the ocean, and the "Delicire Maria," the beautiful side of the sea, but not so striking as the horrors, with several other poems, are rather of the modern fanciful than the old story kind. "The Sale of the Pet Lamb" paints the hardships of poverty, where necessity wrenches away even the most trifling thing we love : but, however akin in subject to the fashionable

cant of the day, which wears a theme till it wears it out, no plagiarism is chargeable upon Mary Howitt; for the poem was written in 1830, and is managed with more of skill and nature than is shown by the numerous imitators who are now trading upon the condition of the poor. Some of the pieces in the miscellaneous poems are not, indeed, altogether free from this taint ; but it is less exhibited in the exaggeration orsentinients or dic- tion than of the incident. Bad as the world is, the persons Mary Howitt exhibits, to paint the sufferings of poverty, would scarcely be so distressed as they are drawn, if they were as virtuous as she describes them.

The miscellaneous poems do not demand so much attention as the ballads. They are of various kinds,—sometimes, as in "Lyrics of Life," touching upon every-day occurrences, "common sorrow, joy, or pain"; sometimes they are taken from more fanciful themes. Throughout the volume, the thoughts and images are quiet and natural, if there is not always a dramatic appropriateness in their position; the sentiments are ever amiable, the diction is poetical, and the versification sufficient. But more of vigour and condensation—more of essential qualities in the sub- stance, and more of strength in the expression, are required to lift the fair writer out of the class of "minor poets."

The first of Aunt Carry's Ballads is a charming little poem by Mrs. Norton, called "The Wood Sprite"; which, though rather halting in its logic is a graceful revival of mythology adapted to modern ideas. Ac- cording to the theory, every tree is the home of a wood-sprite ; and when the tree is cut down, the inhabitant is driven forth, like an Irish cottier, without the means of getting a new holding. In the tale before us, a gentleman, about to make a new path across his lawn, fells a haw- thorn ; the wood-sprite is expelled ; and her adventures in seeking a new lodging "with friends," suffering from exposure to the storms of winter, till her final settlement in a very large oak in Windsor Park, form the theme of the so-called ballad. The moral is pretty.

"And let all kind gentlemen warning take For this poor little wood-sprite's mournful sake; And when any new paths are mark'd and plann'd, And the woodman comes with his axe in his hand, To cat down some hawthorn that long has stood, And drive its fairy out in the wood, Let him have strict orders to plant anew A young tree near where the old tree grew, To shelter the sprite from day to day,

That she may not by storms be blown away."

But here is the hitch. If every tree has a fairy inhabitant, the diffi- culty of room remains, and the older sprite must be guilty of syritieide to secure a lodging. There is some want of dexterity in not giving consis- tency to the new creation. The classical theory of the Hamadryads was the most consistent—that they lived and died with the tree : but this, we suppose, would have been too painful for little readers. "Blanche and Brutikin" is the story of a brother and sister, who res- pectively illustrate industry and idleness, till the brother is converted by a snow-storm in which he nearly perishes, and the alifaction of his sister who is a means of digging him out. There is a more distinct and useful moral inculcated here than in the first tale • the poetry, considered merely as composition, is perhaps superior; the characters of the brother and sis- ter are well described, and Blanche is sweetly touched : but it wants the freshness of "The Wood Sprite"; and there are some improbabilities, which are nothing in a fairy tale, but show more strongly in a story of this working world albeit carried back to the feudal times.