work under the knowledge that they will not be judged by the same standard. So intensely difficult is it to use our powers to the uttermost, that either cause might be sufficient to debar genius from reaching excellence. Combined, they are fatal. Let me add here a remark to which I would venture to request attention, from the bearing it will be found to have on the final results of my argument. It is, that the adverse criticisms, so to call them, often made upon the poetry of women, in regard whether to its want of grasp or to its excess in the emotional and moral elements, do not, as the objectors have apparently believed, point out weaknesses peculiar to it as such. These are not, in any essential sense, feminine characteristics. They are precisely the shortcomings which we notice in much of the poetry of men, when it does not reach first-rate quality. It will hence be obvious that such criticisms are justly applicable to the large majority of poets. They, also, fail of excellence through deficiency in grasp, form, and moderation. When an open criticism is applied (after their death) to women, their work is tacitly compared with the first-rate work of men. And this is undoubtedly the only standard worth anything. But it is so difficult to keep in practical remembrance the infinitely larger number of poets whose work is not first-rate, that a critic is apt, perhaps, to overlook the fact that even numerically considered, the band of female artistsso inferior to the male in positive amount -must be expected to produce, in any circumstances, a lesser average of excellence and that, when we honestly consider the absolute smallness of that average amongst men, and add to it the heavily adverse conditions under which women have worked, it is is only natural that the result (of first-rate quality), should have hitherto been scanty. It is not easy to find instances so parallel that they can be brought forward as complete exemplifications. Under this reserve, however, two short poems, written in the same key, may be quoted in illustration of my former remarks. The first is by Mrs. Hemans; the second by Scott. TROUBADOUR SONG The warrior cross'd the ocean's foam, His voice was heard where javelin-showers Her step was midst the summer flowers, His shield was cleft, his lance was riven, That perish with the breeze- THE MAID OF NEIDPATH O! lovers' eyes are sharp to see, And lovers' ears in hearing; And love, in life's extremity, Can lend an hour of cheering. Disease had been in Mary's bower And slow decay from mourning, Though now she sits on Neidpath's tower, To watch her love's returning. All sunk and dim her eyes so bright, Her form decay'd by pining, Across her cheek was flying; Her maidens thought her dying - Here more of the elements or motives of the pathetic are contained in the first poem than in Scott's; it is also` written with more care and finish in the verse, and contains no such flat prosaicism as the unfortunate first lines of his third stanza; yet how far below it in pathos! how little in it, that lies not deeper than, but nearly as deep as tears! Why is this? We think, because the "Troubadour" wants concentration, wants simplicity-in one word, wants form. Hath stirr'd thee deeply; with its own dear Its own small pasture, almost its own sky! DISTANT SOUND OF THE SEA AT EVENING The same remarks apply to that province of poetry in which, as in case of painting, one would naturally expect from women peculiar success, as it is certainly a province to which they have devoted immense labour. Natural scenery, in all its aspects, has been sung by them in England and in America in many thousand graceful and thoughtful lines; they have drawn not only the landscape in its details, but in its moral. Yet, when the book has been closed, where are the passages which recur to the reader's mind, at those moments when an actual scene reminds him at once of Shakespeare and Milton, of Wordsworth and Shelley? Where, we would ask, is even the short phrase like the many which, to all feeling minds, arise when we are alone with Nature, and make us conscious that Byron, or Keats, or Tennyson have anticipated Lone worshipping, and knows that through what we see, and set it to music for us? The cottage homes of England! By thousands on her plains, As the bird beneath their eaves. An English home-gray twilight pour'd How far more perfect in its beauty is And bee to rest; when summer tints grow Seen through the gathering of a dewy veil, To the last whisper of the falling gale. Then, 'midst the dying of all other sound, When the soul hears thy distant voice profound, the night "Twill worship still, then most its anthem-tone BY THE SEA WITH A CHILD If thou appear untouch'd by solemn thought Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year, nation and Fancy, as it were, on one side, and Predominance of Emotional Instinct, on the other. But, whilst maintaining this division for convenience, I would wish to have it remembered that it is of an arbitrary nature, and that Passion and Imagination might be more accurately described, not as the workings of Heart and Head, but rather as dual functions of that single Force (or whatever it be) which an excellent though somewhat old-fashioned term speaks of as the Soul. Indeed, the word functions, just used, has perhaps itself a misleading tendency; and it might be best to think of Imagination, Fancy, and Passion rather as simple manifestations of the soul in its unity and vitality. No one, we apprehend, who puts aside the technicalities of theory, or the infinitely more confusing metaphors and careless phrases of common phraseology, will seriously believe that the Head can turn itself to produce Imagination only, without respect to the Feelings, as the tongue might utter French or English at will; or that the Heart can at pleasure apply emotions quite irrespective of reason. Science traces what she calls sympathetic action between certain organs of the body. There is a similar sympathetic action between the energies of the soul. And hence, returning to our subject, it is probable that what we have remarked on the Imaginative element in the poetry of women will find a parallel in that other Emotional element which the hasty criticism I am all through contending with has often assumed as the peculiar province of the fair writers. Our remarks tended to this: that want of force and concentration in grasping a scene, painting a character, or realizing a sentiment, whether exhibited in male or female verse, might be summed up, mainly, as deficiency in comprehending poetry as an art. A thousand graceful images, and phrases in which to express them, arise within any cultivated and feeling soul at the sight of natural beauty, or the contemplation of human character in its unselfish moods. But he alone will select those images and phrases, and those only, which are new, penetrating, and musical, who has trained his natural gift by assiduous study of what has been done before him by those who were similarly gifted. In a word, whilst the root of poetry is in the soil of nature, her flowers will only grow in the atmosphere of art. The same law applies, equally and exactly, making the necessary changes in regard to subject matter, to the other Fine Arts. The result of this process of selection to the poet, will often be silence; to the painter, a blank canvas. But the result to the world will be, that we are saved a commonplace picture, or a second-rate poem. In these high regions, there is no success unless our powers are not only strained, but trained, to the very utmost; and fortunate is he, one of ten thousand, who even thus achieves it! Without these conditions, to succeed is simply impossible. Those difficulties, then, arising from limited and shallow education, and the want of an honest judgment from the world, which hinder the serious pursuit of poetry, will not be felt less in reference to its emotional elements, than to its imaginative. But they will show themselves in a different manner. They weaken poetical imagination by destroying grasp and closeness. They equally weaken poetical emotion by leading the poet to give us too much of it. Conscious that it is this quality which may be said to lend Colour (as we might speak of Imagination as lending Form) to poetry, the bias will be to lay on the passions thick and rich over every square inch of the picture. There is no need to prove at length that this is a special tendency or temptation of women. Whilst comparing their work in the Fine Arts. with that of men, I have never taken for granted (although for the general scope of my argument it was not required that I should dwell upon the subject), that what they might do, had they a fair chance, would be similar in quality, any more than the circumstances of life would allow it to be equal in positive. quantity, to the production of the other sex. It is, undoubtedly, within the region of the emotions that nature authorises us to look for the highest success, and for most of it, from female hands. Experience confirms this. From Sappho downwards, this is the side on which women have most impressed the world as poets. Men, it is true, have probably far exceeded them in the actual amount of verse overflushed with feeling which they have created. "The purple light of love," beautiful as it is, has been shed with far too lavish a profusion over their landscapes; nay, there are some, and not of small repute either (Moore is an example), whose whole atmosphere, like what we read of the lakes of Cashmere, is charged rather with rose-pink than with the nobler colour. But this is because so much more verse by men than by women has been printed. If we make a comparative estimate, the Affections and the Emotions, whether as subjects for direct handling, or as the light in which incidents and landscapes are viewed, hold a much larger part in female poetry. And we must sympathize here with what I think may be correctly called the common opinion, that the part thus held is disproportioned to good effect. The due balance is wanting. And there is no one lesson which strict art teaches more strongly than balance. I will add, there is also no lesson more forcibly taught by that study of the great ancient models which is sedulously refused to women. I give here one eminently beautiful instance, wherein this want of balance and moderation appears to me to mar the pleasure which the poem would otherwise afford us. It may be compared with Scott's "Maid of Neidpath," quoted above. The effect of that, as fixed on the mind by its last stanza, as a great living poet once remarked to me, might be spoken of as almost too pathetic: He came-he pass'd-a heedless gaze Returns each whisper spoken, Sister! since I met thee last Yes! thy varying cheek hath caught Music haunts thee, not thine own! Tell me not the tale, my flower! -Weep, sweet sister, on my breast! This is too intense, too delicate, too intime a picture: we feel instinctively that the outer world has hardly a right to disclosures so poignantly pathetic. A few more words on some of the conditions of art already alluded to may lead us to a further insight why the Pathetic and the Passionate in female hands have failed of the excellence to which the sincerity, delicacy, and strength of the emotion itself entitled it. One of the most imperative of these laws is that the work shall leave a sense of high and lofty pleasure. This has been generally accepted as the true end of art. Its object is not, as such, to tell us facts, or to reveal Nature to ordinary souls, or to honour the Deity, or to do us goodpowerfully as it may in fact fulfil these purposes. As art, it must give pleasure, or it fails precisely in that which forms its speciality, and distinguishes it from other forms of human energy. An over abundance of the pathetic may defeat the aim of pleasure. Yet to please has been, probably, less consciously neglected by poetesses than by poets. But women have, I think, been far less willing than men to accept that which necessarily flows from this first condition of poetry -that poetry, like all Fine Art, must not aim at doing us direct good. In this sense the often-abused phrase is true, that art-directly religious, of course, excepted-has no morality. I see no reason to suppose there is anything special in female nature that leads it to finish its poem with a text, or to teach a gracious moral in its picture. These at least are errors common to innumerable male practitioners. But it is quite natural to suppose that the knowledge of the laws and the study of the great models of art (the ancient examples in particular; one of the principal lessons of which is the familiarity they give us with a world where all our problems were approached from a point of view quite different from ours), totally denied to women, may be at least one main reason why this allimportant rule, which makes pleasure the end of Art, has been observed by the men who have been the leading poets and artists of the world. Be this as it may, it appears to me indisputable that the introduction of a definite, frequently indeed of a directly religious, moral, is not only a mark or note of poetry by women, but is one chief reason why they have not carried their poetry to greater excellence. I do not contend that ideas of this character are necessarily, or often, excluded from firstrate verse. A sense of ultimate justice softens even the most tragic dramas of Sophocles or Shakespeare. "To justify the ways of God to man" was one avowed object, it may be doubted whether it can be reckoned one of the successes, of "Paradise Lost." But with women it is not enough to let Christian hopes, for instance, form the unseen though not unfelt background of the picture. Such a feeling as Tennyson's "behind the veil," is alien from them. There must too often even be a positive allusion to heaven in the last stanza. Take the justly-admired lines -I suppose the most admired-of that charming writer who has furnished our former illustrations : THE GRAVES OF A HOUSEHOLD They grew in beauty side by side, They fill'd one home with glee; One, 'midst the forest of the West, The Indian knows his place of rest The sea, the blue lone sea, hath one- One sleeps where southern vines are drest He wrapt his colours round his breast, And one-o'er her the myrtle showers And parted thus they rest, who play'd They that with smiles lit up the hall, And naught beyond, O earth! Beautiful as this is, may I own that, beside a certain want of ease in the last two lines, their sentiment appears to me to destroy the effect of the preceding; and, by so doing, to bring the whole poem down to an inferior level? Alas for love! if thou wert all, And naught beyond, O earth! The very greatness of the idea thus suggested-precisely what would elevate a practical address of consolation-is precisely what lowers and diminishes the poem as poetry. Why? Because before the vast thoughts of eternity, with its accompanying images of love restored, |