The Germ: Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art

“‘Of lazy dogs the laziest ever fateSet on two useless legs you surely are,And born beneath some wayward sauntering starTo sit for ever swinging on a gate,And laugh at wiser people passing through.’So spake the bard De Lacy: for they twoIn frequent skirmishes of fierce debateWould bicker, tho' their mutual love was great.”—p. 35.

Mohun, however, sides with St. Oun, and agrees to escort him in his rambles after the first few shots. He accordingly soon resigns his gun to the keeper Oswald, whose position as one who

“came into possessionOf the head-keepership by due successionThro' sire and grandsire, who, when one was dead,Left his right heir-male keeper in his stead,”

Mr. Cayley evidently regards with some complacence. The friends enter a boat: here, while sailing along a rivulet that winds through the estate, St. Oun falls to talking of wealth, its value and insufficiency, of death, and life, and fame; and coming at length to ask after the history of Sir Reginald's past life, he suggests “this true epic opening for relation:”

“‘The sun, from his meridian heights decliningMirrored his richest tints upon the shiningBosom of a lake. In a light shallop, twoYoung men, whose dress, etcaetera, proclaims,Etcætera,—so would write G.P.R. James—Glided in silence o'er the waters blue,Skirting the wooded slopes. Upward they gazedOn Nornyth's ancient pile, whose windows blazed“‘In sunset rays, whose crimson fulgence streamedAcross the flood: wrapped in deep thought they seemed.‘You are pensive, Reginald,’ at length thus spakeThe helmsman: ‘ha! it is the mystic powerFraught by the sacred stillness of the hour:Forgive me if your reverie I break,Craving, with friendship's sympathy, to shareYour spirit's burden, be it joy or care.’”—pp. 48, 49.

Sir Reginald Mohun's story is soon told.—Born in Italy, and losing his mother at the moment of his birth, and his father and only sister dying also soon after, he is left alone in the world.

“‘My father was a melancholy man,Having a touch of genius, and a heart,But not much of that worldly better partCalled force of character, which finds some planFor getting over anguish that will crushWeak hearts of stronger feeling. He beganTo pine; was pale; and had a hectic flushAt times; and from his eyelids tears would gush.“‘Some law of hearts afflicted seems to bindA spell by which the scenes of grief grew dear;He never could leave Italy, tho' hereAnd there he wandered with unquiet mind,—Rome, Florence, Mantua, Milan; once as farAs Venice; but still Naples had a blindAttraction which still drew him thither. ThereHe died. Heaven rest his ashes from their care.“‘He wrote, a month or so before he died,To Wilton's father; (he is Earl of Eure,My mother's brother); saying he was sureThat he should soon be gone, and would confideUs to his guardian care. My uncle cameBefore his death. We stood by his bedside.He blessed us. We, who scarcely knew the nameOf death, yet read in the expiring flame“‘Of his sunk eyes some awful mystery,And wept we knew not why. There was a graceOf radiant joyful hope upon his face,Most unaccustomed, and which seemed to beAll foreign to his wasted frame; and yetSo heavenly in its consolation weSmiled through the tears with which our lids were wet.His lips were cold, as, whispering, ‘Do not fret“‘When I am gone,’ he kissed us: and he tookOur uncle's hands, which on our heads he laid,And said: ‘My children, do not be afraidOf Death, but be prepared to meet him. Look;Here is your mother's brother; he to herAs Reginald to Eve.’ His thin voice shook.—‘Eve was your Mother's name.’ His words did err,As dreaming; and his wan lips ceased to stir.’”—pp. 55-57.

(We have quoted this passage, not insensible to its defects,—some common-place in sentiment and diction; but independently of the good it does really contain, as being the only one of such a character sustained in quality to a moderate length.)

Reginald and his cousin Wilton grew up together friends, though not bound by common sympathies. The latter has known life early, and “earned experience piecemeal:” with the former, thought has already become a custom.

Thus far only does Reginald bring his retrospect; his other friends come up, and they all return homeward. Here, too, ends the story of this canto; but not without warranting some surmise of what will furnish out the next. There is evidence of observation adroitly applied in the talk of the two under-keepers who take charge of the boat.

“They said: ‘Oh! what a gentleman to talkIs that there Lacy! What a tongue he've got!But Mr. Vivian is a pretty shot.And what a pace his lordship wish to walk!Which Mr. Tancarville, he seemed quite beat:But he's a pleasant gentleman. Good lawk!How he do make me laugh! Dang! this 'ere seatHave wet my smalls slap thro'. Dang! what a treat!“‘There's company coming to the Place to morn:Bess housemaid told me. Lord and Lady–: dashMy wigs! I can't think on. But there's a mashO' comp'ny and fine ladies; fit to tornThe heads of these young chaps. Why now I'd layThis here gun to an empty powder-hornSir Reginald be in love, or that-a-way.He looks a little downcast-loikish,—eh?’”—pp.62, 63.

It will be observed that there is no vulgarity in this vulgarism: indeed, the gentlemanly good humour of the poem is uninterrupted. This, combined with neatness of handling, and the habit of not over-doing, produces that general facility of appearance which it is no disparagement, in speaking of a first canto, to term the chief result of so much of these life and adventures as is here “done into verse.” It may be fairly anticipated, however, that no want of variety in the conception, or of success in the pourtrayal, of character will need to be complained of: meanwhile, a few passages may be quoted to confirm our assertions. The two first extracts are examples of mere cleverness; and all that is aimed at is attained. The former follows out a previous comparison of the world with a “huge churn.”

“Yet some, despising life's legitimate aim,Instead of butter, would become “the cheese;”A low term for distinction. Whence the nameI know not: gents invented it; and theseGave not an etymology. I see noLikelier than this, which with their taste agrees;The caseine element I conceive to mean noLess than the beau ideal of the Casino.”—p. 12.“Wise were the Augurers of old, nor erredIn substance, deeming that the life of man—(This is a new reflection, spick and span)—May be much influenced by the flight of birds.Our senate can no longer hold their houseWhen culminates the evil star of grouse;And stoutest patriots will their shot-belts girdWhen first o'er stubble-field hath partridge whirred.”—p.25.

In these others there is more purpose, with a no less definite conciseness:

“Comes forth the first great poet. Then a numberOf followers leave much literary lumber.He cuts his phrases in the sapling grainOf language; and so weaves them at his will.They from his wickerwork extract with painThe wands now warped and stiffened, which but illBend to their second-hand employment.”—pp. 4, 5.“What's life? A riddle;Or sieve which sifts you thro' it in the middle.”—p.45.

The misadventures of the five friends on their road to Nornyth are very sufficiently described:

“The night was cold and cloudy as they toppedA moorland slope, and met the bitter blast,So cutting that their ears it almost cropped;And rain began to fall extremely fast.A broken sign-post left them in great doubtAbout two roads; and, when an hour was passed,They learned their error from a lucid lout;Soon after, one by one, their lamps went out.”—p.29.

There remains to point out one fault,—and that the last fault the occurrence of which could be looked for, after so clearly expressed an intention as this:

“But, if an Author takes to writing fine,(Which means, I think, an artificial tone),The public sicken and won't read a line.I hope there's nothing of this sort in mine.”—p. 6.

A quotation or two will fully explain our meaning: and we would seriously ask Mr. Cayley to reflect whether he has always borne his principle in mind, and avoided “writing fine;” whether he has not sometimes fallen into high-flown common-place of the most undisguised stamp, rendered, moreover, doubly inexcusable and out of place by being put into the mouth of one of the personages of the poem; It is Sir Reginald Mohun that speaks; and truly, though not thrust forward as a “wondrous paragon of praise,” he must be confessed to be,

“Judging by specimens the author quotes,An utterer of most ordinary phrases,”

not words only and sentences, but real phrases, in the more distinct and specific sense of the term.

“‘There, while yet a new born thing,Death o'er my cradle waved his darksome wing;My mother died to give me birth: forlornI came into the world, a babe of woe,Ill-omened from my childhood's early morn;Yet heir to what the idolators of showDeem life's good things, which earthly bliss bestow.“‘The riches of the heart they call a dream;Love, hope, faith, friendship, hollow phantasies:Living but for their pockets and their eyes,They stifle in their breasts the purer beamOf sunshine glanced from heaven upon their clay,To be its light and warmth. This is a themeFor homilies: and I will only say,The heart feeds not on fortune's baubles gay.’”—p. 51.

Sir Reginald's narrative concludes after this fashion:

“‘But what is this? A dubious compromise;Twilight of cloudy zones, whereon the blazeOf sunshine breaks but seldom with its raysOf heavenly hope, towards which the spirit sighsIts aspirations, and is lost again'Mid doubts: to grasp the wisdom of the skiesToo feeble, tho' convinced earth's bonds are vain,Cowering faint-hearted in the festering chain.’”—p. 60.

A similar instance of conventionality constantly repeated is the sin of inversion, which is no less prevalent, throughout the poem, in the conversational than in the narrative portions. In some cases the exigencies of rhyme may be pleaded in palliation, as for “Cam's marge along” and “breezy willows cool,” which occur in two consecutive lines of a speech; but there are many for which no such excuse can be urged. Does any one talk of “sloth obscure,” or of “hearts afflicted?” Or what reason is there for preferring “verses easy” to easy verses? Ought not the principle laid down in the following passage of the introduction to be followed out, not only into the intention, but into the manner and quality also, of the whole work?

“‘I mean to be sincere in this my lay:That which I think I shall write down withoutA drop of pain or varnish. Therefore, pray,Whatever I may chance to rhyme about,Read it without the shadow of a doubt.’”—p. 12.

Again, the Author appears to us to have acted unwisely in occasionally departing from the usual construction of his stanzas, as in this instance:

“‘But, as I said, you know my history;And your's—not that you made a mysteryOf it, nor used reserve, yet, being notBy nature an Autophonophilete,(A word De Lacy fashioned and called me it)—Your's you have never told me yet. And whatCan be a more appropriate occasionThan this true epic opening for relation?’”—p. 48.

Here the lines do not cohere so happily as in the more varied distribution of the rhymes; and, moreover, as a question of principle, we think it not advisable to allow of minor deviations from the uniformity of a prescribed metre.

It may be well to take leave of Mr. Cayley with a last quotation of his own words,—words which no critic ought to disregard:

“I shall be deeply grateful to reviews,Whether they deign approval, or rebuke,For any hints they think may disabuseDelusions of my inexperienced muse.”– p.8.

If our remarks have been such as to justify the Author's wish for sincere criticism, our object is attained; and we look forward for the second canto with confidence in his powers.

Published Monthly.—Price One S.

Art and Poetry, Being Thoughts towards Nature

Conducted principally by Artists

Of the little worthy the name of writing that has ever been written upon the principles of Art, (of course excepting that on the mere mechanism), a very small portion is by Artists themselves; and that is so scattered, that one scarcely knows where to find the ideas of an Artist except in his pictures.

With a view to obtain the thoughts of Artists, upon Nature as evolved in Art, in another language besides their own proper one, this Periodical has been established. Thus, then, it is not open to the conflicting opinions of all who handle the brush and palette, nor is it restricted to actual practitioners; but is intended to enunciate the principles of those who, in the true spirit of Art, enforce a rigid adherence to the simplicity of Nature either in Art or Poetry, and consequently regardless whether emanating from practical Artists, or from those who have studied nature in the Artist's School.

Hence this work will contain such original Tales (in prose or verse), Poems, Essays, and the like, as may seem conceived in the spirit, or with the intent, of exhibiting a pure and unaffected style, to which purpose analytical Reviews of current Literature—especially Poetry—will be introduced; as also illustrative Etchings, one of which latter, executed with the utmost care and completeness, will appear in each number.

Art and Poetry: Being Thoughts towards Nature Conducted principally by Artists.

No. 4. May, 1850

With an Etching by W.H. DeverellWhen whoso merely hath a little thoughtWill plainly think the thought which is in him,—Not imaging another's bright or dim,Not mangling with new words what others taught;When whoso speaks, from having either soughtOr only found,—will speak, not just to skimA shallow surface with words made and trim,But in that very speech the matter brought:Be not too keen to cry—“So this is all!—A thing I might myself have thought as well,But would not say it, for it was not worth!”Ask: “Is this truth?” For is it still to tellThat, be the theme a point or the whole earth,Truth is a circle, perfect, great or small?

Viola and Olivia

When Viola, a servant of the Duke,Of him she loved the page, went, sent by him,To tell Olivia that great love which shookHis breast and stopt his tongue; was it a whim,Or jealousy or fear that she must lookUpon the face of that Olivia?'Tis hard to say if it were whim or fearOr jealousy, but it was natural,As natural as what came next, the nearIntelligence of hearts: OliviaLoveth, her eye abused by a thin wallOf custom, but her spirit's eyes were clear.Clear? we have oft been curious to knowThe after-fortunes of those lovers dear;Having a steady faith some deed must showThat they were married souls—unmarried here—Having an inward faith that love, called soIn verity, is of the spirit, clearOf earth and dress and sex—it may be nearWhat Viola returned Olivia?

A Dialogue on Art

[The following paper had been sent as a contribution to this publication scarcely more than a week before its author, Mr. John Orchard, died. It was written to commence a series of “Dialogues on Art,” which death has rendered for ever incomplete: nevertheless, the merits of this commencement are such that they seemed to warrant its publication as a fragment; and in order that the chain of argument might be preserved, so far as it goes, uninterrupted, the dialogue is printed entire in the present number, despite its length. Of the writer, but little can be said. He was an artist; but ill health, almost amounting to infirmity—his portion from childhood—rendered him unequal to the bodily labour inseparable from his profession: and in the course of his short life, whose youth was scarcely consummated, he exhibited, from time to time, only a very few small pictures, and these, as regards public recognition, in no way successfully. In art, however, he gave to the “seeing eye,” token of that ability and earnestness which the “hearing ear” will not fail to recognize in the dialogue now published; where the vehicle of expression, being more purely intellectual, was more within his grasp than was the physical and toilsome embodiment of art.

It is possible that a search among the papers he has left, may bring to light a few other fugitive pieces, which will, in such event, as the Poem succeeding this Dialogue, be published in these pages.

To the end that the Author's scheme may be, as far as is now possible, understood and appreciated, we subjoin, in his own words, some explanation of his further intent, and of the views and feelings which guided him in the composition of the dialogue:

“I have adopted the form of dialogue for several, to me, cogent reasons; 1st, because it gives the writer the power of exhibiting the question, Art, on all its sides; 2nd, because the great phases of Art could be represented idiosyncratically; and, to make this clear, I have named the several speakers accordingly; 3rd, because dialogue secures the attention; and, that secured, deeper things strike, and go deeper than otherwise they could be made to; and, 4th and last, because all my earliest and most delightful pleasures associate themselves with dialogue,—(the old dramatists, Lucian, Walter Savage Landor, &c.)

“You will find that I have not made one speaker say a thing on purpose for another to condemn it; but that I make each one utter his wisest in the very wisest manner he can, or rather, that I can for him.

“The further continuation of this 1st dialogue embraces the question Nature, and its processes, invention and imitation,—imitation chiefly. Kosmon begins by showing, in illustration of the truth of Christian's concluding sentences, how imperfectly all the Ancients, excepting the Hebrews, loved, understood, or felt Nature, &c. This is not an unimportant portion of Art knowledge.

“I must not forget to say that the last speech of Kosmon will be answered by Christian when they discourse of imitation. It properly belongs to imitation; and, under that head, it can be most effectively and perfectly confuted. Somewhat after this idea, the “verticalism” and “involution” will be shown to be direct from Nature; the gilding, &c., disposed of on the ground of the old piety using the most precious materials as the most religious and worthy of them; and hence, by a very easy and probable transition, they concluded that that which was most soul-worthy, was also most natural.”]

Dialogue I., in the House of Kalon

Kalon. Welcome, my friends:—this day above all others; to-day is the first day of spring. May it be the herald of a bountiful year,—not alone in harvests of seeds. Great impulses are moving through man; swift as the steam-shot shuttle, weaving some mighty pattern, goes the new birth of mind. As yet, hidden from eyes is the design: whether it be poetry, or painting, or music, or architecture, or whether it be a divine harmony of all, no manner of mind can tell; but that it is mighty, all manners of minds, moved to involuntary utterance, affirm. The intellect has at last again got to work upon thought: too long fascinated by matter and prisoned to motive geometry, genius—wisdom seem once more to have become human, to have put on man, and to speak with divine simplicity. Kosmon, Sophon, again welcome! your journey is well-timed; Christian, my young friend, of whom I have often written to you, this morning tells me by letter that to-day he will pay me his long-promised visit. You, I know, must rejoice to meet him: this interchange of knowledge cannot fail to improve us, both by knocking down and building up: what is true we shall hold in common; what is false not less in common detest. The debateable ground, if at last equally debateable as it was at first, is yet ploughed; and some after-comer may sow it with seed, and reap therefrom a plentiful harvest.

Sophon. Kalon, you speak wisely. Truth hath many sides like a diamond with innumerable facets, each one alike brilliant and piercing. Your information respecting your friend Christian has not a little interested me, and made me desirous of knowing him.

Kosmon. And I, no less than Sophon, am delighted to hear that we shall both see and taste your friend.

Sophon. Kalon, by what you just now said, you would seem to think a dearth of original thought in the world, at any time, was an evil: perhaps it is not so; nay, perhaps, it is a good! Is not an interregnum of genius necessary somewhere? A great genius, sun-like, compels lesser suns to gravitate with and to him; and this is subversive of originality. Age is as visible in thought as it is in man. Death is indispensably requisite for a new life. Genius is like a tree, sheltering and affording support to numberless creepers and climbers, which latter die and live many times before their protecting tree does; flourishing even whilst that decays, and thus, lending to it a greenness not its own; but no new life can come out of that expiring tree; it must die: and it is not until it is dead, and fallen, and rotted into compost, that another tree can grow there; and many years will elapse before the new birth can increase and occupy the room the previous one occupied, and flourish anew with a greenness all its own. This on one side. On another; genius is essentially imitative, or rather, as I just now said, gravitative; it gravitates towards that point peculiarly important at the moment of its existence; as air, more rarified in some places than in others, causes the winds to rush towards them as toward a centre: so that if poetry, painting, or music slumbers, oratory may ravish the world, or chemistry, or steam-power may seduce and rule, or the sciences sit enthroned. Thus, nature ever compensates one art with another; her balance alone is the always just one; for, like her course of the seasons, she grows, ripens, and lies fallow, only that stronger, larger and better food may be reared.

Kalon. By your speaking of chemistry, and the mechanical arts and sciences, as periodically ruling the world along with poetry, painting, and music,—am I to understand that you deem them powers intellectually equal, and to require of their respective professors as mighty, original, and human a genius for their successful practice?

Kosmon. Human genius! why not? Are they not equally human?—nay, are they not—especially steam-power, chemistry and the electric telegraph—more—eminently more—useful to man, more radically civilizers, than music, poetry, painting, sculpture, or architecture?

Kalon. Stay, Kosmon! whither do you hurry? Between chemistry and the mechanical arts and sciences, and between poetry, painting, and music, there exists the whole totality of genius—of genius as distinguished from talent and industry. To be useful alone is not to be great: plus only is plus, and the sum is minus something and plus in nothing if the most unimaginable particle only be absent. The fine arts, poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and architecture, as thought, or idea, Athene-like, are complete, finished, revelations of wisdom at once. Not so the mechanical arts and sciences: they are arts of growth; they are shaped and formed gradually, (and that, more by a blind sort of guessing than by intuition,) and take many men's lives to win even to one true principle. On all sides they are the exact opposites of each other; for, in the former, the principles from the first are mature, and only the manipulation immature; in the latter, it is the principles that are almost always immature, and the manipulation as constantly mature. The fine arts are always grounded upon truth; the mechanical arts and sciences almost always upon hypothesis; the first are unconfined, infinite, immaterial, impossible of reduction into formulas, or of conversion into machines; the last are limited, finite, material, can be uttered through formulas, worked by arithmetic, tabulated and seen in machines.

Sophon. Kosmon, you see that Kalon, true to his nature, prefers the beautiful and good, to the good without the beautiful; and you, who love nature, and regard all that she, and what man from her, can produce, with equal delight,—true to your's,—cannot perceive wherefore he limits genius to the fine arts. Let me show you why Kalon's ideas are truer than yours. You say that chemistry, steam-power, and the electric telegraph, are more radically civilizers than poetry, painting, or music: but bethink you: what emotions beyond the common and selfish ones of wonder and fear do the mechanical arts or sciences excite, or communicate? what pity, or love, or other holy and unselfish desires and aspirations, do they elicit? Inert of themselves in all teachable things, they are the agents only whereby teachable things,—the charities, sympathies and love,—may be more swiftly and more certainly conveyed and diffused: and beyond diffusing media the mechanical arts or sciences cannot get; for they are merely simple facts; nothing more: they cannot induct; for they, in or of themselves, have no inductive powers, and their office is confined to that of carrying and spreading abroad the powers which do induct; which powers make a full, complete, and visible existence only in the fine arts. In FACT and THOUGHT we have the whole question of superiority decided. Fact is merely physical record: Thought is the application of that record to something human. Without application, the fact is only fact, and nothing more; the application, thought, then, certainly must be superior to the record, fact. Also in thought man gets the clearest glimpse he will ever have of soul, and sees the incorporeal make the nearest approach to the corporeal that it is possible for it to do here upon earth. And hence, these noble acts of wisdom are—far—far above the mechanical arts and sciences, and are properly called fine arts, because their high and peculiar office is to refine.