Personal Sketches of His Own Times, Vol. 2 (of 3)

In my rambling estimate of the merits of these two justly celebrated authors, let me bear in mind that they are of different sexes, and recollect the peculiar attributes of either.

Both of them are alike unsparing in their use of the bold language of liberty: but Lady Morgan has improved her ideas of freedom by contrasts on the European continent; while Thomas Moore has not improved his by the exemplification of freedom in America. Lady Morgan has succeeded in adulterating her refinement; Thomas Moore has unsuccessfully endeavoured to refine his grossness: she has abundant talent; he has abundant genius; and whatsoever distinction those terms admit of, indicates, in my mind, their relative merit. This allowance, however, must be made; that the lady has contented herself with invoking only substantial beings and things of this sublunary world, while the gentleman has ransacked both heaven and hell, and “the half-way house,” for figurative assistance.

I knew them both before they had acquired any celebrity and after they had attained to much. I esteemed them then, and have reason equally to esteem them now: it is on their own account that I wish some portion of their compositions had never appeared; and I really believe, upon due consideration, they will themselves be of my way of thinking. But let it be remembered, that my esteem and friendship were never yet increased or diminished by the success or non-success of any body. Besides, while a man is necessitated to read much law, he cannot read much literature; and hence I scarcely saw the writings of either until the general buzz called my attention to them.

I recollect Moore being one night at my house in Merrion Square, during the spring of his celebrity, touching the piano-forte, in his own unique way, to “Rosa,” his favourite amatory sonnet: his head leant back; – now throwing up his ecstatic eyes to heaven, as if to invoke refinement – then casting them softly sideways, and breathing out his chromatics to elevate, as the ladies said, their souls above the world, but at the same moment convincing them that they were completely mortal.

A Mrs. K * * * y, a lady then d’âge mûr, but moving in the best society of Ireland, sat on a chair behind Moore: I watched her profile: her lips quavered in unison with the piano; a sort of amiable convulsion, now and then raising the upper from the under lip, composed a smile less pleasing than expressive; her eye softened, glazed, – and half melting she whispered to herself the following words, which I, standing at the back of her chair, could not avoid hearing: “Dear, dear!” lisped Mrs. K * * * y, “Moore, this is not for the good of my soul!”

Almost involuntarily, I ejaculated in the same low tone, “What is not, Mrs. K * * * y?”

“You know well enough!” she replied (but without blushing, as people used to do formerly); “how can you ask so silly a question?” and she turned into the crowd, but never came near the piano again that night.

I greatly admire the national, indeed patriotic idea, of collecting and publishing the Irish Melodies, so admirably acted on by Mr. T. Moore; and it were to be wished that some of them had the appearance of having been written more enthusiastically.28

Sir John Stevenson, that celebrated warbler, has melodised a good many of these; but he certainly has forgotten poor Carolan, and has also melo-dramatised a considerable portion. I think our rants and planxties would have answered just as well without either symphonies or chromatics, and that the plaintive national music of Ireland does not reach the heart a moment the sooner for passing through a crowd of scientific variations. Tawdry and modern upholstery would not be very appropriate to the ancient tower of an Irish chieftain; and some of Sir John’s proceedings in melodising simplicity, remind me of the Rev. Doctor Hare, who whitewashed the great rock of Cashell to give it a genteel appearance against the visitation.

As I do not attempt (I ought to say presume) to be a literary, so am I still less a musical critic: but I know what pleases myself, and in that species of criticism I cannot be expected to yield to any body.

As to my own authorship, I had business more important than writing books in my early life: but now, in my old days, it is my greatest amusement, and nothing would give me more satisfaction than hearing the free and fair remarks of the critics on my productions.

I cannot omit one word more, in conclusion, as to Lady Morgan. It is to me delightful to see a woman, solely by the force of her own natural talent, succeed triumphantly in the line of letters she has adopted, and in despite of the most virulent, illiberal, and unjust attacks ever yet made on any author by mercenary reviewers.

MEMORANDA POETICA

Poets and poetasters – Major Roche’s extraordinary poem on the battle of Waterloo – “Tears of the British Muse” – French climax of love – A man’s age discovered by his poetry – Evils of a motto – Amorous feelings of youth – Love verses of a boy; of a young man – “Loves of the Angels” – Dinner verses of an Oxonian – “The Highlander,” a poem – Extracts from the poetical manuscripts of Miss Tylden, &c.

There cannot be a juster aphorism than “Poeta nascitur, non fit:” the paucity of those literary productions which deserve the epithet of poetry, compared with the thousand volumes of what rhyming authors call poems, forms a conclusive illustration.

A true poet lives for ever; a poetaster, just till a new one relieves him in the circulating libraries, or on toilets, being used in private families to keep young ladies awake at night and put them to sleep in the morning.

There may possibly be three degrees of excellence in true poetry, but certainly no more. A fourth-rate poet is, in my idea, a mere forger of rhymes; a blacksmith of versification: yet if he minds his prosody, and writes in a style either “vastly interesting,” “immensely pathetic,” or “delightfully luxurious,” he will probably find readers among the fair sex from fifteen to forty-five: the measure he adopts is of no sort of consequence, so that it be tender.

Major Roche, an Irishman, who in 1815 printed and published at Paris a full and true hexameter account of the great battle of Waterloo, with his own portrait emblazoned in the front, and the Duke of Wellington’s in the rear, must certainly be held to exceed in ingenuity all the poets and poetasters, great and small, of the present generation.

The alphabetical printed list of subscribers to Major Roche’s poem sets forth the name of every emperor, king, prince, nobleman, general, minister, and diplomatist – Russian, Prussian, Austrian, German, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, English, Irish, Scotch, Hanoverian, Don Cossack, &c. &c. Such an imperial, royal, and every way magnificent list was in fact never before, nor ever will be again, appended to any poem, civil, political, military, religious, or scientific: and as the major thought very truly that a book so patronised and garnished must be worth vastly more than any other poem of the same dimensions, he stated that “a few copies might still be procured at two guineas each.” He succeeded admirably, and I believe got more money at Paris than any one of the army did at Waterloo, and I am glad of it.

His introduction of the Duke of Wellington in battle was well worth the money: – he described his grace as Mars on horseback (new!), riding helter-skelter, and charging fiercely over every thing in his headlong course; friends and foes, men, women, and children, having no chance of remaining perpendicular if they crossed his way; his horse’s hoofs striking fire even out of the regimental buttons of the dead bodies which he galloped over! while swords, muskets, bayonets, helmets, spears, and cuirasses, pounded down by his trampling steed, formed as it were a turnpike-road, whereupon his grace seemed to fly, in his endeavours to catch Buonaparte.

I really think Major Roche’s idea of making Lord Wellington Mars was a much better one than that of making him Achilles, as the ladies have done at Hyde-Park-Corner. Paris found out the weak point of Achilles, and finished him: but Mars is immortal; and though Diomed knocked him down, neither his carcase nor character is a jot the worse. Besides, though Achilles killed Hector, it certainly was not Lord Wellington who killed Buonaparte.

A remark of mine which, though of no value, is however rather a curious one, I cannot omit – namely, that every man who has been in the habit of scribbling rhyme of any description, involuntarily betrays his age and decline by the nature of his composition. The truth of this observation I will endeavour to illustrate by quotations from some jingling couplets written at different periods of life by a friend of mine, merely to show the strange though gradual transitions and propensities of the human mind from youth to maturity, and from maturity to age. I was brought up at a school where poetry was cultivated, whether the soil would bear a crop or not: I early got, however, somehow or other, an idea of what it was, which boys in general at that age never think of. But I had no practical genius, and never set up for it. Our second master, the son of the principal one, was a parson, and, as he thought, a poet, and wrote a thing called “The Tears of the British Muse,” which we were all obliged to purchase, and repeat once a month. In fact, of all matters, prosody was most assiduously whipped into us.

Love is the first theme of all the poets in the world. Though the French do not understand that matter a bit better than other folks, yet their language certainly expresses amatory ideas far more comprehensively than ours. In talking of love they do not speak of refinement: I never knew a Frenchwoman tie them together fast: their terms of gradation are – L’AMOUR naturel, bien sensible, très fort, à son goût, superbe: finishing the climax with pas nécessaire encore. (There certainly is a touch of despondency in the last gradation.) This classing of the passion with the palate is a very simple mode of defining its varieties.

However, the state of the feelings and propensities of men is much regulated by the amount of their years (ladies in general stick to their text longest). In early youth, poetry flows from natural sensation; and at this period verses in general have much modesty, much feeling, and a visible struggle to keep in with refinement.

In the next degree of age, which runs quite close upon the former, the scene nevertheless sadly alters. We then see plain amatory sonnets turning poor refinement out of company, and showing that it was not so very pure as we had reason to suppose. Next comes that stage wherein sensualists, wits, ballad-singers, gourmands, experienced lovers, and most kinds of poetasters, male and female, give their varieties. All the organs of craniology swell up in the brain and begin to prepare themselves for development: this is rather a lasting stage, and gently glides into, and amalgamates with the final one, filled by satirists, psalmists, epigrammatists, and other specimens of antiquity and ill-nature. But I fancy this latter must be a very unproductive line of versification for the writer, as few ladies ever read such things till after they begin to wear spectacles. Few persons like to see themselves caricatured; and the moment a lady is convinced that she ceases to be an object of love, she fancies that, as matter of course, she at once becomes an object of ridicule: so that she takes care to run no chance of reading to her own mortification till she feels that it is time to commence devotee.

I recollect a friend of mine writing a poem of satire so general, that every body might attribute it to their neighbours, without taking it to themselves. The first edition having gone off rapidly, he published a second, announcing improvements, and giving as a motto the words of Hamlet: —

“To hold the mirror up to Nature.”

This motto was fatal; the idea of holding up the mirror condemned the book: nobody would venture to look into it; and the entire impression is, I dare say, in the act of dry-rotting at the present moment.

One short period is the true Paradise of mortals, that delicious dream of life, when age is too far distant to be seen, and childhood fast receding from our vision! – when Nature pauses briefly between refinement and sensuality – first imparting to our wondering senses what we are and what we shall be, before she consigns us to the dangerous guardianship of chance and of our passions!

That is the crisis when lasting traits of character begin to bud and blossom, and acquire sap; and every effort should then be made to crop and prune, and train the young shoots, while yet they retain the principle of ductility.

During that period the youth is far too chary to avow a passion which he does not fully comprehend, satisfied with making known his feelings by delicate allusions, and thus contriving to disclose the principle without mentioning its existence. All sorts of pretty sentimentalities are employed to this end: – shepherds and shepherdesses are pressed into the service; as are likewise tropes of Arcadian happiness and simplicity, with abundance of metaphorical roses with thorns to them – perfumes and flowers.

A particular friend of mine, who, when a young man, had a great propensity to fall in love and make verses accordingly, has often told me his whole progress in both, and says positively that he should ascertain in a moment a man’s decimal from his versification. He entertained me one morning by showing me certain memorandums which he had from time to time made upon this subject, and from which he permitted me to take extracts, as also from some of his own effusions which he said he had kept out of curiosity.

It appears that at the age of fifteen he fell in love with a Miss Lyddy St. John, who was herself a poetess of fourteen, and the most delicate young Celestial he had ever seen. The purity of her thoughts and verses filtered all his sentiments as clear as spring water, and did not leave an atom of grossness in the whole body of them.

Before he left school he wrote the following lines on this young lady, which he has suffered to stand as the poetical illustration of his boyhood:

IWhat sylph that flits athwart the air,Or hovers round its favourite fair,Can paint such charms to fancy’s eye,Or feebly traceThe unconscious graceOf her for whom I sigh?IIAs silver flakes of falling snowTell the pure sphere from whence they flow,So the chaste beauties of her eyeFaintly impartThe chaster heartOf her for whom I sigh.

Lyddy, however, objected to the last line of each stanza, as she did not understand what he meant by sighing for her; and he not being able to solve the question, she seemed to entertain rather a contempt for his intellects, and palpably gave the preference to one of his schoolfellows – a bolder boy.

In the next stage toward maturity the poet and lover began to know better what he would be at; and determined to pay a visit to the fair one, and try if any lucky circumstance might give him a delicate opportunity of disclosing his sentiments and sufferings, and why he sighed for her.

He unfortunately found that the innocent cause of his torment had gone on a tour, and that his interview must be adjourned sine die: however, he explored the garden; sat down in all the arbours; walked pensively over the flower-plats; peeped into her chamber-window, which was on the ground-floor, and embroidered with honeysuckles and jasmine: his very soul swelled with thoughts of love and rural retirement: and thus his heart, as it were, burst open, and let out a gush of poetry, which he immediately committed to writing in the garb of a lamentation for the fair one’s absence, and forced under the window-frame of her bed-chamber; after which he disconsolately departed, though somewhat relieved by this effort of his Muse. – The words ran thus:

LAMENTATION OF CRONEROE FOR THE ABSENCE OF ITS SYLVAN NYMPHIAh, where has she wander’d? ah, where has she stray’d?What clime now possesses our lost sylvan maid? —No myrtle now blossoms; no tulip will blow;And the lively arbutus now fades at Croneroe.IINo glowing carnation now waves round her seat;Nor crocus, nor cowslip weave turf for her feet;And the woodbine’s soft tendrils, once train’d by her hand,Now wild round her arbour distractedly stand.IIIHer golden-clothed fishes now deaden their hue:The birds cease to warble – the wood-dove to coo:The cypress spreads wide, and the willow droops low,And the noon’s brightest ray can’t enliven Croneroe.IVIn the low-winding glen, all embosom’d in green,Where the thrush courts her muse, and the blackbird is seen,The rill as it flows, limpid, silent, and slow,Trickles down the gray rock as the tears of Croneroe.VThen return, sylvan maid, and the flowers will all spring,And the wood-dove will coo, and the linnet will sing —The gold-fish will sparkle, the silver streams flow,And the noon ray shine bright thro’ the glen of Croneroe.

Nothing very interesting occurred for above two months to our amorous lyrist, when he began to tire of waiting for the nymph of Croneroe, and grew fond of one of his own cousins without being able to give any very particular reason for it, further than that he was becoming more and more enlightened in the ways of the world. But this family flame soon burnt itself out; and he next fell into a sort of furious passion for a fine, strong, ruddy, country girl, the parson’s daughter: she was a capital housekeeper, and the parson himself a jolly hunting fellow: at his house there was a good table, and a hearty style of joking, – which advantages, together with a walk in the shrubbery, a sillabub under the cow, and a romp in the hay-making field, soon sent poor refinement about its business. The poet became absolutely mortal, and began to write common hexameters. However, before he was confirmed in his mortality, he happened one day to mention a sylph to his new sweetheart; she merely replied that she never saw one, and asked her mamma privately what it was, who desired her never to mention such a word again.

But by the time he set out for Oxford he had got tolerably well quit of all his ethereal visions, celestials, and snow-drops: and to convince his love what an admiration he had for sensible, substantial beauty, like hers, he wrote the following lines in a blank leaf of her prayer-book, which she had left in his way, as if suspecting his intention: —

IRefinement’s a very nice thing in its way,And so is Platonic regard;Melting sympathy too – as the highfliers says —Is the only true theme for a bard.Then give them love’s phantoms and flights for their pains;But grant me, ye gods! flesh and blood and blue veins,And dear Dolly – dear Dolly Haynes.III like that full fire and expression of eyes,Where love’s true materiel presides;With a glance now and then to the jellies and pies,To ensure us good living besides.Ye refiners, take angels and sylphs for your pains;But grant me, ye gods! flesh and blood and blue veins,And dear Dolly – dear Dolly Haynes.

I should not omit mentioning here an incident which at the time extremely amused me. A friend of mine, a barrister, whose extravagant ideas of refinement have frequently proved a source of great entertainment to me, was also a most enthusiastic admirer of Mr. Thomas Moore’s writings, prose and verse. I had read over to him the foregoing rather “of earthy” composition, to which he listened with a shrug of the shoulders and a contraction of the upper lip; and I was desirous of drawing out his opinion thereon by adverting to his own favourite bard.

“Here,” said I, “we have a fine illustration of the natural progress from refinement to sensuality – the amalgamation of which principles is so beautifully depicted by Mr. Thomas Moore in his ‘Loves of the Angels.’”

“Your observation is just,” replied my friend: “I cannot conceive why those elegant amours have been so much carped at – since their only object is to prove that flesh and blood is in very high estimation even with the spirituals.”

“What a triumph to mortality!” replied I.

“And why,” continued he, “should people be so very sceptical as to the authenticity of these angelic love-matches? surely there are no negative proofs; and are we not every day told by the gravest authorities that we are bound at our peril to believe divers matters not an atom more intelligible? For my part, I can’t comprehend why a poet should not be as credible a witness as a bishop on matters that are equally and totally invisible to both of them.”

“True,” observed I, smiling; “and the more so, as poets, generally residing nearer the sky than any other members of society, are likely to get better information.”

“Ay, poor fellows, ‘on compulsion!’” said my friend, with a compassionate sigh. – “But,” resumed he, falling in with my tone, “there is one point which I could have wished that our most melodious of lyrists had cleared up to my satisfaction —videlicet, what gender angels really are of?”

“Very little doubt, by logical reasoning, need exist upon that point,” answered I: “Mr. Moore represents his angels in the characters of gay deceivers, and those characters being performed by the male sex —ergo, angels must be males. You perceive the syllogism is complete?”

“Ay, ay,” said my friend; “but how comes it, then, that when we see a beautiful woman, we cry out involuntarily, ‘What an angel!’”

“The word homo signifies either man or woman,” replied I; “give a similar latitude to the word angel, and you have your choice of sexes! Divers of the classics, and some of the sculptors, perfectly authorise Mr. Moore’s delicious ambiguity.”

“That,” said my Moorish friend, “is certainly the fact, and most elegantly has our lyrist handled this question of celestial sexuality: he has paid the highest compliment ever yet conceived to human beauty, by asserting that ethereal spirits, instead of taking up with their own transparent species, prefer the opaque body-colouring of terrestrial dairy-maids – though fastidious casuists may, perhaps, call that a depraved taste.”

“No such thing,” replied I; “it is rather a proof of refined and filtered epicurism. The heathen mythology is crammed with precedents on that point. Every god and goddess in former times (and the sky was then quite crowded with them,) – ”

“And may be so still,” interrupted my friend, “for any thing we know to the contrary.”

“They played their several pranks upon our globe,” continued I, “without the slightest compunction: even Jupiter himself frequently became a trespasser on the honour and peace of several very respectable fleshly families. The distinction between the spiritual and corporeal is likewise dexterously touched on by the dramatist Farquhar, who makes one of his characters29 exclaim to another, ‘I’ll take her body, you her mind: which has the better bargain?’”

“But,” rejoined my friend, “modern sentiment, which brings all these matters into collision, had not then been invented: now we can have both in one lot.”

Finally, we determined to consult Mr. Thomas Moore himself upon this most interesting consideration, agreeing that nobody could possibly understand such a refined subject so well as the person who wrote a book about it: we therefore proceeded (as I shall now do) to the next stage of years and of poetry.

The poet and lover was soon fixed at the university of Oxford, where he shortly made fast acquaintance with a couple of hot young Irishmen, who lost no time in easing him of the dregs of his sentimentality, and convinced him clearly that no rational man should ever be in love except when he is drunk, in which case it signifies little whom he falls in love with. Thus our youth soon forgot the parsonage, and grew enamoured of the bottle: but having some lees of poetry still remaining within him, the classics and the wine set them a fermenting; and he now wrote drinking-songs, hunting-songs, boating-songs, satires on the shopkeepers’ daughters, and lampoons on the fellows of Jesus and Brazen-nose; answered letters in verse; and, in a word, turned out what the lads called a genius.