MIDSUMMER WITH THE MUSES.

BY ANTHONY POPLAR.

THERE are few pleasanter ways of spending the hours of a hot summer noontide, than that which, in this delicious season, we periodically prescribe to ourselves, and which we shall now make known to you all, dear readers. Choose your day carefully. Let it be one in which the heavens smile out clearly-we object not to a cloud here and there dotting the blue of the ether, but it must not be darker than the eider-down—no black, sullen mass should drift across the sunlight, or mar your promised pleasure with the fear of rain. Wind there shall be just enough to set the trees a-sighing, or to break up the sheeted light upon the surface of the sea. Then, while the sun-rays come yet aslant through the ether, and shadows lie in the valleys, go forth from your chamber, and trace upward the path of the little streamlet that leaps and sings down the hill-side; track it through its wooded seclusion, in its wanderings along the open greensward, in its windings through the ravines, in its boundings over the white rocks, and its murmuring amidst the polished pebbles, till you reach the spot where it leaps into light from beneath some dank stone, shaking moss and leaf with its joyous motion, as it breaks away, like a disenthralled Naiad from the dark embrace of the earth.

Stay your step now, for you have reached your resting-place. Ere you sit down, select the spot judiciously. You are at the summit of the hill-there is soft, deep herbage on that table-land-and through the opening in the tree-tops that you have left beneath you, the pleasant landscape smiles in the valley, while on the further side you catch the sea-plain, glittering like molten silver.

And now with the majesty of nature around you, and the glory of heaven above, forget, if you can, for a space, the world, its cares, its paltrinesses, its vanities. As you stand high above man's daily haunts, lift yourself above his daily speculations; and as the prophet sought God upon the mountain top, here let your spirit hold converse with the ideal, and the intellectual. Such a noontide have we just had waking dreams summoned by our own fancies, and pleasant converse with the fancies of others. We have brought up with us a cage of birds that have been singing to us in their captivity longer than we could have wished; but, like poor Miss Flite, we have not forgotten them, but constantly looked forward to the day when we should give them all their liberty, and send them forth with their songs to fill other ears than ours. In other words, we have brought with us certain poetic volumes which we mean to discuss in this our high Court of Parnassus, with the Muses as our jury, and Apollo as our assessor.

Undoubtedly the poetic element is in a state of great activity in the present day. Ever present, we believe, in large masses in the human mind, as the electric element is in the material world, its exhibition depends upon the state of the intellectual atmosphere; if this be dense, and surcharged, and moved to and fro by currents of thought, the collision will be sure to strike out the flame. There is much of this taking place now-a-days; we can perceive a strong current moving from the poetic pole-a revival of the desire for poetic reading, as is evidenced in the republication of the works of the great English poets, and an increased number of new poetical aspirants coming before the world. We see no cause to regret this. We are not of those who can tolerate none but the great few, and are impatient of whatever falls below the standard of perfection. We hold, on the contrary, that the vast regions of intellectual space should be all filled up. There are birds that sing sweetly when the nightingale is not heard, and strains that come pleasantly from the thicket, or the greensward, even while the lark is filling the upper heavens with his melody. Some such sweet singers as these we shall now enjoy, and like them all the better for the variety of their notes.

The name of Arnold is deservedly high in the estimation of the literary pub

lic. It has produced more than one scion of a lineage whose learning is proverbial. Matthew Arnold, with whom we have now to do, is unquestionably a poet, although we may not be able to concede to him a place amongst the foremost ranks. We believe, however, that he would have achieved better things than he has ever done, were he contented to cast his thoughts less in the moulds of the antique, and give his own genius and taste a freer course to run in more modern channels, and to shape themselves in the feelings and imagery which his own times suggest. He is, however, a thorough "fautor veterum;" the rules of ancient composition are his canons of criticism; they are to him as inflexible as Median laws; he adores them with the veneration of an archæologist; and he deems that modern composition has deteriorated precisely in the degree that it has fallen short of the principles laid down and worked out by the ancient dramatists and epic writers of Greece. With many of the observations of Mr. Arnold, in his well-written prefatory essay, we entirely concur. We believe, with him, that a commerce with the ancients produces a composing and a steadying effect upon the judgment, as we believe that the contemplation and the study of the medieval monuments of architecture induce an influence upon modern taste at once solemnising, improving, and elevating; but we can understand very well the process by which the mental vision of the admirer may be so absorbed and concentrated that he will doat over a defect in the one or the other over a grossness of sentiment, or a rudeness of detail-a coarse image or expression, or a grotesque finial or gargoyle, forgetting that they were the necessity of the age which produced them, not the ornamentation of a state of more advanced civilisation. Thus it is, we think, that Mr. Arnold, while extolling the great skill of the ancients in the selection of "action," and the care with which they wrought it out with their undivided power, is himself somewhat forgetful of the fact that modern poetry is, in its functions, essentially different from ancient poetry. In earlier and ruder times the externals of life-corporeal action-occupied the foreground of man's consideration, and so was the primary subject of the drama and the epic; now the thoughts of the heart, the operations of the intellect, largely engross mankind. The present age is a metaphysical and a psychological one, and poetry, as the reflex of the age, must, to be popular, exhibit the inner life of man mental action, feelings, passions, spiritualities. The first poem in the volume before us, "Zohrab and Rustum," illustrates strikingly what we conceive to be the error of Mr. Arnold's poetry. It is a poem of action, and might well be taken as an episode in a great epic; but it is conceived and executed so thoroughly upon the antique model, that we are constantly forgetting ourselves into the past, till some simile, or name, or situation, startles us into a sense of the anachronism. The piece is essentially Homeric; the incident a fine one-that of a son engaging with a father, unawares, in deadly combat, and discovering his relationship only at the moment that he receives his death-wound from his parent. It is highly descriptive, the language rich and felicitous; and yet the imitation of the ancient classic is so ostentatious, that it imparts an air of frigidity and affectation to the whole piece that greatly mars its pathos. A few quotations from the poem will illustrate our criticism. A muster of the Tartar troops is thus finely given :

"The sun, by this, had risen, and clear'd the fog
From the broad Oxus and the glittering sands;
And from their tents the Tartar horsemen fil'd

Into the open plain; so Haman bade-
Haman, who next to Peran-Wisa rul'd

The host, and still was in his lusty prime.

From their black tents, long files of horse, they stream'd:

As when, some grey November morn, the files,

In marching order spread, of long-neck'd cranes,
Stream over Casbin, and the southern slopes

Of Elburz, from the Aralian estuaries,

Or some frore Caspian red-bed, southward bound
For the warm Persian sea-board: so they stream'd.

* "Poems by Matthew Arnold." London: Longman and Co. 1853.

The Tartars of the Oxus, the King's guard,

First, with black sheep-skin caps, and with long spears;
Large men, large steeds; who from Bokhara come
And Khiva, and ferment the milk of mares.

Next the more temperate Toorkmuns of the south,
The Tukas, and the lances of Salore,

And those from Attruck and the Caspian sands;
Light men, and on light steeds, who only drink
The acrid milk of camels, and their wells.
And then a swarm of wandering horse, who came
From far, and a more doubtful service own'd;
The Tartars of Ferghana, from the banks
Of the Jaxartes, men with scanty beards

And close-set skull-caps; and those wilder hordes
Who roam o'er Kipchak and the northern waste
Kalmuks and unkemp'd Kuzzaks, tribes who stray
Nearest the Pole, and wandering Kirghizzes,
Who come on shaggy ponies from Pamere."

Similes, as might be expected, abound in this poem, often felicitous in the extreme, always classically constructed; but sometimes, in the very effort to be so, decidedly detrimental to the general effect. Take, for instance, the following, in which Rustum watches the approach of Zohrab :

"As some rich woman, on a winter's morn,

Eyes through her silken curtains the poor drudge
Who with numb blackened fingers makes her fire
At cock-crow on a starlit winter's morn,
When the frost flowers the whiten'd window-panes,
And wonders how she lives, and what the thoughts
Of that poor drudge may be; so Rustum ey'd
The unknown adventurous Youth, who from afar
Came seeking Rustum, and defying forth
All the most valiant chiefs: long he perus'd
His spirited air, and wonder'd who he was."

The image is a homely one, such as we constantly meet in Homer and Virgil; but the homeliness which, in them, was in keeping, is here quite out of place. Virgil's picture of the mother rising before day-break to spin, and raking up the smouldering fire, is pathetic and appropriate, such as one might have witnessed in the days when Troy was sacked. That of the household drudge is ludicrously anachronistic, and would, if exhibited to the eyes of a Persian or Tartar, fail in conveying the idea intended that of one hero contemplating another, and speculating on what manner of man he may be. To us it suggests a vision of a London cinder-wench, in chamois gloves, lighting the fire-wood with a lucifer match, while her mistress lies a-bed." We point out these defects in no unfriendly or hypercritical spirit, but with the hope that Mr. Arnold will not let his love of what is old lead him astray. Let him eschew all affectation, and take fuller counsel from the natural, and his success is certain. There are evidences of power about him that make us all the more impatient of those faults that fetter it. We could quote largely from this poem to establish the writer's ability. We shall content ourselves with a short one, descriptive of the first encounter:

"At once they rush'd

Together, as two eagles on one prey

Come rushing down together from the clouds,

One from the east, one from the west: their shields

Dash'd with a clang together, and a din

Rose, such as that the sinewy woodcutters
Make often in the forest's heart at morn,

Of hewing axes, crashing trees: such blows
Rustrum and Sohrab on each other hail'd.
And you would say that sun and stars took part
In that unnatural conflict; for a cloud

Grew suddenly in heaven, and dark'd the sun
Over the fighters' heads; and a wind rose
Under their feet, and moaning swept the plain,
And in a sandy whirlwind wrapp'd the pair."

"The Strayed Reveller" is, to our thinking, by no means the best of Mr. Arnold's poems, though we do not deny that it has merit. As a whole, it is indistinct and unsatisfying-full of rich colouring, we admit, and finely expressed thought, with detached passages of much beauty; but it is too overlaid with classicality to attract a general sympathy. It is a cold, white statue, with the moonlight falling upon it-not the warm-tinted picture, standing out in the well-managed daylight. Nevertheless, Mr. Arnold can occasionally disenthral himself from classic trammels; and when he does so, he writes well. A sweeter romance has rarely been written in modern times than his "Tristram and Iseult." It is quaint, without being affected, highly picturesque, and abounds with passages of the deepest pathos. The fever-wanderings of the dying Tris

tram tell, in broken ravings, his ill-starred passion for Iseult of Ireland; while the pictures the sick man's dreams are filled up and explained by comments of the page, who discharges the duty of chorus without any of the formality of that antiquated medium. The voyage to Cornwall, and the drinking of the potion by the lovers, is thus shadowed out:

"The calm sea shines, loose hang the vessel's sails -
Before us are the sweet green fields of Wales,

And overhead the cloudless sky of May.

Ah, would I were in those green fields at play,
Not pent on ship-board this delicious day.
Tristram, I pray thee, of thy courtesy,

Reach me my golden cup that stands by thee,

And pledge me in it first for courtesy.-'

"Ha! dost thou start?-are thy lips blanch'd like mine? Child, 'tis no water this 'tis poison'd wine,

Iseult!"

Then comes the first meeting of the Knight and her who is now another's

"Chill blows the wind, the pleasaunce walks are drear.

Madcap, what jest was this, to meet me here?
Were feet like those made for so wild a way?
The southern winter-parlour, by my fay,

Had been the likeliest trysting place to day.'

"Tristram!-nay, nay-thou must not take my hand-
Tristram-sweet love we are betray'd—out-plann'd.
Fly-save thyself—save me. I dare not stay.'—

"One last kiss first!''Tis vain-to horse-away!'"

Mr. Arnold paints a landscape with no unskilful hand. Here is a scene very prettily worked out :

"Her children were at play

In a green circular hollow in the heath
Which borders the sea-shore; a country path
Creeps over it from the till'd fields behind.
The hollow's grassy banks are soft inclin'd,
And to one standing on them, far and near
The lone unbroken view spreads bright and clear
Over the waste:-This cirque of open ground
Is light and green; the heather, which all around
Creeps thickly, grows not here; but the pale grass
Is strewn with rocks, and many a shiver'd mass
Of vein'd white-gleaming quartz, and here and there
Dotted with holly trees and juniper.

In the smooth centre of the opening stood
Three hollies side by side, and made a screen
Warm with the winter sun, of burnish'd green,
With scarlet berries gemm'd, the fell-fare's food.

Under the glittering hollies Iseult stands
Watching her children play: their little hands
Are busy gathering spars of quartz, and streams
Of stagshorn for their hats anon, with screams
Of mad delight they drop their spoils, and bound
Among the holly clumps and broken ground,
Racing full speed, and startling in their rush
The fell-fares and the speckled missel-thrush
Out of their glossy coverts."

The hopeless, joyless widowhood of Iseult of Brittanny is a very touching piece of writing, and exquisitely true to nature:

"And is she happy? Does she see unmov'd

The days in which she might have liv'd and lov'd
Slip without bringing bliss slowly away,

One after one, to-morrow like to-day?

Joy has not found her yet, nor ever will :

Is it this thought that makes her mien so still,

Her features so fatigued, her eyes, though sweet,

So sunk, so rarely lifted save to meet

Her children's? She moves slow: her voice alone
Has yet an infantine and silver tone,
But even that comes languidly: in truth,
She seems one dying in a mask of youth.
And now she will go home, and softly lay
Her laughing children in their beds, and play
Awhile with them before they sleep; and then
She'll light her silver lamp, which fishermen
Dragging their nets through the rough waves, afar,
Along this iron coast, know like a star,

And take her broidery frame, and there she'll sit
Hour after hour, her gold curls sweeping it,
Lifting her soft-bent head only to mind

Her children, or to listen to the wind.

And when the clock peals midnight, she will move

Her work away, and let her fingers rove

Across the shaggy brows of Tristram's hound

Who lies, guarding her feet, along the ground:

Or else she will fall musing, her blue eyes

Fix'd, her slight hands clasp'd on her lap; then rise,

And at her prie-dieu kneel, until she have told

Her rosary beads of ebony tipp'd with gold,
Then to her soft sleep; and to-morrow 'll be
To-day's exact repeated effigy.

Place aux dames. We see several lady-birds in our aviary, and they shall first get a free pinion.

Mary Hume comes within the category-one whose name is legion-of those ladies and gentlemen who have tender sensibilities, soft hearts, and amiable feelings; who read poetry, and have good ears, and, probably, not very much to do in the way of every-day-world work. Wherever all these concur, the doom of the possessor is sealed. They must rhyme of a necessity; they write-at first stealthily and timidly-in albums, under feigned signatures, or suggestive initials; their partial friends, find them out; they are praised, warmed into full blow, and lo! they print. And why should they not print? why should they not sing out in the fulness of their hearts? If their songs be tuneful, we should not complain. They add something to the melody that fills the groves, though they do not make the heavens vocal with music. In the volume before us there are numberless pretty things in the way of rhyme. There is a common place tale told in very harmonious verses, but in which we do not find anything beyond ordinary thoughts, and the ordinary similies, that flowers, and showers, and sun

"Count Stephen, and other Poems." By Mary Hume.