Fugitive Poetry.
Introduction.
"The world is full of Poetry; the air
Is living with its spirit; and the waves
Dance to the music of its melodies,
And sparkle in its brightness."
"The great tendency of poetry," writes Channing, "is to carry the mind beyond and above the beaten, dusty, weary walks of ordinary life, to lift it into a purer element, and to breathe into it more profound and generous emotion. It reveals to us the loveliness of Nature, brings back the freshness of youthful feeling, revives the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the springtime of our being, strengthens our interest in human nature by vivid delineations of its tenderest and loftiest feelings, knits us by new ties with universal being, and, through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to lay hold on the future life." And says Gray in his Life of Robert Ferguson, "Works of philosophy and science are only the study of a few superior minds, but the productions of imagination are perused by men of every description. The learned and the ignorant, the grave and the gay, the young and the old, find something attractive in the varied pages of the inspired bard. Hence is the tendency of such effusions of the utmost importance in forming the taste, and cultivating the moral perceptions, especially of the youthful mind. An heroic spirit has been roused by a patriotic song, a hard and proud mind softened to sympathy by a powerful representation of fictitious distress. The distant wanderer, restored to his native scenes by a lively description, has blessed the poet's pen; the solitary thoughts of the invalid have been transported to green fields and cooling streams, and his languid ear charmed with the woodland song; even the pious soul is awakened to a more exalted feeling of devotion by the divine strains of the inspired minstrel."
While we read and realise the truthfulness of the above, we may well say, with Campbell—
"Oh, deem not, 'midst this worldly strife,
An idle art the poet brings;
Let high philosophy control,
And sages calm the stream of life,
'Tis he refines its fountain springs,
The nobler passions of the soul."
Many are the stars that shine in the firmament of poetic literature, and, though there are some of lesser magnitude than others, all are light-giving. The many minds that once were with us are now, with imperishable beauty, embalmed to us in their writings; "Therein the dead heart speaketh, the clay-cold tongue is eloquent;" "Their sound is gone into all lands, and their words to the end of the world." When we look at the shelves of our libraries, we are led to exclaim with Tupper, "Oh, books! ye monuments of mind; concrete wisdom of the wisest; sweet solaces of daily life; proofs and results of immortality; trees yielding all fruits, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations! groves of knowledge, where all may eat, nor fear a flaming sword; gentle comrades, kind advisers, friends, comforts, treasures; helps, governments, diversities of tongues, who can weigh your worth!" The literature of the present day is illustrated and adorned by numerous compilations from the writings of our best authors, and these are found to be of inestimable value to those who have not the leisure, means, or application to profit from the perusal of books in their original form. At the feast of reason, where we feed our minds from the stores of the great and grave; where we drink wine from the fountain of wisdom, and, like the giant in Homer, exclaim, "More! this is divine;" where we see many flowerets from the fields of literature adorning the table and delighting the eye; where we see the table overspread with the most savoury dishes, suiting every palate, teeming with the richest nutrition, that we exclaim like Burns over his haggis, "O what a glorious sight, warm-reekin', rich!" these compilations find their place at the festive board as silver baskets loaded with choice fruits, or we find them on the sideboards as golden caskets containing most precious jewels. Many times we refresh our lips with a grape from these silver baskets, and say, "This is delicious; from whose garden is it?" Many a time we take and examine a jewel from these golden caskets, and say, "This is a gem of sterling worth; from whose mine is it?" and on not a few sundry occasions we get the answer, "Anonymous." On coming across these gems—and many gems are truly of poetic worth—we have often
said with Burns, when he heard Lapraik's song—"I've scarce heard aught describe sae weel
What gen'rous, manly bosoms feel;
Thought I, 'Is this frae Pope or Steele,
Or Beattie's mint?'
They tauld me 'twas an odd kind chiel,
Whose name's 'Unkent.'"
We sing the praises of the great masters, and not unworthily, who have by their works raised monuments amongst us more durablethan brass. We love to learn from all those master minds that have shone in the literary world from the Alfred the Great of the Anglo-Saxons to the Alfred the Great of the nineteenth century, Tennyson. We all have our favourite poets. We delight in Chaucer, the father "of English poetry, and admire the Spenser that rekindled the lamp when poesy grew dim. We have pleasure in the Sackville that shed the dawn on the Elizabethan era, when arose the glorious suit, Shakspeare, the "man of a thousand souls." With what pleasure do we read the works of those who hold a place in the solar system of poesy around the Bard of Avon, and with what delight do we strive to give our favourites a place in the firmament of literature, to rank them next to Shakspeare. Some take Milton, "whose richly jewelled and majestic prose alone would raise him to a lofty rank among the Raleighs and the Bacons, the Taylors and the Gibbons of our English tongue, and whose song," writes Macaulay, "so sublime and so holy that it would not misbecome the lips of those ethereal Virtues whom he saw with that inner eye, which no calamity could darken, flinging down on the jasper pavement their crowns of amaranth and gold." Some delight in the author of "Hudibras," and place him prince and paramount of English burlesque. Some praise their Dryden, and endorse Samuel Johnson's statement that "Dryden found English poetry brick and left it marble," while they are compelled to throw the dramatic filth that dims his laurels to the dunghill. Others take up Pope, the prince of the artificial school, and claim for him a place of infallibility. We admire the beautiful hymns of Isaac Watts, that have made his name familiar in every family. With pleasure we make mention of Allan Ramsay, whose "Gentle Shepherd" is the finest Scottish Pastoral Drama ever written, nor shall we forget Robert Blair's fine blank verse poem, "The Grave." Some delight in Thomson, the author of "The Seasons," and admire "the fat and lazy poet" who wrote the "The Castle of Indolence," which is considered his finest piece of literary workmanship. Some have a great appreciation of Gray, who is best known by his famous "Elegy," and say, with Cowper, that he is "the only poet since Shakspeare entitled to the character of the Sublime whilst others side with Johnson, and "don't think Gray a first-rate poet." Some delight in the gentle-hearted Goldsmith, and, with Bishop Percy, speak of his "elegant and enchanting style," and say with poor dying Gray, when he heard "The Deserted Village" read at Malvern, "That man is a poet," whilst others call him, as did Warton, "the first of solemn coxcombs," or "an inspired idiot," as did Horace Walpole. We have Shenstone, who has written the finest specimen of the English Pastoral Ballad, and we must make mention of the Wartons, Mark Akenside, Edward Young, Beattie, Churchill, McPherson—the Scottish Chatterton as he is sometimes called—who gave Ossian's Poems to the world, and Thomas Chatterton, "the marvellous boy that perished in his pride." There are those who are enraptured with the muse of Moore, whose crown is a circlet of shining gems, but allowed to have much of the drawing-room sheen about them. While some would claim Scotland's wreath for Scott, the picturesque painter in words, the poet of chivalry and romance, others give the title of Scotland's National Bard to Robert Burns, the peasant in "hodden grey," who speaks to the hearts of his countrymen, the gentle and stirring spirit of whose poetry has spread into every home and over every country where the English tongue is known. We have a pleasure in the charming compositions of Cowper, "the pensive bard of Olney," who has been termed "the sensitive plant in the garden of literature," while others delight in lauding the illustrious but unhappy Byron, who poured upon the world a flood of poetry, "the strangest mixture of shining gold and black mire." There are some who admire Crabbe, "who was," Byron said, "Nature's sternest painter, yet the best." And, when we come to the end of the eighteenth, and beginning of the nineteenth century, what a constellation of poets surround us, and attract our attention by their brilliancy. We have Samuel Rogers, Hogg, Montgomery, Tannahill, Campbell, Mrs. Hernans, Kirke White, Bishop Heber, Shelley, Keats, Hannah Moore, and Joanna Baillie. We have also, and it were unfair not to mention, Bowles, of sonnet fame; Pollock, whose sacred epic, "The Course of Time," will live as long as time doth run its course; Ferguson, Bloomfield, and Allan Cunningham. We delight in the "magnificent dreams" of "gentle" Coleridge, the "unmanageable themes" mastered by Southey. We have a reverence for "simple" Wordsworth, the great master of the Lake school, and admire the delightful drolleries of the humorous Hood. We have also to be grateful for the pleasure we derive from the Knowleses, the Henry Taylors, and the Talfourds of the nineteenth century, who remind us that we are the countrymen of Shakspeare, Jonson, and Massinger. Coming down nearer our own day we have to bear in remembrance the names of the "Delta" of Blackwood, the "L. E. L." of the Literary Gazette, the Brownings, Professor Aytoun, Thom, Motherwell, Alexander Smith, Hon. Mrs. Norton, Eliza Cook, Charles Swain, Charles Mackay, and Martin F. Tupper. While we have thus made mention of the more prominent of our British Bards, we are in courtesy and duty bound not to overlook those who have flourished and are flourishing on the opposite shores of the Atlantic, such as Edgar Allan Poe, Sigourney, Willis, Whittier, Bryant, and their Laureate, Longfellow, who is perhaps as well known in Britain's Isles as is our own Laureate, Tennyson. And who among us denies the position our present Laureate holds as head of the poets in the passing generation, or dare say "the pure and steady radiance of his sweet varied music" is unworthy of the Royal honour? While we have passed in review before us names familiar to us, and cherished in our memories, we have omitted many sweet singers worthy of notice.
From an article on "The Poetry of the Day," we may aptly quote the following "Hardly a magazine is now published," observed Moore to Scott, when talking of the poetry of the day, "but would once have made a reputation." "Ecod!" said Sir Walter, "we were very lucky to have come before these fellows!" If one were not disarmed by the good-humour of the remark, it might be hinted that both the interlocutors have now subsided into the rank of the minor poets of their own generation, and that therefore the compliment paid to the lesser lights of our day was not very extravagant. There may be plenty of Scotts and Moores among us, but assuredly we do not boast of many Wordsworths and Byrons, or Shelleys and Keats! But nevertheless there is in these last days an astonishing undercurrent of poetry welling constantly on, and working its way towards the light."
There is a poet for every palate, and, while we revere the memories and praise the works of those whose names are written on the Scroll of Fame, what have we to say about the many gems that have been written throughout all these poetic eras; gems whose sterling merit has found them a place in many a standard class-book; gems whose genuineness finds them an undeniable place in many a high-class magazine; gems whose worth entitles them to creep into the vagrant corner of a newspaper to enjoy light for, alas! only a day; gems, bearing the signature—Anonymous.
It has been our design, therefore, to make a selection from these leaves that have been drifting on the stream of Time, kept afloat by their own intrinsic merit, not because they emanated from the pen of a Shakspeare, a Scott, a Burns, a Byron, a Tupper, a Tennyson, or any other of our known or acknowledged authors. Doubtless, a number of fugitive effusions have been sunk in the waters, while the sparkling beauty of many has been the means of their preservation or rescue from oblivion. These fugitive writings may be called, "Bread cast on the waters, found after many days."
Our Ballad Literature, much of which is anonymous, is but meagrely represented in the present collection, as it was not our intention to encroach on a field already gleaned, and whose "gipsy children of song" have been presented in many collected forms. To men such as Percy, Herd, Scott, Motherwell, Buchan, Whitelaw, Roberts, and others, we owe a debt of gratitude for their labours. When we have so many volumes of Ballad Literature, and more especially "The Legendary Ballads of England and Scotland," in present series, it is not within our province to reproduce any examples from the same.
So far as we are aware no such collection as the present has as yet been made, and feeling that a Selection from the many fugitive poems that have been floating about so long in the literature of the past and present, presented in a collected form, would be a something to be desired, a something called for, and, as we shall trust, something that will prove acceptable to all lovers of poesy; we set ourselves with "fear and trembling," yet hopefully to the work, which has been to us one of pleasant research along "the hedgerows and leafy lanes of literature."