Part 11 (2/2)
Shall I court an initial with stars to it, Go mad for a G. or a J., Get Bishop to put a few bars to it, And print it on Valentine's Day?
But every competent critic has seen in it the origin of the more gorgeous and full-mouthed, if not more accomplished and dexterous, rhythm in which Mr. Swinburne has written ”Dolores,” and the even more masterly dedication of the first ”Poems and Ballads.” The shortening of the last line which the later poet has introduced is a touch of genius, but not perhaps greater than Praed's own recognition of the extraordinarily vivid and ringing qualities of the stanza. I profoundly believe that metrical quality is, other things being tolerably equal, the great secret of the enduring attraction of verse: and nowhere, not in the greatest lyrics, is that quality more unmistakable than in the ”Letter of Advice.” I really do not know how many times I have read it; but I never can read it to this day without being forced to read it out loud like a schoolboy and mark with accompaniment of hand-beat such lines as
Remember the thrilling romances We read on the bank in the glen: Remember the suitors our fancies Would picture for both of us then.
They wore the red cross on their shoulder, They had vanquished and pardoned their foe-- Sweet friend, are you wiser or colder?
My own Araminta, say ”No!”
He must walk--like a G.o.d of old story Come down from the home of his rest; He must smile--like the sun in his glory, On the buds he loves ever the best; And oh! from its ivory portal Like music his soft speech must flow!
If he speak, smile, or walk like a mortal, My own Araminta, say ”No!”
There are, metrically speaking, few finer couplets in English than the first of that second stanza. Looked at from another point of view, the mixture of the comic and the serious in the piece is remarkable enough; but not so remarkable, I think, as its extraordinary metrical accomplishment. There is not a note or a syllable wrong in the whole thing, but every sound and every cadence comes exactly where it ought to come, so as to be, in a delightful phrase of Southey's, ”necessary and voluptuous and right.”
It is no wonder that when Praed had discovered such a medium he should have worked it freely. But he never impressed on it such a combination of majesty and grace as in this letter of Medora Trevilian. As far as the metre goes I think the eight-lined stanzas of this piece better suited to it than the twelve-lined ones of ”Good Night to the Season”
and the first ”Letter from Teignmouth,” but both are very delightful.
Perhaps the first is the best known of all Praed's poems, and certainly some things in it, such as
The ice of her ladys.h.i.+p's manners, The ice of his lords.h.i.+p's champagne,
are among the most quoted. But this ant.i.thetical trick, of which Praed was so fond, is repeated a little often in it; and it seems to me to lack the freshness as well as the fire of the ”Advice.” On the other hand, the ”Letter from Teignmouth” is the best thing that even Praed has ever done for combined grace and tenderness.
You once could be pleased with our ballads-- To-day you have critical ears; You once could be charmed with our salads-- Alas! you've been dining with Peers; You trifled and flirted with many-- You've forgotten the when and the how; There was one you liked better than any-- Perhaps you've forgotten her now.
But of those you remember most newly, Of those who delight or enthral, None love you a quarter so truly As some you will find at our Ball.
They tell me you've many who flatter, Because of your wit and your song: They tell me--and what does it matter?-- You like to be praised by the throng: They tell me you're shadowed with laurel: They tell me you're loved by a Blue: They tell me you're sadly immoral-- Dear Clarence, that cannot be true!
But to me, you are still what I found you, Before you grew clever and tall; And you'll think of the spell that once bound you; And you'll come--won't you come?--to our Ball!
Is not that perfectly charming?
It is perhaps a matter of mere taste whether it is or is not more charming than pieces like ”School and Schoolfellows” (the best of Praed's purely Eton poems) and ”Marriage Chimes,” in which, if not Eton, the Etonian set also comes in. If I like these latter pieces less, it is not so much because of their more personal and less universal subjects as because their style is much less individual. The resemblance to Hood cannot be missed, and though I believe there is some dispute as to which of the two poets actually hit upon the particular style first, there can be little doubt that Hood attained to the greater excellence in it. The real sense and savingness of that doctrine of the ”princ.i.p.al and most excellent things,” which has sometimes been preached rather corruptly and narrowly, is that the best things that a man does are those that he does best. Now though
I wondered what they meant by stock, I wrote delightful Sapphics,
and
With no hard work but Bovney stream, No chill except Long Morning,
are very nice things, I do not think they are so good in their kind as the other things that I have quoted; and this, though the poem contains the following wholly delightful stanza in the style of the ”Ode on a Distant Prospect of Clapham Academy”:
Tom Mill was used to blacken eyes Without the fear of sessions; Charles Medlar loathed false quant.i.ties As much as false professions; Now Mill keeps order in the land, A magistrate pedantic; And Medlar's feet repose unscanned Beneath the wide Atlantic.
The same may even be said of ”Utopia,” a much-praised, often-quoted, and certainly very amusing poem, of ”I'm not a Lover now,” and of others, which are also, though less exactly, in Hood's manner. To attempt to distinguish between that manner and the manner which is Praed's own is a rather perilous attempt; and the people who hate all attempts at reducing criticism to principle, and who think that a critic should only say clever things about his subject, will of course dislike me for it.
But that I cannot help. I should say then that Hood had the advantage of Praed in purely serious poetry; for Araminta's bard never did anything at all approaching ”The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies,” ”The Haunted House,” or a score of other things. He had also the advantage in pure broad humour. But where Praed excelled was in the mixed style, not of sharp contrast as in Hood's ”Lay of the Desert Born” and ”Demon s.h.i.+p,”
where from real pity and real terror the reader suddenly stumbles into pure burlesque, but of wholly blended and tempered humour and pathos. It is this mixed style in which I think his note is to be found as it is to be found in no other poet, and as it could hardly be found in any but one with Praed's peculiar talent and temper combined with his peculiar advantages of education, fortune, and social atmosphere. He never had to ”pump out sheets of fun” on a sick-bed for the printer's devil, like his less well-fated but a.s.suredly not less well-gifted rival; and as his scholars.h.i.+p was exactly of the kind to refine, temper, and adjust his literary manner, so his society and circ.u.mstances were exactly of the kind to repress, or at least not to encourage, exuberance or boisterousness in his literary matter. There are I believe who call him trivial, even frivolous; and if this be done sincerely by any careful readers of ”The Red Fisherman” and the ”Letter of Advice” I fear I must peremptorily disable their judgment. But this appearance of levity is in great part due exactly to the perfect modulation and adjustment of his various notes. He never shrieks or guffaws: there is no horse-play in him, just as there is no tearing a pa.s.sion to tatters. His slight mannerisms, more than once referred to, rarely exceed what is justified by good literary manners. His points are very often so delicate, so little insisted on or underlined, that a careless reader may miss them altogether; his ”questionings” are so little ”obstinate” that a careless reader may think them empty.
Will it come with a rose or a brier?
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