THE DRAMAS OF HENRY TAYLOR
There is no living writer whose rank in literature appears to be more accurately determined, or more permanently secured to him, than the author of Philip Van Artevelde.1 Not gifted with the ardent temperament, the very vivid imagination, or the warmth of passion which are supposed necessary to carry a poet to the highest eminences of his art, he has, nevertheless, that intense reflection, that large insight into human life, that severe taste, binding him always to a most select, accurate, and admirable style, which must secure him a lofty and impregnable position amongst the class of writers who come next in order to the very highest.
There have been greater poems, but in modern times we do not think there has appeared any dramatic composition which can be pronounced superior to the masterpiece of Henry Taylor. Neither of the Sardanapalus of Lord Byron, nor the Remorse of Coleridge, nor the Cenci of Shelley, could this be said. We are far from asserting that Taylor is a greater poet than Byron, or Coleridge, or Shelley; but we say that no dramatic composition of these poets surpasses, as a whole, Philip Van Artevelde. These writers have displayed, on various occasions, more passion and more pathos, and a command of more beautiful imagery, but they have none of them produced a more complete dramatic work; nor do any of them manifest a profounder insight, or a wider view of human nature, or more frequently enunciate that pathetic wisdom, that mixture of feeling and sagacity, which we look upon as holding the highest place in eloquence of every description, whether prose or verse. The last act of Shelley's drama of the Cenci has left a more vivid impression upon our mind than any single portion of the modern drama; but one act does not constitute a play, and this drama of the Cenci is so odious from its plot, and the chief character portrayed in it is, in every sense of the word, so utterly monstrous, (for Shelley has combined, for purposes of his own, a spirit of piety with the other ingredients of that diabolical character, which could not have co-existed with them,) that, notwithstanding all its beauty, we would willingly efface this poem from English literature. If one of those creatures, half beautiful woman and half scaly fish, which artists seem, with a traditional depravity of taste, to delight in, were really to be alive, and to present itself before us, it would hardly excite greater disgust than this beautifully foul drama of the Cenci.
The very fact of our author having won so distinct and undisputed a place in public estimation, must be accepted as an excuse for our prolonged delay in noticing his writings. The public very rapidly passed its verdict upon them: it was a sound one. The voice of encouragement was not needed to the author; nor did the reading world require to be informed of the fresh accession made to its stores. If we now propose to ourselves some critical observations on the dramas of Mr Taylor, we enter upon the task in exactly the same spirit that we should bring to the examination of any old writer, any veritable ancient, of established celebrity. We are too late to assist in creating a reputation for these dramas, but we may possibly throw out some critical suggestions which may contribute to their more accurate appreciation.
In Philip Van Artevelde, the great object of the author appears to have been to exhibit, in perfect union, the man of thought and the man of action. The hero is meditative as Hamlet, and as swift to act as Coriolanus. He is pensive as the Dane, and with something of the like cause for his melancholy; but so far from wasting all his energies in moody reflection, he has an equal share for a most enterprising career of real life. He throws his glance as freely and as widely over all this perplexing world, but every footstep of his own is planted with a sure and certain knowledge, and with a firm will. His thoughts may seem to play as loose as the air above him, but his standing-place is always stable as the rock. Such a character, we need not say, could hardly have been selected, and certainly could not have been portrayed with success, by any but a deeply meditative mind.
It is often remarked that the hero is the reflection of the writer. This could not be very correctly said in instances like the present. A writer still lives only in his writings, lives only in his thoughts, whatever martial feats or bold enterprises he may depict. We could not prophesy how the poet himself would act if he had been the citizen of Ghent. It is more accurate to content ourselves with saying that the delineation of his hero has given full scope to the intellectual character of the author, and to his own peculiar habits of thought. For if the great citizen of Ghent combines in an extraordinary degree the reflective and the energetic character, our author unites, in a manner almost as peculiar, two modes of thinking which at first appear to be opposed: he unites that practical sagacity which gives grave, and serious, and useful counsels upon human conduct, with that sad and profound irony – that reasoned despondency – which so generally besets the speculative mind. All life is – vanity. Yet it will not do to resign ourselves to this general conclusion, from which so little, it is plain, can be extracted. From nothing, nothing comes. We must go back, and estimate by comparison each form and department of this human life – which, as a whole, is so nugatory. Thus, practical sagacity is reinstated in full vigour, and has its fair scope of action, though ever and anon a philosophic despondency will throw its shadow over the scene.
As it is a complete man, so it is a whole life, that we have portrayed in the drama of Philip Van Artevelde. The second part is not what is understood by a "continuation" of the first, but an essential portion of the work. In the one we watch the hero rise to his culminating point; in the other we see him sink – not in crime, and not in glory, but in a sort of dim and disastrous twilight. We take up the hero from his student days; we take him from his philosophy and his fishing-line, and that obstinate pondering on unsolvable problems, which is as much a characteristic of youth as the ardent passions with which it is more generally accredited; we take him from the quiet stream which he torments, far more by the thoughts he throws upon it, than by his rod and line.
"He is a man of singular address
In catching river-fish,"
says a sarcastic enemy, who knew nothing of the trains of thought for which that angling was often a convenient disguise. A hint given in the drama will go far to explain what their hue and complexion must have been. The father of Philip had headed the patriotic cause of the citizens of Ghent; it had triumphed in his person; the same citizens of Ghent had murdered him on the threshold of his door. When he was a boy, the stains of his father's blood were still visible on that threshold: the widowed mother would not suffer them to be removed, and, nursing her revenge, loved to show them to the child. There was something here to colour the thoughts of the young fisherman.
But passion and the world are now knocking at the heart of the meditative student. Love and ambition are there, and, moreover, the turbulent condition of the city of Ghent seems to forbid the continuance of this life of quietude. The passions of the world crave admittance. Shall he admit them? The great theatre of life claims its new actor. Shall he go? Shall he commit himself once and for ever to the turmoil and delusions of that scene – delusions that will not delude, but which will exercise as great a tyranny over him as if they did? Yes; he will go. As well do battle with the world without, as eternally with his own thoughts; for this is the only alternative youth presents to us. Yes, he will go; but deliberately: he will not be borne along, he will govern his own footsteps, and, come what may, will be always master of himself.
Launoy, one of Ghent's bravest patriots, has been killed. The first reflection we hear from the lips of Artevelde is called forth by this intelligence. It does not surprise him.
"I never looked that he should live so long.
He was a man of that unsleeping spirit,
He seemed to live by miracle: his food
Was glory, which was poison to his mind
And peril to his body. He was one
Of many thousand such that die betimes,
Whose story is a fragment, known to few.
Then comes the man who has the luck to live,
And he's a prodigy. Compute the chances,
And deem there's ne'er a one in dangerous times
Who wins the race of glory, but than him
A thousand men