| | | There are two kinds of people who | without sufficient vigour | or depth of feeling to raise them to the height of true poetry, | still are driven by a strange intellectual restlessness to | express such slender emotion as they have in verse. It | would be too harsh to accuse them of simply yielding to a | petty and unreasonable vanity. There are foolish lads and | silly maidens, it is true, who write, and even publish, | nonsense out of sheer conceit. But there are a good many | minor poets who do not compose nonsense, and yet do not | compose poetry either. They look at life through their | feelings, and so far are of the poetic temper, but from want | either of culture or favouring circumstances, or force and | depth of character, they never succeed in getting off the | ground. The last is probably the secret of nine failures out | of ten, not only in poetry, but in every other form of literary | enterprise. Of the verse-writers who, for lack of vigour, fail | to rise above the most undeniable mediocrity, some have | taken to composition out of a strong natural proclivity, and | others by the force of acquired ideas stimulating a | temperament that was fairly sensitive to begin with. Of | these two sorts of mediocre poetry the two volumes of | verses before us are very fair examples. Mr. Bradbury, as | a page in his book informs us, is self-taught, and has risen | from the ranks. Mrs. Kemble’s mere name is a sufficient | warranty that she is familiar with cultivated and artistic | traditions. In both writers there is more or less of sincerity | ~~ or, as poetical critics generally call it, unconsciousness | ~~ of genuine feeling, and of a power of rhythmical | expression. The feeling is not transparently artificial and | simulated, as it always is with the sort of youths who used | to imitate Lord Byron, and who now imitate sometimes | Shelley and sometimes Mr. Tennyson, according to their | bent. But in neither volume will the lover of poetry ~~ that is, | either of deep thought strongly coloured with emotion, or | else of deep feeling vigorously expressed and adorned | with the products of imagination stirred by feeling ~~ find | much to give him pleasure. For, in spite of a crude notion to | the contrary ~~ so fallacious that it would be a wonder how | it ever got a footing, if it were not that the crudest notions | about art are precisely those which meet with the readiest | and widest acceptance ~~ a keen poetic sensibility is no | measure of the power of poetic expression, or of the art of | evoking sympathy in the minds of others who are equally | or more sensitive.

“The poet is born,”

we know, | but not everyone that is thus | constitutionally endowed with the poetic temper can lay | claim to an intuitive knowledge of the poetic art. To | succeed here, he must have a vigour, a concentration, a | faculty of wide observing, which a poet, like the rest of us, | can only acquire if at all by practice and industry. However, | as neither Mrs. Kemble nor Mr. Bradbury is likely to claim | seriously a place among the half-dozen giants who divide | among them the great poetic supremacy, it is scarcely | worth while, perhaps even scarcely just, to enter too far | into the first principles of creative genius. Though there are | certainly a great many persons of far profounder sensibility | than either of our present versifiers who never composed a | stanza in their lives, still the fact of possessing an | inclination to write verses at all takes anybody out of the | deadly dry and commonplace class. But there is a | commonplace in sensibility. Most people see the sea break |

“on its cold grey stones,”

and

“the long light | shake across the lakes,”

without having their pulse | stirred, or having a single tender or graceful or pathetic | association suggested. But, even of those to whom these | sights really give a degree of imaginative pleasure, the | majority are only alive to that pleasure in a very | commonplace way. The images that are suggested, and | the associations that are called up, do not ascend into the | loftier and more remote recesses of passion or feeling. | Either Mrs. Kemble’s or Mr. Bradbury’s verses illustrate | equally well this kind of incapacity. | For instance, under the title of “The Poetry of Earth,” Mr. | Bradbury writes a description of a pleasant day in the | country when all nature seems to simile:~~ | | This is very neat and very true, and there are two more | stanzas in the same style; but where is the poetry of earth? | Nearly all Mr. Bradbury’s pieces exhibit the same thin | sensuousness. He is always inviting summer to come | again with

“green, green leaves,”

or begging | some maiden to stay with him in the dell when

“the | white moon floods the skies,”

or thinking little | superficial commonplace thoughts about our mortal lot on | bridges at midnight, or in

“twilight reveries,”

while | the number of distracting maidens, with every variety of | hair and complexion, is positively countless. Some of the | love songs are graceful enough, but very, very thin. When | the poet ceases for a moment, now and then, from these or | else from simple but pretty descriptions of natural objects, | he becomes but the echo of a living poet, whose influence | at the present day it would require a stronger originality | than Mr. Bradbury’s to enable any versifier to resist. We | know pretty nearly all that is going to be said in “A | Fragment,” or anything else which opens thus: ~ | In order to compare the poet with the poetess, we shall do | well to select a gloomy subject, for gloom appears to be | the favourite medium through which Mrs. Kemble surveys | life and things in general. Mr. Bradbury, with his Ada and | Lady Gertrude and Lady Alice, and we know not how many | more, is naturally not often in a melancholy mood. On one | occasion, however, he seems to have been constrained to | write some verses “In Sorrow”: ~~ | And so on. One instantly detects the want of momentum | and concentrated force. This is just the sort of sorrow | which a person of rather more than ordinary sensibility | might feel in a general kind of way; but there is no size nor | depth about it, such as might touch all mankind. Compare | it, for example, with Burn’s fine ode entitled | “Despondency.” Compare the cry ~~ with talk | about preferring to be the humblest flower that grows, and | the like. We immediately detect the measure of our | mediocre poet’s thinness. Mrs. Kemble, as we have said, is | a poetess of acquired ideas, and her verses therefore have | an air of being more artificial. Hence, too, her partiality for | the sonnet. There is no sign in her volume that she has | more depth of feeling than Mr. Bradbury, but her verses | serve to show how far cultivation may help to supply the | lack of natural force and pliancy. For example: ~~ | There is not much superiority of thought here over Mr. | Bradbury’s lines “In Sorrow,” but the varnish is very | different, and makes the sonnet far the more effective of | the two pieces. Very often the varnish is too strong for the | body and colour, only even in this case cultivation tells | enormously. Perhaps to this very cultivation, given to a | temperament only moderately poetic, must be ascribed | Mrs. Kemble’s chief defect ~~ an absence of anything like | buoyancy. It is hard to illustrate this without lengthier | quotations than the reader would care to have to meditate | upon. But any dozen lines, selected almost at random, are | enough to show what we mean. Here are some verses | entitle “A Wish.” | | The thought here is so very much on the surface that | vividness and freshness in the setting are the only things | that could impart any sort of worth to it. But Mrs. Kemble | has not the art of putting this spirit of movement into her | verse. She mistakes sombreness for pathos, and | heaviness for force. Her verses are very polished, but we | nowhere feel the airy, buoyant tread of the poet. It is not | merely that she almost invariably takes the gloomy side of | life. Circumstances might give this tinge to a profoundly | poetic nature. But there is a fatal want of glow and fervour. | On the whole, like all other mediocre verses, these two | volumes confirm the rule that no poems are worth reading | except the best ~~ best, that is, each after its kind ~~ and | this is especially true of lyrics.