Best of all are the fables that deal more immediately with the emotions.There is,for instance,that of 'The Two Travellers,'which is profoundly moving in conception,although by no means as well written as some others.In this,one of the two,fearfully frost-bitten,saves his life out of the snow at the cost of all that was comely in his body;just as,long before,the other,who has now quietly resigned himself to death,had violently freed himself from Love at the cost of all that was finest and fairest in his character.Very graceful and sweet is the fable (if so it should be called)in which the author sings the praises of that 'kindly perspective,'which lets a wheat-stalk near the eye cover twenty leagues of distant country,and makes the humble circle about a man's hearth more to him than all the possibilities of the external world.The companion fable to this is also excellent.It tells us of a man who had,all his life through,entertained a passion for certain blue hills on the far horizon,and had promised himself to travel thither ere he died,and become familiar with these distant friends.At last,in some political trouble,he is banished to the very place of his dreams.He arrives there overnight,and,when he rises and goes forth in the morning,there sure enough are the blue hills,only now they have changed places with him,and smile across to him,distant as ever,from the old home whence he has come.Such a story might have been very cynically treated;but it is not so done,the whole tone is kindly and consolatory,and the disenchanted man submissively takes the lesson,and understands that things far away are to be loved for their own sake,and that the unattainable is not truly unattainable,when we can make the beauty of it our own.Indeed,throughout all these two volumes,though there is much practical scepticism,and much irony on abstract questions,this kindly and consolatory spirit is never absent.There is much that is cheerful and,after a sedate,fireside fashion,hopeful.No one will be discouraged by reading the book;but the ground of all this hopefulness and cheerfulness remains to the end somewhat vague.It does not seem to arise from any practical belief in the future either of the individual or the race,but rather from the profound personal contentment of the writer.
This is,I suppose,all we must look for in the case.It is as much as we can expect,if the fabulist shall prove a shrewd and cheerful fellow-wayfarer,one with whom the world does not seem to have gone much amiss,but who has yet laughingly learned something of its evil.It will depend much,of course,upon our own character and circumstances,whether the encounter will be agreeable and bracing to the spirits,or offend us as an ill-timed mockery.But where,as here,there is a little tincture of bitterness along with the good-nature,where it is plainly not the humour of a man cheerfully ignorant,but of one who looks on,tolerant and superior and smilingly attentive,upon the good and bad of our existence,it will go hardly if we do not catch some reflection of the same spirit to help us on our way.There is here no impertinent and lying proclamation of peace -none of the cheap optimism of the well-to-do;what we find here is a view of life that would be even grievous,were it not enlivened with this abiding cheerfulness,and ever and anon redeemed by a stroke of pathos.
It is natural enough,I suppose,that we should find wanting in this book some of the intenser qualities of the author's work;and their absence is made up for by much happy deion after a quieter fashion.The burst of jubilation over the departure of the snow,which forms the prelude to 'The Thistle,'is full of spirit and of pleasant images.The speech of the forest in 'Sans Souci'is inspired by a beautiful sentiment for nature of the modern sort,and pleases us more,I think,as poetry should please us,than anything in CHRONICLES AND CHARACTERS.There are some admirable felicities of expression here and there;as that of the hill,whose summit 'Did print The azure air with pines.'
Moreover,I do not recollect in the author's former work any symptom of that sympathetic treatment of still life,which is noticeable now and again in the fables;and perhaps most noticeably,when he sketches the burned letters as they hover along the gusty flue,'Thin,sable veils,wherein a restless spark Yet trembled.'But the deion is at its best when the subjects are unpleasant,or even grisly.There are a few capital lines in this key on the last spasm of the battle before alluded to.Surely nothing could be better,in its own way,than the fish in 'The Last Cruise of the Arrogant,'
'the shadowy,side-faced,silent things,'that come butting and staring with lidless eyes at the sunken steam-engine.
And although,in yet another,we are told,pleasantly enough,how the water went down into the valleys,where it set itself gaily to saw wood,and on into the plains,where it would soberly carry grain to town;yet the real strength of the fable is when it dealt with the shut pool in which certain unfortunate raindrops are imprisoned among slugs and snails,and in the company of an old toad.The sodden contentment of the fallen acorn is strangely significant;and it is astonishing how unpleasantly we are startled by the appearance of her horrible lover,the maggot.
And now for a last word,about the style.This is not easy to criticise.It is impossible to deny to it rapidity,spirit,and a full sound;the lines are never lame,and the sense is carried forward with an uninterrupted,impetuous rush.But it is not equal.After passages of really admirable versification,the author falls back upon a sort of loose,cavalry manner,not unlike the style of some of Mr.
Browning's minor pieces,and almost inseparable from wordiness,and an easy acceptation of somewhat cheap finish.