My newspaper informed me this morning that Lord John Manners took his seat last night, in the Upper House, as the Duke of Rutland. These little romantic surprises are denied to Americans, who do not find that old friends get new names, which are very old names, in the course of a night. My Transatlantic readers will never have to grow accustomed to speak of Mr. Lowell as the Earl of Mount Auburn, and I firmly believe that Mr. Howells would consider it a chastisement2 to be hopelessly ennobled. But my thoughts went wanderting back at my breakfast to-day to those far-away times, the fresh memory of which was still reverberating3 about my childhood, when the last new Duke was an ardent5 and ingenuous6 young patriot7, who never dreamed of being a peer, and who hoped to refashion his country to the harp8 of Amphion. So I turned, with assuredly no feeling of disrespect, to that corner of my library where the péchés de jeunesse stand—the little books of early verses which the respectable authors of the same would destroy if they could—and I took down England's Trust.
Fifty years ago a group of young men, all of them fresh from Oxford9 and Cambridge, most of them more or less born in the purple of good families, banded themselves together to create a sort of aristocratic democracy. They called themselves "Young England," and the chronicle of them—is it not patent to all men in the pages of Disraeli's Coningsby? In the hero of that novel people saw a portrait of the leader of the group, the Hon. George Percy Sydney Smythe, to whom also the poems now before us, parvus non parvae pignus amicitiae, were dedicated10 in a warm inscription11. The Sidonia of the story was doubtless only echoing what Smythe had laid down as a dogma when he said: "Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions, never irresistible12 but when he appeals to the imagination." It was the theory of Young England that the historic memory must be awakened13 in the lower classes; that utilitarianism was sapping the very vitals of society, and that ballads14 and May-poles and quaint15 festivities and processions of a loyal peasantry were the proper things for politicians to encourage. It was all very young, and of course it came to nothing. But I do not know that the Primrose16 League is any improvement upon it, and I fancy that when the Duke of Rutland looks back across the half-century he sees something to smile at, but nothing to blush for.
One of the notions that Young England had got hold of was that famous saying of Fletcher of Saltoun's friend about making the ballads of a people. So they set themselves verse-making, and a quaint little collection of books it was that they produced, all smelling alike at this time of day, with a faint, faded perfume of the hay-stack, countrified and wild. Mr. Smythe, who presently became the seventh Viscount Strangford and one of the wittiest17 of Morning Chroniclers, only to die bitterly lamented18 before the age of forty, wrote Historic Fancies, Mr. Faber, then a fellow of University College, Oxford, and afterwards a leading spirit among English Catholics, published The Cherwell Water-Lily, in 1840, and on the heels of this discreet20 volume came the poems of Lord John Manners.
When England's Trust appeared, its author had just left Cambridge. Almost immediately afterward19, it was decided21 that Young England ought to be represented in Parliament, where its Utopian chivalries, it was believed, needed only to be heard to prevail. Accordingly Lord John Manners presented himself, in June 1841, as one of the Conservative candidates for the borough22 of Newark. He was elected, and so was the other Tory candidate, a man already distinguished23, and at present known to the entire world as Mr. W.E. Gladstone. On the hustings24, Lord John Manners was a good deal heckled, and in particular he was teased excessively about a certain couplet in England's Trust. I am not going to repeat that couplet here, for after nearly half a century the Duke of Rutland has a right to be forgiven that extraordinary indiscretion. If any of my readers turn to the volume for themselves, which, of course, I have no power to prevent their doing, they will probably exclaim:
"Was it the Duke of Rutland who wrote that?" for if frequency of quotation25 is the hall-mark of popularity, his Grace must be one of the most popular of our living poets.
There is something exceedingly pathetic in this little volume. Its weakness as verse, for it certainly is weak, had nothing ignoble27 about it, and what is weak without being in the least base has already a negative distinction. The author hopes to be a Lovelace or a Montrose, equally ready to do his monarch28 service with sword or pen. The Duke of Rutland has not quite been a Montrose, but he has been something less brilliant and much more useful, a faithful servant of his country, through an upright and laborious29 life. The young poet of 1841, thrilled by the Tractarian enthusiasm of the moment, looked for a return of the high festivals of the Church, for a victory of faith over all its Paynim foes30. "The worst evils," he writes, "from which we are now suffering, have arisen from our ignorant contempt or neglect of the rules of the Church." He was full of Newman and Pusey, of the great Oxford movement of 1837, of the wind of fervour blowing through England from the common-room of Oriel. Now all is changed past recognition, and with, perhaps, the solitary31 exception of Cardinal32 Newman, preserved in extreme old age, like some precious exotic, in his Birmingham cloister33, the Duke of Rutland may look through the length and breadth of England without recovering one of those lost faces that fed the pure passion of his youth.
The hand which brought the flame from Oriel to the Cambridge scholar was that of the Rev4. Frederick William Faber, and a great number of the poems in England's Trust are dedicated to him openly or secretly. Here is a sonnet34 addressed to Faber, which is very pleasant to read:
Dear Friend! thou askest me to sing our loves,
And sing them fain would I; but I do fear
To mar26 so soft a theme; a theme that moves
My heart unto its core. O friend most dear!
No light request is thine; albeit35 it proves
Thy gentleness and love, that do appear
When absent thus, and in soft looks when near.
Surely, if ever two fond hearts were, twined
In a most holy, mystic knot, so now
Are ours; not common are the ties that bind36
My soul to thine; a dear Apostle thou,
I a young Neophyte37 that yearns38 to find
The sacred truth, and stamp upon his brow
The Cross, dread39 sign of his baptismal vow40!
The Apostle was only twelve months older than the Neophyte, who was in his twenty-third year, but he was a somewhat better as well as stronger poet. The Cherwell Water-Lily is rather a rare book now, and I may perhaps be allowed to give an example of Faber's style. It is from one of many poems in which, with something borrowed too consciously from Wordsworth, who was the very Apollo of Young England, there Is yet a rendering41 of the beauty and mystery of Oxford, and of the delicate sylvan42 scenery which surrounds it, which is wholly original;
_There is a well, a willow-shaded spot.
Cool in the noon-tide gleam,
With rushes nodding in the little stream,
And blue forget-me-not.
Set in thick tufts along the bushy marge
With big bright eyes of gold;
And glorious water-plants, like fans, unfold
Their blossoms strange and large.
That wandering boy, young Hylas, did not find
Beauties so rich and rare,
Where swallow-wort and pale-bright maiden's hair
And dog-grass richly twined.
A sloping bank ran round it like a crown,
Whereon a purple cloud
Of dark wild hyacinths, a fairy crowd,
Had settled softly down.
And dreamy sounds of never-ending bells
From Oxford's holy towers
Came down the stream, and went among the flowers,
And died in little swells_.
These two extracts give a fair notion of the Tractarian poetry, with its purity, its idealism, its love of Nature and its unreal conception of life, Faber also wrote an England's Trust, before Lord John Manners published his; and in this he rejoices in the passing away of all the old sensual confidence, and in the coming of a new age of humility43 and spirituality. Alas44! it never came! There was a roll in the wave of thought, a few beautiful shells were thrown up on the shore of literature, and then the little eddy45 of Tractarianism was broken and spent, and lost in the general progress of mankind. We touch with reverend pity the volumes without which we should scarcely know that Young England had ever existed, and we refuse to believe that all the enthusiasm and piety46 and courage of which they are the mere47 ashes have wholly passed away. They have become spread over a wide expanse of effort, and no one knows who has been graciously affected48 by them. Who shall say that some distant echo of the Cherwell harp was not sounding in the heart of Gordon when he went to his African martyrdom? It is her adventurers, whether of the pen or of the sword, that have made England what she is. But if every adventurer succeeded, where would the adventure be?
The Duke of Rutland soon repeated his first little heroic expedition into the land of verses. He published a volume of English Ballads; but this has not the historical interest which makes England's Trust a curiosity. He has written about Church Rates, and the Colonies, and the Importance of Literature to Men of Business, but never again of his reveries in Neville's Court nor of his determination to emulate50 the virtues51 of King Charles the Martyr49. No matter! If all our hereditary52 legislators were as high-minded and single-hearted as the new Duke of Rutland, the reform of the House of Lords would scarcely be a burning question.
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1
pall
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| v.覆盖，使平淡无味；n.柩衣，棺罩；棺材；帷幕 | |
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chastisement
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| n.惩罚 | |
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reverberating
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| 回响，回荡( reverberate的现在分词 )； 使反响，使回荡，使反射 | |
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rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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ingenuous
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| adj.纯朴的，单纯的；天真的；坦率的 | |
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patriot
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| n.爱国者，爱国主义者 | |
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harp
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| n.竖琴；天琴座 | |
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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dedicated
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| adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的 | |
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inscription
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| n.（尤指石块上的）刻印文字，铭文，碑文 | |
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irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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ballads
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| 民歌，民谣，特别指叙述故事的歌( ballad的名词复数 )； 讴 | |
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quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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primrose
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| n.樱草，最佳部分， | |
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wittiest
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| 机智的，言辞巧妙的，情趣横生的( witty的最高级 ) | |
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lamented
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| adj.被哀悼的，令人遗憾的v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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discreet
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| adj.(言行)谨慎的；慎重的；有判断力的 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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borough
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| n.享有自治权的市镇；(英)自治市镇 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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hustings
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| n.竞选活动 | |
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quotation
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| n.引文，引语，语录；报价，牌价，行情 | |
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mar
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| vt.破坏，毁坏，弄糟 | |
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27
ignoble
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| adj.不光彩的，卑鄙的；可耻的 | |
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monarch
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| n.帝王，君主，最高统治者 | |
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29
laborious
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| adj.吃力的，努力的，不流畅 | |
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30
foes
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| 敌人，仇敌( foe的名词复数 ) | |
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31
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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32
cardinal
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| n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的 | |
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cloister
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| n.修道院；v.隐退，使与世隔绝 | |
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34
sonnet
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| n.十四行诗 | |
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35
albeit
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| conj.即使；纵使；虽然 | |
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36
bind
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| vt.捆，包扎；装订；约束；使凝固；vi.变硬 | |
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37
neophyte
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| n.新信徒；开始者 | |
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38
yearns
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| 渴望，切盼，向往( yearn的第三人称单数 ) | |
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39
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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40
vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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41
rendering
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| n.表现，描写 | |
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42
sylvan
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| adj.森林的 | |
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43
humility
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| n.谦逊，谦恭 | |
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44
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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45
eddy
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| n.漩涡，涡流 | |
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46
piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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47
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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48
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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49
martyr
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| n.烈士，殉难者；vt.杀害，折磨，牺牲 | |
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50
emulate
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| v.努力赶上或超越，与…竞争；效仿 | |
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51
virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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52
hereditary
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| adj.遗传的，遗传性的，可继承的，世袭的 | |
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