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rank with the best humorous-satiric poems in the language; and they are quite unique in their conception and tone.

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The poets by whom this age will be known in history are, we believe, Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Browning. That the same period should have produced two poets apparently so dissimilar in style, in matter, and in intellectual character, is at first sight strange. But a closer examination of their writings will reveal a much more intimate affinity between them than appears upon the surface. Many of the same problems which have presented themselves to the one poet have presented themselves to the other. "In Memoriam,” “The Palace of Art," "Maud," "Caliban upon Setebos," Rabbi Ben Ezra," the "Epilogue" in "Dramatis Personæ,"-all these are products of the characteristic influences of the age. They exhibit the same perturbation of mind with regard to the religious and social questions of the day; the same intellectual passion which animates the leading thinkers of the age; the same desire to grapple with speculative difficulties and solve them; the same subtlety of thought, and blending of profound philosophy with poetical enthusiasm. But there are other resemblances not less noteworthy. There is an intensely realistic tendency everywhere apparent in the works of both poets. They love to treat of commonplace characters and commonplace incidents, and they paint these minutely, without much imaginative warmth. Closely connected with this realistic tendency is a marked absence of real imaginative constructiveness. Neither poet has produced any great work of the highest kind of imaginative poetry. Their tales are simple and turn on every-day incidents-mere threads on which to string the pearls of thought and speculation. Their power of evolving an exciting dramatic plot seems never very great. Perhaps the most imaginative poem which Mr. Tennyson has ever produced is "Tithonus;" perhaps the most imaginative of Mr. Browning's is "Saul." Here both poets are dramatic, and both rise in the fictitious character to a sublime intensity of passion and vision not elsewhere attained by either of them. But in which of their works do we meet with the passionate invention of incident of Byron? where the marvellous constructiveness and breadth of vision we find in Shelley? Another point of resemblance is their lyrical bias. Mr. Browning has written brief unactable dramas, and a great poem consisting of several dramatic studies, but his tendency is to write lyrically. Mr. Tennyson has written a long series of short tales, but his gift is the lyrical gift. If Mr. Browning's lyrics are dramatic, as they profess to be, we cannot hesitate to admit that Mr. Tennyson's lyrics are generally dramatic in the same sense. We are quite

sure that the hero of "Locksley Hall," for example, is as much separated from the author's personality as are any of Mr. Browning's "men and women;" and we do not believe that lyric poetry generally is less dramatic in essence than Mr. Browning's. The only lyric poetry which can be called truly dramatic is that which represents in it some many-sided individual character. Merely to express some peculiar mood of mind, is not necessarily to write dramatically-it may only be, to represent the writer himself at different periods. And, when Mr. Tennyson writes love poems, in illustration of feelings awakened by different forms of beauty, as "Eleanore" and "Adeline," he is writing just as dramatically as Mr. Browning, when he sings of the "Lost Leader" or "Evelyn Hope."

The difference between the writings of the two arises from the accidents of character and education merely. Mr. Browning is one who seems to love excitement--who takes a fierce, animal delight in combat. Mr. Tennyson seeks repose. Mr. Browning would open a thousand new paths, loving progress, loving change, hopeful of the future. Mr. Tennyson would fain reconcile new and old, neither wholly captivated by the dreams of the future nor wholly wedded to the past.

Such are some of the characteristics of the two chief poets of the Victorian age-an age rich in verse, but which has not as yet given birth to any truly great work of poetical art. Which poet is likely to

To answer this ques

live longest among the generations to come? tion will not, we think, be very difficult, nor to attempt it too presumptuous.

When we consider the exquisite finish of Mr. Tennyson's verse, the perfection and purity of his language, the distinctness of his thought, the flawlessness of his rhythms, the subtlety of his melody, the quiet strength of his mind

"That calmness of the temper, heart, and brain,
Which are the power and crown of manliness

we cannot fail to perceive that almost all the elements of an enduring fame are his.

Mr. Browning has a giant intellect, and a heart full of sympathy with his fellow-men. He must survive all other poets of to-day but the Laureate, by many a year. Yet those very qualities which render it so probable that Mr. Tennyson will enjoy long fame, and even popularity, Mr. Browning but rarely exhibits. His poetry is not that of a calm mind it is the offspring of an acute, vigorous, original, and excitable intellect, more at the mercy of ephemeral

influences than one would from its nature be led to expect it to be. He has not the knack of chiselling in clear outline the likeness of the image which is in his mind. Though rich in a rhythmic music peculiar to himself, his verse is generally, to an ordinary ear, harsh and unmelodious. His sentences are constructed on a principle to which the English reader is not, and probably never will be, accustomed. His thoughts, which are bold and great, are vaguely and dimly expressed. Thus, too great a strain, amounting almost to discomfort, is put by him upon the minds of his readers before they are brought face to face with his great conceptions. This is a defect which will prevent Mr. Browning from ever becoming a poet of the people. For if poetry produces in most readers a weariness of brain, and a ruffling of the temper, where is the pleasure which is to endear it to their hearts? It is not that Mr. Browning's thoughts are beyond the comprehension of an ordinary intelligence; they are easy to grasp and easy to digest when once their shell is broken; it is because they are concealed by such uncouth or involved wording that they baffle those who go to poetry for pleasure and instruction. Nor has Mr. Browning given the same national colouring to his work as Mr. Tennyson has. Mr. Tennyson is English of the English. His simple stories of English life will probably always remain unsurpassed by anything of their kind. They reflect the England of his age, and for this reason will always carry with them a strong historical interest. He is national in the truest sense of the word; loves his country; has written her praises; has rebuked her; has faith in her still grander destiny. Mr. Browning is not un-English: but he is more cosmopolitan; and, though his aim is perhaps loftier, he can hardly so endear himself to the hearts of his own countrymen. We have sometimes seen it written by revolutionary critics that Mr. Tennyson's day is gone by. If so, whose day has arrived? Who holds the place in public favour which he has held? Whose influence is as strong as his? We have no hesitation in declaring our belief that Mr. Tennyson will stand out hereafter from among his fellows as the pre-eminent, because the most representative, poet

of his time.

ON THE COMIC WRITERS OF

ENGLAND.

BY CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE.

No. IX.-WYCHERLEY AND CONGREVE.

YCHERLEY was born just twenty-four years after Shakespeare died. He came into the world at the village of Clive, near Shrewsbury, where his father,

who was one of the Tellers of the Exchequer, held some property. The family-which had remained stationary in the same neighbourhood-was an ancient one; for it could be traced, unbroken, from the dramatist up to the reign of Henry IV.

It is observable that the chief of our early play-writers were men of family above the ordinary standard, and that their education was collegiate. Ben Jonson, indeed, forms an exception, and an important one, to the list; but Beaumont and Fletcher were gentlemen born and gentlemen bred; and it should seem that the family of Shakespeare was both ancient and respectable; for the coat of arms has been traced as having been borne by a Warwickshire family of the name in the reign of Henry VII.; but the name itself exists in the records of Henry VI., Edward IV., and Richard III.

Wycherley received his boyish education in France, where he was introduced to the circles of the celebrated Duchess of Montausier, who, as is recorded in his life, converted him to the Catholic religion. After the restoration of Charles II., Wycherley returned to England, and entered at Queen's College, Oxford; but, according to Wood, in his "Athenæ Oxoniensis," he remained a student only, and took no degree. Here he became re-converted to Protestantism; and later in life we find that he made another credal pirouette, and finally died a "Romanist"-the word used by Pope when speaking of him to Spence. When we consider the loose-in more senses than one— and robe-de-chambre faith that signalised the age of the Court-party in Charles II.'s reign; also that Wycherley had imbibed early impressions of that religion whose teachers have occasionally assumed the power of smoothing the knots and asperities of apprehension and misgiving as regards our future state; it is not to be much wondered

at that he, who had manifested no strong adherence to any creed, should finally resign himself to that one which would give him the least trouble. This observation, however, is to be received as an "aside," speaking in dramatic technicality; for we have only to consider Wycherley as a writer.

His comedies are, "Love in a Wood," written at nineteen, and before he went to Oxford; "The Gentleman Dancing-Master,” at twenty-one (the year after his entrance at College); "The Plain Dealer," at twenty-five; and lastly, "The Country Wife," at one or two and thirty. This, their chronology, Pope (in Spence's anecdotes) says Wycherley himself had told him over and over again.

The comedy of "Love in a Wood” is, indeed, an extraordinary piece of invention, and of writing, too, for a youth of nineteen. His knowledge of the arcana of town life, with its interminable intrigues and love-treasons-if it be not profanation to use the term "love" in this description of social commerce -is certainly remarkable. The disguises and blunders and perplexities are conducted with all the display of a young ambition to build up a dramatic plot they are spun out to wearisomeness, and mostly improbable in design. One must keep one's mental eyes closed while reading it, and, like children, play at "make-believe." Moreover, we feel little or no sympathy with even the better class of the characters; one cares nothing whether they "marry and live happy afterwards," or not; for their whole course of conduct shows that their jealousy arises from sensual vanity, and not from a worthy pride of exclusiveness; and, moreover, we feel that if in the end they had all been jilted, they would have quickly righted themselves by some other toy object. Nevertheless, it must be confessed that, gross as many of the scenes are, the "mirror held up to nature" is not a distorted one. Selfishness, duplicity, and insincerity meet their just retribution, as they do in real life; if not openly to the world, to the "still small voice" of the sometime self-communing heart. The character of Ranger in this play of "Love in a Wood" is, perhaps, the most naturally portrayed of the whole company; and he is the elder brother of the same family in name and character in Dr. Hoadley's play of "The Suspicious Husband." Restless as a butterfly, and as various in his enjoyments, and familiar even to effrontery. The next character is the widow Flippant-a railer against men and matrimony from policy, and making desperate lunges to get married. Her confession to her husband-broker, Mrs. Joiner, is an edifying and precocious piece of diplomacy for a youth of nineteen to have concocted. She says, "The widow's fortune, whether supposed or real, is her chiefest

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