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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/625-0.txt b/625-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..882b0a6 --- /dev/null +++ b/625-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3550 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ponkapog Papers, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you +will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before +using this eBook. + +Title: Ponkapog Papers + +Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich + +Release Date: August, 1996 [eBook #625] +[Most recently updated: July 27, 2021] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +Produced by: Judith Boss and David Widger + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PONKAPOG PAPERS *** + + + + +PONKAPOG PAPERS + +By Thomas Bailey Aldrich + + + + +TO FRANCIS BARTLETT + + + +THESE miscellaneous notes and essays are called _Ponkapog Papers_ not +simply because they chanced, for the most part, to be written within +the limits of the old Indian Reservation, but, rather, because there is +something typical of their unpretentiousness in the modesty with which +Ponkapog assumes to being even a village. The little Massachusetts +settlement, nestled under the wing of the Blue Hills, has no illusions +concerning itself, never mistakes the cackle of the bourg for the sound +that echoes round the world, and no more thinks of rivalling great +centres of human activity than these slight papers dream of inviting +comparison between themselves and important pieces of literature. +Therefore there seems something especially appropriate in the +geographical title selected, and if the author's choice of name need +further excuse, it is to be found in the alluring alliteration lying +ready at his hand. + +REDMAN FARM, _Ponkapog_, 1903. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK + + + +ASIDES + +TOM FOLIO + +FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES + +A NOTE ON “L'AIGLON” + +PLOT AND CHARACTER + +THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE + +LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORNWALL + +DECORATION DAY + +WRITERS AND TALKERS + +ON EARLY RISING + +UN POETE MANQUE + +THE MALE COSTUME OF THE PERIOD + +ON A CERTAIN AFFECTATION + +WISHMAKERS' TOWN + +HISTORICAL NOVELS + +POOR YORICK + +THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER + + + +ROBERT HERRICK + + + + + +LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK + + + + +IN his Memoirs, Kropotkin states the singular fact that the natives of +the Malayan Archipelago have an idea that something is extracted from +them when their likenesses are taken by photography. Here is the motive +for a fantastic short story, in which the hero--an author in vogue or +a popular actor--might be depicted as having all his good qualities +gradually photographed out of him. This could well be the result of +too prolonged indulgence in the effort to “look natural.” First the man +loses his charming simplicity; then he begins to pose in intellectual +attitudes, with finger on brow; then he becomes morbidly self-conscious, +and finally ends in an asylum for incurable egotists. His death might be +brought about by a cold caught in going out bareheaded, there being, for +the moment, no hat in the market of sufficient circumference to meet his +enlarged requirement. + +THE evening we dropped anchor in the Bay of Yedo the moon was hanging +directly over Yokohama. It was a mother-of-pearl moon, and might have +been manufactured by any of the delicate artisans in the Hanchodori +quarter. It impressed one as being a very good imitation, but nothing +more. Nammikawa, the cloisonne-worker at Tokio, could have made a better +moon. + +I NOTICE the announcement of a new edition of “The Two First Centuries +of Florentine Literature,” by Professor Pasquale Villari. I am not +acquainted with the work in question, but I trust that Professor Villari +makes it plain to the reader how both centuries happened to be first. + +THE walking delegates of a higher civilization, who have nothing to +divide, look upon the notion of property as a purely artificial creation +of human society. According to these advanced philosophers, the time +will come when no man shall be allowed to call anything his. The +beneficent law which takes away an author's rights in his own books just +at the period when old age is creeping upon him seems to me a handsome +stride toward the longed-for millennium. + +SAVE US from our friends--our enemies we can guard against. The +well-meaning rector of the little parish of Woodgates, England, and +several of Robert Browning's local admirers have recently busied +themselves in erecting a tablet to the memory of “the first known +forefather of the poet.” This lately turned up ancestor, who does not +date very far back, was also named Robert Browning, and is described on +the mural marble as “formerly footman and butler to Sir John Bankes of +Corfe Castle.” Now, Robert Browning the poet had as good right as Abou +Ben Adhem himself to ask to be placed on the list of those who love +their fellow men; but if the poet could have been consulted in the +matter he probably would have preferred not to have that particular +footman exhumed. However, it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Sir +John Bankes would scarcely have been heard of in our young century if +it had not been for his footman. As Robert stood day by day, sleek and +solemn, behind his master's chair in Corfe Castle, how little it entered +into the head of Sir John that his highly respectable name would be +served up to posterity--like a cold relish--by his own butler! By +Robert! + +IN the east-side slums of New York, somewhere in the picturesque Bowery +district, stretches a malodorous little street wholly given over to +long-bearded, bird-beaked merchants of ready-made and second-hand +clothing. The contents of the dingy shops seem to have revolted, and +rushed pell-mell out of doors, and taken possession of the sidewalk. One +could fancy that the rebellion had been quelled at this point, and that +those ghastly rows of complete suits strung up on either side of the +doorways were the bodies of the seditious ringleaders. But as you +approach these limp figures, each dangling and gyrating on its cord in a +most suggestive fashion, you notice, pinned to the lapel of a coat here +and there, a strip of paper announcing the very low price at which you +may become the happy possessor. That dissipates the illusion. + +POLONIUS, in the play, gets killed--and not any too soon. If it only +were practicable to kill him in real life! A story--to be called The +Passing of Polonius--in which a king issues a decree condemning to death +every long-winded, didactic person in the kingdom, irrespective of rank, +and is himself instantly arrested and decapitated. The man who suspects +his own tediousness is yet to be born. + +WHENEVER I take up Emerson's poems I find myself turning automatically +to his Bacchus. Elsewhere, in detachable passages embedded in mediocre +verse, he rises for a moment to heights not reached by any other of our +poets; but Bacchus is in the grand style throughout. Its texture can +bear comparison with the world's best in this kind. In imaginative +quality and austere richness of diction what other verse of our period +approaches it? The day Emerson wrote Bacchus he had in him, as Michael +Drayton said of Marlowe, “those brave translunary things that the first +poets had.” + + +IMAGINE all human beings swept off the face of the earth, excepting one +man. Imagine this man in some vast city, New York or London. Imagine +him on the third or fourth day of his solitude sitting in a house and +hearing a ring at the door-bell! + +No man has ever yet succeeded in painting an honest portrait of himself +in an autobiography, however sedulously he may have set to work about +it. In spite of his candid purpose he omits necessary touches and adds +superfluous ones. At times he cannot help draping his thought, and the +least shred of drapery becomes a disguise. It is only the diarist who +accomplishes the feat of self-portraiture, and he, without any such end +in view, does it unconsciously. A man cannot keep a daily record of +his comings and goings and the little items that make up the sum of his +life, and not inadvertently betray himself at every turn. He lays bare +his heart with a candor not possible to the selfconsciousness that +inevitably colors premeditated revelation. While Pepys was filling those +small octavo pages with his perplexing cipher he never once suspected +that he was adding a photographic portrait of himself to the world's +gallery of immortals. We are more intimately acquainted with Mr. +Samuel Pepys, the inner man--his little meannesses and his large +generosities--then we are with half the persons we call our dear +friends. + +THE young girl in my story is to be as sensitive to praise as a prism is +to light. Whenever anybody praises her she breaks into colors. + +IN the process of dusting my study, the other morning, the maid replaced +an engraving of Philip II. of Spain up-side down on the mantel-shelf, +and his majesty has remained in that undignified posture ever since. I +have no disposition to come to his aid. My abhorrence of the wretch is +as hearty as if he had not been dead and--otherwise provided for +these last three hundred years. Bloody Mary of England was nearly as +merciless, but she was sincere and uncompromising in her extirpation of +heretics. + +Philip II., whose one recorded hearty laugh was occasioned by the news +of the St. Bartholomew massacre, could mask his fanaticism or drop it +for the time being, when it seemed politic to do so. Queen Mary was a +maniac; but the successor of Torquemada was the incarnation of cruelty +pure and simple, and I have a mind to let my counterfeit presentment +of him stand on its head for the rest of its natural life. I cordially +dislike several persons, but I hate nobody, living or dead, excepting +Philip II. of Spain. He appears to give me as much trouble as Charles I. +gave the amiable Mr. Dick. + +AMONG the delightful men and women whom you are certain to meet at an +English country house there is generally one guest who is supposed to be +preternaturally clever and amusing--“so very droll, don't you know.” He +recites things, tells stories in costermonger dialect, and mimics public +characters. He is a type of a class, and I take him to be one of the +elementary forms of animal life, like the acalephae. His presence is +capable of adding a gloom to an undertaker's establishment. The last +time I fell in with him was on a coaching trip through Devon, and in +spite of what I have said I must confess to receiving an instant of +entertainment at his hands. He was delivering a little dissertation on +“the English and American languages.” As there were two Americans on +the back seat--it seems we term ourselves “Amurricans”--his choice +of subject was full of tact. It was exhilarating to get a lesson in +pronunciation from a gentleman who said _boult_ for bolt, called St. +John _Sin' Jun_, and did not know how to pronounce the beautiful name of +his own college at Oxford. Fancy a perfectly sober man saying _Maudlin_ +for Magdalen! Perhaps the purest English spoken is that of the English +folk who have resided abroad ever since the Elizabethan period, or +thereabouts. + +EVERY one has a bookplate these days, and the collectors are after it. +The fool and his bookplate are soon parted. To distribute one's _ex +libris_ is inanely to destroy the only significance it has, that of +indicating the past or present ownership of the volume in which it is +placed. + +WHEN an Englishman is not highly imaginative he is apt to be the most +matter-of-fact of mortals. He is rarely imaginative, and seldom has an +alert sense of humor. Yet England has produced the finest of humorists +and the greatest of poets. The humor and imagination which are diffused +through other peoples concentrate themselves from time to time in +individual Englishmen. + +THIS is a page of autobiography, though not written in the first +person: Many years ago a noted Boston publisher used to keep a large +memorandum-book on a table in his personal office. The volume always +lay open, and was in no manner a private affair, being the receptacle of +nothing more important than hastily scrawled reminders to attend to +this thing or the other. It chanced one day that a very young, unfledged +author, passing through the city, looked in upon the publisher, who was +also the editor of a famous magazine. The unfledged had a copy of verses +secreted about his person. The publisher was absent, and young Milton, +feeling that “they also serve who only stand and wait,” sat down and +waited. Presently his eye fell upon the memorandum-book, lying there +spread out like a morning newspaper, and almost in spite of himself he +read: “Don't forget to see the binder,” “Don't forget to mail E----- his +contract,” “Don't forget H-----'s proofs,” etc. An inspiration seized +upon the youth; he took a pencil, and at the tail of this long list of +“don't forgets” he wrote: “Don't forget to accept A 's poem.” He left +his manuscript on the table and disappeared. That afternoon when the +publisher glanced over his memoranda, he was not a little astonished at +the last item; but his sense of humor was so strong that he did accept +the poem (it required a strong sense of humor to do that), and sent the +lad a check for it, though the verses remain to this day unprinted. That +kindly publisher was wise as well as kind. + +FRENCH novels with metaphysical or psychological prefaces are always +certain to be particularly indecent. + +I HAVE lately discovered that Master Harry Sandford of England, the +priggish little boy in the story of “Sandford and Merton,” has a worthy +American cousin in one Elsie Dinsmore, who sedately pirouettes through +a seemingly endless succession of girls' books. I came across a nest of +fifteen of them the other day. This impossible female is carried from +infancy up to grandmotherhood, and is, I believe, still leisurely +pursuing her way down to the tomb in an ecstatic state of uninterrupted +didacticism. There are twenty-five volumes of her and the granddaughter, +who is also christened Elsie, and is her grandmother's own child, with +the same precocious readiness to dispense ethical instruction to her +elders. An interesting instance of hereditary talent! + +H-----'s intellect resembles a bamboo--slender, graceful, and hollow. +Personally, he is long and narrow, and looks as if he might have +been the product of a rope-walk. He is loosely put together, like +an ill-constructed sentence, and affects me like one. His figure is +ungrammatical. + +AMERICAN humor is nearly as ephemeral as the flowers that bloom in the +spring. Each generation has its own crop, and, as a rule, insists on +cultivating a new kind. That of 1860, if it were to break into blossom +at the present moment, would probably be left to fade upon the stem. + +Humor is a delicate shrub, with the passing hectic flush of its time. +The current-topic variety is especially subject to very early frosts, as +is also the dialectic species. Mark Twain's humor is not to be classed +with the fragile plants; it has a serious root striking deep down into +rich earth, and I think it will go on flowering indefinitely. + +I HAVE been imagining an ideal critical journal, whose plan should +involve the discharge of the chief literary critic and the installment +of a fresh censor on the completion of each issue. To place a man in +permanent absolute control of a certain number of pages, in which to +express his opinions, is to place him in a position of great personal +danger, It is almost inevitable that he should come to overrate +the importance of those opinions, to take himself with far too much +seriousness, and in the end adopt the dogma of his own infallibility. +The liberty to summon this or that man-of-letters to a supposititious +bar of justice is apt to beget in the self-appointed judge an +exaggerated sense of superiority. He becomes impatient of any rulings +not his, and says in effect, if not in so many words: “I am Sir Oracle, +and when I ope my lips let no dog bark.” When the critic reaches this +exalted frame of mind his slight usefulness is gone. + +AFTER a debauch of thunder-shower, the weather takes the pledge and +signs it with a rainbow. + +I LIKE to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every +detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the +desire to use its own wings. The partly draped statue has a charm which +the nude lacks. Who would have those marble folds slip from the raised +knee of the Venus of Melos? Hawthorne knew how to make his lovely +thought lovelier by sometimes half veiling it. + +I HAVE just tested the nib of a new pen on a slight fancy which Herrick +has handled twice in the “Hesperides.” The fancy, however, is not +Herrick's; it is as old as poetry and the exaggeration of lovers, and I +have the same privilege as another to try my fortune with it: + +UP ROOS THE SONNE, AND UP ROOS EMELYE CHAUCER + + + +When some hand has partly drawn The cloudy curtains of her bed, And my +lady's golden head Glimmers in the dusk like dawn, Then methinks is day +begun. Later, when her dream has ceased And she softly stirs and +wakes, Then it is as when the East A sudden rosy magic takes From the +cloud-enfolded sun, And full day breaks! + +Shakespeare, who has done so much to discourage literature by +anticipating everybody, puts the whole matter into a nutshell: + +But soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and +Juliet is the sun. + +THERE is a phrase spoken by Hamlet which I have seen quoted innumerable +times, and never once correctly. Hamlet, addressing Horatio, says: + +Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my +heart's core, ay, in my _heart of heart_. + +The words italicized are invariably written “heart of hearts”--as if a +person possessed that organ in duplicate. Perhaps no one living, with +the exception of Sir Henry Irving, is more familiar with the play of +Hamlet than my good friend Mr. Bram Stoker, who makes his heart plural +on two occasions in his recent novel, “The Mystery of the Sea.” Mrs. +Humphry Ward also twice misquotes the passage in “Lady Rose's Daughter.” + +BOOKS that have become classics--books that ave had their day and now +get more praise than perusal--always remind me of venerable colonels and +majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves +retired upon half pay. + +WHETHER or not the fretful porcupine rolls itself into a ball is +a subject over which my friend John Burroughs and several brother +naturalists have lately become as heated as if the question involved +points of theology. Up among the Adirondacks, and in the very heart +of the region of porcupines, I happen to have a modest cottage. This +retreat is called The Porcupine, and I ought by good rights to know +something about the habits of the small animal from which it derives +its name. Last winter my dog Buster used to return home on an average of +three times a month from an excursion up Mt. Pisgah with his nose +stuck full of quills, and _he_ ought to have some concrete ideas on the +subject. We two, then, are prepared to testify that the porcupine in its +moments of relaxation occasionally contracts itself into what might be +taken for a ball by persons not too difficult to please in the matter +of spheres. But neither Buster nor I--being unwilling to get into +trouble--would like to assert that it is an actual ball. That it is a +shape with which one had better not thoughtlessly meddle is a conviction +that my friend Buster stands ready to defend against all comers. + +WORDSWORTH'S characterization of the woman in one of his poems as “a +creature not too bright or good for human nature's daily food” has +always appeared to me too cannibalesque to be poetical. It directly sets +one to thinking of the South Sea islanders. + +THOUGH Iago was not exactly the kind of person one would select as a +superintendent for a Sunday-school, his advice to young Roderigo was +wisdom itself--“Put money in thy purse.” Whoever disparages money +disparages every step in the progress of the human race. I listened +the other day to a sermon in which gold was personified as a sort of +glittering devil tempting mortals to their ruin. I had an instant +of natural hesitation when the contribution-plate was passed around +immediately afterward. Personally, I believe that the possession of gold +has ruined fewer men than the lack of it. What noble enterprises have +been checked and what fine souls have been blighted in the gloom of +poverty the world will never know. “After the love of knowledge,” says +Buckle, “there is no one passion which has done so much good to mankind +as the love of money.” + +DIALECT tempered with slang is an admirable medium of communication +between persons who have nothing to say and persons who would not care +for anything properly said. + +DR. HOLMES had an odd liking for ingenious desk-accessories in the +way of pencil-sharpeners, paper-weights, penholders, etc. The latest +contrivances in this fashion--probably dropped down to him by the +inventor angling for a nibble of commendation--were always making one +another's acquaintance on his study table. He once said to me: “I 'm +waiting for somebody to invent a mucilage-brush that you can't by any +accident put into your inkstand. It would save me frequent moments of +humiliation.” + +THE deceptive Mr. False and the volatile Mrs. Giddy, who figure in the +pages of seventeenth and eighteenth century fiction, are not tolerated +in modern novels and plays. Steal the burglar and Palette the artist +have ceased to be. A name indicating the quality or occupation of the +bearer strikes us as a too transparent device. Yet there are such names +in contemporary real life. That of our worthy Adjutant-General Drum +may be instanced. Neal and Pray are a pair of deacons who linger in the +memory of my boyhood. Sweet the confectioner and Lamb the butcher are +individuals with whom I have had dealings. The old-time sign of Ketchum +& Cheetam, Brokers, in Wall Street, New York, seems almost too good to +be true. But it was once, if it is not now, an actuality. + +I HAVE observed that whenever a Boston author dies, New York immediately +becomes a great literary centre. + +THE possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man. +There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks. + +EVERY living author has a projection of himself, a sort of eidolon, that +goes about in near and remote places making friends or enemies for him +among persons who never lay eyes upon the writer in the flesh. When he +dies, this phantasmal personality fades away, and the author lives only +in the impression created by his own literature. It is only then that +the world begins to perceive what manner of man the poet, the novelist, +or the historian really was. Not until he is dead, and perhaps some long +time dead, is it possible for the public to take his exact measure. +Up to that point contemporary criticism has either overrated him or +underrated him, or ignored him altogether, having been misled by the +eidolon, which always plays fantastic tricks with the writer temporarily +under its dominion. It invariably represents him as either a greater or +a smaller personage than he actually is. Presently the simulacrum +works no more spells, good or evil, and the deception is unveiled. The +hitherto disregarded author is recognized, and the idol of yesterday, +which seemed so important, is taken down from his too large pedestal and +carted off to the dumping-ground of inadequate things. To be sure, if he +chances to have been not entirely unworthy, and on cool examination is +found to possess some appreciable degree of merit, then he is set up on +a new slab of appropriate dimensions. The late colossal statue shrinks +to a modest bas-relief. On the other hand, some scarcely noticed bust +may suddenly become a revered full-length figure. Between the reputation +of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there is +ever a wide discrepancy. + +A NOT too enchanting glimpse of Tennyson is incidentally given by +Charles Brookfield, the English actor, in his “Random Recollections.” + Mr. Brookfield's father was, on one occasion, dining at the Oxford and +Cambridge Club with George Venables, Frank Lushington, Alfred Tennyson, +and others. “After dinner,” relates the random recollector, “the poet +insisted upon putting his feet on the table, tilting back his chair +_more Americano_. There were strangers in the room, and he was +expostulated with for his uncouthness, but in vain. 'Do put down your +feet!' pleaded his host. 'Why should I?' retorted Tennyson. 'I 'm very +comfortable as I am.' 'Every one's staring at you,' said another. +'Let 'em stare,' replied the poet, placidly. 'Alfred,' said my father, +'people will think you're Longfellow.' Down went the feet.” That _more +Americano_ of Brookfield the younger is delicious with its fine insular +flavor, but the holding up of Longfellow--the soul of gentleness, the +prince of courtesy--as a bugaboo of bad manners is simply inimitable. It +will take England years and years to detect the full unconscious humor +of it. + +GREAT orators who are not also great writers become very indistinct +historical shadows to the generations immediately following them. The +spell vanishes with the voice. A man's voice is almost the only part of +him entirely obliterated by death. The violet of his native land may be +made of his ashes, but nature in her economy seems to have taken no care +of his intonations, unless she perpetuates them in restless waves of air +surging about the poles. The well-graced actor who leaves no perceptible +record of his genius has a decided advantage over the mere orator. The +tradition of the player's method and presence is associated with works +of enduring beauty. Turning to the pages of the dramatist, we can +picture to ourselves the greatness of Garrick or Siddons in this or that +scene, in this or that character. It is not so easy to conjure up +the impassioned orator from the pages of a dry and possibly illogical +argument in favor of or against some long-ago-exploded measure of +government. The laurels of an orator who is not a master of literary art +wither quickly. + +ALL the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of +the hour-glass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do +so, would I? + +SHAKESPEARE is forever coming into our affairs--putting in his oar, so +to speak--with some pat word or sentence. The conversation, the other +evening, had turned on the subject of watches, when one of the gentlemen +present, the manager of a large watch-making establishment, told us a +rather interesting fact. The component parts of a watch are produced +by different workmen, who have no concern with the complex piece +of mechanism as a whole, and possibly, as a rule, understand it +imperfectly. Each worker needs to be expert in only his own special +branch. When the watch has reached a certain advanced state, the work +requires a touch as delicate and firm as that of an oculist performing +an operation. Here the most skilled and trustworthy artisans are +employed; they receive high wages, and have the benefit of a singular +indulgence. In case the workman, through too continuous application, +finds himself lacking the steadiness of nerve demanded by his task, +he is allowed without forfeiture of pay to remain idle temporarily, in +order that his hand may recover the requisite precision of touch. As +I listened, Hamlet's courtly criticism of the grave-digger's want of +sensibility came drifting into my memory. “The hand of little employment +hath the daintier sense,” says Shakespeare, who has left nothing unsaid. + +IT was a festival in honor of Dai Butsu or some one of the auxiliary +deities that preside over the destinies of Japland. For three days and +nights the streets of Tokio--where the squat little brown houses look +for all the world as if they were mimicking the favorite sitting posture +of the Japanese--were crowded with smiling holiday makers, and made +gay with devices of tinted tissue paper, dolphins, devils, dragons, and +mythical winged creatures which at night amiably turned themselves into +lanterns. Garlands of these, arranged close together, were stretched +across the streets from ridgepoles to ridgepole, and your jinrikisha +whisked you through interminable arbors of soft illumination. The +spectacle gave one an idea of fairyland, but then all Japan does that. + + A land not like ours, that land of strange flowers, + Of daemons and spooks with mysterious powers-- + Of gods who breathe ice, who cause peach-blooms and rice + And manage the moonshine and turn on the showers. + + Each day has its fair or its festival there, + And life seems immune to all trouble and care-- + Perhaps only seems, in that island of dreams, + Sea-girdled and basking in magical air. + + They've streets of bazaars filled with lacquers and jars, + And silk stuffs, and sword-blades that tell of old wars; + They've Fuji's white cone looming up, bleak and lone, + As if it were trying to reach to the stars. + + They've temples and gongs, and grim Buddhas in throngs, + And pearl-powdered geisha with dances and songs: + Each girl at her back has an imp, brown or black, + And dresses her hair in remarkable prongs. + + On roadside and street toddling images meet, + And smirk and kotow in a way that is sweet; + Their obis are tied with particular pride, + Their silken kimonos hang scant to the feet. + + With purrs like a cat they all giggle and chat, + Now spreading their fans, and now holding them flat; + A fan by its play whispers, “Go now!” or “Stay!” + “I hate you!” “I love you!”--a fan can say that! + Beneath a dwarf tree, here and there, two or three + Squat coolies are sipping small cups of green tea; + They sputter, and leer, and cry out, and appear + Like bad little chessmen gone off on a spree. + + At night--ah, at night the long streets are a sight, + With garlands of soft-colored lanterns alight-- + Blue, yellow, and red twinkling high overhead, + Like thousands of butterflies taking their flight. + + Somewhere in the gloom that no lanterns illume + Stand groups of slim lilies and jonquils in bloom; + On tiptoe, unseen 'mid a tangle of green, + They offer the midnight their cups of perfume. + + At times, sweet and clear from some tea-garden near, + A ripple of laughter steals out to your ear; + Anon the wind brings from a samisen's strings + The pathos that's born of a smile and a tear. + +THE difference between an English audience and a French audience at the +theatre is marked. The Frenchman brings down a witticism on the wing. +The Briton pauses for it to alight and give him reasonable time for +deliberate aim. In English playhouses an appreciable number of seconds +usually precede the smile or the ripple of laughter that follows a +facetious turn of the least fineness. I disclaim all responsibility for +this statement of my personal observation, since it has recently been +indorsed by one of London's most eminent actors. + +AT the next table, taking his opal drops of absinthe, was a French +gentleman with the blase aspect of an empty champagne-bottle, which +always has the air of saying: “I have lived!” + +WE often read of wonderful manifestations of memory, but they are always +instances of the faculty working in some special direction. It is memory +playing, like Paganini, on one string. No doubt the persons performing +the phenomenal feats ascribed to them have forgotten more than they +remember. To be able to repeat a hundred lines of verse after a single +reading is no proof of a retentive mind, excepting so far as the hundred +lines go. A man might easily fail under such a test, and yet have a good +memory; by which I mean a catholic one, and that I imagine to be nearly +the rarest of gifts. I have never met more than four or five persons +possessing it. The small boy who defined memory as “the thing you forget +with” described the faculty as it exists and works in the majority of +men and women. + +THE survival in publishers of the imitative instinct is a strong +argument in support of Mr. Darwin's theory of the descent of man. One +publisher no sooner brings out a new style of book-cover than half a +dozen other publishers fall to duplicating it. + +THE cavalry sabre hung over the chimney-place with a knot of violets +tied to the dinted guard, there being no known grave to decorate. For +many a year, on each Decoration Day, a sorrowful woman had come and +fastened these flowers there. The first time she brought her offering +she was a slender girl, as fresh as her own violets. It is a slender +figure still, but there are threads of silver in the black hair. + +FORTUNATE was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who in early youth was taught +“to abstain from rhetoric, and poetry, and fine writing”--especially the +fine writing. Simplicity is art's last word. + +The man is clearly an adventurer. In the seventeenth century he would +have worn huge flintlock pistols stuck into a wide leather belt, and +been something in the seafaring line. The fellow is always smartly +dressed, but where he lives and how he lives are as unknown as “what +song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself +among women.” He is a man who apparently has no appointment with his +breakfast and whose dinner is a chance acquaintance. His probable banker +is the next person. A great city like this is the only geography for +such a character. He would be impossible in a small country town, where +everybody knows everybody and what everybody has for lunch. + +I HAVE been seeking, thus far in vain, for the proprietor of the saying +that “Economy is second or third cousin to Avarice.” I went rather +confidently to Rochefoucauld, but it is not among that gentleman's light +luggage of cynical maxims. + +THERE is a popular vague impression that butchers are not allowed to +serve as jurors on murder trials. This is not really the case, but it +logically might be. To a man daily familiar with the lurid incidents of +the _abattoir_, the summary extinction of a fellow creature (whether the +victim or the criminal) can scarcely seem a circumstance of so serious +moment as to another man engaged in less strenuous pursuits. WE do not, +and cannot, read many of the novels that most delighted our ancestors. +Some of our popular fiction is doubtless as poor, but poor with a +difference. There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In +every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite. +There is ragtime literature as well as ragtime music for the many. + +G----- is a man who had rather fail in a great purpose than not +accomplish it in precisely his own way. He has the courage of his +conviction and the intolerance of his courage. He is opposed to +the death penalty for murder, but he would willingly have any one +electrocuted who disagreed with him on the subject. + + +I HAVE thought of an essay to be called “On the Art of Short-Story +Writing,” but have given it up as smacking too much of the shop. It +would be too _intime_, since I should have to deal chiefly with my own +ways, and so give myself the false air of seeming to consider them of +importance. It would interest nobody to know that I always write the +last paragraph first, and then work directly up to that, avoiding all +digressions and side issues. Then who on earth would care to be told +about the trouble my characters cause me by talking too much? They will +talk, and I have to let them; but when the story is finished, I go over +the dialogue and strike out four fifths of the long speeches. I fancy +that makes my characters pretty mad. + +THIS is the golden age of the inventor. He is no longer looked upon as +a madman or a wizard, incontinently to be made away with. Two or three +centuries ago Marconi would not have escaped a ropeless end with his +wireless telegraphy. Even so late as 1800, the friends of one Robert +Fulton seriously entertained the luminous idea of hustling the poor man +into an asylum for the unsound before he had a chance to fire up the +boiler of his tiny steamboat on the Hudson river. In olden times +the pillory and the whipping-post were among the gentler forms of +encouragement awaiting the inventor. If a man devised an especially +practical apple-peeler he was in imminent danger of being peeled with it +by an incensed populace. To-day we hail with enthusiasm a scientific or +a mechanical discovery, and stand ready to make a stock company of it. + +A MAN is known by the company his mind keeps. To live continually +with noble books, with “high-erected thoughts seated in the heart of +courtesy,” teaches the soul good manners. + +THE unconventional has ever a morbid attraction for a certain class of +mind. There is always a small coterie of highly intellectual men and +women eager to give welcome to whatever is eccentric, obscure, or +chaotic. Worshipers at the shrine of the Unpopular, they tingle with a +sense of tolerant superiority when they say: “Of course this is not the +kind of thing _you_ would like.” Sometimes these impressionable souls +almost seem to make a sort of reputation for their fetish. + +I HEAR that B----- directed to have himself buried on the edge of the +pond where his duckstand was located, in order that flocks of migrating +birds might fly over his grave every autumn. He did not have to die, to +become a dead shot. A comrade once said of him: “Yes, B----- is a great +sportsman. He has peppered everything from grouse in North Dakota to his +best friend in the Maine woods.” + +WHEN the novelist introduces a bore into his novel he must not let him +bore the reader. The fellow must be made amusing, which he would not +be in real life. In nine cases out of ten an exact reproduction of +real life would prove tedious. Facts are not necessarily valuable, +and frequently they add nothing to fiction. The art of the realistic +novelist sometimes seems akin to that of the Chinese tailor who +perpetuated the old patch on the new trousers. True art selects and +paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation. + +THE last meeting I had with Lowell was in the north room of his house at +Elmwood, the sleeping-room I had occupied during a two years' tenancy +of the place in his absence abroad. He was lying half propped up in +bed, convalescing from one of the severe attacks that were ultimately to +prove fatal. Near the bed was a chair on which stood a marine picture +in aquarelle--a stretch of calm sea, a bit of rocky shore in the +foreground, if I remember, and a vessel at anchor. The afternoon +sunlight, falling through the window, cast a bloom over the picture, +which was turned toward Lowell. From time to time, as he spoke, his eyes +rested thoughtfully on the water-color. A friend, he said, had just +sent it to him. It seemed to me then, and the fancy has often haunted me +since, that that ship, in the golden haze, with topsails loosened, was +waiting to bear his spirit away. + +CIVILIZATION is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades. If +somebody has already said that, I forgive him the mortification he +causes me. At the beginning of the twentieth century barbarism can throw +off its gentle disguise, and burn a man at the stake as complacently as +in the Middle Ages. + +WHAT is slang in one age sometimes goes into the vocabulary of the +purist in the next. On the other hand, expressions that once were not +considered inelegant are looked at askance in the period following. The +word “brass” was formerly an accepted synonym for money; but at present, +when it takes on that significance, it is not admitted into genteel +circles of language. It may be said to have seen better days, like +another word I have in mind--a word that has become slang, employed in +the sense which once did not exclude it from very good society. A +friend lately informed me that he had “fired” his housekeeper--that +is, dismissed her. He little dreamed that he was speaking excellent +Elizabethan. + +THE “Journal des Goncourt” is crowded with beautiful and hideous things, +like a Japanese Museum. + +“AND she shuddered as she sat, still silent, on her seat, and he saw +that she shuddered.” This is from Anthony Trollope's novel, “Can You +Forgive Her?” Can you forgive him? is the next question. + +A LITTLE thing may be perfect, but perfection is not a little thing. +Possessing this quality, a trifle “no bigger than an agate-stone on the +forefinger of an alderman” shall outlast the Pyramids. The world will +have forgotten all the great masterpieces of literature when it forgets +Lovelace's three verses to Lucasta on his going to the wars. More +durable than marble or bronze are the words, “I could not love thee, +deare, so much, loved I not honor more.” + +I CALLED on the dear old doctor this afternoon to say good-by. I shall +probably not find him here when I come back from the long voyage which +I have in front of me. He is very fragile, and looks as though a puff +of wind would blow him away. He said himself, with his old-time +cheerfulness, that he was attached to this earth by only a little piece +of twine. He has perceptibly failed since I saw him a month ago; but +he was full of the wise and radiant talk to which all the world +has listened, and will miss. I found him absorbed in a newly made +card-catalogue of his library. “It was absurd of me to have it done,” he +remarked. “What I really require is a little bookcase holding only two +volumes; then I could go from one to the other in alternation and always +find each book as fresh as if I never had read it.” This arraignment of +his memory was in pure jest, for the doctor's mind was to the end like +an unclouded crystal. It was interesting to note how he studied himself, +taking his own pulse, as it were, and diagnosing his own case in a sort +of scientific, impersonal way, as if it were somebody else's case and he +were the consulting specialist. I intended to spend a quarter of an hour +with him, and he kept me three hours. I went there rather depressed, +but I returned home leavened with his good spirits, which, I think, will +never desert him, here or hereafter. To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be +hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent--that is to triumph over old age. + +THE thing one reads and likes, and then forgets, is of no account. The +thing that stays, and haunts one, and refuses to be forgotten, that is +the sincere thing. I am describing the impression left upon me by Mr. +Howells's blank-verse sketch called “Father and Mother: A Mystery”--a +strangely touching and imaginative piece of work, not unlike in effect +to some of Maeterlinck's psychical dramas. As I read on, I seemed to be +standing in a shadow cast by some half-remembered experience of my own +in a previous state of existence. When I went to bed that night I had to +lie awake and think it over as an event that had actually befallen me. +I should call the effect _weird_, if the word had not lately been worked +to death. The gloom of Poe and the spirituality of Hawthorne touch cold +finger-tips in those three or four pages. + +FOR a character-study--a man made up entirely of limitations. His +conservatism and negative qualities to be represented as causing him to +attain success where men of conviction and real ability fail of it. + +A DARK, saturnine man sat opposite me at table on board the steamer. +During the entire run from Sandy Hook to Fastnet Light he addressed no +one at meal-times excepting his table steward. Seated next to him, on +the right, was a vivacious gentleman, who, like Gratiano in the play, +spoke “an infinite deal of nothing.” He made persistent and pathetic +attempts to lure his silent neighbor (we had christened him “William +the Silent”) into conversation, but a monosyllable was always the poor +result--until one day. It was the last day of the voyage. We had stopped +at the entrance to Queenstown harbor to deliver the mails, and some fish +had been brought aboard. The vivacious gentleman was in a high state of +excitement that morning at table. “Fresh fish!” he exclaimed; “actually +fresh! They seem quite different from ours. Irish fish, of course. Can +you tell me, sir,” he inquired, turning to his gloomy shipmate, “what +_kind_ of fish these are?” “Cork soles,” said the saturnine man, in a +deep voice, and then went on with his breakfast. + +LOWELL used to find food for great mirth in General George P. Morris's +line, + +“Her heart and morning broke together.” + +Lowell's well-beloved Dr. Donne, however, had an attack of the same +platitude, and possibly inoculated poor Morris. Even literature seems to +have its mischief-making bacilli. The late “incomparable and ingenious +Dean of St. Paul's” says, + +“The day breaks not, it is my heart.” + +I think Dr. Donne's case rather worse than Morris's. Chaucer had the +malady in a milder form when he wrote: + +“Up roos the sonne, and up roos Emelye.” + +The charming naivete of it! + + +SITTING in Ellen Terry's dressing-room at the Lyceum Theatre one evening +during that lady's temporary absence on the stage, Sarah Bernhardt +picked up a crayon and wrote this pretty word on the mirror--_Dearling_, +mistaking it for the word darling. The French actress lighted by chance +upon a Spenserianism now become obsolete without good reason. It is a +more charming adjective than the one that has replaced it. + +A DEAD author appears to be bereft of all earthly rights. He is scarcely +buried before old magazines and newspapers are ransacked in search of +matters which, for reasons sufficient to him, he had carefully excluded +from the definitive edition of his collected writings. + + He gave the people of his best; + His worst he kept, his best he gave. + +One can imagine a poet tempted to address some such appeal as this to +any possible future publisher of his poems: + + Take what thou wilt, a lyric or a line, + Take all, take nothing--and God send thee cheer! + But my anathema on thee and thine + If thou add'st aught to what is printed here. + +THE claim of this country to call itself “The Land of the Free” must be +held in abeyance until every man in it, whether he belongs or does not +belong to a labor organization, shall have the right to work for his +daily bread. + +THERE is a strain of primitive poetry running through the entire Irish +race, a fleeting lyrical emotion which expresses itself in a flash, +usually in connection with love of country and kindred across the sea. +I had a touching illustration of it the other morning. The despot who +reigns over our kitchen was gathering a mess of dandelions on the rear +lawn. It was one of those blue and gold days which seem especially to +belong New England. “It's in County Westmeath I 'd be this day,” she +said, looking up at me. _“I'd go cool my hands in the grass on my ould +mother's grave in the bit of churchyard foreninst the priest's house at +Mullingar.”_ I have seen poorer poetry than that in the magazines. + + +SPEAKING of the late Major Pond, the well-known director of a lecture +bureau, an old client of his remarked: “He was a most capable manager, +but it always made me a little sore to have him deduct twenty-five +per cent. commission.” “Pond's Extract,” murmured one of the gentlemen +present. + +EACH of our great towns has its “Little Italy,” with shops where nothing +is spoken but Italian and streets in which the alien pedestrian had +better not linger after nightfall. The chief industry of these exotic +communities seems to be spaghetti and stilettos. What with our Little +Italys and Chinatowns, and the like, an American need not cross the +ocean in order to visit foreign lands and enjoy the benefits of older +civilizations. + +POETS are made as well as born, the proverb notwithstanding. They are +made possible by the general love of poetry and the consequent imperious +demand for it. When this is nonexistent, poets become mute, the +atmosphere stifles them. There would have been no Shakespeare had there +been no Elizabethan audience. That was an age when, as Emerson finely +puts it, + + Men became + Poets, for the air was fame. + +THE stolid gentleman in livery who has his carriage-stand at the corner +opposite my house is constantly touching on the extremes of human +experience, with probably not the remotest perception of the fact. +Now he takes a pair of lovers out for an airing, and now he drives the +absconding bank-teller to the railway-station. Excepting as question +of distance, the man has positively no choice between a theatre and a +graveyard. I met him this morning dashing up to the portals of Trinity +Church with a bridal party, and this afternoon, as I was crossing +Cambridge Bridge, I saw him creeping along next to the hearse, on his +way to Mount Auburn. The wedding afforded him no pleasure, and the +funeral gave him no grief; yet he was a factor in both. It is his odd +destiny to be wholly detached from the vital part of his own acts. If +the carriage itself could speak! The autobiography of a public hack +written without reservation would be dramatic reading. + +IN this blotted memorandum-book are a score or two of suggestions for +essays, sketches, and poems, which I have not written, and never shall +write. The instant I jot down an idea the desire to utilize it leaves +me, and I turn away to do something unpremeditated. The shabby volume +has become a sort of Potter's Field where I bury my literary intentions, +good and bad, without any belief in their final resurrection. + +A STAGE DIRECTION: _exit time; enter Eternity--with a soliloquy._ + + + + +ASIDES + + + + +TOM FOLIO + +IN my early Boston days a gentle soul was often to be met with about +town, furtively haunting old book-shops and dusty editorial rooms, a +man of ingratiating simplicity of manner, who always spoke in a low, +hesitating voice, with a note of refinement in it. He was a devout +worshiper of Elia, and wrote pleasant discursive essays smacking +somewhat of his master's flavor--suggesting rather than imitating +it--which he signed “Tom Folio.” I forget how he glided into my +acquaintanceship; doubtless in some way too shy and elusive for +remembrance. I never knew him intimately, perhaps no one did, but the +intercourse between us was most cordial, and our chance meetings and +bookish chats extended over a space of a dozen years. + +Tom Folio--I cling to the winning pseudonym--was sparely built and under +medium height, or maybe a slight droop of the shoulders made it seem so, +with a fragile look about him and an aspect of youth that was not his. +Encountering him casually on a street corner, you would, at the first +glance, have taken him for a youngish man, but the second glance left +you doubtful. It was a figure that struck a note of singularity and +would have attracted your attention even in a crowd. + +During the first four or five years of our acquaintance, meeting him +only out of doors or in shops, I had never happened to see him with his +hat off. One day he recklessly removed it, and in the twinkling of an +eye he became an elderly bald-headed man. The Tom Folio I once knew +had virtually vanished. An instant earlier he was a familiar shape; an +instant later, an almost unrecognizable individual. A narrow fringe of +light-colored hair, extending from ear to ear under the rear brim of +his hat, had perpetrated an unintentional deception by leading one to +suppose a head profusely covered with curly locks. “Tom Folio,” I said, +“put on your hat and come back!” But after that day he never seemed young +to me. + +I had few or no inklings of his life disconnected with the streets and +the book-stalls, chiefly those on Cornhill or in the vicinity. It is +possible I am wrong in inferring that he occupied a room somewhere at +the South End or in South Boston, and lived entirely alone, heating his +coffee and boiling his egg over an alcohol lamp. I got from him one or +two fortuitous hints of quaint housekeeping. Every winter, it appeared, +some relative, far or near, sent him a large batch of mince pies, twenty +or thirty at least. He once spoke to me of having laid in his winter +pie, just as another might speak of laying in his winter coal. The +only fireside companion Tom Folio ever alluded to in my presence was +a Maltese cat, whose poor health seriously disturbed him from time to +time. I suspected those mince pies. The cat, I recollect, was named Miss +Mowcher. + +If he had any immediate family ties beyond this I was unaware of +them, and not curious to be enlightened on the subject. He was more +picturesque solitary. I preferred him to remain so. Other figures +introduced into the background of the canvas would have spoiled the +artistic effect. + +Tom Folio was a cheerful, lonely man--a recluse even when he allowed +himself to be jostled and hurried along on the turbulent stream of +humanity sweeping in opposite directions through Washington Street and +its busy estuaries. He was in the crowd, but not of it. I had so little +real knowledge of him that I was obliged to imagine his more intimate +environments. However wide of the mark my conjectures may have fallen, +they were as satisfying to me as facts would have been. His secluded +room I could picture to myself with a sense of certainty--the couch (a +sofa by day), the cupboard, the writing-table with its student lamp, the +litter of pamphlets and old quartos and octavos in tattered bindings, +among which were scarce reprints of his beloved Charles Lamb, and +perhaps--nay, surely--an _editio princeps_ of the “Essays.” + +The gentle Elia never had a gentler follower or a more loving disciple +than Tom Folio. He moved and had much of his being in the early part +of the last century. To him the South-Sea House was the most important +edifice on the globe, remaining the same venerable pile it used to be, +in spite of all the changes that had befallen it. It was there Charles +Lamb passed the novitiate of his long years of clerkship in the East +India Company. In Tom Folio's fancy a slender, boyish figure was still +seated, quill in hand, behind those stately porticoes looking upon +Threadneedle Street and Bishopsgate. That famous first paper in the +“Essays,” describing the South-Sea House and the group of human oddities +which occupied desks within its gloomy chambers, had left an indelible +impression upon the dreamer. Every line traced by the “lean annuitant” + was as familiar to Tom Folio as if he had written it himself. Stray +scraps, which had escaped the vigilance of able editors, were known +to him, and it was his to unearth amid a heap of mouldy, worm-eaten +magazines, a handful of leaves hitherto forgotten of all men. Trifles, +yes--but Charles Lamb's! “The king's chaff is as good as other people's +corn,” says Tom Folio. + +Often his talk was sweet and racy with old-fashioned phrases; the talk of +a man who loved books and drew habitual breath in an atmosphere of +fine thought. Next to Charles Lamb, but at a convenable distance, Izaak +Walton was Tom Folio's favorite. His poet was Alexander Pope, though +he thought Mr. Addison's tragedy of “Cato” contained some proper +good lines. Our friend was a wide reader in English classics, greatly +preferring the literature of the earlier periods to that of the +Victorian age. His smiling, tenderly expressed disapprobation of various +modern authors was enchanting. John Keats's verses were monstrous +pretty, but over-ornamented. A little too much lucent syrup tinct +with cinnamon, don't you think? The poetry of Shelley might have been +composed in the moon by a slightly deranged, well-meaning person. If you +wanted a sound mind in a sound metrical body, why there was Mr. Pope's +“Essay on Man.” There was something winsome and by-gone in the general +make-up of Tom Folio. No man living in the world ever seemed to me to +live so much out of it, or to live more comfortably. + +At times I half suspected him of a convalescent amatory disappointment. +Perhaps long before I knew him he had taken a little sentimental +journey, the unsuccessful end of which had touched him with a gentle +sadness. It was something far off and softened by memory. If Tom Folio +had any love-affair on hand in my day, it must have been of an airy, +platonic sort--a chaste secret passion for Mistress Peg Woffington or +Nell Gwyn, or possibly Mr. Waller's Saccharissa. + +Although Tom Folio was not a collector--that means dividends and bank +balances--he had a passion for the Past and all its belongings, with +a virtuoso's knowledge of them. A fan painted by Vanloo, a bit of rare +Nankin (he had caught from Charles Lamb the love of old china), or an +undoctored stipple of Bartolozzi, gave him delight in the handling, +though he might not aspire to ownership. I believe he would willingly +have drunk any horrible decoction from a silver teapot of Queen Anne's +time. These things were not for him in a coarse, materialistic sense; +in a spiritual sense he held possession of them in fee-simple. I learned +thus much of his tastes one day during an hour we spent together in the +rear showroom of a dealer in antiquities. + +I have spoken of Tom Folio as lonely, but I am inclined to think that +I mis-stated it. He had hosts of friends who used to climb the rather +steep staircase leading to that modest third-story front room which +I have imagined for him--a room with Turkey-red curtains, I like to +believe, and a rare engraving of a scene from Mr. Hogarth's excellent +moral of “The Industrious and Idle Apprentices” pinned against the +chimney breast. Young Chatterton, who was not always the best of +company, dropped in at intervals. There Mr. Samuel Pepys had a special +chair reserved for him by the window, where he could catch a glimpse of +the pretty housemaid over the way, chatting with the policeman at the +area railing. Dr. Johnson and the unworldly author of “The Deserted +Village” were frequent visitors, sometimes appearing together +arm-in-arm, with James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck, following +obsequiously behind. Not that Tom Folio did not have callers vastly more +aristocratic, though he could have had none pleasanter or wholesomer. +Sir Philip Sidney (who must have given Folio that copy of the +“Arcadia”), the Viscount St. Albans, and even two or three others before +whom either of these might have doffed his bonnet, did not disdain to +gather round that hearthstone. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Defoe, Dick +Steele, Dean Swift--there was no end to them! On certain nights, when +all the stolid neighborhood was lapped in slumber, the narrow street +stretching beneath Tom Folio's windows must have been blocked with +invisible coaches and sedan-chairs, and illuminated by the visionary +glare of torches borne by shadowy linkboys hurrying hither and thither. +A man so sought after and companioned cannot be described as lonely. + +My memory here recalls the fact that he had a few friends less +insubstantial--that quaint anatomy perched on the top of a hand-organ, +to whom Tom Folio was wont to give a bite of his apple; and the +brown-legged little Neapolitan who was always nearly certain of a copper +when this multi-millionaire strolled through the slums on a Saturday +afternoon--Saturday probably being the essayist's pay-day. The withered +woman of the peanut-stand on the corner over against Faneuil Hall Market +knew him for a friend, as did also the blind lead-pencil merchant, whom +Tom Folio, on occasions, safely piloted across the stormy traffic of +Dock Square. _Noblesse oblige!_ He was no stranger in those purlieus. +Without designing to confuse small things with great, I may say that a +certain strip of pavement in North Street could be pointed out as Tom +Folio's Walk, just as Addison's Walk is pointed out on the banks of the +Cherwell at Oxford. + +I used to observe that when Tom Folio was not in quest of a print or a +pamphlet or some such urgent thing, but was walking for mere recreation, +he instinctively avoided respectable latitudes. He liked best the +squalid, ill-kept thoroughfares shadowed by tall, smudgy tenement-houses +and teeming with unprosperous, noisy life. Perhaps he had, half +consciously, a sense of subtle kinship to the unsuccess and cheerful +resignation of it all. + +Returning home from abroad one October morning several years ago, I was +told that that simple spirit had passed on. His death had been little +heeded; but in him had passed away an intangible genuine bit of Old +Boston--as genuine a bit, in its kind, as the Autocrat himself--a +personality not to be restored or replaced. Tom Folio could never happen +again! + +Strolling to-day through the streets of the older section of the town, +I miss many a venerable landmark submerged in the rising tide of change, +but I miss nothing quite so much as I do the sight of Tom Folio entering +the doorway of the Old Corner Bookstore, or carefully taking down +a musty volume from its shelf at some melancholy old book-stall on +Cornhill. + + + + +FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES + +WHEN an English novelist does us the honor to introduce any of our +countrymen into his fiction, he generally displays a commendable +desire to present something typical in the way of names for his +adopted characters--to give a dash of local color, as it were, with his +nomenclature. His success is seldom commensurate to the desire. He falls +into the error of appealing to his invention, instead of consulting +some city directory, in which he would find more material than he could +exhaust in ten centuries. Charles Reade might have secured in the pages +of such a compendium a happier title than Fullalove for his Yankee +sea-captain; though I doubt, on the whole, if Anthony Trollope could +have discovered anything better than Olivia Q. Fleabody for the young +woman from “the States” in his novel called “Is He Popenjoy?” + +To christen a sprightly young female advocate of woman's rights Olivia +Q. Fleabody was very happy indeed; to be candid, it was much better than +was usual with Mr. Trollope, whose understanding of American life and +manners was not enlarged by extensive travel in this country. An English +tourist's preconceived idea of us is a thing he brings over with him on +the steamer and carries home again intact; it is as much a part of his +indispensable impedimenta as his hatbox. But Fleabody is excellent; it +was probably suggested by Peabody, which may have struck Mr. Trollope as +comical (just as Trollope strikes _us_ as comical), or, at least, as not +serious. What a capital name Veronica Trollope would be for a hoydenish +young woman in a society novel! I fancy that all foreign names are odd +to the alien. I remember that the signs above shop-doors in England and +on the Continent used to amuse me often enough, when I was over there. +It is a notable circumstance that extraordinary names never seem +extraordinary to the persons bearing them. If a fellow-creature were +branded Ebenezer Cuttlefish he would remain to the end of his days quite +unconscious of anything out of the common. + +I am aware that many of our American names are sufficiently queer; but +English writers make merry over them, as if our most eccentric were not +thrown into the shade by some of their own. No American, living or +dead, can surpass the verbal infelicity of Knatchbull-Hugessen, for +example--if the gentleman will forgive me for conscripting him. Quite as +remarkable, in a grimly significant way, is the appellation of a British +officer who was fighting the Boers in the Transvaal in the year of +blessed memory 1899. This young soldier, who highly distinguished +himself on the field, was known to his brothers-in-arms as Major Pine +Coffin. I trust that the gallant major became a colonel later and is +still alive. It would eclipse the gayety of nations to lose a man with a +name like that. + +Several years ago I read in the sober police reports of “The Pall Mall +Gazette” an account of a young man named George F. Onions, who was +arrested (it ought to have been by “a peeler”) for purloining money +from his employers, Messrs. Joseph Pickles & Son, stuff merchants, of +Bradford--_des noms bien idylliques!_ What mortal could have a more +ludicrous name than Onions, unless it were Pickles, or Pickled Onions? +And then for Onions to rob Pickles! Could there be a more incredible +coincidence? As a coincidence it is nearly sublime. No story-writer +would dare to present that fact or those names in his fiction; neither +would be accepted as possible. Meanwhile Olivia Q. Fleabody is _ben +trovato_. + + + + +A NOTE ON “L'AIGLON” + +THE night-scene on the battlefield of Wagram in “L'Aiglon”--an episode +whose sharp pathos pierces the heart and the imagination like the point +of a rapier--bears a striking resemblance to a picturesque passage in +Victor Hugo's “Les Miserables.” It is the one intense great moment in +the play, and has been widely discussed, but so far as I am aware none +of M. Rostand's innumerable critics has touched on the resemblance +mentioned. In the master's romance it is not the field of Wagram, but +the field of Waterloo, that is magically repeopled with contending +armies of spooks, to use the grim old Dutch word, and made vivid to the +mind's eye. The passage occurs at the end of the sixteenth chapter in +the second part of “Les Miserables” (Cosette), and runs as follows: + +Le champ de Waterloo aujourd'hui a le calme qui appartient a la terre, +support impassible de l'homme, et il resemble a toutes les plaines. La +nuit pourtant une espece de brume visionnaire s'en degage, et si quelque +voyageur s'y promene, s'il regarde, s'il ecoute, s'il reve comme +Virgile dans les funestes plaines de Philippes, l'hallucination de +la catastrophe le saisit. L'effrayant 18 juin revit; la fausse +colline-monument s'efface, ce lion quelconque se dissipe, le champ de +bataille reprend sa realite; des lignes d'infanterie ondulent dans la +plaine, des galops furieux traversent l'horizon; le songeur effare voit +l'eclair des sabres, l'etincelle des bayonnettes, le flamboiement des +bombes, l'entre-croisement monstrueux des tonnerres; il entend, comme un +rale au fond d'une tombe, la clameur vague de la bataille-fantome; ces +ombres, ce sont les grenadiers; ces lueurs, ce sont les cuirassiers; +. . . tout cela n'est plus et se heurte et combat encore; et les ravins +s'empourprent, et les arbres frissonnent, et il y a de la furie jusque +dans les nuees, et, dans les tenebres, toutes ces hauteurs farouches, +Mont-Saint Jean, Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, Plancenoit, +apparaissent confusement couronnees de tourbillons de spectres +s'exterminant. (1) + +Here is the whole battle scene in “L'Aiglon,” with scarcely a gruesome +detail omitted. The vast plain glimmering in phantasmal light; the +ghostly squadrons hurling themselves against one another (seen only +through the eyes of the poor little Duke of Reichstadt); the mangled +shapes lying motionless in various postures of death upon the +blood-stained sward; the moans of the wounded rising up and sweeping by +like vague wailings of the wind--all this might be taken for an artful +appropriation of Victor Hugo's text; but I do not think it was, though +it is possible that a faint reflection of a brilliant page, read in +early youth, still lingered on the retina of M. Rostand's memory. If +such were the case, it does not necessarily detract from the integrity +of the conception or the playwright's presentment of it. + + (1) The field of Waterloo has to-day the peacefulness which + belongs to earth, the impassive support of man, and is like + all other plains. At night, however, a kind of visionary + mist is exhaled, and if any traveler walks there, and + watches and listens, and dreams like Virgil on the sorrowful + plains of Philippi, the hallucination of the catastrophe + takes possession of him. The terrible June 18 relives; the + artificial commemorative mound effaces itself, the lion + disappears, the field of battle assumes its reality; lines + of infantry waver on the plain, the horizon is broken by + furious charges of cavalry; the alarmed dreamer sees the + gleam of sabres, the glimmer of bayonets, the lurid glare of + bursting shells, the clashing of mighty thunderbolts; the + muffled clamor of the phantom conflict comes to him like + dying moans from the tomb; these shadows are grenadiers, + these lights are cuirassiers . . . all this does not really + exist, yet the combat goes on; the ravines are stained with + purple, the trees tremble, there is fury even in the clouds, + and in the obscurity the sombre heights--Mont Saint-Jean, + Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, and Plancenoit--ap-pear + dimly crowned with throngs of apparitions annihilating one + another. + +The idea of repeopling old battlefields with the shades of vanished +hosts is not novel. In such tragic spots the twilight always lays a dark +hand on the imagination, and prompts one to invoke the unappeased spirit +of the past that haunts the place. One summer evening long ago, as I was +standing alone by the ruined walls of Hougomont, with that sense of not +being alone which is sometimes so strangely stirred by solitude, I had +a sudden vision of that desperate last charge of Napoleon's Old Guard. +Marshal Ney rose from the grave and again shouted those heroic words +to Drouet d'Erlon: “Are you not going to get yourself killed?” For an +instant a thousand sabres flashed in the air. The deathly silence that +accompanied the ghostly onset was an added poignancy to the short-lived +dream. A moment later I beheld a hunched little figure mounted on a +white horse with housings of purple velvet. The reins lay slack in the +rider's hand; his three-cornered hat was slouched over his brows, and +his chin rested on the breast of his great-coat. Thus he slowly rode +away through the twilight, and nobody cried, _Vive l'Empereur!_ + +The ground on which a famous battle has been fought casts a spell upon +every man's mind; and the impression made upon two men of poetic genius, +like Victor Hugo and Edmond Rostand, might well be nearly identical. +This sufficiently explains the likeness between the fantastic silhouette +in “Les Miserables” and the battle of the ghosts in “L'Aiglon.” A muse +so rich in the improbable as M. Rostand's need not borrow a piece of +supernaturalness from anybody. + + + + +PLOT AND CHARACTER + +HENRY JAMES, in his paper on Anthony Trollope, says that if Trollope +“had taken sides on the rather superficial opposition between novels +of character and novels of plot, I can imagine him to have said (except +that he never expressed himself in epigram) that he preferred the former +class, inasmuch as character in itself is plot, while plot is by no +means character.” So neat an antithesis would surely never have found +itself between Mr. Trollope's lips if Mr. James had not cunningly +lent it to him. Whatever theory of novel-writing Mr. Trollope may have +preached, his almost invariable practice was to have a plot. He always +had a _story_ to tell, and a story involves beginning, middle, and +end--in short, a framework of some description. + +There have been delightful books filled wholly with character-drawing; +but they have not been great novels. The great novel deals with human +action as well as with mental portraiture and analysis. That “character +in itself is plot” is true only in a limited sense. A plan, a motive +with a logical conclusion, is as necessary to a novel or a romance as it +is to a drama. A group of skillfully made-up men and women lounging in +the green-room or at the wings is not the play. It is not enough to say +that this is Romeo and that Lady Macbeth. It is not enough to inform +us that certain passions are supposed to be embodied in such and such +persons: these persons should be placed in situations developing those +passions. A series of unrelated scenes and dialogues leading to nothing +is inadequate. + +Mr. James's engaging epigram seems to me vulnerable at both ends--unlike +Achilles. “Plot is by no means character.” Strictly speaking, it is +not. It appears to me, however, that plot approaches nearer to being +character than character does to being plot. Plot necessitates action, +and it is impossible to describe a man's actions' under whatever +conditions, without revealing something of his character, his way of +looking at things, his moral and mental pose. What a hero of fiction +_does_ paints him better than what he _says_, and vastly better than +anything his creator may say of him. Mr. James asserts that “we care +what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are.” + I think we care very little what people are (in fiction) when we do not +know what happens to them. + + + + +THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE + +IN the process of their experiments upon the bodies of living animals +some anatomists do not, I fear, sufficiently realize that + + The poor beetle, that we tread upon, + In corporal sufferance, finds a pang as great + As when a giant dies. + +I am not for a moment challenging the necessity of vivisection, though +distinguished surgeons have themselves challenged it; I merely contend +that science is apt to be cold-hearted, and does not seem always to +take into consideration the tortures she inflicts in her search for +knowledge. + +Just now, in turning over the leaves of an old number of the “London +Lancet,” I came upon the report of a lecture on experimental physiology +delivered by Professor William Rutherford before a learned association +in London. Though the type had become antiquated and the paper +yellowed in the lapse of years, the pathos of those pages was alive and +palpitating. + +The following passages from the report will illustrate not unfairly the +point I am making. In the course of his remarks the lecturer exhibited +certain interesting experiments on living frogs. Intellectually I go +very strongly for Professor Rutherford, but I am bound to confess that +the weight of my sympathy rests with the frogs. + +Observe this frog [said the professor], it is regarding our manoeuvres +with a somewhat lively air. Now and then it gives a jump. What the +precise object of its leaps may be I dare not pretend to say; but +probably it regards us with some apprehension, and desires to escape. + +To be perfectly impartial, it must be admitted that the frog had some +slight reason for apprehension. The lecturer proceeded: + +I touch one of its toes, and you see it resents the molestation in a +very decided manner. Why does it so struggle to get away when I pinch +its toes? Doubtless, you will say, because it feels the pinch and would +rather not have it repeated. I now behead the animal with the aid of a +sharp chisel. . . . The headless trunk lies as though it were dead. The +spinal cord seems to be suffering from shock. Probably, however, it +will soon recover from this. . . . Observe that the animal has now +_spontaneously_ drawn up its legs and arms, and it is sitting with its +neck erect just as if it had not lost its head at all. I pinch its +toes, and you see the leg is at once thrust out as if to spurn away the +offending instrument. Does it still feel? and is the motion still the +result of the volition? + +That the frog did feel, and delicately hinted at the circumstance, there +seems to be no room to doubt, for Professor Rutherford related that +having once decapitated a frog, the animal suddenly bounded from the +table, a movement that presumably indicated a kind of consciousness. He +then returned to the subject immediately under observation, pinched its +foot again, the frog again “resenting the stimulation.” He then thrust +a needle down the spinal cord. “The limbs are now flaccid,” observed the +experimenter; “we may wait as long as we please, but a pinch of the toes +will never again cause the limbs of this animal to move.” Here is +where congratulations can come in for _la grenouille_. That frog being +concluded, the lecturer continued: + +I take another frog. In this case I open the cranium and remove the +brain and medulla oblongata. . . . I thrust a pin through the nose and +hang the animal thereby to a support, so that it can move its pendent +legs without any difficulty. . . . I gently pinch the toes. . . . The +leg of the same side is pulled up. . . . I pinch the same more severely. +. . . Both legs are thrown into motion. + +Having thus satisfactorily proved that the wretched creature could still +suffer acutely, the professor resumed: + +The cutaneous nerves of the frog are extremely sensitive to acids; so +I put a drop of acetic acid on the outside of one knee. This, you see, +gives rise to most violent movements both of arms and legs, and notice +particularly that the animal is using the toes of the leg on the same +side for the purpose of rubbing the irritated spot. I dip the whole +animal into water in order to wash away the acid, and now it is all +at rest again. . . . I put a drop of acid on the skin over the lumbar +region of the spine. . . . Both feet are instantly raised to the +irritated spot. The animal is able to localize the seat of irritation. +. . . I wash the acid from the back, and I amputate one of the feet at +the ankle. . . . I apply a drop of acid over the knee of the footless +leg. . . . Again, the animal turns the leg towards the knee, as if to +reach the irritated spot with the toes; these, however, are not now +available. But watch the other foot. The _foot of the other leg_ is now +being used to rub away the acid. The animal, finding that the object is +not accomplished with the foot of the same side, uses the other one. + +I think that at least one thing will be patent to every unprejudiced +reader of these excerpts, namely--that any frog (with its head on or its +head off) which happened to make the personal acquaintance of Professor +Rutherford must have found him poor company. What benefit science may +have derived from such association I am not qualified to pronounce upon. +The lecturer showed conclusively that the frog is a peculiarly sensitive +and intelligent little batrachian. I hope that the genial professor, in +the years which followed, did not frequently consider it necessary to +demonstrate the fact. + + + + +LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORNWALL + +IT has recently become the fashion to speak disparagingly of Leigh Hunt +as a poet, to class him as a sort of pursuivant or shield-bearer to +Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Truth to tell, Hunt was not a Keats nor +a Shelley nor a Coleridge, but he was a most excellent Hunt. He was +a delightful essayist--quite unsurpassed, indeed, in his blithe, +optimistic way--and as a poet deserves to rank high among the lesser +singers of his time. I should place him far above Barry Cornwall, who +has not half the freshness, variety, and originality of his compeer. + +I instance Barry Cornwall because there has seemed a disposition since +his death to praise him unduly. Barry Cornwall has always struck me as +extremely artificial, especially in his dramatic sketches. His verses in +this line are mostly soft Elizabethan echoes. Of course a dramatist +may find it to his profit to go out of his own age and atmosphere for +inspiration; but in order successfully to do so he must be a dramatist. +Barry Cornwall fell short of filling the role; he got no further than +the composing of brief disconnected scenes and scraps of soliloquies, +and a tragedy entitled Mirandola, for which the stage had no use. His +chief claim to recognition lies in his lyrics. Here, as in the dramatic +studies, his attitude is nearly always affected. He studiously strives +to reproduce the form and spirit of the early poets. Being a Londoner, +he naturally sings much of rural English life, but his England is the +England of two or three centuries ago. He has a great deal to say about +the “falcon,” but the poor bird has the air of beating fatigued wings +against the bookshelves of a well-furnished library! This well-furnished +library was--if I may be pardoned a mixed image--the rock on which Barry +Cornwall split. He did not look into his own heart, and write: he looked +into his books. + +A poet need not confine himself to his individual experiences; the world +is all before him where to choose; but there are subjects which he had +better not handle unless he have some personal knowledge of them. The +sea is one of these. The man who sang, + + The sea! the sea! the open sea! + The blue, the fresh, _the ever free!_ + +(a couplet which the Gifted Hopkins might have penned), should never +have permitted himself to sing of the ocean. I am quoting from one of +Barry Cornwall's most popular lyrics. When I first read this singularly +vapid poem years ago, in mid-Atlantic, I wondered if the author had ever +laid eyes on any piece of water wider than the Thames at Greenwich, and +in looking over Barry Cornwall's “Life and Letters” I am not so much +surprised as amused to learn that he was never out of sight of land +in the whole course of his existence. It is to be said of him more +positively than the captain of the Pinafore said it of himself, that he +was hardly ever sick at sea. + +Imagine Byron or Shelley, who knew the ocean in all its protean moods, +piping such thin feebleness as + +“The blue, the fresh, the ever free!” + +To do that required a man whose acquaintance with the deep was limited +to a view of it from an upper window at Margate or Scarborough. Even +frequent dinners of turbot and whitebait at the sign of The Ship and +Turtle will not enable one to write sea poetry. + +Considering the actual facts, there is something weird in the statement, + + I 'm on the sea! I 'm on the sea! + I am where I would ever be. + +The words, to be sure, are placed in the mouth of an imagined sailor, +but they are none the less diverting. The stanza containing the distich +ends with a striking piece of realism: + + If a storm should come and awake the deep, + What matter? I shall ride and sleep. + +This is the course of action usually pursued by sailors during a gale. +The first or second mate goes around and tucks them up comfortably, each +in his hammock, and serves them out an extra ration of grog after the +storm is over. + +Barry Cornwall must have had an exceptionally winning personality, +for he drew to him the friendship of men as differently constituted as +Thackeray, Carlyle, Browning, and Forster. He was liked by the best of +his time, from Charles Lamb down to Algernon Swinburne, who caught a +glimpse of the aged poet in his vanishing. The personal magnetism of an +author does not extend far beyond the orbit of his contemporaries. It is +of the lyrist and not of the man I am speaking here. One could wish he +had written more prose like his admirable “Recollections of Elia.” + +Barry Cornwall seldom sounds a natural note, but when he does it is +extremely sweet. That little ballad in the minor key beginning, + + Touch us gently, Time! + Let us glide adown thy stream, +was written in one of his rare moments. Leigh Hunt, though not without +questionable mannerisms, was rich in the inspiration that came but +infrequently to his friend. Hunt's verse is full of natural felicities. +He also was a bookman, but, unlike Barry Cornwall, he generally knew how +to mint his gathered gold, and to stamp the coinage with his own head. +In “Hero and Leander” there is one line which, at my valuing, is worth +any twenty stanzas that Barry Cornwall has written: + + So might they now have lived, and so have died; + _The story's heart, to me, still beats against its side_. + +Hunt's fortunate verse about the kiss Jane Carlyle gave him lingers on +everybody's lip. That and the rhyme of “Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel” + are spice enough to embalm a man's memory. After all, it takes only a +handful. + + + + +DECORATION DAY + +HOW quickly Nature takes possession of a deserted battlefield, and goes +to work repairing the ravages of man! With invisible magic hand she +smooths the rough earthworks, fills the rifle-pits with delicate +flowers, and wraps the splintered tree-trunks with her fluent drapery +of tendrils. Soon the whole sharp outline of the spot is lost in +unremembering grass. Where the deadly rifle-ball whistled through the +foliage, the robin or the thrush pipes its tremulous note; and where +the menacing shell described its curve through the air, a harmless crow +flies in circles. Season after season the gentle work goes on, healing +the wounds and rents made by the merciless enginery of war, until at +last the once hotly contested battleground differs from none of its +quiet surroundings, except, perhaps, that here the flowers take a richer +tint and the grasses a deeper emerald. + +It is thus the battle lines may be obliterated by Time, but there are +left other and more lasting relics of the struggle. That dinted army +sabre, with a bit of faded crepe knotted at its hilt, which hangs over +the mantel-piece of the “best room” of many a town and country house +in these States, is one; and the graven headstone of the fallen hero +is another. The old swords will be treasured and handed down from +generation to generation as priceless heirlooms, and with them, let us +trust, will be cherished the custom of dressing with annual flowers the +resting-places of those who fell during the Civil War. + + With the tears a Land hath shed + Their graves should ever be green. + + Ever their fair, true glory + Fondly should fame rehearse-- + Light of legend and story, + Flower of marble and verse. + +The impulse which led us to set apart a day for decorating the graves of +our soldiers sprung from the grieved heart of the nation, and in our +own time there is little chance of the rite being neglected. But the +generations that come after us should not allow the observance to fall +into disuse. What with us is an expression of fresh love and sorrow, +should be with them an acknowledgment of an incalculable debt. + +Decoration Day is the most beautiful of our national holidays. How +different from those sullen batteries which used to go rumbling through +our streets are the crowds of light carriages, laden with flowers and +greenery, wending their way to the neighboring cemeteries! The grim +cannon have turned into palm branches, and the shell and shrapnel into +peach blooms. There is no hint of war in these gay baggage trains, +except the presence of men in undress uniform, and perhaps here and +there an empty sleeve to remind one of what has been. Year by year that +empty sleeve is less in evidence. + +The observance of Decoration Day is unmarked by that disorder and +confusion common enough with our people in their holiday moods. The +earlier sorrow has faded out of the hour, leaving a softened solemnity. +It quickly ceased to be simply a local commemoration. While the +sequestered country churchyards and burial-places near our great northern +cities were being hung with May garlands, the thought could not but come +to us that there were graves lying southward above which bent a grief as +tender and sacred as our own. Invisibly we dropped unseen flowers upon +those mounds. There is a beautiful significance in the fact that, two +years after the close of the war, the women of Columbus, Mississippi, +laid their offerings alike on Northern and Southern graves. When all is +said, the great Nation has but one heart. + + + + +WRITERS AND TALKERS + +AS a class, literary men do not shine in conversation. The scintillating +and playful essayist whom you pictured to yourself as the most genial +and entertaining of companions, turns out to be a shy and untalkable +individual, who chills you with his reticence when you chance to +meet him. The poet whose fascinating volume you always drop into your +gripsack on your summer vacation--the poet whom you have so long desired +to know personally--is a moody and abstracted middle-aged gentleman, who +fails to catch your name on introduction, and seems the avatar of the +commonplace. The witty and ferocious critic whom your fancy had +painted as a literary cannibal with a morbid appetite for tender young +poets--the writer of those caustic and scholarly reviews which you never +neglect to read--destroys the un-lifelike portrait you had drawn by +appearing before you as a personage of slender limb and deprecating +glance, who stammers and makes a painful spectacle of himself when +you ask him his opinion of “The Glees of the Gulches,” by Popocatepetl +Jones. The slender, dark-haired novelist of your imagination, with +epigrammatic points to his mustache, suddenly takes the shape of a +short, smoothly-shaven blond man, whose conversation does not sparkle +at all, and you were on the lookout for the most brilliant of verbal +fireworks. Perhaps it is a dramatist you have idealized. Fresh from +witnessing his delightful comedy of manners, you meet him face to face +only to discover that his own manners are anything but delightful. +The play and the playwright are two very distinct entities. You grow +skeptical touching the truth of Buffon's assertion that the style is the +man himself. Who that has encountered his favorite author in the flesh +has not sometimes been a little, if not wholly, disappointed? + +After all, is it not expecting too much to expect a novelist to talk +as cleverly as the clever characters in his novels? Must a dramatist +necessarily go about armed to the teeth with crisp dialogue? May not a +poet be allowed to lay aside his singing-robes and put on a conventional +dress-suit when he dines out? Why is it not permissible in him to be as +prosaic and tiresome as the rest of the company? He usually is. + + + + +ON EARLY RISING + +A CERTAIN scientific gentleman of my acquaintance, who has devoted years +to investigating the subject, states that he has never come across a +case of remarkable longevity unaccompanied by the habit of early rising; +from which testimony it might be inferred that they die early who lie +abed late. But this would be getting out at the wrong station. That the +majority of elderly persons are early risers is due to the simple +fact that they cannot sleep mornings. After a man passes his fiftieth +milestone he usually awakens at dawn, and his wakefulness is no credit +to him. As the theorist confined his observations to the aged, he easily +reached the conclusion that men live to be old because they do not sleep +late, instead of perceiving that men do not sleep late because they are +old. He moreover failed to take into account the numberless young lives +that have been shortened by matutinal habits. + +The intelligent reader, and no other is supposable, need not be told +that the early bird aphorism is a warning and not an incentive. The fate +of the worm refutes the pretended ethical teaching of the proverb, +which assumes to illustrate the advantage of early rising and does so by +showing how extremely dangerous it is. I have no patience with the worm, +and when I rise with the lark I am always careful to select a lark that +has overslept himself. + +The example set by this mythical bird, a mythical bird so far as New +England is concerned, has wrought wide-spread mischief and discomfort. +It is worth noting that his method of accomplishing these ends is +directly the reverse of that of the Caribbean insect mentioned +by Lafcadio Hearn in his enchanting “Two Years in the French West +Indies”--a species of colossal cricket called the wood-kid; in the +creole tongue, _cabritt-bois_. This ingenious pest works a soothing, +sleep-compelling chant from sundown until precisely half past four in +the morning, when it suddenly stops and by its silence awakens everybody +it has lulled into slumber with its insidious croon. Mr. Hearn, with +strange obtuseness to the enormity of the thing, blandly remarks: “For +thousands of early risers too poor to own a clock, the cessation of its +song is the signal to get up.” I devoutly trust that none of the West +India islands furnishing such satanic entomological specimens will +ever be annexed to the United States. Some of our extreme advocates of +territorial expansion might spend a profitable few weeks on one of those +favored isles. A brief association with that _cabritt-bois_ would be +likely to cool the enthusiasm of the most ardent imperialist. + +An incalculable amount of specious sentiment has been lavished upon +daybreak, chiefly by poets who breakfasted, when they did breakfast, at +mid-day. It is charitably to be said that their practice was better than +their precept--or their poetry. Thomson, the author of “The Castle of +Indolence,” who gave birth to the depraved apostrophe, + +“Falsely luxurious, will not man awake,” + +was one of the laziest men of his century. He customarily lay in bed +until noon meditating pentameters on sunrise. This creature used to be +seen in his garden of an afternoon, with both hands in his waistcoat +pockets, eating peaches from a pendent bough. Nearly all the English +poets who at that epoch celebrated what they called “the effulgent orb +of day” were denizens of London, where pure sunshine is unknown eleven +months out of the twelve. + +In a great city there are few incentives to early rising. What charm is +there in roof-tops and chimney-stacks to induce one to escape even +from a nightmare? What is more depressing than a city street before the +shop-windows have lifted an eyelid, when “the very houses seem asleep,” + as Wordsworth says, and nobody is astir but the belated burglar or the +milk-and-water man or Mary washing off the front steps? Daybreak at +the seaside or up among the mountains is sometimes worth while, though +familiarity with it breeds indifference. The man forced by restlessness +or occupation to drink the first vintage of the morning every day of +his life has no right appreciation of the beverage, however much he may +profess to relish it. It is only your habitual late riser who takes in +the full flavor of Nature at those rare intervals when he gets up to +go a-fishing. He brings virginal emotions and unsatiated eyes to the +sparkling freshness of earth and stream and sky. For him--a momentary +Adam--the world is newly created. It is Eden come again, with Eve in the +similitude of a three-pound trout. + +In the country, then, it is well enough occasionally to dress by +candle-light and assist at the ceremony of dawn; it is well if for no +other purpose than to disarm the intolerance of the professional early +riser who, were he in a state of perfect health, would not be the +wandering victim of insomnia, and boast of it. There are few small +things more exasperating than this early bird with the worm of his +conceit in his bill. + + + + +UN POETE MANQUE + +IN the first volume of Miss Dickinson's poetical melange is a little +poem which needs only a slight revision of the initial stanza to +entitle it to rank with some of the swallow-flights in Heine's lyrical +intermezzo. I have tentatively tucked a rhyme into that opening stanza: + + I taste a liquor never brewed + In vats upon the Rhine; + No tankard ever held a draught + Of alcohol like mine. + + Inebriate of air am I, + And debauchee of dew, + Reeling, through endless summer days, + From inns of molten blue. + + When landlords turn the drunken bee + Out of the Foxglove's door, + When butterflies renounce their drams, + I shall but drink the more! + Till seraphs swing their snowy caps + And saints to windows run, + To see the little tippler + Leaning against the sun! + +Those inns of molten blue, and the disreputable honey-gatherer who gets +himself turned out-of-doors at the sign of the Foxglove, are very taking +matters. I know of more important things that interest me vastly less. +This is one of the ten or twelve brief pieces so nearly perfect in +structure as almost to warrant the reader in suspecting that Miss +Dickinson's general disregard of form was a deliberate affectation. The +artistic finish of the following sunset-piece makes her usual quatrains +unforgivable: + + This is the land the sunset washes, + These are the banks of the Yellow Sea; + Where it rose, or whither it rushes, + These are the western mystery! + + Night after night her purple traffic + Strews the landing with opal bales; + Merchantmen poise upon horizons, + Dip, and vanish with fairy sails. + +The little picture has all the opaline atmosphere of a Claude +Lorraine. One instantly frames it in one's memory. Several such bits of +impressionist landscape may be found in the portfolio. + +It is to be said, in passing, that there are few things in Miss +Dickinson's poetry so felicitous as Mr. Higginson's characterization of +it in his preface to the volume: “In many cases these verses will seem +to the reader _like poetry pulled up by the roots_, with rain and dew +and earth clinging to them.” Possibly it might be objected that this is +not the best way to gather either flowers or poetry. + +Miss Dickinson possessed an extremely unconventional and bizarre mind. +She was deeply tinged by the mysticism of Blake, and strongly influenced +by the mannerism of Emerson. The very gesture with which she tied her +bonnet-strings, preparatory to one of her nun-like walks in her garden +at Amherst, must have had something dreamy and Emersonian in it. She had +much fancy of a quaint kind, but only, as it appears to me, intermittent +flashes of imagination. + +That Miss Dickinson's memoranda have a certain something which, for want +of a more precise name, we term _quality_, is not to be denied. But +the incoherence and shapelessness of the greater part of her verse are +fatal. On nearly every page one lights upon an unsupported exquisite +line or a lonely happy epithet; but a single happy epithet or an +isolated exquisite line does not constitute a poem. What Lowell says +of Dr. Donne applies in a manner to Miss Dickinson: “Donne is full of +salient verses that would take the rudest March winds of criticism with +their beauty, of thoughts that first tease us like charades and then +delight us with the felicity of their solution; but these have not saved +him. He is exiled to the limbo of the formless and the fragmentary.” + +Touching this question of mere technique Mr. Ruskin has a word to say +(it appears that he said it “in his earlier and better days”), and Mr. +Higginson quotes it: “No weight, nor mass, nor beauty of execution can +outweigh one grain or fragment of thought.” This is a proposition to +which one would cordially subscribe if it were not so intemperately +stated. A suggestive commentary on Mr. Ruskin's impressive dictum is +furnished by his own volume of verse. The substance of it is weighty +enough, but the workmanship lacks just that touch which distinguishes +the artist from the bungler--the touch which Mr. Ruskin, except when +writing prose, appears not much to have regarded either in his later or +“in his earlier and better days.” + +Miss Dickinson's stanzas, with their impossible rhyme, their involved +significance, their interrupted flute-note of birds that have no +continuous music, seem to have caught the ear of a group of eager +listeners. A shy New England bluebird, shifting its light load of song, +has for the moment been mistaken for a stray nightingale. + + + + +THE MALE COSTUME OF THE PERIOD + +I WENT to see a play the other night, one of those good old-fashioned +English comedies that are in five acts and seem to be in fifteen. The +piece with its wrinkled conventionality, its archaic stiffness, +and obsolete code of morals, was devoid of interest excepting as a +collection of dramatic curios. Still I managed to sit it through. +The one thing in it that held me a pleased spectator was the graceful +costume of a certain player who looked like a fine old portrait--by +Vandyke or Velasquez, let us say--that had come to life and kicked off +its tarnished frame. + +I do not know at what epoch of the world's history the scene of the play +was laid; possibly the author originally knew, but it was evident that +the actors did not, for their make-ups represented quite antagonistic +periods. This circumstance, however, detracted only slightly from the +special pleasure I took in the young person called Delorme. He was +not in himself interesting; he was like that Major Waters in “Pepys's +Diary”--“a most amorous melancholy gentleman who is under a despayr in +love, which makes him bad company;” it was entirely Delorme's dress. + +I never saw mortal man in a dress more sensible and becoming. The +material was according to Polonius's dictum, rich but not gaudy, of some +dark cherry-colored stuff with trimmings of a deeper shade. My idea of +a doublet is so misty that I shall not venture to affirm that the +gentleman wore a doublet. It was a loose coat of some description +hanging negligently from the shoulders and looped at the throat, +showing a tasteful arrangement of lacework below and at the wrists. Full +trousers reaching to the tops of buckskin boots, and a low-crowned soft +hat--not a Puritan's sugar-loaf, but a picturesque shapeless head-gear, +one side jauntily fastened up with a jewel--completed the essential +portions of our friend's attire. It was a costume to walk in, to ride +in, to sit in. The wearer of it could not be awkward if he tried, and I +will do Delorme the justice to say that he put his dress to some severe +tests. But he was graceful all the while, and made me wish that my +countrymen would throw aside their present hideous habiliments and +hasten to the measuring-room of Delorme's tailor. + +In looking over the plates of an old book of fashions we smile at the +monstrous attire in which our worthy great-grandsires saw fit to deck +themselves. Presently it will be the turn of posterity to smile at us, +for in our own way we are no less ridiculous than were our ancestors +in their knee-breeches, pig-tail and _chapeau de bras_. In fact we are +really more absurd. If a fashionably dressed man of to-day could catch +a single glimpse of himself through the eyes of his descendants four +or five generations removed, he would have a strong impression of being +something that had escaped from somewhere. + +Whatever strides we may have made in arts and sciences, we have made +no advance in the matter of costume. That Americans do not tattoo +themselves, and do go fully clad--I am speaking exclusively of my own +sex--is about all that can be said in favor of our present fashions. I +wish I had the vocabulary of Herr Teufelsdrockh with which to +inveigh against the dress-coat of our evening parties, the angular +swallow-tailed coat that makes a man look like a poor species of bird +and gets him mistaken for the waiter. “As long as a man wears the modern +coat,” says Leigh Hunt, “he has no right to despise any dress. What +snips at the collar and lapels! What a mechanical and ridiculous cut +about the flaps! What buttons in front that are never meant to button, +and yet are no ornament! And what an exquisitely absurd pair of +buttons at the back! gravely regarded, nevertheless, and thought as +indispensably necessary to every well-conditioned coat, as other bits +of metal or bone are to the bodies of savages whom we laugh at. There is +absolutely not one iota of sense, grace, or even economy in the modern +coat.” + +Still more deplorable is the ceremonial hat of the period. That a +Christian can go about unabashed with a shiny black cylinder on his head +shows what civilization has done for us in the way of taste in personal +decoration. The scalplock of an Apache brave has more style. When an +Indian squaw comes into a frontier settlement the first “marked-down” + article she purchases is a section of stove-pipe. Her instinct as to +the eternal fitness of things tells her that its proper place is on the +skull of a barbarian. + +It was while revolving these pleasing reflections in my mind, that our +friend Delorme walked across the stage in the fourth act, and though +there was nothing in the situation nor in the text of the play to +warrant it, I broke into tremendous applause, from which I desisted +only at the scowl of an usher--an object in a celluloid collar and +a claw-hammer coat. My solitary ovation to Master Delorme was an +involuntary and, I think, pardonable protest against the male costume of +our own time. + + + + +ON A CERTAIN AFFECTATION + +EXCEPTING on the ground that youth is the age of vain fantasy, there is +no accounting for the fact that young men and young women of poetical +temperament should so frequently assume to look upon an early demise +for themselves as the most desirable thing in the world. Though one may +incidentally be tempted to agree with them in the abstract, one cannot +help wondering. That persons who are exceptionally fortunate in their +environment, and in private do not pretend to be otherwise, should +openly announce their intention of retiring at once into the family +tomb, is a problem not easily solved. The public has so long listened +to these funereal solos that if a few of the poets thus impatient to +be gone were to go, their departure would perhaps be attended by that +resigned speeding which the proverb invokes on behalf of the parting +guest. + +The existence of at least one magazine editor would, I know, have a +shadow lifted from it. At this writing, in a small mortuary basket under +his desk are seven or eight poems of so gloomy a nature that he would +not be able to remain in the same room with them if he did not suspect +the integrity of their pessimism. The ring of a false coin is not more +recognizable than that of a rhyme setting forth a simulated sorrow. + +The Miss Gladys who sends a poem entitled “Forsaken,” in which she +addresses death as her only friend, makes pictures in the editor's eyes. +He sees, among other dissolving views, a little hoyden in magnificent +spirits, perhaps one of this season's social buds, with half a score of +lovers ready to pluck her from the family stem--a rose whose countless +petals are coupons. A caramel has disagreed with her, or she would not +have written in this despondent vein. The young man who seeks to inform +the world in eleven anaemic stanzas of _terze rime_ that the cup of +happiness has been forever dashed from his lip (he appears to have but +one) and darkly intimates that the end is “nigh” (rhyming affably with +“sigh”), will probably be engaged a quarter of a century from now in +making similar declarations. He is simply echoing some dysthymic poet of +the past--reaching out with some other man's hat for the stray nickel of +your sympathy. + +This morbidness seldom accompanies genuine poetic gifts. The case of +David Gray, the young Scottish poet who died in 1861, is an instance +to the contrary. His lot was exceedingly sad, and the failure of +health just as he was on the verge of achieving something like success +justified his profound melancholy; but that he tuned this melancholy and +played upon it, as if it were a musical instrument, is plainly seen in +one of his sonnets. + +In Monckton Milnes's (Lord Houghton's) “Life and Letters of John Keats” + it is related that Keats, one day, on finding a stain of blood upon his +lips after coughing, said to his friend Charles Brown: “I know the color +of that blood; it is arterial blood; I cannot be deceived. That drop +is my death-warrant. I must die.” Who that ever read the passage +could forget it? David Gray did not, for he versified the incident as +happening to himself and appropriated, as his own, Keats's comment: + + Last night, on coughing slightly with sharp pain, + There came arterial blood, and with a sigh + Of absolute grief I cried in bitter vein, + That drop is my death-warrant; I must die. + +The incident was likely enough a personal experience, but the comment +should have been placed in quotation marks. I know of few stranger +things in literature than this poet's dramatization of another man's +pathos. Even Keats's epitaph--_Here lies one whose name_ _was writ in +water_--finds an echo in David Gray's _Below lies one whose name was +traced in sand_. Poor Gray was at least the better prophet. + + + + +WISHMAKERS' TOWN + +A LIMITED edition of this little volume of verse, which seems to me +in many respects unique, was issued in 1885, and has long been out of +print. The reissue of the book is in response to the desire off certain +readers who have not forgotten the charm which William Young's poem +exercised upon them years ago, and, finding the charm still potent, +would have others share it. + +The scheme of the poem, for it is a poem and not simply a series of +unrelated lyrics, is ingenious and original, and unfolds itself in +measures at once strong and delicate. The mood of the poet and the +method of the playwright are obvious throughout. Wishmakers' Town--a +little town situated in the no-man's-land of “The Tempest” and “A +Midsummer Night's Dream”--is shown to us as it awakens, touched by the +dawn. The clangor of bells far and near calls the townfolk to their +various avocations, the toiler to his toil, the idler to his idleness, +the miser to his gold. In swift and picturesque sequence the personages +of the Masque pass before us. Merchants, hucksters, players, lovers, +gossips, soldiers, vagabonds, and princes crowd the scene, and have in +turn their word of poignant speech. We mingle with the throng in the +streets; we hear the whir of looms and the din of foundries, the blare +of trumpets, the whisper of lovers, the scandals of the market-place, +and, in brief, are let into all the secrets of the busy microcosm. +A contracted stage, indeed, yet large enough for the play of many +passions, as the narrowest hearthstone may be. With the sounding of the +curfew, the town is hushed to sleep again, and the curtain falls on this +mimic drama of life. + +The charm of it all is not easily to be defined. Perhaps if one could +name it, the spell were broken. Above the changing rhythms hangs an +atmosphere too evasive for measurement--an atmosphere that stipulates an +imaginative mood on the part of the reader. The quality which pleases in +certain of the lyrical episodes is less intangible. One readily explains +one's liking for so gracious a lyric as The Flower-Seller, to select an +example at random. Next to the pleasure that lies in the writing of such +exquisite verse is the pleasure of quoting it. I copy the stanzas partly +for my own gratification, and partly to win the reader to “Wishmakers' +Town,” not knowing better how to do it. + + Myrtle, and eglantine, + For the old love and the new! + And the columbine, + With its cap and bells, for folly! + And the daffodil, for the hopes of youth! and the rue, + For melancholy! + But of all the blossoms that blow, + Fair gallants all, I charge you to win, if ye may, + This gentle guest, + Who dreams apart, in her wimple of purple and gray, + Like the blessed Virgin, with meek head bending low + Upon her breast. + For the orange flower + Ye may buy as ye will: but the violet of the wood + Is the love of maidenhood; + And he that hath worn it but once, though but for an hour, + He shall never again, though he wander by many a stream, + No, never again shall he meet with a dower that shall seem + So sweet and pure; and forever, in after years, + At the thought of its bloom, or the fragrance of its breath, + The past shall arise, + And his eyes shall be dim with tears, + And his soul shall be far in the gardens of Paradise + Though he stand in the Shambles of death. +In a different tone, but displaying the same sureness of execution, is +the cry of the lowly folk, the wretched pawns in the great game of life: + + Prince, and Bishop, and Knight, and Dame, + Plot, and plunder, and disagree! + O but the game is a royal game! + O but your tourneys are fair to see! + + None too hopeful we found our lives; + Sore was labor from day to day; + Still we strove for our babes and wives-- + Now, to the trumpet, we march away! + + “Why?”--For some one hath will'd it so! + Nothing we know of the why or the where-- + To swamp, or jungle, or wastes of snow-- + Nothing we know, and little we care. + + Give us to kill!--since this is the end + Of love and labor in Nature's plan; + Give us to kill and ravish and rend, + Yea, since this is the end of man. + + States shall perish, and states be born: + Leaders, out of the throng, shall press; + Some to honor, and some to scorn: + We, that are little, shall yet be less. + + Over our lines shall the vultures soar; + Hard on our flanks shall the jackals cry; + And the dead shall be as the sands of the shore; + And daily the living shall pray to die. + + Nay, what matter!--When all is said, + Prince and Bishop will plunder still: + Lord and Lady must dance and wed. + Pity us, pray for us, ye that will! + +It is only the fear of impinging on Mr. Young's copyright that prevents +me reprinting the graphic ballad of The Wanderer and the prologue of The +Strollers, which reads like a page from the prelude to some Old-World +miracle play. The setting of these things is frequently antique, but the +thought is the thought of today. I think there is a new generation of +readers for such poetry as Mr. Young's. I venture the prophecy that +it will not lack for them later when the time comes for the inevitable +rearrangement of present poetic values. + +The author of “Wishmakers' Town” is the child of his period, and has not +escaped the _maladie du siecle_. The doubt and pessimism that marked +the end of the nineteenth century find a voice in the bell-like strophes +with which the volume closes. It is the dramatist rather than the poet +who speaks here. The real message of the poet to mankind is ever one of +hope. Amid the problems that perplex and discourage, it is for him to +sing + + Of what the world shall be + When the years have died away. + + + + + +HISTORICAL NOVELS + +IN default of such an admirable piece of work as Dr. Weir Mitchell's +“Hugh Wynne,” I like best those fictions which deal with kingdoms and +principalities that exist only in the mind's eye. One's knowledge of +actual events and real personages runs no serious risk of receiving +shocks in this no-man's-land. Everything that happens in an imaginary +realm--in the realm of Ruritania, for illustration--has an air of +possibility, at least a shadowy vraisemblance. The atmosphere and local +color, having an authenticity of their own, are not to be challenged. +You cannot charge the writer with ignorance of the period in which his +narrative is laid, since the period is as vague as the geography. +He walks on safe ground, eluding many of the perils that beset +the story-teller who ventures to stray beyond the bounds of the +make-believe. One peril he cannot escape--that of misrepresenting human +nature. + +The anachronisms of the average historical novel, pretending to +reflect history, are among its minor defects. It is a thing altogether +wonderfully and fearfully made--the imbecile intrigue, the cast-iron +characters, the plumed and armored dialogue with its lance of gory +rhetoric forever at charge. The stage at its worst moments is not so +unreal. Here art has broken into smithereens the mirror which she is +supposed to hold up to nature. + +In this romance-world somebody is always somebody's unsuspected father, +mother, or child, deceiving every one excepting the reader. Usually +the anonymous person is the hero, to whom it is mere recreation to hold +twenty swordsmen at bay on a staircase, killing ten or twelve of them +before he escapes through a door that ever providentially opens directly +behind him. How tired one gets of that door! The “caitiff” in these +chronicles of when knighthood was in flower is invariably hanged from +“the highest battlement”--the second highest would not do at all; or +else he is thrown into “the deepest dungeon of the castle”--the second +deepest dungeon was never known to be used on these occasions. The hero +habitually “cleaves” his foeman “to the midriff,” the “midriff” + being what the properly brought up hero always has in view. A certain +fictional historian of my acquaintance makes his swashbuckler exclaim: +“My sword will [shall] kiss his midriff;” but that is an exceptionally +lofty flight of diction. My friend's heroine dresses as a page, and in +the course of long interviews with her lover remains unrecognized--a +diaphanous literary invention that must have been old when the Pyramids +were young. The heroine's small brother, with playful archaicism called +“a springald,” puts on her skirts and things and passes himself off for +his sister or anybody else he pleases. In brief, there is no puerility +that is not at home in this sphere of misbegotten effort. Listen--a +priest, a princess, and a young man in woman's clothes are on the scene: + + \ The princess rose to her feet and + approached the priest. + \ “Father,” she said swiftly, “this + is not the Lady Joan, my brother's + wife, but a youth marvelously like + her, who hath offered himself in + her place that she might escape. . . . + He is the Count von Loen, a lord + of Kernsburg. And I love him. We + want you to marry us now, dear + Father--now, without a moment's + delay; for if you do not they will + kill him, and I shall have to marry + Prince Wasp!” + +This is from “Joan of the Sword Hand,” and if ever I read a more silly +performance I have forgotten it. + + + + +POOR YORICK + +THERE is extant in the city of New York an odd piece of bric-a-brac +which I am sometimes tempted to wish was in my own possession. On a +bracket in Edwin Booth's bedroom at The Players--the apartment remains +as he left it that solemn June day ten years ago--stands a sadly +dilapidated skull which the elder Booth, and afterward his son Edwin, +used to soliloquize over in the graveyard at Elsinore in the fifth act +of “Hamlet.” + +A skull is an object that always invokes interest more or less poignant; +it always has its pathetic story, whether told or untold; but this skull +is especially a skull “with a past.” + +In the early forties, while playing an engagement somewhere in the wild +West, Junius Brutus Booth did a series of kindnesses to a particularly +undeserving fellow, the name of him unknown to us. The man, as it +seemed, was a combination of gambler, horse-stealer, and highwayman--in +brief, a miscellaneous desperado, and precisely the melodramatic sort +of person likely to touch the sympathies of the half-mad player. In the +course of nature or the law, presumably the law, the adventurer bodily +disappeared one day, and soon ceased to exist even as a reminiscence in +the florid mind of his sometime benefactor. + +As the elder Booth was seated at breakfast one morning in a hotel in +Louisville, Kentucky, a negro boy entered the room bearing a small osier +basket neatly covered with a snowy napkin. It had the general appearance +of a basket of fruit or flowers sent by some admirer, and as such it +figured for a moment in Mr. Booth's conjecture. On lifting the cloth the +actor started from the chair with a genuine expression on his features +of that terror which he was used so marvelously to simulate as Richard +III. in the midnight tent-scene or as Macbeth when the ghost of Banquo +usurped his seat at table. + +In the pretty willow-woven basket lay the head of Booth's old pensioner, +which head the old pensioner had bequeathed in due legal form to the +tragedian, begging him henceforth to adopt it as one of the necessary +stage properties in the fifth act of Mr. Shakespeare's tragedy of +“Hamlet.” “Take it away, you black imp!” thundered the actor to the +equally aghast negro boy, whose curiosity had happily not prompted him +to investigate the dark nature of his burden. + +Shortly afterward, however, the horse-stealer's residuary legatee, +recovering from the first shock of his surprise, fell into the grim +humor of the situation, and proceeded to carry out to the letter the +testator's whimsical request. Thus it was that the skull came to secure +an engagement to play the role of poor Yorick in J. B. Booth's company +of strolling players, and to continue a while longer to glimmer behind +the footlights in the hands of his famous son. + +Observing that the grave-digger in his too eager realism was damaging +the thing--the marks of his pick and spade are visible on the +cranium--Edwin Booth presently replaced it with a papier-mache +counterfeit manufactured in the property-room of the theatre. During +his subsequent wanderings in Australia and California, he carefully +preserved the relic, which finally found repose on the bracket in +question. + +How often have I sat, of an afternoon, in that front room on the fourth +floor of the clubhouse in Gramercy Park, watching the winter or summer +twilight gradually softening and blurring the sharp outline of the skull +until it vanished uncannily into the gloom! Edwin Booth had forgotten, +if ever he knew, the name of the man; but I had no need of it in order +to establish acquaintance with poor Yorick. In this association I was +conscious of a deep tinge of sentiment on my own part, a circumstance +not without its queerness, considering how very distant the acquaintance +really was. + +Possibly he was a fellow of infinite jest in his day; he was sober +enough now, and in no way disposed to indulge in those flashes of +merriment “that were wont to set the table on a roar.” But I did not +regret his evaporated hilarity; I liked his more befitting genial +silence, and had learned to look upon his rather open countenance with +the same friendliness as that with which I regarded the faces of +less phantasmal members of the club. He had become to me a dramatic +personality as distinct as that of any of the Thespians I met in the +grillroom or the library. + +Yorick's feeling in regard to me was a subject upon which I frequently +speculated. There was at intervals an alert gleam of intelligence in +those cavernous eye-sockets, as if the sudden remembrance of some old +experience had illumined them. He had been a great traveler, and had +known strange vicissitudes in life; his stage career had brought him +into contact with a varied assortment of men and women, and extended +his horizon. His more peaceful profession of holding up mail-coaches on +lonely roads had surely not been without incident. It was inconceivable +that all this had left no impressions. He must have had at least a faint +recollection of the tempestuous Junius Brutus Booth. That Yorick +had formed his estimate of me, and probably not a flattering one, is +something of which I am strongly convinced. + +At the death of Edwin Booth, poor Yorick passed out of my personal +cognizance, and now lingers an incongruous shadow amid the memories of +the precious things I lost then. + +The suite of apartments formerly occupied by Edwin Booth at The Players +has been, as I have said, kept unchanged--a shrine to which from time to +time some loving heart makes silent pilgrimage. On a table in the +centre of his bedroom lies the book just where he laid it down, an ivory +paper-cutter marking the page his eyes last rested upon; and in this +chamber, with its familiar pictures, pipes, and ornaments, the skull +finds its proper sanctuary. If at odd moments I wish that by chance poor +Yorick had fallen to my care, the wish is only halfhearted, though had +that happened, I would have given him welcome to the choicest corner +in my study and tenderly cherished him for the sake of one who comes no +more. + + + + +THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER + + One that gathers samphire, dreadful trade! + --_King Lear._ + +THE material for this paper on the autograph hunter, his ways and his +manners, has been drawn chiefly from experiences not my own. My personal +relations with him have been comparatively restricted, a circumstance +to which I owe the privilege of treating the subject with a freedom that +might otherwise not seem becoming. + +No author is insensible to the compliment involved in a request for his +autograph, assuming the request to come from some sincere lover of +books and bookmen. It is an affair of different complection when he is +importuned to give time and attention to the innumerable unknown who +“collect” autographs as they would collect postage stamps, with no +interest in the matter beyond the desire to accumulate as many as +possible. The average autograph hunter, with his purposeless insistence, +reminds one of the queen in Stockton's story whose fad was “the +buttonholes of all nations.” + +In our population of eighty millions and upward there are probably two +hundred thousand persons interested more or less in what is termed the +literary world. This estimate is absurdly low, but it serves to cast +a sufficient side-light upon the situation. Now, any unit of these two +hundred thousand is likely at any moment to indite a letter to some +favorite novelist, historian, poet, or what not. It will be seen, then, +that the autograph hunter is no inconsiderable person. He has made it +embarrassing work for the author fortunate or unfortunate enough to +be regarded as worth while. Every mail adds to his reproachful pile +of unanswered letters. If he have a conscience, and no amanuensis, +he quickly finds himself tangled in the meshes of endless and futile +correspondence. Through policy, good nature, or vanity he is apt to +become facile prey. + +A certain literary collector once confessed in print that he always +studied the idiosyncrasies of his “subject” as carefully as another +sort of collector studies the plan of the house to which he meditates +a midnight visit. We were assured that with skillful preparation and +adroit approach an autograph could be extracted from anybody. According +to the revelations of the writer, Bismarck, Queen Victoria, and +Mr. Gladstone had their respective point of easy access--their one +unfastened door or window, metaphorically speaking. The strongest man +has his weak side. + +Dr. Holmes's affability in replying to every one who wrote to him was +perhaps not a trait characteristic of the elder group. Mr. Lowell, for +instance, was harder-hearted and rather difficult to reach. I recall one +day in the library at Elmwood. As I was taking down a volume from the +shelf a sealed letter escaped from the pages and fluttered to my feet. I +handed it to Mr. Lowell, who glanced incuriously at the superscription. +“Oh, yes,” he said, smiling, “I know 'em by instinct.” Relieved of its +envelope, the missive turned out to be eighteen months old, and began +with the usual amusing solecism: “As one of the most famous of American +authors I would like to possess your autograph.” + +Each recipient of such requests has of course his own way of responding. +Mr. Whittier used to be obliging; Mr. Longfellow politic; Mr. Emerson, +always philosophical, dreamily confiscated the postage stamps. + +Time was when the collector contented himself with a signature on a +card; but that, I am told, no longer satisfies. He must have a letter +addressed to him personally--“on any subject you please,” as an immature +scribe lately suggested to an acquaintance of mine. The ingenuous +youth purposed to flourish a letter in the faces of his less fortunate +competitors, in order to show them that he was on familiar terms with +the celebrated So-and-So. This or a kindred motive is the spur to many +a collector. The stratagems he employs to compass his end are +inexhaustible. He drops you an off-hand note to inquire in what year you +first published your beautiful poem entitled “A Psalm of Life.” If you +are a simple soul, you hasten to assure him that you are not the author +of that poem, which he must have confused with your “Rime of the +Ancient Mariner”--and there you are. Another expedient is to ask if your +father's middle name was not Hierophilus. Now, your father has probably +been dead many years, and as perhaps he was not a public man in his day, +you are naturally touched that any one should have interest in him after +this long flight of time. In the innocence of your heart you reply by +the next mail that your father's middle name was not Hierophilus, but +Epaminondas--and there you are again. It is humiliating to be caught +swinging, like a simian ancestor, on a branch of one's genealogical +tree. + +Some morning you find beside your plate at breakfast an imposing +parchment with a great gold seal in the upper left-hand corner. This +document--I am relating an actual occurrence--announces with a flourish +that you have unanimously been elected an honorary member of The +Kalamazoo International Literary Association. Possibly the honor does +not take away your respiration; but you are bound by courtesy to make +an acknowledgment, and you express your insincere thanks to the obliging +secretary of a literary organization which does not exist anywhere on +earth. + +A scheme of lighter creative touch is that of the correspondent who +advises you that he is replenishing his library and desires a detailed +list of your works, with the respective dates of their first issue, +price, style of binding, etc. A bibliophile, you say to yourself. These +interrogations should of course have been addressed to your publisher; +but they are addressed to you, with the stereotyped “thanks in advance.” + The natural inference is that the correspondent, who writes in a brisk +commercial vein, wishes to fill out his collection of your books, or, +possibly, to treat himself to a complete set in full crushed Levant. +Eight or ten months later this individual, having forgotten (or hoping +you will not remember) that he has already demanded a chronological list +of your writings, forwards another application couched in the self-same +words. The length of time it takes him to “replenish” his library (with +your books) strikes you as pathetic. You cannot control your emotions +sufficiently to pen a reply. From a purely literary point of view this +gentleman cares nothing whatever for your holograph; from a mercantile +point of view he cares greatly and likes to obtain duplicate specimens, +which he disposes of to dealers in such frail merchandise. + +The pseudo-journalist who is engaged in preparing a critical and +biographical sketch of you, and wants to incorporate, if possible, some +slight hitherto unnoted event in your life--a signed photograph and +a copy of your bookplate are here in order--is also a character which +periodically appears upon the scene. In this little Comedy of Deceptions +there are as many players as men have fancies. + +A brother slave-of-the-lamp permits me to transfer this leaf from the +book of his experience: “Not long ago the postman brought me a letter of +a rather touching kind. The unknown writer, lately a widow, and plainly +a woman of refinement, had just suffered a new affliction in the loss +of her little girl. My correspondent asked me to copy for her ten or a +dozen lines from a poem which I had written years before on the death of +a child. The request was so shrinkingly put, with such an appealing +air of doubt as to its being heeded, that I immediately transcribed the +entire poem, a matter of a hundred lines or so, and sent it to her. I am +unable to this day to decide whether I was wholly hurt or wholly amused +when, two months afterward, I stumbled over my manuscript, with a neat +price attached to it, in a second-hand bookshop.” + +Perhaps the most distressing feature of the whole business is the very +poor health which seems to prevail among autograph hunters. No other +class of persons in the community shows so large a percentage of +confirmed invalids. There certainly is some mysterious connection +between incipient spinal trouble and the collecting of autographs. Which +superinduces the other is a question for pathology. It is a fact that +one out of every eight applicants for a specimen of penmanship bases +his or her claim upon the possession of some vertebral disability which +leaves him or her incapable of doing anything but write to authors +for their autograph. Why this particular diversion should be the sole +resource remains undisclosed. But so it appears to be, and the appeal +to one's sympathy is most direct and persuasive. Personally, however, +I have my suspicions, suspicions that are shared by several men of +letters, who have come to regard this plea of invalidism, in the +majority of cases, as simply the variation of a very old and familiar +tune. I firmly believe that the health of autograph hunters, as a class, +is excellent. + + + + +ROBERT HERRICK + +I + +A LITTLE over three hundred years ago England had given to her a poet of +the very rarest lyrical quality, but she did not discover the fact for +more than a hundred and fifty years afterward. The poet himself was +aware of the fact at once, and stated it, perhaps not too modestly, in +countless quatrains and couplets, which were not read, or, if read, were +not much regarded at the moment. It has always been an incredulous world +in this matter. So many poets have announced their arrival, and not +arrived! + +Robert Herrick was descended in a direct line from an ancient family +in Lincolnshire, the Eyricks, a mentionable representative of which was +John Eyrick of Leicester, the poet's grandfather, admitted freeman +in 1535, and afterward twice made mayor of the town. John Eyrick or +Heyricke--he spelled his name recklessly--had five sons, the second of +which sought a career in London, where he became a goldsmith, and in +December, 1582, married Julian Stone, spinster, of Bedfordshire, a +sister to Anne, Lady Soame, the wife of Sir Stephen Soame. One of the +many children of this marriage was Robert Herrick. + +It is the common misfortune of the poet's biographers, though it was +the poet's own great good fortune, that the personal interviewer was an +unknown quantity at the period when Herrick played his part on the stage +of life. Of that performance, in its intimate aspects, we have only the +slightest record. + +Robert Herrick was born in Wood street, Cheapside, London, in 1591, and +baptized at St. Vedast's, Foster Lane, on August 24 of that year. He had +several brothers and sisters, with whom we shall not concern ourselves. +It would be idle to add the little we know about these persons to the +little we know about Herrick himself. He is a sufficient problem without +dragging in the rest of the family. + +When the future lyrist was fifteen months old his father, Nicholas +Herrick, made his will, and immediately fell out of an upper window. +Whether or not this fall was an intended sequence to the will, the high +almoner, Dr. Fletcher, Bishop of Bristol, promptly put in his claim to +the estate, “all goods and chattels of suicides” becoming his by law. +The circumstances were suspicious, though not conclusive, and the +good bishop, after long litigation, consented to refer the case to +arbitrators, who awarded him two hundred and twenty pounds, thus leaving +the question at issue--whether or not Herrick's death had been his own +premeditated act--still wrapped in its original mystery. This singular +law, which had the possible effect of inducing high almoners to +encourage suicide among well-to-do persons of the lower and middle +classes, was afterward rescinded. + +Nicholas Herrick did not leave his household destitute, for his estate +amounted to five thousand pounds, that is to say, twenty-five thousand +pounds in to-day's money; but there were many mouths to feed. The poet's +two uncles, Robert Herrick and William Herrick of Beaumanor, the +latter subsequently knighted (1) for his usefulness as jeweller and +money-lender to James I., were appointed guardians to the children. + + (1) Dr. Grosart, in his interesting and valuable Memorial + Introduction to Herrick's poems, quotes this curious item + from Win-wood's _Manorials of Affairs of State_: “On Easter + Tuesday [1605], one Mr. William Herrick, a goldsmith in + Cheapside, was Knighted for making a Hole in the great + Diamond the King cloth wear. The party little expected the + honour, but he did his work so well as won the King to an + extraordinary liking of it.” + +Young Robert appears to have attended school in Westminster until his +fifteenth year, when he was apprenticed to Sir William, who had learned +the gentle art of goldsmith from his nephew's father. Though Robert's +indentures bound him for ten years, Sir William is supposed to have +offered no remonstrance when he was asked, long before that term +expired, to cancel the engagement and allow Robert to enter Cambridge, +which he did as fellow-commoner at St. John's College. At the end of two +years he transferred himself to Trinity Hall, with a view to economy and +the pursuit of the law--the two frequently go together. He received his +degree of B. A. in 1617, and his M. A. in 1620, having relinquished the +law for the arts. + +During this time he was assumed to be in receipt of a quarterly +allowance of ten pounds--a not illiberal provision, the pound being then +five times its present value; but as the payments were eccentric, the +master of arts was in recurrent distress. If this money came from his +own share of his father's estate, as seems likely, Herrick had cause for +complaint; if otherwise, the pith is taken out of his grievance. + +The Iliad of his financial woes at this juncture is told in a few +chance-preserved letters written to his “most careful uncle,” as he +calls that evidently thrifty person. In one of these monotonous and +dreary epistles, which are signed “R. Hearick,” the writer says: “The +essence of my writing is (as heretofore) to entreat you to paye for +my use to Mr. Arthour Johnson, bookseller, in Paule's Churchyarde, the +ordinarie sume of tenn pounds, and that with as much sceleritie as you +maye.” He also indulges in the natural wish that his college bills +“had leaden wings and tortice feet.” This was in 1617. The young man's +patrimony, whatever it may have been, had dwindled, and he confesses to +“many a throe and pinches of the purse.” For the moment, at least, his +prospects were not flattering. + +Robert Herrick's means of livelihood, when in 1620 he quitted the +university and went up to London, are conjectural. It is clear that he +was not without some resources, since he did not starve to death on his +wits before he discovered a patron in the Earl of Pembroke. In the court +circle Herrick also unearthed humbler, but perhaps not less useful, +allies in the persons of Edward Norgate, clerk of the signet, and Master +John Crofts, cup-bearer to the king. Through the two New Year anthems, +honored by the music of Henry Lawes, his Majesty's organist at +Westminster, it is more than possible that Herrick was brought to the +personal notice of Charles and Henrietta Maria. All this was a promise +of success, but not success itself. It has been thought probable that +Herrick may have secured some minor office in the chapel at Whitehall. +That would accord with his subsequent appointment (September, 1627,) as +chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham's unfortunate expedition of the Isle +of Rhe. + +Precisely when Herrick was invested with holy orders is not +ascertainable. If one may draw an inference from his poems, the life he +led meanwhile was not such as his “most careful uncle” would have warmly +approved. The literary clubs and coffee-houses of the day were open to a +free-lance like young Herrick, some of whose blithe measures, passing +in manuscript from hand to hand, had brought him faintly to light as +a poet. The Dog and the Triple Tun were not places devoted to worship, +unless it were to the worship of “rare Ben Jonson,” at whose feet +Herrick now sat, with the other blossoming young poets of the season. He +was a faithful disciple to the end, and addressed many loving lyrics to +the master, of which not the least graceful is His Prayer to Ben Jonson: + + When I a verse shall make, + Know I have praid thee + For old religion's sake, + Saint Ben, to aide me. + + Make the way smooth for me, + When I, thy Herrick, + Honouring thee, on my knee + Offer my lyric. + + Candles I'll give to thee, + And a new altar; + And thou, Saint Ben, shalt be + Writ in my Psalter. + +On September 30, 1629, Charles I., at the recommending of the Earl of +Exeter, presented Herrick with the vicarage of Dean Prior, near Totnes, +in Devonshire. Here he was destined to pass the next nineteen years of +his life among surroundings not congenial. For Herrick to be a mile away +from London stone was for Herrick to be in exile. Even with railway +and telegraphic interruptions from the outside world, the dullness of a +provincial English town of today is something formidable. The dullness +of a sequestered English hamlet in the early part of the seventeenth +century must have been appalling. One is dimly conscious of a belated +throb of sympathy for Robert Herrick. Yet, however discontented or +unhappy he may have been at first in that lonely vicarage, the world may +congratulate itself on the circumstances that stranded him there, far +from the distractions of the town, and with no other solace than his +Muse, for there it was he wrote the greater number of the poems which +were to make his fame. It is to this accidental banishment to Devon that +we owe the cluster of exquisite pieces descriptive of obsolete rural +manners and customs--the Christmas masks, the Twelfth-night mummeries, +the morris-dances, and the May-day festivals. + +The November following Herrick's appointment to the benefice was marked +by the death of his mother, who left him no heavier legacy than “a ringe +of twenty shillings.” Perhaps this was an understood arrangement between +them; but it is to be observed that, though Herrick was a spendthrift in +epitaphs, he wasted no funeral lines on Julian Herrick. In the matter of +verse he dealt generously with his family down to the latest nephew. +One of his most charming and touching poems is entitled To His Dying +Brother, Master William Herrick, a posthumous son. There appear to +have been two brothers named William. The younger, who died early, is +supposed to be referred to here. + +The story of Herrick's existence at Dean Prior is as vague and bare of +detail as the rest of the narrative. His parochial duties must have +been irksome to him, and it is to be imagined that he wore his cassock +lightly. As a preparation for ecclesiastical life he forswore sack and +poetry; but presently he was with the Muse again, and his farewell to +sack was in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Herrick had probably accepted +the vicarship as he would have accepted a lieutenancy in a troop of +horse--with an eye to present emolument and future promotion. The +promotion never came, and the emolument was nearly as scant as that +of Goldsmith's parson, who considered himself “passing rich with forty +pounds a year”--a height of optimism beyond the reach of Herrick, with +his expensive town wants and habits. But fifty pounds--the salary of +his benefice--and possible perquisites in the way of marriage and burial +fees would enable him to live for the time being. It was better than a +possible nothing a year in London. + +Herrick's religious convictions were assuredly not deeper than those of +the average layman. Various writers have taken a different view of the +subject; but it is inconceivable that a clergyman with a fitting sense +of his function could have written certain of the poems which Herrick +afterward gave to the world--those astonishing epigrams upon his rustic +enemies, and those habitual bridal compliments which, among his personal +friends, must have added a terror to matrimony. Had he written only +in that vein, the posterity which he so often invoked with pathetic +confidence would not have greatly troubled itself about him. + +It cannot positively be asserted that all the verses in question relate +to the period of his incumbency, for none of his verse is dated, with +the exception of the Dialogue betwixt Horace and Lydia. The date of some +of the compositions may be arrived at by induction. The religious pieces +grouped under the title of Noble Numbers distinctly associate themselves +with Dean Prior, and have little other interest. Very few of them are +“born of the royal blood.” They lack the inspiration and magic of his +secular poetry, and are frequently so fantastical and grotesque as to +stir a suspicion touching the absolute soundness of Herrick's mind at +all times. The lines in which the Supreme Being is assured that he may +read Herrick's poems without taking any tincture from their sinfulness +might have been written in a retreat for the unbalanced. “For +unconscious impiety,” remarks Mr. Edmund Gosse, (1) “this rivals the +famous passage in which Robert Montgomery exhorted God to 'pause and +think.'” Elsewhere, in an apostrophe to “Heaven,” Herrick says: + + Let mercy be + So kind to set me free, + And I will straight + Come in, or force the gate. + +In any event, the poet did not purpose to be left out! + + (1) In _Seventeenth-Century Studies_. and the general + absence of arrangement in the “Hesperides,” Dr. Grosart + advances the theory that the printers exercised arbitrary + authority on these points. Dr. Grosart assumes that Herrick + kept the epigrams and personal tributes in manuscript books + separate from the rest of the work, which would have made a + too slender volume by itself, and on the plea of this + slender-ness was induced to trust the two collections to the + publisher, “whereupon he or some un-skilled subordinate + proceeded to intermix these additions with the others. That + the poet him-self had nothing to do with the arrangement or + disarrangement lies on the surface.” This is an amiable + supposition, but merely a supposition. + +Relative to the inclusion of unworthy pieces, Herrick personally placed +the “copy” in the hands of John Williams and Francis Eglesfield, and +if he were over-persuaded to allow them to print unfit verses, and to +observe no method whatever in the contents of the book, the discredit is +none the less his. It is charitable to believe that Herrick's coarseness +was not the coarseness of the man, but of the time, and that he followed +the fashion _malgre lui_. With regard to the fairy poems, they certainly +should have been given in sequence; but if there are careless printers, +there are also authors who are careless in the arrangement of their +manuscript, a kind of task, moreover, in which Herrick was wholly +unpractised, and might easily have made mistakes. The “Hesperides” was +his sole publication. + +Herrick was now thirty-eight years of age. Of his personal appearance +at this time we have no description. The portrait of him prefixed to the +original edition of his works belongs to a much later moment. Whether or +not the bovine features in Marshall's engraving are a libel on the poet, +it is to be regretted that oblivion has not laid its erasing finger on +that singularly unpleasant counterfeit presentment. It is interesting to +note that this same Marshall engraved the head of Milton for the +first collection of his miscellaneous poems--the precious 1645 volume +containing Il Penseroso, Lycidas, Comus, etc. The plate gave great +offense to the serious-minded young Milton, not only because it +represented him as an elderly person, but because of certain minute +figures of peasant lads and lassies who are very indistinctly seen +dancing frivolously under the trees in the background. Herrick had more +reason to protest. The aggressive face bestowed upon him by the artist +lends a tone of veracity to the tradition that the vicar occasionally +hurled the manuscript of his sermon at the heads of his drowsy +parishioners, accompanying the missive with pregnant remarks. He has the +aspect of one meditating assault and battery. + +To offset the picture there is much indirect testimony to the amiability +of the man, aside from the evidence furnished by his own writings. +He exhibits a fine trait in the poem on the Bishop of Lincoln's +imprisonment--a poem full of deference and tenderness for a person +who had evidently injured the writer, probably by opposing him in some +affair of church preferment. Anthony Wood says that Herrick “became much +beloved by the gentry in these parts for his florid and witty (wise) +discourses.” It appears that he was fond of animals, and had a pet +spaniel called Tracy, which did not get away without a couplet attached +to him: + + Now thou art dead, no eye shall ever see + For shape and service spaniell like to thee. + +Among the exile's chance acquaintances was a sparrow, whose elegy he +also sings, comparing the bird to Lesbia's sparrow, much to the latter's +disadvantage. All of Herrick's geese were swans. On the authority of +Dorothy King, the daughter of a woman who served Herrick's successor at +Dean Prior in 1674, we are told that the poet kept a pig, which he had +taught to drink out of a tankard--a kind of instruction he was admirably +qualified to impart. Dorothy was in her ninety-ninth year when she +communicated this fact to Mr. Barron Field, the author of the paper on +Herrick published in the “Quarterly Review” for August, 1810, and in the +Boston edition (1) of the “Hesperides” attributed to Southey. + + (1) The Biographical Notice prefacing this volume of The + British Poets is a remarkable production, grammatically and + chronologi-cally. On page 7 the writer speaks of Herrick as + living “in habits of intimacy” with Ben Jonson in 1648. If + that was the case, Her-rick must have taken up his quarters + in Westminster Abbey, for Jonson had been dead eleven years. + +What else do we know of the vicar? A very favorite theme with Herrick +was Herrick. Scattered through his book are no fewer than twenty-five +pieces entitled On Himself, not to mention numberless autobiographical +hints under other captions. They are merely hints, throwing casual +side-lights on his likes and dislikes, and illuminating his vanity. A +whimsical personage without any very definite outlines might be evolved +from these fragments. I picture him as a sort of Samuel Pepys, with +perhaps less quaintness, and the poetical temperament added. Like the +prince of gossips, too, he somehow gets at your affections. In one place +Herrick laments the threatened failure of his eyesight (quite in what +would have been Pepys's manner had Pepys written verse), and in another +place he tells us of the loss of a finger. The quatrain treating of this +latter catastrophe is as fantastic as some of Dr. Donne's _concetti_: + + One of the five straight branches of my hand + Is lopt already, and the rest but stand + Expecting when to fall, which soon will be: + First dies the leafe, the bough next, next the tree. + +With all his great show of candor Herrick really reveals as little of +himself as ever poet did. One thing, however, is manifest--he understood +and loved music. None but a lover could have said: + + The mellow touch of musick most doth wound + The soule when it doth rather sigh than sound. + +Or this to Julia: + + So smooth, so sweet, so silvery is thy voice, + As could they hear, the damn'd would make no noise, + But listen to thee walking in thy chamber + Melting melodious words to lutes of amber. + + . . . Then let me lye + Entranc'd, and lost confusedly; + And by thy musick stricken mute, + Die, and be turn'd into a lute. + +Herrick never married. His modest Devonshire establishment was managed +by a maidservant named Prudence Baldwin. “Fate likes fine names,” says +Lowell. That of Herrick's maid-of-all-work was certainly a happy meeting +of gentle vowels and consonants, and has had the good fortune to be +embalmed in the amber of what may be called a joyous little threnody: + + In this little urne is laid + Prewdence Baldwin, once my maid; + From whose happy spark here let + Spring the purple violet. + +Herrick addressed a number of poems to her before her death, which +seems to have deeply touched him in his loneliness. We shall not allow a +pleasing illusion to be disturbed by the flippancy of an old writer who +says that “Prue was but indifferently qualified to be a tenth muse.” She +was a faithful handmaid, and had the merit of causing Herrick in this +octave to strike a note of sincerity not usual with him: + + These summer birds did with thy master stay + The times of warmth, but then they flew away, + Leaving their poet, being now grown old, + Expos'd to all the coming winter's cold. + But thou, kind Prew, didst with my fates abide + As well the winter's as the summer's tide: + For which thy love, live with thy master here + Not two, but all the seasons of the year. + +Thus much have I done for thy memory, Mistress Prew! + +In spite of Herrick's disparagement of Deanbourn, which he calls “a rude +river,” and his characterization of Devon folk as “a people currish, +churlish as the seas,” the fullest and pleasantest days of his life +were probably spent at Dean Prior. He was not unmindful meanwhile of the +gathering political storm that was to shake England to its foundations. +How anxiously, in his solitude, he watched the course of events, +is attested by many of his poems. This solitude was not without its +compensation. “I confess,” he says, + + I ne'er invented such + Ennobled numbers for the presse + Than where I loath'd so much. + +A man is never wholly unhappy when he is writing verses. Herrick was +firmly convinced that each new lyric was a stone added to the pillar of +his fame, and perhaps his sense of relief was tinged with indefinable +regret when he found himself suddenly deprived of his benefice. The +integrity of some of his royalistic poems is doubtful; but he was not +given the benefit of the doubt by the Long Parliament, which ejected the +panegyrist of young Prince Charles from the vicarage of Dean Prior, +and installed in his place the venerable John Syms, a gentleman with +pronounced Cromwellian views. + +Herrick metaphorically snapped his fingers at the Puritans, discarded +his clerical habiliments, and hastened to London to pick up such as were +left of the gay-colored threads of his old experience there. Once more +he would drink sack at the Triple Tun, once more he would breathe the +air breathed by such poets and wits as Cotton, Denham, Shirley, Selden, +and the rest. “Yes, by Saint Anne! and ginger shall be hot I' the mouth +too.” In the gladness of getting back “from the dull confines of the +drooping west,” he writes a glowing apostrophe to London--that “stony +stepmother to poets.” He claims to be a free-born Roman, and is proud +to find himself a citizen again. According to his earlier biographers, +Herrick had much ado not to starve in that same longed-for London, and +fell into great misery; but Dr. Grosart disputes this, arguing, with +justness, that Herrick's family, which was wealthy and influential, +would not have allowed him to come to abject want. With his royalistic +tendencies he may not have breathed quite freely in the atmosphere of +the Commonwealth, and no doubt many tribulations fell to his lot, but +among them was not poverty. + +The poet was now engaged in preparing his works for the press, and a few +weeks following his return to London they were issued in a single volume +with the title “Hesperides; or, The Works both Humane and Divine of +Robert Herrick, Esq.” + +The time was not ready for him. A new era had dawned--the era of the +commonplace. The interval was come when Shakespeare himself was to lie +in a kind of twilight. Herrick was in spirit an Elizabethan, and had +strayed by chance into an artificial and prosaic age--a sylvan singing +creature alighting on an alien planet. “He was too natural,” says Mr. +Palgrave in his Chrysomela, “too purely poetical; he had not the learned +polish, the political allusion, the tone of the city, the didactic turn, +which were then and onward demanded from poetry.” Yet it is strange that +a public which had a relish for Edmund Waller should neglect a poet who +was fifty times finer than Waller in his own specialty. What poet then, +or in the half-century that followed the Restoration, could have written +Corinna's Going a-Maying, or approached in kind the ineffable grace and +perfection to be found in a score of Herrick's lyrics? + +The “Hesperides” was received with chilling indifference. None of +Herrick's great contemporaries has left a consecrating word concerning +it. The book was not reprinted during the author's lifetime, and for +more than a century after his death Herrick was virtually unread. In +1796 the “Gentleman's Magazine” copied a few of the poems, and two years +later Dr. Nathan Drake published in his “Literary Hours” three critical +papers on the poet, with specimens of his writings. Dr. Johnson omitted +him from the “Lives of the Poets,” though space was found for half a +score of poetasters whose names are to be found nowhere else. In 1810 +Dr. Nott, a physician of Bristol, issued a small volume of selections. +It was not until 1823 that Herrick was reprinted in full. It remained +for the taste of our own day to multiply editions of him. + +In order to set the seal to Herrick's fame, it is now only needful that +some wiseacre should attribute the authorship of the poems to some man +who could not possibly have written a line of them. The opportunity +presents attractions that ought to be irresistible. Excepting a handful +of Herrick's college letters there is no scrap of his manuscript extant; +the men who drank and jested with the poet at the Dog or the Triple Tun +make no reference to him; (1) and in the wide parenthesis formed by his +birth and death we find as little tangible incident as is discoverable +in the briefer span of Shakespeare's fifty-two years. Here is material +for profundity and ciphers! + + + (1) With the single exception of the writer of some verses + in the _Musarum Deliciae_ (1656) who mentions + + That old sack + Young Herrick took to entertain + The Muses in a sprightly vein. + +Herrick's second sojourn in London covered the period between 1648 +and 1662, curing which interim he fades from sight, excepting for +the instant when he is publishing his book. If he engaged in further +literary work there are no evidences of it beyond one contribution to +the “Lacrymae Musarum” in 1649. + +He seems to have had lodgings, for a while at least, in St. Anne's, +Westminster. With the court in exile and the grim Roundheads seated in +the seats of the mighty, it was no longer the merry London of his early +manhood. Time and war had thinned the ranks of friends; in the old +haunts the old familiar faces were wanting. Ben Jonson was dead, Waller +banished, and many another comrade “in disgrace with fortune and men's +eyes.” As Herrick walked through crowded Cheapside or along the dingy +river-bank in those years, his thought must have turned more than once +to the little vicarage in Devonshire, and lingered tenderly. + +On the accession of Charles II. a favorable change of wind wafted +Herrick back to his former moorings at Dean Prior, the obnoxious +Syms having been turned adrift. This occurred on August 24, 1662, the +seventy-first anniversary of the poet's baptism. Of Herrick's movements +after that, tradition does not furnish even the shadow of an outline. +The only notable event concerning him is recorded twelve years later +in the parish register: “Robert Herrick, vicker, was buried ye 15th day +October, 1674.” He was eighty-three years old. The location of his grave +is unknown. In 1857 a monument to his memory was erected in Dean Church. +And this is all. + + + +II + +THE details that have come down to us touching Herrick's private life +are as meagre as if he had been a Marlowe or a Shakespeare. But were +they as ample as could be desired they would still be unimportant +compared with the single fact that in 1648 he gave to the world +his “Hesperides.” The environments of the man were accidental and +transitory. The significant part of him we have, and that is enduring so +long as wit, fancy, and melodious numbers hold a charm for mankind. + +A fine thing incomparably said instantly becomes familiar, and has +henceforth a sort of dateless excellence. Though it may have been said +three hundred years ago, it is as modern as yesterday; though it may +have been said yesterday, it has the trick of seeming to have been +always in our keeping. This quality of remoteness and nearness belongs, +in a striking degree, to Herrick's poems. They are as novel to-day as +they were on the lips of a choice few of his contemporaries, who, in +reading them in their freshness, must surely have been aware here and +there of the ageless grace of old idyllic poets dead and gone. + +Herrick was the bearer of no heavy message to the world, and such +message as he had he was apparently in no hurry to deliver. On this +point he somewhere says: + + Let others to the printing presse run fast; + Since after death comes glory, I 'll not haste. + +He had need of his patience, for he was long detained on the road by +many of those obstacles that waylay poets on their journeys to the +printer. + +Herrick was nearly sixty years old when he published the “Hesperides.” + It was, I repeat, no heavy message, and the bearer was left an +unconscionable time to cool his heels in the antechamber. Though his +pieces had been set to music by such composers as Lawes, Ramsay, and +Laniers, and his court poems had naturally won favor with the Cavalier +party, Herrick cut but a small figure at the side of several of his +rhyming contemporaries who are now forgotten. It sometimes happens +that the light love-song, reaching few or no ears at its first singing, +outlasts the seemingly more prosperous ode which, dealing with some +passing phase of thought, social or political, gains the instant +applause of the multitude. In most cases the timely ode is somehow +apt to fade with the circumstance that inspired it, and becomes the +yesterday's editorial of literature. Oblivion likes especially to get +hold of occasional poems. That makes it hard for feeble poets laureate. + +Mr. Henry James once characterized Alphonse Daudet as “a great little +novelist.” Robert Herrick is a great little poet. The brevity of his +poems, for he wrote nothing _de longue haleine_, would place him among +the minor singers; his workmanship places him among the masters. The +Herricks were not a family of goldsmiths and lapidaries for nothing. The +accurate touch of the artificer in jewels and costly metals was one +of the gifts transmitted to Robert Herrick. Much of his work is as +exquisite and precise as the chasing on a dagger-hilt by Cellini; the +line has nearly always that vine-like fluency which seems impromptu, +and is never the result of anything but austere labor. The critic who, +borrowing Milton's words, described these carefully wrought poems as +“wood-notes wild” showed a singular lapse of penetration. They are full +of subtle simplicity. Here we come across a stanza as severely cut as an +antique cameo--the stanza, for instance, in which the poet speaks of his +lady-love's “winter face”--and there a couplet that breaks into unfading +daffodils and violets. The art, though invisible, is always there. His +amatory songs and catches are such poetry as Orlando would have liked to +hang on the boughs in the forest of Arden. None of the work is hastily +done, not even that portion of it we could wish had not been done at +all. Be the motive grave or gay, it is given that faultlessness of form +which distinguishes everything in literature that has survived its +own period. There is no such thing as “form” alone; it is only the +close-grained material that takes the highest finish. The structure +of Herrick's verse, like that of Blake, is simple to the verge of +innocence. Such rhythmic intricacies as those of Shelley, Tennyson, and +Swinburne he never dreamed of. But his manner has this perfection: it +fits his matter as the cup of the acorn fits its meat. + +Of passion, in the deeper sense, Herrick has little or none. Here are +no “tears from the depth of some divine despair,” no probings into the +tragic heart of man, no insight that goes much farther than the pathos +of a cowslip on a maiden's grave. The tendrils of his verse reach up to +the light, and love the warmer side of the garden wall. But the reader +who does not detect the seriousness under the lightness misreads +Herrick. Nearly all true poets have been wholesome and joyous singers. +A pessimistic poet, like the poisonous ivy, is one of nature's sarcasms. +In his own bright pastoral way Herrick must always remain unexcelled. +His limitations are certainly narrow, but they leave him in the +sunshine. Neither in his thought nor in his utterance is there any +complexity; both are as pellucid as a woodland pond, content to +duplicate the osiers and ferns, and, by chance, the face of a girl +straying near its crystal. His is no troubled stream in which large +trout are caught. He must be accepted on his own terms. + +The greatest poets have, with rare exceptions, been the most indebted +to their predecessors or to their contemporaries. It has wittily been +remarked that only mediocrity is ever wholly original. Impressionability +is one of the conditions of the creative faculty: the sensitive mind is +the only mind that invents. What the poet reads, sees, and feels, goes +into his blood, and becomes an ingredient of his originality. The +color of his thought instinctively blends itself with the color of its +affinities. A writer's style, if it have distinction, is the outcome of +a hundred styles. + +Though a generous borrower of the ancients, Herrick appears to have been +exceptionally free from the influence of contemporary minds. Here and +there in his work are traces of his beloved Ben Jonson, or fleeting +impressions of Fletcher, and in one instance a direct infringement +on Suckling; but the sum of Herrick's obligations of this sort is +inconsiderable. + +This indifference to other writers of his time, this insularity, was +doubtless his loss. The more exalted imagination of Vaughan or Marvell +or Herbert might have taught him a deeper note than he sounded in his +purely devotional poems. Milton, of course, moved in a sphere apart. +Shakespeare, whose personality still haunted the clubs and taverns which +Herrick frequented on his first going up to London, failed to lay any +appreciable spell upon him. That great name, moreover, is a jewel which +finds no setting in Herrick's rhyme. His general reticence relative to +brother poets is extremely curious when we reflect on his penchant for +addressing four-line epics to this or that individual. They were, in +the main, obscure individuals, whose identity is scarcely worth +establishing. His London life, at two different periods, brought him +into contact with many of the celebrities of the day; but his verse has +helped to confer immortality on very few of them. That his verse had the +secret of conferring immortality was one of his unshaken convictions. +Shakespeare had not a finer confidence when he wrote, + + Not marble nor the gilded monuments + Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme, + +than has Herrick whenever he speaks of his own poetry, and he is not by +any means backward in speaking of it. It was the breath of his nostrils. +Without his Muse those nineteen years in that dull, secluded Devonshire +village would have been unendurable. + +His poetry has the value and the defect of that seclusion. In spite, +however, of his contracted horizon there is great variety in Herrick's +themes. Their scope cannot be stated so happily as he has stated it: + + I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers, + Of April, May, of June, and July flowers; + I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, + Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes; + I write of Youth, of Love, and have access + By these to sing of cleanly wantonness; + I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by piece + Of balm, of oil, of spice and ambergris; + I sing of times trans-shifting, and I write + How roses first came red and lilies white; + I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing + The Court of Mab, and of the Fairy King; + I write of Hell; I sing (and ever shall) + Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all. + +Never was there so pretty a table of contents! When you open his book +the breath of the English rural year fans your cheek; the pages seem to +exhale wildwood and meadow smells, as if sprigs of tansy and lavender +had been shut up in the volume and forgotten. One has a sense of +hawthorn hedges and wide-spreading oaks, of open lead-set lattices half +hidden with honeysuckle; and distant voices of the haymakers, returning +home in the rosy afterglow, fall dreamily on one's ear, as sounds should +fall when fancy listens. There is no English poet so thoroughly English +as Herrick. He painted the country life of his own time as no other has +painted it at any time. + +It is to be remarked that the majority of English poets regarded as +national have sought their chief inspiration in almost every land and +period excepting their own. Shakespeare went to Italy, Denmark, Greece, +Egypt, and to many a hitherto unfooted region of the imagination, for +plot and character. It was not Whitehall Garden, but the Garden of Eden +and the celestial spaces, that lured Milton. It is the Ode on a Grecian +Urn, The Eve of St. Agnes, and the noble fragment of Hyperion that +have given Keats his spacious niche in the gallery of England's poets. +Shelley's two masterpieces, Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci, belong +respectively to Greece and Italy. Browning's The Ring and the Book is +Italian; Tennyson wandered to the land of myth for the Idylls of the +King, and Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum--a narrative poem second in +dignity to none produced in the nineteenth century--is a Persian story. +But Herrick's “golden apples” sprang from the soil in his own day, and +reddened in the mist and sunshine of his native island. + +Even the fairy poems, which must be classed by themselves, are not +wanting in local flavor. Herrick's fairy world is an immeasurable +distance from that of “A Midsummer Night's Dream.” Puck and Titania +are of finer breath than Herrick's little folk, who may be said to have +Devonshire manners and to live in a miniature England of their own. Like +the magician who summons them from nowhere, they are fond of color and +perfume and substantial feasts, and indulge in heavy draughts--from the +cups of morning-glories. In the tiny sphere they inhabit everything is +marvelously adapted to their requirement; nothing is out of proportion +or out of perspective. The elves are a strictly religious people in +their winsome way, “part pagan, part papistical;” they have their +pardons and indulgences, their psalters and chapels, and + + An apple's-core is hung up dried, + With rattling kernels, which is rung + To call to Morn and Even-song; + +and very conveniently, + + Hard by, I' th' shell of half a nut, + The Holy-water there is put. + +It is all delightfully naive and fanciful, this elfin-world, where the +impossible does not strike one as incongruous, and the England of 1648 +seems never very far away. + +It is only among the apparently unpremeditated lyrical flights of the +Elizabethan dramatists that one meets with anything like the lilt and +liquid flow of Herrick's songs. While in no degree Shakespearian echoes, +there are epithalamia and dirges of his that might properly have fallen +from the lips of Posthumus in “Cymbeline.” This delicate epicede would +have fitted Imogen: + + Here a solemne fast we keepe + While all beauty lyes asleepe; + Husht be all things; no noyse here + But the toning of a teare, + Or a sigh of such as bring + Cowslips for her covering. + +Many of the pieces are purely dramatic in essence; the Mad Maid's Song, +for example. The lyrist may speak in character, like the dramatist. A +poet's lyrics may be, as most of Browning's are, just so many +_dramatis personae_. “Enter a Song singing” is the stage-direction in a +seventeenth-century play whose name escapes me. The sentiment dramatized +in a lyric is not necessarily a personal expression. In one of his +couplets Herrick neatly denies that his more mercurial utterances are +intended presentations of himself: + + To his Book's end this last line he'd have placed-- + Jocund his Muse was, but his Life was chaste. + +In point of fact he was a whole group of imaginary lovers in one. +Silvia, Anthea, Electra, Perilla, Perenna, and the rest of those lively +ladies ending in _a_, were doubtless, for the most part, but airy +phantoms dancing--as they should not have danced--through the brain of +a sentimental old bachelor who happened to be a vicar of the Church +of England. Even with his overplus of heart it would have been quite +impossible for him to have had enough to go round had there been so +numerous actual demands upon it. + +Thus much may be conceded to Herrick's verse: at its best it has wings +that carry it nearly as close to heaven's gate as any of Shakespeare's +lark-like interludes. The brevity of the poems and their uniform +smoothness sometimes produce the effect of monotony. The crowded +richness of the line advises a desultory reading. But one must go back +to them again and again. They bewitch the memory, having once caught +it, and insist on saying themselves over and over. Among the poets of +England the author of the “Hesperides” remains, and is likely to remain, +unique. As Shakespeare stands alone in his vast domain, so Herrick +stands alone in his scanty plot of ground. + + +“Shine, Poet! in thy place, and be content.” + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PONKAPOG PAPERS *** + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the +United States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Ponkapog Papers</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: August, 1996 [eBook #625]<br /> +[Most recently updated: July 27, 2021]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Judith Boss and David Widger</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PONKAPOG PAPERS ***</div> + +<div class="fig" style="width:55%;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]" /> +</div> + + <h1> + PONKAPOG PAPERS + </h1> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <h2> + By Thomas Bailey Aldrich + </h2> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <h4> + TO FRANCIS BARTLETT + </h4> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <p> + THESE miscellaneous notes and essays are called <i>Ponkapog Papers</i> not + simply because they chanced, for the most part, to be written within the + limits of the old Indian Reservation, but, rather, because there is + something typical of their unpretentiousness in the modesty with which + Ponkapog assumes to being even a village. The little Massachusetts + settlement, nestled under the wing of the Blue Hills, has no illusions + concerning itself, never mistakes the cackle of the bourg for the sound + that echoes round the world, and no more thinks of rivalling great centres + of human activity than these slight papers dream of inviting comparison + between themselves and important pieces of literature. Therefore there + seems something especially appropriate in the geographical title selected, + and if the author's choice of name need further excuse, it is to be found + in the alluring alliteration lying ready at his hand. + </p> + <p> + REDMAN FARM, <i>Ponkapog</i>, 1903. + </p> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + + <p class="toc"> + <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big> + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> ASIDES </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> TOM FOLIO </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> A NOTE ON “L'AIGLON” </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> PLOT AND CHARACTER </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORNWALL </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> DECORATION DAY </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> WRITERS AND TALKERS </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> ON EARLY RISING </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> UN POETE MANQUE </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> THE MALE COSTUME OF THE PERIOD </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> ON A CERTAIN AFFECTATION </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> WISHMAKERS' TOWN </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> HISTORICAL NOVELS </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> POOR YORICK </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> ROBERT HERRICK </a> + </p> + + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br /> + </p> + <h2> + LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK + </h2> + <p> + IN his Memoirs, Kropotkin states the singular fact that the natives of the + Malayan Archipelago have an idea that something is extracted from them + when their likenesses are taken by photography. Here is the motive for a + fantastic short story, in which the hero—an author in vogue or a + popular actor—might be depicted as having all his good qualities + gradually photographed out of him. This could well be the result of too + prolonged indulgence in the effort to “look natural.” First the man loses + his charming simplicity; then he begins to pose in intellectual attitudes, + with finger on brow; then he becomes morbidly self-conscious, and finally + ends in an asylum for incurable egotists. His death might be brought about + by a cold caught in going out bareheaded, there being, for the moment, no + hat in the market of sufficient circumference to meet his enlarged + requirement. + </p> + <p> + THE evening we dropped anchor in the Bay of Yedo the moon was hanging + directly over Yokohama. It was a mother-of-pearl moon, and might have been + manufactured by any of the delicate artisans in the Hanchodori quarter. It + impressed one as being a very good imitation, but nothing more. Nammikawa, + the cloisonne-worker at Tokio, could have made a better moon. + </p> + <p> + I NOTICE the announcement of a new edition of “The Two First Centuries of + Florentine Literature,” by Professor Pasquale Villari. I am not acquainted + with the work in question, but I trust that Professor Villari makes it + plain to the reader how both centuries happened to be first. + </p> + <p> + THE walking delegates of a higher civilization, who have nothing to + divide, look upon the notion of property as a purely artificial creation + of human society. According to these advanced philosophers, the time will + come when no man shall be allowed to call anything his. The beneficent law + which takes away an author's rights in his own books just at the period + when old age is creeping upon him seems to me a handsome stride toward the + longed-for millennium. + </p> + <p> + SAVE US from our friends—our enemies we can guard against. The + well-meaning rector of the little parish of Woodgates, England, and + several of Robert Browning's local admirers have recently busied + themselves in erecting a tablet to the memory of “the first known + forefather of the poet.” This lately turned up ancestor, who does not date + very far back, was also named Robert Browning, and is described on the + mural marble as “formerly footman and butler to Sir John Bankes of Corfe + Castle.” Now, Robert Browning the poet had as good right as Abou Ben Adhem + himself to ask to be placed on the list of those who love their fellow + men; but if the poet could have been consulted in the matter he probably + would have preferred not to have that particular footman exhumed. However, + it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Sir John Bankes would scarcely + have been heard of in our young century if it had not been for his + footman. As Robert stood day by day, sleek and solemn, behind his master's + chair in Corfe Castle, how little it entered into the head of Sir John + that his highly respectable name would be served up to posterity—like + a cold relish—by his own butler! By Robert! + </p> + <p> + IN the east-side slums of New York, somewhere in the picturesque Bowery + district, stretches a malodorous little street wholly given over to + long-bearded, bird-beaked merchants of ready-made and second-hand + clothing. The contents of the dingy shops seem to have revolted, and + rushed pell-mell out of doors, and taken possession of the sidewalk. One + could fancy that the rebellion had been quelled at this point, and that + those ghastly rows of complete suits strung up on either side of the + doorways were the bodies of the seditious ringleaders. But as you approach + these limp figures, each dangling and gyrating on its cord in a most + suggestive fashion, you notice, pinned to the lapel of a coat here and + there, a strip of paper announcing the very low price at which you may + become the happy possessor. That dissipates the illusion. + </p> + <p> + POLONIUS, in the play, gets killed—and not any too soon. If it only + were practicable to kill him in real life! A story—to be called The + Passing of Polonius—in which a king issues a decree condemning to + death every long-winded, didactic person in the kingdom, irrespective of + rank, and is himself instantly arrested and decapitated. The man who + suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born. + </p> + <p> + WHENEVER I take up Emerson's poems I find myself turning automatically to + his Bacchus. Elsewhere, in detachable passages embedded in mediocre verse, + he rises for a moment to heights not reached by any other of our poets; + but Bacchus is in the grand style throughout. Its texture can bear + comparison with the world's best in this kind. In imaginative quality and + austere richness of diction what other verse of our period approaches it? + The day Emerson wrote Bacchus he had in him, as Michael Drayton said of + Marlowe, “those brave translunary things that the first poets had.” + </p> + <p> + IMAGINE all human beings swept off the face of the earth, excepting one + man. Imagine this man in some vast city, New York or London. Imagine him + on the third or fourth day of his solitude sitting in a house and hearing + a ring at the door-bell! + </p> + <p> + No man has ever yet succeeded in painting an honest portrait of himself in + an autobiography, however sedulously he may have set to work about it. In + spite of his candid purpose he omits necessary touches and adds + superfluous ones. At times he cannot help draping his thought, and the + least shred of drapery becomes a disguise. It is only the diarist who + accomplishes the feat of self-portraiture, and he, without any such end in + view, does it unconsciously. A man cannot keep a daily record of his + comings and goings and the little items that make up the sum of his life, + and not inadvertently betray himself at every turn. He lays bare his heart + with a candor not possible to the selfconsciousness that inevitably colors + premeditated revelation. While Pepys was filling those small octavo pages + with his perplexing cipher he never once suspected that he was adding a + photographic portrait of himself to the world's gallery of immortals. We + are more intimately acquainted with Mr. Samuel Pepys, the inner man—his + little meannesses and his large generosities—then we are with half + the persons we call our dear friends. + </p> + <p> + THE young girl in my story is to be as sensitive to praise as a prism is + to light. Whenever anybody praises her she breaks into colors. + </p> + <p> + IN the process of dusting my study, the other morning, the maid replaced + an engraving of Philip II. of Spain up-side down on the mantel-shelf, and + his majesty has remained in that undignified posture ever since. I have no + disposition to come to his aid. My abhorrence of the wretch is as hearty + as if he had not been dead and—otherwise provided for these last + three hundred years. Bloody Mary of England was nearly as merciless, but + she was sincere and uncompromising in her extirpation of heretics. + </p> + <p> + Philip II., whose one recorded hearty laugh was occasioned by the news of + the St. Bartholomew massacre, could mask his fanaticism or drop it for the + time being, when it seemed politic to do so. Queen Mary was a maniac; but + the successor of Torquemada was the incarnation of cruelty pure and + simple, and I have a mind to let my counterfeit presentment of him stand + on its head for the rest of its natural life. I cordially dislike several + persons, but I hate nobody, living or dead, excepting Philip II. of Spain. + He appears to give me as much trouble as Charles I. gave the amiable Mr. + Dick. + </p> + <p> + AMONG the delightful men and women whom you are certain to meet at an + English country house there is generally one guest who is supposed to be + preternaturally clever and amusing—“so very droll, don't you know.” + He recites things, tells stories in costermonger dialect, and mimics + public characters. He is a type of a class, and I take him to be one of + the elementary forms of animal life, like the acalephae. His presence is + capable of adding a gloom to an undertaker's establishment. The last time + I fell in with him was on a coaching trip through Devon, and in spite of + what I have said I must confess to receiving an instant of entertainment + at his hands. He was delivering a little dissertation on “the English and + American languages.” As there were two Americans on the back seat—it + seems we term ourselves “Amurricans”—his choice of subject was full + of tact. It was exhilarating to get a lesson in pronunciation from a + gentleman who said <i>boult</i> for bolt, called St. John <i>Sin' Jun</i>, + and did not know how to pronounce the beautiful name of his own college at + Oxford. Fancy a perfectly sober man saying <i>Maudlin</i> for Magdalen! + Perhaps the purest English spoken is that of the English folk who have + resided abroad ever since the Elizabethan period, or thereabouts. + </p> + <p> + EVERY one has a bookplate these days, and the collectors are after it. The + fool and his bookplate are soon parted. To distribute one's <i>ex libris</i> + is inanely to destroy the only significance it has, that of indicating the + past or present ownership of the volume in which it is placed. + </p> + <p> + WHEN an Englishman is not highly imaginative he is apt to be the most + matter-of-fact of mortals. He is rarely imaginative, and seldom has an + alert sense of humor. Yet England has produced the finest of humorists and + the greatest of poets. The humor and imagination which are diffused + through other peoples concentrate themselves from time to time in + individual Englishmen. + </p> + <p> + THIS is a page of autobiography, though not written in the first person: + Many years ago a noted Boston publisher used to keep a large + memorandum-book on a table in his personal office. The volume always lay + open, and was in no manner a private affair, being the receptacle of + nothing more important than hastily scrawled reminders to attend to this + thing or the other. It chanced one day that a very young, unfledged + author, passing through the city, looked in upon the publisher, who was + also the editor of a famous magazine. The unfledged had a copy of verses + secreted about his person. The publisher was absent, and young Milton, + feeling that “they also serve who only stand and wait,” sat down and + waited. Presently his eye fell upon the memorandum-book, lying there + spread out like a morning newspaper, and almost in spite of himself he + read: “Don't forget to see the binder,” “Don't forget to mail E——- + his contract,” “Don't forget H——-'s proofs,” etc. An + inspiration seized upon the youth; he took a pencil, and at the tail of + this long list of “don't forgets” he wrote: “Don't forget to accept A 's + poem.” He left his manuscript on the table and disappeared. That afternoon + when the publisher glanced over his memoranda, he was not a little + astonished at the last item; but his sense of humor was so strong that he + did accept the poem (it required a strong sense of humor to do that), and + sent the lad a check for it, though the verses remain to this day + unprinted. That kindly publisher was wise as well as kind. + </p> + <p> + FRENCH novels with metaphysical or psychological prefaces are always + certain to be particularly indecent. + </p> + <p> + I HAVE lately discovered that Master Harry Sandford of England, the + priggish little boy in the story of “Sandford and Merton,” has a worthy + American cousin in one Elsie Dinsmore, who sedately pirouettes through a + seemingly endless succession of girls' books. I came across a nest of + fifteen of them the other day. This impossible female is carried from + infancy up to grandmotherhood, and is, I believe, still leisurely pursuing + her way down to the tomb in an ecstatic state of uninterrupted + didacticism. There are twenty-five volumes of her and the granddaughter, + who is also christened Elsie, and is her grandmother's own child, with the + same precocious readiness to dispense ethical instruction to her elders. + An interesting instance of hereditary talent! + </p> + <p> + H——-'s intellect resembles a bamboo—slender, graceful, + and hollow. Personally, he is long and narrow, and looks as if he might + have been the product of a rope-walk. He is loosely put together, like an + ill-constructed sentence, and affects me like one. His figure is + ungrammatical. + </p> + <p> + AMERICAN humor is nearly as ephemeral as the flowers that bloom in the + spring. Each generation has its own crop, and, as a rule, insists on + cultivating a new kind. That of 1860, if it were to break into blossom at + the present moment, would probably be left to fade upon the stem. + </p> + <p> + Humor is a delicate shrub, with the passing hectic flush of its time. The + current-topic variety is especially subject to very early frosts, as is + also the dialectic species. Mark Twain's humor is not to be classed with + the fragile plants; it has a serious root striking deep down into rich + earth, and I think it will go on flowering indefinitely. + </p> + <p> + I HAVE been imagining an ideal critical journal, whose plan should involve + the discharge of the chief literary critic and the installment of a fresh + censor on the completion of each issue. To place a man in permanent + absolute control of a certain number of pages, in which to express his + opinions, is to place him in a position of great personal danger, It is + almost inevitable that he should come to overrate the importance of those + opinions, to take himself with far too much seriousness, and in the end + adopt the dogma of his own infallibility. The liberty to summon this or + that man-of-letters to a supposititious bar of justice is apt to beget in + the self-appointed judge an exaggerated sense of superiority. He becomes + impatient of any rulings not his, and says in effect, if not in so many + words: “I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my lips let no dog bark.” When the + critic reaches this exalted frame of mind his slight usefulness is gone. + </p> + <p> + AFTER a debauch of thunder-shower, the weather takes the pledge and signs + it with a rainbow. + </p> + <p> + I LIKE to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every + detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the + desire to use its own wings. The partly draped statue has a charm which + the nude lacks. Who would have those marble folds slip from the raised + knee of the Venus of Melos? Hawthorne knew how to make his lovely thought + lovelier by sometimes half veiling it. + </p> + <p> + I HAVE just tested the nib of a new pen on a slight fancy which Herrick + has handled twice in the “Hesperides.” The fancy, however, is not + Herrick's; it is as old as poetry and the exaggeration of lovers, and I + have the same privilege as another to try my fortune with it: + </p> + <p> + UP ROOS THE SONNE, AND UP ROOS EMELYE CHAUCER + </p> + <p> + When some hand has partly drawn The cloudy curtains of her bed, And my + lady's golden head Glimmers in the dusk like dawn, Then methinks is day + begun. Later, when her dream has ceased And she softly stirs and wakes, + Then it is as when the East A sudden rosy magic takes From the + cloud-enfolded sun, And full day breaks! + </p> + <p> + Shakespeare, who has done so much to discourage literature by anticipating + everybody, puts the whole matter into a nutshell: + </p> + <p> + But soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and + Juliet is the sun. + </p> + <p> + THERE is a phrase spoken by Hamlet which I have seen quoted innumerable + times, and never once correctly. Hamlet, addressing Horatio, says: + </p> + <p> + Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my + heart's core, ay, in my <i>heart of heart</i>. + </p> + <p> + The words italicized are invariably written “heart of hearts”—as if + a person possessed that organ in duplicate. Perhaps no one living, with + the exception of Sir Henry Irving, is more familiar with the play of + Hamlet than my good friend Mr. Bram Stoker, who makes his heart plural on + two occasions in his recent novel, “The Mystery of the Sea.” Mrs. Humphry + Ward also twice misquotes the passage in “Lady Rose's Daughter.” + </p> + <p> + BOOKS that have become classics—books that ave had their day and now + get more praise than perusal—always remind me of venerable colonels + and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves + retired upon half pay. + </p> + <p> + WHETHER or not the fretful porcupine rolls itself into a ball is a subject + over which my friend John Burroughs and several brother naturalists have + lately become as heated as if the question involved points of theology. Up + among the Adirondacks, and in the very heart of the region of porcupines, + I happen to have a modest cottage. This retreat is called The Porcupine, + and I ought by good rights to know something about the habits of the small + animal from which it derives its name. Last winter my dog Buster used to + return home on an average of three times a month from an excursion up Mt. + Pisgah with his nose stuck full of quills, and <i>he</i> ought to have + some concrete ideas on the subject. We two, then, are prepared to testify + that the porcupine in its moments of relaxation occasionally contracts + itself into what might be taken for a ball by persons not too difficult to + please in the matter of spheres. But neither Buster nor I—being + unwilling to get into trouble—would like to assert that it is an + actual ball. That it is a shape with which one had better not + thoughtlessly meddle is a conviction that my friend Buster stands ready to + defend against all comers. + </p> + <p> + WORDSWORTH'S characterization of the woman in one of his poems as “a + creature not too bright or good for human nature's daily food” has always + appeared to me too cannibalesque to be poetical. It directly sets one to + thinking of the South Sea islanders. + </p> + <p> + THOUGH Iago was not exactly the kind of person one would select as a + superintendent for a Sunday-school, his advice to young Roderigo was + wisdom itself—“Put money in thy purse.” Whoever disparages money + disparages every step in the progress of the human race. I listened the + other day to a sermon in which gold was personified as a sort of + glittering devil tempting mortals to their ruin. I had an instant of + natural hesitation when the contribution-plate was passed around + immediately afterward. Personally, I believe that the possession of gold + has ruined fewer men than the lack of it. What noble enterprises have been + checked and what fine souls have been blighted in the gloom of poverty the + world will never know. “After the love of knowledge,” says Buckle, “there + is no one passion which has done so much good to mankind as the love of + money.” + </p> + <p> + DIALECT tempered with slang is an admirable medium of communication + between persons who have nothing to say and persons who would not care for + anything properly said. + </p> + <p> + DR. HOLMES had an odd liking for ingenious desk-accessories in the way of + pencil-sharpeners, paper-weights, penholders, etc. The latest contrivances + in this fashion—probably dropped down to him by the inventor angling + for a nibble of commendation—were always making one another's + acquaintance on his study table. He once said to me: “I 'm waiting for + somebody to invent a mucilage-brush that you can't by any accident put + into your inkstand. It would save me frequent moments of humiliation.” + </p> + <p> + THE deceptive Mr. False and the volatile Mrs. Giddy, who figure in the + pages of seventeenth and eighteenth century fiction, are not tolerated in + modern novels and plays. Steal the burglar and Palette the artist have + ceased to be. A name indicating the quality or occupation of the bearer + strikes us as a too transparent device. Yet there are such names in + contemporary real life. That of our worthy Adjutant-General Drum may be + instanced. Neal and Pray are a pair of deacons who linger in the memory of + my boyhood. Sweet the confectioner and Lamb the butcher are individuals + with whom I have had dealings. The old-time sign of Ketchum & Cheetam, + Brokers, in Wall Street, New York, seems almost too good to be true. But + it was once, if it is not now, an actuality. + </p> + <p> + I HAVE observed that whenever a Boston author dies, New York immediately + becomes a great literary centre. + </p> + <p> + THE possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man. + There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks. + </p> + <p> + EVERY living author has a projection of himself, a sort of eidolon, that + goes about in near and remote places making friends or enemies for him + among persons who never lay eyes upon the writer in the flesh. When he + dies, this phantasmal personality fades away, and the author lives only in + the impression created by his own literature. It is only then that the + world begins to perceive what manner of man the poet, the novelist, or the + historian really was. Not until he is dead, and perhaps some long time + dead, is it possible for the public to take his exact measure. Up to that + point contemporary criticism has either overrated him or underrated him, + or ignored him altogether, having been misled by the eidolon, which always + plays fantastic tricks with the writer temporarily under its dominion. It + invariably represents him as either a greater or a smaller personage than + he actually is. Presently the simulacrum works no more spells, good or + evil, and the deception is unveiled. The hitherto disregarded author is + recognized, and the idol of yesterday, which seemed so important, is taken + down from his too large pedestal and carted off to the dumping-ground of + inadequate things. To be sure, if he chances to have been not entirely + unworthy, and on cool examination is found to possess some appreciable + degree of merit, then he is set up on a new slab of appropriate + dimensions. The late colossal statue shrinks to a modest bas-relief. On + the other hand, some scarcely noticed bust may suddenly become a revered + full-length figure. Between the reputation of the author living and the + reputation of the same author dead there is ever a wide discrepancy. + </p> + <p> + A NOT too enchanting glimpse of Tennyson is incidentally given by Charles + Brookfield, the English actor, in his “Random Recollections.” Mr. + Brookfield's father was, on one occasion, dining at the Oxford and + Cambridge Club with George Venables, Frank Lushington, Alfred Tennyson, + and others. “After dinner,” relates the random recollector, “the poet + insisted upon putting his feet on the table, tilting back his chair <i>more + Americano</i>. There were strangers in the room, and he was expostulated + with for his uncouthness, but in vain. 'Do put down your feet!' pleaded + his host. 'Why should I?' retorted Tennyson. 'I 'm very comfortable as I + am.' 'Every one's staring at you,' said another. 'Let 'em stare,' replied + the poet, placidly. 'Alfred,' said my father, 'people will think you're + Longfellow.' Down went the feet.” That <i>more Americano</i> of Brookfield + the younger is delicious with its fine insular flavor, but the holding up + of Longfellow—the soul of gentleness, the prince of courtesy—as + a bugaboo of bad manners is simply inimitable. It will take England years + and years to detect the full unconscious humor of it. + </p> + <p> + GREAT orators who are not also great writers become very indistinct + historical shadows to the generations immediately following them. The + spell vanishes with the voice. A man's voice is almost the only part of + him entirely obliterated by death. The violet of his native land may be + made of his ashes, but nature in her economy seems to have taken no care + of his intonations, unless she perpetuates them in restless waves of air + surging about the poles. The well-graced actor who leaves no perceptible + record of his genius has a decided advantage over the mere orator. The + tradition of the player's method and presence is associated with works of + enduring beauty. Turning to the pages of the dramatist, we can picture to + ourselves the greatness of Garrick or Siddons in this or that scene, in + this or that character. It is not so easy to conjure up the impassioned + orator from the pages of a dry and possibly illogical argument in favor of + or against some long-ago-exploded measure of government. The laurels of an + orator who is not a master of literary art wither quickly. + </p> + <p> + ALL the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of + the hour-glass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do so, + would I? + </p> + <p> + SHAKESPEARE is forever coming into our affairs—putting in his oar, + so to speak—with some pat word or sentence. The conversation, the + other evening, had turned on the subject of watches, when one of the + gentlemen present, the manager of a large watch-making establishment, told + us a rather interesting fact. The component parts of a watch are produced + by different workmen, who have no concern with the complex piece of + mechanism as a whole, and possibly, as a rule, understand it imperfectly. + Each worker needs to be expert in only his own special branch. When the + watch has reached a certain advanced state, the work requires a touch as + delicate and firm as that of an oculist performing an operation. Here the + most skilled and trustworthy artisans are employed; they receive high + wages, and have the benefit of a singular indulgence. In case the workman, + through too continuous application, finds himself lacking the steadiness + of nerve demanded by his task, he is allowed without forfeiture of pay to + remain idle temporarily, in order that his hand may recover the requisite + precision of touch. As I listened, Hamlet's courtly criticism of the + grave-digger's want of sensibility came drifting into my memory. “The hand + of little employment hath the daintier sense,” says Shakespeare, who has + left nothing unsaid. + </p> + <p> + IT was a festival in honor of Dai Butsu or some one of the auxiliary + deities that preside over the destinies of Japland. For three days and + nights the streets of Tokio—where the squat little brown houses look + for all the world as if they were mimicking the favorite sitting posture + of the Japanese—were crowded with smiling holiday makers, and made + gay with devices of tinted tissue paper, dolphins, devils, dragons, and + mythical winged creatures which at night amiably turned themselves into + lanterns. Garlands of these, arranged close together, were stretched + across the streets from ridgepoles to ridgepole, and your jinrikisha + whisked you through interminable arbors of soft illumination. The + spectacle gave one an idea of fairyland, but then all Japan does that. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + A land not like ours, that land of strange flowers, + Of daemons and spooks with mysterious powers— + Of gods who breathe ice, who cause peach-blooms and rice + And manage the moonshine and turn on the showers. + + Each day has its fair or its festival there, + And life seems immune to all trouble and care— + Perhaps only seems, in that island of dreams, + Sea-girdled and basking in magical air. + + They've streets of bazaars filled with lacquers and jars, + And silk stuffs, and sword-blades that tell of old wars; + They've Fuji's white cone looming up, bleak and lone, + As if it were trying to reach to the stars. + + They've temples and gongs, and grim Buddhas in throngs, + And pearl-powdered geisha with dances and songs: + Each girl at her back has an imp, brown or black, + And dresses her hair in remarkable prongs. + + On roadside and street toddling images meet, + And smirk and kotow in a way that is sweet; + Their obis are tied with particular pride, + Their silken kimonos hang scant to the feet. + + With purrs like a cat they all giggle and chat, + Now spreading their fans, and now holding them flat; + A fan by its play whispers, “Go now!” or “Stay!” + “I hate you!” “I love you!”—a fan can say that! + Beneath a dwarf tree, here and there, two or three + Squat coolies are sipping small cups of green tea; + They sputter, and leer, and cry out, and appear + Like bad little chessmen gone off on a spree. + + At night—ah, at night the long streets are a sight, + With garlands of soft-colored lanterns alight— + Blue, yellow, and red twinkling high overhead, + Like thousands of butterflies taking their flight. + + Somewhere in the gloom that no lanterns illume + Stand groups of slim lilies and jonquils in bloom; + On tiptoe, unseen 'mid a tangle of green, + They offer the midnight their cups of perfume. + + At times, sweet and clear from some tea-garden near, + A ripple of laughter steals out to your ear; + Anon the wind brings from a samisen's strings + The pathos that's born of a smile and a tear. +</pre> + <p> + THE difference between an English audience and a French audience at the + theatre is marked. The Frenchman brings down a witticism on the wing. The + Briton pauses for it to alight and give him reasonable time for deliberate + aim. In English playhouses an appreciable number of seconds usually + precede the smile or the ripple of laughter that follows a facetious turn + of the least fineness. I disclaim all responsibility for this statement of + my personal observation, since it has recently been indorsed by one of + London's most eminent actors. + </p> + <p> + AT the next table, taking his opal drops of absinthe, was a French + gentleman with the blase aspect of an empty champagne-bottle, which always + has the air of saying: “I have lived!” + </p> + <p> + WE often read of wonderful manifestations of memory, but they are always + instances of the faculty working in some special direction. It is memory + playing, like Paganini, on one string. No doubt the persons performing the + phenomenal feats ascribed to them have forgotten more than they remember. + To be able to repeat a hundred lines of verse after a single reading is no + proof of a retentive mind, excepting so far as the hundred lines go. A man + might easily fail under such a test, and yet have a good memory; by which + I mean a catholic one, and that I imagine to be nearly the rarest of + gifts. I have never met more than four or five persons possessing it. The + small boy who defined memory as “the thing you forget with” described the + faculty as it exists and works in the majority of men and women. + </p> + <p> + THE survival in publishers of the imitative instinct is a strong argument + in support of Mr. Darwin's theory of the descent of man. One publisher no + sooner brings out a new style of book-cover than half a dozen other + publishers fall to duplicating it. + </p> + <p> + THE cavalry sabre hung over the chimney-place with a knot of violets tied + to the dinted guard, there being no known grave to decorate. For many a + year, on each Decoration Day, a sorrowful woman had come and fastened + these flowers there. The first time she brought her offering she was a + slender girl, as fresh as her own violets. It is a slender figure still, + but there are threads of silver in the black hair. + </p> + <p> + FORTUNATE was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who in early youth was taught “to + abstain from rhetoric, and poetry, and fine writing”—especially the + fine writing. Simplicity is art's last word. + </p> + <p> + The man is clearly an adventurer. In the seventeenth century he would have + worn huge flintlock pistols stuck into a wide leather belt, and been + something in the seafaring line. The fellow is always smartly dressed, but + where he lives and how he lives are as unknown as “what song the Sirens + sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women.” He + is a man who apparently has no appointment with his breakfast and whose + dinner is a chance acquaintance. His probable banker is the next person. A + great city like this is the only geography for such a character. He would + be impossible in a small country town, where everybody knows everybody and + what everybody has for lunch. + </p> + <p> + I HAVE been seeking, thus far in vain, for the proprietor of the saying + that “Economy is second or third cousin to Avarice.” I went rather + confidently to Rochefoucauld, but it is not among that gentleman's light + luggage of cynical maxims. + </p> + <p> + THERE is a popular vague impression that butchers are not allowed to serve + as jurors on murder trials. This is not really the case, but it logically + might be. To a man daily familiar with the lurid incidents of the <i>abattoir</i>, + the summary extinction of a fellow creature (whether the victim or the + criminal) can scarcely seem a circumstance of so serious moment as to + another man engaged in less strenuous pursuits. WE do not, and cannot, + read many of the novels that most delighted our ancestors. Some of our + popular fiction is doubtless as poor, but poor with a difference. There is + always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least + cultivated taste has the largest appetite. There is ragtime literature as + well as ragtime music for the many. + </p> + <p> + G——- is a man who had rather fail in a great purpose than not + accomplish it in precisely his own way. He has the courage of his + conviction and the intolerance of his courage. He is opposed to the death + penalty for murder, but he would willingly have any one electrocuted who + disagreed with him on the subject. + </p> + <p> + I HAVE thought of an essay to be called “On the Art of Short-Story + Writing,” but have given it up as smacking too much of the shop. It would + be too <i>intime</i>, since I should have to deal chiefly with my own + ways, and so give myself the false air of seeming to consider them of + importance. It would interest nobody to know that I always write the last + paragraph first, and then work directly up to that, avoiding all + digressions and side issues. Then who on earth would care to be told about + the trouble my characters cause me by talking too much? They will talk, + and I have to let them; but when the story is finished, I go over the + dialogue and strike out four fifths of the long speeches. I fancy that + makes my characters pretty mad. + </p> + <p> + THIS is the golden age of the inventor. He is no longer looked upon as a + madman or a wizard, incontinently to be made away with. Two or three + centuries ago Marconi would not have escaped a ropeless end with his + wireless telegraphy. Even so late as 1800, the friends of one Robert + Fulton seriously entertained the luminous idea of hustling the poor man + into an asylum for the unsound before he had a chance to fire up the + boiler of his tiny steamboat on the Hudson river. In olden times the + pillory and the whipping-post were among the gentler forms of + encouragement awaiting the inventor. If a man devised an especially + practical apple-peeler he was in imminent danger of being peeled with it + by an incensed populace. To-day we hail with enthusiasm a scientific or a + mechanical discovery, and stand ready to make a stock company of it. + </p> + <p> + A MAN is known by the company his mind keeps. To live continually with + noble books, with “high-erected thoughts seated in the heart of courtesy,” + teaches the soul good manners. + </p> + <p> + THE unconventional has ever a morbid attraction for a certain class of + mind. There is always a small coterie of highly intellectual men and women + eager to give welcome to whatever is eccentric, obscure, or chaotic. + Worshipers at the shrine of the Unpopular, they tingle with a sense of + tolerant superiority when they say: “Of course this is not the kind of + thing <i>you</i> would like.” Sometimes these impressionable souls almost + seem to make a sort of reputation for their fetish. + </p> + <p> + I HEAR that B——- directed to have himself buried on the edge + of the pond where his duckstand was located, in order that flocks of + migrating birds might fly over his grave every autumn. He did not have to + die, to become a dead shot. A comrade once said of him: “Yes, B——- + is a great sportsman. He has peppered everything from grouse in North + Dakota to his best friend in the Maine woods.” + </p> + <p> + WHEN the novelist introduces a bore into his novel he must not let him + bore the reader. The fellow must be made amusing, which he would not be in + real life. In nine cases out of ten an exact reproduction of real life + would prove tedious. Facts are not necessarily valuable, and frequently + they add nothing to fiction. The art of the realistic novelist sometimes + seems akin to that of the Chinese tailor who perpetuated the old patch on + the new trousers. True art selects and paraphrases, but seldom gives a + verbatim translation. + </p> + <p> + THE last meeting I had with Lowell was in the north room of his house at + Elmwood, the sleeping-room I had occupied during a two years' tenancy of + the place in his absence abroad. He was lying half propped up in bed, + convalescing from one of the severe attacks that were ultimately to prove + fatal. Near the bed was a chair on which stood a marine picture in + aquarelle—a stretch of calm sea, a bit of rocky shore in the + foreground, if I remember, and a vessel at anchor. The afternoon sunlight, + falling through the window, cast a bloom over the picture, which was + turned toward Lowell. From time to time, as he spoke, his eyes rested + thoughtfully on the water-color. A friend, he said, had just sent it to + him. It seemed to me then, and the fancy has often haunted me since, that + that ship, in the golden haze, with topsails loosened, was waiting to bear + his spirit away. + </p> + <p> + CIVILIZATION is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades. If + somebody has already said that, I forgive him the mortification he causes + me. At the beginning of the twentieth century barbarism can throw off its + gentle disguise, and burn a man at the stake as complacently as in the + Middle Ages. + </p> + <p> + WHAT is slang in one age sometimes goes into the vocabulary of the purist + in the next. On the other hand, expressions that once were not considered + inelegant are looked at askance in the period following. The word “brass” + was formerly an accepted synonym for money; but at present, when it takes + on that significance, it is not admitted into genteel circles of language. + It may be said to have seen better days, like another word I have in mind—a + word that has become slang, employed in the sense which once did not + exclude it from very good society. A friend lately informed me that he had + “fired” his housekeeper—that is, dismissed her. He little dreamed + that he was speaking excellent Elizabethan. + </p> + <p> + THE “Journal des Goncourt” is crowded with beautiful and hideous things, + like a Japanese Museum. + </p> + <p> + “AND she shuddered as she sat, still silent, on her seat, and he saw that + she shuddered.” This is from Anthony Trollope's novel, “Can You Forgive + Her?” Can you forgive him? is the next question. + </p> + <p> + A LITTLE thing may be perfect, but perfection is not a little thing. + Possessing this quality, a trifle “no bigger than an agate-stone on the + forefinger of an alderman” shall outlast the Pyramids. The world will have + forgotten all the great masterpieces of literature when it forgets + Lovelace's three verses to Lucasta on his going to the wars. More durable + than marble or bronze are the words, “I could not love thee, deare, so + much, loved I not honor more.” + </p> + <p> + I CALLED on the dear old doctor this afternoon to say good-by. I shall + probably not find him here when I come back from the long voyage which I + have in front of me. He is very fragile, and looks as though a puff of + wind would blow him away. He said himself, with his old-time cheerfulness, + that he was attached to this earth by only a little piece of twine. He has + perceptibly failed since I saw him a month ago; but he was full of the + wise and radiant talk to which all the world has listened, and will miss. + I found him absorbed in a newly made card-catalogue of his library. “It + was absurd of me to have it done,” he remarked. “What I really require is + a little bookcase holding only two volumes; then I could go from one to + the other in alternation and always find each book as fresh as if I never + had read it.” This arraignment of his memory was in pure jest, for the + doctor's mind was to the end like an unclouded crystal. It was interesting + to note how he studied himself, taking his own pulse, as it were, and + diagnosing his own case in a sort of scientific, impersonal way, as if it + were somebody else's case and he were the consulting specialist. I + intended to spend a quarter of an hour with him, and he kept me three + hours. I went there rather depressed, but I returned home leavened with + his good spirits, which, I think, will never desert him, here or + hereafter. To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, + reverent—that is to triumph over old age. + </p> + <p> + THE thing one reads and likes, and then forgets, is of no account. The + thing that stays, and haunts one, and refuses to be forgotten, that is the + sincere thing. I am describing the impression left upon me by Mr. + Howells's blank-verse sketch called “Father and Mother: A Mystery”—a + strangely touching and imaginative piece of work, not unlike in effect to + some of Maeterlinck's psychical dramas. As I read on, I seemed to be + standing in a shadow cast by some half-remembered experience of my own in + a previous state of existence. When I went to bed that night I had to lie + awake and think it over as an event that had actually befallen me. I + should call the effect <i>weird</i>, if the word had not lately been + worked to death. The gloom of Poe and the spirituality of Hawthorne touch + cold finger-tips in those three or four pages. + </p> + <p> + FOR a character-study—a man made up entirely of limitations. His + conservatism and negative qualities to be represented as causing him to + attain success where men of conviction and real ability fail of it. + </p> + <p> + A DARK, saturnine man sat opposite me at table on board the steamer. + During the entire run from Sandy Hook to Fastnet Light he addressed no one + at meal-times excepting his table steward. Seated next to him, on the + right, was a vivacious gentleman, who, like Gratiano in the play, spoke + “an infinite deal of nothing.” He made persistent and pathetic attempts to + lure his silent neighbor (we had christened him “William the Silent”) into + conversation, but a monosyllable was always the poor result—until + one day. It was the last day of the voyage. We had stopped at the entrance + to Queenstown harbor to deliver the mails, and some fish had been brought + aboard. The vivacious gentleman was in a high state of excitement that + morning at table. “Fresh fish!” he exclaimed; “actually fresh! They seem + quite different from ours. Irish fish, of course. Can you tell me, sir,” + he inquired, turning to his gloomy shipmate, “what <i>kind</i> of fish + these are?” “Cork soles,” said the saturnine man, in a deep voice, and + then went on with his breakfast. + </p> + <p> + LOWELL used to find food for great mirth in General George P. Morris's + line, + </p> + <p> + “Her heart and morning broke together.” + </p> + <p> + Lowell's well-beloved Dr. Donne, however, had an attack of the same + platitude, and possibly inoculated poor Morris. Even literature seems to + have its mischief-making bacilli. The late “incomparable and ingenious + Dean of St. Paul's” says, + </p> + <p> + “The day breaks not, it is my heart.” + </p> + <p> + I think Dr. Donne's case rather worse than Morris's. Chaucer had the + malady in a milder form when he wrote: + </p> + <p> + “Up roos the sonne, and up roos Emelye.” + </p> + <p> + The charming naivete of it! + </p> + <p> + SITTING in Ellen Terry's dressing-room at the Lyceum Theatre one evening + during that lady's temporary absence on the stage, Sarah Bernhardt picked + up a crayon and wrote this pretty word on the mirror—<i>Dearling</i>, + mistaking it for the word darling. The French actress lighted by chance + upon a Spenserianism now become obsolete without good reason. It is a more + charming adjective than the one that has replaced it. + </p> + <p> + A DEAD author appears to be bereft of all earthly rights. He is scarcely + buried before old magazines and newspapers are ransacked in search of + matters which, for reasons sufficient to him, he had carefully excluded + from the definitive edition of his collected writings. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + He gave the people of his best; + His worst he kept, his best he gave. +</pre> + <p> + One can imagine a poet tempted to address some such appeal as this to any + possible future publisher of his poems: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Take what thou wilt, a lyric or a line, + Take all, take nothing—and God send thee cheer! + But my anathema on thee and thine + If thou add'st aught to what is printed here. +</pre> + <p> + THE claim of this country to call itself “The Land of the Free” must be + held in abeyance until every man in it, whether he belongs or does not + belong to a labor organization, shall have the right to work for his daily + bread. + </p> + <p> + THERE is a strain of primitive poetry running through the entire Irish + race, a fleeting lyrical emotion which expresses itself in a flash, + usually in connection with love of country and kindred across the sea. I + had a touching illustration of it the other morning. The despot who reigns + over our kitchen was gathering a mess of dandelions on the rear lawn. It + was one of those blue and gold days which seem especially to belong New + England. “It's in County Westmeath I 'd be this day,” she said, looking up + at me. <i>“I'd go cool my hands in the grass on my ould mother's grave in + the bit of churchyard foreninst the priest's house at Mullingar.”</i> I + have seen poorer poetry than that in the magazines. + </p> + <p> + SPEAKING of the late Major Pond, the well-known director of a lecture + bureau, an old client of his remarked: “He was a most capable manager, but + it always made me a little sore to have him deduct twenty-five per cent. + commission.” “Pond's Extract,” murmured one of the gentlemen present. + </p> + <p> + EACH of our great towns has its “Little Italy,” with shops where nothing + is spoken but Italian and streets in which the alien pedestrian had better + not linger after nightfall. The chief industry of these exotic communities + seems to be spaghetti and stilettos. What with our Little Italys and + Chinatowns, and the like, an American need not cross the ocean in order to + visit foreign lands and enjoy the benefits of older civilizations. + </p> + <p> + POETS are made as well as born, the proverb notwithstanding. They are made + possible by the general love of poetry and the consequent imperious demand + for it. When this is nonexistent, poets become mute, the atmosphere + stifles them. There would have been no Shakespeare had there been no + Elizabethan audience. That was an age when, as Emerson finely puts it, + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Men became + Poets, for the air was fame. +</pre> + <p> + THE stolid gentleman in livery who has his carriage-stand at the corner + opposite my house is constantly touching on the extremes of human + experience, with probably not the remotest perception of the fact. Now he + takes a pair of lovers out for an airing, and now he drives the absconding + bank-teller to the railway-station. Excepting as question of distance, the + man has positively no choice between a theatre and a graveyard. I met him + this morning dashing up to the portals of Trinity Church with a bridal + party, and this afternoon, as I was crossing Cambridge Bridge, I saw him + creeping along next to the hearse, on his way to Mount Auburn. The wedding + afforded him no pleasure, and the funeral gave him no grief; yet he was a + factor in both. It is his odd destiny to be wholly detached from the vital + part of his own acts. If the carriage itself could speak! The + autobiography of a public hack written without reservation would be + dramatic reading. + </p> + <p> + IN this blotted memorandum-book are a score or two of suggestions for + essays, sketches, and poems, which I have not written, and never shall + write. The instant I jot down an idea the desire to utilize it leaves me, + and I turn away to do something unpremeditated. The shabby volume has + become a sort of Potter's Field where I bury my literary intentions, good + and bad, without any belief in their final resurrection. + </p> + <p> + A STAGE DIRECTION: <i>exit time; enter Eternity—with a soliloquy.</i> + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + ASIDES + </h2> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + TOM FOLIO + </h2> + <p> + IN my early Boston days a gentle soul was often to be met with about town, + furtively haunting old book-shops and dusty editorial rooms, a man of + ingratiating simplicity of manner, who always spoke in a low, hesitating + voice, with a note of refinement in it. He was a devout worshiper of Elia, + and wrote pleasant discursive essays smacking somewhat of his master's + flavor—suggesting rather than imitating it—which he signed + “Tom Folio.” I forget how he glided into my acquaintanceship; doubtless in + some way too shy and elusive for remembrance. I never knew him intimately, + perhaps no one did, but the intercourse between us was most cordial, and + our chance meetings and bookish chats extended over a space of a dozen + years. + </p> + <p> + Tom Folio—I cling to the winning pseudonym—was sparely built + and under medium height, or maybe a slight droop of the shoulders made it + seem so, with a fragile look about him and an aspect of youth that was not + his. Encountering him casually on a street corner, you would, at the first + glance, have taken him for a youngish man, but the second glance left you + doubtful. It was a figure that struck a note of singularity and would have + attracted your attention even in a crowd. + </p> + <p> + During the first four or five years of our acquaintance, meeting him only + out of doors or in shops, I had never happened to see him with his hat + off. One day he recklessly removed it, and in the twinkling of an eye he + became an elderly bald-headed man. The Tom Folio I once knew had virtually + vanished. An instant earlier he was a familiar shape; an instant later, an + almost unrecognizable individual. A narrow fringe of light-colored hair, + extending from ear to ear under the rear brim of his hat, had perpetrated + an unintentional deception by leading one to suppose a head profusely + covered with curly locks. “Tom Folio,” I said, “put on your hat and come + back!” But after that day he never seemed young to me. + </p> + <p> + I had few or no inklings of his life disconnected with the streets and the + book-stalls, chiefly those on Cornhill or in the vicinity. It is possible + I am wrong in inferring that he occupied a room somewhere at the South End + or in South Boston, and lived entirely alone, heating his coffee and + boiling his egg over an alcohol lamp. I got from him one or two fortuitous + hints of quaint housekeeping. Every winter, it appeared, some relative, + far or near, sent him a large batch of mince pies, twenty or thirty at + least. He once spoke to me of having laid in his winter pie, just as + another might speak of laying in his winter coal. The only fireside + companion Tom Folio ever alluded to in my presence was a Maltese cat, + whose poor health seriously disturbed him from time to time. I suspected + those mince pies. The cat, I recollect, was named Miss Mowcher. + </p> + <p> + If he had any immediate family ties beyond this I was unaware of them, and + not curious to be enlightened on the subject. He was more picturesque + solitary. I preferred him to remain so. Other figures introduced into the + background of the canvas would have spoiled the artistic effect. + </p> + <p> + Tom Folio was a cheerful, lonely man—a recluse even when he allowed + himself to be jostled and hurried along on the turbulent stream of + humanity sweeping in opposite directions through Washington Street and its + busy estuaries. He was in the crowd, but not of it. I had so little real + knowledge of him that I was obliged to imagine his more intimate + environments. However wide of the mark my conjectures may have fallen, + they were as satisfying to me as facts would have been. His secluded room + I could picture to myself with a sense of certainty—the couch (a + sofa by day), the cupboard, the writing-table with its student lamp, the + litter of pamphlets and old quartos and octavos in tattered bindings, + among which were scarce reprints of his beloved Charles Lamb, and perhaps—nay, + surely—an <i>editio princeps</i> of the “Essays.” + </p> + <p> + The gentle Elia never had a gentler follower or a more loving disciple + than Tom Folio. He moved and had much of his being in the early part of + the last century. To him the South-Sea House was the most important + edifice on the globe, remaining the same venerable pile it used to be, in + spite of all the changes that had befallen it. It was there Charles Lamb + passed the novitiate of his long years of clerkship in the East India + Company. In Tom Folio's fancy a slender, boyish figure was still seated, + quill in hand, behind those stately porticoes looking upon Threadneedle + Street and Bishopsgate. That famous first paper in the “Essays,” + describing the South-Sea House and the group of human oddities which + occupied desks within its gloomy chambers, had left an indelible + impression upon the dreamer. Every line traced by the “lean annuitant” was + as familiar to Tom Folio as if he had written it himself. Stray scraps, + which had escaped the vigilance of able editors, were known to him, and it + was his to unearth amid a heap of mouldy, worm-eaten magazines, a handful + of leaves hitherto forgotten of all men. Trifles, yes—but Charles + Lamb's! “The king's chaff is as good as other people's corn,” says Tom + Folio. + </p> + <p> + Often his talk was sweet and racy with old-fashioned phrases; the talk of + a man who loved books and drew habitual breath in an atmosphere of fine + thought. Next to Charles Lamb, but at a convenable distance, Izaak Walton + was Tom Folio's favorite. His poet was Alexander Pope, though he thought + Mr. Addison's tragedy of “Cato” contained some proper good lines. Our + friend was a wide reader in English classics, greatly preferring the + literature of the earlier periods to that of the Victorian age. His + smiling, tenderly expressed disapprobation of various modern authors was + enchanting. John Keats's verses were monstrous pretty, but + over-ornamented. A little too much lucent syrup tinct with cinnamon, don't + you think? The poetry of Shelley might have been composed in the moon by a + slightly deranged, well-meaning person. If you wanted a sound mind in a + sound metrical body, why there was Mr. Pope's “Essay on Man.” There was + something winsome and by-gone in the general make-up of Tom Folio. No man + living in the world ever seemed to me to live so much out of it, or to + live more comfortably. + </p> + <p> + At times I half suspected him of a convalescent amatory disappointment. + Perhaps long before I knew him he had taken a little sentimental journey, + the unsuccessful end of which had touched him with a gentle sadness. It + was something far off and softened by memory. If Tom Folio had any + love-affair on hand in my day, it must have been of an airy, platonic sort—a + chaste secret passion for Mistress Peg Woffington or Nell Gwyn, or + possibly Mr. Waller's Saccharissa. + </p> + <p> + Although Tom Folio was not a collector—that means dividends and bank + balances—he had a passion for the Past and all its belongings, with + a virtuoso's knowledge of them. A fan painted by Vanloo, a bit of rare + Nankin (he had caught from Charles Lamb the love of old china), or an + undoctored stipple of Bartolozzi, gave him delight in the handling, though + he might not aspire to ownership. I believe he would willingly have drunk + any horrible decoction from a silver teapot of Queen Anne's time. These + things were not for him in a coarse, materialistic sense; in a spiritual + sense he held possession of them in fee-simple. I learned thus much of his + tastes one day during an hour we spent together in the rear showroom of a + dealer in antiquities. + </p> + <p> + I have spoken of Tom Folio as lonely, but I am inclined to think that I + mis-stated it. He had hosts of friends who used to climb the rather steep + staircase leading to that modest third-story front room which I have + imagined for him—a room with Turkey-red curtains, I like to believe, + and a rare engraving of a scene from Mr. Hogarth's excellent moral of “The + Industrious and Idle Apprentices” pinned against the chimney breast. Young + Chatterton, who was not always the best of company, dropped in at + intervals. There Mr. Samuel Pepys had a special chair reserved for him by + the window, where he could catch a glimpse of the pretty housemaid over + the way, chatting with the policeman at the area railing. Dr. Johnson and + the unworldly author of “The Deserted Village” were frequent visitors, + sometimes appearing together arm-in-arm, with James Boswell, Esq., of + Auchinleck, following obsequiously behind. Not that Tom Folio did not have + callers vastly more aristocratic, though he could have had none pleasanter + or wholesomer. Sir Philip Sidney (who must have given Folio that copy of + the “Arcadia”), the Viscount St. Albans, and even two or three others + before whom either of these might have doffed his bonnet, did not disdain + to gather round that hearthstone. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Defoe, Dick + Steele, Dean Swift—there was no end to them! On certain nights, when + all the stolid neighborhood was lapped in slumber, the narrow street + stretching beneath Tom Folio's windows must have been blocked with + invisible coaches and sedan-chairs, and illuminated by the visionary glare + of torches borne by shadowy linkboys hurrying hither and thither. A man so + sought after and companioned cannot be described as lonely. + </p> + <p> + My memory here recalls the fact that he had a few friends less + insubstantial—that quaint anatomy perched on the top of a + hand-organ, to whom Tom Folio was wont to give a bite of his apple; and + the brown-legged little Neapolitan who was always nearly certain of a + copper when this multi-millionaire strolled through the slums on a + Saturday afternoon—Saturday probably being the essayist's pay-day. + The withered woman of the peanut-stand on the corner over against Faneuil + Hall Market knew him for a friend, as did also the blind lead-pencil + merchant, whom Tom Folio, on occasions, safely piloted across the stormy + traffic of Dock Square. <i>Noblesse oblige!</i> He was no stranger in + those purlieus. Without designing to confuse small things with great, I + may say that a certain strip of pavement in North Street could be pointed + out as Tom Folio's Walk, just as Addison's Walk is pointed out on the + banks of the Cherwell at Oxford. + </p> + <p> + I used to observe that when Tom Folio was not in quest of a print or a + pamphlet or some such urgent thing, but was walking for mere recreation, + he instinctively avoided respectable latitudes. He liked best the squalid, + ill-kept thoroughfares shadowed by tall, smudgy tenement-houses and + teeming with unprosperous, noisy life. Perhaps he had, half consciously, a + sense of subtle kinship to the unsuccess and cheerful resignation of it + all. + </p> + <p> + Returning home from abroad one October morning several years ago, I was + told that that simple spirit had passed on. His death had been little + heeded; but in him had passed away an intangible genuine bit of Old Boston—as + genuine a bit, in its kind, as the Autocrat himself—a personality + not to be restored or replaced. Tom Folio could never happen again! + </p> + <p> + Strolling to-day through the streets of the older section of the town, I + miss many a venerable landmark submerged in the rising tide of change, but + I miss nothing quite so much as I do the sight of Tom Folio entering the + doorway of the Old Corner Bookstore, or carefully taking down a musty + volume from its shelf at some melancholy old book-stall on Cornhill. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES + </h2> + <p> + WHEN an English novelist does us the honor to introduce any of our + countrymen into his fiction, he generally displays a commendable desire to + present something typical in the way of names for his adopted characters—to + give a dash of local color, as it were, with his nomenclature. His success + is seldom commensurate to the desire. He falls into the error of appealing + to his invention, instead of consulting some city directory, in which he + would find more material than he could exhaust in ten centuries. Charles + Reade might have secured in the pages of such a compendium a happier title + than Fullalove for his Yankee sea-captain; though I doubt, on the whole, + if Anthony Trollope could have discovered anything better than Olivia Q. + Fleabody for the young woman from “the States” in his novel called “Is He + Popenjoy?” + </p> + <p> + To christen a sprightly young female advocate of woman's rights Olivia Q. + Fleabody was very happy indeed; to be candid, it was much better than was + usual with Mr. Trollope, whose understanding of American life and manners + was not enlarged by extensive travel in this country. An English tourist's + preconceived idea of us is a thing he brings over with him on the steamer + and carries home again intact; it is as much a part of his indispensable + impedimenta as his hatbox. But Fleabody is excellent; it was probably + suggested by Peabody, which may have struck Mr. Trollope as comical (just + as Trollope strikes <i>us</i> as comical), or, at least, as not serious. + What a capital name Veronica Trollope would be for a hoydenish young woman + in a society novel! I fancy that all foreign names are odd to the alien. I + remember that the signs above shop-doors in England and on the Continent + used to amuse me often enough, when I was over there. It is a notable + circumstance that extraordinary names never seem extraordinary to the + persons bearing them. If a fellow-creature were branded Ebenezer + Cuttlefish he would remain to the end of his days quite unconscious of + anything out of the common. + </p> + <p> + I am aware that many of our American names are sufficiently queer; but + English writers make merry over them, as if our most eccentric were not + thrown into the shade by some of their own. No American, living or dead, + can surpass the verbal infelicity of Knatchbull-Hugessen, for example—if + the gentleman will forgive me for conscripting him. Quite as remarkable, + in a grimly significant way, is the appellation of a British officer who + was fighting the Boers in the Transvaal in the year of blessed memory + 1899. This young soldier, who highly distinguished himself on the field, + was known to his brothers-in-arms as Major Pine Coffin. I trust that the + gallant major became a colonel later and is still alive. It would eclipse + the gayety of nations to lose a man with a name like that. + </p> + <p> + Several years ago I read in the sober police reports of “The Pall Mall + Gazette” an account of a young man named George F. Onions, who was + arrested (it ought to have been by “a peeler”) for purloining money from + his employers, Messrs. Joseph Pickles & Son, stuff merchants, of + Bradford—<i>des noms bien idylliques!</i> What mortal could have a + more ludicrous name than Onions, unless it were Pickles, or Pickled + Onions? And then for Onions to rob Pickles! Could there be a more + incredible coincidence? As a coincidence it is nearly sublime. No + story-writer would dare to present that fact or those names in his + fiction; neither would be accepted as possible. Meanwhile Olivia Q. + Fleabody is <i>ben trovato</i>. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + A NOTE ON “L'AIGLON” + </h2> + <p> + THE night-scene on the battlefield of Wagram in “L'Aiglon”—an + episode whose sharp pathos pierces the heart and the imagination like the + point of a rapier—bears a striking resemblance to a picturesque + passage in Victor Hugo's “Les Miserables.” It is the one intense great + moment in the play, and has been widely discussed, but so far as I am + aware none of M. Rostand's innumerable critics has touched on the + resemblance mentioned. In the master's romance it is not the field of + Wagram, but the field of Waterloo, that is magically repeopled with + contending armies of spooks, to use the grim old Dutch word, and made + vivid to the mind's eye. The passage occurs at the end of the sixteenth + chapter in the second part of “Les Miserables” (Cosette), and runs as + follows: + </p> + <p> + Le champ de Waterloo aujourd'hui a le calme qui appartient a la terre, + support impassible de l'homme, et il resemble a toutes les plaines. La + nuit pourtant une espece de brume visionnaire s'en degage, et si quelque + voyageur s'y promene, s'il regarde, s'il ecoute, s'il reve comme Virgile + dans les funestes plaines de Philippes, l'hallucination de la catastrophe + le saisit. L'effrayant 18 juin revit; la fausse colline-monument s'efface, + ce lion quelconque se dissipe, le champ de bataille reprend sa realite; + des lignes d'infanterie ondulent dans la plaine, des galops furieux + traversent l'horizon; le songeur effare voit l'eclair des sabres, + l'etincelle des bayonnettes, le flamboiement des bombes, + l'entre-croisement monstrueux des tonnerres; il entend, comme un rale au + fond d'une tombe, la clameur vague de la bataille-fantome; ces ombres, ce + sont les grenadiers; ces lueurs, ce sont les cuirassiers; . . . tout cela + n'est plus et se heurte et combat encore; et les ravins s'empourprent, et + les arbres frissonnent, et il y a de la furie jusque dans les nuees, et, + dans les tenebres, toutes ces hauteurs farouches, Mont-Saint Jean, + Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, Plancenoit, apparaissent confusement + couronnees de tourbillons de spectres s'exterminant. (1) + </p> + <p> + Here is the whole battle scene in “L'Aiglon,” with scarcely a gruesome + detail omitted. The vast plain glimmering in phantasmal light; the ghostly + squadrons hurling themselves against one another (seen only through the + eyes of the poor little Duke of Reichstadt); the mangled shapes lying + motionless in various postures of death upon the blood-stained sward; the + moans of the wounded rising up and sweeping by like vague wailings of the + wind—all this might be taken for an artful appropriation of Victor + Hugo's text; but I do not think it was, though it is possible that a faint + reflection of a brilliant page, read in early youth, still lingered on the + retina of M. Rostand's memory. If such were the case, it does not + necessarily detract from the integrity of the conception or the + playwright's presentment of it. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + (1) The field of Waterloo has to-day the peacefulness which + belongs to earth, the impassive support of man, and is like + all other plains. At night, however, a kind of visionary + mist is exhaled, and if any traveler walks there, and + watches and listens, and dreams like Virgil on the sorrowful + plains of Philippi, the hallucination of the catastrophe + takes possession of him. The terrible June 18 relives; the + artificial commemorative mound effaces itself, the lion + disappears, the field of battle assumes its reality; lines + of infantry waver on the plain, the horizon is broken by + furious charges of cavalry; the alarmed dreamer sees the + gleam of sabres, the glimmer of bayonets, the lurid glare of + bursting shells, the clashing of mighty thunderbolts; the + muffled clamor of the phantom conflict comes to him like + dying moans from the tomb; these shadows are grenadiers, + these lights are cuirassiers . . . all this does not really + exist, yet the combat goes on; the ravines are stained with + purple, the trees tremble, there is fury even in the clouds, + and in the obscurity the sombre heights—Mont Saint-Jean, + Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, and Plancenoit—ap-pear + dimly crowned with throngs of apparitions annihilating one + another. +</pre> + <p> + The idea of repeopling old battlefields with the shades of vanished hosts + is not novel. In such tragic spots the twilight always lays a dark hand on + the imagination, and prompts one to invoke the unappeased spirit of the + past that haunts the place. One summer evening long ago, as I was standing + alone by the ruined walls of Hougomont, with that sense of not being alone + which is sometimes so strangely stirred by solitude, I had a sudden vision + of that desperate last charge of Napoleon's Old Guard. Marshal Ney rose + from the grave and again shouted those heroic words to Drouet d'Erlon: + “Are you not going to get yourself killed?” For an instant a thousand + sabres flashed in the air. The deathly silence that accompanied the + ghostly onset was an added poignancy to the short-lived dream. A moment + later I beheld a hunched little figure mounted on a white horse with + housings of purple velvet. The reins lay slack in the rider's hand; his + three-cornered hat was slouched over his brows, and his chin rested on the + breast of his great-coat. Thus he slowly rode away through the twilight, + and nobody cried, <i>Vive l'Empereur!</i> + </p> + <p> + The ground on which a famous battle has been fought casts a spell upon + every man's mind; and the impression made upon two men of poetic genius, + like Victor Hugo and Edmond Rostand, might well be nearly identical. This + sufficiently explains the likeness between the fantastic silhouette in + “Les Miserables” and the battle of the ghosts in “L'Aiglon.” A muse so + rich in the improbable as M. Rostand's need not borrow a piece of + supernaturalness from anybody. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + PLOT AND CHARACTER + </h2> + <p> + HENRY JAMES, in his paper on Anthony Trollope, says that if Trollope “had + taken sides on the rather superficial opposition between novels of + character and novels of plot, I can imagine him to have said (except that + he never expressed himself in epigram) that he preferred the former class, + inasmuch as character in itself is plot, while plot is by no means + character.” So neat an antithesis would surely never have found itself + between Mr. Trollope's lips if Mr. James had not cunningly lent it to him. + Whatever theory of novel-writing Mr. Trollope may have preached, his + almost invariable practice was to have a plot. He always had a <i>story</i> + to tell, and a story involves beginning, middle, and end—in short, a + framework of some description. + </p> + <p> + There have been delightful books filled wholly with character-drawing; but + they have not been great novels. The great novel deals with human action + as well as with mental portraiture and analysis. That “character in itself + is plot” is true only in a limited sense. A plan, a motive with a logical + conclusion, is as necessary to a novel or a romance as it is to a drama. A + group of skillfully made-up men and women lounging in the green-room or at + the wings is not the play. It is not enough to say that this is Romeo and + that Lady Macbeth. It is not enough to inform us that certain passions are + supposed to be embodied in such and such persons: these persons should be + placed in situations developing those passions. A series of unrelated + scenes and dialogues leading to nothing is inadequate. + </p> + <p> + Mr. James's engaging epigram seems to me vulnerable at both ends—unlike + Achilles. “Plot is by no means character.” Strictly speaking, it is not. + It appears to me, however, that plot approaches nearer to being character + than character does to being plot. Plot necessitates action, and it is + impossible to describe a man's actions' under whatever conditions, without + revealing something of his character, his way of looking at things, his + moral and mental pose. What a hero of fiction <i>does</i> paints him + better than what he <i>says</i>, and vastly better than anything his + creator may say of him. Mr. James asserts that “we care what happens to + people only in proportion as we know what people are.” I think we care + very little what people are (in fiction) when we do not know what happens + to them. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE + </h2> + <p> + IN the process of their experiments upon the bodies of living animals some + anatomists do not, I fear, sufficiently realize that + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + The poor beetle, that we tread upon, + In corporal sufferance, finds a pang as great + As when a giant dies. +</pre> + <p> + I am not for a moment challenging the necessity of vivisection, though + distinguished surgeons have themselves challenged it; I merely contend + that science is apt to be cold-hearted, and does not seem always to take + into consideration the tortures she inflicts in her search for knowledge. + </p> + <p> + Just now, in turning over the leaves of an old number of the “London + Lancet,” I came upon the report of a lecture on experimental physiology + delivered by Professor William Rutherford before a learned association in + London. Though the type had become antiquated and the paper yellowed in + the lapse of years, the pathos of those pages was alive and palpitating. + </p> + <p> + The following passages from the report will illustrate not unfairly the + point I am making. In the course of his remarks the lecturer exhibited + certain interesting experiments on living frogs. Intellectually I go very + strongly for Professor Rutherford, but I am bound to confess that the + weight of my sympathy rests with the frogs. + </p> + <p> + Observe this frog [said the professor], it is regarding our manoeuvres + with a somewhat lively air. Now and then it gives a jump. What the precise + object of its leaps may be I dare not pretend to say; but probably it + regards us with some apprehension, and desires to escape. + </p> + <p> + To be perfectly impartial, it must be admitted that the frog had some + slight reason for apprehension. The lecturer proceeded: + </p> + <p> + I touch one of its toes, and you see it resents the molestation in a very + decided manner. Why does it so struggle to get away when I pinch its toes? + Doubtless, you will say, because it feels the pinch and would rather not + have it repeated. I now behead the animal with the aid of a sharp chisel. + . . . The headless trunk lies as though it were dead. The spinal cord + seems to be suffering from shock. Probably, however, it will soon recover + from this. . . . Observe that the animal has now <i>spontaneously</i> + drawn up its legs and arms, and it is sitting with its neck erect just as + if it had not lost its head at all. I pinch its toes, and you see the leg + is at once thrust out as if to spurn away the offending instrument. Does + it still feel? and is the motion still the result of the volition? + </p> + <p> + That the frog did feel, and delicately hinted at the circumstance, there + seems to be no room to doubt, for Professor Rutherford related that having + once decapitated a frog, the animal suddenly bounded from the table, a + movement that presumably indicated a kind of consciousness. He then + returned to the subject immediately under observation, pinched its foot + again, the frog again “resenting the stimulation.” He then thrust a needle + down the spinal cord. “The limbs are now flaccid,” observed the + experimenter; “we may wait as long as we please, but a pinch of the toes + will never again cause the limbs of this animal to move.” Here is where + congratulations can come in for <i>la grenouille</i>. That frog being + concluded, the lecturer continued: + </p> + <p> + I take another frog. In this case I open the cranium and remove the brain + and medulla oblongata. . . . I thrust a pin through the nose and hang the + animal thereby to a support, so that it can move its pendent legs without + any difficulty. . . . I gently pinch the toes. . . . The leg of the same + side is pulled up. . . . I pinch the same more severely. . . . Both legs + are thrown into motion. + </p> + <p> + Having thus satisfactorily proved that the wretched creature could still + suffer acutely, the professor resumed: + </p> + <p> + The cutaneous nerves of the frog are extremely sensitive to acids; so I + put a drop of acetic acid on the outside of one knee. This, you see, gives + rise to most violent movements both of arms and legs, and notice + particularly that the animal is using the toes of the leg on the same side + for the purpose of rubbing the irritated spot. I dip the whole animal into + water in order to wash away the acid, and now it is all at rest again. . . + . I put a drop of acid on the skin over the lumbar region of the spine. . + . . Both feet are instantly raised to the irritated spot. The animal is + able to localize the seat of irritation. . . . I wash the acid from the + back, and I amputate one of the feet at the ankle. . . . I apply a drop of + acid over the knee of the footless leg. . . . Again, the animal turns the + leg towards the knee, as if to reach the irritated spot with the toes; + these, however, are not now available. But watch the other foot. The <i>foot + of the other leg</i> is now being used to rub away the acid. The animal, + finding that the object is not accomplished with the foot of the same + side, uses the other one. + </p> + <p> + I think that at least one thing will be patent to every unprejudiced + reader of these excerpts, namely—that any frog (with its head on or + its head off) which happened to make the personal acquaintance of + Professor Rutherford must have found him poor company. What benefit + science may have derived from such association I am not qualified to + pronounce upon. The lecturer showed conclusively that the frog is a + peculiarly sensitive and intelligent little batrachian. I hope that the + genial professor, in the years which followed, did not frequently consider + it necessary to demonstrate the fact. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORNWALL + </h2> + <p> + IT has recently become the fashion to speak disparagingly of Leigh Hunt as + a poet, to class him as a sort of pursuivant or shield-bearer to + Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Truth to tell, Hunt was not a Keats nor a + Shelley nor a Coleridge, but he was a most excellent Hunt. He was a + delightful essayist—quite unsurpassed, indeed, in his blithe, + optimistic way—and as a poet deserves to rank high among the lesser + singers of his time. I should place him far above Barry Cornwall, who has + not half the freshness, variety, and originality of his compeer. + </p> + <p> + I instance Barry Cornwall because there has seemed a disposition since his + death to praise him unduly. Barry Cornwall has always struck me as + extremely artificial, especially in his dramatic sketches. His verses in + this line are mostly soft Elizabethan echoes. Of course a dramatist may + find it to his profit to go out of his own age and atmosphere for + inspiration; but in order successfully to do so he must be a dramatist. + Barry Cornwall fell short of filling the role; he got no further than the + composing of brief disconnected scenes and scraps of soliloquies, and a + tragedy entitled Mirandola, for which the stage had no use. His chief + claim to recognition lies in his lyrics. Here, as in the dramatic studies, + his attitude is nearly always affected. He studiously strives to reproduce + the form and spirit of the early poets. Being a Londoner, he naturally + sings much of rural English life, but his England is the England of two or + three centuries ago. He has a great deal to say about the “falcon,” but + the poor bird has the air of beating fatigued wings against the + bookshelves of a well-furnished library! This well-furnished library was—if + I may be pardoned a mixed image—the rock on which Barry Cornwall + split. He did not look into his own heart, and write: he looked into his + books. + </p> + <p> + A poet need not confine himself to his individual experiences; the world + is all before him where to choose; but there are subjects which he had + better not handle unless he have some personal knowledge of them. The sea + is one of these. The man who sang, + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + The sea! the sea! the open sea! + The blue, the fresh, <i>the ever free!</i> +</pre> + <p> + (a couplet which the Gifted Hopkins might have penned), should never have + permitted himself to sing of the ocean. I am quoting from one of Barry + Cornwall's most popular lyrics. When I first read this singularly vapid + poem years ago, in mid-Atlantic, I wondered if the author had ever laid + eyes on any piece of water wider than the Thames at Greenwich, and in + looking over Barry Cornwall's “Life and Letters” I am not so much + surprised as amused to learn that he was never out of sight of land in the + whole course of his existence. It is to be said of him more positively + than the captain of the Pinafore said it of himself, that he was hardly + ever sick at sea. + </p> + <p> + Imagine Byron or Shelley, who knew the ocean in all its protean moods, + piping such thin feebleness as + </p> + <p> + “The blue, the fresh, the ever free!” + </p> + <p> + To do that required a man whose acquaintance with the deep was limited to + a view of it from an upper window at Margate or Scarborough. Even frequent + dinners of turbot and whitebait at the sign of The Ship and Turtle will + not enable one to write sea poetry. + </p> + <p> + Considering the actual facts, there is something weird in the statement, + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + I 'm on the sea! I 'm on the sea! + I am where I would ever be. +</pre> + <p> + The words, to be sure, are placed in the mouth of an imagined sailor, but + they are none the less diverting. The stanza containing the distich ends + with a striking piece of realism: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + If a storm should come and awake the deep, + What matter? I shall ride and sleep. +</pre> + <p> + This is the course of action usually pursued by sailors during a gale. The + first or second mate goes around and tucks them up comfortably, each in + his hammock, and serves them out an extra ration of grog after the storm + is over. + </p> + <p> + Barry Cornwall must have had an exceptionally winning personality, for he + drew to him the friendship of men as differently constituted as Thackeray, + Carlyle, Browning, and Forster. He was liked by the best of his time, from + Charles Lamb down to Algernon Swinburne, who caught a glimpse of the aged + poet in his vanishing. The personal magnetism of an author does not extend + far beyond the orbit of his contemporaries. It is of the lyrist and not of + the man I am speaking here. One could wish he had written more prose like + his admirable “Recollections of Elia.” + </p> + <p> + Barry Cornwall seldom sounds a natural note, but when he does it is + extremely sweet. That little ballad in the minor key beginning, + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Touch us gently, Time! + Let us glide adown thy stream, +was written in one of his rare moments. Leigh Hunt, though not without +questionable mannerisms, was rich in the inspiration that came but +infrequently to his friend. Hunt's verse is full of natural felicities. +He also was a bookman, but, unlike Barry Cornwall, he generally knew how +to mint his gathered gold, and to stamp the coinage with his own head. +In “Hero and Leander” there is one line which, at my valuing, is worth +any twenty stanzas that Barry Cornwall has written: + + So might they now have lived, and so have died; + <i>The story's heart, to me, still beats against its side</i>. +</pre> + <p> + Hunt's fortunate verse about the kiss Jane Carlyle gave him lingers on + everybody's lip. That and the rhyme of “Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel” are + spice enough to embalm a man's memory. After all, it takes only a handful. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + DECORATION DAY + </h2> + <p> + HOW quickly Nature takes possession of a deserted battlefield, and goes to + work repairing the ravages of man! With invisible magic hand she smooths + the rough earthworks, fills the rifle-pits with delicate flowers, and + wraps the splintered tree-trunks with her fluent drapery of tendrils. Soon + the whole sharp outline of the spot is lost in unremembering grass. Where + the deadly rifle-ball whistled through the foliage, the robin or the + thrush pipes its tremulous note; and where the menacing shell described + its curve through the air, a harmless crow flies in circles. Season after + season the gentle work goes on, healing the wounds and rents made by the + merciless enginery of war, until at last the once hotly contested + battleground differs from none of its quiet surroundings, except, perhaps, + that here the flowers take a richer tint and the grasses a deeper emerald. + </p> + <p> + It is thus the battle lines may be obliterated by Time, but there are left + other and more lasting relics of the struggle. That dinted army sabre, + with a bit of faded crepe knotted at its hilt, which hangs over the + mantel-piece of the “best room” of many a town and country house in these + States, is one; and the graven headstone of the fallen hero is another. + The old swords will be treasured and handed down from generation to + generation as priceless heirlooms, and with them, let us trust, will be + cherished the custom of dressing with annual flowers the resting-places of + those who fell during the Civil War. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + With the tears a Land hath shed + Their graves should ever be green. + + Ever their fair, true glory + Fondly should fame rehearse— + Light of legend and story, + Flower of marble and verse. +</pre> + <p> + The impulse which led us to set apart a day for decorating the graves of + our soldiers sprung from the grieved heart of the nation, and in our own + time there is little chance of the rite being neglected. But the + generations that come after us should not allow the observance to fall + into disuse. What with us is an expression of fresh love and sorrow, + should be with them an acknowledgment of an incalculable debt. + </p> + <p> + Decoration Day is the most beautiful of our national holidays. How + different from those sullen batteries which used to go rumbling through + our streets are the crowds of light carriages, laden with flowers and + greenery, wending their way to the neighboring cemeteries! The grim cannon + have turned into palm branches, and the shell and shrapnel into peach + blooms. There is no hint of war in these gay baggage trains, except the + presence of men in undress uniform, and perhaps here and there an empty + sleeve to remind one of what has been. Year by year that empty sleeve is + less in evidence. + </p> + <p> + The observance of Decoration Day is unmarked by that disorder and + confusion common enough with our people in their holiday moods. The + earlier sorrow has faded out of the hour, leaving a softened solemnity. It + quickly ceased to be simply a local commemoration. While the sequestered + country churchyards and burial-places near our great northern cities were + being hung with May garlands, the thought could not but come to us that + there were graves lying southward above which bent a grief as tender and + sacred as our own. Invisibly we dropped unseen flowers upon those mounds. + There is a beautiful significance in the fact that, two years after the + close of the war, the women of Columbus, Mississippi, laid their offerings + alike on Northern and Southern graves. When all is said, the great Nation + has but one heart. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + WRITERS AND TALKERS + </h2> + <p> + AS a class, literary men do not shine in conversation. The scintillating + and playful essayist whom you pictured to yourself as the most genial and + entertaining of companions, turns out to be a shy and untalkable + individual, who chills you with his reticence when you chance to meet him. + The poet whose fascinating volume you always drop into your gripsack on + your summer vacation—the poet whom you have so long desired to know + personally—is a moody and abstracted middle-aged gentleman, who + fails to catch your name on introduction, and seems the avatar of the + commonplace. The witty and ferocious critic whom your fancy had painted as + a literary cannibal with a morbid appetite for tender young poets—the + writer of those caustic and scholarly reviews which you never neglect to + read—destroys the un-lifelike portrait you had drawn by appearing + before you as a personage of slender limb and deprecating glance, who + stammers and makes a painful spectacle of himself when you ask him his + opinion of “The Glees of the Gulches,” by Popocatepetl Jones. The slender, + dark-haired novelist of your imagination, with epigrammatic points to his + mustache, suddenly takes the shape of a short, smoothly-shaven blond man, + whose conversation does not sparkle at all, and you were on the lookout + for the most brilliant of verbal fireworks. Perhaps it is a dramatist you + have idealized. Fresh from witnessing his delightful comedy of manners, + you meet him face to face only to discover that his own manners are + anything but delightful. The play and the playwright are two very distinct + entities. You grow skeptical touching the truth of Buffon's assertion that + the style is the man himself. Who that has encountered his favorite author + in the flesh has not sometimes been a little, if not wholly, disappointed? + </p> + <p> + After all, is it not expecting too much to expect a novelist to talk as + cleverly as the clever characters in his novels? Must a dramatist + necessarily go about armed to the teeth with crisp dialogue? May not a + poet be allowed to lay aside his singing-robes and put on a conventional + dress-suit when he dines out? Why is it not permissible in him to be as + prosaic and tiresome as the rest of the company? He usually is. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + ON EARLY RISING + </h2> + <p> + A CERTAIN scientific gentleman of my acquaintance, who has devoted years + to investigating the subject, states that he has never come across a case + of remarkable longevity unaccompanied by the habit of early rising; from + which testimony it might be inferred that they die early who lie abed + late. But this would be getting out at the wrong station. That the + majority of elderly persons are early risers is due to the simple fact + that they cannot sleep mornings. After a man passes his fiftieth milestone + he usually awakens at dawn, and his wakefulness is no credit to him. As + the theorist confined his observations to the aged, he easily reached the + conclusion that men live to be old because they do not sleep late, instead + of perceiving that men do not sleep late because they are old. He moreover + failed to take into account the numberless young lives that have been + shortened by matutinal habits. + </p> + <p> + The intelligent reader, and no other is supposable, need not be told that + the early bird aphorism is a warning and not an incentive. The fate of the + worm refutes the pretended ethical teaching of the proverb, which assumes + to illustrate the advantage of early rising and does so by showing how + extremely dangerous it is. I have no patience with the worm, and when I + rise with the lark I am always careful to select a lark that has overslept + himself. + </p> + <p> + The example set by this mythical bird, a mythical bird so far as New + England is concerned, has wrought wide-spread mischief and discomfort. It + is worth noting that his method of accomplishing these ends is directly + the reverse of that of the Caribbean insect mentioned by Lafcadio Hearn in + his enchanting “Two Years in the French West Indies”—a species of + colossal cricket called the wood-kid; in the creole tongue, <i>cabritt-bois</i>. + This ingenious pest works a soothing, sleep-compelling chant from sundown + until precisely half past four in the morning, when it suddenly stops and + by its silence awakens everybody it has lulled into slumber with its + insidious croon. Mr. Hearn, with strange obtuseness to the enormity of the + thing, blandly remarks: “For thousands of early risers too poor to own a + clock, the cessation of its song is the signal to get up.” I devoutly + trust that none of the West India islands furnishing such satanic + entomological specimens will ever be annexed to the United States. Some of + our extreme advocates of territorial expansion might spend a profitable + few weeks on one of those favored isles. A brief association with that <i>cabritt-bois</i> + would be likely to cool the enthusiasm of the most ardent imperialist. + </p> + <p> + An incalculable amount of specious sentiment has been lavished upon + daybreak, chiefly by poets who breakfasted, when they did breakfast, at + mid-day. It is charitably to be said that their practice was better than + their precept—or their poetry. Thomson, the author of “The Castle of + Indolence,” who gave birth to the depraved apostrophe, + </p> + <p> + “Falsely luxurious, will not man awake,” + </p> + <p> + was one of the laziest men of his century. He customarily lay in bed until + noon meditating pentameters on sunrise. This creature used to be seen in + his garden of an afternoon, with both hands in his waistcoat pockets, + eating peaches from a pendent bough. Nearly all the English poets who at + that epoch celebrated what they called “the effulgent orb of day” were + denizens of London, where pure sunshine is unknown eleven months out of + the twelve. + </p> + <p> + In a great city there are few incentives to early rising. What charm is + there in roof-tops and chimney-stacks to induce one to escape even from a + nightmare? What is more depressing than a city street before the + shop-windows have lifted an eyelid, when “the very houses seem asleep,” as + Wordsworth says, and nobody is astir but the belated burglar or the + milk-and-water man or Mary washing off the front steps? Daybreak at the + seaside or up among the mountains is sometimes worth while, though + familiarity with it breeds indifference. The man forced by restlessness or + occupation to drink the first vintage of the morning every day of his life + has no right appreciation of the beverage, however much he may profess to + relish it. It is only your habitual late riser who takes in the full + flavor of Nature at those rare intervals when he gets up to go a-fishing. + He brings virginal emotions and unsatiated eyes to the sparkling freshness + of earth and stream and sky. For him—a momentary Adam—the + world is newly created. It is Eden come again, with Eve in the similitude + of a three-pound trout. + </p> + <p> + In the country, then, it is well enough occasionally to dress by + candle-light and assist at the ceremony of dawn; it is well if for no + other purpose than to disarm the intolerance of the professional early + riser who, were he in a state of perfect health, would not be the + wandering victim of insomnia, and boast of it. There are few small things + more exasperating than this early bird with the worm of his conceit in his + bill. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + UN POETE MANQUE + </h2> + <p> + IN the first volume of Miss Dickinson's poetical melange is a little poem + which needs only a slight revision of the initial stanza to entitle it to + rank with some of the swallow-flights in Heine's lyrical intermezzo. I + have tentatively tucked a rhyme into that opening stanza: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + I taste a liquor never brewed + In vats upon the Rhine; + No tankard ever held a draught + Of alcohol like mine. + + Inebriate of air am I, + And debauchee of dew, + Reeling, through endless summer days, + From inns of molten blue. + + When landlords turn the drunken bee + Out of the Foxglove's door, + When butterflies renounce their drams, + I shall but drink the more! + Till seraphs swing their snowy caps + And saints to windows run, + To see the little tippler + Leaning against the sun! +</pre> + <p> + Those inns of molten blue, and the disreputable honey-gatherer who gets + himself turned out-of-doors at the sign of the Foxglove, are very taking + matters. I know of more important things that interest me vastly less. + This is one of the ten or twelve brief pieces so nearly perfect in + structure as almost to warrant the reader in suspecting that Miss + Dickinson's general disregard of form was a deliberate affectation. The + artistic finish of the following sunset-piece makes her usual quatrains + unforgivable: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + This is the land the sunset washes, + These are the banks of the Yellow Sea; + Where it rose, or whither it rushes, + These are the western mystery! + + Night after night her purple traffic + Strews the landing with opal bales; + Merchantmen poise upon horizons, + Dip, and vanish with fairy sails. +</pre> + <p> + The little picture has all the opaline atmosphere of a Claude Lorraine. + One instantly frames it in one's memory. Several such bits of + impressionist landscape may be found in the portfolio. + </p> + <p> + It is to be said, in passing, that there are few things in Miss + Dickinson's poetry so felicitous as Mr. Higginson's characterization of it + in his preface to the volume: “In many cases these verses will seem to the + reader <i>like poetry pulled up by the roots</i>, with rain and dew and + earth clinging to them.” Possibly it might be objected that this is not + the best way to gather either flowers or poetry. + </p> + <p> + Miss Dickinson possessed an extremely unconventional and bizarre mind. She + was deeply tinged by the mysticism of Blake, and strongly influenced by + the mannerism of Emerson. The very gesture with which she tied her + bonnet-strings, preparatory to one of her nun-like walks in her garden at + Amherst, must have had something dreamy and Emersonian in it. She had much + fancy of a quaint kind, but only, as it appears to me, intermittent + flashes of imagination. + </p> + <p> + That Miss Dickinson's memoranda have a certain something which, for want + of a more precise name, we term <i>quality</i>, is not to be denied. But + the incoherence and shapelessness of the greater part of her verse are + fatal. On nearly every page one lights upon an unsupported exquisite line + or a lonely happy epithet; but a single happy epithet or an isolated + exquisite line does not constitute a poem. What Lowell says of Dr. Donne + applies in a manner to Miss Dickinson: “Donne is full of salient verses + that would take the rudest March winds of criticism with their beauty, of + thoughts that first tease us like charades and then delight us with the + felicity of their solution; but these have not saved him. He is exiled to + the limbo of the formless and the fragmentary.” + </p> + <p> + Touching this question of mere technique Mr. Ruskin has a word to say (it + appears that he said it “in his earlier and better days”), and Mr. + Higginson quotes it: “No weight, nor mass, nor beauty of execution can + outweigh one grain or fragment of thought.” This is a proposition to which + one would cordially subscribe if it were not so intemperately stated. A + suggestive commentary on Mr. Ruskin's impressive dictum is furnished by + his own volume of verse. The substance of it is weighty enough, but the + workmanship lacks just that touch which distinguishes the artist from the + bungler—the touch which Mr. Ruskin, except when writing prose, + appears not much to have regarded either in his later or “in his earlier + and better days.” + </p> + <p> + Miss Dickinson's stanzas, with their impossible rhyme, their involved + significance, their interrupted flute-note of birds that have no + continuous music, seem to have caught the ear of a group of eager + listeners. A shy New England bluebird, shifting its light load of song, + has for the moment been mistaken for a stray nightingale. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + THE MALE COSTUME OF THE PERIOD + </h2> + <p> + I WENT to see a play the other night, one of those good old-fashioned + English comedies that are in five acts and seem to be in fifteen. The + piece with its wrinkled conventionality, its archaic stiffness, and + obsolete code of morals, was devoid of interest excepting as a collection + of dramatic curios. Still I managed to sit it through. The one thing in it + that held me a pleased spectator was the graceful costume of a certain + player who looked like a fine old portrait—by Vandyke or Velasquez, + let us say—that had come to life and kicked off its tarnished frame. + </p> + <p> + I do not know at what epoch of the world's history the scene of the play + was laid; possibly the author originally knew, but it was evident that the + actors did not, for their make-ups represented quite antagonistic periods. + This circumstance, however, detracted only slightly from the special + pleasure I took in the young person called Delorme. He was not in himself + interesting; he was like that Major Waters in “Pepys's Diary”—“a + most amorous melancholy gentleman who is under a despayr in love, which + makes him bad company;” it was entirely Delorme's dress. + </p> + <p> + I never saw mortal man in a dress more sensible and becoming. The material + was according to Polonius's dictum, rich but not gaudy, of some dark + cherry-colored stuff with trimmings of a deeper shade. My idea of a + doublet is so misty that I shall not venture to affirm that the gentleman + wore a doublet. It was a loose coat of some description hanging + negligently from the shoulders and looped at the throat, showing a + tasteful arrangement of lacework below and at the wrists. Full trousers + reaching to the tops of buckskin boots, and a low-crowned soft hat—not + a Puritan's sugar-loaf, but a picturesque shapeless head-gear, one side + jauntily fastened up with a jewel—completed the essential portions + of our friend's attire. It was a costume to walk in, to ride in, to sit + in. The wearer of it could not be awkward if he tried, and I will do + Delorme the justice to say that he put his dress to some severe tests. But + he was graceful all the while, and made me wish that my countrymen would + throw aside their present hideous habiliments and hasten to the + measuring-room of Delorme's tailor. + </p> + <p> + In looking over the plates of an old book of fashions we smile at the + monstrous attire in which our worthy great-grandsires saw fit to deck + themselves. Presently it will be the turn of posterity to smile at us, for + in our own way we are no less ridiculous than were our ancestors in their + knee-breeches, pig-tail and <i>chapeau de bras</i>. In fact we are really + more absurd. If a fashionably dressed man of to-day could catch a single + glimpse of himself through the eyes of his descendants four or five + generations removed, he would have a strong impression of being something + that had escaped from somewhere. + </p> + <p> + Whatever strides we may have made in arts and sciences, we have made no + advance in the matter of costume. That Americans do not tattoo themselves, + and do go fully clad—I am speaking exclusively of my own sex—is + about all that can be said in favor of our present fashions. I wish I had + the vocabulary of Herr Teufelsdrockh with which to inveigh against the + dress-coat of our evening parties, the angular swallow-tailed coat that + makes a man look like a poor species of bird and gets him mistaken for the + waiter. “As long as a man wears the modern coat,” says Leigh Hunt, “he has + no right to despise any dress. What snips at the collar and lapels! What a + mechanical and ridiculous cut about the flaps! What buttons in front that + are never meant to button, and yet are no ornament! And what an + exquisitely absurd pair of buttons at the back! gravely regarded, + nevertheless, and thought as indispensably necessary to every + well-conditioned coat, as other bits of metal or bone are to the bodies of + savages whom we laugh at. There is absolutely not one iota of sense, + grace, or even economy in the modern coat.” + </p> + <p> + Still more deplorable is the ceremonial hat of the period. That a + Christian can go about unabashed with a shiny black cylinder on his head + shows what civilization has done for us in the way of taste in personal + decoration. The scalplock of an Apache brave has more style. When an + Indian squaw comes into a frontier settlement the first “marked-down” + article she purchases is a section of stove-pipe. Her instinct as to the + eternal fitness of things tells her that its proper place is on the skull + of a barbarian. + </p> + <p> + It was while revolving these pleasing reflections in my mind, that our + friend Delorme walked across the stage in the fourth act, and though there + was nothing in the situation nor in the text of the play to warrant it, I + broke into tremendous applause, from which I desisted only at the scowl of + an usher—an object in a celluloid collar and a claw-hammer coat. My + solitary ovation to Master Delorme was an involuntary and, I think, + pardonable protest against the male costume of our own time. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + ON A CERTAIN AFFECTATION + </h2> + <p> + EXCEPTING on the ground that youth is the age of vain fantasy, there is no + accounting for the fact that young men and young women of poetical + temperament should so frequently assume to look upon an early demise for + themselves as the most desirable thing in the world. Though one may + incidentally be tempted to agree with them in the abstract, one cannot + help wondering. That persons who are exceptionally fortunate in their + environment, and in private do not pretend to be otherwise, should openly + announce their intention of retiring at once into the family tomb, is a + problem not easily solved. The public has so long listened to these + funereal solos that if a few of the poets thus impatient to be gone were + to go, their departure would perhaps be attended by that resigned speeding + which the proverb invokes on behalf of the parting guest. + </p> + <p> + The existence of at least one magazine editor would, I know, have a shadow + lifted from it. At this writing, in a small mortuary basket under his desk + are seven or eight poems of so gloomy a nature that he would not be able + to remain in the same room with them if he did not suspect the integrity + of their pessimism. The ring of a false coin is not more recognizable than + that of a rhyme setting forth a simulated sorrow. + </p> + <p> + The Miss Gladys who sends a poem entitled “Forsaken,” in which she + addresses death as her only friend, makes pictures in the editor's eyes. + He sees, among other dissolving views, a little hoyden in magnificent + spirits, perhaps one of this season's social buds, with half a score of + lovers ready to pluck her from the family stem—a rose whose + countless petals are coupons. A caramel has disagreed with her, or she + would not have written in this despondent vein. The young man who seeks to + inform the world in eleven anaemic stanzas of <i>terze rime</i> that the + cup of happiness has been forever dashed from his lip (he appears to have + but one) and darkly intimates that the end is “nigh” (rhyming affably with + “sigh”), will probably be engaged a quarter of a century from now in + making similar declarations. He is simply echoing some dysthymic poet of + the past—reaching out with some other man's hat for the stray nickel + of your sympathy. + </p> + <p> + This morbidness seldom accompanies genuine poetic gifts. The case of David + Gray, the young Scottish poet who died in 1861, is an instance to the + contrary. His lot was exceedingly sad, and the failure of health just as + he was on the verge of achieving something like success justified his + profound melancholy; but that he tuned this melancholy and played upon it, + as if it were a musical instrument, is plainly seen in one of his sonnets. + </p> + <p> + In Monckton Milnes's (Lord Houghton's) “Life and Letters of John Keats” it + is related that Keats, one day, on finding a stain of blood upon his lips + after coughing, said to his friend Charles Brown: “I know the color of + that blood; it is arterial blood; I cannot be deceived. That drop is my + death-warrant. I must die.” Who that ever read the passage could forget + it? David Gray did not, for he versified the incident as happening to + himself and appropriated, as his own, Keats's comment: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Last night, on coughing slightly with sharp pain, + There came arterial blood, and with a sigh + Of absolute grief I cried in bitter vein, + That drop is my death-warrant; I must die. +</pre> + <p> + The incident was likely enough a personal experience, but the comment + should have been placed in quotation marks. I know of few stranger things + in literature than this poet's dramatization of another man's pathos. Even + Keats's epitaph—<i>Here lies one whose name</i> <i>was writ in water</i>—finds + an echo in David Gray's <i>Below lies one whose name was traced in sand</i>. + Poor Gray was at least the better prophet. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + WISHMAKERS' TOWN + </h2> + <p> + A LIMITED edition of this little volume of verse, which seems to me in + many respects unique, was issued in 1885, and has long been out of print. + The reissue of the book is in response to the desire off certain readers + who have not forgotten the charm which William Young's poem exercised upon + them years ago, and, finding the charm still potent, would have others + share it. + </p> + <p> + The scheme of the poem, for it is a poem and not simply a series of + unrelated lyrics, is ingenious and original, and unfolds itself in + measures at once strong and delicate. The mood of the poet and the method + of the playwright are obvious throughout. Wishmakers' Town—a little + town situated in the no-man's-land of “The Tempest” and “A Midsummer + Night's Dream”—is shown to us as it awakens, touched by the dawn. + The clangor of bells far and near calls the townfolk to their various + avocations, the toiler to his toil, the idler to his idleness, the miser + to his gold. In swift and picturesque sequence the personages of the + Masque pass before us. Merchants, hucksters, players, lovers, gossips, + soldiers, vagabonds, and princes crowd the scene, and have in turn their + word of poignant speech. We mingle with the throng in the streets; we hear + the whir of looms and the din of foundries, the blare of trumpets, the + whisper of lovers, the scandals of the market-place, and, in brief, are + let into all the secrets of the busy microcosm. A contracted stage, + indeed, yet large enough for the play of many passions, as the narrowest + hearthstone may be. With the sounding of the curfew, the town is hushed to + sleep again, and the curtain falls on this mimic drama of life. + </p> + <p> + The charm of it all is not easily to be defined. Perhaps if one could name + it, the spell were broken. Above the changing rhythms hangs an atmosphere + too evasive for measurement—an atmosphere that stipulates an + imaginative mood on the part of the reader. The quality which pleases in + certain of the lyrical episodes is less intangible. One readily explains + one's liking for so gracious a lyric as The Flower-Seller, to select an + example at random. Next to the pleasure that lies in the writing of such + exquisite verse is the pleasure of quoting it. I copy the stanzas partly + for my own gratification, and partly to win the reader to “Wishmakers' + Town,” not knowing better how to do it. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Myrtle, and eglantine, + For the old love and the new! + And the columbine, + With its cap and bells, for folly! + And the daffodil, for the hopes of youth! and the rue, + For melancholy! + But of all the blossoms that blow, + Fair gallants all, I charge you to win, if ye may, + This gentle guest, + Who dreams apart, in her wimple of purple and gray, + Like the blessed Virgin, with meek head bending low + Upon her breast. + For the orange flower + Ye may buy as ye will: but the violet of the wood + Is the love of maidenhood; + And he that hath worn it but once, though but for an hour, + He shall never again, though he wander by many a stream, + No, never again shall he meet with a dower that shall seem + So sweet and pure; and forever, in after years, + At the thought of its bloom, or the fragrance of its breath, + The past shall arise, + And his eyes shall be dim with tears, + And his soul shall be far in the gardens of Paradise + Though he stand in the Shambles of death. +In a different tone, but displaying the same sureness of execution, is +the cry of the lowly folk, the wretched pawns in the great game of life: + + Prince, and Bishop, and Knight, and Dame, + Plot, and plunder, and disagree! + O but the game is a royal game! + O but your tourneys are fair to see! + + None too hopeful we found our lives; + Sore was labor from day to day; + Still we strove for our babes and wives— + Now, to the trumpet, we march away! + + “Why?”—For some one hath will'd it so! + Nothing we know of the why or the where— + To swamp, or jungle, or wastes of snow— + Nothing we know, and little we care. + + Give us to kill!—since this is the end + Of love and labor in Nature's plan; + Give us to kill and ravish and rend, + Yea, since this is the end of man. + + States shall perish, and states be born: + Leaders, out of the throng, shall press; + Some to honor, and some to scorn: + We, that are little, shall yet be less. + + Over our lines shall the vultures soar; + Hard on our flanks shall the jackals cry; + And the dead shall be as the sands of the shore; + And daily the living shall pray to die. + + Nay, what matter!—When all is said, + Prince and Bishop will plunder still: + Lord and Lady must dance and wed. + Pity us, pray for us, ye that will! +</pre> + <p> + It is only the fear of impinging on Mr. Young's copyright that prevents me + reprinting the graphic ballad of The Wanderer and the prologue of The + Strollers, which reads like a page from the prelude to some Old-World + miracle play. The setting of these things is frequently antique, but the + thought is the thought of today. I think there is a new generation of + readers for such poetry as Mr. Young's. I venture the prophecy that it + will not lack for them later when the time comes for the inevitable + rearrangement of present poetic values. + </p> + <p> + The author of “Wishmakers' Town” is the child of his period, and has not + escaped the <i>maladie du siecle</i>. The doubt and pessimism that marked + the end of the nineteenth century find a voice in the bell-like strophes + with which the volume closes. It is the dramatist rather than the poet who + speaks here. The real message of the poet to mankind is ever one of hope. + Amid the problems that perplex and discourage, it is for him to sing + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Of what the world shall be + When the years have died away. +</pre> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + HISTORICAL NOVELS + </h2> + <p> + IN default of such an admirable piece of work as Dr. Weir Mitchell's “Hugh + Wynne,” I like best those fictions which deal with kingdoms and + principalities that exist only in the mind's eye. One's knowledge of + actual events and real personages runs no serious risk of receiving shocks + in this no-man's-land. Everything that happens in an imaginary realm—in + the realm of Ruritania, for illustration—has an air of possibility, + at least a shadowy vraisemblance. The atmosphere and local color, having + an authenticity of their own, are not to be challenged. You cannot charge + the writer with ignorance of the period in which his narrative is laid, + since the period is as vague as the geography. He walks on safe ground, + eluding many of the perils that beset the story-teller who ventures to + stray beyond the bounds of the make-believe. One peril he cannot escape—that + of misrepresenting human nature. + </p> + <p> + The anachronisms of the average historical novel, pretending to reflect + history, are among its minor defects. It is a thing altogether wonderfully + and fearfully made—the imbecile intrigue, the cast-iron characters, + the plumed and armored dialogue with its lance of gory rhetoric forever at + charge. The stage at its worst moments is not so unreal. Here art has + broken into smithereens the mirror which she is supposed to hold up to + nature. + </p> + <p> + In this romance-world somebody is always somebody's unsuspected father, + mother, or child, deceiving every one excepting the reader. Usually the + anonymous person is the hero, to whom it is mere recreation to hold twenty + swordsmen at bay on a staircase, killing ten or twelve of them before he + escapes through a door that ever providentially opens directly behind him. + How tired one gets of that door! The “caitiff” in these chronicles of when + knighthood was in flower is invariably hanged from “the highest + battlement”—the second highest would not do at all; or else he is + thrown into “the deepest dungeon of the castle”—the second deepest + dungeon was never known to be used on these occasions. The hero habitually + “cleaves” his foeman “to the midriff,” the “midriff” being what the + properly brought up hero always has in view. A certain fictional historian + of my acquaintance makes his swashbuckler exclaim: “My sword will [shall] + kiss his midriff;” but that is an exceptionally lofty flight of diction. + My friend's heroine dresses as a page, and in the course of long + interviews with her lover remains unrecognized—a diaphanous literary + invention that must have been old when the Pyramids were young. The + heroine's small brother, with playful archaicism called “a springald,” + puts on her skirts and things and passes himself off for his sister or + anybody else he pleases. In brief, there is no puerility that is not at + home in this sphere of misbegotten effort. Listen—a priest, a + princess, and a young man in woman's clothes are on the scene: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + \ The princess rose to her feet and + approached the priest. + \ “Father,” she said swiftly, “this + is not the Lady Joan, my brother's + wife, but a youth marvelously like + her, who hath offered himself in + her place that she might escape. . . . + He is the Count von Loen, a lord + of Kernsburg. And I love him. We + want you to marry us now, dear + Father—now, without a moment's + delay; for if you do not they will + kill him, and I shall have to marry + Prince Wasp!” + </pre> + <p> + This is from “Joan of the Sword Hand,” and if ever I read a more silly + performance I have forgotten it. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + POOR YORICK + </h2> + <p> + THERE is extant in the city of New York an odd piece of bric-a-brac which + I am sometimes tempted to wish was in my own possession. On a bracket in + Edwin Booth's bedroom at The Players—the apartment remains as he + left it that solemn June day ten years ago—stands a sadly + dilapidated skull which the elder Booth, and afterward his son Edwin, used + to soliloquize over in the graveyard at Elsinore in the fifth act of + “Hamlet.” + </p> + <p> + A skull is an object that always invokes interest more or less poignant; + it always has its pathetic story, whether told or untold; but this skull + is especially a skull “with a past.” + </p> + <p> + In the early forties, while playing an engagement somewhere in the wild + West, Junius Brutus Booth did a series of kindnesses to a particularly + undeserving fellow, the name of him unknown to us. The man, as it seemed, + was a combination of gambler, horse-stealer, and highwayman—in + brief, a miscellaneous desperado, and precisely the melodramatic sort of + person likely to touch the sympathies of the half-mad player. In the + course of nature or the law, presumably the law, the adventurer bodily + disappeared one day, and soon ceased to exist even as a reminiscence in + the florid mind of his sometime benefactor. + </p> + <p> + As the elder Booth was seated at breakfast one morning in a hotel in + Louisville, Kentucky, a negro boy entered the room bearing a small osier + basket neatly covered with a snowy napkin. It had the general appearance + of a basket of fruit or flowers sent by some admirer, and as such it + figured for a moment in Mr. Booth's conjecture. On lifting the cloth the + actor started from the chair with a genuine expression on his features of + that terror which he was used so marvelously to simulate as Richard III. + in the midnight tent-scene or as Macbeth when the ghost of Banquo usurped + his seat at table. + </p> + <p> + In the pretty willow-woven basket lay the head of Booth's old pensioner, + which head the old pensioner had bequeathed in due legal form to the + tragedian, begging him henceforth to adopt it as one of the necessary + stage properties in the fifth act of Mr. Shakespeare's tragedy of + “Hamlet.” “Take it away, you black imp!” thundered the actor to the + equally aghast negro boy, whose curiosity had happily not prompted him to + investigate the dark nature of his burden. + </p> + <p> + Shortly afterward, however, the horse-stealer's residuary legatee, + recovering from the first shock of his surprise, fell into the grim humor + of the situation, and proceeded to carry out to the letter the testator's + whimsical request. Thus it was that the skull came to secure an engagement + to play the role of poor Yorick in J. B. Booth's company of strolling + players, and to continue a while longer to glimmer behind the footlights + in the hands of his famous son. + </p> + <p> + Observing that the grave-digger in his too eager realism was damaging the + thing—the marks of his pick and spade are visible on the cranium—Edwin + Booth presently replaced it with a papier-mache counterfeit manufactured + in the property-room of the theatre. During his subsequent wanderings in + Australia and California, he carefully preserved the relic, which finally + found repose on the bracket in question. + </p> + <p> + How often have I sat, of an afternoon, in that front room on the fourth + floor of the clubhouse in Gramercy Park, watching the winter or summer + twilight gradually softening and blurring the sharp outline of the skull + until it vanished uncannily into the gloom! Edwin Booth had forgotten, if + ever he knew, the name of the man; but I had no need of it in order to + establish acquaintance with poor Yorick. In this association I was + conscious of a deep tinge of sentiment on my own part, a circumstance not + without its queerness, considering how very distant the acquaintance + really was. + </p> + <p> + Possibly he was a fellow of infinite jest in his day; he was sober enough + now, and in no way disposed to indulge in those flashes of merriment “that + were wont to set the table on a roar.” But I did not regret his evaporated + hilarity; I liked his more befitting genial silence, and had learned to + look upon his rather open countenance with the same friendliness as that + with which I regarded the faces of less phantasmal members of the club. He + had become to me a dramatic personality as distinct as that of any of the + Thespians I met in the grillroom or the library. + </p> + <p> + Yorick's feeling in regard to me was a subject upon which I frequently + speculated. There was at intervals an alert gleam of intelligence in those + cavernous eye-sockets, as if the sudden remembrance of some old experience + had illumined them. He had been a great traveler, and had known strange + vicissitudes in life; his stage career had brought him into contact with a + varied assortment of men and women, and extended his horizon. His more + peaceful profession of holding up mail-coaches on lonely roads had surely + not been without incident. It was inconceivable that all this had left no + impressions. He must have had at least a faint recollection of the + tempestuous Junius Brutus Booth. That Yorick had formed his estimate of + me, and probably not a flattering one, is something of which I am strongly + convinced. + </p> + <p> + At the death of Edwin Booth, poor Yorick passed out of my personal + cognizance, and now lingers an incongruous shadow amid the memories of the + precious things I lost then. + </p> + <p> + The suite of apartments formerly occupied by Edwin Booth at The Players + has been, as I have said, kept unchanged—a shrine to which from time + to time some loving heart makes silent pilgrimage. On a table in the + centre of his bedroom lies the book just where he laid it down, an ivory + paper-cutter marking the page his eyes last rested upon; and in this + chamber, with its familiar pictures, pipes, and ornaments, the skull finds + its proper sanctuary. If at odd moments I wish that by chance poor Yorick + had fallen to my care, the wish is only halfhearted, though had that + happened, I would have given him welcome to the choicest corner in my + study and tenderly cherished him for the sake of one who comes no more. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER + </h2> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + One that gathers samphire, dreadful trade! + —<i>King Lear.</i> +</pre> + <p> + THE material for this paper on the autograph hunter, his ways and his + manners, has been drawn chiefly from experiences not my own. My personal + relations with him have been comparatively restricted, a circumstance to + which I owe the privilege of treating the subject with a freedom that + might otherwise not seem becoming. + </p> + <p> + No author is insensible to the compliment involved in a request for his + autograph, assuming the request to come from some sincere lover of books + and bookmen. It is an affair of different complection when he is + importuned to give time and attention to the innumerable unknown who + “collect” autographs as they would collect postage stamps, with no + interest in the matter beyond the desire to accumulate as many as + possible. The average autograph hunter, with his purposeless insistence, + reminds one of the queen in Stockton's story whose fad was “the + buttonholes of all nations.” + </p> + <p> + In our population of eighty millions and upward there are probably two + hundred thousand persons interested more or less in what is termed the + literary world. This estimate is absurdly low, but it serves to cast a + sufficient side-light upon the situation. Now, any unit of these two + hundred thousand is likely at any moment to indite a letter to some + favorite novelist, historian, poet, or what not. It will be seen, then, + that the autograph hunter is no inconsiderable person. He has made it + embarrassing work for the author fortunate or unfortunate enough to be + regarded as worth while. Every mail adds to his reproachful pile of + unanswered letters. If he have a conscience, and no amanuensis, he quickly + finds himself tangled in the meshes of endless and futile correspondence. + Through policy, good nature, or vanity he is apt to become facile prey. + </p> + <p> + A certain literary collector once confessed in print that he always + studied the idiosyncrasies of his “subject” as carefully as another sort + of collector studies the plan of the house to which he meditates a + midnight visit. We were assured that with skillful preparation and adroit + approach an autograph could be extracted from anybody. According to the + revelations of the writer, Bismarck, Queen Victoria, and Mr. Gladstone had + their respective point of easy access—their one unfastened door or + window, metaphorically speaking. The strongest man has his weak side. + </p> + <p> + Dr. Holmes's affability in replying to every one who wrote to him was + perhaps not a trait characteristic of the elder group. Mr. Lowell, for + instance, was harder-hearted and rather difficult to reach. I recall one + day in the library at Elmwood. As I was taking down a volume from the + shelf a sealed letter escaped from the pages and fluttered to my feet. I + handed it to Mr. Lowell, who glanced incuriously at the superscription. + “Oh, yes,” he said, smiling, “I know 'em by instinct.” Relieved of its + envelope, the missive turned out to be eighteen months old, and began with + the usual amusing solecism: “As one of the most famous of American authors + I would like to possess your autograph.” + </p> + <p> + Each recipient of such requests has of course his own way of responding. + Mr. Whittier used to be obliging; Mr. Longfellow politic; Mr. Emerson, + always philosophical, dreamily confiscated the postage stamps. + </p> + <p> + Time was when the collector contented himself with a signature on a card; + but that, I am told, no longer satisfies. He must have a letter addressed + to him personally—“on any subject you please,” as an immature scribe + lately suggested to an acquaintance of mine. The ingenuous youth purposed + to flourish a letter in the faces of his less fortunate competitors, in + order to show them that he was on familiar terms with the celebrated + So-and-So. This or a kindred motive is the spur to many a collector. The + stratagems he employs to compass his end are inexhaustible. He drops you + an off-hand note to inquire in what year you first published your + beautiful poem entitled “A Psalm of Life.” If you are a simple soul, you + hasten to assure him that you are not the author of that poem, which he + must have confused with your “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”—and there + you are. Another expedient is to ask if your father's middle name was not + Hierophilus. Now, your father has probably been dead many years, and as + perhaps he was not a public man in his day, you are naturally touched that + any one should have interest in him after this long flight of time. In the + innocence of your heart you reply by the next mail that your father's + middle name was not Hierophilus, but Epaminondas—and there you are + again. It is humiliating to be caught swinging, like a simian ancestor, on + a branch of one's genealogical tree. + </p> + <p> + Some morning you find beside your plate at breakfast an imposing parchment + with a great gold seal in the upper left-hand corner. This document—I + am relating an actual occurrence—announces with a flourish that you + have unanimously been elected an honorary member of The Kalamazoo + International Literary Association. Possibly the honor does not take away + your respiration; but you are bound by courtesy to make an acknowledgment, + and you express your insincere thanks to the obliging secretary of a + literary organization which does not exist anywhere on earth. + </p> + <p> + A scheme of lighter creative touch is that of the correspondent who + advises you that he is replenishing his library and desires a detailed + list of your works, with the respective dates of their first issue, price, + style of binding, etc. A bibliophile, you say to yourself. These + interrogations should of course have been addressed to your publisher; but + they are addressed to you, with the stereotyped “thanks in advance.” The + natural inference is that the correspondent, who writes in a brisk + commercial vein, wishes to fill out his collection of your books, or, + possibly, to treat himself to a complete set in full crushed Levant. Eight + or ten months later this individual, having forgotten (or hoping you will + not remember) that he has already demanded a chronological list of your + writings, forwards another application couched in the self-same words. The + length of time it takes him to “replenish” his library (with your books) + strikes you as pathetic. You cannot control your emotions sufficiently to + pen a reply. From a purely literary point of view this gentleman cares + nothing whatever for your holograph; from a mercantile point of view he + cares greatly and likes to obtain duplicate specimens, which he disposes + of to dealers in such frail merchandise. + </p> + <p> + The pseudo-journalist who is engaged in preparing a critical and + biographical sketch of you, and wants to incorporate, if possible, some + slight hitherto unnoted event in your life—a signed photograph and a + copy of your bookplate are here in order—is also a character which + periodically appears upon the scene. In this little Comedy of Deceptions + there are as many players as men have fancies. + </p> + <p> + A brother slave-of-the-lamp permits me to transfer this leaf from the book + of his experience: “Not long ago the postman brought me a letter of a + rather touching kind. The unknown writer, lately a widow, and plainly a + woman of refinement, had just suffered a new affliction in the loss of her + little girl. My correspondent asked me to copy for her ten or a dozen + lines from a poem which I had written years before on the death of a + child. The request was so shrinkingly put, with such an appealing air of + doubt as to its being heeded, that I immediately transcribed the entire + poem, a matter of a hundred lines or so, and sent it to her. I am unable + to this day to decide whether I was wholly hurt or wholly amused when, two + months afterward, I stumbled over my manuscript, with a neat price + attached to it, in a second-hand bookshop.” + </p> + <p> + Perhaps the most distressing feature of the whole business is the very + poor health which seems to prevail among autograph hunters. No other class + of persons in the community shows so large a percentage of confirmed + invalids. There certainly is some mysterious connection between incipient + spinal trouble and the collecting of autographs. Which superinduces the + other is a question for pathology. It is a fact that one out of every + eight applicants for a specimen of penmanship bases his or her claim upon + the possession of some vertebral disability which leaves him or her + incapable of doing anything but write to authors for their autograph. Why + this particular diversion should be the sole resource remains undisclosed. + But so it appears to be, and the appeal to one's sympathy is most direct + and persuasive. Personally, however, I have my suspicions, suspicions that + are shared by several men of letters, who have come to regard this plea of + invalidism, in the majority of cases, as simply the variation of a very + old and familiar tune. I firmly believe that the health of autograph + hunters, as a class, is excellent. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + ROBERT HERRICK + </h2> + <h3> + I + </h3> + <p> + A LITTLE over three hundred years ago England had given to her a poet of + the very rarest lyrical quality, but she did not discover the fact for + more than a hundred and fifty years afterward. The poet himself was aware + of the fact at once, and stated it, perhaps not too modestly, in countless + quatrains and couplets, which were not read, or, if read, were not much + regarded at the moment. It has always been an incredulous world in this + matter. So many poets have announced their arrival, and not arrived! + </p> + <p> + Robert Herrick was descended in a direct line from an ancient family in + Lincolnshire, the Eyricks, a mentionable representative of which was John + Eyrick of Leicester, the poet's grandfather, admitted freeman in 1535, and + afterward twice made mayor of the town. John Eyrick or Heyricke—he + spelled his name recklessly—had five sons, the second of which + sought a career in London, where he became a goldsmith, and in December, + 1582, married Julian Stone, spinster, of Bedfordshire, a sister to Anne, + Lady Soame, the wife of Sir Stephen Soame. One of the many children of + this marriage was Robert Herrick. + </p> + <p> + It is the common misfortune of the poet's biographers, though it was the + poet's own great good fortune, that the personal interviewer was an + unknown quantity at the period when Herrick played his part on the stage + of life. Of that performance, in its intimate aspects, we have only the + slightest record. + </p> + <p> + Robert Herrick was born in Wood street, Cheapside, London, in 1591, and + baptized at St. Vedast's, Foster Lane, on August 24 of that year. He had + several brothers and sisters, with whom we shall not concern ourselves. It + would be idle to add the little we know about these persons to the little + we know about Herrick himself. He is a sufficient problem without dragging + in the rest of the family. + </p> + <p> + When the future lyrist was fifteen months old his father, Nicholas + Herrick, made his will, and immediately fell out of an upper window. + Whether or not this fall was an intended sequence to the will, the high + almoner, Dr. Fletcher, Bishop of Bristol, promptly put in his claim to the + estate, “all goods and chattels of suicides” becoming his by law. The + circumstances were suspicious, though not conclusive, and the good bishop, + after long litigation, consented to refer the case to arbitrators, who + awarded him two hundred and twenty pounds, thus leaving the question at + issue—whether or not Herrick's death had been his own premeditated + act—still wrapped in its original mystery. This singular law, which + had the possible effect of inducing high almoners to encourage suicide + among well-to-do persons of the lower and middle classes, was afterward + rescinded. + </p> + <p> + Nicholas Herrick did not leave his household destitute, for his estate + amounted to five thousand pounds, that is to say, twenty-five thousand + pounds in to-day's money; but there were many mouths to feed. The poet's + two uncles, Robert Herrick and William Herrick of Beaumanor, the latter + subsequently knighted (1) for his usefulness as jeweller and money-lender + to James I., were appointed guardians to the children. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + (1) Dr. Grosart, in his interesting and valuable Memorial + Introduction to Herrick's poems, quotes this curious item + from Win-wood's <i>Manorials of Affairs of State</i>: “On Easter + Tuesday 1605, one Mr. William Herrick, a goldsmith in + Cheapside, was Knighted for making a Hole in the great + Diamond the King cloth wear. The party little expected the + honour, but he did his work so well as won the King to an + extraordinary liking of it.” + </pre> + <p> + Young Robert appears to have attended school in Westminster until his + fifteenth year, when he was apprenticed to Sir William, who had learned + the gentle art of goldsmith from his nephew's father. Though Robert's + indentures bound him for ten years, Sir William is supposed to have + offered no remonstrance when he was asked, long before that term expired, + to cancel the engagement and allow Robert to enter Cambridge, which he did + as fellow-commoner at St. John's College. At the end of two years he + transferred himself to Trinity Hall, with a view to economy and the + pursuit of the law—the two frequently go together. He received his + degree of B. A. in 1617, and his M. A. in 1620, having relinquished the + law for the arts. + </p> + <p> + During this time he was assumed to be in receipt of a quarterly allowance + of ten pounds—a not illiberal provision, the pound being then five + times its present value; but as the payments were eccentric, the master of + arts was in recurrent distress. If this money came from his own share of + his father's estate, as seems likely, Herrick had cause for complaint; if + otherwise, the pith is taken out of his grievance. + </p> + <p> + The Iliad of his financial woes at this juncture is told in a few + chance-preserved letters written to his “most careful uncle,” as he calls + that evidently thrifty person. In one of these monotonous and dreary + epistles, which are signed “R. Hearick,” the writer says: “The essence of + my writing is (as heretofore) to entreat you to paye for my use to Mr. + Arthour Johnson, bookseller, in Paule's Churchyarde, the ordinarie sume of + tenn pounds, and that with as much sceleritie as you maye.” He also + indulges in the natural wish that his college bills “had leaden wings and + tortice feet.” This was in 1617. The young man's patrimony, whatever it + may have been, had dwindled, and he confesses to “many a throe and pinches + of the purse.” For the moment, at least, his prospects were not + flattering. + </p> + <p> + Robert Herrick's means of livelihood, when in 1620 he quitted the + university and went up to London, are conjectural. It is clear that he was + not without some resources, since he did not starve to death on his wits + before he discovered a patron in the Earl of Pembroke. In the court circle + Herrick also unearthed humbler, but perhaps not less useful, allies in the + persons of Edward Norgate, clerk of the signet, and Master John Crofts, + cup-bearer to the king. Through the two New Year anthems, honored by the + music of Henry Lawes, his Majesty's organist at Westminster, it is more + than possible that Herrick was brought to the personal notice of Charles + and Henrietta Maria. All this was a promise of success, but not success + itself. It has been thought probable that Herrick may have secured some + minor office in the chapel at Whitehall. That would accord with his + subsequent appointment (September, 1627,) as chaplain to the Duke of + Buckingham's unfortunate expedition of the Isle of Rhe. + </p> + <p> + Precisely when Herrick was invested with holy orders is not ascertainable. + If one may draw an inference from his poems, the life he led meanwhile was + not such as his “most careful uncle” would have warmly approved. The + literary clubs and coffee-houses of the day were open to a free-lance like + young Herrick, some of whose blithe measures, passing in manuscript from + hand to hand, had brought him faintly to light as a poet. The Dog and the + Triple Tun were not places devoted to worship, unless it were to the + worship of “rare Ben Jonson,” at whose feet Herrick now sat, with the + other blossoming young poets of the season. He was a faithful disciple to + the end, and addressed many loving lyrics to the master, of which not the + least graceful is His Prayer to Ben Jonson: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + When I a verse shall make, + Know I have praid thee + For old religion's sake, + Saint Ben, to aide me. + + Make the way smooth for me, + When I, thy Herrick, + Honouring thee, on my knee + Offer my lyric. + + Candles I'll give to thee, + And a new altar; + And thou, Saint Ben, shalt be + Writ in my Psalter. +</pre> + <p> + On September 30, 1629, Charles I., at the recommending of the Earl of + Exeter, presented Herrick with the vicarage of Dean Prior, near Totnes, in + Devonshire. Here he was destined to pass the next nineteen years of his + life among surroundings not congenial. For Herrick to be a mile away from + London stone was for Herrick to be in exile. Even with railway and + telegraphic interruptions from the outside world, the dullness of a + provincial English town of today is something formidable. The dullness of + a sequestered English hamlet in the early part of the seventeenth century + must have been appalling. One is dimly conscious of a belated throb of + sympathy for Robert Herrick. Yet, however discontented or unhappy he may + have been at first in that lonely vicarage, the world may congratulate + itself on the circumstances that stranded him there, far from the + distractions of the town, and with no other solace than his Muse, for + there it was he wrote the greater number of the poems which were to make + his fame. It is to this accidental banishment to Devon that we owe the + cluster of exquisite pieces descriptive of obsolete rural manners and + customs—the Christmas masks, the Twelfth-night mummeries, the + morris-dances, and the May-day festivals. + </p> + <p> + The November following Herrick's appointment to the benefice was marked by + the death of his mother, who left him no heavier legacy than “a ringe of + twenty shillings.” Perhaps this was an understood arrangement between + them; but it is to be observed that, though Herrick was a spendthrift in + epitaphs, he wasted no funeral lines on Julian Herrick. In the matter of + verse he dealt generously with his family down to the latest nephew. One + of his most charming and touching poems is entitled To His Dying Brother, + Master William Herrick, a posthumous son. There appear to have been two + brothers named William. The younger, who died early, is supposed to be + referred to here. + </p> + <p> + The story of Herrick's existence at Dean Prior is as vague and bare of + detail as the rest of the narrative. His parochial duties must have been + irksome to him, and it is to be imagined that he wore his cassock lightly. + As a preparation for ecclesiastical life he forswore sack and poetry; but + presently he was with the Muse again, and his farewell to sack was in a + strictly Pickwickian sense. Herrick had probably accepted the vicarship as + he would have accepted a lieutenancy in a troop of horse—with an eye + to present emolument and future promotion. The promotion never came, and + the emolument was nearly as scant as that of Goldsmith's parson, who + considered himself “passing rich with forty pounds a year”—a height + of optimism beyond the reach of Herrick, with his expensive town wants and + habits. But fifty pounds—the salary of his benefice—and + possible perquisites in the way of marriage and burial fees would enable + him to live for the time being. It was better than a possible nothing a + year in London. + </p> + <p> + Herrick's religious convictions were assuredly not deeper than those of + the average layman. Various writers have taken a different view of the + subject; but it is inconceivable that a clergyman with a fitting sense of + his function could have written certain of the poems which Herrick + afterward gave to the world—those astonishing epigrams upon his + rustic enemies, and those habitual bridal compliments which, among his + personal friends, must have added a terror to matrimony. Had he written + only in that vein, the posterity which he so often invoked with pathetic + confidence would not have greatly troubled itself about him. + </p> + <p> + It cannot positively be asserted that all the verses in question relate to + the period of his incumbency, for none of his verse is dated, with the + exception of the Dialogue betwixt Horace and Lydia. The date of some of + the compositions may be arrived at by induction. The religious pieces + grouped under the title of Noble Numbers distinctly associate themselves + with Dean Prior, and have little other interest. Very few of them are + “born of the royal blood.” They lack the inspiration and magic of his + secular poetry, and are frequently so fantastical and grotesque as to stir + a suspicion touching the absolute soundness of Herrick's mind at all + times. The lines in which the Supreme Being is assured that he may read + Herrick's poems without taking any tincture from their sinfulness might + have been written in a retreat for the unbalanced. “For unconscious + impiety,” remarks Mr. Edmund Gosse, (1) “this rivals the famous passage in + which Robert Montgomery exhorted God to 'pause and think.'” Elsewhere, in + an apostrophe to “Heaven,” Herrick says: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Let mercy be + So kind to set me free, + And I will straight + Come in, or force the gate. +</pre> + <p> + In any event, the poet did not purpose to be left out! + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + (1) In <i>Seventeenth-Century Studies</i>. and the general + absence of arrangement in the “Hesperides,” Dr. Grosart + advances the theory that the printers exercised arbitrary + authority on these points. Dr. Grosart assumes that Herrick + kept the epigrams and personal tributes in manuscript books + separate from the rest of the work, which would have made a + too slender volume by itself, and on the plea of this + slender-ness was induced to trust the two collections to the + publisher, “whereupon he or some un-skilled subordinate + proceeded to intermix these additions with the others. That + the poet him-self had nothing to do with the arrangement or + disarrangement lies on the surface.” This is an amiable + supposition, but merely a supposition. +</pre> + <p> + Relative to the inclusion of unworthy pieces, Herrick personally placed + the “copy” in the hands of John Williams and Francis Eglesfield, and if he + were over-persuaded to allow them to print unfit verses, and to observe no + method whatever in the contents of the book, the discredit is none the + less his. It is charitable to believe that Herrick's coarseness was not + the coarseness of the man, but of the time, and that he followed the + fashion <i>malgre lui</i>. With regard to the fairy poems, they certainly + should have been given in sequence; but if there are careless printers, + there are also authors who are careless in the arrangement of their + manuscript, a kind of task, moreover, in which Herrick was wholly + unpractised, and might easily have made mistakes. The “Hesperides” was his + sole publication. + </p> + <p> + Herrick was now thirty-eight years of age. Of his personal appearance at + this time we have no description. The portrait of him prefixed to the + original edition of his works belongs to a much later moment. Whether or + not the bovine features in Marshall's engraving are a libel on the poet, + it is to be regretted that oblivion has not laid its erasing finger on + that singularly unpleasant counterfeit presentment. It is interesting to + note that this same Marshall engraved the head of Milton for the first + collection of his miscellaneous poems—the precious 1645 volume + containing Il Penseroso, Lycidas, Comus, etc. The plate gave great offense + to the serious-minded young Milton, not only because it represented him as + an elderly person, but because of certain minute figures of peasant lads + and lassies who are very indistinctly seen dancing frivolously under the + trees in the background. Herrick had more reason to protest. The + aggressive face bestowed upon him by the artist lends a tone of veracity + to the tradition that the vicar occasionally hurled the manuscript of his + sermon at the heads of his drowsy parishioners, accompanying the missive + with pregnant remarks. He has the aspect of one meditating assault and + battery. + </p> + <p> + To offset the picture there is much indirect testimony to the amiability + of the man, aside from the evidence furnished by his own writings. He + exhibits a fine trait in the poem on the Bishop of Lincoln's imprisonment—a + poem full of deference and tenderness for a person who had evidently + injured the writer, probably by opposing him in some affair of church + preferment. Anthony Wood says that Herrick “became much beloved by the + gentry in these parts for his florid and witty (wise) discourses.” It + appears that he was fond of animals, and had a pet spaniel called Tracy, + which did not get away without a couplet attached to him: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Now thou art dead, no eye shall ever see + For shape and service spaniell like to thee. +</pre> + <p> + Among the exile's chance acquaintances was a sparrow, whose elegy he also + sings, comparing the bird to Lesbia's sparrow, much to the latter's + disadvantage. All of Herrick's geese were swans. On the authority of + Dorothy King, the daughter of a woman who served Herrick's successor at + Dean Prior in 1674, we are told that the poet kept a pig, which he had + taught to drink out of a tankard—a kind of instruction he was + admirably qualified to impart. Dorothy was in her ninety-ninth year when + she communicated this fact to Mr. Barron Field, the author of the paper on + Herrick published in the “Quarterly Review” for August, 1810, and in the + Boston edition (1) of the “Hesperides” attributed to Southey. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + (1) The Biographical Notice prefacing this volume of The + British Poets is a remarkable production, grammatically and + chronologi-cally. On page 7 the writer speaks of Herrick as + living “in habits of intimacy” with Ben Jonson in 1648. If + that was the case, Her-rick must have taken up his quarters + in Westminster Abbey, for Jonson had been dead eleven years. +</pre> + <p> + What else do we know of the vicar? A very favorite theme with Herrick was + Herrick. Scattered through his book are no fewer than twenty-five pieces + entitled On Himself, not to mention numberless autobiographical hints + under other captions. They are merely hints, throwing casual side-lights + on his likes and dislikes, and illuminating his vanity. A whimsical + personage without any very definite outlines might be evolved from these + fragments. I picture him as a sort of Samuel Pepys, with perhaps less + quaintness, and the poetical temperament added. Like the prince of + gossips, too, he somehow gets at your affections. In one place Herrick + laments the threatened failure of his eyesight (quite in what would have + been Pepys's manner had Pepys written verse), and in another place he + tells us of the loss of a finger. The quatrain treating of this latter + catastrophe is as fantastic as some of Dr. Donne's <i>concetti</i>: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + One of the five straight branches of my hand + Is lopt already, and the rest but stand + Expecting when to fall, which soon will be: + First dies the leafe, the bough next, next the tree. +</pre> + <p> + With all his great show of candor Herrick really reveals as little of + himself as ever poet did. One thing, however, is manifest—he + understood and loved music. None but a lover could have said: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + The mellow touch of musick most doth wound + The soule when it doth rather sigh than sound. +</pre> + <p> + Or this to Julia: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + So smooth, so sweet, so silvery is thy voice, + As could they hear, the damn'd would make no noise, + But listen to thee walking in thy chamber + Melting melodious words to lutes of amber. + + . . . Then let me lye + Entranc'd, and lost confusedly; + And by thy musick stricken mute, + Die, and be turn'd into a lute. +</pre> + <p> + Herrick never married. His modest Devonshire establishment was managed by + a maidservant named Prudence Baldwin. “Fate likes fine names,” says + Lowell. That of Herrick's maid-of-all-work was certainly a happy meeting + of gentle vowels and consonants, and has had the good fortune to be + embalmed in the amber of what may be called a joyous little threnody: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + In this little urne is laid + Prewdence Baldwin, once my maid; + From whose happy spark here let + Spring the purple violet. +</pre> + <p> + Herrick addressed a number of poems to her before her death, which seems + to have deeply touched him in his loneliness. We shall not allow a + pleasing illusion to be disturbed by the flippancy of an old writer who + says that “Prue was but indifferently qualified to be a tenth muse.” She + was a faithful handmaid, and had the merit of causing Herrick in this + octave to strike a note of sincerity not usual with him: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + These summer birds did with thy master stay + The times of warmth, but then they flew away, + Leaving their poet, being now grown old, + Expos'd to all the coming winter's cold. + But thou, kind Prew, didst with my fates abide + As well the winter's as the summer's tide: + For which thy love, live with thy master here + Not two, but all the seasons of the year. +</pre> + <p> + Thus much have I done for thy memory, Mistress Prew! + </p> + <p> + In spite of Herrick's disparagement of Deanbourn, which he calls “a rude + river,” and his characterization of Devon folk as “a people currish, + churlish as the seas,” the fullest and pleasantest days of his life were + probably spent at Dean Prior. He was not unmindful meanwhile of the + gathering political storm that was to shake England to its foundations. + How anxiously, in his solitude, he watched the course of events, is + attested by many of his poems. This solitude was not without its + compensation. “I confess,” he says, + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + I ne'er invented such + Ennobled numbers for the presse + Than where I loath'd so much. +</pre> + <p> + A man is never wholly unhappy when he is writing verses. Herrick was + firmly convinced that each new lyric was a stone added to the pillar of + his fame, and perhaps his sense of relief was tinged with indefinable + regret when he found himself suddenly deprived of his benefice. The + integrity of some of his royalistic poems is doubtful; but he was not + given the benefit of the doubt by the Long Parliament, which ejected the + panegyrist of young Prince Charles from the vicarage of Dean Prior, and + installed in his place the venerable John Syms, a gentleman with + pronounced Cromwellian views. + </p> + <p> + Herrick metaphorically snapped his fingers at the Puritans, discarded his + clerical habiliments, and hastened to London to pick up such as were left + of the gay-colored threads of his old experience there. Once more he would + drink sack at the Triple Tun, once more he would breathe the air breathed + by such poets and wits as Cotton, Denham, Shirley, Selden, and the rest. + “Yes, by Saint Anne! and ginger shall be hot I' the mouth too.” In the + gladness of getting back “from the dull confines of the drooping west,” he + writes a glowing apostrophe to London—that “stony stepmother to + poets.” He claims to be a free-born Roman, and is proud to find himself a + citizen again. According to his earlier biographers, Herrick had much ado + not to starve in that same longed-for London, and fell into great misery; + but Dr. Grosart disputes this, arguing, with justness, that Herrick's + family, which was wealthy and influential, would not have allowed him to + come to abject want. With his royalistic tendencies he may not have + breathed quite freely in the atmosphere of the Commonwealth, and no doubt + many tribulations fell to his lot, but among them was not poverty. + </p> + <p> + The poet was now engaged in preparing his works for the press, and a few + weeks following his return to London they were issued in a single volume + with the title “Hesperides; or, The Works both Humane and Divine of Robert + Herrick, Esq.” + </p> + <p> + The time was not ready for him. A new era had dawned—the era of the + commonplace. The interval was come when Shakespeare himself was to lie in + a kind of twilight. Herrick was in spirit an Elizabethan, and had strayed + by chance into an artificial and prosaic age—a sylvan singing + creature alighting on an alien planet. “He was too natural,” says Mr. + Palgrave in his Chrysomela, “too purely poetical; he had not the learned + polish, the political allusion, the tone of the city, the didactic turn, + which were then and onward demanded from poetry.” Yet it is strange that a + public which had a relish for Edmund Waller should neglect a poet who was + fifty times finer than Waller in his own specialty. What poet then, or in + the half-century that followed the Restoration, could have written + Corinna's Going a-Maying, or approached in kind the ineffable grace and + perfection to be found in a score of Herrick's lyrics? + </p> + <p> + The “Hesperides” was received with chilling indifference. None of + Herrick's great contemporaries has left a consecrating word concerning it. + The book was not reprinted during the author's lifetime, and for more than + a century after his death Herrick was virtually unread. In 1796 the + “Gentleman's Magazine” copied a few of the poems, and two years later Dr. + Nathan Drake published in his “Literary Hours” three critical papers on + the poet, with specimens of his writings. Dr. Johnson omitted him from the + “Lives of the Poets,” though space was found for half a score of + poetasters whose names are to be found nowhere else. In 1810 Dr. Nott, a + physician of Bristol, issued a small volume of selections. It was not + until 1823 that Herrick was reprinted in full. It remained for the taste + of our own day to multiply editions of him. + </p> + <p> + In order to set the seal to Herrick's fame, it is now only needful that + some wiseacre should attribute the authorship of the poems to some man who + could not possibly have written a line of them. The opportunity presents + attractions that ought to be irresistible. Excepting a handful of + Herrick's college letters there is no scrap of his manuscript extant; the + men who drank and jested with the poet at the Dog or the Triple Tun make + no reference to him; (1) and in the wide parenthesis formed by his birth + and death we find as little tangible incident as is discoverable in the + briefer span of Shakespeare's fifty-two years. Here is material for + profundity and ciphers! + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + (1) With the single exception of the writer of some verses + in the <i>Musarum Deliciae</i> (1656) who mentions + + That old sack + Young Herrick took to entertain + The Muses in a sprightly vein. +</pre> + <p> + Herrick's second sojourn in London covered the period between 1648 and + 1662, curing which interim he fades from sight, excepting for the instant + when he is publishing his book. If he engaged in further literary work + there are no evidences of it beyond one contribution to the “Lacrymae + Musarum” in 1649. + </p> + <p> + He seems to have had lodgings, for a while at least, in St. Anne's, + Westminster. With the court in exile and the grim Roundheads seated in the + seats of the mighty, it was no longer the merry London of his early + manhood. Time and war had thinned the ranks of friends; in the old haunts + the old familiar faces were wanting. Ben Jonson was dead, Waller banished, + and many another comrade “in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes.” As + Herrick walked through crowded Cheapside or along the dingy river-bank in + those years, his thought must have turned more than once to the little + vicarage in Devonshire, and lingered tenderly. + </p> + <p> + On the accession of Charles II. a favorable change of wind wafted Herrick + back to his former moorings at Dean Prior, the obnoxious Syms having been + turned adrift. This occurred on August 24, 1662, the seventy-first + anniversary of the poet's baptism. Of Herrick's movements after that, + tradition does not furnish even the shadow of an outline. The only notable + event concerning him is recorded twelve years later in the parish + register: “Robert Herrick, vicker, was buried ye 15th day October, 1674.” + He was eighty-three years old. The location of his grave is unknown. In + 1857 a monument to his memory was erected in Dean Church. And this is all. + </p> + <p> + II + </p> + <p> + THE details that have come down to us touching Herrick's private life are + as meagre as if he had been a Marlowe or a Shakespeare. But were they as + ample as could be desired they would still be unimportant compared with + the single fact that in 1648 he gave to the world his “Hesperides.” The + environments of the man were accidental and transitory. The significant + part of him we have, and that is enduring so long as wit, fancy, and + melodious numbers hold a charm for mankind. + </p> + <p> + A fine thing incomparably said instantly becomes familiar, and has + henceforth a sort of dateless excellence. Though it may have been said + three hundred years ago, it is as modern as yesterday; though it may have + been said yesterday, it has the trick of seeming to have been always in + our keeping. This quality of remoteness and nearness belongs, in a + striking degree, to Herrick's poems. They are as novel to-day as they were + on the lips of a choice few of his contemporaries, who, in reading them in + their freshness, must surely have been aware here and there of the ageless + grace of old idyllic poets dead and gone. + </p> + <p> + Herrick was the bearer of no heavy message to the world, and such message + as he had he was apparently in no hurry to deliver. On this point he + somewhere says: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Let others to the printing presse run fast; + Since after death comes glory, I 'll not haste. +</pre> + <p> + He had need of his patience, for he was long detained on the road by many + of those obstacles that waylay poets on their journeys to the printer. + </p> + <p> + Herrick was nearly sixty years old when he published the “Hesperides.” It + was, I repeat, no heavy message, and the bearer was left an unconscionable + time to cool his heels in the antechamber. Though his pieces had been set + to music by such composers as Lawes, Ramsay, and Laniers, and his court + poems had naturally won favor with the Cavalier party, Herrick cut but a + small figure at the side of several of his rhyming contemporaries who are + now forgotten. It sometimes happens that the light love-song, reaching few + or no ears at its first singing, outlasts the seemingly more prosperous + ode which, dealing with some passing phase of thought, social or + political, gains the instant applause of the multitude. In most cases the + timely ode is somehow apt to fade with the circumstance that inspired it, + and becomes the yesterday's editorial of literature. Oblivion likes + especially to get hold of occasional poems. That makes it hard for feeble + poets laureate. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Henry James once characterized Alphonse Daudet as “a great little + novelist.” Robert Herrick is a great little poet. The brevity of his + poems, for he wrote nothing <i>de longue haleine</i>, would place him + among the minor singers; his workmanship places him among the masters. The + Herricks were not a family of goldsmiths and lapidaries for nothing. The + accurate touch of the artificer in jewels and costly metals was one of the + gifts transmitted to Robert Herrick. Much of his work is as exquisite and + precise as the chasing on a dagger-hilt by Cellini; the line has nearly + always that vine-like fluency which seems impromptu, and is never the + result of anything but austere labor. The critic who, borrowing Milton's + words, described these carefully wrought poems as “wood-notes wild” showed + a singular lapse of penetration. They are full of subtle simplicity. Here + we come across a stanza as severely cut as an antique cameo—the + stanza, for instance, in which the poet speaks of his lady-love's “winter + face”—and there a couplet that breaks into unfading daffodils and + violets. The art, though invisible, is always there. His amatory songs and + catches are such poetry as Orlando would have liked to hang on the boughs + in the forest of Arden. None of the work is hastily done, not even that + portion of it we could wish had not been done at all. Be the motive grave + or gay, it is given that faultlessness of form which distinguishes + everything in literature that has survived its own period. There is no + such thing as “form” alone; it is only the close-grained material that + takes the highest finish. The structure of Herrick's verse, like that of + Blake, is simple to the verge of innocence. Such rhythmic intricacies as + those of Shelley, Tennyson, and Swinburne he never dreamed of. But his + manner has this perfection: it fits his matter as the cup of the acorn + fits its meat. + </p> + <p> + Of passion, in the deeper sense, Herrick has little or none. Here are no + “tears from the depth of some divine despair,” no probings into the tragic + heart of man, no insight that goes much farther than the pathos of a + cowslip on a maiden's grave. The tendrils of his verse reach up to the + light, and love the warmer side of the garden wall. But the reader who + does not detect the seriousness under the lightness misreads Herrick. + Nearly all true poets have been wholesome and joyous singers. A + pessimistic poet, like the poisonous ivy, is one of nature's sarcasms. In + his own bright pastoral way Herrick must always remain unexcelled. His + limitations are certainly narrow, but they leave him in the sunshine. + Neither in his thought nor in his utterance is there any complexity; both + are as pellucid as a woodland pond, content to duplicate the osiers and + ferns, and, by chance, the face of a girl straying near its crystal. His + is no troubled stream in which large trout are caught. He must be accepted + on his own terms. + </p> + <p> + The greatest poets have, with rare exceptions, been the most indebted to + their predecessors or to their contemporaries. It has wittily been + remarked that only mediocrity is ever wholly original. Impressionability + is one of the conditions of the creative faculty: the sensitive mind is + the only mind that invents. What the poet reads, sees, and feels, goes + into his blood, and becomes an ingredient of his originality. The color of + his thought instinctively blends itself with the color of its affinities. + A writer's style, if it have distinction, is the outcome of a hundred + styles. + </p> + <p> + Though a generous borrower of the ancients, Herrick appears to have been + exceptionally free from the influence of contemporary minds. Here and + there in his work are traces of his beloved Ben Jonson, or fleeting + impressions of Fletcher, and in one instance a direct infringement on + Suckling; but the sum of Herrick's obligations of this sort is + inconsiderable. + </p> + <p> + This indifference to other writers of his time, this insularity, was + doubtless his loss. The more exalted imagination of Vaughan or Marvell or + Herbert might have taught him a deeper note than he sounded in his purely + devotional poems. Milton, of course, moved in a sphere apart. Shakespeare, + whose personality still haunted the clubs and taverns which Herrick + frequented on his first going up to London, failed to lay any appreciable + spell upon him. That great name, moreover, is a jewel which finds no + setting in Herrick's rhyme. His general reticence relative to brother + poets is extremely curious when we reflect on his penchant for addressing + four-line epics to this or that individual. They were, in the main, + obscure individuals, whose identity is scarcely worth establishing. His + London life, at two different periods, brought him into contact with many + of the celebrities of the day; but his verse has helped to confer + immortality on very few of them. That his verse had the secret of + conferring immortality was one of his unshaken convictions. Shakespeare + had not a finer confidence when he wrote, + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Not marble nor the gilded monuments + Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme, +</pre> + <p> + than has Herrick whenever he speaks of his own poetry, and he is not by + any means backward in speaking of it. It was the breath of his nostrils. + Without his Muse those nineteen years in that dull, secluded Devonshire + village would have been unendurable. + </p> + <p> + His poetry has the value and the defect of that seclusion. In spite, + however, of his contracted horizon there is great variety in Herrick's + themes. Their scope cannot be stated so happily as he has stated it: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers, + Of April, May, of June, and July flowers; + I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, + Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes; + I write of Youth, of Love, and have access + By these to sing of cleanly wantonness; + I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by piece + Of balm, of oil, of spice and ambergris; + I sing of times trans-shifting, and I write + How roses first came red and lilies white; + I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing + The Court of Mab, and of the Fairy King; + I write of Hell; I sing (and ever shall) + Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all. +</pre> + <p> + Never was there so pretty a table of contents! When you open his book the + breath of the English rural year fans your cheek; the pages seem to exhale + wildwood and meadow smells, as if sprigs of tansy and lavender had been + shut up in the volume and forgotten. One has a sense of hawthorn hedges + and wide-spreading oaks, of open lead-set lattices half hidden with + honeysuckle; and distant voices of the haymakers, returning home in the + rosy afterglow, fall dreamily on one's ear, as sounds should fall when + fancy listens. There is no English poet so thoroughly English as Herrick. + He painted the country life of his own time as no other has painted it at + any time. + </p> + <p> + It is to be remarked that the majority of English poets regarded as + national have sought their chief inspiration in almost every land and + period excepting their own. Shakespeare went to Italy, Denmark, Greece, + Egypt, and to many a hitherto unfooted region of the imagination, for plot + and character. It was not Whitehall Garden, but the Garden of Eden and the + celestial spaces, that lured Milton. It is the Ode on a Grecian Urn, The + Eve of St. Agnes, and the noble fragment of Hyperion that have given Keats + his spacious niche in the gallery of England's poets. Shelley's two + masterpieces, Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci, belong respectively to + Greece and Italy. Browning's The Ring and the Book is Italian; Tennyson + wandered to the land of myth for the Idylls of the King, and Matthew + Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum—a narrative poem second in dignity to + none produced in the nineteenth century—is a Persian story. But + Herrick's “golden apples” sprang from the soil in his own day, and + reddened in the mist and sunshine of his native island. + </p> + <p> + Even the fairy poems, which must be classed by themselves, are not wanting + in local flavor. Herrick's fairy world is an immeasurable distance from + that of “A Midsummer Night's Dream.” Puck and Titania are of finer breath + than Herrick's little folk, who may be said to have Devonshire manners and + to live in a miniature England of their own. Like the magician who summons + them from nowhere, they are fond of color and perfume and substantial + feasts, and indulge in heavy draughts—from the cups of + morning-glories. In the tiny sphere they inhabit everything is marvelously + adapted to their requirement; nothing is out of proportion or out of + perspective. The elves are a strictly religious people in their winsome + way, “part pagan, part papistical;” they have their pardons and + indulgences, their psalters and chapels, and + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + An apple's-core is hung up dried, + With rattling kernels, which is rung + To call to Morn and Even-song; +</pre> + <p> + and very conveniently, + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Hard by, I' th' shell of half a nut, + The Holy-water there is put. +</pre> + <p> + It is all delightfully naive and fanciful, this elfin-world, where the + impossible does not strike one as incongruous, and the England of 1648 + seems never very far away. + </p> + <p> + It is only among the apparently unpremeditated lyrical flights of the + Elizabethan dramatists that one meets with anything like the lilt and + liquid flow of Herrick's songs. While in no degree Shakespearian echoes, + there are epithalamia and dirges of his that might properly have fallen + from the lips of Posthumus in “Cymbeline.” This delicate epicede would + have fitted Imogen: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Here a solemne fast we keepe + While all beauty lyes asleepe; + Husht be all things; no noyse here + But the toning of a teare, + Or a sigh of such as bring + Cowslips for her covering. +</pre> + <p> + Many of the pieces are purely dramatic in essence; the Mad Maid's Song, + for example. The lyrist may speak in character, like the dramatist. A + poet's lyrics may be, as most of Browning's are, just so many <i>dramatis + personae</i>. “Enter a Song singing” is the stage-direction in a + seventeenth-century play whose name escapes me. The sentiment dramatized + in a lyric is not necessarily a personal expression. In one of his + couplets Herrick neatly denies that his more mercurial utterances are + intended presentations of himself: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + To his Book's end this last line he'd have placed— + Jocund his Muse was, but his Life was chaste. +</pre> + <p> + In point of fact he was a whole group of imaginary lovers in one. Silvia, + Anthea, Electra, Perilla, Perenna, and the rest of those lively ladies + ending in <i>a</i>, were doubtless, for the most part, but airy phantoms + dancing—as they should not have danced—through the brain of a + sentimental old bachelor who happened to be a vicar of the Church of + England. Even with his overplus of heart it would have been quite + impossible for him to have had enough to go round had there been so + numerous actual demands upon it. + </p> + <p> + Thus much may be conceded to Herrick's verse: at its best it has wings + that carry it nearly as close to heaven's gate as any of Shakespeare's + lark-like interludes. The brevity of the poems and their uniform + smoothness sometimes produce the effect of monotony. The crowded richness + of the line advises a desultory reading. But one must go back to them + again and again. They bewitch the memory, having once caught it, and + insist on saying themselves over and over. Among the poets of England the + author of the “Hesperides” remains, and is likely to remain, unique. As + Shakespeare stands alone in his vast domain, so Herrick stands alone in + his scanty plot of ground. + </p> + <p> + “Shine, Poet! in thy place, and be content.” + </p> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PONKAPOG PAPERS ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ +concept and trademark. 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Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d4024f4 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #625 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/625) diff --git a/old/625.txt b/old/625.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..60189a2 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/625.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3565 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ponkapog Papers, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Ponkapog Papers + +Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich + +Release Date: March 18, 2006 [EBook #625] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PONKAPOG PAPERS *** + + + + +Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger + + + + + +PONKAPOG PAPERS + +By Thomas Bailey Aldrich + + + + +TO FRANCIS BARTLETT + + + +THESE miscellaneous notes and essays are called _Ponkapog Papers_ not +simply because they chanced, for the most part, to be written within +the limits of the old Indian Reservation, but, rather, because there is +something typical of their unpretentiousness in the modesty with which +Ponkapog assumes to being even a village. The little Massachusetts +settlement, nestled under the wing of the Blue Hills, has no illusions +concerning itself, never mistakes the cackle of the bourg for the sound +that echoes round the world, and no more thinks of rivalling great +centres of human activity than these slight papers dream of inviting +comparison between themselves and important pieces of literature. +Therefore there seems something especially appropriate in the +geographical title selected, and if the author's choice of name need +further excuse, it is to be found in the alluring alliteration lying +ready at his hand. + +REDMAN FARM, _Ponkapog_, 1903. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK + + + +ASIDES + +TOM FOLIO + +FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES + +A NOTE ON "L'AIGLON" + +PLOT AND CHARACTER + +THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE + +LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORNWALL + +DECORATION DAY + +WRITERS AND TALKERS + +ON EARLY RISING + +UN POETE MANQUE + +THE MALE COSTUME OF THE PERIOD + +ON A CERTAIN AFFECTATION + +WISHMAKERS' TOWN + +HISTORICAL NOVELS + +POOR YORICK + +THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER + + + +ROBERT HERRICK + + + + + +LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK + + + + +IN his Memoirs, Kropotkin states the singular fact that the natives of +the Malayan Archipelago have an idea that something is extracted from +them when their likenesses are taken by photography. Here is the motive +for a fantastic short story, in which the hero--an author in vogue or +a popular actor--might be depicted as having all his good qualities +gradually photographed out of him. This could well be the result of +too prolonged indulgence in the effort to "look natural." First the man +loses his charming simplicity; then he begins to pose in intellectual +attitudes, with finger on brow; then he becomes morbidly self-conscious, +and finally ends in an asylum for incurable egotists. His death might be +brought about by a cold caught in going out bareheaded, there being, for +the moment, no hat in the market of sufficient circumference to meet his +enlarged requirement. + +THE evening we dropped anchor in the Bay of Yedo the moon was hanging +directly over Yokohama. It was a mother-of-pearl moon, and might have +been manufactured by any of the delicate artisans in the Hanchodori +quarter. It impressed one as being a very good imitation, but nothing +more. Nammikawa, the cloisonne-worker at Tokio, could have made a better +moon. + +I NOTICE the announcement of a new edition of "The Two First Centuries +of Florentine Literature," by Professor Pasquale Villari. I am not +acquainted with the work in question, but I trust that Professor Villari +makes it plain to the reader how both centuries happened to be first. + +THE walking delegates of a higher civilization, who have nothing to +divide, look upon the notion of property as a purely artificial creation +of human society. According to these advanced philosophers, the time +will come when no man shall be allowed to call anything his. The +beneficent law which takes away an author's rights in his own books just +at the period when old age is creeping upon him seems to me a handsome +stride toward the longed-for millennium. + +SAVE US from our friends--our enemies we can guard against. The +well-meaning rector of the little parish of Woodgates, England, and +several of Robert Browning's local admirers have recently busied +themselves in erecting a tablet to the memory of "the first known +forefather of the poet." This lately turned up ancestor, who does not +date very far back, was also named Robert Browning, and is described on +the mural marble as "formerly footman and butler to Sir John Bankes of +Corfe Castle." Now, Robert Browning the poet had as good right as Abou +Ben Adhem himself to ask to be placed on the list of those who love +their fellow men; but if the poet could have been consulted in the +matter he probably would have preferred not to have that particular +footman exhumed. However, it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Sir +John Bankes would scarcely have been heard of in our young century if +it had not been for his footman. As Robert stood day by day, sleek and +solemn, behind his master's chair in Corfe Castle, how little it entered +into the head of Sir John that his highly respectable name would be +served up to posterity--like a cold relish--by his own butler! By +Robert! + +IN the east-side slums of New York, somewhere in the picturesque Bowery +district, stretches a malodorous little street wholly given over to +long-bearded, bird-beaked merchants of ready-made and second-hand +clothing. The contents of the dingy shops seem to have revolted, and +rushed pell-mell out of doors, and taken possession of the sidewalk. One +could fancy that the rebellion had been quelled at this point, and that +those ghastly rows of complete suits strung up on either side of the +doorways were the bodies of the seditious ringleaders. But as you +approach these limp figures, each dangling and gyrating on its cord in a +most suggestive fashion, you notice, pinned to the lapel of a coat here +and there, a strip of paper announcing the very low price at which you +may become the happy possessor. That dissipates the illusion. + +POLONIUS, in the play, gets killed--and not any too soon. If it only +were practicable to kill him in real life! A story--to be called The +Passing of Polonius--in which a king issues a decree condemning to death +every long-winded, didactic person in the kingdom, irrespective of rank, +and is himself instantly arrested and decapitated. The man who suspects +his own tediousness is yet to be born. + +WHENEVER I take up Emerson's poems I find myself turning automatically +to his Bacchus. Elsewhere, in detachable passages embedded in mediocre +verse, he rises for a moment to heights not reached by any other of our +poets; but Bacchus is in the grand style throughout. Its texture can +bear comparison with the world's best in this kind. In imaginative +quality and austere richness of diction what other verse of our period +approaches it? The day Emerson wrote Bacchus he had in him, as Michael +Drayton said of Marlowe, "those brave translunary things that the first +poets had." + + +IMAGINE all human beings swept off the face of the earth, excepting one +man. Imagine this man in some vast city, New York or London. Imagine +him on the third or fourth day of his solitude sitting in a house and +hearing a ring at the door-bell! + +No man has ever yet succeeded in painting an honest portrait of himself +in an autobiography, however sedulously he may have set to work about +it. In spite of his candid purpose he omits necessary touches and adds +superfluous ones. At times he cannot help draping his thought, and the +least shred of drapery becomes a disguise. It is only the diarist who +accomplishes the feat of self-portraiture, and he, without any such end +in view, does it unconsciously. A man cannot keep a daily record of +his comings and goings and the little items that make up the sum of his +life, and not inadvertently betray himself at every turn. He lays bare +his heart with a candor not possible to the selfconsciousness that +inevitably colors premeditated revelation. While Pepys was filling those +small octavo pages with his perplexing cipher he never once suspected +that he was adding a photographic portrait of himself to the world's +gallery of immortals. We are more intimately acquainted with Mr. +Samuel Pepys, the inner man--his little meannesses and his large +generosities--then we are with half the persons we call our dear +friends. + +THE young girl in my story is to be as sensitive to praise as a prism is +to light. Whenever anybody praises her she breaks into colors. + +IN the process of dusting my study, the other morning, the maid replaced +an engraving of Philip II. of Spain up-side down on the mantel-shelf, +and his majesty has remained in that undignified posture ever since. I +have no disposition to come to his aid. My abhorrence of the wretch is +as hearty as if he had not been dead and--otherwise provided for +these last three hundred years. Bloody Mary of England was nearly as +merciless, but she was sincere and uncompromising in her extirpation of +heretics. + +Philip II., whose one recorded hearty laugh was occasioned by the news +of the St. Bartholomew massacre, could mask his fanaticism or drop it +for the time being, when it seemed politic to do so. Queen Mary was a +maniac; but the successor of Torquemada was the incarnation of cruelty +pure and simple, and I have a mind to let my counterfeit presentment +of him stand on its head for the rest of its natural life. I cordially +dislike several persons, but I hate nobody, living or dead, excepting +Philip II. of Spain. He appears to give me as much trouble as Charles I. +gave the amiable Mr. Dick. + +AMONG the delightful men and women whom you are certain to meet at an +English country house there is generally one guest who is supposed to be +preternaturally clever and amusing--"so very droll, don't you know." He +recites things, tells stories in costermonger dialect, and mimics public +characters. He is a type of a class, and I take him to be one of the +elementary forms of animal life, like the acalephae. His presence is +capable of adding a gloom to an undertaker's establishment. The last +time I fell in with him was on a coaching trip through Devon, and in +spite of what I have said I must confess to receiving an instant of +entertainment at his hands. He was delivering a little dissertation on +"the English and American languages." As there were two Americans on +the back seat--it seems we term ourselves "Amurricans"--his choice +of subject was full of tact. It was exhilarating to get a lesson in +pronunciation from a gentleman who said _boult_ for bolt, called St. +John _Sin' Jun_, and did not know how to pronounce the beautiful name of +his own college at Oxford. Fancy a perfectly sober man saying _Maudlin_ +for Magdalen! Perhaps the purest English spoken is that of the English +folk who have resided abroad ever since the Elizabethan period, or +thereabouts. + +EVERY one has a bookplate these days, and the collectors are after it. +The fool and his bookplate are soon parted. To distribute one's _ex +libris_ is inanely to destroy the only significance it has, that of +indicating the past or present ownership of the volume in which it is +placed. + +WHEN an Englishman is not highly imaginative he is apt to be the most +matter-of-fact of mortals. He is rarely imaginative, and seldom has an +alert sense of humor. Yet England has produced the finest of humorists +and the greatest of poets. The humor and imagination which are diffused +through other peoples concentrate themselves from time to time in +individual Englishmen. + +THIS is a page of autobiography, though not written in the first +person: Many years ago a noted Boston publisher used to keep a large +memorandum-book on a table in his personal office. The volume always +lay open, and was in no manner a private affair, being the receptacle of +nothing more important than hastily scrawled reminders to attend to +this thing or the other. It chanced one day that a very young, unfledged +author, passing through the city, looked in upon the publisher, who was +also the editor of a famous magazine. The unfledged had a copy of verses +secreted about his person. The publisher was absent, and young Milton, +feeling that "they also serve who only stand and wait," sat down and +waited. Presently his eye fell upon the memorandum-book, lying there +spread out like a morning newspaper, and almost in spite of himself he +read: "Don't forget to see the binder," "Don't forget to mail E----- his +contract," "Don't forget H-----'s proofs," etc. An inspiration seized +upon the youth; he took a pencil, and at the tail of this long list of +"don't forgets" he wrote: "Don't forget to accept A 's poem." He left +his manuscript on the table and disappeared. That afternoon when the +publisher glanced over his memoranda, he was not a little astonished at +the last item; but his sense of humor was so strong that he did accept +the poem (it required a strong sense of humor to do that), and sent the +lad a check for it, though the verses remain to this day unprinted. That +kindly publisher was wise as well as kind. + +FRENCH novels with metaphysical or psychological prefaces are always +certain to be particularly indecent. + +I HAVE lately discovered that Master Harry Sandford of England, the +priggish little boy in the story of "Sandford and Merton," has a worthy +American cousin in one Elsie Dinsmore, who sedately pirouettes through +a seemingly endless succession of girls' books. I came across a nest of +fifteen of them the other day. This impossible female is carried from +infancy up to grandmotherhood, and is, I believe, still leisurely +pursuing her way down to the tomb in an ecstatic state of uninterrupted +didacticism. There are twenty-five volumes of her and the granddaughter, +who is also christened Elsie, and is her grandmother's own child, with +the same precocious readiness to dispense ethical instruction to her +elders. An interesting instance of hereditary talent! + +H-----'s intellect resembles a bamboo--slender, graceful, and hollow. +Personally, he is long and narrow, and looks as if he might have +been the product of a rope-walk. He is loosely put together, like +an ill-constructed sentence, and affects me like one. His figure is +ungrammatical. + +AMERICAN humor is nearly as ephemeral as the flowers that bloom in the +spring. Each generation has its own crop, and, as a rule, insists on +cultivating a new kind. That of 1860, if it were to break into blossom +at the present moment, would probably be left to fade upon the stem. + +Humor is a delicate shrub, with the passing hectic flush of its time. +The current-topic variety is especially subject to very early frosts, as +is also the dialectic species. Mark Twain's humor is not to be classed +with the fragile plants; it has a serious root striking deep down into +rich earth, and I think it will go on flowering indefinitely. + +I HAVE been imagining an ideal critical journal, whose plan should +involve the discharge of the chief literary critic and the installment +of a fresh censor on the completion of each issue. To place a man in +permanent absolute control of a certain number of pages, in which to +express his opinions, is to place him in a position of great personal +danger, It is almost inevitable that he should come to overrate +the importance of those opinions, to take himself with far too much +seriousness, and in the end adopt the dogma of his own infallibility. +The liberty to summon this or that man-of-letters to a supposititious +bar of justice is apt to beget in the self-appointed judge an +exaggerated sense of superiority. He becomes impatient of any rulings +not his, and says in effect, if not in so many words: "I am Sir Oracle, +and when I ope my lips let no dog bark." When the critic reaches this +exalted frame of mind his slight usefulness is gone. + +AFTER a debauch of thunder-shower, the weather takes the pledge and +signs it with a rainbow. + +I LIKE to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every +detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the +desire to use its own wings. The partly draped statue has a charm which +the nude lacks. Who would have those marble folds slip from the raised +knee of the Venus of Melos? Hawthorne knew how to make his lovely +thought lovelier by sometimes half veiling it. + +I HAVE just tested the nib of a new pen on a slight fancy which Herrick +has handled twice in the "Hesperides." The fancy, however, is not +Herrick's; it is as old as poetry and the exaggeration of lovers, and I +have the same privilege as another to try my fortune with it: + +UP ROOS THE SONNE, AND UP ROOS EMELYE CHAUCER + + + +When some hand has partly drawn The cloudy curtains of her bed, And my +lady's golden head Glimmers in the dusk like dawn, Then methinks is day +begun. Later, when her dream has ceased And she softly stirs and +wakes, Then it is as when the East A sudden rosy magic takes From the +cloud-enfolded sun, And full day breaks! + +Shakespeare, who has done so much to discourage literature by +anticipating everybody, puts the whole matter into a nutshell: + +But soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and +Juliet is the sun. + +THERE is a phrase spoken by Hamlet which I have seen quoted innumerable +times, and never once correctly. Hamlet, addressing Horatio, says: + +Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my +heart's core, ay, in my _heart of heart_. + +The words italicized are invariably written "heart of hearts"--as if a +person possessed that organ in duplicate. Perhaps no one living, with +the exception of Sir Henry Irving, is more familiar with the play of +Hamlet than my good friend Mr. Bram Stoker, who makes his heart plural +on two occasions in his recent novel, "The Mystery of the Sea." Mrs. +Humphry Ward also twice misquotes the passage in "Lady Rose's Daughter." + +BOOKS that have become classics--books that ave had their day and now +get more praise than perusal--always remind me of venerable colonels and +majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves +retired upon half pay. + +WHETHER or not the fretful porcupine rolls itself into a ball is +a subject over which my friend John Burroughs and several brother +naturalists have lately become as heated as if the question involved +points of theology. Up among the Adirondacks, and in the very heart +of the region of porcupines, I happen to have a modest cottage. This +retreat is called The Porcupine, and I ought by good rights to know +something about the habits of the small animal from which it derives +its name. Last winter my dog Buster used to return home on an average of +three times a month from an excursion up Mt. Pisgah with his nose +stuck full of quills, and _he_ ought to have some concrete ideas on the +subject. We two, then, are prepared to testify that the porcupine in its +moments of relaxation occasionally contracts itself into what might be +taken for a ball by persons not too difficult to please in the matter +of spheres. But neither Buster nor I--being unwilling to get into +trouble--would like to assert that it is an actual ball. That it is a +shape with which one had better not thoughtlessly meddle is a conviction +that my friend Buster stands ready to defend against all comers. + +WORDSWORTH'S characterization of the woman in one of his poems as "a +creature not too bright or good for human nature's daily food" has +always appeared to me too cannibalesque to be poetical. It directly sets +one to thinking of the South Sea islanders. + +THOUGH Iago was not exactly the kind of person one would select as a +superintendent for a Sunday-school, his advice to young Roderigo was +wisdom itself--"Put money in thy purse." Whoever disparages money +disparages every step in the progress of the human race. I listened +the other day to a sermon in which gold was personified as a sort of +glittering devil tempting mortals to their ruin. I had an instant +of natural hesitation when the contribution-plate was passed around +immediately afterward. Personally, I believe that the possession of gold +has ruined fewer men than the lack of it. What noble enterprises have +been checked and what fine souls have been blighted in the gloom of +poverty the world will never know. "After the love of knowledge," says +Buckle, "there is no one passion which has done so much good to mankind +as the love of money." + +DIALECT tempered with slang is an admirable medium of communication +between persons who have nothing to say and persons who would not care +for anything properly said. + +DR. HOLMES had an odd liking for ingenious desk-accessories in the +way of pencil-sharpeners, paper-weights, penholders, etc. The latest +contrivances in this fashion--probably dropped down to him by the +inventor angling for a nibble of commendation--were always making one +another's acquaintance on his study table. He once said to me: "I 'm +waiting for somebody to invent a mucilage-brush that you can't by any +accident put into your inkstand. It would save me frequent moments of +humiliation." + +THE deceptive Mr. False and the volatile Mrs. Giddy, who figure in the +pages of seventeenth and eighteenth century fiction, are not tolerated +in modern novels and plays. Steal the burglar and Palette the artist +have ceased to be. A name indicating the quality or occupation of the +bearer strikes us as a too transparent device. Yet there are such names +in contemporary real life. That of our worthy Adjutant-General Drum +may be instanced. Neal and Pray are a pair of deacons who linger in the +memory of my boyhood. Sweet the confectioner and Lamb the butcher are +individuals with whom I have had dealings. The old-time sign of Ketchum +& Cheetam, Brokers, in Wall Street, New York, seems almost too good to +be true. But it was once, if it is not now, an actuality. + +I HAVE observed that whenever a Boston author dies, New York immediately +becomes a great literary centre. + +THE possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man. +There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks. + +EVERY living author has a projection of himself, a sort of eidolon, that +goes about in near and remote places making friends or enemies for him +among persons who never lay eyes upon the writer in the flesh. When he +dies, this phantasmal personality fades away, and the author lives only +in the impression created by his own literature. It is only then that +the world begins to perceive what manner of man the poet, the novelist, +or the historian really was. Not until he is dead, and perhaps some long +time dead, is it possible for the public to take his exact measure. +Up to that point contemporary criticism has either overrated him or +underrated him, or ignored him altogether, having been misled by the +eidolon, which always plays fantastic tricks with the writer temporarily +under its dominion. It invariably represents him as either a greater or +a smaller personage than he actually is. Presently the simulacrum +works no more spells, good or evil, and the deception is unveiled. The +hitherto disregarded author is recognized, and the idol of yesterday, +which seemed so important, is taken down from his too large pedestal and +carted off to the dumping-ground of inadequate things. To be sure, if he +chances to have been not entirely unworthy, and on cool examination is +found to possess some appreciable degree of merit, then he is set up on +a new slab of appropriate dimensions. The late colossal statue shrinks +to a modest bas-relief. On the other hand, some scarcely noticed bust +may suddenly become a revered full-length figure. Between the reputation +of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there is +ever a wide discrepancy. + +A NOT too enchanting glimpse of Tennyson is incidentally given by +Charles Brookfield, the English actor, in his "Random Recollections." +Mr. Brookfield's father was, on one occasion, dining at the Oxford and +Cambridge Club with George Venables, Frank Lushington, Alfred Tennyson, +and others. "After dinner," relates the random recollector, "the poet +insisted upon putting his feet on the table, tilting back his chair +_more Americano_. There were strangers in the room, and he was +expostulated with for his uncouthness, but in vain. 'Do put down your +feet!' pleaded his host. 'Why should I?' retorted Tennyson. 'I 'm very +comfortable as I am.' 'Every one's staring at you,' said another. +'Let 'em stare,' replied the poet, placidly. 'Alfred,' said my father, +'people will think you're Longfellow.' Down went the feet." That _more +Americano_ of Brookfield the younger is delicious with its fine insular +flavor, but the holding up of Longfellow--the soul of gentleness, the +prince of courtesy--as a bugaboo of bad manners is simply inimitable. It +will take England years and years to detect the full unconscious humor +of it. + +GREAT orators who are not also great writers become very indistinct +historical shadows to the generations immediately following them. The +spell vanishes with the voice. A man's voice is almost the only part of +him entirely obliterated by death. The violet of his native land may be +made of his ashes, but nature in her economy seems to have taken no care +of his intonations, unless she perpetuates them in restless waves of air +surging about the poles. The well-graced actor who leaves no perceptible +record of his genius has a decided advantage over the mere orator. The +tradition of the player's method and presence is associated with works +of enduring beauty. Turning to the pages of the dramatist, we can +picture to ourselves the greatness of Garrick or Siddons in this or that +scene, in this or that character. It is not so easy to conjure up +the impassioned orator from the pages of a dry and possibly illogical +argument in favor of or against some long-ago-exploded measure of +government. The laurels of an orator who is not a master of literary art +wither quickly. + +ALL the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of +the hour-glass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do +so, would I? + +SHAKESPEARE is forever coming into our affairs--putting in his oar, so +to speak--with some pat word or sentence. The conversation, the other +evening, had turned on the subject of watches, when one of the gentlemen +present, the manager of a large watch-making establishment, told us a +rather interesting fact. The component parts of a watch are produced +by different workmen, who have no concern with the complex piece +of mechanism as a whole, and possibly, as a rule, understand it +imperfectly. Each worker needs to be expert in only his own special +branch. When the watch has reached a certain advanced state, the work +requires a touch as delicate and firm as that of an oculist performing +an operation. Here the most skilled and trustworthy artisans are +employed; they receive high wages, and have the benefit of a singular +indulgence. In case the workman, through too continuous application, +finds himself lacking the steadiness of nerve demanded by his task, +he is allowed without forfeiture of pay to remain idle temporarily, in +order that his hand may recover the requisite precision of touch. As +I listened, Hamlet's courtly criticism of the grave-digger's want of +sensibility came drifting into my memory. "The hand of little employment +hath the daintier sense," says Shakespeare, who has left nothing unsaid. + +IT was a festival in honor of Dai Butsu or some one of the auxiliary +deities that preside over the destinies of Japland. For three days and +nights the streets of Tokio--where the squat little brown houses look +for all the world as if they were mimicking the favorite sitting posture +of the Japanese--were crowded with smiling holiday makers, and made +gay with devices of tinted tissue paper, dolphins, devils, dragons, and +mythical winged creatures which at night amiably turned themselves into +lanterns. Garlands of these, arranged close together, were stretched +across the streets from ridgepoles to ridgepole, and your jinrikisha +whisked you through interminable arbors of soft illumination. The +spectacle gave one an idea of fairyland, but then all Japan does that. + + A land not like ours, that land of strange flowers, + Of daemons and spooks with mysterious powers-- + Of gods who breathe ice, who cause peach-blooms and rice + And manage the moonshine and turn on the showers. + + Each day has its fair or its festival there, + And life seems immune to all trouble and care-- + Perhaps only seems, in that island of dreams, + Sea-girdled and basking in magical air. + + They've streets of bazaars filled with lacquers and jars, + And silk stuffs, and sword-blades that tell of old wars; + They've Fuji's white cone looming up, bleak and lone, + As if it were trying to reach to the stars. + + They've temples and gongs, and grim Buddhas in throngs, + And pearl-powdered geisha with dances and songs: + Each girl at her back has an imp, brown or black, + And dresses her hair in remarkable prongs. + + On roadside and street toddling images meet, + And smirk and kotow in a way that is sweet; + Their obis are tied with particular pride, + Their silken kimonos hang scant to the feet. + + With purrs like a cat they all giggle and chat, + Now spreading their fans, and now holding them flat; + A fan by its play whispers, "Go now!" or "Stay!" + "I hate you!" "I love you!"--a fan can say that! + Beneath a dwarf tree, here and there, two or three + Squat coolies are sipping small cups of green tea; + They sputter, and leer, and cry out, and appear + Like bad little chessmen gone off on a spree. + + At night--ah, at night the long streets are a sight, + With garlands of soft-colored lanterns alight-- + Blue, yellow, and red twinkling high overhead, + Like thousands of butterflies taking their flight. + + Somewhere in the gloom that no lanterns illume + Stand groups of slim lilies and jonquils in bloom; + On tiptoe, unseen 'mid a tangle of green, + They offer the midnight their cups of perfume. + + At times, sweet and clear from some tea-garden near, + A ripple of laughter steals out to your ear; + Anon the wind brings from a samisen's strings + The pathos that's born of a smile and a tear. + +THE difference between an English audience and a French audience at the +theatre is marked. The Frenchman brings down a witticism on the wing. +The Briton pauses for it to alight and give him reasonable time for +deliberate aim. In English playhouses an appreciable number of seconds +usually precede the smile or the ripple of laughter that follows a +facetious turn of the least fineness. I disclaim all responsibility for +this statement of my personal observation, since it has recently been +indorsed by one of London's most eminent actors. + +AT the next table, taking his opal drops of absinthe, was a French +gentleman with the blase aspect of an empty champagne-bottle, which +always has the air of saying: "I have lived!" + +WE often read of wonderful manifestations of memory, but they are always +instances of the faculty working in some special direction. It is memory +playing, like Paganini, on one string. No doubt the persons performing +the phenomenal feats ascribed to them have forgotten more than they +remember. To be able to repeat a hundred lines of verse after a single +reading is no proof of a retentive mind, excepting so far as the hundred +lines go. A man might easily fail under such a test, and yet have a good +memory; by which I mean a catholic one, and that I imagine to be nearly +the rarest of gifts. I have never met more than four or five persons +possessing it. The small boy who defined memory as "the thing you forget +with" described the faculty as it exists and works in the majority of +men and women. + +THE survival in publishers of the imitative instinct is a strong +argument in support of Mr. Darwin's theory of the descent of man. One +publisher no sooner brings out a new style of book-cover than half a +dozen other publishers fall to duplicating it. + +THE cavalry sabre hung over the chimney-place with a knot of violets +tied to the dinted guard, there being no known grave to decorate. For +many a year, on each Decoration Day, a sorrowful woman had come and +fastened these flowers there. The first time she brought her offering +she was a slender girl, as fresh as her own violets. It is a slender +figure still, but there are threads of silver in the black hair. + +FORTUNATE was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who in early youth was taught +"to abstain from rhetoric, and poetry, and fine writing"--especially the +fine writing. Simplicity is art's last word. + +The man is clearly an adventurer. In the seventeenth century he would +have worn huge flintlock pistols stuck into a wide leather belt, and +been something in the seafaring line. The fellow is always smartly +dressed, but where he lives and how he lives are as unknown as "what +song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself +among women." He is a man who apparently has no appointment with his +breakfast and whose dinner is a chance acquaintance. His probable banker +is the next person. A great city like this is the only geography for +such a character. He would be impossible in a small country town, where +everybody knows everybody and what everybody has for lunch. + +I HAVE been seeking, thus far in vain, for the proprietor of the saying +that "Economy is second or third cousin to Avarice." I went rather +confidently to Rochefoucauld, but it is not among that gentleman's light +luggage of cynical maxims. + +THERE is a popular vague impression that butchers are not allowed to +serve as jurors on murder trials. This is not really the case, but it +logically might be. To a man daily familiar with the lurid incidents of +the _abattoir_, the summary extinction of a fellow creature (whether the +victim or the criminal) can scarcely seem a circumstance of so serious +moment as to another man engaged in less strenuous pursuits. WE do not, +and cannot, read many of the novels that most delighted our ancestors. +Some of our popular fiction is doubtless as poor, but poor with a +difference. There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In +every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite. +There is ragtime literature as well as ragtime music for the many. + +G----- is a man who had rather fail in a great purpose than not +accomplish it in precisely his own way. He has the courage of his +conviction and the intolerance of his courage. He is opposed to +the death penalty for murder, but he would willingly have any one +electrocuted who disagreed with him on the subject. + + +I HAVE thought of an essay to be called "On the Art of Short-Story +Writing," but have given it up as smacking too much of the shop. It +would be too _intime_, since I should have to deal chiefly with my own +ways, and so give myself the false air of seeming to consider them of +importance. It would interest nobody to know that I always write the +last paragraph first, and then work directly up to that, avoiding all +digressions and side issues. Then who on earth would care to be told +about the trouble my characters cause me by talking too much? They will +talk, and I have to let them; but when the story is finished, I go over +the dialogue and strike out four fifths of the long speeches. I fancy +that makes my characters pretty mad. + +THIS is the golden age of the inventor. He is no longer looked upon as +a madman or a wizard, incontinently to be made away with. Two or three +centuries ago Marconi would not have escaped a ropeless end with his +wireless telegraphy. Even so late as 1800, the friends of one Robert +Fulton seriously entertained the luminous idea of hustling the poor man +into an asylum for the unsound before he had a chance to fire up the +boiler of his tiny steamboat on the Hudson river. In olden times +the pillory and the whipping-post were among the gentler forms of +encouragement awaiting the inventor. If a man devised an especially +practical apple-peeler he was in imminent danger of being peeled with it +by an incensed populace. To-day we hail with enthusiasm a scientific or +a mechanical discovery, and stand ready to make a stock company of it. + +A MAN is known by the company his mind keeps. To live continually +with noble books, with "high-erected thoughts seated in the heart of +courtesy," teaches the soul good manners. + +THE unconventional has ever a morbid attraction for a certain class of +mind. There is always a small coterie of highly intellectual men and +women eager to give welcome to whatever is eccentric, obscure, or +chaotic. Worshipers at the shrine of the Unpopular, they tingle with a +sense of tolerant superiority when they say: "Of course this is not the +kind of thing _you_ would like." Sometimes these impressionable souls +almost seem to make a sort of reputation for their fetish. + +I HEAR that B----- directed to have himself buried on the edge of the +pond where his duckstand was located, in order that flocks of migrating +birds might fly over his grave every autumn. He did not have to die, to +become a dead shot. A comrade once said of him: "Yes, B----- is a great +sportsman. He has peppered everything from grouse in North Dakota to his +best friend in the Maine woods." + +WHEN the novelist introduces a bore into his novel he must not let him +bore the reader. The fellow must be made amusing, which he would not +be in real life. In nine cases out of ten an exact reproduction of +real life would prove tedious. Facts are not necessarily valuable, +and frequently they add nothing to fiction. The art of the realistic +novelist sometimes seems akin to that of the Chinese tailor who +perpetuated the old patch on the new trousers. True art selects and +paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation. + +THE last meeting I had with Lowell was in the north room of his house at +Elmwood, the sleeping-room I had occupied during a two years' tenancy +of the place in his absence abroad. He was lying half propped up in +bed, convalescing from one of the severe attacks that were ultimately to +prove fatal. Near the bed was a chair on which stood a marine picture +in aquarelle--a stretch of calm sea, a bit of rocky shore in the +foreground, if I remember, and a vessel at anchor. The afternoon +sunlight, falling through the window, cast a bloom over the picture, +which was turned toward Lowell. From time to time, as he spoke, his eyes +rested thoughtfully on the water-color. A friend, he said, had just +sent it to him. It seemed to me then, and the fancy has often haunted me +since, that that ship, in the golden haze, with topsails loosened, was +waiting to bear his spirit away. + +CIVILIZATION is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades. If +somebody has already said that, I forgive him the mortification he +causes me. At the beginning of the twentieth century barbarism can throw +off its gentle disguise, and burn a man at the stake as complacently as +in the Middle Ages. + +WHAT is slang in one age sometimes goes into the vocabulary of the +purist in the next. On the other hand, expressions that once were not +considered inelegant are looked at askance in the period following. The +word "brass" was formerly an accepted synonym for money; but at present, +when it takes on that significance, it is not admitted into genteel +circles of language. It may be said to have seen better days, like +another word I have in mind--a word that has become slang, employed in +the sense which once did not exclude it from very good society. A +friend lately informed me that he had "fired" his housekeeper--that +is, dismissed her. He little dreamed that he was speaking excellent +Elizabethan. + +THE "Journal des Goncourt" is crowded with beautiful and hideous things, +like a Japanese Museum. + +"AND she shuddered as she sat, still silent, on her seat, and he saw +that she shuddered." This is from Anthony Trollope's novel, "Can You +Forgive Her?" Can you forgive him? is the next question. + +A LITTLE thing may be perfect, but perfection is not a little thing. +Possessing this quality, a trifle "no bigger than an agate-stone on the +forefinger of an alderman" shall outlast the Pyramids. The world will +have forgotten all the great masterpieces of literature when it forgets +Lovelace's three verses to Lucasta on his going to the wars. More +durable than marble or bronze are the words, "I could not love thee, +deare, so much, loved I not honor more." + +I CALLED on the dear old doctor this afternoon to say good-by. I shall +probably not find him here when I come back from the long voyage which +I have in front of me. He is very fragile, and looks as though a puff +of wind would blow him away. He said himself, with his old-time +cheerfulness, that he was attached to this earth by only a little piece +of twine. He has perceptibly failed since I saw him a month ago; but +he was full of the wise and radiant talk to which all the world +has listened, and will miss. I found him absorbed in a newly made +card-catalogue of his library. "It was absurd of me to have it done," he +remarked. "What I really require is a little bookcase holding only two +volumes; then I could go from one to the other in alternation and always +find each book as fresh as if I never had read it." This arraignment of +his memory was in pure jest, for the doctor's mind was to the end like +an unclouded crystal. It was interesting to note how he studied himself, +taking his own pulse, as it were, and diagnosing his own case in a sort +of scientific, impersonal way, as if it were somebody else's case and he +were the consulting specialist. I intended to spend a quarter of an hour +with him, and he kept me three hours. I went there rather depressed, +but I returned home leavened with his good spirits, which, I think, will +never desert him, here or hereafter. To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be +hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent--that is to triumph over old age. + +THE thing one reads and likes, and then forgets, is of no account. The +thing that stays, and haunts one, and refuses to be forgotten, that is +the sincere thing. I am describing the impression left upon me by Mr. +Howells's blank-verse sketch called "Father and Mother: A Mystery"--a +strangely touching and imaginative piece of work, not unlike in effect +to some of Maeterlinck's psychical dramas. As I read on, I seemed to be +standing in a shadow cast by some half-remembered experience of my own +in a previous state of existence. When I went to bed that night I had to +lie awake and think it over as an event that had actually befallen me. +I should call the effect _weird_, if the word had not lately been worked +to death. The gloom of Poe and the spirituality of Hawthorne touch cold +finger-tips in those three or four pages. + +FOR a character-study--a man made up entirely of limitations. His +conservatism and negative qualities to be represented as causing him to +attain success where men of conviction and real ability fail of it. + +A DARK, saturnine man sat opposite me at table on board the steamer. +During the entire run from Sandy Hook to Fastnet Light he addressed no +one at meal-times excepting his table steward. Seated next to him, on +the right, was a vivacious gentleman, who, like Gratiano in the play, +spoke "an infinite deal of nothing." He made persistent and pathetic +attempts to lure his silent neighbor (we had christened him "William +the Silent") into conversation, but a monosyllable was always the poor +result--until one day. It was the last day of the voyage. We had stopped +at the entrance to Queenstown harbor to deliver the mails, and some fish +had been brought aboard. The vivacious gentleman was in a high state of +excitement that morning at table. "Fresh fish!" he exclaimed; "actually +fresh! They seem quite different from ours. Irish fish, of course. Can +you tell me, sir," he inquired, turning to his gloomy shipmate, "what +_kind_ of fish these are?" "Cork soles," said the saturnine man, in a +deep voice, and then went on with his breakfast. + +LOWELL used to find food for great mirth in General George P. Morris's +line, + +"Her heart and morning broke together." + +Lowell's well-beloved Dr. Donne, however, had an attack of the same +platitude, and possibly inoculated poor Morris. Even literature seems to +have its mischief-making bacilli. The late "incomparable and ingenious +Dean of St. Paul's" says, + +"The day breaks not, it is my heart." + +I think Dr. Donne's case rather worse than Morris's. Chaucer had the +malady in a milder form when he wrote: + +"Up roos the sonne, and up roos Emelye." + +The charming naivete of it! + + +SITTING in Ellen Terry's dressing-room at the Lyceum Theatre one evening +during that lady's temporary absence on the stage, Sarah Bernhardt +picked up a crayon and wrote this pretty word on the mirror--_Dearling_, +mistaking it for the word darling. The French actress lighted by chance +upon a Spenserianism now become obsolete without good reason. It is a +more charming adjective than the one that has replaced it. + +A DEAD author appears to be bereft of all earthly rights. He is scarcely +buried before old magazines and newspapers are ransacked in search of +matters which, for reasons sufficient to him, he had carefully excluded +from the definitive edition of his collected writings. + + He gave the people of his best; + His worst he kept, his best he gave. + +One can imagine a poet tempted to address some such appeal as this to +any possible future publisher of his poems: + + Take what thou wilt, a lyric or a line, + Take all, take nothing--and God send thee cheer! + But my anathema on thee and thine + If thou add'st aught to what is printed here. + +THE claim of this country to call itself "The Land of the Free" must be +held in abeyance until every man in it, whether he belongs or does not +belong to a labor organization, shall have the right to work for his +daily bread. + +THERE is a strain of primitive poetry running through the entire Irish +race, a fleeting lyrical emotion which expresses itself in a flash, +usually in connection with love of country and kindred across the sea. +I had a touching illustration of it the other morning. The despot who +reigns over our kitchen was gathering a mess of dandelions on the rear +lawn. It was one of those blue and gold days which seem especially to +belong New England. "It's in County Westmeath I 'd be this day," she +said, looking up at me. _"I'd go cool my hands in the grass on my ould +mother's grave in the bit of churchyard foreninst the priest's house at +Mullingar."_ I have seen poorer poetry than that in the magazines. + + +SPEAKING of the late Major Pond, the well-known director of a lecture +bureau, an old client of his remarked: "He was a most capable manager, +but it always made me a little sore to have him deduct twenty-five +per cent. commission." "Pond's Extract," murmured one of the gentlemen +present. + +EACH of our great towns has its "Little Italy," with shops where nothing +is spoken but Italian and streets in which the alien pedestrian had +better not linger after nightfall. The chief industry of these exotic +communities seems to be spaghetti and stilettos. What with our Little +Italys and Chinatowns, and the like, an American need not cross the +ocean in order to visit foreign lands and enjoy the benefits of older +civilizations. + +POETS are made as well as born, the proverb notwithstanding. They are +made possible by the general love of poetry and the consequent imperious +demand for it. When this is nonexistent, poets become mute, the +atmosphere stifles them. There would have been no Shakespeare had there +been no Elizabethan audience. That was an age when, as Emerson finely +puts it, + + Men became + Poets, for the air was fame. + +THE stolid gentleman in livery who has his carriage-stand at the corner +opposite my house is constantly touching on the extremes of human +experience, with probably not the remotest perception of the fact. +Now he takes a pair of lovers out for an airing, and now he drives the +absconding bank-teller to the railway-station. Excepting as question +of distance, the man has positively no choice between a theatre and a +graveyard. I met him this morning dashing up to the portals of Trinity +Church with a bridal party, and this afternoon, as I was crossing +Cambridge Bridge, I saw him creeping along next to the hearse, on his +way to Mount Auburn. The wedding afforded him no pleasure, and the +funeral gave him no grief; yet he was a factor in both. It is his odd +destiny to be wholly detached from the vital part of his own acts. If +the carriage itself could speak! The autobiography of a public hack +written without reservation would be dramatic reading. + +IN this blotted memorandum-book are a score or two of suggestions for +essays, sketches, and poems, which I have not written, and never shall +write. The instant I jot down an idea the desire to utilize it leaves +me, and I turn away to do something unpremeditated. The shabby volume +has become a sort of Potter's Field where I bury my literary intentions, +good and bad, without any belief in their final resurrection. + +A STAGE DIRECTION: _exit time; enter Eternity--with a soliloquy._ + + + + +ASIDES + + + + +TOM FOLIO + +IN my early Boston days a gentle soul was often to be met with about +town, furtively haunting old book-shops and dusty editorial rooms, a +man of ingratiating simplicity of manner, who always spoke in a low, +hesitating voice, with a note of refinement in it. He was a devout +worshiper of Elia, and wrote pleasant discursive essays smacking +somewhat of his master's flavor--suggesting rather than imitating +it--which he signed "Tom Folio." I forget how he glided into my +acquaintanceship; doubtless in some way too shy and elusive for +remembrance. I never knew him intimately, perhaps no one did, but the +intercourse between us was most cordial, and our chance meetings and +bookish chats extended over a space of a dozen years. + +Tom Folio--I cling to the winning pseudonym--was sparely built and under +medium height, or maybe a slight droop of the shoulders made it seem so, +with a fragile look about him and an aspect of youth that was not his. +Encountering him casually on a street corner, you would, at the first +glance, have taken him for a youngish man, but the second glance left +you doubtful. It was a figure that struck a note of singularity and +would have attracted your attention even in a crowd. + +During the first four or five years of our acquaintance, meeting him +only out of doors or in shops, I had never happened to see him with his +hat off. One day he recklessly removed it, and in the twinkling of an +eye he became an elderly bald-headed man. The Tom Folio I once knew +had virtually vanished. An instant earlier he was a familiar shape; an +instant later, an almost unrecognizable individual. A narrow fringe of +light-colored hair, extending from ear to ear under the rear brim of +his hat, had perpetrated an unintentional deception by leading one to +suppose a head profusely covered with curly locks. "Tom Folio," I said, +"put on your hat and come back!" But after that day he never seemed young +to me. + +I had few or no inklings of his life disconnected with the streets and +the book-stalls, chiefly those on Cornhill or in the vicinity. It is +possible I am wrong in inferring that he occupied a room somewhere at +the South End or in South Boston, and lived entirely alone, heating his +coffee and boiling his egg over an alcohol lamp. I got from him one or +two fortuitous hints of quaint housekeeping. Every winter, it appeared, +some relative, far or near, sent him a large batch of mince pies, twenty +or thirty at least. He once spoke to me of having laid in his winter +pie, just as another might speak of laying in his winter coal. The +only fireside companion Tom Folio ever alluded to in my presence was +a Maltese cat, whose poor health seriously disturbed him from time to +time. I suspected those mince pies. The cat, I recollect, was named Miss +Mowcher. + +If he had any immediate family ties beyond this I was unaware of +them, and not curious to be enlightened on the subject. He was more +picturesque solitary. I preferred him to remain so. Other figures +introduced into the background of the canvas would have spoiled the +artistic effect. + +Tom Folio was a cheerful, lonely man--a recluse even when he allowed +himself to be jostled and hurried along on the turbulent stream of +humanity sweeping in opposite directions through Washington Street and +its busy estuaries. He was in the crowd, but not of it. I had so little +real knowledge of him that I was obliged to imagine his more intimate +environments. However wide of the mark my conjectures may have fallen, +they were as satisfying to me as facts would have been. His secluded +room I could picture to myself with a sense of certainty--the couch (a +sofa by day), the cupboard, the writing-table with its student lamp, the +litter of pamphlets and old quartos and octavos in tattered bindings, +among which were scarce reprints of his beloved Charles Lamb, and +perhaps--nay, surely--an _editio princeps_ of the "Essays." + +The gentle Elia never had a gentler follower or a more loving disciple +than Tom Folio. He moved and had much of his being in the early part +of the last century. To him the South-Sea House was the most important +edifice on the globe, remaining the same venerable pile it used to be, +in spite of all the changes that had befallen it. It was there Charles +Lamb passed the novitiate of his long years of clerkship in the East +India Company. In Tom Folio's fancy a slender, boyish figure was still +seated, quill in hand, behind those stately porticoes looking upon +Threadneedle Street and Bishopsgate. That famous first paper in the +"Essays," describing the South-Sea House and the group of human oddities +which occupied desks within its gloomy chambers, had left an indelible +impression upon the dreamer. Every line traced by the "lean annuitant" +was as familiar to Tom Folio as if he had written it himself. Stray +scraps, which had escaped the vigilance of able editors, were known +to him, and it was his to unearth amid a heap of mouldy, worm-eaten +magazines, a handful of leaves hitherto forgotten of all men. Trifles, +yes--but Charles Lamb's! "The king's chaff is as good as other people's +corn," says Tom Folio. + +Often his talk was sweet and racy with old-fashioned phrases; the talk of +a man who loved books and drew habitual breath in an atmosphere of +fine thought. Next to Charles Lamb, but at a convenable distance, Izaak +Walton was Tom Folio's favorite. His poet was Alexander Pope, though +he thought Mr. Addison's tragedy of "Cato" contained some proper +good lines. Our friend was a wide reader in English classics, greatly +preferring the literature of the earlier periods to that of the +Victorian age. His smiling, tenderly expressed disapprobation of various +modern authors was enchanting. John Keats's verses were monstrous +pretty, but over-ornamented. A little too much lucent syrup tinct +with cinnamon, don't you think? The poetry of Shelley might have been +composed in the moon by a slightly deranged, well-meaning person. If you +wanted a sound mind in a sound metrical body, why there was Mr. Pope's +"Essay on Man." There was something winsome and by-gone in the general +make-up of Tom Folio. No man living in the world ever seemed to me to +live so much out of it, or to live more comfortably. + +At times I half suspected him of a convalescent amatory disappointment. +Perhaps long before I knew him he had taken a little sentimental +journey, the unsuccessful end of which had touched him with a gentle +sadness. It was something far off and softened by memory. If Tom Folio +had any love-affair on hand in my day, it must have been of an airy, +platonic sort--a chaste secret passion for Mistress Peg Woffington or +Nell Gwyn, or possibly Mr. Waller's Saccharissa. + +Although Tom Folio was not a collector--that means dividends and bank +balances--he had a passion for the Past and all its belongings, with +a virtuoso's knowledge of them. A fan painted by Vanloo, a bit of rare +Nankin (he had caught from Charles Lamb the love of old china), or an +undoctored stipple of Bartolozzi, gave him delight in the handling, +though he might not aspire to ownership. I believe he would willingly +have drunk any horrible decoction from a silver teapot of Queen Anne's +time. These things were not for him in a coarse, materialistic sense; +in a spiritual sense he held possession of them in fee-simple. I learned +thus much of his tastes one day during an hour we spent together in the +rear showroom of a dealer in antiquities. + +I have spoken of Tom Folio as lonely, but I am inclined to think that +I mis-stated it. He had hosts of friends who used to climb the rather +steep staircase leading to that modest third-story front room which +I have imagined for him--a room with Turkey-red curtains, I like to +believe, and a rare engraving of a scene from Mr. Hogarth's excellent +moral of "The Industrious and Idle Apprentices" pinned against the +chimney breast. Young Chatterton, who was not always the best of +company, dropped in at intervals. There Mr. Samuel Pepys had a special +chair reserved for him by the window, where he could catch a glimpse of +the pretty housemaid over the way, chatting with the policeman at the +area railing. Dr. Johnson and the unworldly author of "The Deserted +Village" were frequent visitors, sometimes appearing together +arm-in-arm, with James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck, following +obsequiously behind. Not that Tom Folio did not have callers vastly more +aristocratic, though he could have had none pleasanter or wholesomer. +Sir Philip Sidney (who must have given Folio that copy of the +"Arcadia"), the Viscount St. Albans, and even two or three others before +whom either of these might have doffed his bonnet, did not disdain to +gather round that hearthstone. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Defoe, Dick +Steele, Dean Swift--there was no end to them! On certain nights, when +all the stolid neighborhood was lapped in slumber, the narrow street +stretching beneath Tom Folio's windows must have been blocked with +invisible coaches and sedan-chairs, and illuminated by the visionary +glare of torches borne by shadowy linkboys hurrying hither and thither. +A man so sought after and companioned cannot be described as lonely. + +My memory here recalls the fact that he had a few friends less +insubstantial--that quaint anatomy perched on the top of a hand-organ, +to whom Tom Folio was wont to give a bite of his apple; and the +brown-legged little Neapolitan who was always nearly certain of a copper +when this multi-millionaire strolled through the slums on a Saturday +afternoon--Saturday probably being the essayist's pay-day. The withered +woman of the peanut-stand on the corner over against Faneuil Hall Market +knew him for a friend, as did also the blind lead-pencil merchant, whom +Tom Folio, on occasions, safely piloted across the stormy traffic of +Dock Square. _Noblesse oblige!_ He was no stranger in those purlieus. +Without designing to confuse small things with great, I may say that a +certain strip of pavement in North Street could be pointed out as Tom +Folio's Walk, just as Addison's Walk is pointed out on the banks of the +Cherwell at Oxford. + +I used to observe that when Tom Folio was not in quest of a print or a +pamphlet or some such urgent thing, but was walking for mere recreation, +he instinctively avoided respectable latitudes. He liked best the +squalid, ill-kept thoroughfares shadowed by tall, smudgy tenement-houses +and teeming with unprosperous, noisy life. Perhaps he had, half +consciously, a sense of subtle kinship to the unsuccess and cheerful +resignation of it all. + +Returning home from abroad one October morning several years ago, I was +told that that simple spirit had passed on. His death had been little +heeded; but in him had passed away an intangible genuine bit of Old +Boston--as genuine a bit, in its kind, as the Autocrat himself--a +personality not to be restored or replaced. Tom Folio could never happen +again! + +Strolling to-day through the streets of the older section of the town, +I miss many a venerable landmark submerged in the rising tide of change, +but I miss nothing quite so much as I do the sight of Tom Folio entering +the doorway of the Old Corner Bookstore, or carefully taking down +a musty volume from its shelf at some melancholy old book-stall on +Cornhill. + + + + +FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES + +WHEN an English novelist does us the honor to introduce any of our +countrymen into his fiction, he generally displays a commendable +desire to present something typical in the way of names for his +adopted characters--to give a dash of local color, as it were, with his +nomenclature. His success is seldom commensurate to the desire. He falls +into the error of appealing to his invention, instead of consulting +some city directory, in which he would find more material than he could +exhaust in ten centuries. Charles Reade might have secured in the pages +of such a compendium a happier title than Fullalove for his Yankee +sea-captain; though I doubt, on the whole, if Anthony Trollope could +have discovered anything better than Olivia Q. Fleabody for the young +woman from "the States" in his novel called "Is He Popenjoy?" + +To christen a sprightly young female advocate of woman's rights Olivia +Q. Fleabody was very happy indeed; to be candid, it was much better than +was usual with Mr. Trollope, whose understanding of American life and +manners was not enlarged by extensive travel in this country. An English +tourist's preconceived idea of us is a thing he brings over with him on +the steamer and carries home again intact; it is as much a part of his +indispensable impedimenta as his hatbox. But Fleabody is excellent; it +was probably suggested by Peabody, which may have struck Mr. Trollope as +comical (just as Trollope strikes _us_ as comical), or, at least, as not +serious. What a capital name Veronica Trollope would be for a hoydenish +young woman in a society novel! I fancy that all foreign names are odd +to the alien. I remember that the signs above shop-doors in England and +on the Continent used to amuse me often enough, when I was over there. +It is a notable circumstance that extraordinary names never seem +extraordinary to the persons bearing them. If a fellow-creature were +branded Ebenezer Cuttlefish he would remain to the end of his days quite +unconscious of anything out of the common. + +I am aware that many of our American names are sufficiently queer; but +English writers make merry over them, as if our most eccentric were not +thrown into the shade by some of their own. No American, living or +dead, can surpass the verbal infelicity of Knatchbull-Hugessen, for +example--if the gentleman will forgive me for conscripting him. Quite as +remarkable, in a grimly significant way, is the appellation of a British +officer who was fighting the Boers in the Transvaal in the year of +blessed memory 1899. This young soldier, who highly distinguished +himself on the field, was known to his brothers-in-arms as Major Pine +Coffin. I trust that the gallant major became a colonel later and is +still alive. It would eclipse the gayety of nations to lose a man with a +name like that. + +Several years ago I read in the sober police reports of "The Pall Mall +Gazette" an account of a young man named George F. Onions, who was +arrested (it ought to have been by "a peeler") for purloining money +from his employers, Messrs. Joseph Pickles & Son, stuff merchants, of +Bradford--_des noms bien idylliques!_ What mortal could have a more +ludicrous name than Onions, unless it were Pickles, or Pickled Onions? +And then for Onions to rob Pickles! Could there be a more incredible +coincidence? As a coincidence it is nearly sublime. No story-writer +would dare to present that fact or those names in his fiction; neither +would be accepted as possible. Meanwhile Olivia Q. Fleabody is _ben +trovato_. + + + + +A NOTE ON "L'AIGLON" + +THE night-scene on the battlefield of Wagram in "L'Aiglon"--an episode +whose sharp pathos pierces the heart and the imagination like the point +of a rapier--bears a striking resemblance to a picturesque passage in +Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables." It is the one intense great moment in +the play, and has been widely discussed, but so far as I am aware none +of M. Rostand's innumerable critics has touched on the resemblance +mentioned. In the master's romance it is not the field of Wagram, but +the field of Waterloo, that is magically repeopled with contending +armies of spooks, to use the grim old Dutch word, and made vivid to the +mind's eye. The passage occurs at the end of the sixteenth chapter in +the second part of "Les Miserables" (Cosette), and runs as follows: + +Le champ de Waterloo aujourd'hui a le calme qui appartient a la terre, +support impassible de l'homme, et il resemble a toutes les plaines. La +nuit pourtant une espece de brume visionnaire s'en degage, et si quelque +voyageur s'y promene, s'il regarde, s'il ecoute, s'il reve comme +Virgile dans les funestes plaines de Philippes, l'hallucination de +la catastrophe le saisit. L'effrayant 18 juin revit; la fausse +colline-monument s'efface, ce lion quelconque se dissipe, le champ de +bataille reprend sa realite; des lignes d'infanterie ondulent dans la +plaine, des galops furieux traversent l'horizon; le songeur effare voit +l'eclair des sabres, l'etincelle des bayonnettes, le flamboiement des +bombes, l'entre-croisement monstrueux des tonnerres; il entend, comme un +rale au fond d'une tombe, la clameur vague de la bataille-fantome; ces +ombres, ce sont les grenadiers; ces lueurs, ce sont les cuirassiers; +. . . tout cela n'est plus et se heurte et combat encore; et les ravins +s'empourprent, et les arbres frissonnent, et il y a de la furie jusque +dans les nuees, et, dans les tenebres, toutes ces hauteurs farouches, +Mont-Saint Jean, Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, Plancenoit, +apparaissent confusement couronnees de tourbillons de spectres +s'exterminant. (1) + +Here is the whole battle scene in "L'Aiglon," with scarcely a gruesome +detail omitted. The vast plain glimmering in phantasmal light; the +ghostly squadrons hurling themselves against one another (seen only +through the eyes of the poor little Duke of Reichstadt); the mangled +shapes lying motionless in various postures of death upon the +blood-stained sward; the moans of the wounded rising up and sweeping by +like vague wailings of the wind--all this might be taken for an artful +appropriation of Victor Hugo's text; but I do not think it was, though +it is possible that a faint reflection of a brilliant page, read in +early youth, still lingered on the retina of M. Rostand's memory. If +such were the case, it does not necessarily detract from the integrity +of the conception or the playwright's presentment of it. + + (1) The field of Waterloo has to-day the peacefulness which + belongs to earth, the impassive support of man, and is like + all other plains. At night, however, a kind of visionary + mist is exhaled, and if any traveler walks there, and + watches and listens, and dreams like Virgil on the sorrowful + plains of Philippi, the hallucination of the catastrophe + takes possession of him. The terrible June 18 relives; the + artificial commemorative mound effaces itself, the lion + disappears, the field of battle assumes its reality; lines + of infantry waver on the plain, the horizon is broken by + furious charges of cavalry; the alarmed dreamer sees the + gleam of sabres, the glimmer of bayonets, the lurid glare of + bursting shells, the clashing of mighty thunderbolts; the + muffled clamor of the phantom conflict comes to him like + dying moans from the tomb; these shadows are grenadiers, + these lights are cuirassiers . . . all this does not really + exist, yet the combat goes on; the ravines are stained with + purple, the trees tremble, there is fury even in the clouds, + and in the obscurity the sombre heights--Mont Saint-Jean, + Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, and Plancenoit--ap-pear + dimly crowned with throngs of apparitions annihilating one + another. + +The idea of repeopling old battlefields with the shades of vanished +hosts is not novel. In such tragic spots the twilight always lays a dark +hand on the imagination, and prompts one to invoke the unappeased spirit +of the past that haunts the place. One summer evening long ago, as I was +standing alone by the ruined walls of Hougomont, with that sense of not +being alone which is sometimes so strangely stirred by solitude, I had +a sudden vision of that desperate last charge of Napoleon's Old Guard. +Marshal Ney rose from the grave and again shouted those heroic words +to Drouet d'Erlon: "Are you not going to get yourself killed?" For an +instant a thousand sabres flashed in the air. The deathly silence that +accompanied the ghostly onset was an added poignancy to the short-lived +dream. A moment later I beheld a hunched little figure mounted on a +white horse with housings of purple velvet. The reins lay slack in the +rider's hand; his three-cornered hat was slouched over his brows, and +his chin rested on the breast of his great-coat. Thus he slowly rode +away through the twilight, and nobody cried, _Vive l'Empereur!_ + +The ground on which a famous battle has been fought casts a spell upon +every man's mind; and the impression made upon two men of poetic genius, +like Victor Hugo and Edmond Rostand, might well be nearly identical. +This sufficiently explains the likeness between the fantastic silhouette +in "Les Miserables" and the battle of the ghosts in "L'Aiglon." A muse +so rich in the improbable as M. Rostand's need not borrow a piece of +supernaturalness from anybody. + + + + +PLOT AND CHARACTER + +HENRY JAMES, in his paper on Anthony Trollope, says that if Trollope +"had taken sides on the rather superficial opposition between novels +of character and novels of plot, I can imagine him to have said (except +that he never expressed himself in epigram) that he preferred the former +class, inasmuch as character in itself is plot, while plot is by no +means character." So neat an antithesis would surely never have found +itself between Mr. Trollope's lips if Mr. James had not cunningly +lent it to him. Whatever theory of novel-writing Mr. Trollope may have +preached, his almost invariable practice was to have a plot. He always +had a _story_ to tell, and a story involves beginning, middle, and +end--in short, a framework of some description. + +There have been delightful books filled wholly with character-drawing; +but they have not been great novels. The great novel deals with human +action as well as with mental portraiture and analysis. That "character +in itself is plot" is true only in a limited sense. A plan, a motive +with a logical conclusion, is as necessary to a novel or a romance as it +is to a drama. A group of skillfully made-up men and women lounging in +the green-room or at the wings is not the play. It is not enough to say +that this is Romeo and that Lady Macbeth. It is not enough to inform +us that certain passions are supposed to be embodied in such and such +persons: these persons should be placed in situations developing those +passions. A series of unrelated scenes and dialogues leading to nothing +is inadequate. + +Mr. James's engaging epigram seems to me vulnerable at both ends--unlike +Achilles. "Plot is by no means character." Strictly speaking, it is +not. It appears to me, however, that plot approaches nearer to being +character than character does to being plot. Plot necessitates action, +and it is impossible to describe a man's actions' under whatever +conditions, without revealing something of his character, his way of +looking at things, his moral and mental pose. What a hero of fiction +_does_ paints him better than what he _says_, and vastly better than +anything his creator may say of him. Mr. James asserts that "we care +what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are." +I think we care very little what people are (in fiction) when we do not +know what happens to them. + + + + +THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE + +IN the process of their experiments upon the bodies of living animals +some anatomists do not, I fear, sufficiently realize that + + The poor beetle, that we tread upon, + In corporal sufferance, finds a pang as great + As when a giant dies. + +I am not for a moment challenging the necessity of vivisection, though +distinguished surgeons have themselves challenged it; I merely contend +that science is apt to be cold-hearted, and does not seem always to +take into consideration the tortures she inflicts in her search for +knowledge. + +Just now, in turning over the leaves of an old number of the "London +Lancet," I came upon the report of a lecture on experimental physiology +delivered by Professor William Rutherford before a learned association +in London. Though the type had become antiquated and the paper +yellowed in the lapse of years, the pathos of those pages was alive and +palpitating. + +The following passages from the report will illustrate not unfairly the +point I am making. In the course of his remarks the lecturer exhibited +certain interesting experiments on living frogs. Intellectually I go +very strongly for Professor Rutherford, but I am bound to confess that +the weight of my sympathy rests with the frogs. + +Observe this frog [said the professor], it is regarding our manoeuvres +with a somewhat lively air. Now and then it gives a jump. What the +precise object of its leaps may be I dare not pretend to say; but +probably it regards us with some apprehension, and desires to escape. + +To be perfectly impartial, it must be admitted that the frog had some +slight reason for apprehension. The lecturer proceeded: + +I touch one of its toes, and you see it resents the molestation in a +very decided manner. Why does it so struggle to get away when I pinch +its toes? Doubtless, you will say, because it feels the pinch and would +rather not have it repeated. I now behead the animal with the aid of a +sharp chisel. . . . The headless trunk lies as though it were dead. The +spinal cord seems to be suffering from shock. Probably, however, it +will soon recover from this. . . . Observe that the animal has now +_spontaneously_ drawn up its legs and arms, and it is sitting with its +neck erect just as if it had not lost its head at all. I pinch its +toes, and you see the leg is at once thrust out as if to spurn away the +offending instrument. Does it still feel? and is the motion still the +result of the volition? + +That the frog did feel, and delicately hinted at the circumstance, there +seems to be no room to doubt, for Professor Rutherford related that +having once decapitated a frog, the animal suddenly bounded from the +table, a movement that presumably indicated a kind of consciousness. He +then returned to the subject immediately under observation, pinched its +foot again, the frog again "resenting the stimulation." He then thrust +a needle down the spinal cord. "The limbs are now flaccid," observed the +experimenter; "we may wait as long as we please, but a pinch of the toes +will never again cause the limbs of this animal to move." Here is +where congratulations can come in for _la grenouille_. That frog being +concluded, the lecturer continued: + +I take another frog. In this case I open the cranium and remove the +brain and medulla oblongata. . . . I thrust a pin through the nose and +hang the animal thereby to a support, so that it can move its pendent +legs without any difficulty. . . . I gently pinch the toes. . . . The +leg of the same side is pulled up. . . . I pinch the same more severely. +. . . Both legs are thrown into motion. + +Having thus satisfactorily proved that the wretched creature could still +suffer acutely, the professor resumed: + +The cutaneous nerves of the frog are extremely sensitive to acids; so +I put a drop of acetic acid on the outside of one knee. This, you see, +gives rise to most violent movements both of arms and legs, and notice +particularly that the animal is using the toes of the leg on the same +side for the purpose of rubbing the irritated spot. I dip the whole +animal into water in order to wash away the acid, and now it is all +at rest again. . . . I put a drop of acid on the skin over the lumbar +region of the spine. . . . Both feet are instantly raised to the +irritated spot. The animal is able to localize the seat of irritation. +. . . I wash the acid from the back, and I amputate one of the feet at +the ankle. . . . I apply a drop of acid over the knee of the footless +leg. . . . Again, the animal turns the leg towards the knee, as if to +reach the irritated spot with the toes; these, however, are not now +available. But watch the other foot. The _foot of the other leg_ is now +being used to rub away the acid. The animal, finding that the object is +not accomplished with the foot of the same side, uses the other one. + +I think that at least one thing will be patent to every unprejudiced +reader of these excerpts, namely--that any frog (with its head on or its +head off) which happened to make the personal acquaintance of Professor +Rutherford must have found him poor company. What benefit science may +have derived from such association I am not qualified to pronounce upon. +The lecturer showed conclusively that the frog is a peculiarly sensitive +and intelligent little batrachian. I hope that the genial professor, in +the years which followed, did not frequently consider it necessary to +demonstrate the fact. + + + + +LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORNWALL + +IT has recently become the fashion to speak disparagingly of Leigh Hunt +as a poet, to class him as a sort of pursuivant or shield-bearer to +Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Truth to tell, Hunt was not a Keats nor +a Shelley nor a Coleridge, but he was a most excellent Hunt. He was +a delightful essayist--quite unsurpassed, indeed, in his blithe, +optimistic way--and as a poet deserves to rank high among the lesser +singers of his time. I should place him far above Barry Cornwall, who +has not half the freshness, variety, and originality of his compeer. + +I instance Barry Cornwall because there has seemed a disposition since +his death to praise him unduly. Barry Cornwall has always struck me as +extremely artificial, especially in his dramatic sketches. His verses in +this line are mostly soft Elizabethan echoes. Of course a dramatist +may find it to his profit to go out of his own age and atmosphere for +inspiration; but in order successfully to do so he must be a dramatist. +Barry Cornwall fell short of filling the role; he got no further than +the composing of brief disconnected scenes and scraps of soliloquies, +and a tragedy entitled Mirandola, for which the stage had no use. His +chief claim to recognition lies in his lyrics. Here, as in the dramatic +studies, his attitude is nearly always affected. He studiously strives +to reproduce the form and spirit of the early poets. Being a Londoner, +he naturally sings much of rural English life, but his England is the +England of two or three centuries ago. He has a great deal to say about +the "falcon," but the poor bird has the air of beating fatigued wings +against the bookshelves of a well-furnished library! This well-furnished +library was--if I may be pardoned a mixed image--the rock on which Barry +Cornwall split. He did not look into his own heart, and write: he looked +into his books. + +A poet need not confine himself to his individual experiences; the world +is all before him where to choose; but there are subjects which he had +better not handle unless he have some personal knowledge of them. The +sea is one of these. The man who sang, + + The sea! the sea! the open sea! + The blue, the fresh, _the ever free!_ + +(a couplet which the Gifted Hopkins might have penned), should never +have permitted himself to sing of the ocean. I am quoting from one of +Barry Cornwall's most popular lyrics. When I first read this singularly +vapid poem years ago, in mid-Atlantic, I wondered if the author had ever +laid eyes on any piece of water wider than the Thames at Greenwich, and +in looking over Barry Cornwall's "Life and Letters" I am not so much +surprised as amused to learn that he was never out of sight of land +in the whole course of his existence. It is to be said of him more +positively than the captain of the Pinafore said it of himself, that he +was hardly ever sick at sea. + +Imagine Byron or Shelley, who knew the ocean in all its protean moods, +piping such thin feebleness as + +"The blue, the fresh, the ever free!" + +To do that required a man whose acquaintance with the deep was limited +to a view of it from an upper window at Margate or Scarborough. Even +frequent dinners of turbot and whitebait at the sign of The Ship and +Turtle will not enable one to write sea poetry. + +Considering the actual facts, there is something weird in the statement, + + I 'm on the sea! I 'm on the sea! + I am where I would ever be. + +The words, to be sure, are placed in the mouth of an imagined sailor, +but they are none the less diverting. The stanza containing the distich +ends with a striking piece of realism: + + If a storm should come and awake the deep, + What matter? I shall ride and sleep. + +This is the course of action usually pursued by sailors during a gale. +The first or second mate goes around and tucks them up comfortably, each +in his hammock, and serves them out an extra ration of grog after the +storm is over. + +Barry Cornwall must have had an exceptionally winning personality, +for he drew to him the friendship of men as differently constituted as +Thackeray, Carlyle, Browning, and Forster. He was liked by the best of +his time, from Charles Lamb down to Algernon Swinburne, who caught a +glimpse of the aged poet in his vanishing. The personal magnetism of an +author does not extend far beyond the orbit of his contemporaries. It is +of the lyrist and not of the man I am speaking here. One could wish he +had written more prose like his admirable "Recollections of Elia." + +Barry Cornwall seldom sounds a natural note, but when he does it is +extremely sweet. That little ballad in the minor key beginning, + + Touch us gently, Time! + Let us glide adown thy stream, +was written in one of his rare moments. Leigh Hunt, though not without +questionable mannerisms, was rich in the inspiration that came but +infrequently to his friend. Hunt's verse is full of natural felicities. +He also was a bookman, but, unlike Barry Cornwall, he generally knew how +to mint his gathered gold, and to stamp the coinage with his own head. +In "Hero and Leander" there is one line which, at my valuing, is worth +any twenty stanzas that Barry Cornwall has written: + + So might they now have lived, and so have died; + _The story's heart, to me, still beats against its side_. + +Hunt's fortunate verse about the kiss Jane Carlyle gave him lingers on +everybody's lip. That and the rhyme of "Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel" +are spice enough to embalm a man's memory. After all, it takes only a +handful. + + + + +DECORATION DAY + +HOW quickly Nature takes possession of a deserted battlefield, and goes +to work repairing the ravages of man! With invisible magic hand she +smooths the rough earthworks, fills the rifle-pits with delicate +flowers, and wraps the splintered tree-trunks with her fluent drapery +of tendrils. Soon the whole sharp outline of the spot is lost in +unremembering grass. Where the deadly rifle-ball whistled through the +foliage, the robin or the thrush pipes its tremulous note; and where +the menacing shell described its curve through the air, a harmless crow +flies in circles. Season after season the gentle work goes on, healing +the wounds and rents made by the merciless enginery of war, until at +last the once hotly contested battleground differs from none of its +quiet surroundings, except, perhaps, that here the flowers take a richer +tint and the grasses a deeper emerald. + +It is thus the battle lines may be obliterated by Time, but there are +left other and more lasting relics of the struggle. That dinted army +sabre, with a bit of faded crepe knotted at its hilt, which hangs over +the mantel-piece of the "best room" of many a town and country house +in these States, is one; and the graven headstone of the fallen hero +is another. The old swords will be treasured and handed down from +generation to generation as priceless heirlooms, and with them, let us +trust, will be cherished the custom of dressing with annual flowers the +resting-places of those who fell during the Civil War. + + With the tears a Land hath shed + Their graves should ever be green. + + Ever their fair, true glory + Fondly should fame rehearse-- + Light of legend and story, + Flower of marble and verse. + +The impulse which led us to set apart a day for decorating the graves of +our soldiers sprung from the grieved heart of the nation, and in our +own time there is little chance of the rite being neglected. But the +generations that come after us should not allow the observance to fall +into disuse. What with us is an expression of fresh love and sorrow, +should be with them an acknowledgment of an incalculable debt. + +Decoration Day is the most beautiful of our national holidays. How +different from those sullen batteries which used to go rumbling through +our streets are the crowds of light carriages, laden with flowers and +greenery, wending their way to the neighboring cemeteries! The grim +cannon have turned into palm branches, and the shell and shrapnel into +peach blooms. There is no hint of war in these gay baggage trains, +except the presence of men in undress uniform, and perhaps here and +there an empty sleeve to remind one of what has been. Year by year that +empty sleeve is less in evidence. + +The observance of Decoration Day is unmarked by that disorder and +confusion common enough with our people in their holiday moods. The +earlier sorrow has faded out of the hour, leaving a softened solemnity. +It quickly ceased to be simply a local commemoration. While the +sequestered country churchyards and burial-places near our great northern +cities were being hung with May garlands, the thought could not but come +to us that there were graves lying southward above which bent a grief as +tender and sacred as our own. Invisibly we dropped unseen flowers upon +those mounds. There is a beautiful significance in the fact that, two +years after the close of the war, the women of Columbus, Mississippi, +laid their offerings alike on Northern and Southern graves. When all is +said, the great Nation has but one heart. + + + + +WRITERS AND TALKERS + +AS a class, literary men do not shine in conversation. The scintillating +and playful essayist whom you pictured to yourself as the most genial +and entertaining of companions, turns out to be a shy and untalkable +individual, who chills you with his reticence when you chance to +meet him. The poet whose fascinating volume you always drop into your +gripsack on your summer vacation--the poet whom you have so long desired +to know personally--is a moody and abstracted middle-aged gentleman, who +fails to catch your name on introduction, and seems the avatar of the +commonplace. The witty and ferocious critic whom your fancy had +painted as a literary cannibal with a morbid appetite for tender young +poets--the writer of those caustic and scholarly reviews which you never +neglect to read--destroys the un-lifelike portrait you had drawn by +appearing before you as a personage of slender limb and deprecating +glance, who stammers and makes a painful spectacle of himself when +you ask him his opinion of "The Glees of the Gulches," by Popocatepetl +Jones. The slender, dark-haired novelist of your imagination, with +epigrammatic points to his mustache, suddenly takes the shape of a +short, smoothly-shaven blond man, whose conversation does not sparkle +at all, and you were on the lookout for the most brilliant of verbal +fireworks. Perhaps it is a dramatist you have idealized. Fresh from +witnessing his delightful comedy of manners, you meet him face to face +only to discover that his own manners are anything but delightful. +The play and the playwright are two very distinct entities. You grow +skeptical touching the truth of Buffon's assertion that the style is the +man himself. Who that has encountered his favorite author in the flesh +has not sometimes been a little, if not wholly, disappointed? + +After all, is it not expecting too much to expect a novelist to talk +as cleverly as the clever characters in his novels? Must a dramatist +necessarily go about armed to the teeth with crisp dialogue? May not a +poet be allowed to lay aside his singing-robes and put on a conventional +dress-suit when he dines out? Why is it not permissible in him to be as +prosaic and tiresome as the rest of the company? He usually is. + + + + +ON EARLY RISING + +A CERTAIN scientific gentleman of my acquaintance, who has devoted years +to investigating the subject, states that he has never come across a +case of remarkable longevity unaccompanied by the habit of early rising; +from which testimony it might be inferred that they die early who lie +abed late. But this would be getting out at the wrong station. That the +majority of elderly persons are early risers is due to the simple +fact that they cannot sleep mornings. After a man passes his fiftieth +milestone he usually awakens at dawn, and his wakefulness is no credit +to him. As the theorist confined his observations to the aged, he easily +reached the conclusion that men live to be old because they do not sleep +late, instead of perceiving that men do not sleep late because they are +old. He moreover failed to take into account the numberless young lives +that have been shortened by matutinal habits. + +The intelligent reader, and no other is supposable, need not be told +that the early bird aphorism is a warning and not an incentive. The fate +of the worm refutes the pretended ethical teaching of the proverb, +which assumes to illustrate the advantage of early rising and does so by +showing how extremely dangerous it is. I have no patience with the worm, +and when I rise with the lark I am always careful to select a lark that +has overslept himself. + +The example set by this mythical bird, a mythical bird so far as New +England is concerned, has wrought wide-spread mischief and discomfort. +It is worth noting that his method of accomplishing these ends is +directly the reverse of that of the Caribbean insect mentioned +by Lafcadio Hearn in his enchanting "Two Years in the French West +Indies"--a species of colossal cricket called the wood-kid; in the +creole tongue, _cabritt-bois_. This ingenious pest works a soothing, +sleep-compelling chant from sundown until precisely half past four in +the morning, when it suddenly stops and by its silence awakens everybody +it has lulled into slumber with its insidious croon. Mr. Hearn, with +strange obtuseness to the enormity of the thing, blandly remarks: "For +thousands of early risers too poor to own a clock, the cessation of its +song is the signal to get up." I devoutly trust that none of the West +India islands furnishing such satanic entomological specimens will +ever be annexed to the United States. Some of our extreme advocates of +territorial expansion might spend a profitable few weeks on one of those +favored isles. A brief association with that _cabritt-bois_ would be +likely to cool the enthusiasm of the most ardent imperialist. + +An incalculable amount of specious sentiment has been lavished upon +daybreak, chiefly by poets who breakfasted, when they did breakfast, at +mid-day. It is charitably to be said that their practice was better than +their precept--or their poetry. Thomson, the author of "The Castle of +Indolence," who gave birth to the depraved apostrophe, + +"Falsely luxurious, will not man awake," + +was one of the laziest men of his century. He customarily lay in bed +until noon meditating pentameters on sunrise. This creature used to be +seen in his garden of an afternoon, with both hands in his waistcoat +pockets, eating peaches from a pendent bough. Nearly all the English +poets who at that epoch celebrated what they called "the effulgent orb +of day" were denizens of London, where pure sunshine is unknown eleven +months out of the twelve. + +In a great city there are few incentives to early rising. What charm is +there in roof-tops and chimney-stacks to induce one to escape even +from a nightmare? What is more depressing than a city street before the +shop-windows have lifted an eyelid, when "the very houses seem asleep," +as Wordsworth says, and nobody is astir but the belated burglar or the +milk-and-water man or Mary washing off the front steps? Daybreak at +the seaside or up among the mountains is sometimes worth while, though +familiarity with it breeds indifference. The man forced by restlessness +or occupation to drink the first vintage of the morning every day of +his life has no right appreciation of the beverage, however much he may +profess to relish it. It is only your habitual late riser who takes in +the full flavor of Nature at those rare intervals when he gets up to +go a-fishing. He brings virginal emotions and unsatiated eyes to the +sparkling freshness of earth and stream and sky. For him--a momentary +Adam--the world is newly created. It is Eden come again, with Eve in the +similitude of a three-pound trout. + +In the country, then, it is well enough occasionally to dress by +candle-light and assist at the ceremony of dawn; it is well if for no +other purpose than to disarm the intolerance of the professional early +riser who, were he in a state of perfect health, would not be the +wandering victim of insomnia, and boast of it. There are few small +things more exasperating than this early bird with the worm of his +conceit in his bill. + + + + +UN POETE MANQUE + +IN the first volume of Miss Dickinson's poetical melange is a little +poem which needs only a slight revision of the initial stanza to +entitle it to rank with some of the swallow-flights in Heine's lyrical +intermezzo. I have tentatively tucked a rhyme into that opening stanza: + + I taste a liquor never brewed + In vats upon the Rhine; + No tankard ever held a draught + Of alcohol like mine. + + Inebriate of air am I, + And debauchee of dew, + Reeling, through endless summer days, + From inns of molten blue. + + When landlords turn the drunken bee + Out of the Foxglove's door, + When butterflies renounce their drams, + I shall but drink the more! + Till seraphs swing their snowy caps + And saints to windows run, + To see the little tippler + Leaning against the sun! + +Those inns of molten blue, and the disreputable honey-gatherer who gets +himself turned out-of-doors at the sign of the Foxglove, are very taking +matters. I know of more important things that interest me vastly less. +This is one of the ten or twelve brief pieces so nearly perfect in +structure as almost to warrant the reader in suspecting that Miss +Dickinson's general disregard of form was a deliberate affectation. The +artistic finish of the following sunset-piece makes her usual quatrains +unforgivable: + + This is the land the sunset washes, + These are the banks of the Yellow Sea; + Where it rose, or whither it rushes, + These are the western mystery! + + Night after night her purple traffic + Strews the landing with opal bales; + Merchantmen poise upon horizons, + Dip, and vanish with fairy sails. + +The little picture has all the opaline atmosphere of a Claude +Lorraine. One instantly frames it in one's memory. Several such bits of +impressionist landscape may be found in the portfolio. + +It is to be said, in passing, that there are few things in Miss +Dickinson's poetry so felicitous as Mr. Higginson's characterization of +it in his preface to the volume: "In many cases these verses will seem +to the reader _like poetry pulled up by the roots_, with rain and dew +and earth clinging to them." Possibly it might be objected that this is +not the best way to gather either flowers or poetry. + +Miss Dickinson possessed an extremely unconventional and bizarre mind. +She was deeply tinged by the mysticism of Blake, and strongly influenced +by the mannerism of Emerson. The very gesture with which she tied her +bonnet-strings, preparatory to one of her nun-like walks in her garden +at Amherst, must have had something dreamy and Emersonian in it. She had +much fancy of a quaint kind, but only, as it appears to me, intermittent +flashes of imagination. + +That Miss Dickinson's memoranda have a certain something which, for want +of a more precise name, we term _quality_, is not to be denied. But +the incoherence and shapelessness of the greater part of her verse are +fatal. On nearly every page one lights upon an unsupported exquisite +line or a lonely happy epithet; but a single happy epithet or an +isolated exquisite line does not constitute a poem. What Lowell says +of Dr. Donne applies in a manner to Miss Dickinson: "Donne is full of +salient verses that would take the rudest March winds of criticism with +their beauty, of thoughts that first tease us like charades and then +delight us with the felicity of their solution; but these have not saved +him. He is exiled to the limbo of the formless and the fragmentary." + +Touching this question of mere technique Mr. Ruskin has a word to say +(it appears that he said it "in his earlier and better days"), and Mr. +Higginson quotes it: "No weight, nor mass, nor beauty of execution can +outweigh one grain or fragment of thought." This is a proposition to +which one would cordially subscribe if it were not so intemperately +stated. A suggestive commentary on Mr. Ruskin's impressive dictum is +furnished by his own volume of verse. The substance of it is weighty +enough, but the workmanship lacks just that touch which distinguishes +the artist from the bungler--the touch which Mr. Ruskin, except when +writing prose, appears not much to have regarded either in his later or +"in his earlier and better days." + +Miss Dickinson's stanzas, with their impossible rhyme, their involved +significance, their interrupted flute-note of birds that have no +continuous music, seem to have caught the ear of a group of eager +listeners. A shy New England bluebird, shifting its light load of song, +has for the moment been mistaken for a stray nightingale. + + + + +THE MALE COSTUME OF THE PERIOD + +I WENT to see a play the other night, one of those good old-fashioned +English comedies that are in five acts and seem to be in fifteen. The +piece with its wrinkled conventionality, its archaic stiffness, +and obsolete code of morals, was devoid of interest excepting as a +collection of dramatic curios. Still I managed to sit it through. +The one thing in it that held me a pleased spectator was the graceful +costume of a certain player who looked like a fine old portrait--by +Vandyke or Velasquez, let us say--that had come to life and kicked off +its tarnished frame. + +I do not know at what epoch of the world's history the scene of the play +was laid; possibly the author originally knew, but it was evident that +the actors did not, for their make-ups represented quite antagonistic +periods. This circumstance, however, detracted only slightly from the +special pleasure I took in the young person called Delorme. He was +not in himself interesting; he was like that Major Waters in "Pepys's +Diary"--"a most amorous melancholy gentleman who is under a despayr in +love, which makes him bad company;" it was entirely Delorme's dress. + +I never saw mortal man in a dress more sensible and becoming. The +material was according to Polonius's dictum, rich but not gaudy, of some +dark cherry-colored stuff with trimmings of a deeper shade. My idea of +a doublet is so misty that I shall not venture to affirm that the +gentleman wore a doublet. It was a loose coat of some description +hanging negligently from the shoulders and looped at the throat, +showing a tasteful arrangement of lacework below and at the wrists. Full +trousers reaching to the tops of buckskin boots, and a low-crowned soft +hat--not a Puritan's sugar-loaf, but a picturesque shapeless head-gear, +one side jauntily fastened up with a jewel--completed the essential +portions of our friend's attire. It was a costume to walk in, to ride +in, to sit in. The wearer of it could not be awkward if he tried, and I +will do Delorme the justice to say that he put his dress to some severe +tests. But he was graceful all the while, and made me wish that my +countrymen would throw aside their present hideous habiliments and +hasten to the measuring-room of Delorme's tailor. + +In looking over the plates of an old book of fashions we smile at the +monstrous attire in which our worthy great-grandsires saw fit to deck +themselves. Presently it will be the turn of posterity to smile at us, +for in our own way we are no less ridiculous than were our ancestors +in their knee-breeches, pig-tail and _chapeau de bras_. In fact we are +really more absurd. If a fashionably dressed man of to-day could catch +a single glimpse of himself through the eyes of his descendants four +or five generations removed, he would have a strong impression of being +something that had escaped from somewhere. + +Whatever strides we may have made in arts and sciences, we have made +no advance in the matter of costume. That Americans do not tattoo +themselves, and do go fully clad--I am speaking exclusively of my own +sex--is about all that can be said in favor of our present fashions. I +wish I had the vocabulary of Herr Teufelsdrockh with which to +inveigh against the dress-coat of our evening parties, the angular +swallow-tailed coat that makes a man look like a poor species of bird +and gets him mistaken for the waiter. "As long as a man wears the modern +coat," says Leigh Hunt, "he has no right to despise any dress. What +snips at the collar and lapels! What a mechanical and ridiculous cut +about the flaps! What buttons in front that are never meant to button, +and yet are no ornament! And what an exquisitely absurd pair of +buttons at the back! gravely regarded, nevertheless, and thought as +indispensably necessary to every well-conditioned coat, as other bits +of metal or bone are to the bodies of savages whom we laugh at. There is +absolutely not one iota of sense, grace, or even economy in the modern +coat." + +Still more deplorable is the ceremonial hat of the period. That a +Christian can go about unabashed with a shiny black cylinder on his head +shows what civilization has done for us in the way of taste in personal +decoration. The scalplock of an Apache brave has more style. When an +Indian squaw comes into a frontier settlement the first "marked-down" +article she purchases is a section of stove-pipe. Her instinct as to +the eternal fitness of things tells her that its proper place is on the +skull of a barbarian. + +It was while revolving these pleasing reflections in my mind, that our +friend Delorme walked across the stage in the fourth act, and though +there was nothing in the situation nor in the text of the play to +warrant it, I broke into tremendous applause, from which I desisted +only at the scowl of an usher--an object in a celluloid collar and +a claw-hammer coat. My solitary ovation to Master Delorme was an +involuntary and, I think, pardonable protest against the male costume of +our own time. + + + + +ON A CERTAIN AFFECTATION + +EXCEPTING on the ground that youth is the age of vain fantasy, there is +no accounting for the fact that young men and young women of poetical +temperament should so frequently assume to look upon an early demise +for themselves as the most desirable thing in the world. Though one may +incidentally be tempted to agree with them in the abstract, one cannot +help wondering. That persons who are exceptionally fortunate in their +environment, and in private do not pretend to be otherwise, should +openly announce their intention of retiring at once into the family +tomb, is a problem not easily solved. The public has so long listened +to these funereal solos that if a few of the poets thus impatient to +be gone were to go, their departure would perhaps be attended by that +resigned speeding which the proverb invokes on behalf of the parting +guest. + +The existence of at least one magazine editor would, I know, have a +shadow lifted from it. At this writing, in a small mortuary basket under +his desk are seven or eight poems of so gloomy a nature that he would +not be able to remain in the same room with them if he did not suspect +the integrity of their pessimism. The ring of a false coin is not more +recognizable than that of a rhyme setting forth a simulated sorrow. + +The Miss Gladys who sends a poem entitled "Forsaken," in which she +addresses death as her only friend, makes pictures in the editor's eyes. +He sees, among other dissolving views, a little hoyden in magnificent +spirits, perhaps one of this season's social buds, with half a score of +lovers ready to pluck her from the family stem--a rose whose countless +petals are coupons. A caramel has disagreed with her, or she would not +have written in this despondent vein. The young man who seeks to inform +the world in eleven anaemic stanzas of _terze rime_ that the cup of +happiness has been forever dashed from his lip (he appears to have but +one) and darkly intimates that the end is "nigh" (rhyming affably with +"sigh"), will probably be engaged a quarter of a century from now in +making similar declarations. He is simply echoing some dysthymic poet of +the past--reaching out with some other man's hat for the stray nickel of +your sympathy. + +This morbidness seldom accompanies genuine poetic gifts. The case of +David Gray, the young Scottish poet who died in 1861, is an instance +to the contrary. His lot was exceedingly sad, and the failure of +health just as he was on the verge of achieving something like success +justified his profound melancholy; but that he tuned this melancholy and +played upon it, as if it were a musical instrument, is plainly seen in +one of his sonnets. + +In Monckton Milnes's (Lord Houghton's) "Life and Letters of John Keats" +it is related that Keats, one day, on finding a stain of blood upon his +lips after coughing, said to his friend Charles Brown: "I know the color +of that blood; it is arterial blood; I cannot be deceived. That drop +is my death-warrant. I must die." Who that ever read the passage +could forget it? David Gray did not, for he versified the incident as +happening to himself and appropriated, as his own, Keats's comment: + + Last night, on coughing slightly with sharp pain, + There came arterial blood, and with a sigh + Of absolute grief I cried in bitter vein, + That drop is my death-warrant; I must die. + +The incident was likely enough a personal experience, but the comment +should have been placed in quotation marks. I know of few stranger +things in literature than this poet's dramatization of another man's +pathos. Even Keats's epitaph--_Here lies one whose name_ _was writ in +water_--finds an echo in David Gray's _Below lies one whose name was +traced in sand_. Poor Gray was at least the better prophet. + + + + +WISHMAKERS' TOWN + +A LIMITED edition of this little volume of verse, which seems to me +in many respects unique, was issued in 1885, and has long been out of +print. The reissue of the book is in response to the desire off certain +readers who have not forgotten the charm which William Young's poem +exercised upon them years ago, and, finding the charm still potent, +would have others share it. + +The scheme of the poem, for it is a poem and not simply a series of +unrelated lyrics, is ingenious and original, and unfolds itself in +measures at once strong and delicate. The mood of the poet and the +method of the playwright are obvious throughout. Wishmakers' Town--a +little town situated in the no-man's-land of "The Tempest" and "A +Midsummer Night's Dream"--is shown to us as it awakens, touched by the +dawn. The clangor of bells far and near calls the townfolk to their +various avocations, the toiler to his toil, the idler to his idleness, +the miser to his gold. In swift and picturesque sequence the personages +of the Masque pass before us. Merchants, hucksters, players, lovers, +gossips, soldiers, vagabonds, and princes crowd the scene, and have in +turn their word of poignant speech. We mingle with the throng in the +streets; we hear the whir of looms and the din of foundries, the blare +of trumpets, the whisper of lovers, the scandals of the market-place, +and, in brief, are let into all the secrets of the busy microcosm. +A contracted stage, indeed, yet large enough for the play of many +passions, as the narrowest hearthstone may be. With the sounding of the +curfew, the town is hushed to sleep again, and the curtain falls on this +mimic drama of life. + +The charm of it all is not easily to be defined. Perhaps if one could +name it, the spell were broken. Above the changing rhythms hangs an +atmosphere too evasive for measurement--an atmosphere that stipulates an +imaginative mood on the part of the reader. The quality which pleases in +certain of the lyrical episodes is less intangible. One readily explains +one's liking for so gracious a lyric as The Flower-Seller, to select an +example at random. Next to the pleasure that lies in the writing of such +exquisite verse is the pleasure of quoting it. I copy the stanzas partly +for my own gratification, and partly to win the reader to "Wishmakers' +Town," not knowing better how to do it. + + Myrtle, and eglantine, + For the old love and the new! + And the columbine, + With its cap and bells, for folly! + And the daffodil, for the hopes of youth! and the rue, + For melancholy! + But of all the blossoms that blow, + Fair gallants all, I charge you to win, if ye may, + This gentle guest, + Who dreams apart, in her wimple of purple and gray, + Like the blessed Virgin, with meek head bending low + Upon her breast. + For the orange flower + Ye may buy as ye will: but the violet of the wood + Is the love of maidenhood; + And he that hath worn it but once, though but for an hour, + He shall never again, though he wander by many a stream, + No, never again shall he meet with a dower that shall seem + So sweet and pure; and forever, in after years, + At the thought of its bloom, or the fragrance of its breath, + The past shall arise, + And his eyes shall be dim with tears, + And his soul shall be far in the gardens of Paradise + Though he stand in the Shambles of death. +In a different tone, but displaying the same sureness of execution, is +the cry of the lowly folk, the wretched pawns in the great game of life: + + Prince, and Bishop, and Knight, and Dame, + Plot, and plunder, and disagree! + O but the game is a royal game! + O but your tourneys are fair to see! + + None too hopeful we found our lives; + Sore was labor from day to day; + Still we strove for our babes and wives-- + Now, to the trumpet, we march away! + + "Why?"--For some one hath will'd it so! + Nothing we know of the why or the where-- + To swamp, or jungle, or wastes of snow-- + Nothing we know, and little we care. + + Give us to kill!--since this is the end + Of love and labor in Nature's plan; + Give us to kill and ravish and rend, + Yea, since this is the end of man. + + States shall perish, and states be born: + Leaders, out of the throng, shall press; + Some to honor, and some to scorn: + We, that are little, shall yet be less. + + Over our lines shall the vultures soar; + Hard on our flanks shall the jackals cry; + And the dead shall be as the sands of the shore; + And daily the living shall pray to die. + + Nay, what matter!--When all is said, + Prince and Bishop will plunder still: + Lord and Lady must dance and wed. + Pity us, pray for us, ye that will! + +It is only the fear of impinging on Mr. Young's copyright that prevents +me reprinting the graphic ballad of The Wanderer and the prologue of The +Strollers, which reads like a page from the prelude to some Old-World +miracle play. The setting of these things is frequently antique, but the +thought is the thought of today. I think there is a new generation of +readers for such poetry as Mr. Young's. I venture the prophecy that +it will not lack for them later when the time comes for the inevitable +rearrangement of present poetic values. + +The author of "Wishmakers' Town" is the child of his period, and has not +escaped the _maladie du siecle_. The doubt and pessimism that marked +the end of the nineteenth century find a voice in the bell-like strophes +with which the volume closes. It is the dramatist rather than the poet +who speaks here. The real message of the poet to mankind is ever one of +hope. Amid the problems that perplex and discourage, it is for him to +sing + + Of what the world shall be + When the years have died away. + + + + + +HISTORICAL NOVELS + +IN default of such an admirable piece of work as Dr. Weir Mitchell's +"Hugh Wynne," I like best those fictions which deal with kingdoms and +principalities that exist only in the mind's eye. One's knowledge of +actual events and real personages runs no serious risk of receiving +shocks in this no-man's-land. Everything that happens in an imaginary +realm--in the realm of Ruritania, for illustration--has an air of +possibility, at least a shadowy vraisemblance. The atmosphere and local +color, having an authenticity of their own, are not to be challenged. +You cannot charge the writer with ignorance of the period in which his +narrative is laid, since the period is as vague as the geography. +He walks on safe ground, eluding many of the perils that beset +the story-teller who ventures to stray beyond the bounds of the +make-believe. One peril he cannot escape--that of misrepresenting human +nature. + +The anachronisms of the average historical novel, pretending to +reflect history, are among its minor defects. It is a thing altogether +wonderfully and fearfully made--the imbecile intrigue, the cast-iron +characters, the plumed and armored dialogue with its lance of gory +rhetoric forever at charge. The stage at its worst moments is not so +unreal. Here art has broken into smithereens the mirror which she is +supposed to hold up to nature. + +In this romance-world somebody is always somebody's unsuspected father, +mother, or child, deceiving every one excepting the reader. Usually +the anonymous person is the hero, to whom it is mere recreation to hold +twenty swordsmen at bay on a staircase, killing ten or twelve of them +before he escapes through a door that ever providentially opens directly +behind him. How tired one gets of that door! The "caitiff" in these +chronicles of when knighthood was in flower is invariably hanged from +"the highest battlement"--the second highest would not do at all; or +else he is thrown into "the deepest dungeon of the castle"--the second +deepest dungeon was never known to be used on these occasions. The hero +habitually "cleaves" his foeman "to the midriff," the "midriff" +being what the properly brought up hero always has in view. A certain +fictional historian of my acquaintance makes his swashbuckler exclaim: +"My sword will [shall] kiss his midriff;" but that is an exceptionally +lofty flight of diction. My friend's heroine dresses as a page, and in +the course of long interviews with her lover remains unrecognized--a +diaphanous literary invention that must have been old when the Pyramids +were young. The heroine's small brother, with playful archaicism called +"a springald," puts on her skirts and things and passes himself off for +his sister or anybody else he pleases. In brief, there is no puerility +that is not at home in this sphere of misbegotten effort. Listen--a +priest, a princess, and a young man in woman's clothes are on the scene: + + \ The princess rose to her feet and + approached the priest. + \ "Father," she said swiftly, "this + is not the Lady Joan, my brother's + wife, but a youth marvelously like + her, who hath offered himself in + her place that she might escape. . . . + He is the Count von Loen, a lord + of Kernsburg. And I love him. We + want you to marry us now, dear + Father--now, without a moment's + delay; for if you do not they will + kill him, and I shall have to marry + Prince Wasp!" + +This is from "Joan of the Sword Hand," and if ever I read a more silly +performance I have forgotten it. + + + + +POOR YORICK + +THERE is extant in the city of New York an odd piece of bric-a-brac +which I am sometimes tempted to wish was in my own possession. On a +bracket in Edwin Booth's bedroom at The Players--the apartment remains +as he left it that solemn June day ten years ago--stands a sadly +dilapidated skull which the elder Booth, and afterward his son Edwin, +used to soliloquize over in the graveyard at Elsinore in the fifth act +of "Hamlet." + +A skull is an object that always invokes interest more or less poignant; +it always has its pathetic story, whether told or untold; but this skull +is especially a skull "with a past." + +In the early forties, while playing an engagement somewhere in the wild +West, Junius Brutus Booth did a series of kindnesses to a particularly +undeserving fellow, the name of him unknown to us. The man, as it +seemed, was a combination of gambler, horse-stealer, and highwayman--in +brief, a miscellaneous desperado, and precisely the melodramatic sort +of person likely to touch the sympathies of the half-mad player. In the +course of nature or the law, presumably the law, the adventurer bodily +disappeared one day, and soon ceased to exist even as a reminiscence in +the florid mind of his sometime benefactor. + +As the elder Booth was seated at breakfast one morning in a hotel in +Louisville, Kentucky, a negro boy entered the room bearing a small osier +basket neatly covered with a snowy napkin. It had the general appearance +of a basket of fruit or flowers sent by some admirer, and as such it +figured for a moment in Mr. Booth's conjecture. On lifting the cloth the +actor started from the chair with a genuine expression on his features +of that terror which he was used so marvelously to simulate as Richard +III. in the midnight tent-scene or as Macbeth when the ghost of Banquo +usurped his seat at table. + +In the pretty willow-woven basket lay the head of Booth's old pensioner, +which head the old pensioner had bequeathed in due legal form to the +tragedian, begging him henceforth to adopt it as one of the necessary +stage properties in the fifth act of Mr. Shakespeare's tragedy of +"Hamlet." "Take it away, you black imp!" thundered the actor to the +equally aghast negro boy, whose curiosity had happily not prompted him +to investigate the dark nature of his burden. + +Shortly afterward, however, the horse-stealer's residuary legatee, +recovering from the first shock of his surprise, fell into the grim +humor of the situation, and proceeded to carry out to the letter the +testator's whimsical request. Thus it was that the skull came to secure +an engagement to play the role of poor Yorick in J. B. Booth's company +of strolling players, and to continue a while longer to glimmer behind +the footlights in the hands of his famous son. + +Observing that the grave-digger in his too eager realism was damaging +the thing--the marks of his pick and spade are visible on the +cranium--Edwin Booth presently replaced it with a papier-mache +counterfeit manufactured in the property-room of the theatre. During +his subsequent wanderings in Australia and California, he carefully +preserved the relic, which finally found repose on the bracket in +question. + +How often have I sat, of an afternoon, in that front room on the fourth +floor of the clubhouse in Gramercy Park, watching the winter or summer +twilight gradually softening and blurring the sharp outline of the skull +until it vanished uncannily into the gloom! Edwin Booth had forgotten, +if ever he knew, the name of the man; but I had no need of it in order +to establish acquaintance with poor Yorick. In this association I was +conscious of a deep tinge of sentiment on my own part, a circumstance +not without its queerness, considering how very distant the acquaintance +really was. + +Possibly he was a fellow of infinite jest in his day; he was sober +enough now, and in no way disposed to indulge in those flashes of +merriment "that were wont to set the table on a roar." But I did not +regret his evaporated hilarity; I liked his more befitting genial +silence, and had learned to look upon his rather open countenance with +the same friendliness as that with which I regarded the faces of +less phantasmal members of the club. He had become to me a dramatic +personality as distinct as that of any of the Thespians I met in the +grillroom or the library. + +Yorick's feeling in regard to me was a subject upon which I frequently +speculated. There was at intervals an alert gleam of intelligence in +those cavernous eye-sockets, as if the sudden remembrance of some old +experience had illumined them. He had been a great traveler, and had +known strange vicissitudes in life; his stage career had brought him +into contact with a varied assortment of men and women, and extended +his horizon. His more peaceful profession of holding up mail-coaches on +lonely roads had surely not been without incident. It was inconceivable +that all this had left no impressions. He must have had at least a faint +recollection of the tempestuous Junius Brutus Booth. That Yorick +had formed his estimate of me, and probably not a flattering one, is +something of which I am strongly convinced. + +At the death of Edwin Booth, poor Yorick passed out of my personal +cognizance, and now lingers an incongruous shadow amid the memories of +the precious things I lost then. + +The suite of apartments formerly occupied by Edwin Booth at The Players +has been, as I have said, kept unchanged--a shrine to which from time to +time some loving heart makes silent pilgrimage. On a table in the +centre of his bedroom lies the book just where he laid it down, an ivory +paper-cutter marking the page his eyes last rested upon; and in this +chamber, with its familiar pictures, pipes, and ornaments, the skull +finds its proper sanctuary. If at odd moments I wish that by chance poor +Yorick had fallen to my care, the wish is only halfhearted, though had +that happened, I would have given him welcome to the choicest corner +in my study and tenderly cherished him for the sake of one who comes no +more. + + + + +THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER + + One that gathers samphire, dreadful trade! + --_King Lear._ + +THE material for this paper on the autograph hunter, his ways and his +manners, has been drawn chiefly from experiences not my own. My personal +relations with him have been comparatively restricted, a circumstance +to which I owe the privilege of treating the subject with a freedom that +might otherwise not seem becoming. + +No author is insensible to the compliment involved in a request for his +autograph, assuming the request to come from some sincere lover of +books and bookmen. It is an affair of different complection when he is +importuned to give time and attention to the innumerable unknown who +"collect" autographs as they would collect postage stamps, with no +interest in the matter beyond the desire to accumulate as many as +possible. The average autograph hunter, with his purposeless insistence, +reminds one of the queen in Stockton's story whose fad was "the +buttonholes of all nations." + +In our population of eighty millions and upward there are probably two +hundred thousand persons interested more or less in what is termed the +literary world. This estimate is absurdly low, but it serves to cast +a sufficient side-light upon the situation. Now, any unit of these two +hundred thousand is likely at any moment to indite a letter to some +favorite novelist, historian, poet, or what not. It will be seen, then, +that the autograph hunter is no inconsiderable person. He has made it +embarrassing work for the author fortunate or unfortunate enough to +be regarded as worth while. Every mail adds to his reproachful pile +of unanswered letters. If he have a conscience, and no amanuensis, +he quickly finds himself tangled in the meshes of endless and futile +correspondence. Through policy, good nature, or vanity he is apt to +become facile prey. + +A certain literary collector once confessed in print that he always +studied the idiosyncrasies of his "subject" as carefully as another +sort of collector studies the plan of the house to which he meditates +a midnight visit. We were assured that with skillful preparation and +adroit approach an autograph could be extracted from anybody. According +to the revelations of the writer, Bismarck, Queen Victoria, and +Mr. Gladstone had their respective point of easy access--their one +unfastened door or window, metaphorically speaking. The strongest man +has his weak side. + +Dr. Holmes's affability in replying to every one who wrote to him was +perhaps not a trait characteristic of the elder group. Mr. Lowell, for +instance, was harder-hearted and rather difficult to reach. I recall one +day in the library at Elmwood. As I was taking down a volume from the +shelf a sealed letter escaped from the pages and fluttered to my feet. I +handed it to Mr. Lowell, who glanced incuriously at the superscription. +"Oh, yes," he said, smiling, "I know 'em by instinct." Relieved of its +envelope, the missive turned out to be eighteen months old, and began +with the usual amusing solecism: "As one of the most famous of American +authors I would like to possess your autograph." + +Each recipient of such requests has of course his own way of responding. +Mr. Whittier used to be obliging; Mr. Longfellow politic; Mr. Emerson, +always philosophical, dreamily confiscated the postage stamps. + +Time was when the collector contented himself with a signature on a +card; but that, I am told, no longer satisfies. He must have a letter +addressed to him personally--"on any subject you please," as an immature +scribe lately suggested to an acquaintance of mine. The ingenuous +youth purposed to flourish a letter in the faces of his less fortunate +competitors, in order to show them that he was on familiar terms with +the celebrated So-and-So. This or a kindred motive is the spur to many +a collector. The stratagems he employs to compass his end are +inexhaustible. He drops you an off-hand note to inquire in what year you +first published your beautiful poem entitled "A Psalm of Life." If you +are a simple soul, you hasten to assure him that you are not the author +of that poem, which he must have confused with your "Rime of the +Ancient Mariner"--and there you are. Another expedient is to ask if your +father's middle name was not Hierophilus. Now, your father has probably +been dead many years, and as perhaps he was not a public man in his day, +you are naturally touched that any one should have interest in him after +this long flight of time. In the innocence of your heart you reply by +the next mail that your father's middle name was not Hierophilus, but +Epaminondas--and there you are again. It is humiliating to be caught +swinging, like a simian ancestor, on a branch of one's genealogical +tree. + +Some morning you find beside your plate at breakfast an imposing +parchment with a great gold seal in the upper left-hand corner. This +document--I am relating an actual occurrence--announces with a flourish +that you have unanimously been elected an honorary member of The +Kalamazoo International Literary Association. Possibly the honor does +not take away your respiration; but you are bound by courtesy to make +an acknowledgment, and you express your insincere thanks to the obliging +secretary of a literary organization which does not exist anywhere on +earth. + +A scheme of lighter creative touch is that of the correspondent who +advises you that he is replenishing his library and desires a detailed +list of your works, with the respective dates of their first issue, +price, style of binding, etc. A bibliophile, you say to yourself. These +interrogations should of course have been addressed to your publisher; +but they are addressed to you, with the stereotyped "thanks in advance." +The natural inference is that the correspondent, who writes in a brisk +commercial vein, wishes to fill out his collection of your books, or, +possibly, to treat himself to a complete set in full crushed Levant. +Eight or ten months later this individual, having forgotten (or hoping +you will not remember) that he has already demanded a chronological list +of your writings, forwards another application couched in the self-same +words. The length of time it takes him to "replenish" his library (with +your books) strikes you as pathetic. You cannot control your emotions +sufficiently to pen a reply. From a purely literary point of view this +gentleman cares nothing whatever for your holograph; from a mercantile +point of view he cares greatly and likes to obtain duplicate specimens, +which he disposes of to dealers in such frail merchandise. + +The pseudo-journalist who is engaged in preparing a critical and +biographical sketch of you, and wants to incorporate, if possible, some +slight hitherto unnoted event in your life--a signed photograph and +a copy of your bookplate are here in order--is also a character which +periodically appears upon the scene. In this little Comedy of Deceptions +there are as many players as men have fancies. + +A brother slave-of-the-lamp permits me to transfer this leaf from the +book of his experience: "Not long ago the postman brought me a letter of +a rather touching kind. The unknown writer, lately a widow, and plainly +a woman of refinement, had just suffered a new affliction in the loss +of her little girl. My correspondent asked me to copy for her ten or a +dozen lines from a poem which I had written years before on the death of +a child. The request was so shrinkingly put, with such an appealing +air of doubt as to its being heeded, that I immediately transcribed the +entire poem, a matter of a hundred lines or so, and sent it to her. I am +unable to this day to decide whether I was wholly hurt or wholly amused +when, two months afterward, I stumbled over my manuscript, with a neat +price attached to it, in a second-hand bookshop." + +Perhaps the most distressing feature of the whole business is the very +poor health which seems to prevail among autograph hunters. No other +class of persons in the community shows so large a percentage of +confirmed invalids. There certainly is some mysterious connection +between incipient spinal trouble and the collecting of autographs. Which +superinduces the other is a question for pathology. It is a fact that +one out of every eight applicants for a specimen of penmanship bases +his or her claim upon the possession of some vertebral disability which +leaves him or her incapable of doing anything but write to authors +for their autograph. Why this particular diversion should be the sole +resource remains undisclosed. But so it appears to be, and the appeal +to one's sympathy is most direct and persuasive. Personally, however, +I have my suspicions, suspicions that are shared by several men of +letters, who have come to regard this plea of invalidism, in the +majority of cases, as simply the variation of a very old and familiar +tune. I firmly believe that the health of autograph hunters, as a class, +is excellent. + + + + +ROBERT HERRICK + +I + +A LITTLE over three hundred years ago England had given to her a poet of +the very rarest lyrical quality, but she did not discover the fact for +more than a hundred and fifty years afterward. The poet himself was +aware of the fact at once, and stated it, perhaps not too modestly, in +countless quatrains and couplets, which were not read, or, if read, were +not much regarded at the moment. It has always been an incredulous world +in this matter. So many poets have announced their arrival, and not +arrived! + +Robert Herrick was descended in a direct line from an ancient family +in Lincolnshire, the Eyricks, a mentionable representative of which was +John Eyrick of Leicester, the poet's grandfather, admitted freeman +in 1535, and afterward twice made mayor of the town. John Eyrick or +Heyricke--he spelled his name recklessly--had five sons, the second of +which sought a career in London, where he became a goldsmith, and in +December, 1582, married Julian Stone, spinster, of Bedfordshire, a +sister to Anne, Lady Soame, the wife of Sir Stephen Soame. One of the +many children of this marriage was Robert Herrick. + +It is the common misfortune of the poet's biographers, though it was +the poet's own great good fortune, that the personal interviewer was an +unknown quantity at the period when Herrick played his part on the stage +of life. Of that performance, in its intimate aspects, we have only the +slightest record. + +Robert Herrick was born in Wood street, Cheapside, London, in 1591, and +baptized at St. Vedast's, Foster Lane, on August 24 of that year. He had +several brothers and sisters, with whom we shall not concern ourselves. +It would be idle to add the little we know about these persons to the +little we know about Herrick himself. He is a sufficient problem without +dragging in the rest of the family. + +When the future lyrist was fifteen months old his father, Nicholas +Herrick, made his will, and immediately fell out of an upper window. +Whether or not this fall was an intended sequence to the will, the high +almoner, Dr. Fletcher, Bishop of Bristol, promptly put in his claim to +the estate, "all goods and chattels of suicides" becoming his by law. +The circumstances were suspicious, though not conclusive, and the +good bishop, after long litigation, consented to refer the case to +arbitrators, who awarded him two hundred and twenty pounds, thus leaving +the question at issue--whether or not Herrick's death had been his own +premeditated act--still wrapped in its original mystery. This singular +law, which had the possible effect of inducing high almoners to +encourage suicide among well-to-do persons of the lower and middle +classes, was afterward rescinded. + +Nicholas Herrick did not leave his household destitute, for his estate +amounted to five thousand pounds, that is to say, twenty-five thousand +pounds in to-day's money; but there were many mouths to feed. The poet's +two uncles, Robert Herrick and William Herrick of Beaumanor, the +latter subsequently knighted (1) for his usefulness as jeweller and +money-lender to James I., were appointed guardians to the children. + + (1) Dr. Grosart, in his interesting and valuable Memorial + Introduction to Herrick's poems, quotes this curious item + from Win-wood's _Manorials of Affairs of State_: "On Easter + Tuesday [1605], one Mr. William Herrick, a goldsmith in + Cheapside, was Knighted for making a Hole in the great + Diamond the King cloth wear. The party little expected the + honour, but he did his work so well as won the King to an + extraordinary liking of it." + +Young Robert appears to have attended school in Westminster until his +fifteenth year, when he was apprenticed to Sir William, who had learned +the gentle art of goldsmith from his nephew's father. Though Robert's +indentures bound him for ten years, Sir William is supposed to have +offered no remonstrance when he was asked, long before that term +expired, to cancel the engagement and allow Robert to enter Cambridge, +which he did as fellow-commoner at St. John's College. At the end of two +years he transferred himself to Trinity Hall, with a view to economy and +the pursuit of the law--the two frequently go together. He received his +degree of B. A. in 1617, and his M. A. in 1620, having relinquished the +law for the arts. + +During this time he was assumed to be in receipt of a quarterly +allowance of ten pounds--a not illiberal provision, the pound being then +five times its present value; but as the payments were eccentric, the +master of arts was in recurrent distress. If this money came from his +own share of his father's estate, as seems likely, Herrick had cause for +complaint; if otherwise, the pith is taken out of his grievance. + +The Iliad of his financial woes at this juncture is told in a few +chance-preserved letters written to his "most careful uncle," as he +calls that evidently thrifty person. In one of these monotonous and +dreary epistles, which are signed "R. Hearick," the writer says: "The +essence of my writing is (as heretofore) to entreat you to paye for +my use to Mr. Arthour Johnson, bookseller, in Paule's Churchyarde, the +ordinarie sume of tenn pounds, and that with as much sceleritie as you +maye." He also indulges in the natural wish that his college bills +"had leaden wings and tortice feet." This was in 1617. The young man's +patrimony, whatever it may have been, had dwindled, and he confesses to +"many a throe and pinches of the purse." For the moment, at least, his +prospects were not flattering. + +Robert Herrick's means of livelihood, when in 1620 he quitted the +university and went up to London, are conjectural. It is clear that he +was not without some resources, since he did not starve to death on his +wits before he discovered a patron in the Earl of Pembroke. In the court +circle Herrick also unearthed humbler, but perhaps not less useful, +allies in the persons of Edward Norgate, clerk of the signet, and Master +John Crofts, cup-bearer to the king. Through the two New Year anthems, +honored by the music of Henry Lawes, his Majesty's organist at +Westminster, it is more than possible that Herrick was brought to the +personal notice of Charles and Henrietta Maria. All this was a promise +of success, but not success itself. It has been thought probable that +Herrick may have secured some minor office in the chapel at Whitehall. +That would accord with his subsequent appointment (September, 1627,) as +chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham's unfortunate expedition of the Isle +of Rhe. + +Precisely when Herrick was invested with holy orders is not +ascertainable. If one may draw an inference from his poems, the life he +led meanwhile was not such as his "most careful uncle" would have warmly +approved. The literary clubs and coffee-houses of the day were open to a +free-lance like young Herrick, some of whose blithe measures, passing +in manuscript from hand to hand, had brought him faintly to light as +a poet. The Dog and the Triple Tun were not places devoted to worship, +unless it were to the worship of "rare Ben Jonson," at whose feet +Herrick now sat, with the other blossoming young poets of the season. He +was a faithful disciple to the end, and addressed many loving lyrics to +the master, of which not the least graceful is His Prayer to Ben Jonson: + + When I a verse shall make, + Know I have praid thee + For old religion's sake, + Saint Ben, to aide me. + + Make the way smooth for me, + When I, thy Herrick, + Honouring thee, on my knee + Offer my lyric. + + Candles I'll give to thee, + And a new altar; + And thou, Saint Ben, shalt be + Writ in my Psalter. + +On September 30, 1629, Charles I., at the recommending of the Earl of +Exeter, presented Herrick with the vicarage of Dean Prior, near Totnes, +in Devonshire. Here he was destined to pass the next nineteen years of +his life among surroundings not congenial. For Herrick to be a mile away +from London stone was for Herrick to be in exile. Even with railway +and telegraphic interruptions from the outside world, the dullness of a +provincial English town of today is something formidable. The dullness +of a sequestered English hamlet in the early part of the seventeenth +century must have been appalling. One is dimly conscious of a belated +throb of sympathy for Robert Herrick. Yet, however discontented or +unhappy he may have been at first in that lonely vicarage, the world may +congratulate itself on the circumstances that stranded him there, far +from the distractions of the town, and with no other solace than his +Muse, for there it was he wrote the greater number of the poems which +were to make his fame. It is to this accidental banishment to Devon that +we owe the cluster of exquisite pieces descriptive of obsolete rural +manners and customs--the Christmas masks, the Twelfth-night mummeries, +the morris-dances, and the May-day festivals. + +The November following Herrick's appointment to the benefice was marked +by the death of his mother, who left him no heavier legacy than "a ringe +of twenty shillings." Perhaps this was an understood arrangement between +them; but it is to be observed that, though Herrick was a spendthrift in +epitaphs, he wasted no funeral lines on Julian Herrick. In the matter of +verse he dealt generously with his family down to the latest nephew. +One of his most charming and touching poems is entitled To His Dying +Brother, Master William Herrick, a posthumous son. There appear to +have been two brothers named William. The younger, who died early, is +supposed to be referred to here. + +The story of Herrick's existence at Dean Prior is as vague and bare of +detail as the rest of the narrative. His parochial duties must have +been irksome to him, and it is to be imagined that he wore his cassock +lightly. As a preparation for ecclesiastical life he forswore sack and +poetry; but presently he was with the Muse again, and his farewell to +sack was in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Herrick had probably accepted +the vicarship as he would have accepted a lieutenancy in a troop of +horse--with an eye to present emolument and future promotion. The +promotion never came, and the emolument was nearly as scant as that +of Goldsmith's parson, who considered himself "passing rich with forty +pounds a year"--a height of optimism beyond the reach of Herrick, with +his expensive town wants and habits. But fifty pounds--the salary of +his benefice--and possible perquisites in the way of marriage and burial +fees would enable him to live for the time being. It was better than a +possible nothing a year in London. + +Herrick's religious convictions were assuredly not deeper than those of +the average layman. Various writers have taken a different view of the +subject; but it is inconceivable that a clergyman with a fitting sense +of his function could have written certain of the poems which Herrick +afterward gave to the world--those astonishing epigrams upon his rustic +enemies, and those habitual bridal compliments which, among his personal +friends, must have added a terror to matrimony. Had he written only +in that vein, the posterity which he so often invoked with pathetic +confidence would not have greatly troubled itself about him. + +It cannot positively be asserted that all the verses in question relate +to the period of his incumbency, for none of his verse is dated, with +the exception of the Dialogue betwixt Horace and Lydia. The date of some +of the compositions may be arrived at by induction. The religious pieces +grouped under the title of Noble Numbers distinctly associate themselves +with Dean Prior, and have little other interest. Very few of them are +"born of the royal blood." They lack the inspiration and magic of his +secular poetry, and are frequently so fantastical and grotesque as to +stir a suspicion touching the absolute soundness of Herrick's mind at +all times. The lines in which the Supreme Being is assured that he may +read Herrick's poems without taking any tincture from their sinfulness +might have been written in a retreat for the unbalanced. "For +unconscious impiety," remarks Mr. Edmund Gosse, (1) "this rivals the +famous passage in which Robert Montgomery exhorted God to 'pause and +think.'" Elsewhere, in an apostrophe to "Heaven," Herrick says: + + Let mercy be + So kind to set me free, + And I will straight + Come in, or force the gate. + +In any event, the poet did not purpose to be left out! + + (1) In _Seventeenth-Century Studies_. and the general + absence of arrangement in the "Hesperides," Dr. Grosart + advances the theory that the printers exercised arbitrary + authority on these points. Dr. Grosart assumes that Herrick + kept the epigrams and personal tributes in manuscript books + separate from the rest of the work, which would have made a + too slender volume by itself, and on the plea of this + slender-ness was induced to trust the two collections to the + publisher, "whereupon he or some un-skilled subordinate + proceeded to intermix these additions with the others. That + the poet him-self had nothing to do with the arrangement or + disarrangement lies on the surface." This is an amiable + supposition, but merely a supposition. + +Relative to the inclusion of unworthy pieces, Herrick personally placed +the "copy" in the hands of John Williams and Francis Eglesfield, and +if he were over-persuaded to allow them to print unfit verses, and to +observe no method whatever in the contents of the book, the discredit is +none the less his. It is charitable to believe that Herrick's coarseness +was not the coarseness of the man, but of the time, and that he followed +the fashion _malgre lui_. With regard to the fairy poems, they certainly +should have been given in sequence; but if there are careless printers, +there are also authors who are careless in the arrangement of their +manuscript, a kind of task, moreover, in which Herrick was wholly +unpractised, and might easily have made mistakes. The "Hesperides" was +his sole publication. + +Herrick was now thirty-eight years of age. Of his personal appearance +at this time we have no description. The portrait of him prefixed to the +original edition of his works belongs to a much later moment. Whether or +not the bovine features in Marshall's engraving are a libel on the poet, +it is to be regretted that oblivion has not laid its erasing finger on +that singularly unpleasant counterfeit presentment. It is interesting to +note that this same Marshall engraved the head of Milton for the +first collection of his miscellaneous poems--the precious 1645 volume +containing Il Penseroso, Lycidas, Comus, etc. The plate gave great +offense to the serious-minded young Milton, not only because it +represented him as an elderly person, but because of certain minute +figures of peasant lads and lassies who are very indistinctly seen +dancing frivolously under the trees in the background. Herrick had more +reason to protest. The aggressive face bestowed upon him by the artist +lends a tone of veracity to the tradition that the vicar occasionally +hurled the manuscript of his sermon at the heads of his drowsy +parishioners, accompanying the missive with pregnant remarks. He has the +aspect of one meditating assault and battery. + +To offset the picture there is much indirect testimony to the amiability +of the man, aside from the evidence furnished by his own writings. +He exhibits a fine trait in the poem on the Bishop of Lincoln's +imprisonment--a poem full of deference and tenderness for a person +who had evidently injured the writer, probably by opposing him in some +affair of church preferment. Anthony Wood says that Herrick "became much +beloved by the gentry in these parts for his florid and witty (wise) +discourses." It appears that he was fond of animals, and had a pet +spaniel called Tracy, which did not get away without a couplet attached +to him: + + Now thou art dead, no eye shall ever see + For shape and service spaniell like to thee. + +Among the exile's chance acquaintances was a sparrow, whose elegy he +also sings, comparing the bird to Lesbia's sparrow, much to the latter's +disadvantage. All of Herrick's geese were swans. On the authority of +Dorothy King, the daughter of a woman who served Herrick's successor at +Dean Prior in 1674, we are told that the poet kept a pig, which he had +taught to drink out of a tankard--a kind of instruction he was admirably +qualified to impart. Dorothy was in her ninety-ninth year when she +communicated this fact to Mr. Barron Field, the author of the paper on +Herrick published in the "Quarterly Review" for August, 1810, and in the +Boston edition (1) of the "Hesperides" attributed to Southey. + + (1) The Biographical Notice prefacing this volume of The + British Poets is a remarkable production, grammatically and + chronologi-cally. On page 7 the writer speaks of Herrick as + living "in habits of intimacy" with Ben Jonson in 1648. If + that was the case, Her-rick must have taken up his quarters + in Westminster Abbey, for Jonson had been dead eleven years. + +What else do we know of the vicar? A very favorite theme with Herrick +was Herrick. Scattered through his book are no fewer than twenty-five +pieces entitled On Himself, not to mention numberless autobiographical +hints under other captions. They are merely hints, throwing casual +side-lights on his likes and dislikes, and illuminating his vanity. A +whimsical personage without any very definite outlines might be evolved +from these fragments. I picture him as a sort of Samuel Pepys, with +perhaps less quaintness, and the poetical temperament added. Like the +prince of gossips, too, he somehow gets at your affections. In one place +Herrick laments the threatened failure of his eyesight (quite in what +would have been Pepys's manner had Pepys written verse), and in another +place he tells us of the loss of a finger. The quatrain treating of this +latter catastrophe is as fantastic as some of Dr. Donne's _concetti_: + + One of the five straight branches of my hand + Is lopt already, and the rest but stand + Expecting when to fall, which soon will be: + First dies the leafe, the bough next, next the tree. + +With all his great show of candor Herrick really reveals as little of +himself as ever poet did. One thing, however, is manifest--he understood +and loved music. None but a lover could have said: + + The mellow touch of musick most doth wound + The soule when it doth rather sigh than sound. + +Or this to Julia: + + So smooth, so sweet, so silvery is thy voice, + As could they hear, the damn'd would make no noise, + But listen to thee walking in thy chamber + Melting melodious words to lutes of amber. + + . . . Then let me lye + Entranc'd, and lost confusedly; + And by thy musick stricken mute, + Die, and be turn'd into a lute. + +Herrick never married. His modest Devonshire establishment was managed +by a maidservant named Prudence Baldwin. "Fate likes fine names," says +Lowell. That of Herrick's maid-of-all-work was certainly a happy meeting +of gentle vowels and consonants, and has had the good fortune to be +embalmed in the amber of what may be called a joyous little threnody: + + In this little urne is laid + Prewdence Baldwin, once my maid; + From whose happy spark here let + Spring the purple violet. + +Herrick addressed a number of poems to her before her death, which +seems to have deeply touched him in his loneliness. We shall not allow a +pleasing illusion to be disturbed by the flippancy of an old writer who +says that "Prue was but indifferently qualified to be a tenth muse." She +was a faithful handmaid, and had the merit of causing Herrick in this +octave to strike a note of sincerity not usual with him: + + These summer birds did with thy master stay + The times of warmth, but then they flew away, + Leaving their poet, being now grown old, + Expos'd to all the coming winter's cold. + But thou, kind Prew, didst with my fates abide + As well the winter's as the summer's tide: + For which thy love, live with thy master here + Not two, but all the seasons of the year. + +Thus much have I done for thy memory, Mistress Prew! + +In spite of Herrick's disparagement of Deanbourn, which he calls "a rude +river," and his characterization of Devon folk as "a people currish, +churlish as the seas," the fullest and pleasantest days of his life +were probably spent at Dean Prior. He was not unmindful meanwhile of the +gathering political storm that was to shake England to its foundations. +How anxiously, in his solitude, he watched the course of events, +is attested by many of his poems. This solitude was not without its +compensation. "I confess," he says, + + I ne'er invented such + Ennobled numbers for the presse + Than where I loath'd so much. + +A man is never wholly unhappy when he is writing verses. Herrick was +firmly convinced that each new lyric was a stone added to the pillar of +his fame, and perhaps his sense of relief was tinged with indefinable +regret when he found himself suddenly deprived of his benefice. The +integrity of some of his royalistic poems is doubtful; but he was not +given the benefit of the doubt by the Long Parliament, which ejected the +panegyrist of young Prince Charles from the vicarage of Dean Prior, +and installed in his place the venerable John Syms, a gentleman with +pronounced Cromwellian views. + +Herrick metaphorically snapped his fingers at the Puritans, discarded +his clerical habiliments, and hastened to London to pick up such as were +left of the gay-colored threads of his old experience there. Once more +he would drink sack at the Triple Tun, once more he would breathe the +air breathed by such poets and wits as Cotton, Denham, Shirley, Selden, +and the rest. "Yes, by Saint Anne! and ginger shall be hot I' the mouth +too." In the gladness of getting back "from the dull confines of the +drooping west," he writes a glowing apostrophe to London--that "stony +stepmother to poets." He claims to be a free-born Roman, and is proud +to find himself a citizen again. According to his earlier biographers, +Herrick had much ado not to starve in that same longed-for London, and +fell into great misery; but Dr. Grosart disputes this, arguing, with +justness, that Herrick's family, which was wealthy and influential, +would not have allowed him to come to abject want. With his royalistic +tendencies he may not have breathed quite freely in the atmosphere of +the Commonwealth, and no doubt many tribulations fell to his lot, but +among them was not poverty. + +The poet was now engaged in preparing his works for the press, and a few +weeks following his return to London they were issued in a single volume +with the title "Hesperides; or, The Works both Humane and Divine of +Robert Herrick, Esq." + +The time was not ready for him. A new era had dawned--the era of the +commonplace. The interval was come when Shakespeare himself was to lie +in a kind of twilight. Herrick was in spirit an Elizabethan, and had +strayed by chance into an artificial and prosaic age--a sylvan singing +creature alighting on an alien planet. "He was too natural," says Mr. +Palgrave in his Chrysomela, "too purely poetical; he had not the learned +polish, the political allusion, the tone of the city, the didactic turn, +which were then and onward demanded from poetry." Yet it is strange that +a public which had a relish for Edmund Waller should neglect a poet who +was fifty times finer than Waller in his own specialty. What poet then, +or in the half-century that followed the Restoration, could have written +Corinna's Going a-Maying, or approached in kind the ineffable grace and +perfection to be found in a score of Herrick's lyrics? + +The "Hesperides" was received with chilling indifference. None of +Herrick's great contemporaries has left a consecrating word concerning +it. The book was not reprinted during the author's lifetime, and for +more than a century after his death Herrick was virtually unread. In +1796 the "Gentleman's Magazine" copied a few of the poems, and two years +later Dr. Nathan Drake published in his "Literary Hours" three critical +papers on the poet, with specimens of his writings. Dr. Johnson omitted +him from the "Lives of the Poets," though space was found for half a +score of poetasters whose names are to be found nowhere else. In 1810 +Dr. Nott, a physician of Bristol, issued a small volume of selections. +It was not until 1823 that Herrick was reprinted in full. It remained +for the taste of our own day to multiply editions of him. + +In order to set the seal to Herrick's fame, it is now only needful that +some wiseacre should attribute the authorship of the poems to some man +who could not possibly have written a line of them. The opportunity +presents attractions that ought to be irresistible. Excepting a handful +of Herrick's college letters there is no scrap of his manuscript extant; +the men who drank and jested with the poet at the Dog or the Triple Tun +make no reference to him; (1) and in the wide parenthesis formed by his +birth and death we find as little tangible incident as is discoverable +in the briefer span of Shakespeare's fifty-two years. Here is material +for profundity and ciphers! + + + (1) With the single exception of the writer of some verses + in the _Musarum Deliciae_ (1656) who mentions + + That old sack + Young Herrick took to entertain + The Muses in a sprightly vein. + +Herrick's second sojourn in London covered the period between 1648 +and 1662, curing which interim he fades from sight, excepting for +the instant when he is publishing his book. If he engaged in further +literary work there are no evidences of it beyond one contribution to +the "Lacrymae Musarum" in 1649. + +He seems to have had lodgings, for a while at least, in St. Anne's, +Westminster. With the court in exile and the grim Roundheads seated in +the seats of the mighty, it was no longer the merry London of his early +manhood. Time and war had thinned the ranks of friends; in the old +haunts the old familiar faces were wanting. Ben Jonson was dead, Waller +banished, and many another comrade "in disgrace with fortune and men's +eyes." As Herrick walked through crowded Cheapside or along the dingy +river-bank in those years, his thought must have turned more than once +to the little vicarage in Devonshire, and lingered tenderly. + +On the accession of Charles II. a favorable change of wind wafted +Herrick back to his former moorings at Dean Prior, the obnoxious +Syms having been turned adrift. This occurred on August 24, 1662, the +seventy-first anniversary of the poet's baptism. Of Herrick's movements +after that, tradition does not furnish even the shadow of an outline. +The only notable event concerning him is recorded twelve years later +in the parish register: "Robert Herrick, vicker, was buried ye 15th day +October, 1674." He was eighty-three years old. The location of his grave +is unknown. In 1857 a monument to his memory was erected in Dean Church. +And this is all. + + + +II + +THE details that have come down to us touching Herrick's private life +are as meagre as if he had been a Marlowe or a Shakespeare. But were +they as ample as could be desired they would still be unimportant +compared with the single fact that in 1648 he gave to the world +his "Hesperides." The environments of the man were accidental and +transitory. The significant part of him we have, and that is enduring so +long as wit, fancy, and melodious numbers hold a charm for mankind. + +A fine thing incomparably said instantly becomes familiar, and has +henceforth a sort of dateless excellence. Though it may have been said +three hundred years ago, it is as modern as yesterday; though it may +have been said yesterday, it has the trick of seeming to have been +always in our keeping. This quality of remoteness and nearness belongs, +in a striking degree, to Herrick's poems. They are as novel to-day as +they were on the lips of a choice few of his contemporaries, who, in +reading them in their freshness, must surely have been aware here and +there of the ageless grace of old idyllic poets dead and gone. + +Herrick was the bearer of no heavy message to the world, and such +message as he had he was apparently in no hurry to deliver. On this +point he somewhere says: + + Let others to the printing presse run fast; + Since after death comes glory, I 'll not haste. + +He had need of his patience, for he was long detained on the road by +many of those obstacles that waylay poets on their journeys to the +printer. + +Herrick was nearly sixty years old when he published the "Hesperides." +It was, I repeat, no heavy message, and the bearer was left an +unconscionable time to cool his heels in the antechamber. Though his +pieces had been set to music by such composers as Lawes, Ramsay, and +Laniers, and his court poems had naturally won favor with the Cavalier +party, Herrick cut but a small figure at the side of several of his +rhyming contemporaries who are now forgotten. It sometimes happens +that the light love-song, reaching few or no ears at its first singing, +outlasts the seemingly more prosperous ode which, dealing with some +passing phase of thought, social or political, gains the instant +applause of the multitude. In most cases the timely ode is somehow +apt to fade with the circumstance that inspired it, and becomes the +yesterday's editorial of literature. Oblivion likes especially to get +hold of occasional poems. That makes it hard for feeble poets laureate. + +Mr. Henry James once characterized Alphonse Daudet as "a great little +novelist." Robert Herrick is a great little poet. The brevity of his +poems, for he wrote nothing _de longue haleine_, would place him among +the minor singers; his workmanship places him among the masters. The +Herricks were not a family of goldsmiths and lapidaries for nothing. The +accurate touch of the artificer in jewels and costly metals was one +of the gifts transmitted to Robert Herrick. Much of his work is as +exquisite and precise as the chasing on a dagger-hilt by Cellini; the +line has nearly always that vine-like fluency which seems impromptu, +and is never the result of anything but austere labor. The critic who, +borrowing Milton's words, described these carefully wrought poems as +"wood-notes wild" showed a singular lapse of penetration. They are full +of subtle simplicity. Here we come across a stanza as severely cut as an +antique cameo--the stanza, for instance, in which the poet speaks of his +lady-love's "winter face"--and there a couplet that breaks into unfading +daffodils and violets. The art, though invisible, is always there. His +amatory songs and catches are such poetry as Orlando would have liked to +hang on the boughs in the forest of Arden. None of the work is hastily +done, not even that portion of it we could wish had not been done at +all. Be the motive grave or gay, it is given that faultlessness of form +which distinguishes everything in literature that has survived its +own period. There is no such thing as "form" alone; it is only the +close-grained material that takes the highest finish. The structure +of Herrick's verse, like that of Blake, is simple to the verge of +innocence. Such rhythmic intricacies as those of Shelley, Tennyson, and +Swinburne he never dreamed of. But his manner has this perfection: it +fits his matter as the cup of the acorn fits its meat. + +Of passion, in the deeper sense, Herrick has little or none. Here are +no "tears from the depth of some divine despair," no probings into the +tragic heart of man, no insight that goes much farther than the pathos +of a cowslip on a maiden's grave. The tendrils of his verse reach up to +the light, and love the warmer side of the garden wall. But the reader +who does not detect the seriousness under the lightness misreads +Herrick. Nearly all true poets have been wholesome and joyous singers. +A pessimistic poet, like the poisonous ivy, is one of nature's sarcasms. +In his own bright pastoral way Herrick must always remain unexcelled. +His limitations are certainly narrow, but they leave him in the +sunshine. Neither in his thought nor in his utterance is there any +complexity; both are as pellucid as a woodland pond, content to +duplicate the osiers and ferns, and, by chance, the face of a girl +straying near its crystal. His is no troubled stream in which large +trout are caught. He must be accepted on his own terms. + +The greatest poets have, with rare exceptions, been the most indebted +to their predecessors or to their contemporaries. It has wittily been +remarked that only mediocrity is ever wholly original. Impressionability +is one of the conditions of the creative faculty: the sensitive mind is +the only mind that invents. What the poet reads, sees, and feels, goes +into his blood, and becomes an ingredient of his originality. The +color of his thought instinctively blends itself with the color of its +affinities. A writer's style, if it have distinction, is the outcome of +a hundred styles. + +Though a generous borrower of the ancients, Herrick appears to have been +exceptionally free from the influence of contemporary minds. Here and +there in his work are traces of his beloved Ben Jonson, or fleeting +impressions of Fletcher, and in one instance a direct infringement +on Suckling; but the sum of Herrick's obligations of this sort is +inconsiderable. + +This indifference to other writers of his time, this insularity, was +doubtless his loss. The more exalted imagination of Vaughan or Marvell +or Herbert might have taught him a deeper note than he sounded in his +purely devotional poems. Milton, of course, moved in a sphere apart. +Shakespeare, whose personality still haunted the clubs and taverns which +Herrick frequented on his first going up to London, failed to lay any +appreciable spell upon him. That great name, moreover, is a jewel which +finds no setting in Herrick's rhyme. His general reticence relative to +brother poets is extremely curious when we reflect on his penchant for +addressing four-line epics to this or that individual. They were, in +the main, obscure individuals, whose identity is scarcely worth +establishing. His London life, at two different periods, brought him +into contact with many of the celebrities of the day; but his verse has +helped to confer immortality on very few of them. That his verse had the +secret of conferring immortality was one of his unshaken convictions. +Shakespeare had not a finer confidence when he wrote, + + Not marble nor the gilded monuments + Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme, + +than has Herrick whenever he speaks of his own poetry, and he is not by +any means backward in speaking of it. It was the breath of his nostrils. +Without his Muse those nineteen years in that dull, secluded Devonshire +village would have been unendurable. + +His poetry has the value and the defect of that seclusion. In spite, +however, of his contracted horizon there is great variety in Herrick's +themes. Their scope cannot be stated so happily as he has stated it: + + I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers, + Of April, May, of June, and July flowers; + I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, + Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes; + I write of Youth, of Love, and have access + By these to sing of cleanly wantonness; + I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by piece + Of balm, of oil, of spice and ambergris; + I sing of times trans-shifting, and I write + How roses first came red and lilies white; + I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing + The Court of Mab, and of the Fairy King; + I write of Hell; I sing (and ever shall) + Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all. + +Never was there so pretty a table of contents! When you open his book +the breath of the English rural year fans your cheek; the pages seem to +exhale wildwood and meadow smells, as if sprigs of tansy and lavender +had been shut up in the volume and forgotten. One has a sense of +hawthorn hedges and wide-spreading oaks, of open lead-set lattices half +hidden with honeysuckle; and distant voices of the haymakers, returning +home in the rosy afterglow, fall dreamily on one's ear, as sounds should +fall when fancy listens. There is no English poet so thoroughly English +as Herrick. He painted the country life of his own time as no other has +painted it at any time. + +It is to be remarked that the majority of English poets regarded as +national have sought their chief inspiration in almost every land and +period excepting their own. Shakespeare went to Italy, Denmark, Greece, +Egypt, and to many a hitherto unfooted region of the imagination, for +plot and character. It was not Whitehall Garden, but the Garden of Eden +and the celestial spaces, that lured Milton. It is the Ode on a Grecian +Urn, The Eve of St. Agnes, and the noble fragment of Hyperion that +have given Keats his spacious niche in the gallery of England's poets. +Shelley's two masterpieces, Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci, belong +respectively to Greece and Italy. Browning's The Ring and the Book is +Italian; Tennyson wandered to the land of myth for the Idylls of the +King, and Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum--a narrative poem second in +dignity to none produced in the nineteenth century--is a Persian story. +But Herrick's "golden apples" sprang from the soil in his own day, and +reddened in the mist and sunshine of his native island. + +Even the fairy poems, which must be classed by themselves, are not +wanting in local flavor. Herrick's fairy world is an immeasurable +distance from that of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Puck and Titania +are of finer breath than Herrick's little folk, who may be said to have +Devonshire manners and to live in a miniature England of their own. Like +the magician who summons them from nowhere, they are fond of color and +perfume and substantial feasts, and indulge in heavy draughts--from the +cups of morning-glories. In the tiny sphere they inhabit everything is +marvelously adapted to their requirement; nothing is out of proportion +or out of perspective. The elves are a strictly religious people in +their winsome way, "part pagan, part papistical;" they have their +pardons and indulgences, their psalters and chapels, and + + An apple's-core is hung up dried, + With rattling kernels, which is rung + To call to Morn and Even-song; + +and very conveniently, + + Hard by, I' th' shell of half a nut, + The Holy-water there is put. + +It is all delightfully naive and fanciful, this elfin-world, where the +impossible does not strike one as incongruous, and the England of 1648 +seems never very far away. + +It is only among the apparently unpremeditated lyrical flights of the +Elizabethan dramatists that one meets with anything like the lilt and +liquid flow of Herrick's songs. While in no degree Shakespearian echoes, +there are epithalamia and dirges of his that might properly have fallen +from the lips of Posthumus in "Cymbeline." This delicate epicede would +have fitted Imogen: + + Here a solemne fast we keepe + While all beauty lyes asleepe; + Husht be all things; no noyse here + But the toning of a teare, + Or a sigh of such as bring + Cowslips for her covering. + +Many of the pieces are purely dramatic in essence; the Mad Maid's Song, +for example. The lyrist may speak in character, like the dramatist. A +poet's lyrics may be, as most of Browning's are, just so many +_dramatis personae_. "Enter a Song singing" is the stage-direction in a +seventeenth-century play whose name escapes me. The sentiment dramatized +in a lyric is not necessarily a personal expression. In one of his +couplets Herrick neatly denies that his more mercurial utterances are +intended presentations of himself: + + To his Book's end this last line he'd have placed-- + Jocund his Muse was, but his Life was chaste. + +In point of fact he was a whole group of imaginary lovers in one. +Silvia, Anthea, Electra, Perilla, Perenna, and the rest of those lively +ladies ending in _a_, were doubtless, for the most part, but airy +phantoms dancing--as they should not have danced--through the brain of +a sentimental old bachelor who happened to be a vicar of the Church +of England. Even with his overplus of heart it would have been quite +impossible for him to have had enough to go round had there been so +numerous actual demands upon it. + +Thus much may be conceded to Herrick's verse: at its best it has wings +that carry it nearly as close to heaven's gate as any of Shakespeare's +lark-like interludes. The brevity of the poems and their uniform +smoothness sometimes produce the effect of monotony. The crowded +richness of the line advises a desultory reading. But one must go back +to them again and again. They bewitch the memory, having once caught +it, and insist on saying themselves over and over. Among the poets of +England the author of the "Hesperides" remains, and is likely to remain, +unique. As Shakespeare stands alone in his vast domain, so Herrick +stands alone in his scanty plot of ground. + + +"Shine, Poet! in thy place, and be content." + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Ponkapog Papers, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PONKAPOG PAPERS *** + +***** This file should be named 625.txt or 625.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/6/2/625/ + +Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +PONKAPOG PAPERS + +BY THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH + + + + +TO FRANCIS BARTLETT + + + +THESE miscellaneous notes and +essays are called <i>Ponkapog Papers</i> +not simply because they chanced, for +the most part, to be written within the +limits of the old Indian Reservation, +but, rather, because there is something +typical of their unpretentiousness in the +modesty with which Ponkapog assumes +to being even a village. The little +Massachusetts settlement, nestled under +the wing of the Blue Hills, has no illu- +sions concerning itself, never mistakes +the cackle of the bourg for the sound +that echoes round the world, and no +more thinks of rivalling great centres of +human activity than these slight papers +dream of inviting comparison between +themselves and important pieces of +literature. Therefore there seems some- +thing especially appropriate in the geo- +graphical title selected, and if the au- +thor's choice of name need further +excuse, it is to be found in the alluring +alliteration lying ready at his hand. + +REDMAN FARM, <i>Ponkapog</i>, +1903. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK + + + +ASIDES + + TOM FOLIO + + FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES + + A NOTE ON "L'AIGLON" + + PLOT AND CHARACTER + + THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE + + LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORNWALL + + DECORATION DAY + + WRITERS AND TALKERS + + ON EARLY RISING + + UN POETE MANQUE + + THE MALE COSTUME OF THE PERIOD + + ON A CERTAIN AFFECTATION + + WISHMAKERS' TOWN + + HISTORICAL NOVELS + + POOR YORICK + + THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER + + + +ROBERT HERRICK + + + + + +LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK + + + + +IN his Memoirs, Kropotkin states the singular +fact that the natives of the Malayan Archipel- +ago have an idea that something is extracted from +them when their likenesses are taken by photo- +graphy. Here is the motive for a fantastic short +story, in which the hero--an author in vogue +or a popular actor--might be depicted as having +all his good qualities gradually photographed +out of him. This could well be the result of +too prolonged indulgence in the effort to "look +natural." First the man loses his charming sim- +plicity; then he begins to pose in intellectual +attitudes, with finger on brow; then he becomes +morbidly self-conscious, and finally ends in an +asylum for incurable egotists. His death might +be brought about by a cold caught in going out +bareheaded, there being, for the moment, no hat +in the market of sufficient circumference to meet +his enlarged requirement. + +THE evening we dropped anchor in the Bay +of Yedo the moon was hanging directly over +Yokohama. It was a mother-of-pearl moon, +and might have been manufactured by any of +the delicate artisans in the Hanchodori quarter. +It impressed one as being a very good imitation, +but nothing more. Nammikawa, the cloisonne- +worker at Tokio, could have made a better +moon. + +I NOTICE the announcement of a new edition +of "The Two First Centuries of Florentine +Literature," by Professor Pasquale Villari. I +am not acquainted with the work in question, +but I trust that Professor Villari makes it plain +to the reader how both centuries happened to be +first. + +THE walking delegates of a higher civiliza- +tion, who have nothing to divide, look upon the +notion of property as a purely artificial creation +of human society. According to these advanced +philosophers, the time will come when no man +shall be allowed to call anything his. The bene- +ficent law which takes away an author's rights +in his own books just at the period when old +age is creeping upon him seems to me a hand- +some stride toward the longed-for millennium. + +SAVE US from our friends--our enemies we +can guard against. The well-meaning rector of +the little parish of Woodgates, England, and +several of Robert Browning's local admirers +have recently busied themselves in erecting a +tablet to the memory of "the first known fore- +father of the poet." This lately turned up an- +cestor, who does not date very far back, was also +named Robert Browning, and is described on +the mural marble as "formerly footman and +butler to Sir John Bankes of Corfe Castle." +Now, Robert Browning the poet had as good +right as Abou Ben Adhem himself to ask to be +placed on the list of those who love their fellow +men; but if the poet could have been consulted +in the matter he probably would have preferred +not to have that particular footman exhumed. +However, it is an ill wind that blows nobody +good. Sir John Bankes would scarcely have +been heard of in our young century if it had +not been for his footman. As Robert stood day +by day, sleek and solemn, behind his master's +chair in Corfe Castle, how little it entered into +the head of Sir John that his highly respectable +name would be served up to posterity--like a +cold relish--by his own butler! By Robert! + +IN the east-side slums of New York, some- +where in the picturesque Bowery district, +stretches a malodorous little street wholly +given over to long-bearded, bird-beaked mer- +chants of ready-made and second-hand clothing. +The contents of the dingy shops seem to have +revolted, and rushed pell-mell out of doors, and +taken possession of the sidewalk. One could +fancy that the rebellion had been quelled at this +point, and that those ghastly rows of complete +suits strung up on either side of the doorways +were the bodies of the seditious ringleaders. +But as you approach these limp figures, each +dangling and gyrating on its cord in a most +suggestive fashion, you notice, pinned to the +lapel of a coat here and there, a strip of paper +announcing the very low price at which you +may become the happy possessor. That dis- +sipates the illusion. + +POLONIUS, in the play, gets killed--and not +any too soon. If it only were practicable to kill +him in real life! A story--to be called The +Passing of Polonius--in which a king issues a +decree condemning to death every long-winded, +didactic person in the kingdom, irrespective of +rank, and is himself instantly arrested and de- +capitated. The man who suspects his own +tediousness is yet to be born. + +WHENEVER I take up Emerson's poems I find +myself turning automatically to his Bacchus. +Elsewhere, in detachable passages embedded in +mediocre verse, he rises for a moment to heights +not reached by any other of our poets; but +Bacchus is in the grand style throughout. Its tex- +ture can bear comparison with the world's best +in this kind. In imaginative quality and austere +richness of diction what other verse of our +period approaches it? The day Emerson wrote +Bacchus he had in him, as Michael Drayton said +of Marlowe, "those brave translunary things +that the first poets had." + + +IMAGINE all human beings swept off the face of +the earth, excepting one man. Imagine this +man in some vast city, New York or London. +Imagine him on the third or fourth day of his +solitude sitting in a house and hearing a ring +at the door-bell! + +No man has ever yet succeeded in painting an +honest portrait of himself in an autobiography, +however sedulously he may have set to work +about it. In spite of his candid purpose he +omits necessary touches and adds superfluous +ones. At times he cannot help draping his +thought, and the least shred of drapery becomes +a disguise. It is only the diarist who accom- +plishes the feat of self-portraiture, and he, with- +out any such end in view, does it unconsciously. +A man cannot keep a daily record of his com- +ings and goings and the little items that make +up the sum of his life, and not inadvertently +betray himself at every turn. He lays bare his +heart with a candor not possible to the self- +consciousness that inevitably colors premeditated +revelation. While Pepys was filling those small +octavo pages with his perplexing cipher he +never once suspected that he was adding a pho- +tographic portrait of himself to the world's gal- +lery of immortals. We are more intimately +acquainted with Mr. Samuel Pepys, the inner +man--his little meannesses and his large gener- +osities--then we are with half the persons we +call our dear friends. + +THE young girl in my story is to be as sensitive +to praise as a prism is to light. Whenever any- +body praises her she breaks into colors. + +IN the process of dusting my study, the other +morning, the maid replaced an engraving of +Philip II. of Spain up-side down on the man- +tel-shelf, and his majesty has remained in that +undignified posture ever since. I have no dis- +position to come to his aid. My abhorrence of +the wretch is as hearty as if he had not been +dead and--otherwise provided for these last +three hundred years. Bloody Mary of England +was nearly as merciless, but she was sincere and +uncompromising in her extirpation of heretics. + +Philip II., whose one recorded hearty laugh was +occasioned by the news of the St. Bartholomew +massacre, could mask his fanaticism or drop it +for the time being, when it seemed politic to do +so. Queen Mary was a maniac; but the suc- +cessor of Torquemada was the incarnation of +cruelty pure and simple, and I have a mind to +let my counterfeit presentment of him stand on +its head for the rest of its natural life. I cor- +dially dislike several persons, but I hate no- +body, living or dead, excepting Philip II. of +Spain. He appears to give me as much trouble +as Charles I. gave the amiable Mr. Dick. + +AMONG the delightful men and women whom +you are certain to meet at an English country +house there is generally one guest who is sup- +posed to be preternaturally clever and amusing +--"so very droll, don't you know." He recites +things, tells stories in costermonger dialect, and +mimics public characters. He is a type of a +class, and I take him to be one of the elemen- +tary forms of animal life, like the acalephae. +His presence is capable of adding a gloom to +an undertaker's establishment. The last time I +fell in with him was on a coaching trip through +Devon, and in spite of what I have said I must +confess to receiving an instant of entertainment +at his hands. He was delivering a little dis- +sertation on "the English and American lan- +guages." As there were two Americans on the +back seat--it seems we term ourselves "Amur- +ricans"--his choice of subject was full of tact. +It was exhilarating to get a lesson in pronuncia- +tion from a gentleman who said <i>boult</i> for bolt, +called St. John <i>Sin' Jun</i>, and did not know +how to pronounce the beautiful name of his +own college at Oxford. Fancy a perfectly sober +man saying <i>Maudlin</i> for Magdalen! Perhaps +the purest English spoken is that of the English +folk who have resided abroad ever since the +Elizabethan period, or thereabouts. + +EVERY one has a bookplate these days, and the +collectors are after it. The fool and his book- +plate are soon parted. To distribute one's <i>ex- +libris</i> is inanely to destroy the only significance +it has, that of indicating the past or present +ownership of the volume in which it is placed. + +WHEN an Englishman is not highly imaginative +he is apt to be the most matter-of-fact of mortals. +He is rarely imaginative, and seldom has an alert +sense of humor. Yet England has produced +the finest of humorists and the greatest of +poets. The humor and imagination which +are diffused through other peoples concentrate +themselves from time to time in individual +Englishmen. + +THIS is a page of autobiography, though not +written in the first person: Many years ago a +noted Boston publisher used to keep a large +memorandum-book on a table in his personal +office. The volume always lay open, and was in +no manner a private affair, being the receptacle +of nothing more important than hastily scrawled +reminders to attend to this thing or the other. It +chanced one day that a very young, unfledged +author, passing through the city, looked in upon +the publisher, who was also the editor of a +famous magazine. The unfledged had a copy +of verses secreted about his person. The pub- +lisher was absent, and young Milton, feeling +that "they also serve who only stand and wait," +sat down and waited. Presently his eye fell +upon the memorandum-book, lying there spread +out like a morning newspaper, and almost in +spite of himself he read: "Don't forget to see +the binder," "Don't forget to mail E----- his +contract," "Don't forget H-----'s proofs," etc. +An inspiration seized upon the youth; he took +a pencil, and at the tail of this long list of +"don't forgets " he wrote: "Don't forget to +accept A 's poem." He left his manuscript +on the table and disappeared. That afternoon +when the publisher glanced over his memo- +randa, he was not a little astonished at the last +item; but his sense of humor was so strong that +he did accept the poem (it required a strong +sense of humor to do that), and sent the lad a +check for it, though the verses remain to this +day unprinted. That kindly publisher was wise +as well as kind. + +FRENCH novels with metaphysical or psycholo- +gical prefaces are always certain to be particu- +larly indecent. + +I HAVE lately discovered that Master Harry +Sandford of England, the priggish little boy +in the story of "Sandford and Merton," has a +worthy American cousin in one Elsie Dinsmore, +who sedately pirouettes through a seemingly end- +less succession of girls' books. I came across +a nest of fifteen of them the other day. This +impossible female is carried from infancy up to +grandmotherhood, and is, I believe, still lei- +surely pursuing her way down to the tomb in an +ecstatic state of uninterrupted didacticism. There +are twenty-five volumes of her and the grand- +daughter, who is also christened Elsie, and is her +grandmother's own child, with the same preco- +cious readiness to dispense ethical instruction to +her elders. An interesting instance of hereditary +talent! + +H-----'s intellect resembles a bamboo--slender, +graceful, and hollow. Personally, he is long and +narrow, and looks as if he might have been +the product of a rope-walk. He is loosely put +together, like an ill-constructed sentence, and +affects me like one. His figure is ungrammatical. + +AMERICAN humor is nearly as ephemeral as +the flowers that bloom in the spring. Each gen- +eration has its own crop, and, as a rule, insists on +cultivating a new kind. That of 1860, if it were +to break into blossom at the present moment, +would probably be left to fade upon the stem. + +Humor is a delicate shrub, with the passing +hectic flush of its time. The current-topic variety +is especially subject to very early frosts, as is +also the dialectic species. Mark Twain's humor +is not to be classed with the fragile plants; it +has a serious root striking deep down into +rich earth, and I think it will go on flowering +indefinitely. + +I HAVE been imagining an ideal critical journal, +whose plan should involve the discharge of the +chief literary critic and the installment of a fresh +censor on the completion of each issue. To +place a man in permanent absolute control of a +certain number of pages, in which to express his +opinions, is to place him in a position of great +personal danger, It is almost inevitable that he +should come to overrate the importance of those +opinions, to take himself with far too much +seriousness, and in the end adopt the dogma of +his own infallibility. The liberty to summon +this or that man-of-letters to a supposititious +bar of justice is apt to beget in the self-ap- +pointed judge an exaggerated sense of superi- +ority. He becomes impatient of any rulings not +his, and says in effect, if not in so many words: +" I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my lips let +no dog bark." When the critic reaches this +exalted frame of mind his slight usefulness is +gone. + +AFTER a debauch of thunder-shower, the +weather takes the pledge and signs it with a +rainbow. + +I LIKE to have a thing suggested rather than told +in full. When every detail is given, the mind +rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the +desire to use its own wings. The partly draped +statue has a charm which the nude lacks. Who +would have those marble folds slip from the +raised knee of the Venus of Melos? Hawthorne +knew how to make his lovely thought lovelier +by sometimes half veiling it. + +I HAVE just tested the nib of a new pen on a +slight fancy which Herrick has handled twice +in the "Hesperides." The fancy, however, is +not Herrick's; it is as old as poetry and the ex- +aggeration of lovers, and I have the same privi- +lege as another to try my fortune with it: + +UP ROOS THE SONNE, AND UP ROOS EMELYE + CHAUCER + + + +When some hand has partly drawn + The cloudy curtains of her bed, + And my lady's golden head +Glimmers in the dusk like dawn, +Then methinks is day begun. +Later, when her dream has ceased + And she softly stirs and wakes, + Then it is as when the East + A sudden rosy magic takes +From the cloud-enfolded sun, + And full day breaks! + +Shakespeare, who has done so much to discour- +age literature by anticipating everybody, puts the +whole matter into a nutshell: + + But soft! what light through yonder window breaks? + It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. + +THERE is a phrase spoken by Hamlet which I +have seen quoted innumerable times, and never +once correctly. Hamlet, addressing Horatio, +says: + + Give me that man + That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him + In my heart's core, ay, in my <i>heart of heart</i>. + +The words italicized are invariably written +"heart of hearts"--as if a person possessed +that organ in duplicate. Perhaps no one living, +with the exception of Sir Henry Irving, is more +familiar with the play of Hamlet than my good +friend Mr. Bram Stoker, who makes his heart +plural on two occasions in his recent novel, +"The Mystery of the Sea." Mrs. Humphry +Ward also twice misquotes the passage in +"Lady Rose's Daughter." + +BOOKS that have become classics--books that +ave had their day and now get more praise +than perusal--always remind me of venerable +colonels and majors and captains who, having +reached the age limit, find themselves retired +upon half pay. + +WHETHER or not the fretful porcupine rolls itself +into a ball is a subject over which my friend +John Burroughs and several brother naturalists +have lately become as heated as if the question +involved points of theology. Up among the +Adirondacks, and in the very heart of the re- +gion of porcupines, I happen to have a modest +cottage. This retreat is called The Porcupine, +and I ought by good rights to know something +about the habits of the small animal from which +it derives its name. Last winter my dog Buster +used to return home on an average of three times +a month from an excursion up Mt. Pisgah with +his nose stuck full of quills, and <i>he</i> ought to +have some concrete ideas on the subject. We +two, then, are prepared to testify that the por- +cupine in its moments of relaxation occasion- +ally contracts itself into what might be taken +for a ball by persons not too difficult to please +in the matter of spheres. But neither Buster +nor I--being unwilling to get into trouble-- +would like to assert that it is an actual ball. +That it is a shape with which one had better +not thoughtlessly meddle is a conviction that +my friend Buster stands ready to defend against +all comers. + +WORDSWORTH'S characterization of the woman +in one of his poems as "a creature not too bright +or good for human nature's daily food" has +always appeared to me too cannibalesque to be +poetical. It directly sets one to thinking of the +South Sea islanders. + +THOUGH Iago was not exactly the kind of per- +son one would select as a superintendent for a +Sunday-school, his advice to young Roderigo +was wisdom itself--"Put money in thy purse." +Whoever disparages money disparages every +step in the progress of the human race. I lis- +tened the other day to a sermon in which gold was +personified as a sort of glittering devil tempting +mortals to their ruin. I had an instant of natural +hesitation when the contribution-plate was passed +around immediately afterward. Personally, I be- +lieve that the possession of gold has ruined fewer +men than the lack of it. What noble enterprises +have been checked and what fine souls have been +blighted in the gloom of poverty the world will +never know. "After the love of knowledge," +says Buckle, " there is no one passion which has +done so much good to mankind as the love of +money." + +DIALECT tempered with slang is an admirable +medium of communication between persons who +have nothing to say and persons who would not +care for anything properly said. + +DR. HOLMES had an odd liking for ingenious +desk-accessories in the way of pencil-sharpeners, +paper-weights, penholders, etc. The latest con- +trivances in this fashion--probably dropped +down to him by the inventor angling for a nibble +of commendation--were always making one +another's acquaintance on his study table. He +once said to me: "I 'm waiting for somebody to +invent a mucilage-brush that you can't by any +accident put into your inkstand. It would save +me frequent moments of humiliation." + +THE deceptive Mr. False and the volatile Mrs. +Giddy, who figure in the pages of seventeenth +and eighteenth century fiction, are not tolerated in +modern novels and plays. Steal the burglar and +Palette the artist have ceased to be. A name +indicating the quality or occupation of the bearer +strikes us as a too transparent device. Yet there +are such names in contemporary real life. That +of our worthy Adjutant-General Drum may be +instanced. Neal and Pray are a pair of deacons +who linger in the memory of my boyhood. Sweet +the confectioner and Lamb the butcher are indi- +viduals with whom I have had dealings. The +old-time sign of Ketchum & Cheetam, Brokers, +in Wall Street, New York, seems almost too +good to be true. But it was once, if it is not +now, an actuality. + +I HAVE observed that whenever a Boston author +dies, New York immediately becomes a great +literary centre. + +THE possession of unlimited power will make +a despot of almost any man. There is a pos- +sible Nero in the gentlest human creature that +walks. + +EVERY living author has a projection of him- +self, a sort of eidolon, that goes about in near +and remote places making friends or enemies +for him among persons who never lay eyes upon +the writer in the flesh. When he dies, this phan- +tasmal personality fades away, and the author +lives only in the impression created by his own +literature. It is only then that the world begins +to perceive what manner of man the poet, the +novelist, or the historian really was. Not until +he is dead, and perhaps some long time dead, is +it possible for the public to take his exact mea- +sure. Up to that point contemporary criticism +has either overrated him or underrated him, or +ignored him altogether, having been misled by +the eidolon, which always plays fantastic tricks +with the writer temporarily under its dominion. +It invariably represents him as either a greater +or a smaller personage than he actually is. Pre- +sently the simulacrum works no more spells, +good or evil, and the deception is unveiled. The +hitherto disregarded author is recognized, and +the idol of yesterday, which seemed so impor- +tant, is taken down from his too large pedestal +and carted off to the dumping-ground of inade- +quate things. To be sure, if he chances to have +been not entirely unworthy, and on cool exam- +ination is found to possess some appreciable +degree of merit, then he is set up on a new slab +of appropriate dimensions. The late colossal +statue shrinks to a modest bas-relief. On the +other hand, some scarcely noticed bust may +suddenly become a revered full-length figure. +Between the reputation of the author living and +the reputation of the same author dead there is +ever a wide discrepancy. + +A NOT too enchanting glimpse of Tennyson is +incidentally given by Charles Brookfield, the +English actor, in his "Random Recollections." +Mr. Brookfield's father was, on one occasion, +dining at the Oxford and Cambridge Club with +George Venables, Frank Lushington, Alfred +Tennyson, and others. "After dinner," relates +the random recollector, "the poet insisted upon +putting his feet on the table, tilting back his +chair <i>more Americano</i>. There were strangers +in the room, and he was expostulated with for +his uncouthness, but in vain. 'Do put down +your feet!' pleaded his host. 'Why should I?' +retorted Tennyson. 'I 'm very comfortable as +I am.' 'Every one's staring at you,' said an- +other. 'Let 'em stare,' replied the poet, pla- +cidly. 'Alfred,' said my father, 'people will +think you're Longfellow.' Down went the +feet." That <i>more Americano</i> of Brookfield the +younger is delicious with its fine insular flavor, +but the holding up of Longfellow--the soul of +gentleness, the prince of courtesy--as a buga- +boo of bad manners is simply inimitable. It +will take England years and years to detect the +full unconscious humor of it. + +GREAT orators who are not also great writers +become very indistinct historical shadows to the +generations immediately following them. The +spell vanishes with the voice. A man's voice is +almost the only part of him entirely obliterated +by death. The violet of his native land may be +made of his ashes, but nature in her economy +seems to have taken no care of his intonations, +unless she perpetuates them in restless waves of +air surging about the poles. The well-graced +actor who leaves no perceptible record of his +genius has a decided advantage over the mere +orator. The tradition of the player's method +and presence is associated with works of endur- +ing beauty. Turning to the pages of the drama- +tist, we can picture to ourselves the greatness of +Garrick or Siddons in this or that scene, in this +or that character. It is not so easy to conjure up +the impassioned orator from the pages of a dry +and possibly illogical argument in favor of or +against some long-ago-exploded measure of gov- +ernment. The laurels of an orator who is not a +master of literary art wither quickly. + +ALL the best sands of my life are somehow get- +ting into the wrong end of the hour-glass. If I +could only reverse it! Were it in my power to +do so, would I? + +SHAKESPEARE is forever coming into our affairs +--putting in his oar, so to speak--with some +pat word or sentence. The conversation, the +other evening, had turned on the subject of +watches, when one of the gentlemen present, +the manager of a large watch-making establish- +ment, told us a rather interesting fact. The +component parts of a watch are produced by +different workmen, who have no concern with +the complex piece of mechanism as a whole, +and possibly, as a rule, understand it imper- +fectly. Each worker needs to be expert in only +his own special branch. When the watch has +reached a certain advanced state, the work +requires a touch as delicate and firm as that of +an oculist performing an operation. Here the +most skilled and trustworthy artisans are em- +ployed; they receive high wages, and have the +benefit of a singular indulgence. In case the +workman, through too continuous application, +finds himself lacking the steadiness of nerve +demanded by his task, he is allowed without +forfeiture of pay to remain idle temporarily, in +order that his hand may recover the requisite +precision of touch. As I listened, Hamlet's +courtly criticism of the grave-digger's want of +sensibility came drifting into my memory. +"The hand of little employment hath the dain- +tier sense," says Shakespeare, who has left no- +thing unsaid. + +IT was a festival in honor of Dai Butsu or some +one of the auxiliary deities that preside over the +destinies of Japland. For three days and nights +the streets of Tokio--where the squat little +brown houses look for all the world as if they +were mimicking the favorite sitting posture of +the Japanese--were crowded with smiling hol- +iday makers, and made gay with devices of +tinted tissue paper, dolphins, devils, dragons, and +mythical winged creatures which at night amia- +bly turned themselves into lanterns. Garlands +of these, arranged close together, were stretched +across the streets from ridgepoles to ridgepole, +and your jinrikisha whisked you through inter- +minable arbors of soft illumination. The spec- +tacle gave one an idea of fairyland, but then all +Japan does that. + +A land not like ours, that land of strange flowers, +Of daemons and spooks with mysterious powers-- + Of gods who breathe ice, who cause peach-blooms and rice +And manage the moonshine and turn on the showers. + +Each day has its fair or its festival there, +And life seems immune to all trouble and care-- + Perhaps only seems, in that island of dreams, +Sea-girdled and basking in magical air. + +They've streets of bazaars filled with lacquers and jars, +And silk stuffs, and sword-blades that tell of old wars; + They've Fuji's white cone looming up, bleak and lone, +As if it were trying to reach to the stars. + +They've temples and gongs, and grim Buddhas in throngs, +And pearl-powdered geisha with dances and songs: + Each girl at her back has an imp, brown or black, +And dresses her hair in remarkable prongs. + +On roadside and street toddling images meet, +And smirk and kotow in a way that is sweet; + Their obis are tied with particular pride, +Their silken kimonos hang scant to the feet. + +With purrs like a cat they all giggle and chat, +Now spreading their fans, and now holding them flat; + A fan by its play whispers, "Go now!" or "Stay!" +"I hate you! "I love you!"--a fan can say that! +Beneath a dwarf tree, here and there, two or three +Squat coolies are sipping small cups of green tea; + They sputter, and leer, and cry out, and appear +Like bad little chessmen gone off on a spree. + +At night--ah, at night the long streets are a sight, +With garlands of soft-colored lanterns alight-- + Blue, yellow, and red twinkling high overhead, +Like thousands of butterflies taking their flight. + +Somewhere in the gloom that no lanterns illume +Stand groups of slim lilies and jonquils in bloom; + On tiptoe, unseen 'mid a tangle of green, +They offer the midnight their cups of perfume. + +At times, sweet and clear from some tea-garden near, +A ripple of laughter steals out to your ear; + Anon the wind brings from a samisen's strings +The pathos that's born of a smile and a tear. + +THE difference between an English audience +and a French audience at the theatre is marked. +The Frenchman brings down a witticism on the +wing. The Briton pauses for it to alight and +give him reasonable time for deliberate aim. In +English playhouses an appreciable number of +seconds usually precede the smile or the ripple +of laughter that follows a facetious turn of the +least fineness. I disclaim all responsibility for +this statement of my personal observation, since +it has recently been indorsed by one of London's +most eminent actors. + +AT the next table, taking his opal drops of +absinthe, was a French gentleman with the +blase aspect of an empty champagne-bottle, +which always has the air of saying: "I have +lived!" + +WE often read of wonderful manifestations of +memory, but they are always instances of the +faculty working in some special direction. It is +memory playing, like Paganini, on one string. +No doubt the persons performing the phenome- +nal feats ascribed to them have forgotten more +than they remember. To be able to repeat a +hundred lines of verse after a single reading is +no proof of a retentive mind, excepting so far as +the hundred lines go. A man might easily fail +under such a test, and yet have a good memory; +by which I mean a catholic one, and that I +imagine to be nearly the rarest of gifts. I have +never met more than four or five persons pos- +sessing it. The small boy who defined memory +as "the thing you forget with" described the +faculty as it exists and works in the majority of +men and women. + +THE survival in publishers of the imitative in- +stinct is a strong argument in support of Mr. +Darwin's theory of the descent of man. One +publisher no sooner brings out a new style of +book-cover than half a dozen other publishers +fall to duplicating it. + +THE cavalry sabre hung over the chimney-place +with a knot of violets tied to the dinted guard, +there being no known grave to decorate. For +many a year, on each Decoration Day, a sorrow- +ful woman had come and fastened these flowers +there. The first time she brought her offering +she was a slender girl, as fresh as her own vio- +lets. It is a slender figure still, but there are +threads of silver in the black hair. + +FORTUNATE was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, +who in early youth was taught "to abstain from +rhetoric, and poetry, and fine writing"--espe- +cially the fine writing. Simplicity is art's last +word. + +The man is clearly an adventurer. In the seven- +teenth century he would have worn huge flint- +lock pistols stuck into a wide leather belt, and +been something in the seafaring line. The fel- +low is always smartly dressed, but where he +lives and how he lives are as unknown as +"what song the Sirens sang, or what name +Achilles assumed when he hid himself among +women." He is a man who apparently has no +appointment with his breakfast and whose din- +ner is a chance acquaintance. His probable +banker is the next person. A great city like +this is the only geography for such a character. +He would be impossible in a small country +town, where everybody knows everybody and +what everybody has for lunch. + +I HAVE been seeking, thus far in vain, for the +proprietor of the saying that "Economy is sec- +ond or third cousin to Avarice." I went rather +confidently to Rochefoucauld, but it is not +among that gentleman's light luggage of cynical +maxims. + +THERE is a popular vague impression that butch- +ers are not allowed to serve as jurors on mur- +der trials. This is not really the case, but it +logically might be. To a man daily familiar +with the lurid incidents of the <i>abattoir</i>, the +summary extinction of a fellow creature (whe- +ther the victim or the criminal) can scarcely +seem a circumstance of so serious moment +as to another man engaged in less strenuous +pursuits. +WE do not, and cannot, read many of the novels +that most delighted our ancestors. Some of our +popular fiction is doubtless as poor, but poor +with a difference. There is always a heavy de- +mand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation +the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite. +There is ragtime literature as well as ragtime +music for the many. + +G----- is a man who had rather fail in a great +purpose than not accomplish it in precisely his +own way. He has the courage of his conviction +and the intolerance of his courage. He is op- +posed to the death penalty for murder, but he +would willingly have any one electrocuted who +disagreed with him on the subject. + + +I HAVE thought of an essay to be called "On +the Art of Short-Story Writing," but have given +it up as smacking too much of the shop. It +would be too <i>intime</i>, since I should have to deal +chiefly with my own ways, and so give myself +the false air of seeming to consider them of im- +portance. It would interest nobody to know +that I always write the last paragraph first, and +then work directly up to that, avoiding all di- +gressions and side issues. Then who on earth +would care to be told about the trouble my +characters cause me by talking too much? +They will talk, and I have to let them; but +when the story is finished, I go over the dia- +logue and strike out four fifths of the long +speeches. I fancy that makes my characters +pretty mad. + +THIS is the golden age of the inventor. He is +no longer looked upon as a madman or a wiz- +ard, incontinently to be made away with. Two +or three centuries ago Marconi would not have +escaped a ropeless end with his wireless telegra- +phy. Even so late as 1800, the friends of one +Robert Fulton seriously entertained the lumi- +nous idea of hustling the poor man into an asy- +lum for the unsound before he had a chance to +fire up the boiler of his tiny steamboat on the +Hudson river. In olden times the pillory and +the whipping-post were among the gentler forms +of encouragement awaiting the inventor. If a +man devised an especially practical apple-peeler +he was in imminent danger of being peeled with +it by an incensed populace. To-day we hail +with enthusiasm a scientific or a mechanical +discovery, and stand ready to make a stock +company of it. + +A MAN is known by the company his mind +keeps. To live continually with noble books, +with "high-erected thoughts seated in the heart +of courtesy," teaches the soul good manners. + +THE unconventional has ever a morbid attrac- +tion for a certain class of mind. There is always +a small coterie of highly intellectual men and +women eager to give welcome to whatever is +eccentric, obscure, or chaotic. Worshipers at +the shrine of the Unpopular, they tingle with +a sense of tolerant superiority when they say: +"Of course this is not the kind of thing <i>you</i> +would like." Sometimes these impressionable +souls almost seem to make a sort of reputation +for their fetish. + +I HEAR that B----- directed to have himself +buried on the edge of the pond where his duck- +stand was located, in order that flocks of migrat- +ing birds might fly over his grave every autumn. +He did not have to die, to become a dead shot. +A comrade once said of him: "Yes, B----- is +a great sportsman. He has peppered every- +thing from grouse in North Dakota to his best +friend in the Maine woods." + +WHEN the novelist introduces a bore into his +novel he must not let him bore the reader. The +fellow must be made amusing, which he would +not be in real life. In nine cases out of ten +an exact reproduction of real life would prove +tedious. Facts are not necessarily valuable, and +frequently they add nothing to fiction. The art +of the realistic novelist sometimes seems akin to +that of the Chinese tailor who perpetuated the +old patch on the new trousers. True art selects +and paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim +translation. + +THE last meeting I had with Lowell was in the +north room of his house at Elmwood, the sleep- +ing-room I had occupied during a two years' +tenancy of the place in his absence abroad. He +was lying half propped up in bed, convales- +cing from one of the severe attacks that were +ultimately to prove fatal. Near the bed was a +chair on which stood a marine picture in aqua- +relle--a stretch of calm sea, a bit of rocky +shore in the foreground, if I remember, and a +vessel at anchor. The afternoon sunlight, falling +through the window, cast a bloom over the pic- +ture, which was turned toward Lowell. From +time to time, as he spoke, his eyes rested +thoughtfully on the water-color. A friend, he +said, had just sent it to him. It seemed to me +then, and the fancy has often haunted me since, +that that ship, in the golden haze, with top- +sails loosened, was waiting to bear his spirit +away. + +CIVILIZATION is the lamb's skin in which bar- +barism masquerades. If somebody has already +said that, I forgive him the mortification he +causes me. At the beginning of the twentieth +century barbarism can throw off its gentle dis- +guise, and burn a man at the stake as compla- +cently as in the Middle Ages. + +WHAT is slang in one age sometimes goes into +the vocabulary of the purist in the next. On +the other hand, expressions that once were not +considered inelegant are looked at askance in +the period following. The word "brass" was +formerly an accepted synonym for money; but +at present, when it takes on that significance, it +is not admitted into genteel circles of language. +It may be said to have seen better days, like +another word I have in mind--a word that has +become slang, employed in the sense which +once did not exclude it from very good society. +A friend lately informed me that he had "fired" +his housekeeper--that is, dismissed her. He +little dreamed that he was speaking excellent +Elizabethan. + +THE "Journal des Goncourt" is crowded with +beautiful and hideous things, like a Japanese +Museum. + +"AND she shuddered as she sat, still silent, on +her seat, and he saw that she shuddered." This +is from Anthony Trollope's novel, "Can You +Forgive Her?" Can you forgive him? is the +next question. + +A LITTLE thing may be perfect, but perfection +is not a little thing. Possessing this quality, a +trifle "no bigger than an agate-stone on the +forefinger of an alderman" shall outlast the +Pyramids. The world will have forgotten all +the great masterpieces of literature when it for- +gets Lovelace's three verses to Lucasta on his +going to the wars. More durable than marble +or bronze are the words, "I could not love +thee, deare, so much, loved I not honor more." + +I CALLED on the dear old doctor this afternoon +to say good-by. I shall probably not find him +here when I come back from the long voyage +which I have in front of me. He is very fragile, +and looks as though a puff of wind would blow +him away. He said himself, with his old-time +cheerfulness, that he was attached to this earth +by only a little piece of twine. He has percep- +tibly failed since I saw him a month ago; but +he was full of the wise and radiant talk to which +all the world has listened, and will miss. I +found him absorbed in a newly made card-cata- +logue of his library. "It was absurd of me to +have it done," he remarked. "What I really +require is a little bookcase holding only two +volumes; then I could go from one to the other +in alternation and always find each book as fresh +as if I never had read it." This arraignment of +his memory was in pure jest, for the doctor's +mind was to the end like an unclouded crystal. +It was interesting to note how he studied him- +self, taking his own pulse, as it were, and diag- +nosing his own case in a sort of scientific, +impersonal way, as if it were somebody else's +case and he were the consulting specialist. I +intended to spend a quarter of an hour with +him, and he kept me three hours. I went there +rather depressed, but I returned home leavened +with his good spirits, which, I think, will never +desert him, here or hereafter. To keep the heart +unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, +reverent--that is to triumph over old age. + +THE thing one reads and likes, and then forgets, +is of no account. The thing that stays, and +haunts one, and refuses to be forgotten, that is +the sincere thing. I am describing the impres- +sion left upon me by Mr. Howells's blank-verse +sketch called "Father and Mother: A Mystery" +--a strangely touching and imaginative piece +of work, not unlike in effect to some of Mae- +terlinck's psychical dramas. As I read on, I +seemed to be standing in a shadow cast by some +half-remembered experience of my own in a +previous state of existence. When I went to +bed that night I had to lie awake and think it +over as an event that had actually befallen me. +I should call the effect <i>weird</i>, if the word had +not lately been worked to death. The gloom of +Poe and the spirituality of Hawthorne touch +cold finger-tips in those three or four pages. + +FOR a character-study--a man made up en- +tirely of limitations. His conservatism and neg- +ative qualities to be represented as causing him +to attain success where men of conviction and +real ability fail of it. + +A DARK, saturnine man sat opposite me at table +on board the steamer. During the entire run from +Sandy Hook to Fastnet Light he addressed no +one at meal-times excepting his table steward. +Seated next to him, on the right, was a viva- +cious gentleman, who, like Gratiano in the play, +spoke "an infinite deal of nothing." He made +persistent and pathetic attempts to lure his silent +neighbor (we had christened him "William the +Silent") into conversation, but a monosyllable +was always the poor result--until one day. It +was the last day of the voyage. We had stopped +at the entrance to Queenstown harbor to deliver +the mails, and some fish had been brought +aboard. The vivacious gentleman was in a +high state of excitement that morning at table. +"Fresh fish!" he exclaimed; "actually fresh! +They seem quite different from ours. Irish fish, +of course. Can you tell me, sir," he inquired, +turning to his gloomy shipmate, "what <i>kind</i> of +fish these are?" "Cork soles," said the saturn- +ine man, in a deep voice, and then went on +with his breakfast. + +LOWELL used to find food for great mirth in +General George P. Morris's line, + + Her heart and morning broke together. + +Lowell's well-beloved Dr. Donne, however, +had an attack of the same platitude, and pos- +sibly inoculated poor Morris. Even literature +seems to have its mischief-making bacilli. The +late "incomparable and ingenious Dean of St. +Paul's" says, + + The day breaks not, it is my heart. + +I think Dr. Donne's case rather worse than +Morris's. Chaucer had the malady in a milder +form when he wrote: + + Up roos the sonne, and up roos Emelye. + +The charming naivete of it! + +SITTING in Ellen Terry's dressing-room at the +Lyceum Theatre one evening during that lady's +temporary absence on the stage, Sarah Bern- +hardt picked up a crayon and wrote this pretty +word on the mirror--<i>Dearling</i>, mistaking it +for the word darling. The French actress lighted +by chance upon a Spenserianism now become +obsolete without good reason. It is a more +charming adjective than the one that has re- +placed it. + +A DEAD author appears to be bereft of all earthly +rights. He is scarcely buried before old maga- +zines and newspapers are ransacked in search +of matters which, for reasons sufficient to him, +he had carefully excluded from the definitive +edition of his collected writings. + + He gave the people of his best; + His worst he kept, his best he gave. + +One can imagine a poet tempted to address +some such appeal as this to any possible future +publisher of his poems: + + Take what thou wilt, a lyric or a line, + Take all, take nothing--and God send thee cheer! + But my anathema on thee and thine + If thou add'st aught to what is printed here. + + +THE claim of this country to call itself "The +Land of the Free" must be held in abeyance +until every man in it, whether he belongs or +does not belong to a labor organization, shall +have the right to work for his daily bread. + +THERE is a strain of primitive poetry running +through the entire Irish race, a fleeting lyrical +emotion which expresses itself in a flash, usually +in connection with love of country and kindred +across the sea. I had a touching illustration of it +the other morning. The despot who reigns over +our kitchen was gathering a mess of dandelions on +the rear lawn. It was one of those blue and gold +days which seem especially to belong New Eng- +land. "It's in County Westmeath I 'd be this +day," she said, looking up at me. <I>"I'd go cool +my hands in the grass on my ould mother's +grave in the bit of churchyard foreninst +the priest's house at Mullingar."</i> I have +seen poorer poetry than that in the magazines. + + +SPEAKING of the late Major Pond, the well- +known director of a lecture bureau, an old client +of his remarked: "He was a most capable +manager, but it always made me a little sore to +have him deduct twenty-five per cent. commis- +sion." "Pond's Extract," murmured one of the +gentlemen present. + +EACH of our great towns has its "Little Italy," +with shops where nothing is spoken but Italian +and streets in which the alien pedestrian had +better not linger after nightfall. The chief in- +dustry of these exotic communities seems to be +spaghetti and stilettos. What with our Little +Italys and Chinatowns, and the like, an Ameri- +can need not cross the ocean in order to visit +foreign lands and enjoy the benefits of older +civilizations. + +POETS are made as well as born, the proverb +notwithstanding. They are made possible by +the general love of poetry and the consequent +imperious demand for it. When this is non- +existent, poets become mute, the atmosphere +stifles them. There would have been no Shake- +speare had there been no Elizabethan audience. +That was an age when, as Emerson finely puts +it, + + Men became + Poets, for the air was fame. + +THE stolid gentleman in livery who has his car- +riage-stand at the corner opposite my house is +constantly touching on the extremes of human +experience, with probably not the remotest per- +ception of the fact. Now he takes a pair of lovers +out for an airing, and now he drives the abscond- +ing bank-teller to the railway-station. Except- +ing as question of distance, the man has positively +no choice between a theatre and a graveyard. I +met him this morning dashing up to the portals +of Trinity Church with a bridal party, and this +afternoon, as I was crossing Cambridge Bridge, +I saw him creeping along next to the hearse, on +his way to Mount Auburn. The wedding af- +forded him no pleasure, and the funeral gave +him no grief; yet he was a factor in both. It is +his odd destiny to be wholly detached from the +vital part of his own acts. If the carriage itself +could speak! The autobiography of a public +hack written without reservation would be dra- +matic reading. + +IN this blotted memorandum-book are a score +or two of suggestions for essays, sketches, and +poems, which I have not written, and never +shall write. The instant I jot down an idea the +desire to utilize it leaves me, and I turn away to +do something unpremeditated. The shabby vol- +ume has become a sort of Potter's Field where I +bury my literary intentions, good and bad, with- +out any belief in their final resurrection. + +A STAGE DIRECTION: <i>exit time; enter +Eternity--with a soliloquy.</i> + + + + +ASIDES + + + + +TOM FOLIO + +IN my early Boston days a gentle soul was +often to be met with about town, furtively +haunting old book-shops and dusty editorial +rooms, a man of ingratiating simplicity of man- +ner, who always spoke in a low, hesitating voice, +with a note of refinement in it. He was a de- +vout worshiper of Elia, and wrote pleasant dis- +cursive essays smacking somewhat of his master's +flavor--suggesting rather than imitating it-- +which he signed "Tom Folio." I forget how +he glided into my acquaintanceship; doubtless in +some way too shy and elusive for remembrance. +I never knew him intimately, perhaps no one +did, but the intercourse between us was most +cordial, and our chance meetings and bookish +chats extended over a space of a dozen years. + Tom Folio--I cling to the winning pseu- +donym--was sparely built and under medium +height, or maybe a slight droop of the shoulders +made it seem so, with a fragile look about him +and an aspect of youth that was not his. En- +countering him casually on a street corner, you +would, at the first glance, have taken him for a +youngish man, but the second glance left you +doubtful. It was a figure that struck a note of +singularity and would have attracted your atten- +tion even in a crowd. + During the first four or five years of our ac- +quaintance, meeting him only out of doors or in +shops, I had never happened to see him with his +hat off. One day he recklessly removed it, and +in the twinkling of an eye he became an elderly +bald-headed man. The Tom Folio I once knew +had virtually vanished. An instant earlier he +was a familiar shape; an instant later, an almost +unrecognizable individual. A narrow fringe of +light-colored hair, extending from ear to ear +under the rear brim of his hat, had perpetrated +an unintentional deception by leading one to sup- +pose a head profusely covered with curly locks. +"Tom Folio," I said, "put on your hat and +come back! But after that day he never seemed +young to me. + I had few or no inklings of his life discon- +nected with the streets and the book-stalls, chiefly +those on Cornhill or in the vicinity. It is possi- +ble I am wrong in inferring that he occupied a +room somewhere at the South End or in South +Boston, and lived entirely alone, heating his cof- +fee and boiling his egg over an alcohol lamp. I +got from him one or two fortuitous hints of +quaint housekeeping. Every winter, it appeared, +some relative, far or near, sent him a large batch +of mince pies, twenty or thirty at least. He once +spoke to me of having laid in his winter pie, just +as another might speak of laying in his winter +coal. The only fireside companion Tom Folio +ever alluded to in my presence was a Maltese +cat, whose poor health seriously disturbed him +from time to time. I suspected those mince +pies. The cat, I recollect, was named Miss +Mowcher. + If he had any immediate family ties beyond +this I was unaware of them, and not curious to +be enlightened on the subject. He was more pic- +turesque solitary. I preferred him to remain so. +Other figures introduced into the background of +the canvas would have spoiled the artistic effect. + Tom Folio was a cheerful, lonely man--a +recluse even when he allowed himself to be +jostled and hurried along on the turbulent stream +of humanity sweeping in opposite directions +through Washington Street and its busy estu- +aries. He was in the crowd, but not of it. I +had so little real knowledge of him that I was +obliged to imagine his more intimate environ- +ments. However wide of the mark my conjec- +tures may have fallen, they were as satisfying to +me as facts would have been. His secluded +room I could picture to myself with a sense of +certainty--the couch (a sofa by day), the cup- +board, the writing-table with its student lamp, +the litter of pamphlets and old quartos and oc- +tavos in tattered bindings, among which were +scarce reprints of his beloved Charles Lamb, +and perhaps--nay, surely--an <i>editio prin- +ceps</i> of the "Essays." + The gentle Elia never had a gentler follower +or a more loving disciple than Tom Folio. He +moved and had much of his being in the early +part of the last century. To him the South-Sea +House was the most important edifice on the +globe, remaining the same venerable pile it used +to be, in spite of all the changes that had be- +fallen it. It was there Charles Lamb passed the +novitiate of his long years of clerkship in the +East India Company. In Tom Folio's fancy a +slender, boyish figure was still seated, quill in +hand, behind those stately porticoes looking upon +Threadneedle Street and Bishopsgate. That +famous first paper in the "Essays," describing +the South-Sea House and the group of human +oddities which occupied desks within its gloomy +chambers, had left an indelible impression upon +the dreamer. Every line traced by the "lean +annuitant" was as familiar to Tom Folio as if +he had written it himself. Stray scraps, which +had escaped the vigilance of able editors, were +known to him, and it was his to unearth amid +a heap of mouldy, worm-eaten magazines, a +handful of leaves hitherto forgotten of all men. +Trifles, yes--but Charles Lamb's! "The +king's chaff is as good as other people's corn," +says Tom Folio. + Often his talk was sweet and racy with old- +fashioned phrases; the talk of a man who loved +books and drew habitual breath in an atmosphere +of fine thought. Next to Charles Lamb, but at +a convenable distance, Izaak Walton was Tom +Folio's favorite. His poet was Alexander Pope, +though he thought Mr. Addison's tragedy of +"Cato" contained some proper good lines. Our +friend was a wide reader in English classics, +greatly preferring the literature of the earlier pe- +riods to that of the Victorian age. His smiling, +tenderly expressed disapprobation of various +modern authors was enchanting. John Keats's +verses were monstrous pretty, but over-orna- +mented. A little too much lucent syrup tinct +with cinnamon, don't you think? The poetry +of Shelley might have been composed in the +moon by a slightly deranged, well-meaning per- +son. If you wanted a sound mind in a sound +metrical body, why there was Mr. Pope's "Essay +on Man." There was something winsome and +by-gone in the general make-up of Tom Folio. +No man living in the world ever seemed to me +to live so much out of it, or to live more com- +fortably. + At times I half suspected him of a conva- +lescent amatory disappointment. Perhaps long +before I knew him he had taken a little senti- +mental journey, the unsuccessful end of which +had touched him with a gentle sadness. It was +something far off and softened by memory. If +Tom Folio had any love-affair on hand in my +day, it must have been of an airy, platonic sort +--a chaste secret passion for Mistress Peg Wof- +fington or Nell Gwyn, or possibly Mr. Wal- +ler's Saccharissa. + Although Tom Folio was not a collector-- +that means dividends and bank balances--he +had a passion for the Past and all its belongings, +with a virtuoso's knowledge of them. A fan +painted by Vanloo, a bit of rare Nankin (he had +caught from Charles Lamb the love of old china), +or an undoctored stipple of Bartolozzi, gave him +delight in the handling, though he might not +aspire to ownership. I believe he would will- +ingly have drunk any horrible decoction from +a silver teapot of Queen Anne's time. These +things were not for him in a coarse, materialistic +sense; in a spiritual sense he held possession of +them in fee-simple. I learned thus much of his +tastes one day during an hour we spent together +in the rear showroom of a dealer in antiquities. + I have spoken of Tom Folio as lonely, but I +am inclined to think that I mis-stated it. He +had hosts of friends who used to climb the rather +steep staircase leading to that modest third-story +front room which I have imagined for him--a +room with Turkey-red curtains, I like to believe, +and a rare engraving of a scene from Mr. Ho- +garth's excellent moral of "The Industrious and +Idle Apprentices" pinned against the chimney +breast. Young Chatterton, who was not always +the best of company, dropped in at intervals. +There Mr. Samuel Pepys had a special chair +reserved for him by the window, where he could +catch a glimpse of the pretty housemaid over the +way, chatting with the policeman at the area +railing. Dr. Johnson and the unworldly author +of "The Deserted Village" were frequent visit- +ors, sometimes appearing together arm-in-arm, +with James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck, fol- +lowing obsequiously behind. Not that Tom +Folio did not have callers vastly more aristo- +cratic, though he could have had none plea- +santer or wholesomer. Sir Philip Sidney (who +must have given Folio that copy of the "Arca- +dia"), the Viscount St. Albans, and even two +or three others before whom either of these might +have doffed his bonnet, did not disdain to gather +round that hearthstone. Fielding, Smollett, +Sterne, Defoe, Dick Steele, Dean Swift--there +was no end to them! On certain nights, when all +the stolid neighborhood was lapped in slumber, +the narrow street stretching beneath Tom Folio's +windows must have been blocked with invisible +coaches and sedan-chairs, and illuminated by the +visionary glare of torches borne by shadowy +linkboys hurrying hither and thither. A man +so sought after and companioned cannot be +described as lonely. + My memory here recalls the fact that he had +a few friends less insubstantial--that quaint +anatomy perched on the top of a hand-organ, to +whom Tom Folio was wont to give a bite of his +apple; and the brown-legged little Neapolitan +who was always nearly certain of a copper when +this multi-millionaire strolled through the slums +on a Saturday afternoon--Saturday probably +being the essayist's pay-day. The withered +woman of the peanut-stand on the corner over +against Faneuil Hall Market knew him for a +friend, as did also the blind lead-pencil merchant, +whom Tom Folio, on occasions, safely piloted +across the stormy traffic of Dock Square. <i>No- +blesse oblige!</i> He was no stranger in those +purlieus. Without designing to confuse small +things with great, I may say that a certain strip +of pavement in North Street could be pointed +out as Tom Folio's Walk, just as Addison's +Walk is pointed out on the banks of the Cher- +well at Oxford. + I used to observe that when Tom Folio was +not in quest of a print or a pamphlet or some +such urgent thing, but was walking for mere +recreation, he instinctively avoided respectable +latitudes. He liked best the squalid, ill-kept +thoroughfares shadowed by tall, smudgy tene- +ment-houses and teeming with unprosperous, +noisy life. Perhaps he had, half consciously, +a sense of subtle kinship to the unsuccess and +cheerful resignation of it all. + Returning home from abroad one October +morning several years ago, I was told that that +simple spirit had passed on. His death had +been little heeded; but in him had passed away +an intangible genuine bit of Old Boston--as +genuine a bit, in its kind, as the Autocrat himself +--a personality not to be restored or replaced. +Tom Folio could never happen again! + + Strolling to-day through the streets of the older +section of the town, I miss many a venerable +landmark submerged in the rising tide of change, +but I miss nothing quite so much as I do the +sight of Tom Folio entering the doorway of the +Old Corner Bookstore, or carefully taking down +a musty volume from its shelf at some melan- +choly old book-stall on Cornhill. + + + +FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES + +WHEN an English novelist does us the +honor to introduce any of our country- +men into his fiction, he generally displays a +commendable desire to present something typi- +cal in the way of names for his adopted char- +acters--to give a dash of local color, as it were, +with his nomenclature. His success is seldom +commensurate to the desire. He falls into the +error of appealing to his invention, instead of +consulting some city directory, in which he +would find more material than he could exhaust +in ten centuries. Charles Reade might have +secured in the pages of such a compendium a +happier title than Fullalove for his Yankee +sea-captain; though I doubt, on the whole, if +Anthony Trollope could have discovered any- +thing better than Olivia Q. Fleabody for the +young woman from "the States" in his novel +called "Is He Popenjoy?" + To christen a sprightly young female advo- +cate of woman's rights Olivia Q. Fleabody was +very happy indeed; to be candid, it was much +better than was usual with Mr. Trollope, whose +understanding of American life and manners was +not enlarged by extensive travel in this country. +An English tourist's preconceived idea of us is +a thing he brings over with him on the steamer +and carries home again intact; it is as much a +part of his indispensable impedimenta as his hat- +box. But Fleabody is excellent; it was prob- +ably suggested by Peabody, which may have +struck Mr. Trollope as comical (just as Trollope +strikes <i>us</i> as comical), or, at least, as not seri- +ous. What a capital name Veronica Trollope +would be for a hoydenish young woman in a +society novel! I fancy that all foreign names +are odd to the alien. I remember that the signs +above shop-doors in England and on the Conti- +nent used to amuse me often enough, when I +was over there. It is a notable circumstance +that extraordinary names never seem extraordi- +nary to the persons bearing them. If a fellow- +creature were branded Ebenezer Cuttlefish he +would remain to the end of his days quite un- +conscious of anything out of the common. + I am aware that many of our American names +are sufficiently queer; but English writers make +merry over them, as if our most eccentric were +not thrown into the shade by some of their own. +No American, living or dead, can surpass the +verbal infelicity of Knatchbull-Hugessen, for ex- +ample--if the gentleman will forgive me for +conscripting him. Quite as remarkable, in a +grimly significant way, is the appellation of a +British officer who was fighting the Boers in the +Transvaal in the year of blessed memory 1899. +This young soldier, who highly distinguished +himself on the field, was known to his brothers- +in-arms as Major Pine Coffin. I trust that the +gallant major became a colonel later and is still +alive. It would eclipse the gayety of nations to +lose a man with a name like that. + Several years ago I read in the sober police +reports of "The Pall Mall Gazette" an account +of a young man named George F. Onions, who +was arrested (it ought to have been by "a +peeler") for purloining money from his em- +ployers, Messrs. Joseph Pickles & Son, stuff +merchants, of Bradford--<i>des noms bien idyl- +liques!</i> What mortal could have a more ludi- +crous name than Onions, unless it were Pickles, +or Pickled Onions? And then for Onions to rob +Pickles! Could there be a more incredible coin- +cidence? As a coincidence it is nearly sublime. +No story-writer would dare to present that fact +or those names in his fiction; neither would be +accepted as possible. Meanwhile Olivia Q. Flea- +body is <i>ben trovato</i>. + + + +A NOTE ON "L'AIGLON" + +THE night-scene on the battlefield of Wa- +gram in "L'Aiglon"--an episode whose +sharp pathos pierces the heart and the imagina- +tion like the point of a rapier--bears a striking +resemblance to a picturesque passage in Victor +Hugo's "Les Miserables." It is the one intense +great moment in the play, and has been widely +discussed, but so far as I am aware none of M. +Rostand's innumerable critics has touched on the +resemblance mentioned. In the master's ro- +mance it is not the field of Wagram, but the +field of Waterloo, that is magically repeopled +with contending armies of spooks, to use the +grim old Dutch word, and made vivid to the +mind's eye. The passage occurs at the end +of the sixteenth chapter in the second part of +"Les Miserables" (Cosette), and runs as +follows: + + Le champ de Waterloo aujourd'hui a le calme qui +appartient a la terre, support impassible de l'homme, +et il resemble a toutes les plaines. La nuit pourtant +une espece de brume visionnaire s'en degage, et si +quelque voyageur s'y promene, s'il regarde, s'il ecoute, +s'il reve comme Virgile dans les funestes plaines de +Philippes, l'hallucination de la catastrophe le saisit. +L'effrayant 18 juin revit; la fausse colline-monument +s'efface, ce lion quelconque se dissipe, le champ de +bataille reprend sa realite; des lignes d'infanterie +ondulent dans la plaine, des galops furieux traversent +l'horizon; le songeur effare voit l'eclair des sabres, +l'etincelle des bayonnettes, le flamboiement des bombes, +l'entre-croisement monstrueux des tonnerres; il en- +tend, comme un rale au fond d'une tombe, la clameur +vague de la bataille-fantome; ces ombres, ce sont les +grenadiers; ces lueurs, ce sont les cuirassiers; . . . +tout cela n'est plus et se heurte et combat encore; et +les ravins s'empourprent, et les arbres frissonnent, et +il y a de la furie jusque dans les nuees, et, dans les +tenebres, toutes ces hauteurs farouches, Mont-Saint- +Jean, Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, Plance- +noit, apparaissent confusement couronnees de tour- +billons de spectres s'exterminant. <1> + + Here is the whole battle scene in "L'Aiglon," +with scarcely a gruesome detail omitted. The +vast plain glimmering in phantasmal light; the +ghostly squadrons hurling themselves against + + <1> The field of Waterloo has to-day the peacefulness which be- +longs to earth, the impassive support of man, and is like all other +plains. At night, however, a kind of visionary mist is exhaled, +and if any traveler walks there, and watches and listens, and +dreams like Virgil on the sorrowful plains of Philippi, the hallu- +cination of the catastrophe takes possession of him. The terrible +June 18 relives; the artificial commemorative mound effaces itself, +the lion disappears, the field of battle assumes its reality; lines +of infantry waver on the plain, the horizon is broken by furious +charges of cavalry; the alarmed dreamer sees the gleam of sabres, +the glimmer of bayonets, the lurid glare of bursting shells, the +clashing of mighty thunderbolts; the muffled clamor of the +phantom conflict comes to him like dying moans from the tomb; +these shadows are grenadiers, these lights are cuirassiers . . . +all this does not really exist, yet the combat goes on; the ravines are +stained with purple, the trees tremble, there is fury even in the +clouds, and in the obscurity the sombre heights--Mont Saint- +Jean, Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, and Plancenoit--ap- +pear dimly crowned with throngs of apparitions annihilating one +another. + +One another (seen only through the eyes of the +poor little Duke of Reichstadt); the mangled +shapes lying motionless in various postures of +death upon the blood-stained sward; the moans +of the wounded rising up and sweeping by like +vague wailings of the wind--all this might be +taken for an artful appropriation of Victor +Hugo's text; but I do not think it was, though +it is possible that a faint reflection of a brilliant +page, read in early youth, still lingered on the +retina of M. Rostand's memory. If such were +the case, it does not necessarily detract from the +integrity of the conception or the playwright's +presentment of it. + The idea of repeopling old battlefields with +the shades of vanished hosts is not novel. In +such tragic spots the twilight always lays a dark +hand on the imagination, and prompts one to +invoke the unappeased spirit of the past that +haunts the place. One summer evening long +ago, as I was standing alone by the ruined walls +of Hougomont, with that sense of not being +alone which is sometimes so strangely stirred by +solitude, I had a sudden vision of that desperate +last charge of Napoleon's Old Guard. Marshal +Ney rose from the grave and again shouted +those heroic words to Drouet d'Erlon: "Are +you not going to get yourself killed?" For +an instant a thousand sabres flashed in the +air. The deathly silence that accompanied the +ghostly onset was an added poignancy to the +short-lived dream. A moment later I beheld a +hunched little figure mounted on a white horse +with housings of purple velvet. The reins lay +slack in the rider's hand; his three-cornered hat +was slouched over his brows, and his chin +rested on the breast of his great-coat. Thus he +slowly rode away through the twilight, and +nobody cried, <i>Vive l'Empereur!</i> + The ground on which a famous battle has +been fought casts a spell upon every man's +mind; and the impression made upon two men +of poetic genius, like Victor Hugo and Edmond +Rostand, might well be nearly identical. This +sufficiently explains the likeness between the +fantastic silhouette in "Les Miserables" and the +battle of the ghosts in "L'Aiglon." A muse so +rich in the improbable as M. Rostand's need +not borrow a piece of supernaturalness from +anybody. + + + +PLOT AND CHARACTER + +HENRY JAMES, in his paper on Anthony +Trollope, says that if Trollope "had taken +sides on the rather superficial opposition between +novels of character and novels of plot, I can +imagine him to have said (except that he never +expressed himself in epigram) that he preferred +the former class, inasmuch as character in itself +is plot, while plot is by no means character." +So neat an antithesis would surely never have +found itself between Mr. Trollope's lips if Mr. +James had not cunningly lent it to him. What- +ever theory of novel-writing Mr. Trollope may +have preached, his almost invariable practice +was to have a plot. He always had a <i>story</i> to +tell, and a story involves beginning, middle, and +end--in short, a framework of some description. + There have been delightful books filled wholly +with character-drawing; but they have not been +great novels. The great novel deals with human +action as well as with mental portraiture and +analysis. That "character in itself is plot" is +true only in a limited sense. A plan, a motive +with a logical conclusion, is as necessary to a +novel or a romance as it is to a drama. A group +of skillfully made-up men and women lounging +in the green-room or at the wings is not the +play. It is not enough to say that this is Romeo +and that Lady Macbeth. It is not enough to +inform us that certain passions are supposed to +be embodied in such and such persons: these +persons should be placed in situations develop- +ing those passions. A series of unrelated scenes +and dialogues leading to nothing is inadequate. + Mr. James's engaging epigram seems to me +vulnerable at both ends--unlike Achilles. +"Plot is by no means character." Strictly +speaking, it is not. It appears to me, however, +that plot approaches nearer to being character +than character does to being plot. Plot necessi- +tates action, and it is impossible to describe a +man's actions' under whatever conditions, with- +out revealing something of his character, his +way of looking at things, his moral and mental +pose. What a hero of fiction <i>does</i> paints him +better than what he <i>says</i>, and vastly better than +anything his creator may say of him. Mr. +James asserts that "we care what happens to +people only in proportion as we know what +people are." I think we care very little what +people are (in fiction) when we do not know +what happens to them. + + +THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE + +IN the process of their experiments upon the +bodies of living animals some anatomists do +not, I fear, sufficiently realize that + + The poor beetle, that we tread upon, + In corporal sufferance, finds a pang as great + As when a giant dies. + +I am not for a moment challenging the neces- +sity of vivisection, though distinguished sur- +geons have themselves challenged it; I merely +contend that science is apt to be cold-hearted, +and does not seem always to take into consider- +ation the tortures she inflicts in her search for +knowledge. + Just now, in turning over the leaves of an old +number of the "London Lancet," I came upon +the report of a lecture on experimental physiology +delivered by Professor William Rutherford be- +fore a learned association in London. Though +the type had become antiquated and the paper +yellowed in the lapse of years, the pathos of +those pages was alive and palpitating. + The following passages from the report will +illustrate not unfairly the point I am making. +In the course of his remarks the lecturer ex- +hibited certain interesting experiments on living +frogs. Intellectually I go very strongly for Pro- +fessor Rutherford, but I am bound to confess +that the weight of my sympathy rests with the +frogs. + + Observe this frog [said the professor], it is regard- +ing our manoeuvres with a somewhat lively air. Now +and then it gives a jump. What the precise object of +its leaps may be I dare not pretend to say; but prob- +ably it regards us with some apprehension, and desires +to escape. + + To be perfectly impartial, it must be admitted +that the frog had some slight reason for appre- +hension. The lecturer proceeded: + +I touch one of its toes, and you see it resents the +molestation in a very decided manner. Why does it so +struggle to get away when I pinch its toes? Doubt- +less, you will say, because it feels the pinch and would +rather not have it repeated. I now behead the animal +with the aid of a sharp chisel. . . . The headless trunk +lies as though it were dead. The spinal cord seems to +be suffering from shock. Probably, however, it will +soon recover from this. . . . Observe that the animal +has now <i>spontaneously</i> drawn up its legs and arms, +and it is sitting with its neck erect just as if it had +not lost its head at all. I pinch its toes, and you see +the leg is at once thrust out as if to spurn away the +offending instrument. Does it still feel? and is the +motion still the result of the volition? + + That the frog did feel, and delicately hinted +at the circumstance, there seems to be no room to +doubt, for Professor Rutherford related that +having once decapitated a frog, the animal sud- +denly bounded from the table, a movement that +presumably indicated a kind of consciousness. +He then returned to the subject immediately +under observation, pinched its foot again, the +frog again "resenting the stimulation." He then +thrust a needle down the spinal cord. "The +limbs are now flaccid," observed the experi- +menter; "we may wait as long as we please, +but a pinch of the toes will never again cause +the limbs of this animal to move." Here is +where congratulations can come in for <i>la gre- +nouille</i>. That frog being concluded, the lec- +turer continued: + +I take another frog. In this case I open the cranium +and remove the brain and medulla oblongata. . . . +I thrust a pin through the nose and hang the animal + +thereby to a support, so that it can move its pendent +legs without any difficulty. . . . I gently pinch the +toes. . . . The leg of the same side is pulled up. . . . +I pinch the same more severely. . . . Both legs are +thrown into motion. + + Having thus satisfactorily proved that the +wretched creature could still suffer acutely, the +professor resumed: + + The cutaneous nerves of the frog are extremely sen- +sitive to acids; so I put a drop of acetic acid on the +outside of one knee. This, you see, gives rise to most +violent movements both of arms and legs, and notice +particularly that the animal is using the toes of the +leg on the same side for the purpose of rubbing the +irritated spot. I dip the whole animal into water +in order to wash away the acid, and now it is all at +rest again. . . . I put a drop of acid on the skin +over the lumbar region of the spine. . . . Both feet +are instantly raised to the irritated spot. The animal +is able to localize the seat of irritation. . . . I wash +the acid from the back, and I amputate one of the +feet at the ankle. . . . I apply a drop of acid over +the knee of the footless leg. . . . Again, the animal +turns the leg towards the knee, as if to reach the irri- +tated spot with the toes; these, however, are not now +available. But watch the other foot. The <i>foot of the +other leg</i> is now being used to rub away the acid. The +animal, finding that the object is not accomplished +with the foot of the same side, uses the other one. + + I think that at least one thing will be patent +to every unprejudiced reader of these excerpts, +namely--that any frog (with its head on or +its head off) which happened to make the per- +sonal acquaintance of Professor Rutherford must +have found him poor company. What benefit +science may have derived from such association +I am not qualified to pronounce upon. The lec- +turer showed conclusively that the frog is a +peculiarly sensitive and intelligent little batra- +chian. I hope that the genial professor, in the +years which followed, did not frequently con- +sider it necessary to demonstrate the fact. + + + +LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORNWALL + +IT has recently become the fashion to speak +disparagingly of Leigh Hunt as a poet, to +class him as a sort of pursuivant or shield-bearer +to Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Truth to tell, +Hunt was not a Keats nor a Shelley nor a Cole- +ridge, but he was a most excellent Hunt. He +was a delightful essayist--quite unsurpassed, +indeed, in his blithe, optimistic way--and as a +poet deserves to rank high among the lesser +singers of his time. I should place him far +above Barry Cornwall, who has not half the +freshness, variety, and originality of his com- +peer. + I instance Barry Cornwall because there has +seemed a disposition since his death to praise +him unduly. Barry Cornwall has always struck +me as extremely artificial, especially in his dra- +matic sketches. His verses in this line are +mostly soft Elizabethan echoes. Of course a +dramatist may find it to his profit to go out of +his own age and atmosphere for inspiration; but +in order successfully to do so he must be a dra- +matist. Barry Cornwall fell short of filling the +role; he got no further than the composing of +brief disconnected scenes and scraps of solilo- +quies, and a tragedy entitled Mirandola, for +which the stage had no use. His chief claim to +recognition lies in his lyrics. Here, as in the +dramatic studies, his attitude is nearly always +affected. He studiously strives to reproduce the +form and spirit of the early poets. Being a Lon- +doner, he naturally sings much of rural English +life, but his England is the England of two or +three centuries ago. He has a great deal to say +about the "falcon," but the poor bird has the +air of beating fatigued wings against the book- +shelves of a well-furnished library! This well- +furnished library was--if I may be pardoned a +mixed image--the rock on which Barry Corn- +wall split. He did not look into his own heart, +and write: he looked into his books. + A poet need not confine himself to his indi- +vidual experiences; the world is all before him +where to choose; but there are subjects which +he had better not handle unless he have some +personal knowledge of them. The sea is one of +these. The man who sang, + + The sea! the sea! the open sea! + The blue, the fresh, <i>the ever free!</i> + +(a couplet which the Gifted Hopkins might have +penned), should never have permitted himself to +sing of the ocean. I am quoting from one of +Barry Cornwall's most popular lyrics. When I +first read this singularly vapid poem years ago, +in mid-Atlantic, I wondered if the author had +ever laid eyes on any piece of water wider than +the Thames at Greenwich, and in looking over +Barry Cornwall's "Life and Letters" I am not +so much surprised as amused to learn that he was +never out of sight of land in the whole course +of his existence. It is to be said of him more +positively than the captain of the Pinafore said +it of himself, that he was hardly ever sick at +sea. + Imagine Byron or Shelley, who knew the +ocean in all its protean moods, piping such +thin feebleness as + + The blue, the fresh, the ever free! + +To do that required a man whose acquaintance +with the deep was limited to a view of it from +an upper window at Margate or Scarborough. +Even frequent dinners of turbot and whitebait +at the sign of The Ship and Turtle will not en- +able one to write sea poetry. + Considering the actual facts, there is some- +thing weird in the statement, + + I 'm on the sea! I 'm on the sea! + I am where I would ever be. + +The words, to be sure, are placed in the mouth +of an imagined sailor, but they are none the +less diverting. The stanza containing the distich +ends with a striking piece of realism: + + If a storm should come and awake the deep, + What matter? I shall ride and sleep. + +This is the course of action usually pursued +by sailors during a gale. The first or second +mate goes around and tucks them up comfort- +ably, each in his hammock, and serves them +out an extra ration of grog after the storm is +over. + Barry Cornwall must have had an exception- +ally winning personality, for he drew to him the +friendship of men as differently constituted as +Thackeray, Carlyle, Browning, and Forster. +He was liked by the best of his time, from +Charles Lamb down to Algernon Swinburne, +who caught a glimpse of the aged poet in his +vanishing. The personal magnetism of an au- +thor does not extend far beyond the orbit of his +contemporaries. It is of the lyrist and not of +the man I am speaking here. One could wish +he had written more prose like his admirable +"Recollections of Elia." + Barry Cornwall seldom sounds a natural note, +but when he does it is extremely sweet. That +little ballad in the minor key beginning, + + Touch us gently, Time! + Let us glide adown thy stream, + +was written in one of his rare moments. Leigh +Hunt, though not without questionable manner- +isms, was rich in the inspiration that came but +infrequently to his friend. Hunt's verse is full +of natural felicities. He also was a bookman, +but, unlike Barry Cornwall, he generally knew +how to mint his gathered gold, and to stamp the +coinage with his own head. In "Hero and Lean- +der" there is one line which, at my valuing, is +worth any twenty stanzas that Barry Cornwall +has written: + + So might they now have lived, and so have died; + <i>The story's heart, to me, still beats against its side</i>. + + Hunt's fortunate verse about the kiss Jane +Carlyle gave him lingers on everybody's lip. +That and the rhyme of "Abou Ben Adhem and +the Angel" are spice enough to embalm a man's +memory. After all, it takes only a handful. + + + +DECORATION DAY + +HOW quickly Nature takes possession of +a deserted battlefield, and goes to work +repairing the ravages of man! With invisible +magic hand she smooths the rough earthworks, +fills the rifle-pits with delicate flowers, and +wraps the splintered tree-trunks with her fluent +drapery of tendrils. Soon the whole sharp out- +line of the spot is lost in unremembering grass. +Where the deadly rifle-ball whistled through the +foliage, the robin or the thrush pipes its tremu- +lous note; and where the menacing shell de- +scribed its curve through the air, a harmless +crow flies in circles. Season after season the +gentle work goes on, healing the wounds and +rents made by the merciless enginery of war, +until at last the once hotly contested battle- +ground differs from none of its quiet surround- +ings, except, perhaps, that here the flowers take +a richer tint and the grasses a deeper emerald. + It is thus the battle lines may be obliterated +by Time, but there are left other and more last- +ing relics of the struggle. That dinted army +sabre, with a bit of faded crepe knotted at its +hilt, which hangs over the mantel-piece of the +"best room" of many a town and country house +in these States, is one; and the graven headstone +of the fallen hero is another. The old swords +will be treasured and handed down from gener- +ation to generation as priceless heirlooms, and +with them, let us trust, will be cherished the +custom of dressing with annual flowers the rest- +ing-places of those who fell during the Civil +War. + + With the tears a Land hath shed + Their graves should ever be green. + + Ever their fair, true glory + Fondly should fame rehearse-- + Light of legend and story, + Flower of marble and verse. + + The impulse which led us to set apart a day +for decorating the graves of our soldiers sprung +from the grieved heart of the nation, and in our +own time there is little chance of the rite being +neglected. But the generations that come after +us should not allow the observance to fall into +disuse. What with us is an expression of fresh +love and sorrow, should be with them an ac- +knowledgment of an incalculable debt. + Decoration Day is the most beautiful of our +national holidays. How different from those sul- +len batteries which used to go rumbling through +our streets are the crowds of light carriages, +laden with flowers and greenery, wending their +way to the neighboring cemeteries! The grim +cannon have turned into palm branches, and the +shell and shrapnel into peach blooms. There is +no hint of war in these gay baggage trains, ex- +cept the presence of men in undress uniform, +and perhaps here and there an empty sleeve to +remind one of what has been. Year by year +that empty sleeve is less in evidence. + The observance of Decoration Day is un- +marked by that disorder and confusion common +enough with our people in their holiday moods. +The earlier sorrow has faded out of the hour, +leaving a softened solemnity. It quickly ceased +to be simply a local commemoration. While +the sequestered country churchyards and burial- +places near our great northern cities were being +hung with May garlands, the thought could not +but come to us that there were graves lying +southward above which bent a grief as tender +and sacred as our own. Invisibly we dropped +unseen flowers upon those mounds. There is a +beautiful significance in the fact that, two years +after the close of the war, the women of Colum- +bus, Mississippi, laid their offerings alike on +Northern and Southern graves. When all is +said, the great Nation has but one heart. + + + +WRITERS AND TALKERS + +AS a class, literary men do not shine in con- +versation. The scintillating and playful +essayist whom you pictured to yourself as the +most genial and entertaining of companions, +turns out to be a shy and untalkable individual, +who chills you with his reticence when you +chance to meet him. The poet whose fascinating +volume you always drop into your gripsack on +your summer vacation--the poet whom you +have so long desired to know personally--is a +moody and abstracted middle-aged gentleman, +who fails to catch your name on introduction, +and seems the avatar of the commonplace. The +witty and ferocious critic whom your fancy had +painted as a literary cannibal with a morbid +appetite for tender young poets--the writer of +those caustic and scholarly reviews which you +never neglect to read--destroys the un-lifelike +portrait you had drawn by appearing before you +as a personage of slender limb and deprecat- +ing glance, who stammers and makes a painful +spectacle of himself when you ask him his +opinion of "The Glees of the Gulches," by Popo- +catepetl Jones. The slender, dark-haired novel- +ist of your imagination, with epigrammatic +points to his mustache, suddenly takes the shape +of a short, smoothly-shaven blond man, whose +conversation does not sparkle at all, and you +were on the lookout for the most brilliant of +verbal fireworks. Perhaps it is a dramatist you +have idealized. Fresh from witnessing his de- +lightful comedy of manners, you meet him face +to face only to discover that his own manners +are anything but delightful. The play and the +playwright are two very distinct entities. You +grow skeptical touching the truth of Buffon's +assertion that the style is the man himself. Who +that has encountered his favorite author in the +flesh has not sometimes been a little, if not +wholly, disappointed? + After all, is it not expecting too much to +expect a novelist to talk as cleverly as the clever +characters in his novels? Must a dramatist +necessarily go about armed to the teeth with +crisp dialogue? May not a poet be allowed to +lay aside his singing-robes and put on a con- +ventional dress-suit when he dines out? Why +is it not permissible in him to be as prosaic +and tiresome as the rest of the company? He +usually is. + + + +ON EARLY RISING + +A CERTAIN scientific gentleman of my +acquaintance, who has devoted years to +investigating the subject, states that he has never +come across a case of remarkable longevity un- +accompanied by the habit of early rising; from +which testimony it might be inferred that they +die early who lie abed late. But this would be +getting out at the wrong station. That the +majority of elderly persons are early risers is due +to the simple fact that they cannot sleep morn- +ings. After a man passes his fiftieth milestone +he usually awakens at dawn, and his wakeful- +ness is no credit to him. As the theorist con- +fined his observations to the aged, he easily +reached the conclusion that men live to be old +because they do not sleep late, instead of per- +ceiving that men do not sleep late because they +are old. He moreover failed to take into ac- +count the numberless young lives that have been +shortened by matutinal habits. + The intelligent reader, and no other is sup- +posable, need not be told that the early bird +aphorism is a warning and not an incentive. +The fate of the worm refutes the pretended +ethical teaching of the proverb, which assumes +to illustrate the advantage of early rising and +does so by showing how extremely dangerous +it is. I have no patience with the worm, and +when I rise with the lark I am always careful +to select a lark that has overslept himself. + The example set by this mythical bird, a myth- +ical bird so far as New England is concerned, +has wrought wide-spread mischief and discom- +fort. It is worth noting that his method of ac- +complishing these ends is directly the reverse of +that of the Caribbean insect mentioned by Laf- +cadio Hearn in his enchanting "Two Years in +the French West Indies"--a species of colossal +cricket called the wood-kid; in the creole tongue, +<i>cabritt-bois</i>. This ingenious pest works a sooth- +ing, sleep-compelling chant from sundown until +precisely half past four in the morning, when +it suddenly stops and by its silence awakens +everybody it has lulled into slumber with its in- +sidious croon. Mr. Hearn, with strange obtuse- +ness to the enormity of the thing, blandly re- +marks: "For thousands of early risers too poor +to own a clock, the cessation of its song is the +signal to get up." I devoutly trust that none of +the West India islands furnishing such satanic +entomological specimens will ever be annexed +to the United States. Some of our extreme ad- +vocates of territorial expansion might spend a +profitable few weeks on one of those favored +isles. A brief association with that <i>cabritt-bois</i> +would be likely to cool the enthusiasm of the +most ardent imperialist. + An incalculable amount of specious sentiment +has been lavished upon daybreak, chiefly by poets +who breakfasted, when they did breakfast, at +mid-day. It is charitably to be said that their +practice was better than their precept--or their +poetry. Thomson, the author of "The Castle +of Indolence," who gave birth to the depraved +apostrophe, + + Falsely luxurious, will not man awake, + +was one of the laziest men of his century. He +customarily lay in bed until noon meditating +pentameters on sunrise. This creature used to +be seen in his garden of an afternoon, with both +hands in his waistcoat pockets, eating peaches +from a pendent bough. Nearly all the English +poets who at that epoch celebrated what they +called "the effulgent orb of day" were denizens +of London, where pure sunshine is unknown +eleven months out of the twelve. + In a great city there are few incentives to +early rising. What charm is there in roof-tops +and chimney-stacks to induce one to escape even +from a nightmare? What is more depressing +than a city street before the shop-windows have +lifted an eyelid, when "the very houses seem +asleep," as Wordsworth says, and nobody is +astir but the belated burglar or the milk-and- +water man or Mary washing off the front steps? +Daybreak at the seaside or up among the moun- +tains is sometimes worth while, though famil- +iarity with it breeds indifference. The man +forced by restlessness or occupation to drink the +first vintage of the morning every day of his life +has no right appreciation of the beverage, how- +ever much he may profess to relish it. It is +only your habitual late riser who takes in the +full flavor of Nature at those rare intervals when +he gets up to go a-fishing. He brings virginal +emotions and unsatiated eyes to the sparkling +freshness of earth and stream and sky. For him +--a momentary Adam--the world is newly +created. It is Eden come again, with Eve in the +similitude of a three-pound trout. + In the country, then, it is well enough occa- +sionally to dress by candle-light and assist at the +ceremony of dawn; it is well if for no other +purpose than to disarm the intolerance of the +professional early riser who, were he in a state +of perfect health, would not be the wandering +victim of insomnia, and boast of it. There are +few small things more exasperating than this +early bird with the worm of his conceit in his +bill. + + + + UN POETE MANQUE + +IN the first volume of Miss Dickinson's poet- +ical melange is a little poem which needs +only a slight revision of the initial stanza to +entitle it to rank with some of the swallow- +flights in Heine's lyrical intermezzo. I have ten- +tatively tucked a rhyme into that opening stanza: + + I taste a liquor never brewed + In vats upon the Rhine; + No tankard ever held a draught + Of alcohol like mine. + + Inebriate of air am I, + And debauchee of dew, + Reeling, through endless summer days, + From inns of molten blue. + + When landlords turn the drunken bee + Out of the Foxglove's door, + When butterflies renounce their drams, + I shall but drink the more! + Till seraphs swing their snowy caps + And saints to windows run, + To see the little tippler + Leaning against the sun! + +Those inns of molten blue, and the disreputable +honey-gatherer who gets himself turned out-of- +doors at the sign of the Foxglove, are very +taking matters. I know of more important +things that interest me vastly less. This is one +of the ten or twelve brief pieces so nearly per- +fect in structure as almost to warrant the reader +in suspecting that Miss Dickinson's general dis- +regard of form was a deliberate affectation. The +artistic finish of the following sunset-piece +makes her usual quatrains unforgivable: + + This is the land the sunset washes, + These are the banks of the Yellow Sea; + Where it rose, or whither it rushes, + These are the western mystery! + + Night after night her purple traffic + Strews the landing with opal bales; + Merchantmen poise upon horizons, + Dip, and vanish with fairy sails. + +The little picture has all the opaline atmosphere +of a Claude Lorraine. One instantly frames it +in one's memory. Several such bits of impres- +sionist landscape may be found in the portfolio. + It is to be said, in passing, that there are few +things in Miss Dickinson's poetry so felicitous +as Mr. Higginson's characterization of it in his +preface to the volume: "In many cases these +verses will seem to the reader <i>like poetry +pulled up by the roots</i>, with rain and dew and +earth clinging to them." Possibly it might be +objected that this is not the best way to gather +either flowers or poetry. + Miss Dickinson possessed an extremely un- +conventional and bizarre mind. She was deeply +tinged by the mysticism of Blake, and strongly +influenced by the mannerism of Emerson. The +very gesture with which she tied her bonnet- +strings, preparatory to one of her nun-like +walks in her garden at Amherst, must +have had something dreamy and Emersonian +in it. She had much fancy of a quaint kind, +but only, as it appears to me, intermittent +flashes of imagination. + That Miss Dickinson's memoranda have a cer- +tain something which, for want of a more pre- +cise name, we term <i>quality</i>, is not to be denied. +But the incoherence and shapelessness of the +greater part of her verse are fatal. On nearly +every page one lights upon an unsupported +exquisite line or a lonely happy epithet; but a +single happy epithet or an isolated exquisite line +does not constitute a poem. What Lowell says +of Dr. Donne applies in a manner to Miss +Dickinson: "Donne is full of salient verses +that would take the rudest March winds of +criticism with their beauty, of thoughts that first +tease us like charades and then delight us with +the felicity of their solution; but these have not +saved him. He is exiled to the limbo of the +formless and the fragmentary." + Touching this question of mere technique Mr. +Ruskin has a word to say (it appears that he +said it "in his earlier and better days"), and +Mr. Higginson quotes it: "No weight, nor +mass, nor beauty of execution can outweigh one +grain or fragment of thought." This is a pro- +position to which one would cordially subscribe +if it were not so intemperately stated. A sug- +gestive commentary on Mr. Ruskin's impressive +dictum is furnished by his own volume of verse. +The substance of it is weighty enough, but the +workmanship lacks just that touch which dis- +tinguishes the artist from the bungler--the +touch which Mr. Ruskin, except when writing +prose, appears not much to have regarded either +in his later or "in his earlier and better days." + Miss Dickinson's stanzas, with their impos- +sible rhyme, their involved significance, their +interrupted flute-note of birds that have no con- +tinuous music, seem to have caught the ear of a +group of eager listeners. A shy New England +bluebird, shifting its light load of song, has for +the moment been mistaken for a stray nightingale. + + + +THE MALE COSTUME OF THE PERIOD + +I WENT to see a play the other night, one of +those good old-fashioned English comedies +that are in five acts and seem to be in fifteen. +The piece with its wrinkled conventionality, its +archaic stiffness, and obsolete code of morals, +was devoid of interest excepting as a collection +of dramatic curios. Still I managed to sit it +through. The one thing in it that held me a +pleased spectator was the graceful costume of a +certain player who looked like a fine old por- +trait--by Vandyke or Velasquez, let us say-- +that had come to life and kicked off its tar- +nished frame. + I do not know at what epoch of the world's +history the scene of the play was laid; possibly +the author originally knew, but it was evident +that the actors did not, for their make-ups re- +presented quite antagonistic periods. This cir- +cumstance, however, detracted only slightly from +the special pleasure I took in the young person +called Delorme. He was not in himself inter- +esting; he was like that Major Waters in +"Pepys's Diary"--"a most amorous melan- +choly gentleman who is under a despayr in love, +which makes him bad company;" it was en- +tirely Delorme's dress. + + I never saw mortal man in a dress more sen- +sible and becoming. The material was accord- +ing to Polonius's dictum, rich but not gaudy, of +some dark cherry-colored stuff with trimmings +of a deeper shade. My idea of a doublet is so +misty that I shall not venture to affirm that the +gentleman wore a doublet. It was a loose coat +of some description hanging negligently from +the shoulders and looped at the throat, showing +a tasteful arrangement of lacework below and at +the wrists. Full trousers reaching to the tops of +buckskin boots, and a low-crowned soft hat-- +not a Puritan's sugar-loaf, but a picturesque +shapeless head-gear, one side jauntily fastened +up with a jewel--completed the essential por- +tions of our friend's attire. It was a costume to +walk in, to ride in, to sit in. The wearer of it +could not be awkward if he tried, and I will do +Delorme the justice to say that he put his dress +to some severe tests. But he was graceful all +the while, and made me wish that my country- +men would throw aside their present hideous +habiliments and hasten to the measuring-room +of Delorme's tailor. + In looking over the plates of an old book of +fashions we smile at the monstrous attire in +which our worthy great-grandsires saw fit to +deck themselves. Presently it will be the turn +of posterity to smile at us, for in our own way +we are no less ridiculous than were our ances- +tors in their knee-breeches, pig-tail and <i>chapeau +de bras</i>. In fact we are really more absurd. If +a fashionably dressed man of to-day could catch +a single glimpse of himself through the eyes of +his descendants four or five generations re- +moved, he would have a strong impression of +being something that had escaped from some- +where. + Whatever strides we may have made in arts +and sciences, we have made no advance in the +matter of costume. That Americans do not +tattoo themselves, and do go fully clad--I am +speaking exclusively of my own sex--is about +all that can be said in favor of our present +fashions. I wish I had the vocabulary of Herr +Teufelsdrockh with which to inveigh against +the dress-coat of our evening parties, the angu- +lar swallow-tailed coat that makes a man look +like a poor species of bird and gets him mis- +taken for the waiter. "As long as a man wears +the modern coat," says Leigh Hunt, "he has no +right to despise any dress. What snips at the +collar and lapels! What a mechanical and ridic- +ulous cut about the flaps! What buttons in front +that are never meant to button, and yet are no +ornament! And what an exquisitely absurd pair +of buttons at the back! gravely regarded, never- +theless, and thought as indispensably necessary +to every well-conditioned coat, as other bits of +metal or bone are to the bodies of savages whom +we laugh at. There is absolutely not one iota of +sense, grace, or even economy in the modern +coat." + Still more deplorable is the ceremonial hat of +the period. That a Christian can go about un- +abashed with a shiny black cylinder on his head +shows what civilization has done for us in the +way of taste in personal decoration. The scalp- +lock of an Apache brave has more style. When +an Indian squaw comes into a frontier settle- +ment the first "marked-down" article she pur- +chases is a section of stove-pipe. Her instinct +as to the eternal fitness of things tells her that +its proper place is on the skull of a barbarian. + It was while revolving these pleasing reflec- +tions in my mind, that our friend Delorme +walked across the stage in the fourth act, and +though there was nothing in the situation nor in +the text of the play to warrant it, I broke into +tremendous applause, from which I desisted +only at the scowl of an usher--an object in a +celluloid collar and a claw-hammer coat. My +solitary ovation to Master Delorme was an in- +voluntary and, I think, pardonable protest against +the male costume of our own time. + + +ON A CERTAIN AFFECTATION + +EXCEPTING on the ground that youth is +the age of vain fantasy, there is no ac- +counting for the fact that young men and young +women of poetical temperament should so fre- +quently assume to look upon an early demise +for themselves as the most desirable thing in +the world. Though one may incidentally be +tempted to agree with them in the abstract, one +cannot help wondering. That persons who are +exceptionally fortunate in their environment, and +in private do not pretend to be otherwise, should +openly announce their intention of retiring at +once into the family tomb, is a problem not +easily solved. The public has so long listened +to these funereal solos that if a few of the poets +thus impatient to be gone were to go, their de- +parture would perhaps be attended by that re- +signed speeding which the proverb invokes on +behalf of the parting guest. + The existence of at least one magazine editor +would, I know, have a shadow lifted from it. +At this writing, in a small mortuary basket +under his desk are seven or eight poems of so +gloomy a nature that he would not be able to +remain in the same room with them if he did +not suspect the integrity of their pessimism. +The ring of a false coin is not more recognizable +than that of a rhyme setting forth a simulated +sorrow. + The Miss Gladys who sends a poem entitled +"Forsaken," in which she addresses death as her +only friend, makes pictures in the editor's eyes. +He sees, among other dissolving views, a little +hoyden in magnificent spirits, perhaps one of +this season's social buds, with half a score of +lovers ready to pluck her from the family stem +--a rose whose countless petals are coupons. A +caramel has disagreed with her, or she would +not have written in this despondent vein. The +young man who seeks to inform the world in +eleven anaemic stanzas of <i>terze rime</i> that the +cup of happiness has been forever dashed from +his lip (he appears to have but one) and darkly +intimates that the end is "nigh" (rhyming af- +fably with "sigh"), will probably be engaged +a quarter of a century from now in making simi- +lar declarations. He is simply echoing some +dysthymic poet of the past--reaching out with +some other man's hat for the stray nickel of your +sympathy. + This morbidness seldom accompanies gen- +uine poetic gifts. The case of David Gray, the +young Scottish poet who died in 1861, is an in- +stance to the contrary. His lot was exceedingly +sad, and the failure of health just as he was on +the verge of achieving something like success +justified his profound melancholy; but that he +tuned this melancholy and played upon it, as if +it were a musical instrument, is plainly seen in +one of his sonnets. + In Monckton Milnes's (Lord Houghton's) +"Life and Letters of John Keats" it is related +that Keats, one day, on finding a stain of blood +upon his lips after coughing, said to his friend +Charles Brown: "I know the color of that blood; +it is arterial blood; I cannot be deceived. That +drop is my death-warrant. I must die." Who +that ever read the passage could forget it? David +Gray did not, for he versified the incident as +happening to himself and appropriated, as his +own, Keats's comment: + + Last night, on coughing slightly with sharp pain, + There came arterial blood, and with a sigh + Of absolute grief I cried in bitter vein, + That drop is my death-warrant; I must die. + + The incident was likely enough a personal +experience, but the comment should have been +placed in quotation marks. I know of few +stranger things in literature than this poet's +dramatization of another man's pathos. Even +Keats's epitaph--<i>Here lies one whose name</i> +<i>was writ in water</i>--finds an echo in David Gray's +<i>Below lies one whose name was traced in sand</i>. +Poor Gray was at least the better prophet. + + +WISHMAKERS' TOWN + +A LIMITED edition of this little volume +of verse, which seems to me in many re- +spects unique, was issued in 1885, and has long +been out of print. The reissue of the book is +in response to the desire off certain readers who +have not forgotten the charm which William +Young's poem exercised upon them years ago, +and, finding the charm still potent, would have +others share it. + The scheme of the poem, for it is a poem +and not simply a series of unrelated lyrics, is in- +genious and original, and unfolds itself in mea- +sures at once strong and delicate. The mood of +the poet and the method of the playwright are +obvious throughout. Wishmakers' Town--a +little town situated in the no-man's-land of "The +Tempest" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" +--is shown to us as it awakens, touched by the +dawn. The clangor of bells far and near calls +the townfolk to their various avocations, the +toiler to his toil, the idler to his idleness, the +miser to his gold. In swift and picturesque se- +quence the personages of the Masque pass be- +fore us. Merchants, hucksters, players, lovers, +gossips, soldiers, vagabonds, and princes crowd +the scene, and have in turn their word of poign- +ant speech. We mingle with the throng in the +streets; we hear the whir of looms and the din +of foundries, the blare of trumpets, the whisper +of lovers, the scandals of the market-place, and, +in brief, are let into all the secrets of the busy +microcosm. A contracted stage, indeed, yet +large enough for the play of many passions, as +the narrowest hearthstone may be. With the +sounding of the curfew, the town is hushed to +sleep again, and the curtain falls on this mimic +drama of life. + The charm of it all is not easily to be defined. +Perhaps if one could name it, the spell were +broken. Above the changing rhythms hangs +an atmosphere too evasive for measurement--an +atmosphere that stipulates an imaginative mood +on the part of the reader. The quality which +pleases in certain of the lyrical episodes is less +intangible. One readily explains one's liking +for so gracious a lyric as The Flower-Seller, to +select an example at random. Next to the plea- +sure that lies in the writing of such exquisite +verse is the pleasure of quoting it. I copy the +stanzas partly for my own gratification, and +partly to win the reader to "Wishmakers' +Town," not knowing better how to do it. + + Myrtle, and eglantine, + For the old love and the new! + And the columbine, + With its cap and bells, for folly! + And the daffodil, for the hopes of youth! and the rue, + For melancholy! + But of all the blossoms that blow, + Fair gallants all, I charge you to win, if ye may, + This gentle guest, + Who dreams apart, in her wimple of purple and gray, + Like the blessed Virgin, with meek head bending low + Upon her breast. + For the orange flower + Ye may buy as ye will: but the violet of the wood + Is the love of maidenhood; + And he that hath worn it but once, though but for an hour, + He shall never again, though he wander by many a stream, + No, never again shall he meet with a dower that shall seem + So sweet and pure; and forever, in after years, + At the thought of its bloom, or the fragrance of its breath, + The past shall arise, + And his eyes shall be dim with tears, + And his soul shall be far in the gardens of Paradise + Though he stand in the Shambles of death. + + In a different tone, but displaying the same +sureness of execution, is the cry of the lowly +folk, the wretched pawns in the great game of +life: + + Prince, and Bishop, and Knight, and Dame, + Plot, and plunder, and disagree! + O but the game is a royal game! + O but your tourneys are fair to see! + + None too hopeful we found our lives; + Sore was labor from day to day; + Still we strove for our babes and wives-- + Now, to the trumpet, we march away! + + "Why?"--For some one hath will'd it so! + Nothing we know of the why or the where-- + To swamp, or jungle, or wastes of snow-- + Nothing we know, and little we care. + + Give us to kill!--since this is the end + Of love and labor in Nature's plan; + Give us to kill and ravish and rend, + Yea, since this is the end of man. + + States shall perish, and states be born: + Leaders, out of the throng, shall press; + Some to honor, and some to scorn: + We, that are little, shall yet be less. + + Over our lines shall the vultures soar; + Hard on our flanks shall the jackals cry; + And the dead shall be as the sands of the shore; + And daily the living shall pray to die. + + Nay, what matter!--When all is said, + Prince and Bishop will plunder still: + Lord and Lady must dance and wed. + Pity us, pray for us, ye that will! + + It is only the fear of impinging on Mr. +Young's copyright that prevents me reprinting +the graphic ballad of The Wanderer and the +prologue of The Strollers, which reads like a page +from the prelude to some Old-World miracle +play. The setting of these things is frequently +antique, but the thought is the thought of to- +day. I think there is a new generation of +readers for such poetry as Mr. Young's. I ven- +ture the prophecy that it will not lack for them +later when the time comes for the inevitable +rearrangement of present poetic values. + The author of "Wishmakers' Town" is the +child of his period, and has not escaped the <i>ma- +ladie du siecle</i>. The doubt and pessimism that +marked the end of the nineteenth century find a +voice in the bell-like strophes with which the +volume closes. It is the dramatist rather than +the poet who speaks here. The real message of +the poet to mankind is ever one of hope. Amid +the problems that perplex and discourage, it is +for him to sing + + Of what the world shall be + When the years have died away. + + + + HISTORICAL NOVELS + +IN default of such an admirable piece of work +as Dr. Weir Mitchell's "Hugh Wynne," I +like best those fictions which deal with king- +doms and principalities that exist only in the +mind's eye. One's knowledge of actual events +and real personages runs no serious risk of re- +ceiving shocks in this no-man's-land. Everything +that happens in an imaginary realm--in the +realm of Ruritania, for illustration--has an air +of possibility, at least a shadowy vraisemblance. +The atmosphere and local color, having an au- +thenticity of their own, are not to be challenged. +You cannot charge the writer with ignorance of +the period in which his narrative is laid, since +the period is as vague as the geography. He +walks on safe ground, eluding many of the perils +that beset the story-teller who ventures to stray +beyond the bounds of the make-believe. One +peril he cannot escape--that of misrepresenting +human nature. + The anachronisms of the average historical +novel, pretending to reflect history, are among +its minor defects. It is a thing altogether won- +derfully and fearfully made--the imbecile in- +trigue, the cast-iron characters, the plumed and +armored dialogue with its lance of gory rheto- +ric forever at charge. The stage at its worst +moments is not so unreal. Here art has broken +into smithereens the mirror which she is sup- +posed to hold up to nature. + In this romance-world somebody is always +somebody's unsuspected father, mother, or child, +deceiving every one excepting the reader. Usu- +ally the anonymous person is the hero, to whom +it is mere recreation to hold twenty swordsmen +at bay on a staircase, killing ten or twelve of +them before he escapes through a door that ever +providentially opens directly behind him. How +tired one gets of that door! The "caitiff" in +these chronicles of when knighthood was in +flower is invariably hanged from "the highest +battlement"--the second highest would not do +at all; or else he is thrown into "the deepest +dungeon of the castle"--the second deepest +dungeon was never known to be used on these +occasions. The hero habitually "cleaves" his +foeman "to the midriff," the "midriff" being +what the properly brought up hero always has +in view. A certain fictional historian of my +acquaintance makes his swashbuckler exclaim: +"My sword will [shall] kiss his midriff;" but +that is an exceptionally lofty flight of diction. +My friend's heroine dresses as a page, and in +the course of long interviews with her lover re- +mains unrecognized--a diaphanous literary in- +vention that must have been old when the Pyra- +mids were young. The heroine's small brother, +with playful archaicism called "a springald," +puts on her skirts and things and passes him- +self off for his sister or anybody else he pleases. +In brief, there is no puerility that is not at home +in this sphere of misbegotten effort. Listen-- +a priest, a princess, and a young man in woman's +clothes are on the scene: + + The princess rose to her feet and + approached the priest. + "Father," she said swiftly, "this + is not the Lady Joan, my brother's + wife, but a youth marvelously like + her, who hath offered himself in + her place that she might escape. . . . + He is the Count von Loen, a lord + of Kernsburg. And I love him. We + want you to marry us now, dear + Father--now, without a moment's + delay; for if you do not they will + kill him, and I shall have to marry + Prince Wasp!" + +This is from "Joan of the Sword Hand," and +if ever I read a more silly performance I have +forgotten it. + + + +POOR YORICK + +THERE is extant in the city of New York +an odd piece of bric-a-brac which I am +sometimes tempted to wish was in my own +possession. On a bracket in Edwin Booth's +bedroom at The Players--the apartment re- +mains as he left it that solemn June day ten +years ago--stands a sadly dilapidated skull +which the elder Booth, and afterward his son +Edwin, used to soliloquize over in the grave- +yard at Elsinore in the fifth act of "Hamlet." + A skull is an object that always invokes +interest more or less poignant; it always +has its pathetic story, whether told or untold; +but this skull is especially a skull "with a +past." + In the early forties, while playing an engage- +ment somewhere in the wild West, Junius +Brutus Booth did a series of kindnesses to a +particularly undeserving fellow, the name of +him unknown to us. The man, as it seemed, +was a combination of gambler, horse-stealer, +and highwayman--in brief, a miscellaneous +desperado, and precisely the melodramatic sort +of person likely to touch the sympathies of the +half-mad player. In the course of nature or the +law, presumably the law, the adventurer bodily +disappeared one day, and soon ceased to exist +even as a reminiscence in the florid mind of his +sometime benefactor. + As the elder Booth was seated at breakfast +one morning in a hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, +a negro boy entered the room bearing a small +osier basket neatly covered with a snowy nap- +kin. It had the general appearance of a basket +of fruit or flowers sent by some admirer, and as +such it figured for a moment in Mr. Booth's +conjecture. On lifting the cloth the actor started +from the chair with a genuine expression on his +features of that terror which he was used so +marvelously to simulate as Richard III. in the +midnight tent-scene or as Macbeth when the +ghost of Banquo usurped his seat at table. + In the pretty willow-woven basket lay the +head of Booth's old pensioner, which head the +old pensioner had bequeathed in due legal form +to the tragedian, begging him henceforth to +adopt it as one of the necessary stage properties +in the fifth act of Mr. Shakespeare's tragedy +of "Hamlet.'' "Take it away, you black +imp!" thundered the actor to the equally aghast +negro boy, whose curiosity had happily not +prompted him to investigate the dark nature of +his burden. + Shortly afterward, however, the horse-stealer's +residuary legatee, recovering from the first shock +of his surprise, fell into the grim humor of the +situation, and proceeded to carry out to the +letter the testator's whimsical request. Thus it +was that the skull came to secure an engage- +ment to play the role of poor Yorick in J. B. +Booth's company of strolling players, and to +continue a while longer to glimmer behind the +footlights in the hands of his famous son. + Observing that the grave-digger in his too +eager realism was damaging the thing--the +marks of his pick and spade are visible on the +cranium--Edwin Booth presently replaced it +with a papier-mache counterfeit manufactured +in the property-room of the theatre. During +his subsequent wanderings in Australia and +California, he carefully preserved the relic, +which finally found repose on the bracket in +question. + How often have I sat, of an afternoon, in +that front room on the fourth floor of the club- +house in Gramercy Park, watching the winter +or summer twilight gradually softening and +blurring the sharp outline of the skull until it +vanished uncannily into the gloom! Edwin +Booth had forgotten, if ever he knew, the name +of the man; but I had no need of it in order to +establish acquaintance with poor Yorick. In +this association I was conscious of a deep tinge +of sentiment on my own part, a circumstance +not without its queerness, considering how very +distant the acquaintance really was. + Possibly he was a fellow of infinite jest in his +day; he was sober enough now, and in no way +disposed to indulge in those flashes of merri- +ment "that were wont to set the table on a +roar." But I did not regret his evaporated +hilarity; I liked his more befitting genial si- +lence, and had learned to look upon his rather +open countenance with the same friendliness as +that with which I regarded the faces of less +phantasmal members of the club. He had be- +come to me a dramatic personality as distinct as +that of any of the Thespians I met in the grill- +room or the library. + Yorick's feeling in regard to me was a sub- +ject upon which I frequently speculated. There +was at intervals an alert gleam of intelligence +in those cavernous eye-sockets, as if the sudden +remembrance of some old experience had illu- +mined them. He had been a great traveler, and +had known strange vicissitudes in life; his stage +career had brought him into contact with a +varied assortment of men and women, and ex- +tended his horizon. His more peaceful profes- +sion of holding up mail-coaches on lonely roads +had surely not been without incident. It was +inconceivable that all this had left no impres- +sions. He must have had at least a faint recol- +lection of the tempestuous Junius Brutus Booth. +That Yorick had formed his estimate of me, and +probably not a flattering one, is something of +which I am strongly convinced. + At the death of Edwin Booth, poor Yorick +passed out of my personal cognizance, and now +lingers an incongruous shadow amid the mem- +ories of the precious things I lost then. + The suite of apartments formerly occupied by +Edwin Booth at The Players has been, as I have +said, kept unchanged--a shrine to which from +time to time some loving heart makes silent +pilgrimage. On a table in the centre of his +bedroom lies the book just where he laid it +down, an ivory paper-cutter marking the page +his eyes last rested upon; and in this chamber, +with its familiar pictures, pipes, and ornaments, +the skull finds its proper sanctuary. If at odd +moments I wish that by chance poor Yorick +had fallen to my care, the wish is only half- +hearted, though had that happened, I would +have given him welcome to the choicest corner +in my study and tenderly cherished him for the +sake of one who comes no more. + + + +THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER + + One that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!--<i>King Lear.</i> + +THE material for this paper on the auto- +graph hunter, his ways and his manners, +has been drawn chiefly from experiences not +my own. My personal relations with him have +been comparatively restricted, a circumstance +to which I owe the privilege of treating the +subject with a freedom that might otherwise not +seem becoming. + No author is insensible to the compliment in- +volved in a request for his autograph, assuming +the request to come from some sincere lover of +books and bookmen. It is an affair of different +complection when he is importuned to give time +and attention to the innumerable unknown who +"collect" autographs as they would collect post- +age stamps, with no interest in the matter be- +yond the desire to accumulate as many as possi- +ble. The average autograph hunter, with his +purposeless insistence, reminds one of the queen +in Stockton's story whose fad was "the button- +holes of all nations." + In our population of eighty millions and up- +ward there are probably two hundred thousand +persons interested more or less in what is termed +the literary world. This estimate is absurdly +low, but it serves to cast a sufficient side-light +upon the situation. Now, any unit of these two +hundred thousand is likely at any moment to in- +dite a letter to some favorite novelist, historian, +poet, or what not. It will be seen, then, that +the autograph hunter is no inconsiderable per- +son. He has made it embarrassing work for the +author fortunate or unfortunate enough to be re- +garded as worth while. Every mail adds to his +reproachful pile of unanswered letters. If he +have a conscience, and no amanuensis, he quickly +finds himself tangled in the meshes of endless +and futile correspondence. Through policy, +good nature, or vanity he is apt to become facile +prey. + A certain literary collector once confessed in +print that he always studied the idiosyncrasies +of his "subject" as carefully as another sort of +collector studies the plan of the house to which +he meditates a midnight visit. We were as- +sured that with skillful preparation and adroit +approach an autograph could be extracted from +anybody. According to the revelations of the +writer, Bismarck, Queen Victoria, and Mr. +Gladstone had their respective point of easy +access--their one unfastened door or window, +metaphorically speaking. The strongest man +has his weak side. + Dr. Holmes's affability in replying to every +one who wrote to him was perhaps not a trait +characteristic of the elder group. Mr. Lowell, +for instance, was harder-hearted and rather diffi- +cult to reach. I recall one day in the library at +Elmwood. As I was taking down a volume +from the shelf a sealed letter escaped from the +pages and fluttered to my feet. I handed it to +Mr. Lowell, who glanced incuriously at the +superscription. "Oh, yes," he said, smiling, +"I know 'em by instinct." Relieved of its en- +velope, the missive turned out to be eighteen +months old, and began with the usual amusing +solecism: "As one of the most famous of +American authors I would like to possess your +autograph." + Each recipient of such requests has of course +his own way of responding. Mr. Whittier used +to be obliging; Mr. Longfellow politic; Mr. +Emerson, always philosophical, dreamily con- +fiscated the postage stamps. + Time was when the collector contented him- +self with a signature on a card; but that, I am +told, no longer satisfies. He must have a letter +addressed to him personally--"on any subject +you please," as an immature scribe lately sug- +gested to an acquaintance of mine. The in- +genuous youth purposed to flourish a letter in the +faces of his less fortunate competitors, in order +to show them that he was on familiar terms with +the celebrated So-and-So. This or a kindred +motive is the spur to many a collector. The +stratagems he employs to compass his end are +inexhaustible. He drops you an off-hand note +to inquire in what year you first published your +beautiful poem entitled "A Psalm of Life." If +you are a simple soul, you hasten to assure him +that you are not the author of that poem, which +he must have confused with your "Rime of the +Ancient Mariner"--and there you are. Another +expedient is to ask if your father's middle name +was not Hierophilus. Now, your father has +probably been dead many years, and as perhaps +he was not a public man in his day, you are +naturally touched that any one should have in- +terest in him after this long flight of time. In +the innocence of your heart you reply by the +next mail that your father's middle name was +not Hierophilus, but Epaminondas--and there +you are again. It is humiliating to be caught +swinging, like a simian ancestor, on a branch +of one's genealogical tree. + Some morning you find beside your plate at +breakfast an imposing parchment with a great +gold seal in the upper left-hand corner. This +document--I am relating an actual occurrence +--announces with a flourish that you have unan- +imously been elected an honorary member of +The Kalamazoo International Literary Associa- +tion. Possibly the honor does not take away +your respiration; but you are bound by courtesy +to make an acknowledgment, and you express +your insincere thanks to the obliging secretary +of a literary organization which does not exist +anywhere on earth. + A scheme of lighter creative touch is that of +the correspondent who advises you that he is +replenishing his library and desires a detailed +list of your works, with the respective dates of +their first issue, price, style of binding, etc. A +bibliophile, you say to yourself. These inter- +rogations should of course have been addressed +to your publisher; but they are addressed to +you, with the stereotyped "thanks in advance." +The natural inference is that the correspondent, +who writes in a brisk commercial vein, wishes +to fill out his collection of your books, or, pos- +sibly, to treat himself to a complete set in full +crushed Levant. Eight or ten months later this +individual, having forgotten (or hoping you +will not remember) that he has already de- +manded a chronological list of your writings, +forwards another application couched in the +self-same words. The length of time it takes +him to "replenish" his library (with your +books) strikes you as pathetic. You cannot +control your emotions sufficiently to pen a +reply. From a purely literary point of view +this gentleman cares nothing whatever for your +holograph; from a mercantile point of view +he cares greatly and likes to obtain duplicate +specimens, which he disposes of to dealers in +such frail merchandise. + The pseudo-journalist who is engaged in +preparing a critical and biographical sketch of +you, and wants to incorporate, if possible, some +slight hitherto unnoted event in your life--a +signed photograph and a copy of your book- +plate are here in order--is also a character +which periodically appears upon the scene. In +this little Comedy of Deceptions there are as +many players as men have fancies. + A brother slave-of-the-lamp permits me to +transfer this leaf from the book of his experi- +ence: "Not long ago the postman brought me +a letter of a rather touching kind. The unknown +writer, lately a widow, and plainly a woman of +refinement, had just suffered a new affliction in +the loss of her little girl. My correspondent +asked me to copy for her ten or a dozen lines +from a poem which I had written years before +on the death of a child. The request was so +shrinkingly put, with such an appealing air of +doubt as to its being heeded, that I immediately +transcribed the entire poem, a matter of a hun- +dred lines or so, and sent it to her. I am unable +to this day to decide whether I was wholly hurt +or wholly amused when, two months afterward, +I stumbled over my manuscript, with a neat +price attached to it, in a second-hand book- +shop." + Perhaps the most distressing feature of the +whole business is the very poor health which +seems to prevail among autograph hunters. No +other class of persons in the community shows +so large a percentage of confirmed invalids. +There certainly is some mysterious connection +between incipient spinal trouble and the col- +lecting of autographs. Which superinduces the +other is a question for pathology. It is a fact +that one out of every eight applicants for a +specimen of penmanship bases his or her claim +upon the possession of some vertebral disability +which leaves him or her incapable of doing +anything but write to authors for their auto- +graph. Why this particular diversion should be +the sole resource remains undisclosed. But so +it appears to be, and the appeal to one's sympa- +thy is most direct and persuasive. Personally, +however, I have my suspicions, suspicions that +are shared by several men of letters, who have +come to regard this plea of invalidism, in the +majority of cases, as simply the variation of a +very old and familiar tune. I firmly believe +that the health of autograph hunters, as a class, +is excellent. + + + + +ROBERT HERRICK + +I + +A LITTLE over three hundred years ago +England had given to her a poet of the +very rarest lyrical quality, but she did not dis- +cover the fact for more than a hundred and +fifty years afterward. The poet himself was +aware of the fact at once, and stated it, perhaps +not too modestly, in countless quatrains and +couplets, which were not read, or, if read, were +not much regarded at the moment. It has al- +ways been an incredulous world in this matter. +So many poets have announced their arrival, +and not arrived! + Robert Herrick was descended in a direct +line from an ancient family in Lincolnshire, the +Eyricks, a mentionable representative of which +was John Eyrick of Leicester, the poet's grand- +father, admitted freeman in 1535, and afterward +twice made mayor of the town. John Eyrick +or Heyricke--he spelled his name recklessly-- +had five sons, the second of which sought a +career in London, where he became a gold- +smith, and in December, 1582, married Julian +Stone, spinster, of Bedfordshire, a sister to +Anne, Lady Soame, the wife of Sir Stephen +Soame. One of the many children of this mar- +riage was Robert Herrick. + It is the common misfortune of the poet's +biographers, though it was the poet's own great +good fortune, that the personal interviewer was +an unknown quantity at the period when Her- +rick played his part on the stage of life. Of +that performance, in its intimate aspects, we +have only the slightest record. + Robert Herrick was born in Wood street, +Cheapside, London, in 1591, and baptized at +St. Vedast's, Foster Lane, on August 24 of that +year. He had several brothers and sisters, with +whom we shall not concern ourselves. It would +be idle to add the little we know about these +persons to the little we know about Herrick +himself. He is a sufficient problem without +dragging in the rest of the family. + When the future lyrist was fifteen months old +his father, Nicholas Herrick, made his will, +and immediately fell out of an upper win- +dow. Whether or not this fall was an intended +sequence to the will, the high almoner, Dr. +Fletcher, Bishop of Bristol, promptly put in +his claim to the estate, "all goods and chattels +of suicides" becoming his by law. The cir- +cumstances were suspicious, though not conclu- +sive, and the good bishop, after long litigation, +consented to refer the case to arbitrators, who +awarded him two hundred and twenty pounds, +thus leaving the question at issue--whether or +not Herrick's death had been his own premedi- +tated act--still wrapped in its original mystery. +This singular law, which had the possible effect +of inducing high almoners to encourage suicide +among well-to-do persons of the lower and +middle classes, was afterward rescinded. + Nicholas Herrick did not leave his household +destitute, for his estate amounted to five thousand +pounds, that is to say, twenty-five thousand +pounds in to-day's money; but there were many +mouths to feed. The poet's two uncles, Robert +Herrick and William Herrick of Beaumanor, +the latter subsequently knighted <1> for his useful- +ness as jeweller and money-lender to James I., +were appointed guardians to the children. + Young Robert appears to have attended school +in Westminster until his fifteenth year, when +he was apprenticed to Sir William, who had +learned the gentle art of goldsmith from his +nephew's father. Though Robert's indentures + + <1> Dr. Grosart, in his interesting and valuable Memorial-Intro- +duction to Herrick's poems, quotes this curious item from Win- +wood's <i>Manorials of Affairs of State</i>: "On Easter Tuesday [1605], +one Mr. William Herrick, a goldsmith in Cheapside, was Knighted +for making a Hole in the great Diamond the King cloth wear. The +party little expected the honour, but he did his work so well as +won the King to an extraordinary liking of it." +bound him for ten years, Sir William is sup- +posed to have offered no remonstrance when he +was asked, long before that term expired, to +cancel the engagement and allow Robert to enter +Cambridge, which he did as fellow-commoner +at St. John's College. At the end of two years +he transferred himself to Trinity Hall, with a +view to economy and the pursuit of the law-- +the two frequently go together. He received +his degree of B. A. in 1617, and his M. A. in +1620, having relinquished the law for the arts. + During this time he was assumed to be in +receipt of a quarterly allowance of ten pounds-- +a not illiberal provision, the pound being then +five times its present value; but as the payments +were eccentric, the master of arts was in recur- +rent distress. If this money came from his own +share of his father's estate, as seems likely, +Herrick had cause for complaint; if otherwise, +the pith is taken out of his grievance. + The Iliad of his financial woes at this juncture +is told in a few chance-preserved letters written +to his "most careful uncle," as he calls that +evidently thrifty person. In one of these mono- +tonous and dreary epistles, which are signed +"R. Hearick," the writer says: "The essence +of my writing is (as heretofore) to entreat +you to paye for my use to Mr. Arthour Johnson, +bookseller, in Paule's Churchyarde, the ordi- +narie sume of tenn pounds, and that with as +much sceleritie as you maye." He also indulges +in the natural wish that his college bills "had +leaden wings and tortice feet." This was in +1617. The young man's patrimony, whatever +it may have been, had dwindled, and he con- +fesses to "many a throe and pinches of the +purse." For the moment, at least, his prospects +were not flattering. + Robert Herrick's means of livelihood, when +in 1620 he quitted the university and went up to +London, are conjectural. It is clear that he was +not without some resources, since he did not +starve to death on his wits before he discovered +a patron in the Earl of Pembroke. In the court +circle Herrick also unearthed humbler, but per- +haps not less useful, allies in the persons of +Edward Norgate, clerk of the signet, and Master +John Crofts, cup-bearer to the king. Through +the two New Year anthems, honored by the +music of Henry Lawes, his Majesty's organist +at Westminster, it is more than possible that +Herrick was brought to the personal notice of +Charles and Henrietta Maria. All this was a +promise of success, but not success itself. It +has been thought probable that Herrick may +have secured some minor office in the chapel +at Whitehall. That would accord with his sub- +sequent appointment (September, 1627,) as +chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham's unfortu- +nate expedition of the Isle of Rhe. + Precisely when Herrick was invested with +holy orders is not ascertainable. If one may +draw an inference from his poems, the life he +led meanwhile was not such as his "most care- +ful uncle" would have warmly approved. The +literary clubs and coffee-houses of the day were +open to a free-lance like young Herrick, some +of whose blithe measures, passing in manuscript +from hand to hand, had brought him faintly to +light as a poet. The Dog and the Triple Tun +were not places devoted to worship, unless it +were to the worship of "rare Ben Jonson," at +whose feet Herrick now sat, with the other +blossoming young poets of the season. He was +a faithful disciple to the end, and addressed +many loving lyrics to the master, of which not +the least graceful is His Prayer to Ben Jonson: + + When I a verse shall make, + Know I have praid thee + For old religion's sake, + Saint Ben, to aide me. + + Make the way smooth for me, + When I, thy Herrick, + Honouring thee, on my knee + Offer my lyric. + + Candles I'll give to thee, + And a new altar; + And thou, Saint Ben, shalt be + Writ in my Psalter. + + + On September 30, 1629, Charles I., at the +recommending of the Earl of Exeter, presented +Herrick with the vicarage of Dean Prior, near +Totnes, in Devonshire. Here he was destined +to pass the next nineteen years of his life among +surroundings not congenial. For Herrick to be +a mile away from London stone was for Herrick +to be in exile. Even with railway and tele- +graphic interruptions from the outside world, +the dullness of a provincial English town of to- +day is something formidable. The dullness of a +sequestered English hamlet in the early part of +the seventeenth century must have been appall- +ing. One is dimly conscious of a belated throb +of sympathy for Robert Herrick. Yet, however +discontented or unhappy he may have been at +first in that lonely vicarage, the world may con- +gratulate itself on the circumstances that stranded +him there, far from the distractions of the town, +and with no other solace than his Muse, for there +it was he wrote the greater number of the poems +which were to make his fame. It is to this acci- +dental banishment to Devon that we owe the +cluster of exquisite pieces descriptive of obso- +lete rural manners and customs--the Christ- +mas masks, the Twelfth-night mummeries, the +morris-dances, and the May-day festivals. + The November following Herrick's appoint- +ment to the benefice was marked by the death +of his mother, who left him no heavier legacy +than "a ringe of twenty shillings." Perhaps +this was an understood arrangement between +them; but it is to be observed that, though Her- +rick was a spendthrift in epitaphs, he wasted no +funeral lines on Julian Herrick. In the matter +of verse he dealt generously with his family +down to the latest nephew. One of his most +charming and touching poems is entitled To +His Dying Brother, Master William Herrick, +a posthumous son. There appear to have been +two brothers named William. The younger, +who died early, is supposed to be referred to +here. + The story of Herrick's existence at Dean Prior +is as vague and bare of detail as the rest of the +narrative. His parochial duties must have been +irksome to him, and it is to be imagined that he +wore his cassock lightly. As a preparation for +ecclesiastical life he forswore sack and poetry; +but presently he was with the Muse again, and +his farewell to sack was in a strictly Pickwickian +sense. Herrick had probably accepted the vicar- +ship as he would have accepted a lieutenancy in +a troop of horse--with an eye to present emol- +ument and future promotion. The promotion +never came, and the emolument was nearly as +scant as that of Goldsmith's parson, who con- +sidered himself "passing rich with forty pounds +a year"--a height of optimism beyond the +reach of Herrick, with his expensive town wants +and habits. But fifty pounds--the salary of his +benefice--and possible perquisites in the way +of marriage and burial fees would enable him to +live for the time being. It was better than a +possible nothing a year in London. + Herrick's religious convictions were assuredly +not deeper than those of the average layman. +Various writers have taken a different view of +the subject; but it is inconceivable that a clergy- +man with a fitting sense of his function could +have written certain of the poems which Her- +rick afterward gave to the world--those aston- +ishing epigrams upon his rustic enemies, and +those habitual bridal compliments which, among +his personal friends, must have added a terror +to matrimony. Had he written only in that vein, +the posterity which he so often invoked with +pathetic confidence would not have greatly +troubled itself about him. + It cannot positively be asserted that all the +verses in question relate to the period of his in- +cumbency, for none of his verse is dated, with +the exception of the Dialogue betwixt Horace +and Lydia. The date of some of the composi- +tions may be arrived at by induction. The re- +ligious pieces grouped under the title of Noble +Numbers distinctly associate themselves with +Dean Prior, and have little other interest. Very +few of them are "born of the royal blood." +They lack the inspiration and magic of his secu- +lar poetry, and are frequently so fantastical and +grotesque as to stir a suspicion touching the ab- +solute soundness of Herrick's mind at all times. +The lines in which the Supreme Being is as- +sured that he may read Herrick's poems with- +out taking any tincture from their sinfulness +might have been written in a retreat for the un- +balanced. "For unconscious impiety," remarks +Mr. Edmund Gosse, <1> "this rivals the famous +passage in which Robert Montgomery exhorted +God to 'pause and think.'" Elsewhere, in an +apostrophe to "Heaven," Herrick says: + + Let mercy be + So kind to set me free, + And I will straight + Come in, or force the gate. + +In any event, the poet did not purpose to be +left out! + Relative to the inclusion of unworthy pieces + + <1> In <i>Seventeenth-Century Studies</i>. +and the general absence of arrangement in the +"Hesperides," Dr. Grosart advances the theory +that the printers exercised arbitrary authority on +these points. Dr. Grosart assumes that Herrick +kept the epigrams and personal tributes in +manuscript books separate from the rest of the +work, which would have made a too slender +volume by itself, and on the plea of this slender- +ness was induced to trust the two collections +to the publisher, "whereupon he or some un- +skilled subordinate proceeded to intermix these +additions with the others. That the poet him- +self had nothing to do with the arrangement or +disarrangement lies on the surface." This is an +amiable supposition, but merely a supposition. +Herrick personally placed the "copy" in the +hands of John Williams and Francis Eglesfield, +and if he were over-persuaded to allow them +to print unfit verses, and to observe no method +whatever in the contents of the book, the dis- +credit is none the less his. It is charitable to +believe that Herrick's coarseness was not the +coarseness of the man, but of the time, and that +he followed the fashion <i>malgre lui</i>. With re- +gard to the fairy poems, they certainly should +have been given in sequence; but if there are +careless printers, there are also authors who are +careless in the arrangement of their manuscript, +a kind of task, moreover, in which Herrick was +wholly unpractised, and might easily have made +mistakes. The "Hesperides" was his sole +publication. + Herrick was now thirty-eight years of age. +Of his personal appearance at this time we have +no description. The portrait of him prefixed to +the original edition of his works belongs to a +much later moment. Whether or not the bovine +features in Marshall's engraving are a libel on +the poet, it is to be regretted that oblivion has +not laid its erasing finger on that singularly un- +pleasant counterfeit presentment. It is interest- +ing to note that this same Marshall engraved the +head of Milton for the first collection of his mis- +cellaneous poems--the precious 1645 volume +containing Il Penseroso, Lycidas, Comus, etc. +The plate gave great offense to the serious- +minded young Milton, not only because it re- +presented him as an elderly person, but because +of certain minute figures of peasant lads and +lassies who are very indistinctly seen dancing +frivolously under the trees in the background. +Herrick had more reason to protest. The ag- +gressive face bestowed upon him by the artist +lends a tone of veracity to the tradition that the +vicar occasionally hurled the manuscript of his +sermon at the heads of his drowsy parishioners, +accompanying the missive with pregnant re- +marks. He has the aspect of one meditating +assault and battery. + To offset the picture there is much indirect +testimony to the amiability of the man, aside +from the evidence furnished by his own writ- +ings. He exhibits a fine trait in the poem on the +Bishop of Lincoln's imprisonment--a poem full +of deference and tenderness for a person who +had evidently injured the writer, probably by +opposing him in some affair of church prefer- +ment. Anthony Wood says that Herrick "be- +came much beloved by the gentry in these parts +for his florid and witty (wise) discourses." It +appears that he was fond of animals, and had a +pet spaniel called Tracy, which did not get away +without a couplet attached to him: + + + Now thou art dead, no eye shall ever see + For shape and service spaniell like to thee. + +Among the exile's chance acquaintances was a +sparrow, whose elegy he also sings, comparing +the bird to Lesbia's sparrow, much to the latter's +disadvantage. All of Herrick's geese were swans. +On the authority of Dorothy King, the daughter +of a woman who served Herrick's successor at +Dean Prior in 1674, we are told that the poet +kept a pig, which he had taught to drink out of +a tankard--a kind of instruction he was admir- +ably qualified to impart. Dorothy was in her +ninety-ninth year when she communicated this +fact to Mr. Barron Field, the author of the +paper on Herrick published in the "Quarterly +Review" for August, 1810, and in the Boston +edition <1> of the "Hesperides" attributed to +Southey. + What else do we know of the vicar? A very +favorite theme with Herrick was Herrick. Scat- +tered through his book are no fewer than twenty- +five pieces entitled On Himself, not to men- +tion numberless autobiographical hints under +other captions. They are merely hints, throw- +ing casual side-lights on his likes and dislikes, +and illuminating his vanity. A whimsical per- +sonage without any very definite outlines might +be evolved from these fragments. I picture him +as a sort of Samuel Pepys, with perhaps less +quaintness, and the poetical temperament added. +Like the prince of gossips, too, he somehow +gets at your affections. In one place Herrick + + <1> The Biographical Notice prefacing this volume of The British +Poets is a remarkable production, grammatically and chronologi- +cally. On page 7 the writer speaks of Herrick as living "in habits +of intimacy" with Ben Jonson in 1648. If that was the case, Her- +rick must have taken up his quarters in Westminster Abbey, for +Jonson had been dead eleven years. +laments the threatened failure of his eyesight +(quite in what would have been Pepys's man- +ner had Pepys written verse), and in another +place he tells us of the loss of a finger. The +quatrain treating of this latter catastrophe is as +fantastic as some of Dr. Donne's <i>concetti</i>: + + One of the five straight branches of my hand + Is lopt already, and the rest but stand + Expecting when to fall, which soon will be: + First dies the leafe, the bough next, next the tree. + +With all his great show of candor Herrick really +reveals as little of himself as ever poet did. One +thing, however, is manifest--he understood and +loved music. None but a lover could have said: + + The mellow touch of musick most doth wound + The soule when it doth rather sigh than sound. + +Or this to Julia: + + So smooth, so sweet, so silvery is thy voice, + As could they hear, the damn'd would make no noise, + But listen to thee walking in thy chamber + Melting melodious words to lutes of amber. + + . . . Then let me lye + Entranc'd, and lost confusedly; + And by thy musick stricken mute, + Die, and be turn'd into a lute. + + Herrick never married. His modest Devon- +shire establishment was managed by a maid- +servant named Prudence Baldwin. "Fate likes +fine names," says Lowell. That of Herrick's +maid-of-all-work was certainly a happy meeting +of gentle vowels and consonants, and has had +the good fortune to be embalmed in the amber +of what may be called a joyous little threnody: + + In this little urne is laid + Prewdence Baldwin, once my maid; + From whose happy spark here let + Spring the purple violet. + +Herrick addressed a number of poems to her +before her death, which seems to have deeply +touched him in his loneliness. We shall not al- +low a pleasing illusion to be disturbed by the flip- +pancy of an old writer who says that "Prue was +but indifferently qualified to be a tenth muse." +She was a faithful handmaid, and had the merit +of causing Herrick in this octave to strike a note +of sincerity not usual with him: + + These summer birds did with thy master stay + The times of warmth, but then they flew away, + Leaving their poet, being now grown old, + Expos'd to all the coming winter's cold. + But thou, kind Prew, didst with my fates abide + As well the winter's as the summer's tide: + For which thy love, live with thy master here + Not two, but all the seasons of the year. + +Thus much have I done for thy memory, Mis- +tress Prew! + In spite of Herrick's disparagement of Dean- +bourn, which he calls "a rude river," and +his characterization of Devon folk as "a peo- +ple currish, churlish as the seas," the fullest +and pleasantest days of his life were prob- +ably spent at Dean Prior. He was not un- +mindful meanwhile of the gathering political +storm that was to shake England to its foun- +dations. How anxiously, in his solitude, he +watched the course of events, is attested by +many of his poems. This solitude was not +without its compensation. "I confess," he +says, + + I ne'er invented such + Ennobled numbers for the presse + Than where I loath'd so much. + + A man is never wholly unhappy when he is +writing verses. Herrick was firmly convinced +that each new lyric was a stone added to the +pillar of his fame, and perhaps his sense of +relief was tinged with indefinable regret when +he found himself suddenly deprived of his bene- +fice. The integrity of some of his royalistic +poems is doubtful; but he was not given the +benefit of the doubt by the Long Parliament, +which ejected the panegyrist of young Prince +Charles from the vicarage of Dean Prior, and +installed in his place the venerable John Syms, +a gentleman with pronounced Cromwellian +views. + Herrick metaphorically snapped his fingers +at the Puritans, discarded his clerical habili- +ments, and hastened to London to pick up such +as were left of the gay-colored threads of his +old experience there. Once more he would +drink sack at the Triple Tun, once more he +would breathe the air breathed by such poets +and wits as Cotton, Denham, Shirley, Selden, +and the rest. "Yes, by Saint Anne! and gin- +ger shall be hot I' the mouth too." In the +gladness of getting back "from the dull con- +fines of the drooping west," he writes a glow- +ing apostrophe to London--that "stony step- +mother to poets." He claims to be a free-born +Roman, and is proud to find himself a citizen +again. According to his earlier biographers, +Herrick had much ado not to starve in that +same longed-for London, and fell into great +misery; but Dr. Grosart disputes this, arguing, +with justness, that Herrick's family, which was +wealthy and influential, would not have allowed +him to come to abject want. With his royal- +istic tendencies he may not have breathed quite +freely in the atmosphere of the Commonwealth, +and no doubt many tribulations fell to his lot, +but among them was not poverty. + The poet was now engaged in preparing his +works for the press, and a few weeks following +his return to London they were issued in a sin- +gle volume with the title "Hesperides; or, The +Works both Humane and Divine of Robert +Herrick, Esq." + The time was not ready for him. A new era +had dawned--the era of the commonplace. +The interval was come when Shakespeare him- +self was to lie in a kind of twilight. Herrick +was in spirit an Elizabethan, and had strayed +by chance into an artificial and prosaic age-- +a sylvan singing creature alighting on an alien +planet. "He was too natural," says Mr. Pal- +grave in his Chrysomela, "too purely poetical; +he had not the learned polish, the political al- +lusion, the tone of the city, the didactic turn, +which were then and onward demanded from +poetry." Yet it is strange that a public which +had a relish for Edmund Waller should neglect +a poet who was fifty times finer than Waller +in his own specialty. What poet then, or in the +half-century that followed the Restoration, could +have written Corinna's Going a-Maying, or ap- +proached in kind the ineffable grace and perfec- +tion to be found in a score of Herrick's lyrics? + The "Hesperides" was received with chilling +indifference. None of Herrick's great contem- +poraries has left a consecrating word concerning +it. The book was not reprinted during the au- +thor's lifetime, and for more than a century after +his death Herrick was virtually unread. In 1796 +the "Gentleman's Magazine" copied a few of +the poems, and two years later Dr. Nathan Drake +published in his "Literary Hours" three critical +papers on the poet, with specimens of his writ- +ings. Dr. Johnson omitted him from the "Lives +of the Poets," though space was found for half a +score of poetasters whose names are to be found +nowhere else. In 1810 Dr. Nott, a physician +of Bristol, issued a small volume of selections. +It was not until 1823 that Herrick was reprinted +in full. It remained for the taste of our own +day to multiply editions of him. + In order to set the seal to Herrick's fame, it +is now only needful that some wiseacre should +attribute the authorship of the poems to some +man who could not possibly have written a line +of them. The opportunity presents attractions +that ought to be irresistible. Excepting a hand- +ful of Herrick's college letters there is no scrap +of his manuscript extant; the men who drank +and jested with the poet at the Dog or the Triple +Tun make no reference to him; <1> and in the wide +parenthesis formed by his birth and death we +find as little tangible incident as is discover- +able in the briefer span of Shakespeare's fifty- +two years. Here is material for profundity and +ciphers! + Herrick's second sojourn in London covered +the period between 1648 and 1662, curing which +interim he fades from sight, excepting for the + + <1> With the single exception of the writer of some verses in the +<i>Musarum Deliciae</i> (1656) who mentions + + That old sack + Young Herrick took to entertain + The Muses in a sprightly vein. +instant when he is publishing his book. If he +engaged in further literary work there are no +evidences of it beyond one contribution to the +"Lacrymae Musarum" in 1649. + He seems to have had lodgings, for a while +at least, in St. Anne's, Westminster. With the +court in exile and the grim Roundheads seated +in the seats of the mighty, it was no longer the +merry London of his early manhood. Time and +war had thinned the ranks of friends; in the +old haunts the old familiar faces were wanting. +Ben Jonson was dead, Waller banished, and +many another comrade "in disgrace with for- +tune and men's eyes." As Herrick walked +through crowded Cheapside or along the dingy +river-bank in those years, his thought must have +turned more than once to the little vicarage in +Devonshire, and lingered tenderly. + On the accession of Charles II. a favorable +change of wind wafted Herrick back to his +former moorings at Dean Prior, the obnoxious +Syms having been turned adrift. This occurred +on August 24, 1662, the seventy-first anniver- +sary of the poet's baptism. Of Herrick's move- +ments after that, tradition does not furnish even +the shadow of an outline. The only notable +event concerning him is recorded twelve years +later in the parish register: "Robert Herrick, +vicker, was buried ye 15" day October, 1674." +He was eighty-three years old. The location of +his grave is unknown. In 1857 a monument to +his memory was erected in Dean Church. And +this is all. + + + +II + +THE details that have come down to us touch- +ing Herrick's private life are as meagre as if he +had been a Marlowe or a Shakespeare. But +were they as ample as could be desired they +would still be unimportant compared with the +single fact that in 1648 he gave to the world his +"Hesperides." The environments of the man +were accidental and transitory. The significant +part of him we have, and that is enduring so +long as wit, fancy, and melodious numbers hold +a charm for mankind. + A fine thing incomparably said instantly be- +comes familiar, and has henceforth a sort of +dateless excellence. Though it may have been +said three hundred years ago, it is as modern +as yesterday; though it may have been said +yesterday, it has the trick of seeming to have +been always in our keeping. This quality of +remoteness and nearness belongs, in a striking +degree, to Herrick's poems. They are as novel +to-day as they were on the lips of a choice few +of his contemporaries, who, in reading them in +their freshness, must surely have been aware +here and there of the ageless grace of old idyllic +poets dead and gone. + Herrick was the bearer of no heavy message +to the world, and such message as he had he +was apparently in no hurry to deliver. On this +point he somewhere says: + + Let others to the printing presse run fast; + Since after death comes glory, I 'll not haste. + +He had need of his patience, for he was long +detained on the road by many of those obstacles +that waylay poets on their journeys to the +printer. + Herrick was nearly sixty years old when he +published the "Hesperides." It was, I repeat, +no heavy message, and the bearer was left an +unconscionable time to cool his heels in the ante- +chamber. Though his pieces had been set to +music by such composers as Lawes, Ramsay, +and Laniers, and his court poems had naturally +won favor with the Cavalier party, Herrick cut +but a small figure at the side of several of his +rhyming contemporaries who are now forgotten. +It sometimes happens that the light love-song, +reaching few or no ears at its first singing, out- +lasts the seemingly more prosperous ode which, +dealing with some passing phase of thought, +social or political, gains the instant applause of +the multitude. In most cases the timely ode is +somehow apt to fade with the circumstance that +inspired it, and becomes the yesterday's edito- +rial of literature. Oblivion likes especially to +get hold of occasional poems. That makes it +hard for feeble poets laureate. + Mr. Henry James once characterized Al- +phonse Daudet as "a great little novelist." +Robert Herrick is a great little poet. The brev- +ity of his poems, for he wrote nothing <i>de longue +haleine</i>, would place him among the minor +singers; his workmanship places him among +the masters. The Herricks were not a family +of goldsmiths and lapidaries for nothing. The +accurate touch of the artificer in jewels and +costly metals was one of the gifts transmitted to +Robert Herrick. Much of his work is as ex- +quisite and precise as the chasing on a dagger- +hilt by Cellini; the line has nearly always that +vine-like fluency which seems impromptu, and +is never the result of anything but austere labor. +The critic who, borrowing Milton's words, +described these carefully wrought poems as +"wood-notes wild" showed a singular lapse of +penetration. They are full of subtle simplicity. +Here we come across a stanza as severely cut as +an antique cameo--the stanza, for instance, in +which the poet speaks of his lady-love's "win- +ter face"--and there a couplet that breaks into +unfading daffodils and violets. The art, though +invisible, is always there. His amatory songs +and catches are such poetry as Orlando would +have liked to hang on the boughs in the forest +of Arden. None of the work is hastily done, +not even that portion of it we could wish had +not been done at all. Be the motive grave or +gay, it is given that faultlessness of form which +distinguishes everything in literature that has +survived its own period. There is no such thing +as "form" alone; it is only the close-grained +material that takes the highest finish. The struc- +ture of Herrick's verse, like that of Blake, is +simple to the verge of innocence. Such rhyth- +mic intricacies as those of Shelley, Tennyson, +and Swinburne he never dreamed of. But his +manner has this perfection: it fits his matter as +the cup of the acorn fits its meat. + Of passion, in the deeper sense, Herrick has +little or none. Here are no "tears from the +depth of some divine despair," no probings into +the tragic heart of man, no insight that goes +much farther than the pathos of a cowslip on a +maiden's grave. The tendrils of his verse reach +up to the light, and love the warmer side of the +garden wall. But the reader who does not de- +tect the seriousness under the lightness misreads +Herrick. Nearly all true poets have been whole- +some and joyous singers. A pessimistic poet, +like the poisonous ivy, is one of nature's sar- +casms. In his own bright pastoral way Herrick +must always remain unexcelled. His limitations +are certainly narrow, but they leave him in the +sunshine. Neither in his thought nor in his +utterance is there any complexity; both are as +pellucid as a woodland pond, content to du- +plicate the osiers and ferns, and, by chance, +the face of a girl straying near its crystal. His +is no troubled stream in which large trout +are caught. He must be accepted on his own +terms. + The greatest poets have, with rare exceptions, +been the most indebted to their predecessors +or to their contemporaries. It has wittily been +remarked that only mediocrity is ever wholly +original. Impressionability is one of the condi- +tions of the creative faculty: the sensitive mind +is the only mind that invents. What the poet +reads, sees, and feels, goes into his blood, and +becomes an ingredient of his originality. The +color of his thought instinctively blends itself +with the color of its affinities. A writer's style, +if it have distinction, is the outcome of a hun- +dred styles. + Though a generous borrower of the ancients, +Herrick appears to have been exceptionally free +from the influence of contemporary minds. +Here and there in his work are traces of his +beloved Ben Jonson, or fleeting impressions +of Fletcher, and in one instance a direct in- +fringement on Suckling; but the sum of +Herrick's obligations of this sort is inconsider- +able. + This indifference to other writers of his time, +this insularity, was doubtless his loss. The more +exalted imagination of Vaughan or Marvell or +Herbert might have taught him a deeper note +than he sounded in his purely devotional poems. +Milton, of course, moved in a sphere apart. +Shakespeare, whose personality still haunted the +clubs and taverns which Herrick frequented on +his first going up to London, failed to lay any +appreciable spell upon him. That great name, +moreover, is a jewel which finds no setting in +Herrick's rhyme. His general reticence rela- +tive to brother poets is extremely curious when +we reflect on his penchant for addressing four- +line epics to this or that individual. They were, +in the main, obscure individuals, whose iden- +tity is scarcely worth establishing. His London +life, at two different periods, brought him into +contact with many of the celebrities of the day; +but his verse has helped to confer immortality +on very few of them. That his verse had the +secret of conferring immortality was one of his +unshaken convictions. Shakespeare had not a +finer confidence when he wrote, + + Not marble nor the gilded monuments + Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme, + +than has Herrick whenever he speaks of his own +poetry, and he is not by any means backward in +speaking of it. It was the breath of his nostrils. +Without his Muse those nineteen years in that +dull, secluded Devonshire village would have +been unendurable. + His poetry has the value and the defect of that +seclusion. In spite, however, of his contracted +horizon there is great variety in Herrick's themes. +Their scope cannot be stated so happily as he has +stated it: + + I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers, + Of April, May, of June, and July flowers; + I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, + Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes; + I write of Youth, of Love, and have access + By these to sing of cleanly wantonness; + I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by piece + Of balm, of oil, of spice and ambergris; + I sing of times trans-shifting, and I write + How roses first came red and lilies white; + I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing + The Court of Mab, and of the Fairy King; + I write of Hell; I sing (and ever shall) + Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all. + + Never was there so pretty a table of contents! +When you open his book the breath of the Eng- +lish rural year fans your cheek; the pages seem +to exhale wildwood and meadow smells, as if +sprigs of tansy and lavender had been shut up +in the volume and forgotten. One has a sense +of hawthorn hedges and wide-spreading oaks, +of open lead-set lattices half hidden with honey- +suckle; and distant voices of the haymakers, re- +turning home in the rosy afterglow, fall dreamily +on one's ear, as sounds should fall when fancy +listens. There is no English poet so thoroughly +English as Herrick. He painted the country +life of his own time as no other has painted it at +any time. + It is to be remarked that the majority of Eng- +lish poets regarded as national have sought their +chief inspiration in almost every land and period +excepting their own. Shakespeare went to Italy, +Denmark, Greece, Egypt, and to many a hitherto +unfooted region of the imagination, for plot and +character. It was not Whitehall Garden, but +the Garden of Eden and the celestial spaces, that +lured Milton. It is the Ode on a Grecian Urn, +The Eve of St. Agnes, and the noble fragment +of Hyperion that have given Keats his spacious +niche in the gallery of England's poets. Shelley's +two masterpieces, Prometheus Unbound and The +Cenci, belong respectively to Greece and Italy. +Browning's The Ring and the Book is Italian; +Tennyson wandered to the land of myth for the +Idylls of the King, and Matthew Arnold's Soh- +rab and Rustum--a narrative poem second in +dignity to none produced in the nineteenth cen- +tury--is a Persian story. But Herrick's "golden +apples" sprang from the soil in his own day, +and reddened in the mist and sunshine of his +native island. + Even the fairy poems, which must be classed +by themselves, are not wanting in local flavor. +Herrick's fairy world is an immeasurable dis- +tance from that of "A Midsummer Night's +Dream." Puck and Titania are of finer breath +than Herrick's little folk, who may be said to +have Devonshire manners and to live in a minia- +ture England of their own. Like the magician +who summons them from nowhere, they are +fond of color and perfume and substantial feasts, +and indulge in heavy draughts--from the cups +of morning-glories. In the tiny sphere they in- +habit everything is marvelously adapted to their +requirement; nothing is out of proportion or out +of perspective. The elves are a strictly religious +people in their winsome way, "part pagan, part +papistical;" they have their pardons and indul- +gences, their psalters and chapels, and + + An apple's-core is hung up dried, + With rattling kernels, which is rung + To call to Morn and Even-song; + +and very conveniently, + + Hard by, I' th' shell of half a nut, + The Holy-water there is put. + +It is all delightfully naive and fanciful, this elfin- +world, where the impossible does not strike one +as incongruous, and the England of 1648 seems +never very far away. + It is only among the apparently unpremedi- +tated lyrical flights of the Elizabethan dramatists +that one meets with anything like the lilt and +liquid flow of Herrick's songs. While in no de- +gree Shakespearian echoes, there are epithalamia +and dirges of his that might properly have fallen +from the lips of Posthumus in "Cymbeline." +This delicate epicede would have fitted Imogen: + + Here a solemne fast we keepe + While all beauty lyes asleepe; + Husht be all things; no noyse here + But the toning of a teare, + Or a sigh of such as bring + Cowslips for her covering. + +Many of the pieces are purely dramatic in +essence; the Mad Maid's Song, for example. +The lyrist may speak in character, like the +dramatist. A poet's lyrics may be, as most of +Browning's are, just so many <i>dramatis per- +sonae</i>. "Enter a Song singing" is the stage- +direction in a seventeenth-century play whose +name escapes me. The sentiment dramatized in +a lyric is not necessarily a personal expression. +In one of his couplets Herrick neatly denies that +his more mercurial utterances are intended pre- +sentations of himself: + + To his Book's end this last line he'd have placed-- + Jocund his Muse was, but his Life was chaste. + +In point of fact he was a whole group of im- +aginary lovers in one. Silvia, Anthea, Electra, +Perilla, Perenna, and the rest of those lively +ladies ending in <i>a</i>, were doubtless, for the most +part, but airy phantoms dancing--as they should +not have danced--through the brain of a senti- +mental old bachelor who happened to be a vicar +of the Church of England. Even with his over- +plus of heart it would have been quite impossible +for him to have had enough to go round had +there been so numerous actual demands upon it. + Thus much may be conceded to Herrick's +verse: at its best it has wings that carry it nearly +as close to heaven's gate as any of Shakespeare's +lark-like interludes. The brevity of the poems +and their uniform smoothness sometimes produce +the effect of monotony. The crowded richness +of the line advises a desultory reading. But one +must go back to them again and again. They +bewitch the memory, having once caught it, +and insist on saying themselves over and over. +Among the poets of England the author of the +"Hesperides" remains, and is likely to remain, +unique. As Shakespeare stands alone in his vast +domain, so Herrick stands alone in his scanty +plot of ground. + + + Shine, Poet! in thy place, and be content. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Ponkapog Papers by Aldrich + |
