The Illustrious Obscure [44]
[44] West Country Poets: Their Lives and Works, etc. Illustrated with Portraits. By W. H. Kearley Wright, F.R.H.S. London: Elliot Stock. 1896.
Some nineteen hundred years ago Horace observed that there was one thing which neither gods, nor men, nor bookstalls would tolerate in a poet—and that was mediocrity. The verdict of gods, men, and the bookstalls is probably still what it was then; but to such tribunals the rhymesters of our time can afford to be quite indifferent. Paper and printing are cheap; small poets and small critics are now so numerous that they form a world, and a populous world, in themselves; and, well understanding the truth of the old proverb, "Concordiâ, parvæ res crescunt," they mutually manufacture the wreaths with which they crown each other's modest vanity. There are hundreds of "poets" and "critics" of whom the great world knows nothing, who are thus enabled, in their little day, to taste all the sweets of fame, and "walk with inward glory crown'd." To wage serious war against such a tribe as this would be as absurd as to break butterflies upon a wheel; but we really think it high time that some protest should be made against the indefinite multiplication of the rubbish for which these people and their patrons are responsible, and still more against its importation into what purports to be a contribution to serious literature. As long as these geniuses confine themselves to their proper sphere, the poets' corners of provincial newspapers, we have nothing to say. But it becomes quite another matter when the skill of an ingenious projector enables—we are really sorry to have to speak so harshly—a rabble of poetasters to figure side by side with poets of classical fame, and to appear in all the dignity of contributors to a national anthology. Yet such is the design of this volume, which was, it seems, published by subscription, the subscribers being for the most part the various candidates for poetical fame, who have obligingly sent their portraits and their biographies for insertion in Mr. Kearley Wright's "monumental work." As Mr. Kearley Wright's collection begins with the fifteenth century, and includes the really eminent poets who happen to have been born in the West of England, many of his worthies are naturally apud plures, but the majority, in whose honour the anthology appears to have been compiled, adorn the living. And very gratifying it must be for these gentlemen, and for Mr. Kearley Wright himself—for he also has a niche—to find themselves side by side with Sir Walter Raleigh, Herrick, Gay, and Coleridge.
Mr. Kearley Wright's "company of makers" is certainly a motley one. First comes among his living bards an inspired porter at the Teignmouth railway station, who asks in rapture,—
"Along the glitt'ring streets of gold,
Amid the brilliant glare,
Shall we God's banner there unfold,
His righteous helmet wear?"
At no great distance follows, with a portrait looking intensely intellectual, "the manager of the Bristol and South Wales Railway Waggon Company, Limited," whose poems are described as "lacking here and there logical sequence and literary method," but "evincing undoubtedly a great poetical disposition and philosophical drift." The two poems which illustrate this poet's genius afford very little proof either of "a great poetical disposition" or of "a philosophical drift," but painfully conclusive proof that much more is lacking than "logical sequence and literary method," the lack of which may certainly be conceded as well. Next comes Mr. Jonas Coaker, "the landlord of the Warren House Inn," whose verses "disclose a poetic spirit, and, had he possessed the advantages of education, would doubtless have attracted some attention." Mr. Coaker is in the main autobiographical.
"I drew my breath first on the moor,
There my forefathers dwelled;
Its hills and dales I've traversed o'er,
Its desert parts beheld.
*****
It's oft envelop'd in a fog,
Because it's up so high."
And Mr. Coaker continues in the same strain further than we care to transcribe. Then we have Mr. John Goodwin, "formerly a coach-guard, who sung of the days when there was such a thing, if we may so phrase it, as the poetry of locomotion." In his poetry, we are told, "there is a genuine ring," as here, for example:—
"I mind the time, when I was guard,
The lord, the duke, or squire
Would travel by the old stage-coach,
Or post-chaise they would hire."
Mr. Charles Chorley, who is, we are informed, submanager of the Truro Savings Bank, in verses which are presumably a parody of Sir William Jones' Imitation of Alcæus, inquires, not without a certain propriety, "What constitutes a mine?" On a par with all these are the verses of the bard who "in summer hawked gooseberries and in winter shoelaces," and those of the "uneducated journeyman woolcomber."
Now, we need hardly say that the humble vocations of these poets are neither derogatory to them nor in any way detrimental to merit where merit exists; but there is no merit whatever in the poems assigned to them in this volume; they are simply such poems as hawkers, woolcombers, railway porters, and submanagers of provincial banks—"who pen a stanza when they should engross"—might be expected to write. The same may be said of almost every copy of verses, produced by amateurs, to be found in this collection. We have scarcely noticed a single poem which rises above mediocrity; a very large proportion are below even a mediocre standard—they are simply rubbish. In one poet only, among those whose names were not before known to us, do we discern genius, and that is in Mr. John Dryden Hosken, whose poem, entitled My Masters, is really excellent.
The editor of this anthology is plainly incompetent, both in point of taste and critical discernment, and in point of knowledge, for the task which he has undertaken. The first is proved by the extracts which he has selected from the works of well-known poets. Coleridge, for example, is represented by two comparatively inferior poems, The Devil's Thoughts and Fancy in Nubibus; Thomas Carew, by two short poems, one of which is probably the worst he ever wrote; Herrick, by two of his very worst; Praed, by two of the feeblest and least characteristic of his poems; Walcot, by mere trash. It is quite possible that their less illustrious brethren may have suffered from the deplorable inability of this editor to discern between what is good and what is bad. Certainly Capern, who was a poet with a touch of genius, suffers, for the lyric given is very far indeed from representing or illustrating his best or even his characteristic work. In giving an account of Alexander Barclay, who, by the way, is called Andrew in the Preface, Mr. Wright says nothing about his most important poems—his Eclogues. If Eustace Budgell is included among the poets, why are not his poems specified and represented? Of Aaron Hill it is observed that "neither his reputation as a poet nor his connexion with the county of Devon is sufficient to warrant more than a mere notice of his name." Aaron Hill was the author of more than one poem of conspicuous merit. The verses attributed on page 488 to Sir William Yonge were written by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. But these are trifles. What we wish to protest against is the foisting of such volumes as these on our libraries; and it is appalling to learn that it is the intention of Mr. Kearley Wright, if he is sufficiently encouraged by subscribers, to follow this with another similar collection. If poets like these wish to gratify their vanity, let them not gratify it to the detriment of serious literature; for, if the few can discriminate, the many cannot, and the multiplication of works like these must infallibly tend to lower the standard of current literature, by furthering the disastrous "cult of the average man." In our opinion criticism can have no more imperative duty than to discountenance and discourage in every way such projectors as Mr. Kearley Wright and such poets as those for whose merits he and critics like him stand sponsors.