Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/302



is remarkable that this practical, prosaic age is prolific of poetry. Poets are more numerous than they ever were before, and the poetry produced, if not of the very highest order, is not of that which can be justly classed as inferior or minor. We speak, of course, of our own literature only—of English poetry. A great poet is, in any tongue, nay, even in the whole world, the rarest outcome of the highest and subtlest forces of nature. Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and the half-barbarous Chaldean who wrote the Book of Job—these are all the poets of the first grade, whose voices are heard from out the ages. From their elevation we take three or four downward steps to reach the level of a Tennyson. But still, Tennyson, although not a born poet, but made, if ever anything under the sun was made—a made poet, lacking entirely the spontaneous, living spring of song, such for instance as that that ever flowed in Burns's soul—a self-made poet, too, a man who said within his heart, "I will be a poet in spite of myself," and who has made good his determination. This Tennyson is yet a poet for his contemporaries, and all who speak his mother tongue, to take a pride in, and to hearken to with no less deference than pleasure. Robert Browning is the best dramatic poet—it might better be said, the only truly dramatic poet of a high class in our language since Shakespeare. Swinburne's fancy, feeling, and utterance are those of a poet of the highest class, although whether he ever becomes much more than a marvellous voice depends on facts of his moral and intellectual organization, as to which only those who know him best have any trustworthy knowledge. For that subtly formed, almost indefinable something, called character, enters as an important element into a poet's powers, and decides whether he shall be large and enduring, or more or less trivial and ephemeral. Mr. Bryant's poems have a certain tone, given them by character, which will cause them to be preserved and read for comfort and for pleasure when those of more facile, more voluminous, and more popular versifiers will have had their day and been forgotten. And now, while Mr. Swinburne is plucking his first laurels, two new poets come forward for the crown. One of them is the well-known authoress of "Adam Bede" and "Romola;" the other's name, William Morris, is as yet almost unknown in the world of literature.

George Eliot's poem is an ambitious effort—a romantic tragedy in blank verse. The story is, to say the least, exceedingly improbable, which it might be and still have interest for even thoughtful readers; but it not only is, but seems improbable, and it has withal a very melodramatic, low-theatrical air. This, however, may be inseparable from tales about Gypsies, around whom there seems to be woven a robe of romantic nonsense much like that which conceals the real North American Indian from so many eyes. The incidents and characters are briefly these: Fedalma, a foundling child, has been brought up in the household of a Spanish grandee, and, blooming into a rare, rich-natured beauty, she is beloved by the heir, who, when he becomes his own master, determines to marry her, in spite of her uncertain origin. In this condition of affairs, and with a war against the Moors on the hands of the young Duke Alva, the poem opens. On the eve of his marriage, some Gypsy prisoners are brought in, and these Fedalma sees, as, having