THE WORKS OF SIR HENRY TAYLOR.1 It is told of a court physician that, when asked to explain why the malady from which his royal patient was suffering pressed so unequally upon mankind at large, he took refuge in the following generalisation: Sometimes, your Majesty, the gout takes us; sometimes we take the gout.' The same distinction applies to poetry not less than podagra. There are some natures-Shelley's was one-which are absolutely seized and dominated by their imagination. They are nothing if not poetical; no antagonism of unfavourable conditions avails to hinder their development, and you cannot separate the poet from their composition or conceive their fulfilling any other calling without destroying their individuality. In many other natures imagination is a cherished faculty, which under fortunate auspices is certain of indulgence, but it never interpenetrates or subdues their essence. They are poets by choice and habit rather than necessity. Under different circumstances they would have developed the practical side of their character instead of the ideal, and usually contrive to develope both sides more or less fully. It cannot be denied that this is virtually identical with the distinction between genius and talent, never perhaps more pithily stated than in a line of the present Lord Lytton's : Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can. The one answers to the fitfully headstrong impulse of a mountaintorrent that will choose its own course; the other to the steadily placid lapse of a canal that may be turned whither you please. We protest, however, against the stock assumption of criticism that to credit a writer with talent instead of genius is to brand him with a stigma. It is no disparagement of what is good to say that it is not the best; and it is certain that the best is not always the most generally serviceable. Although creative art is the noblest exercise of the imagination, and affords the highest enjoyment to those minds prepared for its reception, it can never command the suffrages of the majority. Reynolds must always be a more popular artist than Raffaelle; Haydn have a wider circle of admirers than Beethoven. The Works of Sir Henry Taylor. Five Volumes. C. Kegan Paul & Co. 1877–8. How many are humanised and soothed by the verse of Thomson, Gray, or Goldsmith, whom poets of a higher order fail to touch! Poetry of all the arts is the most comprehensive, and there is no section of mankind inaccessible to its influence. To the least imaginative classes, politicians and men of business engrossed with the active pursuits of life, it has a twofold value; on the one hand providing their memories with an inexhaustible supply of illustrations of character and of maxims pregnant with social wisdom; on the other hand raising their view from the concrete to the abstract, from the real to the ideal. We have recently had the testimony of a practical statesman to its utility in one or both of these aspects at the present day. "Never was there a time,' says Mr. Grant Duff, when a wise adviser would more decidedly say to a young aspirant to public life: "Be sure to take a great passport of poetry." No sentiment, therefore, but that of gratitude is due to a busy man of the world and an experienced servant of the State, like Sir Henry Taylor, for having devoted the leisure of his long life to the production of imaginative works fitted for the apprehension of readers similarly situated, and in the ripeness of age bestowing such final touches upon his art as may render it more acceptable to his latest contemporaries. Without assigning it a higher literary rank than properly belongs to it, or disguising the existence of its limitations, a just criticism will recognise much in it to commend, a generous criticism much to condone. To a poet of practical imagination and active pursuits historical drama offers the most congenial field of study, and though he has in turn essayed lyrical and idyllic composition also, the great bulk of Sir Henry Taylor's work has been cast in that form. His success in characterisation seems to be limited to the cases in which he has drawn upon his observation, or in which ample data for the construction of types have lain at his disposal. Where he has failed it is evident that he has transcended the range of sight, or been inadequately furnished with historical and biographical material. The students of his plays must be content to miss the shaping forethought, the definite analysis, the vivid energy, and intense passion of the great dramatists; but, in lieu of these, they will be rewarded with a discriminating selection of dramatic subjects, many truthful portraits and representations of historical scenery, much ripe scholarship and sound wisdom, habitual dignity and occasional grace of style, and a uniformly high-minded and healthy tone. As a dramatist, he belongs to the school of Elizabethan revival, but, except in one instance, has been careful to avoid the mistake of imitating his models too closely. In seeking, however, to steer clear of the quicksand of archaism, he has sometimes struck upon the rock of modernism. Philip van Artevelde in his colloquy with Elena (Part II. act v. sc. 3) might be taken for a German metaphysician. Isaac Commenus has affinities with an agnostic thinker of the present century. Wulfstan, in Edwin the Fair, has been plausibly supposed to be a caricature of Coleridge, and Leolf, in the same play, is a gentle sentimentalist who would be more in his element at an 'æsthetic tea' than as heretoch of an Anglo-Saxon army. These lapses, however, are comparatively rare. The keeping of each dramatic picture is for the most part consistently maintained, and the dialogue fairly harmonises with the assumed position of the speakers. The dramatist's occasional failure to keep this in view may be explained by remembering that none of his plays were intended for representation. One who is not continually stimulated by the need of conforming to the conditions of the stage is unavoidably tempted to aim at subtlety rather than definiteness of characterisation-to attempt, that is, the delineation of characters which do not readily unfold themselves through the medium of soliloquy or dialogue, and whose motives can only be made intelligible by means of detailed description, unsuited to any form of poetry but the narrative or lyrical. Two or three of Sir Henry Taylor's most elaborate studies suffer from this inadequate definition, but the majority of his types are happily familiar and simple enough to carry their interpretation along with them. The two-part drama of Philip van Artevelde, which is the best known of his works, deserves its rank of precedence and popularity by the greater vigour with which the action is carried on, and the larger variety and clearer portraiture of the persons of the drama. These merits belong more particularly to the first section. The personal jealousies and the turbulence of faction which hindered the healthy growth of civic freedom in the merchant cities of Flanders, and necessitated the remedial intervention of a dictator, are forcibly represented in the opening scenes. The character of Philip, upon whom this function devolves in the city of Ghent, is drawn with exceptional skill. Meditative and melancholy, domestic and gentle in repose, he conceals under his calm exterior a lofty ambition to be the champion of right, a keen appetite for vengeance on wrong-doers, and a capacity for prompt and resolute action which only oppor: tunity is required to arouse. At once strong, just, and generous, he silences opposition, rewards fidelity, and disarms suspicion. In times of wavering will and divided counsel, he sees clearly what his own and the popular course should be, and firmly adheres to it, dragging along with him those who hesitate, and cutting down those who resist. In Ghent's sorest hour of peril and distress, when the Earl of Flanders, from whose tyranny it has revolted, is straining his utmost to reduce it by famine, Philip frankly takes the citizens into confidence, and, putting before them the alternative of submission to degrading terms of peace or a desperate attack upon the enemy's position, inspires them with his own enthusiasm for the manlier policy which he speedily crowns with success. His address to the citizens ere he and his little band set forth has the eloquence of simple sincerity, legitimately appealing to those emotional resources. upon which a great leader can most safely rely Then fare ye well, ye citizens of Ghent! The minor characters, though obscured by Philip's prominence, are grouped round him effectively; the brutal but honest demagogue, Van den Bosch, and the treacherous, cowardly Occo being the most noteworthy. Adriana, the loving and trustful woman who plights her troth with his, is little more than a sketch; but the incident of her abduction by Occo, who, besides being a traitor to the cause of Ghent, is her rejected suitor, twines a thread of personal interest with the political texture of the plot. Philip's sister, the bright-witted, warm-hearted Clara, and her chivalrous lover, D'Arlon, are also slightly but gracefully delineated. The action in this part of the drama is well-knit, no scene being superfluous or without manifest bearing upon the rest. The same praise cannot be so freely given to the second part, which might be curtailed of more than one scene without apparent loss, although each possesses an independent interest. The presentment of the events in which the leading characters take part is not less vivid than before, but there is less distinctness in the definition of their individual motives. There is still more uncertainty as to the purpose with which the successive incidents have been prepared to bring about the dénouement. Dramatists, of all artists, are allowed most immunity from didactic obligations, but that this is not Sir Henry Taylor's desire may be gathered from the preface to the play, in which he assumes as a canon that one of the main functions of poetry is to instruct and infer.' The moral,' however, of Philip's downfall is not clearly pointed. As a man he forfeits the sympathy hitherto accorded to him by his unworthy readiness to descend from the height of a spiritual love and sully the memory of a lost wife by indulging in illicit intercourse with a frail adventuress; but no attempt is made to connect this private dereliction with any impeachment of his rectitude, foresight, or skill as a leader of men. He sacrifices no public interest to his personal passion, wastes no time in dalliance that might have been employed in diplomacy or strategy. In his capacity as Regent of Flanders he seems to have been no less wise, just, and firm than when he was captain of the White Hoods of Ghent. The assumption of outward dignity with his new rank was not dictated by vanity, but to produce a calculated impression upon the vulgar mind. His one error of judgment, in placing too generous a confidence in the honour of a proved traitor whose life he had spared, was fatal to him personally, but contributed nothing to the ruin of his cause. Nor is his fate shown to have been due to any inherent defect in the democratic principle which he represented. He was not the victim of popular fickleness or factious jealousies from within, but of the overwhelming force of feudalism from without, and the craft of its unscrupulous instruments. The defection of so many of the revolted cities from the cause of freedom at the first approach of danger testified only that the time was not yet ripe for emancipation on so large a scale as he had striven to effect; but, abortive as his gallant efforts were, it cannot be doubted that their memory kept alive the seed of liberty, which two centuries later bore fruit in the Dutch Republic. Upon the whole, the posthumous judgment passed on Philip by the Duke of Burgundy is so well borne out by the dramatic evidence, that he cannot be said to have deserved his fate; and if the dramatist intended it to be instructive, the lesson needs interpretation : With a noble nature and great gifts Of transitory passion, but below Built on a surging subterranean fire That stirr'd and lifted him to high attempts. So prompt and capable and yet so calm, He nothing lack'd in sovereignty but the right, The character of Elena, the Italian adventuress, is also somewhat vaguely outlined, notwithstanding the unusual license which the author has allowed himself of anticipating its dramatic evolution by embodying a long autobiographical soliloquy in the form of a lyrical interlude. The account which she therein gives of herself as the passionate victim of misplaced confidence and heartless desertion |