_The Quacks of Helicon: A Satire. By_ L. A. Wilmer.
_Philadelphia: Printed by J. W. Macclefield._
A satire, professedly such, at the present day, and especially by an
American writer, is a welcome novelty, indeed. We have really done very
little in the line upon this side of the Atlantic—nothing, certainly,
of importance—Trumbull’s clumsy poem and Halleck’s “Croakers” to the
contrary notwithstanding. Some things we have produced, to be sure,
which were excellent in the way of burlesque, without intending a
syllable that was not utterly solemn and serious. Odes, ballads, songs,
sonnets, epics, and epigrams, possessed of this unintentional
excellence, we could have no difficulty in designating by the dozen;
but, in the matter of directly-meant and genuine satire, it cannot be
denied that we are sadly deficient. Although, as a literary people,
however, we are not exactly Archilocuses—although we have no
pretensions to the ηχεηντες ιαμβοι—although, in short, we are no
satirists ourselves, there can be no question that we answer
sufficiently well as subjects for satire.
We repeat, that we are glad to see this book of Mr. Wilmer’s; first,
because it is something new under the sun; secondly, because, in many
respects, it is well executed; and, thirdly, because, in the universal
corruption and rigmarole amid which we gasp for breath, it is really a
pleasant thing to get even one accidental whiff of the unadulterated air
of _truth_.
The “Quacks of Helicon,” as a poem and otherwise, has many defects, and
these we shall have no scruple in pointing out—although Mr. Wilmer is a
personal friend of our own;[4] and we are happy and proud to say so—but
it has also many remarkable merits—merits which it will be quite
useless for those aggrieved by the satire—quite useless for any
_clique_, or set of _cliques_, to attempt to frown down, or to affect
not to see, or to feel, or to understand.
-----
[4] Of Mr. Poe’s.
Its prevalent blemishes are referrible chiefly to the leading sin of
_imitation_. Had the work been composed professedly in paraphrase of the
whole manner of the sarcastic epistles of the times of Dryden and Pope,
we should have pronounced it the most ingenious and truthful thing of
the kind upon record. So close is the copy, that it extends to the most
trivial points—for example to the old forms of punctuation. The turns
of phraseology, the tricks of rhythm, the arrangement of the paragraphs,
the general conduct of the satire—everything—all—are Dryden’s. We
cannot deny, it is true, that the satiric model of the days in question
is insusceptible of improvement, and that the modern author who deviates
therefrom, must necessarily sacrifice something of merit at the shrine
of originality. Neither can we shut our eyes to the fact, that the
imitation, in the present case, has conveyed, in full spirit, the higher
qualities, as well as, in rigid letter, the minor elegances and general
peculiarities of the author of “Absalom and Achitophel.” We have here
the bold, vigorous, and sonorous verse, the biting sarcasm, the pungent
epigrammatism, the unscrupulous directness, as of old. Yet it will not
do to forget that Mr. Wilmer has been _shown how_ to accomplish these
things. He is thus only entitled to the praise of a close observer, and
of a thoughtful and skilful copyist. The images are, to be sure, his
own. They are neither Pope’s, nor Dryden’s, nor Rochester’s, nor
Churchill’s—but they are moulded in the identical mould used by these
satirists.
This servility of imitation has seduced our author into errors which his
better sense should have avoided. He sometimes mistakes intention; at
other times he copies faults, confounding them with beauties. In the
opening of the poem, for example, we find the lines—
Against usurpers, Olney, I declare
A righteous, just, and patriotic war.
The rhymes _war_ and _declare_ are here adopted from Pope, who employs
them frequently; but it should have been remembered that the modern
relative pronunciation of the two words differs materially from the
relative pronunciation of the era of the “Dunciad.”
We are also sure that the gross obscenity, the filth—we can use no
gentler name—which disgraces the “Quacks of Helicon,” cannot be the
result of innate impurity in the mind of the writer. It is but a part of
the slavish and indiscriminating imitation of the Swift and Rochester
school. It has done the book an irreparable injury, both in a moral and
pecuniary view, without effecting anything whatever on the score of
sarcasm, vigor or wit. “Let what is to be said, be said plainly.” True;
but let nothing vulgar be _ever_ said, or conceived.
In asserting that this satire, even in its mannerism, has imbued itself
with the full spirit of the polish and of the pungency of Dryden, we
have already awarded it high praise. But there remains to be mentioned
the far loftier merit of speaking fearlessly the truth, at an epoch when
truth is out of fashion, and under circumstances of social position
which would have deterred almost any man in our community from a similar
Quixotism. For the publication of the “Quacks of Helicon,”—a poem which
brings under review, by name, most of our prominent _literati_, and
treats them, generally, as they deserve (what treatment could be more
bitter?)—for the publication of this attack, Mr. Wilmer, whose
subsistence lies in his pen, has little to look for—apart from the
silent respect of those at once honest and timid—but the most malignant
open or covert persecution. For this reason, and because it is the truth
which he has spoken, do we say to him from the bottom of our hearts,
“God speed!”
We repeat it:—_it is_ the truth which he has spoken, and who shall
contradict us? He has said unscrupulously what every reasonable man
among us has long known to be “as true as the Pentateuch”—that, as a
literary people, we are one vast perambulating humbug. He has asserted
that we are _clique_-ridden, and who does not smile at the obvious
truism of that assertion? He maintains that chicanery is, with us, a far
surer road than talent to distinction in letters. Who gainsays this? The
corrupt nature of our ordinary criticism has become notorious. Its
powers have been prostrated by its own arm. The intercourse between
critic and publisher, as it now almost universally stands, is comprised
either in the paying and pocketing of black mail, as the price of a
simple forbearance, or in a direct system of petty and contemptible
bribery, properly so called—a system even more injurious than the
former to the true interests of the public, and more degrading to the
buyers and sellers of good opinion, on account of the more positive
character of the service here rendered for the consideration received.
We laugh at the idea of any denial of our assertions upon this topic;
they are infamously true. In the charge of general corruption there are
undoubtedly many noble exceptions to be made. There are, indeed, some
very few editors, who, maintaining an entire independence, will receive
no books from publishers at all, or who receive them with a perfect
understanding, on the part of these latter, that an unbiassed _critique_
will be given. But these cases are insufficient to have much effect on
the popular mistrust: a mistrust heightened by late exposure of the
machinations of _coteries_ in New York—_coteries_ which, at the bidding
of leading booksellers, manufacture, as required from time to time, a
pseudo-public opinion by wholesale, for the benefit of any little hanger
on of the party, or pettifogging protector of the firm.
We speak of these things in the bitterness of scorn. It is unnecessary
to cite instances, where one is found in almost every issue of a book.
It is needless to call to mind the desperate case of Fay—a case where
the pertinacity of the effort to gull—where the obviousness of the
attempt at forestalling a judgment—where the wofully over-done
be-Mirrorment of that man-of-straw, together with the pitiable platitude
of his production, proved a dose somewhat too potent for even the
well-prepared stomach of the mob. We say it is supererogatory to dwell
upon “Norman Leslie,” or other by-gone follies, when we have, before our
eyes, hourly instances of the machinations in question. To so great an
extent of methodical assurance has the _system_ of puffery arrived, that
publishers, of late, have made no scruple of keeping on hand an
assortment of commendatory notices, prepared by their men of all work,
and of sending these notices around to the multitudinous papers within
their influence, done up within the fly-leaves of the book. The
grossness of these base attempts, however, has not escaped indignant
rebuke from the more honorable portion of the press; and we hail these
symptoms of restiveness under the yoke of unprincipled ignorance and
quackery (strong only in combination) as the harbinger of a better era
for the interests of real merit, and of the national literature as a
whole.
It has become, indeed the plain duty of each individual connected with
our periodicals, heartily to give whatever influence he possesses, to
the good cause of integrity and the truth. The results thus attainable
will be found worthy his closest attention and best efforts. We shall
thus frown down all conspiracies to foist inanity upon the public
consideration at the obvious expense of every man of talent who is not a
member of a _clique_ in power. We may even arrive, in time, at that
desirable point from which a distinct view of our men of letters may be
obtained, and their respective pretensions adjusted, by the standard of
a rigorous and self-sustaining criticism alone. That their several
positions are as yet properly settled; that the posts which a vast
number of them now hold are maintained by any better tenure than that of
the chicanery upon which we have commented, will be asserted by none but
the ignorant, or the parties who have best right to feel an interest in
the “good old condition of things.” No two matters can be more radically
different than the reputation of some of our prominent _litterateurs_,
as gathered from the mouths of the people, (who glean it from the
paragraphs of the papers,) and the same reputation as deduced from the
private estimate of intelligent and educated men. We do not advance this
fact as a new discovery. Its truth, on the contrary, is the subject, and
has long been so, of every-day witticism and mirth.
Why not? Surely there can be few things more ridiculous than the general
character and assumptions of the ordinary critical notices of new books!
An editor, sometimes without the shadow of the commonest
attainment—often without brains, always without time—does not scruple
to give the world to understand that he is in the _daily_ habit of
critically reading and deciding upon a flood of publications one tenth
of whose title-pages he may possibly have turned over, three fourths of
whose contents would be Hebrew to his most desperate efforts at
comprehension, and whose entire mass and amount, as might be
mathematically demonstrated, would be sufficient to occupy, in the most
cursory perusal, the attention of some ten or twenty readers for a
month! What he wants in plausibility, however, he makes up in
obsequiousness; what he lacks in time he supplies in temper. He is the
most easily pleased man in the world. He admires everything, from the
big Dictionary of Noah Webster to the last diamond edition of Tom Thumb.
Indeed his sole difficulty is in finding tongue to express his delight.
Every pamphlet is a miracle—every book in boards is an epoch in
letters. His phrases, therefore, get bigger and bigger every day, and,
if it were not for talking Cockney, we might call him a “regular swell.”
Yet in the attempt at getting definite information in regard to any one
portion of our literature, the merely general reader, or the foreigner,
will turn in vain from the lighter to the heavier journals. But it is
not our intention here to dwell upon the radical, antique, and
systematized rigmarole of our Quarterlies. The articles here are
anonymous. Who writes?—who causes to be written? Who but an ass will
put faith in tirades which _may_ be the result of personal hostility, or
in panegyrics which nine times out of ten may be laid, directly or
indirectly, to the charge of the author himself? It is in the favor of
these saturnine pamphlets that they contain, now and then, a good essay
_de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis_, which may be looked into, without
decided somnolent consequences, at any period not immediately subsequent
to dinner. But it is useless to expect criticism from periodicals called
“Reviews” from never reviewing. Besides, all men know, or should know,
that these books are sadly given to verbiage. It is a part of their
nature, a condition of their being, a point of their faith. A veteran
reviewer loves the safety of generalities, and is therefore rarely
particular. “Words, words, words” are the secret of his strength. He has
one or two ideas of his own, and is both wary and fussy in giving them
out. His wit lies with his truth, in a well, and there is always a world
of trouble in getting it up. He is a sworn enemy to all things simple
and direct. He gives no ear to the advice of the giant
Moulineau—“_Belier, mon ami, commencez au commencement._” He either
jumps at once into the middle of his subject, or breaks in at a back
door, or sidles up to it with the gait of a crab. No other mode of
approach has an air of sufficient profundity. When fairly into it,
however, he becomes dazzled with the scintillations of his own wisdom,
and is seldom able to see his way out. Tired of laughing at his antics,
or frightened at seeing him flounder, the reader at length shuts him up,
with the book. “What song the Syrens sang,” says Sir Thomas Browne, “or
what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though
puzzling questions, are not beyond _all_ conjecture”—but it would
puzzle Sir Thomas, backed by Achilles and all the Syrens in Heathendom,
to say, in nine cases out of ten, _what is the object_ of a
thorough-going Quarterly Reviewer.
Should the opinions promulgated by our press at large be taken, in their
wonderful aggregate, as an evidence of what American literature
absolutely is, (and it may be said that, in general, they are really so
taken,) we shall find ourselves the most enviable set of people upon the
face of the earth. Our fine writers are legion. Our very atmosphere is
redolent of genius; and we, the nation, are a huge, well-contented
chameleon, grown pursy by inhaling it. We are _teretes et
rotundi_—enwrapped in excellence. All our poets are Miltons, neither
mute nor inglorious; all our poetesses are “American Hemanses;” nor will
it do to deny that all our novelists are great Knowns or great Unknowns,
and that every body who writes, in every possible and impossible
department, is the admirable Crichton, or at least the admirable
Crichton’s ghost. We are thus in a glorious condition, and will remain
so until forced to disgorge our ethereal honors. In truth, there is some
danger that the jealousy of the Old World will interfere. It cannot long
submit to that outrageous monopoly of “all the decency and all the
talent” in which the gentlemen of the press give such undoubted
assurance of our being so busily engaged.
But we feel angry with ourselves for the jesting tone of our
observations upon this topic. The prevalence of the spirit of puffery is
a subject far less for merriment than for disgust. Its truckling, yet
dogmatical character—its bold, unsustained, yet self-sufficient and
wholesale laudation—is becoming, more and more, an insult to the common
sense of the community. Trivial as it essentially is, it has yet been
made the instrument of the grossest abuse in the elevation of
imbecility, to the manifest injury, to the utter ruin, of true merit. Is
there any man of good feeling and of ordinary understanding—is there
one single individual among all our readers—who does not feel a thrill
of bitter indignation, apart from any sentiment of mirth, as he calls to
mind instance after instance of the purest, of the most unadulterated
quackery in letters, which has risen to a high post in the apparent
popular estimation, and which still maintains it, by the sole means of a
blustering arrogance, or of a busy wriggling conceit, or of the most
barefaced plagiarism, or even through the simple immensity of its
assumptions—assumptions not only unopposed by the press at large, but
absolutely supported in proportion to the vociferous clamor with which
they are made—in exact accordance with their utter baselessness and
untenability? We should have no trouble in pointing out, to-day, some
twenty or thirty so-called literary personages, who, if not idiots, as
we half think them, or if not hardened to all sense of shame by a long
course of disingenuousness, will now blush, in the perusal of these
words, through consciousness of the shadowy nature of that purchased
pedestal upon which they stand—will now tremble in thinking of the
feebleness of the breath which will be adequate to the blowing it from
beneath their feet. With the help of a hearty good will, even _we_ may
yet tumble them down.
So firm, through a long endurance, has been the hold taken upon the
popular mind (at least so far as we may consider the popular mind
reflected in ephemeral letters) by the laudatory system which we have
deprecated, that what is, in its own essence, a vice, has become endowed
with the appearance, and met with the reception of a virtue. Antiquity,
as usual, has lent a certain degree of speciousness even to the absurd.
So continuously have we puffed, that we have at length come to think
puffing the duty, and plain speaking the dereliction. What we began in
gross error, we persist in through habit. Having adopted, in the earlier
days of our literature, the untenable idea that this literature, as a
whole, could be advanced by an indiscriminate approbation bestowed on
its every effort—having adopted this idea, we say, without attention to
the obvious fact that praise of all was bitter although negative censure
to the few alone deserving, and that the only result of the system, in
the fostering way, would be the fostering of folly—we now continue our
vile practices through the supineness of custom, even while, in our
national self-conceit, we repudiate that necessity for patronage and
protection in which originated our conduct. In a word, the press
throughout the country has not been ashamed to make head against the
very few bold attempts at independence which have, from time to time,
been made in the face of the reigning order of things. And if, in one,
or perhaps two, insulated cases, the spirit of severe truth, sustained
by an unconquerable will, was not to be so put down, then, forthwith,
were private chicaneries set in motion; then was had resort, on the part
of those who considered themselves injured by the severity of criticism,
(and who were so, if the just contempt of every ingenuous man is
injury,) resort to arts of the most virulent indignity, to untraceable
slanders, to ruthless assassination in the dark. We say these things
were done, while the press in general looked on, and, with a full
understanding of the wrong perpetrated, spoke not against the wrong. The
idea had absolutely gone abroad—had grown up little by little into
toleration—that attacks however just, upon a literary reputation
however obtained, however untenable, were well retaliated by the basest
and most unfounded traduction of personal fame. But is this an age—is
this a day—in which it can be necessary even to advert to such
considerations as that the book of the author is the property of the
public, and that the issue of the book is the throwing down of the
gauntlet to the reviewer—to the reviewer whose duty is the plainest;
the duty not even of approbation, or of censure, or of silence, at his
own will, but at the sway of those sentiments and of those opinions
which are derived from the author himself, through the medium of his
written and published words? True criticism is the reflection of the
thing criticised upon the spirit of the critic.
But _à nos moutons_—to the “Quacks of Helicon.” This satire has many
faults besides those upon which we have commented. The tide, for
example, is not sufficiently distinctive, although otherwise good. It
does not confine the subject to _American_ quacks, while the work does.
The two concluding lines enfeeble instead of strengthening the _finale_,
which would have been exceedingly pungent without them. The individual
portions of the thesis are strung together too much at random—a natural
sequence is not always preserved—so that although the lights of the
picture are often forcible, the whole has what, in artistical parlance,
is termed an accidental and spotty appearance. In truth, the parts of
the poem have evidently been composed each by each, as separate themes,
and afterwards fitted into the general satire, in the best manner
possible.
But a more reprehensible sin than any or than all of these is yet to be
mentioned—the sin of indiscriminate censure. Even here Mr. Wilmer has
erred through imitation. He has held in view the sweeping denunciations
of the Dunciad, and of the later (abortive) satire of Byron. No one in
his senses can deny the justice of the general charges of corruption in
regard to which we have just spoken from the text of our author. But are
there _no_ exceptions? We should indeed blush if there were not. And is
there _no_ hope? Time will show. We cannot do everything in a day—_Non
se gano Zamora en un ora_. Again, it cannot be gainsaid that the greater
number of those who hold high places in our poetical literature are
absolute nincompoops—fellows alike innocent of reason and of rhyme. But
neither are we _all_ brainless, nor is the devil himself so black as he
is painted. Mr. Wilmer must read the chapter in Rabelais’ _Gargantua_,
“_de ce qu’ est signifié par les couleurs blanc et bleu_”—for there is
_some_ difference after all. It will not do in a civilized land to run
a-muck like a Malay. Mr. Morris _has_ written good songs. Mr. Bryant is
not _all_ a fool. Mr. Willis is not _quite_ an ass. Mr. Longfellow
_will_ steal, but perhaps he cannot help it, (for we have heard of such
things,) and then it must not be denied that _nil tetigit quod non
ornavit_.
The fact is that our author, in the rank exuberance of his zeal, seems
to think as little of discrimination as the Bishop of Autun[5] did of
the Bible. Poetical “things in general” are the windmills at which he
spurs his rozinante. He as often tilts at what is true as at what is
false; and thus his lines are like the mirrors of the temples of Smirna,
which represent the fairest images as deformed. But the talent, the
fearlessness, and especially the _design_ of this book, will suffice to
save it even from that dreadful damnation of “silent contempt” to which
editors throughout the country, if we are not very much mistaken, will
endeavor, one and all, to consign it.
-----
[5] Talleyrand.
* * * * *
_Biography and Poetical Remains of the late Margaret Miller
Davidson. By_ Washington Irving. _Philadelphia: Lea and
Blanchard._
The name of Lucretia Davidson is familiar to all readers of Poetry.
Dying at the early age of seventeen, she has been rendered famous not
less, and certainly not more, by her own precocious genius than by three
memorable biographies—one by President Morse, of the American Society
of Arts, another by Miss Sedgwick, and a third by Robert Southey. Mr.
Irving had formed an acquaintance with some of her relatives, and thus,
while, in Europe, took great interest in all that was said or written of
his young countrywoman. Upon his return to America, he called upon Mrs.
Davidson, and then, in 1833, first saw the subject of the memoir now
before us—a fairy-like child of eleven. Three years afterwards he met
with her again, and then found her in delicate health. Three years
having again elapsed, the MSS. which form the basis of the present
volume, were placed in his hands by Mrs. Davidson, as all that remained
of her daughter.
Few books have interested us more profoundly. Yet the interest does not
appertain solely to Margaret. “In fact the narrative,” says Mr. Irving,
“will be found almost as illustrative of the character of the mother as
of the child; they were singularly identified in taste, feeling, and
pursuits; tenderly entwined together by maternal and filial affection,
they reflected an inexpressibly touching grace and interest upon each
other by this holy relationship, and, to my mind it would be marring one
of the most beautiful and affecting groups in modern literature, to
sunder them.” In these words the biographer conveys no more than a just
idea of the exquisite loveliness of the picture here presented to view.
The MSS. handed Mr. Irving, have been suffered, in great measure, to
tell their own thrilling tale. There has been no injudicious attempt at
mere authorship. The compiler has confined himself to chronological
arrangement of his memoranda, and to such simple and natural comments as
serve to bind rather than to illustrate where no illustration was
needed. These memoranda consist of relations by Mrs. Davidson of the
infantine peculiarities of her daughter, and of her habits and general
thoughts in more matured life, intermingled with letters from the young
poetess to intimate friends. There is also a letter from the bereaved
mother to Miss Sedgwick, detailing the last moments of the child—a
letter so full of all potent nature, so full of minute beauty and truth
and pathos, that to read it without tears would be to prove one’s self
less than human.
The “Poetical Remains” of this young creature, who perished (of
consumption) in her sixteenth year, occupy about two hundred pages of a
somewhat closely printed octavo. The longest poem is called “Lenore,”
and consists of some two thousand lines, varying in metre from the
ordinary octo-syllabic, to the four-footed, or twelve-syllabled iambic.
The story, which is a romantic love-tale, not ill-conceived in its
incidents, is told with a skill which might put more practised bards to
the blush, and with occasional bursts of the truest poetic fire. But
although as indicative of her future power, it is the most important, as
it is the longest of her productions, yet as a whole it is not equal to
some of her shorter compositions. It was written not long before her
death, at the age of fifteen, and (as we glean from the biography) after
patient reflection, with much care, and with a high resolve to do
something for fame. As the work of so mere a child, it is unquestionably
wonderful. Its _length_, viewed in connection with its keeping, its
unity, its adaptation, and completeness, will impress the metaphysician
most forcibly, when surveying the capacities of its author. Powers are
here brought into play which are the last to be matured. For fancy we
might have looked, and for the lower evidences of skill in a perfect
versification and the like, but hardly for what we see in Lenore.
Yet remarkable as this production is, from the pen of a girl of fifteen,
it is by no means so incomprehensible as are some of the shorter pieces.
We have known instances—rarely, to be sure—but still we have known
instances when finer poems in every respect than Lenore have been
written by children of as immature age—but we look around us in vain
for anything composed at eight years, which can bear comparison with the
lines subjoined—
“TO MAMMA.
“Farewell, dear mother, for a while
I must resign thy plaintive smile;
May angels watch thy couch of wo,
And joys unceasing round thee flow.
“May the almighty Father spread
His sheltering wings above thy head.
It is not long that we must part,
Then cheer thy downcast drooping heart.
“Remember, oh! remember me,
Unceasing is my love for thee!
When death shall sever earthly ties,
When thy loved form all senseless lies,
“Oh! that my form with thine could flee,
And roam through wide eternity;
Could tread with thee the courts of heaven,
And count the brilliant stars of even.”