GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
Vol. XX. April, 1842 No. 4.
Contents
Fiction, Literature and Articles
The Wife
Lowell’s Poems
Life in Death
The Miner’s Fate
Recollections of West Point
Dreams of the Land and Sea
St. Agnes’ Eve—A Chit-Chat About Keats
The Affair at Tattletown
The Bachelor’s Experiment
The Duel
Harry Cavendish
The Two Dukes
Review of New Books
Poetry and Music
Birth of Freedom
Fragment
Agathè.—A Necromaunt
To a Spirit
The Old Man Returned Home
Stanzas from an Unpublished Poem
Sweethearts and Wives
Elegy on the Fate of Jane M’Crea
Sonnets—Michael Angelo & Raffaello
To Florence
Return From Hawking
There’s No Land Like Scotland
Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.
* * * * *
[Illustration: an oval-shaped lace doily]
[Illustration: Painted by Prentice, Engraved by H. S. Sadd, N.Y. _The
Wife._ _Engraved expressly for Graham’s Magazine_]
GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
Vol. XX. PHILADELPHIA: APRIL, 1842. No. 4.
* * * * *
THE WIFE.
BY AGNES PIERSOL.
It was the dead hour of the night. The room was a high wainscotted
apartment, with furniture of a rich but antique pattern. The pale
moonlight streaming through the curtained window, and struggling with
the subdued light of a candle placed in a corner, disclosed the figure
of a sick man extended on a bed, wrapped in an unquiet slumber. By his
side sat a care-worn though still beautiful woman gazing anxiously on
his face, and breathlessly awaiting the crisis of the fever—for it was
now the ninth day since that strong man had been prostrated by the hand
of disease, and during all that time he had raved in an incessant
delirium. He had at length dropped into an unquiet slumber, broken at
first by starts and moans, but during the last hour he had been less
restless, and he now lay as still as a sculptured statue. His wife well
knew that ere morning the crisis would be past, and she waited, with all
a woman’s affection, breathlessly for the event. Aye! though few women
have been wronged as Emily Walpole had been wronged, she still cherished
her husband’s image, for he was, despite his errors, the lover of her
youth.
Few girls had been more admired than Emily Severn. But it was not only
the beauty of her features and the elegance of her form which drew
around her a train of worshippers: her mind was one of no ordinary cast,
and the sweetness of her temper lent an ineffable charm to all she did.
No one was so eagerly sought for at a ball or a pic-nic as Emily Severn,
and at her parental fireside she was the universal favorite. It was long
before she loved. She was not to be misled by glitter or show. She could
only bestow her affections where she thought they were deserved, and it
was not until she met Edward Walpole that she learned to surrender her
heart.
Edward Walpole, when he became the husband of Emily Severn, was
apparently all that a woman could wish. He was warm hearted, of a noble
soul, kind, gentle, and ever ready to waive his own selfish
gratification at the call of duty. But, alas! he had one weakness, _he
did not act from principle_. His generous deeds were the offspring of a
warm heart rather than of a regulated intellect. As yet he had never
been placed in circumstances which severely tried his principles. But,
about a year after his marriage, he fell heir to the large property of a
maiden aunt, and at once his whole style of life was altered. His
accession of wealth brought him into contact with society in which
hitherto he had never mingled, where the polish of factitious politeness
often hides the most depraved morals. Above all, by abandoning his
profession, he condemned himself to comparative idleness. He now began
to be tortured by _ennui_, and sought any excitement to pass away the
time. The harpies who infest society, and with the appearance of
gentlemen have the hearts of fiends, now marked him for their prey; and
his open and generous nature made him their victim in a comparatively
short space of time. We shall not trace his downward progress. It is
always a melancholy task to mark the lapse from virtue of a noble and
generous character, and how much more so when the heart of a wife is to
be broken by the dereliction from rectitude.
Emily saw the gradual aberration of her husband, and though she mourned
the cause, no word of reproach escaped her lips, but by every gentle
means she strove to bring back her husband to the paths of virtue. But a
fatality seemed to have seized him. He was in a whirlpool from which he
could not extricate himself. He still loved his wife, and more than
once, when her looks cut him to the heart, he made an effort to break
loose from his associates; but they always found means to bring him back
ere long. Thus a year passed. His fortune began to give way, for he had
learnt to gamble. As his losses became more frequent his thirst for
cards became greater, until at length he grew sullen and desperate He
was now a changed man. He no longer felt compunction at the wrongs he
inflicted on his sweet wife, but if her sad looks touched his heart at
all they only stung him into undeserved reproaches. He was become harsh
and violent. Yet his poor wife endured all in silence. No recrimination
passed her lips. But in the solitude of her chamber she shed many a
bitter tear, and often, at the hour of midnight, when her husband was
far away in some riotous company, her prayers were heard ascending for
him.
Two years had now elapsed, and the last one had been a year of bitter
sorrow to Emily. At length her husband came home one night an almost
ruined man. He had been stripped at the gambling table, of every cent of
his property, over which he had any control, and he was now in a state
almost approaching to madness. Before morning he was in a high fever.
For days he raved incessantly of his ruin, cursing the wretches by whom
he had been plundered. Nine days had passed and now the crisis was at
hand.
The clock struck twelve. As sound after sound rung out on the stillness
and died away in echoes, reverberating through the house, the sick man
moved in his sleep, until, when the last stroke was given, he opened his
eyes and looked languidly and vacantly around. His gaze almost instantly
met the face of his wife. For a moment his recollection could be seen
struggling in his countenance, and at length an expression of deep
mental suffering settled in his face. His wife had by this time risen
and was now at his bedside. She saw that the crisis was past, and as she
laid her hand in his, and felt the moisture of the skin, she knew that
he would recover. Tears of joy gushed from her eyes and dropped on the
sick man’s face.
“Heavenly father, I thank thee!” she murmured at length, when her
emotion suffered her to speak, while the tears streamed faster and
faster down her cheek, “he is safe. He will recover,” and though she
ceased speaking, her lips still moved in silent prayer.
The sick man felt the tears on his face, he saw his wife’s grateful
emotion, he knew that she was even now praying for him, and as he
recalled to mind the wrongs which he had inflicted on that uncomplaining
woman, his heart was melted within him. There is no chastener like
sickness; the most stony bosom softens beneath it. He thought of the
long days and nights during which he must have been ill, and when his
insulted and abused wife had watched anxiously at his bedside. Oh! how
he had crushed that noble heart; and now this was her return! She prayed
for him who had wronged her. She shed tears of joy because her erring
husband had been restored, as it were, to life. These things rushed
through his bosom and the strong man’s eyes filled with tears.
“Emily—dear Emily,” he said, “I have been a villain, and can you
forgive me? I deserve it not at your hands—but can you, will you
forgive a wretch like me?”
“Oh! _can_ I forgive you?” sobbed the grateful wife, “yes! yes! but too
gladly. But it is not against me you have sinned, it is against a good
and righteous God.”
“I know it—I know it,” said the repentant husband, “and to His mercy I
look. I cannot pray for myself, but oh! Emily pray for me. He has saved
me from the jaws of death. Pray for me, dear Emily.”
The wife knelt at the bedside, and while the husband, exhausted by his
agitation, sank back with closed eyes on the pillow, she read the noble
petition for the sick, from the book of Common Prayer. At times the sobs
of Emily would almost choke her utterance, but the holy words she read
had at length, a soothing effect both on her mind and that of her
husband. When the prayer was over, she remained for several minutes
kneeling, while her husband murmured at intervals his heart-felt
responses. At length she rose from the bedside. Her husband would again
have spoken, to beseech once more her forgiveness. But with a glad
feeling at her heart—a feeling such as she had not had for years—she
enjoined silence on him, and sat down again by his bedside to watch. At
length he fell again into a calm slumber, while the now happy wife
watched at his bedside until morning, breathing thanksgivings for her
husband’s recovery, and shedding tears of joy the while.
When the sick man awoke at daybreak, he was a changed being. He was now
convalescent, he was more, he was a repentant man. He wept on the bosom
of his wife, and made resolutions of reformation which, after his
recovery, through the blessing of God, he was enabled to fulfil.
The fortune of Walpole was mostly gone, but sufficient remained from its
wrecks, to allow him the comforts, though not the luxuries of life. He
soon settled his affairs and removed from his splendid mansion to a
quiet cottage in a neighboring village. The only pang he felt was at
leaving the home which for so many years had been the dwelling of the
head of his family—the home where his uncle had died, and which had
been lost only through his own folly.
Neither Walpole nor his wife ever regretted their loss of fortune; for
both looked upon it as the means used by an over-ruling Providence to
bring the husband back to the path of rectitude; and they referred to it
therefore with feelings rather of gratitude than of repining. In their
quiet cottage, on the wreck of their wealth, they enjoyed a happiness to
which they had been strangers in the days of their opulence. A family of
lovely children sprung up around them, and it was the daily task of the
parents to educate these young minds in the path of duty and rectitude.
Oh! the happy hours which they enjoyed in that white, vine-embowered
cottage, with their children smiling around them, and the consciousness
of a well regulated life, filling their hearts with peace.
Years rolled by and the hair of Walpole began to turn gray, while the
brow of his sweet wife showed more than one wrinkle, but still their
happiness remained undiminished.
* * * * *
LOWELL’S POEMS.[1]
A NEW SCHOOL OF POETRY AT HAND.
We shall never forget our emotions when we inhaled, for the first time
after a lingering illness, the fresh breezes of a September morning. Oh!
the visions of dewy meadows, rustling forest trees, and silvery brooks
which the delicious air called up before us. This little book has
awakened much the same emotions in our bosom. It reminds us of the
breezy lawns where we played when a child; of the old mossy forest trees
beneath which we loved to sit and muse; of the silent, stately
Brandywine that glided along at our feet, its clear waters sliding over
the rocks or rippling against the long willow leaves that trembled in
its current. There is a freshness about Lowell’s Poems which bewitches
our fancy. They display a genius that has startled us. They breathe a
healthy, honest, good old Saxon spirit, that opens our heart to them as
by a sign of brotherhood. We feel that he is kin of our kin and blood of
our blood, and we take his book to our bosom without suffering it to
plead the exquisite petition which he has put into its mouth, for
“charity in Christ’s dear name.” Lowell is a man after our own heart. We
have a word or two to say of him in connection with the poetry of the
day.
Every one must have perceived that a new school of poetry is at hand. No
one who has thought on the subject can have failed to see that the fever
for Byron, like all fevers, is both wearing itself out and exhausting
the patient. With the death of the noble lord began the decline of the
school to which he gave such popularity, and though he has had many
imitators since, the phrenzy respecting his poetry is nearly over. We do
not mean to depreciate Byron. Every great poet should be spoken of with
reverence; for they all alike discourse in the language of the gods; and
Byron was not only a great poet, but the greatest poet of his school.
That school, however, was a bad one—the fierce, unholy offspring of an
incestuous age. It was a school in which the restlessness of passion
seems to have forced its votaries into poetry. They had none of the
calm, enduring enthusiasm of the great poets of the past; they did not
speak with the majesty of Jove, but with the fury of a Delphin
priestess. They were essentially the poets of a crowd, expressing the
emotions of men in a state of high excitement, and consequently whirling
away their hearers with them in a phrenzy for the time unconquerable,
but destined to subside with the first calm in the public mind. But the
truly great poets—Milton, Shakspeare and Spencer—sit far away on a
mountain by themselves, singing in calm enthusiasm to the stars of
heaven, and startling the dweller on the plain as well as the shepherd
on the hill-side with a melody that seems a part of heaven. The school
of Byron is that of a generation; the school of the old masters is that
of eternity. The one is a lurid planet, that blazes fitfully amid storm
and darkness; the others are fixed stars, that shine around Milton, the
greatest of all, in undimmed and undying lustre.
Ὡς δ’ οτ’ εν ουρανω αστρα φαεινην αμφι σεληνην Φαινετ’
αριπρεπεα.
We have said that a new school of poetry is at hand, and the remark may,
at first sight, appear extravagant when we consider the stagnation which
has been exhibited for years. But betwixt the decline of one school and
the rise of another, there is always a pause. When Milton wrote, a
lustrum had elapsed since Shakspeare died. After the decay of Pope, a
half a century of barrenness ensued before Cowper brought in a more
masculine verse. The poetic soil, during these interregnums, seems to be
worn out, and to require to lie fallow until it can recruit its
energies. Only a few sparse flowers bloom upon the waste. But these,
although insignificant in themselves, serve to betray the changes in the
soil. They are premonitory of the coming harvest. They give us a clue to
the character of the approaching school, and although often vague and
contradictory, they afford us hints for which we would in vain seek
elsewhere. We do not say that, from such hints, the nature of a school
can be certainly predicted. The public taste, to use a phrase from the
geologists, is in a transition state, and what the result may be, will,
in a measure, puzzle the acutest mind. But we can still approximate to
the truth. And even now we may hazard a conjecture respecting the
characteristics of the school which will supersede that of Byron. It
will resemble, in many particulars, that of the old poets. It will have
the same calm, enduring enthusiasm. It will be marked by a like
earnestness of purpose, by the same comprehensive love for “suffering,
sad humanity.” It will have none of the jaundiced views of Byron, and
little of the _petit maître_ style of Pope. It will be intellectual,
and, we fear, pedantic also. It threatens to be disgraced by conceits.
Circumstances, it is true, may occur to give a different turn to the
character of the new school, or a Messiah may arise to do away by a
single dispensation with all former types; but, so far as we can foresee
now, the Tennysons, Longfellows, and poets of that cast of mind, will
give the tone to the coming change in the public taste. Indeed they are
already bringing about a revolution. Men are first acted on singly and
then in masses, and the masses have even now begun to feel the influence
of Longfellow and Tennyson. Wordsworth, too, is not to be disregarded in
this revolution, but his influence, though powerful so far as it goes,
will never be general. He is the poet of the few, not of the many. He is
the priest of the metaphysicians, the seer of the refiners of fine gold.
He writes poems, but his followers write twaddle. He cannot found a
school. He cannot do this aside from his peculiarities. We will explain.
It is a common error to attribute the formation of a school of poetry to
the influence of some one great mind, and we are pointed to Byron, Pope,
Shakspeare and others, as instances to prove this creed. The theory is
false and illegitimate, the offspring of shallow minds and conceited
pedants. A popular poet, we grant, may have many imitators of his
_verbal_ style; but the spirit of his school, like the prophet’s
inspiration, dies with him. If we look to the poets of our own language
we shall find that the great masters usually followed rather than
preceded their respective schools; and if we look abroad we shall, with
few exceptions, discover the same fact. The school of Byron, for
instance, was born of the atheism, scorn and fury of the French
Revolution, and we can see foreshadowings of the spirit of Childe Harold
in most of the minor poems of that day. Byron carried the school up to
its culminating point, and since his death, if not before, it has been
on the decline. Pope was the last of a school that had its origin as far
back as the exile of Charles the Second, and the French style and sickly
effeminacy of this most finished of our poets began to decline while
Walpole still sat at the Treasury, when Lady Mary played the wit at
Richmond, while clouded canes and full-bottomed wigs yet figured in the
Mall. Milton belonged to no school but his own; he stands alone in
unapproachable glory; but his genius was deeply influenced by the
commotions of the civil wars. Shakspeare had few followers, but many
predecessors, and as he was the last so he was the greatest of his
school; while Spencer, standing as he did above the grave of chivalry
and allegorical romance, only gave vent, in his immortal poem, to a
requiem for the departed great. All these men embodied the
characteristics of their age, and left them as a heritage to posterity.
They were types of their times: they spoke the universal mind of their
cotemporaries. It is the cant of the day to talk of men as being in
advance of their age; but there never was and never will be such a man.
Even Bacon, the giant of the modern world, and the reputed author of the
inductive philosophy, was only its great high-priest; for even before he
had written his advancement of learning, twenty minds, in every quarter
of Europe, were stumbling on the same truths. We are not waiting,
therefore, for the advent of a seer to found a new poetic school, for
the school must come first, and then we may expect the seer. It will
require a dozen Tennysons to make a Spencer. The days of the years of
the sons of the prophets are not yet numbered—when they shall be, a new
Messiah will appear in our midst.
The tendency of the age to a new school in poetry is strikingly evinced
by the genius of Lowell. He was educated in the school of the older
poets until his whole soul has become imbued with their spirit. Of these
writers Spencer is clearly his favorite. The allusions to this fine old
poet are frequent in his poems, and we often meet with expressions and
turns of thought, reminding us strikingly of the Faery Queen. We do not
mean to charge Lowell with plagiarism: far from it. But he has read
Spencer so thoroughly that he is often guilty of unconscious imitation.
His fondness for this enchanting writer, is indeed the greatest peril
which threatens his poetical career. There is such a thing as being
beguiled by a syren until you become her slave. We tell him to beware.
Let our young countryman shake himself loose from his bewitching
fetters, and be, as he is partially and can be wholly, original. Let him
be his own master. _Aut Cæsar, aut nihil._
This language, when applied to some, would be a satire. But Lowell has
evinced the possession of powers, nearly, if not altogether equal to
those of any cotemporary poet; and when, in connexion with this, we
consider his youth, we feel justified in assigning to him a genius of
the first rank. Let us not be misunderstood. We do not say that Lowell
has written better poems than any American, but only that he has evinced
a capacity, which in time, may enable him to do so. Indeed this volume
of poems, although possessing high merit, is rather a proof of what he
may do than of what he has done. There is scarcely a poem in the book
which a critic might not prove to be full of faults; but then there
would be passages scattered through it which, to an honest man, would
redeem the whole. And since the publication of this volume, Lowell has
written other poems evincing a progressive excellence and establishing
his genius beyond cavil. In one faculty he is certainly equal to any
cotemporary, and that faculty is the highest one a poet can possess—we
mean IDEALITY. The imagination of Lowell is of the loftiest character.
No one can read a ballad published in this Magazine for October, 1841,
or a poem entitled “Rosaline,” published for February, 1842, without
awarding to our young countryman the gift of this enviable faculty.
Whether he is capable of conceiving and executing an extended poem
remains to be seen; and we would not advise him to attempt the task
until time has matured his taste and refined his powers. But if the
Lycidas of Milton, or the Venus and Adonis of Shakspeare were any
evidence of the intellect of these two masters, then are some of the
poems of Lowell evidence that he has the power, which if properly
cultivated, will enable him to write a great poem. The young eagle that
flutters its wings on the mountain top may not yet be able to breast the
tempest, yet it is an eagle still, and he must be deaf indeed who cannot
distinguish its cry. We say that Lowell has an ideality of the loftiest
order, and that no one can read his poems without discovering this. We
say that ideality is the highest quality of a poet’s mind. So far forth,
therefore, Lowell is entitled to rank among the foremost of our poets.
But this is not all. A poet may have the intellect of a god, and yet
want the heart to make him truly great; for all true greatness is based
on nobility of mind, without which mere intellect is but a tinkling
cymbal. All the great old poets eminently possessed this quality. Their
hearts kept time, in a majestic march, to noble sentiments. They loved
their race, and in their writings showed they were in earnest. This love
for his fellows is one of the finest characteristics of Lowell, and
contrasts strikingly with the frippery of Pope, and the sneering
misanthropy of Byron. We adore this feeling. It is the good old Saxon
spirit, the sentiment of universal brotherhood. We are all the children
of one father, fitted for sympathy, companionship, affection. We are not
born to scorn our fellows. We have not been created to seclude ourselves
from society, to dwell in caves, and cells, and lonely hermitages. We
are made for nobler purposes. Our mission, like that of him of Nazareth,
is to go about doing good. Nor let any man hate his fellows, thinking
them regardless of his sorrows. The most unfortunate of us are not
without friends, often loving us unknown and in spite of our faults. We
have seen the criminal at the bar, when all others shrunk from him,
cheered by the affection of the very wife or mother he had wronged; and
even the houseless old beggar by the way-side finds a friend in every
honest heart that sees his grey hairs tossing in the wind. All over this
wide world, in hut, or cottage, or lordly hall, millions of hearts are
beating with love towards each other, so that the whole human race is,
as it were, interwoven together by innumerable fine threads of sympathy
and affection. A word, a deed, or a kind look may make us a friend of
whom we little think: and it may be that even now, some one whom we have
never seen, is yearning towards us, because something that we may have
written has found an echo in his bosom. God be thanked for this, the
brightest gift in a poet’s mission! How many hearts have sympathised
with the blind old Milton, and how many more will sympathise with him to
the end of all time. And thus it is with the good of every age. They
live again in the memory of posterity. The dying words of Algernon
Sidney will thrill the freeman’s heart through untold centuries. The
apostolic charity of Fenelon, Latimer, Bunyan, Augustine, and of all
holy men, will endear them to noble hearts as long as time endures. The
only immortality worth having is an immortality like this; and it
matters not whether our names are known to those who bless us or not.
Men have written noble sentiments and died and been forgotten, yet
posterity has still yearned towards the poet when it read his lines.
What comfort may not an author thus bring upon his fellows! Go out into
the country and enter that lowly cottage,—you will find perhaps some
mother weeping over little Nell, and drawing consolation from traits in
the character which remind her of a darling child now in heaven. Thus by
ten thousand links does an author bind himself to the hearts of his
fellows, until at length he comes to be loved as we would love a
brother. And often the precepts he instils awaken the dormant good in
other hearts. Lowell has finely expressed this in one of his earliest
poems—
“Noble thoughts like thistle-seed,
Wing’d by nature, fall and breed
From their heedless parents far,
Where fit soil and culture are.”
This fellowship for his kind glows in every line of Lowell. Open his
pages where you may, the eye lights on some kindly word, some noble
thought, some sentiment overflowing with the milk of human kindness.
There is a fine sonnet now before us which expresses the feeling of
brotherhood in true Saxon words—
“Why should we ever weary of this life;
Our souls should widen ever, not contract,
Grow stronger, and not harder, in the strife,
Filling each moment with a noble act:
If we live thus, of vigor all compact,
Doing our duty to our fellow-men,
And striving rather to exalt our race
Than our poor selves, with earnest hand or pen,
We shall erect our names a dwelling-place
Which not all ages shall cast down agen;
Offspring of Time shall then be born each hour,
Which, as of old, earth lovingly shall guard,
To live forever in youth’s perfect flower,
And guide her future children Heavenward.”
And here is one, on the same theme, which many a brother poet would do
well to emulate. How fitly this sonnet might have been read to Gray!
“Poet! who sittest in thy pleasant room,
Warming thy heart with idle thoughts of love,
And of a holy life that leads above,
Striving to keep life’s spring-flowers still in bloom,
And lingering to snuff their fresh perfume,—
O, there were other duties meant for thee,
Than to sit down in peacefulness and be!
O, there are brother hearts that dwell in gloom,
Souls loathsome, foul, and black with daily sin,
So crusted o’er with baseness, that no ray
Of Heaven’s blessed light may enter in!
Come down, then, to this hot and dusty way,
And lead them back to hope and peace again,—
For, save in Act, thy Love is all in vain.”
Here is the sentiment of our mission finely expressed—
“We were not meant to plod along the earth,
Strange to ourselves and to our fellows strange.
We were not meant to struggle from our birth
To skulk and creep, and in mean pathways range;
Act! with stern truth, large faith, and loving will!
Up and be doing! God is with us still.”
The following lines will cheer many a lonely heart in its sore distress:
“Be of good courage, bear up to the end,
And on thine after way rejoicing go!
We all must suffer, if we aught would know;
Life is a teacher stern, and wisdom’s crown
Is oft a crown of thorns, whence, trickling down,
Blood, mix’d with tears, blinding our eyes doth flow;
But Time, a gentle nurse, shall wipe away
This bloody sweat—”
Here are three lines which deserve to pass into a proverb:
“_Be noble!_ and the nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping but never dead
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own;”
Lowell has a passion, if we may use the word, for images of quiet
beauty. He seems to worship nature; he is evidently a dreamer. We
venture to predict that he has spent many a day loitering through the
summer woods, or lingering by the side of some silvery stream. He is a
close observer—as what genius is not? There is a freshness about his
writings which convinces you that he has not drawn his notions of the
country, like many even of our rural poets, from books. He writes freely
and therefore gracefully. His images of nature come to us with a
delicious freshness, reminding us of forest nooks, sylvan retreats, and
the fragrance of new mown hay. He seems to be peculiarly fond of water,
and of the music which its dropping or its flow occasions, Thus:
“Thy voice is like a fountain
Leaping up in still starlight,
And I never weary counting
Its clear droppings lone or single,
Or when in one full gush they mingle,
Shooting in melodious light!”
“And thy light laughter rang as clear
As water drops I loved to hear
In days of boyhood as they fell
Tinkling far down the dim, still well.”
“Weary never, still thou trillest
Spring-gladsome lays,
As of moss-rimmed water brooks
Murmuring through pebbly nooks
In quiet summer days.”
“And like a moonbeam was her hair
That falls where flowing ripples are,
In summer evening, Isabel!”
Many of the poems in this volume as well as several pieces since given
to the world, are love-poems, and breathe all the delicacy and exquisite
tenderness of a first affection. Lowell’s conception of the female
character is noble, chivalrous, pure and elevating. No poet in our
language has a loftier idea of a true woman. Mere personal beauty does
not appear to awaken his adoration, but every feeling of his soul
kindles at a sweet voice or a lovely mind. We like him for this. A sweet
voice is a talisman, and we question whether any true poet could love a
woman whose voice was not low and musical. There is a witchery in a soft
melodious accent that no language can describe. It seems to dissolve
itself into the soul and steal us away unconsciously to ourselves. A
lovely mind is the highest charm a woman can possess. How exquisitely
has Lowell pictured in the following verses, the purity of a young
maiden:
“Early and late, at her soul’s gate
Sits chastity in warderwise,
No thought unchallenged, small or great,
Goes thence into her eyes.”
“She is so gentle and so good
The very flowers in the wood
Do bless her with their sympathy.”
“Thou mad’st me happy with thine eyes,—
And gentle feelings long forgot
Looked up and oped their eyes,
Like violets—when they see a spot
Of summer in the skies.”
“Peace sits within thy eyes,
With white hands crost in joyful rest,
While through thy lips and face arise
The melodies from out thy breast.
She sits and sings
With folded wings.”
The poems entitled “My Love,” “Ianthe,” and “The Lover,” are peculiarly
fraught with these elevated sentiments, and we recommend them, apart
from their poetic merit, to all who love to contemplate true beauty in
woman. The sonnets of Lowell are equally full of those delicate touches.
Those on names are very fine—the one entitled “Anne” particularly so.
Many others may be instanced as exquisite poems, full of tenderness and
beauty.
With all this ideality, this calm enthusiasm, this love for his fellow
men, this freshness and delicacy, Lowell would be entitled to rank
already among the first poets of the country, if it were not for an
occasional affectation, and a comparative want of artistical knowledge.
His affectation is the result of his extravagant fondness for Spencer,
and partakes, in a great measure, of the peculiarities of that fine
poet. The most usual forms in which this affectation developes itself in
Lowell, is in a tendency to push his metaphors to the verge of allegory,
and in a quaintness that is as much out of place as a tie-wig on a beau
of the present generation. The want of artistical knowledge is only
comparative, for Lowell understands the rules of his art better than
nine-tenths of the craft. Indeed we question whether the slovenliness of
many of his poems, does not arise from carelessness as much as from
ignorance. The writings of few men betray such rapidity of composition,
evincing clearly to our mind, that the thoughts of the poet are thrown
upon the paper as fast as they bubble up from his heart. Lowell seems to
scorn revision. He strikes off his poems at a white heat, disdaining to
polish the steel when it has grown cool. Such neglect always leads to
the disbelief in an author’s artistical skill. The public will never
give him the credit of being a good workman, while he shows so great an
indifference to the finish of his wares.
This carelessness is not only evinced in an occasional false measure,
but in other ways more detrimental. One of the slovenly habits of our
poet, is in the use of the accent to lengthen a short syllable. We
constantly meet with such words as “poisèd” “inspirèd,” and others of
like false quantity. Against such liberties we protest. It is no
argument to tell us that other poets have been guilty of the practice.
Twenty wrongs do not constitute a right, nor will volumes of false
quantity make a poem. An author is to take the language as he finds it
and evince his skill by adapting it to his purpose. If every writer is
allowed to beat a short syllable into a long one, there will soon be as
many varieties of accent in our language, as there are gods in the
Chinese theology. If words may be twisted as we please there will be no
end to the fools who write poems. It is time that men stood up for the
purity of our tongue. The affectations of Hunt, Lamb, and Hazlit, might
have been forgiven: but the barbarous jargon of Carlyle deserves to be
damned in the first act. There is a saint in the Brahmin calendar whom a
legion of devils has been tormenting for a thousand years; and the good
old manly English tongue seems to be in much the same predicament. Every
lustrum or two a new onset is made at its purity. Each successive
generation witnesses a mania for some foreign, illegitimate, unholy
alliance. The rage in the days of Pope was for the French school, in the
days of Johnson for the Latin school, and just now it is for the German
school. If we live many years longer we shall expect to see men
affecting the negro jargon from Coromantee.
The false accentuation of his words is not the only sin of Lowell
against the purity of our tongue. His poems are disfigured, on almost
every page, by the use of compound words, which he seems to fabricate,
like an editor makes news, to fill out. We have “dreamy-winged,”
“long-agone,” “grass-hid,” “spring-gladsome,” “moss-rimmed,”
“study-withered,” “over-live,” “maiden-wise,” “rosy-white,”
“full-sailed,” “deep-glowing,” “earth-forgetting,” “down-gushing,”
“cross-folded,” and a host of like mongrel expressions, which no pure
writer would use, and for which not even the genius of Lowell can obtain
currency. The only redeeming feature in his case is that his later poems
evince a decided improvement in this respect. They betray comparatively
little of this carelessness. They show a wider command of words, a more
sonorous and elevated verse. They are less disfigured by affectations
from Spencer and others of the quaint old writers. They begin to be
worthy of the genius of Lowell.
We have attributed these faults to carelessness; but they may be the
result of affectation. Much of the unique appearance of the poetry of
Lowell, is to be assigned unquestionably to these very things which we
have denounced as errors. But if intentional the faults are only the
more reprehensible. It is a very different thing whether a man commits a
murder ignorantly or with malice aforethought. If the first he may be
pardoned; if the second he should be hanged.
The earlier poems of Lowell are apt to be as much overrated by one set
of readers, as they are to be depreciated by another set. The use of
obsolete words, of arbitrary accents, of metaphors that verge on
allegory, commend these poems to a certain school which seems to caress
quaintness with the infatuation of Queen Titania in kissing the long
ears of Bottom. But there is another school, which, possessing an honest
contempt for any thing like affectation, is in danger of transferring
its dislike from the errors to the author himself—of questioning his
genius because of the faults of his style. We condemn each of these
schools—both that which exaggerates and that which depreciates the
poet. Lowell has many of the elements of a great poet inherent in his
nature; while his faults are manifestly acquired, and can be corrected.
His ideality, his enthusiasm, his nobility of sentiment, would enable
him to produce even a great poem, if to these were added the capacity to
grasp a series of incidents in one vast comprehensive whole. This
capacity, or at least the elements of it, we believe him to possess, and
if he adheres to a rigid course of study, and awaits the mature
development of his powers, he will be enabled to prove this to the
world. By that time his taste will be ameliorated and his artistical
skill improved. He now writes rather as his feelings dictate than after
any sustained plan. We must be understood however, as using this
language only comparatively; for as we have before said, Lowell is
already equal in these respects to most of his cotemporaries. But there
is an empyrean to which none of them have yet attained. To that region
of eternal day we would have our young countryman aspire.
We have spoken with frankness, because we love with discretion. The
genius of Lowell is surpassed by no cotemporary and he has only to be
known in order to be understood; but his countrymen have a right to
interpose and save him from the errors into which a false taste, a
pedantic clique, or indiscriminate flattery may plunge him. He cannot
wholly resist the peculiarities of the approaching school, but there is
no reason why he should not soften their errors and elevate their style.
He can display the taste of Coleridge without his absurdities, he can be
as intellectual as Shelley without his mysticism, he can emulate the
ideality of Tennyson and Keats without the affectation of the one, or
the redundancy of the other. He has high genius, susceptible of
improvement, but capable of perversion. He is in that critical period of
a poet’s life when the intoxication of success may lead to idleness,
when the misguided silence of his friends may confirm him in his worst
faults. The improvement which his later poems evince, fill us with high
hopes for the future; but his task is not yet done, as his powers are
still in the process of development. If we were his bosom friend we
should speak as we have written, using that noble sentence as our
apology, “strike, but hear me.”
We look forward to the future career of Lowell, with hope, not
unmingled, however, with fear and trembling. To his hands, we fondly
trust, has been committed the task of achieving a great original
American poem, a work that shall silence the sneers of foreigners, and
write his own name amid the stars of heaven. He has the dormant
intellect which if rightly disciplined, will enable him to fulfil this
mission. But let him bide his time. Let him husband his powers, and yet
not let them rust in idleness; but gird up his loins for the work that
is before him, so that when the day of his translation shall arrive he
may lift up his eyes for the chariot of fire. If he does his mission
aright the hour of his rejoicing will surely come. No power will be able
to avert it. Against the revilings of the envious, against the sneers of
the unbelieving, against the persecution of hostile powers he can bear
himself proudly up, for the sight of the fiery chariot will swim before
his eyes and the sounds of celestial harmonies entrance his soul.
We take leave of Lowell with a single word. He must not be discouraged
if his genius should at first be questioned. Few prophets have honor in
their own country.
C.
-----
[1] “A Year’s Life”—by James Russell Lowell; 1 vol. C. C. Little & J.
Brown, Boston: 1841.
* * * * *
LIFE IN DEATH.
BY EDGAR A. POE.
Egli è _vivo_ e parlerebbe se non osservasse la rigola del silentio.
_Inscription beneath an Italian picture of St. Bruno._
My fever had been excessive and of long duration. All the remedies
attainable in this wild Appennine region had been exhausted to no
purpose. My valet and sole attendant in the lonely chateau, was too
nervous and too grossly unskilful to venture upon letting blood—of
which indeed I had already lost too much in the affray with the
banditti. Neither could I safely permit him to leave me in search of
assistance. At length I bethought me of a little pacquet of opium which
lay with my tobacco in the hookah-case; for at Constantinople I had
acquired the habit of smoking the weed with the drug. Pedro handed me
the case. I sought and found the narcotic. But when about to cut off a
portion I felt the necessity of hesitation. In smoking it was a matter
of little importance _how much_ was employed. Usually, I had half filled
the bowl of the hookah with opium and tobacco cut and mingled
intimately, half and half. Sometimes when I had used the whole of this
mixture I experienced no very peculiar effects; at other times I would
not have smoked the pipe more than two-thirds out, when symptoms of
mental derangement, which were even alarming, warned me to desist. But
the effect proceeded with an easy gradation which deprived the
indulgence of all danger. Here, however, the case was different. I had
never _swallowed_ opium before. Laudanum and morphine I had occasionally
used, and about _them_ should have had no reason to hesitate. But the
solid drug I had never seen employed. Pedro knew no more respecting the
proper quantity to be taken, than myself—and thus, in the sad
emergency, I was left altogether to conjecture. Still I felt no especial
uneasiness; for I resolved to proceed _by degrees_. I would take a
_very_ small dose in the first instance. Should this prove impotent, I
would repeat it; and so on, until I should find an abatement of the
fever, or obtain that sleep which was so pressingly requisite, and with
which my reeling senses had not been blessed for now more than a week.
No doubt it was this very reeling of my senses—it was the dull delirium
which already oppressed me—that prevented me from perceiving the
incoherence of my reason—which blinded me to the folly of defining any
thing as either large or small where I had no preconceived standard of
comparison. I had not, at the moment, the faintest idea that what I
conceived to be an exceedingly small dose of solid opium might, in fact,
be an excessively large one. On the contrary I well remember that I
judged confidently of the quantity to be taken by reference to the
entire quantity of the lump in possession. The portion which, in
conclusion, I swallowed, and swallowed without fear, was no doubt a very
small proportion _of the piece which I held in my hand_.
The chateau into which Pedro had ventured to make forcible entrance
rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a
night in the open air, was one of those fantastic piles of commingled
gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the Appennines, not
less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe. To all appearance it
had been temporarily and very lately abandoned. Day by day we expected
the return of the family who tenanted it, when the misadventure which
had befallen me would, no doubt, be received as sufficient apology for
the intrusion. Meantime, that this intrusion might be taken in better
part, we had established ourselves in one of the smallest and least
sumptuously furnished apartments. It lay high in a remote turret of the
building. Its decorations were rich, yet tattered and antique. Its walls
were hung with tapestry and bedecked with manifold and multiform
armorial trophies, together with an unusually great number of very
spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque. In these
paintings, which depended from the walls not only in their main
surfaces, but in very many nooks which the bizarre architecture of the
chateau rendered necessary—in these paintings my incipient delirium,
perhaps, had caused me to take deep interest; so that having swallowed
the opium, as before told, I bade Pedro to close the heavy shutters of
the room—since it was already night—to light the tongues of a tall
candelabrum which stood by the head of my bed—and to throw open far and
wide the fringed curtains of black velvet which enveloped the bed
itself. I wished all this done that I might resign myself, if not to
sleep, at least alternately to the contemplation of these pictures, and
the perusal of a small volume which had been found upon the pillow, and
which purported to criticise and describe them.
Long—long I read—and devoutly, devotedly I gazed. I felt meantime, the
voluptuous narcotic stealing its way to my brain. I felt that in its
magical influence lay much of the gorgeous richness and variety of the
frames—much of the ethereal hue that gleamed from the canvas—and much
of the wild interest of the book which I perused. Yet this consciousness
rather strengthened than impaired the delight of the illusion, while it
weakened the illusion itself. Rapidly and gloriously the hours flew by,
and the deep midnight came. The position of the candelabrum displeased
me, and outreaching my hand with difficulty, rather than disturb my
slumbering valet, I so placed it as to throw its rays more fully upon
the book.
But the action produced an effect altogether unanticipated. The rays of
the numerous candles (for there were many) now fell within a niche of
the room which had hitherto been thrown into deep shade by one of the
bed-posts. I thus saw in vivid light a picture all unnoticed before. It
was the portrait of a young girl just ripened into womanhood. I glanced
at the painting hurriedly, and then closed my eyes. Why I did this was
not at first apparent even to my own perception. But while my lids
remained thus shut, I ran over in mind my reason for so shutting them.
It was an impulsive movement to gain time for thought—to make sure that
my vision had not deceived me—to calm and subdue my fancy for a more
sober and more certain gaze. In a very few moments I again looked
fixedly at the painting.
That I now saw aright I could not and would not doubt; for the first
flashing of the candles upon that canvas had seemed to dissipate the
dreamy stupor which was stealing over my senses, and to startle me into
waking life as if with the shock of a galvanic battery.