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Marmions and the Rokebys, the Childe Harolds, and the Corsairs? Or is it, that to be widely popular, to gain the ear of multitudes, to shake the hearts of men, poetry should deal more than at present it usually does, with general wants, ordinary feelings, the obvious rather than the rare facts of human nature? Could it not attempt to convert into beauty and thankfulness, or at least into some form and shape, some feeling, at any rate, of content - the actual, palpable things with which our every-day life is concerned; introduce into business and weary task-work a character and a soul of purpose and reality; intimate to us relations which, in our unchosen, peremptorily-appointed posts, in our grievously narrow and limited spheres of action, we still, in and through all, retain to some central, celestial fact? Could it not console us with a sense of significance, if not of dignity, in that often dirty, or at least dingy, work which it is the lot of so many of us to have to do, and which some one or other, after all, must do? Might it not divinely condescend to all infirmities; be in all points tempted as we are; exclude nothing, least of all guilt and distress, from its wide fraternization; not content itself merely with talking of what may be better elsewhere, but seek also to deal with what is here? We could each one of us, alas, be so much that somehow we find we are not; we have all of us fallen away from so much that we still long to call ours. Cannot the Divine Song in some way indicate to us our unity, though from a great way off, with those happier things; inform us, and prove to us, that though we are what we are, we may yet, in some way, even in our abasement, even by and through our daily work, be related to the purer existence.

The modern novel is preferred to the modern poem, because we do here feel an attempt to include these indispensable latest addenda - these phenomena which, if we forget on Sunday, we must remember on Monday- these positive matters of fact, which people, who are not verse-writers, are obliged to have to do with.

Et fortasse cupressum

Scis simulare; quid hoc, si fractis enatat expes

Navibus, ære dato qui pingitur?

The novelist does try to build us a real house to be lived in;

and this common builder, with no notion of the orders, is more to our purpose than the student of ancient art who proposes to lodge us under an Ionic portico. We are, unhappily, not gods, nor even marble statues. While the poets, like the architects, are a good thing enough in its way-studying ancient art, comparing, thinking, theorizing, the common novelist tells a plain tale, often trivial enough, about this, that, and the other, and obtains one reading at any rate; is thrown away indeed to-morrow, but is devoured to-day.

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We do not at all mean to prepare the reader for finding the great poetic desideratum in this present Life-Drama. But it has at least the advantage, such as it is, of not showing much of the litterateur or connoisseur, or indeed the student; nor is it, as we have said, mere pastoral sweet piping from the country. These poems were not written among books and busts, nor yet

By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

They have something substantive and lifelike, immediate and first-hand, about them. There is a charm, for example, in finding, as we do, continual images drawn from the busy seats of industry; it seems to satisfy a want that we have long been conscious of, when we see the black streams that welter out of factories, the dreary lengths of urban and suburban dustiness,

the squares and streets, And the faces that one meets,

irradiated with a gleam of divine purity. There are moods when one is prone to believe that, in these last days, no longer by "clear spring or shady grove," no more upon any Pindus or Parnassus, or by the side of any Castaly, are the true and lawful haunts of the poetic powers: but, we could believe it, if anywhere, in the blank and desolate streets, and upon the solitary bridges of the midnight city, where Guilt is, and wild Temptation, and the dire Compulsion of what has once been done there, with these tragic sisters around him, and with Pity also, and pure Compassion, and pale Hope, that looks like Despair, and Faith in the garb of Doubt, there walks the discrowned Apollo, with unstrung lyre; nay, and

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could he sound it, those mournful Muses would scarcely be able as of old, to respond and "sing in turn with their beautiful voices."

To such moods, and in such states of feeling, this LifeDrama will be an acceptable poem. Under the guise of a different story, a story unskilful enough in its construction, we have seemed continually to recognize the ingenuous, yet passionate, youthful spirit, struggling after something like right and purity amidst the unnumbered difficulties, contradictions, and corruptions of the heated and crowded, busy, vicious, and inhuman town. Eager for action, incapable of action without some support, yet knowing not on what arm to dare to lean; not untainted; hard-pressed; in some sort, at times, overcome, still we seem to see the young combatant, half combatant, half martyr, resolute to fight it out, and not to quit this for some easier field of battle, to make something of it.

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The story, such as we have it, is inartificial enough. Walter, a boy of poetic temperament and endowment, has, it appears, in the society of a poet friend now deceased, grown up with the ambition of achieving something great in the highest form of human speech. Unable to find or make a way, he is diverted from his lofty purposes by a romantic love-adventure, obscurely told, with a "Lady" who finds him asleep, Endymion-like, under a tree. The fervor and force of youth wastes itself here in vain; a quick disappointment, for the lady is betrothed to another, sends him back enfeebled, exhausted, and embittered, to essay once again his task. Disappointed affections, and baffled ambition, contending henceforward in unequal strife with the temptations of scepticism, indifference, apathetic submission, base indulgence, and the like; the sickened, and defeated, yet only too strong, too powerful man, turning desperately off, and recklessly at last plunging in mid-unbelief into joys to which only belief and moral purpose can give reality; - out of horrorstricken guilt, the new birth of clearer and surer, though humbler, conviction, trust, resolution; - these happy changes met, perhaps a little prematurely and almost more than halfway, by success in the aims of a purified ambition, and

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crowned too, at last, by the blessings of a regenerate affection, such is the argument of the latter half of the poem; and there is something of a current and tide, so to say, of poetic intention in it, which carries on the reader, (after the first few scenes,) perforce, in spite of criticism and himself, through faulty imagery, turgid periods, occasional bad versification and even grammar, to the close. Certainly, there is something of a real flesh-and-blood heart and soul in the case, or this could not be so.

Of the first four or five scenes, perhaps the less said the better. There are frequent fine lines, occasional beautiful passages; but the tenor of the narrative is impeded and obstructed to the last degree, not only by accumulations of imagery, but by episode, and episode within episode, of the most embarrassing form. It is really discouraging to turn page upon page, while Walter is quoting the poems of his lost friend, and wooing the unknown lady of the wood with a story of another lady and an Indian page. We could almost recommend the reader to begin with the close of scene IV., where the hero's first love-disappointment is decided, and the lady quits her young poet.

"I must go,

Nay, nay, I go alone! Yet one word more.
Strive for the Poet's crown, but ne'er forget,
How poor are fancy's blooms to thoughtful fruits:
That gold and crimson mornings, though more bright
Than soft blue days, are scarcely half their worth.
Walter 'farewell,' the world shall hear of thee.
[She still lingers.
"I have a strange sweet thought. I do believe
I shall be dead in spring, and that the soul
Which animates and doth inform these limbs,
Will pass into the daisies of my grave:
If memory shall ever lead thee there,
Through daisies I'll look up into thy face,
And feel a dim sweet joy; and if they move
As in a little wind, thou 'lt know 'tis I."

The ensuing scene, between Walter and a Peasant, is also obscurely and indecisively given; and before Part VI., it would

have been well, we think, to place some mark of the lapse of time. The second division of the poem here commences. We are reintroduced to the hero in a room in London, reading a poetical manuscript. Edward, a friend, enters and interrupts. We quote from a speech of Walter's.

"Thou mock'st at much;

And he who sneers at any living hope,

Or aspiration of a human heart,

Is just so many stages less than God,
That universal and all-sided Love.

I'm wretched, Edward, to the very heart:

I see an unreached heaven of young desire
Shine through my hopeless tears. My drooping sails
Flap idly 'gainst the mast of my intent.

I rot upon the waters, when my prow

Should grate the golden isles.

Edward.

What wouldst thou do?

Thy train did teem with vapors wild and vast.

Walter. But since my younger and my hotter days,

(As nebula condenses to an orb,)

These vapors gathered to one shining hope

Sole hanging in my sky.

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When it is fully sung, its great complaint,
Its hope, its yearning, told to earth and heaven,
Our troubled age shall pass, as doth a day

That leaves the west all crimson with the promise
Of the diviner morrow, which even then

Is hurrying up the great world's side with light."

Two scenes of conversation are given between Walter and this friend, Edward, cold, clear-sighted, a little cynical, but patient, calm, resigned, and moral. He, as it happens, is going on the morrow to Bedfordshire, to visit

"Old Mr. Wilmott, nothing in himself,
But rich as ocean. He has in his hand

Sea-marge and moor, and miles of stream and grove,

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