Page:Scottishartrevie01unse.djvu/385

Rh ment of that deadly paralysis of the soul which we call Despair. No writer, possessing either a sense of humour or real tragic power, could be satisfied with so paltry a conception. Compare the figure of ' Melancholia ' in that great poem, the Citii of Dreadful Night. The ' Groves of Faun ' are magically delineated, with that luxury of colour and picturesqueness of efl^ect which here find their appropriate place. Not only the ' vain delight ' of sense appeals to the Pilgrim, but the pure ideal of art, Avhich rejects the sensual, aspires beyond the sensuous, and craves union with the highest spiritual beauty. The ideal is typified in a shepherd-maiden, Dian's child ; her love is the im- mortal Eros, who bears Ishmael away through scenes of enchantment, and shows him, in a gigantic amphi- theatre among mountains, a series of tableaux culminat- ing in the ' Sacrificial tragedy of Cheiron,' and intended 'to adumbrate the entire spirit of Greek poetry and theology.' The taste of the double transformation scene, in which Cheiron, who relieves Prometheus from his age-long tortures, is changed into the likeness of Christ, who is again imaged by the ' transfigured ' Eros, even to the stigmata and the aureole, may be ques- tioned even by those whose susceptibilities are moral and aesthetic rather than religious. It is a mistake in art to treat any serious reformer, much more the founder of a great religion, as the central figure in a pantomime. Again, in the ' Valley of Dead Gods ' there is a revolting picture of a half-reanimated Christ, supported by ' three woman-forms,' who wail aloud ' He hath arisen ! ' The idea is clear enough, but the details of sightless eyes, hanging jaw, helpless body swinging to and fro in the women's arms, give an effect both painful and ludicrous, not only offending the sensitive readei', but defeating the poet's intention. Sylvan, child of nature and naive pantheist, con- verses with our wanderer, and the mountaineer Night- shade leads him upward through the Divine Dark of Mysticism, where thought seeks vainly to image the unimaginable. ' The Spectre of the Inconceivable ' flashes before him for a moment —

' the Light that is the Life Within us and without us, yet eludes Our guessing — fades and changes, and is gone.'

The ' Open Way ' — the haunt of prosaic and unaspiring folk, unlearned or pedantic — leads to a second glorious city. The ' City without God ' is the ' latest and fairest of any built by Man.'

' Down every street A cooling rivulet ran, and in the squares Bright fountains sparkled ; and where'er I walked The library, the gymnasium, and the bath Were open to the sun ; virgins and youths Swung in the golden air like winged things, Or in the crystal waters plunged and swam. Or raced with oiled limbs from goal to goal. And never a sick face made the sunlight sad, And never a blind face hungered for the light. And never a form that was not strong and fair Walked in the brightness of those golden streets.' But in this seeming paradise are asylums where all who dare to believe in God are chained as madmen ; hospitals of birth where blind or sickly infants are put to death ; lecture-halls where animals are vivisected for the instruction of students. A tortured hound seems as though transformed into the crucified Christ before the Pilgrim's eyes, and he hurries wildly away to a ' beauteous garden of the dead,' where white urns, each with its handful of ashes^ are ranged on grassy terraces. Adam the Last, the watcher of the fire, tells him that hope has fled from the fair city, and that

' Death alone Remains the one cold friend and comforter.'

Mad with despair, Ishmael plunges into the land of darkness beyond, peopled with saurians and ptero- dactyls, and other monsters of the 'primEeval slime.' But at last, in company with a repentant founder of the godless town, and guided by an angel child, he reaches the brink of the celestial ocean, and sees the ship of souls bound for an unknown city on the further shore — the city of his dream.

The gravest flaw of this brilliant poem is all the more serious because it is one which most readers will fail to detect. I refer to its gross caricature of the spirit and aims of modern physical science. The ' City without God ' should rather bear the more positive title of the ' City of Man ' ; and it is at least highly improbable that a community governed on humane and hygienic principles would unnecessarily torture sensitive crea- tures, much less make a public exhibition of their sufferings, or extinguish sickly lives, unless on clear proof that the good of such a practice outweighed the evil. Nor would the citizens ' surge wildly ' round a 'pallid wight' who chanced to utter the name of God, and denounce him as a ' blasphemer.' There could be no priesthood, no ' inquisitors.' And where Hygeia reigns, Hope, ' with all the other angels,' wiU continue to dwell, quite irrespective of eschatological theories.

Just as the devout believer will be more revolted than the mere literary critic by the appearance of Christ in a theatrical tableau, so the thinker whose conceptions are founded on scientific data will turn in disgust from untrue or inadequate presentations of his ideal world. Even the decorated Truth may displease him, and the attempt to invest the sublimity of cosmic order with beauty and melody may seem little short of profanation.

Not from the very loftiest minds will the Cily of Dream find a cordial welcome ; nor^ as we have seen, from the most refined and fastidious. In Mr. Buchanan's writings we look in vain for fine discrimination and terse felicity ; there is a certain showiness which does not atone for the lack of delicacy and precision of touch. A fault at least equally striking is the hysterical tone of the whole poem. It contains throughout not a single virile character. There is, indeed, a curious sameness in the forms of effeminacy which pass before us. The Pilgrim himself shakes with ' ex-