Thenceforward, any examination of her true claims to distinction was considered flat heresy. Nor does the awe of the laureate’s ipse dixit seem even yet to have entirely subsided. — “The genius of Lucretia Davidson” — says Miss Sedgwick — ”has had the mead of far more authoritative praise than ours — a tribute from the London Quarterly Review.” Now, what Miss Sedgwick — for whom and for whose opinions in general I can still have the highest respect — what she means by calling the praise of Southey “more authoritative” than her own — is a point I shall not
pause to determine. Her praise is at least honest — or I hope so. Its authority is in exact proportion with the public estimate of her poetical judgment. But it would not do to say all this of the author of “Thalaba”. It would not do to say it in the hearing of men who are sane, and who, being sane, have perused the articles in the “London Quarterly Review” during the 10 or 15 years prior to that period when Robert Southey, having concocted “The Doctor”, took then definitive leave of his wits. In fact, for anything we have yet seen or heard to the contrary, the opinion of the laureate, in respect to the poem of “Amir Man” is a matter still only >>known<< to the ghost of Robert Southey. But were it known to all the world — as Miss Sedgwick supposes with so charmingly innocent an air — I mean to say were it really an honest opinion — this “authoritative praise” — still it would be worth, in the eyes of every sensible person, only just so much as it demonstrates, or makes a show of demonstrating. Happily the day has gone by (and I trust forever) when men were content to swear blindly by the words of a master-poet-laureate though he be — . What Southey says of the poem is at best an opinion and no more. What Miss Sedgwick herself says of it, is very much in the same predicament, — ”Amir Khan”, she writes, “has been long before the public, but we think it has suffered from a general and very natural distrust of precocious genius. The versification is graceful, the story beautifully developed, and the orientalism well sustained. We think it would not have done discredit to our most popular poets in the meridian of their fame; as the production of a girl of 15, it seems prodigious. This “prodigious” puts me in mind of Dominie Sampson. The cant of a kind heart, when betraying into error a naturally sound judgment, is perhaps the only species of cant in the world, not altogether contemptible.I yield to no one in warmth of admiration for the personal character of these sweet sisters, as that character is depicted by the mothers by Miss Sedgwick, and by Mr. Irving. But it costs me no effort to distinguish that which, in my heart, is love of their worth, from that which, in my intellect, is appreciation of their poetic ability. With the former, as critics I have nothing to do. The distinction is one too obvious for comment; and its observation would have spared us much twattle, on the part of the commentators upon “Amir Khan”
I will endeavor to convey — very succinctly — some idea of this poem, as it exists, not in the fancy of the enthusiastic, but in fact. It includes 440 lines. The metre is chiefly iambic octo-syllabic. At one point it is varied by the casual introduction of an anapaest in the first and second foot. The versification is always decent, so far as the meagre written rules of our English Prosody extend — but long and short syllables are placed at random; and a crowd of consonants sometimes renders a line unpronounceable. At times, again, the rhythm lapses, in the most inartistical manner, from one species to another altogether incongruous. Occasionally, it rises into melody and even strength, as here:
‘Twas at the hour when Peris love
Whose portals, bright with many a gem,
Are closed, forever closed — on them.
Upon the whole, however, it is feeble, vacillating, and ineffective; giving token of having been “touched up”, by the hand of a friends from a much worse, into its present condition. Such rhymes as floor and shower