Most rhymed metres have a rhythm peculiar to themselves, and only require that the matter for which they are employed shall not be foreign to their key; that a funeral dirge shall not be set to jaunty choriambics, nor a epithalamium to the grave-yard tune of the six syllable quatrain; but blank verse has little or no rhythm of its own, and therefore the poet has to create the rhythm as he writes. best blank verse in the language, says, in his pause, and the less liberty of changing the Preface, that the writer in this kind of fundamental foot, the less will be the poet's metre, "in order that he may be musical, obligation to originate his own rhythms. must exhibit all the variations, as he proceeds, of which ten syllables are susceptible. Between the first and the last, there is no place at which he must not occasionally pause, and the place of the pause must be continually shifted." This is what is commonly supposed to constitute the main requirement of blank verse; but, it seems to us, that this is very far from a sufficient statement of the "variety " required by the metre in question. In the first place, pause At a time like this, when it is as much is but one, and, perhaps, not the most im- the fashion to exaggerate the so-called "inportant means of "variety." Milton, who spiration " and "unconsciousness" of artistfirst taught us what this kind of verse ought ical production, as it used to be to overto be, is careful to vary the movement by estimate the critical and scientific elements, an occasional inversion of the iambic accent- the utility of laws which it is certain will be uation in each of the five places: the varia- obeyed, more or less unconsciously, by tion of the vowel sounds is also most labo- those who are capable of obeying them at riously attended to by him; and rightly, for all to any profitable result, is likely to have the absence of the emphasis which is confer- seemed questionable to some of our readers. red by rhyme, when it exists, upon one The true poet's song is never trammelled by vowel sound, renders every repetition of a present consciousness of all the laws which vowel sound, within the space of two or it obeys; but it is science, and not ignor three lines, unpleasant, unless it appears to ance, which supplies the condition of such have had a distinct musical motive. But unconsciousness. The lives and the works the great difficulty, as well as delight, of of all great artists, poets or otherwise, show this measure is not in variety of pause, tone, that the free spirit of art has been obtained, and stress, for its own sake. Such variety not by neglect, but by perfection of discimust be incessantly inspired by, and ex- pline. Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and pressive of, ever-varying emotion. Every Goethe, perhaps the highest poetical names alteration of the position of the grammatical of the Christian era, prove clearly enough to pause, every deviation from the strict and dull iambic rhythm, must be either sense or nonsense. Such change is as real a mode of expressing emotion as words themselves are of expressing thought; and when the means exist without reference to their proper ends, the effect of the "variety" thereby obtained, is more offensive to a right judgment, than the dulness which is supposed to be avoided. Hence it is the nature of blank verse to be dull, or worse, without that which only the highest poetical inspiration can confer upon it. We are afraid to say how very small is the amount of good narrative, or "heroic" blank verse, of which our literature can boast, if we have truly stated its essential quality. No poet, unless he feels himself to be above discipline, and therefore above the greatest poets of whose modes of composition we have any record, ought to think of beginning his career with blank verse. It will sound very paradoxical to some of our slovenly versifiers, when we assert that the most inflexibly rigid, and as they are commonly thought, difficult metres, are the easiest for a novice to write decently in. The greater the frequency of the rhyme, and the more fixed the place of the grammatical any one truly acquainted with their spirit, that the laws of art, as far as those were known at their respective periods, had been studied by them as matters of science, and that it was by working on the platform of such knowledge that they achieved strains of poetry which exceeded the laws and limits of all previous art. The poet is unconscious of the laws by which he writes, just as Thalberg and Benedict are unconscious of the rules by which they exercise their surprising craft upon the pianoforte. This craft has been, in each case alike, the product of years of intensely "conscious" discipline. The poet's discipline is only less obviously legal and laborious than that of other artists, because he alone works with purely intellectual instruments; and we do not fear to assert, that no man ever has, or ever can, become a great poet-that is, one who shall originate laws of his own, which future workers in the same line will have, in their turn, to studyunless he himself has learned to comprehend those which are the legacy of his predecessors. Such learning, indeed, will be more likely to make a pedant than a poet of the man who endeavours to ply this singular vocation without express constitutional apt ness for it. Ten lines of the simplest lyrical to serve as the guage and foil to all the suroutpourings of the Ploughman of Scotland rounding varieties of hill and dale, rock and are worth more than all the odes and epics forest; but to speak of "smoothness" as that were ever laboured by merely learned anything more than the negative, merely metrists; but the faculty which, without mechanical and meanest merit of verse, is to laborious culture, is capable of the composi- indicate a great insensibility to the nature of tion of a good love song or ballad, must music in language. Such insensibility is, have the addition of hard discipline, before however, the almost inevitable result upon it can become the inspiration of a truly most minds of the unleisurely habits of great poem. reading into which we moderns are falling. We have not time to feel with a good poet thoroughly enough to catch his music, and the consequence is, that good poets have lately been writing down to our incapacity. ART. VII.—1. A Review of the Divorce Bill of 1856, with Propositions for an Amendment of the Laws affecting Married Persons. Inscribed, by permission, to Lord Lyndhurst. London: 1857. 2. A Bill intituled an Act to Amend the The same, as amended June 25, 1857. 1857. But poets are the persons, after all, who are the least likely to be directly affected by written criticisms. A good poet can scarcely be other than a good judge of that which concerns his art, though he may not be able, or disposed, to put his knowledge into writing. It is the large class of little. critics who are the chief gainers by the enunciation of sound artistic doctrine; and whatever instructs these, confers at least a temporary benefit upon the man whose fame, and, perhaps, worldly prosperity, for the first years of his career, may, in part, depend upon their ability to appreciate his works. It is especially in the matter of good metre that a good poet is likely to be erroneously judged in these days. Most readers of poetry, and we fear we must add, modern writers upon it, know nothing, and feel nothing, of the laws of metre as they 3. have been practised by all great poets. 4. "Smoothness" is regarded as the highest praise of versification, whereas it is about the lowest and most easily attainable of all Or all the subjects which have engaged its qualities. The consummate perfection the attention of the legislature during the of the versification of all Milton and Shake- session of Parliament now wearing to a speare, and much of Chaucer, Spenser, close, the one which has created the largest Fletcher, and Cowley, would not now be amount of general interest is the amendtolerated in a new writer; we should find it ment of the laws relating to marriage and held up to ridicule and contempt; facetious divorce. It is a matter which almost every critics, stringing together separate lines or one understands; in which almost every one short passages, each a brilliant, but, separ-is concerned; of which almost every one ately, unintelligible, morsel of some mosaic has something to say. Society has long of harmony, would ask, "Is this music? is been convinced of the truth of the opening this verse?" perfectly safe as to the reply, words of the preamble of the Lord Chanfor it is certain that, in the greatest work of cellor's bill, "that it is expedient to amend the greatest metrist who ever lived, Milton, the law relating to divorce." They who there is no long and elaborate strain of verse were content with the law as it stood at the without one or more lines which, though commencement of 1857, were the excepprobably the most effective in the passage, will seem to be scarcely verse at all when taken out of it. "Smoothness" might just as reasonably be called the chief merit of natural scenery as of poetry. A capacity for writing smooth verse is certainly essential in a poet, and, as we have indicated, the artistic versifier will occasionally make his thoughts flow along the dead level of the modulus of his metre-that is to say, he will make it perfectly "smooth," just as a landscape painter will generally manage to get in a glimpse of quiet water or level plain, tional few. The public voice had long declared that "something must be done." But here, perhaps, the general harmony begins and ends: for when we come to inquire what that "something" should be, we find that there is little concord of opinion. We cannot be surprised at this. The question is a very delicate and a very difficult one. It is beset with many perplexities. It cannot be discussed without some doubts and misgivings in the writer's mind, and some reservations and qualifications in his expressions of opinion. Two men, pro- what it is on the north of the Tweed; but pounding widely different views of so com- it will diminish the very wide difference at plicated a question, may both be right, as present existing between the practice of the far as they go. For when we have deter- two parts of the island. mined in our own minds what is best to be done, we are forced irresistibly upon the conclusion, that we have only had a choice of evils. We know and acknowledge, at every step of the inquiry, how much there is to be said upon the other side. We have, on former occasions, emphatically expressed our opinions in this Journal relative to the existing, but now condemned, laws of marriage and divorce in England; and we have reason to believe that we have not written in vain. Never, certainly, at There is good reason in this why we any former period of our social history has should discuss the subject rather in a sug- there been so strong a disposition to congestive than in an authoritative strain. It sider, in a fair and candid spirit, the position is the very last on which any writer is en- of women with reference to these laws, as titled to dogmatise. We have seen some has been evinced during the last two or of the best and wisest men in the coun- three years. Men have roused themselves try differing widely in their views of the to the necessity of doing something to requestion, both in its religious and its social move what has been long felt to be a reaspects, without any personal or party in- proach to our civilization; and sentence of centives to the support of one side or the death is now written down against the worst other. We do not doubt that all who have parts of a system, which inflicted such cruel spoken or written on the subject, have been injustice on the weaker half of mankind. moved by deep convictions of the truth of There were some wrongs so patent, so abtheir utterances, and a pervading sense of horrent to reason, and altogether so cruel the solemnity of the question and the mag- and iniquitous, that, in the middle of the nitude of the interests it involves. And we nineteenth century, to look them in the face, ask that the toleration which we extend to others may be extended to us, by those who have hitherto dissented from the views which we are about to express, and will not, after a patient perusal of our remarks, consent to adopt our opinions. and to state them openly, seemed to be suf ficient to secure instant alleviation. For example, it was almost incredible that a man should be suffered to desert his wife, to live in adultery with another woman; and to assert, during the time of separation, a The subject, viewed in its social and in its marital right to possess himself, not only of legal aspects, divides itself into two branch- the property acquired by gift or bequest es;-one relating to marriage itself, and the from her family or friends, but the proceeds dissolution of marriage; the other relating also of her own industry. So monstrous, to the legal processes necessary to the attainment of divorce. But the sprays or off shoots of these branches interlace themselves with each other, and we cannot easily discuss the one division of the subject without sometimes adverting to the other. indeed, was this, that it was certain such a scandal could not long survive the torrent of indignation which had been poured upon it, even if no more general measure for the reform of the laws of marriage were contemplated by the Legislature. It was possible In England, there is no law by which a to legislate for the discontinuance of such marriage can be dissolved. Marriages are an evil as a separate and integral reform; dissolved; but a special Act of Parliament and if nothing else had been done, we should, is necessary to legalise each dissolution. doubtless, have accomplished this, and been Such Acts of Parliament, it need not be thankful for such an instalment. But the said, are obtainable only by the rich. They bill before us embraces this. Indeed, any cannot be obtained until an action has been Act for the amendment of the laws relating brought, and damages decreed for criminal to marriage and divorce would be most imconversation. The process, therefore, is te- perfect, if it did not secure to women so cirdious, costly, and in most cases revolting. cumstanced a right to the uninterrupted enThe new bill proposes to remedy this. We joyment of their own property. The Lord do not say that it will render divorce easy Chancellor's bill gives to this provision a or cheap; but it will make it easier and foremost place; and we shall be readily becheaper. It will not place the rich and the lieved when we say, that there is no part of poor on an equality; but it will place them the bill regarding which there is so little dimore on an equality than before. It will versity of opinion. not place the man and the woman on an equality; but it will place them, too, more on an equality than before. It will not entirely assimilate the law on the south to The bill, after constituting a "Court of Marriage and Divorce," to the nature and functions of which we shall presently advert, enacted, that "any wife might present a pe tition to the said Court, praying for a di-out appeal. She has not a host of friends vorce à mensâ et thoro, on the ground that to declare her wrongs; nor can she move she has been deserted by her husband, and the world to tears by an eloquent pamphlet. that such desertion has continued, without It is the poor sempstress, the poor laundress, reasonable excuse, for two years or up- the doniestic servant, who most needs that wards;" and that the Court might decree a her earnings should be secured to her. If divorce à mensâ et thoro, and make an or- the new Act accomplishes this, it will really der for alimony, if it should seem just to do be a blessing to the people of England. so. The bill then proceeded as follows:- But if the process by which legal separation is to be obtained, and the woman restored "XVII. In every case of a divorce à mensâ et to the privileges of the feme sole, be a costly thoro, the wife shall, from the date of the sen- one, practically the great mass of the peotence, and while the separation shall continue, be ple will be in the same condition as before. considered as a feme sole with respect to property The process under the new system must of every description which she may afterwards acquire, or which may come to or devolve upon necessarily, as we have said, be less costly her; and such property may be disposed of by than under the old, in all cases of divorce à her in all respects as a feme sole; or on her de vinculo matrimonii; and we do not doubt cease, the same shall, in case she shall die intes- that the new Court of Marriage and Divorce tate, so as the same would have done if her hus- will entail fewer burdens on suitors than band had been dead; provided, that if any such the Ecclesiastical Courts, under the existing wife should again cohabit with her husband, all such property as she may be entitled to when such cohabitation shall take place, shall be held to her separate use, subject, however, to any agreement in writing made between herself and her husband while separate." state of things, in cases of mere conjugal separation. But the object of the new bill would have been but imperfectly obtained, if the desired cheapness had not been rendered not merely a comparative cheapness, but one which would place the justice of which we are now speaking within the reach of the poorest woman. But what is this new Court? It is to be called "The Court of Marriage and Divorce." It is to exercise the jurisdiction "now vested in, or exercisable by, any ecclesiastical court or person in England, in respect of divorces It was only right that, in such a case, the necessary responsibility of the husband should entirely cease, except when he had failed to pay the alimony decreed by the Court. No woman will complain of this; but every woman will recognise in the above provision, what, verbally at least, affords redress for the cruel wrong under à mensâ et thoro, suits of nullity of marriage, which her sex has so long been suffering. suits for restitution of conjugal rights, and But that it should meet the case fully and in all causes, suits, and matters matrimocompletely, in fact as well as in word, it was nial, except in respect of marriage licenses." necessary to place the preliminary divorce The judges of this Court are to be found in à menså et thoro within the reach of the the persons of the Lord Chancellor, the humblest petitioner. Perhaps the most Lords Chief Justices of the Queen's Bench cruel cases of the assertion of the marital and Common Pleas, the Chief Baron of the right to property, acquired by the woman during separation, occur in humble life. Desertion is more frequent, self-support is more common, among the poorer classes. In such a condition of life the man has more temptation to lay a violent hand on the earnings of the woman, and fewer restraints, physical and moral, to check the consummation of his selfishness and injustice. Exchequer, and "the Judge of Her Majesty's Court of Probate, constituted by any act of the present session;" the said functionary last named being the Judge Ordinary of the Court, with full authority alone, or with one or more of the other judges, to hear all petitions for separation à mensa et thoro. The exclusive right of practising in all cases where the Judge Ordinary has jurisdiction, without the concurrence of the other judges, is to be vested in the advocates and proctors of the ecclesiastical courts; the principles and rules acted upon being, as nearly But what is shameful in one condition, is as may be, conformable with the principles scarcely held to be so in another. More- and rules on which the ecclesiastical courts over, a woman in humble life can seldom have heretofore acted and granted relief to place herself beyond the reach of her offend- suitors. There is nothing on the face of this ing husband. She can rarely select her to render the process by which separation place of abode, or fence herself around with any obstacles to intrusion. She is, in most cases, despoiled, without defence, and with "The fear of shame's a hangman's whip, To keep the wretch in order." and consequent protection are obtainable, less costly than under the old system. The cost of a separation à mensâ et thoro in the ecclesiastical courts, may have ranged be- the wife is maintaining herself by her own lawful tween £50 and £500. It need not be said industry, it shall be lawful for the wife to make that even this lower amount placed the luxury of separation beyond the reach of a poor woman, living by the labour of her hands. But in such a case she had the privilege of suing in formâ pauperis; and we presume that this is extended to her under the old system, care of course being taken to guard the courts against the introduction of frivolous suits. But it is not on this account the less essential that the procedure should be simple and uncostly; for how many there are who, although not of the class to which the privilege of suing in formâ pauperis is granted, would be practically debarred from obtaining the protection of the Court, if the process were at all an expensive one. application to any Justice of the Peace, and show cause that she has reason to fear that her husband, or her husband's creditors, will interfere with her earnings, and thereupon it shall be lawful for the Justice, if he shall think fit, upon hearing the parties, to give to the wife an order in writing, under his hand, restraining the husband or creditors from interfering, or attempting to interfere, with the wife's earnings or property in manner aforesaid; which order shall be in force for six months from the date thereof, unless sooner discharged or varied by an order of two or more Justices of the Peace or Petty Sessions; and while in force, shall protect the wife, and her earnings and property afore said, against all actions, suits, executions, and proceedings whatever, brought, or taken by, or on behalf of, the husband or creditor; and any such wife shall be at liberty, from time to time, to apply for a renewal of such order, at the exConsiderations such as these appear to piration of the former order; and any person acthave had due weight with the House of ing in wilful disobedience to any such order as Lords. The Chancellor's bill did not suffi- aforesaid, while in force, shall be liable to a fine, ciently simplify the process, whereby wo- not exceeding twenty pounds; and, in default of men, whose husbands have ceased to sup- payment, to imprisonment for any time not export them, may secure for themselves the ceeding two months." right of property in their own earnings. Indeed, it was felt that the mere transfer of It appears to us that this entirely meets the the powers of the Ecclesiastical to the Judge case to which we have so often adverted. Ordinary of the Court of Divorce, would A woman can protect her earnings by simleave matters very much in their old cum- ply going before a magistrate. This will brous state. Some manifest improvements cost her nothing, or next to nothing. The were, therefore, introduced into the bill. In justice sought is, indeed, placed within the the first place, the antiquated technical no- reach of the honest woman who lives by the menclature the absurd and, to the major-labour of her hands and the sweat of her ity, unintelligible Latin jargon of the Eccle- brow. siastical Courts, was swept away. The Lords abolished divorce à mensâ et thoro, by introducing the following clause into the bill: : But important as is this branch of the question, still more important is that involved in the clauses of the bill which relate to the dissolution of marriage. The nineteenth clause* of the Lord Chancellor's bill sets forth that it shall be lawful for any husband to present a petition to the Court, praying that his marriage may be dissolved, on the ground that his wife has been guilty of adultery. To this Court the injured hus "VII. No decree shall hereafter be made for a divorce à mensâ et thoro; but in all cases in which a decree for a divorce à mensâ et thoro might now be pronounced, the Court may pronounce a decree for a judicial separation, which quences as a divorce à mensâ et thoro now has." band is, according to the provisions of the Act, to carry his case without any prelimi shall have the same force and the same conse This, at all events, is an improvement. The nary suit for the recovery of damages from first step towards a simplification of the law, action for crim. con., which has so long polhis wife's paramour. The scandal of the is the simplification of its obsolete nomen-luted the legal system of the country, is to clature. Henceforth, husband and wife, not seeking an absolute dissolution of matrimo- cease from off the face of the land. This is nial bonds, are to be "judicially separated." another tardy instalment of justice to the To accomplish this judicial separation, the same process is necessary as under the provisions of the original bill, relating to divorce à mensâ et thoro. But in the bill, as sent down from the Lords, there is this important addition: "XVII. Where a wife is deserted by her husband, and that desertion has continued, without reasonable excuse, for one year or upwards, and weaker sex. In these suits the woman was perfectly helpless. She was compelled to remain passive while her character was mercilessly torn to pieces. She stood, indeed, unarmed and defenceless between two fires. It was the interest of both parties to the suit to prove her to be an abandoned The plaintiff was bound to show woman. *In the amended bill, Clause XXV. |