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EVERY year, or, at the most, every five years, witnesses the rise and fall of a popular poet. His coming is as certain as that of a financial panic, rather more frequent, and, in its way, almost as disastrous; but, though his end is often pitiable, he enjoys, for a time at least, the rewards and flatteries due to genius real or supposed. The papers have always a spare column for his productions, and a well-trained band of reporters and reviewers to invent, or, if needs be, discover, his antecedents; while the reading public lavishes upon him that superfluous enthusiasm which friends or lovers do not absorb, and it is long odds that he gives his name to a paper collar or to a new form of suspender. It was not so very long ago that that particular school arose which almost did away with our preconceived notions of the simplicity and dignity of poetry, and, by its very grotesqueness, made us stand aghast, - a school which, to use Lowell's comprehensive description, makes the mistake of supposing that imagination is common sense turned inside out, instead of common sense sublimed. The writers of this style of poetry have been so well and so often satirized that one can hardly speak of them without trespassing upon ground already occupied; but, to distinguish them beyond a doubt, it may be said that, of this school, William Morris, perhaps, stands upon the highest round of the ladder of respectability, and Walt Whitman upon the lowest.
Next came that Western growth of poetry, of which Bret Harte wrote a great deal that is good, and others a great deal that is not good. But, be it good or bad in its execution, the influence of poetry which celebrates one noble act as a full atonement for a thousand crimes, and teaches, if it teaches anything, that virtue shines brightest in a setting of vice, can be nothing but injurious. We need not regret that the heroic-ruffian has lost his place in the popular heart.
Brilliant indeed was the appearance of Joaquin Miller (a truly popular poet) in the world of literature. At first, we, in the benighted East, saw the new-born poet only through a cloud of shapeless rumors and perverted facts; but at length the mist cleared away, and disclosed the figure of a tall man, wearing upon his head a great slouched hat, and thrown across his shoulders a United States army blanket, fiercely stroking his mustaches, and pointing with a gleaming knife at an open volume of poems. This was Joaquin Miller. "I give you my honor, sir, that he was born of a half-breed and a Mexican cattle-thief, sir. Until his seventeenth year, he never saw a book, sir, nor a page, nor a line, sir. He was brought up in the deepest dirt, sir, and degradation, sir." Could Mr. Bounderby himself have said more? Here was a poet in a strange shape, indeed. His origin was none of the best, and, we were assured, up to the time of his introduction to his publisher, he invariably ate his beefsteak (raw) with a bowie-knife.
But one thing was needed to make him perfect, he must be proved to be the perpetrator of crimes, - and that was done; he had been the leader of a band of robbers, everybody asked him to dinner; he had been accused of murder, his reputation was established. His poetry, which was by no means bad, found its way across the water, where he was received by John Bull as a new phenomenon of American life. Meanwhile, the critics were as kind as they could have been if bribed; they occupied themselves more harmlessly than ever before or since, - they sorted his words, and with most gratifying results. One eminent philologist discovered that in a certain poem ninety-five per cent of the words was of Anglo-Saxon origin, three and a half was Western slang, while but one and a half per cent was Latin or Greek! He was proclaimed the people's poet, and, for a time, all went well: but he had climbed too high to keep his position; it began to be thought that Homer was, after all, not likely to be rivalled by Joaquin Miller, and that Shakespeare was a better poet, even if he did use longer words. Socially, too, he was no longer successful; he was hardly conventional enough, even for a poet. But worse than all, he spoke condescendingly of Tennyson, and the great British breast swelled with indignation that the poet laureate should be patronized by a wandering American. Moreover, it was reported that he had left in the far West a much-abused wife, and that she, poor lady, was about to take the lecture-stand in order to gain an honest livelihood by proclaiming to the world the crimes and cruelties of her husband. Alas! Joaquin Miller has fallen, and the place of the Popular Poet is vacant once more. For the present, we can merely conjecture in what particular way the coming poet will set at defiance God, man, or nature. That he will do so in some way we may safely conclude from the latest productions of those who aspire to hold his future position. In the mean time we must await him with all the patience we can, and be ready to greet him as heartily as we have his predecessors.
M. C. H.
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