ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)

ROBERT BUCHANAN AND THE MAGAZINES

POEMS - continued

The Battle of Isandúla
published in The Contemporary Review (April 1879.)

The Guardian (4 April, 1879 - p.6)

THE APRIL MAGAZINES.

     The Contemporary Review contains a poem on “Isandula” by Mr. Robert Buchanan. Its versification is spirited, but it cannot be said to be on the whole successful. In particular, there is an obvious jar in speaking of the Zulus as “devils,” “tigers,” &c. This is not the way in which brave men or the bards who worthily sing brave men’s deeds speak of opponents in fair fight.

___

The Examiner (5 April, 1879 - p.24-25)

     It may safely be asserted that if Mr. Alfred Tennyson were not the poet Laureate, and the author of many grand and touching poems, the two effusions of his brains and metrical faculties which head the present number of the Nineteenth Century (Kegan, Paul, and Co.) would have wandered into Mr. Knowles’s rubbish basket, instead of finding their way into its columns. Reviewers are requested by the editor to confine their quotations to extracts only; we can assure him that we were not, even for a single moment, tempted to reprint either the “Dedicatory Poem to the Princess Alice,” or “The Relief of Lucknow.” The latter we should have thought must have been written twenty years ago; yet is not the following line a distinct example of the poet’s later and not better manner?

“So that the brute bullet broke through the brain that could think for the rest.”

     We recommend the public to try and read the poem aloud. It will be as good practice for would-be elocutionists as:—

“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper,
A peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked,” &c.

. . .

     The current number of the Contemporary Review contains a poem by Robert Buchanan on the disaster at Isandula. A good many poets all over the country have already been inspired by our defeat, and have not hesitated to commit their inspirations to paper; nor is the crop yet exhausted, for we shall, in the year 1900, have to expect Mr. Tennyson’s ode. Meanwhile, we are quite satisfied with Mr. Buchanan’s. It is the most metrical, the most flowing, and the most poetic we have yet read. An ode on a battle is nothing if it does not sound well; Mr. Buchanan’s metre is well-chosen, and his verses are sonorous. There is in this number an extremely interesting letter from Russia, which we warmly commend to the few who still believe in her.

___

The Pall Mall Gazette (19 April, 1879)

MILITARY HONOUR.

     The Saturday Review noticing Mr. Buchanan’s poem in the last number of the Contemporary Review, says it might have been hoped that by this time a juster judgment on the disaster at Isandlana would have succeeded to the false one which obtained in the first instance. Mr. Robert Buchanan and people like him might safely be left to write what nonsense they can find editors to accept, but it becomes a more serious matter when we find the commander of a force in the field praising in an official report what he styles the heroic conduct of the two officers who tried to escape with the colours and were drowned in crossing the Buffalo, and other military men writing to propose that their relatives should receive some special mark of distinction for this behaviour. What change has come over the British army when flight from the field of battle, even with the colours, is to be stamped as heroic? It must be remembered that the officer who took them off must have thought he was saving his own life by so doing, and the only creditable thing about his conduct was that he should have encumbered himself with a heavy staff. The Saturday Review does not blame him, but at the same time it protests against any praise being given. The nobler part would have been to stay, as so many of the other officers did, to share the fate of their men. It is the more necessary to insist on this point, because we seem to be entering on a new phase of public opinion in these matters. The only surviving officer of the late disaster near Luneberg reports that, being well mounted, he rode off as hard as he could to that place, leaving as it is to be inferred, the remnant of his men to take their chance on foot. When an officer can be found to make such a report, it is time to ask whether we are going to set up a new standard of military honour in place of the old rules which have hitherto guided the conduct of the British army.

_____

Justinian
published in The Contemporary Review (January 1880.)

The Examiner (3 January, 1880)

     The Contemporary Review for this month is an uncommonly strong number. It opens with a brilliant sketch of England in the eighteenth century by that acute observer and graceful writer, Karl Hillebrand. He shows, and to our mind conclusively, that the political religious and literary development of England in that much decried century was one of the most active and fruitful which even our history records. Professor Stuart Blackie prefers an eloquent indictment against the accumulation of land in the hands of comparatively few owners. The words of Pliny, “Latifundia perdidere Italiam,” are his text. “Large properties are ruining Britian,” is his conclusion. The number is enriched by a really fine poem from the pen of Mr. Robert Buchanan, entitled “Justinian,” which to our mind deserves to rank with his most finished productions. It is so far above the ordinary run of magazine poetry that it would be presumptuous, nay, absurd, to enter upon a discussion of its merits in this place. Professor Calderwood attacks the most recent embodiment of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s philosophy, “The Data of Ethics.” Another valuable philosophical article is the one contributed by Professor Lotze, of Göttingen, on the philosophy of the last forty years. Mr. Mathew Browne has something interesting to say on the letters of Charles Dickens. The section devoted to contemporary life and thought in foreign countries—this time Russia and Italy—is full of suggestive matter.

___

The Academy (10 January, 1880 - p.27)

     THE Contemporary Review is somewhat dull, and ought not to publish an article of Herr Karl Hillebrand, which has been already noticed in these columns, on “England in the Eighteenth Century,” without a statement of the fact that it appeared in the Deutsche Rundschau for December. Prof. Blackie attempts to settle the land question by an appeal to the “law of nature,” which wondrous code we thought had now been abandoned. Prof. R. K. Douglas gives a sketch of the “Chinese Drama” which does not lead us to think that even the existing taste for Chinese art will lead any devotee to agitate for the establishment of a Chinese theatre. The most striking of the contents of this number is a poem by Mr. Robert Buchanan called “Justinian,” which, however, has nothing to do with the Emperor, but is the account of an amiable scientific atheist who begat a son that he might nurture him without superstition, stimulated his desire to work until his health gave way, saw him die with despair, and had none of the comforts of religion. Mr. Buchanan does full justice to the atheist and his good intentions, and the poem has much discrimination of character and much pathos. It is a pity Mr. Buchanan does not know more about obvious things. He makes the father choose for his son “the learned name Justinian,” because he wants a name whose associations are “heathen no more than Christian;” but surely Justinian was not learned, and was eminently pious and superstitious. He gives us a picture of an Italian lake which is positively excruciating. He showers upon it all the colours of the rainbow, and then makes châlets hang upon its sides and gondolas crawl across its stillness.

___

The North China Herald (18 March, 1880)

SOME ENGLISH PERIODICALS.

     Karl Hildebrand makes a stirring appeal in the January Contemporary on behalf of England in the eighteenth century. It was lately the fashion to decry the political life of that period as corrupt, its religious life as death under another name, and its literary development as contemptible. On the contrary, as the result of a minute analysis, Hildebrand shews that under all three aspects English thought and action were never more fruitful than then. It was an age of religious revival, witness Wesley and Whitfield, of literary wealth, witness Swift, and of political energy, witness the improvements introduced into the constitution, and the foreign wars in defence of European independence against schemes of universal monarchy.—Mr. Robert Buchanan tells in smoothly running verse a tale of a philosopher who brought up his only son in the Lucretian creed, and found that body of negative belief all insufficient to sustain him when death snatched away the object of his idolatry. Apart from its poetic merits, which are distinctly high, the tale is most artistically constructed to suggest a moral which is nowhere thrust under the reader’s eyes. Humour and pathos are skilfully blended into a whole which will, we think, agreeably astonish those who stand outside the very select circle of Mr. Buchanan’s admirers.— We pass by a rambling paper by Professor Blackie on Landlords and Land Laws, and a criticism by Professor Calderwood of Herbert Spencer’s last book. . . .

_____

Annus Aureolus: An Ode on the Jubilee of the Empress Victoria
published in The Contemporary Review (June 1887.)

The Globe (31 May, 1887 - p.6)

THE MAGAZINES AND THE JUBILEE.

     The Magazines for June naturally contain a good deal which has some bearing, direct or indirect, upon the great event of the month. Authors, illustrators, and editors have combined to produce a number of articles dealing either with the reign or with the life of Her Majesty, together with others of a kindred but more general nature. The poets are necessarily well to the fore. The subject was one to inspire them, and they have accordingly been inspired, not always to write poetry, but at least to produce very loyal and readable verse. Of Mr. Swinburne’s eloquent Ode in the Nineteenth Century we have spoken before. Mr. Robert Buchanan, in the Contemporary Review, supplies “An Ode on the Jubilee of the Empress Victoria,” which he entitles “Annus Aureolus.” He opens with some spirit:—

“’Tis Jubilee here, and ’tis Jubilee yonder,
As far as the sun round her Empire doth wander;
From the East to the West wakes the world in her honour,
The sunrise and sunset flash splendour upon her.”

He represents the Queen’s “subject Spirits” as attending her. First, India—

                   “Clad in woofs of strange device,
With fruitage from the fabled Eastern Aidenn,
     And gifts of precious gems and gold and spice.
On a white elephant she rides, while round her
     Like baying hounds her spotted tigers run—
Black-brow’d as night, to her who tamed and crown’d her
     She comes, with fiery eyes that front the sun.”

So come Australia, Tasmania, Canada, Albion, and Caledonia; and then Erin rises up and calls to her to “redress her children’s wrongs.” Then we are shown how,

“Huddling beneath the gas, in the dark City,
     Hagar and Mary wail their evil star.”

And in a later verse the Queen is reminded of the wars which have been waged by England in her reign. Finally, in the epode, she is told that God “lends a torch to light her path to peace transcending dreams,” that light being Love. Altogether, Mr. Buchanan’s Ode, though it has “literary merit,” is rather depressing than joyous, showing overmuch of the shadows of the past.
     In Good Words the Laureate of the occasion is the Rev. Dr. Walter Smith, whose poetical fame is not exactly commensurate with the United Kingdom, but who is known in Scotland and many English circles as a rhetorical rhymer of some power. He, too, writes an ode, and calls it “Jubilee.” Its tune is cheerful, as it should be. Of the Queen it says:—

         “Maiden, wife, and widow, queenly
               Mother of a Regal race,
                   Loyal to the Nation’s laws
                   Loyal to the People’s cause,
                   Not for favour or applause
         Thou hast done thy work serenely
               With a royal grace;
Never faltered with the Right,
     Nor faltered where thy path should be,
But walked in duty and in light
     Until this year of Jubilee.”

The various achievements of the reign are also celebrated. No fewer than two poets lift up their voices in the Leisure Hour, the Rev. S. J. Stone (author of that really stirring composition, “The Church’s One Foundation”) contributing a “Hymn,” and Miss Sarah Doudney furnishing a “Lay.” Mr. Stone, in the course of half a dozen well-turned verses, gives praise for

                       “A monarch,
     The stateliest under sun—
Yet for the tenderest woman
     That ever love has won—
For sympathy the sweetest,
     For duty grandly done.”

Miss Doudney’s lines are also more or less religious in sentiment, telling, among other things, how

         “Mother and maid and wife,
         Draw from a royal life
Such holy thoughts as lead to love and rest.”

. . .

___

The Illustrated London News (4 June, 1887 - p.2)

MAGAZINES FOR JUNE.

Contemporary Review.—
. . .

“Annus Aureolus,” Mr. Robert Buchanan’s Jubilee ode, is an inharmonious jingle of alternate double and single rhymes, with interposing strophes of shorter measure which are even more tedious than the longer lines; while neither the thoughts nor the language have any value as poetry.
     Nineteenth Century.—Here indeed is a Jubilee poem which is lyrical, musical, song-like; but Mr. Algernon Swinburne, though a masterly verse-maker, has his faults as a rhetorician; and a besetting habit of forced antithesis often mars the utterance of his best thoughts. Yet there are several noble verse, each fitly enunciating and adorning a fresh and grand idea, in this composition. One verse, which we will quote, would have been improved in syntax and in clearness of sense, though the set order of rhymes would have been deranged, by thus transposing the first two lines:—

[2]  A troubled record, foul and fair,
[1]      A simple record and serene,
           Inscribes for praise a blameless queen,
     For praise and blame, an age of care
           And change and ends unseen.

. . .

___

The Guardian (8 June, 1887)

MAGAZINES FOR JUNE.

     Two articles, dealing more or less with recent changes in Oxford, deserve a more extended notice than usual. Mr. Freeman continues his papers on “Oxford after Forty Years,” in the Contemporary, the first instalment we dealt with fully last month.
. . .

We have only space to call attention to three other contributions to the Contemporary. Mr. Gladstone, discussing the significance of the myth of “The Great Olympian Sedition” of Here, Athene, and Poseidon, regards it as representing an incident in the religious history of the Greek peninsula. Dr. R. W. Dale, the Birmingham Congregationalist minister, treats of “The Liberal Party and Home Rule” from the Radical Unionist point of view; and Mr. Robert Buchanan gives us in “Annus Aureolus” an addition to the ever-lengthening list of Jubilee odes which has more purpose than most.

_____

The Burial of Parnell
published in The Echo (12 October, 1891 - p.1)

The Northern Echo (13 October, 1891 - p.3)

The Yorkshire Post (13 October, 1891 - p.4)

     Mr. Robert Buchanan contributes some stirring lines to the Echo on the late Mr. Parnell which will not tend to soothe the exacerbated feelings of the deceased leader’s supporters. Taking for his text, “We come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him,” Mr. Buchanan turns on the current of his vitriolic pen to the tune of a dozen or more stanzas, each of which is a scathing denunciation of the plotters who strove to drive Mr. Parnell from public life. “Jackals and cowards” are among the epithets he hurls at them,, and he singles out several for special treatment. Mr. Gladstone is of the number. This is how the right hon. gentleman is described:—

Lo! Where the English Brutus stands,
     With white and reverend hair.
Bloodstains upon the wrinkled hands
     He calmly folds in prayer.
Facing all ways beneath the sky,
     Strong still, though worn and wan,
This Brutus is (so all men cry)—
     “An honourable man!”

The verses are not in the best taste, and there is a too dithyrambic flavour about them to suit most English palates, but their very faults will probably recommend them to the excited gentry who are shouting for revenge on the “murderers” of their chief.

___

The Lancashire Evening Post (13 October, 1891 - p.4)

     Mr. Robert Buchanan thinks it necessary to lay a wreath of verse on Mr. Parnell’s grave. Mr. Parnell, according to the bard, was the Cæsar of modern politics, and Mr. Gladstone is the Brutus who folds his blood-stained hands in prayer. This is a sufficient specimen of Mr. Buchanan’s political discernment. As for his rhymes, they have the customary facility of emptiness.

___

The Aberdeen Journal (14 October, 1891 - p.5)

     Mr Robert Buchanan has delivered himself of a poem anent Mr Parnell’s death, which is a very fine piece of writing, and which will no doubt have some influence on the controversy in Ireland, where anything done into poetry will assuredly have a greater effect than even the most fiery prose. It is a characteristic effort, and is thus introduced:— “When the noble leader of Irish freedom was first offered up to the false gods of moral and religious superstition, when the first foul blow was struck by the accredited High Priest, to be followed by the countless poisoned stabs of the journalist in absolution, one English voice alone arose in protestation. That voice was mine.” Then follows the “poor wreath of verse,” which he places on the great Irishman’s grave. Here is a sample laurel from it:—

Who slew this man? The cruel foe
     That stabbed our nation first;
Then Brutus, loth to strike the blow;
     Then Casca, the accurs’t:
Then freed men by his hands unbound,
     And slaves his hands had fed,
Joining the throng that ring’d him round,
     Stoned him till he was dead!

Lo, where the English Brutus stands,
     With white and reverend hair,
Bloodstains upon the wrinkled hands
     He calmly folds in prayer;
Facing all ways beneath the sky,
     Still strong, though worn and wan,
This Brutus is—so all men cry—
     “An honourable man!”

___

The Leeds Times (17 October, 1891 - p.4)

POETRY ON PARNELL.

     The death of Mr. Parnell has brought up the poets, and some of the specimens of the jingling doggerel are really good of their kind. The heaven-sent Robert Buchanan, who seems to be going from bad to worse, has delivered his ink pot of stuff like this:—

Lo! Where the English Brutus stands,
     With white and reverend hair;
Bloodstains upon the wrinkled hands
     He calmly folds in prayer.
Facing all ways beneath the sky,
     Strong still, though worn and wan,
This Brutus is (so all men cry)—
     “An honourable man!”

Brutus, of course, is Mr. Gladstone, who, according to this poet, killed Mr. Parnell. But Mr. Buchanan doesn’t stand alone. There are other people who can waste good ink, too. Listen to this, by Mary Fitzpatrick:—

But, O God, the everlasting horror,
     There he lies before us foully slain!
And the slayers his own trusted brothers—
     Lo! We brand them with the scar of Cain.

All we have to say is that if these people keep on writing poetry like that, they may, in a few years, be qualified to tar palings.

___

Typo: a Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review (New Zealand) (26 December, 1891 - Vol. 5, Issue 60, p.155)

     In the Echo of 12th October, Mr Robert Buchanan has a poem of sixteen eight-line stanzas, full of fiery invective, on “The Burial of Parnell.” It is prefaced by a prose note: “When the noble Leader of Irish Freedom was first offered up to the false gods of moral and religious superstition, … one English voice alone arose in protest. That voice was mine,” &c. The fifteenth stanza is a good sample of the poem:

Not till our King lay bleeding there,
     Crept forth with cruel eyne
The venom’d things which make their lair
     Beneath the Seven-Hill’d shrine:
Then in the name of Him they priced,
     Degraded, and betrayed,
They poisoned, these false priests of Christ,
     The wounds a Judas made!

It is strange to find so sturdy and robust a writer as Buchanan thus prostrating himself at the feet of such a clay idol as Parnell—one of the basest and most utterly selfish characters of modern times. The poet likens him to Cæsar—and as regards his ruling passion, the love of dominion, some resemblance may be admitted. No trust, public or private—no confidence, however implicitly given—was too sacred to be betrayed if it stood in the way of his ambition or of his lower passions. Before his fall, The Times was the only journal that was able to measure him. And this is the man that the erratic poet dubs Martyr, and for whom his eyes “grow dim above the holy spot where our dead monarch lies.” !Holy! The word has been grievously degraded, as in its application to certain fabricated relics; but the “holy” grave of Parnell is too much.

___

The Dundee Evening Telegraph (12 October, 1894 - p.2)

MR ROBERT BUCHANAN AND MR PARNELL.

     Mr Buchanan has contributed a poem to the Dublin Weekly Independent anent the Parnell anniversary celebration last Sunday. He introduces it by the following note:—
     “When the noble leader of Irish freedom was first offered up to the false gods of moral and religious superstition—when the first foul blow was struck by the accredited High Priest, to be followed by the countless stabs of the journalists in absolution—one English voice alone arose in protestation. That voice was mine. What I feared has come to pass, so it is not unfitting that I—an alien, but a lover of Irish freedom—should place this poor wreath of verse on the great Irishman’s grave.—R. B.”
     In the poem Mr Buchanan speaks of one Irish leader who first kissed, then smote, Mr Parnell’s cheek; of another, who mocked him with foul and impious jest; and of a third, “the basest of them all, who gnawed the bleeding breast.”

_____

Next: Robert Buchanan and the Magazines: Essays

or back to Robert Buchanan and the Magazines: List