Chapter XII: Conclusion (7)

People who remember things written as long ago as five years have a certain stiffness in their tastes which disqualifies them for the enjoyment of much contemporaneous achievement; and it is fortunate for the poets that it is the young who make reputations. Miss Ingelow's first volume, indeed, had something in it that could please not only the inexperience of youth, for which nothing like it existed, but even the knowledge of those arrived at the interrogation-point in life, who felt that here there was a movement toward originality in much familiar mannerism and uncertain purpose. If there was not a vast deal for enjoyment, there was a reason for hope. It was plain that the author's gift was not a great one, but it was also clear that she had a gift. She was a little tedious and diffuse; she was often too long in reaching a point, and sometimes she never reached it at all. But then she wrote "The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire," and the "Songs of Seven," and "Divided,"--none of them perfect poems, yet all very good and fresh,--and showed a true feeling for nature, and some knowledge of humanity as women see it. In this second volume, however, she abandons her maturer admirers to their fate, and seeks the favor of the young ladies and gentlemen who have begun to like verses since Mr. Tennyson's latest poems were written, and the old balladists and modern poetical archaists ceased to be read. In fact, it is amazing to see how this author, who had a talent of her own, has contentedly buried it, and gone to counterfeiting the talents of others. The "Story of Doom" here given is an unusually dreary copy of the unrealism of Mr. Tennyson's "Idyls of the King," and makes the history of Noah more than ever improbable; while "Laurance," mimicking all the well-known effects and smallest airs and movements of the laureate's poems of rustic life, is scarcely to be read without laughter. "Winstanley" presents an incident that, if told in simple contemporary English, would have made a thrilling ballad; but what with its quoth-he's, brave skippers, good master mayors, ladies gay, and red suns, it is factitious, and of the library only,--it came from Percy's "Reliques" and "The Ancient Mariner," not from the poet's heart. It seems worthy of the sentimental purpose with which it was written; but we doubt if any child in the National School in Dorsetshire learned it by heart as his forefathers did the old ballads.

In pleasant contrast with its affectations is the beautiful little song entitled "Apprenticed," which the author tells us is in the old English manner, but which we find full of a young feeling and tenderness belonging to all time, expressed in diction quite of our own. This, and that one of the Songs with Preludes entitled "Wedlock," seem to us the best, if not the only, poems in the book. Miss Ingelow's forte is not in single lines and detachable passages, and her efforts are apt to be altogether successful or unsuccessful. In the long rhyme called "Dreams that came True," there is but one inspired line, and that is merely descriptive,--

"In eddying rings the silence seemed to flow"

round him that waked suddenly from an awful dream. There is an inglorious ease in the sarcasm, but we must express our regret that Miss Ingelow did not leave this story in the prose which she says first received it.

We suppose we need scarcely call the reader's attention to the fact that certain faults of Miss Ingelow's first book are exaggerated in this. The rush of half-draped figures, and the pushing and crowding of weak and unruly fancies, are too obviously unpleasant for comment. Perhaps they are most unpleasant in the Song with a Prelude which opens with the bewildering statement that

"Yon mooréd mackerel fleet
Hangs thick as a swarm of bees,
Or a clustering village street
Foundationless built on the seas."

_Critical and Social Essays._ Reprinted from the New York
"Nation." New York: Leypoldt and Holt.

These brief papers very fairly represent the quality of the excellent journal from which they are taken, and treat subjects suggested by literary events and social characteristics with a bright intelligence and an artistic feeling only too uncommon in our journalism. All the essays are good, and several are of quite unique merit. The first in the volume, entitled "The Glut in the Fiction Market," is full of a felicitous badinage and an exquisite power of travesty, which we should not know how to match elsewhere. The author of this admirable paper wrote also, as we imagine, the essays on "Some of our Social Philosophers," "Critics and Criticism," and "Voyages and Travels," which are the best of the humorous articles in the volume. The graver essays are almost as good in their way as these, and we especially like "Why we have no Saturday Reviewers," "Popularizing Science," "Something about Monuments," and "American Ministers abroad." The paper on "The European and American Order of Thought" considers the subject with an originality and penetration which we would willingly have had applied in a more extended study of it.

In fine, we like all these articles from "The Nation," for the reasons that we like "The Nation" itself, which has been, in a degree singular among newspapers, conscientious and candid in literary matters; while in affairs of social and political interest it has shown itself friendly to everything that could advance civilization, and notably indifferent to the claims of persons and parties.