EDITOR'S TABLE.
ADELAIDE A. PROCTER AND JEAN INGELOW.
Extremes ever meet, and our age, which is preëminently occupied with physical science and material comfort and aggrandizement, is also eminently productive in good poetry. There should be no antithesis between the words physical science and poetry. The secrets of the Universe, the ways of God's working, are surely the highest poetry; but the greater number of scientists have willed a divorce between the material and the spiritual, and decry that very imaginative faculty which, in the case of Kepler, bore such wonderful fruits for science. Facts are very well, and induction is also well, but science requires the aid of the creative and divining imagination to order the details and draw thence the broader and higher generalizations. Let us hope that the good common sense of the in-coming half-century will annul the divorce, and again unite on a solid basis spheres that should never have been so far sundered.
Meantime, we cannot but remark the number of good poems meeting us on every hand, not only from writers known to fame, but also from the living tombs of obscure country newspapers. We know it is the fashion to deride such productions, and sneer at the 'would-be poets.' Let critics speak the truth fearlessly, but let them never prefer the glitter of a self-glorifying search for faults to the more amiable but less piquant occupation of discovering solid thought, earnest feeling, and poetic fancy. It is well to discourage insipidity, impudent pretension, and every species of affectation; but critics are, like authors, fallible, and not unfrequently present glaring examples of the very faults they condemn. In any case where the knife is needed, let it be used firmly but gently, that, while the patient bleeds, he may feel the wound has been inflicted by no unloving, cynical hand, but was really intended for his ultimate good. Let the instrument be finely tempered, and neither coarse nor rough. We can all recall a few cases where a rude treatment has effected a cure, but only by draining the life blood of the victim, or by turning every better human feeling into bitterness and corroding gall. Words of blame intended to fall upon the hearts of the young, or of the old, should always be spoken kindly, for we can never know how deeply they may penetrate, what tender schemes for widowed mother, aspiring brother, portionless sister, or starving wife and children they may shatter. The public is a pretty keen judge, and will in most cases drop works devoid of the immortal elements of genius. The critic may point the way, but he need add no unnecessary stab to a downfall sure and bitter.
This digression, however, has no bearing upon the honored names heading this table, as both now have become 'household words' in our midst. Both are acknowledged as real poets, but how different are they in style, and mode of thought! Jean Ingelow, as the more brilliant, is the more general favorite, Adelaide Procter having as yet scarcely received her due meed of praise. Miss Ingelow exhibits an exuberant fancy, a luxurious wealth of diction, and a generally fine poetic sense of form; her thoughts are sound, and their dress new and glittering; but the volume we have read is one to please the fancy and gratify the intellect rather than touch the heart. The style is occasionally obscure and the thought difficult to follow. Of course one can always find a meaning, but one is not always sure of interpreting according to the author's intentions. This quality, found largely in the school of Robert Browning, is one to be guarded against. Mrs. Browning sometimes deals in such involutions, but her style is so evidently an essential part of herself, that we rarely think of affectation in connection with it. It is pleasanter to dream our own dreams, than to follow any author into a tangled maze, whence we, and not he, must furnish the clew for egress.
The 'Songs of Seven' and 'The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire' are truly fine poems, to us the most complete and sustained in the entire collection. In 'Requiescat in Pace,' we are carried so far away from the actualities of life that we scarcely care whether the lover be dead or living. As in a fairy tale, we read for the sake of curiosity, admiring sundry touches here and there, but feeling nothing. Miss Ingelow's rhythm is good, and her language musical.
The style of Adelaide Procter is singularly lucid and direct; she has but little command of poetic ornament, and we rarely think of her choice of words. Pathos, and a close, keen representation of human experience, are her distinguishing characteristics. She is a poet to read when the soul is wrung, and longs for the solace of communion with a noble, tender, sympathetic human heart. The very absence of ornament brings the thoughts and feelings nearer to our needs. Her poems are evidently pictures of real human souls, and not poetic imaginings of what human beings might feel under such and such circumstances. There are many of Miss Procter's tales and shorter poems which bring tears to the eyes of all who have really lived and sorrowed, and the more we read them, the more do they come home to us. We feel as if we could take their author into our heart of hearts, and make all the world love her as do we. With her, brilliancy of imagery and description are replaced by a sententiousness and concentration of expression that suddenly strike home some truth perhaps well known, but little dwelt on. For instance, in 'A Legend of Provence,' we find:
'Kind hearts are here; yet would the tenderest one
Have limits to its mercy: God has none.
And man's forgiveness may be true and sweet,
But yet he stoops to give it. More complete
Is Love that lays forgiveness at thy feet,
And pleads with thee to raise it. Only Heaven
Means crowned, not vanquished, when it says, 'Forgiven!''
Again, in 'The Present:'