Hath wrapt in it a genius and a doom More glowing wondrous than all singing spheres; Growing and towering through the stormy hours, Nos. lxxxv.-vi. RICHARD GARNETT. Dr. Garnett, a true poet and accomplished critic, and the leading bibliographical authority living, has written few sonnets,-but these few are good. The two I quote are sonnets of which Wordsworth or Rossetti might well have been proud to claim the authorship. The second is to be found in his charming volume, Io in Egypt: and other Poems I append another excellent example ; GARIBALDI'S RETIREMENT. Not that three armies thou did'st overthrow; And tend thy vines amid the Etrurian Sea; The having lived such life, that even this deed Calm night, when glorious day it doth succeed; The amazing act with no amazement read. Nos. lxxxvii.-xc. EDMUND W. GOSSE. Mr. Gosse's volumes of verse are entitled On Viol and Flute and New Poems, and he has recently published a new collection called Firdausi in Exile and other Poems. Mr. Gosse has written several excellent sonnets, all characterised by refined grace. No. lxxxix. Mr. Waddington, referring to 'Alcyone,' speaks of it as the first sonnet in dialogue written in English; but this is not quite the case, for William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, wrote one in this form about the beginning of the 17th century. I fancy also there is another example, but cannot recollect the particulars. I print Alcyone' more as an interesting exotic, and for its own indubitable beauty, than as a sonnet proper,-for of course it is no more the latter than are those octosyllabic 14-line poems of which Mr. Waddington and Mr. Lefroy have given us some interesting examples, or than those 7-8 syllabled "sonnets" of which several good specimens are to be found in Alphonse Lemerre's delightful compilation, Le Livre des Sonnets. (Paris 1875.) No. xc. Compare with this the sonnet on Eschylus by Mr. Aubrey De Vere (Search after Proserpine, etc., p. 67.) ÆSCHYLUS. A sea-cliff carved into a bas-relief! Dark thoughts and sad, conceiv'd by brooding Nature; And hides his eyes. Few, few shall pass, great Bard, Shall pierce thy mystic meanings, deep and hard: But these shall owe to thee an endless debt: The Eleusinian caverns they shall tread That wind beneath man's heart; and wisdom learn with dread. Nos. xci.-xcii. DAVID GRAY (1838-1861). The sad story of this young Scotch poet is now familiar. (Vide, especially, the Cambridge edition of 1862, with the memoir by Mr. James Hedderwick and Prefatory Notice by the late Lord Houghton-and Mr. Robert Buchanan's David Gray: and other Essays.) The sonnets in The Luggie: and other Poems, entitled "In the Shadows," are full of delicate fancy and a somewhat morbid sensibility, with a keen note of pain from a bitterly disappointed heart. The sonnets, as sonnets, are generally unsatisfactory. xcii. This sonnet, Mr. Buchanan tells us, was addressed by Gray to him. It has distinct poetic quality, but is at the same time a good example of its author's weaknesses. Tennyson is imitated in the first two lines, and Keats in the fifth. The last two, though pretty, are not happy: a wood dove's flight is rapid but not "smooth"-a "liquid way' is hardly appropriate-and whoever knows "the clamour musical of culver wings," as an obscure poet phrases it, will recognise the falseness of " stately pinion." No. xciii. ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM (1811-1833). Mr. Hallam deserves to be remembered for his own poetic utterances as well as because of his friendship with the present Laureate, and as having been the direct cause of In Memoriam, that most widely read of all elegiac poems. Nos. xciv.-xcviii. EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON. Among the younger poets of our generation there is none who in sonnet composition has surpassed Mr. Lee-Hamilton. This gentleman has published four volumes of verse, marked by curious inequalities along with striking dramatic force and high meditative faculty. His genius is distinctly measurely, not lyrical-in writing sonnets, his ear never fails him: in blank verse, or heroic couplets, only rarely; but in lyrical, and especially in ballad-writing, he is apt constantly to indulge in strangely dissonant lines. The four sonnets I have quoted are all fine, 'Sea-shell Murmurs' being especially noteworthy for its original treatment of a motif worn almost threadbare, it being an application not unworthy, indeed, to rank along with the familiar corresponding passages in Landor and Wordsworth I should much have liked to have also given the fine sonnet "Soulac," and "The Obol" (the companion to "Lethe"), and "Acheron "-indeed several others that strike me as peculiarly fine: but my limits absolutely forbid my doing so. I may, however, give the following, with its noble ethical lesson: in company with Nos. xcv., xcvi., xcvii., and xcviii., it is from Apollo and Marsyas and other Poems (Elliot Stock, 1884), while "Sea-shell Murmurs" is from The New Medusa: and other Poems (Stock, 1882). THE PHANTOM SHIP. We touch Life's shore as swimmers from a wreck Let those who hope for brighter shores no more For grain takes root though all seems bare and bleak. No. xcv. is the second of two sonnets on Mantegna's sepia drawing of Judith, and is one of several remarkably fine sonnets on pictures. No. xcix.-c. SIR WILLIAM ROWAN HAMILTON (1805-1865). As man, philosopher, and poet, Sir W. R. Hamilton was distinctively deserving of the highest admiration. I know no pleasanter biographical volumes than those in which the Rev. R. Percival Graves has so efficiently acted the parts of writer and editor. These two noble sonnets can be matched by others almost equally fine, though the late Astronomer-Royal of Ireland was far from being a voluminous writer, especially in verse. He was essentially one of those keenly-intellectual spiritually-minded men whom to know intimately is to have, in "the best sense, a liberal education." In a letter from Mr. Aubrey de Vere to myself that gentleman writes: "Sir R. Hamilton's are indeed, as you remark, excellent, and I rejoice that you are making them better known than they have been hitherto. Wordsworth once remarked to me that he had known many men of high talents and several of real genius: but that Coleridge and Sir W. R. Hamilton were the only men he had met to whom he would apply the term wonderful." Sir W. R. Hamilton, it will be new to most readers to learn, is among the finest prose writers of this century: in partial support of this assertion I may quote the following passage from his introductory address on astronomy, shortly after his election to the chair, at Dublin University (1831): "But not more surely" (do I believe), "than that to the dwellers in the moon-if such there be--the sun habitually appears and habituallywithdraws during such alternate intervals as we call fortnightly here: not sending to announce his approach those herald clouds of rosy hues which on earth appear before him, nor rising red himself after the gradual light of dawn, but springing forth at once from the bosom of night with more keen clear golden lustre than that which at mid-moon he sheds on the summit ofsome awful Alp; nor throned, as with us at evening, in many coloured pavilion of cloud, nor followed by twilight's solemn hour; but keeping his meridian lustre to the last, and vanishing into sudden darkness." For all particulars concerning the Life and Labours of Sir W. R. Hamilton, the reader should consult the two volumes (a mine of literary interest) by the Rev. R. Percival Graves (Dublin University Press Series, and Longman & Co. -1882). Nos. ci.-ciii. LORD HANMER. Forty-five years ago Lord Hanmer, then Sir John Hanmer, Bart., published a thin quarto volume of sonnets. Few in number, there was not one poor one in the selection: all were excellent, and several exceptionally fine. Reading them is, occasionally, like experiencing again in a dream the subtle magic of Italy, most poetic of the most poetic land. Sonnets like "The Fiumara; or, The Old Fisher' remain with one, as sometimes do circumstances of little import, touched for the moment into some unforgettable beauty. There is a suggestion of that sad northern painter, Josef Israels, in The Old Fisher-a pathos distinct from the more sombre, but humanly indifferent solemnity of most north Italian transcripts. Thou art a fisher of Mazorbo; lone, Drifting a usual shadow o'er the sea With thine old boat, that like a barkless tree Going about to move the anchor-stone; No No. civ. REV. ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER (1804-1875). truer and probably no more eminent poet has been produced by Cornwall than the late Vicar of Normanton. His strength, however, does not lie in sonnets, though he wrote one or two excellent examples. His poetic work, generally, is as fresh and bright as a sunny day on his own Cornish coasts. T |
