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diff --git a/8108-h/8108-h.htm b/8108-h/8108-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4f6d91f --- /dev/null +++ b/8108-h/8108-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6518 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> + +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> + <head> + <title> + Literary and Social Essays, by George William Curtis + </title> + <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + + body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} + .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; } + blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} + .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} + div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } + div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } + .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} + .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} + .pagenum {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal; + margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%; + text-align: right;} + .side { float: right; font-size: 75%; width: 25%; padding-left: 0.8em; + border-left: dashed thin; margin-left: 0.8em; text-align: left; + text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; + font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;} + pre {font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 100%; margin-left: 10%;} + +</style> + </head> + <body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's Literary and Social Essays, by George William Curtis + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Literary and Social Essays + +Author: George William Curtis + + +Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8108] +This file was first posted on June 15, 2003 +Last Updated: May 27, 2013 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS *** + + + + +Text file produced by Eric Eldred, Marc D'Hooghe, Charles Franks, +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + +HTML file produced by David Widger + + + + +</pre> + + <div style="height: 8em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h1> + LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS + </h1> + <h2> + By George William Curtis + </h2> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <p> + <b>CONTENTS</b> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> EMERSON </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> HAWTHORNE </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> THE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> RACHEL </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> THACKERAY IN AMERICA </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> SIR PHILIP SIDNEY </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> LONGFELLOW </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> WASHINGTON IRVING </a> + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + EMERSON + </h2> + <p> + The village of Concord, Massachusetts, lies an hour's ride from Boston, + upon the Great Northern Railway. It is one of those quiet New England + towns, whose few white houses, grouped upon the plain, make but a slight + impression upon the mind of the busy traveller hurrying to or from the + city. As the conductor shouts "Concord!" the busy traveller has scarcely + time to recall "Concord, Lexington, and Bunker Hill" before the town has + vanished and he is darting through woods and fields as solitary as those + he has just left in New Hampshire. Yet as it vanishes he may chance to + "see" two or three spires, and as they rush behind the trees his eyes fall + upon a gleaming sheet of water. It is Walden Pond—or Walden Water, + as Orphic Alcott used to call it—whose virgin seclusion was a just + image of that of the little village, until one afternoon, some half-dozen + or more years since, a shriek, sharper than any that had rung from Walden + woods since the last war-whoop of the last Indians of Musketaquid, + announced to astonished Concord, drowsing in the river meadows, that the + nineteenth century had overtaken it. Yet long before the material force of + the age bound the town to the rest of the world, the spiritual force of a + single mind in it had attracted attention to it, and made its lonely + plains as dear to many widely scattered minds as the groves of the Academy + or the vineyards of Vaucluse. + </p> + <p> + Except in causing the erection of the railway buildings and several + dwellings near it, steam has not much changed Concord. It is yet one of + the quiet country towns whose charm is incredible to all but those who, by + loving it, have found it worthy of love. The shire-town of the great + agricultural county of Middlesex, it is not disturbed by the feverish + throb of factories, nor by any roar of inexorable toil but the few puffs + of the locomotive. One day, during the autumn, it is thronged with the + neighboring farmers, who hold their high festival—the annual + cattle-show—there. But the calm tenor of Concord life is not varied, + even on that day, by anything more exciting than fat oxen and the + cud-chewing eloquence of the agricultural dinner. The population of the + region is composed of sturdy, sterling men, worthy representatives of the + ancestors who sowed along the Concord shores, with their seed-corn and + rye, the germs of a prodigious national greatness. At intervals every day + the rattle, roar, and whistle of the swift shuttle darting to and from the + metropolitan heart of New England, weaving prosperity upon the land, + remind those farmers in their silent fields that the great world yet wags + and wrestles. And the farmer-boy—sweeping with flashing scythe + through the river meadows, whose coarse grass glitters, apt for mowing, in + the early June morning—pauses as the whistle dies into the distance, + and, wiping his brow and whetting his blade anew, questions the + country-smitten citizen, the amateur Corydon struggling with imperfect + stroke behind him, of the mystic romance of city life. + </p> + <p> + The sluggish repose of the little river images the farmer-boy's life. He + bullies his oxen, and trembles at the locomotive. His wonder and fancy + stretch towards the great world beyond the barn-yard and the village + church as the torpid stream tends towards the ocean. The river, in fact, + seems the thread upon which all the beads of that rustic life are strung—the + clew to its tranquil character. If it were an impetuous stream, dashing + along as if it claimed and required the career to which every American + river is entitled, a career it would have. Wheels, factories, shops, + traders, factory-girls, boards of directors, dreary white lines of + boarding-houses, all the signs that indicate the spirit of the age, and of + the American age, would arise upon its margin. Some shaven magician from + State Street would run up by rail, and, from proposals, maps, schedules of + stock, etc., educe a spacious factory as easily as Aladdin's palace arose + from nothing. Instead of a dreaming, pastoral poet of a village, Concord + would be a rushing, whirling, bustling manufacturer of a town, like its + thrifty neighbor Lowell. Many a fine equipage, flashing along city ways—many + an Elizabethan-Gothic-Grecian rural retreat, in which State Street woos + Pan and grows Arcadian in summer, would be reduced, in the last analysis, + to the Concord mills. Yet if these broad river meadows grew factories + instead of corn, they might perhaps lack another harvest, of which the + poet's thought is the sickle. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "One harvest from your field + Homeward brought the oxen strong. + Another crop your acres yield, + Which I gather in a song," +</pre> + <p> + sings Emerson, and again, as the afternoon light strikes pensive across + his memory, as over the fields below him: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Knows he who tills this lonely field, + To reap its scanty corn, + What mystic crops his acres yield, + At midnight and at morn?" +</pre> + <p> + The Concord River, upon whose winding shores the town has scattered its + few houses—as if, loitering over the plain some fervent day, it had + fallen asleep obedient to the slumberous spell, and had not since awakened—is + a languid, shallow stream, that loiters through broad meadows, which + fringe it with rushes and long grasses. Its sluggish current scarcely + moves the autumn leaves showered upon it by a few maples that lean over + the Assabet—as one of its branches is named. Yellow lily-buds and + leathery lily-pads tessellate its surface, and the white water-lilies—pale, + proud Ladies of Shalott—bare their virgin breasts to the sun in the + seclusion of its distant reaches. Clustering vines of wild grape hang its + wooded shores with a tapestry of the South and the Rhine. The + pickerel-weed marks with blue spikes of flowers the points where small + tributary brooks flow in, and along the dusky windings of those brooks + cardinal-flowers with a scarlet splendor paint the tropics upon New + England green. All summer long, from founts unknown, in the upper + counties, from some anonymous pond or wooded hillside moist with springs, + steals the gentle river through the plain, spreading at one point above + the town into a little lake, called by the farmers "Fairhaven Bay", as if + all its lesser names must share the sunny significance of Concord. Then, + shrinking again, alarmed at its own boldness, it dreams on towards the + Merrimac and the sea. + </p> + <p> + The absence of factories has already implied its shallowness and slowness. + In truth it is a very slow river, belonging much more to the Indian than + to the Yankee; so much so, indeed, that until within a very few years + there was an annual visit to its shores from a few sad heirs of its old + masters, who pitched a group of tents in the meadows, and wove their tidy + baskets and strung their beads in unsmiling silence. It was the same thing + that I saw in Jerusalem among the Jews. Every Friday they repair to the + remains of the old temple wall, and pray and wail, kneeling upon the + pavement and kissing the stones. But that passionate Oriental regret was + not more impressive than this silent homage of a waning race, who, as they + beheld the unchanged river, knew that, unlike it, the last drops of their + existence were gradually flowing away, and that for their tribes there + shall be no ingathering. + </p> + <p> + So shallow is the stream that the amateur Corydons who embark at morning + to explore its remoter shores will, not infrequently in midsummer, find + their boat as suddenly tranquil and motionless as the river, having + placidly grounded upon its oozy bottom. Or, returning at evening, they may + lean over the edge as they lie at length in the boat, and float with the + almost imperceptible current, brushing the tips of the long water-grass + and reeds below them in the stream—a river jungle, in which lurk + pickerel and trout—with the sensation of a bird drifting upon soft + evening air over the tree-tops. No available or profitable craft navigate + these waters, and animated gentlemen from the city who run up for "a + mouthful of fresh air" cannot possibly detect the final cause of such a + river. Yet the dreaming idler has a place on maps and a name in history. + </p> + <p> + Near the town it is crossed by three or four bridges. One is a massive + structure to help the railroad over. The stern, strong pile readily + betrays that it is part of good, solid stock, owned in the right quarter. + Close by it is a little arched stone bridge, auxiliary to a great road + leading to some vague region of the world called Acton upon guide-posts + and on maps. Just beyond these bridges the river bends and forgets the + railroad, but it is grateful to the graceful arch of the little stone + bridge for making its curve more picturesque, and, as it muses towards the + Old Manse, listlessly brushing the lilies, it wonders if Ellery Channing, + who lives beyond, upon a hill-side sloping to the shore, wrote his poem of + "The Bridge" to that particular one. There are two or three wooden bridges + also, always combining well with the landscape, always making and + suggesting pictures. + </p> + <p> + The Concord, as I said, has a name in history. Near one of the wooden + bridges you turn aside from the main road, close by the Old Mause—whose + mosses of mystic hue were gathered by Hawthorne, who lived there for three + years—and a few steps bring you to the river and to a small monument + upon its brink. It is a narrow, grassy way; not a field nor a meadow, but + of that shape and character which would perplex the animated stranger from + the city, who would see, also, its unfitness for a building-lot. The + narrow, grassy way is the old road, which in the month of April, 1775, led + to a bridge that crossed the stream at this spot. And upon the river's + margin, upon the bridge and the shore beyond, took place the sharp + struggle between the Middlesex farmers and the scarlet British soldiers + known in tradition as "Concord fight". The small monument records the day + and the event. When it was erected Emerson wrote the following hymn for + the ceremony: + </p> + <h3> + APRIL 19, 1836. + </h3> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "By the rude bridge that arched the flood, + Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, + Here once the embattled farmers stood, + And fired the shot heard round the world. + + "The foe long since in silence slept; + Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; + And Time the ruined bridge has swept + Down the dark stream that seaward creeps. + + "On this green bank, by this soft stream, + We see to-day a votive stone, + That memory may their deed redeem, + When, like our sires, our sons are gone. + + "Spirit that made these heroes dare + To die, or leave their children free, + Bid Time and Nature gently spare + The shaft we raise to them and Thee." +</pre> + <p> + Close under the rough stone wall at the left, which separates it from the + little grassy orchard of the Manse, is a small mound of turf and a broken + stone. Grave and headstone shrink from sight amid the grass and under the + wall, but they mark the earthly bed of the first victims of that first + fight. A few large trees overhang the ground, which Hawthorne thinks have + been planted since that day, and he says that in the river he has seen + mossy timbers of the old bridge, and on the farther bank, half hidden, the + crumbling stone abutments that supported it. In an old house upon the main + road, nearly opposite the entrance to this grassy way, I knew a hale old + woman who well remembered the gay advance of the flashing soldiers, the + terrible ring and crack of fire-arms, and the panic-stricken retreat of + the regulars, blackened and bloody. But the placid river has long since + overborne it all. The alarm, the struggle, the retreat, are swallowed up + in its supreme tranquillity. The summers of more than seventy years have + obliterated every trace of the road with thick grass, which seeks to bury + the graves, as earth buried the victims. Let the sweet ministry of summer + avail. Let its mild iteration even sap the monument and conceal its stones + as it hides the abutment in foliage; for, still on the sunny slopes, white + with the May blossoming of apple-orchards, and in the broad fields, golden + to the marge of the river, and tilled in security and peace, survives the + imperishable remembrance of that day and its results. + </p> + <p> + The river is thus the main feature of the Concord landscape. It is + surrounded by a wide plain, from which rise only three or four low hills. + One is a wooded cliff over Fairhaven Bay, a mile from the town; one + separates the main river from the Assabeth; and just beyond the + battle-ground one rises, rich with orchards, to a fine wood which crowns + it. The river meadows blend with broad, lonely fields. A wide horizon, + like that of the prairie or the sea, is the grand charm of Concord. At + night the stars are seen from the roads crossing the plain, as from a ship + at sea. The landscape would be called tame by those who think no scenery + grand but that of mountains or the sea-coast. But the wide solitude of + that region is not so accounted by those who live there. To them it is + rich and suggestive, as Emerson shows, by saying in the essay upon + "Nature", "My house stands in low land, with limited outlook, and on the + skirt of the village. But I go with my friend to the shore of our little + river, and with one stroke of the paddle I leave the village politics and + personalities, yes, and the world of villages and personalities behind, + and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost + for spotted man to enter without novitiate and probation. We penetrate + bodily this incredible beauty; we dip our hands in this painted element; + our eyes are bathed in these lights and forms. A holiday, a villeggiatura, + a royal-revel, the proudest, most heart-rejoicing festival that valor and + beauty, power and taste ever decked and enjoyed, establishes itself upon + the instant". And again, as indicating where the true charm of scenery + lies: "In every landscape the point to astonishment is the meeting of the + sky and the earth, and that is seen from the first hillock, as well as + from the top of the Alleghanies. The stars stoop down over the brownest, + homeliest common, with all the spiritual magnificence which they shed on + the Campagna or on the marble deserts of Egypt." He is speaking here, of + course, of the spiritual excitement of Beauty, which crops up everywhere + in nature, like gold in a rich region; but the quality of the imagery + indicates the character of the scenery in which the essay was written. + </p> + <p> + Concord is too far from Boston to rival in garden cultivation its + neighbors, West Cambridge, Lexington, and Waltham; nor can it boast, with + Brookline, Dorchester, and Cambridge, the handsome summer homes of city + wealth. But it surpasses them all, perhaps, in a genuine country freshness + and feeling, derived from its loneliness. If not touched by city elegance, + neither is it infected by city meretriciousness; it is sweet, wholesome + country. By climbing one of the hills, your eye sweeps a wide, wide + landscape, until it rests upon graceful Wachuset, or, farther and mistier, + Moriadnoc, the lofty outpost of New Hampshire hills. Level scenery is not + tame. The ocean, the prairie, the desert, are not tame, although of + monotonous surface. The gentle undulations which mark certain scenes—a + rippling landscape, in which all sense of space, of breadth, and of height + is lost—that is tame. It may be made beautiful by exquisite + cultivation, as it often is in England and on parts of the Hudson shores, + but it is, at best, rather pleasing than inspiring. For a permanent view + the eye craves large and simple forms, as the body requires plain food for + its best nourishment. + </p> + <p> + The town of Concord is built mainly upon one side of the river. In its + centre is a large open square, shaded by fine elms. A white wooden church, + in the most classical style of Yankee-Greek, stands upon the square. The + Court-house is upon one of the corners. In the old Courthouse, in the days + when I knew Concord, many conventions were held for humane as well as + merely political objects. One summer day I especially remember, when I did + not envy Athens its forum, for Emerson and William Henry Channing spoke. + In the speech of both burned the sacred fire of eloquence, but in Emerson + it was light, and in Channing heat. + </p> + <p> + From this square diverge four roads, like highways from a forum. One leads + by the Courthouse and under stately sycamores to the Old Manse and the + battle-ground, another goes directly to the river, and a third is the main + avenue of the town. After passing the shops this third divides, and one + branch forms a fair and noble street, spaciously and loftily arched with + elms, the houses standing liberally apart, each with its garden-plot in + front. The fourth avenue is the old Boston road, also dividing, at the + edge of the village, into the direct route to the metropolis and the + Lexington turnpike. + </p> + <p> + The house of Mr. Emerson stands opposite this junction. It is a plain, + square white dwelling-house, yet it has a city air and could not be + mistaken for a farm-house. A quiet merchant, you would say, unostentatious + and simple, has here hidden himself from town. But a thick grove of pine + and fir trees, almost brushing the two windows upon the right of the door, + and occupying the space between them and the road, suggests at least a + peculiar taste in the retired merchant, or hints the possibility that he + may have sold his place to a poet or philosopher—or to some old East + India sea-captain, perhaps, who cannot sleep without the sound of waves, + and so plants pines to rustle, surf-like, against his chamber window. + </p> + <p> + The fact, strangely enough, partly supports your theory. In the year 1828 + Charles Coolidge, a brother of J. Templeman Coolidge, a merchant of repute + in Boston and grandson of Joseph Coolidge, a patriarchal denizen of + Bowdoin Square in that city, came to Concord and built this house. + Gratefully remembering the lofty horse-chestnuts which shaded the city + square, and which, perhaps, first inspired him with the wish to be a + nearer neighbor of woods and fields, he planted a row of them along his + lot, which this year ripen their twenty-fifth harvest. With the liberal + hospitality of a New England merchant he did not forget the spacious + cellars of the city, and, as Mr. Emerson writes, "he built the only good + cellar that had then been built in Concord". + </p> + <p> + Mr. Emerson bought the house in the year 1835. He found it a plain, + convenient, and thoroughly built country residence. An amiable neighbor of + Mr. Coolidge had placed a miserable old barn irregularly upon the edge of + that gentleman's lot, which, for the sake of comeliness, he was forced to + buy and set straight and smooth into a decent dependence of the mansion + house. The estate, upon passing into Mr. Emerson's hands, comprised the + house, barn, and two acres of land. He has enlarged house and barn, and + the two acres have grown to nine. Our author is no farmer, except as every + country gentleman is, yet the kindly slope from the rear of the house to a + little brook, which, passing to the calm Concord beyond, washes the edge + of his land, yields him at least occasional beans and pease—or some + friend, agriculturally enthusiastic and an original Brook-Farmer, + experiments with guano in the garden, and produces melons and other vines + with a success that relieves Brook Farm from every slur of inadequate + practical genius. Mr. Emerson has shaded his originally bare land with + trees, and counts near a hundred apple and pear trees in his orchard. The + whole estate is quite level, inclining only towards the little brook, and + is well watered and convenient. + </p> + <p> + The Orphic Alcott—or Plato Skimpole, as Aspasia called him—well + known in the transcendental history of New England, designed and with his + own hands erected a summer-house, which gracefully adorns the lawn, if I + may so call the smooth grass-plot at the side of the house. Unhappily, + this edifice promises no longer duration, not being "technically based and + pointed". This is not a strange, although a disagreeable fact, to Mr. + Emerson, who has been always the most faithful and appreciative of the + lovers of Mr. Alcott. It is natural that the Orphic Alcott should build + graceful summer-houses. There are even people who declare that he has + covered the pleasant but somewhat misty lawns of ethical speculation with + a thousand such edifices, which need only to be a little more "technically + based and pointed" to be quite perfect. At present they whisper, the wind + blows clean through them, and no figures of flesh and blood are ever seen + there, but only pallid phantoms with large, calm eyes, eating uncooked + grain, out of baskets, and discoursing in a sublime shibboleth of which + mortals have no key. But how could Plato Skimpole, who goes down to + Hingham on the sea, in a New England January, clad only in a suit of + linen, hope to build immortal summer-houses? + </p> + <p> + Mr. Emerson's library is the room at the right of the door upon entering + the house. It is a simple square room, not walled with books like the den + of a literary grub, nor merely elegant like the ornamental retreat of a + dilettante. The books are arranged upon plain shelves, not in + architectural bookcases, and the room is hung with a few choice engravings + of the greatest men. There was a fair copy of Michael Angelo's "Fates", + which, properly enough, imparted that grave serenity to the ornament of + the room which is always apparent in what is written there. It is the + study of a scholar. All our author's published writings, the essays, + orations, and poems, date from this room, as much as they date from any + place or moment. The villagers, indeed, fancy their philosophical + contemporary affected by the novelist James's constancy of composition. + They relate, with wide eyes, that he has a huge manuscript book, in which + he incessantly records the ends of thoughts, bits of observation and + experience, and facts of all kinds—a kind of intellectual and + scientific ragbag, into which all shreds and remnants of conversations and + reminiscences of wayside reveries are incontinently thrust. This work goes + on, they aver, day and night, and when he travels the rag-bag travels too, + and grows more plethoric with each mile of the journey. And a story, which + will one day be a tradition, is perpetuated in the village, that one + night, before his wife had become completely accustomed to his habits, she + awoke suddenly, and hearing him groping about the room, inquired + anxiously, + </p> + <p> + "My dear, are you unwell?" + </p> + <p> + "No, my love, only an idea." + </p> + <p> + The library is not only the study of a scholar, it is the bower of a poet. + The pines lean against the windows, and to the student deeply sunk in + learned lore or soaring upon the daring speculations of an intrepid + philosophy, they whisper a secret beyond that of the philosopher's stone, + and sing of the springs of poetry. + </p> + <p> + The site of the house is not memorable. There is no reasonable ground to + suppose that so much as an Indian wigwam ever occupied the spot; nor has + Henry Thoreau, a very faithful friend of Mr. Emerson's and of the woods + and waters of his native Concord, ever found an Indian arrowhead upon the + premises. Henry Thoreau's instinct is as sure towards the facts of nature + as the witch-hazel towards treasure. If every quiet country town in New + England had a son who, with a lore like Selborne's and an eye like + Buffon's, had watched and studied its landscape and history, and then + published the result, as Thoreau has done, in a book as redolent of + genuine and perceptive sympathy with nature as a clover-field of honey, + New England would seem as poetic and beautiful as Greece. Thoreau lives in + the berry pastures upon a bank over Walden Pond, and in a little house of + his own building. One pleasant summer afternoon a small party of us helped + him raise it—a bit of life as Arcadian as any at Brook Farm. + Elsewhere in the village he turns up arrowheads abundantly, and Hawthorne + mentions that Thoreau initiated him into the mystery of finding them. But + neither the Indians nor nature nor Thoreau can invest the quiet residence + of our author with the dignity or even the suspicion of a legend. History + stops short in that direction with Charles Coolidge, Esq., and the year + 1828. + </p> + <p> + There is little prospect from the house. Directly opposite a low bluff + overhangs the Boston road and obstructs the view. Upon the other sides the + level land stretches away. Towards Lexington it is a broad, half-marshy + region, and between the brook behind and the river good farms lie upon the + outskirts of the town. Pilgrims drawn to Concord by the desire of + conversing with the man whose written or spoken eloquence has so + profoundly charmed them, and who have placed him in some pavilion of + fancy, some peculiar residence, find him in no porch of philosophy nor + academic grove, but in a plain white house by the wayside, ready to + entertain every comer as an ambassador from some remote Cathay of + speculation whence the stars are more nearly seen. But the familiar reader + of our author will not be surprised to find the "walking eye-ball" simply + sheltered, and the "endless experimenter with no past at my back" housed + without ornament. Such a reader will have felt the Spartan severity of + this intellect, and have noticed that the realm of this imagination is + rather sculpturesque than pictorial, more Greek than Italian. Therefore he + will be pleased to alight at the little gate, and hear the breezy welcome + of the pines and the no less cordial salutation of their owner. For if the + visitor knows what he is about, he has come to this plain for bracing + mountain air. These serious Concord reaches are no vale of Cashmere. Where + Plato Skimpole is architect of the summer-house, you may imagine what is + to be expected in the mansion itself. It is always morning within those + doors. If you have nothing to say, if you are really not an envoy from + some kingdom or colony of thought and cannot cast a gem upon the heaped + pile, you had better pass by upon the other side. For it is the + peculiarity of Emerson's mind to be always on the alert. He eats no lotus, + but for-ever quaffs the waters which engender immortal thirst. + </p> + <p> + If the memorabilia of his house could find their proper Xenophon, the want + of antecedent arrowheads upon the premises would not prove very disastrous + to the interest of the history. The fame of the philosopher attracts + admiring friends and enthusiasts from every quarter, and the scholarly + grace and urbane hospitality of the gentleman send them charmed away. + Friendly foes, who altogether differ from Emerson, come to break a lance + with him upon the level pastures of Concord, with all the cheerful and + appreciative zeal of those who longed + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "To drink delight of battle with their peers + Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy." +</pre> + <p> + It is not hazardous to say that the greatest questions of our day and of + all days have been nowhere more amply discussed, with more poetic insight + or profound conviction, than in the comely, square white house upon the + edge of the Lexington turnpike. There have even been attempts at something + more formal and club-like than the chance conversations of occasional + guests, one of which will certainly be nowhere recorded but upon these + pages. + </p> + <p> + It was in the year 1845 that a circle of persons of various ages, and + differing very much in everything but sympathy, found themselves in + Concord. Towards the end of the autumn Mr. Emerson suggested that they + should meet every Monday evening through the winter in his library. + "Monsieur Aubepine", "Miles Coverdale", and other phantoms, since + generally known as Nathaniel Hawthorne, who then occupied the Old Manse; + the inflexible Henry Thoreau, a scholastic and pastoral Orson, then living + among the blackberry pastures of Walden Pond; Plato Skimpole, then + sublimely meditating impossible summer-houses in a little house upon the + Boston road; the enthusiastic agriculturist and Brook-Farmer already + mentioned, then an inmate of Mr. Emerson's house, who added the genial + cultivation of a scholar to the amenities of the natural gentleman; a + sturdy farmer neighbor, who had bravely fought his weary way through + inherited embarrassments to the small success of a New England husbandman, + and whose faithful wife had seven times merited well of her country; two + city youths, ready for the fragments from the feast of wit and wisdom; and + the host himself, composed this club. Ellery Channing, who had that winter + harnessed his Pegasus to the New York <i>Tribune</i>, was a kind of + corresponding member. The news of this world was to be transmitted through + his eminently practical genius, as the club deemed itself competent to + take charge of tidings from all other spheres. + </p> + <p> + I went, the first Monday evening, very much as Ixion may have gone to his + banquet. The philosophers sat dignified and erect. There was a constrained + but very amiable silence, which had the impertinence of a tacit inquiry, + seeming to ask, "Who will now proceed to say the finest thing that has + ever been said?" It was quite involuntary and unavoidable, for the members + lacked that fluent social genius without which a club is impossible. It + was a congress of oracles on the one hand, and of curious listeners upon + the other. I vaguely remember that the Orphic Alcott invaded the Sahara of + silence with a solemn "saying", to which, after due pause, the honorable + member for blackberry pastures responded by some keen and graphic + observation; while the Olympian host, anxious that so much good material + should be spun into something, beamed smiling encouragement upon all + parties. But the conversation became more and more staccato. Miles + Coverdale, a statue of night and silence, sat, a little removed, under a + portrait of Dante, gazing imperturbably upon the group; and as he sat in + the shadow, his dark hair and eyes and suit of sables made him, in that + society, the black thread of mystery which he weaves into his stories, + while the shifting presence of the Brook-Farmer played like heat-lightning + around the room. + </p> + <p> + I recall little else but a grave eating of russet apples by the erect + philosophers, and a solemn disappearance into night. The club struggled + through three Monday evenings. Plato was perpetually putting apples of + gold in pictures of silver; for such was the rich ore of his thoughts, + coined by the deep melody of his voice. Orson charmed us with the secrets + won from his interviews with Pan in the Walden woods; while Emerson, with + the zeal of an engineer trying to dam wild waters, sought to bind the + wide-flying embroidery of discourse into a web of clear sweet sense. But + still in vain. The oracular sayings were the unalloyed saccharine element; + and every chemist knows how much else goes to practical food—how + much coarse, rough, woody fibre is essential. The club struggled on + valiantly, discoursing celestially, eating apples, and disappearing in the + dark, until the third evening it vanished altogether. But I have since + known clubs of fifty times its number, whose collective genius was not + more than that of either one of the Dii Majores of our Concord coterie. + The fault was its too great concentration. It was not relaxation, as a + club should be, but tension. Society is a play, a game, a tournament; not + a battle. It is the easy grace of undress; not an intellectual full-dress + parade. + </p> + <p> + I have already hinted this unbending intellectual alacrity of our author. + His sport is serious—his humor is earnest. He stands like a + sentinel. His look and manner and habit of thought cry "Who goes there?" + and if he does not hear the countersign, he brings the intruder to a halt. + It is for this surprising fidelity and integrity that his influence has + been so deep and sure and permanent upon the intellectual life of the + young men of New England; and of old England, too, where, in Manchester, + there were regular weekly meetings at which his works were read. What he + said long ago in his preface to the American edition of Carlyle's <i>Miscellanies</i>, + that they were papers which had spoken to the young men of the time "with + an emphasis that hindered them from sleep", is strikingly true of his own + writings. His first slim, anonymous duodecimo, <i>Nature</i>, was as fair + and fascinating to the royal young minds who met it in the course of their + reading, as Egeria to Numa wandering in the grove. The essays, orations, + and poems followed, developing and elaborating the same spiritual and + heroic philosophy, applying it to life, history, and literature, with a + vigor and richness so supreme that not only do many account him our truest + philosopher, but others acknowledge him as our most characteristic poet. + </p> + <p> + It would be a curious inquiry how much and what kind of influence the + placid scenery of Concord has exercised upon his mind. "I chide society, I + embrace solitude," he says; "and yet I am not so ungrateful as not to see + the wise, the lovely, and the noble-minded, as from time to time they pass + my gate." It is not difficult to understand his fondness for the spot. He + has been always familiar with it, always more or less a resident of the + village. Born in Boston upon the spot where the Chauncey Place Church now + stands, part of his youth was passed in the Old Manse, which was built by + his grandfather and in which his father was born; and there he wrote <i>Nature</i>. + From the magnificent admiration of ancestral England he was glad to return + two years since to quiet Concord and to acres which will not yield a + single arrowhead. The Swiss sigh for their mountains; but the Nubians, + also, pine for their desert plains. Those who are born by the sea long + annually to return and to rest their eyes upon its living horizon. Is it + because the earliest impressions, made when the mind is most plastic, are + most durable? or because youth is that golden age bounding the confines of + memory and floating forever—an alluring mirage as we recede farther + from it? + </p> + <p> + The imagination of the man who roams the solitary pastures of Concord, or + floats, dreaming, down its river, will easily see its landscape upon + Emerson's pages. "That country is fairest," he says, "which is inhabited + by the noblest minds". And although that idler upon the river may have + leaned over the Mediterranean from Genoese and Neapolitan villas, or have + glanced down the steep green valley of Sicilian Enna, seeking "herself the + fairest flower", or walked the shores where Cleopatra and Helen walked, + yet the charm of a landscape which is felt rather than seen will be + imperishable. "Travelling is a fool's paradise," says Emerson. But he + passed its gates to learn that lesson. His writings, however, have no + imported air. If there be something Oriental in his philosophy and + tropical in his imagination, they have yet the strong flavor of his mother + earth—the underived sweetness of the open Concord sky, and the + spacious breadth of the Concord horizon. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + HAWTHORNE + </h2> + <p> + Hawthorne has himself drawn the picture of the Old Manse in Concord. He + has given to it that quiet richness of coloring which ideally belongs to + an old country mansion. It seemed so fitting a residence for one who loves + to explore the twilight of antiquity—and the gloomier the better—that + the visitor, among the felicities of whose life was included the freedom + of the Manse, could not but fancy that our author's eyes first saw the + daylight enchanted by the slumberous orchard behind the house, or + tranquillized into twilight by the spacious avenue in front. The character + of his imagination, and the golden gloom of its blossoming, completely + harmonize with the rusty, gable-roofed old house upon the river-side, and + the reader of his books would be sure that his boyhood and youth knew no + other friends than the dreaming river and the melancholy meadows and + drooping foliage of its vicinity. + </p> + <p> + Since the reader, however, would greatly mistake if he fancied this, in + good sooth, the ancestral halls of the Hawthornes—the genuine + Hawthorne-den—he will be glad to save the credit of his fancy by + learning that it was here our author's bridal tour—which commenced + in Boston, then three hours away—ended, and his married life began. + Here, also, his first child was born, and here those sad and silver mosses + accumulated upon his fancy, from which he heaped so soft a bed for our + dreaming. "Between two tall gate-posts of rough hewn stone (the gate + itself having fallen from its hinges at some unknown epoch) we beheld the + gray front of the old parsonage, terminating the vista of an avenue of + black-ash trees." It was a pleasant spring day in the year 1843, and as + they entered the house nosegays of fresh flowers, arranged by friendly + hands, welcomed them to Concord and summer. + </p> + <p> + The dark-haired man, who led his wife along the avenue that afternoon, had + been recently an officer of the customs in Boston, before which he had led + a solitary life in Salem. Graduated with Longfellow at Bowdoin College, in + Maine, he had lived a hermit in respectable Salem, an absolute recluse + even from his own family, walking out by night and writing wild tales by + day, most of which were burnt in his bachelor fire, and some of which, in + newspapers, magazines, and annuals, led a wandering, uncertain, and mostly + unnoticed life. + </p> + <p> + Those tales among this class which were attainable he collected into a + small volume, and apprizing the world that they were "twice-told", sent + them forth anew to make their own way, in the year 1841. But he piped to + the world, and it did not sing. He wept to it, and it did not mourn. The + book, however, as all good books do, made its way into various hearts. Yet + the few penetrant minds which recognized a remarkable power and a method + of strange fascination in the stories did not make the public nor + influence the public mind. "I was," he says in the last edition of these + tales, "the most unknown author in America". Full of glancing wit, of + tender satire, of exquisite natural description, of subtle and strange + analysis of human life, darkly passionate and weird, they yet floated + unhailed barks upon the sea of publicity—unhailed, but laden and + gleaming at every crevice with the true treasure of Cathay. Bancroft, then + Collector in Boston, prompt to recognize and to honor talent, made the + dreaming story-teller a surveyor in the custom-house, thus opening to him + a new range of experience. From the society of phantoms he stepped upon + Long Wharf and plumply confronted Captain Cuttle and Dirk Hatteraick. It + was no less romance to our author. There is no greater error of those who + are called "practical men" than the supposition that life is, or can be, + other than a dream to a dreamer. Shut him up in a counting-room, barricade + him with bales of merchandise, and limit his library to the ledger and + cash-book and his prospect to the neighboring signs; talk "Bills + receivable" and "Sundries Dr. to cash" to him forever, and you are only a + very amusing or very annoying phantom to him. The merchant-prince might as + well hope to make himself a poet, as the poet a practical or practicable + man. He has laws to obey not at all the less stringent because men of a + different temperament refuse to acknowledge them, and he is held to a + loyalty quite beyond their conception. + </p> + <p> + So Captain Cuttle and Dirk Hatteraick were as pleasant figures to our + author in the picture of life as any others. He went daily upon the + vessels, looked and listened and learned, was a favorite of the sailors as + such men always are, did his work faithfully, and, having dreamed his + dream upon Long Wharf, was married and slipped up to the Old Manse and a + new chapter in the romance. It opened in "the most delightful little nook + of a study that ever offered its snug seclusion to a scholar". Of the + three years in the Old Manse the prelude to the <i>Mosses</i> is the most + perfect history, and of the quality of those years the <i>Mosses</i> + themselves are sufficient proof. They were mostly written in the little + study, and originally published in the <i>Democratic Review</i>, then + edited by Hawthorne's friend O'Sullivan. + </p> + <p> + To the inhabitants of Concord, however, our author was as much a phantom + and a fable as the old pastor of the parish, dead half a century before, + and whose faded portrait in the attic was gradually rejoining its original + in native dust. The gate, fallen from its hinges in a remote antiquity, + was never rehung. "The wheel-track leading to the door" remained still + overgrown with grass. No bold villager ever invaded the sleep of "the + glimmering shadows" in the avenue. At evening no lights gleamed from the + windows. Scarce once in many months did the single old knobby-faced + coachman at the railroad bring a fare to "Mr. Hawthorne's". "<i>Is</i> + there anybody in the old house?" sobbed the old ladies in despair, + imbibing tea of a livid green. That knocker, which everybody had enjoyed + the right of lifting to summon the good old pastor, no temerity now dared + to touch. Heavens! what if the figure in the mouldy portrait should peer, + in answer, over the eaves, and shake solemnly its decaying surplice! Nay, + what if the mysterious man himself should answer the summons and come to + the door! It is easy to summon spirits—but if they come? Collective + Concord, moving in the river meadows, embraced the better part of valor + and left the knocker untouched. A cloud of romance suddenly fell out of + the heaven of fancy and enveloped the Old Manse: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "In among the bearded barley + The reaper reaping late and early" +</pre> + <p> + did not glance more wistfully towards the island of Shalott and its + mysterious lady than the reapers of Concord rye looked at the Old Manse + and wondered over its inmate. + </p> + <p> + Sometimes in the forenoon a darkly clad figure was seen in the little + garden-plot putting in corn or melon seed, and gravely hoeing. It was a + brief apparition. The farmer passing towards town and seeing the solitary + cultivator, lost his faith in the fact and believed he had dreamed when, + upon returning, he saw no sign of life, except, possibly, upon some + Monday, the ghostly skirt of a shirt flapping spectrally in the distant + orchard. Day dawned and darkened over the lonely house. Summer with "buds + and bird-voices" came singing in from the South, and clad the old + ash-trees in deeper green, the Old Manse in profounder mystery. Gorgeous + autumn came to visit the story-teller in his little western study, and, + departing, wept rainbows among his trees. Winter impatiently swept down + the hill opposite, rifling the trees of each last clinging bit of summer, + as if thrusting aside opposing barriers and determined to search the + mystery. But his white robes floated around the Old Manse, ghostly as the + decaying surplice of the old pastor's portrait, and in the snowy seclusion + of winter the mystery was as mysterious as ever. + </p> + <p> + Occasionally Emerson or Ellery Channing or Henry Thoreau—some poet, + as once Whittier, journeying to the Merrimac, or an old Brook-Farmer who + remembered Miles Coverdale with Arcadian sympathy—went down the + avenue and disappeared in the house. Sometimes a close observer, had he + been ambushed among the long grasses of the orchard, might have seen the + host and one of his guests emerging at the back door and, sauntering to + the river-side, step into the boat, and float off until they faded in the + shadow. The spectacle would not have lessened the romance. If it were + afternoon—one of the spectrally sunny afternoons which often bewitch + that region—he would be only the more convinced that there was + something inexplicable in the whole matter of this man whom nobody knew, + who was never once seen at town-meeting, and concerning whom it was + whispered that he did not constantly attend church all day, although he + occupied the reverend parsonage of the village and had unmeasured acres of + manuscript sermons in his attic, besides the nearly extinct portrait of an + utterly extinct clergyman. Mrs. Radcliffe and Monk Lewis were nothing to + this, and the awe-stricken observer, if he could creep safely out of the + long grass, did not fail to do so quietly, fortifying his courage by + remembering stories of the genial humanity of the last old pastor who + inhabited the Manse, and who for fifty years was the bland and beneficent + Pope of Concord. A genial, gracious old man, whose memory is yet sweet in + the village, and who, wedded to the grave traditions of New England + theology, believed of his young relative Waldo Emerson, as Miss Flite, + touching her forehead, said of her landlord, that he was "<i>m</i>, quite + <i>m</i>", but was proud to love in him the hereditary integrity of noble + ancestors. + </p> + <p> + This old gentleman—an eminent figure in the history of the Manse and + in all reminiscences of Concord—partook sufficiently of mundane + weaknesses to betray his mortality. Hawthorne describes him watching the + battle of Concord from his study window. But when the uncertainty of that + dark moment had so happily resulted, and the first battle-ground of the + Revolution had become a spot of hallowed and patriotic consideration, it + was a pardonable pride in the good old man to order his servant, whenever + there was company, to assist him in reaping the glory due to the owner of + a spot so sacred. Accordingly, when some reverend or distinguished guest + sat with the pastor in his little parlor, or, of a summer evening, at the + hospitable door under the trees, Jeremiah or Nicodemus, the cow-boy, would + deferentially approach and inquire, + </p> + <p> + "Into what pasture shall I turn the cow tonight, sir?" + </p> + <p> + And the old gentleman would audibly reply: + </p> + <p> + "Into the battle-field, Nicodemus, into the battle-field." + </p> + <p> + Then naturally followed wonder, inquiry, a walk in the twilight to the + river-bank, the old gentleman's story, the corresponding respect of the + listening visitor, and the consequent quiet complacency and harmless + satisfaction in the clergyman's bosom. That throb of pride was the one + drop of peculiar advantage which the pastor distilled from the Revolution. + He could not but fancy that he had a hand in so famous a deed accomplished + upon land now his own, and demeaned himself accordingly with continental + dignity. + </p> + <p> + The pulpit, however, was his especial sphere. There he reigned supreme; + there he exhorted, rebuked, and advised, as in the days of Mather. There + he inspired that profound reverence of which he was so proud, and which + induced the matrons of the village, when he was coming to make a visit, to + bedizen the children in their Sunday suits, to parade the best teapot, and + to offer the most capacious chair. In the pulpit he delivered everything + with the pompous cadence of the elder New England clergy, and a sly joke + is told at the expense of his even temper, that on one occasion, when + loftily reading the hymn, he encountered a blot upon the page quite + obliterating the word; but without losing the cadence, although in a very + vindictive tone at the truant word, or the culprit who erased it, he + finished the reading as follows: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "He sits upon His throne above, + Attending angels bless, + While Justice, Mercy, Truth—and another word + which is blotted out— + Compose His princely dress." +</pre> + <p> + We linger around the Old Manse and its occupants as fondly as Hawthorne, + but no more fondly than all who have been once within the influence of its + spell. There glimmer in my memory a few hazy days, of a tranquil and + half-pensive character, which I am conscious were passed in and around the + house, and their pensiveness I know to be only that touch of twilight + which inhered in the house and all its associations. Beside the few chance + visitors I have named there were city friends occasionally, figures quite + unknown to the village, who came preceded by the steam-shriek of the + locomotive, were dropped at the gate-posts, and were seen no more. The + owner was as much a vague name to me as to any one. + </p> + <p> + During Hawthorne's first year's residence in Concord I had driven up with + some friends to an aesthetic tea at Mr. Emerson's. It was in the winter, + and a great wood-fire blazed upon the hospitable hearth. There were + various men and women of note assembled, and I, who listened attentively + to all the fine things that were said, was for some time scarcely aware of + a man who sat upon the edge of the circle, a little withdrawn, his head + slightly thrown forward upon his breast, and his bright eyes clearly + burning under his black brow. As I drifted down the stream of talk, this + person, who sat silent as a shadow, looked to me as Webster might have + looked had he been a poet—a kind of poetic Webster. He rose and + walked to the window, and stood quietly there for a long time, watching + the dead white landscape. No appeal was made to him, nobody looked after + him, the conversation flowed steadily on as if every one understood that + his silence was to be respected. It was the same thing at table. In vain + the silent man imbibed aesthetic tea. Whatever fancies it inspired did not + flower at his lips. But there was a light in his eye which assured me that + nothing was lost. So supreme was his silence that it presently engrossed + me to the exclusion of everything else. There was very brilliant + discourse, but this silence was much more poetic and fascinating. Fine + things were said by the philosophers, but much finer things were implied + by the dumbness of this gentleman with heavy brows and black hair. When he + presently rose and went, Emerson, with the "slow, wise smile" that breaks + over his face, like day over the sky, said, "Hawthorne rides well his + horse of the night." + </p> + <p> + Thus he remained in my memory, a shadow, a phantom, until more than a year + afterwards. Then I came to live in Concord. Every day I passed his house, + but when the villagers, thinking that perhaps I had some clew to the + mystery, said, "Do you know this Mr. Hawthorne?" I said "No," and trusted + to time. + </p> + <p> + Time justified my confidence, and one day I, too, went down the avenue and + disappeared in the house. I mounted those mysterious stairs to that + apocryphal study. I saw "the cheerful coat of paint, and golden-tinted + paper-hangings, lighting up the small apartment; while the shadow of a + willow-tree, that swept against the overhanging eaves, attempered the + cheery western sunshine." I looked from the little northern window whence + the old pastor watched the battle, and in the small dining-room beneath + it, upon the first floor, there were + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Dainty chicken, snow-white bread," +</pre> + <p> + and the golden juices of Italian vineyards, which still feast insatiable + memory. + </p> + <p> + Our author occupied the Old Manse for three years. During that time he was + not seen, probably, by more than a dozen of the villagers. His walks could + easily avoid the town, and upon the river he was always sure of solitude. + It was his favorite habit to bathe every evening in the river, after + nightfall, and in that part of it over which the old bridge stood, at + which the battle was fought. Sometimes, but rarely, his boat accompanied + another up the stream, and I recall the silent and preternatural vigor + with which, on one occasion, he wielded his paddle to counteract the bad + rowing of a friend who conscientiously considered it his duty to do + something and not let Hawthorne work alone; but who, with every stroke, + neutralized all Hawthorne's efforts. I suppose he would have struggled + until he fell senseless, rather than ask his friend to desist. His + principle seemed to be, if a man cannot understand without talking to him, + it is quite useless to talk, because it is immaterial whether such a man + understands or not. His own sympathy was so broad and sure that although + nothing had been said for hours his companion knew that not a thing had + escaped his eye, nor had a single pulse of beauty in the day or scene or + society failed to thrill his heart. In this way his silence was most + social. Everything seemed to have been said. It was a Barmecide feast of + discourse, from which a greater satisfaction resulted than from an actual + banquet. + </p> + <p> + When a formal attempt was made to desert this style of conversation, the + result was ludicrous. Once Emerson and Thoreau arrived to pay a call. They + were shown into the little parlor upon the avenue, and Hawthorne presently + entered. Each of the guests sat upright in his chair like a Roman senator. + "To them" Hawthorne, like a Dacian king. The call went on, but in a most + melancholy manner. The host sat perfectly still, or occasionally + propounded a question which Thoreau answered accurately, and there the + thread broke short off. Emerson delivered sentences that only needed the + setting of an essay to charm the world; but the whole visit was a vague + ghost of the Monday-evening club at Mr. Emerson's—it was a great + failure. Had they all been lying idly upon the river brink, or strolling + in Thoreau's blackberry pastures, the result would have been utterly + different. But imprisoned in the proprieties of a parlor, each a wild man + in his way, with a necessity of talking inherent in the nature of the + occasion, there was only a waste of treasure. This was the only "call" in + which I ever knew Hawthorne to be involved. + </p> + <p> + In Mr. Emerson's house, I said, it seemed always morning. But Hawthorne's + black-ash trees and scraggy apple-boughs shaded + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "a land + In which it seemed always afternoon." +</pre> + <p> + I do not doubt that the lotus grew along the grassy marge of the Concord + behind his house, and it was served, subtly concealed, to all his guests. + The house, its inmates, and its life lay, dream-like, upon the edge of the + little village. You fancied that they all came together and belonged + together, and were glad that at length some idol of your imagination, some + poet whose spell had held you and would hold you forever, was housed as + such a poet should be. + </p> + <p> + During the lapse of the three years since the bridal tour of twenty miles + ended at the "two tall gate-posts of rough-hewn stone", a little wicker + wagon had appeared at intervals upon the avenue, and a placid babe, whose + eyes the soft Concord day had touched with the blue of its beauty, lay + looking tranquilly up at the grave old trees, which sighed lofty lullabies + over her sleep. The tranquillity of the golden-haired Una was the living + and breathing type of the dreamy life of the Old Manse. Perhaps, that + being attained, it was as well to go. Perhaps our author was not surprised + nor displeased when the hints came, "growing more and more distinct, that + the owner of the old house was pining for his native air". One afternoon I + entered the study, and learned from its occupant that the last story he + should ever write there was written. The son of the old pastor yearned for + his homestead. The light of another summer would seek its poet in the Old + Manse, but in vain. + </p> + <p> + While Hawthorne had been quietly writing in the "most delightful little + nook of a study", Mr. Polk had been elected President, and Mr. Bancroft, + in the cabinet, did not forget his old friend, the surveyor in the + custom-house. There came suggestions and offers of various attractions. + Still loving New England, would he tarry there, or, as inspector of woods + and forests in some far-away island of the southern sea, some hazy strip + of distance seen from Florida, would he taste the tropics? He meditated + all the chances, without immediately deciding. Gathering up his household + gods, he passed out of the Old Manse as its heir entered, and before the + end of summer was domesticated in the custom-house of his native town of + Salem. This was in the year 1846. Upon leaving the Old Manse he published + the <i>Mosses</i>, announcing that it was the last collection of tales he + should put forth. Those who knew him and recognized his value to our + literature trembled lest this was the last word from one who spoke only + pearls and rubies. It was a foolish fear. The sun must shine, the sea must + roll, the bird must sing, and the poet write. During his life in Salem, of + which the introduction to <i>The Scarlet Letter</i> describes the official + aspect, he wrote that romance. It is inspired by the spirit of the place. + It presents more vividly than any history the gloomy picturesqueness of + early New England life. There is no strain in our literature so + characteristic or more real than that which Hawthorne had successfully + attempted in several of his earlier sketches, and of which <i>The Scarlet + Letter</i> is the great triumph. It became immediately popular, and + directly placed the writer of stories for a small circle among the world's + masters of romance. + </p> + <p> + Times meanwhile changed, and presidents with them. General Taylor was + elected, and the Salem collector retired. It is one of the romantic points + of Hawthorne's quiet life that its changes have been so frequently + determined by political events, which, more than all others, are the most + entirely foreign to his tastes and habits. He retired to the hills of + Berkshire, the eye of the world now regarding his movements. There he + lived a year or two in a little red cottage upon the "Stockbridge Bowl", + as a small lake near that town is called. In this retreat he wrote <i>The + House of the Seven Gables</i>, which more deeply confirmed the literary + position already acquired for him by the first romance. The scene is laid + in Salem, as if he could not escape a strange fascination in the + witch-haunted town of our early history. It is the same black canvas upon + which plays the rainbow-flash of his fancy, never, in its brightest + moment, more than illuminating the gloom. This marks all his writings. + They have a terrible beauty, like the siren, and their fascination is as + sure. + </p> + <p> + After six years of absence Hawthorne returned to Concord, where he + purchased a small house formerly occupied by Orphic Alcott. When that + philosopher came into possession it was a miserable little house of two + peaked gables. But the genius which recreated itself in devising graceful + summer-houses, like that for Mr. Emerson, already noticed, soon smoothed + the new residence into some kind of comeliness. It was an old house when + Mr. Alcott entered it, but his tasteful finger touched it with picturesque + grace. + </p> + <p> + Not like a tired old drudge of a house, rusting into unhonored decay, but + with a modest freshness that does not belie the innate sobriety of a + venerable New England farm-house, the present residence of our author + stands, withdrawn a few yards from the high-road to Boston, along which + marched the British soldiers to Concord bridge. It lies at the foot of a + wooded hill, a neat house of a "rusty olive hue", with a porch in front, + and a central peak, and a piazza at each end. The genius for summer-houses + has had full play upon the hill behind. Here, upon the homely steppes of + Concord, is a strain of Persia. Mr. Alcott built terraces and arbors and + pavilions of boughs and rough stems of trees, revealing—somewhat + inadequately, perhaps—the hanging gardens of delight that adorn the + Babylon of his orphic imagination. The hill-side is no unapt emblem of his + intellectual habit, which garnishes the arid commonplaces of life with a + cold poetic aurora, forgetting that it is the inexorable law of light to + deform as well as adorn. Treating life as a grand epic poem, the + philosophic Alcott forgets that Homer must nod or we should all fall + asleep. The world would not be very beautiful nor interesting if it were + all one huge summit of Mont Blanc. + </p> + <p> + Unhappily, the terraced hill-side, like the summer-house upon Mr. + Emerson's lawn, "lacks technical arrangement", and the wild winds play + with these architectural toys of fancy, like lions with humming-birds. + They are gradually falling, shattered, and disappearing. Fine locust-trees + shade them and ornament the hill with perennial beauty. The hanging + gardens of Semiramis were not more fragrant than Hawthorne's hill-side + during the June blossoming of the locusts. A few young elms, some + white-pines and young oaks, complete the catalogue of trees. A light + breeze constantly fans the brow of the hill, making harps of the tree-tops + and singing to our author, who, "with a book in my hand, or an unwritten + book in my thoughts", lies stretched beneath them in the shade. + </p> + <p> + From the height of the hill the eye courses, unrestrained, over the + solitary landscape of Concord, broad and still, broken only by the slight + wooded undulations of insignificant hillocks. The river is not visible, + nor any gleam of lake. Walden Pond is just behind the wood in front, and + not far away over the meadows sluggishly steals the river. It is the most + quiet of prospects. Eight acres of good land lie in front of the house, + across the road, and in the rear the estate extends a little distance over + the brow of the hill. + </p> + <p> + This latter is not good garden-ground, but it yields that other crop which + the poet "gathers in a song". Perhaps the world will forgive our author + that he is not a prize farmer, and makes but an indifferent figure at the + annual cattle-show. We have seen that he is more nomadic than + agricultural. He has wandered from spot to spot, pitching a temporary + tent, then striking it for "fresh fields and pastures new". It is natural, + therefore, that he should call his house "The Wayside"—a bench upon + the road where he sits for a while before passing on. If the wayfarer + finds him upon that bench he shall have rare pleasure in sitting with him, + yet shudder while he stays. For the pictures of our poet have more than + the shadows of Rembrandt. If you listen to his story, the lonely pastures + and dull towns of our dear old homely New England shall become suddenly as + radiant with grace and terrible with tragedy as any country and any time. + The waning afternoon in Concord, in which the blue-frocked farmers are + reaping and hoeing, shall set in pensive glory. The woods will forever + after be haunted with strange forms. You will hear whispers and music "i' + the air". In the softest morning you will suspect sadness; in the most + fervent noon a nameless terror. It is because the imagination of our + author treads the almost imperceptible line between the natural and the + supernatural. We are all conscious of striking it sometimes. But we avoid + it. We recoil and hurry away, nor dare to glance over our shoulders lest + we should see phantoms. What are these tales of supernatural appearances, + as well authenticated as any news of the day—and what is the sphere + which they imply? What is the more subtle intellectual apprehension of + fate and its influence upon imagination and life? Whatever it is, it is + the mystery of the fascination of these tales. They converse with that + dreadful realm as with our real world. The light of our sun is poured by + genius upon the phantoms we did not dare to contemplate, and lo! they are + ourselves, unmasked, and playing our many parts. An unutterable sadness + seizes the reader as the inevitable black thread appears. For here genius + assures us what we trembled to suspect, but could not avoid suspecting, + that the black thread is inwoven with all forms of life, with all + development of character. + </p> + <p> + It is for this peculiarity, which harmonizes so well with ancient places, + whose pensive silence seems the trance of memory musing over the young and + lovely life that illuminated its lost years—that Hawthorne is so + intimately associated with the Old Manse. Yet that was but the tent of a + night for him. Already, with the <i>Blithedale Romance</i>, which is dated + from Concord, a new interest begins to cluster around "The Wayside". + </p> + <p> + I know not how I can more fitly conclude these reminiscences of Concord + and Hawthorne, whose own stories have always a saddening close, than by + relating an occurrence which blighted to many hearts the beauty of the + quiet Concord river, and seemed not inconsistent with its lonely + landscape. It has the further fitness of typifying the operation of our + author's imagination: a tranquil stream, clear and bright with sunny + gleams, crowned with lilies and graceful with swaying grass, yet doing + terrible deeds inexorably, and therefore forever after of a shadowed + beauty. + </p> + <p> + Martha was the daughter of a plain Concord farmer, a girl of delicate and + shy temperament, who excelled so much in study that she was sent to a fine + academy in a neighboring town, and won all the honors of the course. She + met at the school, and in the society of the place, a refinement and + cultivation, a social gayety and grace, which were entirely unknown in the + hard life she had led at home, and which by their very novelty, as well as + because they harmonized with her own nature and dreams, were doubly + beautiful and fascinating. She enjoyed this life to the full, while her + timidity kept her only a spectator; and she ornamented it with a fresher + grace, suggestive of the woods and fields, when she ventured to engage in + the airy game. It was a sphere for her capacities and talents. She shone + in it, and the consciousness of a true position and general appreciation + gave her the full use of all her powers. She admired and was admired. She + was surrounded by gratifications of taste, by the stimulants and rewards + of ambition. The world was happy, and she was worthy to live in it. But at + times a cloud suddenly dashed athwart the sun—a shadow stole, dark + and chill, to the very edge of the charmed circle in which she stood. She + knew well what it was and what it foretold, but she would not pause nor + heed. The sun shone again; the future smiled; youth, beauty, and all + gentle hopes and thoughts bathed the moment in lambent light. + </p> + <p> + But school-days ended at last, and with the receding town in which they + had been passed the bright days of life disappeared, and forever. It is + probable that the girl's fancy had been fed, perhaps indiscreetly + pampered, by her experience there. But it was no fairy-land. It was an + academy town in New England, and the fact that it was so alluring is a + fair indication of the kind of life from which she had emerged, and to + which she now returned. What could she do? In the dreary round of petty + details, in the incessant drudgery of a poor farmer's household, with no + companions of any sympathy—for the family of a hard-working New + England farmer are not the Chloes and Clarissas of pastoral poetry, nor + are cow-boys Corydons—with no opportunity of retirement and + cultivation, for reading and studying—which is always voted "stuff" + under such circumstances—the light suddenly quenched out of life, + what was she to do? + </p> + <p> + "Adapt herself to her circumstances. Why had she shot from her sphere in + this silly way?" demands unanimous common-sense in valiant heroics. + </p> + <p> + The simple answer is, that she had only used all her opportunities, and + that, although it was no fault of hers that the routine of her life was in + every way repulsive, she did struggle to accommodate herself to it—and + failed. When she found it impossible to drag on at home, she became an + inmate of a refined and cultivated household in the village, where she had + opportunity to follow her own fancies, and to associate with educated and + attractive persons. But even here she could not escape the feeling that it + was all temporary, that her position was one of dependence; and her pride, + now grown morbid, often drove her from the very society which alone was + agreeable to her. This was all genuine. There was not the slightest strain + of the <i>femme incomprise</i> in her demeanor. She was always shy and + silent, with a touching reserve which won interest and confidence, but + left also a vague sadness in the mind of the observer. After a few months + she made another effort to rend the cloud which was gradually darkening + around her, and opened a school for young children. But although the + interest of friends secured for her a partial success, her gravity and + sadness failed to excite the sympathy of her pupils, who missed in her the + playful gayety always most winning to children. Martha, however, pushed + bravely on, a figure of tragic sobriety to all who watched her course. The + farmers thought her a strange girl, and wondered at the ways of a farmer's + daughter who was not content to milk cows and churn butter and fry pork, + without further hope or thought. The good clergyman of the town, + interested in her situation, sought a confidence she did not care to + bestow, and so, doling out a, b, c, to a wild group of boys and girls, she + found that she could not untie the Gordian knot of her life, and felt, + with terror, that it must be cut. + </p> + <p> + One summer evening she left her father's house and walked into the fields + alone. Night came, but Martha did not return. The family became anxious, + inquired if any one had noticed the direction in which she went, learned + from the neighbors that she was not visiting, that there was no lecture or + meeting to detain her, and wonder passed into apprehension. Neighbors went + into the adjacent woods and called, but received no answer. Every instant + the awful shadow of some dread event solemnized the gathering groups. + Every one thought what no one dared whisper, until a low voice suggested + "the river". Then, with the swiftness of certainty, all friends, far and + near, were roused, and thronged along the banks of the stream. Torches + flashed in boats that put off in the terrible search. Hawthorne, then + living in the Old Manse, was summoned, and the man whom the villagers had + only seen at morning as a musing spectre in his garden, now appeared among + them at night to devote his strong arm and steady heart to their service. + The boats drifted slowly down the stream—the torches flared + strangely upon the black repose of the water, and upon the long, slim + grasses that, weeping, fringed the marge. Upon both banks silent and + awe-stricken crowds hastened along, eager and dreading to find the + slightest trace of what they sought. Suddenly they came upon a few + articles of dress, heavy with the night-dew. No one spoke, for no one had + doubted the result. It was clear that Martha had strayed to the river and + quietly asked of its stillness the repose she sought. The boats gathered + around the spot. With every implement that could be of service the + melancholy search began. Long intervals of fearful silence ensued, but at + length, towards midnight, the sweet face of the dead girl was raised more + placidly to the stars than ever it had been to the sun. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Oh! is it weed or fish or floating hair— + A tress o' golden hair, + O' drowned maiden's hair, + Above the nets at sea? + Was never salmon yet that shone so fair + Among the stakes on Dee." +</pre> + <p> + So ended a village tragedy. The reader may possibly find in it the + original of the thrilling conclusion of the <i>Blithedale Romance</i>, and + learn anew that dark as is the thread with which Hawthorne weaves his + spells, it is no darker than those with which tragedies are spun, even in + regions apparently so torpid as Concord. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + THE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE + </h2> + <p> + The traveller by the Eastern Railroad, from Boston, reaches in less than + an hour the old town of Salem, Massachusetts. It is chiefly composed of + plain wooden houses, but it has a quaint air of past provincial grandeur, + and has indeed been an important commercial town. The first American ship + for Calcutta and China sailed from this port; and Salem ships opened our + trade with New Holland and the South Seas. But its glory has long since + departed, with that of its stately and respectable neighbors, Newburyport + and Portsmouth. There is still, however, a custom-house in Salem, there + are wharves and chandlers' shops and a faint show of shipping and an air + of marine capacity which no apparent result justifies. It sits upon the + shore like an antiquated sea-captain, grave and silent, in tarpaulin and + duck trousers, idly watching the ocean upon which he will never sail + again. + </p> + <p> + But this touching aspect of age and lost prosperity merely serves to + deepen the peculiar impression of the old city, which is not derived from + its former commercial importance, but from other associations. Salem + village was a famous place in the Puritan annals. The tragedy of the + witchcraft tortures and murders has cast upon it a ghostly spell, from + which it seems never to have escaped; and even the sojourner of to-day, as + he loiters along the shore in the sunniest morning of June, will sometimes + feel an icy breath in the air, chilling the very marrow of his bones. Nor + is he consoled by being told that it is only the east wind; for he cannot + help believing that an invisible host of Puritan spectres have breathed + upon him, revengeful, as he poached upon their ancient haunts. + </p> + <p> + The Puritan spirit was neither gracious nor lovely, but nothing softer + than its iron hand could have done its necessary work. The Puritan + character was narrow, intolerant, and exasperating. The forefathers were + very "sour" in the estimation of Morton and his merry company at Mount + Wollaston. But for all that, Bradstreet and Carver and Winthrop were + better forefathers than the gay Morton, and the Puritan spirit is + doubtless the moral influence of modern civilization, both in Old and New + England. By the fruit let the seed be judged. The State to whose rough + coast the <i>Mayflower</i> came, and in which the Pilgrim spirit has been + most active, is to-day the chief of all human societies, politically, + morally, and socially. It is the community in which the average of + well-being is higher than in any State we know in history. Puritan though + it be, it is more truly liberal and free than any large community in the + world. But it had bleak beginnings. The icy shore, the sombre pines, the + stealthy savages, the hard soil, the unbending religious austerity, the + Scriptural severity, the arrogant virtues, the angry intolerance of + contradiction—they all made a narrow strip of sad civilization + between the pitiless sea and the remorseless forests. The moral and + physical tenacity which is wrestling with the Rebellion was toughened + among these flinty and forbidding rocks. The fig, the pomegranate, and the + almond would not grow there, nor the nightingale sing; but nobler men than + its children the sun never shone upon, nor has the heart of man heard + sweeter music than the voices of James Otis and Samuel Adams. Think of + Plymouth in 1620, and of Massachusetts to-day! Out of strength came forth + sweetness. + </p> + <p> + With some of the darkest passages in Puritan history this old town of + Salem, which dozes apparently with the most peaceful conscience in the + world, is identified, and while its Fourth of July bells were joyfully + ringing sixty years ago Nathaniel Hathorne was born. He subsequently chose + to write the name Hawthorne, because he thought he had discovered that it + was the original spelling. In the introduction to <i>The Scarlet Letter</i>, + Hawthorne speaks of his ancestors as coming from Europe in the seventeenth + century, and establishing themselves in Salem, where they served the State + and propitiated Heaven by joining in the persecution of Quakers and + witches. The house known as the Witch House is still standing on the + corner of Summer and Essex streets. It was built in 1642 by Captain George + Corwin, and here in 1692 many of the unfortunates who were palpably guilty + of age and ugliness were examined by the Honorable Jonathan Curwin, Major + Gedney, Captain John Higginson, and John Hathorn, Esquire. + </p> + <p> + The name of this last worthy occurs in one of the first and most famous of + the witch trials, that of "Goodwife Gory", in March, 1692, only a month + after the beginning of the delusion at the house of the minister Parris. + Goodwife Gory was accused by ten children, of whom Elizabeth Parris was + one; they declared that they were pinched by her and strangled, and that + she brought them a book to sign. "Mr. Hathorn, a magistrate of Salem", + says Robert Calef, in <i>More Wonders of the Invisible World</i>, "asked + her why she afflicted these children. She said she did not afflict them. + He asked her who did then. She said, I do not know; how should I know? She + said they were poor, distracted creatures, and no heed ought to be given + to what they said. Mr. Hathorn and Mr. Noyes replied, that it was the + judgment of all that were there present that they were bewitched, and only + she (the accused) said they were distracted. She was accused by them that + the <i>black man</i> whispered to her in her ear now (while she was upon + examination), and that she had a yellow bird that did use to suck between + her fingers, and that the said bird did suck now in the assembly." John + Hathorn and Jonathan Curwin were "the Assistants" of Salem village, and + held most of the examinations and issued the warrants. Justice Hathorn was + very swift in judgment, holding every accused person guilty in every + particular. When poor Jonathan Gary of Charlestown attended his wife + charged with witchcraft before Justice Hathorn, he requested that he might + hold one of her hands, "but it was denied me. Then she desired me to wipe + the tears from her eyes and the sweat from her face, which I did; then she + desired that she might lean herself on me, saying she should faint. + Justice Hathorn replied, she had strength enough to torment these persons, + and she should have strength enough to stand. I speaking something against + their cruel proceedings, they commanded me to be silent, or else I should + be turned out of the room". What a piteous picture of the awful colonial + inquisition and the village Torquemada! What a grim portrait of an + ancestor to hang in your memory, and to trace your kindred to! + </p> + <p> + Hawthorne's description of his ancestors in the Introduction to <i>The + Scarlet Letter</i> is very delightful. As their representative, he + declares that he takes shame to himself for their sake, on account of + these relentless persecutions; but he thinks them earnest and energetic. + "From father to son, for above a hundred years, they followed the sea; a + gray-headed ship-master, in each generation, retiring from the + quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary + place before the mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale, which had + blustered against his sire and grand-sire. The boy also, in due time, + passed from the forecastle to the cabin, spent a tempestuous manhood, and + returned from his world-wanderings, to grow old, and die, and mingle his + dust with the natal earth." Not all, however, for the last of the line of + sailors, Captain Nathaniel Hathorne, who married Elizabeth Clarke Manning, + died at Calcutta after the birth of three children, a boy and two girls. + The house in which the boy was born is still standing upon Union Street, + which leads to the Long Wharf, the chief seat of the old foreign trade of + Salem. The next house, with a back entrance on Union Street, is the + Manning house, where many years of the young Hawthorne's life were spent + in the care of his uncle, Robert Manning. He lived often upon an estate + belonging to his mother's family, in the town of Raymond, near Sebago + Lake, in Maine. The huge house there was called Manning's Folly, and is + now said to be used as a meeting-house. His uncle sent Hawthorne to + Bowdoin College, where he graduated in 1825. A correspondent of the Boston + <i>Daily Advertiser</i>, writing from Bowdoin at the late commencement, + says that he had recently found "in an old drawer" some papers which + proved to be the manuscript "parts" of the students at the Junior + exhibition of 1824; among them was Hawthorne's "De Patribus Conscriptis + Romanorum". "It is quite brief," writes the correspondent, "but is really + curious as perhaps the only college exercise in existence of the great + tragic writer of our day (has there been a greater since Shakespeare?). + The last sentence is as follows (note the words which I put in italics): + 'Augustus equidem antiquam magnificentiam patribus reddidit, <i>sed fulgor + tantum fuit sine fervore</i>. Nunquam in republica senatoribus potestas + recuperata, postremum species etiam amissa est.' On the same occasion + Longfellow had the salutatory oration in Latin—'Oratio Latina; + Anglici Poetae.'" + </p> + <p> + Hawthorne has given us a charming glimpse of himself as a college boy in + the letter to his fellow-student, Horatio Bridge, of the Navy, whose <i>Journal + of an African Cruiser</i> he afterwards edited. "I know not whence your + faith came; but while we were lads together at a country college, + gathering blueberries, in study-hours, under those tall academic pines; or + watching the great logs as they tumbled along the current of the + Androscoggin; or shooting pigeons and gray squirrels in the woods; or + bat-fowling in the summer twilight; or catching trouts in that shadowy + little stream which, I suppose, is still wandering riverward through the + forest—though you and I will never cast a line in it again—two + idle lads, in short (as we need not fear to acknowledge now), doing a + hundred things that the faculty never heard of, or else it had been the + worse for us,—still it was your prognostic of your friend's destiny + that he was to be a writer of fiction." From this sylvan university + Hawthorne came home to Salem; "as if," he wrote later, "Salem were for me + the inevitable centre of the universe." + </p> + <p> + The old witch-hanging city had no weirder product than this dark-haired + son. He has certainly given it an interest which it must otherwise have + lacked; but he speaks of it with small affection, considering that his + family had lived there for two centuries. "An unjoyous attachment," he + calls it. And, to tell the truth, there was evidently little love lost + between the little city and its most famous citizen. Stories still float + in the social gossip of the town, which represent the shy author as + inaccessible to all invitations to dinner and tea; and while the pleasant + circle awaited his coming in the drawing-room, the impracticable man was—at + least so runs the tale—quietly hobnobbing with companions to whom + his fame was unknown. Those who coveted him as a phoenix could never get + him, while he gave himself freely to those who saw in him only a placid + barn-door fowl. The sensitive youth was a recluse, upon whose imagination + had fallen the gloomy mystery of Puritan life and character. Salem was the + inevitable centre of his universe more truly than he thought. The mind of + Justice Hathorn's descendant was bewitched by the fascination of a certain + devilish subtlety working under the comeliest aspects in human affairs. It + overcame him with strange sympathy. It colored and controlled his + intellectual life. + </p> + <p> + Devoted all day to lonely reverie and musing upon the obscurer spiritual + passages of the life whose monuments he constantly encountered, that + musing became inevitably morbid. With the creative instinct of the artist, + he wrote the wild fancies into form as stories, many of which, when + written, he threw into the fire. Then, after nightfall, stealing out from + his room into the silent streets of Salem, and shadowy as the ghosts with + which to his susceptible imagination the dusky town was thronged, he + glided beneath the house in which the witch-trials were held, or across + the moonlit hill upon which the witches were hung, until the spell was + complete. Nor can we help fancying that, after the murder of old Mr. White + in Salem, which happened within a few years after his return from college, + which drew from Mr. Webster his most famous criminal plea, and filled a + shadowy corner of every museum in New England, as every shivering little + man of that time remembers, with an awful reproduction of the scene in + wax-figures, with real sheets on the bed, and the murderer, in a glazed + cap, stooping over to deal the fatal blow—we cannot help fancying + that the young recluse who walked by night, the wizard whom as yet none + knew, hovered about the house, gazing at the windows of the fatal chamber, + and listening in horror for the faint whistle of the confederate in + another street. + </p> + <p> + Three years after he graduated, in 1828, he published anonymously a slight + romance with the motto from Southey, "Wilt thou go with me?" Hawthorne + never acknowledged the book, and it is now seldom found; but it shows + plainly the natural bent of his mind. It is a dim, dreamy tale, such as a + Byron-struck youth of the time might have written, except for that + startling self-possession of style and cold analysis of passion, rather + than sympathy with it, which showed no imitation, but remarkable original + power. The same lurid gloom overhangs it that shadows all his works. It is + uncanny; the figures of the romance are not persons, they are passions, + emotions, spiritual speculations. So the <i>Twice-told Tales</i> that seem + at first but the pleasant fancies of a mild recluse, gradually hold the + mind with a Lamia-like fascination; and the author says truly of them, in + the Preface of 1851, "Even in what purport to be pictures of actual life, + we have allegory not always so warmly dressed in its habiliments of flesh + and blood as to be taken into the reader's mind without a shiver." There + are sunny gleams upon the pages, but a strange, melancholy chill pervades + the book. In "The Wedding Knell", "The Minister's Black Veil", "The Gentle + Boy", "Wakefield", "The Prophetic Pictures", "The Hollow of the Three + Hills", "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment", "The Ambitious Guest", "The White + Old Maid", "Edward Fane's Rose-bud", "The Lily's Quest"—or in the + "Legends of the Province House", where the courtly provincial state of + governors and ladies glitters across the small, sad New England world, + whose very baldness jeers it to scorn—there is the same fateful + atmosphere in which Goody Cloyse might at any moment whisk by upon her + broomstick, and in which the startled heart stands still with unspeakable + terror. + </p> + <p> + The spell of mysterious horror which kindled Hawthorne's imagination was a + test of the character of his genius. The mind of this child of + witch-haunted Salem loved to hover between the natural and the + supernatural, and sought to tread the almost imperceptible and doubtful + line of contact. He instinctively sketched the phantoms that have the + figures of men, but are not human; the elusive, shadowy scenery which, + like that of Gustave Doré's pictures, is Nature sympathizing in her forms + and aspects with the emotions of terror or awe which the tale excites. His + genius broods entranced over the evanescent phantasmagoria of the vague + debatable land in which the realities of experience blend with ghostly + doubts and wonders. + </p> + <p> + But from its poisonous flowers what a wondrous perfume he distilled! + Through his magic reed, into what penetrating melody he blew that deathly + air! His relentless fancy seemed to seek a sin that was hopeless, a cruel + despair that no faith could throw off. Yet his naïve and well-poised + genius hung over the gulf of blackness, and peered into the pit with the + steady nerve and simple face of a boy. The mind of the reader follows him + with an aching wonder and admiration, as the bewildered old mother + forester watched Undine's gambols. As Hawthorne describes Miriam in <i>The + Marble Faun</i>, so may the character of his genius be most truly + indicated. Miriam, the reader will remember, turns to Hilda and Kenyon for + sympathy. "Yet it was to little purpose that she approached the edge of + the voiceless gulf between herself and them. Standing on the utmost verge + of that dark chasm, she might stretch out her hand and never clasp a hand + of theirs; she might strive to call out 'Help, friends! help!' but, as + with dreamers when they shout, her voice would perish inaudibly in the + remoteness that seemed such a little way. This perception of an infinite, + shivering solitude, amid which we cannot come close enough to human beings + to be warmed by them, and where they turn to cold, chilly shapes of mist, + is one of the most forlorn results of any accident, misfortune, crime, or + peculiarity of character, that puts an individual ajar with the world." + </p> + <p> + Thus it was because the early New England life made so much larger account + of the supernatural element than any other modern civilized society, that + the man whose blood had run in its veins instinctively turned to it. But + beyond this alluring spell of its darker and obscurer individual + experience, it seems neither to have touched his imagination nor even to + have aroused his interest. To Walter Scott the romance of feudalism was + precious for the sake of feudalism itself, in which he believed with all + his soul, and for that of the heroic old feudal figures which he honored. + He was a Tory in every particle of his frame, and his genius made him the + poet of Toryism. But Hawthorne had apparently no especial political, + religious, or patriotic affinity with the spirit which inspired him. It + was solely a fascination of the intellect. And although he is + distinctively the poet of the Puritans, although it is to his genius that + we shall always owe that image of them which the power of The Scarlet + Letter has imprinted upon literature, and doubtless henceforth upon + historical interpretation, yet what an imperfect picture of that life it + is! All its stern and melancholy romance is there—its picturesque + gloom and intense passion; but upon those quivering pages, as in every + passage of his stories drawn from that spirit, there seems to be wanting a + deep, complete, sympathetic appreciation of the fine moral heroism, the + spiritual grandeur, which overhung that gloomy life, as a delicate purple + mist suffuses in summer twilights the bald crags of the crystal hills. It + is the glare of the scarlet letter itself, and all that it luridly reveals + and weirdly implies, which produced the tale. It was not beauty in itself + nor deformity, not virtue nor vice, which engaged the author's deepest + sympathy. It was the occult relation between the two. Thus while the + Puritans were of all men pious, it was the instinct of Hawthorne's genius + to search out and trace with terrible tenacity the dark and devious thread + of sin in their lives. + </p> + <p> + Human life and character, whether in New England two hundred years ago or + in Italy to-day, interested him only as they were touched by this glamour + of sombre spiritual mystery; and the attraction pursued him in every form + in which it appeared. It is as apparent in the most perfect of his smaller + tales, <i>Rappaccini's Daughter</i>, as in <i>The Scarlet Letter, The + Blithedale Romance, The House of the Seven Gables</i>, and <i>The Marble + Faun</i>. You may open almost at random, and you are as sure to find it as + to hear the ripple in Mozart's music, or the pathetic minor in a + Neapolitan melody. Take, for instance, The <i>Birth-Mark</i>, which we + might call the best of the smaller stories, if we had not just said the + same thing of <i>Rappaccini's Daughter</i>—for so even and complete + is Hawthorne's power, that, with few exceptions, each work of his, like + Benvenuto's, seems the most characteristic and felicitous. In this story, + a scholar marries a beautiful woman, upon whose face is a mark which has + hitherto seemed to be only a greater charm. Yet in one so lovely the + husband declares that, although it is the slightest possible defect, it is + yet the mark of earthly imperfection, and he proceeds to lavish all the + resources of science to procure its removal. But it will not disappear; + and at last he tells her that the crimson hand "has clutched its grasp" + into her very being, and that there is mortal danger in trying the only + means of removal that remains. She insists that it shall be tried. It + succeeds; but it removes the stain and her life together. So in <i>Rappaccini's + Daughter</i>. The old philosopher nourishes his beautiful child upon the + poisonous breath of a flower. She loves, and her lover is likewise + bewitched. In trying to break the spell, she drinks an antidote which + kills her. The point of interest in both stories is the subtile + connection, in the first, between the beauty of Georgiana and the taint of + the birth-mark; and, in the second, the loveliness of Beatrice and the + poison of the blossom. + </p> + <p> + This, also, is the key of his last romance, <i>The Marble Faun</i>, one of + the most perfect works of art in literature, whose marvellous spell begins + with the very opening words: "Four individuals, in whose fortunes we + should be glad to interest the reader, happened to be standing in one of + the saloons of the sculpture-gallery in the Capitol at Rome." When these + words are read, the mind familiar with Hawthorne is already enthralled. + "What a journey is beginning, not a step of which is trodden, and yet the + heart palpitates with apprehension! Through what delicate, rosy lights of + love, and soft, shimmering humor, and hopes and doubts and vanishing + delights, that journey will proceed, on and on into utter gloom." And it + does so, although "Hilda had a hopeful soul, and saw sunlight on the + mountain-tops". It does so, because Miriam and Donatello are the figures + which interest us most profoundly, and they are both lost in the shadow. + Donatello, indeed, is the true centre of interest, as he is one of the + most striking creations of genius. But the perplexing charm of Donatello, + what is it but the doubt that does not dare to breathe itself, the + appalled wonder whether, if the breeze should lift those clustering locks + a little higher, he would prove to be faun or man? It never does lift + them; the doubt is never solved, but it is always suggested. The mystery + of a partial humanity, morally irresponsible but humanly conscious, haunts + the entrancing page. It draws us irresistibly on. But as the cloud closes + around the lithe figure of Donatello, we hear again from its hidden folds + the words of "The Birth-Mark": "Thus ever does the gross fatality of earth + exult in its invariable triumph over the immortal essence, which, in this + dim sphere of half-development, demands the completeness of a higher + state". Or still more sadly, the mysterious youth, half vanishing from our + sympathy, seems to murmur, with Beatrice Rappaccini, "And still as she + spoke, she kept her hand upon her heart,—'Wherefore didst thou + inflict this miserable doom upon thy child?'" + </p> + <p> + We have left the story of Hawthorne's life sadly behind. But his life had + no more remarkable events than holding office in the Boston Customhouse + under Mr. Bancroft as collector; working for some time with the Brook—Farmers, + from whom he soon separated, not altogether amicably; marrying and living + in the Old Manse at Concord; returning to the Custom-house in Salem as + surveyor; then going to Lenox, in Berkshire, where he lived in what he + called "the ugliest little old red farm-house that you ever saw", and + where the story is told of his shyness, that, if he saw anybody coming + along the road whom he must probably pass, he would jump over the wall + into the pasture, and so give the stranger a wide berth; back again to + Concord; then to Liverpool as consul; travelling in Europe afterwards, and + home at last and forever, to "The Wayside" under the Concord hill. "The + hillside," he wrote to a friend in 1852, "is covered chiefly with + locust-trees, which come into luxuriant blossom in the month of June, and + look and smell very sweetly, intermixed with a few young elms and some + white-pines and infant oaks, the whole forming rather a thicket than a + wood. Nevertheless, there is some very good shade to be found there; I + spend delectable hours there in the hottest part of the day, stretched out + at my lazy length with a book in my hand or an unwritten book in my + thoughts. There is almost always a breeze stirring along the side or the + brow of the hill." + </p> + <p> + It is not strange, certainly, that a man such as has been described, of a + morbid shyness, the path of whose genius diverged always out of the sun + into the darkest shade, and to whom human beings were merely psychological + phenomena, should have been accounted ungenial, and sometimes even hard, + cold, and perverse. From the bent of his intellectual temperament it + happens that in his simplest and sweetest passages he still seems to be + studying and curiously observing, rather than sympathizing. You cannot + help feeling constantly that the author is looking askance both at his + characters and you, the reader; and many a young and fresh mind is + troubled strangely by his books, as if it were aware of a + half-Mephistophelean smile upon the page. Nor is this impression + altogether removed by the remarkable familiarity of his personal + disclosures. There was never a man more shrinkingly retiring, yet surely + never was an author more naively frank. He is willing that you should know + all that a man may fairly reveal of himself. The great interior story he + does not tell, of course, but the Introduction to the <i>Mosses from an + Old Manse</i>, the opening chapter of <i>The Scarlet Letter</i>, and the + <i>Consular Experiences</i>, with much of the rest of <i>Our Old Home</i>, + are as intimate and explicit chapters of autobiography as can be found. + Nor would it be easy to find anywhere a more perfect idyl than that + introductory chapter of the <i>Mosses</i>. Its charm is perennial and + indescribable; and why should it not be, since it was written at a time in + which, as he says, "I was happy?" It is, perhaps, the most softly-hued and + exquisite work of his pen. So the sketch of "The Custom-house", although + prefatory to that most tragically powerful of romances, + </p> + <p> + <i>The Scarlet Letter</i>, is an incessant play of the shyest and most + airy humor. It is like the warbling of bobolinks before a thunder-burst. + How many other men, however unreserved with the pen, would be likely to + dare to paint, with the fidelity of Teniers and the simplicity of Fra + Angelico, a picture of the office and the companions in which and with + whom they did their daily work? The surveyor of customs in the port of + Salem treated the town of Salem, in which he lived and discharged his + daily task, as if it had been, with all its people, as vague and remote a + spot as the town of which he was about to treat in the story. He commented + upon the place and the people as modern travellers in Pompeii discuss the + ancient town. It made a great scandal. He was accused of depicting with + unpardonable severity worthy folks, whose friends were sorely pained and + indignant. But he wrote such sketches as he wrote his stories. He treated + his companions as he treated himself and all the personages in history or + experience with which he dealt, merely as phenomena to be analyzed and + described, with no more private malice or personal emotion than the sun, + which would have photographed them, warts and all. + </p> + <p> + Thus it was that the great currents of human sympathy never swept him + away. The character of his genius isolated him, and he stood aloof from + the common interests. Intent upon studying men in certain aspects, he + cared little for man; and the high tides of collective emotion among his + fellows left him dry and untouched. So he beholds and describes the + generous impulse of humanity with sceptical courtesy rather than with + hopeful cordiality. + </p> + <p> + He does not chide you if you spend effort and life itself in the ardent + van of progress, but he asks simply, "Is six so much better than half a + dozen?" He will not quarrel with you if you expect the millennium + to-morrow. He only says, with that glimmering smile, "So soon?" Yet in all + this there was no shadow of spiritual pride. Nay, so far from this, that + the tranquil and pervasive sadness of all Hawthorne's writings, the kind + of heartache that they leave behind, seem to spring from the fact that his + nature was related to the moral world, as his own Donatello was to the + human. "So alert, so alluring, so noble", muses the heart as we climb the + Apennines towards the tower of Monte Beni; "alas! is he human?" it + whispers, with a pang of doubt. + </p> + <p> + How this directed his choice of subjects, and affected his treatment of + them, when drawn from early history, we have already seen. It is not, + therefore, surprising, that the history into which he was born interested + him only in the same way. + </p> + <p> + When he went to Europe as consul, <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin</i> was already + published, and the country shook with the fierce debate which involved its + life. Yet eight years later Hawthorne wrote with calm ennui, "No author, + without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about + a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no + picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, + in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native + land." Is crime never romantic, then, until distance ennobles it? Or were + the tragedies of Puritan life so terrible that the imagination could not + help kindling, while the pangs of the plantation are superficial and + commonplace? Charlotte Brontë, Dickens, and Thackeray were able to find a + shadow even in "merrie England". But our great romancer looked at the + American life of his time with these marvellous eyes, and could see only + monotonous sunshine. That the devil, in the form of an elderly man clad in + grave and decent attire, should lead astray the saints of Salem village, + two centuries ago, and confuse right and wrong in the mind of Goodman + Brown, was something that excited his imagination, and produced one of his + weirdest stories. But that the same devil, clad in a sombre sophism, was + confusing the sentiment of right and wrong in the mind of his own + countrymen he did not even guess. The monotonous sunshine disappeared in + the blackest storm. The commonplace prosperity ended in tremendous war. + What other man of equal power, who was not intellectually constituted + precisely as Hawthorne was, could have stood merely perplexed and + bewildered, harassed by the inability of positive sympathy, in the vast + conflict which tosses us all in its terrible vortex? + </p> + <p> + In political theories and in an abstract view of war men may differ. But + this war is not to be dismissed as a political difference. Here is an + attempt to destroy the government of a country, not because it oppressed + any man, but because its evident tendency was to secure universal justice + under law. It is, therefore, a conspiracy against human nature. + Civilization itself is at stake; and the warm blood of the noblest youth + is everywhere flowing in as sacred a cause as history records—flowing + not merely to maintain a certain form of government, but to vindicate the + rights of human nature. Shall there not be sorrow and pain, if a friend is + merely impatient or confounded by it—if he sees in it only danger or + doubt, and not hope for the right—or if he seem to insinuate that it + would have been better if the war had been avoided, even at that countless + cost to human welfare by which alone the avoidance was possible? + </p> + <p> + Yet, if the view of Hawthorne's mental constitution which has been + suggested be correct, this attitude of his, however deeply it may be + regretted, can hardly deserve moral condemnation. He knew perfectly well + that if a man has no ear for music he had better not try to sing. But the + danger with such men is that they are apt to doubt if music itself be not + a vain delusion. This danger Hawthorne escaped. There is none of the + shallow persiflage of the sceptic in his tone, nor any affectation of + cosmopolitan superiority. Mr. Edward Dicey, in his interesting + reminiscences of Hawthorne, published in <i>Macmillan's Magazine</i>, + illustrates this very happily. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "To make his position intelligible, let me repeat an anecdote which + was told me by a very near friend of his and mine, who had heard it + from President Pierce himself. Frank Pierce had been, and was to the + day of Hawthorne's death, one of the oldest of his friends. At the + time of the Presidential election of 1856, Hawthorne, for once, took + part in politics, wrote a pamphlet in favor of his friend, and took + a most unusual interest in his success. When the result of the + nomination was known, and Pierce was President-elect, Hawthorne was + among the first to come and wish him joy. He sat down in the room + moodily and silently, as he was wont when anything troubled him; then, + without speaking a word, he shook Pierce warmly by the hand, and at + last remarked, 'Ah, Frank, what a pity!' The moment the victory was + won, that timid, hesitating mind saw the evils of the successful + course—the advantages of the one which had not been followed. So it + was always. Of two lines of action, he was perpetually in doubt which + was the best; and so, between the two, he always inclined to letting + things remain as they are. + + "Nobody disliked slavery more cordially than he did; and yet the + difficulty of what was to be done with the slaves weighed constantly + upon his mind. He told me once that, while he had been consul at + Liverpool, a vessel arrived there with a number of negro sailors, who + had been brought from slave States, and would, of course, be enslaved + again on their return. He fancied that he ought to inform the men of + the fact, but then he was stopped by the reflection—who was to + provide for them if they became free? and, as he said, with a sigh, + 'while I was thinking, the vessel sailed.' So, I recollect, on the old + battle-field of Manassas, in which I strolled in company with + Hawthorne, meeting a batch of runaway slaves—weary, foot-sore, + wretched, and helpless beyond conception; we gave them food and wine, + some small sums of money, and got them a lift upon a train going + northward; but not long afterwards Hawthorne turned to me with the + remark, 'I am not sure we were doing right after all. How can these + poor beings find food and shelter away from home?' Thus this ingrained + and inherent doubt incapacitated him from following any course + vigorously. He thought, on the whole, that Wendell Phillips and Lloyd + Garrison and the Abolitionists were in the right, but then he was + never quite certain that they were not in the wrong after all; so that + his advocacy of their cause was of a very uncertain character. He saw + the best, to alter slightly the famous Horatian line, but he never + could quite make up his mind whether he altogether approved of its + wisdom, and therefore followed it but falteringly. + + "'Better to bear those ills we have, + Than fly to others that we know not of,' + + "expressed the philosophy to which Hawthorne was thus borne + imperceptibly. Unjustly, but yet not unreasonably, he was looked upon + as a pro-slavery man, and suspected of Southern sympathies. In + politics he was always halting between two opinions; or, rather, + holding one opinion, he could never summon up his courage to adhere + to it and it only." +</pre> + <p> + The truth is that his own times and their people and their affairs were + just as shadowy to him as those of any of his stories, and his mind held + the same curious, half-wistful poise among all the conflicts of principle + and passion around him, as among those of which he read and mused. If you + ask why this was so—how it was that the tragedy of an old Italian + garden, or the sin of a lonely Puritan parish, or the crime of a + provincial judge, should so stimulate his imagination with romantic + appeals and harrowing allegories, while either it did not see a Carolina + slave-pen, or found in it only a tame prosperity—you must take your + answer in the other question, why he did not weave into any of his stories + the black and bloody thread of the Inquisition. His genius obeyed its law. + When he wrote like a disembodied intelligence of events with which his + neighbors' hearts were quivering—when the same half-smile flutters + upon his lips in the essay <i>About War Matters</i>, sketched as it were + upon the battle-field, as in that upon <i>Fire Worship</i>, written in the + rural seclusion of the mossy Manse—ah me! it is Donatello, in his + tower of Monte Beni, contemplating with doubtful interest the field upon + which the flower of men are dying for an idea. Do you wonder, as you see + him and hear him, that your heart, bewildered, asks and asks again, "Is he + human? Is he a man?" + </p> + <p> + Now that Hawthorne sleeps by the tranquil Concord, upon whose shores the + Old Manse was his bridal bower, those who knew him chiefly there revert + beyond the angry hour to those peaceful days. How dear the Old Manse was + to him he has himself recorded; and in the opening of the <i>Tanglewood + Tales</i> he pays his tribute to that placid landscape, which will always + be recalled with pensive tenderness by those who, like him, became + familiar with it in happy hours. "To me," he writes, "there is a peculiar, + quiet charm in these broad meadows and gentle eminences. They are better + than mountains, because they do not stamp and stereotype themselves into + the brain, and thus grow wearisome with the same strong impression, + repeated day after day. A few summer weeks among mountains, a lifetime + among green meadows and placid slopes, with outlines forever new, because + continually fading out of the memory, such would be my sober choice." He + used to say, in those days—when, as he was fond of insisting, he was + the obscurest author in the world, because, although he had told his tales + twice, nobody cared to listen—that he never knew exactly how he + contrived to live. But he was then married, and the dullest eye could not + fail to detect the feminine grace and taste that ordered the dwelling, and + perceive the tender sagacity that made all things possible. + </p> + <p> + Such was his simplicity and frugality that, when he was left alone for a + little time in his Arcadia, lie would dismiss "the help", and, with some + friend of other days who came to share his loneliness, he cooked the easy + meal, and washed up the dishes. No picture is clearer in the memory of a + certain writer than that of the magician, in whose presence he almost lost + his breath, looking at him over a dinner-plate which he was gravely wiping + in the kitchen, while the handy friend, who had been a Western settler, + scoured the kettle at the door. Blithedale, where their acquaintance had + begun, had not allowed either of them to forget how to help himself. It + was amusing to one who knew this native independence of Hawthorne, to + hear, some years afterwards, that he wrote the "campaign" <i>Life of + Franklin Pierce</i> for the sake of getting an office. That such a man + should do such a work was possibly incomprehensible to those who did not + know him upon any other supposition, until the fact was known that Mr. + Pierce was an old and constant friend. Then it was explained. Hawthorne + asked simply how he could help his friend, and he did the only thing he + could do for that purpose. But although he passed some years in public + office, he had neither taste nor talent for political life. He owed his + offices to works quite other than political. His first and second + appointments were virtually made by his friend Mr. Bancroft, and the third + by his friend Mr. Pierce. His claims were perceptible enough to + friendship, but would hardly have been so to a caucus. + </p> + <p> + In this brief essay we have aimed only to indicate the general character + of the genius of Hawthorne, and to suggest a key to his peculiar relation + to his time. The reader will at once see that it is rather the man than + the author who has been described; but this has been designedly done, for + we confess a personal solicitude, shared, we are very sure, by many + friends of Nathaniel Hawthorne, that there shall not be wanting to the + future student of his works such light as acquaintance with the man may + throw upon them, as well as some picture of the impression his personality + made upon his contemporaries. + </p> + <p> + Strongly formed, of dark, poetic gravity of aspect, lighted by the deep, + gleaming eye that recoiled with girlish coyness from contact with your + gaze; of rare courtesy and kindliness in personal intercourse, yet so + sensitive that his look and manner can be suggested by the word + "glimmering;" giving you a sense of restrained impatience to be away; + mostly silent in society, and speaking always with an appearance of + effort, but with a lambent light of delicate humor playing over all he + said in the confidence of familiarity, and firm self-possession under all, + as if the glimmering manner were only the tremulous surface of the sea, + Hawthorne was personally known to few, and intimately to very few. But no + one knew him without loving him, or saw him without remembering him; and + the name Nathaniel Hawthorne, which, when it was first written, was + supposed to be fictitious, is now one of the most enduring facts of + English literature. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + RACHEL + </h2> + <p> + One evening in Paris, we were strolling through that most Parisian spot + the Palais Royal, or, as it was called at that moment, the Palais + National. It was after the revolution of February; but, although the place + was full of associations with French revolutions, it seemed to have no + special sympathy with the trouble of the moment, and was as gay as the + youngest imagination conceives Paris to be. There was a constant throng + loitering along the arcades; the cafes were lighted and crowded; men were + smoking, sipping coffee, playing billiards, reading the newspapers, + discussing the debates in the Chamber and the coming "Prophete" of + Meyerbeer at the opera; women were chatting together in the boutiques, + pretty grisettes hurrying home; little blanchisseuses, with their + neatly-napkinned baskets, tripping among the crowd; strangers watched the + gay groups, paused at the windows of tailors and jewellers, and felt the + fascination of Paris. It was the moment of high-tide of Parisian life. It + was an epitome of Paris, and Paris is an epitome of the time and of the + world. + </p> + <p> + At the corner of the Palais Royal is the Comédie Française, and to that we + were going. There Rachel was playing. There she had recently recited the + "Marseillaise" to frenzied Paris; and there, in the vestibule, genius of + French comedy, of French intellect, and of French life, sits the wonderful + Voltaire of Houdon, the statue which, for the first time, after the + dreadful portraits which misrepresent him, gives the spectator some + adequate idea of the personal appearance and impression of the man who + moulded an age. You can scarcely see the statue without a shudder. It is + remorseless intellect laid bare. The cold sweetness of the aspect, the + subtle penetration of the brow, the passionless supremacy of a figure + which is neither manly nor graceful, fill your mind with apprehension and + with the conviction that the French Revolution you have seen is not the + last. + </p> + <p> + The curtain rises, and Paris and France roll away. A sad, solitary figure, + like a dream of tragic Greece, glides across the scene. The air grows cold + and thin, with a sense of the presence of lost antiquity. The feeling of + fate, vast, resistless, and terrible, rises like a suffocating vapor; and + the hopeless woe of the face, the pathetic dignity of the form, assure + you, before she speaks, that this is indeed Rachel. The scenery is poor + and hard; but its severe outlines and its conventional character serve to + suggest Greece. The drapery which hangs upon Rachel is exquisitely studied + from the most perfect statue. There is not a fold which is not Greek and + graceful, and which does not seem obedient to the same law which touches + her face with tragedy. As she slowly opens her thin lips, your own blanch; + and from her melancholy eyes all smiles and possibility of joy have + utterly passed away. Rachel stands alone, a solitary statue of fate and + woe. + </p> + <p> + When she speaks, the low, thrilling, distinct voice seems to proceed + rather from her eyes than her mouth. It has a wan sound, if we may say so. + It is the very tone you would have predicted as coming from that form, + like the unearthly music which accompanies the speech of the + Commendatore's statue in "Don Giovanni". That appearance and that voice + are the key of the whole performance. Before she has spoken, you are + filled with the spirit of an age infinitely remote, and only related to + human sympathy now by the grandeur of suffering. The rest merely confirms + that impression. The whole is simple and intense. It is conceived and + fulfilled in the purest sense of Greek art. + </p> + <p> + Of the early career and later life of Rachel such romantic stories are + told and believed that only to see the heroine of her own life would be + attraction enough to draw the world to Paris. Dr. Vernon, in his <i>Mémoires + d'un Bourgeois</i>, has described her earliest appearance upon the + Boulevards—her studies, her trials, and her triumph. That triumph + has been unequalled in stage annals for enthusiasm and permanence. Other + actors have achieved single successes as brilliant; but no other has held + for so long the most fickle and fastidious nation thrall to her powers; + owning no rival near the throne, and ruling with a sway whose splendor was + only surpassed by its sternness. + </p> + <p> + For Rachel has never sought to ally her genius to goodness, and has rather + despised than courted the aid of noble character. Not a lady by birth or + breeding, she is reported to have surpassed Messalina in debauchery and + Semiramis in luxury. Paris teems with tales of her private life, which, + while they are undoubtedly exaggerated, yet serve to show the kind of + impression her career has produced. Those modern Sybarites, the princes + and nobles of Russia, are the heroes of her private romances; and her + sumptuous apartments, if not a Tour de Nesle, are at least a bower of + Rosamond. + </p> + <p> + As if to show the independent superiority of her art, she has been willing + to appear, or she really is, avaricious, mean, jealous, passionate, false; + and then, by her prodigious power, she has swayed the public that so + judged her as the wind tosses a leaf. There has, alas, been disdain in her + superiority. Perhaps Paris has found something fascinating in her very + contempt, as in the <i>Mémoires du Diable</i> the heroine confesses that + she loved the ferocity of her lover. Nor is it a traditional fame that she + has enjoyed; but whenever Rachel plays, the theatre is crowded, and the + terror and the tears are what they were when she began. + </p> + <p> + Rachel is the greatest of merely dramatic artists. Others are more + beautiful; others are more stately and imposing; others have been fitted + by external gifts of nature to personify characters of very marked + features; others are more graceful and lovely and winning; most others + mingle their own personality with the characters they assume, but Rachel + has this final evidence of genius, that she is always superior to what she + does; her mind presides over her own performances. It is the perfection of + art. In describing this peculiar supremacy of genius, a scholar, in whose + early death a poet and philosopher was lost, says of Shakespeare: "He sat + pensive and alone above the hundred-handed play of his imagination." And + Fanny Kemble, in her journal, describes a conversation upon the stage, in + the tomb-scene of "Romeo and Juliet", where she, as Juliet, says to Mr. + Romeo Keppel, "Where the devil is your dagger?" while all the tearful + audience are lost in the soft woe of the scene. + </p> + <p> + This is very much opposed to the general theory of acting, and the story + is told with great gusto of a boy who was sent to see Garrick, we believe, + and who was greatly delighted with the fine phrasing and swagger of a + supernumerary, but could not understand why people applauded such an + ordinary bumpkin as Garrick, who did not differ a whit from all the + country boobies he had ever seen. It is insisted that the actor must + persuade the spectator that he is what he seems to be, and this is gravely + put as the first and final proof of good acting. + </p> + <p> + This is, however, both a false view of art and a false interpretation and + observation of experience. Shakespeare, through the mouth of Hamlet, tells + the players to "hold the mirror up to nature"—that is, to represent + nature. For what is the dramatic art, like all other arts, but a + representation? If it aims to deceive the eye—if it tries to juggle + the senses of the spectator—it is as trivial as if a painter should + put real gold upon his canvas instead of representing gold by means of + paint; or as if a sculptor should tinge the cheeks of his statue to make + it more like a human face. We have seen tin pans so well represented in + painting that the result was atrocious. For, if the object intended is + really a tin pan, and not the pleasure produced by a conscious + representation of one, then why not insert the veritable pan in the + picture at once? If art is only a more or less successful imitation of + natural objects, with a view to cheat the senses, it is an amusing game, + but it is not a noble pursuit. + </p> + <p> + It is an equally false observation of experience; because, if the + spectator were really deceived, if the actor became, in the mind of the + audience, truly identical with the character he represents, then, when + that character was odious, the audience would revolt. If we cannot quietly + sit and see one dog tear another, without interfering, could we gravely + look on and only put our handkerchiefs to our eyes, when Othello puts the + pillow to the mouth of Desdemona? If we really supposed him to be a + murderous man, how instantly we should leap upon the stage and rescue "the + gentle lady". The truth is, to state it boldly, we know the roaring lion + to be only Snug, the joiner. + </p> + <p> + All works of art must produce pleasure. Even the sternest and most + repulsive subjects must be touched by art into a pensive beauty, or they + fail to reach the height of great works. Goethe has shown this in the <i>Laocoon</i>, + and every man feels it in constant experience. One of the grand themes of + modern painting is the great tragedy of history, the Crucifixion. + Materially it is repulsive, as the spectacle of a man in excruciating + bodily torture; spiritually it is overwhelming, as the symbolized + suffering of God for sin. If, now, the pictures which treat this subject + were indeed only imitations of the scene, so that the spectator listened + for the groans of agony and looked to see the blood drop from the brow + crowned with thorns, how hideous and insupportable the sight would be! The + mind is conscious as it contemplates the picture that it is a + representation, and not a fact. The mere force of actuality is, therefore, + destroyed, and thought busies itself with the moral significance of the + scene. In the same way, in the tragedy of "Othello", conscious that there + is not the actual physical suffering which there seems to be, the mind + contemplates the real meaning which underlies that appearance, and curses + jealousy and the unmanly passions. + </p> + <p> + Even in a very low walk of art the same principle is manifested. A man + might not care to adorn his parlor with the carcass of an ox or a hog, nor + invite to his table boors muzzy with beer. But the most elegant of nations + prizes the pictures of Teniers at extraordinary prices, and hangs its + galleries with works minutely representing the shambles. Here, again, the + explanation is this: that the mind, rejecting any idea of actuality in the + picture, is charmed with the delicacy of detail, with lovely color, with + tone, with tenderness, and all these are qualities inseparable from the + picture, and do not belong by any necessity to the actual carcasses of + animals. In the shambles, the sense of disgust and repulsion overcomes any + pleasure in light and color. In the parlor, if the spectator were + persuaded by the picture to hold his nose, the thing would be as unlovely + as it is in nature. Imitation pleases only so far as it is known to be + imitation. If deception by imitation were the object of art, then the + material of the sculptor should be wax, and not marble. Every visitor + mistakes the sitting figure of Cobbett, in Madame Tussaud's collection of + wax-works, for a real man, and will very likely, as we did, speak to it. + But who would accost the Moses of Michael Angelo, or believe the sitting + Medici in his chapel to have speech? + </p> + <p> + There is something unhandsomely derogatory to art in this common view. It + is forgotten that art is not subsidiary nor auxiliary to nature, but it is + a distinct ministry, and has a world of its own. They are not in + opposition, nor do they clash. The cardinal fact of imitation in works of + art is evident enough. The exquisite charm of art lies in the perfection + of the imitation, coexisting with the consciousness of an absolute + difference, so that the effect produced is not at all that which the + object itself produces, but is an intellectual pleasure arising from the + perception of the mingling of rational intention with the representation + of the natural object. We can illustrate this by supposing a child + bringing in a fresh rose, and a painter his picture of a rose. The + pleasure derived from the picture is surely something better than wonder + at the skill with which the form and color of the flower are imitated. + Since imitation can never attain to the dignity and worth of the original, + and since we live in the midst of nature, it would be folly to claim for + its more or less successful copy the position and form of a great mental + and moral influence. + </p> + <p> + Of course we are not unmindful of the inevitable assertion that if certain + forms are to be used for the expression of certain truths, the first + condition is that those forms shall be accurately rendered. Hence arises + the great stress laid by the modern schools upon a rigorous imitation of + nature, and hence what is called the pre-Raphaelite spirit, with its + marvellous detail. But mere imitation does not come any nearer to great + art by being perfect. If it is not informed by a great intention, + sculpture is only wax-work and painting a juggle. + </p> + <p> + It is by her instinctive recognition of these fundamental principles that + Rachel shows herself to be an artist. She is fully persuaded of the value + of the modern spirit, and she belongs to the time by nothing more than by + her instinctive and hearty adaptation of the principles of art which are + illustrated in all other departments. There is nothing in Millais's or + Hunt's paintings more purely pre-Raphaelite than Rachel's acting in the + last scenes of "Adrienne Lecouvreur". It is the perfection of detail. It + was studied, gasp by gasp, and groan by groan, in the hospital wards of + Paris, where men were dying in agony. It is terrible, but it is true. We + have seen a crowded theatre hanging in a suspense almost suffocating over + that fearful scene. Men grew pale, women fainted, a spell of silence and + awe held us enchanted. But it was all pure art. The actor was superior to + the scene. It was the passion with which she threw herself into the + representation, with a distinct conception of the whole, and a thorough + knowledge of the means necessary to produce its effect, that secured the + success. There was a sublimity of self-control in the spectacle, for, if + she had allowed herself to be overwhelmed by the excitement, the play must + have paused; real feeling would have invaded that which was represented, + and we should, by a rude shock, have been staring in wonder at the weeping + woman Rachel, instead of thrilling with the woes of the dying, despairing + Adrienne. She seems to be what we know she is not. + </p> + <p> + Rachel's earlier triumphs were in the plays of Racine. Certainly nothing + could show the essential worth of the old Greek dramatic material more + than the fact that it could be rendered into French rhyme without losing + all its dignity. If a man should know Homer only through Pope's + translations, he could hardly understand the real greatness and peculiar + charm of Homer. And as most of us know him in no other way, we all + understand that the eminence of Homer is conceded upon the force of + tradition and the feeling of those who have read him in the original. So, + to the reader of Racine, it is his knowledge of the outline of the grand + old Greek stories that prevents their loss of charm and loftiness when + they masquerade in French rhyme. They have lost their sublimity, so far as + treatment can effect it, while they retain their general form of interest. + But it is the splendid triumph of Rachel that she restores the original + Greek grandeur to the drama. We no longer wonder at Racine's idea of + Phèdre, but we are confronted with Phèdre herself. From the moment she + appears, through every change and movement of the scene until the + catastrophe, a sense of fate, the grim, remorseless, and inexorable + destiny that presides over Greek story, is stamped upon every look and nod + and movement of Rachel. It is stated that, since the enthusiasm produced + in Paris by Ristori, Rachel's Italian rival, the sculptor Schlesinger has + declared that his statue of Rachel which he had called Tragedy was only + Melodrama after all. If the report be true, it does not prove that Rachel, + but Schlesinger, is not a great artist. + </p> + <p> + It is this simplicity and grandeur that make the excellence of Rachel in + the characters of Racine. They cease to be French and become Greek. As a + victim of fate, she moves, from the first scene to the last, as by a + resistless impulse. Her voice has a low concentrated tone. Her movement is + not vehement, but intense. If she smiles, it is a wan gleam of sadness, + not of joy, as if the eyes that lighten for a moment saw all the time the + finger of fate pointing over her shoulder. The thin form, graceful with + intellectual dignity, not rounded with the ripeness of young womanhood, + the statuesque simplicity and severity of the drapery, the pale cheek, the + sad lips, the small eyes—these are accessory to the whole + impression, the melancholy ornaments of the tragic scene. Her fine + instinct avoids the romantic and melodramatic touches which, however + seductive to an actor who aims at effect, would destroy at once that + breadth and unity which characterize her best impersonations. Wherever the + idea of fate inspires the tragedy, or can properly be introduced as the + motive, there Rachel is unsurpassed and unapproachable. Her stillness, her + solemnity, her intensity; the want of mouthing, of ranting, of all + extravagance; the slight movement of the arms, and the subtle inflections + of the voice which are more expressive than gestures, haunt the memory and + float through the mind afterwards as the figure of Francesca di Rimini, in + the exquisite picture of Ary Scheffer, sweeps, full of woe, which every + line suggests, across the vision of Dante and his guide. + </p> + <p> + There was, naturally, the greatest curiosity and a good deal of scepticism + about Rachel's power in the modern drama, the melodrama of Victor Hugo, + and the social drama of Scribe. But her appearance in the "Angelo" of + Victor Hugo and in "Adrienne Lecouvreur" of Scribe satisfied the curiosity + and routed the scepticism. It was pleasant after the vast and imposing + forms, the tearless tragedy of Greek story, to see the mastery of this + genius in the conditions of a life and spirit with which we were more + familiar and sympathetic. It was clear that the same passionate intensity + which, united with the most exquisite perceptions, enabled her so + perfectly to restore the Greek spirit to the Greek form, would as + adequately represent the voluptuous southern life. If in the old drama she + was sculpture, so in the modern she was painting, not only with the + flowing outline, but with all the purple, palpitating hues of passion. + </p> + <p> + This is best manifested in the "Angelo", of which the scene is laid in old + Padua and is, therefore, full of the mysterious spirit of mediaeval + Italian, and especially Venetian life. Miss Cushman has played in an + English version of this drama, called the "Actress of Padua". But it is + hardly grandiose enough in its proportions to be very well adapted to the + talent of Miss Cushman. It was remarkable how perfectly the genius which + had, the evening before, adequately represented Phèdre, could impersonate + the ablest finesse of Italian subtilty. The old Italian romances were made + real in a moment. The dim chambers, the dusky passages, the sliding doors, + the vivid contrast of gayety and gloom, the dance in the palace and the + duel in the garden, the smile on the lip and the stab at the heart, the + capricious feeling, the impetuous action, the picturesque costume of life + and society—all the substance and the form of our ideas of + characteristic Italian life, are comprised in Rachel's Thisbe and Angelo. + </p> + <p> + There is one scene in that play not to be forgotten. The curtain rises and + shows a vast, dim chamber in the castle, with a heavily-curtained bed, and + massive carved furniture, and a deep bay-window. It is night; a candle + burns upon the table, feebly flickering in the gloom of the great chamber. + Angelo, whom Thisbe loves, and who pretends to love her, is sitting + uneasily in the chamber with his mistress, whose name we have forgotten, + but whom he really loves. Thisbe is suspicious of his want of faith, and + burns with jealousy, but has had no proof. + </p> + <p> + A gust of wind, the rustle of the tapestry, the creak of a bough in the + garden, the note of a night bird, any slightest sound makes the lovers + start and quiver, as if they stood upon the verge of an imminent peril. + Suddenly they both start at a low noise, apparently in the wall. Angelo + rises and looks about, his mistress shivers and shrinks, but they discover + nothing. The night deepens around them. The sense of calamity and + catastrophe rises in the spectator's mind. They start again. This time + they hear a louder noise, and glance helplessly around and feebly try to + scoff away their terror. The sound dies away, and they converse in + appalled and fragmentary whispers. But again a low, cautious, sliding + noise arrests them. Angelo springs up, runs for his hat and cloak, blows + out the candle upon the table, and escapes from the room, while his + mistress totters to the bed and throws herself upon it, feigning sleep. + The stage is left unoccupied, while the just-extinguished candle still + smokes upon the table, and the sidelights and footlights, being lowered, + wrap the vast chamber in deeper gloom. + </p> + <p> + At this moment a small secret door in the wall at the bottom of the stage + slips aside, and Thisbe, still wearing her ball-dress, and with a + head-dress of gold sequins flashing in her black hair, is discovered + crouching in the aperture, holding an antique lamp in one hand, a little + raised, and with the other softly putting aside the door, while, bending + forward with a cat-like stillness, she glares around the chamber with + eager eyes, that flash upon everything at once. The picture is perfect. + The light falls from the raised lamp upon this jewelled figure crouching + in the darkness at the bottom of the stage. Judith was not more terrible; + Lucrezia Borgia not more superb. But, magnificent as it is, it is a moment + of such intense interest that applause is suspended. The house is + breathless, for it is but the tiger's crouch that precedes the spring. The + next instant she is upon the floor of the chamber, and, still bending + slightly forward to express the eager concentration of her mind, she + glances at the bed and the figure upon it with a scornful sneer, that + indicates how clearly she sees the pretence of sleep, and how evidently + somebody has been there, or something has happened which justifies all her + suspicion, and then, with panther-like celerity, she darts about the + chamber to find some trace of the false lover—a hat, a glove, a + plume, a cloak—to make assurance doubly sure. But there is nothing + upon the floor, nothing upon the table, nothing in the bay-window, nothing + upon the sofa, nor in the huge carved chairs; there is nothing that proves + the treachery she suspects. But her restless eye leads her springing foot + from one corner of the chamber to the other. Speed increases with the + lessening chance of proof; the eye flashes more and more fiercely; the + breast heaves; the hand clinches; the cheek burns, until, suddenly, in the + very moment of despair, having as yet spoken no word, she comes to the + table, sees the candle, which still smokes, and drawing herself up with + fearful calmness, her cheeks grow pallid, the lips livid, the hands relax, + the eye deadens as with a blow, and, with the despairing conviction that + she is betrayed, her heart-break sighs itself out in a cold whisper, "<i>Elle + fume encore</i>". + </p> + <p> + In this she is as purely dramatic as in other plays she is classical. But + neither in the one nor the other is there a look, or a gesture, or a word, + which is not harmonious with the spirit of the style and the character of + the person represented. + </p> + <p> + This is pure passion as the other is implacable fate. There is something + so tearfully human in it that you are touched as by a picture of the + Magdalen. Every representation of Rachel is preserved in your memory with + the first sights of the great statues and the famous pictures. + </p> + <p> + In the French translation of Schiller's "Mary Stuart", a character which + may be supposed especially to interest Americans and English, Rachel is + not less excellent. The sad grace, the tender resignation, the poetic + enthusiasm, the petulant caprice, the wilful, lovely womanliness of the + lovely queen, are made tragically real by her representation. Perhaps it + is not the Mary of Mignet nor of history. But Mary Queen of Scots is one + of the characters which the imagination has chosen to take from history + and decorate with immortal grace. It cares less for what the woman Mary + was, than to have a figure standing upon the fact of history, but radiant + with the beauty of poetry. It has invested her with a loveliness that is + perhaps unreal, with a tenderness and sweetness that were possibly foreign + to her character, and with a general fascination and good intention which + a contemporary might not have discovered. + </p> + <p> + It has made her the ideal of unfortunate womanhood. For it seemed that a + fate so tragic deserved a fame so fair. Perhaps the weakness which Mary + had, and which Lady Jane Grey had not, have been the very reasons why the + unfortunate, unhappy Queen Mary is dearer to our human sympathies than the + unfortunate Lady Jane. Perhaps because it was a woman who pursued her, the + instinct of men has sought to restore, by the canonization of Mary, the + womanly ideal injured by Elizabeth. + </p> + <p> + But, whatever be the reason, there is no question that we judge Mary Queen + of Scots more by the imagination than by historical rigor; and it is Mary, + as the mind insists upon having her, that Rachel represents. She conspires + with the imagination to complete the ideal of Mary. It is a story told in + sad music to which we listen; it is a mournful panorama, unfolding itself + scene by scene, upon which we gaze. Lost in soft melancholy, the figures + of the drama move before us as in a tragic dream. But after seeing + Rachel's Mary we can see no other. If we meet her in history or romance, + it is always that figure, those pensive eyes, forecasting a fearful doom, + that voice whose music is cast in a hopeless minor. It is thus that + dramatic genius creates, and poetry disputes with history. + </p> + <p> + Jules Janin says that Rachel is best in those parts of this play where the + anger of the Queen is more prominent than the grief of the woman. + </p> + <p> + This is true to a certain extent. It was not difficult to see that the + fierceness was more natural than the tenderness to the woman Rachel, and + that, therefore, those parts had a reality which the tenderness had not. + But the performance was symmetrical, and, so far as the mere acting was + concerned, the woman was as well rendered as the Queen. The want of the + spectacle was this, and it is, we fully grant, the defect of all her + similar personations: you felt that it was only intellect feigning heart, + though with perfect success. The tenderness and caprice of the woman, and + the pride and dignity of the Queen, are all there. She would not be the + consummate artist she is if she could not give them. But even through your + tears you see that it is art. It is, indeed, concealed by its own + perfection, but it is not lost in the loveliness of the character it + suggests, as might be the case with a greatly inferior artist. You are + half sure, as you own the excellence, that much of the tender effect + arises from your feeling that Rachel, as she represents a woman so + different from herself, regards her rôle with sad longing and vague + regret. When we say that she is the ideal Mary, we mean strictly the + artistic ideal. + </p> + <p> + The late Charlotte Brontë, in her novel of <i>Villette</i>, has described + Rachel with a splendor of rhetoric that is very unusual with the author of + <i>Jane Eyre</i>. But in the style of the description it is very easy to + see the influence of the thing described. It has a picturesque + stateliness, a grave grace and musical pomp, which all belong to the + genius of Rachel. Even the soft gloom of her eyes is in it; a gloom and a + fire which no one could more subtly feel than Miss Brontë. Her description + is the best that we have seen of what is, in its nature, after all + indescribable. + </p> + <p> + As the fame of an actor or singer is necessarily traditional, and rapidly + perishes, it is not easy to compare one with another when they are not + contemporaries, for you find yourself only comparing vague impressions and + reports. Of Roscius and Betterton we must accept the names and allow the + fame. We can see Reynolds's pictures, we can hear Handel's music, we can + read Goldsmith's and Johnson's books; but of Garrick what can we have but + a name, and somebody's account of what he thought of Garrick? The touch of + Shakespeare we can feel as well as did our ancestors, and our + great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren will feel it as fully as we. But + the voice of Malibran lingers in only a few happy memories, and we know + Mrs. Siddons better by Sir Joshua's portrait than by her own glories. + </p> + <p> + It is, therefore, impossible to decide what relative rank among actresses + Rachel occupies. Mrs. Jameson, in her <i>Common-Place Book of Thoughts, + Memories, and Fancies</i>, says some sharp things of her, and Mrs. Jameson + is a critic of too delicate a mind not to be heeded. The general view she + takes of Rachel is, that she is not a great artist in the true sense of + the word. She is a finished actress, but not an artist fine enough to + conceal her art. The last scene of "Adrienne Lecouvreur" seems to Mrs. + Jameson a mistake and a failure—so beyond the limits of art, a mere + imitation of a repulsive physical fact; and finally she pronounces that + Rachel has talent but not genius; while it is the "entire absence of the + high poetic element which distinguishes Rachel as an actress, and places + her at such an immeasurable distance from Mrs. Siddons, that it shocks me + to hear their names together". + </p> + <p> + It may be fairly questioned, whether a woman so refined and cultivated as + Mrs. Jameson may not have judged Rachel rather by her wants as a woman + than by her excellence as an artist. That the terrible last scene of + "Adrienne" is a harrowing imitation of nature we have conceded. The play + is, in truth, a mere melodrama. It is a vaudeville of costume, with a + frightful catastrophe appended. But as an artist she seems to us perfectly + to render the part. She does not make it more than it is, but she makes it + just what it is—a proud, injured, and betrayed actress. Whether the + accuracy of her imitation is not justified by the intention, which alone + can redeem imitation, will remain a question to each spectator. Mrs. + Jameson also insists that Rachel's power is extraneous, and excites only + the senses and the intellect, and that she has become a hard mannerist. + </p> + <p> + In our remarks upon this celebrated actress we have viewed her simply as + an artist, and not as a woman. She appeals to the public only in that way. + Perhaps the sinister stories that are told of her private career only + serve to confirm and deepen the feeling of the intensity of her nature, + she so skilfully represents the most fearful passions, not from the + perception of genius alone, but from the knowledge of actual experience. + Certainly no woman's character has been more freely discussed, and no + public performer of any kind ever sought so little to propitiate her + audience. She has seemed to scorn the world she fascinated; and like a + superb snake, with glittering eyes and cold crest, to gloat over the + terror which held her captives thrall. Hence it is not surprising to one + who has seen her a great deal, and has felt the peculiarity of her power, + to find in Lehmann's portrait of her—which is, perhaps, the most + characteristic of all that have been taken—a subtle resemblance to a + serpent, which is at once fascinating and startling. Mrs. Jameson mentions + that when she first saw her in Hermione, she was reminded of a Lamia, or + serpent nature in woman's form. As you look at Lehmann's portrait this + feeling is irresistible. The head bends slightly forward, with a darting, + eager movement, yet with a fine, lithe grace. The keen, bright eyes glance + a little askance, with a want of free confidence. There are a slim + smoothness, a silent alertness, in the general impression—a nervous, + susceptible intentness, united with undeniable beauty, that recall the + deadly nightshade among flowers and Keats's "Lamia" among poems. The + portrait would fully interpret the poem, She looked the lovely Lamia upon + the verge of flight, at the instant when she felt the calm, inexorable eye + of criticism and detection. In a moment, while you gaze, that form will be + prone, those bright, cold eyes malignant, that wily grace will undulate + into motion and glide away. You feel that there is no human depravity that + Rachel could not adequately represent. Perhaps you doubt if she could be + Desdemona or Imogen. + </p> + <p> + Rachel is great, but there is something greater. It is not an entirely + satisfactory display of human power, even in its own way. Her triumph is + that of an actress. It is only an intellectual success. For however subtly + dramatic genius may seize and represent the forms of human emotion, yet + the representation is most perfect—not, indeed, as art, but as a + satisfaction of the heart—when the personal character of the artist + interests those emotions to himself, and thus sympathetically affects the + audience. Rachel's Mary is a perfect portrait of Mary; but it is only a + picture, after all, that expresses the difference in feeling between the + impression of her personation and that which will be derived from another + woman. The fiercer and darker passions of human nature are depicted by her + with terrible force-power. They throb with reality; but in the soft, + superior shades you still feel that it is emotion, intellectually + discerned. + </p> + <p> + Such facts easily explain the present defection of Paris from Rachel. + Ristori has come up from Italy, and with one woman's smile, "full of the + warm South", she has lured Paris to her feet. There is no more sudden and + entire desertion of a favorite recorded in all the annals of popular + caprice. The feuilletonists, who are a power in Paris, have gone over in a + body to the beautiful Italian. They describe her triumphs precisely as + they described Rachel's. The old ecstasies are burnished up for the new + occasion. In a country like ours, where there is no theatre, and where the + dramatic differences only creep into an advertisement, such an excitement + as Paris feels, from such a cause and at such a time, is simply + incredible. It is, possibly, as real and dignified an excitement as that + which New York experienced upon the decease of the late lamented William + Poole. + </p> + <p> + There are various explanations of this fall of Rachel, without resorting + to the theory of superior genius in Ristori. Undoubtedly Paris loves + novelty, and has been impatient of the disdainful sway of Rachel. Her + reputed avarice and want of courtesy and generosity, her total failure to + charm as a woman while she fascinated as an artist, have, naturally + enough, after many years, fatigued the patience and disappointed the + humane sympathies of a public whose mere curiosity had been long + satisfied. Rachel seemed only more Parisian than Paris. + </p> + <p> + But when over the Alps came Ristori, lovely as a woman and eminent as an + artist, then there was a new person who could make Paris weep at her + greatness upon the stage, and her goodness away from it; who, in the + plenitude of her first success, could shame the reported avarice of her + fallen rival by offers of the sincerest generosity. When Ristori came, who + seemed to have a virtue for every vice of Rachel, Paris, with one accord, + hurried with hymns and incense to the new divinity. We regard it as a + homage to the woman no less than a tribute to the artist. We regard it as + saying to Rachel that if, being humane and lovely, she chose, from pride, + to rule by scornful superiority, she has greatly erred; or if, being + really unlovely, she has held this crown only by her genius, she has yet + to see human nature justify itself by preferring a humane to an inhuman + power. The most splendid illustration of this kind of homage was the + career of Jenny Lind in America. It was rather the fashion among the <i>dilettanti</i> + to undervalue her excellence as an artist. A popular superficial criticism + was fond of limiting her dramatic power to inferior rôles. She was denied + passion and great artistic skill; she was accused of tricks. But, even had + these things been true, what a career it was! It was unprecedented, and + can never be repeated. Yet it was, at bottom, the success of a saint + rather than that of a singer. Had she been a worse or better artist the + homage would have been the same. If the public—and it is a happy + fact—can love the woman even more than it admires the artist, her + triumph is assured. + </p> + <p> + We look upon the enthusiasm for Ristori by no means as an unmingled + tribute to superior genius. We make no question of her actual womanly + charms. Even if appearance of generosity, of simplicity, and sweetness + were only deep Italian wile, and assumed, upon profound observation and + consideration of human nature and the circumstances of Rachel's position + in Paris, merely for the purpose of exciting applause, that applause would + still be genuine, and would prove the loyalty of the public mind to what + is truly lovely. It was our good-fortune to see Ristori in Italy, where, + for the last ten years, she has been accounted the first Italian actress. + She has there been seen by all the travelling world of Europe and America. + It is not possible that so great a talent, as the Parisians consider it, + could have been so long overlooked. We well remember Ristori as a + charming, natural, simple actress; but of the surpassing power which Paris + has discovered probably very few of us retain any recollection. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + THACKERAY IN AMERICA + </h2> + <p> + Mr. Thackeray's visit at least demonstrates that if we are unwilling to + pay English authors for their books, we are ready to reward them + handsomely for the opportunity of seeing and hearing them. If Mr. Dickens, + instead of dining at other people's expense, and making speeches at his + own, when he came to see us, had devoted an evening or two in the week to + lecturing, his purse would have been fuller, his feelings sweeter, and his + fame fairer. It was a Quixotic crusade, that of the Copyright, and the + excellent Don has never forgiven the windmill that broke his spear. + </p> + <p> + Undoubtedly, when it was ascertained that Mr. Thackeray was coming, the + public feeling on this side of the sea was very much divided as to his + probable reception. "He'll come and humbug us, eat our dinners, pocket our + money, and go home and abuse us, like that unmitigated snob Dickens," said + Jonathan, chafing with the remembrance of that grand ball at the Park + Theatre and the Boz tableaux, and the universal wining and dining, to + which the distinguished Dickens was subject while he was our guest. + </p> + <p> + "Let him have his say," said others, "and we will have our look. We will + pay a dollar to hear him, if we can see him at the same time; and as for + the abuse, why, it takes even more than two such cubs of the roaring + British Lion to frighten the American Eagle. Let him come, and give him + fair play." + </p> + <p> + He did come, and had fair play, and returned to England with a comfortable + pot of gold holding $12.000, and with the hope and promise of seeing us + again in September, to discourse of something not less entertaining than + the witty men and sparkling times of Anne. We think there was no + disappointment with his lectures. Those who knew his books found the + author in the lecturer. Those who did not know his books were charmed in + the lecturer by what is charming in the author—the unaffected + humanity, the tenderness, the sweetness, the genial play of fancy, and the + sad touch of truth, with that glancing stroke of satire which, + lightning-like, illumines while it withers. The lectures were even more + delightful than the books, because the tone of the voice and the + appearance of the man, the general personal magnetism, explained and + alleviated so much that would otherwise have seemed doubtful or unfair. + For those who had long felt in the writings of Thackeray a reality quite + inexpressible, there was a secret delight in finding it justified in his + speaking; for he speaks as he writes—simply, directly, without + flourish, without any cant of oratory, commending what he says by its + intrinsic sense, and the sympathetic and humane way in which it was + spoken. Thackeray is the kind of "stump orator" that would have pleased + Carlyle. He never thrusts himself between you and his thought. If his + conception of the time and his estimate of the men differ from your own, + you have at least no doubt what his view is, nor how sincere and necessary + it is to him. Mr. Thackeray considers Swift a misanthrope; he loves + Goldsmith and Steele and Harry Fielding; he has no love for Sterne, great + admiration for Pope, and alleviated admiration for Addison. How could it + be otherwise? How could Thackeray not think Swift a misanthrope and Sterne + a factitious sentimentalist? He is a man of instincts, not of thoughts: he + sees and feels. He would be Shakespeare's call-boy, rather than dine with + the Dean of St. Patrick's. He would take a pot of ale with Goldsmith, + rather than a glass of burgundy with the "Reverend Mr. Sterne", and that + simply because he is Thackeray. He would have done it as Fielding would + have done it, because he values one genuine emotion above the most + dazzling thought; because he is, in fine, a Bohemian, "a minion of the + moon", a great, sweet, generous heart. + </p> + <p> + We say this with more unction now that we have personal proof of it in his + public and private intercourse while he was here. + </p> + <p> + The popular Thackeray-theory, before his arrival, was of a severe + satirist, who concealed scalpels in his sleeves and carried probes in his + waistcoat pockets; a wearer of masks; a scoffer and sneerer, and general + infidel of all high aims and noble character. Certainly we are justified + in saying that his presence among us quite corrected this idea. We + welcomed a friendly, genial man; not at all convinced that speech is + heaven's first law, but willing to be silent when there is nothing to say; + who decidedly refused to be lionized—not by sulking, but by stepping + off the pedestal and challenging the common sympathies of all he met; a + man who, in view of the thirty-odd editions of Martin Farquhar Tupper, was + willing to confess that every author should "think small-beer of himself". + Indeed, he has this rare quality, that his personal impression deepens, in + kind, that of his writings. The quiet and comprehensive grasp of the fact, + and the intellectual impossibility of holding fast anything but the fact, + is as manifest in the essayist upon the wits as in the author of <i>Henry + Esmond</i> and <i>Vanity Fair</i>. Shall we say that this is the sum of + his power, and the secret of his satire? It is not what might be, nor what + we or other persons of well-regulated minds might wish, but it is the + actual state of things that he sees and describes. How, then, can he help + what we call satire, if he accept Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's invitation and + describe her party? There was no more satire in it, so far as he is + concerned, than in painting lilies white. A full-length portrait of the + fair Lady Beatrix, too, must needs show a gay and vivid figure, superbly + glittering across the vista of those stately days. Then, should Dab and + Tab, the eminent critics, step up and demand that her eyes be a pale blue, + and her stomacher higher around the neck? Do Dab and Tab expect to gather + pears from peach-trees? Or, because their theory of dendrology convinces + them that an ideal fruit-tree would supply any fruit desired upon + application, do they denounce the non-pear-bearing peach-tree in the + columns of their valuable journal? This is the drift of the fault found + with Thackeray. He is not Fénélon, he is not Dickens, he is not Scott; he + is not poetical, he is not ideal, he is not humane; he is not Tit, he is + not Tat, complain the eminent Dabs and Tabs. Of course he is not, because + he is Thackeray—a man who describes what he sees, motives as well as + appearances—a man who believes that character is better than talent—that + there is a worldly weakness superior to worldly wisdom—that Dick + Steele may haunt the ale-house and be carried home muzzy, and yet be a + more commendable character than the reverend Dean of St. Patrick's, who + has genius enough to illuminate a century, but not sympathy enough to + sweeten a drop of beer. And he represents this in a way that makes us see + it as he does, and without exaggeration; for surely nothing could be more + simple than his story of the life of "honest Dick Steele". If he allotted + to that gentleman a consideration disproportioned to the space he occupies + in literary history, it only showed the more strikingly how deeply the + writer-lecturer's sympathy was touched by Steele's honest humanity. + </p> + <p> + An article in our April number complained that the tendency of his view of + Anne's times was to a social laxity, which might be very exhilarating but + was very dangerous; that the lecturer's warm commendation of fermented + drinks, taken at a very early hour of the morning in tavern-rooms and club + houses, was as deleterious to the moral health of enthusiastic young + readers disposed to the literary life as the beverage itself to their + physical health. + </p> + <p> + But this is not a charge to be brought against Thackeray. It is a quarrel + with history and with the nature of literary life. Artists and authors + have always been the good fellows of the world. That mental organization + which predisposes a man to the pursuit of literature and art is made up of + talent combined with ardent social sympathy, geniality, and passion, and + leads him to taste every cup and try every experience. There is certainly + no essential necessity that this class should be a dissipated and + disreputable class, but by their very susceptibility to enjoyment they + will always be the pleasure lovers and seekers. And here is the social + compensation to the literary man for the surrender of those chances of + fortune which men of other pursuits enjoy. If he makes less money, he + makes more juice out of what he does make. If he cannot drink Burgundy he + can quaff the nut-brown ale; while the most brilliant wit, the most + salient fancy, the sweetest sympathy, the most genial culture, shall + sparkle at his board more radiantly than a silver service, and give him + the spirit of the tropics and the Rhine, whose fruits are on other tables. + The golden light that transfigures talent and illuminates the world, and + which we call genius, is erratic and erotic; and while in Milton it is + austere, and in Wordsworth cool, and in Southey methodical, in Shakespeare + it is fervent, with all the results of fervor; in Raphael lovely, with all + the excesses of love; in Dante moody, with all the whims of caprice. The + old quarrel of Lombard Street with Grub Street is as profound as that of + Osiris and Typho—it is the difference of sympathy. The Marquis of + Westminster will take good care that no superfluous shilling escapes. + Oliver Goldsmith will still spend his last shilling upon a brave and + unnecessary banquet to his friends. + </p> + <p> + Whether this be a final fact of human organization or not, it is certainly + a fact of history. Every man instinctively believes that Shakespeare stole + deer, just as he disbelieves that Lord-mayor Whittington ever told a lie; + and the secret of that instinct is the consciousness of the difference in + organization. "Knave, I have the power to hang ye," says somebody in one + of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays. "And I do be hanged and scorn ye," is + the airy answer. "I had a pleasant hour the other evening," said a friend + to us, "over my cigar and a book." "What book was that?" "A treatise + conclusively proving the awful consequences of smoking." De Quincey came + up to London and declared war upon opium; but during a little amnesty, in + which he lapsed into his old elysium, he wrote his best book depicting its + horrors. + </p> + <p> + Our readers will not imagine that we are advocating the claims of + drunkenness nor defending social excess. We are only recognizing a fact + and stating an obvious tendency. The most brilliant illustrations of every + virtue are to be found in the literary guild, as well as the saddest + beacons of warning; yet it will often occur that the last in talent and + the first in excess of a picked company will be a man around whom sympathy + most kindly lingers. We love Goldsmith more at the head of an ill-advised + feast than Johnson and his friends leaving it, thoughtful and generous as + their conduct was. The heart despises prudence. + </p> + <p> + In the single-hearted regard we know that pity has a larger share. Yet it + is not so much that pity is commiseration for misfortune and deficiency, + as that which is recognition of a necessary worldly ignorance. The + literary class is the most innocent of all. The contempt of practical men + for the poets is based upon a consciousness that they are not bad enough + for a bad world. To a practical man nothing is so absurd as the lack of + worldly shrewdness. The very complaint of the literary life that it does + not amass wealth and live in palaces is the scorn of the practical man, + for he cannot understand that intellectual opacity which prevents the + literary man from seeing the necessity of the different pecuniary + condition. It is clear enough to the publisher who lays up fifty thousand + a year why the author ends the year in debt. But the author is amazed that + he who deals in ideas can only dine upon occasional chops, while the man + who merely binds and sells ideas sits down to perpetual sirloin. If they + should change places, fortune would change with them. The publisher turned + author would still lay up his thousands; the publishing author would still + directly lose thousands. It is simply because it is a matter of prudence, + economy, and knowledge of the world. Thomas Hood made his ten thousand + dollars a year, but if he lived at the rate of fifteen thousand he would + hardly die rich. Mr. Jerdan, a gentleman who, in his <i>Autobiography</i>, + advises energetic youth to betake themselves to the highway rather than to + literature, was, we understand, in the receipt of an easy income, and was + a welcome guest in pleasant houses; but living in a careless, shiftless, + extravagant way, he was presently poor, and, instead of giving his memoirs + the motto, <i>peccavi</i>, and inditing a warning, he dashes off a + truculent defiance. Practical publishers and practical men of all sorts + invest their earnings in Michigan Central or Cincinnati and Dayton + instead, in steady works and devoted days, and reap a pleasant harvest of + dividends. Our friends the authors invest in prime Havanas, Rhenish, in + oyster suppers, love and leisure, and divide a heavy percentage of + headache, dyspepsia, and debt. + </p> + <p> + This is as true a view, from another point, as the one we have already + taken. If the literary life has the pleasures of freedom, it has also its + pains. It may be willing to resign the queen's drawing-room, with the + illustrious galaxy of stars and garters, for the chamber with a party + nobler than the nobility. The author's success is of a wholly different + kind from that of the publisher, and he is thoughtless who demands both. + Mr. Roe, who sells sugar, naturally complains that Mr. Doe, who sells + molasses, makes money more rapidly. But Mr. Tennyson, who writes poems, + can hardly make the same complaint of Mr. Moxon, who publishes them, as + was very fairly shown in a number of the <i>Westminster Review</i>, when + noticing Mr. Jordan's book. + </p> + <p> + What we have said is strictly related to Mr. Thackeray's lectures, which + discuss literature. All the men he commemorated were illustrations and + exponents of the career of letters. They all, in various ways, showed the + various phenomena of the temperament. And when in treating of them the + critic came to Steele, he found one who was one of the most striking + illustrations of one of the most universal aspects of literary life—the + simple-hearted, unsuspicious, gay gallant and genial gentleman; ready with + his sword or his pen, with a smile or a tear, the fair representative of + the social tendency of his life. It seems to us that the Thackeray theory—the + conclusion that he is a man who loves to depict madness, and has no + sensibilities to the finer qualities of character—crumbled quite + away before that lecture upon Steele. We know that it was not considered + the best; we know that many of the delighted audience were not + sufficiently familiar with literary history fully to understand the + position of the man in the lecturer's review; but, as a key to Thackeray, + it was, perhaps, the most valuable of all. We know in literature of no + more gentle treatment; we have not often encountered in men of the most + rigorous and acknowledged virtue such humane tenderness; we have not often + heard from the most clerical lips words of such genuine Christianity. + Steele's was a character which makes weakness amiable: it was a weakness, + if you will, but it was certainly amiability, and it was a combination + more attractive than many full-panoplied excellences. It was not presented + as a model. Captain Steele in the tap-room was not painted as the ideal of + virtuous manhood; but it certainly was intimated that many admirable + things were consonant with a free use of beer. It was frankly stated that + if, in that character, virtue abounded, cakes and ale did much more + abound. Captain Richard Steele might have behaved much better than he did, + but we should then have never heard of him. A few fine essays do not float + a man into immortality, but the generous character, the heart sweet in all + excesses and under all chances, is a spectacle too beautiful and too rare + to be easily forgotten. A man is better than many books. Even a man who is + not immaculate may have more virtuous influence than the discreetest + saint. Let us remember how fondly the old painters lingered round the + story of Magdalen, and thank Thackeray for his full-length Steele. + </p> + <p> + We conceive this to be the chief result of Thackeray's visit, that he + convinced us of his intellectual integrity; he showed us how impossible it + is for him to see the world and describe it other than he does. He does + not profess cynicism, nor satirize society with malice; there is no man + more humble, none more simple; his interests are human and concrete, not + abstract. We have already said that he looks through and through at the + fact. It is easy enough, and at some future time it will be done, to + deduce the peculiarity of his writings from the character of his mind. + There is no man who masks so little as he in assuming the author. His + books are his observations reduced to writing. It seems to us as singular + to demand that Dante should be like Shakespeare as to quarrel with + Thackeray's want of what is called ideal portraiture. Even if you thought, + from reading his <i>Vanity Fair</i>, that he had no conception of noble + women, certainly after the lecture upon Swift, after all the lectures, in + which every allusion to women was so manly and delicate and sympathetic, + you thought so no longer. It is clear that his sympathy is attracted to + women—to that which is essentially womanly, feminine. Qualities + common to both sexes do not necessarily charm him because he finds them in + women. A certain degree of goodness must always be assumed. It is only the + rare flowering that inspires special praise. You call Amelia's fondness + for George Osborne foolish, fond idolatry. Thackeray smiles, as if all + love were not idolatry of the fondest foolishness. What was Hero's—what + was Francesco di Rimini's—what was Juliet's? They might have been + more brilliant women than Amelia, and their idols of a larger mould than + George, but the love was the same old foolish, fond idolatry. The passion + of love and a profound and sensible knowledge, regard based upon + prodigious knowledge of character and appreciation of talent, are + different things. What is the historic and poetic splendor of love but the + very fact, which constantly appears in Thackeray's stories, namely, that + it is a glory which dazzles and blinds. Men rarely love the women they + ought to love, according to the ideal standards. It is this that makes the + plot and mystery of life. Is it not the perpetual surprise of all Jane's + friends that she should love Timothy instead of Thomas? and is not the + courtly and accomplished Thomas sure to surrender to some accidental Lucy + without position, wealth, style, worth, culture—without anything but + heart? This is the fact, and it reappears in Thackeray, and it gives his + books that air of reality which they possess beyond all modern story. + </p> + <p> + And it is this single perception of the fact which, simple as it is, is + the rarest intellectual quality that made his lectures so interesting. The + sun rose again upon the vanished century, and lighted those historic + streets. The wits of Queen Anne ruled the hour, and we were bidden to + their feast. Much reading of history and memoirs had not so sent the blood + into those old English cheeks, and so moved those limbs in proper measure, + as these swift glances through the eyes of genius. It was because, true to + himself, Thackeray gave us his impression of those wits as men rather than + authors. For he loves character more than thought. He is a man of the + world, and not a scholar. He interprets the author by the man. When you + are made intimate with young Swift, Sir William Temple's saturnine + secretary, you more intelligently appreciate the Dean of St. Patrick's. + When the surplice of Mr. Sterne is raised a little, more is seen than the + reverend gentleman intends. Hogarth, the bluff Londoner, necessarily + depicts a bluff, coarse, obvious morality. The hearty Fielding, the cool + Addison, the genial Goldsmith, these are the figures that remain in + memory, and their works are valuable as they indicate the man. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Thackeray's success was very great. He did not visit the West, nor + Canada. He went home without seeing Niagara Falls. But wherever he did go + he found a generous and social welcome, and a respectful and sympathetic + hearing. He came to fulfil no mission, but he certainly knit more closely + our sympathy with Englishmen. Heralded by various romantic memoirs, he + smiled at them, stoutly asserted that he had been always able to command a + good dinner, and to pay for it; nor did he seek to disguise that he hoped + his American tour would help him to command and pay for more. He promised + not to write a book about us, but we hope he will, for we can ill spare + the criticism of such an observer. At least, we may be sure that the + material gathered here will be worked up in some way. He found that we + were not savages nor bores. He found that there were a hundred here for + every score in England who knew well and loved the men of whom he spoke. + He found that the same red blood colors all the lips that speak the + language he so nobly praised. He found friends instead of critics. He + found those who, loving the author, loved the man more. He found a quiet + welcome from those who are waiting to welcome him again and as sincerely. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + SIR PHILIP SIDNEY + </h2> + <p> + Wearied of the world and saddened by the ruin of his fortunes, the Italian + Count Maddalo turned from the street, which rang with tales of disaster + and swarmed with melancholy faces, into his palace. Perplexed and anxious, + he passed through the stately rooms in which hung the portraits of + generations of ancestors. The day was hot; his blood was feverish, but the + pictures seemed to him cool and remote in a holy calm. He looked at them + earnestly; he remembered the long history of which his fathers were parts, + he recalled their valor and their patience, and asked himself whether, + after all, their manhood was not their patent of nobility; and stretching + out his hands towards them, exclaimed: "Let me feel that I am indeed your + son by sharing that manhood which made you noble." + </p> + <p> + We Americans laugh at ancestors; and if the best of them came back again, + we should be as likely to laugh at his wig as listen to his wisdom. And in + our evanescent houses and uneasy life we would no more have ancient ranges + of family pictures than Arabs in their tents. Yet we are constantly + building and visiting the greatest portrait gallery of all in the + histories we write and read; and the hour is never lost which we give to + it. It may teach a maid humility to know that her mother was fairer. It + may make a youth more modest to know that his grandsire was braver. For if + the pictures of history show us that deformity is as old as grace, and + that virtue was always martyred, they also show that crime, however + prosperous for a time, is at last disastrous, and that there can be no + permanent peace without justice and freedom. + </p> + <p> + Those pictures teach us also that character is inherited like name and + treasure, and that all of us may have famous or infamous ancestors perhaps + without knowing it. The melancholy poet, eating his own heart out in a + city garret, is the child of Tasso. Grinding Ralph Nickleby, the usurer, + is Shylock's grandson. The unjust judge, who declares that some men have + no rights which others are bound to respect, is a later Jeffries on his + bloody assizes, or dooming Algernon Sidney to the block once more for + loving liberty; while he whose dull heart among the new duties of another + time is never quickened with public spirit, and who as a citizen aims only + at his own selfish advantage, is a later Benedict Arnold whom every + generous heart despises. + </p> + <p> + From this lineage of character arises this great convenience—that as + it is bad manners to criticise our neighbors by name, we may hit them many + a sly rap over the shoulders of their ancestors who wore turbans, or + helmets, or bagwigs, and lived long ago in other countries. The Church + especially finds great comfort in this resource, and the backs of the + whole Hebrew race must be sore with the scorings they get for the sins of + Christian congregations. The timid Peter, the foolish Virgins, the wicked + Herod, are pilloried every Sunday in the pulpit, to the great satisfaction + of the Peters, Virgins, and Herods dozing in the pews. But when some + ardent preacher, heading out of his metaphors, and jumping from Judea and + the first century into the United States and the nineteenth, disturbs + Peter's enjoyment of his ancestor's castigation by saying vehemently to + his face with all the lightning of the law in his eye, and its thunders in + his voice, "Thou art the man!" Peter recoils with decorous horror, begs + his pastor to remember that he and Herod are sheep who were to be led by + still waters; warns him not to bring politics into the pulpit, to talk not + of living people, but of old pictures. So the poor shepherd is driven back + to his pictures, and cudgels Peter once more from behind a metaphor. + </p> + <p> + But the fairest use of these old pictures is to make us feel our common + humanity, and to discover that what seems to us a hopelessly romantic + ideal of character is a familiar fact of every day. Heroism is always the + same, however the fashion of a hero's clothes may alter. Every hero in + history is as near to a man as his neighbor, and if we should tell the + simple truth of some of our neighbors, it would sound like poetry. Sir + Philip Sidney wore doublet and hose, and died in Flanders three hundred + years ago. His name is the synonym of manly honor, of generous + scholarship, of the finest nobility, of the spiritual light that most + irradiates human nature. Look at his portrait closely; it is no stranger + that you see; it is no far-off Englishman. It is your friend, your son, + your brother, your lover. Whoever knew Wendell Phillips knew Philip + Sidney. It is the same spirit in a thousand forms; a perpetual presence, a + constant benediction: Look at his portrait and + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "The night shall be filled with music, + And the cares that infest the day + Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, + And as silently steal away." +</pre> + <p> + The gray walls, the red and peaked roof of the old house of Penshurst, + stand in the pleasant English valley of the Medway, in soft and showery + Kent. Kent is all garden, and there, in November, 1554, Philip Sidney was + born. His father, Sir Henry Sidney, was a wise and honest man. Bred at + court, his sturdy honor was never corrupted. King Edward died in his arms, + and Queen Mary confirmed all his honors and offices three weeks before the + birth of his oldest son, whom, in gratitude, he named Philip, for the + queen's new Spanish husband. Philip's mother was Mary Dudley, daughter of + the Duke of Northumberland, sister of the famous Earl of Leicester, sister + also of Lord Guildford Dudley and sister-in-law of Lady Jane Grey. The + little Philip was born into a sad household. Within fifteen months his + grandfather and uncle had been beheaded for treason; and his sorrowing + mother, a truly noble and tender woman, had been the victim of small-pox, + and hid her grieving heart and poor scarred face in the silence and + seclusion of Penshurst. On the south side of the house was the old garden + or plaisance, sloping down to the Medway, where, in those English summers + of three hundred years ago, when the cruel fires of Mary were busily + burning at Smithfield, the lovely boy Philip, fair-featured, with a high + forehead and ruddy brown hair, almost red—the same color as that of + his nephew Algernon—walked with his shy mother, picking daisies and + chasing butterflies, and calling to her in a soft, musical voice; while + within the house the grave father, when he was not away in Wales, of which + he was lord-president, mused upon great events that were stirring in + Europe—the abdication of Charles V., the fall of Calais, and the + accession of Queen Elizabeth to the throne of England. The lordly + banqueting-hall, in which the politics of three centuries ago were + discussed at Penshurst, is still standing. You may still sit upon the + wooden benches where Burleigh, Spenser, Ben Jonson, James I., and his son + Prince Charles have sat, and where, a little later, the victim of Prince + Charles's cruel son, Algernon Sidney, dreamed of noble manhood and went + forth a noble man; while in those shady avenues of beech and oak outside, + smooth Edmund Waller bowed and smirked, and sighed compliments to his + Sacharissa, as he called Dorothy Sidney, Algernon's sister. + </p> + <p> + At the age of eleven Master Sidney was put to school at Shrewsbury, on the + borders of Wales, of which country his father was lord-president. His fond + friend, Fulke Greville, who was here at school with him, and afterwards + wrote his life, says that even the masters found something in him to + observe and learn. Study probably cost him little effort and few tears. We + may be sure he stood at the head of his class, and was a grave, good boy—not + good as calves and blanc-mange are, but like wine and oak saplings. "My + little Philip," as his mother tenderly calls him, was no Miss Nancy. When + he was older he wrote to his brother Robert, then upon his travels, that + "if there were any good wars he should go to them". So, at Shrewsbury he + doubtless went to all the good wars among his school-mates, while during + the short intervals of peace he mastered his humanities, and at last, when + not yet fifteen years old, he was entered at Christ Church, Oxford. + </p> + <p> + Great good-fortune is the most searching test of character. If a man have + fine friends, fine family, fine talents, and fine prospects, they are very + likely to be the sirens in whose sweet singing he forgets everything but + the pleasure of listening to it. If most of us had come of famous ancestry—if + our father were a vice-regal governor—if the sovereign's favorite + were our uncle, who intended us for his heir—if a marriage were + proposed with the beautiful daughter of the prime-minister, and we were + ourselves young, handsome, and accomplished—and all this were three + hundred years ago, before the rights of men and the dignity of labor had + been much discussed, we should probably have come up to Oxford, of which + our famous uncle was chancellor, in a state of what would be called at + Oxford to-day extreme bumptiousness. But Philip Sidney was too true a + gentleman not to be a simple-hearted man; and although he was even then + one of the most accomplished as well as fortunate youths in England, he + writes to Lord Burleigh to confess with "heavy grief" that in scholarship + he can neither satisfy Burleigh's expectation nor his own desire. + </p> + <p> + In the month of May, 1572, Philip Sidney left Oxford, and after staying a + short time with his parents, following the fashion of young gentlemen of + rank, he crossed over into France in the train of the Earl of Lincoln, who + was Queen Elizabeth's extraordinary ambassador upon the subject of her + marriage with the brother of Charles IX. of France. The young king + immediately made Sidney a gentleman of the bedchamber, and Henry of + Navarre found him a fit companion for a future king. The Paris that Sidney + saw had then twice as many inhabitants as Boston has to-day. Montaigne + called it the most beautiful city in the world, and it had a delusive air + of peace. But the witch Catherine de' Medici sat in the smooth-tongued + court like a spider in its web, spinning and spinning the meshes in which + the hope of liberty was to be entangled. The gay city filled and glittered + with the wedding guests of Henry and the king's sister Margaret—among + others, the hero of St. Quentin, + </p> + <p> + Admiral Coligny. Gayer and gayer grew the city—smoother and smoother + the court—faster and faster spun the black Italian spider—until + on the 23d of August, the Eve of St. Bartholomew, the bloodiest deed in + all the red annals of that metropolis was done, and the young Sidney + looked shuddering from Walsingham House upon the streets reeking with the + blood of his fellow Huguenots. + </p> + <p> + That night made Philip Sidney a man. He heard the applause of the Romish + party ring through Europe—he heard the commendation of Philip of + Spain—he knew that the most eloquent orator of the Church, Muretus, + had congratulated the pope upon this signal victory of the truth. He knew + that medals were stamped in commemoration of the brutal massacre, and he + remembered that the same spirit that had struck at the gray head of + Coligny had also murdered Egmont and Home in the Netherlands; had calmly + gazed in the person of Philip upon De Sezo perishing in the fire, and by + the hand of Philip had denounced death against all who wrote, sold, or + read Protestant books; and he knew that the same spirit, in the most + thriving and intelligent country of Europe, the Netherlands, was blotting + out prosperity in blood, and had driven at least a hundred thousand exiles + into England. + </p> + <p> + Pondering these things, Sidney left Paris, and at Frankfort met Hubert + Languet. Languet was not only a Protestant, but, at heart, a Republican. + He was the friend of Melanethon and of William of Orange, in whose service + he died. One of the most accomplished scholars and shrewdest statesmen in + Europe, honored and trusted by all the Protestant leaders, this wise man + of fifty-four was so enamoured of the English youth of eighteen that they + became life-long friends with the ardor of lovers, and Languet left his + employment, as Fulke Greville says, "to become a nurse of knowledge to + this hopeful young gentleman". + </p> + <p> + As they travelled by easy stages across Germany, where the campaign of + Protestantism had begun, they knew that the decisive battle was yet to be + fought. Europe was silent. The tumult of Charles V.'s reign was over, and + that great monarch marched and countermarched no more from the Baltic to + the Mediterranean. Charles had been victorious so long as he fought kings + with words of steel. But the monk Martin Luther drew the sword of the + spirit, and the conqueror quailed. Luther challenged the Church of Rome at + its own door. The Vatican rained anathemas. It might as well have tried to + blow out the stars; and all the fires of the furious popes who followed + Leo were not sharp enough to consume the colossal heresy of free thought. + But king and emperor and pope fed the fire. The reign of terror blasted + the Netherlands, and when it had succeeded there, when Italy, Austria, and + Holland surrounded the states of Germany, Philip knew it would be the + smothering coil of the serpent around the cradle of religious liberty. But + the young Hercules of free thought throttled the serpent, and leaped forth + to win his victorious and immortal race. + </p> + <p> + We can see it now, but Sidney could not know it. To him the future was as + inscrutable as our own to the eyes of thirty years ago. Yet he and Languet + must have discussed the time with curious earnestness as they passed + through Germany until they reached Vienna. There Sidney devoted himself to + knightly games, to tennis, to music, and especially to horsemanship, which + he studied with Pagliono, who, in praise of the horse, became such a poet + that in the <i>Defence of Poesy</i> Sidney says that if he had not been a + piece of a logician before he came to him, Pagliono would have persuaded + him to wish himself a horse. + </p> + <p> + At Vienna Philip parted with Languet, and arrived in Venice in the year + 1573. The great modern days of Italy were passed. The golden age of the + Medici was gone. Lorenzo the Magnificent had died nearly a century before, + in the same year that Columbus had discovered America. His son, Pope Leo + X., had eaten his last ortolan, had flown his last falcon, had listened to + his last comedy, and hummed his last tune, in the frescoed corridors of + the Vatican. Upon its shining walls the fatal finger of Martin Luther, + stretching out of Germany, had written "Mene, Mene." Beneath the terrible + spell the walls were cracking and the earth was shaking, but the splendid + pope, in his scarlet cloud of cardinals, saw only the wild beauty of + Raphael's Madonnas and the pleasant pages of the recovered literature of + pagan Greece. When Sidney stepped for the first time into his gondola at + Venice, the famous Italian cathedrals and stately palaces were already + built, and the great architects were gone. Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, who + had created Italian literature, lived about as long before Sidney as we + live after him. Cimabue and Giotto had begun; Raphael and Michel Angelo + had perfected that art in which they have had no rivals—and they + were gone. Andrea Doria steered the galleys of Genoa no more, and since + the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope and the West Indies, the spices of + the Indian sea were brought by Portuguese ships into the Baltic instead of + the Adriatic. The glory of the Lombards, who were the first merchants of + Europe, had passed away to the descendants of their old correspondents of + Bruges and Ghent, until, with its five hundred ships daily coming and + going, and on market days eight and nine hundred; with its two thousand + heavy wagons creaking every week through the gates from France and Germany + and Lorraine, Antwerp reigned in the place of Venice, and the long + twilight that has never been broken was settling upon the Italy that + Sidney saw. + </p> + <p> + But the soft splendor of its decline was worthy its prime. The + universities of Bologna and Padua, of Salerno and Pisa, had fallen from + the days when at Bologna alone there were twenty thousand students; but + they were still thronged with pupils, and taught by renowned professors. + When the young Sidney came to Venice, Titian was just tottering into the + grave, nearly a hundred years old, but still holding the pencil which + Charles V. had picked up and handed to him in his studio. Galileo was a + youth of twenty, studying mathematics at Pisa. The melancholy Tasso was + completing his <i>Jerusalem Delivered</i> under the cypress trees of the + Villa d'Este. Palestrina was composing the masses which reformed church + music, and the Christian charity of Charles Borromeo was making him a + saint before he was canonized. Clad in the silk and velvet of Genoa, the + young Englishman went to study geometry at Padua, where twenty years later + Galileo would have been his teacher, and Sidney writes to Languet that he + was perplexed whether to sit to Paul Veronese or to Tintoretto for his + portrait. + </p> + <p> + But he had a shrewd eye for the follies of travellers, and speaks of their + tendency to come home "full of disguisements not only of apparel but of + our countenances, as though the credit of a traveller stood all upon his + outside". He then adds a curious prophecy, which Shakespeare made haste to + fulfil to the very letter. Sidney says, writing in 1578, "I think, ere it + be long, like the mountebanks in Italy, we travellers shall be made sport + of in comedies." Twenty years afterwards, Shakespeare makes Rosalind say + in "As You Like It", "Farewell, Monsieur Traveller. Look you; lisp, and + wear strange suits. Disable all the benefits of your own country. Be out + of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that + countenance you are, or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola." + </p> + <p> + But in all the gayeties and graces of his travel, Philip Sidney was not + content to be merely an elegant lounger. He never forgot for a moment that + all his gifts and accomplishments were only weapons to be kept burnished + for his country's service. He was a boy of twenty, but his boy's warmth + was tempered by the man's wisdom. "You are not over cheerful by nature," + Languet writes to him; and when Sidney sat to Paul Veronese, and sent his + friend the portrait, Languet replies: "The painter has represented you sad + and thoughtful." + </p> + <p> + He had reason to be so. He had seen the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, as + many a young Sidney among ourselves saw the horrors of Kansas thirty years + ago. He did not believe that a little timely patting on the back was + statesmanship. If Spain were crushing the Netherlands, and hung upon the + southern horizon of Europe a black and threatening cloud, he did not + believe that the danger would be averted by gagging those who said the + storm was coming. He did not hold the thermometer responsible for the + weather. "I cannot think," he wrote in May, 1574, "there is any man + possessed of common understanding who does not see to what these rough + storms are driving by which all Christendom has been agitated now these + many years." He did not suppose, as so many of us in our ignoble days, + that while men were the same, the tragical differences which had been + washed out with blood in all other ages could be drowned in milk and water + in his own. + </p> + <p> + In 1575 Sidney returned to England. Every author who writes of this period + breaks out into the most glowing praises of him. Indeed, he is the choice + darling of English history. The only discordant note in the chorus of + praise came long afterwards in the voice of the pedantic dandy Horace + Walpole, who called Goldsmith "an inspired idiot". This is not surprising, + for the earnestness and heroic simplicity of Sidney were as + incomprehensible to the affected trifler of Strawberry Hill as the fresh + enthusiasm of his nephew Arthur to Major Pendennis. The Earl of Leicester, + who seemed to love his nephew more than anything except his own ambition, + presented his brilliant young relative to the queen, who made him her + cup-bearer. Sidney was now twenty-one years old—the finest + gentleman, and one of the most accomplished scholars in England. His + learning was mainly in the classics and in languages; yet he confesses + that he could never learn German, which was then hardly worth learning, + and in his correspondence with Languet is very distrustful of the Latin, + in which language they wrote. But in urging him to grapple with the + German, Languet says to him, and it is a striking proof of the exquisite + finish of Sidney's accomplishment, "I have watched you closely when + speaking my own language (he was a Burgundian), but I hardly ever detected + you pronouncing a single syllable wrongly." + </p> + <p> + In Sidney's time the classics had few rivals. After reading Dante, + Petrarch, Ariosto, Boccaccio, with Sanazzaro's <i>Arcadia</i>, in Italian; + Rabelais, Froissart, and Comines, in French; Chaucer, Gower, and the <i>Mirror + for Magistrates</i> in English, what remained for an ardent young student + to devour? When Sidney came home, Montaigne—whom he probably saw at + the French court—was just writing his <i>Essays</i> at his chateau + in the Gironde. The Portuguese Camoens had only just published his great + poem, to which his own country would not listen, and of which no other had + heard. The Italian Tasso's <i>Jerusalem</i> was still in manuscript, and + the Spanish Ponce de Leon was little known to Europe. All was yet to come. + In Spain, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderon; in France, Corneille and + Racine and Moliere, Fenelon and Bossuet, Rousseau and Voltaire; in + Germany, everything except the Niebelungen and Hans Sachs's rhymes. When + Philip Sidney kissed Elizabeth's hand as her cup-bearer, William + Shakespeare, a boy of eleven, was grinding out his trousers on the + restless seats of the free grammar-school at Stratford; young Francis + Bacon, a youth of sixteen, was studying in France; a poor scholar at + Cambridge, Edmund Spenser was just finishing his studies, and the younger + brother of an old Devonshire family, Walter Raleigh, had just returned + from campaigning in France; indeed, all the literature of modern times was + subsequent to Philip Sidney. The young man shone at court, fascinating men + and women, courtiers, scholars, and divines; and in a few months was made + special ambassador to condole with the Austrian emperor upon the death of + his father. Upon this embassy he departed in great state. His mission, was + supposed to be purely complimentary; but he was really the beautiful eye + with which England and Elizabeth, becoming the head of the Protestant + movement, watched the disposition of the Protestant princes. On his way + home, Sidney passed into the Low Countries to see William of Orange. He + came, resplendent with chivalric magnificence, accompanied by the flower + of English nobility, and met the grave William, who had been the richest + citizen in the Netherlands, clad in an old serge cloak, and surrounded by + plain Dutch burghers. But it was a meeting of men of one mind and heart in + the great cause, and neither was disturbed by the tailoring of the other. + The interview was the beginning of a faithful friendship, and among all + the compliments Sidney received, none is so lofty and touching as that of + William, the greatest man in Europe, who called him in their + correspondence, "Philip, my master." + </p> + <p> + In 1577 Sidney was home again. He had a right to expect conspicuous + advancement, but he got nothing. This was the more disagreeable, because + living at Elizabeth's court was an expensive luxury for a poor gentleman's + son who had magnificent tastes. His father, Lord Henry Sidney, was + lord-deputy of Ireland, but he was also an honest man, and, like most + honest men in high public office, he was not rich. He wrote to Philip, + begging him to remember whose son, not whose nephew, he was; for Philip's + companions, the golden youth of the court, blazed in silks and velvets and + jewels, until the government had to impose laws, as the subjects had + brought luxury from Venice, and Elizabeth, who died the happy owner of + three thousand dresses, issued a solemn proclamation against extravagance + in dress. + </p> + <p> + At such a time, the brilliant nephew of Uncle Leicester would have been a + quickly ruined man if he had not been Philip Sidney. He bowed and flirted + at court, but he chafed under inaction. A marriage was planned for him + with Penelope Devereux, sister of the famous Earl of Essex, one of the + thousand fair and unfortunate women who flit across the page of history + leaving only a name, and that written in tears. But Philip's father grew + cool in the negotiation, and Philip himself was perfectly passive. Yet + when a few years afterwards the lady was married to Lord Rich, who abused + her, Sidney loved her, and wrote the sonnets to Stella, which are his best + poetry, and which Charles Lamb so affectionately praised. + </p> + <p> + But while he loitered at court, beating all the courtiers with their own + weapons in wit, in riding, in games, at tournament, the tales of American + discovery shed a wondrous glamour upon the new continent. Nothing was too + beautiful for belief, and the fiery feet of youth burned the English soil + with eagerness to tread the unutterable Tropics. Francis Drake sailed from + Plymouth to follow Magellan around the world, and he went in a manner + consonant with the popular fancy of the countless riches that rewarded + such adventures. His cooking-vessels were of silver; his table-plate of + exquisite workmanship. The queen knighted him, gave him a sword, and said, + "Whoever striketh at you, Drake, striketh at us." A band of musicians + accompanied the fleet, and the English sailor went to circumnavigate the + globe with the same nonchalant magnificence with which in other days the + gorgeous Alcibiades, with flutes and soft recorders blowing under silken + sails, came idling home from victory. + </p> + <p> + Philip Sidney, his heart alive to all romance, and longing to be his + companion, saw him sail away. But he turned and saw the black Italian + spider, whose sting he had seen on Bartholomew's Eve in Paris, still + weaving her stealthy web, and seeking to entangle Elizabeth into a match + with the Duke of Anjou. The queen was forty-six, and Mounseer, as the + English called him, twenty-three; and while she was coaxing herself to say + the most fatal yes that ever woman said—when Burleigh, Leicester, + Walsingham, all the safe, sound, conservative old gentlemen and + counsellors were just ceasing to dissuade her—Philip Sidney, a youth + of twenty-five, who knew that he had a country as well as a queen, that + the hope of that country lay in the triumph of Protestantism, and that to + marry Mounseer was to abandon that hope, and for the time betray mankind—Philip + Sidney, a youth who did not believe that he could write gravely of sober + things because he had written gayly of ladies' eyebrows, knowing as the + true-hearted gentleman always knows that to-day it may be a man's turn to + sit at a desk in an office, or bend over a book in college, or fashion a + horseshoe at the forge, or toss flowers to some beauty at her window, and + to-morrow to stand firm against a cruel church or a despotic court, a + brutal snob or an ignorant public opinion—this youth, this immortal + gentleman, wrote the letter which dissuaded her from the marriage, and + which was as noble a triumph for Protestantism and human liberty as the + defeat of the Spanish Armada. + </p> + <p> + I cannot follow this lovely life in detail, nor linger, as I would, upon + his literary retirement. + </p> + <p> + The very name of Sidney's <i>Arcadia</i> is aromatic in the imagination, + and its traditional place in our literature is unquestioned. In our day it + is very little read, nor is it a very interesting story. But under its + quaint and courtly conceit its tone is so pure and lofty, its courtesy and + appreciation of women so hearty and honorable; it has so fine a moral + atmosphere, such noble thoughts, such stately and beautiful descriptions, + that to read it is like conversing with a hero. So there is no better + reading than the <i>Defence of Poesy</i>, that noble hymn of loyalty to + intellectual beauty. Hallam well calls Sidney "the first good prose + writer" in our language, and scarcely had he finished in his <i>Defence</i> + an exquisite criticism of English poetry to that time than the full choir + of Elizabethan poets burst into + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "the songs that fill + The spacious times of great Elizabeth + With sounds that echo still." +</pre> + <p> + In 1582 Philip Sidney married the daughter of Walsingham, but in his + retirement, whether steadfastly watching the great struggle upon the + Continent or listening to the alluring music of far-off seas, he knew that + the choice days of his life were passing, and if a career were not opened + for him by the queen, he must make one for himself. William of Orange had + been murdered; Elizabeth promptly succeeded him as the active head of the + Protestant world; Philip of Spain was the great enemy. Strike him at home, + said Sidney; strike him at sea, but strike him everywhere; and he arranged + with Drake a descent upon Spanish America. He hurried privately to + Plymouth to embark, but at the last moment a peer of the realm arrived + from the queen forbidding his departure. The loyal gentleman bowed and + obeyed. + </p> + <p> + But two months after his fleet sailed, on the 7th of November, 1585 (about + the time that William Shakespeare first came to London), Elizabeth + appointed Sidney governor of Flushing, in the Netherlands. He went thither + gladly on the 18th, with three thousand men, to strike for the cause in + which he believed. He had already told the queen that the spirit of the + Netherlands was the spirit of God, and was invincible. His uncle, the Earl + of Leicester, followed him as commander-in-chief. The earl was handsome at + tournaments, but not fit for battle-fields, and Sidney was annoyed by his + uncle's conduct; but he writes to his father-in-law, Walsingham, in a + strain full of the music of a noble soul, and fitly precluding his end: "I + think a wise and constant man ought never to grieve while he doth play, as + a man may say, his own part truly." + </p> + <p> + For that he was always ready. In the misty dawn of the 22d of September, + 1586, a force of three thousand Spaniards stole silently along to the + relief of Zutphen, on the river Isel. Sidney, at the head of five hundred + cavalry, rode forward to meet them. In the obscurity the battle was sharp + and confused. Seeing his friend Lord Willoughby in special danger, Sidney + spurred to the rescue. His horse was shot under him and fell. Springing + upon another, he dashed forward again and succored his friend, but at the + instant a shot struck him below the knee, glancing upward. His furious + horse became unmanageable, and Sir Philip was obliged to leave the field. + But as he passed slowly along to the rear of the soldiers, he felt faint + with bleeding, and called for water. A cup was brought to him, but as he + was lifting it to his month he saw a dying soldier staring at it with + burning eyes. Philip Sidney paused before tasting it, leaned from the + saddle, and handed it to the soldier, saying to him in the same soft, + musical voice with which the boy called to his mother in the sunny garden + at Penshurst, "Friend, thy necessity is yet greater than mine." + </p> + <p> + He was borne on to Araheim, and lived in suffering for twenty-six days. He + conversed pleasantly and called for music, and said at last to his + brother, whom he had loved as brothers seldom love: "Love my memory; + cherish my friends. Their faith to me may assure you they are honest. But, + above all, govern your will and affections by the will and word of your + Creator, in me beholding the end of this world with all her vanities." + "And so," says old Stowe, with fond particularity, "he died, the 17th day + of October, between two and three of the clock in the afternoon." + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, + And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, + Await alike the inevitable hour. + The paths of glory lead but to the grave." +</pre> + <p> + This is the story of Philip Sidney. A letter, a book, a battle. How little + to justify his unique fame! How invisible his performance among the + illustrious events of his prodigious age! Yet is not the instinct of the + human heart true; and in the stately society of his time, if Bacon were + the philosopher, Shakespeare the poet, Burleigh the counsellor, Raleigh + the soldier, Drake the sailor, Hooker the theologian, Essex the courtier, + and Gresham the merchant, was not Philip Sidney as distinctively the + gentleman? Heroes stood beside him in clusters, poets in constellations; + all the illustrious men of the age achieved more tangible results than he, + yet none of them has carved his name upon history more permanently and + with a more diamond point; for he had that happy harmony of mind and + temper, of enthusiasm and good sense, of accomplishment and capacity, + which is described by that most exquisite and most abused word, gentleman. + His guitar hung by a ribbon at his side, but his sword hung upon leather + beneath it. His knee bent gallantly to the queen, but it knelt reverently + also to his Maker. And it was the crown of the gentleman that he was + neither ashamed of the guitar nor of the sword; neither of the loyalty nor + the prayer. For a gentleman is not an idler, a trifler, a dandy; he is not + a scholar only, a soldier, a mechanic, a merchant; he is the flower of + men, in whom the accomplishment of the scholar, the bravery of the + soldier, the skill of the mechanic, the sagacity of the merchant, all have + their part and appreciation. A sense of duty is his main-spring, and like + a watch crusted with precious stones, his function is not to look + prettily, but to tell the time of day. Philip Sidney was not a gentleman + because his grandfather was the Duke of Northumberland and his father + lord-deputy of Ireland, but because he was himself generous, simple, + truthful, noble, refined. He was born with a gold spoon in his mouth, but + the gold is only the test. In the mouths of the base it becomes brass and + iron. George IV., called with bitter irony the first gentleman in Europe, + was born with the gold spoon, but his acrid humors turned it to the basest + metal, betraying his mean soul. George Stephenson was born with the pewter + spoon in his mouth, but the true temper of his soul turned it into pure + gold. The test of a gentleman is his use, not his uselessness; whether + that use be direct or indirect, whether it be actual service or only + inspiring and aiding action. "To what purpose should our thoughts be + directed to various kinds of knowledge," wrote Philip Sidney in 1578, + "unless room be afforded for putting it into practice so that public + advantage may be the result?" And Algernon Sidney said, nearly a century + later: "I have ever had it in my mind that when God cast me into such a + condition as that I cannot save my life but by doing an indecent thing, he + shows me the time has come wherein I should resign it." And when that time + came he did resign it; for every gentleman instinctively serves justice + and liberty. He feels himself personally disgraced by an insult to + humanity, for he, too, is only a man; and however stately his house may be + and murmurous with music, however glowing with pictures and graceful with + statues and reverend with books—however his horses may out-trot + other horses, and his yachts outsail all yachts—the gentleman is + king and master of these and not their servant; he wears them for + ornament, like the ring upon his finger or the flower in his button-hole, + and if they go the gentleman remains. He knows that all their worth came + from human genius and human training; and loving man more than the works + of man, he instinctively shuns whatever in the shape of man is degraded, + outraged, and forsaken. He does not make the poverty of others the reason + for robbing them; he does not make the oppression of others the reason for + oppressing them, for his gentility is his religion; and therefore with + simple truth and tender audacity the old English dramatist Dekkar calls + Him who gave the name to our religion, and who destroyed the plea that + might makes right, "the first true gentleman, that ever breathed". + </p> + <p> + But not only is Philip Sidney's story the poem of a gentleman, it is that + of a young man. It was the age of young men. No man was thought flippant, + whatever his years, who could say a good thing well, or do a brave thing + successfully, or give the right advice at the right moment. The great men + of the day were all young. At sixteen Bacon had already sketched his <i>Philosophy</i>. + At seventeen Walter Raleigh had gone to find some good wars. At seventeen + Edmund Spenser had first published. Before he was twenty, Alexander + Farnese, Prince of Parma, and the greatest general of Sidney's time, had + revealed his masterly genius. At twenty-one Don John of Austria had been + commander-in-chief against the Moors. The Prince of Condé and Henry of + Navarre were leaders while they were yet boys. At twenty Francis Drake + sailed, a captain, with John Hawkins; and at twenty-one the Washington of + European history, to whom an American has for the first time paid just + homage with an enthusiasm and eloquence of Sidney describing his friend—at + twenty-one William of Orange commanded an army of Charles V. + </p> + <p> + When England wanted leaders in those tremendous days that shaped her + destiny, it did just what America did in those recent perilous hours that + determined hers—she sent young men with faith in their hearts and + fire in their veins—not old men with feathers in their hats; and + everywhere it is the young men who have made history. At thirty-two + Alexander wept for another world to conquer. On his thirty-seventh + birthday Raphael lay dead beneath his last picture. At thirty-six Mozart + had sung his swan-song. At twenty-five Hannibal was commander-in-chief of + the Carthaginian armies. At thirty-three Turenne was marshal of France. At + twenty-seven Bonaparte was triumphant in Italy. At forty-five Wellington + had conquered Bonaparte, and at forty-eight retired from active military + service. At forty-three Washington was chief of the Continental army. On + his forty-fifth birthday Sherman was piercing the heart of the American + Rebellion; and before he was forty-three Grant had "fought it out on this + line" to perfect victory. Young men! Of course they were young men. Youth + is the main-spring of the world. The experience of age is wise in action + only when it is electrified by the enthusiasm of youth. Show me a land in + which the young men are cold and sceptical and prematurely wise; which in + polite indifference is called political wisdom, contempt for ideas + common-sense, and honesty in politics Sunday-school statesmanship—show + me a land in which the young men are more anxious about doing well than + about doing right—and I will show you a country in which public + corruption and ruin overtakes private infidelity and cowardice, and in + which, if there were originally a hope for mankind, a faith in principle, + and a conquering enthusiasm, that faith, hope, and enthusiasm are expiring + like the deserted camp-fires of a retiring army. "Woe to a man when his + heart grows old! Woe to a nation when its young men shuffle in the gouty + shoes and limp on the untimely crutches of age, instead of leaping along + the course of life with the jubilant spring of their years and the sturdy + play of their own muscles!" Sir Philip Sidney's was the age of young men: + and wherever there are self-reliance, universal human sympathy, and + confidence in God, there is the age of youth and national triumph; just as + whenever Joan of Arc leads the army, or Molly Stark dares to be a widow, + or Rosa Bonheur paints, or Hattie Hosmer carves, or Jenny Lind sings, or + Mrs. Patten steers the wrecked ship to port, or Florence Nightingale walks + the midnight hospital—these are the age and the sphere of woman. + Queen Elizabeth's was the age of young men; but so it is always when there + are young men who can make an age. + </p> + <p> + And ours is such an age. We live in a country which has been saved by its + young men. Before us opens a future which is to be secured by the young + men. I have not held up Sir Philip Sidney as a reproach, but only for his + brothers to admire—only that we may scatter the glamour of the past + and of history, and understand that we do not live in the lees of time and + the world's decrepitude. There is no country so fair that ours is not + fairer; there is no age so heroic that ours is not as noble; there is no + youth in history so romantic and beloved that in a thousand American homes + you may not find his peer to-day. It is the Sidneys we have known who + interpret this Philip of three hundred years ago. Dear, noble gentleman! + he does not move alone in our imaginations, for our own memories supply + his splendid society. We too have seen, how often and how often, the + bitter fight of the misty morning on the Isel—the ringing charge, + the fatal fall. A thousand times we saw the same true Sidney heart that, + dying, gave the cup of cold water to a fellow-soldier. And we, for whom + the Sidneys died, let us thank God for showing us in our own experience, + as in history, that the noblest traits of human character are still + spanned by the rainbow of perfect beauty; and that human love and faith + and fidelity, like day and night, like seed-time and harvest, shall never, + never fail. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + LONGFELLOW + </h2> + <p> + In the school readers of half a century ago there were two poems which + every boy and girl read and declaimed and remembered. How much of that old + literature has disappeared! How much that stirred the hearts and touched + the fancies of those boys and girls, their children have never heard of! + Willis's "Saturday Afternoon" and "Burial of Arnold" have floated away, + almost out of sight, with Pierpont's "Bunker Hill" and Sprague's + Fourth-of-July oration. The relentless winds of oblivion incessantly blow. + Scraps of verse and rhetoric once so familiar are caught up, wafted + noiselessly away, and lodged in neglected books and in the dark corners of + fading memories, gradually vanish from familiar knowledge. But the two + little poems of which we speak have survived. One of them was Bryant's + "March", and the other was Longfellow's "April", and the names of the two + poets singing of spring were thus associated in the spring-time of our + poetry, as the fathers of which they will be always honored. + </p> + <p> + Both poems originally appeared in the <i>United States Literary Gazette</i>, + and were included in the modest volume of selections from that journal + which was published in Boston in 1826. The chief names in this little book + are those of Bryant, Longfellow, Percival, Mellen, Dawes, and Jones. + Percival has already become a name only; Dawes, and Greenville Mellen, + who, like Longfellow, was a son of Maine, are hardly known to this + generation, and Jones does not even appear in Duyckinck's Cyclopaedia. But + in turning over the pages it is evident that Time has dealt justly with + the youthful bards, and that the laurel rests upon the heads of the + singers whose earliest strains fitly preluded the music of their prime. + Longfellow was nineteen years old when the book was published. He had + graduated at Bowdoin College the year before, and the verses had been + written and printed in the <i>Gazette</i> while he was still a student. + </p> + <p> + The glimpses of the boy that we catch through the recollections of his old + professor, Packard, and of his college mates, are of the same character as + at every period of his life. They reveal a modest, refined, manly youth, + devoted to study, of great personal charm and gentle manners. It is the + boy that the older man suggested. To look back upon him is to trace the + broad and clear and beautiful river far up the green meadows to the limpid + rill. + </p> + <p> + His poetic taste and faculty were already apparent, and it is related that + a version of an ode of Horace which he wrote in his Sophomore year so + impressed one of the members of the examining board that when afterwards a + chair of modern languages was established in the college, he proposed as + its incumbent the young Sophomore whose fluent verse he remembered. The + impression made by the young Longfellow is doubtlessly accurately + described by one of his famous classmates, Hawthorne, for the class of '25 + is a proud tradition of Bowdoin. In "P.'s Correspondence", one of the <i>Mosses + from an Old Manse</i>, a quaint fancy of a letter from "my unfortunate + friend P.", whose wits were a little disordered, there are grotesque hints + of the fate of famous persons. P. talks with Burns at eighty-seven; Byron, + grown old and fat, wears a wig and spectacles; Shelley is reconciled to + the Church of England; Coleridge finishes "Christabel"; Keats writes a + religious epic on the millennium; and George Canning is a peer. On our + side of the sea, Dr. Channing had just published a volume of verses; + Whittier had been lynched ten years before in South Carolina; and, + continues P., "I remember, too, a lad just from college, Longfellow by + name, who scattered some delicate verses to the winds, and went to + Germany, and perished, I think, of intense application, at the University + of Göttingen." Longfellow, in turn, recalled his classmate Hawthorne—a + shy, dark-haired youth flitting across the college grounds in a coat with + bright buttons. + </p> + <p> + Among these delicate verses was the poem to "An April Day". As the work of + a very young man it is singularly restrained and finished. It has the + characteristic elegance and flowing melody of his later verse, and its + half-pensive tone is not excessive nor immature. It is not, however, for + this that it is most interesting, but because, with Bryant's "March", it + is the fresh and simple note of a truly American strain. Perhaps the + curious reader, enlightened by the observation of subsequent years, may + find in the "March" a more vigorous love of nature, and in the "April" a + tenderer tone of tranquil sentiment. But neither of the poems is the echo + of a foreign music, nor an exercise of remembered reading. They both deal + with the sights and sounds and suggestions of the American, landscape in + the early spring. In Longfellow's "April" there are none of the bishops' + caps and foreign ornament of illustration to which Margaret Fuller + afterwards objected in his verse. But these early associated poems, both + of the younger and of the older singer, show an original movement of + American literary genius, and, like the months which they celebrate, they + foretold a summer. + </p> + <p> + That summer bad been long awaited. In 1809, Buckminster said in his Phi + Beta Kappa oration at Harvard College: "Oar poets and historians, our + critics and orators, the men of whom posterity are to stand in awe, and by + whom they are to be instructed, are yet to appear among us." Happily, + however, the orator thought that he beheld the promise of their coming, + although he does not say where. But even as he spoke they were at hand. + Irving's <i>Knickerbocker</i> was published in 1809, and Bryant's + "Thanatopsis" was written in 1812. The <i>North American Review</i>, an + enterprise of literary men in Boston and Cambridge, was begun in 1815, and + Bryant and Longfellow were both contributors. But it was in the year 1821, + the year in which Longfellow entered college, that the beginning of a + distinctive American literature became most evident. There were signs of + an independent intellectual movement both in the choice of subjects and in + the character of treatment. This was the year of the publication of + Bryant's first slim volume, and of Cooper's <i>Spy</i>, and of Dana's <i>Idle + Man</i>. Irving's <i>Sketch Book</i> was already finished, Miss Sedgwick's + <i>Hope Leslie</i> and Percival's first volume had been issued, and + Halleck's and Drake's "Croakers" were already popular. In these works, as + in all others of that time, there was indeed no evidence of great creative + genius. + </p> + <p> + The poet and historian whom Buckminster foresaw, and who were to strike + posterity with awe, had not yet appeared, but in the same year the voice + of the orator whom he anticipated was heard upon Plymouth Rock in cadences + massive and sonorous as the voice of the sea. In the year 1821 there was + the plain evidence of an awakening original literary activity. + </p> + <p> + Longfellow was the youngest of the group in which he first appeared. His + work was graceful, tender, pensive, gentle, melodious, the strain of a + troubadour. When he went to Europe in 1826 to fit himself more fully for + his professorship, he had but "scattered some delicate verses to the + winds". When he returned, and published in 1833 his translations of + "Coplas de Manrique" and other Spanish poems, he had apparently done no + more. There was plainly shown an exquisite literary artist, a very + Benvenuto of grace and skill. But he would hardly have been selected as + the poet who was to take the strongest hold of the hearts of his + countrymen, the singer whose sweet and hallowing spell was to be so deep + and universal that at last it would be said in another country that to it + also his death was a national loss. + </p> + <p> + The qualities of these early verses, however, were never lost. The genius + of the poet steadily and beautifully developed, flowering according to its + nature. The most urbane and sympathetic of men, never aggressive, nor + vehement, nor self-asserting, he was yet thoroughly independent, and the + individuality of his genius held its tranquil way as surely as the river + Charles, whose placid beauty he so often sang, wound through the meadows + calm and free. When Longfellow came to Cambridge, the impulse of + Transcendentalism in New England was deeply affecting scholarship and + literature. It was represented by the most original of American thinkers + and the typical American scholar, Emerson, and its elevating, purifying, + and emancipating influences are memorable in our moral and intellectual + history. Longfellow lived in the very heart of the movement. Its leaders + were his cherished friends. He too was a scholar and a devoted student of + German literature, who had drunk deeply also of the romance of German + life. Indeed, his first important works stimulated the taste for German + studies and the enjoyment of its literature more than any other impulse in + this country. But he remained without the charmed Transcendental circle, + serene and friendly and attentive. There are those whose career was wholly + moulded by the intellectual revival of that time. But Longfellow was + untouched by it, except as his sympathies were attracted by the vigor and + purity of its influence. His tastes, his interests, his activities, his + career, would have been the same had that great light never shone. If he + had been the ductile, echoing, imitative nature that the more ardent + disciples of the faith supposed him to be, he would have been absorbed and + swept away by the flood. But he was as untouched by it as Charles Lamb by + the wars of Napoleon. + </p> + <p> + It was in the first flush of the Transcendental epoch that Longfellow's + first important works appeared. In 1839, his prose-romance of <i>Hyperion</i> + was published, following the sketches of travel, called <i>Outre-Mer</i>. + He was living in Cambridge, in the famous house in which he died, and in + which <i>Hyperion</i> and all of his familiar books were written. Under + the form of a slight love tale, <i>Hyperion</i> is the diary of a poet's + wandering in a storied and picturesque land, the hearty, home-like genius + of whose life and literature is peculiarly akin to his own. The book + bubbles and sings with snatches of the songs of the country; it reproduces + the tone and feeling of the landscape, the grandeur of Switzerland, the + rich romance of the Rhine; it decorates itself with a quaint scholarship, + and is so steeped in the spirit of the country, so glowing with the + palpitating tenderness of passion, that it is still eagerly bought at the + chief points which it commemorates, and is cherished by young hearts as no + prose romance was ever cherished before. + </p> + <p> + <i>Hyperion</i>, indeed, is a poet's and lover's romance. It is full of + deep feeling, of that intense and delighted appreciation of nature in her + grander forms, and of scenes consecrated by poetic tradition, which + belongs to a singularly fine, sensitive, and receptive nature, when + exalted by pure and lofty affection; and it has the fulness and swing of + youth, saddened by experience indeed, yet rising with renewed hope, like a + field of springing grain in May bowed by the west wind, and touched with + the shadow of a cloud, but presently lifting itself again to heaven. A + clear sweet humor and blitheness of heart blend in this romance. What is + called its artificial tone is not insincerity; it is the play of an artist + conscious of his skill and revelling in it, even while his hand and his + heart are deeply in earnest. <i>Werther</i> is a romance, Disraeli's <i>Wondrous + Tale of Alroy</i> is a romance, but they belong to the realm of Beverley + and Julia in Sheridan's <i>Rivals</i>. In <i>Hyperion</i>, with all its + elaborate picturesqueness, its spicy literary atmosphere, and imaginative + outline, there is a breezy freshness and simplicity and healthiness of + feeling which leaves it still unique. + </p> + <p> + In the same year with <i>Hyperion</i> came the <i>Voices of the Night</i>, + a volume of poems which contained the "Coplas de Manrique" and the + translations, with a selection from the verses of the <i>Literary Gazette</i>, + which the author playfully reclaims in a note from their vagabond and + precarious existence in the corners of newspapers—gathering his + children from wanderings in lanes and alleys, and introducing them + decorously to the world. A few later poems were added, and these, with the + <i>Hyperion</i>, showed a new and distinctive literary talent. In both of + these volumes there is the purity of spirit, the elegance of form, the + romantic tone, the airy grace, which were already associated with + Longfellow's name. But there are other qualities. The boy of nineteen, the + poet of Bowdoin, has become a scholar and a traveller. The teeming hours, + the ample opportunities of youth, have not been neglected or squandered, + but, like a golden-banded bee, humming as he sails, the young poet has + drained all the flowers of literature of their nectar, and has built for + himself a hive of sweetness. More than this, he had proved in his own + experience the truth of Irving's tender remark, that an early sorrow is + often the truest benediction for the poet. + </p> + <p> + Through all the romantic grace and elegance of the <i>Voices of the Night</i> + and <i>Hyperion</i>, however, there is a moral earnestness which is even + more remarkable in the poems than in the romance. No volume of poems ever + published in the country was so popular. Severe critics indeed, while + acknowledging its melody and charm, thought it too morally didactic, the + work of a student too fondly enamoured of foreign literatures. But while + they conceded taste and facility, two of the poems at least—the + "Psalm of Life" and the "Footsteps of Angels"—penetrated the common + heart at once, and have held it ever since. A young Scotchman saw them + reprinted in some paper or magazine, and, meeting a literary lady in + London, repeated them to her, and then to a literary assembly at her + house; and the presence of a new poet was at once acknowledged. If the + "Midnight Mass for the Dying Year" in its form and phrase and conception + recalled a land of cathedrals and a historic religious ritual, and had but + a vague and remote charm for the woodman in the pine forests of Maine and + the farmer on the Illinois prairie, yet the "Psalm of Life" was the very + heart-beat of the American conscience, and the "Footsteps of Angels" was a + hymn of the fond yearning of every loving heart. + </p> + <p> + During the period of more than forty years from the publication of the <i>Voices + of the Night</i> to his death, the fame of Longfellow constantly + increased. It was not because his genius, like that of another scholarly + poet, Gray, seldom blossomed in song, so that his renown rested upon a few + gem-like verses. He was not intimidated by his own fame. During those + forty years he wrote and published constantly. Other great fames arose + around him. New poets began to sing. Popular historians took their places. + But still with Bryant the name of Longfellow was always associated at the + head of American singers, and far beyond that of any other American author + was his name known through all the reading world. The volume of <i>Voices + of the Night</i> was followed by similar collections, then by <i>The + Spanish Student</i>, <i>Evangeline</i>, <i>The Golden Legend</i>, <i>Hiawatha</i>, + <i>The Courtship of Miles Standish</i>, <i>The Tales of a Wayside Inn</i>, + <i>The New England Tragedies</i>, <i>The Masque of Pandora</i>, <i>The + Hanging of the Crane</i>, the <i>Morituri Salutarnus</i>, the <i>Kéramos</i>. + But all of these, like stately birds + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Sailing with supreme dominion + Through the upper realms of air," +</pre> + <p> + were attended by shorter poems, sonnets, "birds of passage", as the poet + called his swallow flights of song. In all these larger poems, while the + characteristics of the earlier volumes were more amply developed and + illustrated, and the subtle beauty of the skill became even more + exquisite, the essential qualities of the work remain unchanged, and the + charm of a poet and his significance in the literature and development of + his country were never more readily defined. + </p> + <p> + Child of New England, and trained by her best influences; of a temperament + singularly sweet and serene, and with the sturdy rectitude of his race; + refined and softened by wide contact with other lands and many men; born + in prosperity, accomplished in all literatures, and himself a literary + artist of consummate elegance, he was the fine flower of the Puritan stock + under its changed modern conditions. Out of strength had come forth + sweetness. The grim iconoclast, "humming a surly hymn", had issued in the + Christian gentleman. Captain Miles Standish had risen into Sir Philip + Sidney. The austere morality that relentlessly ruled the elder New England + reappeared in the genius of this singer in the most gracious and + captivating form. The grave nature of Bryant in his early secluded life + among the solitary hills of Western Massachusetts had been tinged by them + with their own sobriety. There was something of the sombre forest, of the + gray rocky face of stern New England in his granitic verse. But what + delicate wild-flowers nodded in the clefts! What scent of the pine-tree, + what music of gurgling water, filled the cool air! What bird high poised + upon its solitary way through heaven-taught faith to him who pursued his + way alone! + </p> + <p> + But while the same moral tone in the poetry both of Bryant and of + Longfellow shows them to be children of the same soil and tradition, and + shows also that they saw plainly, what poets of the greatest genius have + often not seen at all, that in the morality of human life lies its true + beauty, the different aspect of Puritan development which they displayed + was due to difference of temperament and circumstance. The foundations of + our distinctive literature were largely laid in New England, and they rest + upon morality. Literary New England had never a trace of literary Bohemia. + The most illustrious group, and the earliest, of American authors and + scholars and literary men, the Boston and Cambridge group of the last + generation—Channing, the two Danas, Sparks, Everett, Bancroft, + Ticknor, Prescott, Norton, Ripley, Palfrey, Emerson, Parker, Hawthorne, + Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, Agassiz, Lowell, Motley—have been all + sober and industrious citizens of whom Judge Sewall would have approved. + Their lives as well as their works have ennobled literature. They have + illustrated the moral sanity of genius. + </p> + <p> + Longfellow shares this trait with them all. It is the moral purity of his + verse which at once charms the heart, and in his first most famous poem, + the "Psalm of Life", it is the direct inculcation of a moral purpose. + Those who insist that literary art, like all other art, should not concern + itself positively with morality, must reflect that the heart of this age + has been touched as truly by Longfellow, however differently, as that of + any time by its master-poet. This, indeed, is his peculiar distinction. + Among the great poetic names of the century in English literature, Burns, + in a general way, is the poet of love; Wordsworth, of lofty contemplation + of nature; Byron, of passion; Shelley, of aspiration; Keats, of romance; + Scott, of heroic legend; and not less, and quite as distinctively, + Longfellow, of the domestic affections. He is the poet of the household, + of the fireside, of the universal home feeling. The infinite tenderness + and patience, the pathos, and the beauty of daily life, of familiar + emotion, and the common scene, these are the significance of that verse + whose beautiful and simple melody, softly murmuring for more than forty + years, made the singer the most widely beloved of living men. + </p> + <p> + Longfellow's genius was not a great creative force. It burst into no + tempests of mighty passion. It did not wrestle with the haughtily veiled + problems of fate and free-will absolute. It had no dramatic movement and + variety, no eccentricity and grotesqueness and unexpectedness. It was not + Lear, nor Faust, nor Manfred, nor Romeo. A carnation is not a + passion-flower. Indeed, no poet of so universal and sincere a popularity + ever sang so little of love as a passion. None of his smaller poems are + love poems; and <i>Evangeline</i> is a tale, not of fiery romance, but of + affection "that hopes and endures and is patient", of the unwasting + "beauty and strength of woman's devotion", of the constantly tried and + tested virtue that makes up the happiness of daily life. No one has + described so well as Longfellow himself the character and influence of his + own poetry: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Come read to me some poem, + Some simple and heart-felt lay, + That shall soothe this restless feeling, + And banish the thoughts of day. + + "Hot from the grand old masters, + Not from the bards sublime, + Whose distant footsteps echo + Through the corridors of Time. + +</pre> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Such songs have power to quiet + The restless pulse of care, + And come like the benediction + That follows after prayer." +</pre> + <p> + This was the office of Longfellow in literature, and how perfectly it was + fulfilled! It was not a wilful purpose, but he carefully guarded the + fountain of his song from contamination or diversion, and this was its + natural overflow. During the long period of his literary activity there + were many "schools" and styles and fashions of poetry. The influence first + of Byron, then of Keats, is manifest in the poetry of the last generation, + and in later days a voluptuous vagueness and barbaric splendor, as of the + lower empire in literature, have corroded the vigor of much modern verse. + But no perfumed blandishment of doubtful goddesses won Longfellow from his + sweet and domestic Muse. The clear thought, the true feeling, the pure + aspiration, is expressed with limpid simplicity: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Strong without rage; without o'erflowing, full." +</pre> + <p> + The most delightful picture in Goldsmith's life is that of the youth + wandering through rural Europe, stopping at the little villages in the + peaceful summer sunset, and sweetly playing melodies upon his flute for + the lads and lasses to dance upon the green. Who that reads "The + Traveller" and "The Deserted Village" does not hear in their pensive music + the far-away fluting of that kind-hearted wanderer, and see the lovely + idyl of that simple life? So sings this poet to the young men and maidens + in the soft summer air. They follow his measures with fascinated hearts, + for they hear in them their own hearts singing; they catch the music of + their dearest hope, of their best endeavor; they hear the voices of the + peaceful joy that hallows faithful affection, of the benediction that + belongs to self-sacrifice and devotion. And now that the singer is gone, + and his voice is silent, those hushed hearts recall the words of Father + Felicien, Evangeline's pastor: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Forty years of my life have I labored among you, and + taught you + Not in word alone, but in deed, to love one another." +</pre> + <p> + It is this fidelity of his genius to itself, the universal feeling to + which he gives expression, and the perfection of his literary workmanship, + which is sure to give Longfellow a permanent place in literature. His + poems are apples of gold in pictures of silver. There is nothing in them + excessive, nothing overwrought, nothing strained into turgidity, + obscurity, and nonsense. There is sometimes, indeed, a fine stateliness, + as in the "Arsenal at Springfield", and even a resounding splendor of + diction, as in "Sandalphon". But when the melody is most delicate it is + simple. The poet throws nothing into the mist to make it large. How purely + melodious his verse can be without losing the thought or its most + transparent expression is seen in "The Evening Star" and "Snow-Flakes". + </p> + <p> + The literary decoration of his style, the aroma and color and richness, so + to speak, which it derives from his ample accomplishment in literature, + are incomparable. His verse is embroidered with allusions and names and + illustrations wrought with a taste so true and a skill so rare that the + robe, though it be cloth of gold, is as finely flexible as linen, and + still beautifully reveals, not conceals, the living form. + </p> + <p> + This scholarly allusion and literary tone were at one time criticised as + showing that Longfellow's genius was really an exotic grown under glass, + or a smooth-throated mocking-bird warbling a foreign melody. A recent + admirable paper in the <i>Evening Post</i> intimates that the kindly poet + took the suggestion in good part, and modified his strain. But there was + never any interruption or change in the continuity of his work. <i>Evangeline</i> + and <i>Hiawatha</i> and <i>The Courtship of Miles Standish</i> blossom as + naturally out of his evident and characteristic taste and tendency as <i>The + Golden Legend</i> or the <i>Masque of Pandora</i>. In the <i>Tales of a + Wayside Inn</i> the "Ride of Paul Revere" is as natural a play of his + power as "King Robert of Sicily". The various aspect and character of + nature upon the American continent is nowhere so fully, beautifully, and + accurately portrayed as in <i>Evangeline</i>. The scenery of the poem is + the vast American landscape, boundless prairie and wooded hill, brimming + river and green valley, sparkling savanna and broad bayou, city and + village, camp and wigwam, peopled with the children of many races, and all + the blended panorama seen in the magic light of imagination. So, too, the + poetic character of the Indian legend is preserved with conscientious care + and fit monotony of rippling music in <i>Hiawatha</i>. But this is an + accident and an incident. It is not the theme which determines the poet. + All Scotland, indeed, sings and glows in the verse of Burns, but very + little of England is seen or heard in that of Byron. + </p> + <p> + In no other conspicuous figure in literary history are the man and the + poet more indissolubly blended than in Longfellow. The poet was the man, + and the man the poet. What he was to the stranger reading in distant + lands, by + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "The long wash of Australasian seas," +</pre> + <p> + that he was to the most intimate of his friends. His life and character + were perfectly reflected in his books. There is no purity or grace or + feeling or spotless charm in his verse which did not belong to the man. + There was never an explanation to be offered for him; no allowance was + necessary for the eccentricity or grotesqueness or wilfulness or humor of + genius. Simple, modest, frank, manly, he was the good citizen, the + self-respecting gentleman, the symmetrical man. + </p> + <p> + He lived in an interesting historic house in a venerable university town, + itself the suburb of a great city; the highway running by his gate and + dividing the smooth grass and modest green terraces about the house from + the fields and meadows that sloped gently to the placid Charles, and the + low range of distant hills that made the horizon. Through the little gate + passed an endless procession of pilgrims of every degree and from every + country to pay homage to their American friend. Every morning came the + letters of those who could not come in person, and with infinite urbanity + and sympathy and patience the master of the house received them all, and + his gracious hospitality but deepened the admiration and affection of the + guests. His nearer friends sometimes remonstrated at his sweet courtesy to + such annoying "devastators of the day". But to an urgent complaint of his + endless favor to a flagrant offender, Longfellow only answered, + good-humoredly, "If I did not speak kindly to him, there is not a man in + the world who would." On the day that he was taken ill, six days only + before his death, three schoolboys came out from Boston on their Saturday + holiday to ask his autograph. The benign lover of children welcomed them + heartily, showed them a hundred interesting objects in his house, then + wrote his name for them, and for the last time. + </p> + <p> + Few men had known deeper sorrow. But no man ever mounted upon his sorrow + more surely to higher things. Blessed and beloved, the singer is gone, but + his song remains, and its pure and imperishable melody is the song of the + lark in the morning of our literature: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Type of the wise who soar but never roam, + True to the kindred points of heaven and home." +</pre> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES + </h2> + <p> + In 1817 Bryant's "Thanatopsis" was published in the <i>North American + Review</i>. Richard Henry Dana, the elder, who was then one of the + editors, said that it could not be an American poem, for there was no + American who could have written it. But it does not seem to have produced + a remarkable impression upon the public mind. The planet rose silently and + unobserved. Ten years afterwards, in 1827, Dana's own "Buccaneer" was + published, and Christopher North, in <i>Blackwood</i>, saluted it as "by + far the most original and powerful of American poetical compositions". But + it produced in this country no general effect which is remembered. Nine + years later, in 1836, Holmes's "Metrical Essay" was delivered before the + Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College, and was as distinct an event in + literary circles as Edward Everett's oration before the same society in + 1824, or Ralph Waldo Emerson's in 1837, or Horace Bushnell's in 1848, or + Wendell Phillips's in 1881. Holmes was then twenty-seven years old, and + had just returned from his professional studies in Europe, where, as in + his college days at Cambridge, where he was born, he had toyed with many + Muses, yet still, with native Yankee prudence, held fast the hand of + Aesculapius. His poem, like the address of Emerson in the next year, + showed how completely the modern spirit of refined and exquisite literary + cultivation and of free and undaunted thought had superseded the uncouth + literary form and stern and rigid Calvinism of the Mathers and early + Boston. + </p> + <p> + The melody and grace of Goldsmith's line, but with a fresh local spirit, + have not been more perfectly reproduced, nor with a more distinct + revelation of a new spirit, than in this poem. It is retrospective and + contemplative, but it is also full of the buoyancy of youth, of the + consciousness of poetic skill, and of blithe anticipation. Its tender + reminiscence and occasional fond elegiac strain are but clouds of the + morning. Its literary form is exquisite, and its general impression is + that of bright, elastic, confident power. It was by no means, however, a + first work, nor was the poet unknown in his own home. But the "Metrical + Essay" introduced him to a larger public, while the fugitive pieces + already known were the assurance that the more important poem was not a + happy chance, but the development of a quality already proved. Seven years + before, in 1829, the year he graduated at Harvard, Holmes began to + contribute to <i>The Collegian</i>, a college magazine. Two years later, + in 1831, appeared the <i>New England Magazine</i>, in which the young + writer, as he might himself say, took the road with his double team of + verse and prose, holding the ribbons with unsurpassed lightness and grace + and skill, now for two generations guiding those fleet and well-groomed + coursers, which still show their heels to panting rivals, the prancing + team behind which we have all driven and are still driving with constant + and undiminished delight. + </p> + <p> + Mr. F. B. Sanborn, whose tribute to Holmes on his eightieth birthday shows + how thorough was his research for that labor of love, tells us that his + first contribution to the <i>New England Magazine</i> was published in the + third or September number of the first year, 1831. It was a copy of verses + of an unpromising title—"To an Insect". But that particular insect, + seemingly the creature of a day, proved to be immortal, for it was the + katydid, whose voice is perennial: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Thou sayest an undisputed thing + In such a solemn way." +</pre> + <p> + In the contributions of the young graduate the high spirits of a + frolicsome fancy effervesce and sparkle. But their quality of a new + literary tone and spirit is very evident. The ease and fun of these bright + prolusions, without impudence or coarseness, the poetic touch and + refinement, were as unmistakable as the brisk pungency of the gibe. The + stately and scholarly Boston of Channing, Dana, Everett, and Ticknor might + indeed have looked askance at the literary claims of such lines as these + "Thoughts in Dejection" of a poet wondering if the path to Parnassus lay + over Charlestown or Chelsea bridge: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "What is a poet's fame? + Sad hints about his reason, + And sadder praise from gazetteers, + To be returned in season. + + "For him the future holds + No civic wreath above him; + Nor slated roof nor varnished chair, + Nor wife nor child to love him. + + "Maid of the village inn, + Who workest woe on satin, + The grass in black, the graves in green, + The epitaph in Latin, + + "Trust not to them who say + In stanzas they adore thee; + Oh, rather sleep in church-yard clay, + With maudlin cherubs o'er thee!" +</pre> + <p> + The lines to the katydid, with "L'Inconnue"— + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Is thy name Mary, maiden fair?"— +</pre> + <p> + published in the magazine at about the same time, disclose Holmes's + natural melody and his fine instinct for literary form. But his lyrical + fervor finds its most jubilant expression at this time in "Old Ironsides", + written at the turning-point in the poet's life, when he had renounced the + study of the law, and was deciding upon medicine as his profession. The + proposal to destroy the frigate Constitution, fondly and familiarly known + as "Old Ironsides", kindled a patriotic frenzy in the sensitive Boston + boy, which burst forth into the noble lyric, + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!" +</pre> + <p> + There had been no American poetry with a truer lilt of song than these + early verses, and there has been none since. Two years later, in 1833, + Holmes went to complete his medical studies in Paris, and the lines to a + grisette— + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Ah, Clemence, when I saw thee last + Trip down the Rue de Seine!"— +</pre> + <p> + published upon his return in his first volume of verse, are a charming + illustration of his lyrical genius. His limpid line never flowed more + clearly than in this poem. It has the pensive tone of all his best poems + of the kind, but it is the half-happy sadness of youth. + </p> + <p> + All these early verses have an assured literary form. The scope and strain + were new, but their most significant quality was not melody nor pensive + grace, but humor. This was ingrained and genuine. Sometimes it was + rollicking, as in "The Height of the Ridiculous" and "The September Gale". + Sometimes it was drolly meditative, as in "Evening, by a Tailor". + Sometimes it was a tearful smile of the deepest feeling, as in the most + charming and perfect of these poems, "The Last Leaf", in which delicate + and searching pathos is exquisitely fused with tender gayety. The haunting + music and meaning of the lines, + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "The mossy marbles rest + On the lips that he has pressed + In their bloom, + And the names he loved to hear + Have been carved for many a year + On the tomb", +</pre> + <p> + lingered always in the memory of Lincoln, whose simple sincerity and + native melancholy would instinctively have rejected any false note. It is + in such melody as that of the "Last Leaf" that we feel how truly the grim + old Puritan strength has become sweetness. + </p> + <p> + To this poetic grace and humor and music, which at that time were + unrivalled, although the early notes of a tuneful choir of awakening + songsters were already heard, the young Holmes added the brisk and crisp + and sparkling charm of his prose. From the beginning his coursers were + paired, and with equal pace they have constantly held the road. In the <i>New + England Magazine</i> for November in the same year, 1831, a short paper + was published called the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table". The tone of + placid dogmatism and infallible finality with which the bulls of the + domestic pope are delivered is delightfully familiar. This earliest one + has perhaps more of the cardinal's preliminary scarlet than of the mature + papal white, but in its first note the voice of the Autocrat is + unmistakable: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Somebody was rigmarolling the other day about the artificial + distinctions of society. + 'Madam,' said I, 'society is the same in all large places. I divide + it thus: + 1. People of cultivation who live in large houses. + 2. People of cultivation who live in small houses. + 3. People without cultivation who live in large houses. + 4. People without cultivation who live in small houses. + 5. Scrubs.' + An individual at the upper end of the table turned pale and left the + room as I finished with the monosyllable." +</pre> + <p> + "'Tis sixty years since", but that drop is of the same characteristic + transparency and sparkle as in the latest Tea-Cup. + </p> + <p> + The time in which the <i>New England Magazine</i> was published, and these + firstlings of Holmes's muse appeared, was one of prophetic literary stir + in New England. There were other signs than those in letters of the + breaking-up of the long Puritan winter. A more striking and extreme + reaction from the New England tradition could not well be imagined than + that which was offered by Nathaniel Parker Willis, of whom Holmes himself + says "that he was at the time something between a remembrance of Count + D'Orsay and an anticipation of Oscar Wilde". Willis was a kindly + saunterer, the first Boston dandy, who began his literary career with + grotesque propriety as a sentimentalizer of Bible stories, a performance + which Lowell gayly called inspiration and water. In what now seems a + languid, Byronic way, he figured as a Yankee Pelham or Vivian Grey. Yet in + his prose and verse there was a tacit protest against the old order, and + that it was felt is shown by the bitterness of ridicule and taunt and + insult with which, both publicly and privately, this most amiable youth + was attacked, who, at that time, had never said an ill-natured word of + anybody, and who was always most generous in his treatment of his fellow + authors. + </p> + <p> + The epoch of Willis and the <i>New England Magazine</i> is very notable in + the history of American literature. The traditions of that literature were + grave and even sombre. Irving, indeed, in his Knickerbocker and Rip Van + Winkle and Ichabod Crane, and in the general gayety of his literary touch, + had emancipated it from strict allegiance to the solemnity of its + precedents, and had lighted it with a smile. He supplied a quality of + grace and cheerfulness which it had lacked, and without unduly magnifying + his charming genius, it had a natural, fresh, and smiling spirit, which, + amid the funereal, theologic gloom, suggests the sweetness and brightness + of morning. In its effect it is a breath of Chaucer. When Knickerbocker + was published, Joel Barlow's "Hasty-Pudding" was the chief achievement of + American literary humor. Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner were not yet + "the wits of Hartford". Those who bore that name held it by brevet. + Indeed, the humor of our early literature is pathetic. In no State was the + ecclesiastical dominance more absolute than in Connecticut, and nothing + shows more truly how absolute and grim it was than the fact that the + performances of the "wits" in that State were regarded—gravely, it + must have been—as humor. + </p> + <p> + For a long time there was no vital response in New England to the chord + touched by Irving. Yet Boston was then unquestionably the chief seat of + American letters. Dennie had established his <i>Portfolio</i> in + Philadelphia in 1801, but in 1805 the <i>Monthly Anthology</i>, which was + subsequently reproduced in the <i>North American Review</i>, appeared in + Boston, and was the organ or illustration of the most important literary + and intellectual life of the country at that time. The opening of the + century saw the revolt against the supremacy of the old Puritan Church of + New England—a revolt within its own pale. This clerical protest + against the austere dogmas of Calvinism in its ancient seat was coincident + with the overthrow in the national government of Federalism and the + political triumph of Jefferson and his party. Simultaneously also with the + religious and political disturbance was felt the new intellectual and + literary impulse of which the <i>Anthology</i> was the organ. But the + religious and literary movements were not in sympathy with the political + revolution, although they were all indications of emancipation from the + dominance of old traditions, the mental restlessness of a people coming + gradually to national consciousness. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Henry Adams, in remarking upon this situation in his history of + Madison's administration, points out that leaders of the religious protest + which is known as the Unitarian Secession in New England were also leaders + in the intellectual and literary awakening of the time, but had no + sympathy with Jefferson or admiration of France. Bryant's father was a + Federalist; the club that conducted the <i>Anthology</i> and the <i>North + American Review</i> was composed of Federalists; and the youth whose + "Thanatopsis" is the chief distinction of the beginning of that <i>Review</i>, + and the morning star of American poetry, was, as a boy of thirteen, the + author of the "Embargo", a performance in which the valiant Jack gave the + giant Jefferson no quarter. The religious secession took its definite form + in Dr. Channing's sermon at the ordination of Jared Sparks in Baltimore in + 1819, which powerfully arraigned the dominant theology of the time. This + was the year in which Irving's <i>Sketch Book</i> was published. Bryant's + first volume followed a year or two later, and our distinctive literary + epoch opened. + </p> + <p> + Ten years afterwards, when Bryant had left New England, Dr. Channing was + its most dignified and characteristic name in literature. But he was + distinctively a preacher, and his serene and sweet genius never unbent + into a frolicsome mood. As early as 1820 a volume of Robert Burns's poems + fell into Whittier's hands like a spark into tinder, and the flame that + has so long illuminated and cheered began to blaze. It was, however, a + softened ray, not yet the tongue of lyric fire which it afterwards became. + But none of the poets smiled as they sang. The Muse of New England was + staid and stately—or was she, after all, not a true daughter of + Jove, but a tenth Muse, an Anne Bradstreet? The rollicking laugh of + Knickerbocker was a solitary sound in the American air until the blithe + carol of Holmes returned a kindred echo. + </p> + <p> + Willis was the sign of the breaking spell. But his light touch could not + avail. The Puritan spell could be broken only by Puritan force, and it is + the lineal descendants of Puritanism, often the sons of clergymen—Emerson + and Holmes and Longfellow and Hawthorne and Whittier—who emancipated + our literature from its Puritan subjection. In 1829 Willis, as editor of + <i>Peter Parley's Token</i> and the <i>American Monthly Magazine</i>, was + aided by Longfellow and Hawthorne and Motley and Hildreth and Mrs. Child + and Mrs. Sigourney, and the elder Bishop Doane, Park Benjamin and George + B. Cheever, Albert Pike and Rufus Dawes, as contributors. Willis himself + was a copious writer, and in the <i>American Monthly</i> first appeared + the titles of "Inkling of Adventure" and "Pencillings by the Way", which + he afterwards reproduced for some of his best literary work. The <i>Monthly</i> + failed, and in 1831, the year that the <i>New England Magazine</i> began, + it was merged in the New York <i>Mirror</i>, of which Willis became + associate editor, leaving his native city forever, and never forgiving its + injustice towards him. In the heyday of his happy social career in England + he wrote to his mother, "The mines of Golconda would not tempt me to + return and live in Boston." + </p> + <p> + This was the literary situation when Holmes was preluding in the magazine. + The acknowledged poets in Boston were Dana, Sprague, and Pierpont. Are + these names familiar to the readers of this essay? How much of their + poetry can those readers repeat? No one knows more surely than he who + writes of a living author how hard it is to forecast fame, and how + dangerous is prophecy. When Edward Everett saluted Percival's early volume + as the harbinger of literary triumphs, and Emerson greeted Walt Whitman at + "the opening of a great career", they generalized a strong personal + impression. They identified their own preference with the public taste. On + the other hand, Hawthorne says truly of himself that he was long the most + obscure man of letters in America. Yet he had already published the <i>Twice-told + Tales</i> and the <i>Mosses from an Old Manse</i>, the two series of + stories in which the character and quality of his genius are fully + disclosed. But although Longfellow hailed the publication of the first + collection as the rising of a new star, the tone of his comment is not + that of the discoverer of a planet shining for all, but of an individual + poetic pleasure. The prescience of fame is very infrequent. The village + gazes in wonder at the return of the famous man who was born on the farm + under the hill, and whose latent greatness nobody suspected; while the + youth who printed verses in the corner of the county paper, and drew the + fascinated glances of palpitating maidens in the meetinghouse, and seemed + to the farmers to have associated himself at once with Shakespeare and + Tupper and the great literary or "littery folks", never emerges from the + poet's department in the paper in which unconsciously and forever he has + been cornered. It would be a grim Puritan jest if that department had been + named from the corner of the famous dead in Westminster Abbey. + </p> + <p> + If the Boston of sixty years ago had ventured to prophesy for itself + literary renown, it is easy to see upon what reputations of the time it + would have rested its claims. But if the most familiar names of that time + are familiar no longer, if Kettell and poems from the <i>United States + Gazette</i> seem to be cemeteries of departed reputations, the fate of the + singers need not be deplored as if Fame had forgotten them. Fame never + knew them. Fame does not retain the name of every minstrel who passes + singing. But to say that Fame does not know them is not dispraise. They + sang for the hearers of their day, as the players played. Is it nothing to + please those who listen, because those who are out of hearing do not stop + and applaud? If we recall the names most eminent in our literature, + whether they were destined for a longer or shorter date, we shall see that + they are undeniably illustrations of the survival of the fittest. Turning + over the noble volumes of Stedman and Miss Hutchinson, in which, as on a + vast plain, the whole line of American literature is drawn up for + inspection and review, and marches past like the ghostly midnight columns + of Napoleon's grand army, we cannot quarrel with the verdict of time, nor + feel that injustice has been done to Thamis or to Cawdor. There are + singers of a day, but not less singers because they are of a day. The + insect that flashes in the sunbeam does not survive like the elephant. The + splendor of the most gorgeous butterfly does not endure with the faint hue + of the hills that gives Athens its Pindaric name. And there are singers + who do not sing. What says Holmes, with eager sympathy and pity, in one of + his most familiar and most beautiful lyrics?— + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "We count the broken lyres that rest + Where the sweet waiting singers slumber, + But o'er their silent sister's breast + The wild flowers who will stoop to number? + A few can touch the magic string, + And noisy fame is proud to win them; + Alas, for those that never sing, + And die with all their music in them!" +</pre> + <p> + But as he says also that the capacities of listeners at lectures differ + widely, some holding a gallon, others a quart, and others only a pint or a + gill, so of the singers who are not voiceless, their voices differ in + volume. Some are organs that fill the air with glorious and continuous + music; some are trumpets blowing a ringing peal, then sinking into + silence; some are harps of melancholy but faint vibration; still others + are flutes and pipes, whose sweet or shrill note has a dying fall. Some + are heard as the wind or sea is heard; some like the rustle of leaves; + some like the chirp of birds. Some are heard long and far away; others + across the field; others hardly across the street. Fame is perhaps but the + term of a longer or shorter fight with oblivion; but it is the warrior who + "drinks delight of battle with his peers", and holds his own in the fray, + who finally commands the eye and the heart. There were poets pleasantly + singing to our grandfathers whose songs we do not hear, but the unheeded + voice of the youngest songster of that time is a voice we heed to-day. + Holmes wrote but two "Autocrat" papers in the <i>New England Magazine</i>—one + in November, 1831, and the other in February, 1832. The year after the + publication of the second paper he went to Paris, where for three years he + studied medicine, not as a poet, but as a physician, and he returned in + 1836 an admirably trained and highly accomplished professional man. But + the Phi Beta Kappa poem of that year, like the tender lyric to Clemence + upon leaving Paris, shows not only that the poet was not dead, but that he + did not even sleep. The "Metrical Essay" was the serious announcement that + the poet was not lost in the man of science, an announcement which was + followed by the publication in the same year (1836) of his first volume of + poems. This was three years before the publication of Longfellow's first + volume of verses, <i>The Voices of the Night</i>. + </p> + <p> + Holmes's devotion to the two Muses of science and letters was uniform and + untiring, as it was also to the two literary forms of verse and prose. But + although a man of letters, like the other eminent men of letters in New + England, he had no trace of the Bohemian. Willis was the only noted + literary figure that ever mistook Boston for a seaport in Bohemia, and he + early discovered his error. The fraternity which has given to Boston its + literary primacy has been always distinguished not only for propriety of + life and respectability in its true sense of worthiness and respect, but + for the possession of the virtues of fidelity, industry, and good sense, + which have carried so far both the influence and the renown of New + England. Nowhere has the Bohemian tradition been more happily and + completely shattered than in the circle to which Holmes returned from his + European studies to take his place. American citizenship in its most + attractive aspect has been signally illustrated in that circle, and it is + not without reason that the government has so often selected from it our + chief American representatives in other countries. + </p> + <p> + Dr. Holmes, as he was now called, and has continued to be called, + practised his profession in Boston; but whether because of some lurking + popular doubt of a poet's probable skill as a physician, or from some lack + of taste on his part for the details of professional practice, like his + kinsman, Wendell Phillips, and innumerable other young beginners, he + sometimes awaited a professional call longer than was agreeable. But he + wrote medical papers, and was summoned to lecture to the medical school at + Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and later at Pittsfield in + Massachusetts, while his unfailing charm as an occasional poet gave him a + distinctive name. Holmes's felicity in occasional poems is extraordinary. + The "Metrical Essay" was the first and chief of the long series of such + verses, among which the songs of '29, the poems addressed year after year + to his college classmates of that year, have a delightful and endless + grace, tenderness, wit, and point. Pegasus draws well in harness the + triumphant chariot of '29, in which the lucky classmates of the poet move + to a unique and happy renown. + </p> + <p> + As a reader, Holmes was the permanent challenge of Mrs. Browning's sighing + regret that poets never read their own verses to their worth. Park + Benjamin, who heard the Phi Beta Kappa poem, said of its delivery: "A + brilliant, airy, and <i>spirituelle</i> manner varied with striking + flexibility to the changing sentiment of the poem, now deeply impassioned, + now gayly joyous and nonchalant, and anon springing up into almost an + actual flight of rhapsody, rendered the delivery of this poem a rich, + nearly a dramatic entertainment." This was no less true in later years + when he read some of his poems in New York at Bishop Potter's, then rector + of Grace Church, or of the reading of the poem at the doctors' dinner + given to him by the physicians of New York a little later. + </p> + <p> + Holmes's readings were like improvisations. The poems were expressed and + interpreted by the whole personality of the poet. The most subtle touch of + thought, the melody of fond regret, the brilliant passage of description, + the culmination of latent fun exploding in a keen and resistless jest, all + these were vivified in the sensitive play of manner and modulation of tone + of the reader, so that a poem by Holmes at the Harvard Commencement dinner + was one of the anticipated delights which never failed. This temperament + implied an oratorical power which naturally drew the poet into the lecture + lyceum when it was in its prime, in the decade between 1850 and 1860. + During that time the popular lecture was a distinct and effective public + force, and not the least of its services was its part in instructing and + training the public conscience for the great contest of the Civil War. + </p> + <p> + The year 1831, in which Holmes's literary activity began, was also the + year on whose first day the first number of Garrison's <i>Liberator</i> + appeared, and the final period of the slavery controversy opened. But + neither this storm of agitation nor the transcendental mist that a few + years later overhung intellectual New England greatly affected the poet. + </p> + <p> + In the first number of the "Autocrat" there is a passage upon puns, which, + crackling with fun, shows his sensitive scepticism. The "Autocrat" says: + "In a case lately decided before Miller, J., Doe presented Roe a + subscription paper, and urged the claims of suffering humanity. Roe + replied by asking when charity was like a top. It was in evidence that Doe + preserved a dignified silence. Roe then said, 'When it begins to hum.' + There are temperaments of a refined suspiciousness to which, when the plea + of reform is urged, the claims of suffering humanity at once begin to hum. + The very word reform irritates a peculiar kind of sensibility, as a red + flag stirs the fury of a bull. A noted party leader said, with + inexpressible scorn, 'When Dr. Johnson defined the word patriotism as the + last refuge of a scoundrel, he had not learned the infinite possibilities + of the word refa-a-r-m.'" + </p> + <p> + The acridity of this jest is wholly unknown to the "Autocrat", who has + moved always with reform, if not always with reformers, and whose protest + against bigotry is as searching as it is sparkling. Not only has his ear + been quick to detect the hum of Mr. Honeythunder's loud appeal, but his + eye to catch the often ludicrous aspect of honest whimsey. During all the + early years of his literary career he flew his flashing darts at all the + "isms", and he fell under the doubt and censure of those earnest children + of the time whom the gay and clever sceptics derided as apostles of the + newness. When Holmes appeared upon the lecture platform it was to + discourse of literature or science, or to treat some text of social + manners or morals with a crisp Poor Richard sense and mother wit, and a + brilliancy of illustration, epigram, and humor that fascinated the most + obdurate "come-outer". Holmes's lectures on the English poets at the + Lowell Institute were among the most noted of that distinguished platform, + and everywhere the poet was one of the most popular of "attractions". + There were not wanting those who maintained that his use of the platform + was the correct one, and that the orators who, often by happy but incisive + indirection, fought the good fight of the hour abused their opportunity. + </p> + <p> + It was while Holmes was still a professor, but still also touching the + lyre and writing scientific essays and charming the great audiences of the + lecture lyceum, that in the first number of the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, + in November, 1857, the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" remarked, "I was + just going to say, when I was interrupted," and resumed the colloquies of + the <i>New England Magazine</i>. He had been interrupted twenty-two years + before. But as he began again it was plain that it was the same voice, yet + fuller, stronger, richer, and that we were listening to one of the wisest + of wits and sharpest of observers. Emerson warns us that superlatives are + to be avoided. But it will not be denied that the "Autocrat" belongs in + the highest rank of modern magazine or periodical literature, of which the + essays of "Elia" are the type. The form of the "Autocrat"—a + semi-dramatic, conversational, descriptive monologue—is not peculiar + to Holmes's work, but the treatment of it is absolutely original. The + manner is as individual and unmistakable as that of Elia himself. It would + be everywhere recognized as the Autocrat's. During the intermission of the + papers the more noted Macaulay flowers of literature, as the Autocrat + calls them, had bloomed; Carlyle's <i>Sartor Resartus</i> and reviews, + Christopher North's <i>Noctes</i> (now fallen into ancient night), + Thackeray's <i>Roundabout Papers</i>, Lowell's <i>Hosea Biglow</i>—a + whole library of magazine and periodical literature of the first + importance had appeared. But the Autocrat began again, after a quarter of + a century, musical with so rich a chorus, and his voice was clear, + penetrating, masterful, and distinctively his own. + </p> + <p> + The cadet branch of English literature—the familiar colloquial + periodical essay, a comment upon men and manners and life—is a + delightful branch of the family, and traces itself back to Dick Steele and + Addison. Hazlitt, who belonged to it, said that he preferred the <i>Tatler</i> + to the <i>Spectator</i>; and Thackeray, who consorted with it proudly, + although he was of the elder branch, restored Sir Richard, whose habits + had cost him a great deal of his reputation, to general favor. The + familiar essay is susceptible, as the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries + show, of great variety and charm of treatment. What would the Christian + Hero, writing to his Prue that he would be with her in a pint of wine's + time, have said to "Blakesmoor" and "Oxford in the Vacation"? Yet Lamb and + Steele are both consummate masters of the essay, and Holmes, in the + "Autocrat", has given it a new charm. The little realm of the Autocrat, + his lieges of the table, the persons of the drama, are at once as + definitely outlined as Sir Roger's club. Unconsciously and resistlessly we + are drawn within the circle; we are admitted <i>ad eundem</i>, and become + the targets of the wit, the irony, the shrewd and sharp epigram, the airy + whim, the sparkling fancy, the curious and recondite thought, the happy + allusion, the felicitous analogy, of the sovereign master of the feast. + </p> + <p> + The index of the <i>Autocrat</i> is in itself a unique work. It reveals + the whimsical discursiveness of the book; the restless hovering of that + brilliant talk over every topic, fancy, feeling, fact; a humming-bird + sipping the one honeyed drop from every flower; or a huma, to use its own + droll and capital symbol of the lyceum lecturer, the bird that never + lights. There are few books that leave more distinctly the impression of a + mind teeming with riches of many kinds. It is, in the Yankee phrase, + thoroughly wideawake. There is no languor, and it permits none in the + reader, who must move along the page warily, lest in the gay profusion of + the grove, unwittingly defrauding himself of delight, he miss some flower + half hidden, some gem chance-dropped, some darting bird. Howells's <i>Letters</i> + was called a chamber-window book, a book supplying in solitude the charm + of the best society. We could all name a few such in our own literature. + Would any of them, or many, take precedence of the <i>Autocrat of the + Breakfast Table?</i> + </p> + <p> + It is in this book that the value of the scientific training to the man of + letters is illustrated, not only in furnishing noble and strong analogies, + but in precision of observation and accuracy of statement. In Holmes's + style, the definiteness of form and the clearness of expression are graces + and virtues which are due to his exact scientific study, as well as to the + daylight quality of his mind. + </p> + <p> + The delicate apprehension of the finer and tenderer feelings which is + disclosed in the little passages of narrative in the record of the + Autocrat and of his legitimate brothers, the Professor and the Poet, at + the Breakfast Table, gives a grace and a sweetness to the work which + naturally flow into the music of the poems with which the diary of a + conversation often ends. These traits in the Autocrat suggested that he + would yet tell a distinct story, which indeed came while the trilogy of + the Breakfast Table was yet proceeding. <i>Elsie</i> <i>Venner</i> and the + <i>Guardian Angel</i>, the two novels of Holmes's, are full of the same + briskness and acuteness of observation, the same effusiveness of humor and + characteristic Americanism, as the <i>Autocrat</i>. Certain aspects of New + England life and character are treated in these stories with incomparable + vivacity and insight. Holmes's picture is of a later New England than + Hawthorne's, but it is its lineal descendant. It is another facet of the + Puritan diamond which flashes with different light in the genius of + Hawthorne, Emerson, Lowell, Whittier, Longfellow, Holmes, and Judd in <i>Margaret</i>. + For, with all his lyrical instinct and rollicking humor, Holmes is + essentially a New-Englander, and one of the most faithful and shrewd + interpreters of New England. + </p> + <p> + The colloquial habit of the Autocrat is not lost in the stories, and it is + so marked generally in Holmes's writings as to be called distinctive. It + is a fascinating gift, when it is so restrained by taste and instinctive + refinement as not to become what is known as bumptiousness. Thackeray, + even in his novels, is apt to drop into this vein, to talk about the + persons of his drama with his reader, instead of leaving them to play out + their part alone. This trait offends some of Thackeray's audience, to whom + it seems like the manager's hand thrust into the box to help out the play + of the puppets. They resent not "the damnable faces" of the actors, but + the damnable sermonizing of the author, and exhort him to permit the play + to begin. Thackeray frankly acknowledged his tendency to preach, as he + called it. But it was part of the man. Without the private personal touch + of the essayist in his stories they would not be his. This colloquial + habit is very winning when governed by a natural delicacy and an exquisite + literary instinct. It is the quality of all the authors who are distinctly + beloved as persons by their readers, and it is to this class that Holmes + especially belongs. + </p> + <p> + It is not a quality which is easily analyzed, but it blends a power of + sympathetic observation and appreciation both of the thing observed and + the reader to whom the observation is addressed. The Autocrat, as he + converses, brightens with his own clear thought, with the happy quip, the + airy fancy. He is sure of your delight, not only in the thought, but in + its deft expression. He in turn is delighted with your delight. He warms + to the responsive mind and heart, and feels the mutual joy. The personal + relation is established, and the Autocrat's audience become his friends, + to whom he describes with infinite glee the effect of his remarks upon his + lieges at table. No other author takes the reader into his personal + confidence more closely than Holmes, and none reveals his personal + temperament more clearly. This confidential relation becomes even more + simple and intimate as time chastens the eagerness of youth and matures + the keen brilliancy of the blossom into the softer bloom of the fruit. The + colloquies of the Autocrat under the characteristic title of "Over the + Tea-Cups" are full of the same shrewd sense and wise comment and tender + thought. The kindly mentor takes the reader by the button or lays his hand + upon his shoulder, not with the rude familiarity of the bully or the boor, + but with the courtesy of Montaigne, the friendliness of John Aubrey, or + the wise cheer of Selden. The reader glows with the pleasure of an + individual greeting, and a wide diocese of those whom the Autocrat never + saw plume themselves proudly upon his personal acquaintance. + </p> + <p> + In this discursive talk about one of the American authors who have + vindicated the position of American letters in the literature of the + language we have not mentioned all his works. It is the quality rather + than the quantity with which we are concerned, the upright, honorable, + pure quality of the poet, the wit, the scholar, for whom the most devoted + reader is called to make no plea, no apology. The versatility of his power + is obvious, but scarcely less so the uniformity of his work. + </p> + <p> + It is a power which was early mature. For many a year he has dwelt upon a + high table-land where the air is equable and inspiring, yet, as we have + hinted, ever softer and sweeter. The lyric of today glows with the same + ardor as the fervent apostrophe to "Old Ironsides" or the tripping + salutation to the remembered and regretted Clemence; it is only less + eager. The young Autocrat who remarked that the word "scrub" dismissed + from table a fellow-boarder who turned pale, now with the same smiling + acuteness remarks the imprudent politeness which tries to assure him that + it is no matter if he is a little older. Did anybody say so? The easy + agility with which he cleared "the seven-barred gate" has carried him over + the eight bars, and we are all in hot pursuit. For just sixty years since + his first gay and tender note was heard, Holmes has been fulfilling the + promise of his matin song. He has become a patriarch of our literature, + and all his countrymen are his lovers. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + WASHINGTON IRVING + </h2> + <p> + Forty years ago, upon a pleasant afternoon, you might have seen tripping + with an elastic step along Broadway, in New York, a figure which even then + would have been called quaint. It was a man of about sixty-six or + sixty-seven years old, of a rather solid frame, wearing a Talma, as a + short cloak of the time was called, that hung from the shoulders, and low + shoes, neatly tied, which were observable at a time when boots were + generally worn. The head was slightly declined to one side, the face was + smoothly shaven, and the eyes twinkled with kindly humor and shrewdness. + There was a chirping, cheery, old-school air in the whole appearance, an + undeniable Dutch aspect, which, in the streets of New Amsterdam, + irresistibly recalled Diedrich Knickerbocker. The observer might easily + have supposed that he saw some later descendant of the renowned Wouter Van + Twiller refined into a nineteenth-century gentleman. The occasional start + of interest as the figure was recognized by some one in the passing + throng, the respectful bow, and the sudden turn to scan him more closely, + indicated that he was not unknown. Indeed, he was the American of his time + universally known. This modest and kindly man was the creator of Diedrich + Knickerbocker and Rip Van Winkle. He was the father of our literature, and + at that time its patriarch. He was Washington Irving. + </p> + <p> + At the same time you might have seen another man, of slight figure and + rustic aspect, with an air of seriousness, if not severity, moving with + the crowd, but with something remote and reserved in his air, as if in the + city he bore with him another atmosphere, and were still secluded among + solitary hills. In the bright and busy street of the city which was always + cosmopolitan, and in which there lingers a tradition, constantly renewed, + of good-natured banter of the losel Yankee, this figure passed like the + grave genius of New England. By a little play of fancy the first figure + might have seemed the smiling spirit of genial cheerfulness and humor, of + kindly sympathy even with the foibles and weaknesses of poor human nature; + and the other the mentor of its earnest endeavor and serious duty. For he + was the first of our poets, whose "Thanatopsis" was the hymn of his + meditations among the primeval forests of his native hills, and who, in + his last years, sat at the door of his early home and looked across the + valley of the Westfield to the little town of Plainfield upon the wooded + heights beyond, whose chief distinction is that there he wrote the + "Waterfowl"; for this graver figure was the poet Bryant. + </p> + <p> + If in the same walk you had passed those two figures, you would have seen + not only the first of our famous prose writers and the first of our + acknowledged poets, but also the representatives of the two fundamental + and distinctive qualities of our American literature, as of all literature—its + grave, reflective, earnest character, and its sportive, genial, and + humorous genius. + </p> + <p> + At the time of which I speak another figure also was familiar in Broadway, + but less generally recognized as it passed than either of the others, + although, perhaps, even more widely known to fame than they. This was + Cooper, who gave us so many of the heroes of our childhood's delight, but + who at this time was himself the hero of innumerable lawsuits, undertaken + to chastise the press for what he believed to be unjust and libelous + comments upon himself. Now that the uproar of that litigation is silent, + and its occasion forgotten, it seems comical that a man for whom fame had + already rendered a favorable judgment should be busily seeking the opinion + of local courts upon transitory newspaper opinions of him-self and his + writings. It is as if Dickens, when the whole English-reading world—judges + on the bench and bishops in their studies, cobblers in their stalls and + grooms in the stables—were all laughing over Pickwick, should have + sued the <i>Eatanswill Gazette</i> for calling him a clown. Thackeray + pronounces Cooper's Long Tom Coffin one of the prizemen of fiction. That + is a final judgment by the chief-justice. But who knows what was the + verdict in Cooper's lawsuits to vindicate himself, and who cares? When + Cooper died there was a great commemorative meeting in New York. Daniel + Webster presided, and praised the storyteller; Bryant read a discourse + upon him, while Irving sat by his side. One of the triumvirate of our + early literature was gone, and two remained to foresee their own future in + the honors paid to him. Indeed, it was to see them, quite as much as to + hear of their dead comrade, that the multitude assembled that evening; and + the one who was seen with the most interest was Irving, the one in whom + the city of New York naturally feels a peculiar right and pride, as the + most renowned of her children. + </p> + <p> + If I say that he made personally the same impression that his works make, + you can easily see the man. As you read the story of his life you feel its + constant gayety and cheerfulness. It was the life of a literary man and a + man of society—a life without events, or only the events of all our + lives, except that it lacks the great event of marriage. In place of it + there is a tender and pathetic romance. Irving lived to be seventy-six + years old. At twenty-six he was engaged to a beautiful girl, who died. He + never married; but after his death, in a little box of which he always + kept the key, was found the miniature of a lovely girl, and with it a + braid of fair hair, and a slip of paper on which was written the name + Matilda Hoffman, with some pages upon which the writing was long since + faded. That fair face Irving kept all his life in a more secret and sacred + shrine. It looks out, now and then, with unchanged loveliness from some + pensive passage, which he seems to write with wistful melancholy of + remembrance. That fond and immortal presence constantly renewed the gentle + humanity, the tenderness of feeling, the sweet healthfulness and generous + sympathy which never failed in his life and writings. + </p> + <p> + He was born in the city of New York in 1783, the year in which the + Revolution ended in the acknowledgment of American independence. The + British army marched out of the city, and the American army, with + Washington at the head, marched in. "The patriot's work is ended just as + my boy is born," said the patriotic mother, "and the boy shall be named + Washington". Six years later, when Washington returned to New York to be + inaugurated President, he was one day going into a shop when the boy's + Scotch nurse democratically stopped the new republican chief magistrate + and said to him, "Please your honor, here's a bairn was named for you". + The great man turned and looked kindly on his little namesake, laid his + hand upon his head, and blessed his future biographer. + </p> + <p> + The name of no other American has been so curiously confused with + Washington's as that of Irving. Many a young fellow puzzles over the + connection which the name seems vaguely to imply, and in other lands the + identity of the men is confounded. When Irving first went to Europe, a + very young man, well-educated, courteous, with great geniality of manner + and charm of conversation, he was received by Prince Torlonia, the banker, + in Rome, with unusual and flattering civility. His travelling companion, + who had been treated by the prince with entire indifference, was perplexed + at the warmth of Irving's welcome. Irving laughingly said that it only + proved the prince's remarkable discrimination. But the young travellers + laughed still more when the prince unconsciously revealed the secret of + his attentions by taking his guest aside, and asking him how nearly he was + related to General Washington. + </p> + <p> + Many years afterwards, when he had become famous, an English lady and her + daughter paused in an Italian gallery before a bust of Washington. "And + who was Washington, mamma?" asked the daughter. "Why, my dear, I am + surprised at your ignorance," answered the mother, "he was the author of + the <i>Sketch Book</i>." Long ago in Berlin I was talking with some + American friends one evening at a café, and observed a German intently + listening to our conversation as if trying his ability to understand the + language. Presently he said to me, politely, "You are English, no?" But + when I replied "No, we are Americans"—"Americans!" he exclaimed + enthusiastically, grasping my hand and shaking it warmly, "Americans, ach! + we all know your great General Washington Irving." + </p> + <p> + Irving's father was a Presbyterian deacon, in whose heart the sterner + traditions of the Covenanters lingered. He tried hard to teach his son to + contemn amusement, and to impale his youth upon the five points of + Calvinism, rather than to play ball. But it was John Knox trying to curb + the tricksy Ariel. Perhaps from some bright maternal ancestor the boy had + derived his sweet gayety of nature which nothing could repress. His airy + spirits bubbled like a sunny fountain in that somewhat arid household. He + read at ten a translation of the <i>Orlando Furioso</i>, and his father's + yard, doubtless trim and well kept as beseemed a deacon's yard, became at + once a field of chivalry. Candles were forbidden him in his chamber, but + when he made the acquaintance of <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> and <i>Sindbad the + Sailor</i>, he secreted lights to illuminate his innocent revels with + those immortal playmates. + </p> + <p> + The amusements which were permitted were of too depressing a character to + be tolerated by the healthy boy, who, like the duck taking to the water + from under the wing of the astonished hen, sometimes escaped from the + serious house at night by dropping from a window, and with a delight that + must have torn his father's heart with anguish had he known it, tasted the + forbidden fruit of the theatre. It was a Presbyterian boy who tasted it + then; but in the same city many years afterwards it was a Quaker boy whom + I knew who was also enamoured of the play. "John," said his grieved + father, "is this dreadful thing true that I hear of thee? Has thee ever + been to see the play-actress Frances Kemble?" "Yes, father," answered the + heroic John. "I hope thee has not been more than once, John," said the + afflicted father. "Yes, father," replied John, resolved to make a clean + breast of his sins, "more than thirty times." It is useless to try to + prevent blue-birds from flying in the spring. The blithe creatures made to + soar and sing will not be restrained. The same kind Providence that made + Calvin made Shakespeare. The sun is higher than the clouds, and smiles are + as heaven-born as tears. In Emerson's poem the squirrel says to the + mountain: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "You're not so small as I, + And not half so spry; + +</pre> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "If I cannot carry forests on my back + Neither can you crack a nut." +</pre> + <p> + It was in vain to try to thwart the young Irving's genius. Yet the boy who + a little later was to light with rosy cheer the air which, as Wendell + Phillips said, was still black with sermons; who was to give to our + literature its first distinctly humorous strain, and innocently to amuse + the world, was somehow or other, as he said, "taught to feel that + everything pleasant was wicked". + </p> + <p> + If that were so, what a sinner Washington Irving was! If to make life + easier by making it pleasanter, if to outwit trouble by gay banter, if + with satire that smiles but never stings to correct foibles and to quicken + good impulses; if to deepen and strengthen human sympathy, is not to be a + human benefactor, what makes one? When Dr. Johnson said of Garrick that + his death eclipsed the gayety of nations, he did not mean merely that the + player would no longer make men laugh, but that he could no longer make + them better. "If, however," said Irving—and Willis selected the + words for the motto of his second volume of verse published in 1827—"I + can by a lucky chance, in these days of evil, rub out one wrinkle from the + brow of care, or beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sadness; if I + can, now and then, penetrate the gathering film of misanthropy, prompt a + benevolent view of human nature, and make my reader more in good-humor + with his fellow-beings and himself, surely, surely I shall not then have + written entirely in vain." + </p> + <p> + That cannot be said to have been the spirit of any American author before + Irving. Our colonial literature was mainly political and theological. You + have only to return to the early New England days in the stories of + Hawthorne, the magician who restores with a shuddering spell that old, + sombre life, to understand the character of its reading. The books that + were not treatises upon special topics all seemed to say with one of the + grim bards of Calvinism: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "My thoughts on awful subjects roll, + Damnation and the dead." +</pre> + <p> + Literature, in its proper sense, there was none. There was no imaginative + creation, no play of fancy and humor, no subtle charm of the ideal life, + no grace and delight of expression, which are essential to literature. The + perpetual twilight and chill of the New England Puritan world were an + arctic winter in which no flower of poesy bloomed and no bird sang. One of + the French players who came to this country with Rachel says, in his + journal, with a startled air, as if he had remarked in Americans a + universal touch of lunacy, that he was invited to take a pleasure-drive to + Greenwood Cemetery. Evidently he was not familiar with Froissart's epigram + nor with the annals of the Puritan fathers, or he would have known that + their favorite pleasure-ground was the graveyard. Judge Sewell's Journal, + the best picture of daily New England life in the seventeenth and + eighteenth centuries, is a portrait framed in black and hung with thick + crape. It is a register of funerals—a book which seems to require a + suit of sables for its proper reading. + </p> + <p> + The early Christians dwelt so often and so long in the catacombs that when + they emerged, accustomed to associate life with the tomb, they doubtless + regarded the whole world as a cemetery. The American Puritans inherited + the disposition from their early confessors, and so powerful was the + tendency that it laid its sombre spirit upon the earliest enduring poem in + our literature, and the fresh and smiling nature of the new world was + first depicted by our literary art as a tomb: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "The hills, + Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales + Stretching in pensive quietness between; + The venerable woods; rivers that move + In majesty; and the complaining brooks + That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, + Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste, + Are but the solemn decorations all + Of the great tomb of man." +</pre> + <p> + "Thanatopsis" is the swan-song of Puritanism. Indeed, when New England + Puritanism could sing, as for the first time it did in the verse of + Bryant, the great change was accomplished. Out of strength had come forth + sweetness. I am not decrying the Puritans. They were the stern builders of + the modern world, the unconscious heralds of wider liberty, and a kindlier + future for mankind. But + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "God works in a mysterious way + His wonders to perform," +</pre> + <p> + and never more mysteriously than when he chose as the pioneers of + religious liberty in the New World those who hung Quakers, and as the + founders of civil equality those who permitted only members of their own + Church to vote. + </p> + <p> + Irving was not a studious boy. He did not go to college. He read some law + at sixteen, but he read much more literature, and sauntered in the country + about New York with his gun and fishing-rod. He sailed up the Hudson, and + explored for the first time the realm that was presently to be his forever + by the right of eminent domain of the imagination. New York was a snug + little city in those days. At the beginning of the century it was all + below the present City Hall, and the young fellow, who was born a + cosmopolitan, greatly enjoyed the charms of the modest society in which + the Dutch and the English circles were still somewhat separated, and in + which such literary cultivation as there was was necessarily foreign. But + while he enjoyed he observed, and his literary instinct began to stir. + </p> + <p> + Under the name of "Jonathan Oldstyle", the young Irving printed in his + brother's newspaper essays in the style of the <i>Spectator</i>, + discussing topics of the town, and the modest theatre in John Street and + its chance actors, as if it had been Drury Lane with Garrick and Mrs. + Siddons. The little town kindly smiled upon the lively efforts of the + Presbyterian deacon's son; and its welcome of his small essays, the + provincial echo of the famous Queen Anne's men in London, is a touching + revelation of our scant and spare native literary talent. The essays are + forgotten now, but they were enough to bring Charles Brockden Brown to + find the young author, and to tempt him, but in vain, to write for <i>The + Literary Magazine and American Register</i>, which the novelist was just + beginning in Philadelphia, a pioneer of American literary magazines, which + Brown sustained for five years. + </p> + <p> + The youthful Addison of New Amsterdam was a delicate lad, and when he came + of age he sailed for France and the Mediterranean, and passed two years in + travelling. Napoleon Bonaparte was emperor, and at war with England, and + the young American, despite his passport, was everywhere believed to be an + Englishman. Travelling was hard work in those days of war, but the cheery + youth proved the truth of the proverb that a light heart and a whole pair + of breeches go round the world. At Messina, in Sicily, he saw Nelson's + fleet pass through the strait, looking for the French ships; and before + the year ended the famous battle of Trafalgar had been fought, and at + Greenwich in England Irving saw the body of the great sailor lying in + state, wrapped in his flag of victory. At Rome he made the acquaintance of + Washington Allston, and almost resolved to be a painter. In Paris he saw + Madame de Staël, who overwhelmed him with eager questions about his remote + and unknown country, and in London he was enchanted by Mrs. Siddons. Some + years afterwards, when the <i>Sketch Book</i> had made him famous, he was + presented to Mrs. Siddons, and the great actress said to him, in her + deepest voice and with her stateliest manner, "You've made me weep." The + modest young author was utterly abashed, and could say nothing. After the + publication of his <i>Bracebridge</i> Hall he was once more presented to + her, and again with gloomy grandeur she said to him, "You've made me weep + again." This time Irving received the solemn salute with more composure, + and doubtless retorted with a compliment magnificent enough even for the + sovereign Queen of Tragedy, who, as her niece Mrs. Fanny Kemble said of + her, never laid aside her great manner, and at the dinner-table brandished + her fork and stabbed the potatoes. + </p> + <p> + Irving returned from this tour with established health—a refined, + agreeable, exceedingly handsome and charming gentleman; with a confirmed + taste for society, and a delightful store of interesting recollection and + anecdote. With a group of cultivated and lively friends of his own age he + dined and supped and enjoyed the town, and a little anecdote which he was + fond of telling shows that the good old times were not unlike the good new + times: One morning, after a gay dinner, Irving met one of his + fellow-revellers, who told him that on the way home, after draining the + parting bumper, he had fallen through a grating in the sidewalk, which had + been carelessly left open, into the vault beneath. It was impossible to + climb out, and at first the solitude was rather dismal, he said; but + several of the other guests fell in, in the course of the evening, and, on + the whole, they had quite a pleasant time of it. + </p> + <p> + In the midst of this frolicking life, and growing out of it, Irving's real + literary career began. With his brother William, and his friend James K. + Paulding, who afterwards wrote the <i>Dutchman's Fireside</i>, and was one + of the recognized American authors of fifty years ago, he issued every + fortnight a periodical, which ran for twenty numbers, and stopped in the + midst of its success. It was modelled upon the <i>Spectator</i> and + Goldsmith's <i>Citizen of the World</i>, describing and criticising the + manners and morals of the town with extravagant humor and pungency, and a + rollicking independence which must have been both startling and + stimulating. + </p> + <p> + Perhaps, also, the town was secretly pleased to discover that it was + sufficiently important to be worthy of such bright raillery and humorous + reproof. <i>Salmagundi</i> was only a lively <i>jeu d'esprit</i>, and + Irving was never proud of it. "I know," said Paulding, writing to him in + later life, "you consider old Sal as a sort of saucy, flippant trollope, + belonging to nobody, and not worth fathering." But, nevertheless, Irving's + genius was trying its wings in it, and pluming itself for flight. <i>Salmagundi</i> + undoubtedly, to a later taste, is rather crude and cumbrous fun, but it is + interesting as the immediate forerunner of our earliest work of sustained + humor, and of the wit of Holmes and Lowell at a later date. When it was + discontinued, at the beginning of 1808, Irving and his brother began the + <i>History of New York</i>, which was originally designed to be a parody + of a particular book. But the work was interrupted by the business + difficulties of the brother, and at last Irving resumed it alone, recast + it entirely, and as he finished it the engagement with Matilda Hoffman + ended with her death, and the long arid secret romance of his life began. + </p> + <p> + Knickerbocker's <i>History</i> was published just before Christmas, 1809, + and made a merry Christmas for our grandfathers and grandmothers eighty + years ago. The fun began before the book was published. In October the + curiosity of the town of eighty thousand inhabitants was awakened by a + series of skilful paragraphs in the <i>Evening Post</i>. The art of + advertising was never more ingeniously illustrated. Mr. Fulkerson himself + would have paid homage to the artist. One day the quid-nuncs found this + paragraph in the paper, It was headed, + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "DISTRESSING. + + "Left his lodgings, some time since, and has not since been heard + of, a small elderly gentleman, dressed in an old black coat and + cocked hat, by the name of Knickerbocker. As there are some reasons + for believing that he is not entirely in his right mind, and, as + great anxiety is entertained about him, any information concerning + him left either at the Columbian Hotel, Mulberry Street, or at the + office of this paper, will be thankfully received. + + "P. S.—Printers of newspapers would be aiding the cause of humanity + by giving an insertion to the above. + + "<i>October 25th.</i>" +</pre> + <p> + This was followed within a fortnight by another ingenious lure: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "<i>To the Editor of the Evening Post:</i> + + "Sir,—Having read in your paper of the 26th October last a paragraph + respecting an old gentleman by the name of Knickerbocker, who was + missing from his lodgings, if it would be any relief to his friends, + or furnish them with any clue to discover where he is, you may inform + them that a person answering the description was seen by the passengers + of the Albany stage early in the morning, about four or five weeks ago, + resting himself by the side of the road, a little above Kingsbridge. + He had in his hands a small bundle, tied in a red bandana handkerchief. + He appeared to be travelling northward, and was very much fatigued and + exhausted. + + "<i>November 6.</i> A Traveller." +</pre> + <p> + Ten days after came a letter signed by Seth Handaside, landlord of the + Independent Handaside: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Columbian Hotel, Mulberry Street. + + "Sir,—You have been kind enough to publish in your paper a paragraph + about Mr. Diedrich Knickerbocker, who was missing so strangely from his + lodgings some time since. Nothing satisfactory has been heard from the + old gentleman since, but a very curious written Book has been found in + his room in his own handwriting. Now, I wish you to notice him, if he + is still alive, that if he does not return and pay off his bill for + board and lodging, I shall have to dispose of his Book to satisfy me + for the same." +</pre> + <p> + This is very simple jesting, but at that time it was very effective in a + town that enjoyed the high spirits of <i>Salmagundi</i>. Moreover, the + book which was announced in this lively strain was as unprecedented as the + announcement. It was a very serious time and country, and the work of the + small elderly gentleman who carried a little bundle tied in a red bandana + handkerchief appeared in the midst of the sober and dry effusions of our + Puritan literature, and of an eager and energetic life still engrossed + with the subjection of a continent and the establishment of a new nation. + It was the work of a young man of twenty-six, who lived fifty years + afterwards with constantly increasing fame, making many and admirable + contributions to literature. But nothing that followed surpassed the + joyous brilliancy and gay felicity of his first book, which was at once + acknowledged as the wittiest book that America had produced. + </p> + <p> + Knickerbocker's <i>History</i> is a prolonged and elaborate and audacious + burlesque of the early annals of New Amsterdam. The undaunted Goth of the + legend who plucked the Roman senator by the beard was not a more ruthless + iconoclast than this son of New Amsterdam, who drew its grave ancestors + from venerable obscurity by flooding them with the cheerful light of + blameless fun. To pass the vague and venerable traditions of the austere + and heroic founders of the city through the alembic of a youth's hilarious + creative humor, and to turn them out in forms resistlessly grotesque, but + with their identity unimpaired, was a stroke as daring as it was + successful. But the skill and power with which this is done can be best + appreciated by those who are most familiar with the history which the + gleeful genius burlesques. + </p> + <p> + Irving follows the actual story closely, and the characters that he + develops faithfully, although with rollicking caricature, are historical. + Indeed, the fidelity is so absolute that the fiction is welded with the + fact. The days of the Dutch ascendency in New York are inextricably + associated with this ludicrous narrative. It is impossible not to think of + the forefathers of New Amsterdam as Knickerbocker describes them. The + Wouter Van Twiller, the Wilhemus Kieft, the Peter Stuyvesant, who are + familiarly and popularly known, are not themselves, but the figures drawn + by Diedrich Knickerbocker. In comical despair, the historian Grahame, + whose <i>Colonial History</i> is still among the best, says of + Knickerbocker: "If Sancho Panza had been a real governor, misrepresented + by the wit of Cervantes, his future historian would have found it no easy + matter to bespeak a grave attention to the annals of his administration." + </p> + <p> + The gayety of this blithe genius bursting in upon our staid literature is + irresistible. Irving's temperament, his travels, his humor, gave him a + cosmopolitan point of view; and his little native city, with its local + sense of importance, and its droll aristocratic traditions springing from + Dutch burgomasters and traders, impressed his merry genius like a + complacent Cranford or Tarascon taking itself with a provincial + seriousness, which, to his sympathetic fancy, was an exhaustless fountain + of fun. Part of the fun to us, and perhaps to Irving, was the indignation + with which it was received by the descendants of the Dutch families in the + city and State. The excited drawing-rooms denounced it as scandalous + satire and ridicule. Even Irving's friend, Gulian Verplanck, nine years + afterwards, deepening the comedy of his remark by his evident + unconsciousness of the drollery of his gravity, grieved that the author's + exuberance of genuine humor should be wasted on a coarse caricature. + Irving, who was then in Europe, saw Verplanck's strictures just as he had + written <i>Rip Van Winkle</i>, and he wrote to a friend at home that he + could not help laughing at Verplanck's outburst of filial feeling for his + ancestors, adding, in the true Knickerbocker vein, "Remember me heartily + to him, and tell him that I mean to grow wiser and better and older every + day, and to lay the castigation he has given seriously to heart." + </p> + <p> + The success of Knickerbocker's <i>History</i> was immediate, and it was + the first American work of literature which arrested attention in Europe. + </p> + <p> + Sir Walter Scott, who was then the most famous of English poets, and was + about to publish the first of the Waverley Novels, was delighted with a + humor which he thought recalled Swift's, and a sentiment that seemed to + him as tender as Sterne's. He wrote a generous acknowledgment to the + American friend who had sent him the book, and in later years he welcomed + Diedrich Knickerbocker at Abbotsford, and the American has given a + charming and vivid picture of Scott's home and its master. + </p> + <p> + But the success of his book did not at once determine Irving's choice of a + career. He was still a gilded youth who enjoyed the gay idleness of + society, and who found in writing only another and pleasant recreation. He + had been bred in the conservative tradition which looked upon livelihood + by literature as the deliberate choice of Grub Street, and the + wretchedness of Goldsmith as the necessary and natural fate of authors; + but it is droll that, although he recoiled from the uncertainty of support + by literary labor, he was willing to try the very doubtful chances of + office-holding as a means of securing leisure for literary pursuits. He + offered himself as a candidate for appointment as the clerk of a court in + the city. By tradition and sympathy he was a Federalist, but he had taken + no active part in politics, and his chance was slight. He went to Albany, + however, and in a lively letter he paints a familiar picture of the crowd + of office-hunters who, he says, "like a cloud of locusts, have descended + upon the city to devour every plant and herb and every green thing." He + was sick with a cold, and stifled in rooms heated by stoves, and was + utterly disgusted, as he says, "by the servility and duplicity and + rascality I have witnessed among the swarms of scrub politicians who crawl + about the great metropolis of our State like so many vermin about the head + of the body politic." + </p> + <p> + Again the good old times were apparently very much like the good new + times. Thirty-nine years after Irving's discomfiture in trying to get a + public office, Hawthorne was turned out of one that he held, and wrote to + a friend: "It seems to me that an inoffensive man of letters, having + obtained a pitiful little office on no other plea than his pitiful little + literature, ought not to be left at the mercy of these thick-skulled and + no-hearted ruffians." The language is strong, but the epithets are + singularly well-chosen. The distinctive qualities of the ringleaders, + whether of high or low degree, in the degradation of public trusts into + private and party spoils, have never been more accurately or effectively + described than by the words "thick-skulled" and "no-hearted". + </p> + <p> + The story of the sturdy beggar who asked General Jackson to give him the + mission to France, and finally came down to a request for an old coat, + well illustrates a system which regards public office not as a public + trust, but as private alms. The service of the State, whether military or + civil, is an object of high and generous ambition, because it involves the + leadership of men. But if Irving and Hawthorne thought that what is called + office-seeking is disgusting, it was not because the public service is not + noble and dignified, but because we choose to allow it to be so often + dependent, not upon fitness and character, but upon the personal or + political favor of the "thick-skulled" and "no-hearted". + </p> + <p> + But the problem of a career was soon solved. In the year 1810 Irving + formed a business connection with two of his brothers, and the next five + years were passed in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, forming + various literary plans, looking out for his business interests, sparkling + in society; and when war with England began, serving upon the governor's + military staff as Colonel Washington Irving. In the spring of 1815 he + sailed to roam again through Europe, but the illness of his brother + compelled him to remain in England in charge of the business. "London," as + a shrewd and celebrated American recently said, "was then as it is now, + the social centre of the world." Irving saw famous men and women, and his + charming sweetness and humor opened all doors and hearts. But the business + fell into distress, then into disaster, and in the beginning of 1818 the + house failed. He was now thrown wholly upon his literary resources, which + did <i>not</i> fail, and in the spring of 1819, when he was thirty-six + years old, the first number of the <i>Sketch Book</i> was issued in New + York. + </p> + <p> + The merry, exuberant, satirical Diedrich Knickerbocker was transformed + into the genial, urbane, and tender-hearted Geoffrey Crayon. Our fathers + and grandfathers knew him well. They had been bred upon Addison and + Goldsmith, the essayists and the poets of the eighteenth century, and in + Geoffrey Crayon they recognized and welcomed another member of that + delightful literary society. He was all the more welcome that he was an + American—one of themselves. The bland and courteous Geoffrey, + indeed, had few rivals among his countrymen. In our little American world + of letters at that time he came and conquered. Bryant's "Thanatopsis", had + been published only two years before; Halleck's and Drake's lively but + strictly local "Croakers" were still appearing, and Edward Everett had + just hailed Percival's first volume as authorizing great expectations. + </p> + <p> + But prophecy is always dangerous. The year before, Sydney Smith had said, + in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, "Literature the Americans have none—no + native literature we mean. It is all imported. They had a Franklin, + indeed, and may afford to live half a century on his fame. There is, or + was, a Mr. Dwight, who wrote some poems, and his baptismal name was + Timothy. There is also a small account of Virginia by Jefferson, and an + epic poem by Mr. Joel Barlow, and some pieces of pleasantry by Mr. Irving. + But why should Americans write books, when a six weeks' passage brings + them, in their own tongue, <i>our</i> sense, science, and genius, on bales + and hogsheads? Prairies, steamboats, grist-mills are their natural objects + for centuries to come. Then, when they have got to the Pacific Ocean, epic + poems, plays, pleasures of memory, and all the elegant gratifications of + an ancient people who have tamed the wild earth, and sat down to amuse + themselves. This is the natural march of human affairs." As the sarcastic + Yorkshire canon, sitting on the Edinburgh Olympus, wiped his pen, the <i>Sketch + Book</i> was published. The good canon was right as to our small literary + product, but even an <i>Edinburgh Review</i> could not wisely play the + prophet. + </p> + <p> + This Mr. Everett also discovered, for his "great expectations" of Percival + were not fulfilled. A desponding student of our poetry recently sighs that + Percival is a forgotten poet, and then, seizing a promiscuous assortment + of names, exclaims that Charles Sprague, William Wirt, Washington Irving, + and Jack Downing may be referred to as forgotten authors. But this is the + luxury of woe. Why should not Percival be a forgotten poet? That is to + say, what is there in the verse of Percival that should command interest + and attention to-day? He was a remarkably accomplished man and a most + excellent gentleman, and his name is very familiar in the reading-books of + the time when grandfathers of to-day were going to school. But he was a + noted poet not because he took rank with his contemporaries—with + Byron and Scott and Keats and Shelley and Coleridge and Wordsworth—but + because there were very few Americans who wrote verses, and our fathers + patriotically stood by them. + </p> + <p> + Yet because the note of a singer of another day is not heard by us, it + does not follow that he did not touch the heart of his time. Grenville + Mellen is a forgotten poet also, and Rufus Dawes and John Neal and James + G. Eastburn. If the gentle reader will turn to the pages of Kettell, or + any early American anthology, he will seem to himself to be walking among + tombs. Upon each page might be suitably inscribed, "Sacred to the memory" + of almost every one of the singers. But can we say with honest reproach, + "forgotten poets"? The loiterer in the wood hears the song of the + wood-thrush, but is the hermit-bird wronged, or is his song less sweet, + because it is not echoed round the world? Is Fame to be held responsible + for not retaining the name of every minstrel who loiters by and touches + his harp lightly, and sings a sweet song as he passes on? Is it a hard + fate to give pleasure to those who listen because those out of hearing do + not applaud? + </p> + <p> + Many an author may have a tone and a touch which please the ear and taste + of his own day, and which, as characteristic of a time, may be only + curious to a later taste, like the costumes and dances of our + great-grandmothers. But young America, sauntering at the club and at + Newport, would not willingly wear the boots of Beau Nash, nor even the + cloak of Beau Brummel. The law which provides that nothing shall be lost + is equally observable in the realm of literary fame. Is anything of + literature lost that deserves longer remembrance? or, more properly, can + it be lost? A fair answer to the question can be found in the reply to + another, whether delving in Kettell, or in any other anthology, reveals + treasures dropped by Fame as precious as those she carries. + </p> + <p> + There are two ways in which authors survive: one by the constant reading + of his works, the other by his name. Is Milton a forgotten author? But how + much is he read, compared with the contemporary singers? Is Plato + forgotten? Yet how many know him except by name? Irving thus far holds + both. Time, like a thrifty husbandman, winnows its wheat, blowing away + much chaff, but the golden grain remains. This is true not only of the + whole multitude of authors, but of the works of each author. How many of + them really survive in the anthology only? <i>Astoria</i> and <i>Captain + Bonneville</i> and <i>Mahomet</i> and other books of Irving will + disappear; but <i>Knickerbocker</i> and <i>Rip Van Winkle</i> still buffet + the relentless wave of oblivion, and their buoyancy is undiminished. + </p> + <p> + As for Sprague—a mild, genial, charming gentleman, who carried his + simple freshness of nature and of manner to the end, and about whose + venerable head in State Street always shone the faint halo of early poetic + renown—his literary talent was essentially for a day, not for all + time. But what then? On Christmas Eve we hear the passing music in the + street that supplies for us the song of the waits. Distant and melodious, + it pensively recalls the days and the faces and the voices that are no + more. But the singers are not the same waits that we heard long ago; still + less are they those that the youth of a century ago heard with the same + musing melancholy. But the substance of the song, and the emotion which it + awakens, and the tender pathos of association—these are all the + same. Sprague was a wait of yesterday, of last year, of fifty years ago. + Others sing in the street the song that he sang, and, singing, they pass + on, and the sweet strain grows fainter, softer, and fainter and fainter, + and the echoes answer, "Dying, dying, dying," and it is gone. + </p> + <p> + See how tenderly Mr. Stedman speaks of the troubadours who are singing for + us now, whose names are familiar, who trill and twitter in the magazines, + and in tasteful and delicate volumes, which seem to tempt the stream of + time to suffer such light and graceful barks to slip along unnoted to + future ages. But the kindly critic's tone forecasts the fate of the + sparkling ventures. + </p> + <p> + Moore tells us of the Indian maids upon the banks of the Ganges who light + a tiny taper, and, on a frail little chip, set it afloat upon the river. + It twinkles and dwindles, and flashes and expires. Mr. Stedman watches the + minor poets trimming their tapers and carefully launching their chips upon + the brimming river. "Pleasant journey," he cries cheerily from the shore, + as if he were speaking to hearty Captain Cook going up the side of his + great ship, and shaking out his mighty canvas to circumnavigate the globe. + "Pleasant journey," cries the cheery critic; but there is a wistful + something in his tone that betrays a consciousness of the swift extinction + of the pretty perfumed flickering flame. + </p> + <p> + So scant, indeed, was the blossom of our literature when the <i>Sketch + Book</i> was published, that even twenty years later, when Emerson + described the college Commencement Day as the only tribute of a country + too busy to give to letters any more, Geoffrey Crayon, with the exception + of Cooper, had really no American competitors. Long afterwards I met Mr. + Irving one morning at the office of Mr. Putnam, his publisher, and in his + cordial way, with a twinkle in his eye, and in his pleasant husky voice, + he said, "You young literary fellows to-day have a harder time than we old + fellows had. You trip over each other's heels; there are so many of you. + We had it all our own way. But the account is square, for you can make as + much by a lecture as we made by a book." Then, laughing slyly, he added, + "A pretty figure I should make lecturing in this voice." Indeed, his + modesty forbade him to risk that voice in public addresses. + </p> + <p> + Irving, I think, made but one speech. It was at the dinner given to him + upon his return from Europe in 1832, after his absence of seventeen years. + Like other distinguished Americans who have felt the fascination of the + old home of their ancestors, and who have not thought that a narrow heart + and a barbaric disdain of everything foreign attested the truest + patriotism, he was suspected of some alienation from his country. His + speech was full of emotion, and his protestation of love for his native + land was received with boundless acclamation. But he could not overcome + his aversion to speech-making. When Dickens came, and the great dinner was + given to him in New York, Irving was predestined to preside. Nobody else + could be even mentioned. He was himself conscious of it, and was filled + with melancholy forebodings. Professor Felton, of Harvard, compared + Irving's haunting terror and dismay at the prospect of this speech to that + of Mr. Pickwick at the prospect of leading that dreadful horse all day. + </p> + <p> + Poor Irving went about muttering, "I shall certainly break down. I know I + shall break down." At last the day, the hour, and the very moment itself + arrived, and he rose to propose the health of Dickens. He began pleasantly + and smoothly in two or three sentences, then hesitated, stammered, smiled, + and stopped; tried in vain to begin again, then gracefully gave it up, + announced the toast—"Charles Dickens, the guest of the nation"—then + sank into his chair amid immense applause, whispering to his neighbor, + "There, I told you I should break down, and I've done it." + </p> + <p> + When Thackeray came, Irving consented to preside at a dinner if speeches + were absolutely forbidden. The condition was faithfully observed, but it + was the most extraordinary instance of American self-command on record. + Whenever two or three Americans are gathered together, somebody must make + a speech; and no wonder, because somebody always speaks so well. The + custom is now so confirmed that it is foolish and useless to oppose it. + </p> + <p> + I remember a few years since that a dinner was given to a famous American + artist long resident abroad, and, as the condition of the attendance of a + distinguished guest whose presence was greatly desired, the same agreement + was made that Irving required at the Thackeray dinner. It was a company of + exceedingly clever and brilliant men, but the gayety of the feast was + extinguished by the general consciousness that the situation was abnormal. + It was a fruit without flavor, a flower without fragrance, a symphony + without melody, a dinner without speeches. But the dinner of which I + speak, when the condition of Irving's presence was that there should be no + speeches, was the great exception. It was the only dinner of the kind that + I have ever known. But Irving's cheery anecdote and gayety, the songs and + banter of the company, the happy chat and sparkling wit, took the place of + eloquence, and I recall no dinner more delightful. + </p> + <p> + However scant was our literature when the <i>Sketch Book</i> appeared, it + is a mistake to suppose that Irving owes his success to English + admiration. That was, undoubtedly, very agreeable to him and to his + countrymen. But it is well to correct a misapprehension which is still + cherished. Many years ago an English critic said that Irving was much more + relished and admired in England than in his own country, and added: "It is + only recently critics on the lookout for a literature have elevated him to + his proper and almost more than his proper place. This docility to English + guidance in the case of their best, or almost their best, prose writer, + may perhaps be followed by a similar docility in the case of their best, + or almost their best, poet, Poe, whom also England had preceded the United + States in recognizing." This comical patron is all the more amusing from + his comparative estimate of Poe. + </p> + <p> + If it were true that Irving's countrymen had not recognized and honored + him from the first, it might be suspected that it was because they were + descendants of the people who showed little contemporaneous appreciation + of Shakespeare. But it is certainly creditable to the literary England + which was busy idolizing Scott and Byron, that it recognized also the + charming genius of Irving, and that Leslie, the painter, could truly write + of him, "Geoffrey Crayon is the most fashionable fellow of the day." + </p> + <p> + But while the English appreciation of Irving is very creditable to + England, English conceit must not go so far as to suppose that it was that + appreciation which commended him to his own countrymen. At the time when + Sydney Smith wrote the article from which we have quoted there was + apparently an almost literary sterility in this country, and the + professional critics of the critical journals were, as Professor Lounsbury + says in his admirable <i>Life of Cooper</i>, undoubtedly greatly affected + by English opinion. But there was an American reading public independent + of the few literary periodicals, as was shown when Cooper's <i>Spy</i> was + published at the end of 1821, the year in which Bryant's first volume of + poems and Dana's <i>Idle Man</i> appeared. Cooper had published his <i>Precaution</i> + in 1819, a book which Professor Lounsbury is one of the very few men who + are known to have read. He was an unknown author. But the <i>Spy</i> was + instantly successful. Some of the timid English journals awaited the + English opinion, for Murray had declined, upon Gifford's advice, to + publish the book. But a publisher was found, and England and Europe + followed America in their approval. Cooper always said, and truly, that it + was to his countrymen alone that he owed his first success, and his + biographer concedes that the success of the <i>Spy</i> was determined + before the opinion of Europe was known. + </p> + <p> + Nearly three years before, in May, 1819, the first number of Irving's <i>Sketch + Book</i> was published. He sent the manuscript to his brother, who had + regretted Irving's refusal of a government place in the Navy Board, and to + whom he wrote, "My talents are merely literary, and all my habits of + thinking, reading, etc., have been in a different direction from that + required for the active politician.... In fact, I consider myself at + present as making a literary experiment, in the course of which I only + care to be kept in bread and cheese. Should it not succeed—should my + writings not acquire critical applause—I am content to throw up the + pen, and that to any commonplace employment. But if they should succeed, + it would repay me for a world of care and privation to be placed among the + established authors of my country, and to win the affection of my + countrymen." + </p> + <p> + The first number of the <i>Sketch Book</i> was published simultaneously in + New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Its success was immediate. + In September, 1819, Irving wrote: "The manner in which the work has been + received, and the eulogiums that have been passed upon it in the American + papers and periodical works, have quite overwhelmed me ... I feel almost + appalled by such success." The echo of the acclamation reached England. + Murray at first declined to publish it, as he had at first declined + Cooper's <i>Spy</i>. But when England ascertained that the American + judgment was correct, and that it was a popular work, Murray was willing + to publish it. + </p> + <p> + The delightful genius which his country had recognized with joy it never + ceased proudly and tenderly to honor. When, in 1832, he returned to his + native land, as his latest biographer, Mr. Warner, records, "America + greeted her most famous literary man with a spontaneous outburst of love + and admiration." It was in his own country that he had published his + works. It was his own countrymen whose applause apprised England of the + charm of the new author; and it is a humorous mentor who now teaches us + that it was our happy docility to English guidance which enabled us to + recognize and honor him. + </p> + <p> + Was it docility to the same beneficent guidance which enabled us to + perceive the genius of Carlyle, whose works we first collected, and taught + England to read and admire? Did it enable us, also, to inform England that + in Robert Browning she had another poet? Was it the same docility which + enabled us to reveal to England one of her most philosophic observers in + Herbert Spencer, and to offer to Darwin his most appreciative + correspondents and interpreters in Chauncey Wright, John Fiske, and + Professors Gray and Wyman? There are many offences to be scored against + us, but failure to know our own literary genius is not one of them. + </p> + <p> + Indeed, there is not one great literary fame in America that was not first + recognized here. Not to one of them has docility to English literary + opinion conducted us, as is often believed. Bryant and Cooper and Irving, + Bancroft and Prescott and Motley, Emerson and Channing, Longfellow, + Hawthorne, Lowell, Whittier, and Holmes were authors whom we were content + to admire and love without knowing or asking whether England had heard of + them, or what she thought of them. The "greatness" of Poe England may have + preceded us in recognizing. That is an assertion which we are not disposed + to dispute. But Walter Scott was not more immediately popular and beloved + in England than was Washington Irving in America; and American guidance + led England to Scott quite as much as English guidance drew America to + Irving. + </p> + <p> + The first number of the <i>Sketch Book</i> contained the tale of <i>Rip + Van Winkle</i>, one of the most charming and suggestive of legends, whose + hero is an exceedingly pathetic creation. It is, indeed, a mere sketch, a + hint, a suggestion; but the imagination readily completes it. It is the + more remarkable and interesting because, although the first American + literary creation, it is not in the least characteristic of American life, + but, on the contrary, is a quiet and delicate satire upon it. The kindly + vagabond asserts the charm of loitering idleness in the sweet leisure of + woods and fields against the characteristic American excitement of the + overflowing crowd and crushing competition of the city, its tremendous + energy and incessant devotion to money-getting. + </p> + <p> + It is not necessary to defend poor Rip, or to justify the morality of his + example. It is the imagination that interprets him; and how soothing to + those who give their lives to the furious accumulation of the means of + living to behold that figure stretched by the brook, or finding nuts with + the children, or sauntering homeward at sunset! Later figures of our + literature allure us—Hester Prynne, wrapped in her cloak of Nersus, + the Scarlet Letter, Hosea Biglow, Evangeline, Uncle Tom, and Topsy—but + the charm of this figure is unfading. The new writers introduce us to + their worlds, and with pleasure we make the acquaintance of new friends. + The new standards of another literary spirit are raised, a fresh literary + impulse surrounds us; but it is not thunder that we hear in the Kaatskills + on a still summer afternoon it is the distant game of Hendrick Hudson and + his men; and on the shore of our river, rattling and roaring with the + frenzied haste and endless activity of prosperous industry, still Rip Van + Winkle lounges idly by, an unwasted figure of the imagination, the + constant and unconscious satirist of American life. + </p> + <p> + He seems to me peculiarly congenial with the temperament of Irving. He, + too, was essentially a loiterer. He had the same freshness of sympathy, + the same gentleness of nature, the same taste for leisure and repose. His + genius was reminiscent, and, as with all humorists, its climate was that + of April. The sun and the shower chased each other. Irving's intellectual + habit was emotional rather than thoughtful. In politics and public affairs + he took no part, although office was often urged upon him, as when the + friends of General Jackson wished him to go as representative to Congress, + or President Van Buren offered him the secretaryship of the navy, or + Tammany Hall, in New York, unanimously and vociferously nominated him for + mayor, an incident in the later annals of the city which transcends the + most humorous touch in <i>Knickerbocker's History</i>. He was appointed + secretary of legation in England in 1829, and in 1842, when Daniel Webster + was secretary of state, minister to Spain. + </p> + <p> + But what we call practical politics was always distasteful to him. The + spirit which I once heard laugh at a young man new in politics because he + treated "the boys" with his own good cigars instead of buying bad ones at + the saloon—the spirit which I once heard assure a man of public + ability and fitness that he could never reach political office unless he + pushed himself, and paid agents to buy votes, because no man could expect + an office to be handed to him on a gold plate—the spirit which, to + my knowledge, displayed a handful of bank-notes in the anteroom of a + legislature, and exclaimed, "That's what makes the laws!"—this was a + spirit which, like other honorable men and patriotic Americans, Irving + despised. + </p> + <p> + He was a gentleman of manly feeling and of moral refinement, who had had + glimpses of what is called "the inside" of politics; and, as he believed + these qualities would make participation in politics uncomfortable, he + abstained. To those of us who are wiser than he, who know that simple + honesty and public spirit and self-respect and contempt of sneaking and + fawning and bribery and crawling are the conditions of political + preferment, Irving, in not perceiving this, must naturally seem to be a + queer, wrong-headed, and rather super-celestial American, who had lived + too much in the heated atmosphere of European aristocracies and altogether + too little in the pure and bracing air of American ward politics and + caucuses and conventions. To use an old New York phrase, Irving preferred + to stroll and fish and chat with Rip Van Winkle rather than to "run wid + der machine". + </p> + <p> + The <i>Sketch Book</i> made Irving famous, and with its predecessor, <i>Knickerbocker</i>, + and its successor, <i>Bracebridge Hall</i>, disclosed the essential + quality of his genius. But all these books performed another and greater + service than that of winning the world to read an American book: this was + the restoration of a kindlier feeling between the two countries which, by + all ties, should be the two most friendly countries on the globe. The + books were written when our old bitterness of feeling against England had + been renewed by the later war. In the thirty years since the Revolution + ended we had patriotically fostered the quarrel with John Bull. Our + domestic politics had turned largely upon that feeling, and the game of + French and English was played almost as fiercely upon our side of the + ocean as upon their own. + </p> + <p> + The great epoch of our extraordinary material development and prosperity + had not opened, and, even had John Bull been friendlier than he was, it + would have been the very flattery of falsehood had he complimented our + literature, our science, our art. Sydney Smith's question, "Who reads an + American book?" was contemptuous and exasperating. But here was an + American who wrote books which John Bull was delighted to read, and was + compelled to confess that they depicted-the most characteristic and + attractive aspects of his own life with more delicate grace than that of + any living Englishman. + </p> + <p> + It was Irving who recalled the old English Christmas. It was his cordial + and picturesque description of the great holiday of Christendom which + preceded and stimulated Dickens's <i>Christmas Carols</i> and Thackeray's + <i>Holiday Tales</i>. It was the genial spirit of Christmas, native to his + gentle heart and his happy temperament, which made Irving, as Thackeray + called him, a peacemaker between the mother-country and her proud and + sensitive offspring of the West. He showed John Bull that England is ours + as well as his. + </p> + <p> + "Old fellow," he said, "you cannot help yourself. It is the same blood + that flows in our veins, the same language that we speak, the same + traditions that we cherish. If you love liberty, so do we; if you will see + fair play, so will we. It is natural to you, so it is to us. We cannot + escape our blood. Shakespeare is not your poet more than ours. If your + ancestors danced round the Maypole, so did our ancestors in your + ancestors' shoes. If Old England cherished Christmas and New England did + not, Bradford and Endicott and Cotton were Englishmen, not Americans. If + old English life and customs and traditions are dear to you, listen to my + story, and judge whether they are less dear to us." Then, with a merry + smile, the young stranger holds out his hand to John Bull, and exclaims, + "Behold, here is my arm! I bare it before your eyes, and here it is—it + is the strawberry-mark; come to my bosom, I am your long-lost brother." + </p> + <p> + It was an incalculable service which Irving rendered in renewing a common + feeling between England and America. It was involuntary, because in + writing he had no such purpose. He was only following the bent of his own + taste, and his works reflected only his individual sympathies. But it was + this very fact—it was the English instinct in the American, the + appreciation native in the heart of the Western stranger of the true + poetic charm of England—which was the spell of the magician. Irving + had the same imaginative enthusiasm for traditional and poetic England + that Burke had for political England. Indeed, it is an England which never + actually existed except in the English and American imagination. The + coarse, mercenary, material England which Lecky photographs in his history + of the eighteenth century was the same England in which Burke lived, and + which his glowing imagination exalted into the magnificent image of + constitutional liberty before which he bowed his great head. So with the + old England that Irving drew. He saw with poetic fancy a rural Arcadia, + and reproduced the vision with airy grace and called it England. No wonder + that John Bull was delighted with an artist who could paint so fascinating + a picture, and write under it John Bull's portrait. + </p> + <p> + To change a word in Marvell's noble lines, when Irving was in England + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "He nothing common saw or mean + Upon that memorable scene." +</pre> + <p> + Only an American could have seen England as he described it, and invested + it with an enchantment which the mass of Englishmen had neither suspected + nor perceived. Irving's instinct was that of Hawthorne afterwards, who + called England "Our Old Home". There is a foolish American habit growing + patriotically out of our old contentions with England, and politically out + of our desire to conciliate the Irish vote in this country, of branding as + servile and un-American the natural susceptibility of people of English + descent, but natives of another land, to the charm of their ancestral + country. But the American is greatly to be pitied who thinks to prove the + purity of his patriotism by flouting the land in which he has a legitimate + right, the land of Alfred and Runnymede, of Chaucer and Shakespeare and + Milton, of Hampden and Cromwell, of Newton and Bunyan, of Somers and + Chatham and Edmund Burke, the cradle of constitutional liberty and + parliamentary government. If the great body of the literature of our + language in which we delight, if the sources of our law and politics, if + the great exploits of contemporary scholarship and science, are largely + beyond our boundaries, yet are legitimately ours as well as all that we + have ourselves achieved, why should we spurn any of our just and + hereditary share in the great English traditions of civilization and + freedom? + </p> + <p> + Irving returned to America in 1832, and here he afterwards remained, + except during his absence as minister in Spain. In an earlier visit to + that country he had felt the spell of its romantic history, and had + written the <i>Life of Columbus</i>, the <i>Conquest of Granada</i>, and + the <i>Chronicles of the Alhambra</i>. During all his later years he was + busy with his pen, and, while the modest author had risen to the chief + place in American literature, its later constellation was rising into the + heavens. + </p> + <p> + But his intrinsic modesty never disappeared either from the works or the + character of the benign writer. In the height of his renown there was no + kind of presumption or conceit in his simple and generous breast. Some + time after his return from his long absence in Europe, and before Putnam + became his publisher, Irving found some disinclination upon the part of + publishers to issue new editions of his books, and he expressed, with + entire good humor, the belief that he had had his day. + </p> + <p> + It is doubtless true, as <i>Blackwood</i> remarked, with what we may call + <i>Blackwood</i> courtesy, when Mr. Lowell was American minister in + England, that Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Addison, Pope, and so many more + "will not be replaced by Mr. Washington Irving and Mr. Lowell". But it is + equally true that, since Swift, <i>Blackwood</i> cannot find in English + literature political satire more trenchant, humorous, forcible, and + effective than the <i>Biglow Papers</i>, and nothing in Swift more + original. It is said that it is ludicrous to compare the mild humor of Rip + Van Winkle with the "robustious fun of Swift". But this is a curious + "derangement of epitaphs". Swift has wit, and satiric power, and burning + invective, and ribaldry, and caustic, scornful humor; but fun, in any just + sense, he has not. He is too fierce to be funny. The tender and + imaginative play of Rip Van Winkle are wholly beyond the reach of Swift. + </p> + <p> + Irving and other American writers are not the rivals of their British + associates in the literature of the English language—they are worthy + comrades. Wordsworth and Byron are not Shakespeare and Milton, but they + are nevertheless Wordsworth and Byron, and their place is secure. So the + brows of Irving and Cooper, of Bryant and Longfellow, and of Lowell, of + Emerson and Hawthorne do not crave the laurels of any other master. The + perturbed spirit of <i>Blackwood</i> may rest in the confident assurance + that no generous and intelligent student of our literature admires Gibbon + less because he enjoys Macaulay, or depreciates Bacon because he delights + in Emerson, or denies the sting of Gulliver because he feels the light + touch of Knickerbocker. It is with good fame as with true love: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "True love in this differs from gold and clay, + That to divide is not to take away." +</pre> + <p> + In the year that Irving published the <i>Sketch Book</i>, Cooper published + his first novel, and two years before Bryant's <i>Thanatopsis</i> had been + published. When, forty years afterwards, in the last year of his life, the + last volume of the <i>Life of Washington</i> was issued, Irving and Bryant + and Cooper were no longer the solitary chiefs of our literature. An + illustrious company had received the torch unextinguished from their hands—Whittier, + Hawthorne, Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Bancroft, Prescott, + Motley, Parkman, Mrs. Stowe, had all taken their places, yet all gladly + and proudly acknowledged Irving as the patriarch. It is our happy fortune + that these names, of which we are all proud, are not those of men of + letters only, but of typical American citizens. The old traditions of the + literary life, the mad roystering, the dissipation, Grub Street, the + sponging-house, the bailiff, the garret, and the jail, genius that fawns + for place and flatters for hire, the golden talent wrapped in a napkin, + and often a dirty and ragged napkin, have vanished in our American annals + of letters. Pure, upright, faithful, industrious, honorable, and honored, + there is scarcely one American author of eminence who may not be counted + as a good and useful citizen of the Republic of the Union, and a shining + light of the Republic of Letters. + </p> + <p> + Of Washington Irving, as of so many of this noble company, it is + especially true that the author was the man. The healthy fun and merry + satire of Diedrich Knickerbocker, the sweet humor and quick sympathy and + simple pathos of Geoffrey Crayon, were those of the modest master of + Sunnyside. Every literary man of Irving's time, whether old or young, had + nothing but affectionate praise of his artless urbanity and exhaustless + good-nature. These qualities are delightfully reflected in Thackeray's + stories of him in the <i>Roundabout Papers</i> upon Irving and Macaulay, + "the Goldsmith and the Gibbon of our time". + </p> + <p> + "He came to one of my lectures in Washington," Thackeray says, "and the + retiring President, Mr. Fillmore, and his successor, Mr. Pierce, were + present. 'Two kings of Brentford smelling at one rose,' said Irving, with + his good-natured smile. In his little bower of a home at Sunnyside he was + always accessible. One English newspaper man came and introduced himself, + and partook of luncheon with the family, and, while the host fell into a + little doze, as was his habit, the wary Englishman took a swift inventory + of everything in the house, and served up the description to the British + public, including the nap of his entertainer. At another time, Irving + said, 'Two persons came to me, and one held me in conversation while the + other miscreant took my portrait.'" Thackeray tells these little stories + with admiring sympathy. His manly heart always grew tender over his + fellow-authors who had no acrid drop in their humor, and Irving's was as + sweet as dew. + </p> + <p> + It is late for a fresh compliment to be paid to him, but the London <i>Spectator</i> + paid it in 1883, the year of his centenary, by saying, "Since the time of + Pope more than one hundred essayists have attempted to excel or to equal + the <i>Tatler</i> and <i>Spectator</i>. One alone, in a few of his best + efforts, may be said to have rivalled them, and he is Washington Irving." + The <i>Spectator</i> adds that one has surpassed them, "the incomparable + Elia". + </p> + <p> + Irving's temperament, however, was much more congenial with that of the + early essayists than Charles Lamb's, and his pictures of English country + life in <i>Bracebridge Hall</i> have just the delicate, imaginative touch + of the sketches of Sir Roger de Coverley. But in treating distinctively + English topics, however airy and vivid his touch may be, Irving is + manifestly enthralled by his admiration for the literary masters of the + Anne time, and by the spirit of their writing. It is in the Knickerbocker + world that he is characteristically at home. Indeed, it is his humorous + and graphic fancy more than the sober veracity of history which has given + popular and perpetual form to the early life of New York, and it is Irving + who has enriched it with romantic tradition such as suffuses the story of + no other State. + </p> + <p> + The bay, the river, the city, the Kaatskill Mountains, as Choate said of + Faneuil Hall and Webster, breathe and burn of him. He has charmed the + Hudson with a peculiar spell. The quaint life of its old Dutch villages, + the droll legend of Sleepy Hollow, the pathetic fate of Rip Van Winkle, + the drowsy wisdom of Communipaw, the marvellous municipality of New + Amsterdam, and the Nose of Anthony guarding the Highlands, with the myriad + sly and graphic allusions and descriptions strewn all through his books, + have made the river Irving's river, and the state Irving's state, and the + city Irving's city, so that the first instinctive question of every lover + of Irving from beyond the state, as he enters Central Park and beholds its + memorial statues, is, "Where is the statue of Irving?" + </p> + <p> + Unhappily, echo, and not the park guide-book, answers. There is, indeed, a + bust, and, in a general sense, "Si monumentum" may serve for a reply. From + that point of view, indeed, Westminster Abbey, as the monument of English + heroes in letters and arms, in the Church and the State, would be + superfluous. But the abbey is a shrine of pilgrimage because of the very + fact that it is the burial-place of famous Englishmen. The Central Park, + in New York, is already a Walhalla of famous men, and the statue that + would first suggest itself as peculiarly fitting for the Park is of the + New-Yorker who first made New York distinctively famous in literature—the + New-Yorker whose kindly genius first made American literature respected by + the world. + </p> + <p> + Reversing the question, "Where be the bad people buried?" the wondering + pilgrim in the Park asks, "Where be Irving and Bryant and Cooper?" They + were not Americans only, but, by birth or choice, New-Yorkers, and the + three distinctive figures of our early literature. It was very touching to + see the venerable Bryant, in the soft May sunshine, when the statue of + Halleck was unveiled, standing with bare head and speaking of his old + friend and comrade. But who that listened could not see, through tender + mists of years, the grave and reverend form of the speaker himself, + transformed to marble or bronze, sitting serene forever beneath the + shadowing trees, side by side with the poet of Faust and the worshipper of + Highland Mary? + </p> + <p> + But Bryant would have been the first to name Washington Irving as the most + renowned distinctively American man of letters whose figure, reproduced + characteristically and with simple quaintness, should decorate the Park. + To a statue of Washington Irving all the gates should open, as every heart + would open, in welcome. That half-humorous turn of the head and almost the + twinkling eye, that brisk and jaunty air, that springing step, that modest + and gentle and benign presence, all these could be suggested by the + artist, and in their happy combination the pleased loiterer would perceive + old Diedrich Knickerbocker and the summer dreamer of the Hudson legends, + the charming biographer of Columbus and of Goldsmith, the cheerful gossip + of Wolfert's Roost, and the mellow and courteous Geoffrey Crayon, who + first taught incredulous Europe that beyond the sea there were men also, + and that at last all the world must read an American book. + </p> + <p> + Irving was seventy-six years old when he died, late in 1859. Born in the + year in which the Revolution ended, he died on the eve of the civil war. + His life exactly covered the period during which the American republic was + an experiment. It ended just as the invincible power of free institutions + was to be finally demonstrated. His life had been one of singular + happiness, both of temperament and circumstance. His nature was too simple + and gentle to breed rivalries or to tolerate animosities. Through the + sharpest struggles of our politics he passed without bitterness of feeling + and with universal respect, and his eyes happily closed before seeing a + civil war which, although the most righteous of all wars, would have + broken his heart. The country was proud of him: the older authors knew in + him not a rival, but a friend, the younger loved him as a father. Such + love, I think, is better than fame. On the day of his burial in the ground + overlooking the Hudson and the valley of Sleepy Hollow, unable to reach + Tarrytown in time for the funeral, I came down the shore of the river + which he loved and immortalized. As the train hastened and wound along, I + saw the Catskills draped in autumnal mist, not concealing, but irradiating + them with lingering and pathetic splendor. Far away towards the south the + river-bank on which his home lay was Sunnyside still, for the sky was + cloudless and soft with serene sunshine. I could not but remember his last + words to me, more than a year before, when his book was finished and his + health was failing: "I am getting ready to go; I am shutting up my doors + and windows", and I could not but feel that they were all open now, and + bright with the light of eternal morning. + </p> + <div style="height: 6em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Literary and Social Essays, by +George William Curtis + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS *** + +***** This file should be named 8108-h.htm or 8108-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/8/1/0/8108/ + + +Text file produced by Eric Eldred, Marc D'Hooghe, Charles Franks, +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + +HTML file produced by David Widger + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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