and his choice inspirations come from the life of the clans. Speranza's verse, so far as it has a specially Irish character, is of the most ancient type of that character. It is full of oriental figures and illustrations. It is, when it is most Irish, rather cognate to Persian and Hebrew ways of thinking, forms of metaphor, redundance of expression—in its tendency to adjuration, in its habit of apostrophe, in its very peculiar and powerful but monotonous rhythm, which seems to pulsate on the ear with the even, strident stroke of a Hindoo drum. Where this peculiar poetry at all adapts itself to the vogue of the modern muse, it is easy to see that Miss Barrett had very great influence in determining the mere manner of Lady Wilde's genius. When in the midst of one very powerful poem, "The Voice of the Poor," these lines come in—
When the human rests upon the human,
All grief is light;
But who lends one kind glance to illumine
Our life-long night?
The air around is ringing with their laughter—
God has only made the rich to smile,
But we—in our rags, and want, and woe—we follow after,
Weeping the while.
—we are tempted to note an unconscious homage to the author of "Aurora Leigh." But the character of Lady Wilde's verse is far more colored by the range of her studies than by the influence of any special style. The general reader, who may not breathe at ease the political atmosphere of the earlier part of this volume, will pause with pleasure to observe the spirit, grace, and fidelity of the translations which succeed. They are from almost every language in Europe, whether of Latin or Teutonic origin, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Swedish, Danish, and Russian. Among these may be mentioned in particular two hymns of Savonarola, which are rendered so exquisitely that one is tempted to suggest that the "Carmina Sedulii," with much more of the ancient Irish hymnology, are as yet untranslated into the tongue now used in Ireland. It is a work peculiarly adapted to her genius. The first quality of Lady Wilde's poetry is that lyrical power of which the hymn is the finest development; and her most striking poems are those which assume the character of the older and more regular form of ode.
The readers of Mr. William Allingham's early writings were in general gratefully surprised when it was announced that he was the author of a very remarkable poem, of the order of eclogue, which appeared by parts in Fraser's Magazine in 1863. His earlier poems, chiefly songs and verse of society, were pleasing from a certain airy grace and lightness; but on the whole their style was thin and jejune. Of late, his faculties have evidently mellowed very rapidly, and his language has become more animated, more concentrated, and more sustained. "Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland" has had, as it were, a triple success—the success of a pamphlet, the success of a novel of Irish life, and its own more proper and legitimate success, as a regular pastoral, skilfully conceived, carefully executed, in which the flow of thought is sustained at a very even, if not a very lofty level throughout, [{477}] and whose language is on the whole admirably harmonized, full of happy allusional effects, of quaint, minute, picturesque delineation, and of a certain graceful and easy energy. Mr. Gladstone has quoted some of its lines in a speech on the budget as an excuse for maintaining the duty on whisky; and he is not the only Englishman who has derived from its perusal an unexpected insight into some of the more perplexing problems of Irish life. Certainly, Mr. Allingham's views of Irish society, when he touches on questions of religion and politics, are not our views. He is an Ulster Protestant by religion, and an advanced liberal (we take it) in politics. But making those allowances, it must be admitted that he shows the poet's many-sided sympathetic mind in every page of this very remarkable poem. "It is," as he fairly says, "free from personalities, and neither of an orange nor a green complexion; but it is Irish in phraseology, character, and local color—with as little use as might be of a corrupt dialect, and with no deference at all to the stage traditions of Paddyism." It is divided into twelve chapters, and it is written in pleasantly modulated pentameters.
The story is of the life of a young squire, who was on the point of declaring himself a Young Irelander in his youth. His guardian, to cut the folly short, sent him incontinently to Cambridge, thence to the continent. He returns to Ireland in his twenty-sixth year, and finds the population decimated by the famine, and agitated by agrarian conspiracy. The neighboring gentry are bent, as conacre has ceased to pay, on supplanting the population by cattle. The population suppurates into secret societies. Laurence Bloomfield, long revolving the difficulties of his lot, and abhorring pretty equally the crimes of each class against the other—determined, moreover, to be neither exterminator, demagogue, nor absentee—resolves to live among the people of his estate like a modern patriarch, and see what patience, kindness, a good understanding, and enlightened management may be able to effect. He extinguishes the Ribbon lodge, fastens his tenantry by equitable leases to the glebe, and gradually finds in the management of his estate a career of easy, pleasant, and even prosperous power. In the course of ten years, Lisnamoy has become an Irish Arcadia, and Mr. Allingham's honest muse rises accordingly to sing a hero even more memorable in his way than the Man of Ross.
Bloomfield first promulgates his peculiar views of territorial administration at a dinner of his landlord neighbors in Lisnamoy House, where the wholesale eviction of the tenantry of a large neighboring district is proposed on the plea that—
"This country sorely needs
A quicker clearance of its human weeds;
But still the proper system is begun,
And forty holdings we shall change to one."
Bloomfield his inexperience much confessed,
Doubts if the large dispeopled farms be best,—
Best in a wide sense, best for all the world
(At this expression sundry lips were curl'd),—
"I wish but know not how each peasant's hand
Might work, nay, hope to win, a share of land;
For ownership, however small it be,
Breeds diligence, content, and loyalty,
And tirelessly compels the rudest field,
Inch after inch, its very most to yield.
Wealth might its true prerogatives retain;
And no man lose, and all men greatly gain."
It is from the ill-concealed contempt of his class for such thoughts as these, that Bloomfield's resolution to remain in Ireland and administer his own estate arises.
The story, as it is evolved, presents some charming sketches of character. Hardly even Carleton has delineated so admirably the nature and habits of the Irish peasant family as Mr. Allingham has done in his picture of the Dorans. How easy and natural, for example, is the portrait of Bridget Doran:
Mild oval face, a freckle here and there,
Clear eyes, broad forehead, dark abundant hair,
Pure placid look that show'd a gentle nature,
Firm, unperplex'd, were hers; the maiden's stature
Graceful arose, and strong, to middle height,
With fair round arms, and footstep free and light;
She was not showy, she was always neat
In every gesture, native and complete,
Disliking noise, yet neither dull nor slack,
Could throw a rustic banter briskly back,
Reserved but ready, innocently shrewd,—
In brief, a charming flower of womanhood.