Part 27 (2/2)
To ill.u.s.trate our criticism: that man whom we saw by the wayside shrine acknowledged the presence of some spiritual beauty and truth, the beauty of holiness, the ineffable loveliness of G.o.d. So the man who trains a child, or gives thanks for a friend, or remembers his mother, is always at heart a lover of beauty,--the moral beauty of character, of comrades.h.i.+p, of self-sacrifice. But the poetry of Keats deals largely with outward matters, with form, color, melody, odors, with what is called ”sensuous” beauty because it delights our human senses. Such beauty is good, but it is not supreme. Moreover, the artist who would appeal widely to men must by sympathy understand their whole life, their mirth as well as their sorrow, their days of labor, their hours of play, their moments of wors.h.i.+p. But Keats, living apart with his ideal of beauty, like a hermit in his cell, was able to understand and to voice only one of the profound interests of humanity. For this reason, and because of the deep note of sadness which sounds through all his work like the monotone of the sea, his exquisite poems have never had any general appreciation. Like Spenser, who was his first master, he is a poet's poet.
MINOR POETS OF ROMANTICISM
In the early nineteenth century the Literary Annuals appeared, took root and flourished mightily in England and America. These annuals (such a vigorous crop should have been called hardy annuals) were collections of contemporary prose or verse that appeared once a year under such sentimental names as ”Friends.h.i.+p's Offering,” ”The Token” and ”The Garland.” That they were sold in large numbers on both sides of the Atlantic speaks of the growing popular interest in literature. Moreover, they served an excellent purpose at a time when books and libraries were less accessible than they are now. They satisfied the need of ordinary readers for poetry and romance; they often made known to the world a talented author, who found in public approval that sweet encouragement which critics denied him; they made it unlikely that henceforth ”some mute, inglorious Milton” should remain either mute or inglorious; and they not only preserved the best work of minor poets but, what is much better, they gave it a wide reading.
Thanks to such collections, from which every newspaper filled its Poet's Corner, good poems which else might have hid their little light under a bushel--Campbell's ”Hohenlinden,” Mrs. Hemans' ”Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers,” Hunt's ”Abou ben Adhem,” Hood's ”The Song of the s.h.i.+rt,” and many others--are now as widely known as are the best works of Wordsworth or Byron.
[Ill.u.s.tration: LEIGH HUNT]
We can name only a few poets of the age, leaving the reader to form acquaintance with their songs in an anthology. Especially worthy of remembrance are: Thomas Campbell, who greatly influenced the American poets Halleck and Drake; Thomas Moore, whose _Irish Melodies_ have an attractive singing quality; James Hogg (The Ettrick Shepherd); John Keble, author of _The Christian Year_; Thomas Hood; Felicia Hemans; and Leigh Hunt, whose encouragement of Keats is as memorable as his ”Abou ben Adhem”
or ”The Glove and the Lions.” There are other poets of equal rank with those we have ventured to name, and their melodious quality is such that a modern critic has spoken of them, in terms commonly applied to the Elizabethans, as ”a nest of singing birds”; which would be an excellent figure if we could forget the fact that birds in a nest never sing. Their work is perhaps less imaginative (and certainly less fantastic) than that of Elizabethan singers, but it comes nearer to present life and reality.
One of the least known of these minor poets, Thomas Beddoes, was gifted in a way to remind us of the strange genius of Blake. He wrote not much, his life being too broken and disappointed; but running through his scanty verse is a thread of the pure gold of poetry. In a single stanza of his ”Dream Pedlary” he has reflected the spirit of the whole romantic movement:
If there were dreams to sell, What would you buy?
Some cost a pa.s.sing bell, Some a light sigh That shakes from Life's fresh crown Only a rose leaf down.
If there were dreams to sell, Merry and sad to tell, And the crier rang the bell, What would you buy?
THE WORK OF WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832)
To read Scott is to read Scotland. Of no other modern author can it so freely be said that he gave to literature a whole country, its scenery, its people, its history and traditions, its ideals of faith and courage and loyalty.
That is a large achievement, but that is not all. It was Scott, more than any other author, who brought poetry and romance home to ordinary readers; and with romance came pleasure, wholesome and refres.h.i.+ng as a drink from a living spring. When he began to write, the novel was in a sad state,--sentimental, sensational, fantastic, devoted to what Charles Lamb described as wildly improbable events and to characters that belong neither to this world nor to any other conceivable one. When his work was done, the novel had been raised to its present position as the most powerful literary influence that bears upon the human mind. Among novelists, therefore, Scott deserves his t.i.tle of ”the first of the modern race of giants.”
LIFE. To his family, descendants of the old Borderers, Scott owed that intensely patriotic quality which glows in all his work. He is said to have borne strong resemblance to his grandfather, ”Old Bardie Scott,” an unbending clansman who vowed never to cut his beard till a Stuart prince came back to the throne. The clansmen were now citizens of the Empire, but their loyalty to hereditary chiefs is reflected in Scott's reverence for everything pertaining to rank or royalty.
[Sidenote: FIRST IMPRESSIONS]
He was born (1771) in Edinburgh, but his early a.s.sociations were all of the open country. Some illness had left him lame of foot, and with the hope of a cure he was sent to relatives at Sandy Knowe. There in the heart of the Border he spent his days on the hills with the shepherds, listening to Scottish legends. At bedtime his grandmother told him tales of the clans; and when he could read for himself he learned by heart Percy's _Reliques of Ancient Poetry_. So the scenes which he loved because of their wild beauty became sacred because of their historical a.s.sociation. Even in that early day his heart had framed the sentiment which found expression in his _Lay of the Last Minstrel_:
Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said: This is my own, my native land?
[Sidenote: WORK AND PLAY]
At school, and at college at Edinburgh, the boy's heart was never in his books, unless perchance they contained something of the tradition of Scotland. After college he worked in his father's law office, became an advocate, and for twenty years followed the law.
His vacations were spent ”making raids,” as he said, into the Highlands, adding to his enormous store of old tales and ballads. A companion on one of these trips gives us a picture of the man:
”Eh me, sic an endless fund o' humour and drollery as he had wi' him! Never ten yards but we were either laughing or roaring and singing. Whenever we stopped, how brawlie he suited himsel' to everybody! He aye did as the lave did; never made himsel' the great man, or took ony airs in the company.”
This boyish delight in roaming, in new scenes, in new people met frankly under the open sky, is characteristic of Scott's poems and novels, which never move freely until they are out of doors. The vigor of these works may be partially accounted for by the fact that Scott was a hard worker and a hearty player,--a capital combination.
[Sidenote: HIS POEMS]
He was past thirty when he began to write. [Footnote: This refers to original composition. In 1796 Scott published some translations of German romantic ballads, and in 1802 his _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_. The latter was a collection of old ballads, to some of which Scott gave a more modern form.] By that time he had been appointed Clerk of Sessions, and also Sheriff of Selkirks.h.i.+re (he took that hangman's job, and kept it even after he had won fame, just for the money there was in it); and these offices, together with his wife's dowry, provided a comfortable income. When his first poem, _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ (1805), met with immense success he gladly gave up the law, and wrote _Marmion_ (1808) and _The Lady of the Lake_ (1810). These increased his good fortune; but his later poems were of inferior quality, and met with a cool reception. Meanwhile Byron had appeared to dazzle the reading public. Scott recognized the greater poetic genius of the author of _Childe Harold_, and sought another field where he was safe from all rivals.
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