CHAPTER VII.

POLITICAL AND MINOR POETS-LOWELL, WHITTIER, HOLMES, ETC.

MR. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL introduces one of the chapters of his pleasant volume of Fireside Travels with these remarks: "The first sight of a shore so historical as that of Europe gives an American a strange thrill. What we always feel the artistic want of at home is background. It is all idle to say that we are Englishmen, and that English history is ours too. It is precisely in this that we are not Englishmen, as we only possess their history through our minds, and not by lifelong association with a spot and an idea that we call England." The growth of a history on their own soil is, in the minds of most Americans, a requisite to the development of national art. Memories of the Revolution war have suggested some stirring verses; as, "Paul Revere's Ride" in the Wayside Inn; several of Hawthorne's prose-poems; and Winthrop's Edwin Brothertoft ; but the most effective national works of recent date owe their generative impulse to the political movements of the last quarter of a century. The assertion of Henri Beyle (Stendthal) that Politics are like a stone tied round the neck of Literature, and Goethe's warning to the young Germans, who were reproaching him with a lack of patriotic fervour, 'Remember politics are not poetry," must be accepted with a reservation. As a rule, the wider the grasp of the poet, the further is he removed from the partisan. In Shakespeare, as

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in Chaucer, this comprehensiveness is so extreme that he includes in his view of life (like that of a remote star with an infinitesimal parallax) only the common points, and excludes from it the differences of the two great systems of faith, which in his youth were contending, and are still contending, for the dominion of Christendom. Dante and Milton, with a narrow range, take more definite sides; but their highest poetry transcends the strife of Guelph and Ghibelline, of Puritan and Cavalier. On the other hand, poetry of a secondary, though still of a high, order may be referred to the suggestions of contemporary history, i.e. to politics. Ballads, not legendary or purely domestic, have often a political face; and this is true of the songs which, like the Marseillaise, help to fight the battles, or, according to Fletcher of Saltoun, make the laws of a nation. The stalks of asphodel which move to and fro the Gygonian Rock grow under its shadow. Even if we admit that the heroic thought which inspires heroic deeds comes from a loftier source, the shrewd thought that condemns or ridicules degenerate deeds is an offshoot of local or temporary circumstances. Satire not merely personal is, almost always, more or less political. The poetry of Sophocles seems to confirm Goethe's dictum; that of Aristophanes disproves it. Paradise Lost is comparatively impartial, but Hudibras would be naught without the animus of its polemic.

The Biglow Papers, a series of metrical pamphlets born of the great social and political struggle, to the phases of which we have referred, are among the most original contributions to American literature. Previous to the publication of this work, Mr. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL was already well known, on both sides of the Atlantic, as the author of an extensive volume of miscellaneous verses, in various measures and themes, in several of which the zeal of the politician runs alongside of the fervour of the poet. Generally speaking, his

earlier efforts are more impetuous than powerful, and they conspicuously illustrate the artistic defects often attributed to his countrymen, as well as some of their peculiar and characteristic merits. Buoyant and vigorous, but bearing on every page the mark of haste, they display more fancy than imagination. Lowell says of Bryant (punning on the coldness of his manner) that "he dwells by himself in supreme ice-olation:" the remark is made natural by the fact that his own genius everywhere appears in opposition to Bryant's. Far from shrinking into solitary places, he loves great cities and their cries, and sets them to rhyme with hearty goodwill. When he goes into the country, it is to have his blood sent faster through his veins by the spring morning, and not to dream among autumn woods. We may read the following, one of the best of his descriptions, as a sufficient contrast to Thanatopsis:

"And what is so rare as a day in June?

Then if ever come perfect days;

Then Heaven tries the Earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays.
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur or see it glisten:

Every clod feels a stir of might,

An instinct within that reaches and towers,
And, grasping blindly above it for light,

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers."

Mr. Lowell, a Yankee to the backbone, is intolerant of English criticism; but can anything be more perverse, after the complete success of the last couplet, than to follow it up with this expansion in bad rhythm and bad rhyme ?—

"The flush of life may well be seen; (!)

Thrilling back over hills and valleys

The cowslip startles in meadows green,

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice;
And there's never a leaf or a blade too mean
To be some happy creature's palace.”

If we turn the page, in the same Vision of Sir Launfal,

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to the picture of the grim old castle, which "summer besieges on every side," or read Allegra, or The Fountain, or the Indian Summer Reverie, we find, pervading them all, the same jubilant energy or flush of life, and the same carelessness. The passage from which we have quoted runs on "leaping and flashing," through a shoal of phantasies; and repeats itself in substance, a score of times, before coming to a period. Mr. Lowell's earlier style is apt to be both verbose and tautological-faults only half redeemed by its fluency and richness. He writes in utter disregard of Pope's "greatest art," and, unchecked by any reverences, contemns "the dead blaspheming Past," "Bibliolatry," and the "dotard Orient," after the fashion in which Dr. Mackay, Chartist poetaster and later Times correspondent,' was used to deal with "old opinions, rags, and tatters." The imagery in those poems, drawn direct from nature, is generally correct and suggestive, showing a keen eye and a fine sense of analogies that drawn from history is less appropriate. Few Americans know how to use the classics with due reticence; Mr. Lowell constantly abuses them. His pages are perpetually pestered with schoolboy commonplaces; as Phidian Joves, Syracusan tyrants, Dodona groves, Olympus, Ganymede, Tyrtæan harps, rattling shields at Marathon; and confused by abstractions, as The Actual, The Idea, The Age, Humanity, etc.-abstractions more bombastic than metaphysical. Few of his ballads are wanting in fine lines; but most of them are spoilt by incongruities. The semi-political and social verses are, in substance, manly exhortations: we read them, in a sympathetic mood, with a glow of enthusiasm ; but their fire never reaches a white heat, and, on revisal, it seems to be merely smouldering. The Ode to Freedom, the verses on the Capture of Fugitive Slaves, and those on the Present Crisis (bearing the date 1845, and presumably referring to the annexation of

1 i.e. during the war, when he upheld the cause of the slaveholders.

Texas), are thick-set with stirring watchwords: few are more capable of being recited with effect on platforms, but they will not bear analysis. Mr. Lowell censures, with extreme severity, a mixed metaphor in Dean Merivale's History. What is a critic to say of the following?

"New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth. They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.

Lo, before us, gleam her camp-fires; we ourselves must pilgrims be— Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,

Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key.” "We are glad, since we have so much in the same kind to answer for, that this bit of horticultural rhetoric is from beyond sea." The Ode to France, which, by its name, provokes a terrible comparison, abounds in worse examples.

Mr. Lowell's early volume is by no means the product of a poetaster; but his Odes are, almost without exception, calculated to encourage poetasters. His most famous performance in this direction, the Ode recited at the Harvard Commemoration, July 21, 1865, has been generally exalted, on both sides of the Atlantic, as the author's masterpiece. It does not seem to me, save in a few passages, to be even in the second rank of his works. In this laborious and often animated composition, platitudes lie side by side with violences, and attempts at strong writing too often result in cacophony; while the clear notes of its exultant patriotism are marred by a continual snarling over the sea.

"Who now shall sneer? 1

That is best blood that hath most iron in't

No victory

1 Few were inclined to "sneer," though many to regret. ever "tingled the ears" of some of us with such exultation as that of Gettysburg, unless it were that of Sedan: but of late years Americans have proved sometimes ungracious even to their friends on this side of the water; and one but dares to doubt the thinness of the blood of Cœur de Lion.