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MAUD AND OTHER POEMS.*

The poets of this generation are more like King David than King Solomon. King David amassed the materials for a gorgeous temple which it was denied him to build. It required the genius of Solomon to rear into a habitation for the Lord of Hosts the treasures which his father had heaped— the Tyrian purple, the Shittim wood, the cedars of Lebanon, the gold of Ophir, and the brass for those bright lavers which he cast in the clay ground by the Jordan, between Succoth and Zarthan. Like David, our reigning poets spare no pains in gathering from the four winds of Heaven the elements of grand poems. All science—even toxicology, embryology, and hippopathology—they traverse in quest of knowledge. Aldobrandus, Hakluyt, and the Talmuds they ransack for curious illustration. New words that appal us like Frankensteins they create without end; and old words they exhume without scruple from Cotgrave and Ashe. They twist and twine with a labour of love the interminable arabesques of metaphysical subtlety. They invent unheard-of metres that would have driven Hermann to despair, and demanded a preface with half-a-dozen postscripts from Porson. Exotic similes they pursue as Dr. Hooker pursued the Himalayan flora, and cherish, as Sir William cherishes, the Victoria Regia at Kew. And, after all this preparation, what is the result? Where is the temple?—where is the Solomon to build a temple worthy of a God?—where is the genius, inferior to Solomon, that can raise such a palace as in a single night the genius of the wonderful lamp raised for the nuptials of Aladdin and the Princess Badroulboudour? To speak frankly, we are afraid that the architecture of our poets does not go much beyond the art of piling sentence upon sentence and “building the lofty rhyme.”

The more we examine the tendency oftheir minds the less can we wonder at this inglorious result. They are so analytical and self-conscious that we should rather expect to see them professors of metasphysics in a Scotch university than poets soliloquizing in a poet's nooks. Their gaze is continually turned upon themselves. It is therefore turned upon an object which they can only see in parts; and the pictures which they draw must correspond with the fragmentary character of their perception. Thus they resemble the Kallipygian Venus, lifting her drapery and straining over her shoulder to gaze on the beauties of her person—painful her attitude, little can she see, and that little is not the best; while other poets, without thinking of themselves, see themselves in full view projected in the mirror of human life. The result of this continual introspection is, that it grows with their growth until it becomes an incurable disease—until it becomes, what Bacon describes, the merest cannibalism—the heart eating itself. All interest in human action departs. They care no more to sing of mighty deeds. From the external world of life and action they secrete themselves in the dormitory of their own thoughts; there they slumber In perpetual nightmare, or only wake from the nightmare to pass into hysterics over a pebble or a moss. All things are out of proportion. To their distempered vision molehills become mountains, and the great globe appears as “that little o, the earth.” They repeat the marvel of antiquity and give us Iliads in nutshells. The return of the swallow in spring is to them a more joyous epic than the return of Ulysses to Ithaca; the opening of an oyster is a deed more heroic, with issues more terrible, than the wrath of Achilles and the sack of Troy. Can we wonder at the products of such miserable sentimentalism? Can we wonder that the poems are without form and void? There they are—full of nonsense dressed up as enigmas; full of diseased thought that is partially concealed by a hectic beauty; full of hiccough and maudlin; full of genius and absurdity; with talk as fluent as the Deluge, and action as little as in the Ark; with morbid heroes predestined to Bedlam, and morbid heroines predestined to the Magdalen.

It is with great pain that we find it necessary to commence a review of Mr. Tennyson's latest poem with these observations. But the fact is that Maud is unworthy of his genius, and gathers into a focus all the worst faults of the popular poetry of the day—the poetry which has been called “spasmodic.” Our admiration for the Laureate has been so profound that, however we may have been dissatisfied with some of his later productions, we never deemed it possible for him to err so egregiously as to take his place at the head of the spasmodic poets. In now looking at his successive works we can see how—small by degrees and beautifully less—he has been tendng to this.

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In his first three publications, which bear the dates of 1830, 1832, and 1842, he rose higher and higher, till in Locksley Hall, Morte d'Arthur, and The Gardener's Daughter, he attained his zenith. Then came The Princess, next In Memoriam, lastly Maud—each volume a fatal descent. The Prncess was his first attempt to write a sustained poem; he has truly described it on the titlepage—The Pricess; a Medley. It was a jumble of fantastic images and obscure ideas, with an impossible story and an impenetrable purpose. Still more obscure and impalpable was In Memoriam, the train of thought more disjointed, and the language dreamlike and ghostlike. And now it would seem as if in Maud he had reached the lowest deep. It is impossible that Mr. Tennyson should write what is utterly wanting in beauty; but we repeat that we deemed it still more impossible for him to write anything so hysterical and weak as the present poem. We have sometimes thought that the spasmodic poets have been dealt with too rigorously by the critics, and that some allowance should have been made for the waywardness of youth and the promise of the future. But what shall be said of the Laureate, in all the maturity of his great genius, presenting us with a poem which is the very triumph of spasm? The spasmodic poets generally pretend to exhibit somewhat, however little, of action; they pass off soliloquy for dialogue and dialogue for action, and profess to write with a dramatic intent—life dramas and death dramas, devil dramas and soul dramas. The Laureate makes no such pretensions, pays no such deference to popular requirements. The poem is one long soliloquy—rhymed fragments of the diary of a very disagreeable and excited individual of name unknown. It is written in a series of 26 fits—we do not mean the fits or cantos of old ballads, but veritable ague-fits. Undeterred by the knowledge that spasm is at present epidemic among the poets, Mr. Tennyson has actually sent forth a poem which is the perfection of spasmodic form.

The slight story, rather hinted than fairly developed in the poem, is soon told. The anonymous hero, soured by early disappointment, and leading a sort of “philosopher's life in the quiet woodland ways”—that is, a life in which, while hugging peace and inaction, he philosophizes on the superior healthiness of activity and war, glorious war—suddenly meets with Maud, the daughter of a neighbouring proprietor, and falls in love with her “cold and clear cut face,” and “the delicate Arab arch of her feet.” She, too, although intended by her father, “a ponderous squire,” and her brother, a “curled Assyrian Bull,” to be the bride of a certain “babe-faced lord,” loves him and plights her troth to him. Now, It happens that the “ponderous squire,” her father, gives a grand political dinner to the Tories around—a dinner and a dance; and our hero, not being a Tory, is not invited. But, not to be baulked, he spends the night in the rose garden of his lady-love, watching the windows and uttering pretty confidences to the flowers. At early morn, when all the guests have departed, when

“Low on the sand and loud on the shore “The last wheel echoes away,”

Maud comes to him to the garden gate. She is followed by her brother, “the Assyrian Bull,” who heaps on her terms of disgrace, and, finally—to sustain the rhyme—strikes her lover on the face. A duel is the result, in which ”the Assyrian Bull” is killed. The hero flies to France; cannot rest there; returns to England only to find that his Maud is dead; goes mad; sings a very mad song (the obscurest part of the volume, but any one taking the trouble to make a minute psychological analysis of the state will find it a marvel of truth); by judicious treatment comes to his senes, discovers that we are at war with Russia, and, standing on a giant deck, waves his hat and shouts as the fleet weighs anchor for the Baltic. So ends the tale, with the strangest anti-climax that we ever remember to have read Whether it has any hidden meaning we are not learned enough to discover. The more advanced: Tennysonians used to detect abysses of meaning in The Princess, and we have heard that they find some wondrous allegory of the war in the present poem. If so, it is “as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile,” and the element it lives in is mud. The Princess and Maud are both Intelligible on the surface; it simply throws dust in our eyes, and clouds what is clear to be told of other and undiscoverable meanings. A windmill is a windmill; we must leave it to the Quixotes to encounter it as a giant armed. We find here simply a morbid, misanthropic young man, who is cured of his misanthropy but not of his morbidity by falling in love whose love; whose love drives him to bloodshed and madness; and whose madness dissipates with the proclamation of war.

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It is simply the representation of a diseased state of mind, of which the hero discovers at the end, although apparently without acting on his discovery, that the only sovereign remedy is action and war:—

“As months ran on, and rumour of battle grew, “‘It is time, it is time, O passionate heart, said I, “‘It is time, O passionate heart and morbid eye, “‘That old hysterical mock-disease should die.’ “And I stood on a giant deck and mix'd my breath “With a loyal people shouting a battle cry.”

Taking the poem, then, simply as we find it, Mr. Tennyson has never yet presented to the public anything so crude, so shapeless, and so commonplace. The tale Is sketchy, without the vigour of a sketch. The writing is prosaic and metaphysical, with the flatness and without the straitforwardness of prose. The imagery is conceited and far-fetched. The metre, which is varied, is for the most part an attempt to engraft the idea of the hexameter on the iambic rhythm to which English ears are accustomed, and has all the perplexities without the music of genuine dactylics. Coming from an unknown author, such a poem, notwithstanding some rare beauties of detail, would scarcely merit a lengthened criticism. Coming from Tennyson it rises into importance, and every poet and poetaster throughout the country—able to imitate his blemishes, but unable to imitate his beauties—will set up the Laureate as an example for prosy verse, for metaphysical sentiment, for affected imagery, for hysterical tears and melodramatic rage. It will be forgotten that he never sinned to the same extent before, and that here he has committed offences which no one ever dreamt that he was capable of committing. While reprehending these faults, it would be unfair to deny to Mr. Tennyson the merit which he deserves. The poem is not healthy, is not pleasing, will never be popular; but we have no doubt that it is true to his idea, and that its faults are to a certain extent intentional. Given a hero afflicted with “the old hysterical mock-disease,” there cannot be a doubt that, as a dramatic study, the six and twenty fits of this poem are true to the life. Trust Tennyson to represent a character faithfully—he will never fail. And from this point ef view we have not a syllable of objection to urge against the poem. Given the hero—his hysterical sentiment, his psychological analyses, his prosiness, his unequal verse, his conceited imagery follow naturally. The imagery, for example, is not merely mannered In form, but also limited in the selection of subjects. His muse delights in two things—horticulture and jewelry. She flies to flowers like a bee, and talks jewels like the fairygifted girl. The jewels are principally emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and pearls; the flowers are more varied and numerous—daffodils, violets, larkspur, pimpernel, jessamine, but chiefly roses and lilies. Now the imagery of Mr. Tennyson when he writes in his own person, is so catholic that one can have little hesitation in accepting the peculiarly horticultural and bejewelled imagery of the hero, merely as a characteristic of his position. And so with whatever else is faulty in the poem—it belongs to the hero.

What is there to blame then? it will be asked. Has not the poet a right to choose whatever subjects he pleases? And if he fulfils his intention, what more can we expect? Now, it may be very heretical, but we must deny the poet a right to choose what subjects he pleases. Were Byron and his school now alive and active, we think we should have a right to quarrel with his Satanic heroes; and we have the same right to quarrel with the consumptive heroes of Mr. Tennyson and the present race of poets. Dr. Darwin composed the Botanic Garden, he made the most of his theme; but not the less do we reprobate the poem and laugh at the loves of the flowers. In the same manner, what wonder that we tire of the Laureate—s horticultural tendencies, and sicken over the morbid anatomy of Maud? Intention!—the intention of a poet is determined by his tastes and habits, and when we find a band of poets abhorrent of action, and piping of disease and poppyheads, and dreams, we may set them down as "mild-eyed, melancholy, lotus-eaters," whose poems reflect their characters. It is no use to say that Mr. Tennyson reprobates disease and inaction as strongly as we do; no use to quote the moral of the poem—

“It is time, O pasionate heart and morbid eye, “That old, hysterical, mock-disease should die.”

That was the kind of argument which the comic dramatists of the Restoration, Wycherley and Congreve, Farquhar and Vanbrugh, employed to excuse the licentiousness of plays in which a bad word was a bon Mot, profanity passed for wit, and obscenity for humour. Delighting in the vices which they portrayed, and portrayed in fairest colours, these dramatists declared that they only painted vice in order to make it abhorred:—

“Vice is a monster of such hideous mien, “As to be hated needs but to be seen.”

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And here we have half-a-dozen poets, with Mr. Tennyson at their head, pourtraying disease with painful minuteness, adorning it with the finest poetry at their command, and then, having done their best to make us admire the malady, finishing with a sigh. It is too bad, it won't do, such a life is death, the only true life is action. If Mr. Tennyson really wishes to inculcate such a moral, he knows that example is better than precept, and a poem full of healthy action far more inspiring than the moping and melancholy of Maud.

After all, however defectively the moral may be conveyed, we rejoice to find the Laureate proclaiming the truth with regard to the war—that this great war is the salvation of the country from evils fare more to be dreaded than any which excite the fears of dove-eyed peacemongers. Very boldly he proclaims it throughout the poem, but most articulately at the conclusion in the following verses, part of which we have quoted already:—

“It lightened my despair “When I thought that a war would arise in defence of the right, “That an iron tyranny now should bend or cease, “The glory of manhood stand on his ancient height, “Nor Britain's one sole God be the millionaire: “No more shall commerce be all in all, and peace “Pipe on her pastoral billock a languid note, “And watch her harvest ripen, her herd increase, “Nor the cannon-bullet rust on a slothful shore, “And the cobweb woven across the cannon's throat “Shall shake its threaded tears in the wind no more.

“And as months ran on and rumour of battle grew, “It is time, it is time, O passionate heart,' said I “(For I cleaved to a cause that I felt to be pure and true), “'It is time, O passionate heart and morbid eye “That old hysterical mock-disease should die.' “And I stood on a giant deck and mix'd my breath “With a loyal people shouting a battlecry, “Till I saw the dreary phantom arise and fly “Far into the North, and battle, and seas of death.

“Let it go or stay, so I wake to the higher aims “Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold, “And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and shames, “Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told; “And hail once more to the banner of battle unroll'd! “Tho' many a light shall darken, and many shall weep “For those that are crushed in the clash of jarring claims, “Yet God's just doom shall be wreaked on a giant liar; “And many a darkness unto the light shall leap, “And shine in the sudden making of splendid names, “And noble thought be freer under the sun, “And the heart of a people beat with one desire; “For the long, long canker of peace is over and done, “And now by the side of the Black and Baltic deep, “And deathful grinning mouths of the fortress, flames “The bloodred blossom of war with a heart of fire.”

We have heard far too much of the blessing of peace. Like the blessings of Balaam they may prove curses. There comes a time to every man and to every nation when the cry must be raised—“War! war! No peace; Peace is to me a war!” Let us now hear somewhat of the blessings of war—war that has restored the manhood of a nation and taught us that honour is more precious than gold, duty grander than interest, and righteous Victory sweeping through the vineyards of the Alma diviner than Peace drowsily cracking the walnuts over the wine. And it is to hoped that, among other blessings of the war, our young poets, instead of pulling corners, will arouse themselves, come forth to the day, and show some interest in healthy human action. Let them remember that the really great poets have been pre-eminently men of action. Homer travelled far and mixed much with men; Æschylus fought at Marathon; Sophocles was a judge; Shakspere had the Globe Theatre; Milton was the secretary of Cromwell; Goethe a Minister of State. Instead of this, what have we now? Poets hiding themselves in holes and corners, and weaving interminable cobwebs out of their own bowels. It is, indeed, to be hoped that the war will put an end to this, and inspire the poet's heart to beat like a drum to action, and the poet's tongue to sound like a trumpet after victory.