| | | Why should anyone , with | certain obvious exceptions, go on writing poetry? The | answer is plain: that it is a great amusement to the writers, | and, on the whole, after making allowance for certain | undeniable evils, it is not a very great annoyance to | anyone else. We exclude, of | course, the possible danger of being called upon to listen | to an author’s recital of his works, or to give him a candid | opinion of their merits. But there is the great advantage | about a poem that it is generally short. Few men in these | days have the courage for writing original epics, though | they have a fancy for translating them. Mr. Brodie, indeed, | is going to bring out a poem in four cantos. Only one has | appeared at present, and persons who like such reading as | we are about to describe may get through it very | comfortably in half an hour. Taken in these moderate | doses, we incline to the opinion that some people may not | impossibly finish it. We do not, however, recommend the | experiment. Mr. Brodie favours us with a preface, giving an | anticipatory defence for having written a poem at all. | He says that people will tell him, first, that this is not a | poetical age; and, secondly, that he should have chosen a | subject more removed from him in time. Instead of | describing the cruise of the Erebus and | Terror, he should have taken the “Discovery of | America,” the “Death of Montezuma,” the “Fall of | Wallenstein,” or some similarly lively subject. We certainly | are not about to raise either of these objections. Our one | recommendation to Mr. Brodie would be next time to leave | out the rhymes and the divisions into lines and stanzas. His | poem will run into very tolerable prose; but it comes under | no definition of poetry that we know of, except that of being | in verse. It is mere prose bewitched; and it is really curious | that a man should fancy himself to be writing a poem when | he is merely torturing Captain Sherard Osborn’s book into | Spenserian stanzas. The process certainly is free from one | objection. There is no affectation of the ordinary kind about | his writing. it never becomes turgid or metaphorical or | bombastic (except, indeed, that an invocation of the Spirit | of Poesy is inserted a propos of nothing | particular about half-way through); but then it is at least as | necessary for a poet to try to be vigorous as to avoid being | overstrained, whereas Mr. Brodie jogs as contentedly | along in his Spenserian stanzas as if he was writing an | account of the expedition for the newspapers. The whole | performance is about on the level of those curious | productions which are sometimes sent in for prize poems; | in which the author has been so surprised at finding that he | can rhyme, that he has quite forgotten to do anything else. | It is a really curious psychological phenomenon that any | educated man should have written such stuff as | Euthanasia, and been deceived by its external form | into fancying that it had more in common with Spenser | than with a column of the Times. | The so-called poem begins with a statement of the subject, | with remarks on the general impulse communicated to | science by the peace of 1815, and the special impulse | towards Arctic discovery, followed by some observations | about the Esquimaux, and their Luckily, he | passes them over shortly though We are then | favoured with a slight sketch of Arctic discovery between | the years of 1815 and 1845 in such terms as these ~~ | After which Sir John Barrow makes a long speech, to | no particular audience and in no particular time or place; | this being a poetical way of stating that he had written a | great many articles in the Quarterly Review, of | which these stanzas contain the substance. he tells, for | example, how Dease and Simpson | This speech a somewhat singular performance; | which means, metaphorically that they approved of Sir | John’s articles. Lord Haddington then remarks to Sir John | Franklin that he is sixty years old, and must stay at home; | whereupon. | A good many volunteers join Sir John and hereupon the | Spirit of Poesy is invoked as before mentioned, with some | of the customary talk about

“Tiber’s side and Arno’s | rill”;

after which the progress of the expedition is duly | detailed in the style of

“Our Own Correspondent.”

| These ships, we are told, were well found: ~~ | | We have careful geographical details in this fashion: ~~ | | After this, the poet takes his sailors comfortably down the | Thames, introducing a stanza upon Lord Palmerston, | which he assures us in a note because he has | just mentioned the heroic nature of Englishmen; and, | therefore, Gradually we get to Stromness and to | the Arctic Seas, where, as the poet pathetically remarks: | ~~ | | If by the seal’s

“shining orbs”

are meant his eyes, | we should have preferred calling them fishy. Having got his | adventurers safely to Beechey’s Island, Mr. Brodie comes | home, as he rather mysteriously tells us, What Mr. | Brodie’s bark means, or why it should be iron-cased, we | have not the faintest idea. But we hope that the process | won’t enable him to make many more ventures in the | poetical line. | Mr. Chorley’s volume, if it does not attain any very high | degree of excellence, is at least too good to be put in the | same class with Mr. Brodie’s. Mr. Chorley is evidently a | man of taste, who, if he does not write very excellent | poems, knows at any rate what poems ought to be. His | verses do not give us the impression of having first been | written in prose, then cut up into lengths of ten syllables, | and finally twisted about forcibly into rhymes. They have a | certain natural swing and harmony about them, which | shows that, if the writer had any very poetical ideas, they | would not fail of expression for want of due power over | language. We many, and in fact do, think them deficient in | inspiration; but there is nothing in them grotesque, ore any | absence of due polish. Mr. Chorley himself speaks very | modestly about them. The chief poem, the “Wife’s Litany,” | had, he says, been laid aside for several years, and when | he accidentally found it again he thought it had | We do not dispute this verdict, as it is in fact rather difficult | to say what exact degree of merit warrants the | preservation of a poem. The most curious thing about it is | the method of composition of which Mr. Chorley informs us. | he seems, as we judge from other pieces in the volume, to | have a decided predilection for ghosts and the | supernatural generally. he says himself that the | Accordingly, Mr. Chorley favours us with a ballad, | something after the “Ancient Mariner” fashion, where a | dead man steers a ship home, all its proper navigators | being killed off in a very disagreeable manner. He finds the | remains of an old wreck in another ballad, and has a long | and interesting conversation with a ghost, who kindly gives | the particulars of the accident by which it was lost, and | ends by calling up the spirits of the rest of the crew, much | as Admiral Hosier’s injured ghost did in a parallel case. Mr. | Chorley, then, having these propensities towards the | superhuman, had a dream. he saw

“a vision of the | night,”

in which the leading incidents of the “Wife’s | Litany” were presented The dream which thus | formed the nucleus of the poem appears, as we infer from | the poem itself, to have been on this wise. He saw an old | chapel at midnight, in which a villanous knight, assisted by | his domestic chaplain and an evil-minded retainer, were | burying a victim. This victim would naturally be a | gentleman who had been in love with the knight’s wife | before her marriage, and whom he had taken the | opportunity to murder comfortably, with the chaplain’s | connivance, on his unexpected reappearance. To the party | thus pleasantly engaged enters the wife, in a state either of | somnambulism or of demoniacal possession; for, from a | conversation of certain highly indefinite

“voices”

a | short time before, Mr. Chorley seems to attribute this | sleep-walking to a very ill-disposed

“Shadow,”

| which makes the lights burn blue. The lady walks up to the | altar, and, kneeling down before it, proceeds to utter her |

“litany,”

which, it need hardly be said, is not of a | conciliatory tendency to her husband. She prays, in fact, in | a very emphatic manner, that ~~ | | After a good deal of this, the bell strikes midnight, and the |

“unhallowed sprite”

leaves her; she awakes, sees | her lover lying dead, and, what is indeed the only course | open to her under the circumstances, falls on his body and | dies herself; the knight goes mad; and

“the voices” |

inform us that the lady and her lover are going up to | heaven without further trouble. The various scenes which | lead up to this conclusion may be easily imagined. We | certainly do not envy Mr. Chorley his dreams, which are | unpleasantly suggestive of previous suppers. Admitting, | however, that poets have a right to deal in shadows and | voices and wild huntsmen and other anomalous beings, | the story is well enough told. The form, it appears, is | intended to be in imitation of Spanish comedy, and people | who like to read pretty verses about such unsubstantial | subjects may go through it without any danger of having | their taste offended. We confess that dreamland seems to | us to be rather too unsubstantial a district even to found | poems upon; but Mr. Chorley may boast of having added | one more to a list in which Kubla Khan is the only other | example that we can at present remember. | Neither of the poems we have noticed can be considered | as serious additions to our literature; but, as | mathematicians say that one indefinitely small thing may | bear an indefinitely great ratio to another, so two poor | poems may be incomparably different in merit. Mr. Chorley | is not a Shakspeare, nor even a Coleridge, but a talent for | writing elegant verse without very much meaning, or very | ambitious aim, is enough to establish a vast difference | between its possessor and a writer of the unsuccessful | prize-poem order. It is worth while to compare him the | gratitude due for what is, at first sight, the rather negative | merit of not being more prosaic than prose itself.