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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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