Of
course, such a word as "lady" is made to do good service, and "ye" asserts
its well-known superiority to "you." All this the author evidently
considers highly meritorious, although the words are entirely unsuitable.
His notion seems to be, that these are poetical words, and the way to write
poetry is to take all the exclusively poetical words you can find. The
occasional attempt to make his verses familiar and natural by the use of
such abbreviations as "I've" or "can't" is as much a failure as the effort
of an awkward man in a ball-room to make everybody think him at his ease by
forcing an unhappy smile and a look of preternatural buoyancy.
From the beginning to the end of "Hester," there is one unerring indication
of an uncultivated mind and an unpractised pen. This is the writer's
fondness for well-worn phrases, which authors of a severer taste have long
discarded as suited only to the newspapers, but which Mr. Beckett has
picked up with eager delight, and, having distributed them liberally
throughout the poem, contemplates with a complacency to be matched only by
his satisfaction with the success of his expedients for filling out his
rhymes, some of which are certainly ingenious and startling,
The plot is a jumble of improbabilities, to which we would gladly attend,
for it passes even the liberal bounds of poetic license, but we have
already spent all the time we can upon the New Poem, and we must decline
(in Mr. Beckett's own impressive language) any further "to distend the
title.
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