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1853.]

The Influence of Poets.

poetry of doubt will find itself unable to use those forms of verse which have been always held to be the highest; tragedy, epic, the ballad, and lastly, even the subjective lyrical ode. For they, too, to judge by every great lyric which remains to us, require a groundwork of consistent, self-coherent belief; and they require also an appreciation of melody even more delicate, and a verbal polish even more complete than any other form of poetic utterance. But where there is no melody within, there will be no melody with lout. It is in vain to attempt the setting of spiritual discords to physical music. The mere practical patience and self-restraint requisite to work out rhythm when fixed on, will be wanting; nay, the fitting rhythm will never be found, the subject itself being arhythmic; and thus we shall have, or rather, alas! do have, a wider and wider divorce of sound and sense, a greater and greater carelessness for polish, and for the charm of musical utterance, and watch the clear and spirit-stirring melodies of the older poets, swept away by a deluge of half-metrical prose-run-mad, diffuse, unfinished, unmusical, to which any other metre than that in which it happens to have been written would have been equally appropriate, because all are equally inappropriate; and where men have nothing to sing, it is not of the slightest consequence how they sing it.

While poets persist in thinking and in writing thus, it is in vain for them to talk loud about the poet's divine mission, as the prophet of mankind, the swayer of the universe, and so forth. Not that we believe the poet simply by virtue of being a singer to have any such power. While young gentlemen are talking about governing heaven and earth by verse, Wellingtons and Peels, Arkwrights and Stephensons, Frys and Chisholms, are doing it by plain, practical prose; and even of those who have moved and led the hearts of men by verse, every one, as far as we know, has produced his magical effects by poetry of the very opposite form to that which is now in fashion. What poet ever had more influence than Homer? What poet is more utterly antipodal to our

VOL. XLVIII. NO. CCLXXXVI.

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modern schools? There are certain Hebrew psalms, too, which will be confest, even by those who differ most from them, to have exercised some slight influence on human thought and action, and to be likely to exercise the same for some time

It

to come. Are they any more like our modern poetic forms than they are like our modern poetic matter? Ay, even in our own time, what has been the form, what the temper, of all poetry, from Körner and Heine, which has made the German heart leap up, but simplicity, manhood, clearness, finished melody, the very opposite in a word of our new school? And to look at home, what is the modern poetry which lives on the lips and in the hearts of Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen? is not only simple in form and language, but much of it fitted, by a severe exercise of artistic patience, to tunes already existing. does not remember how the 'Marseillaise' was born, or how Burns's 'Scots wha' ha wi' Wallace bled,' or the story of Moore's taking the old 'Red Fox March,' and giving it a new immortality as Let Erin remember the days of old,' while poor Emmett sprang up and cried, 'Oh, that I had twenty thousand Irishmen marching to that tune!' So it is, even to this day, and let those who hanker after poetic fame take note of it; not a poem which is now really living but has gained its immortality by virtue of simplicity and positive faith.

6

Who

Let the poets of the new school consider carefully Wolfe's 'Sir John Moore,' Campbell's 'Hohenlinden,' Mariners of England,' and 'Rule Britannia,' Hood's Song of the Shirt' and 'Bridge of Sighs,' and then ask themselves, as men who would be poets, were it not better to have written any one of those glorious lyrics than all which John Keats has left behind him; and let them be sure that, howsoever they may answer the question to themselves, the sound heart of the English people has already made its choice; and that when that beautiful

Hero and Leander,' in which Hood has outrivalled the conceit-mongers at their own weapons, by virtue of that very terseness, clearness, and manliness which they neglect, has been gathered to the limbo of the

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Crashawes and Marinos, his 'Song of the Shirt' and his 'Bridge of Sighs' will be esteemed by great new English nations far beyond the seas, for what they are-two of the most noble lyric poems ever written by an English pen. If our poetasters talk with Wordsworth of the dignity and pathos of the commonest human things, they will find them there in perfection; if they talk about the cravings of the new time, they will find them there. If they want the truly sublime and the awful, they will find them there also. But they will find none of their own favourite concetti; hardly even a metaphor; no taint of this new poetic diction into which we have now fallen, after all our abuse of the far more manly and sincere 'poetic diction' of the eighteenth century; they will find no loitering by the way to argue and moralize, and grumble at Providence, and show off the author's own genius and sensibility; they will find, in short, two real works of art, earnest, melodious, self-forgetful, knowing clearly what they want to say, and saying it in the shortest, the simplest, the calmest, the most finished words. Saying it rather taught to say it. For if that divine inspiration of poets,' of which the poetasters make such rash and irreverent boastings, have indeed, as all ages have held, any reality corresponding to it, it will rather be bestowed on such works as these, appeals from unrighteous man to a righteous God, than on men whose only claim to celestial help seems to be that mere passionate sensibility, which our modern Draco once described when speaking of poor John Keats, as an infinite hunger after all manner of pleasant things, crying to the universe, 'Oh, that thou wert one great lump of sugar, that I might suck thee!''

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Our task is ended. We have given as plainly as we can our reasons for the opinion which this Magazine has exprest several times already, that with the exception of Mr. Allingham and Mr. Meredith, our young poets are a very hopeless generation, and will so continue unless they utterly repent and amend. If they do not choose to awaken emselves from within, all that is

rus is to hope that they may

be awakened from without, or by some radical revulsion in public taste be shown their own real value and durability, and compelled to be true and manly under pain of being laughed at and forgotten. A general war combining England, America, and Piedmont against the continental despots might, amid all its inevitable horrors, sweep away at once the dyspeptic unbelief, the insincere bigotry, the effeminate frivolity which now paralyses our poetry as much as it does our action, and strike from England's heart a lightning flash of noble deeds, a thunder peal of noble song. Such a case is neither an impossible nora far-fetched one; let us not doubt that by some other means if not by that the immense volume of thought and power which is still among us will soon find its utterance, and justify itself to after ages by showing in harmonious and self-restrained poetry its kinship to the heroic and the beautiful of every age and clime. And till then; till the sunshine and the thaw shall come, and the spring flowers burst into bud and bloom, heralding a new golden year in the world's life, let us even be content with our pea-green and orange fungi; nay, even admire them, as not without their own tawdry beauty, their clumsy fitness; for after all they are products of nature, though only of her dyspepsia; and grow and breed-as indeed cutaneous disorders do-by an organic law of their own; fulfilling their little destiny, and then making, according to Professor Way, by no means bad manure. And so we take our leave of Mr. Alexander Smith, entreating him, if these pages meet his eye, to consider three things, namely, that in as far as he has written poetry, he is on the road to ruin by reason of following the worst possible models. That in as far as the prevailing taste has put these models before him he is neither to take much blame to himself, nor to be in anywise disheartened for the future. That in as far as he shall utterly reverse his whole poetic method, whether in morals or in æsthetics, leave undone all that he has done, and do all that he has not done, he will be, come what he evidently, by grace of God, can become if he will, namely, a lasting and a good poet.

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PIKE, SALMON, SILURUS, HERRING, AND COMPANY. ESOX OR PIKE.

IF the Greeks were acquainted with

this common and widely distributed fish, they have certainly not left the evidence of such knowledge in any notices which have come down to us; whether we should have been wiser had more of their piscatory writings remained cannot be determined with certainty; but it seems scarcely probable that so striking a fish as the pike should have escaped the notice of so careful an observer as Aristotle* had it really been an inhabitant of the lakes and rivers of ancient Greece; some, indeed, have conjectured that the oxyrynchus of the Nile (a creature mentioned by Elian, supposed to be sprung from the wounds of Osiris, and held on that account in great respect by the Egyptianst), was the true ancestor of the pike; but as Elian's fish, according to Plutarch, comes up from the sea, we need look no further to be convinced that this particular oxyrynchus, which will not live in salt water, cannot be the esox of modern anglers' guides, while if any additional objection against the identity of the two were necessary, the very name (though it has led to an opposite inference) ought to be conclusive; for with what plausibility can the broad patulous anserine mouthpiece of the pike be assimilated with the sharp pointed beak so clearly designated by the word οξύρυγχος. This terror of the modern duck-pond seems to have been as little known at Rome as he was at Athens. Pliny's esox (a name which

modern Ichthyology has imposed upon the pike) is evidently a misnomer, for the Roman naturalist only says of his esox, in the first place, that it is a river-fish, and, secondly, that it attains the weight of a thousand pounds. Now the mere fact that both esox and pike are river fish, will scarcely, we imagine, be held by the prudent a sufficient reason for considering them identical; and as to size, whenever a pike shall have been taken, out of any river or lake weighing a thousand pounds, it will be then time to consider what weight should attach to an opinion which is at present wholly unsupported. The first appearance of Sir Lucius in poetry or prose is, we believe, in the fourth century, when the little-known French Abbé, but well-known Latin poet, Ausonius, ushers him into no very favourable notice under this now familiar name.

The wary luce, midst wrack and rushes hid,

The scourge and terror of the scaly brood,

Unknown at friendship's hospitable board,

Smokes 'midst the smoky tavern's coarsest food. §

The word lucius (whence the illustrious O'Trigger, after the precedent of a Roman emperor,|| took his first nom de guerre) has been interpreted by some as a derivative from AUKOS, in consequence of the wolf-like rapacity of the pike; by others from luceo, to shine, in allusion to certain phos

* Of Aristotle, who was so intimately acquainted with fish in particular, that it seemed doubtful whether he had obtained his extraordinary knowledge of their habits from his innate genius and powers of observation alone, or whether Nereus or Proteus might not have risen from the depths expressly to reveal it to him: του Αριστοτέλους τεθαύμακα τῆς ἀκριβείας, πότε μαθῶν ἢ παρὰ τίνος ἀνελθόντος ἐκ τοῦ βαθοῦ Πρώτεως ἢ Νήρεως τί ποιουσιν οἱ ἰχθύες ἢ πῶς κοιμῶνται ἢ πῶς διαι τῶνται. (Ath.)

So great is the reverence entertained by the Nile boatmen for this oxyrynchus, that if one be enclosed in their nets it is immediately liberated with all care; and sooner than keep one a prisoner, the crew would willingly lose the whole draught of fish-προτιμωσιν ἀθηριαν, ἡ ἁλοντος ἐκείνου την μαλιστα ἐυθηριαν. (Alian.) Elian designates four very different fish under this common name; that one of them which inhabits the Caspian, and is carried, salted, on camels' backs to Ecbatana,' is, no doubt, the sturgeon.

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§ Lucius obscurus ulva lacunas

Obsidet. His nuilos mensarum lectus ad usus,
Fumat fumosis olido nidore popinis.

Lucius Verus-i. e., the original Lucius, as he first adopted it.

phorescent properties he is said to display in the dark. Which of these two derivations be the worse it would be difficult to say, and we leave them both accordingly to the judgment of more adept etymologists than ourself for decision. The origin of that verbum usitatissimum, 'pike' is equally obscure. Skinner and Tooke would derive it from the French word pique, on account, say they, of the sharpness of its snout, but to give point to this etymology it should be pointed too (l'épingle, l'abeille, l'éperon piquent;) but a sword though equally sharp, unless it be a small sword, ne pique point, mais blesse: and so our adjective piked, from the same verb, means pointed. Shakspeare calls a man with a pointed beard a piked man. 'Why then I suck my teeth and catechise my piked man of countries;'

and in Camden we read of shoes and pattens snouted and piked more than a finger long. The French names are of easier explanation than any of the above: brochet or brocheton, is evidently derived from the spit-like shape of the body; and lance, lanceron, from the speed with which these fish hurl themselves upon prey or against an enemy; lastly, becquet is a sobriquet suggested no doubt by the flattened form (more like a duck's bill than a fish's mouth) of the muzzle.

Though a stranger to her waters, some pike are, it seems, no strangers to the language of ancient Greece; and one of the race in leaving a most extraordinary record of himself has adopted this learned language for the vehicle of communication. In the year 1497 a giant Jackkiller' was captured in the neighbourhood of Manheim, when the following announcement in Greek was found appended to his muzzle:'I am the first fish that was put into this pond by the hands of the Emperor Frederic the Second, on this third day of October, 1262.' The age, of the informant, therefore, if his lips spoke truth (and the unprece dented dimensions of the body left little doubt on that point) was more than two hundred and thirty-five years. Already he had been the survivor of many important changes in the political and social world

around, and would have swam out perhaps several others had the captors been as solicitous not to take his life, as they were to take his portrait. This, on the demise of the original, was hung up in the castle of Lautern, and the enormous carcase (which when entire weighed three hundred and fifty pounds, and measured nineteen feet) was sent to the museum of the neighbouring town of Manheim. where, deprived of its flesh, and articulated de novo, it hung, and haply yet hangs, a light exsiccated skeleton, which a child might move. Great men have been long known to lose much of their weight corporeal after death-expende Hannibalem!

That urn of ashes to the balance bear, And mark how much of Hannibal be there;

And from the above account of this esox it would seem that great fish are in the same predicament, while it suggests a new second reading for the remainder of the celebrated line incohated above, quot sunt libras in luce summo;'

How many pounds of that great Jack remain,

The well-gorged tyrant of two centuries' reign.

After the mention of such a monster as this it would be an anti-climax to refer the reader to Scotch, Irish, German, Swiss, or Italian specimens weighing from twenty to a hundred pounds each; but many of these would tend to establish the doubted longevity of the pike, and suffice to show that Sir Francis Bacon's assigned period of forty years, which he considers the extreme limit of pike life, cannot be a correct estimate. We must not be deceived here by any supposed analogy be tween human oppressors and the tyrants of the deep; with us the allotted period of such savages is fortunately, for the most part short; frequently they do not live out half their days.'

Few blood-stained despots pass the sable flood

Unscath'd by wounds or unbaptized in blood.

But the pike is a notable exception to this rule of our race; coming to the full maturity of his size only by

1853.]

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Esox or Pike.

slow degrees,* his career of violence seems prolonged indefinitely; with strength and activity quite undiminished, and a voracity wholly unimpaired, for centuries he agitates, pursues, and destroys every living creature he meets;' and time which loosens most things seems only to tighten his teeth. The proceedings of this stealthy and greedy marauder are described with the accuracy of an eye witness by the ingenious author of British Fish and Fisheries:- Shrouded from observation in his solitary retreat he follows with his eye the motions of the shoals of fish that wander heedlessly along; he marks the water rat swimming to his burrow, the ducklings paddling among the water weeds; the dab-chick and the moorhen leisurely swimming on the surface; he selects his victim, and like the tiger springing from the jungle, he rushes forth, seldom indeed missing his aim—there is a sudden rush, circle after circle forms on the surface of the water, and all is still again in an instant.' Though few things come amiss to our freshwater shark,' he too, like omnivorous man, has his preferences and dislikes; in the midst of a banquet of frogs throw him a toad and he turns from it loathing; put a slimy tench near his muzzle and he will recoil from the nauseous creature; and if compelled by strong necessity, as the scarcity of all other more acceptable food, to dine on a perch, he holds it shudderingly under water, at the greatest possible distance transversely in his jaws, whilst any life remains, and having next carefully put down the offensive spines on the back, proceeds to pouch it with address, but leisurely and not without manifest reluctance. The sticklebacks are held in yet greater abomination than perch by old pikes, and not without good reason,

469.

seeing the havoc they commit amongst the young and unwary pickerels. It is only by personal suffering that fish any more than men buy wisdom; our young pikes no sooner begin to feel hunger, and to find they have large mouths, well furnished with teeth provided on purpose to cater for it, than they proceed at once to make essay upon the bodies of the smallest fish within reach. These are commonly the gaserostei or sticklebacks, who on observing the gaping foe advancing against them prepare for the encounter by bristling up their spines in instinctive readiness to stick in his throat instead of going smoothly down into his stomach. This induces a dreadful choking disease, called sticklebackitis, by means of which many a promising young jack is cut off in cunabulis. old fish have as strong a predilection for certain provisions as a dislike to others. Amongst a great variety of objets de consommation the following have been ascertained to be most to their taste-a swan's head and shoulders, a mule's lip, a Polish damsel's foot, a gentleman's hand (probably, however, no objection would be made to a lady's); plump puppies just opening their eyes, and tender kittens paying the penalty of a mother's indiscretion; together with every kind of fish that comes to the maw, with the few exceptions just noticed.

The

As regards culinary qualities, no fish perhaps ever met, at different times and in different places, with a greater diversity of opinion; the sentiment of Ausonius is, as we have seen, strongly against it; and in his part of France to this day the flesh is considered unsavory and plebeian: whilst at Chalons-sur-Saone, on the other hand, it is in high repute in Italy pike are rarely eaten, and the Spaniards entirely reject them. Fur

The growth of a pike, under favourable circumstances, during the earlier portion of life, is occasionally at the rate of four pounds per annum; after twelve years it diminishes probably to one or two pounds; and lessens still more as the age of the fish advances. When about five years old, he will eat every fortnight his own weight in gudgeons, and does ample justice to his food: when old, though his appetite may be as good, yet as he has then many different kinds of parasites to maintain, assimilation is not so perfect as in a younger fish.

On the symptoms and post mortem appearances of sticklebackitis, which presents some interesting analogies with esophagitis, laryngitis, and croup, we reserve what we have to say till we publish our nosology of fish.' Being content here to call the attention of pathologists to the subject.

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