RECENT POETRY.

The Light of Asia. By Edwin Arnold, M. A. Boston: Roberts Brothers. Blanid. By Robert D. Joyce, author of "Deidre." Ibid.

The Poetical Works of Bayard Taylor. Household edition. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co.

THE light of Asia has been long in reaching the heaven of European song. It twinkled on the chalky cliffs of England in a letter from Mary Wortley Montagu, written to the poet Pope from Adrianople on April 1, 1717, and containing a copy of verses addressed by Ibrahim Pasha, the reigning favorite of Achmet III., to the eldest daughter of that potentate, to whom he was contracted in marriage. Her ladyship took abundant pains, she wrote, to get a literal translation of them, which is evident enough, and she thought they resembled the Song of Solomon. She sent them to her correspondent as a curiosity rather than as a poem, for she appreciated their poetic qualities so slightly that she immediately set to work and spoiled them by turning them into sing-song heroics. About this time, or possibly a little earlier, Parnell wrote his poem "The Hermit," which is unquestionably of Eastern origin, and is fully worthy of its reputation as a moral apologue. It was followed by four musical but absurd productions, the work of a true poet, in whose exquisite little volume they may be read to-day as "Oriental Eclogues." Of greater intellectual value than these was the famous "Vision of Mirza" in the "Spectator," and of doubtful value was Johnson's lumbering story of "Rasselas." Of no value at all were the many delineations of Asiatic personages in the early poetic drama of England-its Tamburlaines, Bajazets, Aurungzebesmonstrosities that would be laughable, if they were not horrible. A host of other Orientalities-the spawn of these, and of the Anglicized version of Galland's French paraphrase of "The Thousand and One Nights"-"Persian Tales," "Chinese Tales," "Tales of the Genii," and what not-confounded the English mind with their

vast and varied misinformation concerning the literature of the East. It might have been enlightened, however, toward the close of the last century by Sir William Jones, who was one of the first, if not the first, Englishman to devote himself seriously to Oriental studies, which were then in their infancy among Europeans, and who achieved what was then thought to be eminence therein. His scholarship was more remarkable than his talents, which were not distinguished for force or originality, and were rather of a judicial than poetic order. He wrote two volumes of elaborate trifles in rhyme, among which were a number of translations, paraphrases, and imitations, in Latin and English, of Arabic, Persian, Chinese, and Turkish poems, besides a series of hymns in honor of several Hindoo deities. It is possible to read these languid exercises in verse, but it requires a large fund of patience to do so, and a determination to find something characteristic in them. Only one of Sir William's Eastern poems has come down to us through the poetic anthologies-a loose paraphrase, for it is in no sense a translation, of the gazel of Hafiz, beginning "Egher an Turki Shirazi," which is chiefly remembered on account of its single quotable line

"Like Orient pearls at random strung."

If Sir William had been a poet, the light of Asia might have reached us sooner than it did, and its white radiance need not have been obscured, as it was by the lurid glooms of Byron and the twinkling illuminations of Moore. But it was not lost, for gleams of it struggled out now and then in the poems of Leigh Hunt, whose "Abou Ben-Adhem" will live as long as the language; in those of Trench, whose "Poems from Eastern Sources" are the best things that he has written; and in Matthew Arnold's "Sohrab and Rustem," a noble rendering of the most pathetic episode of the Shah Nameh of Ferdousi, and in his "Sick King in Bokhara "-a soultroubled relation of the melancholy Prince of Denmark. Nor was it merely handed down to us by the poets, like the torches in the old Greek game, for, the more the languages of the East were studied, the clearer it became. It was a guiding star to scholars all over Europe who dedicated their lives to the study of Sanskrit, and Persian, and Chinese: it was a fresh source of inspiration to Goethe, and Rückert, and Bodenstedt and it was a stumbling-block to Christian missionaries, who were obliged to translate its Scriptures before they could hope to supplant them. We owe these good gentlemen more, no doubt, than they intended we should; for, in

:

their endeavor to show the superiority of our religion over the religions of the East, they were compelled to state just what those religions are, and, in so doing, to place in our hands a standard of comparison which we did not before possess, and which perhaps is not so favorable to their own dogmatism as they suppose. But, however this may be, and through whatever means it has been gained, authentic and noble knowledge of the cradle of the race has become a part of our intellectual inheritance, and has prepared us to welcome its latest manifestation in "The Light of Asia."

The mere word "Asia" summons a thousand remembrances "From the dark backward and abysm of Time "—

remembrances of the primitive race as they are recorded in tradition the goings forth of men with their flocks and herds; encampments of tents followed by villages of huts, which in turn are followed by walled towns and cities; kingdoms of which we only know the names of their rulers, and that their peoples were of less account in their eyes than the wild beasts they hunted; the building up of great empires, structures of tyrannous power, cemented with blood, and the downfall of those empires when the measure of their iniquity was full-scenes of carnage and destruction which the Muse of History shudders to contemplate. But there is another Asia than this; for upon the stage of this gigantic theatre, where light and darkness are struggling so tumultuously, we see glorious and majestic shapes, and a splendor of opulence without a parallel in later times. And there is still another Asia, which goes back beyond these, and is yet an important factor in the history of the world-the mysterious mother of myths which have shaped themselves into Religion. It is this greater Asia which is the inspiration of Mr. Arnold, who has selected its gentlest and most gracious benefactor as the hero of his poem. The life of this extraordinary personage who is sometimes known as Gautama, at others as Sâkya-Muni, but more generally as Buddha, is so overlaid with myths that it is difficult to distinguish the man as he was from his magnified reflection in the minds of his followers. The date of his birth, which varies largely in the different countries where his religion prevails, is supposed by European scholars to have been in the first quarter of the sixth century before the Christian era. His name was Siddârtha, and he was the son of King Suddhôdana and of Maya his queen. Stripped of its poetic garb, the story of his childhood is that of a beautiful prince who was gifted with genius,

and who was secluded by his parents lest he should discover the sorrows and sufferings of mankind. They surrounded him with all that could please the eye and gratify the senses; and if ever prince should have been happy it was he. But he was born for higher things, and he sought them in solitary musings-in solemn visions and far-reaching dreams

"In which the burden of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world

Was lightened."

Happy in his marriage-for he weds a beautiful princess, whom he wins from all his rivals by feats of strength and skill-a longing to see the world haunts him like a passion, and he orders his chariot to be yoked

"That he may ride abroad and see mankind."

His father commands the city to be gayly decked, and that no one who is halt or maimed, sick or stricken in years, shall come forth. Prince Siddârtha rides along joyously until he meets a man whose back is bent with the burden of many years, and who solicits alms. Then he knows what age is :

"Turn back, and drive me to my home again!

I have seen that I did not think to see."

He rode forth again, and beheld a wretch smitten with the plague, and, as he had before known what age was, so now he knew what death was. He returned to his palace sorrowfully, and, brooding over the misery that he had seen, it was borne in upon him that there must be a cure for it, and that he, or such a one as he, who having much to give gave it all for the good of man, and spent himself in the search for truth, would find it, and so bless the race :

"Surely at last, far off, sometime, somewhere,
The veil would lift for his deep-searching eyes,
The road would open for his painful feet,
That should be won for which he lost the world,
And Death might find him conqueror of death."

So he arose one night, leaving his wife and his unborn child, and went forth on his wanderings after wisdom. He sojourned awhile

among the most learned Brahmans, who sought to detain him, but without success, for they could not direct him to what he sought. He was beset by temptations, which he baffled, and passed through dire conflicts with hostile deities, who could not prevail against him. At last, after years of wandering and meditation, when he was sitting under a bôdhi-tree, he understood the riddle of life and death, and attained Nirvâna. Illuminated with divine wisdom, and filled with infinite pity, he returned to the city of his birth, making many converts by the way, and reached it after a twelve years' separation from his wife, who, with five hundred ladies of rank, embraced his faith. Such was Buddha, whose religious tenets propagated themselves rapidly, and are to-day the faith of nearly five hundred millions of mankind.

What concerns us critically is not Buddhism, but Buddha, who certainly ranks among the great names of the world. Sympathy such as he felt for suffiering, and recognition of the brotherhood of the race, was a mental phenomenon in his time, and, if it had been looked for at all, would have been looked for in a peasant, never in a prince. The high station which Buddha filled, and from which he descended in his love of mankind, glorified his life of abnegation, and imparted an heroic element to his character, both as a man and a religious teacher, an element which Mr. Arnold is the first English poet to perceive. He has followed the accepted facts of his life, retaining as much of its mythological machinery as was necessary for his purpose, and has constructed a narrative poem which is as creditable to his imagination as if it were his own invention instead of a rifacimento of an old legend. It is orderly in its arrangement of incidents and its development, artistic in its succession of picturesque effects, and noticeable for its fluency. Mr. Arnold's blank verse has the merit of movement, and the demerit of carelessness. His vocabulary is not large, and his ear is not nice. With all its blemishes, however, it is an honest, manly, beautiful piece of writing, which will be read with delight by the lovers of poetry, and with interest by the student of ethics. No other poem with which we are acquainted is so thoroughly informed with the spiritual life of the East, with its gentleness, its compassion, and its selfsacrifice, and with what it has sought and found in its unwearied searches into the mysteries of life and death. What Mr. Tennyson has done for King Arthur, Mr. Arnold has done for Buddha, whose divine personality is henceforth enthroned in the heavens of English song, where it is indeed the Light of Asia.