BOOKS.

A LEGACY OF VERSE.*

IT ispainful work making acquaintance for the first time with a mind of rare genius and sweetness which has already and only just left us, and yet left us before its promise had passed into anything like full and adequate performance. There are many of the little poems in this volume which ought to live, which have the breath of true genius in them, and which merely to have entered into should be enjoyment. Yet it is impossible even for an absolute stranger, like the present writer, who had never even heard of the author or read one of the verses in the volume till they appeared in this posthumous publication, to read them without feeling throughout the melancholy of something like a personal loss. This arises , partly from the delicately pencilled personal character stamped upon the poems, and on the few extracts from Miss Williams's letters which Mr. Plumptre has given us in his brief but most effective preliminary sketch, and partly, no doubt, from the constantly recurring notes of fragility which are to be found in almost all the most beautiful—which seem generally also the most hasty—of these poems, and which give to nearly every one of them the tone of a hurried though pathetic farewell. In one of Keble's letters which Sir J. T. Coleridge quotes in his recently published life, Keble makes a characteristic remark on the attaching character of ill-health, observing that it

is almost heartbreaking, " because it gets stronger as hope gets less." This remark was made twenty years before his own marriage, which, however, as Sir J. T. Coleridge observes, certainly illus trated it. Now there is something of a similar kind of fascination in a certain class of poems, not of course because they convey an appeal for help,—we doubt very much if that is the true attraction of even physical feebleness,—but because the mere impression of fragility adds a fresh beauty to that which is Ileautiful ; the more sense of transience, the shadow of coining withdrawal, the presentiment of loss, adds not only a new keenness to the insight with which we enter into the vanishing gleam, but gives also a new softness to the beauty itself, the softness of gentle renunciation, of that thrill which makes no demand on the atten tion, but carries it all the more by the involuntary vibration the sinking cadence leaves behind. All poetry, if it be poetry at all, must be full of life ; but there is no paradox in saying that life departing is often the fullest life. Fragility is not deficiency of life, but only transience, and though that is inconsistent with the full sense of power which breathes through some poetry, it no doubt adds a very specific ray of vital beauty to poetry of another kind.

The most lovely thrill in Shelley's poetry is derived from this sense of transience, which flickers up and down iu it like an unsteady flame :—

" When the lamp is shattered, tho light in the dust lies dead ; When the cloud is scattered, the rainbow's glory is fled ; When the Into is broken, sweet tones are remembered not ; When the lips have spoken, loved accents aro soon forgot."

The wave of life seems to leap and fall in such lines as these, and it is in such lines as these that Shelley's exquisite genius had its most perfect expression.

We are not going to compare these beautiful poems of Miss Williams's to Shelley's. That would be unjust to her, and would, moreover, convey a very false notion of the true drift and bent of her genius. But they are like his in this. and in this alone, that almost all of them have about them what Mr. Arnold, speaking of Shelley, calls "the lovely wail" of a half conscious and half unconscious fragility. They all tremble with a kind of distant and airy plaintiveness, not the enduring kind of sadness, but the yielding sadness,—not the frayed but tenacious string of such a harp as Scott's or Wordsworth's, whose saddest tones have a resonance of terrestrial strength and fortitude about them, but the delicate and ghostly melancholy that seems to be attained only by virtue of the attenuation of the chord, and through the tendency of a half disembodied music to hover over instruments that are near their hour of breaking. Yet Miss Williams's gaiety and humour are not less remarkable than her melancholy, but all are of the same kind, all have the tenderness and pathos that seem just to touch this world from some point behind and beyond it. As an illustration of what we have said, take almost any of the beautiful poems called " Questionings " and " Responses," which seem to contain

all the boldness of a masculine and all the tenderness of a feminine spirit ; but this especially, which is, perhaps, the moat lovely of them all : SORROW AND SIGHING SHALL FLEE AWAY:—Tut: PROPHET ISAIAH.

"Sorrow and sighing, sorrow and sighing,

How can it happen that these should plum Out of a world where the flowers lie dying, Out of .a world whore all flesh is grass ? Sorrow and sighing, sorrow and sighing, Dear as the autumn, mid fair as the rain.

Sorrow and sighing, sorrow and sighing, Will they then cease. and our souls grow dull? Sluggishly somnolent, torpidly lying, Lapped in tho calm of a deep sea lull ? Sorrow and sighing, sorrow and sighing,—

Should we not long for the thundering main ?

Sorrow and sighing, sorrow and sighing, All to be done, and our tears gone dry , Never a thought o'er the boundary flying, Never a grasp as the clouds swing by. Sorrow and sighing, sorrow and sighing, All faded out, nothing loft to restrain.

" Sorrow and sighing. sorrow and sighing.

What would our clays be cut off from those?

If. at the fairy mart, we were life buying.

Should wo not choose them, past things that please?

Sorrow and sighing, sorrow and sighing,—

Take what you will, only leave us our pain."

The couplet in the third verse,

" Never a thought o'er the boundary flying Never a grasp as the clouds awing by," has the far-away ring of true spiritual detachment,' something of the moan of the waves of another world breaking on the hard shore of the visible and finite.

But this, though one of the most beautiful of these unfinished but wonderful lyrics will by no means convey to our readers a fair conception of the poet's originality of imagination, of the boldness with which she deals with conceptions that would seem anything but native to an English girl's imagination. Take, now, this, which we might almost call, in some humble sense, a companion to the Poet Laureate's "Northern Farmer,"—not, of course, that it involves anything like the same grasp of detail or the same complete dramatic knowledge of the class depicted. But Miss Williams skilfully avoided the necessity for this by giving to her yeoman's dying thoughts just a faint touch of fever and delirium, just that vagrancy of mind which renders it impossible to expect that he would paint his standard of life so minutely as Tennyson's farmer paints his. Also, she has chosen a rough mind of a higher strain than the Northern Farmer, a mind evidently often visited by gleams of spiritual light. On the whole, her picture is sufficiently vivid and striking :—

" YEOMAN SERVICE.

" Is it death, is it death, that is coming? Well, let it come:

It has been, like The French !' but a cry of Wolf for so long, That I think I am glad now at last to find it is hero, That the enemy stands at the door. Walk in, tardy foe.

" When the minister came from Bethesda after my soul, He declared I was Pagan in strength, it grieved him to say.

• Are the Christians all weak, then?' I asked : 'if so, none for me ;' Let the women be meek, but the men must stand till they die.

-Holy Father, forgive me! I am hat sore angered with these ; I am Thine, as Thou knowest, Thine alone,—never bended my knees To the Pope, nor the Saints, nor the Virgin ; nor cowered to please The young parson in yellow, who moans at the Chapel of Ease.

"I know naught about singing and playing, nor wearing of crowns ; But there may be a school outside Heaven for learning such things, Or the Master may give me employment I know how to do,— Say the care of the wondrous white horses of John the Divine.

Or I might keep the gates 'gainst the dogs of the liars without,— I am great against liars myself; yet I lied to the squire When I met him, along with the rest, at his coming of age, And hurra'd for • Our noble young master '—he, mean as a hound !

"And again, when the parson I spoke of came here t'other day,— Out of church he is gentle, and pure as a woman, and poor, And the poverty is such a kingship, becomes him so well, That I called him ` Your Reverence' humbly : I doubt it was wrong.

" There's another sin, too, on my conscience : when we wore first wed, I was jealous with Janet, miscalled her a sinner one day,

And 1 struck her! She lives with the angels this many a year ; But I'll scarce dare to meet her, till Thou, Lord, halt spoke to her first.

"I would fain make confession to Thee. Lord, before I come hence ; But the children crowd round me with crying, and harass my soul. If they would but be still for a moment until I am gone, And not thrust in their sighing while I am at talk with the King.

"Well, what is it you want, then, Kezia ? speak quickly, my girl! 'Say good-bye to us, father ; nor mutter like this, in your sloop.' Little lass ! she is tender and fair, and the boys are good boys ; I must help them from yonder. Good-bye, lass! Good-bye, boys, Good-bye !"

The condition of mind implied in the fine line,

"And the poverty is such a kingship, becomes him so well!"

is, it will be seen, as strikingly opposed as possible to the pure worship of the laud,—the conscientia' which is adstricta of Tennyson's hero. But if we go on extracting all that seems to us the product of true genius in the volume we should print nearly half of it, and we should have to do so merely to show the striking variety of mood and poetical conception it contains. What a range of conception, from the first fine piece called "Baal," the idea of which is to paint the changing attitude of man towards the powers of evil as the world grows older, and the corresponding change in the voice of God as it pleads with man, —to the exquisite little children's poems, such as " Marjory's Wedding " and " Crutch, the Judge," which show the divine light playing on children's nature with a spiritual truth, as it seems to us, infinitely superior to the highest touches in Mr. lieble's beautiful but comparatively artificial Lyra Innocentium. For mere force of diction take the following verse :— " Is it so, 0 Christ in heaven ! that the highest suffer most?

That the strongest wander furthest and more hopelessly are lost ? That the mark of rank in nature is capacity 16r /win.

And the angu;sh of the singer makes the sweetness of the strain?"

Or read the debate between "the sisters" as to the preciousness to them of their past griefs (pp. 129-131), and its exquisitely pathetic conclusion ; or the lovely lyric called " Departed ;" or the previous one, headed " Domine, Dirige Nos," with its wonderfully dramatic climax,— "Darkness, dumbness, fall on us Through the valley groping ; Drowning brothers call on us; Bern men talk of hoping.

0 Lord, direct us !''

But, as we have said, it is impossible for us even to refer to the innumerable indications of originality, sweetness, and power in this little volume.

In all Miss Williams's poems there are sudden roughnesses, failures, flaws, but there is scarcely one poem that does not stamp her a poet of an order above what it has usually been given to women to attain. Had she lived, we cannot doubt that she might have been known as a poet vastly more powerful and original than Mrs. Hemans, one with at least as much originality and far less of mannerism than Mrs. Browning. The very small quantity of what she has left behind her, will, of course, prevent this full recognition of her genius. Still, we think that those who have eyes to see will discover it.

We cannot conclude without giving a specimen or two of Miss Williams's letters, from Mr. Plumptre's finely chosen extracts. What a perfect bit of description is the following,—better than a water-colour as mere sketching, and with a humour and observation playing over it worthy, as Mr. Plumptre truly observes, of Charles Lamb !—

" Yesterday I saw the sunset over the fields ; there was such a curious bright peacefulness over everything, the cool clear grey and blue of the sky, joined to the low green hills by a crimson line, where the sun had flung back a parting resurgam before he sank." "In this delicious weather one must keep out all day ; this afternoon the sunset colours on the sea were exquisite, and the sky scenery magnificent—little gem-like bits of darkest blue set in snowy curled cumuli, and lead-grey nimbus. Of course it is utterly impossible to describe this sort of thing; but I suppose one's instinct of speech is ineradicable. Talking of instincts, I fancy the desire for some kind of audience or public is one almost universal. The few children there are on the sands now, play among themselves prosaically enough ; but a grown-up person has only to sit down amongst them, looking tolerably good-tempered, and may at once enliven them into attempting wonderful feats, casting up droll little glances in search of a smile of approbation or amusement. I think, with children at least, that it is partly the unselfish desire to give pleasure. They like gathering shells or doing anything for anybody. I hear dismal accounts of east winds in London ; but the swallows believe in the spring, at any rate. They keep arriving in long V-like lines. How tame they are when they first came ! One alighted nearly at my feet this morning and stood looking at me with the most charming air of disdain imaginable. Then he perched on a lump of chalk, and gave his greeting to the land in a little low song —only two or three notes—bat wonderfully clear and sweet. The gaunt old cliff seems to have a fluttering veil of melody thrown over it, it is so peopled with divers birds."

And take this, for subtle humour,—a criticism on humility that is a strong contrast to the clerico-didactic view of that virtue ;—Miss Williams's exquisite freshness of feeling and touch makes us feel again what we have often felt before, that without a certain playfulness of mind there is little true moral insight :

"I don't know how the good people do who are always lowly-minded ; for me, when I am humble, I am detestable, fit only to growl in a hole like an Adullamite bear. I was just longing for some moral caustic to apply to set me right, when, after the bountiful fashion of Heaven, came instead the sweet and wholesome manna of encouragement."

We cannot turn from these poems without real regret. As they constitute, we suppose, at least the substance of Miss Williams's claim to rank among English poets, a claim which can now never become stronger than it is, we cannot close without pain a volume which is, at the present day, we fear, insufficient in amount to give her such a rank,—it was not so once, for Gray's claim rests upon as little, we think, in quantity, on poetry of far narrower scope, and containing far leas play of light and thought, though, we admit, on far more perfect workmanship and execution,—and yet a volume which proves completely, to our apprehension, that she had ample genius, with a few years longer of life, to have established it.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JAMES GRANT.* THE chief clerical functionary of a rather celebrated wateringplace published to the world on one occasion a sermon with the very remarkable title—" God is love, or a Plea for Church Rates." In reading this quaint conjunction of alternative designations, one could hardly evade the suspicion that this reverend discourser had a dash of genuine humour in him, salt as of the sea. Our present author has printed a book with the same title as the sermon referred to, and if we were to fuse that volume and the work before us into one, and construct an appropriate name for the amalgamation, it would be, " God is Love, or a Plea for Everlasting Torments." But there is no humour in Mr. Grant. He is nothing if not tormentist, and the devout frame of mind which the story ascribes to the sea-sick missionary when he exclaimed, " But for the miseries of the lost, how could I endure this trial ?" seems to be possessed by him in full measure. Mr•. Grant has given us upwards of 500 pages of lamentation and woe. He has fallen on evil days, and so abouuding is the evil, so dead is the faith, that the writer stands alone, like the one willow-tree on the bleak common, which Robert Hall described as " nature hanging out a signal of distress." No doubt in this big city there are not a few " deadly errors," and very many " dangerous delusions of the day,"—we would add, of the night also. If Mr. Grant should ever happen to take a walk about midnight in the neighbourhood in which the Record and Morning Advertiser are published, we suspect he would encounter, in a very concrete form, some very "deadly " tendencies.

He would witness all too palpable signs of the ignorance, the pauperism, and the crime which are formidable enough to cause the heart of even the most hopeful philanthropist at times to fail him. Did he follow the drunken husband, or the slatternly wife, or the miserable daughter home to the foul and crowded rooms where all the laws of health and all the decencies of life are evermore outraged, he would find materials enough to inspire with amazement and sorrow any one who has the common instincts of humanity still unblunted. And we must believe that no one possessing in even the slightest measure a sympathy with the mind of Christ, who lived and died to save others, could become cognizant of the degraded and degrading conditions which envelope the lives of thousands in this metropolis,—not to speak of other places at all,—without the feeling rising up within him that the estate of the humbler classes is the question which by its urgency and its dangers dwarfs all others for the present into comparative insignificance, and calls upon all who " profess and call themselves Christians" to make one great united effort towards its physical and moral amelioration. But apparently Mr. Grant is wholly unacquainted with the circumstances to which we allude. The only evils visible from his lonely

watch-tower are purely speculative. The old ecclesiastical luminaries are fading away, like the flowers of the forest, and in their places he descries a dismal nebula, which he has with his Calvinistic telescope resolved into a cluster of stars each with aspect more malign than its neighbour. These stars in their courses are all fighting against Mr. Grant's religious " tendencies." It is " awful," " terrible," " absolutely appalling," to think of the destructive influences of these new Lucifers. For, to speak without a figure, they are all associated in " the most formidable conspiracy which ever yet was formed against• the religion of Christ," and their names are legion. From " the majority of our pulpits," both Nonconformist and Established, quite another gospel than that of Mr. Grant is preached. We hope he is correct in this statement,—while the press groans beneath a load of matter which is "simply blasphemous," "'makes one shudder," is " fearfully profane," and "awfully daring." Foremost among the conspirators by whom " Christianity is betrayed,—as our Lord Himself was by Judas,"—stand the "Colensos, the Stanleys, the Maurices."t Very conspicuous, too, is Mr. Jowett, and scarcely less so is a certain Mr. Davies, who, according to Mr. Grant, was very naughty in tearing up at the altar, before his congregation, a petition which had been " got up" for signature "against the errors,—in other words, the infidelity,—of Dr. Colenso," and who is, it seems, " an incumbent of a Church of England chapel," near " Cavendish Square." The tenderness of Mr. Grant's geographical feeling as shown in the expression " near Cavendish Square," is very touching. All the same, there is no such incumbent of a Church of England chapel in that neighbourhood. Possibly the author meant to label with his gracious adjectives Mr. Llewellyn Davies, who only happens to be the Rector of Christ Church, Marylebone ; but we are quite sure that he was not guilty of the puerile indiscretion which Mr. Grant assigns to an incumbent of a Church of England chapel. Another of the conspirators is Robertson's biographer, Mr. Stopford Brooke ; another is Mr. Kingsley, while the lay element of the dreadful alliance is represented by ourselves, Lord Amberley, John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson, Ruskin, and Carlyle. Concerning all of these laymen Mr. Grant imparts some information to his readers which is quite worthy of his statement respecting the reverend gentleman who preaches " near Cavendish Square." For instance, Mr. Carlyle acknowledges no God but Nature ! Mr. Mill is " au atheist in the most absolute sense of the term, and on all occasions parades and glories in his atheism," especially, we presume, as evidenced in his address to the students of St. Andrew's University. Mr. Matthew Arnold we must heedfully shun, for lie." systematically assails Christianity in poetry and prose, representing it as a gigantic I. raud, which is just beginnineto be detected, and will very soon be entirely exploded." But our author's homily on Mr. Ruskin is quite his chef d'eencre. Mr. Ruskin at one time, it seems, was a regular hearer of the most popular preacher of the age, and to show how the most evangelical ministrations of the day improved his moral sentiments, Mr. Grant exclaims, "Just only listen to his exposure of the sophistries of universal

ism in the course of his advocacy of the cardinal doctrines of the Christian religion." But, alas ! Mr. Ruskin does not now believe that the glad tidings of great joy to all people means the sad tidings of everlasting torment to the great majority of mankind. We are pleased exceedingly to be made acquainted with this revolution in Mr. Ruskin's theory of the divine government. But how has Mr. Grant become cognizant of the change? Such of our readers as have not been iu the habit of perusing " religious " books or newspapers will scarcely be prepared for the answer to this question. For all the authority on which Mr. Grant relies for his asseverations touching Mr. Ruskin's change of creed, is that this gentleman "openly mentions the matter in society."

Of course, we are utterly bewildered as to how a matter that is mentioned in society could be mentioned otherwise than "openly," but of this we are thoroughly persuaded, that no " society " of decently well-bred men and women would ever feel at liberty to publish, even to a religious world, what any speaker had uttered in the intimacy of private life without his direct and special sanction. However, this procedure on the part of Mr. Grant is not quite singular. For there is lying before us, as we write, a letter from the office of a well-known religious journal, in which it is frankly admitted that the charges the publication in question had repeatedly printed against a certain clergyman were based entirely upon reports of his private conversation ! We called Mr. Grant's lament over Ruskin his masterpiece ; but some critics might think that his sentences about Tennyson are the beat revelation of the author's highest mood. Mr. Tennyson, as all the world knows, has written many very reverent but allhopeful lines about the world " within the veil ;" and the more one studies the In Memoriam, the profounder does the impression become that this great writer flees from all dogmatism as a dead and accursed thing, and that to save the life of love he must become even as a little child, and take refuge in the living and enduring Will. The poet knows nothing, he only trusts that good will fall at last, far off, at last to all, and every winter change to spring. But, according to Mr. Grant, the sublimely simple stanzas, in which the Laureate gives utterance to his trust and longing for light, assert the baitf of the writer in the limited duration of future punishments, and the ulti mate restoration of all intelligent beings ;" while, regarded simply as poetry," they are "very poor"! This is exquisite. The trust that not a worm is cloven in vain means, in Mr. Grant's interpretation, the limited duration of future punishment ; and the hope that not a moth with vain desire is shrivelled in a fruitless fire, signifies the ultimate restoration of all intelligent beings. No wonder that Mr. Grant's book, containing matter like this, is, as he tells us, making a great sensation.

There is another morsel that claims a notice of its own.

Mr. Grant informs us that, if forced to make his election between Ritualism and Rationalism, he would greatly prefer the former, and adds, "Give me the Bishop of Oxford in preference to Dr. Colenso, Dr. Pusey in preference to Dean Stanley." But Mr. Grant is not predestined to cast in his lot with any of these celebrities. All is safe with him. It is his mercy (sic !) to know that lie is not shut up to the necessity of adopting the views of either. And his mercy is great, for he subjoins :—" The Ritualists come under the awful condemnation pronounced in the last chapter of the Book of Revelation on those who add to the Word of God; the Rationalists subject themselves

to the terrible doom which is there pronounced on those who take away from that blessed book." A certain theologian, in the old days, in his great sorrow over the delusions of his time, said, in his grand, passionate, self-sacrificing way, that lie could even "wish himself accursed from Christ for the sake of his brethren," and it seems as if he would have gone mad or become hopelessly desponding, had lie not seen a light on the far horizon which was to him the dawn of a day in which all Israel should be saved. The great "mercy" which calmly contemplates the inevitable doom of others had not yet visited his heart. Richter, in one of his grim, humorous moods, says that a certain race of writers who strove mainly to supply their readers with strong stimulants seem to have been guided in their literary endeavours by the experience of the Red Indian missionaries, who found that the natives always left the

stations as soon as the brandy was exhausted. In like manner, Mr. Grant must have his consolation. Tennyson's hope is "poor"

stuff to him. Nothing will suffice for himself but the fierce wine of wrath poured out, however, unto others ; and he fears that if this delightful stimulus is withdrawn from our pulpits, the congregations will retire en masse, like the Red Indians.

What, then, is Mr. Grant's own gospel ? As far as we can interpret his wrathful utterances, his belief seems to be this :— There is no certainty but that of damnation. No doubt, all who die very young go to heaven, whether, as we presume, they be Negroes, Hindoos, or Japanese. But after members of the human family attain a certain period of life, there is no security as to their spiritual welfare. So long as the descendants of Adam have no sins in particular to be forgiven, the infinite charity of Heaven may take them into favour ; but, as a rule, there is no forgiveness for adult sinners. Christ did not die for any save a very few who think themselves believers ; and if you meet with a statement like this, that God is reconciling the world to Himself, you must not take it literally, but must interpret the comprehensive assertion of St. Paul by the jealous utterance of the Pharisees when they affirmed that all the world had gone after Christ. For Mr. Grant's rule of exposition is this : whenever, in the New Testament a passage is found which seems to rebuke our narrowness and our unforgiving fleas, which seems to say that an almighty charity did create man, did send a divine messenger to win back all prodigal sous to a perfect Father, let the old Adam be your commentator.

Never, for a moment, imagine that Heaven's compassion is the least like man's. We are to forgive until seventy times seven a day ; but God's ways are quite unlike ours. Our best thoughts are no indication of His ; for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so high are our human conceptions of forgiveness above those of the Almighty Creator. The works of the Devil are not to be destroyed. Christ will not draw all men to Himself, and where grace abounds sin abounds still more, and shall remain triumphant. On the whole, Mr. Grant would lead men to say, blessed are the heathen who never heard of Christ, but woe to the majority of all adult persons in Christian countries !

If there is no fear in love, the converse is equally true that there is no love in fear, and the only religion which a work like that of this writer could produce would be a religion of hate and rebellion.

Christ's Gospel appeals directly to the human heart, to our reverence, our sense of justice, our philanthropy. It would win us over to the side of God by calling forth our love of truth, of beauty, of goodness. Mr. Grant's gospel appeals only to fear. " Shure qui pent" is his alpha and omega ; and as extremes always meet, he endorses the latest materialism, which maintains that the human conscience has its genesis in the fear of punishment. If this conclusion is well founded, then it follows, inevitably, that the greatest saint is the greatest coward.

In conclusion, the impression which remains with us after reading this book, perhaps more carefully than it deserves, is that the writer has not the remotest suspicion of the relation between a man's creed and a man's character. The aim of every devout worshipper must be evermore to be made like his God ; but what sort of moral condition must be engendered by the belief, if belief there can be, in an Almighty power who ushers into time and life a multitude which no man can number in order to have the satisfaction of tormenting them world without end ?

Mr. Grant should read a moral against trying to obstruct light and progress, in the elephant which attacked a locomotive engine the other day in India. The assault of the ponderous pachyderm was to us quite a speaking similitude of Mr. Grant's performance in this fearful and wonderful volume.