413 TABLE TALK. MEMORIALS TO CHARLES READE AND D. G. ROSSETTI. N the afternoon of August 2 a few men of letters and others ON Paul's Cathedral for the purpose of unveiling a memorial tablet to Charles Reade. The design, which is due to private subscription, consists of a medallion portrait, an excellent likeness, taken by Mr. S. M. Curtice from a cast after death of the great novelist's features. It is close to the bust of George Cruikshank, and bears the simple inscription, " To the memory of Charles Reade, D.C.L., born June 2, 1884: died April 11, 1884: author, dramatist, journalist." The bust was unveiled by Sir Algernon Borthwick, M.P. Such "flattery" can scarcely "soothe the chill cold ear of death." We owe it to ourselves, however, that a place in our Walhalla should be assigned the author of "The Cloister and the Hearth," and a score of other brilliant and powerful works. Not long before, in front of his former residence in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, a monument to Dante Gabriel Rossetti was uncovered by his old friend and associate Mr. Holman Hunt. This also was due to private subscription. Failing the national recognition, which is now reserved for soldiers or for princely or aristocratic nonentities, but will in future days become the appanage of the intellectually great, this form of tribute must be taken as satisfactory. When possible, the open-air monument is the preferable, as the more easily in view and readily accessible. It is only when a man has dwelt opposite an open space or on a river bank that such a memorial as is erected to Rossetti is possible. A memorial other than a plaque in a modern London residential street is not to be thought of. THE EXETER THEATRE. BER EFORE there has been time for the words I wrote on the fire at the Ring Theatre in Vienna to be forgotten by those who took cognizance of them, a domestic calamity only less cruel has taken place in our midst, and a couple of hundred of our fellow countrymen have been suffocated or burnt in the fire at the Exeter theatre. Once more the fire began at what, with a close knowledge of theatres, I pointed out as the seat of utmost danger, namely, the portion immediately above the stage, where the scenery is desiccated and as combustible as tinder. Once more there will be an outcry, once more it will subside, and nothing will be done. Are we in England, then, such children that it is necessary for Parliament to legislate for us? The real remedies are known, and all that is necessary is for the public to stay away from the theatres until they are applied. No one, however, will do this. The precautions managers announce are forgotten as public fear subsides, and the whole process of destruction begins afresh. Meanwhile, visits of inspection are made by those appointed to see into the condition of our theatres. Will it be believed that these visits are invariably announced beforehand? The manager receiving the intimation has every portal open, every barrier removed, a little whitewash applied to points where the ceiling is blackened by gas-lights, and everything put in spick-and-span order. So soon as the visitor's back is turned the doors are closed, the barriers re-erected, and things resume their former course. Verily, for a people that has conquered no inconsiderable share of the world, and still dares to rule it, we are the most pitiful of impostors. The lesson, "How not to do it," could scarcely obtain more satisfactory illustration. WHAT ARE THE BEST PASSAGES IN ENGLISH POETRY? O deal with the subject of poetical quotation generally, I defy any man of wide range to say what is his favourite passage. His choice changes according to his mood or his surroundings. I have held myself that I would fain place in gold letters in every room in my house this maxim from Wordsworth: Never to blend our pleasure or our pride, With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels. I own, however, that it is the sentiment rather than the poetry that justifies such preference. My life, again, has been moulded in its higher moments by Milton's magnificent injunction To scorn delights and live laborious days, and I have asked, with full sense of its lovely suggestion, the question he opposes to this counsel : Were it not better done, as others use, There are moods when the whole soul goes out with Tennyson's "Break, break, break!" or when the "Lotus Eaters" appears the most ineffable of poetic utterances. At others I would give up both for a chorus in Mr. Swinburne's "Atalanta in Calydon," or a stanza or two from the prelude to "Songs before Sunrise." There are two stanzas in Mr. Arnold's "Thyrsis" that at times seem to fit all intellectual longing; and there are moments even when the magnificent rhetoric of Clough seems better than poetry. The best lyrics of Shakespeare, Drayton, Herrick, Milton, Wither, and I know not how many more, and poems such as the "Skylark" and the "Ode to the Nightingale," the lover of poetry has off by heart, and, being able to summon them up at will, he feels as if they were, so to speak, his own property and did not come into the competition. Who that does not know one at least of the sonnets from the Portuguese of Mrs. Browning? So interminable is, indeed, the list of poems that rises, I am disposed to take refuge in the idea that the poetry a man learns off by heart intentionally or by frequent repetition, for the mere pleasure of employing it as a sort of instrument to play an accompaniment to his moods, is what he loves best. One thing more I will say. While Eschylus, Horace, Dante, and Bossuet are freely quoted by the competitors in the Fortnightly, there is no line given from any German author or from any Saga. Hugo, Musset, and Heine pass unmentioned. The exclusion by many contributors of Shakespeare and the Bible is perhaps natural. For every prose passage given from Raleigh, and Ruskin, and Carlyle I will be bound to find equivalents from Montaigne and Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne, Charles Lamb, and even from George MacDonald. IT MR. STEVENSON'S "UNDERWOODS.” I T is pleasant, and not surprising, to welcome Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson among the poets. An imagination so fervent as he displays in his romances is seldom unaccompanied by lyrical power. In more than one of his prose works his possession of metrical gifts was evinced, and his "A Child's Garden of Verses" asserted on his behalf a strong claim to be regarded as a singer. With the publication of "Underwoods"-as, after Ben Jonson, he has called his collection of lyrics-his right to the name of poet is conclusively established. No need is there to apologise for the appropriation of the graceful and poetical title which, as a sequel to his "Forest," Ben Jonson assigned to a few scattered verses not published until after 1 Chatto and Windus. his death. Whatever may be the place allotted Mr. Stevenson in the Olympian hierarchy, his lyric gift is in advance of that of Jonson, who, except in a few exquisite and well-remembered poems, displays more vigour than grace. Mr. Stevenson has much more in common with the lyrists of a following generation, with George Wither, whose full merits are not even yet recognised, and notably with Robert Herrick. The new volume is divided into two almost equal portions, whereof one book is written in English and the second in "Scots." Through the good-natured but vigorous satire of the Scottish poems traces of the influence of Burns may be found. The English poems, on the other hand, imitate no previous writer and belong to no school. They are, to use Goethe's distinction, voices, not echoes. Some traces of the sadness which has been the key-note of English poetry for well-nigh a century may be found. So subtly blended with quiet humour are these, that the effect, if pensive, is not depressing. It is the voice neither of arraignment, as with Mr. Swinburne, nor of wail, as with Byron or Clough, but of thoughtful acquiescence. Meanwhile, for grace of diction, for the series of enchanting pictures they present, and for what Sir Henry Wotton calls a "certain Doric delicacy," poems such as "The Canoe Speaks," ," "The House Beautiful," "The Unfathomable Sea,” and a dozen more, may compare with anything of the class in modern literature. This dainty little volume will be welcomed by all lovers of poetry. Some day or other, moreover, as the first poetic outcome of a singularly original mind, it will, I venture to predict, be remembered among bibliographical rarities. SYLVANUS URBAN. THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE. NOVEMBER 1887. SYLVESTER MAGRATH'S LOVE STORY. BY DENIS DESMOND. PART 1. Ο LD Sylvester Magrath's cabin stood at the foot of a hill near the road, and about a quarter of a mile from the western shore of Glengal bay. It was chiefly remarkable for its extreme squalor. Outside the walls were a dirty yellow, and inside they were darkened with turf-smoke, very little of which sought its legitimate mode of exit the wide chimney. The rafters were dark with age and smoke, and so was the thatch, which had sheltered, with occasional patching, several generations of Magraths. There were only three rooms in the cabin, a good-sized kitchen with a small bed-room opening off it at either end. In each bed-room there was a low wooden bed, probably half a century old, and a wooden chair, but no other furniture. In the kitchen there was a dilapidated dresser in one corner, and a wooden settle in the other, and a broken deal table. The whole cabin had an air of the most sordid poverty and disorder. Nevertheless old Sylvester Magrath was by no means a poor man; on the contrary, he considered himself an exceptionally fortunate one. His pecuniary transactions had generally been. successful, and he had actually succeeded in saving, and safely investing, five hundred pounds, by sheep-farming on a small scale. He had a great deal of general ability, and was remarkable for a sort of rude eloquence and for his strong opinions, not on political, but on domestic subjects. He was really the victim of a master passion, that of avarice, which had developed itself at a very early age, and which had degraded his whole nature, and daily tempted him to the basest and most cruel actions. VOL. CCLXIII NO. 1883. GG |