Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 70, No. 433, November 1851

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 70, No. 433, November 1851

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 506 itself before us, it would hardly excite greater disgust than this beautifully foul drama of the Cenci. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

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Ebook Number: 46629
Author: Various
Release Date: Aug 19, 2014
Format: eBook
Language: English