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systems of Europe, and clear the ground for the new edifices of our century, had begun to work against him now his mission was accomplished?

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So at the end courage seemed to desert him. He fled in panic-not that he ever feared for his life, as malignant contemporaries pretended-to Paris, when coolness of head might at least have repaired some of the disaster of Waterloo. It was superstition-the sense, after all deep within him, because it showed itself at such moments, that there is a moral government of the universe, and that it had pronounced against him. His last letter concludes with a flicker of simulated confidence, All is not lost,' and goes on to contemplate a furious struggle in France. With the words 'surtout du courage et de la fermeté,' he takes his leave of us. By the irony of fate, which punishes late, but punishes, it was his destiny to be threatened with death, if he did not abdicate, by that very Davout whom he had loaded with honours and plunder, and whom he had despatched to harry and devastate North Germany with merciless severity. He threw everything away, diminished and devastated France, because in the pride of his success he imagined that force and force alone swayed the destinies of the world. The greatest of his kind-great with commanding intellect and will-he saw the creations of his arms vanish like a dream. Few tragedies are deeper and sadder than this—that the man, who with many rare and noble qualities seemed born to regenerate his race and benefit the world, should have ended his life hated and feared by a whole continent for his misdeeds.

*The story of Napoleon praying solemnly in a Dresden church on the eve of the fatal expedition to Moscow, at an hour when his spirit was troubled with forebodings, is a sign that, for all his outward indifference, he wished to have God on his side. Chance, after all, plays a great part in all war; and what is chance?

ART

ART. IV.-1. Fo'c's'le Yarns: including Betsy Lee, and other Poems. London, 1881.

2. The Doctor, and other Poems. By T. E. Brown, M.A., late Fellow of Oriel College. London, 1887.

3. The Manx Witch, and other Poems. By the Same. London and New York, 1889.

4. Old John, and other Poems. By the Same. London and New York, 1893.

WHA

WHAT is it we expect from poetry? Above all things, we expect to be kindled; the true poet bears in him a spark of fire; we receive it by sympathy, and our own emotions are set aflame by it. But the methods of the poet vary, and are divided into two main branches. Epic poetry and dramatic poetry kindle us through the vivid presentation of man as he acts among his fellows for noble ends; lyric poetry concentres itself on the hour and scene at which emotion is highest, and by its cadences calls up that which in our own hearts is likest to the culminating passion.

Lyric poetry has been the glory of the present century in England. Some have said (and Tennyson, we believe, is among those who have said it) that Goethe was the greatest lyric poet that ever lived. We do not demur; but it is hard to set anything even in Goethe above some of our English lyrics; and not to make such an assertion without examples, let us instance, in Tennyson himself, the "O that 'twere possible' of 'Maud,' and in Shelley, the closing stanza of the Adonais.'

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So pervading has the lyrical spirit been, that the true narrative poem, in which the interest lies rather in the total action than in special moments of concentrated feeling, has become rather a rarity in the present century. Still, there are notable instances of it; such as Wordsworth's Michael' and 'The Brothers'; the story of Haidée in Byron's 'Don Juan'; and of course Scott's Marmion,' and its kindred; Crabbe's rough but strong pictures of common life, and Clough's more delicate delineations. As contrasted with these, such poems as 'The Ancient Mariner' and the Idylls of the King' must be reckoned as emblematic rather than truly narrative; the spirit of them is different, and much more akin to the lyrical.

The poems of the Rev. T. E. Brown, the titles of which are prefixed to the present article, belong for the most part to the class of true narrative poems. That is, three-fourths of them belong to this class; lyrics there are among them, and some of no slight beauty; but story is the predominant element.

It is at some hazard, and not without a feeling of temerity, that a critic can adventure the opinion, that poems which have not yet attained a high degree of popularity belong to that class which posterity will not let die. And if the question were one of comparative excellence, caution would be still more desirable. But there are certain marks which (apart from all comparison) characterize poetry that will last; above all, this mark, that the thing said or sung shall not have been said or sung before, and shall be also interesting that it shall touch the heart. We think that this mark of permanence belongs to Mr. Brown's poetry; he depicts for us a region that has never been depicted before; he shows us men and women different from any men or women that poet or novelist has hitherto shown-but men and women real, full of life, natural in spite of many peculiarities and oddities, strong in spite of many weaknesses. Such pictures of life are worth preserving; and the poet himself, in his personal feeling, has also phases that have never before been rendered in verse; sudden turns, opening out in a few words unexpected vistas. Individuality stamps the lyrics in these volumes as well as the narrative poems; and this (provided it be a worthy individuality) is the surest guarantee of permanence.

Before illustrating what we have said by quotations or detailed comments, a few words about the writer who is the subject of our article will be in place. T. E. Brown, born in 1830, was the son of a Manx clergyman, educated first in his native island, afterwards at Oxford, where he obtained two first-classes and a fellowship. He took orders, but never was engaged in parochial work; he spent the greater part of his life as an assistant master at Clifton College; from this he retired in 1892, and his home for the next five years was at Ramsey. In 1895 he was offered, but declined, the Archdeaconry of the Isle of Man. He died on October 29, 1897, quite suddenly, while in the act of giving an address to the boys at Clifton College, where he was on a visit.

The mere externals of such a life do not present anything extraordinary. But Mr. Brown's sudden death created an unusual degree of sorrow, an unusual sense of loss, in the many who (whether as friend, colleague, or pupil) had known him; and whatever may have been his successes as a schoolmaster (and these we believe were not small) it is certain that all who came in contact with him were impressed with the power of his mind and the strength of his affections. His poems bear witness to the same qualities; and since his death there has been expressed in various quarters (notably the 'Spectator,' the 'Speaker,'

'Speaker,' and the New Review' of last December) the opinion that what he wrote has more than common merit.

We have spoken of the strength of his affections; and these, above all, were concentrated on the island in which he spent all the early, as well as the closing, years of his life. He was a Manxinan to the core; and the humours and fervid temperament of his own people, their varied occupations seafaring, seafishing, farming, mining their curious knowledge and quaint ignorance, became part of the tissue of his mind, unaltered by any wider experience. Yet wider experience he had; for not only had he (like Ulysses) ' seen the cities and known the mind of many men,' but also the deepest problems of human life and destiny engaged his thoughts much, and he formed his conclusions fearlessly. In all such matters he scorned merely intellectual investigation; he put heart and soul into the enquiry, and provided he were confident that his insight was just, was little careful as to the reasoning by which it might be proved. But we must hasten to give some account of his works.

'Betsy Lee,' the first published of his poems, has also been the most popular. Perhaps, as a whole, it is the most poetical of the narrative poems. There is plenty of humour in it too; our favourite passage in this line is the little conversation between Tom Baynes and his sweetheart, after Tom has disconcerted and driven away his rival, by turning the teat of the cow he was milking so as to drench the fine new waistcoat of that worthy.

"Aw, Tom!" says Betsy; "Aw, Betsy," says I;
"Whatever!" says she, and she begun to cry.
Well,” I says, "it's no wonder o' me,

With your ransy-tansy-tissimitee"

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that is, we suppose, with your chattering' (but ransy-tansytissimitee is the burden of a child's song). Betsy, it will be understood, has been carrying on' with the rival to a degree that Tom found unbearable. The word 'Whatever!' suggests a wonderful combination of dismay, anger, and amusement.

A roughness in the scansion of the second of the above lines will be noticed; this is a common feature in Mr. Brown's poems, and is meant to represent (and does not unnaturally represent) the careless rapid speech of the supposed narrator, who is a rough but tenderhearted seaman.

Tom Baynes is both hero and narrator in 'Betsy Lee'; in the other poems he is the narrator of, and an occasional actor in, the story. With all his roughness of style, he has a refined soul.

soul. We should be sorry to say that the sentiments of the following passage are impossible in a common sailor who is also a religious-minded man; and the Celtic fire in the Manxman may predispose to artistic appreciation. Tom is

supposed in his voyages to have visited Italy, and to have seen the Madonnas of Raphael or of Perugino: Here is his account of them :

"Whoever made the likes o' them

Their feet was in Jerusalem;

Whoever thought that a woman could look

Like that he knew the Holy Book;

He knew the mind of God; he knew

What a woman could be, and he drew and he drew

Till he got the touch; and I'm a fool

That was almost walloped out o' the school,

I was that stupid, but I'll tell ye! I've got

A soul in my inside, whether or not,

And I know the way the chap was feelin

When he made them picthers-he must ha' been kneelin
All the time, I think, and prayin

To God for to help him; and it's likely sayin

He was paintin the Queen-they calls her the Queen

Of Heaven, but of coorse she couldn ha' been

But that's the sort-a woman lifted

To Heaven, with a breast like snow that's sifted,

And a eye that's fixed on God hisself—

Now where's your wivin and thrivin and pelf?

And sweethearts, and widdies well stocked with the rhino?
Ah! that's the thing likest God that I know.'

-(Fo'c's'le Yarns,' pp. 113, 114.)

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These lines are from the poem entitled Christmas Rose' a weird tragedy. Christmas Rose is a girl, who as an infant was saved out of a shipwreck by a faithful negro, who dies in saving her. As she is the only survivor, her parentage is wholly unknown; her nationality is conjectured, but only conjectured, to be Spanish. Brought thus mysteriously into the midst of a race alien to her, she perishes equally mysteriously by lightning on the hills-a lightning which she seems to have sought. In the interval between her birth and death she causes the death of one brave boy, and the ruin of another-both falling hopelessly in love with her, a love to which she cannot respond. Though the cause of such suffering, she yet escapes deep blame. Perhaps it is her death which absolves her in the reader's mind; what she suffers is the necessary counterpart of what she has done. Anyhow, it will be seen that such a poem gives plenty of scope for discussion on the character of women;

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