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English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History by Henry Coppee

H >> Henry Coppee >> English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History




... whatsoe'er thy birth,
Thou wert a beautiful thought and softly bodied forth.

Of his dramas which are founded upon history, we cannot say so much; they
are dramatic only in form: some of them are spectacular, like
_Sardanapalus_, which is still presented upon the stage on account of its
scenic effects. In _Manfred_ we have a rare insight into his nature, and
_Cain_ is the vehicle for his peculiar, dark sentiments on the subject of
religion.

_Don Juan_ is illustrative not only of the poet, but of the age; there was
a generation of such men and women. But quite apart from its moral, or
rather immoral, character, the poem is one of the finest in our
literature: it is full of wonderful descriptions, and exhibits a splendid
mastery of language, rhythm, and rhyme: a glorious epic with an inglorious
hero, and that hero Byron himself.

As a man he was an enigma to the world, and doubtless to himself: he was
bad, but he was bold. If he was vindictive, he was generous; if he was
misanthropic and sceptical, it was partly because he despised shams: in
all his actions, we see that implicit working out of his own nature, which
not only conceals nothing, but even exaggerates his own faults. His
antecedents were bad;--his father was a villain; his grand-uncle a
murderer; his mother a woman of violent temper; and himself, with all this
legacy, a man of powerful passions. If evil is in any degree to be
palliated because it is hereditary, those who most condemn it in the
abstract, may still look with compassionate leniency upon the career of
Lord Byron.


THOMAS MOORE.--Emphatically the creature of his age, Moore wrote
sentimental songs in melodious language to the old airs of Ireland, and
used them as an instrument to excite the Irish people in the struggle they
were engaged in against English misgovernment. But his songs were true
neither to tradition nor to nature; they placed before the ardent Celtic
fancy an Irish glory and grandeur entirely different from the reality. Nor
had he in any degree caught the bardic spirit. His lyre was attuned to
reach the ear rather than the heart; his scenes are in enchanted lands;
his _dramatis personae_ tread theatrical boards; his thunder is a
melo-dramatic roll; his lightning is pyrotechny; his tears are either
hypocritical or maudlin; and his laughter is the perfection of genteel
comedy.

Thomas Moore was born in Dublin, on the 28th of May, 1779: he was a
diminutive but precocious child, and was paraded by his father and mother,
who were people in humble life, as a reciter of verse; and as an early
rhymer also. His first poem was printed in a Dublin magazine, when he was
fourteen years old. In 1794 he entered Trinity College, Dublin; and,
although never considered a good scholar, he was graduated in 1798, when
he was nineteen years old.


ANACREON.--The first work which brought him into notice, and which
manifests at once the precocity of his powers and the peculiarity of his
taste, was his translation of the _Odes of Anacreon_. He had begun this
work while at college, but it was finished and published in London,
whither he had gone after leaving college, to enter the Middle Temple, in
order to study law. With equal acuteness and adaptation to character, he
dedicated the poems to the Prince of Wales, an anacreontic hero. As might
be expected, with such a patron, the volume was a success. In 1801 he
published another series of erotic poems, under the title _The Poetical
Works of the late Thomas Little_. This gained for him, in Byron's line,
the name of "the young Catullus of his day"; and, at the instance of Lord
Moira, he was appointed poet-laureate, a post he filled only long enough
to write one birthday ode. What seemed a better fortune came in the shape
of an appointment as Registrar of the Admiralty Court of Bermuda. He went
to the island; remained but a short time; and turned over the uncongenial
duties of the post to a deputy, who subsequently became a defaulter, and
involved Moore to a large amount. Returning from Bermuda, he travelled in
the United States and Canada; not without some poetical record of his
movements. In 1806 he published his _Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems_,
which called down the righteous wrath of the Edinburgh Review: Jeffrey
denounced the book as "a public nuisance," and "a corrupter of public
morals." For this harsh judgment, Moore challenged him; but the duel was
stopped by the police. This hostile meeting was turned to ridicule by
Byron in the lines:

When Little's leadless pistols met his eye,
And Bow-street myrmidons stood laughing by.


LATER FORTUNES.--Moore was now the favorite--the poet and the dependent of
the nobility; and his versatile pen was principally employed to amuse and
to please. He soon began that series of _Irish Melodies_ which he
continued to augment with new pieces for nearly thirty years.

Always of a theatrical turn, he acted well in private drama, in which the
gentlemen were amateurs, and the female parts were personated by
professional actresses. Thus playing in a cast with Miss Dyke, the
daughter of an Irish actor, Moore fell in love with her, and married her
on the 25th of March, 1811.

With a foolish lack of judgment, he lost his hopes of preferment, by
writing satires against the regent; but as a means of livelihood, he
engaged to write songs for Powers, at a salary of L500 per annum, for
seven years.


LALLA ROOKH.--The most acceptable offering to fame, and the most
successful pecuniary venture, was his _Lalla Rookh_. The East was becoming
known to the English; and the fancy of the poet could convert the glimpses
of oriental things into charming pictures. Long possessed with the purpose
to write an Eastern story in verse, Moore set to work with laudable
industry to read books of travels and history, in order to form a strong
and sensible basis for his poetical superstructure. The work is a
collection of beautiful poems, in a delicate setting of beautiful prose.
The princess Lalla Rookh journeys, with great pomp, to become the bride of
the youthful king of Bokkara, and finds among her attendants a handsome
young poet, who beguiles the journey by singing to her these tales in
verse. The dangers of the process became manifest--the king of Bokkara is
forgotten, and the heart of the unfortunate princess is won by the beauty
and the minstrelsy of the youthful poet. What is her relief and her joy to
find on her arrival the unknown poet seated upon the throne as the king,
who had won her heart as an humble bard!

This beautiful and popular work was published in 1817; and for it Moore
received from his publishers, the Longmans, L3000.

In the same year Moore took a small cottage at Sloperton on the estate of
the Marquis of Lansdowne, which, with some interruptions of travel, and a
short residence in Paris, continued to be his residence during his life.
Improvident in money matters, he was greatly troubled by his affairs in
Bermuda;--the amount for which he became responsible by the defalcation of
his deputy was L6000; which, however, by legal cleverness, was compromised
for a thousand guineas.


HIS DIARY.--It is very fortunate, for a proper understanding of Moore's
life, that we have from this time a diary which is invaluable to the
biographer. In 1820 he went to Paris, where he wasted his time and money
in fashionable dissipation, and produced nothing of enduring value. Here
he sketched an Egyptian story, versified in _Alciphron_, but enlarged in
the prose romance called _The Epicurean_.

On a short tour he visited Venice, where he received, as a gift from Lord
Byron, his autobiographical memoirs, which contained so much that was
compromising to others, that they were never published--at least in that
form. They were withdrawn from the Murrays, in whose hands he had placed
them, upon the death of Byron in 1824, and destroyed. A short visit to
Ireland led to his writing the _Memoirs of Captain Rock_, a work which
attained an unprecedented popularity in Ireland.

In 1825 he published his _Life of Sheridan_, which is rather a friendly
panegyric than a truthful biography.

During three years--from 1827 to 1830--he was engaged upon the _Life of
Byron_, which concealed more truth than it divulged. But in all these
years, his chief dependence for daily bread was upon his songs and glees,
squibs for newspapers and magazines, and review articles.

In 1831 he made another successful hit in his _Life of Lord Edward
Fitzgerald_, a rebel of '98, which was followed in 1833 by _The Travels of
an Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion_.

In 1835, through the agency of Lord John Russel, the improvident poet
received a pension of L300. It came in a time of need; for he was getting
old, and his mind moved more sluggishly. His infirmities made him more
domestic; but his greater trials were still before him. His sons were
frivolous spendthrifts; one for whom he had secured a commission in the
army behaved ill, and drew upon his impoverished father again and again
for money: both died young. This cumulation of troubles broke him down; he
had a cerebral attack in December, 1849, and lived helpless and broken
until the 26th of February, 1852, when he expired without suffering.


HIS POETRY.--In most cases, the concurrence of what an author has written
will present to us the mental and moral features of the man. It is
particularly true in the case of Moore. He appears to us in Protean
shapes, indeed, but not without an affinity between them. Small in
stature, of jovial appearance; devoted to the gayest society; not very
earnest in politics; a Roman Catholic in name, with but little practical
religion, he pandered at first to a frivolous public taste, and was even
more corrupt than the public morals.

Not so apparently as Pope an artificial poet, he had few touches of
nature. Of lyric sentiment he has but little; but we must differ from
those who deny to him rare lyrical expression, and happy musical
adaptations. His songs one can hardly _read_; we feel that they must be
sung. He has been accused, too violently, by Maginn of plagiarism: this,
of course, means of phrases and ideas. In our estimate of Moore, it counts
but little; his rare rhythm and exquisite cadences are not plagiarized;
they are his own, and his chief merit.

He abounds in imagery of oriental gorgeousness; and if, in personality,
he may be compared to his own Peri, or one of "the beautiful blue damsel
flies" of that poem, he has given to his unfriendly critics a judgment of
his own style, in a criticism made by Fadladeen of the young poet's story
to Lalla Rookh;--"it resembles one of those Maldivian boats--a slight,
gilded thing, sent adrift without rudder or ballast, and with nothing but
vapid sweets and faded flowers on board." "The effect of the whole," says
one of his biographers, speaking of Lalla Rookh, "is much the same as that
of a magnificent ballet, on which all the resources of the theatre have
been lavished, and no expense spared in golden clouds, ethereal light,
gauze-clad sylphs, and splendid tableaux."

Moore has been felicitously called "the poet of all circles," a phrase
which shows that he reflected the general features of his age. At no time
could the license of _Anacreon_, or the poems of Little, have been so well
received as when "the first gentleman in Europe" set the example of
systematic impurity. At no time could _Irish Melodies_ have had such a
_furore_ of adoption and applause, as when _Repeal_ was the cry, and the
Irish were firing their minds by remembering "the glories of Brian the
Brave;" that Brian Boroimhe who died in the eleventh century, after
defeating the Danes in twenty-five battles.

Moore's _Biographies_, with all their faults, are important social
histories. _Lalla Rookh_ has a double historical significance: it is a
reflection--like _Anastasius_ and _Vathek_, like _Thalaba_ and _The Curse
of Kehama_, like _The Giaour_ and _The Bride of Abydos_--of English
conquest, travel, and adventure in the East. It is so true to nature in
oriental descriptions and allusions, that one traveller declared that to
read it was like riding on a camel; but it is far more important to
observe that the relative conditions of England and the Irish Roman
Catholics are symbolized in the Moslem rule over the Ghebers, as
delineated in _The Fire Worshippers_. In his preface to that poem, Moore
himself says: "The cause of tolerance was again my inspiring theme; and
the spirit that had spoken in the melodies of Ireland soon found itself at
home in the East."

In an historic view of English Literature, the works of Moore, touching
almost every subject, must always be of great value to the student of his
period: there he will always have his prominent place. But he is already
losing his niche in public favor as a poet proper; better taste, purer
morals, truer heart-songs, and more practical views will steadily supplant
him, until, with no power to influence the present, he shall stand only as
a charming relic of the past.




CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY (CONTINUED).


Robert Burns. His Poems. His Career. George Crabbe. Thomas Campbell.
Samuel Rogers. P. B. Shelley. John Keats. Other Writers.



ROBERT BURNS.


If Moore was, in the opinion of his age, an Irish prodigy, Burns is, for
all time, a Scottish marvel. The one was polished and musical, but
artificial and insidiously immoral; the other homely and simple, but
powerful and effective to men of all classes in society. The one was the
poet of the aristocracy; the other the genius whose sympathies were with
the poor. One was most at home in the palaces of the great; and the other,
in the rude Ayrshire cottage, or in the little sitting-room of the
landlord in company with Souter John and Tam O'Shanter. As to most of his
poems, Burns was really of no distinct school, but seems to stand alone,
the creature of circumstance rather than of the age, in an unnatural and
false position, compared by himself to the daisy he uprooted with his
ploughshare:

Even thou who mourn'st the daisy's fate,
That fate is thine--no distant date;
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate,
Full on thy bloom,
Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight
Shall be thy doom!

His life was uneventful. He was the son of a very poor man who was
gardener to a gentleman at Ayr. He was born in Alloway on the 25th of
January, 1759. His early education was scanty; but he read with avidity
the few books on which he could lay his hands, among which he particularly
mentions, in his short autobiography, _The Spectator_, the poems of Pope,
and the writings of Sterne and Thomson. But the work which he was to do
needed not even that training: he drew his simple subjects from
surrounding nature, and his ideas came from his heart rather than his
head. Like Moore, he found the old tunes or airs of the country, and set
them to new words--words full of sentiment and sense.


HIS POEMS.--Most of his poems are quite short, and of the kind called
fugitive, except that they will not fly away. _The Cotter's Saturday
Night_ is for men of all creeds, a pastoral full of divine philosophy. His
_Address to the Deil_ is a tender thought even for the Prince of Darkness,
whom, says Carlyle, his kind nature could not hate with right orthodoxy.
His poems on _The Louse, The Field-Mouse's Nest_, and _The Mountain
Daisy_, are homely meditations and moral lessons, and contain counsels for
all hearts. In _The Twa Dogs_ he contrasts, in fable, the relative
happiness of rich and poor. In the beautiful song

Ye banks and braes of bonnie Doun,

he expresses that hearty sympathy with nature which is one of the most
attractive features of his character. His _Bruce's Address_ stirs the
blood, and makes one start up into an attitude of martial advance. But his
most famous poem--drama, comedy, epic, and pastoral--is _Tam o' Shanter_:
it is a universal favorite; and few travellers leave Scotland without
standing at the window of "Alloway's auld haunted kirk," walking over the
road upon which Meg galloped, pausing over "the keystane of the brigg"
where she lost her tail; and then returning, full of the spirit of the
poem, to sit in Tam's chair, and drink ale out of the same silver-bound
wooden bicker, in the very room of the inn where Tam and the poet used to
get "unco fou," while praising "inspiring bold John Barley-corn." Indeed,
in the words of the poor Scotch carpenter, met by Washington Irving at
Kirk Alloway, "it seems as if the country had grown more beautiful since
Burns had written his bonnie little songs about it."


HIS CAREER.--The poet's career was sad. Gifted but poor, and doomed to
hard work, he was given a place in the excise. He went to Edinburgh, and
for a while was a great social lion; but he acquired a horrid thirst for
drink, which shortened his life. He died in Dumfries, at the early age of
thirty-seven. His allusions to his excesses are frequent, and many of them
touching. In his praise of _Scotch Drink_ he sings _con amore_. In a
letter to Mr. Ainslie, he epitomizes his failing: "Can you, amid the
horrors of penitence, regret, headache, nausea, and all the rest of the
hounds of hell that beset a poor wretch who has been guilty of the sin of
drunkenness,--can you speak peace to a troubled soul."

Burns was a great letter-writer, and thought he excelled in that art; but,
valuable as his letters are, in presenting certain phases of his literary
and personal character, they display none of the power of his poetry, and
would not alone have raised him to eminence. They are in vigorous and
somewhat pedantic English; while most of his poems are in that Lowland
Scottish language or dialect which attracts by its homeliness and pleases
by its _couleur locale_. It should be stated, in conclusion, that Burns is
original in thought and presentation; and to this gift must be added a
large share of humor, and an intense patriotism. Poverty was his grim
horror. He declared that it killed his father, and was pursuing him to the
grave. He rose above the drudgery of a farmer's toil, and he found no
other work which would sustain him; and yet this needy poet stands to-day
among the most distinguished Scotchmen who have contributed to English
Literature.


GEORGE CRABBE.--Also of the transition school; in form and diction
adhering to the classicism of Pope, but, with Thomson, restoring the
pastoral to nature, the poet of the humble poor;--in the words of Byron,
"Pope in worsted stockings," Crabbe was the delight of his time; and Sir
Walter Scott, returning to die at Abbotsford, paid him the following
tribute: he asked that they would read him something amusing, "Read me a
bit of Crabbe." As it was read, he exclaimed, "Capital--excellent--very
good; Crabbe has lost nothing."

George Crabbe was born on December 24th, 1754, at Aldborough, Suffolk. His
father was a poor man; and Crabbe, with little early education, was
apprenticed to a surgeon, and afterwards practised; but his aspirations
were such that he went to London, with three pounds in his pocket, for a
literary venture. He would have been in great straits, had it not been for
the disinterested generosity of Burke, to whom, although an utter
stranger, he applied for assistance. Burke aided him by introducing him to
distinguished literary men; and his fortune was made. In 1781 he published
_The Library_, which was well received. Crabbe then took orders, and was
for a little time curate at Aldborough, his native place, while other
preferment awaited him. In 1783 he appeared under still more favorable
auspices, by publishing _The Village_, which had a decided success. Two
livings were then given him; and he, much to his credit, married his early
love, a young girl of Suffolk. In _The Village_ he describes homely scenes
with great power, in pentameter verse. The poor are the heroes of his
humble epic; and he knew them well, as having been of them. In 1807
appeared _The Parish Register_, in 1810 _The Borough_, and in 1812 his
_Tales in Verse_,--the precursor, in the former style, however, of
Wordsworth's lyrical stories. All these were excellent and very popular,
because they were real, and from his own experience. _The Tales of the
Hall_, referring chiefly to the higher classes of society, are more
artificial, and not so good. His pen was most at home in describing
smugglers, gipsies, and humble villagers, and in delineating poverty and
wretchedness; and thus opening to the rich and titled, doors through which
they might exercise their philanthropy and munificence. In this way Crabbe
was a reformer, and did great good; although his scenes are sometimes
revolting, and his pathos too exacting. As a painter of nature, he is true
and felicitous; especially in marine and coast views, where he is a
pre-Raphaelite in his minuteness. Byron called him "Nature's sternest
painter, but the best." He does not seem to write for effect, and he is
without pretension; so that the critics were quite at fault; for what they
mainly attack is not the poet's work so much as the consideration whether
his works come up to his manifesto. Crabbe died in 1832, on the 3d of
February, being one of the famous dead of that fatal year.

Crabbe's poems mark his age. At an earlier time, when literature was for
the fashionable few, his subjects would have been beneath interest; but
the times had changed; education had been more diffused, and readers were
multiplied. Goldsmith's _Deserted Village_ had struck a new chord, upon
which Crabbe continued to play. Of his treatment of these subjects it must
be said, that while he holds a powerful pen, and portrays truth vividly,
he had an eye only for the sadder conditions of life, and gives pain
rather than excites sympathy in the reader. Our meaning will be best
illustrated by a comparison of _The Village_ of Crabbe with _The Deserted
Village_ of Goldsmith, and the pleasure with which we pass from the
squalid scenes of the former to the gentler sorrows and sympathies of the
latter.


THOMAS CAMPBELL.--More identified with his age than any other poet, and
yet forming a link between the old and the new, was Campbell. Classical
and correct in versification, and smothering nature with sonorous prosody,
he still had the poetic fire, and an excellent power of poetic criticism.
He was the son of a merchant, and was born at Glasgow on the 27th of July,
1777. He thus grew up with the French revolution, and with the great
progress of the English nation in the wars incident to it. He was
carefully educated, and was six years at the University of Glasgow, where
he received prizes for composition. He went later to Germany, after being
graduated, to study Greek literature with Heyne. After some preliminary
essays in verse, he published the _Pleasures of Hope_ in 1799, before he
was twenty-two years old. It was one of the greatest successes of the age,
and has always since been popular. His subject was one of universal
interest; his verse was high-sounding; and his illustrations modern--such
as the fall of Poland--_Finis Poloniae_; and although there is some
turgidity, and some want of unity, making the work a series of poems
rather than a connected one, it was most remarkable for a youth of his
age. It was perhaps unfortunate for his future fame; for it led the world
to expect other and better things, which were not forthcoming. Travelling
on the continent in the next year, 1800, he witnessed the battle of
Hohenlinden from the monastery of St. Jacob, and wrote that splendid,
ringing battle-piece, which has been so often recited and parodied. From
that time he wrote nothing in poetry worthy of note, except songs and
battle odes, with one exception. Among his battle-pieces which have never
been equalled are _Ye Mariners of England_, _The Battle of the Baltic_,
and _Lochiel's Warning_. His _Exile of Erin_ has been greatly admired, and
was suspected at the time of being treasonable; the author, however, being
entirely innocent of such an intention, as he clearly showed.

Besides reviews and other miscellanies, Campbell wrote _The Annals of
Great Britain, from the Accession of George III. to the Peace of Amiens_,
which is a graceful but not valuable work. In 1805 he received a pension
of L200 per annum.

In 1809 he published his _Gertrude of Wyoming_--the exception referred
to--a touching story, written with exquisite grace, but not true to the
nature of the country or the Indian character. Like _Rasselas_, it is a
conventional English tale with foreign names and localities; but as an
English poem it has great merit; and it turned public attention to the
beautiful Valley of Wyoming, and the noble river which flows through it.

As a critic, Campbell had great acquirements and gifts. These were
displayed in his elaborate _Specimens of the British Poets_, published in
1819, and in his _Lectures on Poetry_ before the Surrey Institution in
1820. In 1827 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow; but
afterwards his literary efforts were by no means worthy of his reputation.
Few have read his _Pilgrim of Glencoe_; and all who have, are pained by
its manifestation of his failing powers. In fact, his was an unfinished
fame--a brilliant beginning, but no continuance. Sir Walter Scott has
touched it with a needle, when he says, "Campbell is in a manner a bugbear
to himself; the brightness of his early success is a detriment to all his
after efforts. He is afraid of the shadow which his own fame casts before
him." Byron placed him in the second category of the greatest living
English poets; but Byron was no critic.

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