1851. The "Hyperion" of John Keats. ing before a strong wind; there is sublimity | observation, and satisfying to the intellect. in the movements of vast bodies of men, In his larger works, want of unity detracts when they seem to be informed with a com- from their dignity and value as works of art. The sublime carries with it It has been said of him, that though a "lawmon purpose. a feeling of the mysterious. The majesty of giver of art, he was not an artist;"* and yet oratory awakens a sublime emotion in which who but an artist could have created the the uncertain and mysterious largely prevail. character of Mignon, or composed the drama We feel in the speaker himself a power, a of Iphigenia? "Was it that he knew too consciousness and a confidence, which over- much, that his sight was microscopic and interfered with the just perspective, the seewhelms while it elevates. For the production of great and continu- ing of the whole?" Clearly not; but that ous sublimity and beauty, there is needed a he lacked concentration; for if the possesquality of intellect akin to obstinacy: we sion of the microscopic eye were inconshould perhaps have said, rather, a quality sistent with that of the higher artistic of intelligence, of the active and impulsive, faculties, what shall we say of Shakspeare, and not of the gubernatorial faculties. If Aristophanes, Swift, Homer, in whom unity not a quality, then a power, a faculty, for of design and singleness of purpose are traits "He is fragmentary-a which psychology has no name, (psychology as conspicuous as any other proper to the being a science uncultivated in our language,) artistic mind? Yes; and to which we are obliged to give the name writer of occasional poems." "concentrativeness," invented by the phre-these poems, at least the best of them, have nologists. The brokenness and want of con- an undeniable unity. "When he sits down tinuity of Keats may perhaps be attributed to write a drama or a tale, he collects and to a want or weakness of this faculty; a sorts his observations, and combines them deficiency which no cultivation could fully into a body, as fitly as he can." But, with compensate, whose want excludes the artist an utter deficiency of the artistic power, he from the epic and dramatic circles, restricting could not have collected his observations; the efforts of his genius within the sphere he could see their fitness, but he could not of lyric and essay. While the fit is on him, fuse them into a consistent whole; he could he is able to give unity to his work; but he build the sacrificial pile, but he could not set cannot recover the mood. The faculty of fire to it. His nature was cold, and the soaring is denied him; his flights, though quality of concentrativeness is a quality of powerful, are brief and swooping;-a quality heat, and lies on the side of passion. The excellent only for a wit, a song-writer, a sto-man who is devoid of it will not only prory-teller, or a humorist. It is said by those duce no long works of art, but he will have who have read the epic of Petrarch, that it no life friendships nor enmities. Warm for is deficient in every quality of an epic. It may have been a deficiency of the kind which we have described, which limited this author to the production of a sonnet or a canzonet. It may have been the same deficiency, or rather the consciousness of it, which restrained Boccaccio from any fiction of magnitude. In a fiction of three pages, Boccaccio has no rival; in a fiction of twenty, he fatigues the reader: the shorter the story, the better it is told. The fire is intense, but it burns only for a moment. Was there not a similar deficiency, natural and inherent, in the greatest of the German poets, Goethe? In a chapter of cool advice to the young poets of Germany, he forbids the undertaking of long works; for wise reasons, perhaps, he restricted himself; and his reputation rests rather upon lyrical passages, brief essays, full of pith and the moment, his fire is soon out; he is sentimental and fickle; he is versatile, not so much from the plasticity and variety of his intellect, as from a natural coldness and shallowness of feeling; he is skeptical, not so much from a want of insight, as from observing in himself the incessant change and fluctuation of his own feelings; and learning to despise this weakness in himself, he mistakes it for a weakness of all humanity. To return to the subject of our article. It is not easy to determine whether in Keats the interruptedness and want of unity arose more from a physical or an intellectual weakness. Feeble, and of a consumptive habit, the fire of his passions devoured the strength of his body; and as we observe in his later * Emerson, Representative Men, page 282. + Id. ence. works a unity which the earlier do not show, I author does not seem at all surprising; for it may have been in him a defect more of the of all passions that afflict humanity, that of flesh than of the spirit; and as a token of poetic renown is the most consuming and this, we observe in all his works a most abso-invincible. A great genius, failing in youth lute unity of feeling at least: the quality is under the burden of an immortal design, is even, the texture only broken; the pursuit an object most pathetic, most touching, and is steady, but the limbs are weak. He we dare say, most venerable. The passion needed, it may be, only the ripening and that actuates and consumes him is a desire solidifying influence of health and experi- for the love, not of one person, but of all mankind, of all futurity. There is in him no scorn of humanity, but the most exalted regard; he falls a victim to it; he is a lover, dying of an eternal passion. It is no shallow vanity that spurs him; he is content with a present obscurity in exchange for a lasting renown. His desire is to please all mankind, and while he pleases, while he fascinates, to elevate and to calm. He is, in a strict sense, the prophet, or rather the illustrator and the expounder of the beauty and the harmony of the universe; and not only of the beauty and the harmony, but of the eternal sweetness, of which individual love is but a spark. Is he not, then, in a peculiar and sublime sense, a favorite with the creative Power? And as such, ought we not seriously, and apart from all sentiment, to respect and honor him in his vocation? After every minor difficulty has been surmounted by the artist, the taste cultivated, expression abounding, imagery at command, knowledge full and serviceable, the field and the limit of genius ascertained, the greatest of all remains yet to be overcome; and that is, the choice of subject. If his genius is epical, but one theme will occur to him in the entire course of his life. If it occurs at all, with the conviction of fitness attending it, it may be undertaken too early, or at an unseasonable time, and its weight may kill the author; or it may never rise before him until he has become so far engaged in the business of life, there is no leisure left. The conjunction of four planets is hardly more rare than the fortunate conjunction of time, subject, circumstance, preparation, and ability for the work. That it should kill its J. D. W. WOOD FALL. (IMITATED FROM THE "BUGLE SONG.") THE breeze creeps still from plain and hill And floods the woodland maze in glory. From mosses deep on ruined steep Slow drops descend in sullen plashing; The waters leap in foam-wreaths flashing. It rolls away-the river gray, But columned mists to sky are driven; So mount our better thoughts to heaven. REINHOLD. SONGS AND SONG-WRITERS. Ir is an old axiom, that "Good goods are | speare got his death by rising from a bed of oftenest made up in small parcels." There sickness to give Ben Jonson, Beaumont, is much of truth in it, and we are inclined to and Fletcher a "drink." And in our own hold by it, and adopt it as one of our articles day, hadn't our philosophic friend, the Seer of faith. In a little poem, as in a little house, of Weissnichtwo, Herr Teufelsdröckh, his or in a little man, may we often find not a academic gukguk; Byron, his gin; Maginn, little domestic comfort, true spirit of inde- his whiskey; Kit North, his Glenlivet; Tom pendence, appreciation of the beautiful, and Moore, his rosy wine; Hartley Coleridge manhood. and Poe, whatever they could get? And why shouldn't we have our amontillado? We will have it, (when we can get it;) and we are sure our admirers will not debar us, even in thought, of what makes us "mind our business." This hint is only thrown out for those who don't mind their business. Having said so much, we must now get our pen into a critical position. Our architectural and ventilation comfortseeking friends must not suppose, however, that we are going to create a revolution, or throw the whole brick-and-mortar world into a barricade by writing an essay on "Cottage Building." Neither must our 66 one-smallhead-could-carry-all-he-knew" admirers think they shall peruse a paper devoted to the physiology or psychology of little men, or Short poems or lyrics, to be what they the immortalization of "Short Boys," from ought to be, must not be mere fragments of our pen. We at present shall not enlighten the brain, but the complete, unique, and the former by intruding on their hearths, refined thought on the object or circumstance nor the latter by a cargo of small souls, but in the poet's mind. A lyric must not be the confine ourselves to a few remarks on a sub-mere head, arm, or leg of the form to be ject which is as good as life to both, especially if the one be an "unco merrie chiel," and the other inhabited with a "set of right gay fellows," meerschaums and amontillado included. That subject is Songs-Lyrics-base, column, and capital, in true Doric or short poems. embodied, but head, arms, trunk, legs and all-the perfect embodiment, strong in its perfection, solid in its unity. The mere capital or base will not do; we must have Ionic simplicity. What is to be said, must A word on our morals-the meerschaums be said, so much, and no more. The and amontillado, to wit. In this age of re- slightest word not appropriate to the object volution, it is not to be wondered at that in view destroys the effect; and no expedihalf creation smokes; and further, though ency of rhyme can make up for a verbal critically we are opposed to puffs, we find defect in a song. Their great beauty is that a genial pipe has a most harmonious their directness, their candor, their faith, effect on our cranium, and enables us to which needs no extraneous sophistry to play-we had nigh said the very d--produce the end which the honesty of simwith the discordant volumes of sound (and fury) which the muses of certain scribes persist in emitting. A good Havana is a sort of lightning-conductor from the head, and the denser the clouds, be sure the more electric fire they contain. As to the goblet-the same reason that we would have shot why, all poets and philosophers have had, (without court-martial) the band-master who and have, their especial nectar, and that only would strike up a dead march in an enemy's is true nectar which agrees best with the country, we would hand over to the keeper constituted being of its imbiber. Anacreon, of Blackwell's Island, without a commission Catullus, and Pindar were jolly gods. Shak-de lunatico, the versifier who would give us plicity and straight-wordedness can alone attain. Their effect may be heightened by ideality or fancy, in the same manner as a band of music cheers a marching army and idealizes its hopes and vocation. And, for in it for his boisterous temperament, although Whose word no man relies on; He never did a wise one." If he never did a wiser thing than appreciate this song, we could respect him for that alone. DEATH'S FINAL CONQUEST. "The glories of our birth and state Are shadows, not substantial things; sixteen or sixty lines of mosaic in regular "The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses," and syllables, and call it a song, merely because is said to have been a favorite song with King of its shortness. Charles the Second. We don't think the The true song-writer is the greatest word-"merrie monarch" found much consolation artist. He uses, chooses, and thinks over his assortment of words, as a doctor analyzes in his mind the component parts of the prescription he is jotting down for the use of his patient. Every word, as every drachm or grain of medicine, is chosen relatively as to its effect on those with which it is to be used, and with which it is to act and produce certain effects. Moreover, all this must be done, as in the doctor's case, so that no mark of the process of thought shall be left visible after its completion. The song must have a hearty wholeness, a rich miniature perfection when complete, even though every line cost a week, as precious metals show a perfect brilliancy after passing through the refining crucible. Metaphor may be used freely, provided it does not lead to digression, which it is very likely to do on indulgence. Metaphorical allusions are rather pleasing, and can aid in the purpose of the song much, if delicately introduced, and at the proper times. Too frequently we see, in what are given to us as "songs," an overloading of expression from the overworking of this faculty, or rather from its too obliging nature-ever ready to be at the service of the poet. It is in this the abuse of the faculty lies, and a weak succumbing to its influence only tends to swathe in a wrappage of words the thought with which the poet started. The song, as the sonnet, must be clear and unique in itself, and tell a story simply by suggesting it. Its suggestiveness is the great aim of the song, and which is nearly as much dependent on its euphony, as shown in the relation of words, as its thought. Heaviness of expression will obstruct the is purposes of music, without which a song intolerable. In fact, it must sing itself, by its own very nature and construction, into the senses, as we read, even if it is not adapted to regular musical notes. Its cadences of rhythm must rise and fall in a pleasing harmony with the thought, and be suggestive of an air, even as it is suggestive of a tale or a picture. We take the latter to be one of the great, perhaps the great aim of the lyric, that it suggest an epic. Here is a glorious moral song by old James Shirley: let us read it. It was intended for a funeral song in a play of his, Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made "Some men with swords may reap the field, And plant fresh laurels where they kill: But their strong nerves at last must yield; They tame but one another still. Early or late They stoop to fate, And must give up their murmuring breath, The garlands wither on your brow, Then boast no more your mighty deeds; See where the victor victim bleeds. That grand old lyric to a great extent exemplifies what we have said in reference to such compositions. It is perfect as a death-song. Every line is suggestive, and spreads itself in the mind into a wide area of thought and speculation. Its art, too, is excellent, and reminds us forcibly of Tennyson in our own day. We have no lame lines eking out their miserable volition by soiled or worn-out wings of fancy, or forced up to our sense by stilted metaphors. What is said is crisply and strongly, because naturally, said. The expressiveness is unobtrusive, because strength is never a bully. We know of nothing in the range of lyrical works more beautiful than the opening of this song, and its great beauty and strength is in its direct expressiveness: "The glories of our birth and state Are shadows, not substantial things." The contrast, a power of great efficiency in all classes of poetry, and of great beauty when well introduced, especially into the lyric order, is here very perfect; and it is solely because there is no claptrap in the construction of the verse. Shirley speaks with perfect naturalness, and in that is his triumph. It is the triumph of honesty. Shadows are called shadows, not fleeting vapors of this thing or that; and substances are called-what would appear to some of our dilettanti awfully prosy-substantial; not "concentrated essences of sublimated bricks," and so forth. There is no straining after effect; and the fact is, we have the whole existence of man, his birth, ambition, and eminence, conveyed as strongly, truly, and suggestively, in twelve simple, natural words, as in the most elaborate epics or death-verses in the English language. Poe was right in saying, "It is no paradox, that the more prosaic the construction of the verse the better." It is a perfect truth, though by no means an original idea of his. In this song of Shirley's we have a capital illustration of the force of directness. How many preachers might have quoted, "There is no armor against fate," and saved their breath and their sermons. The simple line suggests-and no mind capable of hearing any every-day sermon can help, after reading it, thinking to itself much quicker than any other could convey-all that can be said or writ on the subject. The whole moral of the grand revolutionist and his republican equality, death and the grave, upon which more rags and paper have been wasted than would winding-sheet creation, is given in the eight syllables: "Death lays his icy hands on kings." It is needless to go through it line for line; the song is there, and its immense suggestiveness will shoot through the brain of every reader. A word on its style. It is perfect. The change in the fifth line of each stanza to the short line of two iambuses from the alternating iambics and anapests of the four preceding is perhaps not noticed in its effect by most readers, but is a movement of great strength, and aids the purpose of the poem in a remarkable manner. The shortening of the line, or rather the dividing of a line of four iambic feet into two lines of two iambuses, makes a necessity for the quick recurrence of a rhyme, which in this place comes with marked and forcible emphasis. and what follows, is but an amplification of the line which preceded; but amplification, when judiciously and dramatically done, is one of the true and great resources of the orator, and oratory, or rather its power of eloquent expression, is of the most decided need to a lyrical composition, it being always supposed to be written for chanting. "Sceptre and crown," &c., is an emphatic explanation of what preceded; a burden or refrain enlarged from the premises laid down, in which some generalities for the sake of conviction and explanation are introduced. In the other two stanzas the same construction is present. The four first lines of every stanza make the poem complete, for they are perfect; the latter four lines are introduced to each stanza in the shape of evidence to the senses, and convey with more minutiae of detail what was already said. The verbal elegance and strength of nomenclature displayed in the composition of this song are eloquent in their own behalf; and we will do no more than italicize some of them, lest our readers might argue, as they do of psuedo witticisms, that to need explanation only proves their stupidity. Let us present our reader with another song, on a different subject, though uncheerful. (We have a natural, or a practice-made-perfect love for misfortune and disappointinent.) The song which we are about to present is a modern one, and one which we think beautiful, and favor as such. Its great beauty is its prolific suggestiveness. It is by Tom Hood, that genial and dual spirit, for whom Urania and Momus must have stood sponsors, and whom in love for their charge each sought to make their own, by casting with lovable |