A LAUREATE VIVISECTED,

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1192, 29 July 1911, Page 9

A LAUREATE VIVISECTED,

The "Westminster Gazette" tears Mr. Alfred Austin to rags in reviewing " his "Autobiography": It is extremely difficult to give the reader any idea of the quality of this book but simplicity and seriousness are its dominant notes. The poet-laureate had a double task before him in writing his autobiography: the first to provide tho critics of poetry with a cluo to the psychology of the poet, and to lay bare tho inner'springs of inspiration which bubbred iip e eyonluaHy into tho fons Bandusiae laureatae; the second to describe the varied activities of a busy !:;'s devoted to journalism, politics, and gardening. . . . In both respects it is a plain tnle told without affectation or fulse modesty, but naturally in dealing with a poet-laureate u-e turn with greatest interest to that part of tho narrative which deals with literary activities, and here we find ourselves 'most richly rewarded.

llr. Austin, like innsl. (.'rent poets, had early intimations of immortality. When h« was still a baby, his nurw, taking advantage of the fact that lii.s Christian name was "the same as that of England's darling," u?ed lo iterate and reiterate that "he shall bo King of all England, he shall." Brought up in a ' Roman Catholic home, and in the Roman Catholic schools and colleges of St. Edward's, Stonyhurst, and Oscott, he soon made his impression as an exceptional I>d.v. Curious little facts such as that he was granted a special towel all to himself at one of these institutions, stamp themselves on his memory. Growing up, ho had all the poet's <l!s----taslo for prosaic occupations. He could not settle down to Hie bar, ho Mould not go into tho city, he wasted an opportunity of a secure, berth at tho India Office, But he had other uio're positive

symptoms.' He lisped in number?, and was strangely excited by Byron and Scott. Presently he produced, a satire called "Tho Seasons," which "more than one critic hailed as the. best thing of us kind since "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," and which Mrs. Grundy thought should bo rigidly excluded from the boudoir. Then came the wander years necessary to the. making of every genius, and, like Goethe, he turns to Italy, prom this time forward we watch the germinating of ideals which transcend prose, and 'tho author is frequently compelled to resort to "what, has since become, his more natural form of expression" in order to do justice to his feelings. Thus:

Frce! • . Joy! Free, at last, from vulgar thrall: No longer need my voice be dumb; And quicker far than thou can'st call, 0 Italy, I come! To feel mo the adopted heir Of Art and Nature wed and blent, In days of trouble routed care; In these,will bring content. At Sion, in Switzerland, the clock strikes eleven, and thus lends itself to a charming poetical effiTct: All is still in the little town, Now the belfry sounds eleven. All is still, and the moon looks down On the snow-peaks far and the near ones brown From an untroubled heaven. The contrast .in tho last line but one between "far" and "brown" already shows tho beginning of an original poetical style, which we see even more clearly in tho poem called the "Two Visions," written about tho same time:—

The., curtains of the night were folded Bound sleep-entangled sense,; So that the things I saw were moulded, I know not how, nor.whence. But I beheld a smokeless city, Built upon jutting slopes. "Up whose steep paths, as if for pity, Stretched loosely hanging ropes. Withal, of many who ascended, No one appeared to use This aid, allowed in days since mended, When folks had weaker-thews. Till then, no English poet bad written quite like that, but a period of disappointmont. was to follow. The Muss went dumb, and her votary seemed, with some qualms of conscience,' to be merely living through "a time of delightful anil self-indulgent leisure." But the poet of a later date knows better:

"I little know .that 'The Human Tragedy,, not to come fully and finally to tho birth till more than ten years lator, was already, germinating, and" was waiting only for the simultaneous occurrence of the mighty European events between tho years 1806 and 1871,' and the muchneeded expansion of my own mind. Nor could I then, whatever I hourly felt, have written the Roman section of The Door of Humility,' not even the closing stanBuild as man may, Time gnaws and peers Through marble fissures, granite rents; Only Imagination rears Imperishable Monuments. Let Gaul and Goth pollute the shrine. Level tho altar, fire the fane: There is no razing the Divine; The Gods return, the Gods remain.

But, as Goethe said, 'No youth can be a master/ and one was young. Home, moreover, was the vc-rv place to teach one that lesson. 'Silence! , said that awe-inspiring teacher; and I was silent. Tho man who, at any age. tries to writo poetry, can have no idea of what poetry is. its font, its force, its channel; and t make no attempt to draw water from a Hippocreno that seemingly had ruii' dry."

This passage, and others like it in tho first volume, arc essential to tho true criticism of Mr. Austin's poetry. His respect for his muso is an example to all young posts. She comes and she goes, but;he never forces her. "My delight may ba imagined," he writes, "when, one evening, without any premonitory admonition, I found myielf composing tho first eight stanzas of 'Madonna's Child' that- open that little pcom which now nppears'at : tho' beginning of tho Second Canto of 'The Human Tragedy.' To this day I am unable to explain how they came or whence . . . Doubtless they were the real transfigured by imaginative ■memory," thus conforming to "the definition of Poetry I propounded many years later." But, alas! just as tho tricksy thiugs had.come without premonitory admonition, so they departed without admonitory premonition, aud the poet was left puzzled and annoyed. For he "did not then know what he learned later, that other poets passed through a prolonged pause in poetic production before finally starting on the full demonstration of their poetic power." Tho pause, in fact, was a ble?sing in <lisguife, for it enabled Mr. Austin to withhold- his,-greatest-works until he had. reached the p'enilnde of his powers, and looking back on it all he is able to realise that, "notwithstanding seeming silence, one was being impregnated with faroff future utterances."

This inadequate summary of a very remarkable book will show tho reader at least that the poct-lnurcate. is a man of liiecli seriousness. Tn this respect his thoroughness and conscientiousness are beyond praise. Thmigh he admires the masculine muse of Bvron. he is careful to rebuke that poet, for tho unfortunate episodes in this life, when payinir a. nnptic tribute to his memory (Tl—lo-12). Nor was lie less faithful to tho poet Burns, even though called unon to deliver .an filoze at the nnveiliii" of a statue of him in Scotland. "Whi'e sayins all I possibly could in uraiso of Burns's pnems in the Scotch rli.nlect. and making ivlipr allowance T truthfully could for his faults. T did not comval my r°"ret at the jrlnrin" irregularities of his life in two directions." The standard of conduct in jioeU has steadily sine* these two unfortunate men nuitterl fh? scene, mid n"?terity will be. nblp to '■T,inmb?i' that the of th-se fimoa was n.inan of hi<rli e'inraf f r>r iinrl WaineiMs life. wh" c e writing, like his disposition, was uttirlv fre-9 from any taint of levity whatsoever.