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ESSA YS

"The

Critic" BY

JOHN BURROUGHS

EDMUND C. STEDMAN WALT WHITMAN R. H.

STODDARD F. B. SANBORN E.

W. GOSSE

AND OTHERS

BOSTON JAMES

OSGOOD AND COMPANY 1882

1882,

GILDER.

JFranklin ^rcss:

RAND, AVERY, AND COMPANY, BOSTON.

The is

essays and sketches of which this volume

composed are taken, as the name

implies,

from

"The

Critic."

not

of them, are, despite their brevity, of per-

all

manent

In the conviction that some,

literary value, it has

to reproduce

them

been deemed well

a form more durable than

that of a fortnightly review.

This step

ren-

dered doubly advisable by the fact that some of the earlier numbers of

out of print.

" The Critic"

are already

CONTENTS. Page I.

II.

Thokeau's "Wildness. John Burroughs "William Blake, Poet and Painter. .

Edmund C. Stedman Death of Caelyle. Walt. Wliitman .... IT. Death or Longfellow. Walt Whitman V. George Eliot and the Novel. Edward

Eggleston R. H. Stoddard,

Unpublished Poetry.

Company of Spring Poets.

Edith M.

Tlwmas

X. Nature in Literature. John Burroughs XI. Austin Doeson. E. W. Gosse XII. Alphonse Daudet.

John Bur-

roityhs

F. B.

Sanborn VIII. Emerson and the Superlative.

IX.

VI. Frances Hodgson Burnett. VII. Thokeau's

103 109

P. M. Potter

121

The Boston Culture. J. H. Morse .... XIV. The Late Sidney Lanier. E. C. Stedman XV. English Society and Endymion. Julia Ward

XIII.

Howe XVI. Historical Criticism of Christ.

133 141

153 PL.

W. 165

Bellows

XVII. "Whitman's Leaves of Grass

175

THOREAU'S WILDNESS.

Essays from

"The

Critic."

THOREAU'S WILDNESS. Doxjbtless the wildest man

New England

has turned out since the red aborigines vacated her territory was

man

whom

Henry Thoreau,

the Indian re-appeared on the

One

plane of taste and morals.

him

to apply to

Dugan," as

much more neighbor

it is

his

own

lines

tempted

on "Elisha

very certain they

fit

himself

closely than they ever did his

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; "

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

O man

of wild habits,

Partridges and rabbits,

Who

hast no cares

Only

to set snares,

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

Who

liv'st all

alone

Close to the bone,

And where

sweetest

life is

Constantly eatest."

His whole

life

was a search

for the wild,

not only in nature, but in literature, in

The shyest and most

in morals.

thoughts

and impressions were

own mind, but

in the

startling paradoxes

wildness took.

except as ties,

elusive

the

him most, not only in

that fascinated

minds of are

life,

others.

ones his

His

only one form his

cared

little for science,

escaped the rules and technicali-

and put him on the

trail of

the ideal,

Thoreau was of French

the transcendental.

extraction ; and every drop of his blood seems to have turned

toward the aboriginal, as the

French blood has so often done in other ways in this country.

spised the white

He, for the most part, de-

man; but

his

enthusiasm

kindled at the mention of the Indian.

envied the Indian

;

he coveted his knowl-

THOREAU'S WILDNESS.

edge, his arts, his wood-craft. ited

accred-

him with a more "practical and

science " than "

was contained

vital

in the books.

The Indian stood nearer to wild Nature " It was a new light when my

than we."

guide gave

which

Indian names for things for

had only

scientific

ones before.

proportion as I understood the language, I

And

saw them from a new point of view." again off

The

Indian's earthly

from us as heaven

is."

life

he complains that our poetry

man's poetry.

" If

was

as far

In his " Week,"

we could

only white

but for

listen

an instant to the chant of the Indian muse,

we should understand why he exchange

his

says, " I

would

at least

spade into the earth with such

careless freedom, but accuracy, as the

pecker his

con-

genius dates from an older

era than the agricultural. strike

not

savageness for civilization."

Speaking of himself, he vinced that

will

bill into

a tree.

There

woodin

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

nature, methinks, a singular yearning toward all

wildness."

the Indian

Again and again he returns "

Indian, but that

talk of civilizing the

not the name for his im-

the

wary independence and

aloofness of his

dim

forest life he preserves

his intercourse

with his native gods, and

provement.

admitted from time to time to a rare and peculiar society with Nature.

has glances

of starry recognition, to which our saloons are

strangers.

his genius,

The steady

dim only because

illumination of distant, is like

the faint but satisfying light of the stars

compared with the dazzling but ineffectual

and short-lived blaze of candles."

would not always be soothing and taming nature, breaking the horse and the ox, but

sometimes ride the horse wild, and chase the buffalo."

The only

are Indian relics.

relics that interest

One

recreations or occupations

arrow-heads.

him

of his regular spring is

the hunting of

goes looking for arrow-

THOREAU'S WILDNESS.

heads as other people go berrying or bota-

In his journal, parts of which have

nizing.

recently been published, under the

title

" Early Spring in Massachusetts," he

a long entry under date of

March

makes

28, 1859,

" I spend

about his pursuit of arrow-heads.

many hours every

spring," he says, " gather-

ing the crop which the melting snow and

some island field

in the

elsewhere has been ploughed, perhaps

for rye, in the

not

When, at length, meadow or some sandy

have washed bare.

rain

fall, I

take note of

fail to repair thither as

it,

and do

soon as the earth

begins to be dry in the spring.

If the spot

chances never to have been cultivated before, I

the

farmer

first to

little

vest which

gather a crop from

it.

The

thinks that another reaps a haris

the fruit of his toil."

"As

the dragon's teeth bore a crop of soldiers, so these

[arrow-heads] bear crops of philoso-

phers and poets, and the same seed

good

plant again.

It is

just as

a stone fruit.

;

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

Each one

yields

a thought.

nearer to the maker of

bones."

his

than

come

found

probably picked up thou-

He had

sands of arrow-heads.

them.

The Indian

an eye for

him recognized

its

own.

His genius

itself is arrow-like,

weapon he

the wild

flinty, fine-grained,

flying

penetrating,

down

shaft, bringing

marvellous sureness.

and typical

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; hard, winged, â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a

so loved,

its

game with

His literary art was

to let fly with a kind of quick inspiration

and though yet

it is

his arrows

always a pleasure to watch their Indeed, Thoreau was a kind

aerial course.

sometimes go wide,

Emersonian or transcendental red man,

going about with a pocket-glass and an herbarium, instead of with a

hawk-

and

appears to have been as stoical

indifferent

table

bow and toma-

Indian

;

and unsympathetic

as a veri-

and how he hunted without

trap or gun, and fished without

hook

THOREAU'S WILDNESS. snare

Everywhere the wild drew him.

liked the telegraph, because seolian

was a kind of

harp ; the wind blowing upon

wild, sweet music.

through his native town, because wildest road he

knew

of: it only

cuts into and through the

no houses nor

made

liked the railroad it

hills.

The

foot-travellers.

was the

made deep

are

travel

The woods are left Though straight, it is wild in its accompaniments, keeping all its raw edges. Even the laborers on it are not like other laborers." One day he passed a little boy in the street who had on a home-made it

does not disturb me.

hang over

it.

cap of a woodchuck's skin, and

He makes

filled his eye.

about

in his journal.

of cap to have,

they say."

wild

completely

a delightful note

That was the kind

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; "a perfect

Any

trait

little Idyl,

unexpectedly

cropping out in any of the domestic animals

The

crab-apple

was

his favorite apple, because of its beauty

and

pleased him immensely.

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

perfume.

perhaps never tried to ride a

wild horse, but such an exploit was in keeping with his genius.

Thoreau hesitated

to call himself a natu-

That was too tame

ralist.

he would per-

haps have been content to have been an Indian naturalist.

says in this journal,

and with much truth and

force, "

Man

afford to be a naturalist, to look at

cannot

Nature

directly,

but only with the side of his eye.

He must

look through and beyond her.

look at her of Medusa.

as fatal as to look at the It turns the

When

stone."

man

head

of science to

he was applied to by the

secretary of the Association for the

ment

Advance-

of Science, at Washington, for informa-

tion as to the particular branch of science he

was most

interested^! in,

ashamed to answer cule.

But he

he confesses he was

for fear of exciting ridi-

says,

" If

had been the

secretary of an association of which Plato or Aristotle

was the

president, I should not

;

THOREAU'S WILDNESS. have hesitated to

describe "

once and particularly."

The

studies at

fact

is,

a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural

Indeed, what Thoreau

philosopher to boot."

was

finally after

ulterior

science,

nature was something

something

ulterior

poetry, something ulterior to philosophy

was that vague something which he " the

higher law," and which eludes

He went

direct statement.

to it

;

calls all

Nature as to

an oracle; and though he sometimes, indeed very often, questioned her as a naturalist

and a

poet, yet there

question in his mind.

was always another

country about Concord in weathers, and at

all

ransacked the all

seasons and

times of the day and

night ; he delved into the ground, he probed the swamps, he searched the waters, he dug into

woodchuck

holes, into muskrats' dens,

into the retreats of the mice

he saw every

bird,

and

squirrels

heard every sound, found

every wild-flower, and brought home

many

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

fresh bit of natural history

;

but he was

always searching for something he did not This search of his for the transcen-

find.

dental, the unfindable, the wild that will not

be caught, he has set forth in a beautiful parable in "

Walden

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

" I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and

a turtle-dove, and

Many

on their

still

trail.

are the travellers I have spoken con-

cerning them, describing their tracks, and

what

calls

one or two

they answered

to.

who had heard

have met

the hound, and

the tramp of the horse, and even seen the

dove disappear behind a cloud; and they

seemed as anxious

had

lost

to recover

them

as if they

them themselves."

JOHN BURROUGHS.

II.

WILLIAM BLAKE, POET AND PAINTER.

n. WILLIAM BLAKE, POET AND PAINTER. If Blake was not a great master, he had in

him

certain elements that go to the

making

Often these were beyond his

of one.

One does not need

control.

own

be a painter

or a poet to see, in his extraordinary work, that he frequently

was the servant rather

than the master; that he was swept away,

own Elijah, by the

like his

the

fire,

and that when,

horses and chariot

like Paul, he

third heaven, whether he

body or out of was not

series.

was tell.

in the

This

The conception and Job " are massive, pow-

so at all times.

execution of his " erful,

he could not

reached

sublime, maintained throughout the

The Marriage

Heaven and Hell

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC

22 is

a wonderful, a fearlessly imaginative, proof his labor with pen

But much

duction.

show that union

or pencil does not

of genius

with method which declares the master. does not always is

sit

above the thunder: he

enrapt, whirled, trembling in the electric

vortex of a cloud.

What inspired

you

say,

but to be the more

True, no

man

ever lived

is this, ?

at intervals, a

more absolute

who

had,

revelation.

was obedient to the heavenly vision; but great masters, obeying

own

with their

will

it,

find

and

harmony

occasion.

They

have, moreover, the power to discern be-

tween

false

and

foolish

prophecies,

tween the monitions from a

deity,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; be-

and those

from the limbo of dreams, delusions, and bewildered souls.

Did Blake to

see?

see the apparitions

Did the heads

Wallace, and the

Man

he claimed

Edward and

that built the Pyra-

mids, rise at his bidding, like the phantoms

WILLIAM BLAKE, POET AND PAINTER.

summoned of

Macbeth?

for

have no doubt

Neither, I think, will painters doubt

it.

for I suspect that they also have such

it;

visions,

that

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; they "who are born with

makes

visible

the sense

the inward eye the

aspect of forms and faces which they have

imagined or composed, and with the faculty that retains

them

tion has

done

painters,

clouded eyes,

times

out another, as

see

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; one if

lessness to capture

Men

until the art of reproduc-

We, who

its service.

visions

face

with

swiftly

our

blotting

mockery at our power-

and depict them.

Swedenborg and Blake,

in every fibre

are not

sensitive

and exalted by mysticism,

ac-

cept as direct revelation the visions which other leaders understand to be the conceptions of their

own

faculty,

and

utilize in

the

practice of their art.

One

Blake's masterly elements was

individuality.

as to

startle

His drawings are so original us:

they seem like pictures

ESSAYS FROM TEE CRITIC.

from some new-discovered world, and require time for our just appreciation of their unique beauty, weirdness, and power.

Another element was

faith,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; unbounded

faith in his religion, his mission,

revealed to him. is

and the way

say that he had faith

to say also that he believed in himself;

for his ecstatic piety

and reverence and

his

most glorious visions were the unconscious effluence

own

of his

nature.

And

poet or an artist should have faith vital

and

essential.

The

agnostic.

victions

own.

he believed in royalty and the

indeed,

speaking

had various

fast to his

of Shakespeare's con-

divine right of kings. chiefs

have

leaders

Take the lowest grade

most

cannot be a mere

but each has held

beliefs,

that a

hedged

in the

language or time.

His kings, then, are

with

kingliest If I

and

any

were asked to name

the most grievous thing

should say

divinity,

diction

modern

art,

the lack of some kind of

; :

WILLIAM BLAKE, POET AND PAINTER. faith.

Doubt,

distrust, the question

"What

make dim the canvas, and burden many a lyre. The new faith looks to science and the reign of law. Very well is

the use

these

they

must breed will.

But

in time

its inspiration, as

the processes of reason are

slower than the childish instincts of an early

and poetic

age.

Blake had the true

gift of expression

was not merely learned, but inventive, his

methods of drawing, etching, and

Here, and in his talks concerning

he in

color.

art,

showed power and wisdom enough

to equip

a host of ordinary draughtsmen.

He was

mad, only in the sense that gave the clown warrant for saying only

when he

thoroughly

left

all

Englishmen are mad

the field in which he was

grounded, for

which he was

self-trained

It is useless, however, to

speculations

and

half-trained.

wonder what such

an one might have been: he was what he was, and as great as he could be.

There

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

no gainsaying

his

marvellous and instant

He saw

imagination.

not the sunrise, but

an innumerable company of the angelic host, crying, " Holy, holy, holy,

Almighty " alike

the Lord

Heaven and Hell

naked and

alike clothed with beauty,

rushing together in eternal love. his friends are almost

and of

Job and

pre-Adamite in mould

His daughters are indeed they

visage.

whom we

are told that there were not

found others so himself

God

are spirits,

came

fair in all the land.

within

Jehovah

Blake's vision:

the

dreamer walked not only with sages and archangels and Titans, but with the very

God.

Among

his other qualities

were a surpris-

human

tenderness and

ingly delicate fancy, pity, industry

He had

and

fertility in the

ideas of right

extreme.

and government, and

was grandly impatient of dulness and of hypocrisy in his faults,

life

or method.

Finally, even

and the grotesqueness which

re-

WILLIAM BLAKE, POET AND PAINT ER.

mark below

peatedly brings his

add

the highest,

to the fascination that attends the re-

and study of

vival

this artist.

say of his drawings applies in to his

rhymed and unrhymed

special

gift

was

the

would not be correct

All that I

many verse.

respects

But

his

draughtsman's. to say that he

often

hesitated with the pen but never with the pencil; since, whether as

maker of songs and

artist or as

" prophetic books," his

product was bold and unstinted: but his grotesque errors are found more frequently in his poetry than in his designs, while his

most original and exquisite range of verse is

far

below that attained by him in

works of outline

and

his

color.

These are the merest, the most fragmentary impressions of a

man whom some have

dismissed with a phrase, terming him a sub-

lime

madman, and concerning whom

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; poets and type â&#x20AC;&#x201D; have

critics

written

of a subtle

essay upon

others

and poetic essay,

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

deemed whole volumes too

brief for their

glowing studies of his genius. not found a school, that a the

may

But

of Blake,

of his

itself

upon

modes and

in copying the external qualiit

does not follow that his

self-elected pupils are

rapture,

did

almost be said

modern school has founded

new understanding

purpose. ties

If he

animated by his genius,

and undaunted

faith.

EDMUND

STEDMAN.

III.

DEATH OF CARLYLE.

m. DEATH OF CARLYLE.

And

so the flame of the lamp, after long

wasting and flickering, has gone out entirely.

As ure,

a representative author, a literary

no man

else will

bequeath

significant hints of our

fierce

paradoxes,

and

its din,

parturition periods, than

longs to our neither

Gothic.

own branch

Latin

nor

fig-

to the future

stormy its

era, its

struggling

Carlyle.

be-

of the stock too,

Greek, but

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

altogether

Rugged, mountainous, volcanic, he

was himself more a French Revolution than any of

his

volumes.

In some respects, so far in the nineteenth century, the best-equipt, keenest mind, even

from the college point of view, of

all Brit-

ESSAYS FROM TEE CRITIC.

32 ain

be traced in every page, and

and then

among that

Dyspep-

only he had an ailing body.

;

sia is to

fills

the page.

the lessons of his

One may

include

— even

though

life,

stretched to amazing length,

life

now

— how

behind the tally of genius and morals stands the stomach, and gives a sort of casting vote.

Two to

conflicting agonistic elements

seem

have contended in the man, sometimes

pulling

him

He was

a cautious, conservative Scotchman,

fully'

different ways, like wild horses.

aware what a

modern radicalism

foetid gas-bag is;

much

but then his great

heart demanded reform, demanded change,

— an

always

sympathetic, always

human

heart, often terribly at odds with his scornful brain.

author ever put so

much

wailing and

despair into his books, sometimes palpable, oftener latent.

sage in Young's

reminds

of that pas-

poems, where, as

Death

DEATH OF CARLYLE. presses closer

and

closer for his prey, the

Soul rushes hither and thither, appealing, shrieking,

berating, to

escape the general

doom.

Of shortcomings, even

positive blur-spots,

from an American point of view, he had serious share

them.

fying

;

but this

When we

no time think

for speci-

how

great

changes never go by jumps in any depart-

ment

of our universe, but that long prep-

arations,

processes,

awakenings, are indis-

pensable, Carlyle was the most serviceable

democrat of the age.

How he of

modern

less,

literature

and

politics!

respecting the latter, one needs

realize,

vice,

splashes like leviathan in the seas

Doubtfirst

from actual observation, the squalor,

and doggedness ingrained in the bulk-

population of the British Islands, with the red-tape, the fatuity, the

flunkyism every-

where, to understand the last meaning in his pages.

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

Accordingly, though he was no chartist or radical, I consider Carlyle's

indignant

comment

most

anent the

protest

fruits of feudalism to-day in

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the

far the

Great Britain,

increasing poverty and degradation of

the homeless, landless twenty millions, while a few thousands, or rather a few hundreds, possess the entire

soil,

the money, and the

Trade and shipping, and clubs

fat berths.

and

culture,

fine

select class of gentry

with

and

and guns, and a

prestige,

and

aristocracy,

modern improvement, cannot

every

begin to salve or defend such stupendous hoggishness.

For the

last three years

America

have had transmitted glimpses of Carlyle's prostration

and bodily decay,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; pictures

a thin-bodied, lonesome, wifeless, childless,

very old man, lying on a

bed by indomitable well

enough

this sort

will,

sofa,

kept out of

but of late never

to take the open air.

was brought us

last fall

News

by the

sick

DEATH OF CARLYLE.

man's neighbor, Moncure Conway; and I it from time to time in brief

have noted

descriptions in the papers.

week ago

read such an item just before I started out for

customary evening

stroll

between

eight and nine.

In the (Feb.

fine,

'81),

cold night, unusually clear as

walked some

open

grounds adjacent, the condition of Carlyle,

and

his

actual

approaching

— death,

— perhaps

filled

with

even

then

thoughts,

eluding statement, and curiously blending

with the scene.

The planet Venus, an hour

high in the west, with lustre

all

her volume and

recovered (she has been shorn and

languid

for

nearly a year), including an

additional sentiment I never noticed before

— not merely voluptuous, Paphian, steeping, fascinating — now with calm, commanding, dazzling seriousness and hauteur — the Milo Venus now. Upward to the zenith, Jupiter, Saturn, and the moon past her quarter, trail-

ESSAYS FROM TEE CRITIC.

ing in procession, with the Pleiades follow-

and the constellation Taurus, and red

ing,

Not a cloud

Aldebaran.

Orion

in heaven.

strode through the south-east, with his glittering belt of the

more some

;

and a

night,

trifle

Sirius.

below hung the sun

Every

star

clear

nights

when

the

entirely outshine the rest.

nigh.

Berenice's

little star

and

Hair showing

as in

larger stars

Every

or cluster just as distinctly visible,

gem, and new ones.

dilated,

Not

vitreous, nearer than usual.

just

every

the north-east and

north the Sickle, the Goat and Kids, Cassiopeia, Castor

and Pollux, and the two Dip-

pers.

While through the whole of indescribable

this silent

show, enclosing and bathing

whole receptivity, ran the thought of

Carlyle dying.

and, as far as

(To soothe and

may

spiritualize

be, solve the mysteries of

death and genius, consider them under the stars at midnight.)

DEATH OF CARLYLE.

And now

that he has gone hence, can

be that Thomas Carlyle, soon to chemically dissolve in ashes

and by winds, remains an

In ways perhaps eluding

identity still?

all

the statements, lore, and speculations of ten

— eluding possible — does he yet to mortal

thousand years,

ments

all

sense,

exist,

definite, vital being, a spirit,

perhaps

now wafted

stellar sytems,

less as

far I

they

state-

an individual,

in space

among

—

those

which, suggestive and limit-

are,

merely edge more

limitless,

more suggestive systems ? have no doubt of

it.

In silence, of a fine

night, such questions are answered to the soul, the

"With cially till

best answers that too',

can be given.

when depressed by some

spe-

sad event, or tearing problem, I wait

go out under the stars for the

last

voiceless satisfaction.

WALT WHITMAN.

IV.

DEATH OF LONGFELLOW.

IV.

DEATH OF LONGFELLOW. I

have

just returned from a couple of

weeks down I love to

some primitive woods where

go occasionally away from parlors,

pavements, and the newspapers and magazines

;

and where, of a

clear forenoon,

in the shade of pines

and

cedars,

gle of old laurel-trees

and

vines, the

Longfellow's death

want

first

any thing

and a tan-

news of For

reached me.

better,

let

deep

lightly

twine a sprig of the sweet ground-ivy,

trail-

ing so plentifully through the dead leaves at

feet,

with reflections of that half-hour

alone, there in the silence, the mottled light,

'mid those earth-smells of the Jersey woods in spring,

and lay

the dead bard's grave.

contribution on

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

Longfellow in his voluminous works seems to

not only to be eminent in the style

and forms of poetical expression that mark the present age (an idiocrasy, almost a sickness, of verbal is

melody), but to bring what

always dearest as poetry to the general

human

heart and taste, and probably must be

so in the nature of things.

the sort of

certainly

bard and counteractant most

needed for our

materialistic,

self-assertive,

money-worshipping, Anglo-Saxon races, and especially for the present age in America,

an age tyrannically regulated with

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

refer-

ence to the manufacturer, the merchant, the financier, the politician,

man

;

for

and the day work-

whom and among whom

he comes

as the poet of melody, courtesy, deference,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

poet of the mellow twilight of the past in Italy,

Germany, Spain,

Europe, poet of

all

and

Northern

sympathetic gentleness,

and universal poet of women and young people.

I should have to think long if I

DEATH OF LONGFELLOW.

were asked to name the man who has done more, and in more valuable directions, for

America. I doubt if there ever fine intuitive

was before such a

judge and selecter of poems.

His translations of many German and Scandinavian pieces are said to be better than

the vernaculars.

His influence is

is like

does not urge or lash.

good drink or

not tepid either, but always

flavor,

motion, grace.

air.

vital,

with

strikes a splendid

average, and does not sing exceptional passions, or is

humanity's jagged escapades.

not revolutionary, brings nothing offensive

or new, does not deal hard blows.

the

contrary, his songs soothe and heal, or,

they excite, excitement.

a healthy and agreeable

His very anger

gentle,

at second hand (as in "

The Quadroon Girl," and " The Witnesses "). There is no undue element of pensiveness in Longfellow's strains.

Even

in the early

ESSAYS FROM TEE CRITIC.

translations, the " is

as of strong

Manrique," the movement

and steady wind

ing up and buoying.

Death

through his many themes

;

or tide hold-

not avoided

but there

some-

thing almost winning in his original verses

— closing " The Happiest Land " dispute, —

and renderings on that dread subject

And then the landlord's daughter Up to heaven raised her hand, And said, Ye may no more contend, '

There

lies

the happiest land

—

the ungracious complaint-charge

by Margaret Fuller many years several times since), of his nativity

and

want

say that America and the world

—

for

ago,

(as

and

of racy

special originality, I shall only

reverently thankful

enough

as,

— can

may

well be

never be thankful

any such singing-bird vouch-

safed out of the centuries, without asking

that the notes be

different

from those

other songsters; adding what I have heard

DEATH OF LONGFELLOW. Longfellow himself say, that ere

45 tlie

New-

World can be worthily original, and announce herself and her own heroes, she must be well saturated with the others,

that lived before

Without sions,

daily

originality

and respectfully consider the heroes

Agamemnon.

mean

without

jealousies,

pas-

never did the personality, character,

and yearly

life

and truly assimilate

of a poet,

own

his

guileless, courteous ideal,

steadily

loving, cultured,

and exemplify

it.

In the world's arena he had some special sorrows

;

but he had

prizes, triumphs, rec-

ognitions, the grandest.

Extensive and heartfelt as

to-day,

and

has been for a long while, the fame of Longfellow, it is probable,

hence

will be wider

nay

certain, that years

and deeper. "WALT WHITMAN.

Camden, N. J., April

3, '82.

GEORGE ELIOT AND THE NOVEL.

Every

'writer

some modification

first

rank makes

in his genre.

The modern

the

French comedy was created by Moliere English drama changed

its

the French

was turned upside down by the ap-

pearance of "Hernani." take

far-reaching in

it,

to take place in the

" Scenes

Bede

the

form and aims

in the hands of Shakespeare;

stage

;

change, I

its effect,

has begun

modern novel

Clerical

Life "

" appeared to a public

and

still

since the

Adam

enamoured

of the historical romances of Walter Scott. I

know

that some of our ablest critics have

thought that George Eliot, though a great writer,

was not great

as a novelist, according

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

common

to the

Neither

standard.

Shake-

speare a great dramatist according to the old

The novel

classical standard.

flexible

form of

There

literature.

the most

hardly

such a thing as a legitimate and an

mate novel.

I suppose that

illegiti-

even " Wilhelm

Meister," that most structureless -work of genius,

a novel.

writing

species

that can contain Mr. Roe's homiletic tales,

Judge Tourgee's picturesque

political

bro-

Lord Beaconsfield's autobiographies

chures,

and malice, Spielhagen's weird nightmares,

and Erckmann - Chatrian's photographs, certainly the era.

But

include

most catholic of

needs no latitudinarianism to

George

To my

works.

Eliot's

mind,

it is

as a novelist that she

est.

Ah,

but

matic,

it is

literary gen-

her

objected

stories !

But who

novel to a dramatic form? the normal novelist?

are

be tableaux with red lights ?

dra-

limited the

Is Charles

Must

great-

not

there

Reade always

Fielding, the

â&#x20AC;&#x17E;

GEORGE ELIOT AND THE NOVEL.

was not "dramatic." But open " Daniel Deronda " at the incomcreator of the novel,

parable river scene, where Deronda rescues

Mira, and

novel

me by what

scene in any

surpassed in artistic

Read on little

tell

to the

interest?

meeting of the sweet

Jewess with the Meyricks;

lost

or take

Gwendolen's confession to Deronda; or go to

Middlemarch, and see Dorothea whisper-

ing confidences in the ear of Lydgate's wife.

These scenes

and

are

live ineffaceably in the

ments of the

artificial sort.

But what has

this

novelist

rank taught those who come her

memory,

worth a thousand dramatic denoA-

art?

What

of the

after her

peculiarities

first

about

George

Eliot's are likely to leave a strong impress

after

her?

I answer, She, of all novelists,

has attacked the profound problems of our existence.

She has taught that the mystery

worthy of a great

artist is

not the shallow

mystery of device, but the

infinite perspec-

JESSATS

FROM THE

tive of the great,

life

deeper interest in

seen in the modern, scientific

daylight, than in

life

viewed through a mist

of ancient and dying superstitions

human

interest of

interest

human

dark enigmas of

nature; that there

human

CRITIC.

;

that the

character transcends the

circumstances;

invented

the epic story of a hero and a heroine so

that is

not

grand as the natural history of a com-

munity.

She,

sections of

first

modern

all,

life,

has

made

cross

and shown us the

busy human hive in the light of a great artistic

and philosophic

not sought to see

men

in the

romantic past, but to bring vision

who by

She has

intellect.

dim haze

men

difference of race, condition,

or the lapse of time, were far away.

Eliot has

made the

the supernatural.

George

typical novel of this age

of scientific thought

neers,

of a

into close

and growing unbelief in Knights, corsairs, bucca-

highwaymen, witches, charms, ghosts,

miracles, second-sight,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; these are

the worn-

GEORGE ELIOT AND THE NOVEL. out stage property of the past. Eliot,

more than any

other, has

But George shown that

romance, so far from dying under the

influ-

ence of the stern scepticism of our time, has had opened to ous

new and more

vigor-

She has made the great ruthless

life.

forces of nature into dramatis persona?,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; not

writing books of fortune, but books of

Now, the book

of fate

The book ments of

all,

or,

or he

of fate has

rightly.

come and gone. of the novel.

the

and breaks few

it is

and the most

to read

ties,

perchance,

falls,

nevertheless

seeks to climb

most he attains to the

to the sun, but at

steeple;

fate.

the book of failure,

The man

partial or entire.

mountain-top,

It has

neck.

" dramatic " deno4-

the sublimest book

interesting, if

church-

his

learn

literary primate

must

has

revise our notion

taken on new

possibili-

and received a new impress.

EDWAED EGGLESTON.

VI.

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.

VI. FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. I

AM frequently

struck with the difference

between an impression as

exists

mind, and the same impression as

struggles

through the best expression that I can give it

I have never been able to satisfy

on paper.

myself with any thing I wrote about a book or a person

for there

;

and persons which one

that about books

feels,

and very deeply

perhaps, but which one cannot define, even shallowly.

words

;

Poe wrote an ingenious

little

which he maintained the power of

essay, in

but the time came when he

claimed his confessed

mad his

pride of intellectuality,

dis-

and

impotence to utter the un-

thought-like thoughts which two words,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

two

foreign, soft dissyllables,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

out the abysses of his heart. state, in

which

what

not at

;

that I shall suc-

much that I wish to me before I can grasp

for

say will either escape

or will refuse to be put in words.

cism

may

desire

of Mrs. Burnett

all certain

ceed in doing so

it,

from

to follow, the estimation in

I hold the genius

but I

stirred

be an

art,

but

Criti-

not an exact

it is

science.

It perceives intellectual

qualities

which

cannot classify;

exercises itself

defy analysis.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; emotions,

for,

the

upon them, the more they They are elusive, shadowy,

not thoughts

;

emanations of

the original soul whence they proceed, that

obey no will but their own in revealing themselves to the souls of others, and they choose their

There

own

time for that.

a quality in the

work

of Mrs.

me of Dickens, but which reminds me of Dickens's man-

Burnett which reminds nothing ner.

Roughly speaking,

I should say it

was

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.

a profound sympathy with, and an intimate

knowledge

of,

what English

statisticians call

the lower classes, and American statisticians, the democratic masses people, the poor.

was drawn

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in

other words, the

I should also say that she

them

in her early years, with-

out knowing how, or caring why.

They

had, I think, the same attractions for her that they had for the

young Shakespeare, who

mastered the humors of clowns and constables long before he mastered the emotions of

kings,

had

queens, and lovers

for the

u 'prentice han' " on

The bent

;

and that they

young Dickens, who

tried his

every-day characters.

of her genius directed her girlish

observation toward the miners of Lancashire, as

later

directed her maiden observation, at a period,

toward the

North Carolina. writers to

whom

mean whites

There have

been great

the people were of

much

less account than they were to Shakespeare,

or Scott, or Dickens.

Balzac was one of

;

ESSArS FROM THE CRITIC.

60 these,

Thackeray another, and Hawthorne a

third.

Not that they did not introduce

them

in their stories,

when they were needed

for artistic purposes, but that they did not

handle them as

they loved them

ton said of the angler's worm.

— as Wal-

There

may

be a wider scope and a deeper philosophy in the writings of this latter class;

they

may

be more metropolitan, more national, more cosmical even,

may be

the phrase

allowed

but they are apt to lack a charm which characteristic of provincial writing, of

which

the songs of Burns and Miss Blamire are

good examples in

verse,

and the

Mr. Cable and Mrs. Burnett

stories

in prose.

Mrs. Burnett discovers gracious secrets in

rough and forbidding natures,

— the

sweet-

ness that often underlies their bitterness, the soul of goodness in things evil. presses

—

She im-

understanding her suffering

and sinning characters as ever understood

his,

fully as

— as

Dickens

having a more

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.

genuine affection for them, and as never at

any time caricaturing them. possibilities

I find no im-

among them, no monsters

and darkness, and no attempt sensibilities

she

pathetic,

tears in

humor, when she

me when

I close

them

admire.

so unforced

for laughing at

reading her books

not to

;

and when

criticise,

but to

do not mean to say that she has

not faults, and that I do not feel them

not

never question her domination over

from

when

and her

eyes;

humorous,

that I do not despise myself it.

pathos,

so natural that I

ashamed of the

to capture

Her

trickery.

of light

it.

are chapters in "

There

far

That Lass

Lowrie's " which are tantalizing with un-

fulfilment;

they stop when they should go

on, bringing up suddenly like balky horses.

What

the matter here

? I

ask myself.

Did

when she ought not to when the soul was in a fer-

Mrs. Burnett write

have written,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

ment, as Keats says, the character undecided,

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

the ambition thick-sighted,

away her work

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; or did she

lop

to bring it within editorial

There are branches which the

requirements ?

pruning-knife would seem to have trimmed,

and gaps which only a broadaxe could have made.

I feel these

here and there story

that

it is ;

but I never

feel,

feel that the

not true to the nature

writer

and

faults, I say,

a certain indecision of invention

besides,

depicts;

not true to the imagination of the

and

that,

with

all its faults, it is

not

admirable.

Mrs. Burnett seems to have an intuitive perception of character, and what belongs to it.

think

we apprehend her personages, and I we do clearly, it is not because she

describes

them

to us, but because they reveal

themselves in their actions. sponsible for

more to

so than

She

what they say or

not re-

do, or not

Thackeray would allow himself

be for the love between Henry

and Lady Castlewood.

"Why

Esmond did

you

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. marry them?" asked Mrs. Jameson it

(I think

was), whose sense of propriety was some-

how shocked by he answered

" I did not,"

that incident.

" they married themselves."

Mrs. Burnett's characters are as veritable as Thackeray's

;

though her range, of course,

much narrower than

his, as

her sympathies

more nearly allied to sentiment. The word " sentimental," however, which so justare

work

ly describes the

many

does not apply to her work

"romantic," in

its

;

lady novelists,

though the word

highest sense, does.

She

has an impassioned mind, that conceives with tenderness as well as strength.

Only such

a mind could have conceived Jean Lowrie,

who, whether she follows Derrick in the darkness, night after night, to protect him

from the wrath of her brutal

father, or

walks

her room crooning to the child of poor foolish Liz,

She

alike

womanly and

glorious

primitive, cast in the

creature,

mould

alike

noble.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; elemental,

of the mothers

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

of the race,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the daughters

live in the

vigorous drawings of Blake, or

the

daughters of men,

God saw were

of Job, as they

whom

the

sons of

She belongs to a

fair.

hood of heroic heroines

whom

sister-

the novelists

of the period are fond of delineating (nota-

bly Mr. Charles Reade), but she overtops

them

massive simplicity of character

all in

and thorough womanhood.

Very

but very lovely and touching,

sitive, rustic

that shy, sen-

lady, Louisiana Rogers;

little

and very charming and lovable

Miss Octavia

Bassett,

who seemed

embody

the American girl abroad.

women

whom

their sex, in a

nett's three novels, "

represent, also, the intellect

The

three

have spoken represent

That Lass

Mrs. BurLowrie's,"

Fair Barbarian;" and

growth and change of her

during the three years in which she

was writing them. recur to

have a divine right to

certain sense, in

"Louisiana," and

different,

Other

women

of hers

remembrance, though not with

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.

may

the same vividness (I ing,

mention, in pass-

Esmeralda and Lodusky)

would recur

sure,

it if

and

;

others, I

had read her

early stories as they appeared in the maga-

could hring myself to make their

zines, or if I

now

acquaintance

books.

unauthorized

certain

do not remember her

men with

the same distinctness as her women, I con-

clude that her strength hitherto has lain in

drawing the for

what

final;

for

genius until

latter.

I state

this conclusion

worth, as tentative, and not

do not accept the it

has gone

down

finality of

into the dark

and narrow house, nor even then when think

of " Denis

I like to

Duval " and

I be-

" Hyperion."

know something about

lives of the writers

whom

the

I admire, I take it

for granted that the readers of Mrs. Burnett will like to

know something about

I therefore proceed to tell

about

Nov.

it.

It is not

much.

her

them what

life.

know

She was born on

24, 1849, in Manchester, Eng.,

where

E8SATS FROM THE CRITIC.

she passed the

years of her

first fifteen

life.

particulars of her childhood have reached

me, except that, like Charlotte Bronte, she developed a talent for improvising stories at

an early age, and that while at school she

wrote poems, and began to write novels.

war her parents emi-

the close of our civil

grated to the United States, and settled at

Newmarket, a small nessee,

some twenty-five miles from Knox-

About a year

ville.

Ten-

village in Eastern

later they

removed

Knoxville, where, at the age of sixteen, she

completed a story which she had planned,

and partly written, and sent

in her thirteenth year,

to a Boston periodical.

was

accepted, and an early insertion promised; but, as the editor stated that

could be given for sent

it,

she reclaimed

to " Godey's Lady's

was published, paid other stories.

no remuneration

for,

it,

and

Book," where

and followed by

From Godey's

" Peterson's Magazine," for

she passed to

which she wrote

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.

The

largely.

turning-point in her literary" Surly

fortunes was

Tim's

Trouble," an

English dialect story, which she sent to the editor of

" Scribner's

published there

and the

;

Monthly."

Hodgson, was invited to furnish more

which she hastened

was

writer, Miss Frances

to do.

About

stories,

this

time

(1873) Miss Hodgson married a young Tennessee physician, and became Mrs. Burnett.

Her next work Lass

of importance

" Scribner's," and which tion, especially

form.

was "That

Lowrie's," which was published in

when

was reprinted

made

a great sensa-

was issued in

book

England, where

of one edition alone about thirty thousand copies

were

sold.

was burlesqued

"Punch," and was dramatized and played with success.

Mrs. Burnett's subsequent

works are " Surly

Tim and Other

Stories

" (1877), "Haworth's" (1879), " Louisiana

(1880), and

The

latest

work

Fair Barbarian" (1881). to

which she has put her

ESSATS FROM THE CRITIC.

hand "

a novel of

Washington

life,

entitled

Through One Administration," the mate-

rials for

which have been gathered during a

residence of

This story

first

now running

the

capital.

as a serial in

instalment (in the

"The

November num-

Burnett's dramatization of her

ber), Mrs.

story of " Esmeralda "

was produced

Madison-square Theatre. questioned

Just before the publication of

Century." the

several years

;

and

it is

at the

Its success is un-

important as indicating

the line in which her best

work may be done.

E. H.

STODDARD.

VII.

THOREAU'S UNPUBLISHED POETRY.

vn. THOREAU'S UNPUBLISHED POETRY.

Soon

after

the

death

Thoreau, in October, 1876,

Miss

Sophia

I received

from

her executor in Maine, where she died, her brother Henry's copy of " The Dial," in four

volumes, which she had asked

memory

of her and of him.

keep in

Opening the

volumes, I found in one of them a sheet of verses in

Henry Thoreau's handwriting, and

evidently

copied out of his commonplace-

book many years ago.

Some

never been printed, and

all

manner

that

may

suggest

them have

are arranged in a

how

this

man

great and peculiar genius regarded

poems.

He seldom

his

of a

own

published any except as

parts of his prose essays, where they occur

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

either

choruses, or

ment

of his thought.

several of his

poems

hymns, or as word-

pictures to illustrate

move-

clearly the

he allowed

It is true

to appear in

"The

beginning with " Sympathy " in

Dial,"

the

first

number, which Mr. Emerson has reprinted with a few more at the end of his selection

from

Thoreau's

letters.

But these were

probably obtained from him by friends

them

desired to see

them

printed, after reading

in his manuscripts.

said that the earliest

friend

who

have heard

poem he showed

any

was "Sic Vita," which was printed

years afterward in "

The

Dial,"

and then in

"Week."

This was written on a sheet

of paper that

was wrapped round a bunch of

the

violets,

tied

loosely

with

thrown into a lady's window.

deemed worthy

place

was not

among

selected for printing in 1865 (though

been read 1862), and

at his funeral is

and

straw,

those it

had

by Mr. Alcott

indeed far less striking than

THOREAU 'S UNPUBLISHED POETRY. " Inspiration,"

his

poem

longest

;

perhaps

Thoreau had much

own

lifetime.

in selecting from

skill

verses; and no doubt these frag-

ments were the which

his

but only a few extracts from

appeared during the author's

this

his

which

best

lines

the poem,

consists of twenty-one stanzas.

Emerson printed seven

these

Mr.

stanzas,

omitting the less significant parts, but also omitting

deemed

much which

the author would have

essential to the full statement of his

thought.

Having received the manuscript

from Miss Thoreau in 1863, right to print

entire in the

monwealth," just as

Any

was

differences noticed

thought

Boston " Com-

left

by the

between the

poet.

lines as

there given, and as published by Mr. Emerson, are caused

hand.

Miss Thoreau did not object to these

slight changes essay,

by changes made by another

;

and

in regard to one short

entitled "Prayers,"

which she pub-

lished in the last collection of her brother's

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

papers that was

made by

singular error.

This

Thoreau's at

all,

her, she fell into a

essay

not

Henry

but Mr. Emerson's.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; which Prayer," â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

contains some verses of Thoreau's, in his manuscripts are entitled "

but nothing

was

from

else

The essay

his hand.

originally published in "

The Dial

" for

and, as the verses there appear

July, 1842

;

in a fuller

form than that given below,

I as-

sume that the sheet of verses found in " Dial "

was written

came

to me,

least

twenty years

(May

death

previous to Thoreau's

In this form

1862). of

its title, like

conclude, was the

were made.

form which

out, in the

some time before 1842, or

simply a collection

each with

way

rhymed

epigrams

;

sentences,

and

this, I

that Thoreau's verses

They might

be,

and often were,

afterward joined together in

connected

poem and sometimes the framework of this poem was arranged beforehand, as in the piece called " The Fisher's Boy," contain;

;

THOREAU'S UNPUBLISHED POETRY. ing the line so well quoted, —

My life

known and

like a stroll

often

upon the beach."

After this long preface, let us come to the sheet of verses

—

OMNIPRESENCE.

Who

equalleth the coward's haste,

And still inspires the faintest heart; Whose lofty fame is not disgraced, Though

assume the lowest part. INSPIRATION.

thou wilt but stand by

When When

through the that

field

my ear,

thy anthem's rung,

done I will not fear

But the same power

will abet

my tongue.

PRAYER. Great God

Than

that I

That in

I ask thee for no

may

conduct I

can now

meaner

pelf,

not disappoint myself

may

soar as high

discern with this clear eye

my weak hand may equal my firm faith, And my life practise more than my tongue saith That

;

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

That

Nor my That

low conduct

may

not show,

relenting lines,

I thy purpose did not

know,

overrated thy designs.

MISSION. I've searched

learn

why

my faculties life

around,

me was

lent

I will attend the faintest sound,

And

then declare to

man what God

hath meant.

DELAY.

generous action can delay

Or thwart our But

higher, steadier aims

and true are they,

sincere

It will arouse

our sight, and nerve our frames.

THE VIREO.

Upon the lofty elm-tree sprays The Vireo rings the changes meet, During these trivial summer days, Striving to

lift

our thoughts above the

MORNING.

street.

THOREAU 'S UNPUBLISHED POETRY.

Here the sheet abruptly ends, and what was to be said about " Morning " we may never know.

The quatrain describing the

vireo singing in the elms above a Concord street

was printed

in "

The Dial "

for July,

1842; another indication that these verses are of earlier date than that.

may

Perhaps they

be found among the " verses in the long

book," to which Thoreau refers by pencilnotes in his copy of " The Dial," the " long

book

ago destroyed.

may

indeed

not have been long

For during

in the winter of 1861-62,

his last illness,

Henry Thoreau

told me, in one of the conversations

we had

in his sick-room, that he had once destroyed

many

of his verses, because

please the friend (Mr.

they did not

Emerson)

whose

eye he had submitted them; but he added,

"I am sorry now that

burned them,

for

perhaps they were better than he thought." I

doubt not they were, and am anxious now

that every line he left behind

him should be

ESSAYS FROM TEE CRITIC.

printed

;

for

he had examined

with great care, and certainly "

line which, dying,

Why, or

his

own work

left

he could wish to blot."

then, should his friends erase one,

withhold

from

publication?

those which do not rise into his loftiest cast a tender light acter,

which were

ble than

on far

his

own

life

Even mood

and char-

more sweet and amia-

some have supposed. F.

SANBORN'.

VIII.

EMERSON AND THE SUPERLATIVE.

vm. EMERSON AND THE SUPERLATIVE.

Emerson on Century")

known

the Superlative

same Emerson we have

the

This

of old.

"The

(in

essays of his prime, as

perhaps one of the it

certainly

on a

par with any of the chapters of his later volumes.

How

speech, the gas lar

orator

he hates the superlative in

and insincerity of the popu-

When

he went West a few

years ago, he said the only thing he saw that

equalled the brag was the Yosemite.

was the kind of superlative he superlative of fact,

liked,

This

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; grandeur that beggared

comparison.

Yet Emerson

himself a master exag-

gerator, the lord of extremes, holding the

;

ESSAYS FMOM TEE

CRITIC.

But

zenith and the nadir in his two hands. at his best

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; runs

runs the other

to excess of truth, rather than

way,"

excess of

superlative

his

Without

form.

adjective

adverb, he reaches the superlative degree

by the sheer and nouns.

projectile

It is the

not of quantity

;

force

of his verbs

exaggeration of quality,

of essence,

not of bulk.

His sentences are a steam-chest: the force of expansion

the gas

there â&#x20AC;˘without the expansion

held by an iron grip, and

to work.

statement

;

praises a

low

style,

moderate

but there must be a good

pounds pressure to the square inch

low

style

that suits him.

must be ready fly

fly,

on any account.

The

made

many in

the

rivet-heads

only they must not Perfect control and

moderation though you are handling thunderbolts.

If there is a difference

statement

then

between an extreme

and an exaggerated statement,

we should say Emerson makes

the

;

EMERSON AND THE SUPERLATIVE.

extreme statement, the compact, iron-bound,

There

high-pressure statement.

admixture of a insincerity,

never any

but always the plus, the pressure

make

of a purpose that would

not the least taint of

lie,

the extreme

The

and submissive.

available

last

degree, the last limit of power, he wants

but he wants

tion.

without striving or contor-

cuts no

fantastic

tricks

before

high heaven, but he deals in plain speech before the Olympian is

no god dare wrong a worm," he says Speaking for Brahma, he says

somewhere. to the "

meek

lover of the good," " Find me,

and turn thy back on heaven." is

" There

dignitaries.

His rhetoric

a search for an extreme, but for a safe and

well-clinched statement,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

for the

arousing

superlative, the superlative that freezes the

mercury, or

statement

what

whom

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

boils

when

omits

;

it.

it is

when

he speaks in

likes

an under-

bold or stimulates by the village father of

this

article

gave as a

ESSATS FROM TEE CRITIC.

84 toast at

had finished "

The

fair, after

the speaker

discourse, this

sentiment,

an agricultural his

orator of the day

his subject deserves ;

the attention of every farmer " or the boy

who on said

the top of the Catslrill Mountains

Tony,

Come up

companion, "

his

here,

;

looks pretty out-of-doors " and he

likes

an over-statement when

bold,

when

equally

it is

a blow and not a word, a

it is

double shot and not a blank cartridge. short, the statement

under or over. is

when

powder and

Superlative

it is

forcible,

whether

says the low expression

strong and agreeable.

agreeable of

must be

He means

strong, â&#x20AC;&#x201D; when

bullet.

This

it is full

article

on the

a good example of Emerson's

Spartan exaggeration, his heroic hyperbole.

Speaking of a person with the superlative temperament, he says, "If the talker lose a

thaw and

tooth, he thinks the universal

solution his

opinion,

things has come.

and

cries,

dis-

Controvert Persecution

EMERSON AND TEE SUPERLATIVE. and reckons himself with

was sawed

in two."

St.

Barnabas,

who

says " every favor-

not a cherub, nor every cat a

ite is

griffin,

nor each unpleasing person a dark diabolical intriguer

;

our

sies

nor agonies executions, nor ecstadaily

death, judgment,

when

Thousands never, on a

just

hungry or

But

this

thirsty, or furious

tameness and monot-

what our philosopher would avoid

speech.

hair stand on life,

The books end

say,

Who,

made

when

of the true

Emersonian exaggeration.

first

in our municipal

ever had such an experience?"

the phrase,

froze

tedious

who were

single occasion,

secrets

are

recurring as minute-guns.

or terrified."

The

eternity

of people live and die

ony

bread."

used,

Yet

was a sample

blood," too, he dislikes

;

"It

yet he has

used the phrase " the shudder of joy," and in his

poem on

the " Titmouse," he says of

the severe cold that

the marble bones."

" curdles the blood to

In one of his earlier

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

essays he speaks of that hunger of the soul

that could eat the solar system like gingercake.

" Religion

and poetry," he

ing of the superlative character

says, speak-

and manners

of the Eastern races, " are all the, civilization

of the Arab."

The exaggeration

ing and telling antithesis

always agreeable

" Dante," he says, in " Letters

Emerson. and Social Aims," " was

all

of a strik-

wings,

Turnpike

— yet is

free imagination,

wrote

—

Euclid."

one thing," he says, speaking

of Dryden, " blue sky another."

Emerson's exaggeration, either way, up or down, unlike that, say, of such a writer as Victor

Hugo, great as the

strikes fire,

latter

is,

always kindles the mind

;

always

and we

get a glimpse of noble manners, or feel the religious

else

the

poetic thrill.

The

heroic quality lurks in every line he writes.

There ple,

always the stimulus of great exam-

— of that high

and undaunted attitude

and the cheerful confronting of great odds,

EMERSON AND TEE SUPERLATIVE. which

the

reply of

the Athenian

soldier to his Persian enemy, " will

darken the sun," said the

Our arrows latter. " Then

will fight in the shade," said the Greek.

JOHN BURROUGHS.

IX.

A COMPANY OF SPRING

POETS.

A COMPANY OF SPUING POETS.

IX.

A COMPANY OF SPRING POETS. If there be a Tenth Muse,

known

henceforth as the

Poetry!

This

her be

Muse of Spring when the ed-

the season

waste-basket

itor's

let

filled

overflowing

with odes, sonnets, and nameless other species of metrical

composition in praise of the

god Vertumnus. "spirit of

The

season which puts a

youth in every thing"

affects as

well the, laity as the recognized priesthood of poesy,

dumb

and makes the usually

spirit

rambs.

discreet

break forth in unadvised dithy-

There may possibly be a singing

contagion in the atmosphere,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;a

dancing

breathe, which rhythmically

of the

air

affects

our pulse, and urges us to seek a

ESSArS FROM THE CRITIC.

"organic num-

vocal embodiment for our

most sponta-

It is certain that the

bers."

neous couplet, inside or outside the rhyming dictionary,

commonest

" spring "

bit

and

of song, if its

spring, never falls into

good usage.

" sing

Witness

;

and the

keynote be

contempt or out of

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

April showers

Bring forth

This

May flowers.

undoubtedly the briefest

lyric ever

composed on the subject of spring

any thing known gists, it

to the contrary

may have come down

;

to us

but, for philolo-

from the

remotest " Aryan antiquity."

Anacreon,

sounded only

whose

three

love, wine,

and

stringed himself,

lyre

makes

an agreeable exception when, for once, he takes up the praise of spring.

ing

Very charm-

the picture which the old pleasure-

lover gives us of the youthful season, as he

beheld

it:

a world of flowers; the Graces

A COMPANY OF SPRING POETS.

dancing on the fresh green turf; the return the sunshiny water with

of the cranes;

ducks;

sailing olive

the

flowers,

;

same branches

leaves, ;

shoots

thrifty fruit,

and, last of

its

the

crowding the

all,

Bacchus and

himself rejoicing at the prospect of a great grape-yield next

autumn

Anacreon was,

without question, the chief " spring poet of Teos

but he encountered no editorial

malison, for he

seems

have had

little

ambition for "rushing into print;" on the contrary, being quite recitals vivants.

content with private

and the applause of

But poets

his fellow bons

of the South

and Orient

could not, from the nature of the climate,

have known cate

all

the rich surprises and deli-

coquetries of the spring as they were

known tudes,

to the bards of

more northern

where the changes of the year are

more emphatically marked. poetry,

lati-

we may

say,

Early English

began with a melodious

somnambulism on a May morning of the

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

fourteenth century.

Chaucer was the

" spring poet " of our tongue.

one induction to nearly

all his

There

first

but

performances,

greeting to the springtime, and particularly " observance

May."

There were light

sleepers in those days, folk longing to go

and impatient

pilgrimages, of daylight,

coming

for the

the birds themselves, as

Chaucer describes them in the Canterbury Prologue

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

And

That slepen It

was on a

first

smale fowles m&ken melodie

the night with open yhe."

morne of May

saw Emelie, who had

" that

Palamon

risen early to do

honor to the day, and was walking in the

garden gathering flowers to make a " certeyn gerland " for her head. of the

Cuckow and

sleepless

Nightingale," a

wight wanders through a grove in

the morning

May.

Again, in the story the

twilight, early in the

month

Unluckily for the success of his love-

A COMPANY OF SPRING POETS.

he hears the cuckoo sing before the

suit,

nightingale finds

and

;

but, in partial compensation, he

mysterious

green," sie."

land

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; grass-green,

There he

sits

" all

white and

"ypoudred with

down among

dai-

the flowers,

listens to the singing of the birds.

The old dramatists are never happier than when they draw their comparisons from Shakespeare makes Prince

vernal nature.

pay a pretty compliment

Florizel

who

attired as the

shearing

frolic.

to Perdita,

queen of the sheep-

tells

her that she seems

" no shepherdess, but Flora

Peering in April's front."

the course

the

suitable

for

her

Perdita

festivities,

wishes for some "flowers

the

spring,"

young companions, and

names the following:

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

"Daffodils,

That come before the swallow

The winds

dares,

March with beauty;

But sweeter than the

and take

violets dim,

lids of Juno's eyes,

Or Cytherea's breath."

ESSAYS FROM TEE CRITIC.

Other delicacies in

bouquet of spring

this

beauties are pale primroses, bold oxslips, the

crown imperial,

of all kinds, including

lilies

Yet another clerk

the flower-de-luce.

the floWer-roll of spring.

memory

that the grant,

embalmed

calls

was inevitable

of Lycidas should be fraas

those he names.

was

such sweets as

(No wonder

New

Eng-

land poets cast jealous and covetous regards

upon the

The

floral treasures

Old England.

flowers of our continent are only half-

souled, if fragrance constitutes the soul of a flower.)

We with

cannot go by Robin Herrick's garden,

its

fantastic parterres, without begging

a holiday souvenir.

will ask for violets.

In what trim and tripping measures does he celebrate their beauty "

Welcome, maids of honor

Ye do bring In the Spring,

And

wait upon her."

A COMPANY OF SPUING POETS. and early we hear him

Bright

Corinna to go a-maying. infer,

97 calling

This Corinna,

was a very phlegmatic young person

require so

much reminding that May Day had

come, and that her friends were impatiently waiting for her to join them in their quest for white-thorn and greens for decoration.

The

playful despatch and impatience of the verse

We,

are altogether irresistible.

no two minds about the matter

..." Wash, Few

dress,

who

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

have

be briefe in praying

prayers are best, -when once

Collins,

at least, :

we goe a-maying."

stands a long remove from

the poets best read in Nature's traditions,

has nevertheless one drop of pure quintessence distilled from the very atmosphere of

There

spring.

something more than mere

personification

elegant

couplet

the

following

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

When

Spring, with

dewy fingers

cold,

Returns to deck their hallowed mould

;

ESSAYS FROM TUB CRITIC.

The

poet,

dewy

indeed, must

have

we have among the

fingers (as

fitfully stirring

of the

young

seen

those

often seen

them)

slim,

weak blades

close of a chilly

grass, at the

April day, or smoothing out the creases of earliest-opened leaves

the

midst of

" sweet, uncalendared spring rain."

May

Never has the divinity of divinely

May "

hymned than

Keats's ode for

Day, opening with an

Mother

Maia

Hermes,

and

Did we not know

could readily believe

been more

invocation still

youthful

authorship,

its

a fragment de-

scended from some sublime-hearted Grecian bard, one of those

who

" died content on pleasant sward,

Leaving great verse unto a

little

clan."

This ode contains but fourteen

and short

them

;

but they

are, as their

lines,

long

poet wished

to be, "rich in the simple worship of

a day."

;

A COMPANY OF SPUING POETS.

Everywhere

the

poetic

scriptures

bear

record of the dangerous reciprocity existing

between love and springtime,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; no

other

season so fatally propitious for love-making.

When

Launcelot brings Guinevere home to

Camelot,

The rain

it is

the

"boyhood

of the year."

spring has come in a "sunlit flood of ;

" the tallest forest elms

have already

gathered a green mist about their tops

yellow river runs

full

to its

the linnet pipes, and the throstle strong.

for Guinevere, she

for the Faerie

Queen

herself,

;

the

grassy brim whistles

might pass

having on the

suit in fashion at the elfin court,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;a

grass-

green robe with golden

and

light-

clasps,

green plumes held by a ring of gold, floating

from her cap

she rides

swiftly along.

" She seemed a part of joyous spring," told it

;

and

to one

who had beheld

would have been none too great a "

To waste his whole Upon her perfect

are

her then sacrifice

heart in one kiss lips."

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

100

Alas for Launcelot and Guinevere, and for

good King Arthur, that

journey was

this

not

made

later

summer, or under the November sky,

the dull unelectric

any time save when the

days of

spirits of

April

were weaving their enchantments for pilgrims with

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

idle

empty hearts

The spring poets

May

their race never

They cannot be

too many, too

early, or too long-delaying.

Let them not

die out

be put where. the

down by

Philistine depreciation any-

Let nothing

less

than a

ear from Apollo himself put

shame.

What though new

them

their notes be small

and tame, abounding in melodious that were not

fillip

last

iterations

year, or the

year

before last? "

Remember, never

to the hill or plain,

Valley or wood, without her cuckoo strain,

Comes

the fresh Spring in all her green completed."

EDITH

THOMAS.

NATURE IN LITERATURE.

NATURE

103

IN LITERATURE.

Several different kinds or phases of this thing we call Nature have at different times appeared in literature. is

For

towering

Greek bards,

Nature born of wonder, rance,

alive

every thing else

human

expression

made manly and

himself that he

alive,

and

that he could see only these qualities

Nature.

whose

fear, childish igno-

and the tyranny of personality: the

Greek was

instance, there

the personified or deified Nature of the

Or the Greek

nature

simple

spring-water, or the open

milk or fruit or bread.

idyllic

and air,

poets,

fresh,

or the taste of

The same thing

perhaps true in a measure of Virgil's Nature.

ESSAYS FROM TEE CRITIC.

104

In a later

class of writers

arose in Italy, Nature

and dogmas

and

that

artists

steeped in the faith

of the Christian

Church

it is

kind of theological Nature. In English literature there cial

Nature of Pope and his

the

class,

artifi-

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a kind

of classic liturgy repeated from the books,

and

and hollow

dead

shells.

fossil

Earlier than that, the quaint and affected

Nature of the Elizabethan poets;

later, the

melodramatic and wild-eyed Nature of the

Byronic muse

and

;

and

spiritualized

lastly,

the transmuted

Nature of Wordsworth,

which has given the prevailing tone and to

most modern poetry.

cast

Thus, from a god-

dess Nature has changed to a rustic

nymph,

a cloistered nun, a heroine of romance, besides

other characters not so

definite, till

she has at last become a priestess of the soul.

What

will

be the next phase

already indicated in

Whitman,

which

the

poems

Nature

perhaps of

Walt

regarded

NATURE IN LITERATURE. mainly in the light of science

105

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; through

the immense vistas opened up by astronomy

and geology.

This poet sees the earth as

one of the orbs, and has sought to adjust

modern problems

his

imagination

and

conditions, always taking care, however,

preserve an

the

outlook

into

the

highest

regions. I

was much struck with a passage

Whitman's

last

volume, "

Two

Eivulets," in

which he says that he has not been afraid of the charge of obscurity in his poems, "be-

human

cause

thought,

poetry or melody,

must have dim escapes and

outlets,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; must

possess a certain fluid, aerial character, akin to space itself, obscure to those of little or

no imagination, but highest

purposes.

dressed to the soul, line,

sculpture,

half-tints,

the

Poetic style,

when

ad-

is less definite

form, out-

indispensable

and becomes

and even

know no ampler

less

than

justification

vista,

music,

half-tints."

of a certain

106

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

elusive quality there

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; something

explained, and that

many

in the highest poetry

that refuses to be tabulated or is

readers â&#x20AC;&#x201D; than

a stumbling-block to is

contained in these

sentences.

JOHN BURROUGHS.

XL AUSTIN DOBSON.

AUSTIN DOBSON.

109

XI. AUSTIN DOBSON.

Theee

something kindred to humorous

poetry in the

de-sooiStS

warm and humid

have

who had

Prior,

been

Devon men, except

the misfortune to be born

just over the border in Dorset.

made

climate of

All our best writers of vers-

Devonshire.

year ago

a pilgrimage to the neat little house

Dodbrooke, where Peter Pindar saw the

light,

and looked across the muddy creeks of

Kingsbridge harbor to the home of Praed.

Mr. Austin Dobson, however, though born at

Plymouth, on the 18th of January, 1840,

really of

French extraction.

Mr. George civil engineer,

Clarisse

came

His

father,

Dobson, who was a

England early

life.

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

110

the

name shows,

he, in his turn,

was of

English descent, so that the nationalities in the poet are nicely confounded. of eight or nine the latter his

the age

was taken with

parents to Holyhead, in the island of

Anglesea

;

he was educated at Beaumaris,

at Coventry,

and

finally at Strasburg,

whence

he returned at the age of sixteen with the intention of becoming a civil engineer.

was decided, however, that he should enter the civil service ber, 1856,

and accordingly,

;

Decem-

he received an appointment at the

Board of Trade, where he has remained ever since, nearly a quarter of a

Dobson's

first

phile Gautier

did, as a

century.

Mr.

ambition, like that of The"o-

and

others,

matter of

was

fact,

be a painter.

design with great

delicacy; but professional training, at the schools of art in South Kensington, seemed

merely to destroy to say,

was not

this native faculty.

Strange

until his twenty-fourth year

that he began to write

;

but his success at

AUSTIN DOBSON.

Ill

once showed this to be his true vocation.

When

Mr. Anthony Trollope

magazine

St.

was one of the authors duced

the

public.

printed in that serial in

was the

whom

of letters.

first intro-

Une Marquise,"

March

earliest intimation that

the world of this

Nothing

started his

PauVs, in 1868, Mr. Dobson

new and

of that year,

was given

striking talent.

more quiet than the

life

of a

man

Mr. Dobson's career has been as

uneventful as that of most modern poets.

In 1873, at the age of thirty-three, he collected his

which he

scattered lyrics in a volume

called

" Vignettes

This book achieved, as

wide success. his

Rhyme."

deserved, a very

In 1874 he lost his father and

mother, and a brother,

Brazil.

first

who

died in

Fate often seems to concentrate her

blow when she persuades herself to strike one of her favorites. "When Mr. Dobson's next volume, "Proverbs in Porcelain," appeared, in 1877, the consensus of critical

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

112

showed how much position the

attention

among

writer had gained

lished

many charming

help fancying that cate

things

;

and

will be as

sure

his delipast.

welcome in America

American public

collection published last year

There

whom

by Mr. Holt, a

the field his

own

plot,

and there

upon

for

it is,

work

this side of the

Mr. Dobson can, in

opinion, see a dangerous

us.

no one living on

Atlantic in

possesses, in the

great deal more of Mr. Dobson's late

than he has yet given to

For the time

be in England.

being, the

cannot

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; not too indiscreetly, I hope â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

we may see a third volume of work before many months are

hope is

the judicious in

Since then he has pub-

these four years.

rival.

after

all,

has

made

but a narrow

scarcely standing-room

more than one

at a

time.

reigns where Prior and Praed have reigned

before him, and this

able to say of any man.

little

thing to be

I do not

know

that

AUSTIN DOBSON.

113

he has ever reached the highest level of Prior, that true

and exquisite

seldom was true

to his

"The God

own

of us Verse

poet,

force

Men"

who

and music.

has a manly

tenderness, a sort of heroic and sentimental

which surpasses

levity,

the same kind

;

all

modern writing

and even the author of the

"Ballad of the Spanish Armada" has not quite the roar and animal spirits of the "

on the Taking of Namur."

and more easy

ous poet with Praed this

It is

compare our

latest

Ode fair

humor-

nor do I think that

;

comparison by which the living

writer will suffer.

The turns

of Praed are

rapid and

telling, his vivacity extraordinary,

and

rhythmical

his

bright

;

but he

movement

slight

sentiment, and his muse

singularly

and monotonous is

like a

performing

bullfinch, that goes through three tricks with infinite

skill,

and whistles one tune and a

half as prettily as possible.

Now,

Mr.

Dobson's work we do not find these limita-

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

114 tions

he can do

many

things very well.

not merely a writer of vers-de-sociStS

a fabulist, a dramatist in parvo, a lyrist

The only

pure and simple.

which he seems

upon

occasions

to fail are those

which he attempts the romantic and heroic "

styles. is

The Prayer

of the

flawless in construction

cold and indifferent as Prior, or Gay's

the "

leaves us as

Solomon

Dryden

said to Swift,

Cousin Dobson, you will never be a

pindaric poet " !

perfect

Whether he the

but

;

tragedy of "Dione."

are obliged to say, as

" Swine to Circe

But

artist,

in his

how

own way, how

exquisite

rattles, in ballad-style,

adventures of

poet

Beau Brocade and

cynical crew of admirers

through his

whether he whis-

;

pers worldly wisdom, and

sighs

a note

regret over the fish-pool with Denise and the

princess; whether, behind a curtain in

the

chateau corridor, he giggles at the discomfiture

of the Abbe"

Tirili,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; he

always

AUSTIN DOBSON.

115

the same acute and refined observer, passing lightly over the surface

to go deeper at

of things, because

would wound a heart not

callous

but indolent, perhaps, and touching

all,

the harmonious frivolities of by-gone times as the fingers of

some maestro might

lightly

run over the keys of an old-fashioned harpsi-

chord.

most at home,

seems to me,

in the first half of the eighteenth century.

Had he been a contemporary of how singular would it have been to different point of artists

had no kind

note the

view of two such observant

From Mr. Dobson we satire

Hogarth,

should have

of any crushing or slashing

but what new lights on the career of

;

Counsellor Silvertongue, what urbane consideration of the merits of Farinelli, disposition

grance over the absurdities

Lane

Since

we may say

what

throw warm color and

that

are set

Dobson

Mrs.

fra-

Fox

upon comparisons, is

really a sort of

Thackeray in miniature; a more timid, a

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; ESSATS FROM THE CRITIC.

116

more indulgent, but a not in the "

less perspicuous,

There are many passages

student of society.

Roundabout Papers

" that are pitched

exactly the same key as such verses as

these

You

are just a porcelain

trifle,

Belle Marquise

Just a thing of puffs and patches,

Made Not

for madrigals

and

catches,

for heart-wounds, but for scratches,

Marquise

Just a pinky porcelain

trifle,

Belle Marquise

Wrought Quick

at verbal point

Clever, doubtless

and parry,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but to marry,

No, Marquise

There

social verse

artist

plenty of room in the world for

when

it is

done in this way, by

and a gentleman

ground, after

Not merely

in rarest rose-Dubarry I

all,

but

it is

limited

we began by

saying.

;

the least breath of vulgarity

AUSTIN DOBSON. fatal

to the

upon us

entire

117

structure,

which melts

a clamp horror, like Covvper's

vitreous palace, but the interest of the flying

and onion-domes

buttresses

In vers-de-sociHS not only

hausted.

ex-

easily is

noth-

ing tolerable short of the best, but the best itself

should not be too often repeated.

think Mr. Dobson has

felt

adventure, like Ulysses, upon

make is

fresh conquests.

one that

lies

new

seas,

The province

open to

and

of fable

his invasion,

which has been utterly neglected of

must

that he

and

late.

hope he will return to those exquisite

little

dramas in octosyllabic rhyme, with which he opened

which

his

" Proverbs in

much

These tiny pieces popular

;

will

never be

but Mr. Dobson has

place in literature that he

now

may be

address only the judicious.

and

critics.

broadly so firm a

content to

would be

down any limit to the advance be made by a poet who began to write

fatuous to lay

yet to

Porcelain,"

delighted the best

118

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

rather late in it

may be

life,

and

is still

young

;

but

prophesied that he will write suc-

cessfully just in so far as he remains true to

the French streak in his blood, and to the

picturesque instinct that has only just missed finding expression with brush or pencil.

EDMUND

W. GOSSE.

XII.

ALPHONSE DAUDET.

ALP30NSE DAUDET.

121

XII.

ALPHONSE DAUDET.

The

distinctive quality of

Alphonse Dau-

det's genius is his passion for nature.

notoriety came

Since

upon him unawares, he has

devoted himself to the arts by which notoriety

describing

preserved,

the

flash

manners of the town, the flaunting vices of metropolitan

life

period

this

its

predecessors,

heart

and if each successive book

;

shows it is

little

advance upon

because the novelist's

not in his work.

sighing for

the Provencal woods, for the mill where he

sang the charms of tery of the

rusticity, for the

monas-

White Fathers where he sipped

the golden cordial, and listened to Erasmian stories

while

the

mistral

rushed howling

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

122

through the belfry.

has never been very

happy when absent from the scenes his childhood

was busy

his father

and

mother and

his

women

both,

was spent.

Nismes forty-one years ago

;

which

was born at

and

there, while

at a silk-manufactory,

aunt,

discussed at

Church-

strict

home

the

mis-

fortunes that had befallen the Papacy, the

boy would

slip

away

to the

river,

playiug

truant from school, selling his books, for the sake of an afternoon on the water. in those

summer

chain of

down

Often,

days, tying his boat to the

barges which were being towed

the stream, he

would

silently

watch

the beauties of the passing landscape, his

meditation only broken by the noise of the

screw or the barking of a dog on the steamtug.

Often, caught in the reeds, he

would

gaze for hours on the river, the bridges that gradually

green

grew

islets

smaller

and

smaller,

the

that trembled on the horizon.

Then coming home, he would every day seek

new

ALPHONSE DAUDET.

123

excuse for his truancy.

"Mother,"

said he, on one of these occasions, " I staid

from school because

Pope was dead." the household. table, the

had heard that

Thereupon dismay

The

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the

fell

father sat silent at the

mother wept

;

the aunt alone had

courage to discuss the event, recalling the

when Pius

days

VII. had passed in post-

chaise through her village ing,

when

false,

;

and next morn-

the boy's news was found to be

the joy was so great that nobody had

the heart to scold him.

Daudet lay

phonse

They were more stories

The youth

of Al-

scenes like

these.

typical of his

life

than the

which he wrote of " Le Petit Chose,"

and which were manifestly constructed dramatic

When

for

effect.

he came to Paris to make his

in literature, he

way

was very poor, and put up

with such company as he could get.

There

were in those days many clever men in the Latin Quarter ; and the young poet, wander-

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

124

ing

through

the

cafe's,

saw something of

Eochefort and Gambetta.

also received

houses

the

an occasional invitation to

actresses or of such literary notorieties as

lived in the

neighborhood of the Ode'on.

These experiences seem to have gained for

him the reputation

mian.

He was

reputation could

then, as he

of men.

of an incorrigible Bohe-

fit

him

less well.

now, the most sensitive

delighted in solitary rambles,

wherein he could study odd phases of his ease.

While

in the brasserie, he

way

to the Seine,

would quietly make

dress

his

peep through the windows

of the little riverside house,

man

life

comrades were singing

his

hung dripping on

where a muslin

a nail,

and an old

sat roasting apples at a stove, viewing

in his lap the objects

which had been found

with the muslin dress,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a thimble

sand, a purse with a sou in scissors,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and

it,

turning for a

filled

with

a rusty pair of

moment

aside

to write in his official register, " Felicie Ra-

ALPHONSE DAVDET.

125

Or he

meau, milliner, seventeen years old."

would

cross the bridge,

men's

quarter,

and enter the work-

watching

the

lights

that

gleamed in the low cabaret, the drunken orator

who was

tables,

and the

its

pale wife's face that

thin,

was pressed against the

make

one

bellowing at

glass,

a signal to the speaker

trying to

and warn him

that the night was spent and the children

were starving at home.

Or, again, he would

pass before the old-fashioned houses of the

Marais, houses,

now turned and

glories of flashed, streets,

re-clothe

into stores

them with

and ware-

their antique

two centuries ago, when torches

and sedan-chairs

swung

the

and in the drawing-rooms there was

a rustle of silks and clank of swords, and

minuets were danced to the music of four violins,

with smirkings, and trippings, and

bowings innumerable.

The change his

in Daudet's life

began with

Due

de Morny.

introduction

the

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

126

Many

stories are told of that first interview,

and most is

them

The poet

are apocryphal.

reported to have said, that, as the son of a

Legitimist, he

could hardly serve a Bona-

To which, according

partist.

count, the duke replied,

The empress

will. ;

you "

according

or,

whatever

political

ask of you

His new

life

one

ac-

"Be whatever you

more Legitimist than to

another,

views you please.

Have All I

that you shall cut your hair."

was very novel, and not very

He had no

palatable, to Daudet.

thought in

those clays of writing sensational novels.

the duke's antechamber he would see the late

King

Don

Carlos,

of Hanover, the

and Queen

careful to study fiction.

them

He would

royalty, the Prince

King

Isabella,

of Naples,

and was not

for the purposes of

hear of the scandals of of Orange's escapades,

the intrigues of Russian grand dukes, and

was not struck with the idea of using them to spice the history of

King Christian

II.

ALPUONSE DAUDET. If he

Illyria.

Eue

went

Castiglione, or

127

to the agencies of the

hunted

for bric-a-brac at

the Hotel Drouot, or carried a diplomatic

message to Worth the dressmaker, or watched the gamblers at the Mirlitons or the dancers at Mabille, he

Tom

was not

in ssarch of

Levis, Sephora Leemans,

Mr.

Spricht,

the Prince d'Axel, or any of the personages

whom 'â&#x20AC;˘Lies

he afterward introduced to fame in

Hois en Exil."

These people and their

doings he afterward recalled

when he found

that the public wanted to hear about them.

sickened of their company in the days

when he knew them.

obtained a long

furlough from the duke, and fled from Paris.

In a ruined mill of the country around Avignon, he wrote

winch should be of posterity

;

many

of those short stories

his best title to the regard

and,

when

winds came to disturb his

way

coast,

the strong southern

his solitude, he

a little island off the

and took up

his

made

Corsican

abode in a light-house.

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

128

The whole

clay

contemplation

he would spend in quiet

the rocks,

whirling over his head.

seagulls

the

night he slept

beneath the rays of the huge lantern.

was the happiest period of Daudet's life. When the war of 1870 was drawing to a close,

his

later

work can

which he then made.

rival

Champigny, the

battalions of the Marais were

night in the

the sketches

While Ducrot was

fighting on the heights of

encamped

Avenue Daumesnil, and tried to " The Eighth

time as best they could.

kill

are giving a concert," said

det

None

he was enrolled as a volunteer.

large

come and hear

some one

booth, lighted with candles

points of bayonets, and filled with asleep and half drunk.

Dau-

They entered

it."

The

singer,

the

men

half

mounted

on a platform, was shouting in a hoarse voice the popular song of the period, " C'est la canaille C'est la canaille

Eh, bienl J'en suis."

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

;

ALPHONSE DAUDET.

He was phemous,

129

followed by other singers,

and obscene

ribald,

;

all blas-

and

in the

distance the cannon joined in the refrain.

Daudet hastened from the

tent, speechless

with indignation, and did not stop

reached Paris

the

till

The night was

Seine.

was sleeping

circlet

fire.

Dimly a gunboat could be seen trying force its

way up

again and again

battle,

"Ah!"

river swept

way toward

its

cheer

burst

cried Daudet, !

it.

the scene

from the crew.

"how far away No historian

will be able to paint

Daudet painted

down,

began to conquer the

concert of the Eighth "

war

returned to the effort

made

stream, and of

last,

the river against the tide.

Again and again the and at

dark.

the

of the

so vividly as

His pen has the quali-

Neuville's brush.

His story of

the "Siege

Berlin" â&#x20AC;&#x201D; of

the paralyzed

ties

veteran

and

who thought

the French would win,

of the imaginary campaign which his

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

130

granddaughter planned

rivalled in pathos

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; of

Classe,"

told that he

for

him

his tale of "

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

only-

La Dernidre

the schoolmaster who, being

must never more teach French

in Alsace, could say nothing to the boys, but

with a heart bursting with large letters

on the

and then, leaning

slate,

his

grief,

"Vive

wrote in France,"

head against the wall,

signed with his hand, "C'est

Allez-

fini.

vous-en."

Ten

years have passed since then.

day Alphonse Zola

slaps

him

Daudet noisily

on the back, and

claims him as a disciple of realism. larity

may have

its

pay

for

Popu-

advantages for Daudet,

but the familiarity of Zola to

To-

Emile

famous.

a heavy price

it.

P. M.

POTTER.

XIII.

THE BOSTON CULTURE.

133

xm. THE BOSTON CULTURE.

profound

some

returning

thinker,

years ago from a visit to Boston, where he

had been entertained

" Culture

the

clubs, declared that he could almost see the fine essence of inspiration

steaming upward

a visible vapor from the scalps of the

members.

"Whatever

satire

lay under this

grotesque imagery, there can be no doubt that the

and

it is

New-England atmosphere

has long been one of scholarship the essential pride of Boston and

;

its

borhood that the best element of mosphere finds it

its

would be easy

that

origin there. to

neigh-

this at-

To be

sure,

name a dozen towns

are little Bostons, with

circles

re-

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

134

served, as severe in their tastes, as refined, as the best in the metropolis also be easy to

;

and

would

show that a hundred New-

England

villages,

possess

the

from Lenox to Lexington, quality,

essential

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; an

innate

respect for scholarship, for intellectual su-

premacy,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; which

Boston what

'makes

is.

The quality goes far back, and spreads widely in New-England life. It has never been confined to a

select

circle.

One

sometimes inclined to test with a sharpened

weapon the apparent claim of a few Boston families

justice

the

Puritan.

noble

The claim

inheritance is

the

by many a farmer and cobbler and

tin-peddler.

Whatever

fine ichor there

in the colonial magistrate

divine

shared with equal

was

and the scholarly

inherited in equal proportions

the elegant diplomat and the rustic squash-

vender.

summers

It has

been our good luck in past

be served with milk by one

THE BOSTON CULTURE.

who

bears the

name

135

of an illustrious vice-

president, to find in our wood-chopper blood

from a stock which furnished the most quent defender of colonial over our horses to a tree for

many

liberty, to

man whose

elo-

hand

ancestral

years supplied the two colo-

nies of Massachusetts with their governors.

The blood

contains the old elements

still

that produces energy and sound action,

all

and may

in a generation find its

high station as it has

such a population there degree of greatness. of inheritance there

great past to

make

way

ever reached. is

to as

With

a basis for

any

With such an equality is all

the stimulus of a

a great future.

Where

the blood lacks only the refinement which

education brings, or the opportunity which

belongs to locality, every New-England boy is

taught to feel that he has only to pack

his

book

in his bundle,

and

start

road which leads to a foreign mission. reaches the court of England at

last,

on the If

he will

;

ESSAYS FROM TEE CRITIC.

136

find the ancestral blood in

This

there.

may

call

makes what we

that which

the Boston culture a pervading

element in there

the best veins

all

New-England

Where

life.

such a proud inheritance, such a

and such a glorious

stern present necessity,

possibility, the conditions of a fine life are

always present.

New England has

certainly

held the mastership in energetic intellectual life,

and to-day

in its

acy

own

threatened,

we asked the

its

chief competitors

Its

suprem-

threatened at

all,

Some years ago name twenty leading men of the New- York When he had done so, we found that

the house of

bar.

finds

transplanted stock.

its

children.

distinguished lawyer to

the larger half were born, and had received their early training, in

same rule held good

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; those,

men known

that

New

England.

is,

outside of their

whose

names were

own denomination

for the great journalists, orators, writers.

The

for the leading clergy-

and public

TEE BOSTON CULTURE. If

we were asked

137

mention the one

leading quality in this inherited excellence,

we should

say that

lay in the

home

life,

the spirit of reading, and independent

thinking, the reverence for learning and the learned, which pervades almost every

there.

good book

entrance and

finds

welcome in the New-England home where

else.

home

respected by the

as nofather,

reverenced by the mother, and read by the children.

may

be a poem, or the last

report of the Department of Agriculture; it

may be

er's ily,

a literary magazine, or the Farm-

the famAlmanac, — finds readers — appreciative, may or merely amin

be,

bitious,

In rural districts life

The same may New- York home.

but anyhow readers.

be sometimes true- of the it is

who would dare

often so, but of city

to claim

Here the student reads, professional

man

family does very

in his little

— the

as the rule

scholar, the

department; but the reading.

Books are

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

138

bought, and put upon the centre-table, but

they are seldom opened. discussed,

They

are rarely

and almost never reverenced.

Boston, Cambridge, Concord, Plymouth, they are at least read,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; whether they are

lated, or only cause

There

assimi-

intellectual dyspepsia.

an audience, therefore, always pres-

ent for the speaker or the thinker.

New

greater part of

New York

there

Englanders

and audience.

classed as lecturers is

The

may be Here

no audience anywhere

for the best products of intellectual activity.

There

none

visible

The audience

none in the parlor. is

from the platform,

often sophomoric and brags.

in Boston

It too often

reminds us of that precept of Sir Philip Sidney: "If you heare a wise sentence, or

an apt phrase, commytt

to your rnemorye,

with respect to the circumstance, when you shall

speak

of growth.

it."

But

The

presents the material

lecturer, the

thinker,

generally worthy; and the silent, invisible

THE BOSTON CULTURE.

home

auditors in the

showy

are but a

ine culture

" Culture " clubs

but the genu-

efflorescence,

sweet and rich and modest.

It is a real gift to feels

circle are vastly

The

than the visible ones.

139

New York whenever

the currents of this intellectual

life.

have virtues of our own with which

New England

cannot equip us,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; our

guarded generosity, our unflinching

and richer experience

a wide receptivity, practical activities

un-

charity, in

but a reverence for the

best in thought, for the inspiration of fine

we have not and as long as we without this, we shall produce million-

sentiment, are

naires,

;

but not high thinkers,

but not Emersons. but not

fine recreation,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Vanderbilts,

shall

and

have bustle,

shall

be known

abroad for the immensity of our railroad system, rather than for the soundness and elevation of our mental

observer

who

praised

life.

The shrewd

Newport because

was equally removed from the virtues of

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

140

Boston and the vices of

New

York, might

have constructed from the two extremes a possible metropolis nearer to the millennial city

even than Newport.

Let us hope that

see the beginning of such a city in the

fresh impulse given here of late in art, in

music, in architecture,

science,

and

some departments of literature. J.

H. MORSE.

XIV.

THE LATE SIDNEY LAMER.

TEE LATE SIDNEY LANIER.

143

XIV. THE LATE SIDNEY LANIER. [The following brief essay on the late

life

and genius

of the

Mr. Sidney Lanier was read at a memorial gathering

Hopkins Hall, Baltimore, on the evening

of Saturday,

The meeting was not only a tribute to the memory of Mr. Lanier, but was designed to initiate a movement to raise money for the support of his widow and the education of his children. President Gilman, Oct. 22, 1881.

Johns Hopkins University

(in

which Mr. Lanier served

as lecturer on English literature), presided, and to

him

was addressed. It was courteously withheld from publication in any report of the meeting, Mr. Stedman's

letter

in order that

might be printed in " The

My deae my

Sir,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

Critic."

]

have expressed already

regret that I cannot be present at your

assembly commemorative of the poet and gentle scholar, Sidney Lanier. avail myself of

But

I gladly

your permission to write a

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

144

few words in recognition of his original genius,

which

and

in expression of the

his fellows

sorrow with

lament him, as one gone

before his time.

Certainly

all

who

care

for

whatsoever

things are pure, lovely, and of good report,

must be deeply concerned

ending of Lanier's earthly pilgrimage cerned no

less, if

and

in the record ;

con-

ever they chanced to meet

him, in the mingled softness and strength of his nature, the loyalty with his song,

which he sang

pursued his researches, and took

the failures and successes of his consecrated life.

For,

there ever

bore a vow, or a

consecrate to an ideal,

life

such a votary was

was a pilgrim who

this

poet-artist,

manifestly ordered was his too brief

You spirit,

will

and

life.

speak to one another of his brave

of the illness

and

trials

that handi-

capped him, and of the cheerful industry with which he went through daily tasks, and yet so often escaped to the region of poetry

THE LATE SIDNEY LANIER. and

That he had the graceful and prac-

art.

can adapt

tical talent that

give

145

itself to use,

and

pleasure to the simplest minds, was

proved by

his admirable

books for the young,

and the professional labors fresh

But

ollection.

in the

mould

your rec-

of Lanier, as

in that of every real poet, the imaginative qualities

and the sense of beauty governed

and gave tone

to all other senses

He was

powers.

first

of all a poet

and of a refined and novel

No man,

and motive and

artist,

order.

in fact, displayed

clearly

the poetic and artistic temperaments in their

extreme conjunction. they

impeded, rather

may

than

be said that

hastened,

power of adequate expression. to

create

ance,

new language

and a method of

for their

strove utter-

To reach

own.

his

the effects toward which his subtle instincts

guided him, he required a prolonged lifetime of experiment and discovery short a

life

was given,

;

and

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and that

him how

how

full

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

146

of impediment

He had

scarcely sounded

the key-note of his overture, fell

from

meant a

his

hand

;

to compose, not

symphony, â&#x20AC;&#x201D; one

when

and beyond an

air or

involving

the

bow

all this

a tune, but

all

harmonic

and combinations before unknown.

resources,

that I

I find

involuntarily using the

diction of music to express the purpose of his verse

and

;

upon what he as an

this fact alone has a bearing

did,

American

tion in

poet.

him was

differed from,

and what he did not do,

and went beyond, or

that of other men.

then some

affecta-

gave us

which

outside,

now and

wandering or regular, that

lyric,

was marked by weir dn ess, to

What seemed

his veritable nature,

sufficient

beauty, pathos,

show what he

might

have

accomplished, had he been content to sing

spontaneously

sung

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; without

analyzing his processes

the song was done. cian,

and

still

very great poets have

But Lanier was

till

a musi-

heard in his soul "the music

THE LATE SIDNEY LANIER.

of 'wondrous melodies."

constructive

mind

147

had, too, the

who compre-

of the artist

How

hends the laws of form and tone. logical

was

of beauty,

his exposition of the

mathematics

seen in that unique work, "

The

Science of English Verse."

Now,

it is

a question whether, art being so

long and time so

fleeting,

a poet should con-

sider too anxiously the rationale of his song.

Again, he strove to demonstrate in his verse the absolute co-relations of music and poetry

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and seemed at times to forget that rhythm is

but one component of poetry, albeit one

most

essential.

While music

one of the

poet's servitors,

and must ever be compelled

to his use, there

still

remains that boundary

of Lessing's between the liberties of the arts,

though herein

less sharply

two

denned than

between those of poetry and painting.

The

rhythm alone of Lanier's verse often had meaning

to himself that others

to understand.

this

found

hard

he was conscious.

148

JESSATS

FROM THE

CRITTC.

In a letter to me, he said that one reason for

The Science of English Verse " was, that he had some poems which he hoped soon to print, but which " he could not hope

his writing "

get understood, generally, without edu-

cating their audience." that the task to him,

he added

and that he " never could have found

courage to endure all

this

was "inexpressibly irksome"

directions

save for the fact that in

the poetic art was suffering

from the shameful circumstance that

criti-

cism was without a scientific basis for even the most elementary of If,

in dwelling

its

judgments."

upon the science of

he hampered the exercise of the less a

none the

man

of those "

less, at first sight, in

His name

ear

still

-while

bearing, fea-

and lover of the

added

whose haunting

Ends incomplete,

The

he was none

it,

of imagination, of ideality;

tures, conversation, a poet

beautiful.

his art,

strain

to the

names

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

through the starry night

waits for what

did not

tell."

Yet the

THE LATE SIDNEY LANIER.

149

incompleteness

and of

sense

regret for his

the

broken

life

tempered by

remembrance that the most suggestive

careers of poets have not always been those

which were fully rounded, but often of those whose voices reach us from early stages of the

march which

was not given them long

to continue.

EDMUND Daniel

Oilman, LL.D., Baltimore, Md.

STEDMAN.

XV.

ENGLISH SOCIETY AND "ENDYMION."

ENGLISB SOCIETY AND

ENDYMION."

153

XV. ENGLISH SOCIETY AND "ENDYMION."

A the

classic name, as

work

fellow's

that bears

Hyperion

suggestive of

little

was Mr. Long-

of the

accompanying

named

narrative.

Books nowadays

like ships,

with a view to what will sound

and look to

well,

what they

are often

and with no possible reference are

or to

what they

carry.

This work of Lord Beaconsfield's will hardly

add more

Tennyson's of fame.

his reputation

last

volume

dull book,

than will Mr.

to his half-century

with a rambling,

insignificant story, it has yet,

from one point

of view, a certain importance for the

student of

and

interest

men and manners.

unfolds some of the secrets of that dazzling

154

ESSATS FROM THE CRITIC.

London

life

whose

imperfectly

features,

translated through various mediums, have

Americans a

always had for most polite great attraction.

much

This book does or should do dispel the illusions with

which distance and

imagination are wont to invest the "high life "

of Great Britain.

Its

give us a single glimpse

we understand

oblige

which

his facile

low and

silly.

the

Even the

blue blood which, Heaven

noblesse

The

it.

pen depicts

touches our transatlantic

author does not

society

at once shal-

tradition

of the

knows why, reverence,

gives

way before his treatment. In his narrative, men of the humblest rank rise to posts of high honor and influence. The butler of Endymion's

father,

married to his mother's

maid, makes such a transition from humble to high

life,

while the sister of the female

attendant just mentioned weds a noble lord,

and becomes a leader of

fashion.

A London

ENGLISH SOCIETY AND

ENDYMION."

tailor gives entertainments at

of the realm finds

155

which a peer

delightful to be present,

and in time attains to a baronetcy and a seat in the

that, according to all this is

Why

House of Commons.

some may ask; and we

will

American views

natural enough.

not

say in reply,

There

life,

nothing

repugnant to our theories in such changes of

outward fortune.

the worshipper of

What

rank

should shock discovery

the

which Lord Beaconsfield allows us that

human

nature, in

its intrinsic

and genuine manifestations, same

Belgravia as elsewhere.

tige of their position, the

he depicts are

make,

qualities

much

of their exceptional wealth and

Stripped

of the pres-

men and women

rather more commonplace and

uninteresting than the average of our

acquaintance.

upon which

the

own

They have nothing whatever

to found a claim of superiority

in character* talent, or true breeding.

Love,

ambition, anger, avarice, are the same with

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

156

them

as with the civilized world in general.

Among

among

them, as

whose object

in life has

the parvenu

us,

been to climb from

the base to the top of the social ladder

bigot

true

the

Those born iar

with

rank

this

sum

conditions,

(of

which they usually

Those who " with a

money

or of effort)

freedom " often manifest

devotion to that which has

much.

The

consfield's

distinction.

in recognized position are famil-

its

do not exaggerate. great

and

historical value

book

of his story.

far

fantastic

them

cost of

obtain

Lord Bea-

beyond the

interest

speaks as an eye-witness

of political changes

and complications which

occurred during the two reigns preceding the long-continued dominion of the present sovereign.

has inevitably

known some-

thing of the internal history of events which the

sexagenarian of

as having

to-day will

remember

been matters of comment and of

interest in his

own

early

days.

has

ENGLISH SOCIETY AND

ENDYMION."

seen Bismarck and Louis Napoleon

which the world troubled

time

little

about them.

represents

157

itself

them

meeting on friendly terms at the great entertainments of fashionable houses during

London

the

season.

They

are very likely

have met, and the suggestion

calls

grimly to mind the denotiment of their relations

which the future held

The

circle

in store.

which Lord Beaconsfield's

talents

and personal attractions gave him

access

early

manhood was indeed an London society

exceptionally brilliant one.

might be proud when

men

Sydney

could boast of such

Smith,

Samuel

Rogers,

Monckton Milnes, Edwin Landseer, Dickens, and

Thackeray.

by an

matched

These equally

were

luminaries brilliant

set

women, among whom we may name

the

Duchess of Sutherland and her beautiful daughters, stricted

Lady Blessington

but

privileged

(in

coterie),

her

re-

and the

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

158

Sheridan

sisters,

whom

Hon. Mrs.

the

was

talent.

More than one American

who

pre-eminent

has grateful

palmy days,

and

beauty

Norton

remembrance

still lives

those

whose high pleasures a good

introduction or an

exceptional reputation

sometimes admitted a transatlantic cousin.

To know a field

little

even of what Lord Beacons-

must have known

persons

a boon of

presentment of disappointment.

them

some of these even

interest,

must involve

his

some

The noble lord does not

describe this exceptional time, these exceptional people at their best.

game

prelate,

His story

commoner, and men of

but the pieces which his

skill

on the checkered board.

game

too, in

is like

and

of chess, in which lord

lady,

letters, are

manoeuvres is

which the victory

devil's

rests

with

ambition, freighted with talent, and guided

by cool judgment. tries

The glimpse which he

give us of the world of letters in

ENGLISH SOCIETY AND "ENDYMION." the persons of one or two of citizens is scarcely

its

159

prominent

worthy of one who must

have himself enjoyed the freedom of the intellectual guild.

the

age,

The two

great satirists

Dickens and Thackeray, are

spoken of in the novel under the names of

Gushy and

of the latter

St. is

Barbe so

;

and the portraiture

unpleasing that

are

glad to hear of the former only as hated and decried

his

terizations of

The

literary rival.

charac-

Baron Rothschild and Cardinal

Manning, under the pseudonymes of Mr. Neufchatel and Nigel Penruddock, are more

The one has the calm poise and kindliness of the man who has achieved transcendent fortune by fair means. The happily hit

off.

other starts in

life

with that mistaking of

the symbol for the substance which

him

first

spiritual

tyranny.

The family

manufacturer, Job Thornberry, painted.

makes

the slave, then the instrument, of

The sound

sense

of the rich is

also well

and genuine

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

160

pluck of the farmer's son,

who becomes not

only a rich man, but also a political power, the snobbish aristocracy of his son, the easy

surrender of his wife to the blandishments of the Romanist archbishop,

points are simply

The

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

all

of these

and strongly given.

attitude of the writer in relation to

the society which he

describes

perhaps

the most singular feature of the book.

own

depth of his lowness of

and

contrasts with the shal-

characters.

his

Their likings

dislikings, acts, prejudices,

and under-

takings, are all painted in the flattest relief.

find in

affection,

All is

his

no background of

picture

philanthropy, or steadfast belief.

glittering surface,

from which there

Thackeray's " Vanity Fair

retreat.

seems to us the only parallel of " Endymion," for the dreary to

us.

make up apples of

moral waste which

Pride,

ambition,

the feast of

Sodom

unfolds

cunning,

vanity,

life,

which the

furnish the only appropriate

ENGLISH SOCIETY AND

From such

dessert.

relief.

The

point of interest for Americans trast

which

of freedom,

realities

shams

this life of

161

kingdom an empire

would be a

of India

ENDYMION."

greatest

the con-

affords to the

energy, and affection

which form the staple of our national

life.

And

this

this interests us

most because

it is

very quintessence of frivolity which seems to

attract the

Our

country.

our own men and women

golden youth of literary

once looked to England for the seal and sanction

their

merit.

have

now

own by which Heaven forbid England of Lord

developed a literature of our

England that

glad to

we should look

profit.

to the

Beaconsfield for our standard of morals and

manners

does not depict our mother

country, for motherhood there his portraiture.

us know,

family

life,

different

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; cheery,

none in

England some

hospitable,

rich in

earnest in philanthropy, reserved

but steadfast in reform and progress.

Give

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

162

us the England of Wordsworth, Tennyson,

and Browning

;

the

England

Bacon, and Milton.

She

of Shakespeare,

lives

in an

un-

rivalled literature, in thrifty colonies, in

robust and well-dowered daughter.

her

we may look with love and veneration. Of her we may learn in the future as we have learned in the past. Honor to those who can

show us

Honor

to those

this

who study

her great lessons,

and cherish her grand traditions for the

fribble of the

to let

them

New,

England!

truly noble

it is

And

Old World and the perhaps well enough

pair off harmlessly together.

JULIA

WARD HOWE.

XVI.

HISTORICAL CRITICISM OF CHRIST.

165

XVI. HISTORICAL CRITICISM OF CHRIST.

Theee

are

two natural processes

in re-

spect of all great personalities that attract

the interest and win the honor and rever-

ence of the race, are magnified

mythic

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the process by which they

and exalted

divinities;

into demi-gods

and

and the process by which,

in ages of critical inquisitiveness, they are

reduced to their original historic proportions.

The two rily

by no means necessaThe mythic greatness,

processes are

contradictory.

the glamour and imaginative exaltation, of the

human

the souls of

spirits that

men with

have wrought upon

transcendent power,

just as truly a part of the history of hu-

manity, and a deserved tribute to their mag-

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

166

nitude as persons of vast original force, as it

were biographic ally true in

And

details.

its

the later necessity which the critical or

strictly historic spirit falls under, of discover-

ing just what the literal facts were touching the person

who

thus idealized, does

little

disturb the place the object of this inquiry

holds in the reverence of men.

have

seen a general resurrection of the heroes and

martyrs and poets and patriots of the past, called

spirit of

the last half-century

modern

under the review of a quest, later

and

strictly rational in-

undergo not the

last,

but a

judgment, from the beneficiaries

their genius, or

by the

historic criticism, to pass

their doings

and sayings.

intense curiosity has animated the

mod-

ern world to see the kings, the patriots, the poets, the saints

and heroes

men, and not merely to bring

of the past, as

as splendid apparitions;

them not down

to,

but within, the

immediate range of human sympathies; to

HISTORICAL CRITICISM OF CHRIST.

know them and get

as they really lived

167

and moved,

as near to their private hearts

and

experiences as the utmost pains could bring the closest and most microscopic investiga-

tors.

have, perhaps, lost some beloved

under

personalities

undraped

human

figures

that

process

which has

seemed warm with

blood, to discover beneath only an

human

idea that had passed into

taken a name

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

like that of Tell

form, and

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; where only

a group of national feelings really existed.

But, as a rule, the greatness and glory of

names have not suffered from mod-

historic

ern

criticism,

much

that

feebler lose

has

revealed

was private and human on the

What

side.

even when

they have seemed to

familiarity they

sympathy and

reality.

have regained by

The more human

they have been made, the more interesting.

Washington from the

himself growing in estimation

critical

personality; for

development of his human it is

not only supernatural

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

168

beings to

whom

the world assigns a double

nature,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the

public,

and the nature that belongs

nature that belongs to their to their

private character.

The

multiplication of works on the strictly

human marked

nature of Jesus

one of the most

features of the times.

tian world for eighteen centuries

The Chriswas wholly

occupied with the supernatural side of the

His humanity was

founder of Christianity.

deemed of comparatively

little

importance,

except as a sign of his humiliation, and a

ground

doctrine.

Supreme

That the

Being should have condescended to incarnate himself in flesh and blood, and take

upon him the nature

man, was indeed a

matter of profound theological interest, and naturally became the foundation-stone of a

vast dogmatic system which

still

rules the

creeds and the religious imagination of the

Church and the world. Jesus from a

human

But

the

life

point of view necessa-

HISTORICAL CRITICISM OF CHRIST.

169

became denaturalized by the hypothesis,

rily

however well founded, of

his being really a

god, shrouded in a human form.

must be considered on one effectual the very

scension,

and

dogma

Human

side,

of his divine conde-

him capable of

to render

make expi-

ating the sins of the race, whose lineage and

nature he shared, and

whom

But

his self-sacrifice.

Christ's was, after

human

this

humanity of

metaphysically real,

all, if

practically fictitious.

he came to save

He was

only so far as a

God

a man,

and

of omniscient

and omnipotent wisdom and power could be a

man

;

and he could only be a man

king could be a beggar

and assumed

his filth

about asking alms.

as a

he put on his rags

and poverty, and went All the while the king

keeps his crown, and knows his royalty, and

must

feel the unreality of his destitution;

and

it is

how

the

while

at least very difficult to conceive

man in Jesus could be a real man, the God in him was a real God. The

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

170

union made a large part of

difficulties of this

the dogmatic speculation and controversy of the early Church.

got

at last

itself

mental dogma,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;a

But the double nature established as a funda-

mystery and riddle of

hopeless obscurity, but none the less an cle of faith, fruitful of the

most

the

man

Under

convictions.

arti-

and

most awful and

puzzling, but also of the decisive

intricate

its

influence

Jesus for eighteen centuries wholly

The

disappeared.

Christ

came

forward,

wearing indeed his human habiliments, and carrying in his divine person

all

the dog-

matic fruits of his crucified humanity, but really only a

god; nay,

God

overwhelmingly interesting his proper

himself,

humanity continued only as a

means of

setting off

and

God, while

effectively

foil,

and

dramatically his divinity.

But

in the last half-century the

brought forth children in

whom

all its

the study of Jesus, not so

Church has

branches, to

much

as the

HISTORICAL CRITICISM OF CHRIST. Christ, but in himself as a genuine

man

171

man,

—a

to himself, to his first disciples, to his

mother and brethren,

and

to the

to his fellow Galileans,

Jewish people,

matter of the same interest

been

easy

was to

seems to have

to his original biographers, the

How

tics.

— has become it

Synop-

lose this interest

in contemplating the Christ,

and not Jesus,

appears in the extraordinary departure

made

in the Fourth Gospel from the simplicity of

the three Synoptics; and departure, once for epistles

made from

still

in that

which Paul

all,

in his

the biographical or purely

historic

and actual Jesus of Nazareth,

up the

Christ, the divine Saviour, or deific

to set

Messiah, as the sole object of contemplation, faith,

and confidence,

for his disciples.

who must have known

worth while

— not

his birth, or

history of Jesus, hardly thinks to dwell on his

any part of

works of mercy or

graces,

— but only on

it,

Paul,

the earthly

fully

love, or his

his death

human

and resurrec-

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

172 tion,

his set

and elevation

to heavenly powers,

and

speedy return in the clouds of heaven to

kingdom amid

his divine

saints in the earth.

Is it

his risen

any wonder that

the Church for eighteen centuries has mainly

followed in the track

so early took

under

the great authority of Paul, in neglecting

the strictly

human

side of the

founder of the

faith? H. W.

BELLOWS.

XVII.

WHITMAN'S "LEAVES OF GRASS."

WHITMAN'S "LEAVES OF

175

GBASS."

XVII. WHITMAN'S "LEAVES OF GRASS." Virtually, but not first

time that Mr.

poems through

actually, this is the

Whitman

The two volumes

" Leaves of Grass " and "

called

The Two Rivu-

which he had printed and himself sold

Camden,

has issued his

a publishing-house instead of

at his private cost.

lets,"

under the former tions of

now

N.J., are title,

issued in one,

without special accre-

new work, but

not without a good

deal of re-arrangement in the sequence of

the poems.

Pieces that were evidently writ-

ten later, and intended to be eventually put

under "Leaves of Grass," now find their 1

Leaves of Grass.

James B. Osgood

Co.

By Walt

"Whitman.

Boston:

;

ESSAYS FROM TEE CRITIC.

176

place

;

some that apparently did well enough

where they were have been shifted to other departments.

the whole, however, the

changes have been in the direction of greater clearness as regards their relation to the subtitles.

It is

new book

not apparent, however, that the greatly superior to the old in

typography, although undeniably the fault of the privately printed volumes, a variation in types used, is

no longer met with.

The

margins are narrower, and the look of the

page more commonplace. called "

Walt Whitman

of Myself." I too

The famous poem is now the " Song

It still maintains

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

I sound

It still has the portrait

Whitman when

younger, standing in a loose flannel shirt and slouched hat, with one hand on his hip, the other in his pocket.

"Eidolons" has been

taken from the second volume, and placed,

WHITMAN'S "LEAVES OF for

177

GRASS."

good reasons that the reader may not be

ready to understand, among the

first

pieces

gathered under the sub-title " Inscriptions." It

ends with the " Songs of Parting," under last is "

which the foreigner, easily

So Long," a

title

that a

and perhaps an American, might

consider quite as

untranslatable

Mr. Whitman proclaims himself to be.

The

motive for the publication seems to be to take

which

whom

advantage is

that wider popularity

coming somewhat

late in life to

his admirers like to

call

him

"the good

gray poet."

One

great anomaly of Whitman's case has

been, that while he

an aggressive cham-

pion of democracy and of the working-man, in a broad sense of the term working-man, his admirers have

been almost exclusively of

a class the farthest possibly removed from that which labors for daily bread

work.

Whitman

by manual

has always been truly cavi-

are to the multitude.

was only those who

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

178

knew much of poetry, and loved it greatly, who penetrated the singular shell of his verses,

and rejoiced

in the rich, pulpy kernel.

Even with connoisseurs, Whitman has been somewhat of an acquired taste; and it has always been amusing to note the readiness with which persons

who would

not or could

not read him, raised a cry of affectation

who did. This phenomenon is too well known in other departments of taste to need further remark but it may be added that Mr. Whitman has both gained by it and against those

;

lost.

has gained a vigorousness of sup-

port on the part of his admirers that probably

more than out-balances the acrid attacks of

who

those

with

all

consider his

that

work synonymous

vicious in poetical technique,

and wicked from the point of morals. to the

latter, it

must be confessed,

that, ac-

cording to present standards of social relations,

the

doctrines

taught

by Whitman

might readily be construed, by the Over-hasty

;

WHITMAN'S "LEAVES OF

179

GRASS."

or unscrupulous, into excuses for foul living for such persons do not look face,

below the

Whitman's treatment of fervid his expressions

scornful he

may

However

love. be,

and however

of the miserable

hypocrisies

that fetter but also protect the

posed,

heart

sur-

nor can they grasp the whole idea of

it is

evilly dis-

plain that the idea he

has at

that universal love which leaves no

room

for wickedness, because

room

for doing or saying unkind, unchari-

leaves no

table, unjust things to his fellow-man.

With

an exuberance of thought that would supply the mental outfit of ten ordinary poets, and

with a rush of words that reckless,

by no means

but intensely and grandly labored,

Whitman

hurls his view of the world at the

heads of his readers with a vigor and boldness that takes

century

away

one's breath.

getting noted

among

for singular departures in art

Among them

all,

there

and

This

centuries literature.

none bolder or

ESSATS FROM THE CRITIC.

180

original than that of

haps Poe in his

an equal.

own

line

It is strange,

Whitman.

Per-

might be cited as

and yet

not

strange, that he should have waited so long for recognition,

and that by many thousands

of people of no little culture his claims to

being a poet at

all

are either frankly scouted

or else held in abeyance.

Literature here

has remarkably held aloof from the vital

and hopes of the

thoughts

seems as

country.

the very crudity of the struggle

here drove people into a petty dilettante

atmosphere of prettiness in art and literature as

an escape from the dust and cinders of

daily

which

Hence our national love

life.

" slicked

it is

pictures,

often

instance,

for

claimed in Europe that

promising geniuses in painting, there, have

been ruined for higher work. patronage of poets that have

all

Hence our the polish

of a cymbal, but all a cymbal's dry note

hollowness.

and

Hence, at one time, our admi-

WHITMAN'S "LEAVES OF GRASS."

181

ration for orators that were ornate to the

verge of inanity. literature

Into this hot-house air of

Walt Whitman bounded with the

vigor and suppleness of a clown at a funeral.

Dire were the grimaces

of.

the mourners in

high places, and dire are their grimaces

There were plenty of even

after one

criticisms

still.

make,

had finished crying " Oh

" at

the frank sensuality, the unbelievable nakedness of Walt.

Every thing that decent

folk

covered up, Walt exhibited, and boasted of

He was proud of his nakedness and sensuality. He cried, " Look here, you exhibiting

pampered rogues of

literature,

what

are

you

squirming about, when you know, and every-

body knows, that things

are just like this,

always have been, always will be ? "

must be remembered that wrote, and that he did

by order from

his genius.

this

But

was what he

with a plan, and It

has never been

heard of him that he was disgusting in or vile in private life; while

talk,

has been

ESSAYS FROM TEE CRITIC.

182

known

that poets celebrated for the lofty

tone of their morality, for the strictness of their Christianity, the purity of their cabinet

hymns, can condescend in private wallow in

that

all

base.

That

great anomaly of "Whitman.

life

the other

rhapsodizes

of things seldom seen in print with the en-

thusiasm of a surgeon enamoured of the wonderful

not

mechanism of the body.

soil his

evil is in

But he does

conversation with lewdness.

him,

shows only in

his book.

Whitman's strength and Whitman's weakness

lie

in his lack

of taste.

a mere

external sign, look at his privately printed

volumes.

For a printer and

porter and editor, they do not

type-setter, re-

show

taste in

the selection and arrangement of the type.

A cardinal sin in the

eyes of most critics

the use of French, Spanish, and American-

Spanish words, which are scattered here and there, as if

Whitman had picked them

up,

sometimes slightly incorrectly, from wander-

;

WHITMAN'S "LEAVES OF

GBASS."

183

ing minstrels, Cubans, or fugitives from one

He shows

of Walker's raids.

crudely the

American way of incorporating into

the

language a handy or a high-sounding word without elaborate examination of

its

meaning, just as we absorb the

original different

nationalities that crowd over from Europe.

His thought and his mode are immense, often

flat,

expression

very often monoto-

nous, like our great sprawling cities with their

endless scattering of

gets the "

when one colossal

Yet

suburbs.

hang " of

it,

there

grandeur in conception and execu-

tion that

must

be patient

finally convince

enough

look

whoever

will

for

His

it.

much burlesqued, is all of a part man and his ideas. It is apparently

rhythm, so

with the confused

;

really

most carefully schemed

certainly to a high degree original.

what

in the music of

movement

Wagner,

It has

the finest thing

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;a

great booming

to the present writer

or undertone, like the noise of

ESSAYS FROM THE CRITIC.

184

heavy

surf.

His crowded adjectives are like

the mediaeval writers of Irish, those extraor-

who sang the old Irish heroes own contemporaries, the chiefs of

dinary poets

and their

their

clans.

Irishman of

to-day has

written a nobler lament for Ireland, or a

more hopeful,

or a

Walt Whitman.

Yet

has Irish blood.

Nor

truthful, than has

not said that he

there to be found in

our literature another original piece of prose so valuable to future historians as his notes

on the war.

Nor

time extant

who

that day of

"Drum

there a poet of the war-

has so struck the note of

conflict

Taps."

His verses are

Whitman

He makes like the

lines of volunteers,

parts of

him.

the flesh creep.

march

of the

and then again

bugles of distant cavalry.

As he

But

stands

" Leaves of Grass," in spite of that regard for the

has in

long

like the

these

are

complete in all

the things

decencies of drawing-

rooms and families may wish away, he

cer-

WHITMAN'S "LEAVES OF tainly represents, as

world, the hearted, cent, is

somewhat

blundering,

civilization that

in the United States of America.

avoids the cultured few.

represent,

in the

sound-

coarse, but still magnifi-

vanguard of Western

encamped

no other writer

struggling,

185

GRASS."

and does

in his

own

He wants

strange way-

represent, the lower middle stratum of hu-

manity.

But, so

far, it is

not evident that

his chosen constituency cares for, or has

recognized him.

Wide

even

readers are beginning

to guess his proportions.