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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 4

Literature

page 21

Literature.

Youth is not a matter of years alone, and Tennyson's new volume shows that the poet is aged in more senses than one. The characteristic beauties of his style appear, and so do his mannerisms. Who but he could have written the lines

Raving politics, never at rest—as this poor earth's pale history runs—

What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns?

The second line well expresses the tone and temper of much of the book—abounding in irritable and impatient denunciation of wrongs, social and moral; the poet apparently looking on the world as a Pandora's box, from which even hope has departed. This gloomy mood is not characteristic of his early poems. In his grandest work, written under the shadow of a great sorrow, the hopefulness of youth continually asserts itself, occasionally rising to a hymn of triumphant faith. The poem is not even allowed to close in a spirit of melancholy; but in a prophetic strain foreshadowing the « far-off divine event » when « good shall be the final goal of ill. » The poem which gives its title to the new volume, « Demeter and Persephone » is a beautiful and powerful treatment of a lovely old myth, in the poet's best style. From such as this, it is painful to turn to the lines in which he assails the real or imagined abuses of his time. « Happy » is disfigured by a grossness of thought that is something new in Tennyson. The leper's wife's anticipation of

The beauty that endures on the spiritual height,
When we shall stand transfigured like Christ on Her-mon hill,
And moving each to music, soul in soul and light in light,
Shall flash through one another in a moment as we will.

—is counterbalanced by the old heresy that the body is so essentially unclean that disease is unable to render it more foul. Whence the poet derived the inspiration to call the human frame a « little city of sewers, » it would be hard to say. Such a city may at least be clean—would he prefer a city of filth? Where he has shaken off his gloom, his new poems exhibit all the freshness of thought and perfect finish that characterise his best work. « Owd Boa » (Rover) a dog story, is one of his happiest dialect pieces; but best of all is the little poem with which the book closes. It may be the old poet's last word— for we are sorry to see by late telegrams that his health is seriously failing. There is no lovelier gem than this in the whole range of English poetry. It is entitled, « Crossing the Bar: »

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a time as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound or foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell
When I embark;
For though from out our bourne of Time and Place,
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

Browning's new volume shows that the spirit of faith and hope animated the old veteran to the end. There is no gloomy pessimism in « Asolando. » In fact he sees so much of good in the present life, and in « this evil world, » that he looks for a heaven in which the same life is to be continued in sublimated form. It is very « unorthodox, » no doubt, but not so much as the Manichæan slough into which the laureate has fallen. Contrast Browning:

Others may need new life in heaven—
Man, Nature, Art—made new assume!
Man with new mind old sense to leaven,
Nature—new light to clear old gloom,
Art that breaks bounds, gets soaring-room.
I shall pray: « Fugitive as precious—
« Minutes which passed—return, remain!
« Let earth's old life once more enmesh us,
« You with old pleasure, me—old pain,
« So we but meet nor part again!»

There is a robust and healthy tone here contrasting strongly with the horrible « realism » of the « Leper's Bride, » and its gross carnality. We do not think that the late poet could be better described than in the following stirring lines from the Epilogue to his new book—his last message:

One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.
No, at noonday in the bustle of man's worktime
Greet the unseen with a cheer!
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
« Strive and thrive! » cry « Speed—fight on, fare ever
There as here! »

Browning was buried in Westminster Abbey, close to the tomb of Chaucer. Part of the funeral service consisted of three stanzas of Mrs Browning's exquisite poem « He giveth his beloved sleep, » set to appropriate music by Dr Bridge.

In the Fortnightly, Swinburne publishes « a sequence of sonnets » on Browning. There are seven in all. These are the fifth and seventh:

Among the wondrous ways of men and time
He went as one that ever found and sought
And bore in hand the lamplike spirit of thought
To illume with instance of its fire sublime
The dusk of many a cloudlike age and clime.
No spirit in shape of light and darkness wrought
No faith, no fear, no dream, no rapture, nought
That blooms in wisdom, nought that burns in crime,
No virtue girt and armed and helmed with light,
No love more lovely than the snows are white,
No serpent sleeping in some dead soul's tomb,
No song-bird singing from some live soul's height,
But he might hear, interpret, and illume
With sense invasive as the dawn of doom.

He held no dream worth waking: so he said,
He who stands now on death's triumphal steep,
Awakened out of life wherein we sleep
And dream of what he knows and sees, being dead.
But never death for him was dark and dread:
« Look forth,' » he bade the soul, « and fear not. » Weep,
All ye that trust not in his truth, and keep
Vain memory's vision of a vanished head
As all that lives of all that once was he
Save that which lightens from his word; but we,
Who, seeing the sunset-colored waters roll,
Yet know the sun subdued not of the sea,
Nor weep nor doubt that still the spirit is whole,
And life and death but shadows of the soul.

The Bookmart says:—The very welcome announcement is made that Dr Holmes will write a series of papers of reminiscence and characteristic reflection for the Atlantic Monthly next year. To indicate at once a certain likeness and unlikeness to the famous « Breakfast-Table » papers, he will call these « Over the Tea-cups. »

The University Library at Copenhagen has recently secured a literary treasure—a perfect copy of the first New Testament printed in the Icelandic language, translated by Oddur, and published at Roeskilde in 1540. It was found not far from Copenhagen in a Zealand peasant's house, where it had come from Iceland in 1820, and was purchased for the moderate sum of £1 7s 6d.

Typos are given to courting the Muses. So much is this the case in France, that a new periodical « Organe des Typos-Poétes, » entitled Les Coquelicots (Wild Poppies), has been started by M. Georges Nicolas, 3 cité Magenta, Paris. The subscription is 2 ½ francs per annum.

El Sud-Americano (No. 28) sent us by an unknown typographic friend in Argentina, is beautifully illustrated as usual. We have already noted the high character of this Spanish fortnightly.

Referring to Benzon's book, which he did not write, a contemporary remarks:—It would be interesting to know how many books and articles published by men whose names for special reasons attract the public are written by those who sign them. The vanities of some of the great men of England, whether they be of the professional or the leisured class, are the means of keeping hundreds of clever hack writers in constant and highly paid employment.

An English paper gives some interesting particulars regarding modern music. Waltzes are the most popular, and pay the best. The copyright of Charles Coote's « Prince Imperial Galop, » composed sixteen years ago, was sold by auction for £1000 after a hundred thousand copies of the piece had been sold. Another hundred thousand copies have since been disposed of. The « Great Eastern Polka, » by the same composer, sold for £750 after 150,000 copies had been issued. « Max Friihling » is an Englishman, whose « Marie Stuart » schottische has beaten the record with a sale of 100,090. Caroline Lowthian is the most popular writer of waltzes. She made £500 each out of her « Lullaby » and « Bittersweet » waltzes. Of the latter 100,000 copies have been sold, and three times as many of the « Myosotis. » Of W. H. Hutchison's « Ehren on the Rhine, » 280,000 copies were sold, realizing £14,000. « Ehren » is not to be found on the map, but « Ehrenbreit-stein it is. Mr Hutchison merely followed the example of Tom Ingoldsby, who, for metrical reasons, abridged the name of his Welsh mountain to « Pen. » « Dream Faces » was one of the most successful songs ever written. The composer's price of £95 was refused; yet the song yielded a profit of £16,000, over 320,000 copies having been sold.

The Kőlnische Volkszeitung of Cologne had been publishing a novel which did not finish in the usual satisfactory way by the marriage of the much-tried lovers. The lady readers of the paper were not satisfied with such an ending, and a shower of angry letters fell into the sanctuary of the editor, who, to shelter himself from it and to get back his peace of mind, published in one of the next issues of the paper a betrothal of the lovers in due legal form.

We are often in receipt of publications quite outside our own special department, especially from the United States. One of these The New Christianity, (Germantown, Philadelphia) is an ably-edited paper chiefly devoted to social reforms, and published under the auspices of the Swedenborgian or New Church.—The New Earth, (New York), of which No. 1 has come to hand, is the organ of those in the same denomination who advocate what is known as the « Single Tax. » This first number has, we read, been « mailed » to eleven thousand addresses in various parts of the world. As a freetrader we believe Mr George is sound; but we think that the page 22adoption of his « single-tax » proposals would lead to disaster. We know of no corporation, public body, or official department honest enough to assume the ownership of the lands of a country. Officialism and corruption are too often synonomous.—From Washington we have No. 14 vol. ii of the National Economist, official organ of the Farmers' Alliance, which is now confederated with the Knights of Labor. It is a large quarto weekly of sixteen pages, and in an article specially marked with three crosses, the editor demands the restoration of the silver unit as the standard of coinage.

In its review of Browning's life and works, The Times, referring to « Bishop Blougram, » published in 1855, says: « It is amusing to note that these volumes were reviewed in the Roman Catholic paper called the Rambler by no less a person than Cardinal Wiseman, who was extremely complimentary to Bishop Blougram, and did not by any means despair of his conversion. »