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• Introduction
• The Autobiography
• Literary Essays
• Appendices
• Textual Principles and Methods
• Acknowledgments
• Autobiography and Literary Essays
• Autobiography Parallel Reading Texts of the Early Draft and the Columbia Ms
• Editors’ Note
• [early Draft]
• [yale Fragment]
• Chapter I: Childhood, and Early Education
• Chapter II: Moral Influences In Early Youth. My Father’s Character and Opinions
• Chapter III: Last Stage of Education, and First of Self-education
• Chapter IV: Youthful Propagandism. the Westminster Review
• Chapter V: A Crisis In My Mental History. One Stage Onward
• Chapter VI: Commencement of the Most Valuable Friendship of My Life. My Father’s Death. Writings and Other Proceedings Up to 1840
• Chapter VII: General View of the Remainder of My Life
• Periodical Literature: Edinburgh Review 1824
• Editors’ Note
• Periodical Literature: Edinburgh Review
• On Genius 1832
• Editors’ Note
• On Genius
• Thoughts On Poetry and Its Varieties 1833
• Editors’ Note
• Thoughts On Poetry and Its Varieties
• Writings of Junius Redivivus [i] 1833
• Editors’ Note
• Writings of Junius Redivivus [i]
• Writings of Junius Redivivus [ii] 1833
• Editors’ Note
• Writings of Junius Redivivus [ii]
• Views of the Pyrenees 1833
• Editors’ Note
• Views of the Pyrenees
• Tennyson’s Poems 1835
• Editors’ Note
• Tennyson’s Poems
• Aphorisms: Thoughts In the Cloister and the Crowd 1837
• Editors’ Note
• Aphorisms: Thoughts In the Cloister and the Crowd
• Ware’s Letters From Palmyra 1838
• Editors’ Note
• Ware’s Letters From Palmyra
• Writings of Alfred De Vigny 1838
• Editors’ Note
• Writings of Alfred De Vigny
• Milnes’s Poems 1838
• Editors’ Note
• Milnes’s Poems
• Milnes’s Poetry For the People 1840
• Editors’ Note
• Milnes’s Poetry For the People
• Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome 1843
• Editors’ Note
• Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome
• Letter to the Editor of the Edinburgh Review, On James Mill 1844
• Editors’ Note
• Letter to the Editor of the Edinburgh Review, On James Mill[*]
• Appendices
• Appendix A: Juvenilia
• The History of Rome By John Stuart Mill Aged 6½ Yrs
• Appendix B: Mill’s Early Reading, 1809-22
• Appendix C: Mill’s Early Writing, 1811?-22
• Appendix D: A Few Observations On Mr. Mill (1833)
• Appendix E: Browning’s Pauline (1833)
• Appendix F: Editorial Notes In the London and Westminster Review
• Appendix H: Helen Taylor’s Continuation of the Autobiography
• Appendix I: Bibliographic Index of Persons and Works Cited, With Variants and Notes

MILNES’S POETRY FOR THE PEOPLE

1840

EDITORS’ NOTE

Westminster Review, XXXIV (Sept., 1840), 511-13. This notice appeared in the Poetry section of the Miscellaneous Notices part of the WR, with the heading: “Poetry for the People, and other Poems. By Richard Monckton Milnes. [London:] Moxon. 1840.” Running titles: “Miscellaneous Notices. / Poetry.” Signed: “A.” Not republished Identified in Mill’s bibliography as “A short notice of Milnes’ Poetry for the people, in the same number of the same review”—i.e., as his notice of two publications on Plato (MacMinn, p. 52). No copy in the Somerville College library.

For comment, see the Introduction, p. xlii above.

Milnes’s Poetry for the People

most of these poems have already appeared in periodicals; and although they bear marks of the same hand as the two volumes already published by Mr. Milnes,^[*] there are indications of haste, and a want of finish in their composition, such as we are too apt to see in the contributions even of real poets to those fugitive pages. It is the besetting sin of the poets of our age that they write too much: even of Wordsworth, his most sincere admirers could spare nearly all which he has written in the last twenty years: and Ebenezer Elliott is wasting his great powers and noble feelings in careless, empty productions of no permanent value. It would be well for them to consider how few are the voluminous poets who have descended to posterity. Mr. Milnes has, we think, need of the same lesson; not that these poems are not good, but that he might so easily have made them better; or have written, in lieu of them, a much smaller number of far superior performances.

The “Specimens of Poetry for the People”^[†] are, for the most part, excellent in sentiment and purpose; some of them are warnings to the poor, others are rather pleadings for the poor to the rich, and therefore hardly merit their title. But neither the warnings nor the pleadings are so impressive as they would have been, had Mr. Milnes taken half the pains with them which he must have employed upon some of his earlier productions. Some of the very short poems are far more perfect; such as the following, one of several entitled “Love-Thoughts.”

• • Think not, because I walk in power,
  • While thou art by my side,
  • That I could keep the path one hour
  • Without my guard and guide.
• • The keeper left me once alone
  • Within a mad-house hall,
  • With gibber, shriek, and fixed smile
  • About me,—madmen all!
• • The horrid sense which then I felt
  • Is what my life would be,
  • If in this world of pain and guilt
  • I once lost sight of Thee.^[*]

Or this:

• • Beneath an Indian palm a girl
  • Of other blood reposes;
  • Her cheek is clear and pale as pearl,
  • Amid that wild of roses.
• • Beside a northern pine a boy
  • Is leaning, fancy-bound,
  • Nor listens where with noisy joy
  • Awaits the impatient hound.
• • Cool grows the sick and feverish calm
  • Relaxt the frosty twine,—
  • The pine-tree dreameth of the palm,
  • The palm-tree of the pine
• • As soon shall nature interlace
  • Those dimly-visioned boughs,
  • As these young lovers face to face
  • Renew their early vows!^[†]

The following is of a higher character, as suggestive to the inward imagination as it is picturesque to the outward and visual one:

• • She had left all on earth for him,
  • Her home of wealth, her name of pride,
  • And now his lamp of love was dim,
  • And, sad to tell, she had not died.
• • She watcht the crimson sun’s decline
  • From some lone rock that fronts the sea—
  • “I would, O burning heart of mine,
  • There were an ocean-rest for thee.
• • “The thoughtful moon awaits her turn,
  • The stars compose their choral crown,
  • But those soft lights can never burn
  • Till once the fiery sun is down.”^[‡]

Our last quotation shall be a legendary tale:

• • A gentle household spirit, unchallenged and unpaid,
  • Attended with his service a lonely servant-maid.
• • She seemed a weary woman, who had found life unkind,
  • Whose youth had left her early, and little left behind.
• • Most desolate and dreary her days went on until
  • Arose this unseen stranger her labours to fulfil
• • But now she walkt at leisure, secure of blame she slept,
  • The meal was always ready, the room was always swept.
• • And by the cheerful fire-light, the winter evenings long,
  • He gave her words of kindness and snatches of sweet song:—
• • With useful housewife secrets and tales of faeries fair,
  • From times when gaunt magicians and dwarfs and giants were.
• • Thus, habit closing round her, by slow degrees she nurst
  • A sense of trust and pleasure, where she had feared at first
• • When strange desire came on her, and shook her like a storm,
  • To see this faithful being distinct in outward form.
• • He was so pure a nature, of so benign a will,
  • It could be nothing fearful, it could be nothing ill.
• • At first with grave denial her prayer he laid aside,
  • Then warning and entreaty, but all in vain, he tried.
• • The wish upgrew to passion,—she urged him more and more—
  • Until, as one outwearied, but still lamenting sore,—
• • He promist in her chamber he would attend her call,
  • When from the small high window the full-moonlight should fall.
• • Most proud and glad that evening she entered to behold
  • How there her phantom-lover his presence would unfold;
• • When lo! in bloody pallor lay, on the moonlit-floor,
  • The babe she bore and murdered some thirteen years before^[*]

[[*] ]Poems of Many Years, and Memorials of a Residence on the Continent, and Historical Poems (both London: Moxon, 1838); reviewed by Mill in “Milnes’s Poems,” above, pp. 503-16.

[[†] ]A section of Poetry for the People, pp. 37-59.

[[*] ]Poetry for the People, p. 162.

[[†] ]Poem V of “Shadows,” ibid., p. 173.

[[‡] ]Poem VI of “Shadows,” ibid., p. 174.

[[*] ]“The Brownie. A Legend,” ibid., pp. 75-6.