Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850.

"You really think so, Tronchon? You think that I shall be something yet?'

"'Tu ira loin,' I say," repeated he emphatically, and with the air of an oracle who would not suffer further interrogation. I therefore shook his hand cordially, and set out to pay my visit to the general.

(To be continued.)

[From the London Eclectic Review.]

HAVE GREAT POETS BECOME IMPOSSIBLE?[18 - The Roman: a Dramatic Poem. By Sydney Yendys. London: Rantley, 1850.]

"Poetry is declining – poetry is being extinguished – poetry is extinct. To talk of poetry now is eccentricity – to write it is absurdity – to publish it is moonstruck madness." So the changes are rung. Now, it is impossible to deny that what is called poetry has become a drug, a bore, and nuisance, and that the name "Poet," as commonly applied, is at present about the shabbiest in the literary calendar. But we are far from believing that poetry is extinct. We entertain, on the contrary, sanguine hopes of its near and glorious resurrection. Soon do we hope to hear those tones of high melody, which are now like the echoes of forgotten thunder:

"From land to land re-echoed solemnly,

Till silence become music."

We expect, about the very time, when the presumption against the revivication of poetry shall have attained the appearance of absolute certainty, to witness a Tenth Avatar of Genius – and to witness its effect, too, upon the sapient personages who had been predicting that it was forever departed.

But this, it seems, is "not a poetical age." For our parts, we know not what age has not been poetical – in what age have not existed all the elements of poetry, been developed all its passions, and been heard many of its tones. "Were the dark ages poetical?" it will be asked. Yes, for then, as now, there was pathos – there was passion – there were hatred, revenge, love, grief, despair, religion. Wherever there is the fear of death and of judgment, there is, and must be poetry – and when was that feeling more intensely developed than during that dim period? The victims of a spell are objects of poetical interest. Here was a strong spell, embracing a world. Was no arm during the dark ages bared aloft in defense of outraged innocence? Or was no head then covered with the snows of a hundred winters, through one midnight despair? Was the voice of prayer then stifled throughout Europe's hundred lands? Was the mighty heart of man – the throbbing of which is just poetry, then utterly silent? But it was not expressed! We maintain, on the contrary, that it was – expressed at the time, in part by monks, and scalds, and orators, and expressed afterward in the glad energy of the spring which human nature made from its trance, into new life and motion. The elements of poetry had been accumulating in secret. The renovation of letters merely opened a passage for what had been struggling for vent. What is Dante's work but a beautiful incarnation of the spirit of the Middle Ages? His passion is that of a sublimated Inquisitor. His "Inferno" is such a dream as might have been dreamed by a poet monk, whose body had been macerated by austerities, and whose spirit had been darkened by long broodings on the fate of the victims of perdition. It is the poetical part of the passion of those ages of darkness finding a full voice – an eternal echo. And it was not in vain that so deep had been the slumber, when such had been its visions. There is a grandeur about any passion when carried to excess. Superstition, therefore, became the inspiration of one of the greatest productions of the universe. Dante was needed precisely when he appeared. The precise quantity of poetical material to answer the ends of a great original poet was accumulated; and the mighty Florentine, when he rose, became the mouth-piece and oracle of his age and of its cognate ages past – the exact index of all that redeemed, animated, excited, or adorned them.

The crusades, too, were another proof that the slumber in which Europe had been buried was not absolutely and altogether that of stupor or death. They occurred after the noon of that period we usually denominate dark. But they were the realization of a dream which had often passed through the monkish heart – the embodiment, of a wish which had often brought tears into the eyes of genuine enthusiasts. There was, surely, as much sublimity in the first conception as in the execution. What indeed were the crusades, but the means of bringing to light, feelings, desires, passions, a lofty disinterested heroism, which the very depth of the former darkness had tended to foster and fire?

If the dark ages had thus their poetical tendencies, climbing toward a full poetic expression, surely no age need or can be destitute of theirs – need or can be called unpoetical. But the misfortune is, that men will not look at the essential poetry which is lying around them, and under their feet. They suppose their age to be unpoetical, merely because they grapple not with its great excitements, nor will venture to sail upon its "mighty stream of tendency." They overlook the volcano in the next mountain – while admiring or deploring those which have been extinct for centuries, or which are a thousand miles away. They are afraid that if they catch the spirit of their age in verse, they will give it a temporary stamp; and therefore they either abstain from writing, and take to abusing the age on which they have unluckily fallen, or else come to the same resolution after an unsuccessful attempt to revive faded stimulants. Dante embodied, for instance, his countrymen's rude conception of future punishment – and he did well. But our modern religious poets have never ventured to meddle with those moral aspects of the subject which have now so generally supplanted the material. They talk instead, with Pollok, of the "rocks of dark damnation," or outrage common sense by such barbarous mis-creations as he has sculptured on the gate of hell, and think they have written an "Inferno," or that, if they have failed, it is because their age is not poetical.

Indeed, the least poetry is sometimes written in the most poetical ages. Men, when acting poetry, have little time either to write or to read it. There was less poetry written in the age of Charles I., than in that which preceded it, and more poetry enacted. But the majority of men only listen to the reverberations of emotion in song. They sympathize not with poetry, but with poets. And, therefore, when a cluster of poets die, or are buried before they be dead, they chant dirges over the death of poetry – as if it ever did or ever could die! as if its roots, which are just the roots of the human soul, were perishable – as if, especially when a strong current of excitement was flowing, it were not plain, that there was a poetry which should, in due time, develop its own masters to record and prolong it forever. Surely, as long as the grass is green and the sky is blue, as long as man's heart is warm and woman's face is fair, poetry, like seed-time and harvest, like summer and winter shall not cease.

There was little poetry, some people think, about England's civil war, because the leader of one party was a red-nosed fanatic. They, for their part, cannot extract poetry from a red nose; but they are in raptures with Milton. Fools! but for that civil war, its high and solemn excitement, the deeds and daring of that red-nosed fanatic, would the "Paradise Lost" ever have been written, or written as it has been? That stupendous edifice of genius seems cemented by the blood of Naseby and of Marston Moor.

Such persons, too, see little that is poetical in the American struggle – no mighty romance in tumbling a few chests of tea into the Atlantic. Washington they think insipid; and because America has produced hitherto no great poet, its whole history they regard as a gigantic commonplace – thus ignoring the innumerable deeds of derring-do which distinguished that immortal contest – blinding their eyes to the "lines of empire" in the "infant face of that cradled Hercules," and the tremendous sprawlings of his nascent strength – and seeking to degrade those forests into whose depths a path for the sunbeams must be hewn, and where, lightning appears to enter trembling, and to withdraw in haste; forests which must one day drop down a poet, whose genius shall be worthy of their age, their vastitude, the beauty which they inclose, and the load of grandeur below which they bend.

Nor, to the vulgar eye, does there seem much poetry in the French Revolution, though it was the mightiest tide of human passion which ever boiled and raved: a great deal, doubtless, in Burke's "Reflections" – but none in the cry of a liberated people, which was heard in heaven – none in the fall of the Bastile – none in Danton's giant figure, nor in Charlotte Corday's homicide – nor in Madame Roland's scaffold speeches, immortal though they be as the stars of heaven – nor in the wild song of the six hundred Marseillese, marching northward "to die." The age of the French Revolution was proved to be a grand and spirit-stirring age by its after results – by bringing forth its genuine poet-children – its Byrons and Shelleys – but needed not this late demonstration of its power and tendencies.

Surely our age, too, abounds in the elements of poetical excitement, awaiting; only fit utterance. The harvest is rich and ripe – and nothing now is wanting but laborers to put in the sickle.

Special objections might indeed, and have been taken, to the poetical character of our time, which we may briefly dispose of before enumerating the qualities which a new and great poet, aspiring to be the Poet of the Age, must possess, and inquiring how far Mr. S. Yendys exhibits those qualities in this very remarkable first effort, "The Roman."

"It is a mechanical age," say some. To use Shakspeare's words, "he is a mechanical salt-butter rogue who says so." Men use more machines than formerly, but are not one whit more machines themselves. Was James Watt an automaton? Has the press become less an object of wonder or terror since it was worked by steam? How sublime was the stoppage of a mail as the index of rebellion. Luther's Bible was printed by a machine. The organ is a machine – and not the roar of a lion in a midnight forest is more sublime, or a fitter reply from earth to the thunder. The railway carriages of this mechanical age are the conductors of the fire of intellect and passion – and its steamboats may be loaded with thunderbolts, as well as with bullocks or yarn. The great American ship is but a machine; and yet how poetical it becomes, as it walks the waters of the summer sea, or wrestles, like a demon of kindred power, with the angry billows. Mechanism, indeed, may be called the short-hand of poetry, concentrating its force and facilitating its operations.

But this is an "age too late." So doubted Milton, while the shadow of Shakspeare had scarce left the earth, and while he himself was writing the greatest epic the world ever saw. And so any one may say, provided he does not mutilate or restrain his genius in consequence. We have reason to bless Providence that Milton did not act upon his hasty peradventure. But some will attempt to prove its truth, by saying that the field of poetry is limited – that the first cultivators will probably exhaust it, and that, in fact, a decline in poetry has been observed – the first poets being uniformly the best. But we deny that the field of poetry is limited. That is nature and the deep heart of man; or, more correctly, the field of poetry is human nature, and the external universe, multiplied indefinitely by the imagination. This, surely, is a wide enough territory. Where shall poetry, if sent forth like Noah's dove, fail to find a resting-place? Each new fact in the history of man and nature is a fact for it– suited to its purposes, and awaiting its consecration.

"The great writers have exhausted it." True, they have exhausted, speaking generally, the topics they have handled. Few will think of attempting the "Fall of Man" after Milton – and Dryden and Galt, alone, have dared, to their own disgrace, to burst within Shakspeare's magic circle. But the great poets have not verily occupied the entire field of poetry – have not counted all the beatings of the human heart – have not lighted on all those places whence poetry, like water from the smitten rock, rushes at the touch of genius – have not exhausted all the "riches fineless" which garnish the universe – nay, they have multiplied them infinitely, and shed on them a deeper radiance. The more poetry there is, the more there must be. A good criticism on a great poem becomes a poem itself. It is the essence of poetry to increase and multiply – to create an echo and shadow of its own power, even as the voice of the cataract summons the spirits of the wilderness to return it in thunder. As truly say that storms can exhaust the sky, as that poems can exhaust the blue dome of poesy. We doubt, too, the dictum that the earliest poets are uniformly the best. Who knows not that many prefer Eschylus to Homer; and many, Virgil to Lucretius; and many, Milton to Shakspeare; and that a nation sets Goethe above all men, save Shakspeare; and has not the toast been actually given, "To the two greatest of poets – Shakspeare and Byron?" To settle the endless questions connected with such a topic by any dogmatical assertion of the superiority of early poets, is obviously impossible.

But "the age will not now read poetry." True, it will not read whatever bears the name it will not read nursery themes; nor tenth-rate imitations of tenth-rate imitations of Byron, Scott, or Wordsworth; nor the effusions either of mystical cant, or of respectable commonplace; nor yet very willingly the study-sweepings of reputed men, who deem, in their complacency, that the world is gaping for the rinsings of their intellect. But it will read genuine poetry, if it be accommodated to the wants of the age, and if it be fairly brought before it. "Vain to cast pearls before swine!" Cast down the pearls before you call the men of the age swine. In truth, seldom had a true and new poet a fairer field, or the prospect of a wider favor, than at this very time. The age remembers that many of those poets it now delights to honor, were at first received with obloquy or neglect. It is not so likely to renew the disgraceful sin, since it recollects the disgraceful repentance. It is becoming wide awake, and is ready to recognize every symptom of original power. The reviews and literary journals are still, indeed, comparatively an unfair medium; but, by their multitude and their contradictions, have neutralized each other's power, and rendered the public less willing and less apt to be bullied or blackguarded out of its senses. Were Hazlitt alive now, and called, by any miserable scribbler in the "Athenæum" or "Spectator," a dunce, he could laugh in his face; instead of retiring as he did, perhaps hunger-bitten, to bleed out his heart's blood in secret. Were Shelley now called in "Blackwood" a madman, and Keats a mannikin, they would be as much disturbed by it as the moon at the baying of a Lapland wolf. The good old art, in short, of writing an author up or down, is dying hard, but dying fast; and the public is beginning to follow the strange new fashion of discarding its timid, or truculent, or too-much-seasoned tasters, and judging for itself. We have often imaged to ourselves the rapture with which a poet, of proper proportions and due culture, if writing in his age's spirit, would be received in an age when the works of Coleridge, and Wordsworth, and Keats, are so widely read and thoroughly appreciated. He would find it "all ear."

Great things, however, must be done by the man who cherishes this high ambition. He must not only be at once a genius and an artist, but his art and his genius must be proportioned, with chemical exactness, to each other. He must not only be a poet, but have a distinct mission and message, savoring of the prophetic – he must say as well as sing. He must use his poetic powers as wonders attesting the purpose for which he speaks – not as mere bravados of ostentatious power. He must, while feeling the beauty, the charm, and the meaning of mysticism, stand above it, on a clear and sun-lighted peak, and incline rather to the classical and masculine, than to the abstract and transcendental. His genius should be less epic and didactic, than lyrical and popular. He should be not so much the Homer as the Tyrtæus of this strange time. He should have sung over to himself the deep controversies of his age, and sought to reduce them into an unique and intelligible harmony. Into scales of doubt, equally balanced, he should be ready to throw his lyre, as a makeweight. Not a partisan either of the old or the new, he should seek to set in song the numerous points in which they agree, and strive to produce a glorious synthesis between them. He should stand (as on a broad platform) on the identity and eternity of all that is good and true – on the fact that "faiths never die, but are only translated" – on the fact that beauty physical and beauty moral are in heart the same; and that Christianity, as rightly understood, is at once the root and the flower of all truth – and, standing on this, should sing his fearless strains to the world. He should have a high idea of his art – counting it a lower inspiration, a sacred trust, a minor grace – a plant from a seed originally dropped out of the paradise of God! He should find in it a work, and not a recreation – an affair of life, not of moments of leisure. And while appealing, by his earnestness, his faith, his holiness, his genius, to the imagination, the heart, and the conscience of man, he should possess, or attain to, the mechanical ingenuity that can satisfy man's constructive understanding, the elegance that can please his sensuous taste, the fluency that can blend ease with instruction, and the music that can touch through the ear the inner springs of his being. Heart and genius, art and nature, sympathy with man and God, love of the beautiful apparition of the universe, and of that divine halo of Christianity which surrounds its head, must be united in our poet. He should conjoin Byron's energy – better controlled; Shelley's earnestness – better instructed; Keats's sensibility – guarded and armed; Wordsworth's Christianized love of Nature; and Coleridge's Christianized view of philosophy – to his own fancy, language, melody, and purpose; a lofty ideal of man the spirit, to a deep sympathy with man the worm, toiling, eating, drinking, struggling, falling, rising, and progressing, amidst his actual environments; and become the Magnus Apollo of our present age.

Perhaps we have fixed the standard too high, and forced a renewal of the exclamation in Rasselas, "Thou hast convinced me that no man can ever be a poet" – or, at least, the poet thus described. But nothing, we are persuaded, is in the imagination which may not be in the fact. Had we defined a Shakspeare ere he arose, "impossible" had been the cry. It must, too, be conceded that hitherto we have no rising, or nearly-risen poet, who answers fully to our ideal. Macaulay and Aytoun are content with being brilliant ballad-singers – they never seek to touch the deeper spiritual chords of our being. Tennyson's exquisite genius is neutralized, whether by fastidiousness of taste or by morbidity of temperament – neutralized, we mean, so far as great future achievements are concerned. Emerson's undisguised Pantheism casts a cold shade over his genius and his poetry. There is something odd, mystical, and shall we say affected, about both the Brownings, which mars their general effect – the wine is good, but the shape of the cyathus is deliberately queer. Samuel Brown is devoted to other pursuits. Marston's very elegant, refined, and accomplished mind, lacks, perhaps, enough of the manly, the forceful, and the profound. Bailey of "Festus," and Yendys of the poem before us, are the most likely candidates for the vacant laurel.

That Bailey's genius is all that need be desired in the "coming poet," will be contested by few who have read and wondered at "Festus" – at its fire of speech, its force of sentiment, its music of sound, its Californian wealth of golden imagery; the infinite variety of its scenes, speeches, and songs; the spirit of reverence which underlies all its liberties, errors, and extravagances; and the originality which, like the air of a mountain summit, renders its perusal at first difficult, and almost deadly, but at last excites and elevates to absolute intoxication. It has, however, been objected to it, that it seems an exhaustion of the author's mind – that its purposeless, planless shape betrays a lack of constructive power – that it becomes almost polemical in its religious aspect, and gives up to party what was meant for mankind – that it betrays a tendency toward obscure, mystical raptures and allegorizings, scarcely consistent with healthy manhood of mind, and which seems growing, as is testified by the "Angel World" – that there is a great gulf between the powers it indicates, and the task of leading the age – and that, on the whole, it is rather a prodigious comet in the poetical heavens, than either a still, calm luminary, or even the curdling of a future fair creation.

Admitting the force of much of this criticism, and that Bailey's art and aptitude to teach are unequal to his native power and richness of mind, we are still willing to wait for a production more matured than "Festus," and less fragmentary and dim than the "Angel World;" and till then, must waive our judgment as to whether on his head the laurel crown is transcendently to flourish.

But meanwhile a young voice has suddenly been uplifted from a provincial town in England, crying, "Hear me – I also am a poet; I aspire, too, to prove myself worthy of being a teacher I aim at no middle flight, but commit myself at once to high, difficult, and daring song, and that, too, of varied kinds." Nor has the voice been despised or disregarded. Some of the most fastidious of critical journals have already waxed enthusiastic in his praise. Many fine spirits, both young and old, have welcomed him with acclamation, as his own hero was admitted, for the sake of one song, into the society of a band of experienced bards. Even the few who deny – unjustly and captiously, as it appears to us – the artistic, admit the poetical merit of his work And we have now before us, not the miserable drudgery of weighing a would-be poet, but the nobler duty of inquiring how far a man of undoubted genius, and great artistic skill, is likely to fulfill the high-raised expectations of the period. The scene of the "Roman" is in Italy. The hero is a patriot, filled and devoured by a love for the liberation of Italy, and for the re-establishment of the ancient Roman Republic – "One, entire, and indivisible." To promote this purpose, he assumes the disguise of a monk; and the history of his progress – addressing now little groups, now single individuals, and now large multitudes of men – at one time captivating, unwittingly, a young and enthusiastic lady, by the fervor of his eloquence, who delivers him from death by suicide – and at another, shaking the walls of his dungeon, through the power and grandeur of his predictions and dreams – till at last, as, after the mockery of a trial, he is led forth to death, he hears the shout of his country, rising en masse– is the whole story of the piece. But around this slender thread, the author has strung some of the largest, richest, and most resplendent gems of poetry we have seen for years.

Let us present our readers with a few passages, selected almost at random. Take the "Song of the Dancers" for its music:

"Dancers. Sing lowly, foot slowly, oh, why should we chase
The hour that gives heaven to this earthly embrace?
To-morrow, to-morrow, is dreary and lonely;
Then love as they love who would live to love only!
Closer yet, eyes of jet – breasts fair and sweet!
No eyes flash like those eyes that flash as they meet!
Weave brightly, wear lightly, the warm-woven chain,
Love on for to-night if we ne'er love again.
Fond youths! happy maidens! we are not alone!
Bright steps and sweet voices keep pace with our own,
Love-lorn Lusignuolo, the soft-sighing breeze,
The rose with the zephyr, the wind with the trees.
While heaven blushing pleasure, is full of love notes,
Soft down the sweet measure the fairy world floats."

    P. I, 2.
Take the Monk's Appeal to his "Mother, Italy," for its eloquence:

"By thine eternal youth,
And coeternal utterless dishonor —
Past, present, future, life and death, all oaths
Which may bind earth and heaven, mother, I swear it
We know we have dishonored thee. We know
All thou canst tell the angels. At thy feet,
The feet where kings have trembled, we confess,
And weep; and only bid thee live, my mother,
To see how we can die. Thou shalt be free!
By all our sins, and all thy wrongs, we swear it
We swear it, mother, by the thousand omens
That heave this pregnant time. Tempests for whom
The Alps lack wombs – quick earthquakes – hurricanes
That moan and chafe, and thunder for the light,
And must be native here. Hark, hark, the angel!
I see the birthday in the imminent skies!
Clouds break in fire. Earth yawns. The exulting thunder
Shouts havoc to the whirlwinds. And men hear
Amid the terrors of consenting storms,
Floods, rocking worlds, mad seas, and rending mountains,
Above the infinite clash, one long great cry,
Thou shalt be free!"

    P. 14, 15.
Take the few lines about "Truth," for their depth: