Mr. Aldrich's New Volume

MR. ALDRICH has collected in this volume his recent verse, — much of it already prized by his readers as they have found it from time to time in these and other pages, but some of it now enlarged or corrected from the printed form in which it first came to them. It is only in the compass of a book, however, that the varied nature of his talent, the sureness of his touch, and the continued charm of his art in many styles can really be felt and valued. So small a volume as this, covering but a year or two of literary activity, cannot show the author’s full range in verse, but it is singularly adequate to much of his finest quality, and exceeds, we think, in interest any previous similar collection from his hand. One misses from the book the sonnet and the quatrain in the forms; the romantic element in the color is less than heretofore ; but the whole is characteristic of the poet as he has made himself known by years of artistic expression, and brings into prominence some traits of his maturity which have not been fully recognized.

That which especially distinguishes the volume is the more constant presence of the dramatic faculty, both in the express form of dialogue, and implicitly in the handling of some of those pieces which might not at once be classed as in the province of drama. This note is struck, perhaps unintentionally, in the title poem that opens the first group, The Sisters’ Tragedy, which, brief as it is, contains contrasted character, situation, development, emotional intensity, and a tragic climax and surprise; again, in Pauline Pavlovna there is a definite dramatic scene, managed more obviously in accordance with the rules of this kind of literary art; and, to take at present but one more striking instance, the poem which holds the first place in the group called Bagatelle, that delightful mocking pastoral of Corydon, is equally governed by a dramatic feeling and interest which are not lost in the successive descriptive passages, as in a purely lyrical poet might have happened. The hand of the dramatist is in these three poems, which are among the best in the book, as well as in several others which the reader will find for himself; but it is to be observed that the author uses this gift very sparingly and with unusual restraint. Those who are familiar with his prose drama, Mercedes, will recall how much he relies, in that work, on the story of the piece as mere action, and how closely he has pruned the language to the limit of what is necessary to set forth the characters and plot. This economy of phrase and imagery, which betrays a feeling that a drama is not a poem, but a living action, is in accord with rules and reasons of art; but it results in a literary form more bare, more condensed, and in a sense more ascetic than has been usual with Mr. Aldrich. This leading characteristic of Mercedes, though not exactly reproduced in the shorter dramatic poems of the present collection, belongs to them in a greater or less degree. In Pauline Pavlovna a story is told, and the absence of anything superfluous in the telling, the care taken that the words of the interlocutors shall advance the narrative and intensify the interest up to the dénoûment, the excision of the poetical and rhetorical in language for its own sake, are all in line with the method followed in Mercedes. In The Sisters’ Tragedy there is less of verbal restraint; the feeling for economy is shown mainly in the brevity of the poem. As a time narrative the subject would have afforded many times the space that was possible for it as a dramatic moment; but this very brevity illustrates what has just been urged of the artistic control which the poet exercises in many ways whenever he puts his dramatic power into play. Corydon, shot through with beauty, sentiment, and a felicitous blending of the poetry of nature with the charm of girlish form, is not an exception ; for the subject itself permits this heightened expression, since the scene is Arcady, and the dramatis person339; true shepherds of the Renaissance pattern. To follow the examples a trifle further. Act V. is almost a fragment in its condensation, where a simple succession of briefly touched pictures, a line or two to each, is made to give the romantic effect of an entire Romeo passion, and the poem lies largely in that part of it which was left unwritten. In The Shipman’s Tale, Thalia, and The Last Cæsar the dramatic feeling is a strong element; and in the single ballad. Alec Yeaton’s Son, it is as definite and simple as in the best of that sort of writing since it became a conscious literary form, and by the author’s success in this particular point he brings the poem very near to the ancient model.

We must not be led aside, however, in our brief review, to a disproportionate emphasis on one quality among many, though we desire to see Mr. Aldrich’s dramatic faculty more recognized than it has been, and wish this the more for the very reason that he has refused all sensationalism in his method, and has sought his effects by vigorous artistic means which render them less obvious to the crude sense of our popular criticism and appreciation ; but in developing more fully this part of his literary talent, in which he has been helped, doubtless, by his experience as a narrative writer, he has not lost any of that lyrical flow and delight in pure poetry which have made him a favorite with those who care more for song and beauty and the charm of the art itself than for anything else. Few are the lines, even in so unusual a metrical structure for him as that employed in At the Funeral of a Minor Poet, which have any jar or friction in their syllables, so smooth is the ordinary workmanship throughout; but in point of pure melody the Echo-Song, which opens the group of poems called Interludes, is as musical as anything that the poet has written, and there are on nearly every page some lines which the ear takes notice of with peculiar pleasure, and which one recurs to for their verbal beauty. In the use of the pentameter couplet especially there is more than ordinary skill, — something of the music that the earlier poets of this century were able to extort from its reluctant syllables with more success than falls to the Victorians. In the distinctly lyrical poems this songlike quality is most present, but the measure is often strong without quite rising to lyrism, as in the stanzas to Tennyson : —

And even in those poems which fly lowest toward verse, toward the utterance of pure reflection or the narration of fact, there is never wanting a lift and quality which belong to one who must write with music if he write poems at all.

To say that this definite power of melody pervades all of Mr. Aldrich’s poetical work is more than perhaps it seems at first; for it means that he not only masters that technique which is within the reach of all verse-writers in a greater or less measure, and may fairly be required of them as a condition of writing at all in our day, but that he is thoroughly poetical, whether he writes as a dramatist, a traveler, a wit, a romancer, or in any of the many phases which his verse takes. He remains through all a poet first, and the rest afterwards. This is, in particular, what distinguishes his lighter verse, — what might be called society verse, were it not for this transfusion of poetical feeling in it which sets it apart from the work of others in this region, of late years so prolific in rhymes. In Corydon, for example, which we have already mentioned, this poetical feeling is the whole of the poem, if we except the touch of humor at the end ; but in all this Bagatelle, in At a Reading, L’Eau Dormante, and the Palinode, this touch of the poet raises the verse above what such subjects commonly are capable of in tlie hands of those who most affect the style ; and in Thalia, which is in our judgment one of the most artistic poems in the collection, the blending of the modern society form with the dramatic and the poetical in style is so admirable as to make the verses unique; a certain emotion colors the lines here and there without passing the limit of expression so far as to disturb the sedate decorum of what is conceivable in the Muse’s drawing-room. Such a couplet, for instance, as this, —

is poetically far from the ordinary tones of light verse. The quality which it illustrates is to be observed elsewhere, and it explains how it is that Mr. Aldrich has worked out an individual manner which is really all his own, and which makes an unusually strong element in the attractiveness of his work. There remain, besides, the intellectual quality, the felicitous and often curt phrase just adequate to the moment, the badinage in poetical disguise, the compliment, and a certain youthfulness of temper which takes the form of sympathy with youth, the more pleasant because it is not too serious. These poems, however, should not be too much dwelt upon, being a kind of by-play, and we must reserve what little space is left to say something more concerning one or two of those pieces in which the author’s talent is best employed in another sort.

The poem which is at once the most complete and the most varied, and outranks the rest, is The Last Cætesar. The combination of the sonnet structure in it with a pendant of reflective and descriptive verse in a more familiar style is novel, but it succeeds in rendering the scenes and the moods evoked by them with a union of dignity and force in the former, and of grace and seriousness in the latter, wholly admirable. The portrait of Napoleon III. is exact and vigorous, and the description of the garden of the Tuileries and the historic neighborhood about, as all lay quiet in the brown sunset, has not been surpassed by any contemporary in transparency and ease of style perfectly fitted to the theme. The lines do not fail at any point of criticism ; they are pervaded by human interest and a sense of the near presence of great events which shadow the air with a certain weird power, and they show the author at his best in serious verse. The Monody on the Death of Wendell Phillips also stands very high among these poems, in our judgment, with its brief portraiture of Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Emerson, its contrast of Phillips with these, and the characterization of the latter, which is strong, eloquent, and especially felicitous in the metaphors employed. The personal element in the volume, which is noticeable in these poems, is also greater than in previous collections. The praise and enjoyment of nature are throughout incidental and brief, and confined mostly to a few lyrics ; but there is much in honor of the poet’s craft, — the lines In Westminster Abbey, the whole of the characterization of the Minor Poet, the eulogy of Tennyson and Shakespeare, and the two tributes, one to E. R. Sill and the other to an unnamed writer ; and the lines upon Booth’s Portrait, in which the difficult task of writing familiar verse with dignity, simplicity, and sincerity is so well discharged, completes the list. In each of these we find something kindly, generous, graceful, — something more and better than style, point, and music, however attractive these may be ; and in this self-expression of the poet’s regard for men, for the fame of the great and the endeavor of those who fail of real distinction or right appreciation, is one of the pleasantest traits of the entire volume.

We have not attempted to analyze Mr. Aldrich’s poetic gift, because it would be unjust to found such a criticism on what is a small part of his work ; but if we have indicated certain qualities especially shown in these later verses, and have expressed the high value we place upon them, it is all that the present occasion allows.