FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141  
142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   >>   >|  
h lines as these (no picture of tropical loveliness ever surpassed, in our opinion, the description printed in italics) that we admire "Locksley Hall," than on account of the troubled passions which it embodies; knowing as we do, that poetry has nobler offices to perform than to fulmine forth fierce and sarcastic invectives against the head of a jilt; and if, as Mr Tennyson says, "love is love for evermore," we would ask even him why he did not make the lover in "Locksley Hall" betray, even in spite of himself, a more pitiful tenderness for the devoted heroine of the tale? How different the strain of the manly Schiller under similar circumstances! _His_ bitterness cannot be restrained from breaking down at last in a flood of tenderness over the lost mistress of his affections. "Oh! what scorn for thy desolate years Shall I feel! God forbid it should be! How bitter will then be the tears Shed, Minna, oh Minna, for thee!" But if it be true that "Locksley Hall" is somewhat deficient in the ethereal tenderness which would overcome a true heart, even when blighted in its best affections, it was not to be expected that its imitator should have been visited with deeper glimpses of the divine. The indignant passions of his unrequited lover are, indeed, passions of the most ignoble clay--not one touch of elevated feeling lifts him for a moment out of the mire. The whole train of circumstances which engender his emotions, prove the lover, in this case, to have been the silliest of mortal men, and his mistress, from the very beginning of his intercourse with her, to have been one of the most abandoned of her sex. "Lilian" is a burlesque on disappointed love, and a travestie of the passions which such a disappointment entails. We know not which are the more odious and revolting in their expression--the emotions of the jilted lover, or the incidents which call them into play. The poem is designed to illustrate the bad effects produced on the female mind by the reading of French novels. We have nothing to say in their defence. But the incongruity lies here--that Lilian, who was seduced by means of these noxious publications, was evidently a lady of the frailest virtue from the very first; and her lover might have seen this with half an eye. Her materials were obviously of the most inflammable order; and it evidently did not require the application of such a spark as the seducer Winton, with his formidable ar
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141  
142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
passions
 

tenderness

 

Locksley

 

affections

 

emotions

 
Lilian
 
mistress
 

circumstances

 
evidently
 

abandoned


entails

 

travestie

 
disappointed
 

burlesque

 
disappointment
 

moment

 
feeling
 
elevated
 

ignoble

 

unrequited


silliest

 

mortal

 

beginning

 

engender

 

odious

 

intercourse

 

virtue

 

noxious

 

publications

 

frailest


materials

 
seducer
 

Winton

 

formidable

 

application

 
require
 

inflammable

 
seduced
 

designed

 
illustrate

indignant
 

jilted

 
expression
 
incidents
 

effects

 

produced

 
defence
 

incongruity

 
novels
 

female