It is now nearly twenty years since this book was published. Being the
third of the Breakfast-Table series, it could hardly be expected to
attract so much attention as the earlier volumes. Still, I had no
reason to be disappointed with its reception. It took its place with
the others, and was in some points a clearer exposition of my views and
feelings than either of the other books, its predecessors. The poems
“Homesick in Heaven” and the longer group of passages coming from the
midnight reveries of the Young Astronomer have thoughts in them not so
fully expressed elsewhere in my writings.
The first of these two poems is at war with our common modes of thought.
In looking forward to rejoining in a future state those whom we have
loved on earth,--as most of us hope and many of us believe we shall,--we
are apt to forget that the same individuality is remembered by one
relative as a babe, by another as an adult in the strength of maturity,
and by a third as a wreck with little left except its infirmities and
its affections. The main thought of this poem is a painful one to some
persons. They have so closely associated life with its accidents that
they expect to see their departed friends in the costume of the time
in which they best remember them, and feel as if they should meet the
spirit of their grandfather with his wig and cane, as they habitually
recall him to memory.
The process of scientific specialization referred to and illustrated in
this record has been going on more actively than ever during these last
twenty years. We have only to look over the lists of the Faculties and
teachers of our Universities to see the subdivision of labor carried
out as never before. The movement is irresistible; it brings with
it exactness, exhaustive knowledge, a narrow but complete
self-satisfaction, with such accompanying faults as pedantry,
triviality, and the kind of partial blindness which belong to
intellectual myopia. The specialist is idealized almost into sublimity
in Browning's “Burial of the Grammarian.” We never need fear that he
will undervalue himself. To be the supreme authority on anything is
a satisfaction to self-love next door to the precious delusions of
dementia. I have never pictured a character more contented with himself
than the “Scarabee” of this story.
BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August 1, 1891. O. W. H.