The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, September, 1851Various
History
The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, September, 1851
Various
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals
It may, perhaps, be objected, besides, that Delta has left no large or
great poem. Now, here we trace the presence of another prevalent
fallacy. Largeness is frequently confounded with greatness. But,
because Milton's Paradise Lost is both large and great, it does not
follow that every great poem must be large, any more than that every
large poem must be great. Pollok's Course of Time is a large and a
clever, but scarcely a great poem. Hamlet and Faust may be read each
in an hour, and yet both are great poems. Heraud's Judgment of the
Flood is a vast folio in size, but a very second-rate poem in
substance. Thomas Aird's Devil's Dream covers only four pages, yet who
ever read it without the impression "this is a great effort of
genius." Lalla Rookh was originally a quarto, but, although brilliant
in the extreme, it can hardly be called a poem at all. Burns's Vision
of Liberty contains, in the space of thirty-two lines, we hesitate not
to say, all the elements of a great poem. Although Delta's poems be
not large, it is not a necessary corollary that they are inferior
productions. And if none of them, perhaps, fill up the whole measure
of the term "great," many of them are beautiful, all are genuine, and
some, such as Casa Wappy, are exquisite.
Health is one eminent quality in this pleasing writer. Free
originally from morbid tendencies, he has nursed and cherished this
happy tone of mind by perusing chiefly healthy authors. He has acted
on the principle that the whole should be kept from the sick. He has
dipped but sparingly into the pages of Byron and Shelley, whereas
Wordsworth, Wilson, Southey, and Scott, are the gods of his idolatry.
Scott is transcendently clear. Indeed, we think that he gives to him,
_as a poet_, a place beyond his just deserts. His ease, simplicity,
romantic interest, and Border fire, have blinded him to his faults,
his fatal facility of verse, his looseness of construction, and his
sad want of deep thought and original sentiment. To name him beside or
above Wordsworth, the great consecrated bard of his period, is
certainly a heresy of no small order. One or two of Wordsworth's
little poems, or of his sonnets, are, we venture to say, in genuine
poetical depth and beauty, superior to Scott's _five_ larger poems put
together. _They_ are long, lively, rambling, shallow, and blue,
glittering streams. Wordsworth's ballads are deep and clear as those
mountain pools over which bends the rowan, and on which smiles the
autumn sky, as on the fittest reflector of its own bright profundity
and solemn clearness.
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