An Irish poet, from the death of Tennyson the dean of English verse, died in London, January 21, 1902. Born at Curragh Chase, Ireland, January 10, 1814, he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, subsequently passed some time at Rydal Mount, and in 1842 published his first volume, “The Waldenses, or the Fall of Rora: A Lyrical Tale.” In the year following, his “Search After Proserpine” brought him into favorable prominence as a maker of graceful verse. Other poetical works are: “Irish Odes” (1869), “The Legends of St. Patrick” (1872), “Legends of the Saxon Saints” (1879), “St. Peter’s Chains” (1888), and the dramas “Alexander the Great” (1874), and “St. Thomas of Canterbury” (1876). His prose includes “Essays Chiefly on Poetry” (1887), “Essays Chiefly Literary and Ethical” (1889), and “Recollections” (1897).

Personal

  I am sorry to learn that in all these years you have had no better specimen of London at Ballyshannon than Aubrey de Vere, who is surely one of the wateriest of the well-meaning.

  The writer of these lines had the rare pleasure, by kind invitation, of spending some hours at Curragh Chase, in July, 1888…. This is a magnificent old estate—an ideal home for a poet and lover of nature. It contains some two thousand acres of field and forest, “upland, glade and glen.” The grand old mansion stands upon a moderate elevation, overlooking a most beautiful little lake. Across the lake, upon a high crag is planted a large pillar in the form of an Irish cross, around the base of which are inscribed the names of those of the family who have passed away. A belt of timber surrounds the whole tract. How much of this had been planted one could hardly determine—the arrangement was so natural and so beautiful; but I have seldom seen such grand old elms, oaks, lindens and beeches, and they were almost everywhere interspersed with evergreens and thickets of shrubbery. The beeches—both the common and the red varieties—grow in wonderful perfection, with wide-spreading limbs, forming perfect pyramids to the height of 60 to 80 feet. When we were there they were so loaded with nuts that the lower branches often rested upon the ground. I did not wonder that the poet was proud of his trees.

  The friend of Cardinals Manning and Newman, the disciple of Wordsworth, the associate of most of the well-known men of the century which has almost reached its end, he is a connecting link of the present with the past, one of the solitary survivors—does he find it, one wonders, a little lonely?—of the notable group of world-wide reputation which counted among its members such men as Tennyson, Southey, Sir William Hamilton, Lord Houghton, Henry Taylor, Landor, Coventry Patmore, and many others.

General

  He is not the most poetical poet of this century; but of the poetical poets he is by far the most intellectual, next after, if after, Coleridge and Wordsworth. If the justness of his intellect were equal to its range of power, few among the poets would be greater than he.

  In point of language, our author inherits an Irishman’s full measure of vocabulary. Through a most varied series of metres, his verse is full of ease, fluency, and grace. In rhythm he rises to the rank of an artist. He has passed the first degree—that baccalaureateship of verse-making whose diploma is perfect smoothness and melody; where Tom Moore took a double first, and beyond which so few ever attain. He is one of the maestri, like Tennyson and Swinburne, who know the uses of a discord, and can handle diminished sevenths. His lines are full of subtle shadings, and curious sub-felicities of diction, that not everyone feels, and few save the devotees to metre (such as we own ourselves to be) pause to analyze and admire. His taste, too, is fastidiously unerring; there is never a swerve beyond the cobweb boundaries of the line of beauty. Sometimes he misses the exact word he wants, but he never halts for want of a good one. The only deficiency arises from his temperament.

  The most marvellous character in human history, is the one of all others whom Mr. de Vere, with a courage which, if not justified by the result, can only be looked upon as either rashness or folly, has undertaken to set living and real before us, speaking the speech, thinking the thoughts, scheming the schemes, dreaming the dream of Alexander. Greatness thus becomes one of the necessary standards by which we must judge Mr. de Vere’s work…. The action of the piece is rapid; the characters, small and great, rounded and full; the scenes most varied and dramatically set. The clew to the play we take to be that old whisper which first allured our parents from the allegiance, and tempts forever the race of man: Ye shall be as gods.

  As a rule Mr. Aubrey de Vere prefers the high places of the intellect to these lower literary levels, and is more uniformly philosophical than we expect any man to be who writes “chiefly on poetry.”… Mr. Aubrey de Vere’s style, though fluent, correct, and dignified, is lacking in that grip which is given by the living expression of the vividly conceived thought in the apt word that such a thought always brings with it. It is expatiatory, and gives us no sense of inevitableness. The writer himself wisely remarks that “energetic truth forbids diffuseness, for it is through brief select expression that thoughts disclose their character. Clearness and intensity are thus found together, and to write with these is to write with force.” This is well put; but if we apply these words to Mr. Aubrey de Vere’s own style, we are compelled to draw the inference that his realisation of the truth he has to expound is very insufficiently “energetic,” for he is frequently diffuse, hardly ever intense, and not always even clear…. I must not be understood to say that Mr. Aubrey de Vere is ever obscure with that purely literary obscurity which makes any single sentence at all difficult to understand. The want of clearness inheres not in parts, but in the whole; and it evidently comes from the lack of that energetic dealing with truth which he so rightly admires.

  He is acknowledged by the most careful and best equipped critics to be, in certain departments of poetry, unequalled. If he were not so Christian, I should, nevertheless, proclaim him as a poet who deserves to rank beside Tennyson. But as he is, above all, Christian, I am very happy in pointing out to you, among a race of literary neo-pagans, the one poet who is great as a poet, true as a man, magnificent in his adherence to Divine Truth…. Aubrey de Vere’s “Saint Thomas of Canterbury” has a foil in “Becket” which, by contrast, makes it glow and seem more full of lustre and color, as a diamond of flawless purity when put in a circle of brilliants. It is hard to account for the blindness of the poet of the “Idyls of the King” in venturing to attempt a work that had already been perfectly done. Aubrey de Vere’s place as a great dramatic poet was settled when “Alexander the Great” appeared. “Saint Thomas of Canterbury” was not needed to teach the world what he could do. But he has given it out of the abundance of his heart; and we Catholics who have the key of faith with which to unlock its mysteries, which are unknown to a poet of even Tennyson’s insight, may thank God that he has raised up a seer at once strong, pure, true to his ideals both in religion and art, more than worthy to wear the mantle that fell from the shoulders of Wordsworth, and with much of the divine fire that made Shakepeare an arbiter of English thought and speech.

  Much of Mr. de Vere’s finest verse is cast in a meditative and serious mould, and is occasionally mystical. Hence probably it is that his poems have not been popular in the strict sense, though they have never lacked warm admirers. At his best he shows a distinct command over poetic methods. As a sonneteer he is especially successful; indeed, it is, perhaps, as a writer of sonnets that he, like his father, is most widely known. In reality, however, there is more variety in his poetry than is supposed by readers only partially acquainted with his work. Many of his idylls prove conclusively that he has caught the true feeling for the old Greek mythology which distinguishes some of the most splendid work of the great poets of our time.

  No other poem of mine was written more intensely, I may say more painfully, from my heart than “Inisfail.” Some of its English readers were displeased at Irish history being thus interpreted, though one of them, I remember, exclaimed on reading it, “Either this is the true meaning of Irish history or else it never had a meaning.” If those who were displeased imagined that the book was one likely to excite Irish political passions they must have been very simple. The book was addressed not to the many, but to the thoughtful and the few, and at least as much to English statesmen as to Irish patriots.

  Reverence and awe—essential characteristics of the devotional spirit—are strongly marked in Mr. de Vere’s religious verse; and short as some of his religious poems are, they seem to reproduce the very atmosphere of devotion from which they evidently sprung.

  De Vere’s poetry moves on a high plane of ethical contemplation, and is brightened by a rich imagination; but he lacked the lyrical gift, and his best work is to be praised chiefly as possessing a grave austerity of thought and a stately dignity in its diction.