less mystic, and clearer song, attributed | One in that company, and to commune to thy lips before, although Yendys has With them, saying, Thou, oh Alp, and thou, not. His, as a whole, is not worthy either And I. Nathless, proud equal, look thou of thee or himself! But what beautiful words are these about the sun's darling-Summer-immediately below this Sun-song?— Alas! that one Should use the days of summer but to live, We quote but one more of these random and ransomless gems: "The Sublime and Beautiful, We promised next to quote one or two longer passages. We wish we had room for all the description of Chamouni, which, like the scene, is unapproachable—the most Miltonic strain since Milton-and this, because it accomplishes its sublime effects merely by sublime thought and image, almost disdaining aught but simple and colloquial words. Yet we must give a few scattered stones from this new Alp in descriptive literature-this, as yet, the masterpiece of its author's genius: Chamouni, 'mid sternest Alps Down-gazing, like a solemn company "There being old thrones Mountainous mutterings, or through the vale and thou, take Heed of thy peer, lest he perceive thee notLest the wind blow his garment, and the hem Crush thee, or lest he stir, and the mere dust In the eternal folds bury thee quick." Coleridge, in his "Hymn to Mont Blanc"- -a hymn of which it is the highest praise to say that it is equal to the subject, to Thomson's hymn at the end of "The Seasons," to Milton's hymn put into the mouth of our first parents, and to this grand effusion of Sydney Yendys says, "Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, And straight stood still, Balder has thus nobly expanded, if he ever (which we doubt) thought of, the Coleridgean image: in vain "The ocean of a frozen world; A marble storm in monumental rage; Passion at nought, and strength still strong A wrestling giant, spell-bound, but not dead, As though the universal deluge pass'd These confines, and when forty days were o'er, Knew the set time obedient, and arose In haste. But Winter lifted up his hand, And stay'd the everlasting sign, which strives For ever to return. Cold crested tides, And cataracts more white than wintry foam, Eternally in act of the great leap That never may be ta'en-these fill the gorge, And rear upon the steep uplifted waves Immoveable, that proudly feign to go." There follow a number of verses, not so clearly representing the magnificent idea in the author's mind to ordinary readers as we might have wished. Yet all this dim gulf of thought and image is radiant, here and there, with poetry. But how finely this passage sweetens and softens the grandeur before and after: "Here, in the lowest vale, Sit we beside the torrent, till the goats Come tinkling home at eve, with pastoral horn, Slow down the winding way, plucking sweet | In these dead seasons, whence our Danish grass sires Amid the yellow pansies and harebells blue. Of the Great Arctic Ghost, the efficient The milk is warm, The cakes are brown; The flax is spun, The kine are dry; The bed is laid, So sings the mother as she milks within There follows a fine picture of the "trouble" making cold the Alpine sum mits as the sun sets: "For they do watch The journey of the setting sun, as one Who, when the weaker inmates of the house Have sunk about his feet in dews and shades Of sorrow, watches still, with brows of light And manly eye, a brother on his way; But when the lessening face shines no return, Through distance slowly lengthening, and sinks slow Behind the hill-top, nor him, looking back, The straining sense discerns, nor the far sound Of wheels, stands fix'd in sudden gloom profound, And thoughts more stern than wo.” This, too, is very striking— "These fall back aghast in sight Of everlasting Winter, where, snow-borne In his white realm, for ever white, he sits Invisible to men; and in his works Gives argument of that which seen makes faint Aspiring Nature, and his throne a mount As the darkness deepens, the poet, resting his eye upon the vast snow of the upper hills, which alone continues visible, is reminded of a Norland legend; and with a powerful picture of it the noble strain closes: "There was a legend wild-whisper'd at eve, Late round the dying watchfires to awed men power And apparition of the frozen North, The mystic Swan of Norna, the dread bird Swooping from heaven, its head to earth, its neck Down-streaming from the cloud; above the cloud, Its great vans through a rolling dust of stars, Thundrous descending in the rush of fate." Our readers will notice, in these and the foregoing extracts, a vast improvement over "The Roman" in the music of the versification. The verse of "The Roman" was constructed too much on the model of Byron, who often closes and begins his lines with expletives and weak words. The verse of Yendys is much more Miltonic. We give, as a specimen of this, and as one of the finest passages in the poem, the following description of Morn: When she stood forth at universal prime, And could not sin; and so she won of God, Once again The heavens forget their limits, pinions bright Sweet winds to opening flowers, MORN to the heart. But more than dew to grass, or light to eyes, She audibly remember'd, they who heard Coleridge (in his "Love") have alone of our poets adequately represented. Shelley, like Yendys, is too spiritual; Keats, like Smith, is too sensuous. Shakspere, we think, makes woman too much the handmaid, instead of the companion, of man: his yielding, bending shadow, not his sister and friend:— "Stronger Shakspere felt for man alone." Ere closing this critique, we have to mention one or two conclusions in reference to Yendys' genius, which this book has deeply impressed on our mind. First, his forte is not the drama or the lyrical poem. The lyrics in this poem are nu Of mortal dwelling, neither flush'd nor merous, but none of them equal to Smith's pale, Pure in the naked loveliness of heaven- "Garden and Child," or to his own "Winter Night" in "The Roman;" none of them entirely worthy of his genius. Nor Smith and Yendys differ very materially is he strikingly dramatic in the managein their conception of woman. Smith's fe- ment of his scenes and situations. He males are houris in a Mahometan heaven; should give us next, either a great prose those of Yendys are angels in the Para- work, developing his peculiar theory of dise of our God. Smith's emblem of things, in the bold, rich, and eloquent woman is a rich and luscious rose, bend- style of those articles he contributed to ing to every breath of wind, and wooing "The Palladium," "The Sun," and "The every eye; that of Yendys is a star look- Eclectic;" or he should bind himself up ing across gulfs of space and galaxies of to the task he has already in his eye, that splendour, to one chosen earthly lover, of constructing a great epic poem. We whose eyes alone respond to the mystic know no writer of the age who, if he will messages of the celestial bride. Smith's but clarify somewhat his style, and select idea of love, though not impure, is pas- some stern, high, continuous narrative for sionate; that of Yendys is more Platonic his theme, is so sure to succeed in this than Plato's own. The poet true, the human, the poetic, and the who has coped with the Coliseum, the Christian idea of love, includes and com- most magnificent production of man's art, pounds the sensuous and the spiritual and with Chamouni, the grandest of God's elements into one—a tertium quid-earthly works, need shrink from no topic, diviner, shall we say? because more com- however lofty; nay, the loftier his theme plete than either; and which Milton and the better. We think that the forsaken walk of the Titans. ALEXANDER SMITH. THERE is something exceedingly sweet long is he to continue to shine? Such but solemn in the strain of thought suggested by the appearance of a new and true poet. Well is his uprise often compared to that of a new star arising in the midnight. What is he? whence has he come? whither is he going? and how are questions which are alike applicable to the planet and to the poet. A new poet, like a new planet, is another proof of the continued existence of the creative energy of the "Father of Spirits." He is a new messenger and mediator between the Infinite and the race of man. Whether-works which, nevertheless, a world so rising or falling, retreating or culminat- long as it lies in wickedness shall never ing, in aphelion or in perihelion, he is willingly let die? continually an instructor to his kind. There is never a moment when he is not seen by some one, and when to be seen is, of course, to shine. And if his mission be thoroughly accomplished, the men of future ages are permitted either to share in the shadow of his splendour, or to fill their empty urns with the relict radiance of his beams. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever;" so a poet, a king of beauty, is for ever a joy or a terror; a gulf of glory opening above, or an abyss of torment and mystery gaping below. And Alas! it is too late; elpyaσro, as the Greek play has it. The shaft of genius once ejaculated can be recalled no more, be it aimed at Satan or at God. hence in our day the peculiar propriety, nay, necessity, of prefacing or winding up our praise of poetic power by such a stern caution to its possessor as this:-" Be thou sure that thy word, whether that of an angel or a fiend, whether openly or secretly blasphemous, whether loyal or rebellious to the existence of a God and of his great laws, whether in favour of the alternative Despair or the alternative Revelation, the only two possible, shall endure with the endurance of earth, and shall remain on thy head either a halo of horror or a crown of glory." 'Tis verily a fearful gift that of poetic genius; and fearful, especially, through the immortality which waits upon all its genuine inspirations, whatever be their Claiming, as we do, something of a pamoral purpose and tendency. Thus, a ternal interest in Alexander Smith, we Marlowe is as immortal as a Milton-a propose, in the remainder of this paper, Congreve as a Goldsmith- -a Byron or first characterising his peculiar powers, Burns as a Wordsworth or James Mont- and secondly, adding to this estimate gomery-an Edgar Poe as a Longfellow our most sincere and friendly counsel as or a Lowell. Just look at the dreadful, to their future exercise. the unquenchable, the infernal life of It is a labour of love; for ever since Poe's Lyrics and Tales. No one can the straggling, scratching MS., along with read these without shuddering, without its accompanying letter, reached our still pity, and sorrow, and condemnation of study, we have loved the author of the the author, without a half-muttered mur-"Life Drama;" and all the more since mur of inquiry at his Maker-"Why this we met him in his quiet yet distinct, moawful anomaly in Thy works?" And yet dest yet manly personality. And perhaps no one can avoid reading them, and read- the opportunities of observation which ing them again, and hanging over their lurid and lightning-blasted pages, and thinking that this wondrous being wanted only two things to have made him the master of American minds-virtue and happiness. And there steals in another We may first, however, glance at some thought, which deepens the melancholy of the charges which even his friendly and eternises the interest-what would critics have brought against him. He Poe Now give to have lived another life has been accused of over sensuousness. than he did, and to have devoted his in- The true answer to this is to state his estimable powers to other works than the youth. He is only twenty-five years of convulsive preparation of such terrible age, and wrote all those parts of the poem trifles-such nocturne nuga-as con- to which objections have been made when stitute his remains? And still more em- he was two or three years younger. Every phatically, what would Swift and Byron youth of genius must be sensuous; and now exchange for the liberty of suppress- if he write poetry, ought, in truth to his ing their fouler and more malignant works own nature, to express it there. Of course have been thus afforded may qualify us for speaking with greater certainty and satisfaction, both to ourselves and others, than the majority of his critics, about the principal elements of his genius. "O happy time of youthful lovers, heaven" we distinguish between the sensuous and to answer in this matter, except by again the sensual. Smith is never sensual; and referring to his age. All young poets are his most glowing descriptions, no more imitators. Poetry," says Aristotle, "is than those in the "Song of Songs," tend imitation." It begins with imitation, to excite lascivious feelings. Female and it continues in imitation, and with beauty is a natural object of admiration, imitation it ends. The difference beand a young poet filled with this passion- tween the various stages only is, that in ate feeling, were a mere hypocrite if he boyhood and early youth poets imitate did not voice it forth in verse, and, both other poets, and that in manhood they as an artist and as an honest man, will pass from the study of models which they feel himself compelled to do so. Had may admire to error and extravagance, Wordsworth himself written poetry at to that great original, which, without that period of his life to which he after- blame, excites an infinite and endless wards so beautifully refers in the lines devotion. That Smith has read and admired, and learned of Keats, and Shelley, and Tennyson, and many others, is obvious; but it is obvious, also, that he has read his own heart still more closely, and has learned still more from the book of nature. Every page contains allusions it had perhaps been scarcely less richly to his favourite authors; but every page, flesh-coloured than the "Life Drama." too, contains evidences of a rich native In general, however, the true poet, as he vein. The man who preserves his idioadvances in his life and in his career, will syncrasy amid much reading of the poets, become less and less sensuous in feeling is more to be praised than he who, in and in song. Woman's form will retreat horror at plagiarism, draws a cordon farther back in the sky of his fancy, and sanitaire around himself, and refuses to woman's ideal will come more promi- cultivate acquaintance with the great nently forward; she will "die in the classics of his age and country. A true flesh, to be raised in the spirit;" and original is often most so when he is imithis inevitable process, through which tating or even translating others. So even Moore passed, and Keats was pass-Smith has marvellously improved some ing at his death, shall yet be realised in of the few figures he has borrowed. The Alexander Smith, if he continue to live, and his critics consent to wait. If our readers will compare Shelley's conception of woman, in his juvenile novels "Zastrozzi" and the "Rosicrucian," with Bea- A still more common objection is a trice Cenci, or the graceful imaginary fe- certain monotony of figure which marks male forms which play like creatures of his poetry. He draws, it is said, all his the elements in the "Prometheus," he imagery from the stars, the sea, the sun, will find another striking instance of and the moon. Now we think we can what we mean. In some cases, perhaps, not only defend him in this, but deduce the process may be reversed, and the young poet who began with the ideal may, in after life, descend to the real, and drown his early dream of spiritual love in sensuous admiration and desire. But these we think are rare, and are accounted for as much from physical as from mental causes. Smith has been called an imitator, or éven a plagiarist. We are not careful objects shown are sometimes the same as in other authors, but he has cast on them the mellowing, softening, and spiritualising moonlight of his own genius. from it an argument in favour of the But |