Originally published in Howitt's Journal (William Lovett) vol.1 #10 (06 Mar 1847).
The Battle of Nibley Green. From the MSS. of a Templar; with a Preface, Notes, and other Poems. By J.B. Kington. London: Henry Colburn.
According to the often repeated fiction of poets and romancists, the author tells us that in his chambers in the Temple
Searching ancient records lately,
In a dusty nook he found
An old volume tall and stately,
Iron-clasped and parchment-bound;
and that this said volume, written in Law French, contained in part the legend of the Battle of Nibley Green, which he, not having a great deal to do in his profession, put into a modern dress, and has here presented to the reader. Be it so; wonderful things are sometimes discovered in those same old chambers about the Temple, not the least wonderful being that of the genuine poet. By a subtle alchymy the rarest spirit of poetry is extracted from the dryest study of the law; and beneath the gown and wig is shrouded the poet with his divine insight into inward and outward things; his large capacity of love and sympathy; his sense of the beautiful and the true; his brotherhood with man, and his communion with the spirit of God in all its revelations.
To say nothing of Scott, we need only mention Barry Cornwall, Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, and that good lawyer
in Chancery-lane, who bears the assumed name of Nicholas Thirning Moile, whose State Trials contain some of the most magnificent poetry of the age, and of whose so-called drama of Cicero we spoke in our last number. To this already-established list of lawyer-poets, we must now add a new name, that of J.B. Kington, who, independently of this legend of the battle, gives us other poems of so exquisite a character, as at once to establish his reputation as a poet.
To make the principal poem intelligible to our readers, we must give an idea of its subject. A long and desperate feud, about the possession of certain manors, existed between the kindred families of Berkley and De Lisle, which feud met with a temporary and bloody satisfaction in the Battle of Nibley Green, on the 20th of March, 1470. Local historians, says the author, have called this encounter the English Chevy Chase; and not without reason—the two earls concerned in it were Thomas Lord Viscount Lisle, the son of Shakspere's "young John Talbot," and William
Lord Berkley. After many provocations on both sides, the young Viscount de Lisle, whom the poet calls Walter instead of Thomas (indeed he changes all the Christian names, for a reason which seems to us inadequate), at length writes an insulting letter, containing a challenge to his adversary to meet him, that they two might fight out their quarrel. The challenge is accepted; the place of meeting being Nibley Green. The young Lord de Lisle, who seems to have been less wily than his adversary, goes forth with fifteen score men, whilst the other had a thousand, among whom were the mayor of Bristol, whose daughter, according to the poem, he had married, armed citizens of the town, and turbulent commoners out of the Forest of Dean. Lord de Lisle is cruelly slain, not by the hand of his noble adversary, but by that of one Black Will, a rude forester, by whom also his body is mangled. After this, Lord Berkley, not yet sufficiently appeased, rode forward with his armed and ruthless party to the Manor House of the De Lisles at Wootten, which they despoiled, driving thence the widowed viscountess with fire and sword. This flight occasioned the premature birth of a male child, and thus the title itself became extinct in the direct line. The widowed lady, after this, appealed to King Edward IV.; a warrant was issued against Lord Berkley and his lawless followers; and it is with this part of the story that the poem deals.
There is something extremely Chaucer-like in the strong, graphic descriptions of life and character, with which the poem abounds. Take, for instance, the following—the Introduction of Hugh de Glanville, the old lawyer, who comes armed with the king's warrant:—
There stood before the earl, in his vexed mood,
An old, grave man, erect and unsubdued;
His frame large and well-knit; but pale his look
With studious thought; and stooping o'er his book,
Had rounded him a little in the back;
His habit plain, and made of seemly black,
But cut of richest velvet; for the rest,
A sealed parchment peeped from his breast.
Him did Sir Maurice scan with curious eye,
And read in him the quiet mastery
Of conscious power; and knew not how to brook
The calm, broad brow, and the fixed, placid look,
Though nought of disrespect lay lurking there.
At length he cried, "What mummer have we here?
What mummer, ere the time of wassail come?
Speak out, man! art thou deaf, or drunk, or dumb?
Thy message, or I strike thee to the earth!"
The stranger drew the sealed parchment forth,
And held it to the earl, but held in vain;
For looking on it with a huge disdain,
Sir Maurice said, "I write my knightly word,
And sign and seal it with my own good sword;
Such tricks for girls, and clerks, and shavelings be;
Read it thyself, if it pertain to me!"
The warrant is read, and the remainder of the poem consists in the lawyer's examination of witnesses; and in this the most admirable skill is employed. The witnesses are various: the friar of the household, the armourer, a young page, the host of the village inn, the smith, the jester, Black Will, the forester, Lord de Lisle's body squire, and the holy Father Francis, whose remarkable dream the night after the battle reminds the reader of the grand philosophical spirit of Dante. The friar's portrait bears out what we have said of the Chaucer-like vein of the writer.
A portly ruddy man was friar John;
In colour and in shape much like to brawn;
Huge rolls of fat, piled up in many a crease,
Proclaimed of Satanas,—a Hart of grease!
That snored away the hours of witch and ghost,
With all their wasting cares and fears attending,
And with a ready unction blessed the roast;
Daftly, upon his trencher, blending
The luscious underdone with the rich brown,
And with great gulps of wine washing the morsels down.
He was a preaching friar, that heathenish sport,
To the rude people of the common sort,
With tricks like juggler at a village wake,
In ribald tales, and long quaint words did make;
A man who chaffered, by the tale, in creeds,
With endless repetitions on his beads;
And would, if time pressed on his matter, then
Crowd fourscore aves into one amen!
And on the women cast a sweltering leer,
Until they shuddered with disgustful fear;
For women have an innate sense of evil,
Since they bought wisdom of the serpent-devil.
The jester is an admirable picture. He is met by the lawyer, who is riding in the Forest of Dean.
He drew his bridle near a clear stream, welling
From a cleft rock, and listened to the belling
Of a belated roe, across the lea,
Who had departed from her company;
And, scanning with keen eye the forest track,
Swung himself slowly drawn from the tired back
Of his brave steed, leaving the wearied horse
To graze at will, and mused upon his course,
High over head a goshawk soared and swooped;
A fox barked in the brake; a shrill voice whooped
In the far distance; and, along the sky,
An eagle, seeking prey, sailed heavily.
The eagle sailed into the distant grey;
Down plumpt the hawk, and cushioned on his prey;
And with a furtive look, the silent fox
Slunk down the covert, for a noise of cocks
Burst startling on the ear, clucking and crowing,
Dogs bayed, cats mewed, pigs squeaked, and then a lowing
Of kine was heard; and up the forest glade
A figure came, in jester's guise arrayed.
A party-coloured staff his right hand bore;
And party-coloured was the dress he wore;
The mitre-gules emblazoned on his breast;
A sprig of holly fastened to the crest
Of his cloth-cap, indented at the top;
And so he gambolled, with a stepskip, hop,
Along the sward; whilst the whole forest rang
With his strange clamour. Then the jester sang
In a sweet voice, but with a wayward mood,
About a hunter, hunting in a wood,
Upon a yellow-tinted autumn day.
How beautiful and fresh is this! Nothing indeed can surpass the exquisite bits of woodland life and scenery with which the whole book abounds. With one or two extracts from Father Francis's dream, we must conclude, having already exceeded our limits. The dream is of the Hall of Blood, in which awful mouths bear testimony to the suffering inflicted, and the wrong done by crime. Thus:—
I testify against
Glory and Conquest: Judge them, oh my God:—
Glory that builds a monument to fame
Of human skulls and bones; and of their flesh
Makes reeking sacrifice to his false gods!
Conquest that reaps the yellow corn with fire,
Makes the red wine-press run with th' redder wine,
And for one wolf gives a whole fold to prey!
These two did burst upon the innocent sleep
Of my dear household; dooming life to death,—
Dishonouring honour,—casting stock and store
To scrambling rapine, and improvident greed,
That grasps beyond the measure of his hand,
And his selfish cup, until it runs
To idle, wilful, wanton, wicked waste.
Again:—
I testify against
State-craft, which turns the balance of the scales
With human hearts and hopes; which falsifies
The word that bids us love, and substitutes
The devilish heathen subtlety which says
Divide and govern; hence rivalries unwise,
Unnatural hates, and groundless jealousies,
And envious regards in neighbour states;
Until this huckstering policy,—this pare
And clip of right for wrong,—this parchment good,—
This geometric rounding of a point
Of narrow land,—this barren rock within
A river's jaws, converts the general good
To general evil; breaks the sweet accord
Of peaceful treaties with the brunt of war;
Turns golden commerce into steeled strife;
The hymns of harvest to death-seeking songs;
The pleasant fields to wastes of fierce contention;
The running streams to blood! And therefore, I,
A quiet citizen, enforced to be
A soldier of the state, do testify
That I was stricken down by one, with whom,
In better days, albeit an alien born,
I did exchange the labour of my hands
For the ripe produce of his industry.
These extracts will suffice to show the power and sterling quality of the writer; we only regret that we have not space for even one quotation from the poem called Maid Marian, a fragment of the Spirit of Gentleness; one of the sweetest things we know.
The "Christian Witness" examined, on a Defamatory Charge of Infidelity against William Lloyd Garrison, Esq., President of the American Anti-Slavery Society, etc. London: Aylott and Jones. Pp. 40. 1847.
One of the ablest and most complete refutations of a baseless and wicked slander on one of the best of men that ever was written. We rejoice to see Dr. Campbell so thoroughly condemned out of his own mouth. William Garrison, who in principle is a non-resistant, is styled a firebrand because he will not let the American slave-drivers brand their slaves with impunity. A most conscientious Christian, he is called an infidel, on the same principle that Christ himself was declared not fit to live—i.e. because he denounced in the most unsparing terms—"Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!"—the orthodox time-servers of his day. William Lloyd Garrison will need no defender at the day when defence will be of the most consequence; but the cause of truth and freedom needs defence every day, and the author of this little work has done good service by it. We trust that it will be extensively read, and do not envy Dr. Campbell's feelings on the perusal of it.
Simon. by George Sand. Translated by Matilda M. Hays, Author of Helen Stanley. London: E. Churton. 1847.
In this graceful story, the second of Miss Hays' translations, the English reader will perceive something of that nobility of sentiment which he has been led to expect in George Sand's writings. Simon, a peasant by birth, is possessed of a fine intellect, and a truly poetical and sensitive nature. He is a being formed either to be a curse to himself and mankind, or a glorious leader and helper on of his fellow men.—But if he have ambition and violent passions, he has also a tender heart, and faith in the beautiful and the true;—and by these he is saved!—The old mother, Jeanne Feline, with her true piety, her poetical fervour of character, and her devotion to her son, is one of the most beautiful delineations of human nature with which we are acquainted.
As in the Last of the Aldini, and in several others of Madame Dudevant's novels, the chief interest of the tale consists in a man of the people presuming to love a high-born beauty—and what is more inspiring, a return of his affection.—The character of Simon, however, is as much higher and purer than the character of Lelio, as is the love which he inspires.—Fiamma, the descendant of the Falieri, and the adopted daughter of the Count of Fougères, recognises in the poor lawyer and peasant-born Simon a truly noble human being; and after many trials, both of his heart and her own, sacrifices her fortune and unites her fate with his. She is one of those strong women, morally, intellectually, and physically, whom George Sand delights so much to paint. Fiamma, Jeanne Feline—to whom she would be a worthy daughter-in-law—and the gentle Bonne, the daughter of Simon's kind friend and patron the Advocate Parquet—form a lovely trio, worthy to stand forth in a dream of fair women.
In this work also there is a deal of delightful landscape painting. The reader hears the hum of bees, and the gurgling of mountain brooks; smells wild thyme, and a thousand mountain and forest flowers, and reposes in the shades of deep woods.—But we refer him to the book itself for all these refreshments, and for a thousand more, as well as for some deep glimpses into that strange mystery, the human heart.—If there are certain faults in the book, we leave them for him to discover. The translation is peculiarly agreeable, and testifies to Miss Hays' fitness for her undertaking.
Village Tales from the Black Forest. By Berthold Auerbacnh. Translated by Meta Taylor. London: David Bogue.
Thee are the most characteristic and truthful pictures of German village life with which we are acquainted. They enjoy a high reputation in their own country; and the first half of the original volume translated by Mrs. Taylor, and published by Mr. Cundall, met with the reception in this country which it deserved. The translator has now completed her work, and the whole published in an elegant form, accompanied by four illustrations from John Absolon, one of the most simple and truthful of our designers, cannot fail of being warmly welcomed by the English public.
As a translator, Mrs. Taylor has performed her task admirably. Nothing can be more faithfully rendered than these tales, which with their slight touch of dialect required the hand of a master to do them full justice.