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In this passage we have a definite invitation to retreat from volitional to affective thought: from the window to the quiet place where "no creature dwelleth," and in Patmore's phrase "the night of thought becomes the light of perception." This fringe-region or foreconscious is in fact the organ of contemplation, as the realistic outward looking mind is the organ of action.
Coventry Patmore's admirable 'Angel in the House. It is the method that is difficult. Browning remorselessly hunts him down, tracks him to the last recesses of his mind, and there bids him stand and deliver. He describes love, not only broken but breaking; hate in its germ; doubt at its birth.
When I heard the serenade I thought of Coventry Patmore's epithet, actually used, I think, about Mozart: "glittering peace." Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, and Beethoven all seemed for the moment to lose a little of their light under this pure and tranquil and unwavering "glitter." I hope I shall never hear the "Serenade" again, for I shall never hear it played as these particular players played it.
Not to illustrate exhaustively, three of the most widely read poems with poet heroes, of the beginning, middle and end of the century respectively, i. e., Moore's Lalla Rookh, Mrs. Browning's Lady Geraldine's Courtship, and Coventry Patmore's The Angel in the House, all depend for plot interest upon their hero's implication in a love affair.
But who is he, with modest looks, And clad in homely russet brown? He murmurs near the running brooks A music sweeter than their own. He is retired as noontide dew, Or fountain in a noon-day grove; And you must love him, ere to you He will seem worthy of your love. Whatever Patmore's theory may be worth, it is certain that Lamb adhered to black after the change. Beaumont and Fletcher. Barker's.
Shelley's "Epipsychidion" was the expression of a passing mood; Tennyson's "Come into the Garden, Maud," a lyric exaltation that must have died down when Maud appeared, and could in any case scarce have survived its fiftieth rewriting; Rossetti's interpretation of "The House of Life" is as purely individual as Patmore's "Angel in the House"; Swinburne sings of phantasms; we can no more take our poets for types of modern lovers than we can accept Dante or Petrarch as representatives of the mediaeval lover.
But through nearly the whole of Coventry Patmore's poetry there is an endurance of the mortal touch. Nay, more, he has the endurance of the immortal touch. That is, his capacity for all the things that men elude for their greatness is more than the capacity of other men. He endures therefore what they could but will not endure and, besides this, degrees that they cannot apprehend.
It is a dismal day, and Crene, to comfort me, puts into my hands two books as companions by the way. They are Coventry Patmore's "Angel in the House," "The Espousals and the Betrothal." I do not approve of reading in the cars; but without is a dense, white, unvarying fog, and within my heart it is not clear sunshine. So I turn to my books. Did any one ever read them before?
Coventry Patmore's books generally are made up of poetry and prattle, but the poetry makes you forgive the prattle. The tender, strong, wholesome truths they contain steady the frail bark through dangerous waters; but "Faithful Forever" is wrong, false, and pernicious, root and branch, and a thorough misnomer besides.
It is a dismal day, and Crene, to comfort me, puts into my hands two books as companions by the way. They are Coventry Patmore's "Angel in the House," "The Espousals and the Betrothal." I do not approve of reading in the cars; but without is a dense, white, unvarying fog, and within my heart it is not clear sunshine. So I turn to my books. Did any one ever read them before?
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