It was Goethe, we believe, who objected to some poet, that he put too much water in his ink. This objection would apply to the uncounted host of our amateur versifiers, and poets by the grace of verbiage. If an idea, or part of an idea, chances to stray into the brain of an American gentleman, he quickly apparels it in an old coat from his wardrobe of worn phrases, and rushes off in mad haste to the first magazine or newspaper, in order that the public may enjoy its delectable beauty at once. We have on hand enough MSS. of this kind, which we never intend to print, to freight the navy of Great Britain. But mediocrity and stupidity are not the only sinners in respect to this habit of writing carelessly. Hasty composition is an epidemic among many of our writers, whose powers, if disciplined by study, and directed to a definite object, would enable them to produce beautiful and permanent works. So general is the mental malady to which we have alluded, that it affects the judgments of criticism, and if a collection of lines, going under the name of a poem, contains fine passages, or felicitous flashes of thought, it commonly passes muster as satisfying the requirements of the critical code. Careless writers, therefore, are sustained by indulgent critics, and between both good literature is apt to be strangled in its birth.
Now it is due to Mr. Hirst to say that his poem belongs not to the class we have described. It is no transcript of chance conceptions, expressed in loose language, and recklessly huddled together, without coherence and without artistic form, but a true and consistent creation, with a central principle of vitality and a definite shape. He has, in short, produced an original poem on a classic subject, written in a style of classic grace, sweetness and simplicity, rejecting all superfluous ornament and sentimental prettinesses, and conveying one clear and strong impression throughout all its variety of incident, character and description. It is no conglomeration of parts, but an organic whole. This merit alone should give him a high rank among the leading poets of the country, for it evidences that he has a clear notion of what the word poem means.
We have neither time nor space to analyze the poem, and indicate its merits as a work of art. It displays throughout great force and delicacy of conception, a fine sense of harmony, and a power and decision of expression which neither overloads nor falls short of the thought. In tone it is half way between Shelley and Keats, neither so ideal as the one nor so sensuous as the other. Keat's Endymion is so thick with fancies, and verbal daintinesses, and sweet sensations, that with all its wonderful affluence of beautiful things it lacks unity of impression. The mind of the poet is so possessed by his subject that, in an artistic sense, he becomes its victim, and wanders in metaphor, and revels in separate images, and gets entangled in a throng of thoughts, until, at the end, we have a sense of a beautiful confusion of "flowers of all hues, and weeds of glorious feature," and applaud the fertility at the expense of the force of his mind. The truth is that will is an important element of genius, and without it the spontaneous productions of the mind must lack the highest quality of poetic art. True intellectual creation is an effort of the imagination, not its result, and without force of will to guide it, it does not obey its own laws, and gives little impression of real power. Art is not the prize of luck or the effect of chance, but of conscious combination of vital elements. Mr. Hirst, though he does give evidence of Keats' fluency of fancy and expression, has really produced a finer work of art. We think it is so important that a poem, to be altogether worthy of the name, should be deeply meditated and carefully finished, that we hazard this last opinion at the expense of being berated by all the undeveloped geniuses of the land, as having no true sense of the richness of Keats' mind, or the great capacity implied, rather than fully expressed, in his Endymion.
Mere extracts alone can give no fair impression of the beauty of Mr. Hirst's poem as a whole, but we cannot leave it without quoting a few passages illustrative of the author's power of spiritualizing the voluptuous, and the grace, harmony and expressiveness of his verse:
And still the moon arose, serenely hovering,
Dove-like, above the horizon. Like a queen
She walked in light between
The stars—her lovely handmaids—softly covering
Valley and wold, and mountain-side and plain
With streams of lucid rain.
She saw not Eros, who on rosy pinion
Hung in the willow's shadow—did not feel
His subtle searching steel
Piercing her very soul, though his dominion
Her breast had grown: and what to her was heaven
If from Endymion riven?
Nothing; for love flowed in her, like a river,
Flooding the banks of wisdom; and her soul,
Losing its self-control,
Waved with a vague, uncertain, tremulous quiver,
And like a lily in the storm, at last
She sunk 'neath passion's blast.
Flowing the fragrance rose—as though each blossom
Breathed out its very life—swell over swell,
Like mist along the dell,
Wooing his wondering heart from out his bosom—
His heart, which like a lark seemed slowly winging
Its way toward heaven, singing.
Dian looked on; she saw her spells completing,
And sighing, bade the sweetest nightingale
That ever in Carian vale
Sang to her charms, rise, and with softest greeting
Woo from its mortal dreams and thoughts of clay
Endymion's soul away.
From the conclusion of the poem we take a few stanzas, describing the struggle of Dian with her passion, when Endymion asserts his love for Chromia: