In this sudden avalanche of sorrows Sterling,weak and worn as we have seen,bore up manfully,and with pious valor fronted what had come upon him.He was not a man to yield to vain wailings,or make repinings at the unalterable:here was enough to be long mourned over;but here,for the moment,was very much imperatively requiring to be done.That evening,he called his children round him;spoke words of religious admonition and affection to them;said,"He must now be a Mother as well as Father to them."On the evening of the funeral,writes Mr.Hare,he bade them good-night,adding these words,"If I am taken from you,God will take care of you."He had six children left to his charge,two of them infants;and a dark outlook ahead of them and him.The good Mrs.Maurice,the children's young Aunt,present at this time and often afterwards till all ended,was a great consolation.
Falmouth,it may be supposed,had grown a sorrowful place to him,peopled with haggard memories in his weak state;and now again,as had been usual with him,change of place suggested itself as a desirable alleviation;--and indeed,in some sort,as a necessity.He has "friends here,"he admits to himself,"whose kindness is beyond all price,all description;"but his little children,if anything befell him,have no relative within two hundred miles.He is now sole watcher over them;and his very life is so precarious;nay,at any rate,it would appear,he has to leave Falmouth every spring,or run the hazard of worse.Once more,what is to be done?Once more,--and now,as it turned out,for the last time.
A still gentler climate,greater proximity to London,where his Brother Anthony now was and most of his friends and interests were:these considerations recommended Ventnor,in the beautiful Southeastern corner of the Isle of Wight;where on inquiry an eligible house was found for sale.The house and its surrounding piece of ground,improvable both,were purchased;he removed thither in June of this year 1843;and set about improvements and adjustments on a frank scale.By the decease of his Mother,he had become rich in money;his share of the West-India properties having now fallen to him,which,added to his former incomings,made a revenue he could consider ample and abundant.Falmouth friends looked lovingly towards him,promising occasional visits;old Herstmonceux,which he often spoke of revisiting but never did,was not far off;and London,with all its resources and remembrances,was now again accessible.He resumed his work;and had hopes of again achieving something.
The Poem of _Coeur-de-Lion_has been already mentioned,and the wider form and aim it had got since he first took it in hand.It was above a year before the date of these tragedies and changes,that he had sent me a Canto,or couple of Cantos,of _Coeur-de-Lion_;loyally again demanding my opinion,harsh as it had often been on that side.
This time I felt right glad to answer in another tone:"That here was real felicity and ingenuity,on the prescribed conditions;a decisively rhythmic quality in this composition;thought and phraseology actually _dancing_,after a sort.What the plan and scope of the Work might be,he had not said,and I could not judge;but here was a light opulence of airy fancy,picturesque conception,vigorous delineation,all marching on as with cheerful drum and fife,if without more rich and complicated forms of melody:if a man _would_write in metre,this sure enough was the way to try doing it."For such encouragement from that stinted quarter,Sterling,I doubt not,was very thankful;and of course it might co-operate with the inspirations from his Naples Tour to further him a little in this his now chief task in the way of Poetry;a thought which,among my many almost pathetic remembrances of contradictions to his Poetic tendency,is pleasant for me.
But,on the whole,it was no matter.With or without encouragement,he was resolute to persevere in Poetry,and did persevere.When Ithink now of his modest,quiet steadfastness in this business of Poetry;how,in spite of friend and foe,he silently persisted,without wavering,in the form of utterance he had chosen for himself;and to what length he carried it,and vindicated himself against us all;--his character comes out in a new light to me,with more of a certain central inflexibility and noble silent resolution than I had elsewhere noticed in it.This summer,moved by natural feelings,which were sanctioned,too,and in a sort sanctified to him,by the remembered counsel of his late Wife,he printed the _Tragedy of Strafford_.But there was in the public no contradiction to the hard vote I had given about it:the little Book fell dead-born;and Sterling had again to take his disappointment;--which it must be owned he cheerfully did;and,resolute to try it again and ever again,went along with his _Coeur-de-Lion_,as if the public had been all with him.An honorable capacity to stand single against the whole world;such as all men need,from time to time!After all,who knows whether,in his overclouded,broken,flighty way of life,incapable of long hard drudgery,and so shut out from the solid forms of Prose,this Poetic Form,which he could well learn as he could all forms,was not the suitablest for him?
