On her offering to swear that she would never use the charm against himself, he suggests "You might perhaps Essay it on some one of the Table Round, Then the vixen flares out: "And Vivien, frowning in true anger, said: Were I not woman, I could tell a tale. But you are man, you well can understand 999 On his challenging her for proof, she retails an amount of current scandal, touching the knights and their ladye loves, confirmatory of Byron's theory that they were no better than they should be, and leading to the conclusion that the blameless King's Court had points in common with that of Charles II.: "And Vivien answer'd frowning wrathfully. Whose kinsman left him watcher o'er his wife But one hour old! there lay the reckling, one What said the happy sire ? A seven months' babe had been a truer gift. Those twelve sweet moons confused his fatherhood.' On Merlin's endeavouring to explain this away : "O ay,' said Vivien, 'overtrue a tale. What say ye then to sweet Sir Sagramore, That ardent man? "to pluck the flower in season,' So says the song, "I trow it is no treason." To crop his own sweet rose before the hour?'" "What say ye then to fair Sir Percivale And of the horrid foulness that he wrought; Well chosen topics for a maid-of-honour's mouth! She crowns all by the affair of Lancelot with the Queen, which sets Merlin meditating: "But Vivien deeming Merlin overborne By instance, recommenced, and let her tongue Not even Lancelot brave, nor Galahad clean.” She triumphs in a scene resembling that between "Then crying, I have made his glory mine, 999 Taken all in all, it strikes us that this poem is quite as objectionable as "Don Juan," and that Vivien's conversation is not more edifying than Julia's letter, whilst in point of feminine delicacy she is decidedly inferior to Haidee. There is a once popular novel, entitled "Ellen Wareham," by Mrs. Sullivan, in which a woman, believing her first husband (forced on her by her parents) to have died abroad, marries the man of her heart, has a family by him, and is living happily, when the first husband unexpectedly presents himself to insist upon his conjugal rights. There is a more remarkable novel, entitled "André," by George Sand, in which the hero, finding that his young wife, to whom he is devotedly attached, would rather be the wife of a friend, quietly starts for Switzerland and tumbles into a glacier in a way to exclude all suspicion of his having committed suicide to set her free. Mr. Tennyson's "Enoch Arden" is a husband of an intermediate quality between these two. On finding, on his return after a ten years' absence, that his wife has committed bigamy, he neither interferes with her domestic arrangements, nor sets her free till he dies a natural death; when, by way of consolation, she receives a deathbed message to tell her what he has suffered through her fault. His story is made the vehicle for fifty pages of blank verse. There is a fine passage (p. 32) about the island in which Enoch passes a Robinson Crusoe kind of life: there are touches of pathos and bits of poetical description interspersed; but these do not occur often enough to animate the whole, nor to suppress the doubt whether a story, which could be better told in prose, is to take rank as a standard poem on the strength of that manipulation and inversion of language which are now held to constitute blank verse. We pass over "Maude," "The Holy Grail," etc., etc., as we have passed over Mazeppa," "Cain," "Marino Faliero, "Sardanapalus," "Werner," and the whole of Byron's minor poems, which would make the reputation of half-a-dozen minor poets of our time, and to spare. We call attention to salient points, to grand features. Strike, but hear: pronounce, but read. Let any real lover of fine poetry, who does not freshly remember them, read once again the Third and Fourth Cantos of "Childe Harold," and then say in what class or category the author is to be placed. It is in the ordinary course of things that the popular taste should veer about: that reputation should follow reputation as star chases star across the sky; and a name with innate buoyancy, if accidentally submerged, may commonly be trusted to rise unaided to the surface and float on with the rest. But it will rise the sooner, if relieved from all adventitious weight; and the weight of prejudice by which Byron's is kept down, has grown with foreign critics into a set topic of national reproach. Goethe pointedly contrasted the dirt and rubbish flung at the noble poet with the glory he had reflected on his country, "boundless in its splendour and incalculable in its consequences." "Having now," concludes Herr Elze, "traced the literary and political influence of Byron from the southern extremity of the earth to its north-eastern boundary, we come back to his native land, where his influence has hitherto been least, where moral and religious illiberality still stands in the way of an unprejudiced estimation." He thinks that this "blinding bigotry" cannot go further without producing a reaction, and he discerns, or fancies he discerns, a turning-point. There is at all events a standing-point, from which the lever which will restore the balance may be worked. There is a compact body of sound, ripe, critical opinion in this country that has never wavered, and on its sure, if slow, expansion we confidently rely. NOTE.—A marked change has taken place since this was written. Readers who do not remember the state of the public mind ten years ago will probably be surprised to hear that any vindication was required. THE REPUBLIC OF VENICE: ITS RISE, DECLINE, AND FALL.' (From the Quarterly Review, October, 1874). MARC ANTONIO BARBARO was a Venetian noble of illustrious birth, who filled successively each of the highest offices in the Republic, with the exception. of the Dogeship, which he narrowly missed. He was born in 1518 and died in 1595; and adopting him as the type of the patrician of the sixteenth century, the author of the book before us has undertaken to connect or associate with his career a full description of the laws, customs, manners, and policy of the Queen of the Adriatic in the height of her prosperity and the fulness of her pride. Thus, à propos of Barbaro's rank, we are treated to a sketch of the patrician order, with its privileges on his marriage, to a disquisition on Venetian women. His nomination to an embassy suggests the fertile' topic of diplomacy; while his candidature for the Dogeship gives occasion for a complete account of this exalted office with its attributes. The conception is ingenious, and the execution leaves little to desire as regards learning, critical acuteness and discriminating research. 1 La Vie d'un Patricien de Venise au Seizième Siècle.-Les Doges-La Charte Ducale-Les Femmes à Venise-L'Université de Padoue Les Préliminaires de Lépante, etc., d'après les Papiers d'Etat des Archives de Venise. Par Charles Yriarte. Paris, 1874. |