we signify under the name of Omar Khayyám, they do not equal FitzGerald in realness for us. He is not the less real to us that in his lifetime the one quality he managed He moved in for the most part to hide was his genius. the narrowest of orbits, not disdaining intimacy with his posthumous father-in-law, the Quaker, banker, and poetaster, worthy Bernard Barton. Always he cared less for admiration than for affection, which he prized, while he seemed to slight. Few even of his familiars, perhaps not Tennyson himself, notwithstanding the dedication, could have guessed that he was secure of immortality on Par nassus. For the world no man of letters could have been more obscure. Of the bulk of his doings in literature it remains serenely unconscious still. His anonymous version of Omar's reputed musings itself, it refused to take at his own final valuation of a penny piece. A quarter of a century after the original publication in 1859, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in a list of editions of the Rubáiyát, refers to his as just a portion of the same rendered in English verse by E. Fitzgerald'. The coldness of literary opinion, while he lived, struck his sense of humour rather than of resentment. It never occurred to him to complain. His interest was in his work for the time being-as much in a plodding verification of the Field of Naseby, as in the inspired interpretation of a 'golden Eastern lay '10 So long as he felt he had done his part thoroughly, and to the best of his powers, he was sovereignly content. So lived 'Old Fritz'; and so he died; to have the minutest, half legendary, scrapings of his character lit up in the grave with a blaze of renown. Nor without reason, as I sincerely think; though I have been exposing myself, I know, to condemnation, alike, for exaggerated eulogizing of the verse, by persons never touched with the rapture of the Englished Rubáiyát as mere harmony, and by votaries of the doctrines, for having minimized their merits out of theological or moral bigotry. Rubaiyát of Omar Khayyám, the Astronomer, Poet of Persia. Rendered into English Verse. Macmillan & Co., 1900. Agamemnon-A Tragedy: Taken from Aeschylus. Bernard Quaritch, 1876. Letters and Literary Remains of Edward FitzGerald, ed. W. A. Wright, 1889. 1 Bredfield Hall (Letters and Literary Remains), vol. iii, pp. 458-61. Agamemnon, Chorus 4-5, pp. 13–15. Ibid., Chorus 6-7, pp. 15-17. • To E. Fitzgerald (Tiresias and Other Poems, 1885), p. 3. 5 Rubayyát, stanzas 8-9 and 17-23, pp. 29-30 and 32–4. • Ibid., stanzas 27-8, p. 36. • Ibid., stanzas 84-7, pp. 55–6. Ibid., st. 64, p. 48. • Encyc. Brit., ed. ix, vol. xviii, 1884. Art. Omar Khayyám (H.E.). 10 Vide suprà, Tennyson to Fitzgerald (Tiresias, &c.), p. 3. COVENTRY PATMORE 1823-1896 As I read Coventry Patmore, I wonder if there be not a secret religion among women of the middle and upper classes. Man would have no right to be surprised if they all kept in their boudoirs, their school-room desks, their wardrobes, along with Jane Eyre and The Christian Year, copies of The Angel in the House, Victories of Love, The Unknown Eros. Before they go down in the morning, while they dress for dinner, after or before their evening prayer, they might well find time for a few verses, if not for a book. May there not be ladies' clubs at which he is regularly studied, Girton Extension lectures at which he is expounded? When men praise their Milton, Wordsworth, Browning, Tennyson, do they never hear Patmore's name interpolated whisperingly by feminine lips? that he is seldom mentioned openly, and now less often than thirty years ago. It may merely be another proof of the adage that half of us know nothing of the way in which the other half live. I find it hard to credit that the one real poet who honestly believed in the right divine of women to be adored no less after than before marriage, and more so as wives than as brides, has ceased to be habitually revered by their sex. Poetesses do not count, besides that they rarely are genuine woman-lovers. Until Coventry Patmore poets had been wont to end their worship as soon as the Altar steps were reached. As he True boasts, it was reserved for him, last of all, to sing the first of themes. He traces it in a series of soft-sweet idylls, very fully from the wooing to the wedding-ring, and thence, in outline, rather shadowy, through happy years of nuptial and parental love. The husband-lover prays to be inspired as chronicler : Thou, Primal Love, who grantest wings And voices to the woodland birds, Too simple and too sweet for words.1 His verse sufficiently proves that his petition was received. With charming delicacy he describes the discovery, in Honoria Churchill, the player of The Wedding March of Mendelssohn,2 of the girl with whom as a child he had played six years before; the revelation to himself of his passion through a passing tremor at the thought of a possible rival; and its elevating effect: Whatever in her sight I'd seem I'd really be; I'd never blend "Twould change her cheek to comprehend.3 Were his affection to be unreturned, he would be proud of it still : If fate Love's dear ambition mar, And load his breast with hopeless pain, And seem to blot out sun and star, Love, lost or won, is countless gain ; His sorrow boasts a secret bliss Which sorrow of itself beguiles, And Love in tears too noble is For pity, save of Love in smiles.1 For him it envelops the universe; casting, in the eyes of the sleepless watcher, uncertain as yet of the issue of his suit, a grim pallor at dawn over The landscape, all made sharp and clear By stillness, as a face by death.5 A little later the blessed answer has been given; and the same landscape is transfigured : 'Twas when the spousal time of May Hangs all the hedge with bridal wreaths, Gives thanks for every breath it breathes; Lay stretch'd within a lonely glade, Beneath the softly twinkling shade. So these were green and those were gold; In dim recesses hyacinths droop'd, And breadths of primrose lit the air, Which, wandering through the woodland, stoop'd And gather'd perfumes here and there; Upon the spray the squirrel swung, And careless songsters, six or seven, Sang lofty songs the leaves among, Fit for their only listener, Heaven.6 If there could be a drawback to the wooer's own ecstasy, it was caused by its completeness: She answering, own'd that she lov'd too. The avowal had overwhelmed the victor with compassion, even shame, at his lady paramount's abdication of her throne: By that consenting scared and shock'd, Such change came o'er her mien and mood That I felt startled and half mock'd At winning what I had not woo'd. |