"'It is one of the penalties one always has to pay for a woman's fame,'

I said to myself, one day, as I sat sipping my chocolate, while I was

forced to overhear from a neighboring alcove an insolent young dandy

tell of various scenes, betraying passionate love on both sides, which

he had probably manufactured to make himself of consequence. One story

he told I felt sure was false, and yet I would rather it had been true

than the others; he declared he had been present at the theatre when it

had taken place, which had been the morning previous,--the morning after

the first representation of this famous opera. La Malanotte, he said,

was dissatisfied with her opening _cavatina_, and at rehearsal had

presented the _maestro_ with the MS. of that passage torn into fifty

atoms, declaring in a haughty tone that she would never sing it again.

This was too unlike Adelaïde to be true; but I tried to swallow my

vexation in silence, and with difficulty restrained myself from

insulting the addle-pated young puppy. I had heard her say she did not

like the passage so well as the rest of the opera, and felt sure

that the whole story had been founded on this simple expression of

disapprobation.

"I swallowed my chocolate, put on my hat, and sauntered leisurely along

to Montresor's apartments. It was late in the afternoon; the servant

admitted me, saying Madame was alone in the _salon_. The apartments were

several rooms _en suite;_ the music-room was divided from the _salon_ by

curtains. I entered the _salon_ unannounced; for the _valet de chambre_

was an old family-servant, and having known me for so many years

as _garçon de famille_, he let me proceed through the antechamber

unaccompanied. The heavy curtains over the music-room were dropped; but

as I entered, I heard a low murmur of voices coming from it. The thick

Turkey carpet which lay on the inlaid ivory floor of the _salon_ gave

back no sound of my footsteps. I did not think of committing any

indiscretion; I concluded that Adelaïde was busy studying; so I took up

a book and seated myself comfortably, feeling as well off there as at

home.

"Presently I heard a brilliant preluding passage on the piano, then

Adelaïde's glorious voice pronounced that stirring recitative, _'O

Patria.'_ This was the passage alluded to by the young dandies in

the _caffè_. I laid down my book, and leaned forward to listen. The

recitative over, then followed that delicious 'hymn of youth and love,'

as Scudo calls it, '_Tu che accendi_' followed by the 'Di _tanti

palpiti_.' Can you imagine the sensations produced by hearing for the

first time such a passage? If you can, pray do, for I cannot describe

them;--just fancy that intoxicating '_Ti revedrò_' soaring up, followed

by the glittering accompaniment,--and to hear it, as I did, just fresh

from its source, the aroma from this bright-beaded goblet of youth and

love! Heigho! Adelaïde repeated it again and again, and the _enivrement_

seemed as great in the music-room as in my brain and heart. Then the low

talking recommenced, and from some words that reached my ears I began

to think I might be committing an indiscretion; so I left the room as I

entered it, unannounced.

"That night I was at the theatre, and witnessed the wild, frantic

reception of this _cavatina_, and also saw the point Scudo alludes to,

which Adelaïde made that night for the first time, in the duo between

Tancredi and Argirio, '_Ah, se de' mali miei_,' in the passage at the

close of '_Ecco la tromba_,' at the repeat of '_Al campo_.' She looked

superbly, and, as that part of the duo ended, she advanced a step, drew

up her fine form to its full height, flashed her sword with a gesture of

inspiration, and exclaimed, in clear, musical diction, '_Il vivo lampo

di questa spada_.' The effect was electric. The duet could not proceed

for the cries and shouts of enthusiasm; the whole theatre rose in one

mass, and shouted aloud their ecstasy in one voice, as if they had but

one common ear and heart.

"The instant the cries lessened, Adelaïde gave the sign to Argirio,

and they took up the duo, '_Splenda terribile_,' before the orchestra,

equally electrified with the audience, were prepared for it, so that

Adelaïde's clear ringing '_Mi_' soared out like a mellow violoncello

note, and she sang the three following measures unaccompanied. The short

symphony which follows this little bit was not heard for the cries of

applause, which were silenced only by the grand finale, '_Se il ciel mi

guida_.'

"_Gran Dio!_ the bare memory of that night is a joy," said my friend,

walking rapidly up and down the room.

"I had to leave for my Russian home a few days after that, and saw

Adelaïde only once; it was the morning of my departure. Her _salon_ was

crowded, and she was leaning on her husband's arm, looking very proud

and happy. 'Who could have been in that music-room?' I asked myself,

while I looked at them; then in an instant I felt reproached at my

suspicions, as the thought flashed across my mind, that it might have

been her husband. What more likely? I bade her good-bye, and told her,

laughingly, as she gave me a cordial grasp of her hand, that I hoped to

renew our friendship in St. Petersburg.

"She never wrote to me after that. Marked differences in pursuits and

a continued separation will dissolve the outward bonds of the truest

friendships. Adelaïde's time was now completely occupied; it was one

round of brilliant success for the poor woman. 'Such triumphs! such

intoxication!' as Scudo says; but the glory was that of a shooting star.

In eight short years after that brilliant season at Venice, Adelaïde

Montresor, better known as 'La Malanotte,' the idol of the European

musical public, the short-lived infatuation and passion of the

celebrated Rossini, was a hopeless invalid, and worse, _presque folle_.

"I received the news, strange to say, one evening at the opera in St.

Petersburg, while I was listening to the music of 'Tancredi.' Two

gentlemen were talking behind me, and one was telling the other his

recollection of that brilliant scene I have just recounted. Then

followed the account of her illness; and I could not restrain myself, as

I had in the _caffe_ at Venice; for I had known Adelaïde as a girl, and

loved her as a brother. I presented myself, explaining the cause of my

interest in their conversation, and found the news was only too

true. The gentlemen had just come from Southern Europe, and knew the

Montresors personally. He said that her mind was gone, even more

hopelessly than her health. She lingered eleven years in this sad state,

and then, happily for herself, died."

"And Rossini," I asked,--"how did he take her illness?"

"Oh, three years after his Venetian infatuation, he was off here in

Naples, worshipping the Spanish beauty, a little _passée_ to be sure, of

La Colbrand. She, however, possessed more lasting attractions than mere

physical ones. She had amassed a large fortune in a variety of ways.

Rossini was not over-nice; he wanted money most of all things, and he

carried off La Colbrand from her _cher ami_, the Neapolitan director of

San Carlo, and married her. It was a regular elopement, as if of a young

miss from her papa. Do not look so shocked. Rossini could not help his

changeability. You women always throw away a real gem, and receive, nine

times out of ten, a mock one in return. But the fault lies not with us,

but with you; you almost invariably select the wrong person. Now such

men as Montresor and I knew how to return a real gem for Adelaïde's

heart-gift; but such men as Rossini have no real feelings in their

hearts."

"And you think she loved him?"

"I try to think otherwise, for I cannot bear to remember Adelaïde

Montresor as an unworthy woman; and when the unwelcome thought will

thrust itself in, I think of her youth, her beauty, her genius, and

the sudden blinding effect that rapid prosperity and brilliant success

produce on an enthusiastic, warm temperament--Good-morning; to-morrow

let me come again, and we will go over 'Tancredi,' and I will sing with

you the '_Ah, se de' mali miei_.'"

My friend left me alone. I sat by the window, watching the waving of the

tasselled branches of the acacia, and the purple fiery vapor that arose

from the overflowing Vesuvius; and I thought of Adelaïde Malanotte,

and wondered at the strange, fatal necessity attendant on genius, its

spiritual labor and pain. Like all things beautiful in Art, made by

human hands, it must proceed from toil of brain or heart. It takes

fierce heat to purify the gold, and welding beats are needed to mould

it into gracious shapes; the sharp chisel must cut into the marble,

to fashion by keen, driving blows the fair statue; the fine, piercing

instrument, "the little diamond-pointed ill," it is that traces the

forms of beauty on the hard onyx. There had been sorrow in the tale of

my friend, temptation at least, if not sinful yielding, labor and pain,

which had broken down the fair mind itself,--but it had all created a

gracious form for the memory to dwell on, an undying association with

the "Tancredi," as beautiful, instructive, and joy-giving as the "Divino

Amore" of Raphael, the exquisite onyx heads in the "Cabinet of Gems," or

that divine prelude the Englishman was at that moment pouring out from

his piano in a neighboring _palazzo_, in a flood of harmony as golden

and rich as the wine of Capri, every note of which, we know, had been a

life-drop wrung from the proud, breaking heart of Chopin, when he sat

alone, that solemn, stormy midnight, in the old convent-chamber at

Majorca. But the toil and suffering are forgotten in the enjoyment of

creation, and genius itself, when going down into the fiery baptism of

sorrow, or walking over the red-hot ploughshares of temptation, would

rather take all its suffering and peril than not be itself;--and well it

may; for it is making, what poor heart-broken Keats sung,

"A thing of beauty--a joy forever."

THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

WHAT HE SAID, WHAT HE HEARD, AND WHAT HE SAW.

Iris, her Book.

I pray thee by the soul of her that bore thee,

By thine own sister's spirit I implore thee,

Deal gently with the leaves that lie before thee!

For Iris had no mother to infold her,

Nor ever leaned upon a sister's shoulder,

Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature told her.

She had not learned the mystery of awaking

Those chorded keys that soothe a sorrow's aching,

Giving the dumb heart voice, that else were breaking.

Yet lived, wrought, suffered. Lo, the pictured token!

Why should her fleeting day-dreams fade unspoken,

Like daffodils that die with sheaths unbroken?

She knew not love, yet lived in maiden fancies,--

Walked simply clad, a queen of high romances,

And talked strange tongues with angels in her trances.

Twin-souled she seemed, a twofold nature wearing,--

Sometimes a flashing falcon in her daring,

Then a poor mateless dove that droops despairing.

Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her?

What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her?

Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor.

And then all tears and anguish: Queen of Heaven,

Sweet Saints, and Thou by mortal sorrows riven,

Save me! oh, save me! Shall I die forgiven?

And then--Ah, God! But nay, it little matters:

Look at the wasted seeds that autumn scatters

The myriad germs that Nature shapes and shatters!

If she had--Well! She longed, and knew not wherefore.

Had the world nothing she might live to care for?

No second self to say her evening prayer for?

She knew the marble shapes that set men dreaming,

Yet with her shoulders bare and tresses streaming

Showed not unlovely to her simple seeming.

Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher.

What if a lonely and unsistered creature

Loved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature,

Saying, unsaddened,--This shall soon be faded,

And double-hued the shining tresses braided,

And all the sunlight of the morning shaded?

--This her poor book is full of saddest follies

Of tearful smiles and laughing melancholies,

With summer roses twined and wintry hollies.

In the strange crossing of uncertain chances,

Somewhere, beneath some maiden's tear-dimmed glances

May fall her little book of dreams and fancies.

Sweet sister! Iris, who shall never name thee,

Trembling for fear her open heart may shame thee,

Speaks from this vision-haunted page to claim thee.

Spare her, I pray thee! If the maid is sleeping,

Peace with her! she has had her hour of weeping.

No more! She leaves her memory in thy keeping.

These verses were written in the first leaves of the locked volume. As I

turned the pages, I hesitated for a moment. Is it quite fair to take

advantage of a generous, trusting impulse to read the unsunned depths of

a young girl's nature, which I can look through, as the balloon-voyagers

tell us they see from their hanging-baskets through the translucent

waters which the keenest eye of such as sail over them in ships might

strive to pierce in vain? Why has the child trusted _me_ with such

artless confessions,--self-revelations, which might be whispered by

trembling lips, under the veil of twilight, in sacred confessionals, but

which I cannot look at in the light of day without a feeling of wronging

a sacred confidence?

To all this the answer seemed plain enough after a little thought.

She did not know how fearfully she had disclosed herself; she was too

profoundly innocent. Her soul was no more ashamed than the fair shapes

that walked in Eden without a thought of over-liberal loveliness. Having

nobody to tell her story to,--having, as she said in her verses, no

musical instrument to laugh and cry with her,--nothing, in short, but

the language of pen and pencil,--all the veinings of her nature were

impressed on these pages, as those of a fresh leaf are transferred

to the blank sheets which inclose it. It was the same thing which I

remember seeing beautifully shown in a child of some four or five years

we had one day at our boarding-house. This child was a deaf mute. But

its soul had the inner sense that answers to hearing, and the shaping

capacity which through natural organs realizes itself in words. Only

it had to talk with its face alone; and such speaking eyes, such rapid

alternations of feeling and shifting expressions of thought as flitted

over its face, I have never seen in any other human countenance.

I wonder if something of spiritual _transparency_ is not typified in

the golden-_blonde_ organization. There are a great many little

creatures,--many small fishes, for instance,--that are literally

transparent, with the exception of some of the internal organs. The

heart can be seen beating as if in a case of clouded crystal. The

central nervous column with its sheath runs as a dark stripe through

the whole length of the diaphanous muscles of the body. Other little

creatures are so darkened with pigment that we can see only their

surface. Conspirators and poisoners are painted with black, beady eyes

and swarthy hue; Judas, in Leonardo's picture, is the model of them all.

However this may be, I should say there never had been a book like this

of Iris,--so full of the heart's silent language, so transparent that

the heart itself could be seen beating through it. I should say there

never could have been such a book, but for one recollection, which is

not peculiar to myself, but is shared by a certain number of my former

townsmen. If you think I overcolor this matter of the young girl's book,

hear this, which there are others, as I just said, besides myself, will

tell you is strictly true.

_The Book of the Three Maiden Sisters_.

In the town called Cantabridge, now a city, water-veined and

gas-windpiped, in the street running down to the Bridge, beyond which

dwelt Sally, told of in a book of a friend of mine, was of old a house

inhabited by three maidens. They left no near kinsfolk, I believe; if

they did, I have no ill to speak of them; for they lived and died in

all good report and maidenly credit. The house they lived in was of the

small, gambrel-roofed cottage pattern, after the shape of Esquires'

houses, but after the size of the dwellings of handicraftsmen. The lower

story was fitted up as a shop. Specially was it provided with one of

those half-doors now so rarely met with, which are to whole doors as

spencers worn by old folk are to coats. They speak of limited commerce

united with a social or observing disposition on the part of the

shopkeeper,--allowing, as they do, talk with passers-by, yet keeping off

such as have not the excuse of business to cross the threshold. On the

door-posts, at either side, above the half-door, hung certain perennial

articles of merchandise, of which my memory still has hanging among its

faded photographs a kind of netted scarf and some pairs of thick woollen

stockings. More articles, but not very many, were stored inside; and

there was one drawer, containing children's books, out of which I once

was treated to a minute quarto ornamented with handsome cuts. This was

the only purchase I ever _knew_ to be made at the shop kept by the three

maiden ladies, though it is probable there were others. So long as I

remember the shop, the same scarf and, I should say, the same stockings

hung on the door-posts.--[You think I am exaggerating again, and that

shopkeepers would not keep the same article exposed for years. Come to

me, the Professor, and I will take you in five minutes to a shop in this

city where I will show you an article hanging now in the very place

where more than _thirty years ago_ I myself inquired the price of it of

the present head of the establishment.]

The three maidens were of comely presence, and one of them had

had claims to be considered a Beauty. When I saw them in the old

meeting-house on Sundays, as they rustled in through the aisles in silks

and satins, not gay, but more than decent, as I remember them, I thought

of My Lady Bountiful in the history of "Little King Pippin," and of the

Madame Blaize of Goldsmith (who, by the way, may have taken the hint of

it from a pleasant poem, "Monsieur de la Palisse," attributed to De la

Monnoye, in the collection of French songs before me). There was some

story of an old romance in which the Beauty had played her part. Perhaps

they all had had lovers; for, as I said, they were shapely and seemly

personages, as I remember them; but their lives were out of the flower

and in the berry at the time of my first recollections.

One after another they all three dropped away, objects of kindly

attention to the good people round, leaving little or almost nothing,

and nobody to inherit it. Not absolutely nothing, of course. There must

have been a few old dresses,--perhaps some bits of furniture, a Bible,

and the spectacles the good old souls read it through, and little

keepsakes, such as make us cry to look at, when we find them in old

drawers;--such relics there must have been. But there was more. There

was a manuscript of some hundred pages, closely written, in which the

poor things had chronicled for many years the incidents of their daily

life. After their death it was passed round somewhat freely, and fell

into my hands. How I have cried and laughed and colored over it! There

was nothing in it to be ashamed of, perhaps there was nothing in it to

laugh at, but such a picture of the mode of being of poor simple good

old women I do believe was never drawn before. And there were all the

smallest incidents recorded, such as do really make up humble life, but

which die out of all mere literary memoirs, as the houses where the

Egyptians or the Athenians lived crumble and leave only their temples

standing. I know, for instance, that on a given day of a certain year,

a kindly woman, herself a poor widow, now, I trust, not without special

mercies in heaven for her good deeds,--for I read her name on a proper

tablet in the churchyard a week ago,--sent a fractional pudding from her

own table to the Maiden Sisters, who, I fear, from the warmth and detail

of their description, were fasting, or at least on short allowance,

about that time. I know who sent them the segment of melon, which in her

riotous fancy one of them compared to those huge barges to which we give

the ungracious name of mudscows. But why should I illustrate further

what it seems almost a breach of confidence to speak of? Some kind

friend, who could challenge a nearer interest than the curious strangers

into whose hands the book might fall, at last claimed it, and I was glad

that it should be henceforth sealed to common eyes. I learned from it

that every good and, alas! every evil act we do may slumber unforgotten

even in some earthly record. I got a new lesson in that humanity which

our sharp race finds it so hard to learn. The poor widow, fighting

hard to feed and clothe and educate her children, had not forgotten the

poorer ancient maidens. I remembered it the other day, as I stood by her

place of rest, and I felt sure that it was remembered elsewhere. I know

there are prettier words than _pudding_, but I can't help it,--the

pudding went upon the record, I feel sure, with the mite which was cast

into the treasury by that other poor widow whose deed the world shall

remember forever, and with the coats and garments which the good women

cried over, when Tabitha, called by interpretation Dorcas, lay dead in

the upper chamber, with her charitable needlework strewed around her.

* * * * *

----Such was the Book of the Maiden Sisters. You will believe me more

readily now when I tell you that I found the soul of Iris in the one

that lay open before me. Sometimes it was a poem that held it, sometimes

a drawing,--angel, arabesque, caricature, or a mere hieroglyphic

symbol of which I could make nothing. A rag of cloud on one page, as I

remember, with a streak of red zigzagging out of it across the paper as

naturally as a crack runs through a China bowl. On the next page a dead

bird,--some little favorite, I suppose; for it was worked out with a

special love, and I saw on the leaf that sign with which once or twice

in my life I have had a letter sealed,--a round spot where the paper is

slightly corrugated, and, if there is writing there, the letters are

somewhat faint and blurred. Most of the pages were surrounded with

emblematic traceries. It was strange to me at first to see how often she

introduced those homelier wild-flowers which we call _weeds_,--for it

seemed there was none of them too humble for her to love, and none too

little cared for by Nature to be without its beauty for her artist eye

and pencil. By the side of the garden-flowers,--of Spring's curled

darlings, the hyacinths, of rosebuds, dear to sketching maidens, of

flower-de-luces and morning-glories,--nay, oftener than these, and more

tenderly caressed by the colored brush that rendered them,--were those

common growths that fling themselves to be crushed under our feet and

our wheels, making themselves so cheap in this perpetual martyrdom that

we forget each of them is a ray of the Divine beauty.

Yellow japanned buttercups and star-disked dandelions,--just as we see

them lying in the grass, like sparks that have leaped from the kindling

sun of summer; the profuse daisy-like flower which whitens the fields,

to the great disgust of liberal shepherds, yet seems fair to loving

eyes, with its button-like mound of gold set round with milk-white rays;

the tall-stemmed succory, setting its pale blue flowers aflame, one

after another, sparingly, as the lights are kindled in the candelabra of

decaying palaces when the heirs of dethroned monarchs are dying out; the

red and white clovers; the broad, flat leaves of the plantain,--"the

white man's foot," as the Indians called it,--the wiry, jointed stems of

that iron creeping plant which we call "knot-_grass_" and which loves

its life so dearly that it is next to impossible to murder it with a

hoe, as it clings to the cracks of the pavement;--all these plants, and

many more, she wove into her fanciful garlands and borders.--On one of

the pages were some musical notes. I touched them from curiosity on a

piano belonging to one of our boarders. Strange! There are passages that

I have heard before, plaintive, full of some hidden meaning, as if

they were gasping for words to interpret them. She must have heard the

strains that have so excited my curiosity, coming from my neighbor's

chamber. The illuminated border she had traced round the page that held

these notes took the place of the words they seemed to be aching for.

Above, a long, monotonous sweep of waves, leaden-hued, anxious and jaded

and sullen, if you can imagine such an expression in water. On one side

an Alpine _needle_, as it were, of black basalt, girdled with snow. On

the other a threaded waterfall. The red morning-tint that shone in

the drops had something fearful,--one would say the cliff was

bleeding;--perhaps she did not mean it. Below, a stretch of sand, and

a solitary bird of prey, with his wings spread over some unseen

object.--And on the very next page a procession wound along, after the

fashion of that on the title-page of Fuller's "Holy War," in which I

recognized without difficulty every boarder at our table in all the

glory of the most resplendent caricature,--three only excepted,--the

Little Gentleman, myself, and one other.

I confess I did expect to see something that would remind me of the

girl's little deformed neighbor, if not portraits of him.--There is

a left arm again, though;--no,--that is from the "Fighting

Gladiator,"--the "_Jeune Héros combatiant_" of the Louvre;--there is the

broad ring of the shield. From a cast, doubtless. [The separate casts

of the "Gladiator's" arm look immense; but in its place the limb looks

light, almost slender,--such is the perfection of that miraculous

marble. I never felt as if I touched the life of the old Greeks until I

looked on that statue.]--Here is something very odd, to be sure. An Eden

of all the humped and crooked creatures! What could have been in her

head when she worked out such a fantasy? She has contrived to give them

all beauty or dignity or melancholy grace. A Bactrian camel lying under

a palm. A dromedary flashing up the sands,--spray of the dry ocean

sailed by the "ship of the desert." A herd of buffaloes, uncouth,

shaggy-maned, heavy in the forehand, light in the hind-quarter. [The

buffalo is the _lion_ of the ruminants.] And there is a Norman horse,

with his huge, rough collar, echoing, as it were, the natural form of

the other beast. And here are twisted serpents; and stately swans, with

answering curves in their bowed necks, as if they had snake's blood

under their white feathers; and grave, high-shouldered herons, standing

on one foot like cripples, and looking at life round them with the cold

stare of monumental effigies.--A very odd page indeed! Not a creature in

it without a curve or a twist, and not one of them a mean figure to look

at. You can make your own comment; I am fanciful, you know. I believe

she is trying to idealize what we vulgarly call deformity, which she

strives to look at in the light of one of Nature's eccentric curves,

belonging to her system of beauty, as the hyperbola and parabola belong

to the conic sections, though we cannot see them as symmetrical and

entire figures, like the circle and ellipse. At any rate, I cannot help

referring this paradise of twisted spines to some idea floating in

her head connected with her friend whom Nature has warped in the

moulding.--That is nothing to another transcendental fancy of mine. I

believe her soul thinks itself in his little crooked body at times,--if

it does not really get freed or half freed from her own. Did you ever

see a case of catalepsy? You know what I mean,--transient loss of sense,

will, and motion; body and limbs taking any position in which they are

put, as if they belonged to a lay-figure. She had been talking with him

and listening to him one day when the boarders moved from the table

nearly all at once. But she sat as before, her cheek resting on her

hand, her amber eyes wide open and still. I went to her,--she was

breathing as usual, and her heart was beating naturally enough,--but she

did not answer. I bent her arm; it was as plastic as softened wax, and

kept the place I gave it.--This will never do, though,--and I sprinkled

a few drops of water on her forehead. She started and looked round.--I

have been in a dream,--she said;--I feel as if all my strength were in

this arm;--give me your hand!--She took my right hand in her left, which

looked soft and white enough, but--Good Heaven! I believe she will crack

my bones! All the nervous power in her body must have flashed through

those muscles; as when a crazy lady snaps her iron window-bars,--she who

could hardly glove herself when in her common health. Iris turned pale,

and the tears came to her eyes;--she saw she had given pain. Then she

trembled, and might have fallen but for me;--the poor little soul

had been in one of those trances that belong to the spiritual pathology

of higher natures, mostly those of women.

To come back to this wondrous book of Iris. Two pages faced each other

which I took for symbolical expressions of two states of mind. On the

left hand, a bright blue sky washed over the page, specked with a single

bird. No trace of earth, but still the winged creature seemed to be

soaring upward and upward. Facing it, one of those black dungeons such

as Piranesi alone of all men has pictured. I am sure she must have

seen those awful prisons of his, out of which the Opium-Eater got his

nightmare vision, described by another as "cemeteries of departed

greatness, where monstrous and forbidden things are crawling and twining

their slimy convolutions among mouldering bones, broken sculpture, and

mutilated inscriptions." Such a black dungeon faced the page that held

the blue sky and the single bird; at the bottom of it something was

coiled,--what, and whether meant for dead or alive, my eyes could not

make out.

I told you the young girl's soul was in this book. As I turned over the

last leaves I could not help starting. There were all sorts of faces

among the arabesques which laughed and scowled in the borders that ran

round the pages. They had mostly the outline of childish or womanly or

manly beauty, without very distinct individuality. But at last it seemed

to me that some of them were taking on a look not wholly unfamiliar to

me; there were features that did not seem new.--Can it be so? Was there

ever such innocence in a creature so full of life? She tells her heart's

secrets as a three-years-old child betrays itself without need of being

questioned! This was no common miss, such as are turned out in scores

from the young-lady-factories, with parchments warranting them

accomplished and virtuous,--in case anybody should question the fact. I

began to understand her;--and what is so charming as to read the secret

of a real _femme incomprise_?-for such there are, though they are not

the ones who think themselves uncomprehended women.

Poets are never young, in one sense. Their delicate ear hears the

far-off whispers of eternity, which coarser souls must travel towards

for scores of years before their dull sense is touched by them. A

moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience. I have

frequently seen children, long exercised by pain and exhaustion, whose

features had a strange look of advanced age. Too often one meets such in

our charitable institutions. Their faces are saddened and wrinkled, as

if their few summers were three-score years and ten.

And so, many youthful poets have written as if their hearts were old

before their time; their pensive morning twilight has been as cool

and saddening as that of evening in more common lives. The profound

melancholy of those lines of Shelley,

"I could lie down like a tired child

And weep away the life of care

Which I have borne and yet must bear,"

came from a heart, as he says, "too soon grown old,"--at _twenty-six

years_, as dull people count time, even when they talk of poets.

I know enough to be prepared for an exceptional nature, only this gift

of the hand in rendering every thought in form and color, as well as in

words, gives a richness to this young girl's alphabet of feeling and

imagery that takes me by surprise. And then besides, and most of all, I

am puzzled at her sudden and seemingly easy confidence in me. Perhaps I

owe it to my ------ Well, no matter! How one must love the editor who

first calls him the _venerable_ So-and-So!

--I locked the book and sighed as I laid it down. The world is always

ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what

to do with genius. Talent is a docile creature. It bows its head meekly

while the world slips the collar over it. It backs into the shafts like

a lamb. It draws its load cheerfully, and is patient of the bit and

of the whip. But genius is always impatient of its harness; its wild

blood makes it hard to train.

Talent seems, at first, in one sense, higher than genius,--namely, that

it is more uniformly and absolutely submitted to the will, and therefore

more distinctly human in its character. Genius, on the other hand, is

much more like those instincts which govern the admirable movements of

the lower creatures, and therefore seems to have something of the

lower or animal character. A goose flies by a chart which the Royal

Geographical Society could not mend. A poet, like the goose, sails

without visible landmarks to unexplored regions of truth, which

philosophy has yet to lay down on its atlas. The philosopher gets his

track by observation; the poet trusts to his inner sense, and makes the

straighter and swifter line.

And yet, to look at it in another light, is not even the lowest instinct

more truly divine than any voluntary human act done by the suggestion

of reason? What is a bee's architecture but an _un_obstructed divine

thought?--what is a builder's approximative rule but an obstructed

thought of the Creator, a mutilated and imperfect copy of some absolute

rule Divine Wisdom has established, transmitted through a human soul as

an image through clouded glass?

Talent is a very common family-trait; genius belongs rather to

individuals;--just as you find one giant or one dwarf in a family, but

rarely a whole brood of either. Talent is often to be envied, and genius

very commonly to be pitied. It stands twice the chance of the other of

dying in a hospital, in jail, in debt, in bad repute. It is a perpetual

insult to mediocrity; its every word is a trespass against somebody's

vested ideas,--blasphemy against somebody's _O'm_, or intangible private

truth.

----What is the use of my weighing out antitheses in this way, like a

rhetorical grocer?--You know twenty men of talent, who are making their

way in the world; you may, perhaps, know one man of genius, and very

likely do not want to know any more. For a divine instinct, such as

drives the goose southward and the poet heavenward, is a hard thing to

manage, and proves too strong for many whom it possesses. It must have

been a terrible thing to have a friend like Chatterton or Burns. And

here is a being who certainly has more than talent, at once poet and

artist in tendency, if not yet fairly developed,--a woman, too;--and

genius grafted on womanhood is like to overgrow it and break its stem,

as you may see a grafted fruit-tree spreading over the stock which

cannot keep pace with its evolution.

I think now you know something of this young person. She wants nothing

but an atmosphere to expand in. Now and then one meets with a nature

for which our hard, practical New England life is obviously utterly

incompetent. It comes up, as a Southern seed, dropped by accident in one

of our gardens, finds itself trying to grow and blow into flower among

the homely roots and the hardy shrubs that surround it. There is no

question that certain persons who are born among us find themselves many

degrees too far north. Tropical by organization, they cannot fight for

life with our eastern and northwestern breezes without losing the

color and fragrance into which their lives would have blossomed in

the latitude of myrtles and oranges. Strange effects are produced by

suffering any living thing to be developed under conditions such as

Nature had not intended for it. A French physiologist confined some

tadpoles under water in the dark, removed from the natural stimulus of

light, they did not develop legs and arms at the proper period of their

growth, and so become frogs; they swelled and spread into gigantic

tadpoles. I have seen a hundred colossal _human_ tadpoles,--overgrown

_larvae_ or embryos; nay, I am afraid we Protestants should look on a

considerable proportion of the Holy Father's one hundred and thirty-nine

millions as spiritual _larvae_, sculling about in the dark by the aid

of their caudal extremities, instead of standing on their legs, and

breathing by gills, instead of taking the free air of heaven into the

lungs made to receive it. Of course _we_ never try to keep young souls

in the tadpole state, for fear they should get a pair or two of legs

by-and-by and jump out of the pool where they have been bred and fed!

Never! Never. Never?

Now to go back to our plant. You may know, that, for the earlier stages

of development of almost any vegetable, you only want warmth, air,

light, and water. But by-and-by, if it is to have special complex

principles as a part of its organization, they must be supplied by

the soil;--your pears will crack, if the root of the tree gets no

iron,--your asparagus-bed wants salt as much as you do. Just at the

period of adolescence, the mind often suddenly begins to come into

flower and to set its fruit. Then it is that many young natures, having

exhausted the spiritual soil round them of all it contains of the

elements they demand, wither away, undeveloped and uncolored, unless

they are transplanted.

Pray for these dear young souls! This is the second _natural_

birth;--for I do not speak of those peculiar religious experiences which

form the point of transition in many lives between the consciousness of

a general relation to the Divine nature and a special personal

relation. The litany should count a prayer for them in the list of its

supplications; masses should be said for them as for souls in purgatory;

all good Christians should remember them as they remember those in peril

through travel or sickness or in warfare.

I would transport this child to Rome at once, if I had my will. She

should ripen under an Italian sun. She should walk under the frescoed

vaults of palaces, until her colors deepened to those of Venetian

beauties, and her forms were perfected into rivalry with the Greek

marbles, and the east wind was out of her soul. Has she not exhausted

this lean soil of the elements her growing nature requires?

I do not know. The magnolia grows and comes into full flower on Cape

Ann, many degrees out of its proper region. I was riding once along that

delicious road between the hills and the sea, when we passed a thicket

where there seemed to be a chance for finding it. In five minutes I had

fallen on the trees in full blossom, and filled my arms with the sweet,

resplendent flowers. I could not believe I was in our cold, northern

Essex, which, in the dreary season when I pass its slate-colored,

unpainted farmhouses, and huge, square, windy, 'squire-built "mansions,"

looks as brown and unvegetating as an old rug with its patterns all

trodden out and the colored fringe worn from all its border.

If the magnolia can bloom in northern New England, why should not a poet

or a painter come to his full growth here just as well? Yes, but if

the gorgeous tree-flower is rare, and only as if by a freak of Nature

springs up in a single spot among the beeches and alders, is there not

as much reason to think the perfumed flower of imaginative genius will

find it hard to be born and harder to spread its leaves in the clear,

cold atmosphere of our ultra-temperate zone of humanity?

Take the poet. On the one hand, I believe that a person with the

poetical faculty finds material everywhere. The grandest objects of

sense and thought are common to all climates and civilizations. The

sky, the woods, the waters, the storms, life, death, love, the hope and

vision of eternity,--these are images that write themselves in poetry in

every soul which has anything of the divine gift.

On the other hand, there is such a thing as a lean, impoverished life,

in distinction from a rich and suggestive one. Which our common New

England life might be considered, I will not decide. But there are some

things I think the poet missed in our western Eden. I trust it is not

unpatriotic to mention them in this point of view, as they come before

us in so many other aspects.

There is no sufficient flavor of humanity in the soil out of which we

grow. At Cantabridge, near the sea, I have once or twice picked up an

Indian arrowhead in a fresh furrow. At Canoe Meadow, in the Berkshire

Mountains, I have found Indian arrowheads. So everywhere Indian

arrowheads. Whether a hundred or a thousand years old, who knows?

who cares? There is no history to the red race,--there is hardly

an individual in it;--a few instincts on legs and holding a

tomahawk,--there is the Indian of all time. The story of one red ant is

the story of all red ants. So, the poet, in trying to wing his way

back through the life that has kindled, flitted, and faded along our

watercourses and on our southern hillsides for unknown generations,

finds nothing to breathe; he "meets

A vast vacuity! all unawares,

Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down he drops

Ten thousand fathom deep."

But think of the Old World,--that part of it which is the seat of

ancient civilization! The stakes of the Britons' stockades are still

standing in the bed of the Thames. The ploughman turns up an old Saxon's

bones, and beneath them is a tessellated pavement of the time of

the Caesars. In Italy, the works of mediaeval Art seem to be of

yesterday,--Rome, under her kings, is but an intruding new-comer, as

we contemplate her in the shadow of the Cyclopean walls of Fiesole or

Volterra. It makes a man human to live on these old humanized soils.

He cannot help marching in step with his kind in the rear of such a

procession. They say a dead man's hand cures swellings, if laid on them.

There is nothing like the dead cold hand of the Past to take down our

tumid egotism and lead us into the solemn flow of the life of our race.

Rousseau came out of one of his sad self-torturing fits, as he cast his

eye on the arches of the old Roman aqueduct, the Pont du Gard.

I am far from denying that there is an attraction in a thriving railroad

village. The new "dépôt," the smartly-painted pine houses, the spacious

brick hotel, the white meeting-house, and the row of youthful and leggy

trees before it, _are_ exhilarating. They speak of progress, and the

time when there shall be a city, with a His Honor the Mayor, in the

place of their trim but transient architectural growths. Pardon me, if

I prefer the pyramids. They seem to me crystals formed from a stronger

solution of humanity than the steeple of the new meeting-house. I may be

wrong, but the Tiber has a voice for me, as it whispers to the piers of

the Pons Aelius, even more full of meaning than my well-beloved Charles

eddying round the piles of West Boston Bridge.

Then, again, we Yankees are a kind of gypsies,--a mechanical and

migratory race. A poet wants a home. He can dispense with an apple-parer

and a reaping-machine. I feel this more for others than for myself, for

the home of my birth and childhood has been as yet exempted from the

change which has invaded almost everything around it.

----Pardon me a short digression. To what small things our memory and

our affections attach themselves! I remember, when I was a child, that

one of the girls planted some Star-of-Bethlehem bulbs in the southwest

corner of our front-yard. Well, I left the paternal roof and wandered in

other lands, and learned to think in the words of strange people.

But after many years, as I looked on the little front-yard again, it

occurred to me that there used to be some Stars-of-Bethlehem in the

southwest corner. The grass was tall there, and the blade of the plant

is very much like grass, only thicker and glossier. Even as Tully

parted the briers and brambles when he hunted for the sphere-containing

cylinder that marked the grave of Archimedes, so did I comb the grass

with my fingers for my monumental memorial-flower. Nature had stored my

keepsake tenderly in her bosom; the glossy, faintly streaked blades were

there; they are there still, though they never flower, darkened as they

are by the shade of the elms and rooted in the matted turf.

Our hearts are held down to our homes by innumerable fibres, trivial

as that I have just recalled; but Gulliver was fixed to the soil, you

remember, by pinning his head a hair at a time. Even a stone with a

white band crossing it, belonging to the pavement of the back-yard,

insisted on becoming one of the talismans of memory. This

intussusception of the ideas of inanimate objects, and their faithful

storing away among the sentiments, are curiously prefigured in the

material structure of the thinking centre itself. In the very core of

the brain, in the part where Des Cartes placed the soul, is a small

mineral deposit, consisting, as I have seen it in the microscope, of

grape-like masses of crystalline matter.

But the plants that come up every year in the same place, like the

Stars-of-Bethlehem, of all the lesser objects, give me the liveliest

home-feeling. Close to our ancient gambrel-roofed house is the dwelling

of pleasant old Neighbor Walrus. I remember the sweet honeysuckle that I

saw in flower against the wall of his house a few months ago, as long

as I remember the sky and stars. That clump of peonies, butting their

purple heads through the soil every spring in just the same circle, and

by-and-by unpacking their hard balls of buds in flowers big enough

to make a double handful of leaves, has come up in just that place,

Neighbor Walrus tells me, for more years than I have passed on this

planet. It is a rare privilege in our nomadic state to find the home of

one's childhood and its immediate neighborhood thus unchanged. Many born

poets, I am afraid, flower poorly in song, or not at all, because they

have been too often transplanted.

Then a good many of our race are very hard and unimaginative;--their

voices have nothing caressing; their movements are as of machinery,

without elasticity or oil. I wish it were fair to print a letter a young

girl, about the age of our Iris, wrote a short time since. "I am *** ***

***," she says, and tells her whole name outright. Ah!--said I, when I

read that first frank declaration,--you are one of the right sort!--She

was. A winged creature among close-clipped barn-door fowl. How tired the

poor girl was of the dull life about her,--the old woman's "skeleton hand"

at the window opposite, drawing her curtains,--"Ma'am----_shooing_ away

the hens,"--the vacuous country eyes staring at her as only country eyes

can stare,--a routine of mechanical duties,--and the soul's half-

articulated cry for sympathy, without an answer! Yes,--pray for her, and

for all such! Faith often cures their longings; but it is so hard to give

a soul to heaven that has not first been trained in the fullest and

sweetest human affections! Too often they fling their hearts away on

unworthy objects. Too often they pine in a secret discontent, which

spreads its leaden cloud over the morning of their youth. The immeasurable

distance between one of these delicate natures and the average youths

among whom is like to be her only choice makes one's heart ache. How many

women are born too finely organized in sense and soul for the highway they

must walk with feet unshod! Life is adjusted to the wants of the stronger

sex. There are plenty of torrents to be crossed in its journey; but their

stepping-stones are measured by the stride of man, and not of woman.

Women are more subject than men to _atrophy of the heart_. So says the

great medical authority, Laennec. Incurable cases of this kind used

to find their hospitals in convents. We have the disease in New

England,--but not the hospitals. I don't like to think of it. I will not

believe our young Iris is going to die out in this way. Providence will

find her some great happiness, or affliction, or duty,--and which would

be best for her, I cannot tell. One thing is sure: the interest she

takes in her little neighbor is getting to be more engrossing than ever.

Something is the matter with him, and she knows it, and I think worries

herself about it. I wonder sometimes how so fragile and distorted a

frame has kept the fiery spirit that inhabits it so long its tenant. He

accounts for it in his own way.

The air of the Old World is good for nothing,--he said, one day.--Used

up, Sir,--breathed over and over again. You must come to this side, Sir,

for an atmosphere fit to breathe nowadays. Did not old Josselyn say that

a breath of New England's air is better than a sup of Old England's ale?

I ought to have died when I was a boy, Sir; but I couldn't die in this

Boston air,--and I think I shall have to go to New York one of these

days, when it's time for me to drop this bundle,--or to New Orleans,

where they have the yellow fever,--or to Philadelphia, where they have

so many doctors.

This was some time ago; but of late he has seemed, as I have before

said, to be ailing. An experienced eye, such as I think I may call mine,

can tell commonly whether a man is going to die, or not, long before he

or his friends are alarmed about him. I don't like it.

Iris has told me that the Scottish gift of second-sight runs in her

family, and that she is afraid she has it. Those who are so endowed

look upon a well man and see a shroud wrapt about him. According to the

degree to which it covers him, his death will be near or more remote. It

is an awful faculty; but science gives one too much like it. Luckily

for our friends, most of us who have the scientific second-sight school

ourselves not to betray our knowledge by word or look.

Day by day, as the Little Gentleman comes to the table, it seems to me

that the shadow of some approaching change falls darker and darker over

his countenance. Nature is struggling with something, and I am afraid

she is under in the wrestling-match. You do not care much, perhaps, for

my particular conjectures as to the nature of his difficulty. I should

say, however, from the sudden flushes to which he is subject, and

certain other marks which, as an expert, I know how to interpret, that

his heart was in trouble; but then he presses his hand to the _right_

side, as if there were the centre of his uneasiness.

When I say difficulty about the heart, I do not mean any of those

sentimental maladies of that organ which figure more largely in romances

than on the returns which furnish our Bills of Mortality. I mean some

actual change in the organ itself, which may carry him off by slow and

painful degrees, or strike him down with one huge pang and only time

for a single shriek,--as when the shot broke through the brave Captain

Nolan's breast, at the head of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, and with

a loud cry he dropped dead from his saddle.

I thought it only fair to say something of what I apprehended to

some who were entitled to be warned. The landlady's face fell when I

mentioned my fears.

Poor man!--she said.--And will leave the best room empty! Hasn't he got

any sisters or nieces or anybody to see to his things, if he should be

took away? Such a sight of cases, full of everything! Never thought

of his failin' so suddin. A complication of diseases, she expected.

Liver-complaint one of 'em?

After this first involuntary expression of the too natural selfish

feelings, (which we must not judge very harshly, unless we happen to

be poor widows ourselves, with children to keep filled, covered, and

taught,--rents high,--beef eighteen to twenty cents per pound,)--after

this first squeak of selfishness, followed by a brief movement of

curiosity, so invariable in mature females, as to the nature of the

complaint which threatens the life of a friend or any person who may

happen to be mentioned as ill,--the worthy soul's better feelings

struggled up to the surface, and she grieved for the doomed invalid,

until a tear or two came forth and found their way down a channel worn

for them since the early days of her widowhood.

Oh, this dreadful, dreadful business of being the prophet of evil! Of

all the trials which those who take charge of others' health and lives

have to undergo, this is the most painful. It is all so plain to the

practised eye!--and there is the poor wife, the doting mother, who has

never suspected anything, or at least has clung always to the hope which

you are just going to wrench away from her!--I must tell Iris that I

think her poor friend is in a precarious state. She seems nearer to him

than anybody.

I did tell her. Whatever emotion it produced, she kept a still face,

except, perhaps, a little trembling of the lip.--Could I be certain that

there was any mortal complaint?--Why, no, I could not be certain; but it

looked alarming to me.--He shall have some of my life,--she said.

I suppose this to have been a fancy of hers, of a kind of magnetic power

she could give out;--at any rate, I cannot help thinking she _wills_ her

strength away from herself, for she has lost vigor and color from that

day. I have sometimes thought he gained the force she lost; but this may

have been a whim, very probably.

One day she came suddenly to me, looking deadly pale. Her lips moved,

as if she were speaking; but I could not hear a word. Her hair looked

strangely, as if lifting itself, and her eyes were full of wild light.

She sunk upon a chair, and I thought was falling into one of her

trances. Something had frozen her blood with fear; I thought, from

what she said, half audibly, that she believed she had seen a shrouded

figure.

That night, at about eleven o'clock, I was sent for to see the Little

Gentleman, who was taken suddenly ill. Bridget, the servant, went before

me with a light. The doors were both unfastened, and I found myself

ushered, without hindrance, into the dim light of the mysterious

apartment I had so longed to enter.

I found these stanzas in the young girl's book, among many others. I

give them as characterizing the tone of her sadder moments.

UNDER THE VIOLETS.

Her hands are cold; her face is white;

No more her pulses come and go;

Her eyes are shut to life and light;--

Fold the white vesture, snow on snow.

And lay her where the violets blow.

But not beneath a graven stone,

To plead for tears with alien eyes:

A slender cross of wood alone

Shall say, that here a maiden lies

In peace beneath the peaceful skies.

And gray old trees of hugest limb

Shall wheel their circling shadows round

To make the scorching sunlight dim

That drinks the greenness from the ground,

And drop their dead leaves on her mound.

When o'er their boughs the squirrels run,

And through their leaves the robins call,

And, ripening in the autumn sun,

The acorns and the chestnuts fall,

Doubt not that she will heed them all.

For her the morning choir shall sing

Its matins from the branches high,

And every minstrel-voice of spring,

That trills beneath the April sky,

Shall greet her with its earliest cry.

When, turning round their dial-track,

Eastward the lengthening shadows pass,

Her little mourners, clad in black,

The crickets, sliding through the grass,

Shall pipe for her an evening mass.

At last the rootlets of the trees

Shall find the prison where she lies,

And bear the buried dust they seize

In leaves and blossoms to the skies.

So may the soul that warmed it rise!

If any, born of kindlier blood,

Should ask, What maiden lies below?

Say only this: A tender bud,

That tried to blossom in the snow,

Lies withered where the violets blow.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_The Collier-folio Shakespeare._ Is it an imposture?

When the Lady Bab of "High Life below Stairs," having laid the

forgetfulness which causes her tardy appearance at the elegant

entertainment given in Mr. Lovel's servant's hall to the fascination of

her favorite author, "Shikspur," is asked, "Who wrote Shikspur?" she

replies, with that promptness which shows complete mastery of a subject,

"Ben Jonson." In later days, another lady has, with greater prolixity,

it is true, but hardly less confidence, and, it must be confessed, equal

reason, answered to the same query, "Francis Bacon." This question must,

then, be regarded as still open to discussion; but, assuming, for the

nonce, that the Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies in a certain folio

volume published at London in 1623 were written by William Shakespeare,

gentleman, sometime actor at the Black Friars Theatre and a principal

proprietor therein, we apply ourselves to the brief examination of

another, somewhat related to it, and at least as complicated:--the

question as to the authorship of certain marginal manuscript readings in

a copy of a later folio edition of the same works,--that published in

1632,--which readings Mr. Payne Collier discovered and brought before

the world with all the weight of his reputation and influence in favor

of their authority and value. We write for those who are somewhat

interested in this subject, and must assume that our readers are not

entirely without information upon it; but it is desirable, if not

necessary, that in the beginning we should call to mind the following

dates and circumstances.

According to Mr. Collier's account, this folio was bought by him "in the

spring of 1849," of Mr. Thomas Rodd, an antiquarian bookseller, well

known in London. For a year and more he hardly looked at it; but his

attention being directed particularly to it as he was packing it away to

be taken into the country, he found that "there was hardly a page which

did not represent, _in a handwriting of the time_, some emendations in

the pointing or in the text." He then subjected it to "a most careful

scrutiny," and became convinced of the great value of its manuscript

readings. He talked about it to his literary friends, and took it to a

meeting of the Council of the Shakespeare Society, and to two or three

meetings of the Society of Antiquaries, as we know by the reports of

those meetings in the London "Times." He wrote letters in the summer

of 1852 to the London "Athenaeum," setting forth the character of the

volume, and giving some of its most noteworthy changes of Shakespeare's

text. He published, at last, in 1853, his volume of "Notes and

Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare's Plays from _Early Manuscript

Corrections_ in a Copy of the Folio of 1632," etc.; and in 1854,

he published an edition of Shakespeare, in the text of which these

manuscript readings were embodied. In 1856, he added to a Shakespearian

volume a "List of all the Emendations" in his folio, remarking in the

preface to the book, (p. lxxix.,) that he had "_often gone over_ the

thousands of marks of all kinds in its [the folio's] margins," and

that, for the purpose of making the list in question, he had "recently

_reëxamined every line and letter_ of the folio." He had previously

printed for private circulation a few fac-simile copies of eighteen

corrected passages in the folio; and with the volume last mentioned, his

publications, and, we believe, all others,--of which more anon,--upon

the subject, ceased. Mr. Collier, it should be borne in mind, has been

for forty years a professed student of Elizabethan literature, and is a

man of hitherto unquestioned honor.

But he is now upon trial. Certain officers of the British Museum, among

them men of high professional reputation and personal standing, men who

occupy, and who confess that they occupy, "a judicial position" on such

questions, charge, after careful investigation, that a great fraud has

been committed in this folio; that its marginal readings, instead of

being as old as they seem, and as Mr. Collier has asserted them to be,

are modern fabrications, and that, consequently, Mr. Collier is either

an impostor or a dupe. The charge is not a new one. The weight that

it carries, and the impression that it has produced, are owing to the

position of the men who make it, and the evidence which they have

published in its support. It was made, however, six years ago,--but

vaguely. For, although there was on every side a disposition to welcome

with all heartiness the manuscript readings, the antiquity and value of

which Mr. Collier had so positively announced, the poetic sense of the

world recoiled from the mass of them when they appeared; and although a

few, a very few, of the readings peculiar to this folio were accepted

by Shakespearian editors and commentators, they were opposed as a whole

with determination, and in one or two instances with unbecoming heat, by

Mr. Collier's fellow-laborers. Prominent among these was Mr. Singer, a

man of moderate capacity and undisciplined powers, but extensive reading

in early English literature,--known, too, for the bitterness with

which he habitually wrote. In opposing Mr. Collier's folio, he did not

hesitate to insinuate broadly that he believed it to be an imposition.

But as he based his suspicion solely upon the very numerous coincidences

between the marginal readings in that volume and the conjectural

readings of the editors and critics of the last century,--coincidences

which, however, affect the character of a very large proportion of

the noticeable changes in the folio,--he failed to accomplish his

conservative purpose at the expense of Mr. Collier's reputation. But

although this insinuation of the spurious character Of the writing in

Mr. Collier's folio fell to the ground, such antiquity as would give

its readings the consequence due to their having been introduced by a

contemporary of Shakespeare was shown not to pertain to them, in the

course of two articles which appeared in "Putnam's Magazine" for October

and November, 1853, and which, it may be as well to say, were from the

same hand that writes this reference to them. They effected this by

exhibiting the corrector's ignorance of the meaning of words in common

use twenty years after Shakespeare's death, and his introduction of

stage directions which could not have been complied with until half a

century after that event, and which were at variance with the very text

itself to which they were applied. That the argument which they embodied

was conclusive has been admitted by all the English editors and

commentators, including even Mr. Collier himself. But this conclusion

only brought down the date of these marginal readings to a period

somewhat later than the Restoration of the British Monarchy, and it

did not put in question the good faith either of their author or their

discoverer.

The attack now made upon them is directed solely against their

genuineness, and is based altogether upon external, or, we may properly

say, physical evidence. The accusers are Mr. N.E.S.A. Hamilton, an

assistant in the Manuscript Department of the British Museum, (whose

chief, Sir Frederick Madden, the Keeper of that Department, is

understood to support him,) and Mr. Nevil Story Maskelyne, Keeper of

the Mineraloglcal Department. Of the alphabetical Mr. Hamilton we know

something. He is one of the ablest palaeographists of his years in

England, and the possessor of a pair of eyes of such microscopic

powers that he can decipher manuscript which to ordinary sight seems

obliterated by time, or even fire: a man of worth, too, as we hear, and

one who has borne himself in this affair with mingled confidence and

modesty. He says, that, of the corrections originally made on the

margins of this folio, the number which have been wholly or partially

"obliterated.....with a penknife or the employment of chymical agency"

"are almost as numerous as those suffered to remain"; that, of the

corrections allowed to stand, many have been "tampered with, touched

up, or painted over, a modern character being dexterously altered, by

touches of the pen, into a more antique form"; and that the margins are

"covered with an infinite number of faint pencil-marks, in obedience to

which the supposed old corrector has made his emendations"; and that

these pencilled memorandums "have not even the pretence of antiquity in

character or spelling, but are written in a bold hand of the present

century"; and with regard to the incongruities of spelling, he

especially mentions the instances, "'body,' 'offals,' in pencil,

'bodie,' 'offals,' in ink."

Mr. Maskelyne, having examined many of the margins of the folio with the

microscope, confirms entirely the evidence of Mr. Hamilton's eyes. He

found the pencilled memorandums "plentifully distributed down the

margins," and "the particles of plumbago in the hollows of the paper" in

every instance that he has examined. He found, also, that what seems

to be ink is not ink, but "a paint, removable, with the exception of a

slight stain, by mere water,"--which "paint, formed perhaps of sepia,"

would enable an impostor, it need hardly be observed, to simulate ink

faded by time; and in several cases in which "the ink word, in a quaint,

antique-looking writing, and the pencil word, in a modern-looking hand,

occupy the same ground, and are one over the other," the pencil-marks

being obscured or obliterated, Mr. Maskelyne found, on washing off the

ink, that at first "the pencil-marks became much plainer than before,

and even when as much of the ink-stain as possible was removed, the

pencil still runs through the ink line in unbroken, even continuity."

These points established, Mr. Maskelyne's conclusion, that in the

examples which he tested "the pencil underlies the ink, that is to say,

was antecedent to it in its date," is unavoidable. But does it follow

upon this conclusion that the manuscript changes in the readings of this

folio are of spurious and modern date,--made, for instance, within the

last fifty years, and with the intention of deceiving the world as to

their age? Perhaps; but, for reasons which we are about to give, we

venture to think, not certainly.

First, however, as to the very delicate and unpleasant position in which

Mr. Collier is placed by these discoveries. For, although the age of the

manuscript readings of his folio must be fixed by that of the pencilled

memorandums over which they are written, the question as to whether he

has not been uncandid or unwise enough to suppress an important part

of the truth in describing that volume is entirely independent of this

problem in paleography. For these numberless partially erased pencilled

memorandums, to which Mr. Collier has made no allusion whatever, must

have been written upon the margins of that folio either before Mr.

Collier bought it, in the spring of 1849, or since. If before, is it

possible that he could have subjected it to "a most careful scrutiny" in

1850, that he could have studied it for three years for the purpose of

preparing his "Notes and Emendations,"--an octavo volume of five hundred

pages,--which appeared in 1853, and that after having, for various

purposes, "often gone over the thousands of marks _of all kinds_" on

its margins, he could again, after the lapse of three years more, have

"reëxamined every line and letter" on those margins for the purpose of

making the list of the readings which he published in 1856, without

having discovered, in the course of all this close scrutiny, extending

through so many years, the pencil-marks which at once became visible

when the volume went to the British Museum? And if these pencil-marks,

that underlie the simulated ink corrections, were made after the spring

of 1849----! Here is a dilemma, either horn of which has a very ugly

look.

But out of this trial we hope, nay, we confidently believe, that Mr.

Collier will come unscathed. We hope it for the sake of the profession

of literature,--for the sake of one who has been honorably known among

men of letters for almost half a century, and who has borne into the

vale of years a hitherto untarnished name. We believe it, because a

contrary supposition would be entirely at variance with Mr. Collier's

conduct about this folio ever since his first announcement of its

discovery. It is true, that, in the course of the controversy which the

publication of his "Notes and Emendations" inevitably brought upon him,

Mr. Collier has not always shown that delicacy and consideration for

candid opponents which he could have afforded to show, and which would

have sat so gracefully upon him. It is true, that, in noticing, and,

in his enthusiastic partiality, much exaggerating, the admissions of a

volume in which, as he must have seen, he was first defended against Mr.

Singer's repeated insinuations of forgery, [Footnote: See _Shakespeare's

Scholar_, p. 71.] and in availing himself again and again of those not

always discreet admissions, he was uncourteous enough not to mention the

name even of the work in question, not to say that of its author. It

is true, that, on the appearance of an edition of Shakespeare's Works

edited by the author of that volume, he hastened to accuse him publicly

of misrepresentation, unwarily admitting at the same time that he did so

upon a mere glance at the book, and before he had even "cut it open,"

and, in his haste, causing his accusation to recoil upon his own

head.[1] [Footnote 1: See the London _Athenaeum_, of Nov. 20th, 1858,

and Jan. 8th, 1859.] It is true, that, when, in his recent edition of

Shakespeare's Works,[2] [Footnote 2: London, 1858, Vol. II, p. 181.]

he abandoned one of the readings of his folio, ("she discourses, she

_craves_," Merry Wives, I. 3,) which the same opponent had been the

first to show not only untenable, but fatal to the authority and

antiquity of the readings of that volume, he requited that opponent's

defence of him by attributing his defeat on this point to an English

editor, who only quoted the passage in question from "Shakespeare's

Scholar," and with special mention of its authorship and its

importance,[3] [Footnote 3: Rimbault's Edition of Overbury's Works,

London, 1856, p. 50.]

Under the present circumstances, it may be well to let the reader see

for himself exactly what Mr. Collier's course was in this little affair.

Dr. Rimbault's note, published in 1856, is as follows:--

(-----"_her wrie little finger bewraies carving_, etc.) The passage in

the text sufficiently shows that _carving_ was a sign of intelligence

made with the little finger, as the glass was raised to the mouth. See

the prefatory letter to Mr. R. G. White's _Shakespeare's Scholar_,

8vo., New York, 1854, p. xxxiii. Mr. Hunter (_New Illustrations of

Shakespeare_, i. 215), Mr. Dyce (_A Few Notes on Shakespeare_, 1853, p.

18), and Mr. Mitford (_Cursory Notes on Beaumont and Fletcher_, etc.,

1856, p. 40), were unacquainted with this valuable illustration of a

Shakespearian word given by Overbury."

And yet Mr. Collier, with this note before him, as it will be seen,

could write as follows:--

"The Rev. Mr. Dyce ('Few Notes,' p. 18) and the Rev. Mr. Hunter ('New

Illustrations,' i. p. 215) both adduce quotations [as to 'carves'], but

they have missed the most apposite, _pointed out by Dr. Rimbault_ in his

edition of Sir Thomas Overbury's Works, 8vo., 1856, p. 50."

The reader cannot estimate more lightly than we do the credit which Mr.

Collier thought of consequence enough for him to do an unhandsome, not

to say dishonorable, act to deprive an opponent of it. By referring to

White's edition of Shakespeare, Vol. II. p. lx., another instance may be

found of the same discourtesy on the part of Mr. Collier to Chalmers,

with regard to a matter yet more trifling.] and that he thereby

subjected himself self to open rebuke in his own country;[4] [Footnote

4: See Dyce's _Strictures_ etc., 1859, p. 28.] and he found, we suppose,

his justification for this course in his seniority and his opponent's

place of nativity. It is true, also, that, in the recently published

edition of Shakespeare's Works, just alluded to, he has vengefully

revived, in its worst form, the animosity which disgraced the pages of

the editors and commentators of the last century, and has attacked the

most eminent of critical English scholars, the Rev. Alexander Dyce,

throughout that edition, bitterly and incessantly,[5] [Footnote 5: See

the edition _passim_.] and also unfairly and upon forced occasion,

as Mr. Dyce has conclusively shown, in a volume,[6] [Footnote 6:

_Strictures on Collier's Shakespeare_, London, 1859.] the appearance of

which from the pen of a man of Mr. Dyce's character and position we yet

cannot but deplore, great as the provocation was. Mr. Collier has done

these things, which would not be tolerated among such men of letters in

America as are also gentlemen; and he has also made statements about his

folio which have been proved to be so inaccurate that it is clear that

his memory is not to be trusted on that matter; but, in spite of all

this, we neither will nor can believe, that, in his testimony as to the

manner in which he became possessed of this celebrated volume, or in his

description of its peculiarities, he has, with the intention to deceive,

either suppressed the true or asserted the false. Since his first

announcement of the discovery of the manuscript readings in that volume,

he has had no concealments about it; he has shown it freely to the very

persons who would be most likely to detect a literary imposition; he has

told all, and more than all, that he could have been expected to tell

about it; he has left no stone unturned in his endeavor to trace its

history; and, after finally putting all of its manuscript readings upon

record, and confessing frankly that he had been in error with regard

to some of them, and that there are many of them which are

"innovations,--changes which had crept in from time to time, [upon

the stage,] to make sense out of difficult passages, but which do not

represent the authentic text of Shakespeare," he gives the volume away

to the Duke of Devonshire, the owner of one of the most celebrated

dramatic libraries in England, on whose shelves he knew it would be

almost as subject to close examination as on those of the British

Museum. This is not the conduct of a literary forger in regard to the

enduring witness of his forgery; and we may be sure, that, unless

practice has made him reckless, and he is the very Merdle of Elizabethan

scholarship, Mr. Collier has been in this matter as loyal as he has

seemed to be.

But is the charge of forgery made out? It would seem that it is,--that

the discovery of pencilled memorandums in a modern hand and in modern

spelling, over which the readings in ink are written in an antique hand

and antique spelling, leaves no doubt upon the question. Yet, assuming

all that is charged at the British Museum to be established, we venture

to withhold our assent from the conclusion of forgery against all the

readings in question until the evidence in the case has been more

thoroughly sifted. Our reasons we must state briefly; and they can as

well be appreciated from a brief as a detailed statement.

And first, as to the "modern-looking hand" of the pencil-marks over

which the "antique-looking writing" in ink is found. All the writing

of even the early part of the seventeenth century was not done in the

quaint, and, to us, strange and elaborate-seeming hand, sometimes called

old chancery hand, specimens of which may be seen on the fac-simile

published with Mr. Collier's "Notes and Emendations." This

modern-looking hand, in which the pencil-marks appear, we venture to say

may be that of a writer who lived long before the date (1632) of the

volume on which his traces have been discovered, In support of this

supposition, we might produce hundreds of instances within our reach.

We must confine ourselves to one; and that, though somewhat more modern

than others that we could produce, shall be from a volume easily

accessible and well known to all Shakespearian scholars, and which

naturally came before us in connection with our present subject. In

Malone's "Inquiry, etc., into the Ireland Shakespeare Forgeries"

(London: 8vo. 1796) are two fac-similes (Plate III.) of parts of

letters from Shakespeare's friend, the Earl of Southampton. From the

superscription to one of them, written in 1621 to the Lord-Keeper

Williams, and preserved among the Harleian MSS., we give in fac-simile

the following words:--

[Illustration: script text which reads "the right honorable"]

We select these words only because they happen to contain six of

the letters most characteristic of the antique chancery hand of the

seventeenth century,--_t_, _h_, _e_, _r_, _g_, and _b_,--within a space

suited to the columns for which we write. The words themselves need none

of ours added to them to set forth their modern look. They might have

been written yesterday. The further to enforce our point, we add a

fac-simile of some writing of forty years' later date. It is in a copy

in our possession of Simon Lennard's translation of Charron "De la

Sagesse," which (the translation) was not published until 1658. On an

original fly-leaf, and evidently after the book had been subjected to

some years' hard usage, an early possessor of the volume has entered his

week's washing-account, in a hand of which the words following the date

afford a fair specimen.

[Illustration: script text which is illegible]

Probably not many readers of the "Atlantic" can decipher the whole of

this, although it is very neat, clear, and elegant. It is "Cloathes: 1.

shirt"; [Footnote: This memorandum is characteristic. In full it is as

follows:--

"Sept: the 9th: Cloathes: 1. Shirt: 3: bands: 8 handkecheirfs: 4

neckcloaths: 7: pa: cuffs: 1. bootes tops: 1 cap: an old towell: a

Napkin."

The writer was evidently young, poor, and a dandy. His youth is shown

by his wearing neckcloths, which were a new and youthful fashion at

the date of this memorandum; his dandyism, by the number of his

handkerchiefs, (a luxury in those days,) and of his cuffs, which answer

to our wristbands, and by his lace boot-tops; his poverty, by his

wearing three bands, four neckcloths, and seven pair of cuffs (probably

one a day for the week) to one shirt. His having, in respect to the last

garment, was probably like Poins'] and if the reader [Footnote: "one

for superfluity and one other for use." The cap was probably that which

he wore when he laid aside his wig. His hose, of colored silk, probably

made only "semi-occasional" visits to the laundress.]

will examine the fac-simile in Mr. Collier's "Notes and Emendations," he

will find that it is even older in appearance than the marginal readings

there given. Clearly, then, if the pencil memorandums on the margins of

the Collier folio had been made by a person who wrote as the Earl of

Southampton (born in 1573) did in the first quarter of the seventeenth

century, and the ink readings were made to conform to them by a person

who wrote as the profaner of Charron's "Wisdome" with his washing-bill

did in the third quarter of that century, the pencilled guide would

be "modern-looking," and the reading in ink written over it

"antique-looking," although the former might have been half a century

older than the latter. And that both pencil and ink readings are by the

same hand remains to be proved. The presumption in our own mind is, that

they are not. The margins of this folio, on the evidence of all who have

examined it, Mr. Collier included, are full of proofs that there were

many doubts and conjectures in the mind of its corrector, (shown by

erasures, reinsertions, and change of manuscript readings,) before the

work on it was abandoned; and is it not quite probable that some person

who was or had been connected with the theatre made memoranda of such

changes in the text as his memory suggested to him, and that these were

passed upon (it is in evidence that some of them wore rejected) by the

person who had undertaken to prepare the text for a new edition, or

the performance of the plays by a new company? That even all the ink

readings are by the same hand has not yet been established; and that

the writing in pencil and that in ink are by one person is yet more

uncertain. It is, in our opinion, more than doubtful. To assume it is to

beg the question.

Next, as to the suspicious circumstance, that the pencil spelling is in

some places modern, while that of the ink reading is old; as "body" in

pencil, and "bodie" in ink. We wonder that such a fact was noticed by

a man of Mr. Hamilton's knowledge; for it can be easily set aside; or

rather, it need not be regarded, because there is nothing suspicious

about it. For the spelling of the seventeenth century, like its syntax

and its pronunciation, was irregular; and the fatal error of those

who attempt to imitate it is that they always use double consonants,

superfluous final e-s, and _ie_ for _y_. And even supposing that these

pencilled words and the words in ink were written by the same person,

the fact that the word, when written in pencil, is spelled with a _y_ or

a single _l_, when written in ink with _ie_ or double _l_, is of not the

least consequence. This will be made clear to those who do not already

know it, by the following instances (the like of which might be produced

by tens of thousands,) from "Euphues his England," ed. 1597, which

happened to lie on our table when we read Mr. Hamilton's first letter.

"For that _Honnie_ taken excessiuelie, cloyeth the stomacke though it be

_Honny_." (Sig. Aa3.) In this instance, "honey," spelled first in the

old way, as to the last vowel sound, on its repetition, in the same

sentence, is spelled in what is called the new way; but in the example

which follows, the word "folly," which appears first as a catchword

at the bottom of the page in modern spelling, is found in the ancient

spelling on the turning of the leaf: "Things that are commonlie knowne

it were foll_y_ foll_ie_ to repeate." (Sig. Aa.) English scholars may

smile at the citation of passages to establish such a point; but we are

writing for those who are too wise to read old books, and who have their

English study done, as the Turk would have had his dancing, by others

for them. And besides, Mr. Hamilton has shown that even an English

professor of antiquarian literature can forget the point, or at least

not see its bearing on the subject in hand.

The modern-looking hand and the modern spelling of the pencilled

memorandums do not, then, compel the conclusion that there has been

forgery, even although they underlie the antique-looking hand and the

old spelling; but let us see if there is not other evidence to be taken

into consideration. We have before us the privately-printed fac-similes

of the eighteen passages in Mr. Collier's folio, above referred to.

Perhaps they may help us to judge if the corrector's work is like that

of a forger. From the first we take these four lines [_Tempest_, Act I,

Sc. 2];--"Lend thy hand

And plueke my Magick garment from me: So [Sidenote: _Lay it downe._]

Lye there my Art: wipe thou thine eyes, have comfort,

The direfull spectacle," etc.

In those lines, the corrector, beside supplying the stage direction _Lay

it downe_, has added a comma after "hand," substituted a period for the

colon after "Art," and a capital for a small _w_ in "wipe." Would

a forger do such minute and needless work as this, and do it so

carelessly, too, as this one did? for, to make the colon a period, he

merely strikes his pen lightly through the upper point; and, to make the

small _w_ a capital, he merely lengthens its lines upward.

In the passage from "The Taming of the Shrew," we see, what Mr. Collier

himself notices in his "Notes and Emendations," that the prefix to the

tinker's speeches, which in the folios is invariably _Beg._ [Beggar],

is changed to _Sly;_ and this is done in every instance. We have not

counted _Sly's_ speeches; but they are numerous enough to force the

unanswerable question, With what possible purpose could this task

have been undertaken by a forger? for the change adds nothing to our

knowledge of the interlocutors, and produces no variation in the

reading.

In a passage given from "The Winter's Tale," Act IV. Sc. 3, we find

these lines:--

"_Pol._ This is the pettiest Low-borne Lasse, that ever,

Ran on the greene-sord: Nothing she do's _or seemes,_"--

where "seems" is changed to "says," by striking out all but the first

and last letters, and writing _ay_ in the margin. In a passage given

from "Troilus and Cressida," Act V. Sc. 2, we have this line:--

"Good traders in the flesh, set this in your painted cloathes,"--

where the _a_ in the last word is struck out. In a speech of the Moor's,

given from "Othello," Act IV. Sc. 1, we notice this sentence:--

"It is not words that shakes me thus, (pish)."

where the final _s_ is struck from "shakes." This is strange work for a

forger of antique readings, a man who is supposed to be detected at his

work by writing "bodie" in ink, when his pencil memorandum was "body."

For, in these instances, he has _modernized the text_, and, except in

the first, that is _all_ that he has done. If he had wished his text to

look old, he would have left the last _e_ in "seemes," and read "sayes";

he would not have been at the trouble of striking out the _a_ in

"painted cloathes;" [Footnote: See As You Like It, in the folio of 1623,

p. 196, col. 2, "I answer you right painted _cloath_," and Henry VIII.,

_Idem_, p. 224, col. 2, "They that beare the _Cloath_ of Honour ouer

her."] and he would have left the _s_ in "shakes," which superfluity is

one of the most marked and best-known characteristics of English books

published before the middle of the seventeenth century. Instances of

this kind, in which a forger would have defeated his own purpose to gain

nothing, must be countless upon the nine hundred and odd pages of the

Collier folio, of which the eighteen fac-similes, from which we have

quoted, do not give us as much as would fill a single page of the

original.

Again, we find the author of these manuscript readings scrupulously

leaving a mark of the antiquity of his work, which we must regard as a

mark of its genuineness. (For a man can blow hot and blow cold, though

satyrs have not sense enough to see the right and the reason of it.) In

a passage given from "Timon of Athens," Act IV. Sc. 2, the first line is

"Who _wou_ld be so mock'd with glory, or to live."

Here, by a misprint both in the first and second folio, there is a

syllable too much for rhythm; and the corrector properly abbreviates

"Who would" into one syllable; but he does it, not by striking out all

of "would" but the _d_, as a forger of modern days inevitably would

have done: he scrupulously leaves the _l_, which was pronounced in

Shakespeare's time, and for many years after; though this, we believe,

was never remarked until the appearance of a work very recently

published in this country!

To revert to some of the aimless work of this supposed forger. There are

many passages in the Collier folio, some of a few lines, others of many,

which are entirely stricken out; and of these there is not one that we

have noticed which it could possibly have been intended to represent as

spurious. What was a forger to gain by this? It could but serve to throw

discredit on his work. And again, in these erased passages, and on

erasures for new readings, the verbal and literal changes are still

made, and made, too, in points of not the slightest moment as to the

text, and which, in fact, produce no change in it, Take this instance,

in a passage given from "Hamlet," Act V. Sc. 2:--

"_Hora_. Now cracks a Noble heart:

Good night sweet Prience," etc.

Here "sweet Prience" is struck out, and "be blest" substituted in the

margin; but, previously to this change, the first e had been struck out

in "Prience,"--a change of no more consequence than if the capital N

in "Noble" had been changed to a small one. What, too, did the forger

propose to gain by putting, at great pains to himself, commas, in

passages like this, from "Timon of Athens," Act IV. Sc. 2:--

"To have his pompe, and all state comprehends,

But onely painted like his varnisht Friends"?

where he inserts a comma after "painted," properly enough, but

without at all changing the sense of the passage, or facilitating our

comprehension of it in the slightest degree.

But enough, although we leave much unsaid. For we think that our readers

can hardly fail to conclude with us, that proof far stronger and more

complete than the discovery of modern-looking pencil-marks under

antique-looking words in ink is required to prove Mr. Collier's folio a

fabrication of the present day. This external physical evidence is, to

say the least, far from conclusive, even on its own grounds; and the

internal moral evidence, ever the higher and the weightier in such

questions, is all against it. The forgery may be proved hereafter; but

it has not been proved yet. The character of the ink is not clearly

established in all the readings which have thus far been submitted to

experiment, as Mr. Maskelyne admits; and that question is still to be

determined. We await with interest the appearance of a pamphlet upon the

subject, which is now in preparation at the British Museum. Meantime,

upon this brief examination of the subject in a light as new to us as

to our readers, we venture to repeat the opinion which we have before

expressed, that many, if not all, of the corrections in this folio were

made in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. The dropping of

superfluous e-s, (as in "sayes,") and a-s, (as in "cloath,") and s-s,

(as in "shakes,") points to as late a date as that; and the retention

of the _l_ in the abbreviation of "would" indicates a period before the

reign of William and Mary. We conjecture, that, possibly, some of the

readings are spurious, and were added by a person who found the volume

with many ancient corrections, and seized the opportunity to obtain the

authority of age and the support of those corrections for others of

later date. This, however, is but a conjecture, and upon a point of

little consequence. Indeed, the chief importance of this investigation

at the British Museum, to all the world but Mr. Collier, is, that,

whether the pencil-marks, which the corrector chose in some cases to

follow, in others to disregard, prove to be ancient or modern, the

corrections are now deprived of all pretence to authority, and thrown

upon their own merits; which is just the position in which all candid

people desire to see them.

_The Exploits and Triumphs in Europe of Paul Morphy, the Chess

Champion_; including an Historical Account of Clubs, Biographical

Sketches of Famous Players, and Various Information and Anecdote

relating to the Noble Game of Chess. By Paul Morphy's late Secretary.

New York: D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 203.

The American Chess Congress, at New York, in October, 1857, by

the wide-spread interest which it awakened, revealed what was not very

generally suspected,--that the game of chess is played and studied in

the New World more generally, and on the present occasion, we may say

more thoroughly and successfully, than in the Old. This interest in

chess the subsequent career of Paul Morphy, the prime hero of that grand

encounter, has greatly widened and deepened; and to all who had the

chess-fever before his advent, or who have caught it since, this book

will be welcome. It fulfils all the promises of its title-page, and

tells the story of Paul Morphy's modestly achieved victories at home and

abroad with authority and intimate knowledge. Chess-players, and all who

take even an incidental interest in Mr. Morphy's adventures abroad,

will be glad to find here a particular account of his engagements with

Harrwitz, Anderssen, and especially of the match which he did not play

with Mr. Stanton, and why he did not play it. The whole of the Stanton

affair is recounted with much minuteness of date and circumstance, and a

production of all the letters which passed upon the subject; and we must

say, that upon the facts, (about which there appears to be no room for

dispute,) aside from any color given to them by the writer's manner of

stating them, the case has a very bad aspect for the English champion.

How much better would Mr. Stanton now be standing before his brother

chess-players, and, so much attention has the affair attracted, before

the world, had he been fairly beaten, like Professor Anderssen! His

reputation as a chess-player would have suffered no diminution by such

a result of an encounter with Mr. Morphy; that would only have shown,

that, well as Stanton played, Morphy played better,--as to which the

world is as well satisfied now as then it would have been. And as to

his reputation as a man,--what need to say a word about it? This

chess-flurry has been fraught with good lessons by example. The

frankness, the entire candor, and simple manliness of Professor

Anderssen, who went from Breslau to Paris for the purpose of meeting

Mr. Morphy and there contending for the belt of the chess-ring, and who

played his games as if he and his opponent were two brothers, playing

for a chance half-hour's amusement, is charming, and has won him regard

the world over. Such generosity is truly noble, and it appears yet

nobler by contrast with the endeavors of Harrwitz to worry and tire his

opponent into defeat, and his final contrivance to avoid a confession

that he was beaten. Mr. Stanton's conduct is a warning that cannot be

entirely lost upon men not utterly depraved, who are tempted into

petty duplicity to serve petty ends; and in the midst of all, how Paul

Morphy's modesty, dignity of carriage, generosity, and entire honesty of

purpose shine out and make us proud to call him countryman!

Mr. Morphy, in the speeches which he has been compelled to make

since his return from Europe, has spoken lightly of chess, as a mere

amusement. It became him to do so; and yet chess would seem to have its

value as a discipline upon natures amenable to discipline. We--that is,

the present writer, not all the contributors to the "Atlantic"--sat by

the side of Mr. Morphy when he won from Mr. Paulsen the decisive game at

the Chess Tournament in New York,--that game in which all the others

of that encounter culminated. The game was evidently approaching its

termination. Mr. Paulsen, who generally thinks out to its last result

his every move, deliberated half an hour and moved, and then, with a

slight flush upon his face, sat quietly awaiting the consequences.

Morphy, pale, collected, yet with a look of restrained--though entirely

restrained--nervousness, looked steadily at the board for about one

minute, after which his hand opened very far back, so that the knuckles

were much the lowest part of it, poised over a piece for a second or

two, and then swooped quickly down and moved it somewhat decidedly,

which is his usual way of moving. He remained looking intently upon

the board, which Paulsen studied for a few minutes, equally absorbed.

Looking up at last, the latter quietly said to his opponent,--"I don't

see how I can prevent the mate." Paul Morphy smiled, waved his hand

deprecatingly, and the tournament was won. The checkmate was about five

moves off, if we remember rightly. Restraint of this kind seems to be

imposed by a thorough study of this noble game, and its moral discipline

is quite as valuable as the sharpening of the intellectual faculties

which it accompanies.

But even those who have a sincere admiration of Mr. Morphy, and have a

sufficient knowledge of chess to appreciate his absolute mastery of the

game, must be unpleasantly affected by the public and extravagant manner

in which he has been lionized since his return from Europe. It was well

that the chess-players of New York should present him with a chessboard

so splendid that he can never use it; well that the cleverest men in

Boston should have him to dine with them; but what need of such blatant

publicity? what justification for such interminable and such miserable

speeches as were made at him in Gotham? Why did not one compliment in

each town suffice? and why must he be persecuted with watches and run

down by crowds? Why, except because some people are allowed to pamper

their silly vanity by means of other people's silly curiosity? Good

sense and good taste revolted at these exhibitions; but good sense and

good taste are undemonstrative, while folly and vulgarity are bold and

carry the day. In all such matters, we of this country allow ourselves

to be misrepresented by a comparatively few impudent people, with their

own ends to serve. This book is somewhat open to like objections. Its

title is too pretentious; its style is braggart, and tainted with the

vulgarity of an English flash reporter; and yet this is tempered by a

certain constraint, as if the writer could not but occasionally think

how ill such a style was suited to his subject. The portrait

is wretched, and a certain likeness to Mr. Morphy adds to its

offensiveness.

_Summer Pictures_. From Copenhagen to Venice. By HENRY M. FIELD, Author

of "The Irish Confederates and the Rebellion of 1798." New York:

Sheldon, Blakeman & Co. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1859.

The unpretending title to this neat volume expresses the modest purpose

of the writer. Escaping from care and responsibility, he has made

a rapid tour through parts of Europe, some of which are rarely

frequented;--from London to Normandy; thence to Paris, Holland, Denmark;

through the Baltic to Berlin, Dresden, Prague, and Vienna; thence to the

Adriatic, Venice, Milan, and so round again to Paris.

To see all this with new eyes, and to present the world with a perfectly

fresh book of "Travels in Europe," requires a rare man and a rare

audacity; and we congratulate Mr. Field that he has not attempted the

doubtful task. But, in his rapid run, he has gathered a flower here, a

specimen there, a bit of history, a sight of a man, a pebble from the

Baltic, a moss from Venice, a sigh from the heart of Italy, a word of

hope and happiness from the domestic life of France. He has seen the

cloud rising in Italy, and ventures to hope, almost against possibility.

He has seen the firesides and _homes_ of France, and assures us that in

Paris, too, exist honest and warm and pure hearts, and generous and holy

souls, and that all France is not a den in which liars and charlatans

only struggle and tear one another. Mr. Field looks at things with

somewhat of a professional eye, and draws what encouragement he can for

the future of the Protestant religion. His facts and speculations will

thus interest a large and valuable class of readers, while to some few

of another class a certain suspicion of prosiness will be distasteful.

The volume is well prepared, and we are sure that the manly, generous

sentiments of the writer will be welcomed by a large number of personal

friends, and by a discriminating public.

_Adam Bede_. By GEORGE ELLIOT, Author of "Scenes of Clerical Life." New

York: Harper & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 496.

As Nature will have it, Great Unknowns are out of the question in any

other branch of the world's business than the writing of books. If,

through sponsorial neglect or cruelty, the name of our butcher or baker

or candlestick-maker happens to be John, with the further and congenial

addition of Smith, JOHN SMITH it is on sign-board, pass book, and at the

top, and sometimes at the bottom, of the monthly bills, in living and

familiar characters. But in the matter of authorship, the world is yet

far short of the Scriptural standard; in a variety of instances it has

found itself unable to know men by their works; and, in deference to

this short-sightedness of their fellows, merchants and lawyers and

doctors have their cards, and clergymen, at least once in every

twelvemonth, make the personal circuit of their congregations, so that

no sheep shall wander into darkness through ignorance of the shepherd.

We believe that no pursuit should be marked by greater frankness and

fairness than the literary. It is a question, at least, of kindness; and

it is not kind to set good people on an uneasy edge of curiosity; it is

not kind to bring down upon the care-bowed heads of editors storms of

communications, couched in terms of angry disputation; it is not kind to

establish a perennial root of bitterness, to give an unhealthy flavor to

the literary waters of unborn generations, as "Junius" did, and Scott

would have done, had he been able.

"Adam Bede" is remarkable, not less for the unaffected Saxon style which

upholds the graceful fabric of the narrative, and for the naturalness of

its scenes and characters, so that the reader at once feels happy and

at home among them, than for the general perception of those universal

springs of action which control all society, the patient unfolding of

those traits of humanity with which commonplace writers get out of

temper and rudely dispense. The place and the people are of the

simplest, and the language is of the simplest; and what happens from day

to day, and from year to year, in the period of the action, might happen

in any little village where the sun shines.

We do not know where to look, in the whole range of contemporary

fictitious literature, for pictures in which the sober and the brilliant

tones of Nature blend with more exquisite harmony than in those which

are set in every chapter of "Adam Bede." Still life--the harvest-field,

the polished kitchens, the dairies with a concentrated cool smell of all

that is nourishing and sweet, the green, the porches that have vines

about them and are pleasant late in the afternoon, and deep woods

thrilling with birds--all these were never more vividly, and yet

tenderly depicted. The characters are drawn with a free and impartial

hand, and one of them is a creation for immortality. Mrs. Poyser is

a woman with an incorrigible tongue, set firmly in opposition to the

mandates of a heart the overflows of whose sympathy and love keep the

circle of her influence in a state of continual irrigation. Her epigrams

are aromatic, and she is strong in simile, but never ventures beyond her

own depth into that of her author.

_The Poetical Works of Edgar A. Poe._ With an Original Memoir. Redfield,

New York.

This pocket edition of the Poetical Works of Edgar A. Poe is illustrated

with a very much idealized portrait of the author. The poems are

introduced by an original memoir, which, without eulogy or anathema,

gives a clear and succinct account of that singular and wayward genius.

The copies of verses are many in number, and most of them are chiefly

remarkable for their art, rather than for their power of awakening

either pleasing or profound emotion. It is one poem alone which makes an

edition of these works emphatically called for. That poem, it is nearly

superfluous to mention, is "The Raven," and truly it is unforgetable.

In this weird and wonderful creation, art holds equal dominion with

feeling. The form not only never yields to the sweep of the thought, but

that thought, touching and fearful as is its tone, is made to turn and

double fantastically, almost playfully, in many of the lines. The croak

of the raven is taken up and moulded into rhyme by a nimble, if not a

mocking spirit; and, fascinating as is the rhythmic movement of the

verse, it appears like the dancing of the daughter of Herodias. This

looks incongruous; and so do the words of the fool which Shakspeare has

intermingled with the agonies and imprecations of Lear. In the tragedy,

this is held to be a consummate stroke of art, and certainly the reader

is grateful for the relief. Had Poe a similar design? Closely analyzed,

this song seems the very ecstasy of fancy; as if the haunting apparition

inspired the poet more than it appalled the man. We can call to mind no

one who has ever played with an inexplicable horror more daintily or

more impressively; and, whether premeditated or spontaneous, it is

an epitome of the life of the writer, for the marked traits of his

character are there, and almost the prevailing expression of his . . . .

* * * * *

It becomes the sad duty of the editors of the "ATLANTIC" to record the

death of its founder, MR. M.D. PHILLIPS. It indicates no ordinary force

of character, that a man, dying at the age of forty-six, should have

worked himself, solely by his own talents and integrity, to the head

of one of the largest publishing-houses of the country. But it was

not merely by strength and tenacity of purpose, and by clearness of

judgment, that Mr. Phillips was distinguished. He had also a generous

ambition, and aims which transcended the sphere of self and the limits

of merely commercial success. Showing, as he did, a rare courage (and

that of the best kind, for it was a courage based upon experience and

qualified by discretion) in beginning the publication of the "Atlantic"

during the very storm and stress of the financial revulsion of 1857, it

was by no means as a mere business speculation that he undertook

what seemed a doubtful enterprise. His wish and hope were, that the

"Atlantic" should represent what was best in American thought and

letters; and while he had no doubt of ultimate pecuniary profit, his

chief motive was the praiseworthy ambition to associate his name with

an undertaking which should result in some good to letters and some

progress in ideas and principles which were dear to him.

We speak of him as we saw him. He would not have wished a garrulous

eulogy or a cumbrous epitaph. A character whose outline was simple

and bold, and which was marked by certain leading and high qualities,

demands few words, if only they be sincere. It is less painful to say

that good word for the dead, which it is the instinct of human nature to

offer, when we can say, as of Mr. Phillips, that his mind was strong and

clear, that it was tenacious of experience, and therefore both rapid and

safe in decision, that he was courageous and constant, and acted under

the inspiration of desires and motives which he can carry with him into

the new sphere to which he has passed.

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