What, however, Mr. Clarke has to say about the facts of Gordon’s life is, at best, inaccurate. It is Mr. Sutherland to whom our gratitude is due here, gratitude for having discovered for us all the details of the poet’s life which it is necessary for us to know.[2]
What, then, remains for any other critic to do? There remains to him, as it seems to me, the task of doing what Mr. Clarke tells us he did not propose to do, “of criticising these volumes,” and also of trying, as befits one who comes later, and to whom, therefore, the events of the past have fallen into that symmetry and proper proportion that the events of the present can scarcely ever fall into: of trying, I say, to bring out more clearly (one aspect of which he has done little more than indicate), the real, deep, true significance of the poet’s work; in a word, of trying to understand, instead of being “astonished” at it.
The first thing to notice about Gordon’s poetry is, that it is almost all in regular and rymed rhythms. There is not a line of blank verse in it. Now, a “fine faculty” for regular and rymed rhythms is by no means a synonym for a “fine lyrical faculty.” Shelley, our greatest master in poetry of pure melody, has a “fine faculty” for regular and rymed rhythms, but has also a fine faculty for irregular rhythms: lines in which the regular rhythm is broken, in order that a more subtle melody may be expressed, are frequent in him. In Mr. Swinburne such lines are rare—he has a fine faculty for regular and rymed rhythms, but his faculty for irregular rhythms is (let us say) less fine. Gordon, who is the disciple of this first side of Mr. Swinburne’s technical talent, who, in his turn, is a disciple of the first side of Shelley’s—Gordon, I say, is in this respect to Mr. Swinburne what Mr. Swinburne is to Shelley.
Mr. Hammersley, one of the few survivors of that peculiar phase of colonial and Victorian feeling which produced the poetry of Gordon, and who “may say he knew him intimately” —tells us[3] how he “was often amused to hear him quote from the poets, and his recitations used to make me laugh outright. One day I said, ‘Hang it, Gordon, you can write good poetry, but you can’t read.’” What was the matter with his “reading,” then? He used to “read” in “a sing-song fashion.” Mr. Woods, too, tells us[4] that “Gordon had an odd way of reciting poetry, and his delivery was monotonous; but,” he adds, “his way of emphasising the beautiful portions of what he recited was charming from its earnestness.” Gordon’s criticism on his own verses was: “They don’t ring so badly after all, old fellow, do they?” He had no faculty for irregular rhythms. He cannot, then, be said to possess a “fine lyrical faculty;” he possessed a fine faculty for regular and rymed rhythms. (As for his rymes, as rymes, they are as a rule excellent, although there is often too little of the “poet or prophet,” as he says, in them, and too much of the “jingler of rymes,” the dealer in “verse-jingle chimes.”) Since, however, this faculty of his is a fine faculty, it must not be described as (in the usual and bad sense of the word) imitative. There are, I think, passages in him that Byron might have written (“To my Sister”), that Lord Tennyson might have written (“The Road to Avernus,” scene x.), that Mr. Swinburne might have written (“A Dedication”), and the latter are frequent. In no other poets, save Wordsworth and the earlier works of Mr. Arnold, do I find precisely this same sort of (shall I say) parallelism of feeling and expression on certain subjects that I do in Mr. Swinburne and Gordon. But it is, I think, very open to question whether Gordon would have grown, as Mr. Arnold has, into a purely distinctive style of his own. Gordon is terribly lacking in variety: to live with a close study of him for several days is one of the most trying of critical tasks. “My rymes,” he asks—
“My rymes, are they stale? If my metre
is varied, one chime rings through all;
one chime—though I sing more or sing less,
I have but one string to my lute.”
I doubt, I say, whether under any circumstances Gordon would have produced, as Mr. Hammersley thought, “poems worthy to be ranked with some of the masterpieces of the English language.” He had not patience enough, he had not clear-sightedness enough! “A more dare-devil rider,” says Mr. Hammersley, “never crossed a horse.... As a steeplechase rider he was, of course, in the very first rank, and his name is indelibly associated with many of the most famous chases run in Victoria, although in my opinion, and I think in that of many good judges too, he was deficient in what is termed ‘good hands,’ and when it came to a finish was far behind a Mount or a Watson.” (And, considering his shortsightedness, which Mr. Woods designates as “painful,” this is not to be wondered at). It is the same with his poetry. All in his poetry that is good has been done at a rush; the rest is inferior, poor, and sometimes quite worthless. He has little, if any, sense of real artistic workmanship either in whole or in parts: “he is deficient in what is termed ‘good hands.’” Take, for instance, his dramatic lyric, “Ashtaroth.” It is worth reading. There are two beautiful songs in it, “On the Current,” and “Oh! days and years departed.” There are a few fine passages, a few fine dramatic touches, in it, and one splendid outburst of Orion’s (“I hate thee not, thy grievous plight”), but the poem, taken as a whole is, I say, worth reading. Many of the speeches are weak, and some are not poetry at all, but rymed prose, and bad at that. A sustained effort, such as a piece like this requires, was impossible to him. I say nothing of the ludicrous attempt at an adaptation of Faust, Mephistopheles and Margarete, which is the basis of the poem: I merely remark that, judged by its own poor standard of judgment, it is quite a failure. Perhaps some day we shall have a selection from the poet’s work, from which what is worthless will be eliminated, in order that all our attention may be fixed on what is good, and perhaps the selector will have the courage to dismiss all this poem, save some dozen or so of extracts, into the gulf of oblivion or an appendix. Encumbered as Gordon at present is with such an amount of worthless work, there is a danger that much of what is good may perish also.
All his poetry that is good, I say, has been done at a rush. The dramatic touches in it are as frequent as they are fine. Take, for instance, this from the “Rhyme of Joyous Guard.”—Lancelot, old, worn-out, feeling that “there is nothing good for him under the sun but to perish as” (his bright past) “has perished,” is thinking of the close of his career and Arthur’s: of the discovery of his amour with Guinevere, his siege in Joyous Guard, his encounters with “brave Gawain,” whom he virtually slew, and then “the crime of Modred,” and “the king by the knave’s hand stricken”—