(SOME ADVICE TO AN AUTHOR.)
You tell me, my dear Eugenius, that you are hesitating between the novel
and the drama: you know not which to attack; and you wish me to give you
some suggestions on the subject. You are candid enough to say that it is
not point-blank advice that you ask, which you would probably heed just
as much as good counsel is generally heeded by those who apply for it;
but you would have me lay before you such ideas as may occur to me, in
order that you may have the picking and choosing amongst them, with the
chance of finding something to your mind--something which may assist you
to a decision. Artists in arabesque get an idea by watching the shifting
forms of the kaleidoscope; in the same manner you hope--if I will but
turn my mind about a little--that some lucky adjustment of its fragments
of observation may help you to a serviceable thought or two. At all
events, you shall not have to complain of too much method in what
follows.
If I could only, my dear Eugenius, persuade you to leave them both
alone!--drama and novel both! But this is hopeless. The love one bears
to a woman may be conquered--not indeed by good counsel, but by speedy
flight; but the passion that draws us to poetry and romance can only die
out, it cannot be expelled; for in this passion, go where we will, we
carry our Helen with us. She steals upon us at each unguarded moment,
and renews in secret her kisses upon our lip. Well, if I cannot persuade
you to leave both alone, my next advice is that you attack both; for if
you endeavour to express in either of these forms of composition all
that is probably fermenting in your mind, the chance is that you spoil
your work.
And by all means lay your hands first upon the drama. True, it is the
higher aim of the two, and I will not pretend to augur any very
brilliant success. But still it is the more appropriate to the first
ebullitions of genius, and the spasmodic efforts of youth. The heart is
at this time full of poetry, which, be its value what it may, must be
got rid of before the stream of prose will run clear. Besides, the very
effort of verse seems necessary to this age, which disdains a facile
task, and seeks to expend its utmost vigour on its chosen labour.
Moreover, to write a good novel one should have passed through the
spring-time and enthusiasm of youth--one should be able to survey life
with some degree of tranquillity; neither wrapped in its illusions, nor
full of indignation at its discovered hollowness. At two-and-twenty,
even if the heart is not burning with fever heat of some kind--some
enthusiastic passion or misanthropical disgust--the head at least is
preoccupied with some engrossing idea, which so besets the man, that he
can see nothing clearly in the world around him. At this age he has a
philosophy, a metaphysical system, which he really believes in, (a
species of delusion the first to quit us,) and he persists in seeing his
dogma reflected to him from all sides. This is supportable, or may be
disguised in poetry; it becomes intolerable in prose. Add to all which,
that the writer of a novel should have had some _experience_ in the
realities of life, a certain empirical knowledge of the manner in which
the passions develop themselves in men and women. The high ideal forms
of good and evil he may learn from his own heart; but there is in actual
life, so to speak, a vulgar monstrosity which must be seen to be
credited. I can figure to myself the writer of a drama musing out his
subject in solitude, whether the solitude of the seashore or of a garret
in London; but the successful novelist must have mingled with the world,
and should know whatever the club, the drawing-room, and, above all, the
boudoir can reveal to him.
Of course it is understood between us, that in speaking of the drama we
make no reference to the stage. Indeed, you can hardly contemplate
writing for the stage, as there is no stage to write for. We speak of
the drama solely as a form of composition, presented, like any other, to
the reader. I have heard the opinion expressed that the drama, viewed as
a composition designed only to be read, is destined to be entirely
superseded by the novel, which admits of so great a variety of material
being worked into its structure, and affords an unrivalled scope for the
development both of story and of character. To me it seems that the
drama, especially in its more classic form, apart from its application
to the stage, has a vitality of its own, and will stand its ground in
literature, let the novel advance as it may.
All the passions of man represent themselves in his speech, the great
prerogative of the human being; almost every thing he does is transacted
through the medium of speech, or accompanied by it; even in solitude his
thoughts are thrown into words, which are frequently uttered aloud, and
the soliloquy is wellnigh as natural as the dialogue. Give, therefore, a
fair representation of the speech of men throughout every great
transaction, and you give the best and truest representations of their
actions and their passions, and this in the briefest form possible. You
have all that is essential to the most faithful portrait, without the
distraction of detail and circumstance. With a reader of the drama the
eye is little exercised; he seems to be brought into immediate contact
with the minds of those imaginary persons who are rather thinking and
feeling, than acting before him. To this select representation of
humanity is added the charm of verse, the strange power of harmonizing
diction. If the drama rarely captivates the eye, it takes possession of
the ear. May it never lose its appropriate language of verse--that
language which so well comports with its high ideal character, being one
which, as a French poet has happily expressed it, the world understands,
but does not speak--
"Elle a cela pour elle--
Que le monde l'entend, et ne la parle pas!"
The drama is peculiarly appropriate to the ideal; and it seems to me
that the very fact, that whatever appertains to the middle region of
art, or requires the aid of much circumstance and detail, has found in
the novel a far more perfect development, ought to induce us to purify
the drama, and retain amongst us its most exalted type. It is in vain
that it strives to compete with the novel in the intricacy of its plot,
in the number of its _dramatis personae_, in the representation of the
peculiarities, or as they used to be called, the _humours_ of men. These
have now a better scene for their exhibition than the old five-act play,
or tragi-comedy, could afford them; but the high passions of mankind,
whatever is most elevated or most tender, whatever naturally leads the
mind, be it good or evil, to profound contemplation--this will still
find its most complete, and powerful, and graceful development in the
poetic form of the drama.
The novel and the drama have thus their several characteristics. Do you
wish to hurry on your reader with a untiring curiosity? you will, of
course, select the novel. Do you wish to hold him lingering, meditative,
to your pages--pages which he shall turn backwards as well as forwards?
you were wise to choose the drama. Both should have character, and
passion, and incident; but in the first the interest of the _story_
should pervade the whole, in the second the interest of the _passion_
should predominate. If you write a novel, do not expect your readers
very often to stand still and meditate profoundly; if you write a drama,
forego entirely the charm of curiosity. Do not hope, by any contrivance
of your plot, to entrap or allure the attention of your readers, who
must come to you--there is no help for it--with something of the spirit,
and something of the unwillingness, of the student. What some man of
genius may one day perform, or not perform, it were presumptuous to
assert; for it is the privilege of genius to prove to the critic what is
possible; but, speaking according to our _present lights_, we should say
that the sustaining of the main characteristic interest of the novel, is
incompatible with the more intense efforts of reflection or of poetry.
One cannot be dragged on and chained to the spot at the same time. Some
one _may_ arise who shall combine the genius of Lord Byron and of Sir
Walter Scott; but till the prodigy makes his appearance, I shall
continue to think that no intellectual chymistry could present to us, in
one compound, the charms of _Ivanhoe_ and of _Sardanapalus_.
I should be very ungrateful--I who have been an idle man--if I
underrated the novel. It is hardly possible to imagine a form of
composition more fit to display the varied powers of an author; for wit
and pathos, the tragic and the comic, descriptions, reflections,
dialogue, narrative, each takes its turn; but I cannot consent that it
carry off all our regard from its elder sister, the drama. In the novel
every thing passes by in dizzy rapidity; we are whirled along over hill
and valley, through the grandeur and the filth of cities, and a thousand
noble and a thousand grotesque objects flit over our field of vision. In
the drama, it is true, we often toil on, slow as a tired pedestrian; but
then how often do we sit down, as at the foot of some mountain, and fill
our eyes and our hearts with the prospect before us? How gay is the
first!--even when terrible, she has still her own vivacity; but then she
exhausts at once all the artillery of her charms. How severe is the
second!--even when gayest, she is still thoughtful, still maintains her
intricate movement, and her habit of involved allusions; but then at
each visit some fresh beauty discloses itself. It was once my good
fortune--I who am now old, may prattle of these things--to be something
a favourite with a fair lady who, with the world at large, had little
reputation for beauty. Her sparkling sister, with her sunny locks and
still more sunny countenance, carried away all hearts; she, pale and
silent, sat often unregarded. But, oh, Eugenius! when she turned upon
you her eyes lit with the light of love and genius, that pale and
dark-browed girl grew suddenly more beautiful than I have any words to
express. You must make the application yourself; for having once
conjured up her image to my mind, I cannot consent to compare her even
to the most eloquent poetry that was ever penned.
Undoubtedly the first dramatic writer amongst our contemporaries is
Henry Taylor, and the most admirable dramatic poem which these times
have witnessed is _Philip van Artevelde_. How well he uses the language
of the _old masters_! how completely has he made it his own! and how
replete is the poem with that sagacious observation which penetrates the
very core of human life, and which is so appropriate to the drama! Yet
the author of _Philip van Artevelde_, I shall be told, has evidently
taken a very different view of the powers and functions of the drama at
this day than what I have been expressing. In his poem we have the whole
lifetime of a man described, and a considerable portion of the history
of a people sketched out; we have a canvass so ample, and so well
filled, that all the materials for a long novel might be found there.
But the example of _Philip van Artevelde_ rather confirms than shakes my
opinion. I am persuaded that that drama, good as it is, would have been
fifty times better, had it been framed on a more restricted plan. You,
of course, have read and admired this poem. Now recall to mind those
parts which you probably marked with your pencil as you proceeded, and
which you afterwards read a second and a third and a fourth time; bring
them together, and you will at once perceive how little the poem would
have lost, how much it would have gained, if it had been curtailed, or
rather constructed on a simpler plan. What care we for his Sir Simon
Bette and his Guisebert Grutt? And of what avail is it to attempt,
within the limits of a drama, and under the trammels of verse, what can
be much better done in the freedom and amplitude of prose? Under what
disadvantages does the historical play appear after the historical
novels of the Author of Waverley!
The author of _Philip van Artevelde_, and _Edwin the Fair_, seems to
shrink from idealizing character, lest he should depart from historic
truth. But historic truth is not the sort of truth most essential to the
drama. We are pleased when we meet with it; but its presence will never
justify the author for neglecting the higher resources of his art. Do
not think, however, that in making this observation I intend to impeach
the character of Philip van Artevelde himself. Artevelde I admire
without stint, and without exception. Compare this character with the
Wallenstein of Schiller, and you will see at once its excellence. They
are both leaders of armies, and both men of reflection. But in
Wallenstein the habit of self-examination has led to an irresolution
which we feel at once, in such a man, to be a degrading weakness, and
altogether inconsistent with the part he is playing in life. It is an
indecision which, in spite of the philosophical tone it assumes,
pronounces him to be unfit for the command of men, or to sway the
destinies of a people. Artevelde, too, reflects, examines himself,
pauses, considers, and his will is the servant of his thought; but
reflection with him comes in aid of resolution, matures it, establishes
it. He can discuss with himself, whether he shall pursue a life of
peaceful retirement, or plunge into one of stormy action; but having
once made his election, he proceeds along his devoted path with perfect
self-confidence, and without a look that speaks of retreat. A world of
thought is still around him; he carries with him, at each step, his old
habit of reflection--for this, no man who has once possessed, can ever
relinquish--but nothing of all this disturbs or impedes him.
Do not you, Eugenius, be led by the cant of criticism to sacrifice the
real interest of your _dramatis personae_. Some dry censor will tell you
that your Greeks are by no means Greek, nor your Romans Roman. See you
first that they are real men, and be not afraid to throw your own heart
into them. Little will it console either you or your readers, if, after
you have repelled us by some frigid formal figure, a complimentary
critic of this school should propose to place it as a frontispiece to a
new edition of Potter or of Adam--applauding you the while for having
faithfully preserved the classic costume. I tell you that the classic
costume must ruffle and stir with passions kindred to our own, or it had
better be left hanging against the wall. And what a deception it is that
the scholastic imagination is perpetually imposing on itself in this
matter! Accustomed to dwell on the points of difference between the men
of one age and of another, it revolts from admitting the many mere
points of resemblance which must have existed between them; it hardly
takes into account the great fund of humanity common to them both. The
politics of Cicero, it is true, would be unintelligible to one unversed
in the constitution and history of Rome; but the ambition of Cicero, the
embarrassment of the politician, the meditated treachery, the boasted
independence, the doubt, the fear, the hesitation,--all this will be
better studied in a living House of Commons, than in all the manuscripts
of the Vatican. Sacrifice nothing of what you know to be the substantial
interest of your piece, to what these critics call the _colour_ of the
age, which, after all, is nothing better than one guess amongst many at
historic truth. Schiller fell a victim, in one or two instances, to this
sort of criticism, and, in obedience to it, contradicted the natural
bias of his genius. In his _Wilhelm Tell_, instead of the hero of
liberty and of Switzerland, he has given us little more than a sturdy
peasant, who, in destroying Gessler, follows only a personal revenge,
and feels the remorse of a common assassin. If this were historic truth,
it was not the part of the poet to be the first to discover and proclaim
it. Was he to degrade the character below the rank which ordinary
historians assigned to it? We do not want a drama to frame the portrait
of a Lincolnshire farmer; it is the place, if place there is, for the
representation of the higher forms of humanity.
After taking note of the distinctive qualities of the drama and the
novel, it were well--O author that will be!--to take note of thyself,
and observe what manner of talent is strongest within thee. There are
two descriptions of men of genius. The one are men of genius in virtue
of their own quick feelings and intense reflection; they have
imagination, but it is chiefly kindled by their own personal emotions:
they write from the inspiration of their own hearts; they see the world
in the height of their own joys and afflictions. These amiable egotists
fill all nature with the voice of their own plaints, and they have ever
a tangled skein of their own peculiar thoughts to unravel and to ravel
again. The second order of men of genius, albeit they are not deficient
in keen susceptibility or profound reflection, see the world
outstretched before them, as it lies beneath the impartial light of
heaven; they understand, they master it; they turn the great globe round
under the sun; they make their own mimic variations after its strange
and varied pattern. Now you must take rank, high or low, amongst this
second order of men of genius, if you are to prosper in the land of
fiction and romance. Pray, do you--as I half suspect--do you, when
sitting down to sketch out some budding romance, find that you have
filled your paper with the analysis of a character or a sentiment, and
that you have risen from your desk without relating a single incident,
or advancing your story beyond the first attitude, the first _pose_ of
your hero? If so, I doubt of your aptitude for the novel. I know that
you have some noble ideas of elevating the standard of the romance, and,
by retarding and subduing the interest of the narrative, to make this
combine with more elaborate beauties, and more subtle thought, that has
been hitherto considered as legitimately appertaining to the novel. I
like the idea--I should rejoice to see it executed; but pardon me, if
the very circumstance of you being possessed with this idea, leads me to
augur ill of you as a writer of fiction. You have not love enough for
your story, nor sufficient confidence in it. You are afraid of every
sentence which has in it no peculiar beauty of diction or of sentiment.
A novelist must be liberal of letter-press, must feel no remorse at
leading us down, page after page, destitute of all other merit than that
of conducting us to his _denouement_: he writes not by sentences; takes
no account of paragraphs; he strides from chapter to chapter, from
volume to volume.
"Verily," I think I hear you say, "you are the most consolatory of
counsellors; you advise me to commence with the drama--but with no
prospect of success--in order to prepare myself for a failure in the
novel!"
My dear Eugenius, you shall not fail. You shall write a very powerful,
exciting, affecting romance. Pray, do not be too severe upon our
sensibilities, do not put us on the rack more than is absolutely
necessary. It has always seemed to me--and I am glad to have this
opportunity of unburdening my heart upon the point--it has always seemed
to me, that there was something _barbarous_ in that torture of the
sympathies in which the novelist delights, and which his reader, it must
be supposed, finds peculiarly grateful. It really reminds me of that
pleasure which certain savages are said to take in cutting themselves
with knives, and inflicting other wounds upon themselves when in a state
of great excitement. I have myself often flung away the work of fiction,
when it seemed bent upon raising my sympathies only to torture them.
Pray, spare us when you, in your time, shall have become a potent
magician. Follow the example of the poets, who, when they bear the
sword, yet hide it in such a clustre of laurels that its sharpness is
not seen.
To take very common instance--All the world knows that the catastrophe
of a romance must be inevitably postponed, that suspense must be
prolonged, and that the two lovers whose fate we have become interested
in, cannot possibly be made happy in the first or even in the second
volume. But the expedients employed to delay this term of felicity, are
sometimes such as the laws of a civilized society ought really to
proscribe. I will mention the first example that occurs to me, though
your better memory will directly suggest many more striking and more
flagrant. It is taken from the work of no mean artist; indeed, none but
a writer of more or less talent could inflict this gratuitous anguish
upon us. In the novel of _Rienzi_, a young nobleman, Adrian, goes to
Florence, at that time visited by the plague, to seek his betrothed
Irene, sister of the Tribune. Fatigue, the extreme heat, and his own
dreadful anxiety, have thrown him into a fever, and he sinks down in the
public thoroughfare. It is Irene herself who rushes to his assistance.
Every one else avoids him, thinking him struck by the plague. She and a
benevolent friar convey him, still in a state of unconsciousness, into
an empty and deserted palace which stood by, and of which there were
many at that time in Florence. She tends him, nurses him day and night,
aided only by the same pious and charitable friar. In his delirium he
raves of that Irene who is standing by his head, and who thus learns
that it is to seek her he has exposed himself to the horrors of the
plague. At the end of this time the friar, who had administered to the
patient some healing draught, tells her, on leaving, that Adrian will
shortly fall into a sound slumber--that this will be the crisis of his
fever--that he will either wake from this sleep restored to
consciousness and health, or will sink under his malady. Adrian falls
accordingly into a sound sleep, Irene watching by his side. Now we know
that the patient is doing well, and our hearts have been sedulously
prepared for the happy interview that is promised us, when, on awaking,
he will see beside him the loved Irene whom he has been seeking, and
recognise in her the saviour of his life. But this sleep lasts longer
than Irene had anticipated; she becomes alarmed, and goes away to seek
the friar. The moment she has left the room, Adrian wakes!--finds
himself well and alone--there is no one to tell him who it is that has
preserved his life; nor has Irene, it seems, left any trace of her
presence. He sallies forth again into the city of the plague to seek
her, and she is destined to return to the empty chamber! Taken to a
hideous sort of charnel-house, Adrian is shown the body of a female clad
in a mantle that had once been Irene's, and concludes that it is the
corpse of her who, for the last three days and nights, has been tending
on him. I recollect that, when I came to this part of the novel, I threw
the book down, and stalked for five minutes indignantly about the room,
exclaiming that it was cruel--barbarous--savage, to be sporting thus
with human sympathies. To be sure, I ought to add, in justice to the
author, that, after exhaling my rage in this manner, I again took up the
novel, and read on to the end.
I do beseech you, Eugenius, do not give us a _philosophical_ novel.
Every work of art of a high order will, in one sense of the word, be
philosophical; there will be philosophy there for those who can
penetrate it, and sometimes the reader will gather a profounder and
juster meaning, than the author himself detected in his fiction. I mean,
of course, those works where some theory or some dogma is expressly
taught, where a vein of scholastic, or political, or ethical matter
alternates with a vein of narrative and fictitious matter. I dislike the
whole genus. Either one is interested in your story, and then your
philosophy is a bore; or one is not interested in it, and then your
philosophy can gain no currency by being tacked to it. Suppose the
narrative and didactic portions of such a book equally good, it is still
essentially two books in one, and should be read once for the story, and
once without. We are repeatedly told that people are induced to peruse,
in the shape of a novel, what they would have avoided as dry and
uninteresting in the shape of an essay. Pray, can you get people to take
knowledge, as you get children to take physic, without knowing what it
is they swallow? So that the powder was in the jelly, and the jelly goes
down the throat, the business, in the one case, is done. But I rather
think, in gaining knowledge, one must _taste the powder;_ there is no
help for it. Really, the manner in which these good nurses of the public
talk of passing off their wisdom upon us, reminds us of the old and
approved fashion in which Paddy passes his bad shilling, by slipping it
between two sound penny pieces. To be sure it is but twopence after all,
and he gets neither more nor less than his twopenny-worth of
intoxication, but he has succeeded in putting his shilling into
circulation. Just such a circulation of wisdom may we expect from novels
which are to teach philosophy, and politics, and political economy, and
I know not what else. But such works have succeeded, you will tell me.
What shall I say to _Tremaine?_--what to _Coningsby?_ In _Tremaine_, so
far as I remember, the didactic portion had sunk like a sort of
sediment, and being collected into a dense mass in the third volume,
could easily be avoided. As to _Coningsby_, I deny that it any where
calls upon the reader for much exercise of his reflective powers. The
novel has some sparkling scenes written in the vivacious manner of our
neighbours, the French, and these we read. Some Eton boys talk politics,
and as they talk just as boys should talk, their prattle is easily
tolerated. Besides, I am not responsible for the caprice of fashion, nor
for those adventitious circumstances which give currency to books, and
which may sometimes compel us all to read what none of us heartily
admires.
Certainly, if I were admitted to the counsels of a novelist, I should
never have finished with my list of grievances, my entreaties, and
deprecations. I will not inflict it upon you. But there is one little
request I cannot help making even to a novelist in embryo. I have been
annoyed beyond measure at the habit our writers of fiction have fallen
into, of throwing their heroes perpetually into a sort of swoon or
delirium, or state of half consciousness. That a heroine should
occasionally faint, and so permit the author to carry her quietly off
the stage--this is an old expedient, natural and allowable. What I
complain of is, that whenever the passions of the hero himself rise to a
certain pitch; or whenever the necessities of the plot require him to do
one thing, whilst both his reason and his feelings would plainly lead
him to do another--he is immediately thrown into a state of half frenzy,
has a "vague consciousness" of something or other, makes a complete
nightmare of the business; is cast, in short, into a state of _coma_, in
which the author can carry him hither and thither, and communicate to
him whatever impulse he pleases. In this sort of dream he raves and
resolves, he fights or he flies, and then wakes to confused memory of
just what the author thinks fit to call to his recollection. It is very
interesting and edifying, truly, to watch the movements of an irrational
puppet! I do beg of you, when you take up the functions of the novelist,
not to distribute this species of intoxication amongst your _dramatis
personae_, more largely than is absolutely necessary. Keep them in a
rational state as long as you can. Depend upon it they will not grow
more interesting in proportion as they approximate to madmen or idiots.
And so, dear Eugenius, you are resolved, at all events, in some form or
other, to be the author! This is decided. What was that desperate phrase
I once heard you utter--you would strike one blow, though you put your
whole life into the stroke, and died upon the broken sword!
Ah! but one does not die upon the broken sword; one has to live on.
Would that I could dissuade you from this inky pestilence! This
poetizing spirit, which gives all life so much significance _to the
imagination_, strikes it with sterility in every thing which should
beget or prosper a personal career. It opens the heart--true, but keeps
it open; it closes in on nothing--shuts in nothing for itself. It is an
open heart, and the sunshine enters there, and the bird alights there;
but nothing retains them, and the light and the song depart as freely as
they came. You lose the spring of action, and forfeit the easy
intercourse with the world; for, believe me, however you struggle
against it, so long as you live a poet, will you feel yourself a
stranger or a child amongst men. And all for what? I have that
confidence in your talent, that I am sure you will make no ridiculous
failures. What you write for fame, will be far superior to what others
write for popularity. But these will attain their end, and you, with far
more merit, will be only known as having failed. And know you not that
men revenge on mediocrity the praise extorted from them by indisputable
celebrity? It is a crime to be above the vulgar, and yet not overawe the
vulgar. There are a few great names they cannot refuse to extol; men of
genuine merit, of a larger merit than they can measure, who yet cannot
confessedly approach to these select few, they treat with derision and
contempt.
But suppose the most complete success that you can rationally
expect--what have you done? You have added one work of art the more to a
literature already so rich, that the life of a man can hardly exhaust
it; so rich, that it is compelled to drop by the way, as booty it cannot
preserve, what in another literature, or at an earlier period of its own
career, would have been considered invaluable treasure.
But the question of success or failure is not, after all, the first or
most important to your happiness. Could the hope of literary fame, could
the passion for it, could the esteem even of its possession, keep a
steady place in your mind, there were but little danger in admitting
this species of ambition as the ruling spirit of your house. But, alas!
whilst it is the most tenacious, it is also the most fluctuating of
passions. It rises all radiant with the morning, and before the sun is
in the zenith, it forsakes you, and the bright world at your feet is as
a glittering desert. But if you should make good resolutions to reform
and eject your tyrant, it will not fail to return before the night
descends to dash and confound them.
I remember meeting somewhere with the complaint of a young poet who had
made trial of his muse and failed; the style was perhaps somewhat
quaint, but it spoke the language of truth, and I copied it out. I will
transcribe it for your edification, and so conclude this wandering
epistle. You must not ask me for the title of the book, for I am not
sure that I could give it you correctly. Besides, it would be of no use,
as the work I know is out of print.
"I could do better," says the poet in reply to his friend, who
had been suggesting the usual consolations and lenitives
applicable to the case, "but I could not so far excel what I
have written, as to make all the difference between obscurity
and fame. It is not a brief and tolerated existence in the
world of letters that can be a sanction and motive to my
endeavours; and since a noble immortality is denied me, I am
willing to sink at once into oblivion. The sentence has been
passed. I have not that obstinacy of hope which can make an
appeal to the decision of posterity. My labours have been
futile--my whole being has been an error--my life is without
aim or meaning."
"I sought it not," continued the disappointed bard, "I sought
not this gift of poesy--I despised not the ruder toils of
existence--I strove to pursue them, but I strove in vain. I
could not walk along this earth with the busy forward tread of
other men. The fair wonder detained and withheld me. Flowers on
their slender stalks could prove an hindrance in my path; the
light acacia would fling the barrier of its beauty across my
way; the slow-thoughted stream would bend me to its winding
current. Was it fault of mine that all nature was replete with
feeling that compassed and enthralled me? On the surface of the
lake at eventide, there lay how sweet a sadness! Hope visited
me from the blue hills. There was perpetual revelry of thought
amidst the clouds, and in the wide cope of heaven. This passion
of the poet came to me, not knowing what it was. It came the
gift of tranquil skies, and was breathed by playful zephyrs,
and fell on me, with many a serene influence from the bright
and silent stars.
"I saw others pursuing and enjoying the varied prosperity of
life--I felt no envy at their success, and no participation in
their desires. I could not call in and limit my mind to the
concerns of a personal welfare. I had leaned my ear unto the
earth, and heard the beating of her mighty heart, and the
murmur of her mysteries, and my spirit lost its fitness for any
selfish aim or narrow purpose. I stood forth to be the
interpreter of his own word to man. Alas! I myself am but
one--the poorest--of the restless and craving multitude.
"Gone! gone for ever! is the pleasant hope that danced before
me on my path, with feet that never wearied, and timbrel that
never paused! Oh, gay illusion! whither hast thou led me? and
to what desolation has the music of thy course conducted? I am
laden, as it were, with the fruitage of cultivated affections,
but I myself am forlorn and disregarded. I kindle with
innumerable sympathies, but am shut out for ever from social
endearments--from the sweet relationships that make happy the
homes of other men. I am faint with love of the beautiful, and
my heart pants with an unclaimed devotion--but who may love the
poet in his poverty?"
The disappointed bard, who, I should mention, was an Italian, resolves
to quit Rome, and books, and meditations; he goes to a seaport town,
becomes a mariner, and is soon advanced to the rank of captain of a
small trading vessel. The same friend to whom he had poured out the
lamentation I have already transcribed, encounters him in this new
character, and he then gives the following account of himself:--
"I worked hard with the men, and studied diligently with the
captain. One voyage to the Levant was speedily followed by a
second; I gained experience; I have earned promotion--go to--I
have earned money! Here I am, master of this vessel, which
shall carry you to the mouth of the Tiber, or the port of
Genoa."
"Then you have quite merged the poet in the sailor?" said his
companion.
"Quite! quite! These hands are hard," replied the poet, gaily
exhibiting his swarthy palms; "they have tugged at other than
the cordage of a lyre. I, who used to burden the passing clouds
with many a pensive sentiment, now ask of them what weather
they predict. I, who was wont to give a thousand utterances to
the winds of heaven, enquire from what point of the compass
they are blowing. I, who could never behold the ocean without
lapsing into dreamy emotions or endless speculations, now study
its tides, and sound its shallows, and know it as the high-road
I travel on. Yes," he continued, pacing the deck with
animation, "I am no longer that commiserated mortal, whose
musing gait marks him out for the mingled ridicule and,
compassion of all observers; who burns with a passion for fame
which renders him at once the most solitary and the most
dependent of men. Me--I belong to the multitude--I am one of
themselves. They cannot point the finger at me. I am released
from that needless necessity to distinguish myself from
others--from that pledge, given unsought to a heedless world,
to leave behind an enduring memento of my existence. I can be
filled with daily life, as with daily bread. Life is indeed a
freedom--I can give _all_ to death."
"I think," said his friend with a smile, "I trace something of
the leaven of poetry even in this description of your
unpoetized condition. Fear you not that the old fever will
return?"
"No; I resist--I fly from all temptation. If leaning,
perchance, over the side of the vessel, and looking down on the
troubled water, my mind grows troubled also with agitated
thoughts, I start from the insidious posture. I find something
to tug--to haul. A rope is thrown to me, and I am saved! Or I
seize the rudder--I grasp its handle, grown smooth by its
frequent intercourse with the human palm--and, believe me,
there is a magic in its touch that brings me back instantly to
the actual world of man's wants and of man's energies. I feel
my feet press firm upon the boarded deck; I look out and around
me; and my eye surveys, and my ear listens to the plain and
serviceable realities of this our habitable globe."
This seems like a case of cure. But the symptoms were deceptive. The
next time we meet the poet-sailor he has embarked all he possessed in an
expedition of discovery in the new world which had recently been laid
open by Columbus; and this, not from love of gain, nor love of science,
nor even the ardour of enterprise, but purely from the restlessness of a
spirit which, ejected from its home in the world of thought, could never
find another amongst those "serviceable realities" of life, which he
knew so well how to applaud. He set sail from the port of Genoa, and was
never heard of afterwards. The moral of which is, that you take timely
warning, Eugenius, lest your poetic culture end in a voyage of discovery
to New South Wales!