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By Root 15884 0

the falling of the Heavens. Nor must we be misunderstood. We intend to wrong neither Mr. Lord nor our own conscience, by denying him particular merits — such as they are. His book is not altogether contemptible — although the conduct of his friends has innoculated nine-tenths of the community with the opinion that it is — but what we wish to say is, that “remarkable” is by no means the epithet to be applied, in the way of commendation, either to anything that he has yet done or to anything that he may hereafter accomplish. In a word, while he has undoubtedly given proof of a very ordinary species of talent, no man whose opinion is entitled to the slightest respect, will admit in him any indication of genius.

The “particular merits” to which, in the case of Mr. Lord, we have allusion, are merely the accidental merits of particular passages. We say accidental — because poetical merit which is not simply an accident, is very sure to be found, more or less, in a state of diffusion throughout a poem. No man is entitled to the sacred name of poet, because from 160 pages of doggrel, may be culled a few sentences of worth. Nor would the case be in any ­respect altered, if these few sentences, or even if a few passages of length, were of an excellence even supreme. For a poet is necessarily a man of genius, and with the spirit of true genius even its veriest common-places are intertwined and inextricably intertangled. When, therefore, amid a Sahara of platitude, we discover an occasional Oasis, we must not so far forget ourselves as to fancy any latent fertility in the sands. It is our purpose, however, to do the fullest justice to Mr. Lord, and we proceed at once to cull from his book whatever, in our opinion, will put in the fairest light his poetical pretensions.

And first we extract the one brief passage which aroused in us what we recognised as the Poetical Sentiment. It occurs, at page 94, in “Saint Mary’s Gift,” which, although excessively unoriginal at all points, is upon the whole, the least reprehensible poem of the volume. The heroine of the story having taken a sleeping draught, after the manner of Juliet, is conveyed to a vault, (still in the same manner) and (still in the same manner) awakes in the presence of her lover, who comes to gaze on what he supposes her corpse:

And each unto the other was a dream;

And so they gazed without a stir or breath,

Until her head into the golden stream

Of her wide tresses, loosened from their wreath,

Sank back, as she did yield again to death.

At page 3, in a composition of much general eloquence, there occur a few lines of which we should not hesitate to speak enthusiastically were we not perfectly well aware that Mr. Lord has no claim to their origination:

——— Ye winds

That in the impalpable deep caves of air,

Moving your silent plumes, in dreams of flight,

Tumultuous lie, and from your half-stretched wings

Beat the faint zephyrs that disturb the air!

At page 6, in the same poem, we meet, also, a passage of high merit, although sadly disfigured:

Thee the bright host of Heaven,

The stars adore: — a thousand altars, fed

By pure unwearied hands, like cressets blaze

In the blue depths of night; nor all unseen

In the pale sky of day, with tempered light

Burn radiant of thy praise.

The disfiguration to which we allude, lies in the making a ­blazing altar burn merely like a blazing cresset — a simile about as forcible as would be the likening an apple to a pear, or the sea-foam to the froth on a pitcher of Burton’s ale.

At page 7, still in the same poem, we find some verses which are very quotable, and will serve to make our readers understand what we mean by the eloquence of the piece:

Great Worshipper! hast thou no thought of Him

Who gave the Sun his brightness, winged the winds,

And on the everlasting deep bestowed

Its voiceless thunder — spread its fields of blue,

And made them glorious like an inner sky

From which the islands rise like steadfast clouds,

How beautiful! who gemmed thy zone with stars,

Around thee threw his own cerulean robe, —

And bent