ABSTRACT
This elaborate appeal from the deeps to a vain yet reasonable world is the oddest jumble: of truth and falsehood, of sincerity and affectation, of excellence and rubbish, of stuff that moves and stuff that bores, and worse. A descant on the emotions of C.3.3 and others on the occasion of a death by the rope in the gaol wherein they were immured, it is a piece of realism, yet it reeks with traditional phrases and effects. It states the fact with gloom, that everybody is engaged in killing the thing he loves:—
The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword:
yet it seems to approve, and it pleads passionately against the penalising of such excesses in emotion. In style it reminds you now of Mr. Kipling, now of ‘Eugene Aram’, now of ‘The Antient Mariner’, now of the Border ballads, now of passionate Brompton and aesthetic Chelsea. In matter, it is a patchwork of what is and what is not. Here it is instinct and vigorous with veracity; there it is flushed and stertorous with sentimentalism. It is carefully written and elaborately designed; yet is it full fifty stanzas too long, and it is laced with such futilities as ‘whisper low’ and ‘empty space’. It is a thing of modern life, and at least a part of itis vécue;1 yet you dance to ‘flutes’ and you dance to ‘lutes’ (Ha! Old Truepenny!), and in one stanza you make as free with Christ as Mr. Robert Buchanan ever did, and in another:—
The warders stripped him of his clothes And gave him to the flies; They marked the swollen, purple throat And the stark and staring eyes, And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud In which the convict lies.
