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By Root 16901 0

energy — a horror sublime in its simplicity — of which a far greater than Dante might have been proud. “Bertha in the Lane,” a rich ballad, very singularly excepted from the wholesale commendation of the “Democratic Review,” as “perhaps not one of the best,” and designated by Blackwood, on the contrary, as “decidedly the finest poem of the collection,” is not the very best, we think, only because mere pathos, however exquisite, cannot be ranked with the loftiest exhibitions of the ideal. Of “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,” the magazine last quoted observes that “some pith is put forth in its passionate parts.” We will not pause to examine the delicacy or lucidity of the metaphor ­embraced in the “putting forth of some pith;” but unless by “some pith” itself, is intended the utmost conceivable intensity and vigour, then the critic is merely damning with faint praise. With the exception of Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall,” we have never perused a poem combining so much of the fiercest passion with so much of the most ethereal fancy, as the “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,” of Miss Barrett. We are forced to admit, however, that the latter work is a very palpable imitation of the former, which it surpasses in plot or rather in thesis, as much as it falls below it in artistical management, and a certain calm energy — lustrous and indomitable — such as we might imagine in a broad river of molten gold.

It is in the “Lady Geraldine” that the critic of Blackwood is again put at fault in the comprehension of a couple of passages. He confesses his inability “to make out the construction of the words, ‘all that spirits pure and ardent are cast out of love and reverence, because chancing not to hold.’ “ There are comparatively few American school-boys who could not parse it. The prosaic construction would run thus: — “all that (wealth understood) because chancing not to hold which, (or on account of not holding which) all pure and ardent spirits are cast out of love and reverence.” The “which” is involved in the relative pronoun “that” — the second word of the sentence. All that we know is, that Miss Barrett is right: — here is a parallel phrase, meaning — “all that (which) we know,” etc. The fact is, that the accusation of imperfect grammar would have been more safely, if more generally, urged: in descending to particular exceptions, the reviewer has been doing little more than exposing himself at all points.

Turning aside, however, from grammar, he declares his incapacity to fathom the meaning of

She has halls and she has castles, and the resonant steam-eagles

Follow far on the directing of her floating dove-like hand —

With a thunderous vapour trailing underneath the starry vigils,

So to mark upon the blasted heaven the measure of her land.

Now it must be understood that he is profoundly serious in his declaration — he really does not apprehend the thought designed — and he is even more than profoundly serious, too in intending these his own comments upon his own stolidity for wit: — “We ­thought that steam-coaches generally followed the directing of no hand except the stoker’s, but it, certainly, is always much liker [[sic]] a raven than a dove.” After this, who shall question the infallibility of Christopher North? We presume there are very few of our readers who will not easily appreciate the richly imaginative conception of the poetess: — The Lady Geraldine is supposed to be standing in her own door, (positively not on the top of an engine), and thence pointing, “with her floating dove-like hand,” to the lines of vapour, from the “resonant steam-eagles,” that designate upon the “blasted heaven,” the remote boundaries of her domain. — But, perhaps, we are guilty of a very gross absurdity ourselves, in commenting at all upon the whimsicalities of a reviewer who can deliberately select for special animadversion the second of the four verses we here copy:

Eyes, he said, now throbbing through me! are ye eyes that did undo me?

Shining eyes like antique jewels set in Parian statue-stone!

Underneath that calm white forehead are ye ever burning