"I know that all beneath the moon decays,
And what by mortals in this world is brought,
In time's great period shall return to nought.
I know that all the muse's heavenly lays,
With toil of sprite which are so dearly bought,
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought,
That there is nothing lighter than mere praise."
--DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.
There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind, in which we naturally
steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt, where we may
indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed. In such a
mood I was loitering about the old gray cloisters of Westminster Abbey,
enjoying that luxury of wandering thought which one is apt to dignify
with the name of reflection; when suddenly an interruption of madcap
boys from Westminster School, playing at football, broke in upon the
monastic stillness of the place, making the vaulted passages and
mouldering tombs echo with their merriment. I sought to take refuge from
their noise by penetrating still deeper into the solitudes of the pile,
and applied to one of the vergers for admission to the library. He
conducted me through a portal rich with the crumbling sculpture of
former ages, which opened upon a gloomy passage leading to the
chapter-house and the chamber in which doomsday book is deposited. Just
within the passage is a small door on the left. To this the verger
applied a key; it was double locked, and opened with some difficulty, as
if seldom used. We now ascended a dark narrow staircase, and, passing
through a second door, entered the library.
I found myself in a lofty antique hall, the roof supported by massive
joists of old English oak. It was soberly lighted by a row of Gothic
windows at a considerable height from the floor, and which apparently
opened upon the roofs of the cloisters. An ancient picture of some
reverend dignitary of the church in his robes hung over the fireplace.
Around the hall and in a small gallery were the books, arranged in
carved oaken cases. They consisted principally of old polemical writers,
and were much more worn by time than use. In the center of the library
was a solitary table with two or three books on it, an inkstand without
ink, and a few pens parched by long disuse. The place seemed fitted for
quiet study and profound meditation. It was buried deep among the
massive walls of the abbey, and shut up from the tumult of the world. I
could only hear now and then the shouts of the school-boys faintly
swelling from the cloisters, and the sound of a bell tolling for
prayers, echoing soberly along the roofs of the abbey. By degrees the
shouts of merriment grew fainter and fainter, and at length died away;
the bell ceased to toll, and a profound silence reigned through the
dusky hall.
I had taken down a little thick quarto, curiously bound in parchment,
with brass clasps, and seated myself at the table in a venerable
elbow-chair. Instead of reading, however, I was beguiled by the solemn
monastic air, and lifeless quiet of the place, into a train of musing.
As I looked around upon the old volumes in their mouldering covers, thus
ranged on the shelves, and apparently never disturbed in their repose, I
could not but consider the library a kind of literary catacomb, where
authors, like mummies, are piously entombed, and left to blacken and
moulder in dusty oblivion.
How much, thought I, has each of these volumes, now thrust aside with
such indifference, cost some aching head! how many weary days! how many
sleepless nights! How have their authors buried themselves in the
solitude of cells and cloisters; shut themselves up from the face of
man, and the still more blessed face of nature; and devoted themselves
to painful research and intense reflection! And all for what? to occupy
an inch of dusty shelf--to have the title of their works read now and
then in a future age, by some drowsy churchman or casual straggler like
myself; and in another age to be lost, even to remembrance. Such is the
amount of this boasted immortality. A mere temporary rumor, a local
sound; like the tone of that bell which has just tolled among these
towers, filling the ear for a moment--lingering transiently in echo--and
then passing away like a thing that was not.
While I sat half murmuring, half meditating these unprofitable
speculations with my head resting on my hand, I was thrumming with the
other hand upon the quarto, until I accidentally loosened the clasps;
when, to my utter astonishment, the little book gave two or three yawns,
like one awaking from a deep sleep; then a husky hem; and at length
began to talk. At first its voice was very hoarse and broken, being much
troubled by a cobweb which some studious spider had woven across it; and
having probably contracted a cold from long exposure to the chills and
damps of the abbey. In a short time, however, it became more distinct,
and I soon found it an exceedingly fluent conversable little tome. Its
language, to be sure, was rather quaint and obsolete, and its
pronunciation, what, in the present day, would be deemed barbarous; but
I shall endeavor, as far as I am able, to render it in modern parlance.
It began with railings about the neglect of the world--about merit being
suffered to languish in obscurity, and other such commonplace topics of
literary repining, and complained bitterly that it had not been opened
for more than two centuries; that the dean only looked now and then into
the library, sometimes took down a volume or two, trifled with them for
a few moments, and then returned them to their shelves. "What a plague
do they mean," said the little quarto, which I began to perceive was
somewhat choleric, "what a plague do they mean by keeping several
thousand volumes of us shut up here, and watched by a set of old
vergers, like so many beauties in a harem, merely to be looked at now
and then by the dean? Books were written to give pleasure and to be
enjoyed; and I would have a rule passed that the dean should pay each of
us a visit at least once a year; or if he is not equal to the task, let
them once in a while turn loose the whole school of Westminster among
us, that at any rate we may now and then have an airing."
"Softly, my worthy friend," replied I, "you are not aware how much
better you are off than most books of your generation. By being stored
away in this ancient library, you are like the treasured remains of
those saints and monarchs, which lie enshrined in the adjoining chapels;
while the remains of your contemporary mortals, left to the ordinary
course of nature, have long since returned to dust."
"Sir," said the little tome, ruffling his leaves and looking big, "I was
written for all the world, not for the bookworms of an abbey. I was
intended to circulate from hand to hand, like other great contemporary
works; but here have I been clasped up for more than two centuries, and
might have silently fallen a prey to these worms that are playing the
very vengeance with my intestines, if you had not by chance given me an
opportunity of uttering a few last words before I go to pieces."
"My good friend," rejoined I, "had you been left to the circulation of
which you speak, you would long ere this have been no more. To judge
from your physiognomy, you are now well stricken in years: very few of
your contemporaries can be at present in existence; and those few owe
their longevity to being immured like yourself in old libraries; which,
suffer me to add, instead of likening to harems, you might more properly
and gratefully have compared to those infirmaries attached to religious
establishments, for the benefit of the old and decrepit, and where, by
quiet fostering and no employment, they often endure to an amazingly
good-for-nothing old age. You talk of your contemporaries as if in
circulation--where do we meet with their works? what do we hear of
Robert Groteste, of Lincoln? No one could have toiled harder than he for
immortality. He is said to have written nearly two hundred volumes. He
built, as it were, a pyramid of books to perpetuate his name: but, alas!
the pyramid has long since fallen, and only a few fragments are
scattered in various libraries, where they are scarcely disturbed even
by the antiquarian. What do we hear of Giraldus Cambrensis, the
historian, antiquary, philosopher, theologian, and poet? He declined two
bishoprics, that he might shut himself up and write for posterity; but
posterity never inquires after his labors. What of Henry of Huntingdon,
who, besides a learned history of England, wrote a treatise on the
contempt of the world, which the world has revenged by forgetting him?
What is quoted of Joseph of Exeter, styled the miracle of his age in
classical composition? Of his three great heroic poems one is lost
forever, excepting a mere fragment; the others are known only to a few
of the curious in literature; and as to his love verses and epigrams,
they have entirely disappeared. What is in current use of John Wallis,
the Franciscan, who acquired the name of the tree of life? Of William of
Malmsbury;--of Simeon of Durham;--of Benedict of Peterborough;--of John
Hanvill of St. Albans;--of----"
"Prithee, friend," cried the quarto, in a testy tone, "how old do you
think me? You are talking of authors that lived long before my time, and
wrote either in Latin or French, so that they in a manner expatriated
themselves, and deserved to be forgotten;[1] but I, sir, was ushered
into the world from the press of the renowned Wynkyn de Worde. I was
written in my own native tongue, at a time when the language had become
fixed; and indeed I was considered a model of pure and elegant English."
(I should observe that these remarks were couched in such intolerably
antiquated terms, that I have had infinite difficulty in rendering them
into modern phraseology.)
"I cry your mercy," said I, "for mistaking your age; but it matters
little: almost all the writers of your time have likewise passed into
forgetfulness; and De Worde's publications are mere literary rarities
among book-collectors. The purity and stability of language, too, on
which you found your claims to perpetuity, have been the fallacious
dependence of authors of every age, even back to the times of the worthy
Robert of Gloucester, who wrote his history in rhymes of mongrel
Saxon.[2] Even now many talk of Spenser's 'well of pure English
undefiled,' as if the language ever sprang from a well or fountain-head,
and was not rather a mere confluence of various tongues, perpetually
subject to changes and intermixtures. It is this which has made English
literature so extremely mutable, and the reputation built upon it so
fleeting. Unless thought can be committed to something more permanent
and unchangeable than such a medium, even thought must share the fate of
everything else, and fall into decay. This should serve as a check upon
the vanity and exultation of the most popular writer. He finds the
language in which he has embarked his fame gradually altering, and
subject to the dilapidations of time and the caprice of fashion. He
looks back and beholds the early authors of his country, once the
favorites of their day, supplanted by modern writers. A few short ages
have covered them with obscurity, and their merits can only be relished
by the quaint taste of the bookworm. And such, he anticipates, will be
the fate of his own work, which, however it may be admired in its day,
and held up as a model of purity, will in the course of years grow
antiquated and obsolete; until it shall become almost as unintelligible
in its native land as an Egyptian obelisk, or one of those Runic
inscriptions said to exist in the deserts of Tartary. I declare," added
I, with some emotion, "when I contemplate a modern library, filled with
new works, in all the bravery of rich gilding and binding, I feel
disposed to sit down and weep; like the good Xerxes, when he surveyed
his army, pranked out in all the splendor of military array, and
reflected that in one hundred years not one of them would be in
existence!"
"Ah," said the little quarto, with a heavy sigh, "I see how it is; these
modern scribblers have superseded all the good old authors. I suppose
nothing is read now-a-days but Sir Philip Sydney's _Arcadia_,
Sackville's stately plays, and Mirror for Magistrates, or the fine-spun
euphuisms of the 'unparalleled John Lyly.'"
"There you are again mistaken," said I; "the writers whom you suppose in
vogue, because they happened to be so when you were last in circulation,
have long since had their day. Sir Philip Sydney's _Arcadia_, the
immortality of which was so fondly predicted by his admirers,[3] and
which, in truth, is full of noble thoughts, delicate images, and
graceful turns of language, is now scarcely ever mentioned. Sackville
has strutted into obscurity; and even Lyly, though his writings were
once the delight of a court, and apparently perpetuated by a proverb, is
now scarcely known even by name. A whole crowd of authors who wrote and
wrangled at the time, have likewise gone down, with all their writings
and their controversies. Wave after wave of succeeding literature has
rolled over them, until they are buried so deep, that it is only now and
then that some industrious diver after fragments of antiquity brings up
a specimen for the gratification of the curious.
"For my part," I continued, "I consider this mutability of language a
wise precaution of Providence for the benefit of the world at large, and
of authors in particular. To reason from analogy, we daily behold the
varied and beautiful tribes of vegetables springing up, flourishing,
adorning the fields for a short time, and then fading into dust, to make
way for their successors. Were not this the case, the fecundity of
nature would be a grievance instead of a blessing. The earth would groan
with rank and excessive vegetation, and its surface become a tangled
wilderness. In like manner the works of genius and learning decline, and
make way for subsequent productions. Language gradually varies, and with
it fade away the writings of authors who have flourished their allotted
time; otherwise, the creative powers of genius would overstock the
world, and the mind would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes
of literature. Formerly there were some restraints on this excessive
multiplication. Works had to be transcribed by hand, which was a slow
and laborious operation; they were written either on parchment, which
was expensive, so that one work was often erased to make way for
another; or on papyrus, which was fragile and extremely perishable.
Authorship was a limited and unprofitable craft, pursued chiefly by
monks in the leisure and solitude of their cloisters. The accumulation
of manuscripts was slow and costly, and confined almost entirely to
monasteries. To these circumstances it may, in some measure, be owing
that we have not been inundated by the intellect of antiquity; that the
fountains of thought have not been broken up, and modern genius drowned
in the deluge. But the inventions of paper and the press have put an end
to all these restraints. They have made everyone a writer, and enabled
every mind to pour itself into print, and diffuse itself over the whole
intellectual world. The consequences are alarming. The stream of
literature has swollen into a torrent--augmented into a river--expanded
into a sea. A few centuries since, five or six hundred manuscripts
constituted a great library; but what would you say to libraries such as
actually exist, containing three or four hundred thousand volumes;
legions of authors at the same time busy; and the press going on with
fearfully increasing activity, to double and quadruple the number?
Unless some unforeseen mortality should break out among the progeny of
the muse, now that she has become so prolific, I tremble for posterity.
I fear the mere fluctuation of language will not be sufficient.
Criticism may do much. It increases with the increase of literature, and
resembles one of those salutary checks on population spoken of by
economists. All possible encouragement, therefore, should be given to
the growth of critics, good or bad. But I fear all will be in vain; let
criticism do what it may, writers will write, printers will print, and
the world will inevitably be overstocked with good books. It will soon
be the employment of a lifetime merely to learn their names. Many a man
of passable information, at the present day, reads scarcely anything but
reviews; and before long a man of erudition will be little better than a
mere walking catalogue."
"My very good sir," said the little quarto, yawning most drearily in my
face, "excuse my interrupting you, but I perceive you are rather given
to prose. I would ask the fate of an author who was making some noise
just as I left the world. His reputation, however, was considered quite
temporary. The learned shook their heads at him, for he was a poor
half-educated varlet, that knew little of Latin, and nothing of Greek,
and had been obliged to run the country for deer-stealing. I think his
name was Shakspeare. I presume he soon sunk into oblivion."
"On the contrary," said I, "it is owing to that very man that the
literature of his period has experienced a duration beyond the ordinary
term of English literature. There rise authors now and then, who seem
proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted
themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. They are like
gigantic trees that we sometimes see on the banks of a stream; which, by
their vast and deep roots, penetrating through the mere surface, and
laying hold on the very foundations of the earth, preserve the soil
around them from being swept away by the ever-flowing current, and hold
up many a neighboring plant, and perhaps worthless weed, to perpetuity.
Such is the case with Shakspeare, whom we behold defying the
encroachments of time, retaining in modern use the language and
literature of his day, and giving duration to many an indifferent
author, merely from having flourished in his vicinity. But even he, I
grieve to say, is gradually assuming the tint of age, and his whole form
is overrun by a profusion of commentators, who, like clambering vines
and creepers, almost bury the noble plant that upholds them."
Here the little quarto began to heave his sides and chuckle, until at
length he broke out in a plethoric fit of laughter that had well nigh
choked him, by reason of his excessive corpulency. "Mighty well!" cried
he, as soon as he could recover breath, "mighty well! and so you would
persuade me that the literature of an age is to be perpetuated by a
vagabond deer-stealer! by a man without learning; by a poet, forsooth--a
poet!" And here he wheezed forth another fit of laughter.
I confess that I felt somewhat nettled at this rudeness, which, however,
I pardoned on account of his having flourished in a less polished age. I
determined, nevertheless, not to give up my point.
"Yes," resumed I, positively, "a poet; for of all writers he has the
best chance for immortality. Others may write from the head, but he
writes from the heart, and the heart will always understand him. He is
the faithful portrayer of nature, whose features are always the same and
always interesting. Prose writers are voluminous and unwieldy; their
pages are crowded with commonplaces, and their thoughts expanded into
tediousness. But with the true poet everything is terse, touching, or
brilliant. He gives the choicest thoughts in the choicest language. He
illustrates them by everything that he sees most striking in nature and
art. He enriches them by pictures of human life, such as it is passing
before him. His writings, therefore, contain the spirit, the aroma, if I
may use the phrase, of the age in which he lives. They are caskets which
inclose within a small compass the wealth of the language--its family
jewels, which are thus transmitted in a portable form to posterity. The
setting may occasionally be antiquated, and require now and then to be
renewed, as in the case of Chaucer; but the brilliancy and intrinsic
value of the gems continue unaltered. Cast a look back over the long
reach of literary history. What vast valleys of dullness, filled with
monkish legends and academical controversies! what bogs of theological
speculations! what dreary wastes of metaphysics! Here and there only do
we behold the heaven-illuminated bards, elevated like beacons on their
widely-separate heights, to transmit the pure light of poetical
intelligence from age to age."[4]
I was just about to launch forth into eulogiums upon the poets of the
day, when the sudden opening of the door caused me to turn my head. It
was the verger, who came to inform me that it was time to close the
library. I sought to have a parting word with the quarto, but the worthy
little tome was silent; the clasps were closed: and it looked perfectly
unconscious of all that had passed. I have been to the library two or
three times since, and have endeavored to draw it into further
conversation, but in vain; and whether all this rambling colloquy
actually took place, or whether it was another of those odd day-dreams
to which I am subject, I have never to this moment been able to
discover.