Commentary is not yet available.
If, on the occasion of any public performance of Shakspere's great
tragedy, the actors who perform the parts of Rosencranz and Guildenstern were, by a
preconcerted arrangement and by means of what is technically known as
“gagging,
” to make themselves fully as prominent as the leading character, and
to indulge in soliloquies and business strictly belonging to Hamlet himself, the result would
be, to say the least of it, astonishing; yet a very similar effect is produced on the
unprejudiced mind when the “walking gentlemen
” of the fleshly school of
poetry, who bear precisely the same relation to Mr. Tennyson as Rosencranz and Guildenstern
do to the Prince of Denmark in the play, obtrude their lesser identities and parade their
smaller idiosyncrasies in the front rank of leading performers. In their own place, the
gentlemen are interesting and useful. Pursuing still the theatrical analogy, the present
drama of poetry might be cast as follows: Mr. Tennyson supporting the part of Hamlet, Mr.
Matthew Arnold that of Horatio, Mr. Bailey that of Voltimand, Mr. Buchanan that of Cornelius,
Messrs. Swinburne and Morris the parts of Rosencranz and Guildenstern, Mr. Rossetti that of
Osric, and Mr. Robert Lytton that of “A Gentleman.” It will be seen that we have left no
place for Mr. Browning, who may be said, however, to play the leading character in his own
peculiar fashion on alternate nights.
This may seem a frivolous and inadequate way of opening our
We are informed that Mr. Swinburne dashed off his noble odeorat a sitting,
Mr. Swinburne's songs have already reached a second edition,or
Good poetry seems to be in demand; the first edition of Mr. O'Shaughnessy's poems is exhausted;when the
During the past year or two Mr. Swinburne has written several novels” (!), and that some review or other is to be praised for giving Mr. Rossetti's poems “
the attentive study which they demand”—when we read these things we might or might not know pretty well how and where they originated; but to a provincial eye, perhaps, the whole thing really looked like leading business. It would be scarcely worth while, however, to inquire into the pretensions of the writers on merely literary grounds, because sooner or later all literature finds its own level, whatever criticism may say or do in the matter; but it unfortunately happens in the present case that the fleshly school of verse-writers are, so to speak, public offenders, because they are diligently spreading the seeds of disease broadcast wherever they are read and understood. Their complaint too is catching, and carries off many young persons. What the complaint is, and how it works, may be seen on a very slight examination of the works of Mr. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, to whom we shall confine our attention in the present article.
Mr. Rossetti has been known for many years as a painter of exceptional powers, who, for
reasons best known to himself, has shrunk from publicly exhibiting his pictures, and from
allowing anything like a popular estimate to be formed of their qualities. He belongs, or is
said to belong, to the so-called Pre-Raphaelite school, a school which is generally
considered to exhibit much genius for colour, and great indifference to perspective. It would
be unfair to judge the painter by the glimpses we have had of his works, or by the
photographs which are sold of the principal paintings. Judged by the photographs, he is an
artist who conceives unpleasantly, and draws ill. Like Mr. Simeon Solomon, however, with whom
he seems to have many points in common, he is distinctively a colourist, and of his
capabilities in colour we cannot speak, though we should guess that they are great; for if
there is any good quality by which his poems are specially marked, it is a great
sensitiveness to hues and tints as conveyed in poetic epithet. These qualities, which impress
the casual spectator of the photographs from his pictures, are to be found abundantly among
his verses. There is the same thinness and transparence of design, the same combination of the
Although he has been known for many years as a poet as well as a painter—as a painter and
poet idolized by his own family and personal associates—and although he has once or twice
appeared in print as a contributor to magazines, Mr. Rossetti did not formally appeal to the
public until rather more than a year ago, when he published a copious volume of poems, with
the announcement that the book, although it contained pieces composed at intervals during a
period of many years, “included nothing which the author believes to be
immature.
” This work was inscribed to his brother, Mr. William Rossetti, who, having
written much both in poetry and criticism, will perhaps be known to bibliographers as the
editor of the worst edition of Shelley which has yet seen the light. No sooner had the work
appeared than the chorus of eulogy began. “The book is satisfactory from end to
end,
” wrote Mr. Morris in the
I think these lyrics, with all their other merits, the most complete of their time; nor do I know what lyrics of any time are to be called” On the same subject Mr. Swinburne went into a hysteria of admiration: “great, if we are to deny the title to these.
golden affluence,” “
jewel-coloured words,” “
chastity of form,” “
harmonious nakedness,” “
consummate fleshly sculpture,” and so on in Mr. Swinburne's well-known manner when reviewing his friends. Other critics, with a singular similarity of phrase, followed suit. Strange to say, moreover, no one accused Mr. Rossetti of naughtiness. What had been heinous in Mr. Swinburne was
It is is simply nasty.” rather than “
It is simply nasty.”
I” screamed the little boy; but, after all, what did it matter? It is quite different, however, when a grown man, with the self-control and easy audacity of actual experience, comes forward to chronicle his amorous sensations, and, first proclaiming in a loud voice his literary maturity, and consequent responsibility, shamelessly prints and publishes such a piece of writing as this sonnet onwillbe naughty!
At length their long kiss severed, with sweet smart:And as the last slow sudden drops are shedFrom sparkling eaves when all the storm has fled,So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.Their bosoms sundered, with the opening startOf married flowers to either side outspreadFrom the knit stem; yet still their mouths, burnt red,Fawned on each other where they lay apart.Sleep sank them lower than the tide of dreams, And their dreams watched them sink, and slid away. Slowly their souls swam up again, through gleams Of watered light and dull drowned waifs of day; Till from some wonder of new woods and streams He woke, and wondered more: for there she lay.
quotation of
the golden affluence of words, the firm outline, the justice and chastity of form.” Here is a full-grown man, presumably intelligent and cultivated, putting on record for other full-grown men to read, the most secret mysteries of sexual connection, and that with so sickening a desire to reproduce the sensual mood, so careful a choice of epithet to convey mere animal sensations, that we merely shudder at the shameless nakedness. We are no purists in such matters. We hold the sensual part of our nature to be as holy as the spiritual or intellectual part, and we believe that such things must find their equivalent in all; but it is neither poetic, nor manly, nor even human, to obtrude such things as the themes of whole poems. It is is simply nasty. Nasty as it is, we are very mistaken if many readers do not think it nice. English society of one kind purchases the
It must not be supposed that all Mr. Rossetti's poems are made up of trash like this. Some of them are as noteworthy for delicacy of touch as others are for shamelessness of exposition. They contain some exquisite pictures of nature, occasional passages of real meaning, much beautiful phraseology, lines of peculiar sweetness, and epithets chosen with true literary cunning. But the fleshly feeling is everywhere. Sometimes, as in
gold bar of heaven,” and seeing
“Time like a pulse shake fierce Thro' all the worlds;”
quotation of
heaven-born Helen, Sparta's queen,” whose “
each twin breast is an apple sweet;” he is Lilith the first wife of Adam; he is the rosy Virgin of the poem called
” melting her waxen man; he is all these, just as surely as he is Mr. Rossetti soliloquizing over Jenny in her London lodging, or the very nuptial person writing erotic sonnets to his wife. In petticoats or pantaloons, in modern times or in the middle ages, he is just Mr. Rossetti, a fleshly person, with nothing particular to tell us or teach us, with extreme self-control, a strong sense of colour, and a careful choice of diction. Amid all his “Sister Helen
affluence of jewel-coloured words,” he has not given us one rounded and noteworthy piece of art, though his verses are all art; not one poem which is memorable for its own sake, and
composition,” and a clever one. Read the opening stanzas:—
“The blessed damozel leaned out From the gold bar of Heaven; Her eyes were deeper than the depth Of water stilled at even; She had three lilies in her hand, And the stars in her hair were seven. “Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem, No wrought flowers did adorn, But a white rose of Mary's gift, For service meetly worn; Her hair that lay along her back Was yellow like ripe corn.”
quotation of
“this earth Spins like a fretful midge,”
quotation of
“the curled moon Was like a little feather Fluttering far down the gulf,”—
quotation of
“And still she bowed herself and stooped Out of the circling charm; Until her bosom must have madeThe bar she leaned on warm,And the lilies lay as if asleep Along her bended arm. “From the fixed place of Heaven she saw Time like a pulse shake fierceThro' all the worlds.Her gaze still stroveWithin the gulf to pierce Its path; and now she spoke as when The stars sang in their spheres.”
quotation of
damozels,” “
citherns,” and “
citoles,” and addresses the mother of Christ as the “
Lady Mary,”—
“With her five handmaidens, whose names Are five sweet symphonies, Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen, Margaret and Rosalys.”
quotation of
weakening to the intellect.” The thing would have been almost too much in the shape of a picture, though the workmanship might have made amends. The truth is that literature, and more particularly poetry, is in a very bad way when one art gets hold of another, and imposes upon it its conditions and limitations. In the first few verses of the
In a short notice from a well-known pen, giving the best estimate we have seen of Mr. Rossetti's powers as a poet, the
it may probably be the expression of genuine moods of mind in natures too little comprehensive.”
*
”—Why, sir, Sherry is dull,
naturally dull; but it must have taken
him a great deal of trouble to become what we now see him—such an
excess of stupidity is not in nature.
“I looked up And saw where a brown-shouldered harlot leaned Half through a tavern window thick with vine. Some man had come behind her in the room And caught her by her arms, and she had turned With that coarse empty laugh on him, as now He munched her neck with kisses, while the vineCrawled in her back.
quotation of
“As I stooped, her own lips rising there Bubbled with brimming kissesat my mouth.”
quotation of
“Have seen your lifted silken skirt Advertise dainties through the dirt!”
quotation of
“What more prize than love to impel thee, Gripandlipmy limbs as I tell thee!”
quotation of
Passages like these are the common stock of the walking gentlemen of the fleshly school. We
cannot forbear expressing our wonder, by the way, at the kind of women whom it seems the
unhappy lot of these gentlemen to encounter. We have lived as long in the world as they have,
but never yet came across persons of the other sex who conduct themselves in the manner
described. Females who bite, scratch, scream, bubble, munch, sweat, writhe, twist, wriggle,
foam, and in a general way slaver over their lovers, must surely possess some extraordinary
qualities to counteract their otherwise most offensive mode of conducting themselves. It
appears, however, on examination, that their poet-lovers conduct themselves in a similar
manner. They, too, bite, scratch, scream, bubble, munch, sweat, writhe, twist, wriggle, foam,
and slaver, in a style frightful to hear of. Let us hope that it is only their fun, and that
they don't mean half they say. At times, in reading such books as this, one cannot help
wishing that things had remained for ever in the asexual state described in Mr. Darwin's
great chapter on Palingenesis. We get very weary of this protracted hankering after a person
of the other sex; it seems meat, drink, thought, sinew, religion for the fleshly school.
There is no limit to the fleshliness, and Mr. Rossetti finds in it its own religious
justification much in the same way as Holy Willie:— quotation of
Nothing,
” says a modern writer, “in human life is so utterly
remorseless—not love, not hate, not ambition, not vanity—as the artistic or æsthetic
instinct morbidly developed to the suppression of conscience and feeling;
” and at no
time do we feel more fully impressed with this truth than after the perusal of
“Lazy laughing languid Jenny, Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea;”
quotation of
“Whose person or whose purse may be The lodestar of your reverie?”
quotation of
The soliloquy is long, and in some parts beautiful, despite a very constant suspicion that
we are listening to an emasculated Mr. Browning, whose whole tone and gesture, so to speak,
is occasionally introduced with startling fidelity; and there are here and there glimpses of
actual thought and insight, over and above the picturesque touches which belong to the
writer's true profession, such as that where, at daybreak— quotation of
the lamp's doubled shade grows blue.”
What we object to in this poem is not the subject, which any writer may be fairly left to choose for himself; nor anything particularly vicious in the poetic treatment of it; nor any bad blood bursting through in special passages. But the whole tone, without being more than usually coarse, seems heartless. There is not a drop of piteousness in Mr. Rossetti. He is just to the outcast, even generous; severe to the seducer; sad even at the spectacle of lust in dimity and fine ribbons. Notwithstanding all this, and a certain delicacy and refinement of treatment unusual with this poet, the poem repels and revolts us, and we like Mr. Rossetti least after its perusal. We are angry with the fleshly person at last. The
The whole work” (
is worthy to fill its place for ever as one of the most perfect poems of an age or generation. There is just the same life-blood and breadth of poetic interest in this episode of a London street and lodging as in the song of”—to which last statement we cordially assent; for there is bad blood in all, and breadthand the song of Troy Town ; just as much, and no jot more, Eden Bower
Vengeance of Jenny's case,” indeed! —when such a poet as this comes fawning over her, with tender compassion in one eye and æsthetic enjoyment in the other!
It is time that we permitted Mr. Rossetti to speak for himself, which we will do by quoting
a fairly representative poem entire:— quotation of quotation of quotation of quotation of quotation of
Love-Lily.
A spirit is born whose birth endows
My blood with fire to burn through me;
riotous longing rest in me!
riotous longing,
” which seems to make
Mr. Rossetti a burthen to himself, there is nothing to find fault with in the extreme
fleshliness of these verses, and to many people who live in the country they may even appear
beautiful. Without pausing to criticise a thing so trifling—as well might we dissect a cobweb
or anatomize a medusa—let us ask the reader's attention to a peculiarity to which all the
students of the fleshly school must sooner or later give their attention—we mean the habit of
accenting the last syllable in words which in ordinary speech are accented on the penultimate:—
ee!”
ket!”
neither for nothing
men
empty
” season to make up
for their dullness by fearfully original “new readings,
” distinguish their
attempt at leading business by affecting the construction of their grandfathers and
great-grandfathers, and the accentuation of the poets of the court of James I. It is in all
respects a sign of remarkable genius, from this point of view, to rhyme “was
”
with “grass,
” “death
” with “lièth,
”
“love
” with “of,
” “once
” with
“suns,
” and so on ad nauseam.
It is on the score that these tricks and affectations have procured the professors a number
of imitators, that the fleshly school deliver their formula that great poets are always to be
known because their manner is immediately reproduced by small poets, and that a poet who
finds few imitators is probably of inferior rank—by which they mean to infer that they
themselves are very great poets indeed. It is quite true that they are imitated. On the
stage, twenty provincial “ * stars
” copy Charles Kean, while not one copies his
father; there are dozens of actors who reproduce Mr. Charles Dillon, and not one who attempts
to reproduce Macready.
*
†
and so on, till the English speech seems the speech of raving madmen. Of a piece with other affectations is the device of a burthen, of which the fleshly persons are very fond for its own sake, quite apart from its relevancy. Thus Mr. Rossetti sings:—“When winds do roar, and rains do pour, Hard is the life of the sail or;He scarcely as he reels can tell The side-lights from the binna cle;He looketh on the wild wa ter,” &c.,
“Why did you melt your waxen man, Sister Helen? To-day is the third since you began. The time was long, yet the time ran, Little brother. ( O mother, Mary mother,Three days to-day between Heaven and Hell.)
quotation of
Why did you melt your waxen man, Sister Helen? To-day is the third since you began. The time was long, yet the time ran, Little brother. ( O Mr. Dante Rossetti,What stuff is this about Heaven and Hell?)
somehing” is printed rather than “
something.”
“We were three maidens in the green corn, Hey chickaleerie, the red cock and gray,Fairer maidens were never born, One o'clock, two o'clock, off and away.”
quotation of
silly sooth” in good earnest, though they delight some newspaper critics of the day, and are copied by young gentlemen with animal faculties morbidly developed by too much tobacco and too little exercise. Such indulgence, however, would ruin the strongest poetical constitution; and it unfortunately happens that neither masters nor pupils were naturally very healthy. In such a poem as
The great strong current of English poetry rolls on, ever mirroring in its bosom new
prospects of fair and wholesome thought. Morbid deviations are endless and inevitable; there
must be marsh and stagnant mere as well as mountain and wood. Glancing backward into the
shady places of the obscure, we see the once prosperous nonsense-writers each now consigned
to his own little limbo—Skelton and Gower still playing fantastic tricks with the
mother-tongue; Gascoigne outlasting the applause of all, and living to see his own works
buried before him; Silvester doomed to oblivion by his own fame as a translator; Carew the
idol of courts, and Donne the beloved of schoolmen, both buried in the same oblivion; the
fantastic Fletchers winning the wonder of collegians, and fading out through sheer poetic
impotence; Cowley shaking all England with his pindarics, and perishing with them; Waller,
the famous, saved from oblivion by the natural note of one single song—and so on, through
league after league of a
we have in him another poetical man, and a man markedly poetical, and of a kind apparently, though not radically, different from any of our secondary writers of poetry, but that we have not in him a new poet of any weight;” and that he is “
so affected, sentimental, and painfully self-conscious, that the best to be done in his case is to hope that this book of his, having unpacked his bosom of so much that is unhealthy, may have done him more good than it has given others pleasure.” Such, we say, is our opinion, which might very well be wrong, and have to undergo modification, if Mr. Rossetti was younger and less self-possessed. His “
maturity” is fatal.