Volume II Part 24 (1/2)
CONCLUSION.
HEROINES OF MODERN POETRY.
Heureuse la Beaut que le pote adore!
Heureux le nom qu'il a chant!
DE LAMARTINE.
It will be allowed, I think, that women have reason to be satisfied with the rank they hold in modern poetry; and that the homage which has been addressed to them, either directly and individually, or paid indirectly and generally, in the beautiful characters and portraits drawn of them, ought to satisfy equally female sentiment and female vanity. From the half ethereal forms which float amid moonbeams and gems, and odours and flowers, along the dazzling pages of Lalla Rookh, down to Phoebe Dawson, in the Parish Register:[153] from that loveliest gem of polished life, the young Aurora of Lord Byron, down to Wordsworth's poor Margaret weeping in her deserted cottage;[154]--all the various aspects between these wide extremes of character and situation, under which we have been exhibited, have been, with few exceptions, just and favourable to our s.e.x.
In the literature of the cla.s.sical ages, we were debased into mere servants of pleasure, alternately the objects of loose incense or coa.r.s.e invective. In the poetry of the Gothic ages, we all rank as queens. In the succeeding period, when the platonic philosophy was oddly mixed up with the inst.i.tutions of chivalry, we were exalted into divinities;--”angels called, and angel-like adored.” Then followed the age of French gallantry, tinged with cla.s.sical elegance, and tainted with cla.s.sical licence, when we were caressed, complimented, wooed and satirised by c.o.xcomb poets,
Who ever mix'd their song with light licentious toys.
There was much expenditure of wit and of talent, but in an ill cause;--for the feeling was, _au fond_, bad and false;--”et il n'est guere plaisant d'tre empoisonn, mme par l'esprit de rose.”
In the present time a better spirit prevails. We are not indeed sublimated into G.o.ddesses; but neither is it the fas.h.i.+on to degrade us into the playthings of fopling poets. We seem to have found, at length, our proper level in poetry, as in society; and take the place a.s.signed to us as women--
As creatures not too bright or good, For human nature's daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles![155]
We are represented as ruling by our feminine attractions, moral or exterior, the pa.s.sions and imaginations of men; as claiming, by our weakness, our delicacy, our devotion,--their protection, their tenderness, and their grat.i.tude: and, since the minds of women have been more generally and highly cultivated; since a Madame de Stael, a Joanna Baillie, a Maria Edgeworth, and a hundred other names, now s.h.i.+ning aloft like stars, have shed a reflected glory on the whole s.e.x they belong to, we possess through them, a claim to admiration and respect for our mental capabilities. We a.s.sume the right of pa.s.sing judgment on the poetical homage addressed to us, and our smiles alone can consecrate what our smiles first inspired.[156]
If we look over the ma.s.s of poetry produced during the last twenty-five years, whether Italian, French, German, or English, we shall find that the predominant feeling is honourable to women, and if not gallantry, is something better.[157] It is too true, that the incense has not been always perfectly pure. ”Many light lays,--ah, woe is me there-fore!”[158] have sounded from one gifted lyre, which has since been strung to songs of patriotism and tenderness. Moore, whom I am proud, for a thousand reasons, to claim as my countryman, began his literary and amatory career, fresh from the study of the cla.s.sics, and the poets of Charles the Second's time; and too often through the thin undress of superficial refinement, we trace the grossness of his models.
It is said, I know not how truly, that he has since made the _amende honorable_. He has possibly discovered, that women of sense and sentiment, who have a true feeling of what is due to them as women, are not fitly addressed in the style of Anacreon and Catullus; have no sympathies with his equivocal Rosas, f.a.n.n.y, and Julias, and are not flattered by being a.s.sociated with tavern orgies and b.u.mpers of wine, and such ”tipsey revelry.” Into themes like these he has, it is true, infused a buoyant spirit of gaiety, a tone of sentiment, and touches of tender and moral feeling, which would reconcile us to them, if any thing could; as in the beautiful songs, ”When time, who steals our years away,”--”O think not my spirits are always as light,”--”Farewell! but whenever you think on the hour,”--”The Legacy,” and a hundred others.
But how many _more_ are there, in which the purity and earnestness of the feeling vie with the grace and delicacy of the expression! and in the difficult art (only to be appreciated by a singer) of marrying verse to sound, Moore was never excelled--never equalled--but by Burns. He seems to be gifted, as poet and musician, with a double instinct of harmony, peculiar to himself.
Barry Cornwall is another living poet who has drunk deep from the cla.s.sics and from our older writers; but with a finer taste and a better feeling, he has borrowed only what was decorative, graceful and accessory: the pure stream of his sentiment flows unmingled and untainted,--
Yet musical as when the waters run, Lapsing through sylvan haunts deliciously.[159]
It is not without reason that Barry Cornwall has been styled the ”Poet of woman,” _par excellence_. It enhances the value, it adds to the charm of every tender and beautiful pa.s.sage addressed to us, that we know them to be sincere and heartfelt,
Not fable bred, But such as truest poets love to write.
It is for the sake of _one_, beloved ”beyond ambition and the light of song,”--and worthy to be so loved, that he approaches _all_ women with the most graceful, delicate, and reverential homage ever expressed in sweet poetry. His fancy is indeed so luxuriant, that he makes whatever he touches appear fanciful: but the beauty adorned by his verse, and adorning his home, is not imaginary; and though he has almost hidden his divinity behind a cloud of incense, she is not therefore less _real_.
The life Lord Byron led was not calculated to give him a good opinion of women, or to place before him the best virtues of our s.e.x. Of all modern poets, he has been the most generally popular among female readers; and he owes this enthusiasm not certainly to our obligations to _him_; for, as far as women are concerned, we may designate his works by a line borrowed from himself,--
With much to excite, there's little to exalt.
But who, like him, could administer to that ”_besoin de sentir_” which I am afraid is an ingredient in the feminine character all over the world?
Lord Byron is really the Grand Turk of amatory poetry,--ardent in his love,--mean and merciless in his resentment: he could trace pa.s.sion in characters of fire, but his caustic satire burns and blisters where it falls. Lovely as are some of his female portraits, and inimitably beautiful as are some of his lyrical effusions, it must be confessed there is something very Oriental in all his feelings and ideas about women; he seems to require nothing of us but beauty and submission.
Please him--and he will crown you with the richest flowers of poetry, and heap the treasures of the universe at your feet, as trophies of his love; but once offend, and you are lost,--
There yawns the sack--and yonder rolls the sea!