I the less manly partOf life to leave behind;
My loss is but the lighter heart,
My gain the graver mind."
Poetry is no longer the most popular form of literature amongst us, and the drama is understood to be the least popular form of poetry. If this be the case, Mr Taylor has the additional merit of having won his way to celebrity under singular disadvantages. But, in truth, such poetry as Mr Taylor's could never appeal to the multitude. Literature of any kind which requires of the reader himself to think in order to enjoy, can never be popular. It is impossible to deny that the dramas we have been reviewing demand an effort, in the first instance, on the part of the reader: he must sit down to them with something of the spirit of the student. But, having done this, he will find himself amply repaid. As he advances in the work, he will read with increased pleasure; he will read it the second time with greater delight than the first; and if he were to live twenty years, and were to read such a drama as Philip Van Artevelde every year of his life, he would find in it some fresh source of interest to the last.
As we have not contented ourselves with selecting beautiful passages of writing from Mr Taylor's dramas, but have attempted such an analysis of the three principal characters they portray as may send the reader to their reperusal with additional zest, so neither have we paused to dispute the propriety of particular parts, or to notice blemishes and defects. We would not have it understood that we admire all that Mr Taylor has written. Of whom could we say this? We think, for instance, that, throughout his dramas, from the first to the last, he treats the monks too coarsely. His portraiture borders upon farce. His Father John shows that he can do justice to the character of the intelligent and pious monk. Admitting that this character is rare, we believe that the extremely gross portraiture which we have elsewhere is almost equally rare. This last, however, is so frequently introduced, that it will pass with the reader as Mr Taylor's type of the monkish order. The monks could never have been more ignorant than the surrounding laity, and they were always something better in morals and in true piety. We are quite at a loss, too, to understand Mr Taylor's fondness for the introduction into his dramas of certain songs or ballads, which are not even intended to be poetical. To have made them so, he would probably contend, would have been a dramatic impropriety. Very well; but let us have as few of such things as may be, and as short as possible. In Edwin the Fair they are very numerous; and those which are introduced in Philip Van Artevelde we could gladly dispense with. We could also very willingly have dispensed with the conversation of those burgesses of Bruges who entertained the Earl of Flanders with some of these ballads. We agree with the Earl, that their hospitalities are a sore affliction. Tediousness may be very dramatic, but it is tediousness still – a truth which our writer, intent on the delineations of his character, sometimes forgets. But defects like these it is sufficient merely to have hinted at. That criticism must be very long and ample indeed, of the dramas of Mr Taylor, in which they ought to occupy any considerable space.
A LEGEND OF GIBRALTAR
CHAPTER I
The Governor's residence at Gibraltar was, in days of Spanish domination, a religious house, and still retains the name of the Convent. Two sides of a long quadrangular gallery, traversing the interior of the building, are hung with portraits of officers present at the great siege in 1779-83, executed in a style which proves that Pre-Raphaelite painters existed in those days. One of these portraits represents my grandfather. To judge from a painting of him by Sir Joshua, and a small miniature likeness, both still in possession of the family, he must have been rather a good-looking old gentleman, with an affable, soldierlike air, and very respectable features. The portrait at the Convent is doubtless a strong likeness, but by no means so flattering; it represents him much as he might have appeared in life, if looked at through a cheap opera-glass. A full inch has been abstracted from his forehead, and added to his chin; the bold nose has become a great promontory in the midst of the level countenance; the eyes have gained in ferocity what they have lost in speculation, and would, indeed, go far to convey a disagreeable impression of my ancestor's character, but for the inflexible smile of the mouth. Altogether, the grimness of the air, the buckram rigidity of figure, and the uncompromising hardness of his shirt-frill and the curls of his wig, are such as are to be met with in few works of art, besides the figure-heads of vessels, the signboards of country inns, and the happiest efforts of Messrs Millais and Hunt.
However, my grandfather is no worse off than his compeers. Not far from this one is another larger painting, representing a council of officers held during the siege, where, notwithstanding the gravity of the occasion and the imminence of the danger, not a single face in the intrepid assembly wears the slightest expression of anxiety or fear, or, indeed, of anything else; and though my progenitor, in addition to the graces of the other portrait, is here depicted with a squint, yet he is by no means the most ill-looking individual present. But the illustrious governor, Eliott, has suffered more than anybody at the hands of the artist. Besides figuring in the production aforesaid, a statue of him stands in the Alameda, carved in some sort of wood, unluckily for him, of a durable nature. The features are of a very elevated cast, especially the nose; the little legs seem by no means equal to the task of sustaining the enormous cocked-hat; and the bearing is so excessively military, that it has been found necessary to prop the great commander from behind to prevent him from falling backwards.
My grandfather, John Flinders, joined the garrison of Gibraltar as a major of infantry a few years before the siege. He was then forty-seven years of age, and up to that time had remained one of the most determined old bachelors that ever existed. Not that he ever declaimed against matrimony in the style of some of our young moderns, who fancy themselves too strong-minded to marry; the truth being that they remain single either because they have not been gifted by nature with tastes sufficiently strong to like one woman better than another, or else, because no woman ever took the trouble to lay siege to them. My grandfather had never married, simply, I believe, because matrimony had never entered his head. He seldom ventured, of his own choice, into ladies' society, but, when he did, no man was more emphatically gallant to the sex. One after one, he saw his old friends abandoning the irresponsible ease of bachelorhood for the cares of wedded life; but while he duly congratulated them on their felicity, and officiated as godfather to their progeny, he never seemed to anticipate a similar destiny for himself. All his habits showed that he had been too long accustomed to single harness to go cleverly as one of a pair. He had particular hours of rising, and going to bed; of riding out and returning; of settling himself down for the evening to a book and pipe, which the presence of a helpmate would have materially deranged. And therefore, without holding any Malthusian tenets, without pitying his Benedick acquaintances, or entertaining a thought of the sex which would have been in the least decree derogatory to the character of a De Coverley, his castles in the air were never tenanted by any of his own posterity.
It was fortunate for my grandfather that in his time people did not suffer so much as now from that chronic inflammation of the conscience, which renders them perfectly miserable unless they are engaged in some tangible pursuit – "improving their minds," or "adding to the general stock of information." A more useless, contented person never existed. He never made even a show of employing himself profitably, and never complained of weariness in maintaining the monotonous jog-trot of his simple daily life. He read a good deal, certainly, but it was not to improve his mind, only to amuse himself. Strong-minded books, to stimulate his thinking faculties, would have had no charms for him; he would as soon have thought of getting galvanised for the pleasure of looking at his muscles. And I don't know whether it was not just as well. In systematically cultivating his mind, he would merely have been laying a top-dressing on a thin soil – manuring where there would never have been a crop – and some pleasant old weeds would have been pulled up in the process. A green thistly common, even though a goose could hardly find sustenance there, is nature still, which can hardly be said of a patch of earth covered with guano.
So my grandfather went on enjoying himself without remorse after his own fashion, and never troubled himself to think – an operation that would have been inconvenient to himself, and productive of no great results
