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NOTICES OF BOOKS. 61
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
* * 1.—The Angel John In The W House . P...
our poet for fixing its loveliness on canvas . Perhaps in another hundred years we may be on the decline;—the Russians may have
played the part of Goths and Vandals , and destroyed our social fabricwe be fihting some dire battle in which men and
women ;— alike may will convuls g e to the gigantic proportions of Michael Angelo . At any rate we need but look below us now to find the
ground of humanity , unbroken or roughly ploughed , bearing grass , taresbreadstuff ' sand deal for tables . So let us be thankful for our
tall white , aloe-blossom , , and be p leased at this painting on ivory of society in Salisbury Close .
But we here come to the one quality , if quality it can be called , which rather constitutes the essential mould of this poem ;—it is , — -
in no bad sensebut most unmitigatedly , —conventional . We mean that at no other place , than in this country , and in no other rank than in
that rankand at no other time of the -world ' s history did people , conduct their courtship and their "wedding in that manner ; and the
story is so told that the young college-bred squire , and the Dean ' s eldest daughterare onlpresent to our sympathies under those
particular outside , characteristics y , and could no more have made love , and got married , in those wretchedly awkward and narrow
circumstances which oblige people to go to Gravesend for their one day ' s wedding tripand then back to keep the ledger and make the
bedsthan Sir Charles , Grandison could have wooed and won his Harriet , Byron if he had suddenly found himself transformed into
Alonzo the Brave and the lady into Imogene the Fair . A maroon coat and silk tights were necessary to Grandison ; until he got them ,
he would have had no platform on which to display his many fine and noble attributes . In the same way , we cannot conceive what
vision Mr . Coventry Patmore could in his most prolific moments embodyof a woman who could not afford to wear white kid gloves ,
, —or at least a muslin gown and blue sash . Many great poems have been quaint and conventional enough in
their accessories . Chaucer and Dante paint good and fair women , great and gallant men , in all the moral costume of their respective
ages ; yet in the characters they draw burns some living fire of universal humanity which keeps the story ever fresh , and makes us
kniteach in our succeeding generation , perpetual friendship with , those But peop when le — of putting the older aside time the _. question of how far readers yet
unborn will be able to enter into the somewhat restricted circle of ' The Angel in the House , ' —we , of the year of grace how 1858 , read delicate this
romance in versewe are at a loss to express very , truthful , and beautiful , it appears to us . It is like one of Messonier _' s paintinso elaboratelminute in its analysis of feeling and of
beauty , gs that , every page y seems enough for the text of a volume . There is no waste in Mr . Patmore ' s rhyme : he says nothing till he
thoroughly means to say it , and then he says it thoroughly—and
Notices Of Books. 61
NOTICES OF BOOKS . 61
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), March 1, 1858, page 61, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01031858/page/61/
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