Εικόνες σελίδας
PDF
Ηλεκτρ. έκδοση

The Rev. Mr. Brooke should be a poet by birth, if genius were transmittible by inheritance, as he is a descendant of one who was, in his day, a distinguished poet-the author of Gustavus Vasa. But Mr. Brooke should remember that poetry loses its god-like character when it seeks for meretricious aid from subjects of a painful or disgusting nature. Delirium Tremens is not a pleasing subject for a poem, yet Mr. Brooke has adopted it. Scarlet Fever is not a very poetical theme, but Mr. Brooke has selected the disease as the subject of some verses, in which the following appear :

"Alas, alas, thy words are true."

She sat upheaved upon a pillow,
Her face all flushed with scarlet hue,
Her chest wild heaving, like a billow-
Fainting, yet fighting hard for breath,
In sinking Nature's strife with death.

The black blood trickled from her lips;
From side to side her head she cast,
While o'er her glassy eyes' eclipse
The thick brown films were gathering fast.
Oh, what a weight of dire distress
Wrought fearfully on that young face!

Mr. Brooke calls his book, Poems Illustrative of Grace, Creation, Suffering; but does he think it poetical to turn into rhyme Cooper's Surgical Dictionary, or to versify The Physician's Vade Mecum.? That he is possessed of poetic ability is clear, and if he were to confine himself to subjects of a legitimately poetical character, we doubt not his ability would be generally acknowledged. His power of versification is sweet and musical, and, as a specimen of his style, we insert the following lines :

THE DEATH-BED OF JACOB BEHMEN.

When within the walls of Gorlitz the Teutonic Mystic lay,
Circled by his weeping dear ones, watching till he passed away;
When, with coming death contending, the reluctant flame of life,
Leaping in its silver socket, scarce maintained the dubious strife:

It was day-break, and the crimson of the purple skies had come,
Like a spirit, through the lattice, flushing all the sick man's room,
Lighting up his fixing features, calm as marble sculpture-wrought,
With something like the lofty life of former tone and thought.

Broader, brighter broke the morning, and the crimson hues are gone,
And blazing all with gems and gold, upheaves God's glorious sun.
Was it this that stayed the life-tides, as they slowly ebbed away?
Was it this that checked the spirit, ere it soared to endless day?

Up spake the dying man, and said, "Ope the door, that I may hear
That soft music which is ringing wild and sweet within my ear;
Heard you not that strain excelling?-blessed sound, it sinks and falls:
Oh Lord, it is thy thrilling voice that for my spirit calls.

"Oh, strength of love-oh, life of death-my God, above this hour
Lift me. Oh, Christ, the waves are strong, but stronger is thy power."
Then to the wall he turned his face-" I am going hence," he cried,
"To Paradise, to meet my Lord;" and softly thus he died.

And was it not a marvel strange, in such an hour to see,
How God did loose his servant's mind from its life-long fantasy?-
How one like him, so overwrought, who had leaped beyond all rules,
To plunge in depths untrod alike by sages and by fools,

Rapt in the sainted Sabbath, trod the centre and the ground
Of man's nature, shadowed over with a mystery profound-
Felt the touch of God the Saviour, in seven days' shadow dim,
Saw the Spirit with his lamps-held his peace, and worshipped Him?

To think that such a mind and man, on this, his dying day,
Like a river issuing bright and swift from weeds that clogged its way,
Heard but the heavenly shepherd's voice, as the shadowy vale he trod,
Then laid him down, like some dear child, and slept to wake with God.

These are the only poetical publications issued lately from the Dublin Press, to which we can at present refer. In future papers we shall resume this subject, and, under their proper heading, and more particular arrangement of style of composition, refer to the poems of the De Veres, of Lover, of De Jean, and of Davis, The Belfast Man.

We have, indeed, in this paper, dwelt rather upon the position of our resident litterateurs than upon the merits or demerits, critically considered, of the authors. We have pointed out the faults of Irish literary life; we have indicated the causes which conduce to make literature here a trade, rather than a profession; where he who possesses, or fancies that he possesses, talents, uses these talents as a chaffering peddler displays his wares to a country wench, putting upon them, not the true rate of an open market, but the tricky price which can be obtained where pretence passes for reality, and where impudence assumes for vulgar presumption a value which belongs only to open, confessed, and genuine merit. Therefore it is, that men of no ability become, to the Dublin public, men of ability; and men ofability become men of great genius; and thus the whole system of quackery and puffery produces its fledglings of Parnassus, whilst all is literary envy, literary detraction, and literary snobbishness. No man receives his real and deserved praise or censure, he is puffed by his friends and decried by his opponents, this, alas! is the position of Irish literature, and the merit, or demerit, of our poets, from the specimens we have inserted-we leave to the judgment of our readers.

The scientific and medical professions are doing man's work in our country. Within the past eight months two most ably and cleverly conducted journals have issued from the Dublin Press, and in The Monthly Journal of Industrial Progress, in The Dublin Hospital Gazette, with their learned and zealous supporters, we believe full evidence is furnished that at length dilettanteism in these walks of life is exploded, that Irish learning can find field for its display at home, and need not fly to England or Scotland to make itself known; possibly from this effort upon the part of scientific Irish

men may arise a spirit which will extend its influence to those of their fellow countrymen whose genius, or whose bent of mind is merely literary, and thus all may learn, what some men know, that to be the chief genius of a clique, or of a section, is to be as unlike a man of true genius, as "a wit amongst lords," is unlike "a lord amongst wits."

[blocks in formation]

In reading the biographies of literary men he, who observes the results of their life labors, but too frequently closes the pages describing the final scene of all, impressed by the sad truth that genius is a glowing complexion of the mind, and, like to that of the radiant-hued cheek, is only a "fatal gift of beauty," "betokening a dower unto the tomb." Genius, from the first, has toiled in want, in pain, in sorrow. Genius has had its Martyrs too, and, standing in Poets' Corner, we can fancy that there float around us the dim, sad, spectres of Churchyard proclaiming that

"Poverty and Poetry his tomb doth enclose"

of Nash lamenting, with a wild fierceness

"Why is't damnation to despair and die
When life is my true happiness' disease"-

of Chatterton, daring starvation so bravely despite its gnawing pangs of Otway choked by the beggar's crust, devoured too ravenously-of Goldsmith living on penniesof great, noble, Samuel Johnson wearing out his bright years in poverty, but a man in all of Kirke White, poor murdered child of song and sorrow-of John Keats, by his solitary hearth, a gloom-rapt soul, to whom

"-The bare heath of life presents no bloom-” of Gerald Griffin, so worn and wan before his time, starving by day, and awakened at night, by the dread pulsation of his

throbbing heart, to sigh lest day and its toil had come once more, and, most woful of all, Sir Walter and Southey, so good and true in all that makes the nobility of christian manhood, so bright in intellect, and so dauntless in labor once, but so crushed and broken at the close of life, come before us, all teaching great truths in the moral of their lives-and proving too, that old Burton judged rightly when, in The Anatomy of Melancholy, he quaintly wrote, that the Destinies of old put poverty upon Mercury as a punishment, since when, poetry and beggary are Geminii, twin-born brats, inseparable companions. Mercury can help them to knowledge, but not to money."

It is true that genius has often been its own doomster. Debauchery and improvidence have, alas! been lures to lead the grandest souls to ruin; and fancies which, in the dawn of fame blazed bright in beauty, have set in black clouds of gross and earthy passion. But there are other sufferers who have perished in the contest with the world, and who, in mental anguish, and in bodily pain, attempted to accomplish the great deeds of which in youth they dreamed those dreams that come only in the days when

"-All we met was fair and good,

And all was good that time could bring,
And all the secret of the spring
Moved in the chambers of the blood."

These are the real Martyrs of genius who, commencing life in strength and hope-with that hope whose rosy light tints every rugged pathway in the far off steeps that inust be passed ere the gorgeous dream-land of golden fame can be reached; commencing life too, with that power which ever dwells in the deep heart of youth, making to-day but the training ground for a future, when, amongst the clashing of minds, in the jarring struggle the world, triumph shall crown him a victor, -hope on for ever.

Such a man as this was John Banim: a bright-hearted, truesouled Irishman. He began his way of toil in trusting daring, -side by side with a loving unchanging wife, he would try the power of his mind, the readiness of his intellect, and the versatility of his genius; and had Omniscient Wisdom spared him health, as fully as it bestowed upon him energy of soul, and each ability of mind, he would have been the Scott of Ireland. But all his life long he labored amidst the frowns of Fortune or the tortures of disease. He wrote in the intervals of anguish, frequently too, during its paroxysms, and closed his life a mind-wreck, drifting away upon the lone black sea of pain and sorrow. But herein it is that his life deserves a record: its home love, its beautiful affection for her whom the Germans so thoughtfully call The House Mother; his never-flagging hope; his patient endurance; his triumphs; his efforts after excellence as a novelist, form many important teachings for him who would enter the world a candidate for literary fame.

Banim was, in heart and soul, a man; and in toiling onward in his self-chosen profession, amidst all his griefs he was ever a hero, disdaining to be, while the soul of a man dwelt in manhood's frame

"An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light :
And with no language but a cry." -

Work, was his motto, and of the great psalm of life he made the anthem

LABORARE EST ORARE.

Like Southey, he was always hoping, and always working, -and the glory of his toil was not in the present work, but in that which should be accomplished in future times: like Scott, he loved the humorous side of things, and when not in heroics was most at ease. His letters are more hearty than those of Moore; and the self-reliant independence of one who would be successful by his own efforts, is plain and evident in all his communications with the household at home. From the first letter to the last, now before us, these feelings are fully expressed; and much as we have read, much as we know, of literary men and their habits, we believe that of those who are the supports of the periodical Press, there is no man whom a Christian, a gentleman, or a brother litterateur would prefer to have called Friend, before John Banim.

A

In the year 1792 there resided in the city of Kilkenny a young, hard-working man, named Michael Banim. natural love of out-door exercise and field sports had sprung up in his breast, and had been strengthened by all the influences that extend to young men who reside in a county, even less remarkable for the sporting habits of its gentry, than of those exhibited by the members of the once famous Kilkenny Hunt. Michael Banim united pleasure with business, pushing his way in the world as a trader in all the necessaries of a sportsman's and angler's outfit,--dealing in everything from a

« ΠροηγούμενηΣυνέχεια »