many great poets have done little or not at all better. But, to draw any reasonable probability of real poetry in future from this fact requires a logic and a calculus which the literary historian should respectfully decline to practise. For, if the fact of not having written good poetry up to the age of twenty were sufficient to constitute a claim to poetical rank, mankind at large might claim that position; and, even if the fact of the claim were limited to having actually written bad or indifferent verse before that age, the Corpus Poetarum would be insupportably enlarged.

It is no small relief to turn from indifferent performance and undiscoverable promise to something, and that no small thing, not merely attempted but definitely done. Henry Francis Cary wrote some prose sketches of poets, not without merit, in continuation or imitation of Johnson's Lives; and was a translator on a large scale; but one of his efforts in this latter difficult and too often thankless business has secured him the place (and, again, it is no scanty or obscure one) which he occupies in English literature. It may be impossible to translate Dante into English verse after a fashion even nearly so satisfactory to those who can read the Italian poet, and who can estimate English poetry, as is the prose of J. A. Carlyle and A. J. Butler. But it may be very seriously doubted whether, of the innumerable attempts in verse up to the present day, any is so satisfactory to a jury composed of persons who answer to the just given specifications as Cary's blank verse. It is, no doubt, in a certain sense, a 'refusal'; but it is not in the least, in the sense of the famous passage of its original, a rifiuto. It is, on the contrary, a courageous, scholarly and almost fully justified recognition that attempts directly to conquer the difficulty by adopting rimed terza rima are doomed to failure; and that all others, in stanza or rimed verse of any kind, are evasions to begin with, and almost as certain failures to boot. It may even be said to be a further, and a very largely successful, recognition of the fact that blank verse, while 'nearest prose' in one sense, and, therefore, sharing its advantages, is almost furthest from it in another, in the peculiar qualities of rhythm which it demands. Cary does not quite come up to this latter requisition, but, unless Milton had translated Dante, nobody could have done so. Meanwhile, Cary's verse translation has gone the furthest and come the nearest. It is no slight achievement.

Two names famous in their way remain to be dealt with and the dealing may with both, as with Cary, be pleasant. Probably no 'single-speech' poet has attracted more attention and has been

the subject of more writing than Charles Wolfe, several times questioned but quite unquestionable author of The Burial of Sir John Moore. The thing is one of those 'windfalls of the muses for which one can only give the muses thanks. That it seems to have been originally a metrical paraphrase from Southey's admirable prose account of the facts in The Annual Register is not in the least against it; that, not merely the at once flaming and triumphant patriotism of the time (1817) but all competent judgment since has accepted it as one of the very best things of the kind is conclusive. It has been parodied not merely in one famous instance by Barham, but again and again; it was made the subject of a most ingenious mystification by father Prout; it may be cavilled at by merely pedantic criticism as facile, sentimental, claptrap and what not. But its facility is the facility of at least temporary inspiration; its sentiment is of the sunt lacrimae rerum and of no meaner description; if it appeals for the plaudite, it is to those whose applause is worth having. It has the rush and sweep of Campbell (no less a person than Shelley thought it might be his) without Campbell's occasional flaws. There is no doubt about it. But, when amiable persons, founding their belief on some amiable things (To Mary and so forth) which are included among Wolfe's Remains, suggest that we lost a major poet by Wolfe's death in consumption at the age of thirty-two, it is best to let the reply be silence.

On the other hand, there are reasons for thinking that, if Reginald Heber, bishop of Calcutta, had devoted himself entirely to letters, he might have been a poet, if not exactly of first rank, at least very high in the second. He has no 'rocket' piece like Wolfe's Burial. But, though he died at forty-three, and, for the last twenty years of his life, laboured faithfully at clerical work (latterly of the most absorbing kind), he showed a range and variety of talent in verse which should have taken him far. The story is well known how, during a visit of Scott to Oxford, Heber added impromptu on a remark from Sir Walter1 the best lines of the rather famous Newdigate which he was about to recite. He added to hymnology some dozen of the best and best known attempts in that difficult art below its few masterpieces. He could write serio-comic verse in a fashion which suggests not imitation, but, in some cases, anticipation, of Moore, Praed and Barham at The Spenserians of his Morte d'Arthur need only to have been taken a little more seriously to be excellent; and the 1 But it was before his baronetcy.

once.

charming lines to his wife (If thou wert by my side, my love) in the late Indian days, unpretentious and homely as they are, remind one of the best side of the eighteenth century in that vein as shown in Lewis's Winifreda.

For there was still a considerable eighteenth century touch in Heber; and the fact may conveniently introduce the few general remarks which have been promised to end this chapter. It is safe to say that all the poets here dealt with-major, minor, or minim, in their own division-display, not merely in a fanciful chronological classification but in real fact, the transition character which is very important to the historical student of literature, and very interesting to the reader of poetry who does not wilfully choose to shut his ears and eyes to it. Some, to use the old figure, are Januses of the backward face only; or with but a contorted and casual vision forwards. Hardly one can be said to look steadily ahead, though, in the group to which particular attention has been devoted (that of Hood, Darley, Beddoes and others), the forward velleity, however embarrassed and unknowing, is clear. Their struggle does not avail much, but it avails something. In yet others, new kinds of subject, and even of outward form, effect an alteration which their treatment hardly keeps up.

Another point connected with this general aspect and itself of some importance for the general study of literary history is this— that, despite individual tendencies to imitation, all these poets show a general air as of sheep without a shepherd. They have except Rogers, Bloomfield and one or two more among the minors and Campbell as a kind of major in a half vain recalcitrance—lost the catchwords and guiding rules of eighteenth century poetry, and they have not fully discovered those of the nineteenth. Even their elder contemporaries, from Wordsworth downwards, were fully comprehended by few of them; Shelley and Keats only dawn upon the youngest and not fully even on them. Now, it has sometimes been asserted that the complete dominance of any poet, poets or style of poetry is a drawback to poetic progress; and particular applications have been suggested in the case of the long ascendency of Tennyson in the middle and later nineteenth century. A comparison of the range of lesser poetry, as we have surveyed it, between 1800 and 1835, with that which appeared between 1840 and 1880, is not very likely to bear out this suggestion.

CHAPTER VI

REVIEWS AND MAGAZINES IN THE EARLY YEARS

OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

BEFORE the opening of the nineteenth century, the periodical review, such as we now know it, can hardly be said to have achieved a permanent place in general literature. There had, nevertheless, for a considerable time, been in existence periodical publications under the names reviews or magazines which served partly as chronicles, or records, or registers of past events, which conveyed information and which opened their pages, more or less, to original contributions of poetry and prose. The Gentleman's Monthly Magazine, founded in 1731, lived till 1868. It was rather in short-lived newspaper sheets, such as The Tatler and The Spectator, in the early days of the eighteenth century, and in their successors founded on the same lines, that (as has been shown in an earlier volume of this work) are to be found any adumbrations of the periodical essay and of the periodical fiction which formed the bulk of the reviews and magazines of a later date. In cases such as these, an author or authors of eminence had found the means of addressing the general public. Apart from them, the publication had no separate existence of its own, and, of course, it came to an end when they ceased to write. At the end of the eighteenth century, however, when political thoughts were stirring in men's minds, various magazines and reviews intended to promote sectional and party objects-high church, evangelical, tory, whig and extremist-sprang up and had a short life; but none of them achieved any authoritative position in the estimation of the general public.

Between the review and the magazine there was a very real distinction, and, though there has been a tendency on the part of each to borrow occasionally the special characteristics of the other, it has never been wholly left out of sight. The review made it its business to discuss works of literature, art and science, to consider national policy and public events, to enlighten its readers

141 upon these subjects and to award praise or censure to authors and statesmen. It did not publish original matter, but confined itself to commenting upon or criticising the works and doings of others. Its articles professed to be the serious consideration of specified books, or of parliamentary or other speeches of public men. They were not, at least in form, independent and original studies. Even Macaulay's brilliant biographical essays appeared in The Edinburgh Review in the form of literary criticisms of books whose titles served him as the pegs upon which to hang his own study of the life and work of some great historical figure.

The magazine, on the other hand, was a miscellany. Though it contained reviews and criticisms of books, it did not confine itself to reviewing. To its pages, authors and poets sent original contributions. It admitted correspondence from the outside world; and it aimed at the entertainment of its readers rather than at the advocacy of views. Through the instrumentality of the magazine, much valuable and permanent literary matter first came before the public. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the two great reviews-The Edinburgh and The Quarterly and two brilliant magazines-Blackwood's and The London-sprang to life, and, on the whole, they have conformed to the original distinctions of type.

With these reviews and magazines and their many imitators, a substantially new form was originated and developed in which literature of a high class was to find its opportunities. An aspiring author, in this way, might, and did, obtain a hearing without undergoing the risk and expense of publishing a book or a pamphlet. From the reception given to the new reviews, it is clear that, on the part of the general community, an intellectual thirst, once confined to the very few, was now keenly felt. Men wanted to know about books, and events, and to find them discussed; yet, till the eighteenth century had struck, it is hardly too much to say that able, honest and independent literary criticism was unknown. The spurious criticism of periodicals, notoriously kept alive by publishers to promote the sale of their own books, was, virtually, all that existed. In all these respects, a great and momentous change was at hand.

The system of anonymous reviewing in periodicals under the guidance and control of responsible editors, themselves men of strong individuality, soon led to the review acquiring a distinct personality of its own. By ninety-nine out of every hundred readers, the criticism expressed would be accepted as that of the