Poems | Page 7

by the artist, is brought out, and the distinctness with which that one specific impression which is appropriate to it, is attained. This is the kind of excellence which we ascribe to Mr. Morris; an excellence of a lofty order; genuine, sincere, and incapable of question; more valuable in this class of composition than in any other, because both more important and more difficult. For the song appears to us to possess a definiteness peculiarly jealous and exclusive; to be less flexible in character and to permit less variety of tone than most other classes of composition. If a man shall say, "I will put more force into my song than your model allows, I will charge it with a greater variety of impressions," it is well; if he is skilful, he may make something that is very valuable. But in so far as his work is more than a song, it is not a song. In all works of Art--wherever form is concerned--excess is error.
The just notion and office of the modern song, as we think of it, is to be the embodiment and expression, in beauty, of some one of those sentiments or thoughts, gay, moral, pensive, joyous, or melancholy, which are as natural and appropriate, in particular circumstances, or to certain occasions, as the odor to the flower; rising at such seasons, into the minds of all classes of persons, instinctive and unbidden, yet in obedience to some law of association which it is the gift of the poet to apprehend. Its graceful purpose is to exhibit an incident in the substance of an emotion, to communicate wisdom in the form of sentiment; it is the refracted gleam of some wandering ray from the fair orb of moral truth, which glancing against some occurrence in common life, is surprised into a smile of quick-darting, many colored beauty; it is the airy ripple that is thrown up when the current of feeling in human hearts accidentally encounters the current of thought and bubbles forth with a gentle fret of sparkling foam. Self-evolved, almost, and obedient in its development and shaping to some inward spark of beauty which appears to possess and control its course, it might almost seem that, in the out-going loveliness of such productions, sentiment made substantial in language, floated abroad in natural self-delivery; as that heat which is not yet flame, gives forth in blue wreaths of vaporous grace, which unfold their delicateness for a moment upon the tranquil air, and then vanish away. It is not an artificial structure built up by intellect after a model foreshaped by fancy, or foreshadowed by the instincts of the passions; it is a simple emotion, crystalled into beauty by passing for a moment through the cooler air of the mind; it is merely an effluence of creative vigor; a graceful feeling thickened into words. Its proper dwelling is in the atmosphere of the sentiments, no the passions; it will not, indeed, repel the sympathy of deeper feelings, but knows them rather under the form of the flower that floats upon the surface of meditation, than of the deeper root that lies beneath its stream. And this is the grievous fault of nearly all Lord Byron's melodies; that he pierces them too profoundly, and passes below the region of grace, charging his lyre with far more vehemence of passion than its slight strings are meant to bear. The beauty which belongs to this production, should be in the form of the thought rather than the fashion of the setting: that genuineness and simplicity of character which constitute almost its essence, are destroyed by any appearance of the cold artifices of construction, palpable springs set for our admiration, whereby the beginning is obviously arranged in reference to a particular ending. This is the short-reaching power of Moore--guilty, by design, of that departure from simplicity, by which he fascinated one generation at the expense of being forgotten by another. The song, while it is general in its impression, should be particular in its occasion; not an abstraction of the mind, but a definite feeling, special to some certain set of circumstances. Rising from out the surface of daily experience, like the watery issuings of a fountain, it throws itself upward for a moment, then descends in a soft, glittering shower to the level whence it rose. Herein resides the chief defect of Bayly's songs; that they are too general and vague--a species of pattern songs--being embodiments of some general feeling, or reflection, but lacking that sufficient reference to some season or occurrence which would justify their appearing, and take away from them the aspect of pretension and display.
The only satisfactory method of criticism is by means of clinical lectures; and we feel regret that our limits do not suffer us--to