BOOKS.
LUCILE.* LUCILE has disappointed us. We like neither its substance nor its form. It is the epic of a used-up, sophisticated society. The true moral, it has been said, of Byron's poems, lies in the frustra- tion of the epicurean or anarchic life which they depict. They show you the vanity of those efforts to obtain individual happiness, that are divorced from all motives and all ends that are not purely self-regarding. A boundless love of liberty and lust of will, a despotic self-assertion, and a passionate demand of felicity, are the characteristics of Byron's heroes. Byron is the Solomon of the modern poets. He has tried all the resources of material, plea- sure, and those of art, of a voluptuous sensational art, are thoroughly known to him. He has looked over and through life, worldly-artistic life, and has found no satisfaction, no happiness anywhere, and like the Jewish King of old, his bitter sorrowful " Vanitaii Vanitatum," is the final cry of his agonized soul. Egoism in, life, egoism in. pleasure, in knowledge, or in art, results in disappointment, self-contempt, and despair. Hence, in one sense, Byron's poetry is supremely moral. It is the condemna- tion of an obsolete system, in politics, in religion, in practical existence. It does not pretend to sac what is, right, though it may, indeed, intimate the existence of a higher, fairer world of thought and feeling and musically aspire towards it. It ends mainly with a negation, and by its protest against the selfish mo- ralities, suggests a purer, nobler, sweeter code of morals. There is at all times a black shadow which overhangs existence. Perhaps we can never hope entirely to overcome the sorrow and terrors of human destiny ; perhaps, in the presence of the Infinite and the Eternal, the littleness of Time, and the limitations of our defective Mortality must always oppress and sadden sensitive or aspiring natures. And thus it may be said, in Byron's partial justification, that his song takes its colour, in some degree, from that blackness, at once extreme and unintelligible, which but the fatal condition of the glorifying splendour of life, that black- ness, which, stoicism teaches us to endure and religious faith to regard hopefully, but which in our epicureanism we deplore, or in our intolerance of imperfection we denounce as diabolic. Thus the'wail of the universal and inevitable scepticism, which all men, even good men, sometimes help to swell, rives and falls, in Byron's moody song, while that individual despondence and private fret- fulness, which result from a waste or misdirection of human ener- gies, inspire with a sadness which can be healed, his morbid and melancholy verse. And thus, too, in Byron, there is a dark grandeur, an intenseness and a power of utterance, a real desola- tion and "salt-surf " bitterness of emotion and expression, that reconcile you to the perverseness and the smallness 'of the . everlasting complaint — " I am so unhappy." But if we oar tolerate Byronic sentiment in its original modu- lator, we require no repetition of it; not even when the latent Moral of Byron's poems is recognized and enforced. Thus Lucile, with all its cleverness and its virtuous ending, is little better, in our judgment, than a "damnable iteration." Not, indeed, that the new poet of drawing-room existence is a direct or conscious imi- tator of the author of Childe Harold. In some respects, in- deed, he resembles Moore rather than Byron ; and in the treatment of his subject, in the mechanical part of his art, and his general elaboration of character, he approximates but distantly to our musical Werter. It is rather in the representation of the same restless, purposeless, voluptuous life, with its discontents and satieties that the implied resemblance is felt. The Giaours and Corsairs, the Alps and the Laras, the Gulnares and Kaleds, into whiff!). Byron transformed the life-weary and desperate votaries of pleasure, in the glittering capitals of Europe are in their Meredith metamorphoses, reconverted into the Alfred Vargraves, the de Luvois, and Luoiles of civilized existence. They are all properly behaved, according to the regulations of the society to which they have now returned ; or, if a little of the brigand still hang about them, they are all the more interesting, from the traces which they still retain of the old delightful, vagabond. existence, which they led in the pathless solitude, or the pirate's isle.
We shall not attempt to give an analysis of Mr. Owen Mere- dith's story in verse; but we will at least introduce the principal persons of the drama. The hero of the tale, Lord Alfred Far- grave, is one of those social victims, that drawn off one way by their passions and drawn back again by their heart, are pursued by a vague and immortal regret. Martyrs of the "divine de- spair," which haunts the heroin sufferers in the Belgravian "sanctuary of sorrow," the class of men to which our esthetic patrician-remotely belongs, endeavour to quench the thirst of a deathless desire in the dregs of a sensual opiate. Their better nature, however, awakens as they reel home under upbraiding stars, and the votaries of Bacchus, the reveller, are transformed into the worshippers of the awful god of poetic inspiration. Via- grave is brilliant, various, and versatile, with
" A character wavering, fitful, uncertain,
As the shadow that shades o'er a luminous curtain, Vague and flitting, but on it for ever impressing The shape of some substance at which you stand guessing : When you said, All is -worthless and weak here,' behold ! Into sight on a sudden there seemed to unfold Great outlines of strenuous truth in the man : When you said this is genius the outlines grew wan, • Lucas. By Owen Meredith, Author of the " Wanderer," " Clytemnestra," age. Published by Chapman and Hall. And his life, the' in all things so gifted and-skilled, Was at best but a promise which nothing fulfilled."
The heroine of the tale, Lucile do Nevers, is a woman of genius, at war with the world and the world's conventions. She is impassioned, self-immolating, at least in-idea, and if •in earlier life her fierce and unfashioned nature had not precluded the true self-surrender, she might have satisfied' her ambition, realized her aspirations, developed her intellectual power, in and through the man whose heart had comprehended. her own. An opportu- nity of such self-identification had presented itself. She had missed it. It is scarcely clear whether the fault was her's or Vargrave's. We believe both were wrong. Years pass by, and Lord Alfred is on the eve of marriage with the golden-haired. rosy-lipped. Matilda Darcy, when a note, daintily written, and violet-scented, is put into his correspondingly aesthetic hands. The note is from "Lucile." It summons him to Serchon, in fulfil- ment of a promise to return its epistolary predecessors, the records of an earlier and more glowing age. Leaving Cousin John to explain his sudden disappearance to his.bright-tressed " Will-o'- the Wisp," Lord Alfred obeys the summons. Once more in the presence of the lady of his first dreams, now "basking in the silent but sumptuous blaze of a soft, second summer," the old. feelings return. Their revival is reciprocal. Explanations com mence, when presently the Duke de Luvois is announced, and i Alfred slips into an arbour, The ducal intruder, in a later period of his life, degenerates morally, though we presume his ex- ternal improvement was uninterrupted, for when he became "a self-crowned young king of the fashion in France" :--
" Whose resplendent regalia so dazzled the sight,
Whose horse was so perfect, whose boots were so bright, Who so hailed in the salon, so marked in the Bois, Who so welcomed by all as Eugene de Luvois."
As yet, however, he is not " the free rebel of life," which he eventually becomes : his existence is made up of trifles ; but his vigour of nature and tension of will, if rightly directed by a great living principle, or an ennobling love, are capable of being turned to splendid account. Nevertheless, the initiation of vice has already begun, and its earnest prosecution seems even now to announce the fashionable coronation, the resplendent regalia, the attractive and liberal view of life, the easy morals, the perfect horse, and the polished boots !
We have now introduced the refined and lawless denizens of this Mayfair poet's world. Rivalry, desperation, marriage, plot, and counterplot ; the fall and the redemption of the well-booted giaour under the seraphic influence of saintly womanhood ; the awakening of the hero of the immortal longings, under the stress of pecuniary adversity, to a sense of his duties and his powers, help to form the argument of this drawing-room song. The talent, ingenuity, and affluent fancy which the poem displays are undeniable. If the story is sometimes tedious, it is rarely without some interest ; occasionally, you even admire the elo- quence and vigour with which a scene is depicted, or an emotion described, or feel the momentary contagion of poetic enthusiasm or moral sympathy ; as when Matilda's girlish confiding love is ponrtrayed ; or Lucile makes her earnest appeal to Luvois, or hovers like a guardian angel around the steps of the young and imperilled wife ; or when the Duke's self-conquest, in favour of his rival's son, "on the red field of Inkerman," is the theme of the poet's song. In short, we willingly acknowledge, in the au- thor of Lucile, the existence of a varied literary talent. He can amuse ; he can interest ; he is facile in expression; he is versa- tile in thought ; he can change from grave to gay, from lively to severe ; he has some of the qualities that go to make a poet ; and experience and rigorous discipline may enable him to deserve and secure success. Judged, however, by any high standard of poetic art, Lucile must, we think, be pronounced a mistake. It wants simplicity, imagination, passion, concentration. The nature which it depicts is hot-house nature; its principal characters are the diseased exotics of civilized life ; without that tragical ne- cessity which makes the Manfreds and Conrads of Byron en- durable. Mr. Meredith's impersonations are lawless, dis- contented, spoilt children of society, fitting heroes and heroines for a novel, but incapable of high poetic idealization. If we reprove the argument, we must equally reprove the form of the poem. A true musical expression is the fitting vesture of poetry ; or it is the sensuous form in which the poetic idea em- bodies itself. Such form, such expression, is not to be found in Mr. Meredith's rhymed novel. The measure which he has selected as the vehicle of his thoughts and sentiments is eminently un- pleasing, treated at least as he has treated it ; and probably under uo conditions could be made an: appropriateinstrument of melody. It is rarely more than a spirited dingle; it is often a succession of jog-trot discordanees ; and usually it has about it a coxcombical jauntiness which irritates rather than delights. It would be too easy to substantiate our criticism, but we refrain to do so ; preferring in a final quotation to adduce proof of Mr. Meredith's ability to write stirring and animated rhymes in this deprecated metre, when the subject accords with the character of the verse. In this instance, the subject thus accordant is war, war physical and war intellectual. " Oh were nought gained beside from this conflict of Thought, Man at last in alliance with man bath been brought. The wide world owns no longer one master alone, And no more every nation is vassal to one. Now the strong need the weak, and the weak aid the strong, Gracious laws whereby Peace may her lifetime prolong Have been wrought out of Wrath by the swords of mankind, And the shout of free nations rolls forth on the wind,
May the sword then be sheathed ? May the banners be furl'd ? And is Peace orown'd for ever fair Queen of the World ?
Nay Peace holds the sword to establish her state, And the sentinel walks by the white temple gate, Lest the Lion by night to the Leopard should say ' Arise, brother leopard, and forth on the prey ! ' Still the Watchfire must burn, still the Watchman must wake, And still Force arm to keep what still Force arms to take."
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