publicly to express our sympathy with Dr Cheever in the trying circumstances in which his bold stand for the truth has placed him; and by sending him such pecuniary aid as we can, to enable him to maintain the position he now holds as pastor of the great Puritan Church of New York. By so doing, we shall at once honour him, ourselves, and the Great Lord and Master of us all. "NIGHT AND THE SOUL."* SOME men achieve a ready reputation, and other men of no less merit perform work after work, and the world agrees to pass them over. Literary adventures are like adventures by sea, their success is determinable by no forecast, the two vessels quit the same harbour well found, and in gallant trim; one reaches her port as with the wings of a bird, the other after a hard struggle founders at last. So marked is this dispensation of fortune, that when we have heard men, as some matter of fact people will, discountenancing the very use of the word chance, we have felt tempted to say, "it is clear sir, you never wrote a book." For a successful author, if there is anything in him, must have perceived that he owed his prosperity to something external to bimself, a lucky chance, a good publisher, accidental literary interest, a generous critic, or an influential friend; and an unsuccessful author, what solace has he in his disappointment if he may not fall back upon the doctrine of chance, and attribute the position of those who are more favoured to the guidance of that fortune that " brings in some boats that are not steered." This train of thought has been suggested to us by the perusal of a noble poem by Stanyan Bigg, and the comparatively small recognition which it has met with in literary circles, and amongst the general public; a recognition which is daily widening, no doubt, yet which still falls very short of what its merit should command. We propose, now, to draw our readers' attention to it, as a work suffused with brilliancy, and qualified to shine in the heaven of poetry as a distinct and individual star. It is but just to mention that the first discoverer of this, as of many of the other new and rising lights, was the Rev. George Gilfillan, whose genial encouragement and hearty recognition of all that is grand, true, or beautiful, has brought joy to a thousand young hearts that might otherwise have been crushed under the general bitterness and sarcasm of critical reception. Poets usually are not clad in triple brass; even though they may have carried good conscience to their work; and are morally much benefited when some man of crest and prowess will champion them at first, and interpose an Ajacean shield to ward off the too thickly coming shafts. Assuredly whether prized as he ought to be, or not, the man who does this does a good deed in this wretched world of ours. If the schoolmaster * Night and the Soul, a Dramatic Poem, by J. Stanyan Bigg. Groombridge, London. should be remembered, as Dr Johnson thought, when a pupil becomes celebrated, how much more should the foster father? All hail, Gilfillan! genial critic and benevolent, we too are proud to owe thee something, and have felt that to obtain thee in a gloomy hour, was "an estate of seven years' health." Mr Bigg's poem is by no means a perfect production; it is loose and irregular, and testifies to haste, a sad neglect of the rule inculcated by Horace for pressure of the ninth year, and the practice of Isocrates who sat down before a panegyric, like the Greeks before Troy, for ten years. This poem is a promise on the part of the author to do great things some day, circumstances and the hour befitting. Nuggets of gold from a new mine is "Night and the Soul," which the author binds himself by these indentures, to work at manfully, that he may elicit for use the wealth that in the rough certainly does lie there. But there is much to be done first; weeds and jungle and undergrowth to be torn up by the roots if possible; or, to quit figure, all slip-shod phrases are to be cut out, and they are multitudinous, though not more than we find, to say truth, in most modern poems, but a great many more than there ought to be, if modern poems are intended ever to become ancient. We think that poetry, that is the metrical sort, may almost be upon its last legs now, so overwhelming is the newspaper force, so abundant is admirable reviewing, so copious is diffusive learning and distraction, so tempting is it to write the dashing article, or thunderclap railway reading, instead of quietly sobering the brain that it may be capable to judge, closing the eye that it may retain its sight, strengthening the imagination by the spirit and waters of solitude, that it may round its ideas as the sea does the flint-stones in its lonely tide-washings, or desert beaches. The old method was the only one, and Quintillian was right "Emendatio pars studiorum longe utilissima," for the writer is most workmanlike when blotting out. Writing is like sculpture, the last finish is given by taking away. ог Remember this when you write "Ungloomed by not a throb of life.” (P. 1.) "As a tooth-grinding jar among the harps or such debasement of conversational familiarity as this:- Such moralists as these, who would crowd Yon infinite expanse into a chart Of ways and means, and turn the universe Into a great poor Richard's Almanac." (P. 7.) We are distressed when we come to a passage of such rare beauty defaced as the following, where it is said of the Almighty "Who paints himself upon the leaves of flowers, And flings his portrait on the breasted clouds, Of suns, and moons, and planetary systems." (P. 11.) Why not say "Inscribes his portrait." The last line is a syllable too long, "orbs" would perhaps read better. In spite, however, of these blemishes there is real poetry breathing in the passage. Why then should we be reminded of Charles Surface flinging away the portraits of his ancestral predecessors. The whole of page 14 is in the most unfortunate strain; we have a "chit-chat with the stars," in which those gossiping luminaries "peached about events to come;" and we are introduced (P. 15.) to "a prudent man, Who keeps a keen shrewd eye on the main chance.'' Sometimes the very poetical faculty itself lands Mr Bigg into error, -the error of too-muchness, if such an expression may be tolerated. Such as, "In ever-during darkness, lidded night." The darkness was quite enough, and the ingenuity of "lidded" night is not only lost upon us, but we wish it out of the way. We think we trace in Mr Bigg much of the morbid feeling discernible in the Kirke Whites, Southeys, and Coleridges, of the early part of this century, who always murdered a mother, when they wished to excite our sensibility, as newspaper editors run over an old woman when they wish to fill the corner of a column. Let not the reader think us over-critical, we are raking up all the faults in this poem because Mr Bigg is worth finding fault with, and we intend to repay him for this discipline, by copious citations of the many noble passages with which his book abounds. As a specimen of the morbid, we refer to Ferdinand's apostrophe to his "ladye-love," an occasion, when least of all, one could expect to find it, for the lady seems in excellent humour, so the gentleman cannot, one would think, exclaim with Romeo, "dry sorrow drinks our blood," and yet he tells her she is as "the spring's glad smiling While the glooms of winter linger! On a dead man's pallid finger." (P. 66.) Caroline no doubt was a strong-minded woman, for she takes no notice of this allusion, but talks on uninterruptedly about rosebuds and clouds of light. This wretched conclusion is all the more remarkable because it follows some lines of rare excellence, beginning: "For thou art as dear to me As the ruby-breasted robin, The same tendency is shown constantly : "And all the glances of the eyes we love Are turned into the heartless stare of death." (P. 16. VOL. XXIX. B The world at noon is said to be Virtue, "Like a queen stricken in her marriage robes.” (P. 136.) Such allusions as these are gratuitously horrible, for the dramatic situations in the poem, are of altogether invisible interest, and will not justify in the least any such ghastly dialogue. Considering the beautiful and scholarly cast of Mr Bigg's mind, we are at a loss to account for the common-place embellishments and thread-bare finery in which he sometimes indulges, and this he will do quite unconsciously in the midst of passages of remarkable power and fervour. His moments of best inspiration will sometimes not save him from lapses of this sort. Such words as 66 opaline, trammelage, tinselled fripperies, seraphic nations," are common offences. Such familiarities as "trust me for that," "no not quite that," often obtrude, to the great disfigurement of the page. Our author will not disdain such embellishments as may be had of "rainbow plumes," and will mistake for eloquence such inflation as this "before them lay Eternal domes of bliss ablaze with light, In whose vast jasper halls suns hung as tapers." (P. 9.) This is done upon the old rule of making a big thing small, that by comparing the sun to "store," you may make the ball very big indeed. The "material sublime" is not sublime in words; the object seen by the natural eye may be grand, but words cannot picture it, and you may set ten Troys burning on paper, and never kindle one heart. The balloon image is a favourite one,— "Man's life is dwindling into nullity, Is shrinking up like a collapsed balloon." (P. 129.) Mr Bigg's similes are generally correct and often startlingly original; he has failed however at page 88. "My heart would then be all rimmed round with light, On heaven's dark concave through a winter's night." If her love was like a moon, Alexis' heart could not be "rimmed with light," for it must represent heaven's dark concave specked with light. Again at P. 83 the Ministering Spirit says, "And God bringeth forth a flower From a foul and rotten root." We apprehend a rotten root will produce nothing, a rotten soil may. Our author is affluent in imagery, but he has said a terrible and shocking thing at page 152; so far-fetched a simile is not commonly found in even sterile writers, as this :: "He looked as pale as he had been with God Close closeted an hour." There is not a particle of sublimity here; the familiarity is simply ludicrous and shocking. It almost infringes the third commandment in the Decalogue, and unfortunately, or fortunately, as the case may be, it does so, without attaining beauty, unlike that gigantic daring and blasphemy in the "Mariner," where the Sun's bright levee is given as― : "Nor dim, nor red, like God's own head, The spirit of the verse redeems the impropriety in some measure, for we think that vaticination was on, and that the poet spoke as he was urged, but in the passage before us, there is no such palliative; all this hyperbole is to describe the preternatural pallor of a driftless sceptic, in whom we have lost all sympathy before he has uttered half his fine doubts, and whom if we had in the flesh, we should have recommended to go early to bed for a few weeks and abstain from tea and coffee health being an admirable remedy for scepticism. Carlyle and most of the religious people, at the opposite pole of theory, offend in the same way. We would fain commend to them the Jewish reverence for the word of Jehovah, though that became a superstition; or the solemn pause which our own Boyle always observed when occasion required him to utter that holiest of symbols. In the author of "Night and the Soul," we attribute this merely to a poetical error, and do not doubt the holiness of the pen which wrote (P.149.) "But the divine Shekinah is behind! We dwell in God as yon stars rest in heaven : He is without, within, above, below, And all things preach him to the holy soul." In no carping spirit have we pointed out these minor, and in many cases verbal blemishes; we have, on the contrary, done so because we consider that J. Stanyan Bigg either is now, or is to be, a standard author, and a classic in the English tongue, and nothing is more useful to a man destined to be eminent, than a plain and honest declaration of those things in his work, that in perusal, gave offence to a well-disposed and admiring reader: indeed there is a modesty about this writer that makes us think our well-meant censure, even when unfounded, will not be received as the officiousness of impertinence. The more important defects are partly attributable to the author's idiosyncrasy, and of course cannot be wholly cured. The absence of constructiveness is not to be supplied. In " Night and the Soul" it is in vain to look for any human interest; plot there is none. It is a plum pudding made of nothing but plums, a poetical common-place book with Night for a subject. Another fault not incurable, but yet almost so, is the morbid bias discoverable in every page. Though there is some appearance that this morbidness is rather a theoretical error, and an endeavour to portray a scepticism not felt, than a natural emanation of the author's own mind. If so, this is the only dramatic effort in the book, for there never was invented a more lifeless dialogue, unalleviated by any discrimination of persons, than that which is sustained by the characters throughout this poem. Men and wo |