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ART. III.-1. Sorrows, Aspirations, and Legends from India. BY MARY E. LESLIE, Calcutta. London, John Snow, 35, Paternoster Row. 1858.

By

2. The Moslem and the Hindoo, a Poem on the Sepoy Revolt. By a GRADUATE OF OXFORD. London, Saunders and Otley. 1858.

3. Poetics, an Essay on Poetry. By E. S. DALLAS. London, Smith, Elder and Co., 65, Cornhill. 1852.

THE

HE rebellion, at least in its present stage, ere its shouts and shrieks have died away, is a fit subject only for lyric poetry. As it becomes more an event of history, as the narrative portrait-painter takes it up, and arranges its many and scattered incidents, so as to form a perfect scene; as the critical historian, with statesman-like wisdom, sifts its course, probes its causes, and traces its results, Poetry, as a handmaid, may take up the tale, and in severe epic majesty, tell its horrors and its triumphs, limn out its heroes and its heroines, and raise to the glory of an all-superintending and ever-merciful Providence, a monument that shall, like Milton's of old, "justify the ways of God to men." But meanwhile poetry cannot step out of the region of the lyric, and within that will best act as the exponent of the events of the past two years.

The work before us is a collection of lyrics in the form of sonnets of a descriptive character, each commemorating some one of the great deeds or men of the rebellion. Above all the poetry on this subject hitherto published, and above all the poetry of Anglo-Indians, if we except that of Heber, whose glory as a poet is rather English, we would place this little work. Mary Leslie has proved her right to enter the sacred and jealously guarded temple of the Muses, albeit she must take but a humble place there, by this and the smaller poems in "Ina", her former work, and it will depend upon herself whether she is to be contented with the honourable though humble niche she has reached, or whether, in justice to Him Who has given her the power of song and to those for whose good it was given, she will burst the bonds of inexperience, of youth, of innocent faith in and occasional imitation of others, and of maiden modesty, and rise to those higher heights, where, like the lark, she may in all the freedom of unconsciousness, and with all the power of unfettered genius, trill forth lays that will make her immortal.

The lyric is of two kinds. In its higher form it is the

expression by the poet of what he himself feels, and hence is truthful, genuine, and as the exponent of emotion and regulated by laws which are universally the same in every breast, it becomes national or the property and pride of the race. This may be called, for want of a better word, the Egoistic. The form that it assumes is the song or the personal sonnet, or sometimes the pathetic elegy. The finer lyrics of Burns and Sappho, some of the "Tristia" of Ovid, the wailing strains of David and the poets of the Jewish captivity, and especially the "In Memoriam" of Tennyson, illustrate this. In its lower form the poet does not express his own feelings in his own person, but transfers them to another, in whom he subjectifies himself and with whom he identifies himself. In porportion as this appreciation of the circumstances and nature of the scene or event chosen is perfect, is the lyric valuable and telling, and hence some have held that this form is the more difficult and denotes higher powers, for there is the poetic vis only in the egoistic class, while in this there are, in addition to that, the identification of the poet with another or others, and the harmony between that identification and the poetic vis. It must be said that the greatest lyric poets have excelled in both, and no better illustrations of this can be found than in the case of Byron, Burns, and Tennyson. The Hebrew and Scotch lays of the first belong to the lower class, while he has not a few pieces descriptive of his own misanthropy, misery, and exilelongings which are inferior to these. It is difficult to say, in the case of Burns, whether his Highland Mary' and 'Bonnie Lass O' Ballochmyle,' in which he expresses his own feelings, and Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,' in which he speaks as the member of a nation on the one hand, or his "Macpherson's Farewell," and the rest of that class on the other, are the more beautiful; while we suspect there are not a few who prefer the "Legend of Fair Women," and " The Lotus Eaters," and "the Lady of Shalott" of Tennyson to his "In Memoriam." This second class may be called the objective or Imitative class.

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As the lyric is the poetry of feeling, and is called forth oftener by the sorrowful and despairing, than by the joyful and exultant emotions; it is not only finest when dealing with religious subjects, or with ordinary woes in a religious spirit, but its natural and necessary tendency is to God. It cannot rest till it ends with Him. The wounded soul amid its agony and tempest-tossings, with every support of human kind cut away, and the blackness of darkness of unutterable woe and impossible peace before it, casts ever about for one who will be a

deliverer, or at least a sympathiser, a brother.

And it finds

it only, it must find it, in God. Faith in Him never permanently leaves it. "Though He slay me yet will I trust Him," "All things work together for good," is its language, and though paroxysms of doubt come, and He seems for a time to have hidden His face, it is only for a time. And even

if on earth He should fail the sorrower, there is, and this is the second great necessity and ultimate end of the lyric, there is immortality. The soul never lets go its hold of that sure and steadfast anchor, but rides at it bravely, and if it cannot weather, proudly bows to the storm.

This religious element in the lyric does not always assume the purely religious form. On the contrary, unless in the hymns and divine songs which, as composed by Ambrose and others in the primitive Christian church, were so beautiful, but now, with a few exceptions, are so bald and mediocre, it rather avoids the form, and proves its reality and natural simplicity all the more, by the use of the terms expressive of emotion viewed as such. There is thus no lurking suspicion in the mind of the reader of cant or bypocrisy, for it is none but truly spiritual and etherealised souls that can naturally use such religious phrases, and these even among the best and holiest of men we know to be but few. The whole turn of language and tone of expression, rather than any distinct phrases, make you feel as you read such, that the hope and peace, and faith. and joy, which thus evidence their existence, are real and natural. Such a song as "The Hour before Day," or "Ilka blade o' grass keps its ain drap o' dew," by Ballantine, illustrates the great truths of an ever-present God and Father, and of an evergood and wise Providence, who dispenses his gifts and his chastisements, joy and sorrow, justly among all, even more powerfully than, to take the most favourable illustration, Cowper's grandest hymn, "God moves in a mysterious way." And the grandeur and poetry of even this arise partly from the absence of phrases that are common to the most mediocre hymns of Watts, Wesley, and Toplady. The lyric does not put on religion as a dress which covers it, but is not part of itself, but rather absorbs it into its very nature, chemically (as it were) combines it with itself, and thus becomes elevated, purified, transfused, but none the less natural. The heart has its own language, and it refuses to adopt any other, and so to falsify itself and artificialise its ever-living genuineness. The only exception to this is found in such a case as the Puritans and Covenanters, where we have men who, steeped in Bible truth and Bible phrase from their infancy, so that it ultimately became a part of their nature, used such as the best exponent of their sorrows, DEC., 1858.

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longings and triumphs when necessity came. But in some cases even with them, it became a mere cry, a cant, an exaggeration which made them perhaps more remarkable, but less useful and worthy, than otherwise they would have been.

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None have insisted so much on unconsciousness' as a main element in all true poetry, and especially in the lyric, as Mr. Dallas in his Poetics'; and we think rightly so. Altogether apart from the arguments that he advances, and the fresh exposition that he gives of it, there is an inner play or current, an incessant energising of the soul, which in the higher orders of mind seems to be the main element of genius, or at least a most necessary condition of its exercise. If Aristotle's theory of Pleasure, as taught by Sir W. Hamilton, be a correct one, that it is the free, spontaneous, and unimpeded energy of the soul, existing and acting in adequate degree and duration, and is with pain the concomitant of all energy; and if pleasure of the highest order be so much the end and aim of all true poetry, as experience proves it to be, then that will ever be the higher and most stirring order of poetry, that will ever appeal most to the sensibilities and emotions of the race, which is most fully unconscious within the sphere of the poetic. We know that the doctrine of unconsciousness' in poetry may be misapplied, either in support of a false theory of inspiration or of the maddest and wildest fanaticism. Nay, unconsciousness of a certain kind approaches madness, and is a form of mania recognised as such by physicians. But the unconsciousness of which we speak is one that lies wholly within the faculties that are occupied in the production of poetry, and more in the purely emotional and imaginative part of those than in the intellectual, which results in the conception of plot and incident. It is not the spontaneous reason' of Cousin, nor the elevation of the religious consciousness' of Neander. It is not in any respect whatever analogous to inspiration, any more than genius is, in the common acceptation of the term. If by inspiration be meant that which divinely causes or has a divine cause, then it savours of its nature. But if the term inspiration be applied in its orthodox and plenary sense, and not in its purely philological meaning, then unconsciousness has nothing to do with it. Without asserting any thing as to the cause, more than that it is divine, even as the whole mind itself is, it means that the emotions and aesthetic part of the mind work freely and spontaneously, and not by a strong effort of the will, that when once some incident, or unbidden and heaven-sent' suggestion' (to use Dr. Thomas Brown's phraseology) has started up, the soul works on in a regular train, without any effort of its own, and language arises that, in fit though oft unpolished phrase,

immortalises the results, stamps them with objective being, and makes them "a joy for ever." We cannot better illustrate this than by the naineless lyrics' of Tennyson, especially his

"Break, Break, Break,

On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill ;

But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me."

In one though a very low sense, the fisher-boy in his boat on the laughing sea, the youth when his heart is full of joy bounding over the meadow, the mourner when almost speechless with sorrow, as they utter their brief, interjectional cries, are lyric. But they want the ability to give expression to feelings that to them are new or very rare, and that consequently have never been analysed or understood. There are few men in the world who have not at some periods of their life had their lyric moments, their unbidden, unaccountable transports of joy or calm settled sense of happiness; their transports of grief, "too deep for words", too sacred for even sympathy. They have the receptive unconscious capacity, but lack the expressive or creative power. They differ from the poet on the subjective side, in so rarely, so temporarily, experiencing such, while he lives therein, it is his nature; on the objective side, by an utter want of harmony, rhythm, expression, in their higher poetical forms.

The unconscious, the subjective, the internal, is the first and chiefest requisite of the lyric poet. He has it without education, nothing but God can give him it. Experience and circumstances may and do develope, purify, and exalt it, but they cannot give it. They are the Occasio, not the Causa. But the expression of the results of this poetic unconscious energising now follows. And it is for this that education is so necessary, and does so much. Thought and expression are so intimately linked together that each is the condition of the other's exist

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