Volume I Part 4 (1/2)
”I could only disclose that before a Royal Commission”--alluding to a political artifice then coming into vogue in Parliament When a Minister did not know what to say to a popular demand, or found it inconvenient to say it if he did know, he would suggest a Commission to inquire into it, as is done to this day.
Then the clown would demand, ”What is the good of a Royal Commission?”
when the answer would be: ”Every good in the world to a Ministry, for before the Commission agreed as to the answer to be given, the public would forget what the question was.” Under this diversion of the audience, no one noticed that no answer was given to the original question put to the jester. Whether I could have succeeded in this walk was never decided. It was found that I lacked the loud, radiant, explosive voice necessary for circus effects, and I ceased to dream of distinction there.
I suppose, like many others who could not well write anything, I thought poetry might be my latent--very latent--faculty. So I began. For all I knew, my genius, if I had any, might lie that way. To ”body forth things unknown,” which I was told poets did, must be delightful. To ”build castles in the air”--as my means did not enable me to pay ground rent--was at least an economical project. So I began with a question, as new Members of Parliament do, until they discover something to say. My first production, which I hoped would be mistaken for a poem, was in the form of a ”Question to a Pedestrian”:--
”Saw you my Lilian pa.s.s this way?
You would know her by the ray Of light which doth attend her.
Her eye such fire of pa.s.sion hath, That none who meet her ever pa.s.s, But they some message send her.”
The critics said to me, as they said to Keats, to whom I bore no other resemblance, ”This sort of thing will never do. It is an imitation of Shenstone, or of one of the Shepherd and Shepherdess School of the Elizabethan era”--of whom I knew nothing. So I was lost to the Muses, who, however, never missed me.
But my career was not ended. I was told there might be an opening for me in criticism, especially of poetry, as there were many persons great in the critical line, who could not write a verse themselves--and yet lived to become a terror to all who could. My first effort in this direction was upon the book of a young poet whom I knew personally. Not venturing upon longer pieces at first, I selected two sonnets--as the author, Emslie Duncan, called them. The opening was very striking, and was thus expressed:--
”Great G.o.d: What is it that I see?
A figure shrimping in the sea.”
How natural is the exclamation, I began. The poet invokes the Deity on the threshold of a great surprise. Luther did the same in his famous hymn beginning--
”Great G.o.d! What do mine eyes behold!”
Our sonneteer may be said to have borrowed the exclamation from Luther.*
But we have no doubt the exclamation of our poet is purely original.
He next demands an interpretation of his vision. It is early morning, though the poet does not mention it (great poets are suggestive, and stoop not to detail). An evasive grey mist spreads everywhere, like the new fiscal policy of the Bentinckian type (then in the air), obscuring the landmarks of long-time safety. Still there is one object visible.
The poet's eye in ”fine frenzy rolling” sees something. He is not sure of the personality that confronts him, and with agnostic precaution worthy of Huxley, he declines to say what it is--until he knows--and so contents himself with telling the reader it is a ”figure” out shrimping.
The scene is most impressive. As amateurs say, when they do not understand a picture they are praising, ”It grows upon you.” So this marvellous sonnet grows upon the
* The opening of Luther's fine hymn:--
”Great G.o.d! What do mine eyes behold!
The end of things created”--
which long imposed on my imagination and does so still.
reader. If there be not imagination and profundity here, we do not know where to look for it.
Next our poet returns to town, and in White-chapel meets with the statue of a lady attired only in a blouse. Notwithstanding his astonishment he varies his abjuration, and exclaims--
”Judge ye G.o.ds, of my surprise, A lady naked in her chemise!”
This is unquestionably very fine. True, there is some contradiction in nudity and attire; but splendid contradiction is an eternal element of poetry. What would Milton's ”Paradise Lost” be without it? The reader cannot tell whether the surprise of the poet is at the lady or her drapery. There is no use in asking a great poet what he meant in writing his brilliant lines. If as candid as Browning, he would answer as Browning did, that ”he had not the slightest idea what he meant.”
Nothing remains for us but to congratulate the public on the advent of a new poet who is equally great on subjects of land or sea.
There is a good deal of reviewing done on this principle, and reputations made by this sort of writing as fully without foundation, and I looked forward to further employment.
The editor to whom I sent these primal specimens of my new vocation seemed undecided what to do with them--throw them into his waste-paper basket or submit them to his readers. I a.s.sured him I had seen a number of criticisms less restrained than mine, on performances quite as slender as the sonnets I had described. With kindly consideration, lest he might be repressing a rising genius in me, he asked me to give my opinion upon a charming little poem by Longfellow--to commend, as he hoped I could, as a new edition in which he was interested was about to be published.
The object of the poet, I found, was to awaken certain young ladies, whose only fault consisted in getting up late in the morning. The lines addressed to them, if I rightly remember, began thus:--
”Awake! Arise! and greet the day.