Alexander Smith never rises to the heights nor strikes the distinct notes of Dobell; but the Life Drama is really on the whole better than either Balder or The Roman, and is full of what may be called, from opposite points of view, happy thoughts and quaint conceits, expressed in a stamp of verse certainly not quite original, but melodious always, and sometimes very striking. He has not yet had his critical resurrection, and perhaps none such will ever exalt him to a very high prominent position. He seems to suffer from the operation of that mysterious but very real law which decrees that undeserved popularity shall be followed by neglect sometimes even more undeserved. But when he does finally find his level, it will not be a very low one.
To the Spasmodics may be appended yet another list of bards who can claim here but the notice of a sentence or a clause, though by no means uninteresting to the student, and often very interesting indeed to the student-lover of poetry:—the two Joneses—Ernest (1819-69), a rather silly victim of Chartism, for which he went to prison, but a generous person and master of a pretty twitter enough; and Ebenezer (1820-60), a London clerk, author of Studies of Sensation and Event, a rather curious link between the Cockney school of the beginning of the century and some minor poets of our own times, but overpraised by his rediscoverers some years ago; W. C. Bennett, a popular song-writer; William Cory ( -1892), earlier and better known as Johnson, an Eton master, a scholar, an admirable writer of prose and in Ionica of verse slightly effeminate but with a note in it not unworthy of one glance of its punning title; W. C. Roscoe (1823-59), grandson of the historian, a minor poet in the best sense of the term; William Allingham (1824-89), sometime editor of Fraser, and a writer of verse from whom at one time something might have been expected; Thomas Woolner, a sculptor of great, and—in My Beautiful Lady, Pygmalion, etc.—a poet of estimable merit, whose first-named volume attracted rather disproportionate praise at its first appearance. As one thinks of the work of these and others—often enjoyable, sometimes admirable, and long ago or later admired and enjoyed—the unceremoniousness of despatching them so slightly brings a twinge of shame. But it is impossible to do justice to their work, or to the lyrics, merry or sensuous, of Mortimer Collins, who was nearly a real poet of vers de société, and had a capital satiric and a winning romantic touch; the stirring ballads of Walter Thornbury (which, however, would hardly have been written but for Macaulay on the one hand and Barham on the other) and the ill-conditioned but clever Radical railing of Robert Brough at "Gentlemen." But if they cannot be discussed, they shall at least be mentioned. On three others, Frederick Locker, Arthur Hugh Clough, and "Owen Meredith" (Lord Lytton), we must dwell longer.
Clough has been called by persons of distinction a "bad poet"; but this was only a joke, and, with all respect to those who made it, a rather bad joke. The author of "Qua Cursum Ventus," of the marvellous picture of the advancing tide in "Say not the struggle," and of not a few other things, was certainly no bad poet, though it would not be uncritical to call him a thin one. He was born at Liverpool on New Year's Day 1819, spent part of his childhood in America, went to Rugby very young and distinguished himself there greatly, though it may be doubted whether the peculiar system which Arnold had just brought into full play was the healthiest for a self-conscious and rather morbid nature like Clough's. From Rugby he went to Balliol, and was entirely upset, not, as is sometimes most unjustly said, by Newman, but by the influence of W. G. Ward, a genial Puck of Theology, who, himself caring for nothing but mathematics, philosophy, and play-acting, disturbed the consciences of others by metaphysical quibbles, and then took refuge in the Church of Rome. Clough, who had been elected to an Oriel fellowship, threw it up in 1848, turned freethinker, and became the head of an educational institution in London called University Hall. He did not hold this very long, receiving a post in the Education Office, which he held in various forms till his death in 1861 at Florence.
It is not necessary to be biassed by Matthew Arnold's musical epicede of "Thyrsis" in order to admit, nor should any bias against his theological views and his rather restless character be sufficient to induce any one to deny, a distinct vein of poetry in Clough. His earliest and most popular considerable work, The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich (the title of which was originally rather different,) is written in hexameters which do not, like Kingsley's, escape the curse of that "pestilent heresy"; and the later Amours de Voyage and Dipsychus, though there are fine passages in both, bring him very close to the Spasmodic school, of which in fact he was an unattached and more cultivated member, with fancies directed rather to religiosity than to strict literature. Ambarvalia had preceded the Bothie, and other things followed. On the whole, Clough is one of the most unsatisfactory products of that well-known form of nineteenth century scepticism which has neither the strength to believe nor the courage to disbelieve "and have done with it." He hankers and looks back, his "two souls" are always warring with each other, and though the clash and conflict sometimes bring out fine things (as in the two pieces above cited and the still finer poem at Naples with the refrain "Christ is not risen"), though his "Latest Decalogue" has satirical merit, and some of his country poems, written without undercurrent of thought, are fresh and genial, he is on the whole a failure. But he is a failure of a considerable poet, and some fragments of success chequer him.
Frederick Locker, who on his second marriage took the additional name of Lampson, was born in 1821 of a family long connected with the Navy and with Greenwich Hospital. He himself held for some years a post in the Admiralty; but he was much more addicted to society and to literature than to official work. His first marriage with Lady Charlotte Bruce strengthened his social position, and his second gave him wealth. He published, as early as 1857, a volume of light verse entitled London Lyrics, which, with the work of Prior, Praed, and Mr. Austin Dobson, stands at the head of its kind in English. But—an exceedingly rare thing for amateur as well as for professional writers in our time—he was not tempted either by profit or fame to write copiously. He added during his not short life, which closed in May 1895, a few more poems to London Lyrics. He edited in 1867 an anthology of his own kind of verse called Lyra Elegantiarum, and in 1879 he produced a miscellany of verse and prose, original and selected, called Patchwork, in which some have seen his most accomplished and characteristic production. In form it is something like Southey's Omniana, partly a commonplace book, partly full of original things; but the extracts are so choicely made and the original part is so delightful that it is not quite like any book in the language. If Charles Lamb had been of Mr. Locker's time and circumstances he might have made its fellow. "My Guardian Angel," a short prose anecdote, is, as nearly as the present writer knows, unique. Latterly its author was chiefly known as a man of much hospitality and a collector of choice books. He would not do anything bad, and apparently he did not feel inclined to do anything good. And as this is a century when almost everybody must still be doing, and taking the chance of goodness and badness, such an exception to the rule should meet with honour.
No poet of the period, perhaps none of the century, occupies a position less settled by general criticism, or more difficult to settle, than that of Edward Robert, first Earl of Lytton, for a long time known in poetry as "Owen Meredith." The only son of the novelist, he was born on 8th November 1831, and after going to Harrow, but not to either university, entered the diplomatic service at the age of eighteen. In this he filled a great many different offices at a great many different places for nearly thirty years, till, after succeeding to his father's title, he was made First Minister at Lisbon, and then in 1876 Viceroy of India. This post he gave up in 1880, and after the return of the Tory party to power, was sent in 1887 as Ambassador to Paris, where he was very popular, and where he died in 1892.
Despite the fact that his time, save for the interval of 1880-87, was thus uninterruptedly occupied with business, Lord Lytton was an indefatigable writer of verse; while in The Ring of Amasis he tried the prose romance. His chief poetical books were Clytemnestra (1855); The Wanderer (1859), which contains some charming lyrical work; Lucile (1860), a verse story; Songs of Servia (Serbski Pesme) (1861); Orval, or the Fool of Time and Chronicles and Characters (1869); Fables in Song (1874); Glenaveril, a very long modern epic (1885); and After Paradise, or Legends of Exile (1887). Besides these he collaborated in 1861 with his friend Julian Fane in a poem, Tannhäuser, which, though too much of a Tennysonian echo, has good passages; and after his death two volumes equal if not superior to anything he had done, Marah, a collection of short poems, and King Poppy, a fantastic epic, were published. This extensive and not always easily accessible work is conveniently represented by two volumes of selections, one representing chiefly the earlier and shorter works, edited by Miss Betham-Edwards in 1890, the other drawn mostly from the later and longer, edited by his daughter, Lady Betty Balfour, in 1894. This latter was accompanied by reprints of The Wanderer and Lucile.
The difficulties in criticism above referred to arise, not merely from the voluminousness of this work, nor from the fact that Lord Lytton shares with all the poets of his special generation, except Rossetti, that inability to hit upon a definite and distinct manner of his own which is so frequently and strangely remarkable in what may be called intermediate poetical periods. Indeed in his later years he did strike out something like a very distinct style. But he suffers more than any other poet of anything like his gifts from two faults, one of which is perhaps the fault that hurts a poet most with the vulgar, and the other that which does him most harm with critics. He was so frankly pleased with, and so apt at imitating the work of his great contemporaries, that he would publish things to which fools gave the name of plagiarisms—when they were in fact studies in the manner of Tennyson, Heine, Browning, and others. And in the second place, though he frequently rewrote, it seemed impossible for him to retrench and concentrate. To this may be added his fondness for extremely long narrative poems, the taste for which has certainly gone out, while it may be doubted whether, unless they are pure romances of adventure, they are ever good things.
The consequence of all this, and perhaps of other things less legitimately literary, such as political partnership, has hitherto been that Lord Lytton has been ranked very far indeed below his proper place. For he had two poetical gifts, the higher of them in a high, the lower in an eminent degree. The first was the gift of true lyric, not seldom indeed marred by the lack of polish above noticed, but real, true, and constant, from the "Fata Morgana" and "Buried Heart" of The Wanderer to the "Experientia Docet" and "Selenites" of Marah, more than thirty years later. The other was a much more individual power, and by some might be ranked higher. It is the gift of what can best generally be called ironical narration, using irony in its proper sense of covert suggestive speech. This took various forms, indicated with more or less clearness in the very titles of Chronicles and Characters and Fables in Song,—symbolic-mystical in Legends of Exile (where not only some of the legends but the poems called "Uriel" and "Strangers" are among the best things of the author and highly typical of his later manner), and fantastically romantic, with a strong touch of symbolism, in King Poppy. And when, as happens in most of the pieces mentioned above and many others, the combination welds itself into a kind of passionate allegory, few poets show a better power of transporting the reader in the due poetic manner. There can be no doubt that if Lord Lytton had developed this faculty somewhat earlier (there are traces of it very early), had made its exercises rather more clear and direct, and had subjected their expression to severer thinning and compression, he would have made a great reputation as a poet. As it is, it cannot be denied that he had the positive faculties of poetry in kind and degree only inferior to those possessed by at most four or five of his English contemporaries from Tennyson downwards.
Nor should there perhaps lack mention of Roden Noel and Thomas Ashe, two writers in whom, from their earlier work, it was not unreasonable to expect poets of a distinct kind, and who, though they never improved on this early work, can never be said exactly to have declined from it. The first and elder was a son of the Earl of Gainsborough, was born in 1834, went to Cambridge, travelled a good deal, and at various times, till his death at the age of sixty, published much verse and not a little prose, both showing a distinctly poetical imagination without a sufficient organ of expression. Nor did he ever develop this except in A Little Child's Monument, where the passionate personal agony injures as much as it helps the poetical result. Mr. Ashe, who was born in 1836, and died in 1889, also a Cambridge man, had a much less ambitious and rather less interesting but somewhat better-organised talent for verse, and his Sorrows of Hypsipyle, published in 1866, caused and authorised at the time considerable expectations from him. But his vein was rather the result of classical culture working on a slight original talent than anything better, and he did not rise beyond a pleasant competence in verse which was never that of a poetaster, but hardly ever that of a distinct poet. In which respect he may appear here as the representative of no scanty company dead and living. For even the longest chapter of a book must have an end; and it is impossible to find room in it for the discussion of the question, whether the friends of Oliver Madox Brown, son of the famous Præ-Raphaelite painter, were or were not wrong in seeing extraordinary promise in his boyish work; whether the sonnets of Ernest Lefroy (1855-91) were exercises or works of art. A few more remarks on humorous poets and women-poets must close the record.