MR. BARLOW'S SONNETS"
WE owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Rossetti for a series of sonnets which all bear the stamp of a true poetic power, and some of which will bear comparison with the acknowledged masterpieces of their kind. In these and in his other poems he has given in- creased richness and colour to English lyric verse without in any degree losing accuracy of form. Nor can we refuse to accept Mr. Swinburne's almost boundless wealth of language and melody, extravagant though it be at times, as a real addition to the treasures of English poetry. But Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Rossetti have a very strongly marked vocabulary, or rather phraseology ; and we are almost inclined to owe them a grudge when we see to what dangers this exposes the public. What is in their own mouths a natural and characteristic accent may become in the mouths of rash imitators an intolerable jargon. It some- times happens that after reading a book with strong interest one seems to be reading it again in the dreams of the succeeding night ; but even in the midst of the dream one generally feels that there is something odd about the contents ; and if perchance one wakes and remembers any part of the illusory chapter or poem, it is almost invariably so absurd that one can hardly believe it to have passed muster even in a dream. Some persons are said to have the power of choosing what they shall dream of ; if any of our, readers enjoy this faculty, they may get a very fair motion of the volume now before us by reading over several of Mr. Rossetti's sonnets, interspersed with a few of Mr. Swinburne's less coherent pieces, the last thing at night, and then attempting to reproduce them in a dream. At least these would suffice to be taken as the main ingredients; but possibly the effect would be improved by throwing in one or two specimens of Wordsworth at his weakest, or better still, the parody of him in Rejected Addresses. To him as well as to the more recent poets already mentioned we owe a deep debt of gratitude ; he rescued English song from the tawdriness of conventional verbiage and showed that true strength rejoices in simplicity. But with him also one is tempted to be angry for the sake of followers who act on the faith that mere baldness will give strength to that which is in itself weak. To be sure, the poets may send us back to the old maxim Corruptio optimi pessima. It is their business to do their best, and if those who come after them make the worst of their work it is no fault of the original authors. And certainly even if both the modern school and the Lake school had foreseen the wrong to be done to them by imitators, they could never have guessed or taken precautions against the event of one and the same writer mixing up in the same set of poems extravagances borrowed from Mr. Swinburne at his wildest with platitudes borrowed from Wordsworth at his weakest.
This volume is the first part of a work to be called Poems and .Sonnets ; so far it professes to contain only sonnets, though the author takes a somewhat lax view of a sonnetteer's obligations as to construction and otherwise. Not to mention smaller matters, one of these pieces runs to a length of twenty lines. But we do not wish to be captious on points of form; it is better to give at once a few specimens of the two modes of diction in the alternation of .which the author seems to seek a pleasing variety. Taking first the prevailing style, which we may call the Swinburnian, we at -once find flowers of foam and odours of hair in abundance. In the first sonnet a lady's eyes are "a twin-born wonder, green and brown and gray ;" and elsewhere a lover looks up to the " endless fire of her face." In due time come the "sting of rosy lips" and melodies that beat and burst and stun ;" after which a " cold white windy day " seems familiar enough, and a " greedy grasp of passion-shaking hands" common-place. The colour of the day is set off by a "scarlet evening air." The scarlet however appears to have strayed out of the tropical sunrise in Enoch Arden, and must be a little uncomfortable in the company of such a troop of revellers fresh from Poems and Ballads. Love is " white, born of -woman, fiery-footed, free." And to return to the hair, the idea of its blossoming into perfume, whatever that may mean, has taken such a hold on the writer that he has made it the foundation of Poems and Sonnets. By George Barlow. Part L London: J. C. Rotten. 1871.
two separate sonnets. Such then is the ornate manner of these poems.
When we turn to the passages where simplicity is affected, the excess in this direction is hardly less absurd, only with a milder kind of absurdity. On the very first page the writer asks:— "Have I, in fact, as Beats in humble thought Deemed that in water he his name had wrought, To shifting sand of poetry made bequeath ?"
In fact, there is undeniably a certain baldness about this. We have said that we do not want to be captious on trifles, but our impression is that there is no middle course at present in the English language between bequeathing and making a bequest, though bequest has in its day been a verb. But to proceed with our instances, what shall we say to these ?- "My meaning this but partially expresses."
"Soon as Shakespeare's lips tho above had spoken." "These obstacles one's further route retard."
The eccentricities we have called attention to might be excused if the general quality of the workmanship were of a high standard, but in this also the work must be found wanting. Halting verses
such as,—
" Its ecstasy ought to blossom into perfume," (where the italics are the author's),— "As an offering—well, it cannot but seem hard," and still worse, such false rhymes as saw, shore ; dawn, horn ; Isolina, demeanour ; Novalis, tallies, are not to be endured in verse composition of any kind, and least of all in the sonnet, where slovenliness is absolutely fatal. The author expresses his admiration of American society for being free from " the pruning of Convention's hand," but it is much to be regretted that he has forborne to apply more of such pruning to his own work. Another oddity in his composition which must be distressing to a sensitive reader is a habit of dropping italics about in unlikely places. The same reader may also be startled at finding two or even three alternative versions of the same piece all printed to- gether. It has hitherto been the custom of poets to publish only
one recension at a time.
We fear that the writer's own account of his relation to poetry is at present more literally true than he thinks ; " I love it," he says, " but I cannot find a voice." And yet a promise of better things is not wholly wanting. There are grace and melody in the pieces entitled, " Reminiscence " and "The Discovery of Love," and another called " The Waking of Beauty " shows a genuine worship which ought some time to bear worthier fruit. If the whole work were of the quality of these lines, we should have spoken of it far otherwise than we have done :-
"From end to end of our awakened earth
Shall roll upon the wings of morning mirth The great reverberation of her name, And she shall rule the ages, she the same To whom the foam of Grecian waves gave birth."
There is not much chance of the author listening to the advice of one whom he will probably regard as an enemy : yet if we dared to offer him a word of advice we should recommend him to study Milton diligently, and to practise for a season a strict abstinence from any more recent English poet.
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