Part 41 (1/2)
HIS POEMS.--Most of his poems are quite short, and of the kind called fugitive, except that they will not fly away. _The Cotter's Sat.u.r.day Night_ is for men of all creeds, a pastoral full of divine philosophy. His _Address to the Deil_ is a tender thought even for the Prince of Darkness, whom, says Carlyle, his kind nature could not hate with right orthodoxy.
His poems on _The Louse, The Field-Mouse's Nest_, and _The Mountain Daisy_, are homely meditations and moral lessons, and contain counsels for all hearts. In _The Twa Dogs_ he contrasts, in fable, the relative happiness of rich and poor. In the beautiful song
Ye banks and braes of bonnie Doun,
he expresses that hearty sympathy with nature which is one of the most attractive features of his character. His _Bruce's Address_ stirs the blood, and makes one start up into an att.i.tude of martial advance. But his most famous poem--drama, comedy, epic, and pastoral--is _Tam o' Shanter_: it is a universal favorite; and few travellers leave Scotland without standing at the window of ”Alloway's auld haunted kirk,” walking over the road upon which Meg galloped, pausing over ”the keystane of the brigg”
where she lost her tail; and then returning, full of the spirit of the poem, to sit in Tam's chair, and drink ale out of the same silver-bound wooden bicker, in the very room of the inn where Tam and the poet used to get ”unco fou,” while praising ”inspiring bold John Barley-corn.” Indeed, in the words of the poor Scotch carpenter, met by Was.h.i.+ngton Irving at Kirk Alloway, ”it seems as if the country had grown more beautiful since Burns had written his bonnie little songs about it.”
HIS CAREER.--The poet's career was sad. Gifted but poor, and doomed to hard work, he was given a place in the excise. He went to Edinburgh, and for a while was a great social lion; but he acquired a horrid thirst for drink, which shortened his life. He died in Dumfries, at the early age of thirty-seven. His allusions to his excesses are frequent, and many of them touching. In his praise of _Scotch Drink_ he sings _con amore_. In a letter to Mr. Ainslie, he epitomizes his failing: ”Can you, amid the horrors of penitence, regret, headache, nausea, and all the rest of the hounds of h.e.l.l that beset a poor wretch who has been guilty of the sin of drunkenness,--can you speak peace to a troubled soul.”
Burns was a great letter-writer, and thought he excelled in that art; but, valuable as his letters are, in presenting certain phases of his literary and personal character, they display none of the power of his poetry, and would not alone have raised him to eminence. They are in vigorous and somewhat pedantic English; while most of his poems are in that Lowland Scottish language or dialect which attracts by its homeliness and pleases by its _couleur locale_. It should be stated, in conclusion, that Burns is original in thought and presentation; and to this gift must be added a large share of humor, and an intense patriotism. Poverty was his grim horror. He declared that it killed his father, and was pursuing him to the grave. He rose above the drudgery of a farmer's toil, and he found no other work which would sustain him; and yet this needy poet stands to-day among the most distinguished Scotchmen who have contributed to English Literature.
GEORGE CRABBE.--Also of the transition school; in form and diction adhering to the cla.s.sicism of Pope, but, with Thomson, restoring the pastoral to nature, the poet of the humble poor;--in the words of Byron, ”Pope in worsted stockings,” Crabbe was the delight of his time; and Sir Walter Scott, returning to die at Abbotsford, paid him the following tribute: he asked that they would read him something amusing, ”Read me a bit of Crabbe.” As it was read, he exclaimed, ”Capital--excellent--very good; Crabbe has lost nothing.”
George Crabbe was born on December 24th, 1754, at Aldborough, Suffolk. His father was a poor man; and Crabbe, with little early education, was apprenticed to a surgeon, and afterwards practised; but his aspirations were such that he went to London, with three pounds in his pocket, for a literary venture. He would have been in great straits, had it not been for the disinterested generosity of Burke, to whom, although an utter stranger, he applied for a.s.sistance. Burke aided him by introducing him to distinguished literary men; and his fortune was made. In 1781 he published _The Library_, which was well received. Crabbe then took orders, and was for a little time curate at Aldborough, his native place, while other preferment awaited him. In 1783 he appeared under still more favorable auspices, by publis.h.i.+ng _The Village_, which had a decided success. Two livings were then given him; and he, much to his credit, married his early love, a young girl of Suffolk. In _The Village_ he describes homely scenes with great power, in pentameter verse. The poor are the heroes of his humble epic; and he knew them well, as having been of them. In 1807 appeared _The Parish Register_, in 1810 _The Borough_, and in 1812 his _Tales in Verse_,--the precursor, in the former style, however, of Wordsworth's lyrical stories. All these were excellent and very popular, because they were real, and from his own experience. _The Tales of the Hall_, referring chiefly to the higher cla.s.ses of society, are more artificial, and not so good. His pen was most at home in describing smugglers, gipsies, and humble villagers, and in delineating poverty and wretchedness; and thus opening to the rich and t.i.tled, doors through which they might exercise their philanthropy and munificence. In this way Crabbe was a reformer, and did great good; although his scenes are sometimes revolting, and his pathos too exacting. As a painter of nature, he is true and felicitous; especially in marine and coast views, where he is a pre-Raphaelite in his minuteness. Byron called him ”Nature's sternest painter, but the best.” He does not seem to write for effect, and he is without pretension; so that the critics were quite at fault; for what they mainly attack is not the poet's work so much as the consideration whether his works come up to his manifesto. Crabbe died in 1832, on the 3d of February, being one of the famous dead of that fatal year.
Crabbe's poems mark his age. At an earlier time, when literature was for the fas.h.i.+onable few, his subjects would have been beneath interest; but the times had changed; education had been more diffused, and readers were multiplied. Goldsmith's _Deserted Village_ had struck a new chord, upon which Crabbe continued to play. Of his treatment of these subjects it must be said, that while he holds a powerful pen, and portrays truth vividly, he had an eye only for the sadder conditions of life, and gives pain rather than excites sympathy in the reader. Our meaning will be best ill.u.s.trated by a comparison of _The Village_ of Crabbe with _The Deserted Village_ of Goldsmith, and the pleasure with which we pa.s.s from the squalid scenes of the former to the gentler sorrows and sympathies of the latter.
THOMAS CAMPBELL.--More identified with his age than any other poet, and yet forming a link between the old and the new, was Campbell. Cla.s.sical and correct in versification, and smothering nature with sonorous prosody, he still had the poetic fire, and an excellent power of poetic criticism.
He was the son of a merchant, and was born at Glasgow on the 27th of July, 1777. He thus grew up with the French revolution, and with the great progress of the English nation in the wars incident to it. He was carefully educated, and was six years at the University of Glasgow, where he received prizes for composition. He went later to Germany, after being graduated, to study Greek literature with Heyne. After some preliminary essays in verse, he published the _Pleasures of Hope_ in 1799, before he was twenty-two years old. It was one of the greatest successes of the age, and has always since been popular. His subject was one of universal interest; his verse was high-sounding; and his ill.u.s.trations modern--such as the fall of Poland--_Finis Poloniae_; and although there is some turgidity, and some want of unity, making the work a series of poems rather than a connected one, it was most remarkable for a youth of his age. It was perhaps unfortunate for his future fame; for it led the world to expect other and better things, which were not forthcoming. Travelling on the continent in the next year, 1800, he witnessed the battle of Hohenlinden from the monastery of St. Jacob, and wrote that splendid, ringing battle-piece, which has been so often recited and parodied. From that time he wrote nothing in poetry worthy of note, except songs and battle odes, with one exception. Among his battle-pieces which have never been equalled are _Ye Mariners of England_, _The Battle of the Baltic_, and _Lochiel's Warning_. His _Exile of Erin_ has been greatly admired, and was suspected at the time of being treasonable; the author, however, being entirely innocent of such an intention, as he clearly showed.
Besides reviews and other miscellanies, Campbell wrote _The Annals of Great Britain, from the Accession of George III. to the Peace of Amiens_, which is a graceful but not valuable work. In 1805 he received a pension of 200 per annum.
In 1809 he published his _Gertrude of Wyoming_--the exception referred to--a touching story, written with exquisite grace, but not true to the nature of the country or the Indian character. Like _Ra.s.selas_, it is a conventional English tale with foreign names and localities; but as an English poem it has great merit; and it turned public attention to the beautiful Valley of Wyoming, and the n.o.ble river which flows through it.
As a critic, Campbell had great acquirements and gifts. These were displayed in his elaborate _Specimens of the British Poets_, published in 1819, and in his _Lectures on Poetry_ before the Surrey Inst.i.tution in 1820. In 1827 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow; but afterwards his literary efforts were by no means worthy of his reputation.
Few have read his _Pilgrim of Glencoe_; and all who have, are pained by its manifestation of his failing powers. In fact, his was an unfinished fame--a brilliant beginning, but no continuance. Sir Walter Scott has touched it with a needle, when he says, ”Campbell is in a manner a bugbear to himself; the brightness of his early success is a detriment to all his after efforts. He is afraid of the shadow which his own fame casts before him.” Byron placed him in the second category of the greatest living English poets; but Byron was no critic.
He also published a _Life of Petrarch_, and a _Life of Frederick the Great_; and, in 1830, he edited the _New Monthly Magazine_. He died at Boulogne, June 15th, 1844, after a long period of decay in mental power.
SAMUEL ROGERS.--Rogers was a companion or consort to Campbell, although the two men were very different personally. As Campbell had borrowed from Akenside and written _The Pleasures of Hope_, Rogers enriched our literature with _The Pleasures of Memory_, a poem of exquisite versification, more finished and unified than its pendent picture; containing neither pa.s.sion nor declamation, but polish, taste, and tenderness.
Rogers was born in a suburb of London, in 1762. His father was a banker; and, although well educated, the poet was designed to succeed him, as he did, being until his death a partner in the same banking-house. Early enamored of poetry by reading Beattie's _Minstrel_, Rogers devoted all his spare time to its cultivation, and with great and merited success.
In 1786 he produced his _Ode to Superst.i.tion_, after the manner of Gray, and in 1792 his _Pleasures of Memory_, which was enthusiastically received, and which is polished to the extreme. In 1812 appeared a fragment, _The Voyage of Columbus_, and in 1814 _Jacqueline_, in the same volume with Byron's _Lara_. _Human Life_ was published in 1819. It is a poem in the old style, (most of his poems are in the rhymed pentameter couplet;) but in 1822 appeared his poem of _Italy_, in blank verse, which has the charm of originality in presentation, freshness of personal experience, picturesqueness in description, novelty in incident and story, scholars.h.i.+p, and taste in art criticism. In short, it is not only the best of his poems, but it has great merit besides that of the poetry. The story of Ginevra is a masterpiece of cabinet art, and is universally appreciated. With these works Rogers contented himself. Rich and distinguished, his house became a place of resort to men of distinction and taste in art: it was filled with articles of _vertu_; and Rogers the poet lived long as Rogers the _virtuoso_. His breakfast parties were particularly noted. His long, prosperous, and happy life was ended on the 18th December, 1855, at the age of ninety-two.
The position of Rogers may be best ill.u.s.trated in the words of Sir J.
Mackintosh, in which he says: ”He appeared at the commencement of this literary revolution, without paying court to the revolutionary tastes, or seeking distinction by resistance to them.” His works are not destined to live freshly in the course of literature, but to the historical student they mark in a very pleasing manner the characteristics of his age.
PERCY B. Sh.e.l.lEY.--Revolutions never go backward; and one of the greatest characters in this forward movement was a gifted, irregular, splendid, unbalanced mind, who, while taking part in it, unconsciously, as one of many, stands out also in a very singular individuality.
Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley was born on the 4th of August, 1792, at Fieldplace, in Suss.e.x, England. He was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Sh.e.l.ley, and of an ancient family, traced back, it is said, to Sir Philip Sidney. When thirteen years old he was sent to Eton, where he began to display his revolutionary tendencies by his resistance to the f.a.gging system; and where he also gave some earnest in writing of his future powers. At the age of sixteen he entered University College, Oxford, and appeared as a radical in most social, political, and religious questions. On account of a paper ent.i.tled _The Necessity of Atheism_, he was expelled from the university and went to London. In 1811 he made a runaway match with Miss Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of the keeper of a coffee-house, which brought down on him the wrath of his father. After the birth of two children, a separation followed; and he eloped with Miss G.o.dwin in 1814.
His wife committed suicide in 1816; and then the law took away from him the control of his children, on the ground that he was an atheist.
After some time of residence in England, he returned to Italy, where soon after he met with a tragical end. Going in an open boat from Leghorn to Spezzia, he was lost in a storm on the Mediterranean: his body was washed on sh.o.r.e near the town of Via Reggio, where his remains were burned in the presence of Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, and others. The ashes were afterwards buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome in July, 1822.