Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

dered a lady in one of his publications, and he afterward left England poor and dishonored. His friends seem to have come somewhat tardily to his rescue; but he was finally established comfortably at Florence, with an annuity of two hundred pounds, which Robert Browning is said to have kindly seen "duly employed so long as he remained in Florence."

Though deaf and ailing, Landor still solaced himself by writing and publishing verses; and at his ninetieth year, when death ended his labors, he was still engaged in working at new" Conversations," in which it is said "the old fire burned not dimly." Landor's poetry is far infe rior to his prose. "Gebir"-his principal poem-has not been widely appreciated. Southey warmly admired the work; De Quincey extolled it, and said of it that it had for some time the sublime distinction of having enjoyed only two readers The Southey and himself. poem was originally written in Latin (Gebirus). Unprejudiced critics have pronounced its chief fault to be its obscurity. Landor was a deep and fluent thinker, but in his verse he does not always clothe his ideas in clear, forcible, and direct terms, and is often unintelligible to his readers. This fine passage, which has been amplified by Wordsworth in his "Excursion," is from "Gebir":

"But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue
Within, and they that lustre have imbibed
In the sun's palace-porch, where when unyoked
His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave:

Shake one, and it awakens, then apply
Its polished lips to your attentive ear,

And it remembers its august abodes

And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there."

Landor's "Imaginary Conversations" are written in pure, nervous English. A series of dialogues published at

intervals, they number in all one hundred and twenty-five; and it has been aptly said of them that they " all history, all time, and almost all subjects."

range over

In character Landor was moody, egotistic, and full of crotchets and prejudices which he liberally expressed, regardless of others, and often in language offensive to good taste. He was somewhat visionary in his philosophy; and Mr. John Bull has esteemed him an unsound politician. In an appeal to Lord Brougham-in 1850, I think-respecting the claims of literary men upon the nation, he suggests that "a portion of the sum expended in building stables for a prince not tall enough to mount a donkey, be appropriated to the reward of the chief living geniuses who have adorned and exalted their age." In his aphorisms Landor is often apt and forcible, as in this: "The happy man is he who distinguishes the boundary between desire and delight."

CHAPTER XXIII.

ROGERS, LAMB, POLLOK, AND MINOR POETS OF THE

E

TIME.

MINENT in that school whose verse is relished only by the intellectual classes, and has no deep pathos or kindling energy to touch the soul or fire the imagination, is Samuel Rogers, born at Stoke Newington, near London, 1763. Rogers can in no sense claim to have "learned in suffering what he taught in song." His life was as calm and felicitous as his poetry.

The son of a wealthy banker, he received a careful private education, and was subsequently made a partner in the paternal establishment, where he continued to his death. Rogers's life emphatically gives the lie to that dispiriting asseveration of the Man of Uz, "Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward." An accomplished traveller, a lover of the fair and good and great, and enabled by kindly fortune to cultivate his favorite tastes and to follow his favorite pursuits; to enrich his home with rare pictures, fine busts, choice books, and whatsoever delighteth a poet's heart; to choose and entertain his friends with generous hospitality, and to soothe and relieve with noble bounty suffering worth and unfriended talent; at ninety years still retaining his passion for the beautiful, and dying painlessly by slow decay, who would not rejoice to behold so gracious a mortal lot?

Rogers's reign in London literary society was long and brilliant. An invitation to his dinners was much coveted,

and his ten o'clock breakfasts were so distinguished that it was considered something even to have seen such men as had breakfasted with Rogers. In his long life he was a cotemporary of many men of genius. As a young man he was the friend of Fox, Sheridan, and Adam Smith; later, an intimate of Moore, Byron, Wordsworth, and Sir Walter Scott; and in his old age Tennyson, Dickens, and Ruskin were welcomed at his table, where “ the feast of reason and the flow of soul" even exceeded the ample grosser supply. There Coleridge in his wonderful monologue talked poetry to the guests; Wordsworth discoursed of his own particular poetry; Walter Scott told capital stories; and Sydney Smith's sharp wit seasoned the feast.

66

Rogers, on the death of his friend Wordsworth, was asked to succeed him as poet laureate. He is said to have written to Prince Albert, in declining the honor, at eighty-seven: Nothing remains of me but my shadow, a shadow soon to depart." His pungent wit, and his well-known propensity to exercise it, made him a terror to his foes; and in early life he is said sometimes to have indulged it even at the expense of his friends. He became more gentle in character as age drew on; but it has been aptly said of him that "no one ever said severer things or did kinder deeds."

[ocr errors]

Rogers's elegance and polish as a poet half atones for his lack of power and originality. In his published "Table Talk he says: "I was engaged on the 'Pleasures of Memory' for nine years; on Human Life' for nearly the same space of time, and Italy' was not completed in less than sixteen years." Here surely was time enough for the poet to have "appealed from Philip drunk to Philip sober;" but unfortunately this "Philip" was never "drunk" at all! His allowance of the divine afflatus was, alas! but a safe teaspoonful or so. His verse

is chiefly characterized by elegant finish and pensive tenderness of the soberest kind. His best poems are the three above-named. In "Italy" his tale of Ginevra is embraced; this poem gives to the reader delightful glimpses of Italian life and scenery and traditional lore. "Human Life" possesses deeper feeling than may be found in "Italy," or even in the "Pleasures of Memory." Italy" was published in a form so highly ornate as to captivate by its mere externals. Dr. Holmes has aptly remarked of this poem: ""T is a pity that all poets are not rich bankers, one's children look so much better dressed in point-lace than in plain muslin."

.66

"The Pleasures of Memory" is Rogers's most popular poem. It has been happily remarked that he was "more fortunate in his choice of a subject than Campbell or Akenside, since Hope and Imagination we may outlive; but Memory passes away only with the heart wherein it dwells." Rogers was a laggard votary of the school of Pope; and this fragment is not without its spice of the bard of Twickenham.

TO THE BUTTERFLY.

CHILD of the sun! pursue thy rapturous flight,
Mingling with her thou lovest in fields of light;
And, where the flowers of Paradise unfold,
Quaff fragrant nectar from their cups of gold.
There shall thy wings, rich as an evening sky,
Expand and shut with silent ecstasy!

Yet wert thou once a worm, a thing that crept
On the bare earth, there wrought a tomb and slept.
And such is man; soon from this cell of clay
To burst a seraph in the blaze of day.

Rogers was thoroughly in love with his muse, and assiduously cultivated his poetical talent to the very end of

« ZurückWeiter »