“Blessings be with him, and eternal praise,
The poet, who on earth has made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight, by heavenly lays.”
Although, as already remarked, not the poet of the age—it has, in our view, been, on the whole, fortunate for poetry and society, that for seven years William Wordsworth has been poet-laureate. We live in a transition state in respect to both. The march and the music are both changing—nor are they yet fully attuned to each other—and, meanwhile, it was desirable that a poet should preside, whose strains formed a fine “musical confusion,” like that of old in the “wood of Crete”—of the old and the new—of the Conservative and the Democratic—of the golden age, supposed by many to have existed in the past, and of the millennium, expected by more in the future—a compromise of the two poetical styles besides—the one, which clung to the hoary tradition of the elders, and the other, which accepted innovation because it was new, and boldness because it was daring, and mysticism because it was dark—not truth, though new; beauty, though bold; and insight, though shadowy and shy. Nay, we heartily wish, had it been for nothing else than this, that his reign had lasted for many years longer, till, perchance, the discordant elements in our creeds and literature, had been somewhat harmonized. As it is, there must now be great difficulty in choosing his successor to the laureateship; nor is there, we think, a single name in our poetry whose elevation to the office would give universal, or even general, satisfaction.
Milman is a fine poet, but not a great one. Croly is, or ought to have been, a great poet; but is not sufficiently known, nor en rapport with the spirit of the time. Bowles is dead—Moore dying. Lockhart and Macaulay have written clever ballads; but no shapely, continuous, and masterly poem. John Wilson, alias Christopher North, has more poetry in his eye, brow, head, hair, figure, voice, talk, and the prose of his “Noetes,” than any man living; but his verse, on the whole, is mawkish—and his being a Scotchman will be a stumbling-block to many, though not to us; for, had Campbell been alive, we should have said at once, let him be laureate—if manly grace, classic power, and genuine popularity, form qualifications for the office. Tennyson, considering all he has done, has received his full meed already. Let him and Leigh Hunt repose under the shadow of their pensions. Our gifted friends, Bailey, of “Festus,” and Yendys, of the “Roman,” are yet in blossom—though it is a glorious blossom. Henry Taylor is rather in the sere and yellow leaf—nor was his leaf ever, in our judgment, very fresh or ample: a masterly builder he is, certainly, but the materials he brings are not highly poetical. When Dickens is promoted to Scott's wizard throne, let Browning succeed Wordsworth on the forked Helvellyn! Landor is a vast monumental name; but, while he has overawed the higher intellects of the time, he has never touched the general heart, nor told the world much, except his great opinion of himself, the low opinion he has of almost every body else, and the very learned reasons and sufficient grounds he has for supporting those twin opinions. Never was such power so wasted and thrown away. The proposition of a lady laureate is simply absurd, without being witty. Why not as soon have proposed the Infant Sappho? In short, if we ask again, Where is the poet worthy to wear the crown which has dropped from the solemn brow of “old Pan,” “sole king of rocky Cumberland?”—Echo, from Glaramara, or the Langdale Pikes, might well answer, “Where?”
We have, however, a notion of our own, which we mean, as a close to the article, to indicate. The laureateship was too long a sop for parasites, whose politics and poetry were equally tame. It seems now to have become the late reward of veteran merit—the Popedom of poetry. Why not, rather, hang it up as a crown, to be won by our rising bards—either as the reward of some special poem on an appointed subject, or of general merit? Why not delay for a season the bestowal of the laurel, and give thus a national importance to its decision?
Sidney Smith. By George Gilfillan.
Sidney Smith.