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Perhaps it is partly by reason of its contrast with the wild, stark coast that the far-famed Vale of Lanherne has won its reputation. It is a spot that has excited the enthusiasm of painters, versifiers, and guide-books; yet probably its chief charm is the surprise of its sylvan and pastoral character in a tract of country that is not notable for either.
It is no more an argument against the vital significance of the novel that tens of thousands of people that everybody, in fact should to-day essay that form of art, than it is an argument against poetry that for all the centuries droves and flocks of versifiers and scribblers and rhymesters have succeeded in making the name of poet a little foolish in worldly eyes. The true function of poetry!
"Atalanta" was a revelation; there was a new and original poet here, a Balliol man, too. In my own mind "Atalanta" remains the best, the most beautiful, the most musical of Mr. Swinburne's many poems. He instantly became the easily parodied model of undergraduate versifiers. Swinburnian prize poems, even, were attempted, without success. As yet we had not seen Mr. Matthew Arnold's verses.
He was educated for the bar at Toulouse, the seat of one of the most celebrated parliaments of the kingdom, practised as an advocate with considerable success, and wrote some small pieces, which he sent to the principal literary societies in the south of France. Among provincial towns, Toulouse seems to have been remarkably rich in indifferent versifiers and critics.
In the state archives, kept in the library of the Lord of the Isle, are whole volumes of unpublished verse, some by well-known hands, and others quite as good, by the last people you would think of as versifiers, men who could pension off all the genuine poets in the country, and buy ten acres of Boston common, if it was for sale, with what they had left.
Schopenhauer has formulated a philosophy of pessimism, and through a host of the minor story-tellers and versifiers runs the note of discouragement and abandonment. The most dangerous alliance which besets man is that between Sensuality and Unbelief, whispering together in his ear, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die!"
Some of these being termed according to the matter they deal with, some by the sorts of verses they liked best to write in, for indeed the greatest part of poets have apparelled their poetical inventions in that numbrous kind of writing which is called verse: indeed but apparelled, verse being but an ornament and no cause to poetry: sith there have been many most excellent poets that never versified, and now swarm many versifiers that need never answer to the name of poets.
Moore to an innocent distinction among the song-writers and occasional poets of his day: But he is indebted, we fear, for the celebrity he actually enjoys to accomplishments of a different description; and may boast, if the boast can please him, of being the most licentious of modern versifiers, and the most poetical of those who, in our times, have devoted their talents to the propagation of immorality.
We fancy not even a critic; for the race so vigilantly malign in other days has lost its bitterness, or has been broken of its courage by the myriad numbers of the versifiers once so exultingly destroyed. Indeed, that cruel slaughter was but a combat with Nature, "So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life";
Escot had formerly been the received lover of Miss Cephalis, till he incurred the indignation of her father by laughing at a very profound dissertation which the old gentleman delivered. Next arrived a postchaise containing four insides. These personages were two very profound critics, Mr. Gall and Mr. Treacle, and two very multitudinous versifiers, Mr. Nightshade and Mr. McLaurel.
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