I cannot omit one word more, in conclusion, as to Lady Morgan. It is to me delightful to see a woman, solely by the force of her own natural talent, succeed triumphantly in the line of letters she has adopted, and in despite of the most virulent, illiberal, and unjust attacks ever yet made on any author by mercenary reviewers.
MEMORANDA POETICA.
Poets and poetasters—Major Roche’s extraordinary poem on the battle of Waterloo—“Tears of the British Muse”—French climax of love—A man’s age discovered by his poetry—Evils of a motto—Amorous feelings of youth—Love verses of a boy; of a young man—“Loves of the Angels”—Dinner verses of an Oxonian—“The Highlander,” a poem—Extracts from the poetical manuscripts of Miss Tylden, &c.
There cannot be a juster aphorism than “Poeta nascitur, non fit:” the paucity of those literary productions which deserve the epithet of poetry, compared with the thousand volumes of what rhyming authors call poems, forms a conclusive illustration.
A true poet lives for ever; a poetaster, just till a new one relieves him in the circulating libraries, or on toilets, being used in private families to keep young ladies awake at night and put them to sleep in the morning.
There may possibly be three degrees of excellence in true poetry, but certainly no more. A fourth-rate poet is, in my idea, a mere forger of rhymes; a blacksmith of versification: yet if he minds his prosody, and writes in a style either “vastly interesting,” “immensely pathetic,” or “delightfully luxurious,” he will probably find readers among the fair sex from fifteen to forty-five: the measure he adopts is of no sort of consequence, so that it be tender.
Major Roche, an Irishman, who in 1815 printed and published at Paris a full and true hexameter account of the great battle of Waterloo, with his own portrait emblazoned in the front, and the Duke of Wellington’s in the rear, must certainly be held to exceed in ingenuity all the poets and poetasters, great and small, of the present generation.
The alphabetical printed list of subscribers to Major Roche’s poem sets forth the name of every emperor, king, prince, nobleman, general, minister, and diplomatist—Russian, Prussian, Austrian, German, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, English, Irish, Scotch, Hanoverian, Don Cossack, &c. &c. Such an imperial, royal, and every way magnificent list was in fact never before, nor ever will be again, appended to any poem, civil, political, military, religious, or scientific: and as the major thought very truly that a book so patronised and garnished must be worth vastly more than any other poem of the same dimensions, he stated that “a few copies might still be procured at two guineas each.” He succeeded admirably, and I believe got more money at Paris than any one of the army did at Waterloo, and I am glad of it.
His introduction of the Duke of Wellington in battle was well worth the money:—he described his grace as Mars on horseback (new!), riding helter-skelter, and charging fiercely over every thing in his headlong course; friends and foes, men, women, and children, having no chance of remaining perpendicular if they crossed his way; his horse’s hoofs striking fire even out of the regimental buttons of the dead bodies which he galloped over! while swords, muskets, bayonets, helmets, spears, and cuirasses, pounded down by his trampling steed, formed as it were a turnpike-road, whereupon his grace seemed to fly, in his endeavours to catch Buonaparte.
I really think Major Roche’s idea of making Lord Wellington Mars was a much better one than that of making him Achilles, as the ladies have done at Hyde-Park-Corner. Paris found out the weak point of Achilles, and finished him: but Mars is immortal; and though Diomed knocked him down, neither his carcase nor character is a jot the worse. Besides, though Achilles killed Hector, it certainly was not Lord Wellington who killed Buonaparte.