Chapter C: (dated From Adelaide.) (5)

It has been one of the consequence of dissent in Wales--not intended, we believe, by the majority of the ministers, but following inevitably from the organisation of their congregations,--that a democratic spirit of self-government should have arisen among the people, and have interwoven itself with their habits of thought and their associations of daily life. The middle and lower classes, separated from the upper by a difference of language, and alienated from the church by its inefficiency and neglect, have thrown themselves into the system of dissent,--that is, of self-adopted religious opinions, meditated upon, sustained, and expounded in their own native tongue, with all the enthusiasm that marks the Celtic character. The gulf between the nobles and gentry of Wales on the one side, and the middle and lower classes on the other, was already sufficiently wide, without any new principle of disunion being introduced; but now the church has become emphatically the church of the upper classes alone,--the chapel is the chapel of the lower orders--and the country is divided thereby into two hostile and bitterly opposed parties. On the one hand are all the aristocratic and hierarchic traditions of the nation; on the other is the democratic self-governing spirit, opposed to the former as much as light is to darkness, and adopted with the greater readiness, because it is linked to the religious feelings and practices of the vast majority of the whole people. Dissent and democratic opinions have now become the traditions of the lower orders in Wales; and every thing that belongs to the church or the higher orders of the country, is repulsive to the feelings of the people, because they hold them identical with oppression and superstition. The traditions of the conquest were quite strong enough,--the Welshman hated the Englishman thoroughly enough already; but now that he finds his superiors all speaking the English tongue, all members of the English church, he clings the more fondly and more obstinately to his own self-formed, self-chosen, system of worship and government, and the work of reunion and reconciliation is made almost impossible. In the midst of all this, the church in Wales is itself divided into high and low, into genteel and vulgar; the dignitaries hold to the abuses of the system,--and some, less burdened with common sense than the rest, gabble about "Wales and the Welsh," as if any fresh fuel were wanted to feed the fire already burning beneath the surface of society!

Even at the present moment, chartism is active in Wales: Mormonites and Latter-day Saints still preach and go forth from the Principality to the United States, (fortunately for this country;) and unprincipled itinerant lecturers on socialism, chartism, and infidelity, are now going their circuits in Wales, and obtaining numerous audiences.[18]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A damper is a cake of flour baked without yeast, in the ashes.

[2] "I have frequently," says Mr Wilkinson, in his invaluable work upon South Australia, at once so graphic and so practical, "been out on a journey in such a night, and, whilst allowing the horse his own time to walk along the road, have solaced myself by reading in the still moonlight."

[3] _Mémoires d'Outre Tombe._ Par M. le VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND. 4 vols. Paris, 1846-9.

[4] "Il y a peu des femmes, même dans le haut rang, dont je n'eusse fait la conquête si je l'avais enterprise."--Biogiaphie _Universelle_, xxxix. 136.

[5] Alluding to the name _l'Infame_, given by the King of Prussia, D'Alembert, and Diderot, in their correspondences, to the Christian religion.

[6] Dante.

[7] Cook's grease.

[8] East-Indian steward.

[9] _Mina-bird_, or Grakle; a frequent pet in homeward-bound East Indiamen, and singular for its mimetic faculty; but impudent, and, from educational disadvantages, not particularly select in its expressions: appearance as described by the lieutenant.

[10] Familiar metonomy, at sea, for the ship's cook.

[11] Five o'clock, P.M.

[12] It is here due to the credit of our friend the captain, who was not unusually imaginative for a sailor, to state, that this speculation as a commercial one, is strictly and literally a _fact_, as the Anglo-Indian of Calcutta can probably testify. The bold and all but poetical catholicity of the idea could have been reached, perhaps, by the 'progressing' American intellect alone, while Staffordshire, it is certain, furnished its realisation: the investment, it is nevertheless believed, proved eventually unprofitable.

[13] Currents are designated from the direction they run _towards_; winds, the quarter they blow _from_.

[14] _Wales: the Language, Social Condition, Moral Character, and Religious Opinions of the People considered in their relation to Education._ By Sir THOMAS PHILLIPS. 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 606. London: 1849.

[15] For the information of those among our readers who may not be aware of the fact, it will be well to mention that Sir Thomas Phillips was knighted for having, as mayor of Newport, in Monmouthshire, aided so materially in suppressing the Chartist riots that took place there in 1839.

[16] "In Breconshire, the proportion of persons who speak English is much larger; but a considerable number of these are immigrants from England to the iron works; whilst, in Radnorshire, the great bulk of the population is not Celtic, and English is all but universal."

[17] The leading scholars and authors of Wales are all named Williams: viz. Archdeacon Williams, and the Revs. Robert Williams, John Williams, Rowland Williams, Charles Williams, and Morris Williams--none of them relations!

[18] It is only a short time since that Vincent, of London notoriety, made a successful visit to South Wales, lecturing in the Baptist chapels, wherever he went, on the Claims of the Age, on the Rights of Woman, on the Claims of Labour, and the other usual clap-trap subjects. At Swansea, though it is a poor compliment to the good sense of its inhabitants, he actually succeeded in getting one of his meetings presided over by a gentleman who had once been mayor of the town, and he lined his pockets at the expense of not a few persons calling themselves respectable, and pretending to be people of discernment. The lecturer, in his hand-bills posted on the walls of Swansea and Tenby, called himself simply Henry Vincent; but in the smaller towns, such as Llanelly and Caermarthen, he gave himself out as Henry Vincent, _Esquire_!

Most of the leading gentry and nobility of Wales are, strange to say, dabblers in Whiggism and amateur radicalism; many of the M.P.s are to be found on the wrong side in the most disgraceful divisions: the corporations of the country are of an unsatisfactory character, and disaffection prevails extensively in many of the chief towns. We believe that a great deal of all this has arisen from the folly, the neglect, the bad example, and the non-residence of the natural leaders of the Principality. Welsh landlords, like Irish--though not so bad as the latter--are uncommonly unwilling to loosen their purse-strings, except for their own immediate pleasures. Scores of parishes have no other representative of the upper classes in them than a half-educated and poorly paid resident clergyman: agents and lawyers ride it roughly and graspingly over the land; the people have few or no natural leaders within reach; they pay their rents, but they get little back from them, to be spent in their humble villages. Their only, and their best friend, as they imagine, is their preacher--one of themselves, elected by themselves, _deposable_ by themselves. They come in contact with a _sharp_ lawyer, a drunken journalist, a Chartist lecturer, a Latter-day Saint--can the result be wondered at?

As long as the patriotism of the Welsh gentry and clergy consists, as it now, too often, does, in frothy words, and an absence of deeds--in the accepting of English money and in abusing England--in playing the Aristocrat at home, and the Whig-radical-liberal in public--so long will disaffection continue in the Principality, and the social condition of the people remain unimproved. The only thing that preserves Wales from rapidly verging to the condition of Ireland, is the absence of large towns with their contaminating influences, and the purely agricultural character of the greatest portion of the people. But even the mountaineer and the man of the plain may be corrupted at last, and he may degenerate into the wretched cottier--the poor slave, not of a proud lord, but of a profligate republic. It is from this lowest depth that we would wish to see him rescued; for in the peasantry the ultimate hope of the country is involved quite as much as in the upper classes; and until the latter set the example, by actually putting their shoulders to the wheel, throwing aside their political tamperings with the worst faction that divides the state, and especially by encouraging the introduction of English settlers into all corners of the country,--we shall not see the social and moral condition of Wales such as it should be. Let the nobles and gentry spend their incomes _in_ the country, not _out_ of it; let them live even amid their mountains, and _mix_ with their people; let them improve the towns by introducing English tradesmen as much as possible; let them try to get up a spirit of industry, perseverance, and cleanliness throughout the land;--so shall they discomfit the Chartists, and convert the democrats into good subjects. Let the clergy reform the discipline of the Welsh church; let them alter the financial inequalities and abuses that prevail in it, to an almost incredible extent; and let them, by their doctrines and practice, emulate the good qualities of their professional opponents;--so shall they empty the meeting-houses, and thaw the coldness of Independentism or Methodism into the warmth of union and affectionate co-operation. Let every Welshman, while he maintains intact and undiminished the real honour of his country, join with his Saxon neighbour, imitating his good qualities, correcting his evil ones by his own good example; and let their children, mingling in blood, obliterate the national distinctions that now are mischievously sought to be revived;--so shall the union of Wales with England remain unrepealed, and the common honour of the two countries, distinct yet conjoined, be promoted by their common weal.

THE STRAYED REVELLER.[19]

The other evening, on returning home from the pleasant hospitalities of the Royal Mid-Lothian Yeomanry, our heart cheered with claret, and our intellect refreshed by the patriotic eloquence of M'Whirter, we found upon our table a volume of suspicious thinness, the title of which for a moment inspired us with a feeling of dismay. Fate has assigned to us a female relative of advanced years and a curious disposition, whose affection is constantly manifested by a regard for our private morals. Belonging to the Supra-lapsarian persuasion, she never loses an opportunity of inculcating her own peculiar tenets: many a tract has been put into our hands as an antidote against social backslidings; and no sooner did that ominous phrase, _The Strayed Reveller_, meet our eye, than we conjectured that the old lady had somehow fathomed the nature of our previous engagement, and, in our absence, deposited the volume as a special warning against indulgence in military banquets. On opening it, however, we discovered that it was verse; and the first distich which met our eye was to the following effect:--

"O Vizier, thou art old, I young,
Clear in these things I cannot see.
My head is burning; and a heat
Is in my skin, which angers me."

This frank confession altered the current of our thought, and we straightway set down the poet as some young roysterer, who had indulged rather too copiously in strong potations, and who was now celebrating in lyrics his various erratic adventures before reaching home. But a little more attention speedily convinced us that jollity was about the last imputation which could possibly be urged against our new acquaintance.

One of the most painful features of our recent poetical literature, is the marked absence of anything like heartiness, happiness, or hope. We do not want to see young gentlemen aping the liveliness of Anacreon, indulging in praises of the rosy god, or frisking with supernatural agility; but we should much prefer even such an unnecessary exuberance of spirits, to the dreary melancholy which is but too apparent in their songs. Read their lugubrious ditties, and you would think that life had utterly lost all charm for them before they have crossed its threshold. The cause of such overwhelming despondency it is in vain to discover; for none of them have the pluck, like Byron, to commit imaginary crimes, or to represent themselves as racked with remorse for murders which they never perpetrated. If one of them would broadly accuse himself of having run his man through the vitals--of having, in an experimental fit, plucked up a rail, and so caused a terrific accident on the South-Western--or of having done some other deed of reasonable turpitude and atrocity, we could understand what the fellow meant by his excessively unmirthful monologues. But we are not indulged with any full-flavoured fictions of the kind. On the contrary, our bards affect the purity and innocence of the dove. They shrink from naughty phrases with instinctive horror--have an idea that the mildest kind of flirtation involves a deviation from virtue; and, in their most savage moments of wrath, none of them would injure a fly. How, then, can we account for that unhappy mist which floats between them and the azure heaven, so heavily as to cloud the whole tenor of their existence? What makes them maunder so incessantly about gloom, and graves, and misery? Why confine themselves everlastingly to apple-blossoms, whereof the product in autumn will not amount to a single Ribston pippin? What has society done to them, or what can they possibly have done to society, that the future tenor of their span must be one of unmitigated woe? We rather suspect that most of the poets would be puzzled to give satisfactory answers to such queries. They might, indeed, reply, that misery is the heritage of genius; but that, we apprehend, would be arguing upon false premises; for we can discover very little genius to vindicate the existence of so vast a quantity of woe.

We hope, for the sake of human nature, that the whole thing is a humbug; nay, we have not the least doubt of it; for the experience of a good many years has convinced us, that a young poet in print is a very different person from the actual existing bard. The former has nerves of gossamer, and states that he is suckled with dew; the latter is generally a fellow of his inches, and has no insuperable objection to gin and water. In the one capacity, he feebly implores an early death; in the other, he shouts for broiled kidneys long after midnight, when he ought to be snoring on his truckle. Of a morning, the Strayed Reveller inspires you with ideas of dyspepsia--towards evening, your estimate of his character decidedly improves. Only fancy what sort of a companion the author of the following lines must be:--

"TO FAUSTA.

Joy comes and goes: life ebbs and flows,
Like the wave.
Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men.
Love lends life a little grace,
A few sad smiles: and then,
Both are laid in one cold place,
In the grave.

Dreams dawn and fly: friends smile and die,
Like spring flowers.
Our vaunted life is one long funeral.
Men dig graves with bitter tears,
For their dead hopes; and all,
Mazed with doubts, and sick with fears,
Count the hours.

We count the hours: these dreams of ours,
False and hollow,
Shall we go hence and find they are not dead?
Joys we dimly apprehend,
Faces that smiled and fled,
Hopes born here, and born to end,
Shall we follow?"

It is impossible to account for tastes; but we fairly confess, that if we thought the above lines were an accurate reflex of the ordinary mood of the author, we should infinitely prefer supping in company with the nearest sexton. However, we have no suspicion of the kind. An early intimacy with the writings of Shelley, who in his own person was no impostor, is enough to account for the composition of these singularly dolorous verses, without supposing that they are any symptom whatever of the diseased idiosyncrasy of the author.

If we have selected this poet as the type of a class now unfortunately too common, it is rather for the purpose of remonstrating with him on the abuse of his natural gifts, than from any desire to hold him up to ridicule. We know not whether he may be a stripling or a grown-up man. If the latter, we fear that he is incorrigible, and that the modicum of talent which he certainly possesses is already so perverted, by excessive imitation, as to afford little ground for hope that he can ever purify himself from a bad style of writing, and a worse habit of thought. But if, as we rather incline to believe, he is still a young man, we by no means despair of his reformation, and it is with that view alone that we have selected his volume for criticism. For although there is hardly a page of it which is not studded with faults apparent to the most common censor, there are nevertheless, here and there, passages of some promise and beauty; and one poem, though it be tainted by imitation, is deserving of considerable praise. It is the glitter of the golden ore, though obscured by much that is worthless, which has attracted our notice; and we hope, that by subjecting his poems to a strict examination, we may do the author a real service.

It is not to be expected that the first essay of a young poet should be faultless. Most youths addicted to versification, are from an early age sedulous students of poetry. They select a model through certain affinities of sympathy, and, having done so, they become copyists for a time. We are far from objecting to such a practice; indeed, we consider it inevitable; for the tendency to imitate pervades every branch of art, and poetry is no exception. We distrust originality in a mere boy, because he is not yet capable of the strong impressions, or of the extended and subtile views, from which originality ought to spring. His power of creating music is still undeveloped, but the tendency to imitate music which he has heard, and can even appreciate, is strong. Most immature lyrics indicate pretty clearly the favourite study of their authors. Sometimes they read like a weak version of the choric songs of Euripides: sometimes the versification smacks of the school of Pope, and not unfrequently it betrays an undue intimacy with the writings of Barry Cornwall. Nor is the resemblance always confined to the form; for ever and anon we stumble upon a sentiment or expression, so very marked and idiosyncratic as to leave no doubt whatever of its paternity.

The same remarks apply to prose composition. Distinctions of style occupy but a small share of academical attention; and that most important rhetorical exercise, the analysis of the Period, has fallen into general disregard. Rules for composition certainly exist, but they are seldom made the subject of prelection; and consequently bad models find their way into the hands, and too often pervert the taste, of the rising generation. The cramped, ungrammatical style of Carlyle, and the vague pomposity of Emerson, are copied by numerous pupils; the value of words has risen immensely in the literary market, whilst that of ideas has declined; in order to arrive at the meaning of an author of the new school, we are forced to crack a sentence as hard and angular as a hickory-nut, and, after all our pains, we are usually rewarded with no better kernel than a maggot.

The _Strayed Reveller_ is rather a curious compound of imitation. He claims to be a classical scholar of no mean acquirements, and a good deal of his inspiration is traceable to the Greek dramatists. In certain of his poems he tries to think like Sophocles, and has so far succeeded as to have constructed certain choric passages, which might be taken by an unlettered person for translations from the antique. The language, though hard, is rather stately; and many of the individual images are by no means destitute of grace. The epithets which he employs bear the stamp of the Greek coinage; but, upon the whole, we must pronounce these specimens failures. The images are not bound together or grouped artistically, and the rhythm which the author has selected is, to an English ear, utterly destitute of melody. It is strange that people cannot be brought to understand that the genius and capabilities of one language differ essentially from those of another: and that the measures of antiquity are altogether unsuitable for modern verse. It is no doubt possible, by a Procrustean operation, to force words into almost any kind of mould; a chorus may be constructed, which, so far as scanning goes, might satisfy the requirements of a pedagogue, but the result of the experiment will inevitably show that melody has been sacrified in the attempt. Now melody is a charm without which poetry is of little worth; we are not quite sure whether it would not be more correct to say, that without melody poetry has no existence. Our author does not seem to have the slightest idea of this, and accordingly he treats us to such passages as the following:--

"No, no, old men, Creon I curse not.
I weep, Thebans,
One than Creon crueller far,
For he, he, at least by slaying her,
August laws doth mightily vindicate:
But thou, too bold, headstrong, pitiless,
Ah me! honourest more than thy lover,
O Antigone,
A dead, ignorant, thankless corpse."

"Nor was the love untrue
Which the Dawn-Goddess bore
To that fair youth she erst,
Leaving the salt-sea beds
And coming flush'd over the stormy frith
Of loud Euripus, saw:
Saw and snatch'd, wild with love,
From the pine-dotted spurs
Of Parnes, where thy waves,
Asopus, gleam rock-hemm'd;
The Hunter of the Tanagroean Field.
But him, in his sweet prime,
By severance immature,
By Artemis' soft shafts,
She, though a goddess born,
Saw in the rocky isle of Delos die.
Such end o'ertook that love,
For she desired to make
Immortal mortal man,
And blend his happy life,
Far from the gods, with hers:
To him postponing an eternal law."

We are sincerely sorry to find the lessons of a good classical education applied to so pitiable a use; for if, out of courtesy, the above should be denominated verses, they are nevertheless as far removed from poetry as the Indus is from the pole. It is one thing to know the classics, and another to write classically. Indeed, if this be classical writing, it would furnish the best argument ever yet advanced against the study of the works of antiquity. Mr Tennyson, to whom, as we shall presently have occasion to observe, this author is indebted for another phase of his inspiration, has handled classical subjects with fine taste and singular delicacy; and his "Ulysses" and "OEnone" show how beautifully the Hellenic idea may be wrought out in mellifluous English verse. But Tennyson knows his craft too well to adopt either the Greek phraseology or the Greek rhythm. Even in the choric hymns which he has once or twice attempted, he has spurned halt and ungainly metres, and given full freedom and scope to the cadence of his mother tongue. These antique scraps of the _Reveller_ are farther open to a still more serious objection, which indeed is applicable to most of his poetry. We read them, marking every here and there some image of considerable beauty; but, when we have laid down the book, we are unable for the life of us to tell what it is all about. The poem from which the volume takes its name is a confused kind of chaunt about Circe, Ulysses, and the Gods, from which no exercise of ingenuity can extract the vestige of a meaning. It has pictures which, were they introduced for any conceivable purpose, might fairly deserve some admiration; but, thrust in as they are, without method or reason, they utterly lose their effect, and only serve to augment our dissatisfaction at the perversion of a taste which, with so much culture, should have been capable of better things.

The adoption of the Greek choric metres, in some of the poems, appears to us the more inexplicable, because in others, when he descends from his classic altitudes, our author shows that he is by no means insensible to the power of melody. True, he wants that peculiar characteristic of a good poet--a melody of his own; for no poet is master of his craft unless his music is self-inspired: but, in default of that gift, he not unfrequently borrows a few notes or a tune from some of his contemporaries, and exhibits a fair command and mastery of his instrument. Here, for example, are a few stanzas, the origin of which nobody can mistake. They are an exact echo of the lyrics of Elizabeth Barrett Browning:--

"Are the accents of your luring
More melodious than of yore?
Are those frail forms more enduring
Than the charms Ulysses bore?
That we sought you with rejoicings,
Till at evening we descry,
At a pause of siren voicings,
These vext branches and this howling sky?

Oh! your pardon. The uncouthness
Of that primal age is gone,
And the kind of dazzling smoothness
Screens not now a heart of stone.
Love has flushed those cruel faces;
And your slackened arms forego
The delight of fierce embraces;
And those whitening bone-mounds do not grow.

'Come,' you say; 'the large appearance
Of man's labour is but vain;
And we plead as firm adherence
Due to pleasure as to pain.'
Pointing to some world-worn creatures,
'Come,' you murmur with a sigh:
'Ah! we own diviner features,
Loftier bearing, and a prouder eye.'"

High and commanding genius is able to win our attention even in its most eccentric moods. Such genius belongs to Mrs Browning in a very remarkable degree, and on that account we readily forgive her for some forced rhyming, intricate diction, and even occasional obscurity of thought. But what shall we say of the man who seeks to reproduce her marvellous effects by copying her blemishes? Read the above lines, and you will find that, in so far as sound and mannerism go, they are an exact transcript from Mrs Browning. Apply your intellect to the discovery of their meaning, and you will rise from the task thoroughly convinced of its hopelessness. The poem in which they occur is entitled _The New Sirens_, but it might with equal felicity and point have been called _The New Harpies_, or _The Lay of the Hurdy-Gurdy_. It seems to us a mere experiment, for the purpose of showing that words placed together in certain juxtaposition, without any regard to their significance or propriety, can be made to produce a peculiar phonetic effect. The phenomenon is by no means a new one--it occurs whenever the manufacture of nonsense-verses is attempted; and it needed not the staining of innocent wire-wove to convince us of its practicability. Read the following stanza--divorce the sound from the sense, and then tell us what you can make of it:--

"With a sad majestic motion--
With a stately slow surprise--
From their earthward-bound devotion
Lifting up your languid eyes:
_Would you freeze my louder boldness,
Humbly smiling as you go?_
One faint frown of distant coldness
Flitting fast across each marble brow?"

What say you, Parson Sir Hugh Evans? "The tevil with his tam; what phrase is this--_freeze my louder boldness_? Why, it is affectations."

If any one, in possession of a good ear, and with a certain facility for composing verse, though destitute of the inventive faculty, will persevere in imitating the style of different poets, he is almost certain at last to discover some writer whose peculiar manner he can assume with far greater facility than that of others. The _Strayed Reveller_ fails altogether with Mrs Browning; because it is beyond his power, whilst following her, to make any kind of agreement between sound and sense. He is indeed very far from being a metaphysician, for his perception is abundantly hazy: and if he be wise, he will abstain from any future attempts at profundity. But he has a fair share of the painter's gift; and were he to cultivate that on his own account, we believe that he might produce something far superior to any of his present efforts. As it is, we can merely accord him the praise of sketching an occasional landscape, very like one which we might expect from Alfred Tennyson. He has not only caught the trick of Tennyson's handling, but he can use his colours with considerable dexterity. He is like one of those second-rate artists, who, with Danby in their eye, crowd our exhibitions with fiery sunsets and oceans radiant in carmine; sometimes their pictures are a little overlaid, but, on the whole, they give a fair idea of the manner of their undoubted master.

The following extract will, we think, illustrate our meaning. It is from a poem entitled _Mycerinus_, which, though it does not possess the interest of any tale, is correctly and pleasingly written:--

"So spake he, half in anger, half in scorn,
And one loud cry of grief and of amaze
Broke from his sorrowing people; so he spake,
And turning, left them there; and with brief pause,
Girt with a throng of revellers, bent his way
To the cool regions of the grove he loved.
There by the river banks he wandered on,
From palm-grove on to palm-grove; happy trees,
Their smooth tops shining sunwards, and beneath
Burying their unsunn'd stems in grass and flowers;
Where in one dream the feverish time of youth
Might fade in slumber, and the feet of Joy
Might wander all day long and never tire:
Here came the king, holding high feast, at morn
Rose-crown'd; and ever, when the sun went down,
A hundred lamps beam'd in the tranquil gloom
From tree to tree, all through the twinkling grove,
Revealing all the tumult of the feast,
Flush'd guests, and golden goblets, foam'd with wine,
While the deep burnish'd foliage overhead
Splinter'd the silver arrows of the moon."

This really is a pretty picture; its worst, and perhaps its only fault, being that it constantly reminds us of the superior original artist. Throughout the book indeed, and incorporated in many of the poems, there occur images to which Mr Tennyson has a decided right by priority of invention, and which the _Strayed Reveller_ has "conveyed" with little attention to ceremony. For example, in a poem which we never much admired, _The Vision of Sin_, Mr Tennyson has the two following lines--

"And on the glimmering limit, far withdrawn,
God made himself an awful rose of dawn."

This image is afterwards repeated in the _Princess_. Thus--

"Till the sun
Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all
The rosy heights came out above the lawns."

Young Danby catches at the idea, and straightway favours us with a copy--

"When the first rose-flush was steeping
All the frore peak's awful crown."

The image is a natural one, and of course open to all the world, but the diction has been clearly borrowed.

Not only in blank verse but in lyrics does the Tennysonian tendency of our author break out, and to that tendency we owe by far the best poem in the present volume. "The Forsaken Merman," though the subject is fantastic, and though it has further the disadvantage of directly reminding us of one of Alfred's early extravaganzas, is nevertheless indicative of considerable power, not only of imagery and versification, but of actual pathos. A maiden of the earth has been taken down to the depths of the sea, where for years she has resided with her merman lover, and has borne him children. We shall let the poet tell the rest of his story, the more readily because we are anxious that he should receive credit for what real poetical accomplishment he possesses, and that he may not suppose, from our censure of his faults, that we are at all indifferent to his merits.

"Children dear, was it yesterday
(Call yet once) that she went away?
Once she sate with you and me,
On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,
And the youngest sate on her knee.
She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well,
When down swung the sound of the far-off bell.
She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea.
She said, 'I must go, for my kinsfolk pray
In the little gray church on the shore to-day.
'Twill be Easter-time in the world--ah me'
And I lose my poor soul, Merman, here with thee.'
I said, 'Go up, dear heart, through the waves,
Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves.'
She smil'd, she went up through the surf in the bay.
Children dear, was it yesterday?

"Children dear, were we long alone?
'The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.
Long prayers,' I said, 'in the world they say.
Come,' I said, and we rose through the surf in the bay.
We went up the beach, by the sandy down
Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall'd town.
Through the narrow pav'd streets, where all was still,
To the little gray church on the windy hill.
From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,
But we stood without in the cold-blowing airs.
We climbed on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,
And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes.
She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:
'Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here.
Dear heart,' I said, 'we are long alone,
The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.'
But, ah, she gave me never a look,
For her eyes were sealed to the holy book.
'Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door.'
Come away, children, call no more.
Come away, come down, call no more.

"Down, down, down,
Down to the depths of the sea.
She sits at her wheel in the humming town,
Singing most joyfully.
Hark, what she sings; 'O joy, O joy,
For the humming street, and the child with its toy.
For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well.
For the wheel where I spun,
And the bless'd light of the sun.'
And so she sings her fill,
Singing most joyfully,
Till the shuttle falls from her hand,
And the whizzing wheel stands still.
She steals to the window, and looks at the sand;
And over the sand at the sea;
And her eyes are set in a stare;
And anon there breaks a sigh,
And anon there drops a tear,
From a sorrow-clouded eye,
And a heart sorrow-laden,
A long, long sigh,
For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden,
And the gleam of her golden hair."

Had the author given us much poetry like this, our task would, indeed, have been a pleasant one; but as the case is otherwise, we can do no more than point to the solitary pearl. Yet it is something to know that, in spite of imitation, and a taste which has gone far astray, this writer has powers, which, if properly directed and developed, might insure him a sympathy, which, for the present, must be withheld. Sympathy, indeed, he cannot look for, so long as he appeals neither to the heart, the affections, nor the passions of mankind, but prefers appearing before them in the ridiculous guise of a misanthrope. He would fain persuade us that he is a sort of Timon, who, despairing of the tendency of the age, wishes to wrap himself up in the mantle of necessity, and to take no part whatever in the vulgar concerns of existence. It is absolutely ridiculous to find this young gentleman--after confiding "to a Republican friend" the fact that he despises

"The barren, optimistic sophistries
Of comfortable moles, whom what they do
Teaches the limit of the just and true,
And for such doing have no need of eyes,"--

thus favouring the public in a sonnet with his views touching the onward progress of society:--

"Yet, when I muse on what life is, I seem
Rather to patience prompted, than that proud
Prospect of hope which France proclaims so loud--
France, famed in all good arts, in none supreme.
Seeing this vale, this earth, whereon we dream,
Is on all sides o'ershadowed by the high
Uno'erleap'd mountains of necessity,
Sparing us narrower margin than we deem.
Nor will that day dawn at a human nod,
When, bursting through the network superpos'd
By selfish occupation--plot and plan,
Lust, avarice, envy--liberated man,
All difference with his fellow-man compos'd,
Shall be left standing face to face with God."

What would our friend be at? If he is a Tory, can't he find work enough in denouncing and exposing the lies of the League, and in taking up the cudgels for native industry? If he is a Whig, can't he be great upon sewerage, and the scheme of planting colonies in Connaught, to grow corn and rear pigs at prices which will not pay for the manure and the hogs'-wash? If he is a Chartist, can't he say so, and stand up manfully with Julian Harney for "the points," whatever may be their latest number? But we think that, all things considered, he had better avoid politics. Let him do his duty to God and man, work six hours a-day, whether he requires to do so for a livelihood or not, marry and get children, and, in his moments of leisure, let him still study Sophocles and amend his verses. But we hope that, whatever he does, he will not inflict upon us any more such platitudes as "Resignation," addressed "to Fausta" or any sonnets similar to that which he has written in _Emerson's Essays_. We tender our counsel with a most sincere regard for his future welfare; for, in spite of his many faults, the _Strayed Reveller_ is a clever fellow; and though it cannot be averred that, up to the present time, he has made the most of fair talents and a first-rate education, we are not without hope that, some day or other, we may be able to congratulate him on having fairly got rid of his affected misanthropy, his false philosophy, and his besetting sin of imitation, and that he may yet achieve something which may come home to the heart, and secure the admiration of the public.

NEW LIGHT ON THE STORY OF LADY GRANGE.

Before we offer our readers some new light on this renowned mystery, it is necessary that we should give them, in a sentence, the briefest possible outline of the oft-told tale, so far as it has been hitherto known. John Erskine, Lord Grange, a judge of the Court of Session, and a leader of the ultra-religious party in Scotland, was married to the daughter of that Chiesley of Dalry who had shot the Lord President in the High Street of Edinburgh, for giving a decision against him. The marriage was a very unhappy one. The pious leader of a religious party was scandalised in various ways, obliged to live separate from his wife, and subjected to many outrages from her. At length her death was announced, her funeral was duly attended, and the widower preserved the decorous silence of one to whom death has brought relief from what is generally counted a calamity.

This occurred in January 1732. The lapse of nearly nine years had almost consigned the remembrance of the unfortunate woman to oblivion, when strange rumours gained circulation, that she who was believed to be dead and buried was living in bondage in the distant island of St Kilda. The account she subsequently gave of her adventures, bore, that one night in her solitary lodging she was seized by some Highlanders, whom she knew to be retainers of Lord Lovat, and conveyed away, gagged and blindfolded, in the arms of a man seated in a sedan chair. It appears that she was kept in various places of confinement, and subjected to much rough usage, in the Low Country. At length she was conveyed north-westward, towards the Highland line. She passed through the grim solitudes of Glencoe, where recent murder must have awakened in the captive horrible associations, on to the western part of Lord Lovat's country, where any deed of tyranny or violence might be committed with safety. Thence she was transferred to the equally safe country of Glengarry, and, after crossing some of the highest mountains in Scotland, was shipped on the wild Loch Hourn, for ever darkened by the shadow of gigantic mountains falling on its narrow waters. She was kept for some time on the small island of Heskir, belonging to Macdonald of Sleat, and was afterwards transferred to the still more inaccessible St Kilda, which has acquired a sort of celebrity from its connexion with her strange history. In 1741, when a communication from the captive had, through devious courses, reached her friends in Edinburgh, an effort was made to release her; but it was baffled by her transference to another place of confinement, where she died in 1745.

Little did the old judge imagine, at the time when he had so successfully and so quietly got rid of his domestic curse--when the mock funeral had been performed, the family condolences acted over, and the victim safely conveyed to her distant prison, that on some future day the public, frantic with curiosity, would tear to pieces the covering of his great mystery, and expose every fragment of it to the admiring crowd. It was but a simple matter in the eyes of those who were concerned in it. The woman was troublesome--her husband was a judge, and therefore a powerful man--so he put her out of the way. Nor was he cruel or unscrupulous, according to the morality of the circle in which he lived, in the method he adopted to accomplish his end. He had advisers about him, who would have taken a shorter and a more effectual plan for ridding themselves of a troublesome woman, wife or not, and would have walked forth into the world without being haunted by any dread that rumours of remote captivities might rise up to disturb their peace. Indeed, when we remember the character of the instruments to whom Lord Grange committed the kidnapping and removal of his wife, it is only wonderful that they had patience enough to carry out so long and troublesome an operation; and that they did not, out of regard to themselves and to their employer, put a violent termination to the career of their troublesome charge, and send her at once to where the weary are at rest. Had this been her fate, the affair of Lady Grange would have been one of secondary interest. Such things were too easily accomplished in those days. The chances would have been greatly against a discovery, and if it took place, equally great against the conviction and punishment of the offenders, unless the lady had a more powerful party at her back than the daughter of Chiesley the murderer would be likely to command. It would have created, so far as it was known, great excitement, and some little horror at the time, but it would have speedily sunk to the level of the ordinary contents of the criminal records, and would never have bequeathed to the ensuing century an object which antiquarians have hunted out as religiously and zealously as if it had involved the fate of Europe.

In fact, Lord Grange was what was called in his day "a discreet man." He wished to avoid scandal, and bore a character for religious zeal, which appears to have been on occasion a very serious burden not easily borne. He dreaded scandal and notoriety, and therefore he shrouded his great act of iniquity in the most profound secrecy. Moreover, he kept a conscience--something that, like Rob Roy's honesty, might be called a conscience "after a kind." He said pretty accurately of himself in his _Diary_--"I have religion enough to spoil my relish and prosecution of this world, and not enough to get me to the next." We may probably believe that, even if he could have performed the deed with perfect secrecy and safety, so far as this world is concerned, he would not have murdered his wife, his conscience recoiling at the dreadful crime--his fear of the world causing him to shrink from exposure. Urged by these two conflicting motives, he adopted the expedient of the secret removal to a desolate and distant spot, believing that he had surrounded the whole project with a deep and impenetrable cloud of mystery. Never was human foresight more signally set at naught. It was this very machinery of intense mystery that, by ministering to one of the cravings of the human imagination, has made the incident one of the most notorious of human events. It is almost satisfactory to know that this dreaded notoriety visited the hoary tyrant, for after he had for nine years enjoyed in secret the success of his plot, and kept his fair fame with the world, we find him, when legal proceedings were commenced against him, bitterly saying that "strange stories were spread all over the town of Edinburgh, and made the talk of coffee-houses and tea-tables, and sent, as I have ground to apprehend, to several other places of Great Britain."[20] One may notice, too, in the following discontented mumblings, the bitterness with which he contemplated the divulging of the secret,--it is in a letter to the imprisoned lady's champion, Mr Hope of Rankeillor.

"Any of the smallest discretion will see what a worthy part
_he_ acts towards me and mine, and many others, and even
towards the person pretended to be cared for, who, in such
an occasion, begins by spreading through Great Britain
strange stories, unexamined and unvouched, and not so much
as communicated to us concerned; and next, when offered
satisfaction, yet proceeds to fix such on public records, and
to force others to bring on record sad and proved truths, which
he himself knows and formerly has acknowledged to be truths,
and that ought for ever to be sunk. This cannot be construed to
be anything but an endeavour to fix, as far as in him lies, a
lasting blot on persons and families. The first was defamation,
and the next would be the same, under a cover of a pretended
legal shape, but in itself more atrocious. One cannot doubt
that this is a serious thing to many more than me, and cannot
but be laid to heart."[21]

The text from which we are at present discoursing, is a bundle of confidential letters from Lord Grange, printed in the _Miscellany of the Spalding Club_, and not the least valuable and curious of the many contributions made by that useful and spirited institution, to the elucidation of Scottish history and manners. At the foot of the high conical hill of Bennochie, in a small group of forest trees, there nestles one of those quaint small turreted mansions of old French architecture so frequently to be seen in the north of Scotland. The owner of this mansion was an Erskine; he was related to Erskine of Grange, and it so happened that this relative was the person in whose ear he poured his secret sorrows, as a disappointed and morbid politician. Such confidential outpourings are not the most interesting of communications, even when one has the fortune to be so far connected with the wailer as to be the chosen vessel into which he pours the anguish of his heart. Some of these letters are portentous--they are absolute pamphlets--in their spirit as yellow and mildewed with discontent, as their outward aspect may have been by the cold damp air of Bennochie, when they were discovered in the worm-eaten chest. It requires a little zeal to peruse the whole series; but, unless we are greatly deceived, we think we can present our readers with a few plums picked out of the mass, which they may find not unacceptable. And here, by the way, let us observe, how great a service is done by those who ransack the repositories of our old Scottish houses, and make their contents accessible to the public. We are convinced that in dusty garrets, in vaults, in musty libraries, and crazy old oak-chests, there is still an almost inexhaustible wealth of curious lore of this description. The correspondence of the old Scottish families is generally far more interesting than that of English houses of the same rank. Since the civil wars of the seventeenth century, England may be said to have been internally undisturbed, and no private papers contain matters of state, save those of the great families whose ancestors have been high in office. But in Scotland, the various outbreaks, and the unceasing Jacobite intrigues, made almost all the country gentlemen statesmen--made too many of them state offenders. The Essex squire, be he ever so rich, was still but the lord of a certain quantity of timber and oxen, grass and turnips. The Highland laird, be he ever so poor, was a leader of men--a person who had more or less the power of keeping the country in a state of war or danger--a sort of petty king reigning over his own people. Hence, while the letters of the last century one might pick up in a comfortable old English mansion, would relate to swing-gates and turnpike roads, game preserves and tithes, those found hidden behind the wainscoat of a gaunt old cheerless Scottish fortalice, would relate to risings at home, or landings from abroad--to the number of broadswords and targets still kept in defiance of the Arms Act--to communications received through French Jesuits, or secret missions "across the water."[22]

We believe that the passages from these documents, on which we are now to comment, in the first place exhibit to us pretty plainly the motive of Lord Grange for the deportation of his wife; and, in the second place, prove that he entertained designs of a similar character against another female with whom he was nearly connected.

When Lady Grange's strange history was first communicated to the public, it was believed that the cause of her abduction was not merely her violent temper, but her possession of certain secrets which would enable her to compromise the safety of her husband and his friends, by proving their connexion with the Jacobite intrigues of the period. The view more lately taken of the mystery, has been that she was merely a mad woman, and that her abduction, with all its laborious mystery, was only an attempt to accommodate the judge with a resource in which Scotland was then deficient--a lunatic asylum for insane relatives. Though, as we shall presently see, his confidential communications give other and darker revelations, this was the light in which Lord Grange wished the matter to be viewed, after his plot had been discovered; and in his controversial letter to Mr Hope, already referred to, he gives an account of her frantic outbreaks, which certainly affords a picture of one likely to have been a most distressing partner in life to a grave judge, having a few secrets to conceal which required him to be peculiarly circumspect in his walk; and holding a high, but a rather precarious position, in the opinion of the religious world. After stating that she had agreed to a separation, he continues--

"Then it was hoped that I and the children (who she used
to curse bitterly when they went dutifully to wait on her)
would be in quiet; but she often attacked my house, and from
the streets, and among the footmen and chairmen of visitors,
cried and raged against me and mine, and watched for me in the
streets, and chased me from place to place in the most indecent
and shameless manner, and threatened to attack me on the bench,
which, dreading she would do every time I went to it, made my
duty there very heavy on me, lest that honourable Court of
Session should be disturbed and affronted on my occasion. And
not content with these, and odd and very bad contrivances about
the poor children, she waited on a Sunday's afternoon that my
sister, Lady Jane Paterson, with my second daughter, came out
of the Tron Church, and on the street, among all the people,
fell upon her with violent scolding and curses, and followed
her so down Merlin's Wynd, till Lady Jane and the child near
the bottom of it got shelter from her and being exposed to the
multitude in a friend's house. You also know, and may well
remember, that before you and the rest advised the separation,
and till she went from my house, she would not keep herself in
that part of it (the best apartment) which was assigned her,
but abused all in the family, and when none were adverting,
broke into the room of ane old gentlewoman, recommended to me
for housekeeper, and carried off and destroyed her accompts,
&c., and committed outrages, so that at length I was forced to
have a watch in my house, and especially in the night time, as
if it had been in the frontier of an enemy's country, or to be
spoiled by robbers."[23]