Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/802

796 opened to me through the kindness of Mr. Macready to offer it to the proprietor of Covent Garden Theatre. I allowed the play to appear, while I was conscious of its many shortcomings. The toil of placing a tragedy or comedy on the stage (apart from the trouble of writing it) is sufficient to daunt most men from repeating the experiment. Without doubt, the activity and kindness of Mr. Macready, and the general good-will of the actors, saved me from much trouble, and from many rebuffs. The tragedy was acted for sixteen nights; it produced, including the copyright, £630; and then passed away (with other temporary matters) into the region of the moths.

"Mirandola" was performed in 1821. In that year the author became engaged to Miss Skepper, the daughter of Mrs. Basil Montagu by her first husband. Considering the way in which he spoke of his most considerable literary effort, it is anything but strange that his marriage in 1825 should have been the close of his literary career. Literature had been the pastime of his leisure, when leisure had been the whole of his life; he had neither strength nor ambition to pursue it in the intervals of business. And he turned to his business of conveyancing with an ardent appetite which left few intervals, as men often do who take up practical life late, and find they are still in time to succeed. Apparently the sense of having got hold of reality at last, just before a man's power is over, is one of the keenest enjoyments there is. Mrs. Procter says her husband never expressed so much satisfaction at any literary success as when the solicitor on the opposite side employed him because he admired his work. He took many pupils—Eliot Warburton and Kinglake among them. He sat up two nights a week to work, and lived to reflect, that if in all labor there is profit, this too is vanity and vexation of spirit.

Here are two stanzas from "Labor Improbus," published for the first time in the work before us:—

One notices that what he regrets is liberty to enjoy nature rather than liberty to cultivate art. Long ago he had defended poetry on the ground that it helps better than most things to keep us near our ideal; but after all, people come nearer their ideal in a really happy marriage. Mr. Procter's marriage must have been very happy; and busy as he was, a really tuneful nature can always find space for song. Mr. Procter agreed with most of his friends in regarding the "English Lyrics," as the most permanent portion of his work. He differed from them, characteristically, in doubting whether they would really last. He rather overrated the power of fashion, and thought it hard to believe that any author could be classical when the sale began to fall off; he thought he had lived to see the end of even Wordsworth's day. Even the editor feels a need of reassuring himself against his author's self-distrust: he fortifies his own judgment with the testimonies of Landor and Mr. Swinburne; but there is really no need to go beyond the unbroken consent of the literati of fifty years. The interest of the "Dramatic Scenes" is purely literary, and though it is probable that good judges here and there will always be found to rate their literary merit as high as that of the "English Lyrics," the time has come when they have decidedly more interest for literati than for cultivated men at large. And the "English Lyrics" appeal to all cultivated men, and as literati are men too, they appeal more readily than the "Dramatic Scenes" even to literati.

It is easier to feel the charm of the "English Lyrics" than to define it. We know approximately what Burns is admired for, or what Shelley is admired for. We know the sort of grace which seemed admirable in Moore, or, to come to a later reputation, we know what is the attraction of the "Legends and Lyrics" of Barry Cornwall's own daughter, which it seems now are selling better than any poetry but Mr. Tennyson's. But when we try to appraise the "English Lyrics," it seems hard at first to get beyond praise that would do for anybody. When we have said that the sense and feeling and tune are thoroughly good and manly, and that the metre and finish are quite good enough, we have said no more than we might fairly say of any creditable fiasco of a personal friend. That is clearly not an adequate account to 