Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet, was born at Carlisle, 31st January 1784. In 1809 he became clerk to a bank at Woodbridge, a post which he held till within two days of his death, 19th February 1849. His “Metrical Effusions” (1812) brought him into correspondence with Southey; whilst “Poems by an Amateur” (1818), “Poems” (1820), and several more volumes of verse, increased his reputation, and gained him the friendship of Lamb. His devotional poems have an echo of George Herbert, and some of his lyrics are graceful; but he is on the whole less a poet than a versifier, easy and pleasant withal. Lamb’s advice to him was sound, “Keep to your bank, and your bank will keep you;” and by Lamb’s advice it was that he accepted the sum of £1200, raised by some Quaker friends in 1824. See his “Poems and Letters” (1849), selected by his daughter, with a memoir by her husband, Edward FitzGerald, and E. V. Lucas’s “Bernard Barton and his Friends” (1894).
Personal
To those of his own neighbourhood he was known besides as a most amiable, genial, charitable man—of pure, unaffected, unpretending piety—the good neighbour—the cheerful companion—the welcome guest—a hospitable host—tolerant of all men, sincerely attached to many. Few, high or low, but were glad to see him at his customary place in the bank; to exchange some words of kindly greeting with him—few but were glad to have him at their own homes; and there he was the same man and had the same manners to all; always equally frank, genial, and communicative, without distinction of rank. He had all George Fox’s “better part”—thorough independence of rank, titles, wealth, and all the distinctions of haberdashery, without making any needless display of such independence. He could dine with Sir Robert Peel one day, and the next day sup off bread and cheese with equal relish at a farmhouse, and relate with equal enjoyment at the one place what he had heard and seen at the other…. He was excellent company in all companies; but in none more than in homely parties, in or out of doors, over the winter’s fire in the farmhouse, or under the tree in summer. He had a cheery word for all; a challenge to good fellowship with the old—a jest with the young—enjoying all, and making all enjoyable and joyous.
Your father and I visited Woodbridge yesterday. There we saw Bernard Barton’s old home, the little quiet house behind the Bank, and the small room where he wrote his poetry and his letters, his bedroom, his kitchen, and that which used to be his drawing-room. We heard many traits of his character, all carefully treasured up in the mind of our informant. We found that his dear friend and housekeeper—the Mary Unwin of his life—has now been dead these five years; and that his daughter Lucy, Mrs. Fitzgerald, lives at Brighton. We were told in their old home, that she was then in Woodbridge, at the house of Mr. Jones, the surgeon, and there we went to call on her. But she was gone. Mr. Jones, however, we saw. He took us into his sumptuous drawing-room, and talked to us about “old Barton,” “dear old Barton,” “good old Barton,” since whose death Woodbridge had never been itself.
I recall him as he walked the streets of London on his visits there, in a broad-brimmed hat and coat of quakerish cut: a tall man, with a complexion telling less of the counting-house than of walks among the fields and lanes that environ Woodbridge in quiet Suffolk.
General
Some weeks ago my friend Mr. Rogers showed me some of the Stanzas in MS., and I then expressed my opinion of their merit, which a further perusal of the printed volume has given me no reason to revoke. I mention this as it may not be disagreeable to you to learn that I entertained a very favourable opinion of your power before I was aware that such sentiments were reciprocal.
The volume before us has all the purity, the piety and gentleness, of the Sect to which its author belongs—with something too much perhaps of their sobriety. The style is rather diffuse and wordy, though generally graceful, flowing, and easy; and though it cannot be said to contain many bright thoughts or original images, it is recommended throughout by a truth of feeling and an unstudied earnestness of manner, that wins both upon the heart and the attention. In these qualities, as well as in the copiousness of the diction and the facility of the versification, it frequently reminds us of the smaller pieces of Cowper,—the author, like that eminent and most amiable writer, never disdaining ordinary words and sentiments when they come in his way, and combining, with his most solemn and contemplative strains, a certain air of homeliness and simplicity, which seems to show that the matter was more in his thoughts than the manner, and that the glory of fine writing was less considered than the clear and complete expression of the sentiments, for the sake of which alone he was induced to become a writer.
As might be expected, he writes with sweetness, simplicity, and good sense; the two latter very rare commodities at present in poetry, when the bards of England go abroad to write, and bring home all the fervid heats of a tropical sun, backed by the scorching sirocco of the desert, to excite us into a proper degree of poetical enthusiasm. Friend Bernard’s poetry is tender without exaggeration, and simple without childishness. His Pegasus is neither an elephant, a camel, nor a dromedary, but a horse of good pace and habits. In a better age of poetry he would be more admired. As it is, his Muse wants a few of the buttons of the honourable band of gentlemen pensioners to make her shine, and is, moreover, rather drab-coloured for the present flashy taste.
My Dear Sir—Your title of “Poetic Vigils” arrides me much more than a volume of verse, which is no meaning. The motto says nothing, but I cannot suggest a better. I do not like mottoes but where they are singularly felicitous; there is foppery in them. They are unplain and un-Quakerish. They are good only where they flow from the title, and are a kind of justification of it. There is nothing about watchings or lucubrations in the one you suggest; no commentary on vigils. By the way, a wag would recommend you to the line of Pope,
| “Sleepless himself—to give his readers sleep.” |
I can hardly tell why I cannot take to him: I have dreamt, I believe, that he is a sort of priggish Quaker, and I hate his straight-haired effigy—a reasonable reason!
Barton’s style is diffuse, but simple and graceful. His poetry is generally descriptive and meditative, tender and devoted, and animated by cheerful views of life.
The great bulk of Poems is religious; but there are not wanting those of a lighter character, which will be found to be the wholesome relaxation of a pure, good, and essentially religious mind. These may succeed each other as graceful and beneficently as April sunshine and showers over the meadow. So indeed such moods followed in his own mind, and were so revealed in his domestic intercourse.
The Poems, if not written off as easily as the Letters, were probably as little elaborated as any that ever were published. Without claiming for them the highest attributes of poetry (which the author never pretended to), we may surely say they abound in genuine feeling and elegant fancy expressed in easy, and often very felicitous, verse. These qualities employed in illustrating the religious and domestic affections, and the pastoral scenery with which such affections are perhaps most generally associated, have made Bernard Barton, as he desired to be, a household poet with a large class of readers—a class, who, as they may be supposed to welcome such poetry as being the articulate voice of those good feelings yearning in their own bosoms, one may hope will continue and increase in England. While in many of these Poems it is the spirit within that redeems an imperfect form—just as it lights up the irregular features of a face into beauty—there are many which will surely abide the test of severer criticism.
He sang of what he loved—the domestic virtues in man, and the quiet pastoral scenes in nature; and no one can read his poetry without feeling it to be the production of one of a chastened imagination, pure moral feeling, and who sympathized with all that tends to elevate and bless man. His works are full of passages of natural tenderness and his religious poems, while they are animated with a warmth of devotion, are still expressed with that subdued propriety of language which evinces at once a correctness of taste and feeling.
“Barton’s poetry makes no lofty pretensions, but it is rich in true feeling, and evinces a chaste and cultivated fancy. His verse, which is generally easy and graceful, sometimes conspicuously so, is seldom very faulty; and several of his poems have numerous passages that are affluent of felicities of expression. On the whole, his sonnets, which are quite numerous, are probably the most correct and fervid of his poems, and many of them will compare advantageously with the best by our minor poets.”
Bernard Barton is chiefly remembered as the friend of Lamb. His many volumes of verse are quite forgotten. Even the scanty book of selections published by his daughter contains much that might have been omitted. He wrote easily—too easily—and never troubled to correct what he had written. But all his work is unaffected; nor are there wanting occasional touches of deep and genuine pathos. In his devotional verses there is a flavour of old-world quaintness and charm, recalling homely George Herbert’s “Temple;” and in other lyrics Edward Fitzgerald found something of the “leisurely grace” that distinguishes the Greek Anthology.
His verse commended itself both to Southey (who had a kindly but rather disastrous weakness for minor bards) and to Byron, but has little value.
The Quaker poet wrote, in fact, what may be described without disparagement as Quaker poetry, sober, sensible, and modest, if withal formal, homely and drab…. He wrote easily and without revision, and aimed at morality rather than poetry, with the result that he produced a large quantity of prosy verse.
