| | | Of all the odd reasons that authors have found for the titles | of their books, the circumstance which has given a name to | the volume of verse before us seems the very oddest. The | gentleman who has written it has been acquainted with the | gentleman to whom it is dedicated for five-and twenty | years, so he calls his book A Quarter of a Century. | Unless Mr. Fricker had resorted to the old and simple | designation of Poems, it would be difficult, we | may confess, to find one name that would be more | appropriate than another. There is nothing distinctive about | either the form, or the thought, or the set of subjects. The | poet is inspired by the widest imaginable variety of | circumstances. Belshazzar, an Australian digger, the | villanies of the Church of Rome, dead babies, young ladies, | the Day of Judgment, and a score of other matters are | equally suggestive themes for Mr. Fricker’s lyre. Certainly | the lyre always gives out one sort of tone, but it would be | hard to hit off this tone in a single phrase such as is | required for a title-page. Nor is the tone so striking as to | make us very anxious to analyse its composition with | anything like precision. In the same way, the poems are | not so remarkable as to make us care very much by what | name they are called. The fact that Mr. Fricker has known | Mr. Tipper for twenty-five years furnishes a title quite as | satisfactorily as anything that could have been derived | from the structure or thought of the poems themselves. | And the title, after all, is in its own way very suggestive, | and stamps the book with something peculiar. An author | who has enjoyed

“a long and unvarying friendship” |

of a quarter of a century must probably be at least | forty. There is nothing surprising in the publication of | absurd and pretentious poems by youths. Young men will | be young men, and if they have a turn for writing verses, | and insist on publishing them, we fairly look upon what | they have done as a harmless kind of weakness of which | in due time they will sincerely repent. They might have | much worse faults. Excessive drinking, and excessive | smoking, and an extravagant love of billiards, are all much | more objectionable habits in a young person than writing | occasional sonnets and the like. Poetry does not injure the | digestion, nor seriously affect the purse. The worst that can | be said against the youthful poet in ordinary life is that he is | wasting his time. And even this is not altogether just. Up to | a certain age, the occasional composition of a washy but | well-meant lyric is perhaps rather a healthy process than | otherwise. An epic is unpardonable. The time consumed is | more than can be spared out of threescore years and ten. | But a weak sonnet, redolent of Wordsworth and Tennyson | largely diluted, has on the whole a very good effect on the | mind of the young composer. Objectively it is nonsense, | and, to the innocent friend who is compelled to listen to it, a | sheer nuisance. But the writer feels soothed after such an | effort. His thoughts, or what he excusably mistakes for | thoughts, are elevated. He feels kindlier and purer about | the world. His self-respect, or perhaps we should say his | self-conceit, is increased, and altogether he has rather a | comfortable glow in his mind. Still a season arrives when | childish things should be put away, and Mr. Fricker would | seem to have reached that season. At all events, his friend | of twenty-five years standing might have been supposed to | possess influence enough to keep him back from | publishing bad poems. What is the use of

“long and | unvarying”

friends, if they do not prevent you from | childish things? And would a friend of five-and-twenty, or | even fifty, years deny the childishness of Mr. Fricker’s | verses about the Indian Mutiny for example? ~~ | | There is a good deal more to the same effect, but scarcely | worth quoting. To any ordinary reader there is a touch of | violence in making shimmer rhyme with | river, but a more familiar acquaintance with our new | poet soon dispels any squeamishness of this kind. Mr. | Fricker’s ear must be of a really astounding susceptibility. | Imagine Neva being made to rhyme with | leader, waters with Tartars, and | solitary and contrary with Mary | and Canary. And to this same Mary the poet | says, with a rhyme as execrable even as these: ~~ | | The accentuation of the two trisyllables at the end of the | second and fourth lines in the next stanza, too, is not quite | what it usually is on lips polite: ~~ | But even this is trifling compared with a word which might | make a Gradus ad Parnasum or a Lempriere turn on its | shelves: ~~ | Perhaps Mr. Fricker never saw and has | forgotten that

“Ganymede flavo”

ends the last line | of an alcaic stanza. In a less ancient name he is not much | fortunate, for he says that ~~ | As Frank Osbaldeston’s father said to him when he found | Garonne rhyming with sun, | Writing poor verses is rather a beggarly trade at the best, | and the least that can be expected is a certain decency | about rhymes. Decent grammar, too, is what the least | exacting of readers feels that he has a kind of right to ask, | and to say that

“cups might graced”

Ganymede is | by no means decent grammar. Mr. Fricker evidently look | on this funny construction as quite within the wide bounds | of poetic license, for, in another place, he talks of a little | maid so dark, . | He probably has some sort of notion that

“might been” |

is a delicious archaism; and the indiscriminate use of |

“be”,

when he means

“is,”

appears due | to the same love of what he quite falsely supposes to be | antique. He asks of somebody or other, in the idiom of a | Dorsetshire yokel, | And then he answers scornfully ~~ | Fancy a

“blond”

star! We suppose there is some | sly imitation of the antique, too, in the line ~~ | What is gained by adding

“itself”

to

“self, |

and what is the difference between self and itself? | There is a fine Irish, or antique, or whatever other flavour it | may be, about the statement ~~ | This is simply the poetic way of saying what in prose would | be that

“his eye never wept and his heart never | quailed,”

&c. On the whole, perhaps, the prosaic way | is preferable. It is simpler, and more easily understood. | Sometimes, however, Mr. Fricker cannot be understood at | all. For instance, when he says: ~~ | | Who were made to know dull Lethe’s stream, and why | were they made to know it? Or is it the stream that was | made to know? If so, what did it know, and how could | Lethe’s stream know anything? Even more unintelligible | than this is a simile in which the poet, after exclaiming ~~ | | goes on to say of them ~~ | | What on earth does

“for”

mean here? Why | cannot waves shake beneath the hoary tower? And even if | they cannot, why should they be on that account | particularly like flashes of the eyes, or flashes of the skies, | or whatever else it is to which Mr. Fricker means to | compare them? The author’s imagery is sometimes as | objectionable for its clearness as it is here for its obscurity. | Disease, we are told, | Piling pustules! What an inimitably graceful and elegant | trope! It is a comfort in the midst of all this to find that Mr. | Fricker is at least sound in his religious sentiments. As he | finely says: ~~ And a little lower down: ~ | | If you have once got a good rhyme like

“ban”

and |

“Vatican,”

not a rather shaky one like

“glory” |

and

o’er thee,”

the best course is clearly not | to lose sight of it. Mr. Fricker has some uncommonly | vigorous things against the Jesuits. They are compared to | jaguars and other evil beasts, and after showing how they | lie in wait for feeble souls, the inspired poet sings in superb | strains: ~ | than which we cannot recall anything more spirited and | genuinely poetic in the works of Tate and Brady | themselves. And the poet’s address to the Eternal City is | not less thrilling: ~~ | There is something which makes a man’s heart stir in the | very audacity of letting Pagan be pronounced so as to | rhyme with Trajan. One does not quite see why Trajan | should have been selected as the type of

“tribuned | lords,”

and we can only suppose that he was chosen | for the sake of the singular sweetness of the rhyme with | Pajan. Perhaps it would have been even more | charming if the poet had written

“diadem and glories | gorgeous,”

and “

Thou fillest the realm of | Claudius.”

Mr. Fricker will doubtless think any critic a | very poor creature who merely looks to hateful rhymes and | bad grammar, instead of searching for the golden light of | thought beneath his words. WE have searched, but | searched in vain. As is usually the case, affected and | extravagant diction is only the cloak of vapid ideas. A great | many young poets write nonsense quite as bad as Mr. | Fricker’s. From a person with a friend of five-and-twenty | years’ standing we look for sager conduct. But it is to be | remembered that the misfortunes of our best friends are | not displeasing to us, and possibly Mr. Fricker’s volume | may give this cynical pleasure to Mr. Tipper and all his | other

“dear friends.”