Robert Buchanan.

1841-1901.

HAD Robert Buchanan added to his other laurels those of a politician and orator he would have rivalled the versatility of the first Lord Lytton, who was surely the most variously endowed Englishman of his time.

As it was he made his mark as poet, novelist, biographer-his sketch of David Gray is a delightful piece of biographical work-essayist, critic, and playwright; and if it cannot truly be said of him, as it was said of Goldsmith, that he touched nothing which he did not adorn, it may be declared by the most exacting critic that in every kind of intellectual labour to which he put his hand he, somewhere or other, left an impress which no seeing eye can mistake for anything but the sign manual of genius.

And yet, curiously enough, while he was essentially a poet, and a novelist, playwright, and the rest only, as it were, par hasard, the work which is most characteristic, most truly his, has obtained recognition noticeably scanty when compared with that accorded to the other work which speaks of a talent rather than of a personality. His novels good and bad—and he produced both-have been read by thousands; night after night his plays have been greeted with the applause of crowded houses; but his poetry, though

it has numerous and warm admirers, cannot be said to have even yet caught the ear of the " great reading public,"—a fact all the more curious because, as will speedily be seen, his verse, while possessing many of the higher poetical qualities which will always appeal exclusively to the few, is peculiarly rich in other qualities which are in the best sense of the word popular.

Yet, strange as it is, it is certainly true that numbers of readers who could stand a fairly rigorous examination in Browning, Tennyson, or Matthew Arnold, will confess that Robert Buchanan is known to them only by "Phil Blood's Leap," "The Wedding of Shon Maclean," or possibly also by "St. Abe and his Seven Wives."

Robert Buchanan was born August 18th, 1841, his father being proprietor of a Glasgow newspaper, a journalist, and a writer on themes other than those covered by ordinary journalism. Nurtured thus in a semi-literary atmosphere, the youth seems to have shown a strong impulse towards the imaginative expression of himself in verse,—an impulse which must have been indefinitely strengthened and stimulated by an ardent friendship he had formed with a somewhat older but still young Scottish poet, David Gray.

The story of this friendship Buchanan has told in pathetic prose; his grief for the loss of his friend, too soon laid low, he has celebrated in eloquent and tender verse:-here, where elaborate detail of biographical record is impossible, it must suffice to say that in the spring of 1860 the two lads-for they were little more-took flight to London, that great metropolis of letters, confident of their ability to "cultivate

literature on a little oatmeal," if no better fare were procurable.

Gray left London only to die; Robert Buchanan remained to struggle, and for long the struggle was a hard one, though in the year just mentioned he achieved the publication of Undertones," his first book of verse. This was followed in 1865 by "Idyls and Legends of Inverburn," and in 1866 by the "London Poems," two volumes in which the note of individuality was much more clearly discernible than in the earlier efforts, which, though full of promise, were of necessity tentative and, in a less degree, imitative as well.

During the intervening years the poet was largely occupied by prose and verse contributions to various periodicals, notably to the magazines published by Mr. A. Strahan, who was doubtless drawn to a brother Scot.

But by this time Robert Buchanan had impressed himself on a public if not on the public; and works of poetry and criticism, mainly the former, followed each other in rapid succession. The growth of his reputation was probably interrupted by his unfortunate article on "The Fleshly School of Poetry" (1871), and of his material prosperity by a luckless adventure in journalism; but he speedily regained lost ground.

In 1876 appeared his novel "The Shadow of the Sword," an impressive romance which has had many successors, though perhaps not more than one that is really worthy of it; and in later years he won fame in other than purely literary circles by various successful plays, the most popular of which were his effective adaptations to histrionic ends of certain famous

eighteenth-century novels. Even this did not absorb all his intellectual energies, for from time to time he enriched contemporary literature by the publication of a new volume of verse; and the appearance in 1889 of an important poem, "The City of Dream," provided sufficing evidence of his fidelity to what was certainly his true vocation.

When a critic in attempting an estimate of the work of any literary producer performs his task under conditions which render brevity essential, he will, if he be wise, endeavour to concentrate his attention upon the special element in that work. or the special portion of it, which is so strongly individualised as to be more or less recognisably unique. Uniqueness is not in itself a valuable quality, for it may be achieved by whim, perversity, affectation, or even simple ignorance; but when other qualities intrinsically valuable are unique or even rare, their uniqueness or rarity gives to them an added extrinsic worth. In a complete survey of Robert Buchanan's work the question needing an answer would be, "What has he done?" In this survey which, in the nature of things, cannot be exhaustive, the critic must fain be content to answer as best he can the narrower, but hardly less interesting question, "What has he done that no one else has done at all, or done quite so well, or quite in the same way?" Now, in his verse, not less than in his total literary product, Robert Buchanan displayed such versatility of endowment that any answer to such question-involving, as it must, a selection and an exclusion-will needs have a look of arbitrariness or dogmatism; but this is an unavoidable misfortune, and in this place all proper

dubitations, qualifications, and reserves must be taken for granted. Be it said, then,-without any implied depreciation of his longer narrative poems,-whether like "Balder" they possess a spiritual significance, or, like "White Rose and Red," dispense with it; of such dramatic or semi-dramatic performances as "Political Mystics" and "Saint Abe;" of those reincarnations of the old ballad spirit, of which "The Lights of Leith" is an impressive example, or of his sonnets and miscellaneous lyrics, which vary much in individuality of treatment, but are often of rare beauty-that the work of Robert Buchanan, which must be put in evidence when the critic makes his reply to the postulated question, is to be found partly in the "London Poems" and in other pieces devoted to the homely or terrible realities of the life of the poor, and partly in those remarkable examples of imaginative mysticism most adequately represented by the contents of "The Book of Orm, the Celt."

In his choice of subjects for the majority of the "London Poems," it may be frankly admitted that Buchanan followed the lead of Wordsworth, who in the early days of the 19th century had sought "the huts where poor men lie," and had succeeded in idealising the most apparently unpromising material, not by ignoring or tampering with prosaic details, but by exhibiting them in front of a moral or emotional background suffused with a light which transfigured and glorified them. Wordsworth, however, had an advantage over the later poet, inasmuch as his poems of the poor were exclusively or mainly rural idyls. The lowliest life spent in the country, howsoever prosaic in itself, is lived in