THE NURTURE OF TRIPTOLEMUS.

135

Poets ever agreed so much in determining and methodising their feelings before they allowed themselves to be betrayed into any utterance.

There is a beautiful and most graceful allegory of Leigh Hunt's in the Indicator, called the Nurture of Triptolemus-Triptolemus who first taught men to sow the earth with corn and reap its fruits. Triptolemus besought the goddess Demeter to become his tutor and his guide, and she conducted him through a course of trials, so severe that those who dared to make themselves spectators of his discipline, fainted and died beneath the spectacle; "gradual sorrow said she shall give birth to gradual joy." She restored his health, but she stretched him on a fiery rack in the midst of her temple; but by the roaring fire which scorched, burnt, and tormented him, his spirit was so expanded, his eyes so opened, that visions of surpassing wonder appeared before him, the first pains conducted him to Deformity, the analysis of things; but as the roar and blaze of the fire deepened beneath him, he passed on to the Wholeness and perfectness of things. Suffering became sublimed to Endurance; Endurance matured itself to immortal Strength. And thus was he fitted to go forth from the temple sowing joy wherever he went.

In the Apotheosis of Suffering, and the review of its relation to the great purposes of life, we may introduce some notice of " the White Doe of Rylstone," in which is seen the majesty of endurance and the final triumph of tranquil and patient waiting. Of all the Poems of Wordsworth there is not one, which depends more for

the hues it takes, upon the state of the readers mind, to the readers of Scott's Poetry, the admirers of the more glaring achievements of chivalry; how tame must seem this narrative of

"A soul by force of sorrows high
Uplifted to the parent sky

Of undisturbed humanity."

We have always thought this Poem such an one as no man could perfectly love and appreciate. Jeffery extracted fine sport from it; in truth, it seems to need the delicacy, the tenderness of womanhood to love it; there runs through it a vein of subtle sentiment, perceptible and appreciated by refined and educated woman, born to suffer and endure; it is not the enthronement of personal prowess, nor the laudation of victory and martial heroism; on the contrary, it is a song of defeat, of hope lying prostrate, of gentle and lovely faith cast out to wander in the wilderness, unattended, save by purity and weakness, and yet, in all this the Poet perceives strength and power, in all this he beholds what really survives. And the good survives, although the suffering be transient, like the matchless Damascus steel which was said to be prepared from the burying old horse shoes in a damp cellar, the metals weaker portion perishing by oxydation, and the brighter particles then recognized shining amidst the brown rust, and thus it was said, was constructed the essence of the trenchant ore. Even so all suffering develops virtues, bright and vivid, but unknown, until tried by the rust

THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE.

137

and the fire to which it submitted them. This we have said is the great lesson of the White Doe of Rylstone, and it is taught us with a grace and felicity of diction which might well disarm all criticism, even if the gorgeous passages, descriptive of the moon-light over the Wharf, the Church Yard, peopled and deserted, the Brother's Prophecy, the rearing of the consecrated Banner, and the development of the history and the tale were unavailing for that purpose. The consecrated Emily, whose

"Duty is to stand and wait,

In resignation to abide

The shock, and finally secure,
O'er pain and grief, a triumph pure."

Than this surely no Poet can teach a more sublime or celestial lesson.

It is more than probable that the White Doe of Rylstone was suggested to the writer by a very different Poem: the Hind and the Panther, of that illustrious but most graceless renegade and poet, John Dryden. No two Poems can be possibly more unlike; Wordsworth's is a lofty song of enduring faith, clear, spiritual, and elevating; Dryden's is a coarse and grovelling strain, half imprecation and half satire; both of the Poets intended to paint to their readers-Dryden in the Hind, and Wordsworth in the Doe-a patient and purifying faith and Church, and faith driven from its altars and shrines to the wilderness. And the introduction of the beautiful and emblematic creature in either Poem s somewhat similar-look at Dryden's.

"A milk white Hind, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on the lawns, and in the forest ranged,
Without unspotted, innocent within,

She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.
Panting and pensive now she ranged alone,
And wandered in the kingdoms once her own.
The common hunt though from their rage restrained,

By sovereign power her company disdained,
Grinn'd as they passed, and with a glaring eye

Gave gloomy signs of secret enmity.

'Tis true, she bounded by and tripped so light
They had not time to take a steady sight,

For truth has such a face and such a mien,

As to be loved needs only to be seen."

And thus Wordsworth introduces the beautiful sub

ject of his Poem.

"Soft! the dusky trees between,

And down the path through the open green,
Where is no living thing to be seen;

And through yon gateway, where is found,
Beneath the arch with ivy bound,

Free entrance to the Churchyard ground-
Comes gliding in with lovely gleam,
Comes gliding in serene and slow,

Soft and silent as a dream,

A solitary Doe!

White she is, as lily of June,

And beauteous as the silver moon

When out of sight the clouds are driven

And she is left alone in heaven;

Or like a ship some gentle day

In sunshine sailing far away,

A glittering ship, that hath the plain

Of ocean for her own domain."

Here all resemblance ceases. The Hind and Panther

THE HIND AND THE DOE.

139

was a Poem very much to the taste of the critics of the Jeffrey School. We confess to ourselves it is painful labour to read it. The "Doe" was jeered, and mocked, and scoffed at by the Edinburgh Reviewers. Both Poets started with the same intention; namely, to vindicate and beautify an outcast faith. The Hind, of the Church of Rome; the Doe, of the Church of England. Each Poet gave what was given to him. The first, the Hind-a sad misuse of a meek and lovely creature,―becomes a cursing, swearing, lying, and by no means delicate special pleader, very well acquainted with history and a good many other things, making very bad use of every piece of knowledge, and inculcating scarce one lesson of sound and beautiful truth. The allegory is as badly maintained as any piece of literary bungling with which we are acquainted. Still it was Dryden's, and it suited Jeffrey. The Doe, never speaks, she glides to and fro through the Poem, over the graves of the Churchyard, over the rugged ridges of Rylstone Fell; among prostrate and defaced shrines, and fractured cells, and the sculptured forms of Warriors laid low; through the deserted halls, where the consecrated banner droops in folds by the side of the lovely Emily, or her brave brothers; through the aisles of Bolton, she glides by all, and through all, like an influence; and very dull, it seems to us, must that imagination be, that fails to perceive, in her milk white purity, now tremulously stealing through the moonlight, now bounding lightly through the open day, the beautiful shadow,