English bigotry, under nineteenth century forms, is to-day as patent, as understood, as calculable a mainspring and motive of public judgment as in Archbishop Laud's era. Miss Procter's chance of any high praise was thus never very great. But appearing as she did on the scene of letters at a time when the Church of England was yet in the full sanctimoniousness of righteous reaction against the dismembering logic of the Puseyites, any good there was in her was very safe from discovery by most of the critics. Had she been a self asserting sectarian, cramming her dogmas, as some of us did their abolitionism, down her readers' throats, she might have been hunted down to fame by the indignant zeal of the saintly star-chamberers of letters, who lead public opinion much as the foam leads the wave. Unfortunately for this opening, Miss Procter was a lady, and such self-assertion the most foreign of traits to her nature. Not loud enough for martyrdom, she was just firmly Catholic enough for misjudgment, or rather for denial of judgment. While the tribunals of criticism could not avoid taking notice of a book by Barry Cornwall's daughter, still, with all the little good and ill the reviewers said of her, they never did her the one essential service they could render, of putting her name where the reading public would see it and pass judgment on her. There is a way of praising that keeps off, and a way of blaming that attracts, the mass of readers.
With the returning tide of ritualism, she has begun to be more appreciated, but it is only a beginning. We are so strongly inclined to think her poems at the outset of a new career in public favor, and we consider that so little justice has been done her in the critical journals of this country, that we cannot help feeling toward them accordingly; and so, in range of our attempted discussion of her merits, and copiousness of citation, we have treated her in all respects precisely as a new author.
For we believe sincerely that the clouds of circumstance and prejudice about Miss Procter's entrance into literary life have obscured from us poetical powers not only of no common order, but of that calm, self-centred kind we have spoken of as rare enough in man, and the feminine counterpart of which is almost unknown in literary history. Her mind is not Shakespeare's, nor Coleridge's, nor Goethe's, but the resistless river and the fountain of the rocks may both be the overflow of the same sunless reservoir in the deep bosom of the mountains. And her poetry is indeed a fountain of the rocks; pure, placid, deep of source, shaded yet sparkling, "making a quiet music all its own;" with no torrent nor show of force, yet musically passing all obstacles, and emerging, clear, bright, and beautiful, in the sunlight beyond. Most varied and versatile in her choice of subjects, she brings to all a poetic insight, a freedom and fancy of expression, a grasp of the topic, and, above all, a strange, noble earnestness, that altogether make up a style whose quiet charm we had rather easily illustrate than elaborately fail in describing.
The key-note of all her writings is thoughtfulness, and withal a peculiar kind of thoroughness of thought such as we have found in no other woman. Mrs. Browning (perhaps we ought to add the new Mrs. Augusta Webster, whose perceptive powers are the theme of the English reviews) is the only one who ever has analyzed nearly so well, and she and all the others seem only incidentally, while Miss Procter is habitually, analytical. Her entire superiority, indeed, is the consequence and corollary of this curious depth of mind. Bold in abstractions, tender in revealings of the heart, ingenious in incident and invention, she is sure to have a well-defined thought at bottom, always suggestive, often philosophic, sometimes profound. The rare combination of entire femininity with this thinking habit is an originality in itself. Very novel and very charming is the effect of seeing together with this strong, clear, searching introspection, all the woman's delicacy of touch.
But the reader is tired of our generalities, and would much rather see for himself how well Miss Procter thinks. So we give him a fair example in the poem called
Incompleteness.
Nothing resting in its own completeness
Can have power or beauty; but alone
Because it leads and tends to further sweetness,
Fuller, higher, deeper than its own.
Spring's real glory dwells not in the meaning,
Gracious though it be, of her blue hours,
But is hidden in her tender leaning
To the summer's richer wealth of flowers.
Dawn is fair because the mists fade slowly
Into day, which floods the world with light;
Twilight's mystery is so sweet and holy
Just because it ends in starry night.
Childhood's smiles unconscious graces borrow
From strife that in a far-off future lies;
And angel glances (veiled now by life's sorrow)
Draw our hearts to some beloved eyes.
Life is only bright when it proceedeth
Toward a truer, deeper life above;
Human love is sweetest when it leadeth
To a more divine and perfect love.
Learn the mystery of progression duly:
Do not call each glorious change decay;
But know we only hold our treasures truly,
When it seems as if they passed away.
Nor dare to blame God's gifts for incompleteness;
In that want their beauty lies; they roll
Toward some infinite depth of love and sweetness,
Bearing onward man's reluctant soul.
This poem holds one of the great principles in Miss Procter's very noble theory of life—a theory abundantly developed in her poems. Her cardinal axioms would seem to be three: The great rule of life is progression; its great agent, sorrow; its great fact and end, love. On these pillars she builds, and 'Incompleteness' is one of the most direct statements of one part of her creed. Another fine poem, in thought a kind of companion-piece to this, in which we readily recognize the same underlying thought, is
Beyond.
We must not doubt, or fear, or dread that love for
life is only given,
And that the calm and sainted dead will meet
estranged and cold in heaven:
Oh! love were poor and vain, indeed, based on so
harsh and stern a creed.
True that this earth must pass away
with all the starry worlds of light,
With all the glory of the day, and calmer tenderness
of night,
For in that radiant home can shine alone
the immortal and divine.
Earth's lower things—her pride, her fame,
her science, learning, wealth, and power,
Slow growths that through long ages came,
or fruits of some convulsive hour,
Whose very memory must decay—heaven is
too pure for such as they.
They are complete; their work done.
So let them sleep in endless rest.
Love's life is only here begun, nor is,
nor can be, fully blest;
It has no room to spread its wings,
amid this crowd of meaner things.
Just for the very shadow thrown upon its
sweetness here below,
The cross that it must bear alone,
and bloody baptism of woe,
Crowned and completed through its pain,
we know that it shall rise again.
So, if its flame burn pure and bright,
here where our air is dark and dense,
(And nothing in this world of night
lives with a living so intense,)
When it shall reach its home at length,
how bright its light! how strong its strength!
And while the vain weak loves of earth
(for such base counterfeits abound)
Shall perish with what gave them birth—
their graves are green and fresh around—
No funeral song shall need to rise
for the true love that never dies.
If in my heart I now could fear that,
risen again, we should not know
What was our life of life when here—the
hearts we loved so much below
I would arise this very day
and cast so poor a thing away.
But love is no such soulless clod;
living, perfected it shall rise,
Transfigured in the light, of God,
and giving glory to the skies:
And that which makes this life so sweet
shall render heaven's joy complete.
As a poem, this latter is superior, because it applies beautifully to a beautiful subject the principle which the other merely enunciates. And the style is not less remarkable than the ideas. Can anything be more clearly, calmly right than the thought, more easy, lucid, real than its utterance? And it is not the bald perspicuity, either, of mere logical disquisition, but full of suggestion and spirit; and it does not flag; especially in Beyond there is not a weak line nor lower thought. Now is not all this refreshing after the diffuse grace and dilute sweetness of female poetry in general? It is to the run of it as a copse of May's arbutus to a meadow strewn with buttercups.