Novelty and Romancement

My thirst and passion from boyhood (predominating over the love of taws and running neck and neck with my appetite for toffee) has been for poetry — for poetry in its widest and wildest sense — for poetry untrammeled by the laws of sense, rhyme, or rhythm, soaring through the universe, and echoing the music of the spheres! From my youth, nay, from my very cradle, I have yearned for poetry, for beauty, for novelty, for romancement. When I say "yearned", I employ a word mildly expressive of what may be considered as an outline of my feelings in my calmer moments: it is about as capable of picturing the headlong impetuosity of my life-long enthusiasm as those unanatomical paintings which adorn the outside of the Adelphi, representing Flexmore in one of the many conceivable attitudes into which the human frame has never yet been reduced, are of conveying to the speculative pitgoer a true idea of the feats performed by that extraordinary compound of humanity and Indian-rubber.

I have wandered from the point: that is a peculiarity, if I may be permitted to say so, incidental to life; and, as I remarked on an occasion which time will not suffer me more fully to specify, "What, after all, is life?" nor did I find any one of the individuals present (we were a party of nine, including the waiter, and it was while the soup was being removed that the above-recorded observation was made) capable of furnishing me with a rational answer to the question.

The verses which I wrote at an early period of life were eminently distinguished by a perfect freedom from conventionalism, and were thus unsuited to the present exactions of literature: in a future age they will be read and admired, "when Milton," as my venerable uncle has frequently exclaimed, "when Milton and such like are forgot!" Had it not been for this sympathetic relative, I firmly believe that the poetry of my nature would never have come out; I can still recall the feelings which thrilled me when lie offered me sixpence for a rhyme to "despotism". I never succeeded, it is true, in finding the rhyme, but it was on the very next Wednesday that I penned my well known "Sonnet on a Dead Kitten", and in the course of a fortnight had commenced three epics, the titles of which I have unfortunately now forgotten.

Seven volumes of poetry have I given to an ungrateful world during my life; they have all shared the fate of true genius—obscurity and contempt. Not that any fault could be found with their contents; whatever their deficiencies may have been, no reviewer has yet dared to criticize them. This is a great fact.

The only composition of mine which has yet made any noise in the world, was a sonnet I addressed to one of the Corporation of Muggleton-cum-Swillside, on the occasion of his being selected Mayor of that town. It was largely circulated through private hands, and much talked of at the time; and though the subject of it, with characteristic vulgarity of mind, failed to appreciate the delicate compliments it involved, and indeed spoke of it rather disrespectfully than otherwise, I am inclined to think that it possesses all the elements of greatness. The concluding couplet was added at the suggestion of a friend, who assured me it was necessary to complete the sense, and in this point I deferred to his maturer judgment:

"When Desolation snatched her tearful prey

From the lorn empire of despairing day;

When all the light, by geraless fancy thrown.

Served but to animate the putrid stone;

When monarchs, lessening on the wildered sight,

Crumblingly vanished into utter night;

When murder stalked with thirstier strides abroad,

And redly flashed the never-sated sword;

In such an hour thy greatness had been seen —

That is, if such an hour had ever been —

In such an hour thy praises shall be sung.

If not by mine, by many a worthier tongue;

And thou be gazed upon by wondering men,

When such an hour arrives, but not till thenl"

Alfred Tennyson is Poet Laureate, and it is not for me to dispute his claim to that eminent position; still I cannot help thinking, that if the Government had only come forward candidly at the time, and thrown the thing open to general competition, proposing some subject to test the powers of the candidate (say "Frampton's Pill of Health, an Acrostic"), a very different result might have been arrived at.

But let us return to our muttons (as our noble allies do most unromantically express themselves), and to the mechanic of Great Wattles-street. He was coming out of a small shop — rudely built it was, dilapidated exceedingly, and in its general appearance seedy — what did I see in all this to inspire a belief that a great epoch in my existence arrived? Reader, I saw the signboard!

Yes. Upon that rusty signboard, creaking awkwardly on its one hinge against the mouldering wall, was an inscription which thrilled me from head to foot with unwonted excitement. "Simon Lubkin. Dealer in Romancement." Those were the very words.