"FORBIDDEN LOVE. "I love thee! Oh, the strife, the pain, O stars! that thou couldst read my soul! "Look love upon me, with thine eyes! Yet, no men's evil tongues are nigh: Look pity, then, and with thy sighs Waste music on me till I die! Yet, love not! sigh not! Turn, (thou must) To death, because I am not blind!" &c.-p. 11. We may also mention "The Stranger," p. 8, and "Bolivar," p. 20, as instances of his inspiration in its happier moments; but they are scarcely good enough to be worth quoting for their beauty, or poor enough to be amusing from their faults. metre and rhyme, he should be more successful as to his thoughts. Again, what poet, who that ever read the human heart, would write such meaningless and tiresome common-place as this? "I go, and she doth miss me not! "Death, and the all-absorbing tomb ""Tis well, perhaps, that this should be ; That thou shouldst spoil one blooming thought for me or these lines on "THE HEART BROKEN. Garlands for my forehead pale, "I am dead-a statue, left. Pointing perils out unknown, The above pieces show Mr. Procter's powers in their most favorable light. He is not a poet of a high order, though he is continually aspiring to that rank, and failing. He never looks deep into the heart and the soul of man, revealing those secrets which are the poet's peculiar treasures. In reading him we never feel as if we were recalling our own emotions, or recognize some feeling, some truth of which we were before ignorant, but whose existence and identity we immediately acknowledge. Our sympathies are never roused by some unexpected touch of nature, some long hidden thought, wrung out, as it were, with the heart's blood, which gives us such delicious and inexplicable pleasure mingled with sadness. This part, the true poet's Notwithstanding his incapacity to read the heart, highest vocation, is utterly unknown to him, and, in and his deficiency in the knowledge so necessary to attempting to enact it, he invariably fails. Fre- a poet,—that of mankind-he is continually endeavquently, in beginning a song, we hope that we have oring to display his small powers that way, and stumbled on something more worthy a poet's repu-utters trite little moral truths, and common-place tation, but we are immediately brought down from observations, with a solemnity quite edifying, and our fancied altitude by some expression or idea worthy the Dodonean oak itself. For instance, we which shows how incapable our author is of understanding, or carrying out his own feelings. The light is revealed to him but by glimmers, and he neglects it. Thus, in "Forbidden Love," quoted above, he ends with something about "reading aright my song;" and here is one even worse. What can we think of such nonsense? "What use is all the love 1 bear thee, "I love thee as they tell in story And I let loose my wild heart before thee, Surely, when he allows himself such latitude in VOL. XI-5 These are not specimens of unusual poverty. Poems similar to them occur on almost every page. can scarcely believe him serious in the following "When friends look dark and cold O then 'tis time to look forward, "When the trader is scant of words, O then 'tis time to look forward, &c. "Whenever a change is wrought, And you know not the reason why, In your own, or a neighbor's thought, Be sure there is danger nigh. O then 'tis time to look forward, And back, like the hunted hare, or the following specimen of optimism. "A fable is good, and a truth is good, And loss and gain; And the ebb, and the flood, and the black pine wood, To wake, and to sleep, and to dream of the deep, And 'tis good to laugh, and 'tis good to weep, Yet thus all things go ranging, From riddle to riddle changing, From day into night, from life into death, saith."-p. 16. What school-boy would not deserve a whipping if he introduced such a display of silly, pointless pedantry as this, in his exercise? "A mountain stands where Agamemnon died, And Cheops hath derived eternal fame, Because he made his tomb a place of pride, And thus the dead Metella earned a name," &c.-p. 27. And surely the levelling propensities of Death have been sufficiently dwelt on by all rhymesters, from Horace's "æquo pulsat pede" down, to have spared us the infliction of such trash as of a poet than Rogers or Moore! We had marked down a dozen more passages like the above, but we have quoted enough for our purpose, and wish not to subject our reader to the "crambe repetita." Mr. Procter makes many excursions Now what is there in the above extracts, either as regards ideas, language, or versification, to render them worthy of publication? What must we think of the man who could write them, coolly revise them, and give them to the world,-not throw them into the fire? And yet it is he of whom Willis says that he has written verse worthy of Shakspeare, and whom he pronounces to be more "Where the divers of Bathos lie drowned in a heap, And Southey's last pæan has pillowed his sleep," in various other directions, though we cannot say that he always is smothered in "respectable mud." One of his glaring failures is in respect to actual, common life. He has seen what effect can be produced by a skilful handling of the sufferings and feelings of those actually around us, though the attending circumstances be not poetical; and he frequently attempts to rouse us in like manner. But he does not seem to know that it requires uncommon tact and delicacy to do this-" difficile est When, well manpropriè communia dicere." aged, this kind of poetry produces the strongest effect on the mind of the reader, but even in the best hands, there is much danger of the ridiculous. For one "Song of a Shirt," we have twenty "Pauper's Jubilees" and "Beggar's Songs," such as Procter has favored us with. Take, for instance, some stanzas from the former, "Yesterday, oh yesterday! Why should we forever work? And cramps and agues manifold!" &c.—p. 22. Now there is nothing laughable in the reality of all this. We naturally feel, and feel deeply for such misery, and yet this man, wishing to make it forcible, by his folly renders it ridiculous. Here, again, is a part of And the slip of a garden that gladdened the eye, "A cabin we had, and the cow was hard by, And there was our Patrick,Ne'er idle while light ever lived in the sky," &c.—p. 9. A few lines from a long rhapsody entitled "The Convict's Farewell," in addition to the above, will suffice as examples of his success in this kind of writing. "May your traders grumble when bread is high, And your blood-covered bankers e'er hang together, "Farewell to England's woe or weal! -For our betters so bold and blythe, Lest these intensely malignant wishes may injure Mr. Procter's character in the estimation of the reader, we must observe that he very rarely indulges in such malevolence, but seems to be a well-disposed person in the main, and "eminently respectable in every thing but his poetry." We give the following good wishes towards the land of his nativity as an antidote to the above. They have about equal claims to be considered as poetry. "Hurrah for the land of England, And the men, like air, Are all lovers of liberty! Hurrah for merry England! Long life, without strife, to England! "Hurrah for William of England, Our friend, as a king should be; Who casteth aside Man's useless pride, And leans on his people free! Hurrah for the king of England, The boast of merry England!" &c.—p. 6. He does not confine himself, however, to these common-place subjects, but diverges and digresses into many others, in which he meets with similar "Sing! who sings To her who weareth a hundred rings? The VINE, boys, the VINE, The mother of mighty Wine. A roamer is she O'er wall and tree, And sometimes very good company! "Drink! who drinks To her who blushes, and never thinks? Until she is turned to Wine! For better is she Than Vine can be And the best of all good company! "Dream! who dreams Of the God who governs a thousand streams? 'Tis WINE, boys, 'tis WINE! O better is he Than grape or tree, And the best of all good company!"-p. 5. This pure, unmitigated twaddle makes us sigh for the good old stereotype phrases of "ruby stream," "flowing bowl," &c., which formed the staple fabric of the old bacchanalian effusions. Mr. Procter has here started an undeniably original style, but invention is not always improvement. Of the same calibre as the above are, "Why Doth the Bottle Stand."-p. 7 and "Wine"-p. 13, in which he informs us "O brave Wine! Rare old Wine, Bad are the rhymes, And bad the times That scorn old wine," &c., with sundry others, which we will not inflict upon our readers. Can we imagine an individual in any stage of drunkenness, losing his senses so completely as to sing these inanities? On a par with these are some hunting and battle success. Of course his fame as a song-writer songs. It is easy to perceive that he has not soul could not be complete without some poems in praise enough to enter into the fierce certaminis gaudia,— of drinking. This must have been the considera- "the rapture of the strife," and his efforts to be tion which impelled him to tire us with so much strong in words and notes of admiration, without prattlement about wine, concerning which he writes corresponding ideas, form a mixture truly ludicrous. like a tee-to-taller praising it against his will. We As an exemplification of this, we give a few stanzas meet allusions to it every where, whether in place from or not. For instance, he begins a love song "I love thee, I love thee Far better than wine!" Very complimentary, truly! We have given one specimen of his powers in this line already. Here is another, even worse. What follower of Bacchus, since the days of Anacreon, would give utterance to such nonsense as this! "THE ONSET. "Sound an alarum! The foe is come! "Sound! The blast of our trumpet blown Sometimes, however, his imagination takes a wilder range, without leaving the earth quite so far behind it. Here is a choice effusion produced in such a mood. "Which is the maiden I love best? Twenty now are buzzing round me; Three in their milk white arms have wound me Gently, yet I feel no rest! One hath showered her black locks o'er me, Which must I love best? Tell me, (ah, more gently take me, Sweet one! in thy warm white arms!) From that forehead crowned with pride? If ye pause a moment longer, I shall love ye-ALL! O fie, Mr. P.! If we did not know you to be a moral young man, a virtuous limb of the law, with a wife, children and other incumbrances, we should be inclined to suspect something. Pray what did Mrs. P. say on first reading it? Does she approve of such comprehensive amativeness? However, we will pardon you on the supposition that this warm flow of imagination was caused by dining out late and reading "Candide." "For, when thus heated with the unusual grape, We are also moved by the thoughts of the curtain lecture which must have followed Mrs. P's perusal of it, during which you promised never to let your pen trespass so again. Indeed, any remains of our indignant feelings would speedily be melted into pity on coming across the following piteous question, "Wilt thou remember me when I am gone? Gone to that leaden darkness where men lie and this, addressed, we suppose, to some metaphysical Dulcinea, "We love, and meet the world's sharp scorn: Why, dear one, why, why were we born?" With what a fearful struggle is his mighty mind convulsed as he puts this momentous question "why, why, WHY were we born?"! Mr. Procter is also at considerable pains to inform us that he is a great admirer of nature. As, however, he has not unveiled any thing new either as regards nature herself, or the feelings which she excites, his opinions may be regarded as the purée of all that he has written on the subject. "Very, very, soft and merry Is the natural song of earth!" He also disgusts us with his poetical cant. He is continually indulging in small prattlement concerning "rhymes," "Poet's thoughts," "Secrets of Singing," "Love the Poet," &c., &c. The mantle of inspiration hangs so lightly over the shoulders of a true poet, that he never seems to be aware of it, but Cornwall, as if conscious of his slender claims to it, is continually obtruding it upon our notice, and always in a manner to convince us of the imposture. In short, he never seems at ease while writing. He never sits down to depict his own feelings forcibly, but without exaggeration. He is always striving and forcing himself along, as little to his own ease as that of his readers. We do not wish to be detained over mere verbal criticism, and will therefore pass by his mis-placed parentheses, numerous italics, thickly strown notes of admiration, silly choruses, out of the way stanzas, ideas brought in for rhyme, extravagant and unmeaning epithets, and other minutiæ highly disagreeable to the reader. We must, however, comment on a fashion of his, whenever he is at a loss in filling out the metre, of storing in some two or three unnecessary epithets, sometimes utterly incongruous, and sometimes poverty stricken repetitions. Thus, No spot, no blemish, pure and unforlorn! Untouched, untainted!" As we have done nearly all that we could in our own small way, and in a Christian-like manner, towards denying Mr. Procter's claim to one translation of the coveted title of VATES, it is only justice to let him establish his right to the other, by the following Delphic prophecy. Sleep-sleep my Lyre! Untouched, unsought, unstrung! No one now will e'er enquire If poet to thee ever sung. Nor if his spirit clung To thy witching wire! 'Tis well to be a thing forgot! Oblivion is a happy lot! We are glad to see in Mr. P. such pious resignation to his inevitable fate. It may perhaps seem to some of our readers that we have been too severe on Cornwall's faults; that productions like these should not be examined with an eye too closely critical. If so, they are in error. In the present state of poetry, songs and minor poems have assumed an importance utterly unknown before. Many of our poets rest their greatest chance of fame on these little productions, which, when liked, are more read and more admired than ponderous epics and prosy didactics. The Irish Melodies and "Ye Mariners of England," will be remembered when "Lalla Róokh" and "The Pleasures of Hope" are forgotten. These little poems constitute the most important and most popular part of the writings of Mr. Procter. He is besides a veteran writer, and not entitled to the mercy which awaits a first offence. His works have seen numerous editions, and he has had the opportunity of lopping off and polishing whatever he may have deemed objectionable in the first draught. He has also been much praised by misjudging persons. Indeed a little wholesome severity at the commencement of his career might have induced a reformation beneficial both to himself and his readers. We are sorry to see N. P. Willis, (a man with ten times the genius of Procter,) condescend to the bandying of compliments with him. Cornwall edited a volume of poems for him in England and Willis returns the favor here. Wilson laughed at the idea ten years ago, but it has continued ever since. Procter bids fair, at present, to retain his ill-gotten reputation for some time to come; but Prince Posterity will settle it all satisfactorily. Philadelphia, October, 1844.1 |