Chapter VIII: Book II (5)

At the peace of 1763 the 'Royal George' was paid off, and Falconer became purser of the 'Glory', frigate of 32 guns. About this time he married a young lady named Hicks, daughter of a surgeon in Sheerness-yard--a lady more distinguished by her mental than her physical qualities. The poet dubbed her in his verses, "Miranda." It is hinted that he had some difficulty in procuring her consent to marry him, and was forced to lay regular siege to her in rhyme. At length she capitulated, and the marriage was eminently happy. She survived her husband many years; lived at Bath, and enjoyed a comfortable livelihood on the proceeds of her husband's "Marine Dictionary."

When the 'Glory' was laid up at Chatham, Commissioner Hanway, brother of the once celebrated Jonas Hanway (whom Dr Johnson so justly chastised for his diatribe against Tea), showed much interest in the pursuits and person of our poet. He even ordered the captain's cabin to be fitted up with every comfort, that Falconer might pursue his studies without expense, and with all convenience. Here he brought his "Marine Dictionary" to a conclusion--a work which had occupied him for years, and which supplied a desideratum in the literature of the profession. The design had been suggested by one Scott, and approved of by Sir Edward Hawke; and the book, when it appeared in 1769, was greatly commended by Dr Hamel, the Frenchman, who had gained note himself, by producing some works on naval architecture. From the 'Glory' Falconer received an appointment in the 'Swift-sure'. In 1764 he issued a new edition of "The Shipwreck," carefully corrected, and with considerable additions. The next year he issued a political poem, in which, like a true tar of the 'Royal George', he took the King's side, and emitted much dull and drivelling bile against Lord Chatham, Wilkes, and Churchill. The satire proved that, though at home on the ocean, he was utterly "at sea" in land-politics.

Falconer had now left his cabin study with its many pleasant accommodations, and become a scribbler of all work in a London garret. Here his existence ran on for a while in an obscure and probably miserable current. It is said that Murray, the bookseller, the father of 'the' John Murray, of Albemarle Street, wished to take the poet into partnership,--upon terms of great advantage,--but that Falconer, for reasons which are not known, declined the offer. "My Murray," as Byron calls him, was destined instead to have his name connected with a grander and ghastlier shipwreck than it lay in the brain of the projected partner of his firm to conceive, or in his genius to execute--that, namely, described in the ever-detestable, yet ever-memorable, second canto of "Don Juan."

In 1769, a third edition of his poem was called for, and he was employed in making improvements and additions when he was again summoned to sea. In his hurry of departure, he is said to have committed these to the care of the notorious David Mallett, the son of a Crieff innkeeper, the friend of Thomson, the biographer of Bacon, and, as Johnson called him, the "beggarly Scotchman, who drew the trigger of Bolingbroke's blunderbuss of infidelity," who seems to have paid no manner of attention to his trust, as mistakes in the nautical terms and a frequent inferiority in execution manifest.

Falconer had undoubtedly thought the sea a hard and sickening profession; but latterly found that writing for the booksellers was a slavery still more abject and unendurable. He resolved once more to embark upon the "melancholy main." Often as he had hugged its horrors, laid his hand on its mane, and narrowly escaped its devouring jaws, he was drawn in again as by the fatal suction of a whirlpool into its power. Perhaps he had imbibed a passion for the sea. At all events, he accepted the office of purser to the Aurora frigate, which was going out to India, and on the 30th of September 1769, he left England for ever. The Aurora was never heard of more! Some vague rumours, indeed, prevailed of a contradictory character--that she had been burned--that she had foundered in the Mozambique Channel--that she had been cast away on a reef of rocks near Macao--that five persons had been saved from her wreck, but nothing certain transpired, except that she was lost; and this fine singer of the sea along with her. Unfortunate Aurora! dawn soon overcast! Unfortunate poet, so speedily removed!

"It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built i' the eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark,
That laid so low that sacred head of thine."

The drowning of one poet of far loftier genius in the Bay of Spezia, latterly proved that the offering up of Falconer's life had not fully appeased the wrath of old Neptune, and that bards may still entertain, in the lines of Wordsworth,

"Of the old sea some reverential fear."

Burns heard of and deplored the loss of the Poet of the Shipwreck. In one of his letters to Mrs Dunlop, he mentions the fact, and adds the beautiful words, "He was one of those daring, adventurous spirits which Scotland beyond any other country is remarkable for producing. Little does the fond mother think, as she hangs delighted over the sweet little leech at her bosom, where the poor fellow may hereafter wander, and what may be his fate. I remember a stanza in an old Scottish ballad, which speaks feelingly to the heart--

'Little did my mother think,
That day she cradled me,
What land I was to travel on,
Or what death I should die.'"

Falconer is represented as a bluff, blunt, but cheerful sailor--fond of amusing his shipmates with acrostics on the names of their mistresses--with little learning except in seamanship, and what he had picked up in his travels. His smaller pieces scarcely deserve criticsm. His whole reputation now reposes on the one pillar of his one poem, "The Shipwreck."

This poem was greatly overrated when it first appeared. It was by some critics preferred to Virgil's "Æneid," and compared to the "Odyssey." It is now, we think, as unjustly depreciated. That there is a good deal of swollen commonplace in the diction and sentiments, must be admitted. Falconer arose in a bad age in respect of poetry. The terseness of Pope was gone, and in his imitators only his tinkle remained. His exquisite sense and trembling finish had vanished, and only his conventional diction--the ghost of his greatness--was to be found in the poets of the time. It was extremely natural that a half-taught mind like Falconer's should be captivated by what was the mode of the day. Indeed, Burns himself was only saved from the same error by continuing to write in Scotch; many of his English verses and his letters are marred by more or less of the disgusting and vicious affectation of style which then prevailed; and in parts of Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope," we find the last modified specimen of the evil. Hence, in Falconer the obsolete mythological allusions--the names with classical terminations--the perpetual apostrophes--the set and stilted speeches he puts into the mouths of heroes--the bombast, verbiage, and sounding sameness of much of his verse. Nor do we greatly admire the story which he introduces with the poem, nor the discrimination of his characters, nor, what may be called strictly, the pathos of the piece. Indeed, considering the size of the poem, there is so much that is vapid and common, that the counter-balancing excellences must be great ere they could have floated it so long. To use an expression suitable to the theme, the vessel which has sailed so far, notwithstanding its numerous leaks, must be of a strong and sturdy build.

And this is the main merit of "The Shipwreck." It has in most of its descriptive passages a certain rugged strength and truth, which prove at once the perspicacity and the poetic vision of the author, who, while he sees all the minute details of his subject, sees also the glory of imagination shining around them. A ship appears before his view, with its every spar and yard, clear and distinct as if seen in meridian sunshine, and yet with a radiance of poetry around it all, as if he were looking at it by moonlight, or in the magical light of a dream. Take the following lines, for instance:--

"Up-torn reluctant from its oozy cave,
The ponderous anchor rises o'er the wave.
High on the slipp'ry masts the yards ascend,
And far abroad the canvas wings extend.
Along the glassy plain the vessel glides,
While azure radiance trembles on her sides."

We grant, indeed, that sometimes his technical lore rises up, as it were, and drowns the poetry. What imaginative quality, for example, have we in the following verses?

"The mainsail, by the squall so lately rent,
In streaming pendants flying, is unbent;
With brails refixed, another soon prepared,
Ascending spreads along beneath the yard;
To each yard-arm the head-rope they extend,
And soon their ear-rings and their robans bend.
That task perform'd, they first the braces slack,
Then to the chess-tree drag the unwilling tack;
And, while the lee clue-garnet's lower'd away,
Taught aft the sheet they tally, and belay."

This is mere log-book; and such passages are common in the poem. But frequently he bathes the web of the shrouds and ship-rigging in rich ideal gold. Take the following:--

"With equal sheets restrain'd, the bellying sail
Spreads a broad concave to the sweeping gale;
While o'er the foam the ship impetuous flies,
The helm the attentive timoneer applies:
As in pursuit along the aerial way,
With ardent eye the falcon marks his prey,
Each motion watches of the doubtful chase,
Obliquely wheeling through the fluid space;
So, govern'd by the steersman's GLOWING hands,
The regent helm her motion still commands."

Falconer may in some points be likened to Crabbe. Like him, he excels in minute and patient painting. Like him he is capable at times of extracting the imaginative element from the barest and simplest details. And, like him, he sometimes sets before us, mere dry inventories or invoices, instead of such poetical catalogues as Homer gives of ships, and Milton of devils. It is remarkable that Falconer never shines at all except when he is describing ships or sea scenery.

"His path is on the mountain waves,
His home is on the deep."

No words in Scripture are so strange to him as these, "There shall be no more sea." The course of his voyage in the Shipwreck, brings him past lands the most famous in the ancient world for arts and arms, for philosophy, patriotism, and poetry. And sore does he labour to lash himself into inspiration as he apostrophizes them; but in vain--the result is little else than furious feebleness and stilted bombast. But when he returns to the element, the impatient, irregular, changeful, treacherous, terrible ocean--and watches the night, winged with black storm and red lightning, sinking down over the Mediterranean, and the devoted bark which is helplessly struggling with its billows, then his blood rises, his verse heaves, and hurries on, and you see the full-born poet--

"High o'er the poop the audacious seas aspire,
Uproll'd in hills of fluctuating fire:
With labouring throes she rolls on either side,
And dips her gunnells in the yawning tide.
Her joints unhinged in palsied langour play,
As ice-flakes part beneath the noontide ray;
The gale howls doleful through the blocks and shrouds,
And big rain pours a deluge from the clouds.
From wintry magazines that sweep the sky,
Descending globes of hail incessant fly;
High on the masts with pale and lurid rays,
Amid the gloom portentous meteors blaze!
The ethereal dome in mournful pomp array'd,
Now buried lies beneath impervious shade,--
Now flashing round intolerable light,
Redoubles all the horrors of the night.
Such terror Sinai's trembling hill o'erspread,
When Heaven's loud trumpet sounded o'er its head.
It seem'd the wrathful angel of the wind,
Had all the horrors of the skies combined;
And here to one ill-fated ship opposed,
At once the dreadful magazine disclosed."

This is noble writing. "Deep calleth unto deep." It reminds us of Pope's translation of that tremendous passage in the 8th Book of the Iliad, where Jove comes forth, and darts his angry lightnings in the eyes of the Grecians, and repels and appals their mightiest; Nestor alone, but with his horse wounded by the dart of Paris, sustaining the divine assault.

Lord Byron, in his letter to Bowles in defence of Pope, alludes to Falconer's Shipwreck, and cites it in proof of the poetical use which may be made of the works of art. But it has justly been remarked by Hazlitt, in his very masterly reply, published in the 'London Magazine', that the finest parts of the Shipwreck are not those in which he appears to versify parts of his own Marine Dictionary, or in which he makes vain efforts to describe the vestiges of Grecian grandeur, but those in which, as in the above passage, he mates with the sublime and terrible 'natural' phenomena he meets in his voyage--the gathering of the storm--the treacherous lull of the sea, breathing itself like a tiger for its fatal spring--the ship, now walking the calm waters of the glassy sea, and now wrestling like a demon of kindred power and fury with the angry billows--the last fearful onset of the maddened surge--and the secret stab given by the assassin rock from below, which completes the ruin of the doomed vessel, and scatters its fragments o'er the tide, growling in joy--these, as the poet describes them, constitute the poetical glory of "The Shipwreck," and these have little connexion with art, and much with nature.

Lord Byron was better at emulating than at criticising Falconer's 'chef-d'oeuvre'. We have already once or twice alluded to 'his' Shipwreck--surely the grandest and most characteristic effort of his genius, in its demoniac force, and demoniac spirit. As we have elsewhere said, "he describes the horrors of a shipwreck, like a fiend who had, invisible, sat amid the shrouds, choked with laughter--with immeasurable glee had heard the wild farewell rising from sea to sky--had leaped into the long-boat as it put off with its pale crew--had gloated o'er the cannibal repast--had leered, unseen, into the 'dim eyes of those shipwreck'd men'--and with a loud and savage burst of derision had seen them at length sinking into the waves." The superiority of his picture over Falconer's, lies in the simplicity and strength of the style, in the ease of the narrative, in the variety of the incidents and characters, and in certain short masterly touches, now of pathos, now of infernal humour, and now of description, competent only to Byron and to Shakspeare. Such are,--

"Then shriek'd the timid and stood still the brave."
"The bubbling cry
Of some strong swimmer in his agony."
"For he, poor fellow, had a wife and children,
Two things to dying people quite bewildering,"--

and the inimitable description of the rainbow, closing with,--

"Then changed like to a bow that's bent, and then--
Forsook the dim eyes of these shipwreck'd men."

The technicalities introduced are fewer; and are handled with greater force, and made to tell more on the general effect. You marvel, too, at the versatility of the writer, who seems this moment to be looking at the scene with the eye of the melancholy Jacques; the next, with the philosophical aspect of the moralizing Hamlet; the next, with the rage of a misanthropical Timon; and the next, with the bitter sneer of a malignant Iago: and yet, who, amidst all these disguises, leaves on you the impression that he is throughout acting the part, and displaying the spirit, of a demon--a deep current of mockery at man's miseries, and at God's providence, running under all his moods and imitations. We read it once, when recovering from an illness, and shall never forget the withering horror, and the shock of disgust and loathing, which it gave to our weakened nerves.

Since Falconer's time, besides Byron, Scott, in the Pirate, and Cooper, there has not, as we hinted, been much of the poetical extracted from the sea. The subject suggested in Boswell's Johnson, by General Oglethorpe, as a noble theme for a poem--namely, "The Mediterranean," is still unsung, at least by any competent bard. Mrs Hemans has one sweet strain on the "Treasures of the Deep." Allan Cunningham's "Wet Sheet and Flowing Sea," and Barry Cornwall's "The Sea, the Sea," are in everybody's mouth. We remember a young student at Glasgow College, long since dead--George Gray by name--a thin lame lad, with dark mild eyes, and a fine spiritual expression on his pale face, handing in to Professor Milne of the Moral Philosophy class, some lines which he read to his class, and by which they, as well as the old, arid, although profound and ingenious philosopher, were perfectly electrified. We shall quote all we remember of them, and it will be thought much, when we state that twenty-five years have elapsed since we read them. They began--

"The storm is up; the anchor spring,
And man the sails, my merry men;
I must not lose the carolling
Of ocean in a hurricane;
My soul mates with the mountain storm,
The cooing gale disdains.
Bring Ocean in his wildest form,
All booming thunder-strains;
I'll bid him welcome, clap his mane;
I'll dip my temples in his yeast,
And hug his breakers to my breast;
And bid them hail! all hail, I cry,
My younger brethren hail!

The sea shall be my cemetery
Unto eternity.

How glorious 'tis to have the wave
For ever dashing o'er thee;--
Besides that dull and lonesome grave,
Where worms and earth devour thee.

My messmates, when ye drink my dirge,
Go, fill the cup from ocean's surge;
And when ye drain the beverage up,
Remember Neptune in the cup.
For he has been my _brawling host_,
Since first I roam'd from coast to coast;
And he my _brawling_ host shall be--
I love his ocean courtesy--
His _boisterous_ hospitality."

These lines, to us at least, seem to echo the rough roar of the breakers, as they rush upon an iron-bound coast. Poor G. Gray! He now sleeps, not in the bosom of that old Ocean he loved so dearly, but, we think, in the kirkyard of Douglas, in the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire,--a light early quenched,--but whose memory this notice and these lines may, perhaps, for a season, preserve! The SEA still lies over, after all written in prose or rhyme regarding it, as the subject for a great poem; and it will task all the energies of even the truest poet.

FALCONER'S POEMS.

THE SHIPWRECK.

IN THREE CANTOS.

THE TIME EMPLOYED IN THIS POEM IS ABOUT SIX DAYS.

Quæque ipse miserrima vidi,
Et quorum pars magna fui.

VIRG. ÆN. lib. ii.