The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2

ARTICLES FROM ‘THE MONTHLY REVIEW’.

1.  ‘POEMS’, BY W. R. SPENCER. (VOL. 67, 1812, PP. 54-60.)

Art.  VII.  Poems by William Robert Spencer. 8vo. 10s.  Boards.  Cadell and Davies. 1811.

The author of this well-printed volume has more than once been introduced to our readers, and is known to rank among that class of poetical persons who have never been highly favoured by stern criticism.  The “mob of gentlemen who write with ease” has indeed of late years (like other mobs) become so importunate, as to threaten an alarming rivalry to the regular body of writers who are not fortunate enough to be either easy or genteel.  Hence the jaundiced eye with which the real author regards the red Morocco binding of the presumptuous “Littérateur;” we say, the binding, for into the book itself he cannot condescend to look, at least not beyond the frontispiece.—­Into Mr. Spencer’s volume, however, he may dip farther, and will find sufficient to give him pleasure or pain, in proportion to his own candour.  It consists chiefly of “Vers de Société,” calculated to prove very delightful to a large circle of fashionable acquaintance, and pleasing to a limited number of vulgar purchasers.  These last, indeed, may be rude enough to expect something more for their specie during the present scarcity of change, than lines to “Young Poets and Poetesses,” “Epitaphs upon Years,” Poems “to my Grammatical Niece,” “Epistle from Sister Dolly in Cascadia to Sister Tanny in Snowdonia,” etc.:  but we doubt not that a long list of persons of quality, wit, and honour, “in town and country,” who are here addressed, will be highly pleased with themselves and with the poet who has shewn them off in a very handsome volume:  as will doubtless the “Butterfly at the end of Winter,” provided that he is fortunate enough to survive the present inclemencies.  We are, however, by no means convinced that the Bellman will relish Mr. S.’s usurpation of a “Christmas Carol;” which looks so very like his own, that we advise him immediately to put in his claim, and it will be universally allowed.

With the exception of these and similar productions, the volume contains poems eminently beautiful; some which have been already published, and others that are well worthy of present publication.  Of “Leonora,” with which it opens, we made our report many years ago (in vol. xx.  N.S. p. 451):  but our readers, perhaps, will not be sorry to see another short extract.  We presume that they are well acquainted with the story, and therefore select one of the central passages: 

  “See, where fresh blood-gouts mat the green,
    Yon wheel its reeking points advance;
  There, by the moon’s wan light half seen,
    Grim ghosts of tombless murderers dance. 
  ’Come, spectres of the guilty dead,
    With us your goblin morris ply,
  Come all in festive dance to tread,
    Ere on the bridal couch we lie.’

  “Forward th’ obedient phantoms push,
    Their trackless footsteps rustle near,
  In sound like autumn winds that rush
    Through withering oak or beech-wood sere. 
  With lightning’s force the courser flies,
    Earth shakes his thund’ring hoofs beneath,
  Dust, stones, and sparks, in whirlwind rise,
    And horse and horseman heave for breath.

  “Swift roll the moon-light scenes away,
    Hills chasing hills successive fly;
  E’en stars that pave th’ eternal way,
    Seem shooting to a backward sky. 
  ’Fear’st thou, my love? the moon shines clear;
    Hurrah! how swiftly speed the dead! 
  The dead does Leonora fear? 
    Oh God! oh leave, oh leave the dead!’”

Such a specimen of “the Terrible” will place the merit of the poem in a proper point of view:  but we do not think that some of the alterations in this copy of Leonora are altogether so judicious as Mr. S.’s well-known taste had led us to expect.  “Reviving Friendship” (p. 5) is perhaps less expressive than “Relenting,” as it once stood; and the phrase, “ten thousand furlowed heroes” (’ibid’.), throws a new light on the heroic character.  It is extremely proper that heroes should have “furlows,” since school-boys have holidays, and lawyers have long vacations:  but we very much question whether young gentlemen of the scholastic, legal, or heroic calling, would be flattered by any epithet derived from the relaxation of their respectable pursuits.  We should feel some hesitation in telling an interesting youth, of any given battalion from Portugal, that he was a “furlowed hero,” lest he should prove to us that his “furlow” had by no means impaired his “heroism.”  The old epithet, “war-worn,” was more adapted to heroism and to poetry; and, if we mistake not, it has very recently been superseded by an epithet which precludes “otium cum dignitate” from the soldier, without imparting either ease or dignity to the verse.  Why is “horse and horsemen pant for breath” changed to “heave for breath,” unless for the alliteration of the too tempting aspirate?  “Heaving” is appropriate enough to coals and to sighs, but “panting” belongs to successful lovers and spirited horses; and why should Mr. S.’s horse and horseman not have panted as heretofore?

The next poem in arrangement as well as in merit is the “Year of Sorrow;” to which we offered a tribute of praise in our 45th vol.  N.S. p. 288.—­We are sorry to observe that the compliment paid to Mr. Wedgewood by a “late traveller” (see note, p. 50), viz. that “an Englishman in journeying from Calais to Ispahan may have his dinner served every day on Wedgewood’s ware,” is no longer a matter of fact.  It has lately been the good or evil fortune of one of our travelling department to pass near to Calais, and to have journeyed through divers Paynim lands to no very remote distance from Ispahan; and neither in the palace of the Pacha nor in the caravanserai of the traveller, nor in the hut of the peasant, was he so favoured as to masticate his pilaff from that fashionable service.  Such is, in this and numerous other instances, the altered state of the continent and of Europe, since the annotation of the “late traveller;” and on the authority of a later, we must report that the ware has been all broken since the former passed that way.  We wish that we could efficiently exhort Mr. Wedgewood to send out a fresh supply, on all the turnpike roads by the route of Bagdad, for the convenience of the “latest travellers.”

Passing over the “Chorus from Euripides,” which might as well have slept in quiet with the rest of the author’s school-exercises, we come to “the Visionary,” which we gladly extract as a very elegant specimen of the lighter poems: 

  “When midnight o’er the moonless skies
    Her pall of transient death has spread,
  When mortals sleep, when spectres rise,
    And nought is wakeful but the dead!

  “No bloodless shape my way pursues,
    No sheeted ghost my couch annoys. 
  Visions more sad my fancy views,
    Visions of long departed joys!

  “The shade of youthful hope is there,
    That linger’d long, and latest died;
  Ambition all dissolved to air,
    With phantom honours at her side.

  “What empty shadows glimmer nigh! 
    They once were friendship, truth, and love! 
  Oh, die to thought, to mem’ry die,
    Since lifeless to my heart ye prove!”

We cannot forbear adding the beautiful stanzas in pages 166, 167: 

  “To THE LADY ANNE HAMILTON.

  “Too late I staid, forgive the crime,
    Unheeded flew the hours;
  How noiseless falls the foot of Time,
    That only treads on flow’rs!

  “What eye with clear account remarks
    The ebbing of his glass,
  When all its sands are di’mond sparks,
    That dazzle as they pass?

  “Ah! who to sober measurement
    Time’s happy swiftness brings,
  When birds of Paradise have lent
    Their plumage for his wings?”

The far greater part of the volume, however, contains pieces which can be little gratifying to the public:—­some are pretty; and all are besprinkled with “gems,” and “roses,” and “birds,” and “diamonds,” and such like cheap poetical adornments, as are always to be obtained at no great expense of thought or of metre.—­It is happy for the author that these bijoux are presented to persons of high degree; countesses, foreign and domestic; “Maids of Honour to Louisa Landgravine of Hesse D’Armstadt;” Lady Blank, and Lady Asterisk, besides—–­, and—–­, and others anonymous; who are exactly the kind of people to be best pleased with these sparkling, shining, fashionable trifles.  We will solace our readers with three stanzas of the soberest of these odes: 

  “ADDRESSED TO LADY SUSAN FINCASTLE, NOW COUNTESS OF DUNMORE.

  “What ails you, Fancy? you’re become
    Colder than Truth, than Reason duller! 
  Your wings are worn, your chirping’s dumb,
    And ev’ry plume has lost its colour.

  “You droop like geese, whose cacklings cease
    When dire St. Michael they remember,
  Or like some bird who just has heard
    That Fin’s preparing for September?

  “Can you refuse your sweetest spell
    When I for Susan’s praise invoke you? 
  What, sulkier still? you pout and swell
    As if that lovely name would choke you.”

We are to suppose that “Fin preparing for September” is the lady with whose “lovely name” Fancy runs some risk of being “choked;” and, really, if killing partridges formed a part of her Ladyship’s accomplishments, both “Fancy” and Feeling were in danger of a quinsey.  Indeed, the whole of these stanzas are couched in that most exquisite irony, in which Mr. S. has more than once succeeded.  All the songs to “persons of quality” seem to be written on that purest model, “the song by a person of quality;” whose stanzas have not been fabricated in vain.  This sedulous imitation extends even to the praise of things inanimate: 

  “When an Eden zephyr hovers
    O’er a slumb’ring cherub’s lyre,
  Or when sighs of seraph lovers
    Breathe upon th’ unfinger’d wire.”

If namby-pamby still leads to distinction, Mr. S., like Ambrose Phillips, will be “preferred for wit.”

  “Heav’n must hear—­a bloom more tender
    Seems to tint the wreath of May,
  Lovelier beams the noon-day splendour,
    Brighter dew-drops gem the spray!

  “Is the breath of angels moving
    O’er each flow’ret’s heighten’d hue? 
  Are their smiles the day improving,
    Have their tears enrich’d the dew?”

Here we have “angels’ tears,” and “breath,” and “smiles,” and “Eden zephyrs,” “sighs of seraph lovers,” and “lyres of slumbering cherubs,” dancing away to “the Pedal Harp!” How strange it is that Thomson, in his stanzas on the Æolian lyre (see the ’Castle of Indolence’), never dreamed of such things, but left all these prettinesses to the last of the Cruscanti!

One of the best pieces in the volume is an “Epistle to T. Moore, Esq.,” which though disfigured with “Fiends on sulphur nurst,” and “Hell’s chillest Winter” (“poor Tom’s a’-cold!”), and some other vagaries of the same sort, forms a pleasant specimen of poetical friendship.—­We give the last ten lines: 

“The triflers think your varied powers Made only for life’s gala bow’rs, To smooth Reflection’s mentor-frown, Or Pillow joy on softer down.—­ Fools!—­yon blest orb not only glows To chase the cloud, or paint the rose; These are the pastimes of his might, Earth’s torpid bosom drinks his light; Find there his wondrous pow’r’s true measure, Death turn’d to life, and dross to treasure!”

We have now arrived at Mr. Spencer’s French and Italian poesy; the former of which is written sometimes in new and sometimes in old French, and, occasionally, in a kind of tongue neither old nor new.  We offer a sample of the two former: 

  “‘QU’EST CE QUE C’EST QUE LE GENIE?’

  “Brillant est cet esprit privé de sentiment;
  Mais ce n’est qu’un soleil trop vif et trop constant,
  Tendre est ce sentiment qu’ aucun esprit n’anime,
  Mais ce n’est qu’un jour doux, que trop de pluie abime! 
  Quand un brillant esprit de ses rares couleurs,
  Orne du sentiment les aimables douleurs,
  Un Phenomêne en nait, le plus beau de la vie! 
  C’est alors que les ris en se mélant aux pleurs,
  Font ces Iris de l’ame, appellê le Genie!”

  “C’y gist un povre menestrel,
  Occis par maint ennuict cruel—­
  Ne plains pas trop sa destinée—­
  N’est icy que son corps mortel: 
  Son ame est toujours à Gillwell,
  Et n’est ce pas là l’Elyséé?”

We think that Mr. Spencer’s Italian rhymes are better finished than his French; and indeed the facility of composing in that most poetical of all languages must be obvious:  but, as a composer in Italian, he and all other Englishmen are much inferior to Mr. Mathias.  It is very perceptible in many of Mr. S.’s smaller pieces that he has suffered his English versification to be vitiated with Italian ‘concetti’; and we should have been better pleased with his compositions in a foreign language, had they not induced him to corrupt his mother-tongue.  Still we would by no means utterly proscribe these excursions into other languages; though they remind us occasionally of that aspiring Frenchman who placed in his grounds the following inscription in honour of Shenstone and the Leasowes: 

  “See this stone
  For William Shenstone—­
  Who planted groves rural,
  And wrote verse natural!”

The above lines were displayed by the worthy proprietor, in the pride of his heart, to all English travellers, as a tribute of respect for the resemblance of his paternal chateau to the Leasowes, and a striking coincidence between Shenstone’s versification and his own.—­We do not mean to insinuate that Mr. Spencer’s French verses (“Cy gist un povre menestrel,” with an Urn inscribed W. R. S. at the top) are precisely a return in kind for the quatrain above quoted:  but we place it as a beacon to all young gentlemen of poetical propensities on the French Parnassus.  Few would proceed better on the Gallic Pegasus, than the Anglo-troubadour on ours.

We now take our leave of Mr. Spencer, without being blind to his errors or insensible to his merits.  As a poet, he may be placed rather below Mr. Moore and somewhat above Lord Strangford; and if his volume meet with half their number of purchasers, he will have no reason to complain either of our judgment or of his own success.

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