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ART. VI.-1. Festus: a Poem. By Philip James Bailey, Barrister-at-Law. Second Edition. London: Pickering,

1845.

2. Poems. By Coventry Patmore. Moxon: 1844.

3. Luria; and a Soul's Tragedy. By Robert Browning. Moxon: 1846.

4. Poems. By James Russell Lowell. Mudie: 1844.

5. Dramas for the Stage. By George Stephens. 2 vols. Ineditus: 1846.

6. Alfred, and Edward the Black Prince. By Sir Coutts Lindsay. 1846.

7. A Book of Highland Minstrelsy.

By Mrs. D. Ogilvy.

With Illustrations, by R. A. Mc Ion. Nickisson: 1846. POETRY has but a churlish welcome with us. Abundant beyond all example, excellent in point of abstraction, generated in the highest regions of the cultivated mind, and appealing to the deepest feelings of heart and soul, song pours a cataract of majestic waters, and thunders like Niagara, or rather like the flood when let down from the opened windows of heaven, baptizing the whole earth,-yet no special wonder is awakened; neither terror nor admiration attests the presence of the miracle. Perhaps the world-drama enacting about us and within us is, in its practical aspect, too great for speculative poetry, and so puts it out of countenance. The fountains of the great deep are broken up in this social life of ours; the bases of agricultural influence and commercial prosperity are laid bare, and the most prudent minister of his age becomes a martyr to national interests; and this, too, at the very moment when art has its distinguished martyr, and the perplexed apprehension, now contrasting, now comparing, sees great deeds done and getting the start of time, while recompense, like a limping cur just run over on the high road, lags painfully after, yelping, not applauding. Tardy recognition insults the genius which it starves, and yet crowns. "Patient merit!" How long are the two words to be twins? How long shall merit need to exercise patience? Not a true poet in the land but whose soul is weary,

sick, and languishing, for the unworthy spurns him from the threshold where Mammon has his statue in the hall: nay, the god of this world rules in the very air we breathe, and the life of life itself is infected, poisoned, and corrupted. Hence it is that the sons of song, after making a glorious manifestation or so, become mute. Why, for instance, has not the author of "Festus" produced a second poem?-Want of sufficient encouragement. "Festus," indeed, has come to a second edition, --but how slowly! It is coming to a third; but still how slowly! By such patronage, indeed, the fame of the poet is secured, but his need is not supplied.

The present age has been fertile in religious poetry of a confessedly extraordinary character. Mr. Heraud's "Judgment of the Flood," and "Descent into Hell;" Mr. Browning's "Paracelsus," and also his "Pauline;" Goethe's "Faust;" Mr. Powell's drama of the "Blind Wife;" and Mr. Bailey's "Festus," are all works of a kindred spirit for speculative daring, dauntless imagination, and profound and mysterious feelings. With theological dogmas it is perilous to touch in poetry, yet of all objects are they the most attractive to the highest poetic minds. Their very glory allures, and the seraph soul would rush into and become consumed in it, but that in mercy some repelling power therein prevents the self-sacrifice which the supremely beautiful and holy otherwise induce. Hard it is, however, to escape without a scorched wing; but as the lightning consecrates what it shatters, even so the divine fire hallows what it sears. Mr. Bailey, in the poem of "Festus," is audacious in his piety, not avoiding the loftiest mysteries because destruction awaits the rash intruder.

We have not to learn that there is a wide difference between the heretical in opinion and in character. We may know, as Coleridge remarks, what is heresy, but not who is the heretic. Undoubtedly there is much that is heretical in "Festus;" and as might have been expected, some of the most poetical things in the poem are the most heretical. The poet was not twenty years old when he began this work. He calls it, now it is done, a "boyish feat." It is, however, a feat accomplished, a feat which no man could have accomplished better. Neither Dante nor Shelley could have subdued with more vigour or effect the difficulties involved. If strict theological truth has overthrown all these poets and their theories, involving them in the ruin of the Babels they had erected, let it be carried to the account of the might of sacred verity, and let human weakness be confessed, but not insulted. Genius may be an abortive aspiration, but it is in the seeking, and not in the

finding, that exercise is implied and strength acquired. This is the law of man's life on earth; he who has attempted any thing and found it otherwise, let him cast the first stone! None? Then let Dante, Shelley, and Bailey wear their laurels unscathed, if not their hearts unwounded. Let the temple's outside be spared, though the shrine within be riven. O what a ruined altar is the lost soul of a man!

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The subject of "Festus" is the Love of God and the Love of Man ;-the first, more infinite than sin, and faithful to its purpose; the last, finite as defect, and tainted with all manner of infidelities. Perhaps the female loves to which the hero becomes untrue may be allegorical,-may mean the talents successively cultivated on earth, and which, in full and complete assemblage, receive their perfection in heaven, where "Festus' recognises those whom he had betrayed, awaiting him in happiness to make him happy. This may, we repeat, be allegorical; whether or not, the assumption makes the poem lawless, injures it as a work of art, and deprives the critic of the privilege of detecting beauties in preference to defects,-for what the whole is, the parts must be.

This acknowledged, our condemnation were indeed sweeping, were not love and praise both beautiful, and therefore irresistible. The poet sings at all events, even if "erringly and ill," the praises of divine love. To the second edition he has also published a proem, designed as a defence or apology for what might else be justly censured. Let us hear him:

"Poetry is itself a thing of God.

He made His prophets poets; and the more
We feel of poesie do we become

Like God in love and

power,-under-makers.
All great lays, equals to the minds of men,
Deal more or less with the Divine, and have
For end some good of mind or soul in man.
The mind is this world's, but the soul is God's;
The wise man joins them here all in his power."

Such, then, is his conception of his mission. He next tells us, that Fiction is higher than Fact, but he would have every work of fiction crowned with hearty holiness:

"As a gold cross the master-dome, and show,
Like that instoniment of divinity,

That the whole building doth belong to God."

Next he ventures on the hypothesis, that "all are of the race

of God, and have in themselves good;" and declares that his theme is of a "soul being saved :"

""Tis the bard's aim to shew the mind-made world

Without, within; how the soul stands with God,

And the unseen realities about us.

It is a view of life spiritual

And earthly."

A view which requires faith in writer and reader. It is here the poet describes himself, first, as "a young, hot, unworldschooled heart, that has had its own way in life;" secondly, as "the world-man, in whose heart one passion stands for all, the most indulged. And thus he has inter-sphered the universal and the individual. Again :

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"And though these scenes may seem to careless eyes
Irregular and rough and unconverted,

Like to the stones at Stonehenge,-though convolved
And in primeval mystery,-still an use,
A meaning, and a purpose may be marked
Among them of a temple reared to God;-
The meaning alway dwelling in the word
In secret sanctity, like a golden toy

Mid beauty's orbid bosom. Scenes of earth

And heaven are mixed, as flesh and soul in man."

All this is mysticism defiant of criticism,-a war of isms, which, after long conflict, like most wars, settles nothing. The "religion of the book" is of the same colour

"The Scriptures show

That God doth suffer for the sins of those

Whom He hath made, that are liable to sin;
In all of us He hath His agony ;-"

that is, according to Mr. Bailey's interpretation of Scripture; according to which, also, there is not only a universality of redemption, but also of salvation,-a case, we wot, right hard to make out as belonging to the Christian dispensation. In philosophy he declares himself to be a necessitarian, in theology a predestinarian :

"Free will is but necessity in play,

The clattering of the golden reins which guide
The thunder-footed couriers of the sun,

The ship which goes to sea informed with fire,—
Obeying only its own iron force,

Reckless of adverse tide, breeze dead, or weak
As infant's parting breath, too faint to stir
The feather held before it,-is as much
The appointed thrall of all the elements,

As the white box-wood bark which woos the wind,
And when it dies desists."

Much fine poetry is here wasted on error, yet has a certain truth for the writer. What he says of the reader, likewise, has an application partially just, and in that part, it must be confessed, strongly so:

"A work or thought

Is what each makes it to himself, and may
Be full of great dark meanings, like the sea
With shoals of life rushing; or like the air,
Benighted with the wing of the wild dove,
Sweeping miles broad o'er the far western woods,
With mighty glimpses of the central light,—
Or may be nothing,-bodiless, spiritless."

This proem is an after-thought; had it originally accompanied the poem, we should have thought less of the latter. It is written in defence of the work against critical objections; but fails, utterly, of its object. In any other light it were too conscious, would give specific limits to the spirit and design of the poem, which would render mechanical what now we would fain take for spontaneous creation. Had the proem been really a proem, and not an epilogue, it were the fatallest precursor. The poet should scarcely ever, if ever, interpret his own work, especially when of this elevation and scope. Let it blend with, and be lost if it will, in the infinity,-let it be obscure, if it must, to unintelligibility,-with the reader it rests to make what he can of it. Be it known, for instance, that we have ourselves read Mr. Browning's "Sordello" a dozen times, vainly as vaguely, hoping to understand it at last. We must yet read it a thirteenth time. Why would Mr. Bailey, by interposing an explanation between the title-page and the poem, most kindly and considerately inform his readers that they need not read "Festus" once? Who would read a riddle if the answer came first? Happily for Mr. Bailey nobody will care for his answer, or take it for one,-nobody will accept his explanation: his poem is wiser than he knows. Mr. Bailey as his own critic, and Mr. Bailey as the poet, is a different person. We tell him boldly, he does not and cannot understand "Festus," neither can any one else, and that it would be good for nothing if they could. Now, to speak candidly, the poem is of the same class as the ancient" Mysteries." Attempt to throw the light of interpretation on such compositions, they become absurd, bizarre, monstrous,-to some, abominable, to a few, even blasphemous. Contemplate them in their own

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