Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850.Various
History
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850.
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
Our readers must perceive from such extracts, that our author belongs
more to the masculine than to the mystic school. Deep in thought, he is
clear in language and in purpose. Since Byron's dramas, we have seldom
had such fiery and vigorous verse. He blends the strong with the tender,
in natural and sweet proportions. His genius, too, vaults into the lyric
motion with very great ease and mastery. He is a minstrel as well as a
bard, and has shown power over almost every form of lyrical composition.
His sentiment is clear without being commonplace, original, yet not
extravagant, and betokens, as well as his style, a masculine health,
maturity, and completeness, rarely to be met with in a first attempt.
Above all, his tone of mind, while sympathizing to rapture with the
liberal progress of the age, is that of one who feels the eternal
divinity and paramount power of the Christian religion; that what God
has once pronounced true can never become a lie; that what was once
really alive may change, but can never die; that Christianity is a fact,
great, real, and permanent, as birth or death; and that its seeming
decay is only the symptom that it is putting off the old skin, and about
to renew its mighty youth.
We have thus found many, if not all, the qualities of our ideal poet
united in the author of the "Roman," and are not ashamed to say that we
expect more from him than from any other of our rising "Sons of the
Morning." But he must work and walk worthy of his high vocation, and of
the hopes which now lie upon him--hopes which must either be the ribbons
of his crown or the cords of his sacrifice. He must discard his tendency
to diffusion, and break in that demon-steed of eloquence, who sometimes
is apt to run away with him. He must give us next, not scattered scenes,
but a whole epic, the middle of which shall be as obvious as the
beginning or the end. He should, in his next work, seek less to please,
startle, or gain an audience, than to tell them in thunder and in music
what they ought to believe and to do. Thus acting, he may "fill his
crescent-sphere;" revive the power and glory of song; give voice to a
great dumb struggle in the mind of the age; rescue the lyre from the
camp of the Philistines, where it has been but too long detained; and
render possible the hope, that the day shall come when again, as
formerly, the names "of poet and of prophet are the same."
FOOTNOTES:
[18] The Roman: a Dramatic Poem. By Sydney Yendys. London: Rantley,
1850.
[From Sharpe's London Magazine.]
RECOLLECTIONS OF THOMAS CAMPBELL.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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