I should like to write a Preface, if I could.—Such an ample
field is afforded, for appealing to the sympathy and generosity
of the “Liberal Public.” Such emphatic words as “youthful
diffidence,” “consciousness of errors,” “request of friends,”
“leisure hours,” “relief in solitude,”—all these once attracted
my delighted attention, and I resolved, if _I_ ever should write
a book, to present therewith a very sentimental Preface. But
upon this subject my opinions are changed. Negatively speaking
of my volume—“youthful diffidence” I cannot plead;
“consciousness of errors,” I might, which I own I have had time
to correct. I do not publish at the “request of friends,” for no
friends, to my knowledge, were ever particularly anxious for
such an event. Nor for the amusement of my “leisure hours,” for,
since my remembrance, I never had any. Nor as a “relief in
solitude,” for I am never alone. And permit me to add, not for
gold, for my muse will never become a Crœsus. Lastly, not for
Fame, for light is my regard for her vain breath.
A Preface is an article which I am by no means prepared to
attempt, being apprehensive that my labors might terminate like
those of a certain venerable individual, of spelling-book
celebrity, who, in companionship with his son, and a long-eared
fellow-traveller, by his anxiety to please everybody, found, to
his mortification, that he could please nobody. Now, with the
very moderate desire of pleasing somebody, I have determined to
write no preface to my book, because I am not prepared to make a
single fashionable apology for its publication. At the present
era of book-making, all prefatory introductions seem to be
disregarded as superfluous by the reading community, except to
works of deep erudition, or on subjects which may require
preliminary elucidations from the author. All others are merely
glanced over like the “programme of an entertainment,” or a
“bill of the play,” and obtain no further notice. Scarcely one
reader out of ten has the least interest or curiosity to learn
what motive induced the author to write the volume, which he has
either bought or borrowed for his entertainment. He certainly
has a right to expect it will contain some matter either to
improve, inform, or amuse the mind. If disappointed, no apology,
however gracefully made, will effect a change in his opinion;
and the author may expect to receive the same compliment which a
certain learned doctor (more famed for candor than politeness)
once paid to his delinquent pupil, who made an elaborate apology
for his errors, that he who was good at making “a handsome
apology, was generally good for nothing else.”
Thine respectfully,
K. A. W.
Since we have suffered our author to speak for herself, nobody can
accuse us of unfairness, since that captious gentleman, Nobody, is not
obliged to think as we do, but can, if he so pleases, pronounce Mrs.
Katharine Augusta Ware to be the most modest, unassuming, charming
pilgrim, that ever journeyed to the fountain of Helicon, or toiled up
the steeps of Parnassus.
We have, in our time, been constrained by our vocation, to spell out a
good many pieces of bombast; but we can safely say that, in our serious
belief, no rhetorician was ever better furnished with an illustration
for that not very rare quality of style, than in the effusion with which
we begin to be overwhelmed on page one, under the imposing title “The
Power of the Passions.” We had thought of turning the whole into prose,
but as we have not the space to spare, and the readers can easily do it
for themselves, whenever we shall have occasion to cite a passage, we
content ourselves with a cursory description, and no very acute
analysis, since the philosophy is quite as incomprehensible as the lines
are vapid, and the ideas commonplace. _Imprimis_, we are favored with
the strikingly novel information that there was a time, a good while
ago, when man stood in God’s own image communing with angels in a bower,
“When first creation dawned upon his view.”
This fair world, we are next agreeably astonished to learn, was given to
man by high Omnipotence. At this interesting period, Creation owned her
Lord, and all that moved confessed his reign, and the forest monarch
bowed down before him, beside the young lamb; (bah!) moreover, birds
hailed the rising day, and there were flowers and trees and fruits _cum
multis aliis_ of the sort.
Such was fair Paradise! When Woman smiled,
All Eden brightened with a richer glow!
Led by the hand of Deity, she came
To dwell in kind companionship with man,
A sharer of his pleasures and his toils,
Which nature’s genial bosom richly paid:
Love, joy, and harmony, and peace, were there—
God saw his glorious work, and it was good.
These lines are cited, because they are the only good ones in the poem,
and because it occurs to us that we have seen something rather like them
in the works of a respectable poet of the middle ages—one Milton. In
the remainder of the effusion, Mrs. Ware is unquestionably original.
Brief hour of human purity and truth!
Malignant Envy, in the bland disguise
Of friendship, stole, yea, twined his serpent folds
Around fair Wisdom’s consecrated Tree.
“Eat, woman, eat—ye shall _not_ surely die!”
Thus spake the tempter of mankind. _They ate_—
A sudden darkness gathered o’er the sky.
_Wild raged the storm, earth’s firm foundations shook,_
_While ocean trembled from her deepest cells;_
_Blue, livid lightnings flashed with lurid glare,_
_Wreathing in flames the blackened arch of heaven;_
While the loud thunder’s deep, continuous roar
Proclaimed, in God’s _own voice_, that Man was _lost_!
The four verses we have italicised are fiercely grand; more terrible
than any we ever saw, except those by which they are succeeded. After
the thunder-clap, lions roared, tigers yelled, hyenas cried, wolves
howled, leviathans drifted ashore, birds of ill omen shrieked, and there
was a dreadful rumpus in general among beasts, such as are usually to be
seen in a Zoological Garden. The Arch-Enemy chuckles over this sport,
rives his chain, and stalks over the globe, taking the precaution,
however, to veil his hideous form and smile demoniac, (why, we cannot
well perceive,) and finally speaks. His observations are left to the
ingenuity of the reader; but he had no sooner “concluded his remarks,”
than
“Wild spirits filled the air, the earth,
The sea.”
These we suppose are the Passions, mentioned in the title. Taking them
as they are introduced, they are the most outrageous set of ill-behaved
monsters that ever were seen, and are as dissimilar to those polite
entities, classified under the same names, and said by the Fourrierists
to be easily subjected to the domination of reason and the affections,
as can well be imagined. It must be noted, however, that Mrs. Ware is
more original in the individuals she recommends to our attention as the
Passions, than she is in her figures of speech.
First, Murder came, his right hand red
With the pure blood of his young brother’s heart,
For which his own, in every clime and age,
Hath deeply paid. “_Cursed art thou!_” said God,
And set his mark upon the murderer’s brow.
We were not, until now, aware that _Murder_ was a Passion, considering
it rather as a deed, consequent upon some one of the Passions. Next in
order comes Remorse, “whose step is followed by Despair.” “Next comes
Revenge.” And what _Passion_, reader, do you imagine follows next? “’Tis
War, insatiate War.” Another new Passion. Afterwards “pale Jealousy is
seen,” in an awful taking because “the treasured ideal of his soul is
false;” accordingly, he rushes _blindly_ forth, meets his haughty foe,
and, though he is blind, “their _eyes_ have met,” and
The fierce volcano’s flame
Ne’er flashed more wildly than his furious glance!
No more. ’Tis done—the double deed of death.
The reeking steel, red from his rival’s heart,
Is quivering now within her heaving breast.
Here is murder in the first degree once more. Now some people may call
this strong writing; we call it fustian run mad. Next come Riot and
Folly and Theft and Love and Misery and Guilt, of which we do not
recognise any one but Love as belonging to the Passions. Just here there
occurs a passage, which is so clearly applicable to the “divine Fanny
Elssler,” that, “in the opinion of this court,” an action on the case
for heavy damages will lie. Although the _danseuse_ alluded to figures
under no name whatsoever, and is merely described as “Another,” we beg
leave to put it to the immense jury, consisting of the subscribers to
this Magazine, what other than the “splendiferous Madam,” above named,
can possibly be signified? Read the remarkable passage, and record your
verdicts.
Another, too, in tinselled garb, is near,
’Mid scenic splendor, like a thing of light—
With limbs scarce veiled, and gestures wild and strange,
She gaily bounds in the lascivious dance,
Moving as if her element were air,
And music was the echo of her step.
Around her bold, unblushing brow are twined
The deadly nightshade and the curling vine,
Enwreathed with flowers luxuriant and fair,
Yet poisonous as the Upas in their breath.
Her sparkling eye, keen as the basilisk’s,
Who marks his prey, beams with a flashing light—
False as the flame which hovers o’er the gulf
Of dark oblivion—tempting to destroy.
Mysterious power! men shudder while they gaze—
Despise, yet own her fascinating spell.
As bursts the “deafening thunder of applause,”
’Mid showers of votive wreaths, and _parfum vif_—
Descending like bright Juno from her cloud,
With glance erratic round th’ enchanted ring—
She smiles on all above, and all below,
With regal condescension, and accepts
The worthless homage offered at her shrine.
Let not the reader hastily conclude that he has yet ascended with Mrs.
Katharine A. Ware to the cloud-capped summit of turgidity. In the
concluding passages of her perfectly ferocious poem, she excels herself.
A higher Alp of nonsense towers above the smaller Alps we have already
passed. To change the metaphor, all the former passages are mere
rattling musket shot, compared to this concentrated, thundering
discharge of the artillery of bombast:—
Last in the train of human misery,
Unconscious Madness rushed. The storm that beat
On his unsheltered head and naked breast,
Was calm to that which wildly raged within:
All the dark passions that deform the soul
By turns usurped departed Reason’s throne.
His rolling eye, red as the meteor’s flash,
In fierce defiance wildly glanced around;
While his Herculean frame dilated rose,
As if exulting in its giant strength!
Uprooted trees were strewn across his path—
The remnants of his sanguinary meal,
Still warm with life, lay quivering at his feet;
They caught his eye. Not Etna’s wildest roar
E’er came more deep than his demoniac laugh!
As rolls the distant thunder on—it ceased.
And we cease; but not altogether. Cry not, oh reader, with king-killing
Macbeth, “hold, enough!” till we shall have at least ferreted out some
stanzas worth commendation, in the one hundred and forty “mortal pages,”
which drag their slow length after “The Power of the Passions”—which
title, we beg leave to suggest, should be changed to the somewhat
Hibernian one of “A Power of Passions,” which would be more expressive
of the number of new ones “making their first appearance on any stage.”
All the gross errors of persons who deem themselves poets, but are
not—who make verses, to which neither gods, men nor columns can yield
applause—are displayed, not only in the effusion which we have too
tenderly handled, but in most of the remaining rubbish of metre, which
this mistaken lady has raked together and piled up for the diversion of
the public in England. It is said of those, who make constant efforts to
utter happy repartees and smart jokes, that it would be a wonder if they
did not now and then stumble upon a clever hit. The remark may with
truth be applied to the indefatigable concoctor of rhymes. Desperate
must be his condition, if, at large intervals, good couplets did not
slip from his pen. Poor as most of Mrs. Ware’s poems are, stanzas are
scattered through them which are really beautiful, and have the air of
being in their present position by mistake. Occasionally, also, when the
subject is dictated by feeling; when the thoughts well from the heart,
and are like those which are entertained by the author in common with
other people of sensibility; when she does not strive to be very fine,
very grand and very fascinating, her lines run smoothly and gracefully
along. Take as a favorable example of her versification one stanza, from
a poem called “Diamond Island,” which, as we are told, is a delightful
little island, situated in Lake George, and well known to the Northern
tourists for its picturesque beauty, and the brilliant crystals to be
found on its shores:—
How sweet to stray along thy flowery shore,
Where crystals sparkle in the sunny ray;
While the red boatman plies his silvery oar
To the wild measure of some rustic lay.
As a specimen of the sometimes able and sometimes slovenly mode in which
Mrs. Ware poetizes, take the following couplets as an example. In
describing what scenes are beheld by “The Genius of Græcia,” she finely
writes:—
“Views the broad Stadium, where the Gymnic art
Nerved the young arm and energized the heart.”