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sense of the terror and shame of mortality, but from a love of the picturesque pageantry of it, the majesty and sombre beauty, the swift, theatrical transitions, the combined elegance and horror that wait upon the sudden decease of monarchs. He was scarcely a

born singer; he was a man of consummate natural ability, who chose to walk through the world in the masquerade of a tragic dramatist, and who carried his antique robes so consistently and so skilfully, that at last his artificial presentment was almost as interesting as the real thing would have been, and the mummer himself almost forgot that he was mumming. The reader who carefully analyses his passages of declamatory fancy, is equally startled by the unreality and by the consummate cleverness of the style. The blank verse of Beddoes is always admirable; it was not as a craftsman that so accomplished a personage was likely to fail; it is even more than admirable, it occasionally approaches closer to the grand manner of the Elizabethan iambic movement than almost any modern verse. But under it all there lies no deep murmur of poetry, no ground-swell of momentous music, making itself dimly heard when the march of the lines is silent, none of that wonderful mystery of sound that we catch in the best passages of Webster and Marston, and even of Cyril Tourneur. Beddoes succeeds, in my judgment, much more truly as a songwriter than as a constructor of blank verse. His songs are very plainly modelled upon two types, the one that of Shakespeare and his school, the other that of Shelley. It was no honour to Beddoes, it was merely characteristic of his extraordinary intellectual vigour and perspicacity, that he was the first Englishman, outside the circle of personal friends, to perceive the momentous character of Shelley's genius. In his lyrics he sat at Shelley's feet, always with too much cleverness to fall into the tricks of imitation; and it would perhaps not be very easy to trace the likeness, if he had not unwarily left one palpable specimen of his method in the song 'The swallow leaves her nest,' where the movement of Shelley's verse is borrowed, not adapted. Yet, if we are content to take the best of his songs for what they are worth, as marvellously clever tours de force, they are as enjoyable as purely artificial exercises in verse can ever be.

Beddoes expended thought and labour for four years on the one poem which he meant to be his masterpiece, Death's Fest Book. It is a tragedy of the same class as the Duchess of Malfy and Antonio and Mellido; indeed there are whole scenes which

might have been taken bodily out of Marston. There is no doubt that Death's Fest Book is a poem which will reward perusal; it can scarcely be said to invite it. The plot is founded on the story of a Duke Boleslaus of Münsterberg in Silesia, who was killed by his court-fool in 1377. Some months before Beddoes actually commenced the composition of the piece, he wrote, in one of his charming letters, the following extremely sage words about the mode in which to approach modern tragedy: 'Say what you will, I am convinced the man who is to awaken the drama must be a bold trampling fellow, no creeper inte wormholes, no reviver even, however good. Such ghosts as Marlowe, Webster, etc., are better dramatists, better poets, I dare say, than any contemporary of ours, but they are ghosts; the worm is in their pages; and we want to see something that our great-grandsires did not know.' It would have been salutary indeed for the poor poet himself to have practised what he preached; as it is, nothing is more curious than the contrast between what he wished to do and what he did. Death's Jest Book is the most eminent specimen existing of poetical spirit-rapping; those very ghosts, whose presence on the modern boards Beddoes so wisely deprecated, were called up more lustily and pertinaciously by none than he. Sometimes, as notably in the scene where the Duke watches by his wife's grave, the modern poet almost attains to the genuine horror of his master's touch, but even here something mechanical reminds us of the deception. In Death's Fest Book, as elsewhere in Beddoes, the lyrics appear to me fresher and more enjoyable than the blank verse, and some of the grim and humorous songs have the spell of real genius upon them. That containing the stanza

From the old supper-giver's pole

He tore the many-kingdomed mitre;
To him, who cost him his son's soul,
He gave it, to the Persian fighter,'

seems to me of an extraordinary force and horror. My friend Mr. Browning, from whose subtle pen we may yet hope to receive the final and authoritative judgment on Beddoes, informs me that many songs of this ghastly comic cast still remain unprinted, and throw an interesting light upon the character of this problem of a poet.

EDMUND W. GOSSE

DIRGE FOR WOLFRAM.

[Death's Jest Book, Act ii.]

If thou wilt ease thine heart

Of love and all its smart,

Then sleep, dear, sleep;

And not a sorrow

Hang any tear on your eyelashes;
Lie still and deep,

Sad soul, until the sea-wave washes

The rim o' the sun to-morrow,

In eastern sky.

But wilt thou cure thine heart

Of love and all its smart,

Then die, dear, die;

'Tis deeper, sweeter,

Than on a rose-bank to lie dreaming
With folded eye;

And there alone, amid the beaming
Of Love's stars, thou 'lt meet her
In eastern sky.

SONG.

[Torrismond, Sc. iii.]

How many times do I love thee, dear? Tell me how many thoughts there be In the atmosphere

Of a new-fall'n year,

Whose white and sable hours appear

The latest flake of Eternity :—

So many times do I love thee, dear.

How many times do I love, again?
Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain

Of evening rain

Unravelled from the tumbling main

And threading the eye of a yellow star So many times do I love again.

AMALA'S BRIDAL SONG.

[From Death's Jest Book, Act iv.]

Female Voices.

We have bathed, where none have seen us, In the lake and in the fountain,

Underneath the charmed statue

Of the timid, bending Venus,

When the water-nymphs were counting In the waves the stars of night,

And those maidens started at you,

Your limbs shone through so soft and bright. But no secrets dare we tell,

For thy slaves unlace thee,

And he, who shall embrace thee,
Waits to try thy beauty's spell.

Male Voices.

We have crowned thee queen of women,
Since love's love, the rose, hath kept her
Court within thy lips and blushes,

And thine eye, in beauty swimming,
Kissing, we rendered up the sceptre,
At whose touch the startled soul

Like an ocean bounds and gushes,

And spirits bend at thy control.

But no secrets dare we tell,

For thy slaves unlace thee,

And he, who shall embrace thee,

Is at hand, and so farewell.

ATHULF'S SONG.

[From Death's Jest Book, Act iv.]

A cypress-bough, and a rose-wreath sweet, A wedding-robe, and a winding-sheet,

A bridal bed and a bier.

Thine be the kisses, maid,

And smiling Love's alarms;
And thou, pale youth, be laid
In the grave's cold arms.
Each in his own charms,
Death and Hymen both are here;
So up with scythe and torch,
And to the old church porch,
While all the bells ring clear:
And rosy, rosy the bed shall bloom,
And earthy, earthy heap up the tomb.

Now tremble dimples on your cheek,
Sweet be your lips to taste and speak,
For he who kisses is near:

By her the bride-god fair,

In youthful power and force;

By him the grizard bare,

Pale knight on a pale horse,
To woo him to a corse.

Death and Hymen both are here,
So up with scythe and torch,
And to the old church porch,
While all the bells ring clear :
And rosy, rosy the bed shall bloom,
And earthy, earthy heap up the tomb

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