"I've no doubt Father Cam will take your advice," responded the philosopher. "He's done that already," rejoined the poet. "It's the only place I know of where his slumbers would be undisturbed by the ever-restless oar. I'll tell you how he came here :— Where does Father Cam reside? Is it where reflections fall On his scarcely moving tide Of bridge and lawn and college wall? Passing fair; yet none the less Startled thence His Sleepiness. Then he chose a new abode Somewhere by the Ditton shore; Cox's shout and coach's bawl; So he passed beyond the throng, Sings a soporific song, Where the stream is almost clear: Him the soothing waters lull 'Neath an eddy cool and deep : Undisturbed by oar or scull Peacefully he lies asleep." “And an inn close at hand too!" murmured the philosopher. "Happy thought!" responded the poet. R. H. F. No Stead and no Henley? WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY*. OME curious observer, not untouched with a shallow optimism, has noted that the appearance of every new shape of physical evil is followed by some kind of remedy or counterpoise. We could have dispensed with the remedy, on condition that the evil, too, were withheld. Yet in the moral and spiritual world, we can but regard such a disposition with gratitude, for here we must be willing to purchase any positive good at whatever price may be asked for it. The birthday of the Review of Reviews will scarcely be marked with chalk in our calendars, nor does the evolution of M. Zola and his school give humanity reason to rate itself too high. But if we had to elect for either "no Stead and no Henley" or our present endowment, if our great Enemy could make us an explicit offer, "Forget your Stevenson, and I will keep my Zola," we should probably acquiesce in things as we have them. A Book of Verses. First Edition. Printing begun March 1, ended June 8, 1888. Ordinary Issue 1050 copies. Special Issue-hand-made 75 copies. Finest Japanese 20 copies. Views and Reviews. First Edition. Printing begun 28th October 1889, ended 13th May 1890. Ordinary Issue 1000 copies. Finest Japanese 20 copies. Three Plays. By W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson, 1892. The Song of the Sword. 1892. Printed by T. and A. Constable. Published by David Nutt. In Fleet All that is best and most wholesome in what Englishmen are writing to-day finds sure recognition, even if it has not, as often, found also an inspiration, in Mr Henley's literary censorship. Rash as, at first sight, the comparison may appear, there is more than a distant analogy between the central position of Swift among men of letters in the seventeenhundreds, and the relation of Mr Henley to his contemporaries. Romance, in the persons of Stevenson and "Q" and Kipling, poetry as represented by Richard le Gallienne, William Watson, and Norman Gale, even the criticism of our only critic, Andrew Lang, each and all discover a ground of union, or a common startingpoint for new energies, in his friendship or his tutelage. Under his guidance the National Observer has become not merely an exponent of sound politics and healthy morals, but a sacred Palladium to those who love letters, a terror and a sign to Philistines, to gnash their teeth thereat. Strange it is that a man who has done so much, in genuine result, should have so little of work in material shape to show: two little books of verse, a by-no-means large volume of criticism-written in a desultory manner for various journals-the part-authorship of three plays. So much (in mere bulk) might have been offered to the public-wrought by no means ill-by many a young man who could claim to win from it only the veriest rudiment of a reputation. Of Mr Henley's plays, the uninitiated must Three Plays. speak with caution. The discrimination of the different hands is not everywhere to him that runs. That Mr Henley's influence is most traceable in Deacon Brodie--we know that he is an authority on slang, and a serious student of the manners of thievery-that Mr Stevenson gives more of the tone to Beau Austinthough if the Prologue that speaks of that great duel of Sex, that ancient strife should not be signed W. E. H., then πúvтa ěvaλλa YévoιTo-thus much may be hazarded. But the ways of collaborators are fearsome and devious. It may even be that Pew himself, the most intimate creation of Mr Stevenson's fancy, has taken service under a new master. Who dare say? However it be, the mastery is still apparent. In his verse Mr Henley is studied, curiously His poetry. wrought sometimes, often reminiscent, with another kind of reminiscence to that we know in a Milton or a Tennyson, resetting in the pure gold of a most individual style the brilliants of many a word-jeweller dead and gone. What Mr Henley appropriates is a mode of utterance, rather than phrase or thought; yet he does not imitate. When he finds prepared to his hand an instrument proper to express the harmony in his mind, he cares not who has compelled music from it before. He does not even care to impress upon it his own stamp. If the thought be truly his own, it is enough to reject those mannerisms of an alien style (yet not alien, for it will serve his turn) which would offer to the thought's clear presentation a difficulty. One instance is enough. The spirit of wine, as Henley sings it, might have been sung by Longfellow in his happiest, least moralising vein: only Longfellow would never have given his spirit the keys of that secret spiritual shrine. Where, his work-a-day soul put by, His radiant and conquering self, Man worships and talks and is glad. The entire congruity of such a characteristic note with the note of the whole poem shows-what might else have escaped us-how subtly yet completely that is moulded by the author's distinctive touch. Those who prefer to regard Mr Henley as the English apostle of "Impressionism Impressionism" must find an immense advance on his former work in the Song of the Sword. A Book of Verses is by comparison quite simple. To re-cast language into a shape capable of giving effect to the most delicate nuances, the phantom-like suggestions of a drugged imagination-towards this quite the largest, and, at least in my opinion, the most enjoyable half of his poetry makes no attempt. The truth seems to be, that with an entirely right feeling for word-music, with his full share of the artist's passion for "the exotic word, the moving cadence of a phrase," Mr Henley still belongs to those who in execution can only not lose on their conception. His inspiration comes all from within, and in no way arises out of his material. Many a worse poet has been inspired by the exigency of a rhyme, the compulsion of an intractable phrase, till the rough sketch grew under his hands, as it were spontaneously, into beauty. In the volume of 1892, dealing with deeper mysteries than the Book of Verses had attempted, the poet's utterance seems half-strangled by the difficult medium, as of a heavy choking air, through which it has to struggle to our ears. A keenly discerning eye it goes without saying that Mr Henley has for the externals alike of man and nature. Every claimant for the rank of even minor poet must to-day be thus equipped, or at least passably counterfeit such equipment. In London Voluntaries no less than in the sketches In Hospital, he shows himself a brilliantly faultless draughtsman. There is nothing blurred or botched, and nothing shirked. The truthfulness is as undeniable as the skill. But, for all his unshrinking truthfulness, it stands out on the surface that Mr Henley's tendencies are romantic rather than realist. He never holds his hand from painting what presents itself to be painted: the ugly, the terrible, the obscene, But when he has done, we no longer say "this is ugly, or terrible, or obscene": only, "this is art." His treatment is Rembrandtesque, rather than Dutch. To bring into sharpest opposition the realism, say, of Maupassant, and the kind of realism Henley allows himself, needs VOL. XVIII. G |