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him to feel at liberty to speak to her in the old straightforward brotherly way; especially now, when he perceived her efforts to conceal her feelings, and the way in which she drank her tea in feverish haste, and accepted bread only to crumble it about her plate, untouched. It was all that he could do to make talk under these circumstances; but he backed up her efforts as well as he could until Aimée came down, grave and anxious; her boy had not had a good night, and did not seem well; he had fallen into a feverish sleep now, or she could not have left him. Immediately the whole table was in a ferment. The squire pushed away his plate, and could eat no more; Roger was trying to extract a detail or a fact out of Aimée, who began to give way to tears. Molly quickly proposed that the carriage, which had been ordered to take her home at eleven, should come round immediately -she had everything ready packed up, she said, and bring back her father at once. By leaving directly, she said it was probable they might catch him after he had returned from his morning visits in the town, and before he had set off on his more distant round. Her proposal was agreed to, and she went upstairs to put on her things. She came down all ready into the drawingroom, expecting to find Aimée and the squire there; but during her absence word had been brought to the anxious mother and grandfather that the child had wakened up in a panic, and both had rushed up to their darling. But Roger was in the drawing-room awaiting Molly, with a large bunch

of the choicest flowers.

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"Then you must do something for me," said he, determined not to notice the restraint of her manner, and making the rearrangement of the flowers which she held a sort of link between them, so that she could not follow her impulse, and leave the

room.

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"Tell me, honestly as I know you will if you speak at all, have not I done something to vex you since we were so happy at the Towers together?"

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would have been thankful to tell him all; she believed that he could have helped her more than any one to understand how she ought to behave rightly; he would have disentangled her fancies, if only he himself had not lain at the very core and centre of all her perplexity and dismay. How could she tell him of Mrs. Goodenough's words troubling her maiden modesty? How could she ever repeat what his father had said that morning, and assure him that she, no more than he, wished that their old friendliness should be troubled by the thought of a nearer relationship?

"No, you never vexed me in my whole life, Roger," said she, looking straight at him for the first time for many days.

"I believe you, because you say so. I have no right, to ask further, Molly. Will you give me back one of those flowers, as a pledge of what you have said?"

"Take whichever you like," said she, eagerly offering him the whole nosegay to choose from.

"No; you must choose, and you must give it me."

Just then the squire came in. Roger would have been glad if Molly had not gone on so eagerly to ransack the bunch for the choicest flower in his father's presence; but she exclaimed:

"Oh, please, Mr. Hamley, do you know which is Roger's favourite flower?"

"No. A rose, I daresay. The carriage is at the door, and, Molly my dear, I don't want to hurry you, but "

"I know. Here, Roger, here is a rose!

("And red as a rose was she.")

I will find papa as soon as ever I get home. How is the little boy?"

"I'm afraid he's beginning of some kind of a fever."

And the squire took her to the carriage, talking all the way of the little boy; Roger following, and hardly heeding what he was doing in the answer to the question he kept asking himself: "Too late or not? Can she ever forget that my first foolish love was given to one so different?"

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While she, as the carriage rolled away, kept saying to herself,-"We are friends again. I don't believe he will remember what the dear squire took it into his head to suggest for many days. It is so pleasant His voice was so kind and true, -his to be on the old terms again; and what manner so winning yet wistful, that Molly lovely flowers!" THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXII. 1444.

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From the Month.

HENRY TAYLOR.

works, and a more comprehensive estimate of them than we could have made when each of them successively appeared. We have not space to notice them all, and shall here confine ourselves to the principal one, Philip van Artevelde.

THE present century has been a great age of English poetry-greater unquestionably than any which preceded it, except the Elizabethan. But there is one great One of the most remarkable circumstandifference between the Elizabethan poetry ces connected with Mr. Taylor's poetry is and that of the nineteenth century. Our the small degree in which it can be classed of the sixteenth century in the main with the schools above named. Like the poets bore to each other a considerable resem- first that we have referred to, it is thoughtblance, not in detail, but in spirit. The ful in an unusual degree; but its thoughtEnglish poetry of the nineteenth century, fulness is never abstract or metaphysical, on the other hand, has unconsciously divided still less mystical. In moral gravity it has itself into different schools, as remote from some affinity with Southey's poetry; in each other as were those of Italian painting. scholarly and periodic construction of In Wordsworth and Coleridge we have the sentences, with Shelley's; in precision of school of philosophic thought, united with a form and compactness of diction, with Lanmystical reverence for nature. In Shelley, dor's. But in the case of these poets the reKeats, and Landor we find the classical or semblance to Mr. Taylor is far less than the Hellenic school, with its sharpness of out- dissimilitude; while with most of the other line, its love of definite and finite beauty, poets we have named he stands in striking its appreciation of nature rather through contrast. There exists, it is true, one charthe sensations than the intellect, and its acteristic in common between the authors of habit of interpreting nature through sen- Childe Harold and of Philip van Artevelde : suous types and mythological fancies. In in each case there is a strongly-marked Leigh Hunt and Thomas Hood English ideal of human character, with which the aupoetry wears an Italian grace and gayety thor is plainly in sympathy, and with which of aspect; while in the Pleasures of Memory he has a singular power of making us sympaand the Pleasures of Hope we have the last thize. The two ideals have also, with all echoes of the French, or pseudo-classical their antagonism, thus much in common, school, transmitted from Goldsmith and that they both eminently belong to the Pope. In Crabbe we find the school of dry and hard reality, the dusty idyl of Common English life, externally, prosaic enough, yet with poetry at its centre, like the spark latent in the flint. The romantic and chivalrous tales of Scott were a revival of the old English ballad-poetry, with a larger development but a less fine handling and a less vivid inspiration. In Byron and Moore we have the poetry of passion, or, more correctly speaking, of emotional excitement; combined in the former instance with great energy of an imagination rather rhetorical than comprehensive or penetrating, and in the latter with great brilliancy and affluence of fancy, but with little refinement.

In our own day there have risen among us several new poets, the most celebrated of whom are unquestionably Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Henry Taylor. The poetry of the latter has now been presented to us in what is called a "complete edition; "* and though we trust that it is not yet literally complete, enough of it is now before us to allow of a comparison between his several

*The Poetical Works of Henry Taylor. 3 vols. Chapman & Hall, 1864.

sphere of the natural man, and have few relations with the spiritual. But in all else they are absolutely opposed to each other. Lord Byron's ideal is that of a man mastered by his passions, or impelled mainly by his wrongs; one whose strength, like that of a projectile, is not a strength inherent in him, but one to which he is subjected. The ideal exhibited in Philip van Artevelde, while equally of this world, is a nobler conception. It is that of one whose passions are under the control of the intellect and moral will, however little these last are themselves ruled by a supernatural principle. But here the analogy ends. Lord Byron constantly delineates the same ideal in his various works; a proof that, despite the great ability of his dramas, his genius was not dramatic. Mr. Taylor's ideal may be found adumbrated in Isaac Comnenus, his earliest drama, while it is completely delineated in Philip van Artevelde; but in the latter work, and still more in his two later dramas, characters cast in the most different moulds are illustrated with no less vigour. His union of vigour with classic grace is his chief characteristic.

Mr. Taylor's poetry is preeminently that

of action, as Lord Byron's is that of passion; | tween Bacon and Hooker, we have the or rather it includes action as well as pas- England of the sixteenth century; in his sion, thus corresponding with Milton's defi- "Lucullus and Cæsar" we have old Rome; nition of tragic poetry as " high actions and high passions best describing." It is this peculiarity which has made him succeed in a species of poetry which most of our modern poets have attempted, but almost all unsuccessfully.

Wordsworth wrote a drama in his youth which he published in his old age: Coleridge wrote two; but though they bear the impress of genius, we feel in reading them that the author was not in natural sympathy with action, and that it was to him a dramatic necessity, not a thing to be valued for its own sake. He could analyze what lay still, not exhibit the fleeting. His characters are metaphysical conceptions, worked out with a conscious exercise of the philosophic faculty, not with that spontaneous energy and instinctive felicity which belongs to the genius essentially dramatic.

in his " Epicurus, Ternissa, and Leontium" we have more of Greece than we can gain from all other classical revivals put together. In his "Pentameron " we have Italy at the restoration of literature. The dramatic rises to the full strength of the tragic in his "Tiberius and Vipsania; "—yet on the whole he failed as a dramtic poet. What he lacked was genuine sympathy with action.

As an exception to the undramatic character of modern English genius, the Cenci of Mr. Shelley may be named. An extraordinary vigour and skill are shown in the treatment of a subject so revolting as to be unfit for our times, despite the precedents, which are but partially such, of Pagan Greece. Mr. Shelley in this work remarkably exhibits the faculty of self-control that belongs to genius. On all other occasions his imagination not merely dealt largely with metaphor and image, but lived in a world of such. He never saw anything as it was, because he always saw what it was

We should have felt certain that Sir Walter Scott could have excelled in the drama had he not made the attempt and failed. He could both conceive character and compose a story; but he lacked appa-like; nay, he piles image upon image, and the rently the fiery intensity of the drama, and object he describes is sometimes reflected from though a true poet, he is dramatic chiefly in so many different mirrors that the dazzled his novels, while in his poems he is contented reader walks in a sphere where it is hard to with being picturesque. Mr. Landor has distinguish between substance and semwritten several dramas and numerous dra- blance. It was only by putting an absolute matic scenes. They abound in passages of restraint upon himself that he could even high thought and refined sentiment; and hope to write a drama; and in the whole of they are characterized, now by the impe- the Cenci there is but one passage that can be rious eloquence, now by the antique maj- called figurative. The imagination self-subesty of that great writer. Yet they are not jected to this restraint became strengthendramatic; the plot halts, as if the author ed for severer toils than usual, and mouldhad not thought it worth bis pains to elabo-ed the work into a fair shape, though hewn rate it; the fact being that where a genuine sympathy with dramatic action exists, the instinct of art forces the dramatist to take pains with the plot, which a celebrated author once confessed that "he always left a good deal to Providence." Mr. Lander's characters are also for the most part imperfectly conceived, though in the more impassioned scenes parts of them are brought out with a salient projection. It is in his Imaginary Conversations, where he has to do with dialogue but not with action, that his dramatic power achieves its highest triumphs. No matter what country or what age he deals with, he is always at home in this region of art, which he has conquered for his own. He dramatizes not only individuals but epochs, nations, and states of society. In such dialogues as that between Roger Ascham and Jane Grey, or that be

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out of a dark material. But he did not succeed, in similar attempts at a later time. One who had the best means of forming a correct judgment, Leigh Hunt, believed that had Shelley lived he would have made himself chiefly known as a tragic poet; but, as a matter of fact, he wrote his Witch of Atlas in three days, while the labour of weeks got him through but a few scenes of his projected drama on Charles I.

Much of poetic and dramatic power has been shown by other recent writers besides those whom we have referred to; but the result has seldom corresponded with the ability spent on them. Dean Milman, Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall, Charles Lamb, George Darley, Shiel, and others have written dramas; but it is chiefly in connection with other tasks that they are remembered; while the plays which have

sued a want of adequate appreciation for its intellectual and immortal part? I confess that such seems to me to have been both the natural and the actual result, and I can hardly believe the public taste to have been in a healthy state whilst the most ap

been most successful on the stage — those of Sir Bulwer Lytton and Sheridan Knowles have not been those of the highest literary merits. The undramatic character of modern poetic genius is evinced by the fact that while so many plays have been written, so few finely-conceived and adequately-proved poetry of past times was almost illustrated original characters have been added to the stores of the British drama. One of these few is to be found in the Mary Tudor of the late Sir Aubrey de Vere, where the sad English queen -certainly one of the most dramatic characters presented to us by history is delineated in her virtues and her errors, her wrongs and her woes, her aspirations and infirmities, with a strong clear hand and a fearless impartiality.

Mr. Taylor has how published six dramas: Isaac Comnenus, Philip van Artevelde (in two parts), Edwin the Fair, A Sicilian Summer, and St. Clement's Eve. The earliest of these, though at first less successful than the works that succeeded it, gave no doubtful promise of a brilliant dramatic career. The earlier works of men of genius, however inferior to their later, have generally contained the germ of the excellence developed by labour and time; and in this instance both the style of the work and the character of the hero were an anticipation of that maturer drama which at once established the poet's reputation. It is not a little remarkable that a public which had so long been accustomed to the vehement stimulants of Lord Byroh, and the bright but superficial imagery of Moore, should have responded to so sudden a summons. Had the challenge been a less bold one, it would probably have been less successful. In the preface to Philip van Artevelde Mr. Taylor proclaimed open war against the poetic taste of his time. The poets in whom the age had chiefly delighted were characterized, he affirmed, "by force and beauty of language, and by a versification particularly easy and adroit, and abounding in that sort of melody which, by its very obvious cadences, makes itself most pleasing to an unpractised ear. They exhibited, therefore, many of the most attractive graces and charms of poetry,-its vital warmth, not less than its external embellishments; and had not the admiration which they excited tended to produce an indifference to higher, graver, and more various endowments, no one would have said that it was, in any evil sense, excessive. But from this unbounded indulgence in the mere luxuries of poetry has there not en

unread. We may now perhaps be turning back to it; but it was not, as far as I can judge, till more than a quarter of a century had expired that any signs of reaction could be discerned. Till then the elder luminaries of our poetical literature were obscured or little regarded, and we sat with dazzled eyes at a high festival of poetry, where, as at the funeral of Arvalan, the torchlight put out the starlight.

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"They (the popular modern poets) wanted, in the first place, subject-matter. A feeling came more easily to them than a reflection, and an image was always at hand when a thought was not forthcoming. The realities of nature, and the truths which they suggest, would have seemed cold and incongruous if suffered to mix with the strains of impassioned sentiment and glowing imagery in which they poured themselves forth. . Writers, however, whose appeal is made so exclusively to the excitabilities of mankind will not find it possible to work upon them continuously without a diminishing effect. Poetry of which sense is not the basis, though it may be excellent of its kind, will not long be reputed to be poetry of the highest order."

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The new aspirant was fortunate in his theme. It was taken from a period of history when the life of the Middle Ages was passing into that of modern political society, and when those picturesque pomps of chivalry with which Sir Walter Scott had made men familiar were beginning to yield before the first blasts of a storm by which the ecclesiastical as well as the political institutions of Europe were visited before long. In the fourteenth century the Flemish cities, though subject to the Earl of Flanders, enjoyed an almost republican inde pendence with respect to their internal affairs. If offended by one of the earl's bailiffs, they rose in arms under their associated "guilds " or crafts; and could they have permanently united, it would have been nearly impossible to have reduced them again to obedience. But the interest of one city was not that of another; and in Ghent itself, as well as the towns that sided with it- such as Damne, Ypres, Courtray, Grammont, &c. there were generally two parties, that of the rich, whose trade re

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quired peace, and that of the poor, who re- | of grave reflection in which he is himself garded war as their trade. It was appa- deficient are as needful for the permanent rently its nearness to actual life, not the success of a leader as energy and fearlesschivalrous pageantry mixed up with it, that ness. He offers Philip the supreme comrecommended this theme to a dramatist of mand in the people's name, and the recluse robust and practical genius. The war was becomes the man of action. He desires to one which "in its progress extended to the avenge his father's death; he desires to reswhole of Flanders, and excited a degree of cue his country from tyrants whose incominterest in all the civilized countries of petency he scorns as much as he hates their Europe, for which the cause must be sought brutality; but most of all he yields to that in the state of European communities at instinct which makes ability and daring seek the time. It was believed that entire suc- a sphere large enough for them. The charcess on the part of Ghent would bring on a acter of Philip constitutes the principal ingeneral rising almost throughout Christen- terest of the drama. Habitually thoughtdom of the commonalty against the feudal ful he is, yet never abstract; and the metalords and men of substance. The incorpo- physical speculations to which he refers at a ration of the citizens of Paris, known by the late period of his career as having once name of the Army with Mallets,' was, ac- passed across his mind were evidently but cording to the well-known chronicler of the those guests of youth which abide only with period, all by the example of them of the few who have a special vocation for such Ghent.' Nicholas le Flamand deterred inquiries. Life and man had been the subthem from pulling down the Louvre by ject of his meditations; and living from his urging the expediency of waiting to see childhood amid the whirl of intense action, what success might attend the Flemish in- when, the time came to take a part, action surgents. At Rheims, Chalons-on-the- was as easy to him as thought unaccomMarne, at Orleans, Beauvoisin, the like panied by action to Hamlet. He is not designs were entertained. The rebellion embarrassed by scruples. He never shrinks of the Jacquerie,' says Froissart,; was from what is needful because it involves never so terrible as this was likely to have suffering and danger, whether to others or been.' Brabant, Burgundy, and the lower to himself. He is not selfish, or, at the part of Germany were in a dangerous con- earlier part of his career, strongly ambidition; and in England Wat Tyler's re- tious; but neither is he generous nor self-sacbellion was contemporaneous, and not un- rificing. He is grave-hearted. His aspiraconnected with what was going on in Flan- tions are not after an ideal excellence, but ders." (Preface.) It was the first great to carry out a fixed purpose is the law of upheaval of the popular element in modern his being. He knows himself and the place society. At the end of the last century the that belongs to him; he has calculated his "fountains of the great deep were broken powers and ascertained their limits, and by open," and the institutions which had sur- a deliberate act resolved that he will try the vived many a lesser shock went down be- venture and abide the consequence. He neath the great deluge. In our own day the has had no temptation to conceal from himstorm continues to rage throughout no small self any of the difficulties in his way, for part of the world; nor is it likely to cease his is that calm courage that sees things as in those of our sons; but the first murmurs they are. He has small patriotic enthusiof the tempest went forth from among the asm, and aspires after no golden age. He wealthy burghers of Flanders in the four- looks on human society as a stormy sea of teenth century. passions, that need to be ruled; but he desires that they should be ruled by a manly at least, if not a disinterested, intelligence, - not by caprice in high place or by appetites more brutal than those restrained. Sagacious in intellect and fixed in purpose, his native dignity of character retains for him that ascendency over his fellow-men which bis daring and stern justice had early acquired. Without either breadth of sympathy or subtle refinement of thought, he carries everything before him by his strength, consistency, and efficiency. To trace the changes made in such a character,

The leader of the insurgent party had been Jacques van Artevelde, who was murdered in a popular tumult. Things had long gone ill the men who had successively headed the revolt had pushed themselves into eminence by courage and military skill, but had subsequently failed from want of personal ascendency and statesman-like ability. With their failure the play begins. Philip van Artevelde has lived the life of a retired student; but Van den Bosch, a rough hard-headed chief of the insurgents, has shrewdness enough to know that the powers

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