outbreak was announced to them in the battle of Lexington. Not a moment
was lost, the drum of the Kentish Guards beat to arms, and they were
soon on their march toward Boston. News having reached the Governor that
they had left for the seat of war, he sent a peremptory message for
their immediate return, and, strange to say, the whole company, with the
exception of Greene, his brother, and another, responded to the request
and returned to their homes; these three gallant fellows mounted their
horses and repaired with all haste toward the scene of action, but
before they had completed half their journey they were met with the
welcome tidings of the retreat of the British, and the triumph of their
countrymen. The first blow being given, retaliation commenced with
vigor; delegates were dispatched in all directions, calling for
assistance in this trying emergency. The Assembly of Rhode Island voted
an army of one thousand six hundred men. The army was to receive its
officers from the Assembly; and then it was that Greene’s real position
among his colleagues was felt, by the unanimous voice of that body he
was raised to the rank of major-general. In a few days his preparations
were completed, and in less than one year from the day of his marriage,
he entered upon that career in which he was to encounter so many
hardships and reap so high a fame. Greene having attained the age of
thirty-three, in the month of May, 1775, assumed the command as
major-general of the Rhode Island troops to the army of the united
colonies. It was well for him that his mind and body had long been
trained to habits of laborious exertion, for he soon found himself
surrounded with cares and anxieties which no one but a commander of an
undisciplined army can understand. His military knowledge, obtained by
his studies, was now brought into actual service, and the information
gained from the instruction of the deserted drill-master was of immense
importance to him. Greene was a man who had made human nature his
favorite study, and deep indeed must have been that disguise which could
escape his penetrating glance. With these important qualities, he
commanded with more than ordinary success, his opinion was always
listened to with deference and a preference given to his acknowledged
military talents. A gentleman of distinction, who happened to be present
at a court-martial upon which he was sitting a few weeks after the
battle of Bunker’s Hill, was so struck with the sagacity and pertinence
of his remarks, and the commanding dignity of his aspect, that without
even knowing his name, pronounced him to be a man of real military
genius, and decidedly the ablest member of the court. In entering
seriously upon his military duties, Greene had firmly resolved to submit
to every sacrifice, and endure every hardship in the fulfillment of
them. The zeal and energy with which he applied himself in the
discipline of his men, caused his troops to be pronounced, by a member
of Washington’s own staff, as the best disciplined men in the service.
On the 3d of July, General Washington joined the camp at Boston.
His arrival was hailed with great delight by Greene, who was anxious
that the forces of the country should be brought together under one
common head. In order to make his sentiments more publicly known, he
welcomed him to the army in the name of his troops; and the feelings
emanating from such relative positions, led to the formation of that
affectionate and confidential intercourse, which ceased only with life.
The first duty assigned the commander-in-chief, was to place the army
upon the continental establishment, the officers till now, holding their
commissions from their respective states, were received into the
immediate service of the united colonies.
Some dissatisfaction was felt among the officers, on account of the
changes in rank, but Greene found that he had no cause for complaint at
being required to exchange the rank of major-general to brigadier, which
was offered him in the name of Congress.
Shortly after the arrival of General Washington, the command of the left
wing had been given to Major-General Lee, and Greene with his brigade
placed under him. Nearly a year passed away without any decisive
movements on either side, although both Washington and Greene were
anxious to make the trial. “Out of an army of twenty thousand men,” says
Greene, “it will be hard if we cannot find eight thousand who will do
their duty.” But many of the officers were of a different opinion, and
to their decision he was obliged to acquiesce. At this time serious
apprehensions were entertained of the small-pox, which was known to be
raging in Boston, and against which few were guarded by inoculation.
By Greene’s advice, a hospital was established at Coventry, for the
inoculation of the officers; and sending his family into hired lodgings,
he gave up his own house for the purpose.
During the excitement which this disease caused among both officers and
men, Greene was seized with a severe attack of jaundice, the first
illness he ever had, probably the consequence of this new mode of life;
and this, too, at a time when many officers and men were down with the
small-pox, and strong reasons for supposing that an attack would at
length be made upon Boston. “Sick or well,” says he, “I intend to be
there, if I am able to sit on my horse.” But the attempt was not made;
and when, a month after, positive preparations were making for an
assault by water, to support the movements at Dorchester, a brigade of
four thousand picked men was entrusted to his command.
A sudden tempest frustrated the plans of the British commander,
compelling him to put off the assault which he had meditated upon the
right wing of the American army; and when the storm ceased, it was too
late to attempt it with any chance of success. He, hastily embarking his
troops, evacuated Boston.
Washington now ordered the forces to withdraw with all speed to New
York, where he next expected to meet the enemy. Greene was ordered to
march with all haste, and take up his quarters at Brooklyn. He had not
reached his destination when he was seized with a bilious fever, which
brought him to the brink of the grave. This was in the month of August,
and during this severe attack, the battle of Long Island was fought;
when the news reached him and he was hardly able to raise his head from
his pillow, he exclaimed, “Gracious God! to be confined at such a time!”
From his bed he heard the sound of the cannon, and received with the
keenest anxiety the reports which were brought to him every half hour of
the progress of the battle. When he was told of the havoc that had been
made in Smallwood’s gallant band, his favorite regiment, he could no
longer restrain his feelings, but burst into an agony of tears,
accompanied by such severe spasms as to alarm the attendants who were
near him. Well might he mourn over such a misfortune, for it was very
generally believed, that had he been permitted to have been present, the
reverses of that memorable day would have been changed. As soon as he
was able to mount his horse, he was again at his post, the duties of
which had been much enlarged by his promotion to the rank of
major-general. The fate of New York was the question which was now in
suspense; and Greene being stationed at Hærlem, took part in his first
battle; for he had hitherto seen nothing but distant cannonades and
slight skirmishes; in his journal he speaks of it as one in which he had
“fought hard.”
No sooner had this battle taken place than new difficulties appeared
before him; the terms of service of a large portion of the troops was
about to expire, and no measures taken to supply their places. The only
resource that remained was the militia, and very many of them had
refused to serve, alledging as an excuse the assurances of peace,
liberty and safety which had been given them by the British. This was a
moment of conflict, and he found that the strong hand of the soldier
must be used to enforce the injunctions of the law. He instantly ordered
down a detachment of his regulars, to check it in its bud, threatening
them, at the same time, with the rigors of garrison duty in Fort Lee, as
a punishment for their cowardice.
Early on the morning of the 18th of November, Lord Cornwallis crossed
the Hudson with a strong body of the British and Hessians, intending an
attack upon Fort Lee. Greene had four miles to march before he could
reach the river, and Cornwallis but one and a half. Without losing an
instant, he pushed forward with all his forces to the head of the
stream, and drawing them up in front of Cornwallis, contrived to hold
them at bay until Washington, to whom a courier had been dispatched,
could come up. Then, leaving them under the guidance of the
commander-in-chief, he hastened back to the fort, and collecting the
stragglers and others, nearly three hundred in all, conveyed them in
safety across the Hackensack River. This manœuvre was his first
encounter with Cornwallis. Now began the memorable retreat through the
Jerseys.
During the whole of this trying period Greene was by the side of his
commander, partaking his cares and anxieties, and sharing with him that
firm and unbending trust in the ultimate triumph of their cause, which
forms one of the sublimest traits in the character of Washington.
By rapid and exhausting marches, in a few days, the hostile armies were
ranged, front to front along the banks of the Delaware.
During this halt was planned the brilliant attack upon Trenton; in this
Greene bore a distinguished part, and strongly urged the following up of
this blow by an attack upon the other posts of the enemy in New Jersey.
During the winter of 1777, Washington established his quarters at
Morristown. Greene was stationed with a separate division at
Baskingridge; and through the whole of a long and severe winter,
continual skirmishes took place, which very frequently were attended
with decided advantages to the Americans. At the approach of spring,
General Greene was dispatched to Philadelphia, to hasten the action of
Congress upon the important subjects submitted for their decision. After
his return, he with General Knox was sent to examine the passes of the
Highlands on the Hudson, and take measures for their defense. The winter
had thus far passed without much molestation, and early in May
Washington removed from his quarters at Morristown to a strong station
at Middlebrook. While encamped at this station, an incident occurred,
which was well nigh depriving the army of some of its bravest officers.
The delicate etiquette of military rank had never been fully understood
by the new and inexperienced Congress; and when a report reached camp
that a gentleman but recently arrived in the country had been appointed
a major-general, with a commission of an earlier date than their own, it
is not surprising that it should cause Generals Greene, Sullivan and
Knox to declare their intention of resigning in case the report should
be found true; and each of them addressed the President of Congress to
this effect. Happily the rumor was unfounded; and by it Congress saw the
necessity of a rigorous adherence to the established laws of promotion.
Nearly the whole of the following summer was employed in short marches
and slight skirmishes, till the 10th of September, when they took up
their position on the banks of the Brandywine.
Early on the morning following, the British appeared on the advance,
preparing for an attack.
The passage of the ford, near which the chief of the American forces had
been stationed, was manfully defended; but in the mean time a strong
detachment, led by Howe and Cornwallis, had crossed the river by a
circuitous march, and were rapidly gaining the American rear. A few
minutes sufficed to show how judiciously this measure had been devised.
After a gallant resistance the Americans were forced from the field, in
spite of all the efforts of their officers to rally them. Now was the
time for Greene to display his coolness and his energy.
Marching along a road which intersected the flight of the Americans, and
the advance of the enemy, he hurried his men forward with such rapidity
that they marched four miles in forty-nine minutes. Here every thing was
in confusion; ranks broken, troops scattered, the roads filled with
fugitives, rushing forward they knew not whither, in the wildness of
fear, and the enemy pressing close upon their footsteps with shouts of
exultation. Throwing himself between them and his flying countrymen, he
opened a sharp and well directed fire from his field-pieces, opening his
ranks from time to time for the fugitives, and closing them the moment
they had passed.
Having retreated in this manner for half a mile, until he came to a
narrow defile protected on both sides by woods, he halted and drew up
his men for battle; first depositing his cannon in a safe place, in case
he should be forced to a hasty retreat. The British soon made their
appearance, flushed with success, and thinking only of putting the last
hand to their victorious conflict; but a close and destructive fire
checked their pursuit, and compelled them to halt. So well chosen was
Greene’s position, that it could neither be forced nor turned, and the
sight of his fierce eye and firm countenance seemed to have inspired his
men with an energy like his own. For two hours did he maintain the
unequal conflict, and having wearied the enemy out, he gave up the
contest, and drew off his troops to rejoin the army at their rallying
point.
Howe was now resolved to follow up his success by another battle, or a
stroke at Philadelphia, and advancing with two columns, was soon once
more within striking distance of the Americans.
This being perceived by Greene, he managed to frustrate all his designs,
till Howe, finding it useless to continue his skirmishes, made the best
of his way to Philadelphia, where he made his triumphal entry on the
26th of September. At this time the main body of the British army were
quartered at Germantown; a portion was in the city, and another part
scattered between the two places. Washington now resolved on attacking
the main army at Germantown, and began making preparations for that
purpose.
Greene was ordered to march at once within the limits prescribed by
Washington, which was done, and the effect was the sanguine and bloody
battle of Germantown, which historians have so repeatedly described.
Greene’s next orders were to examine the forts on the Delaware, and then
retire to Valley Forge for winter quarters. It was customary with the
generals when retired to quarters for the winter to receive their
families; shortly after their arrival at Valley Forge Mrs. Washington
joined her husband, and about the same time Mrs. Greene arrived, and the
wives of other officers hastened to follow the example, and the cares
and gloom of a winter encampment were illumined for a moment by this
transient return of the sweets of domestic life. It was during this
memorable winter that the intrigues against the commander-in-chief,
commonly known as Conway’s cabal, became public. These calumnies were
traced and ferreted out by the perseverance of Greene, and when exposed
by him, fell to the ground, like drops from the melting icicle in the
rays of the sun. In a letter to a friend, before they went to Valley
Forge, he writes thus, “I have no hopes of coming home this winter, the
general will not permit it; Mrs. Greene is coming to camp; we are all
going into log huts; a sweet life after a most fatiguing campaign.”
Time was now approaching for some action, and indications were observed
which led the army to suppose that the British troops were about to
evacuate Philadelphia. But they were unable to ascertain whether it was
the intention of the enemy to return overland to New York, or to engage
in some more distant enterprise.
News, however, having arrived, informing them that the enemy was on the
eastern bank of the Delaware, and that it was his intention to direct
his march through the Jersey’s, the American army was now hastily put in
motion to follow, and after a few minutes conversation, the orders were
issued which ended in the battle of Monmouth.
At this period the department of quartermaster in the American army was
in a very defective and alarming condition, and required speedy reform.
The commander-in-chief was requested by Congress to look out for an
officer suitably calculated to fill a post of so much importance.
Washington well knew that if Greene could be convinced that he could
render his country more essential service in the department of
quartermaster than in the field, he would accept of the appointment.
“There is not,” he observed, “an officer in the army, nor a man in
America, more sincerely attached to the interests of his country than
General Greene; and could he best promote their interests, in the
character of a _corporal_, he would readily exchange the epaulet for the
knot.” When the appointment was offered Greene, he at first declined it,
but on a second conference with the commander-in-chief, he accepted, on
condition that he should forfeit nothing of his right to command in time
of action.
He entered on the duties of his office on the 22d March, 1776. Very
shortly after receiving his new appointment, he took a high and
distinguished part in the battle of Monmouth, and followed in a very
brilliant expedition against the enemy in Rhode Island, under the
command of General Sullivan. At the battle of Monmouth, General
Washington, disgusted with the behaviour of General Lee, deposed him in
the field of battle, and appointed Greene to his command, which greatly
contributed to retrieve the errors of his predecessor, and to the events
of the day. General Greene had now been more than three years from home,
and during this period the direction of his affairs had been intrusted
to others, over which he had neither time nor means of control.
His short visit to his home at Coventry was hailed by his neighbors with
affectionate demonstrations of joy. Even the Society of Friends, who had
reluctantly excluded him from their communion, expressed their sincere
satisfaction at the high position he had attained in the confidence of
his country. One of the Society of Friends was asked by a young officer,
in jest, how he, who was an advocate for peace, could keep company with
General Greene, whose profession was war. “Friend,” said the Quaker,
“’Tis true, I do not approve of this many-colored apparel, but whatever
may be the color of his garments, Nathaniel Greene still retains the
sound head and virtuous heart, which have gained him the love and esteem
of our Society.”
About this time, General Greene was called to perform one of the most
trying and painful duties of his life. The melancholy affair of Major
Andre.
Washington having summoned a court of fourteen general officers,
appointed General Greene to preside.
When summoned before this military tribunal, the unfortunate officer
disclosed without interrogatory, what bore heaviest on his own life, but
studiously concealed whatever might affect the safety of others.
His own confessions were conclusive, and no witness was examined against
him. The court were unanimous that he must suffer death. When the
sentence was communicated to the unhappy man, he entreated that he might
not be compelled to expire on a gibbet, like a common felon, but that he
might be permitted to close his life by that law generally prescribed by
military usage; and to effect this, he dictated a letter to General
Washington, containing one of the most affecting and pathetic appeals
that ever fell from mortal pen. The commander-in-chief referred the
subject to his general officers, who, with the exception of Greene,
decided that Andre should be shot. The following remarks from the
president of the council show his firmness; that no circumstance
whatever could move him where the honor of his country was involved.
“Andre,” said he, “is either a spy or an innocent man. If the latter, to
execute him in any way will be murder; if the former, the mode of his
death is prescribed by law, and you have no right to alter it; and at
this alarming crisis of our affairs, the public safety demands a solemn
and impressive example. Nothing can satisfy it short of the execution of
the prisoner as a common spy; a character of which his own confession
has clearly convicted him.”
This reasoning was considered conclusive by the council, and the
prisoner suffered as a common spy. The post at West Point, now vacated
by the treachery of Arnold, was confided to Greene, and by the 8th of
October he was already at his new station on the banks of the Hudson. He
had hardly entered upon his duties, when General Washington appointed
him to the command of the army in the South.
We now behold an entire change in the situation of General Greene, and
follow him through a southern campaign, virtually invested with the
supreme command of a large section of the United States. On his arrival
at Charlotte, North Carolina, the head-quarters of General Gates, and on
entering on the duties of his command, he found himself in a situation
fearfully embarrassing.
He found but a handful of men, amounting to about two thousand, and
these principally militia, with but three days’ provision, and a very
short supply of ammunition. In front lay an enemy treble his number,
proud in victory, and too strong to be encountered. Before him was a
task which he considered hopeless—the recovery of two States already
conquered, and the protection of a third. He saw the astounding
difficulty he had to encounter—to raise and provide for a dispirited
army in a devastated country, having to create resources where they did
not exist; to operate with an incompetent force on an extended and
broken line of frontier, and to contend with an enemy superior in
numbers and discipline. To conduct a warfare like this required a genius
of the highest order, combined with indefatigable skill and industry. In
order to prepare for such a campaign, Greene’s first care was to provide
for his troops subsistence and ammunition. His next was to draw close
the reins of discipline, which had been shamefully relaxed, and make
both officers and men feel that they had a commander who knew both his
duty and theirs, and was resolved that both should be performed. He
called no councils of war, studying every question himself, and
communicating his intentions to only two or three of his officers whom
he trusted most. In a letter to General Hamilton, he says, “If I cannot
inspire the army with confidence and respect by an independent conduct,
I foresee it will be impossible to instill discipline and order among
the troops.”
His next care was to select a position where his troops could be
properly trained to the use of their arms, and better and more easily
supplied with food; while at the same time it was essential that every
step on his part should be a connecting link in his general plan of
operations. It must be conceded that much of the moral strength of an
army consists in a confidence in its leader, an attachment to his
person, and a spirit of subordination founded on principle. To such an
extent was this true, that even the common soldiery, sensible of the
superintendence of a superior officer, confidently predicted a change of
fortune. They felt a solicitude to regain the reputation they lost at
Camden under their late commander, and to signalize their prowess under
the command of their present one. The main part of the British army was
then lying at Winnsborough, between the Broad River and the Catawba,
with powerful garrisons in their flank and rear, and Charleston to fall
back upon in case of a defeat. Cornwallis, who was at Charleston,
receiving continual supplies of both men and provisions from New York,
was expected to connect with the part of the army at Winnsborough, and
attack the Americans before they could be ready to leave the village of
Charlotte. This called for a decided movement of the American army, and
Greene resolved to divide his forces, sending one portion to act upon
the west bank of the Catawba, to the north of the enemy’s position, and
advancing with the other to the Cheraw hills on the frontiers of South
Carolina. The first dispatch was about four hundred continentals, under
General Morgan, with Colonel Washington’s corps of dragoons, and a few
militia, amounting in all to six hundred men. This judicious
arrangement, which formed a rallying point for the friends of
independence, both in the East and West, also facilitated the procuring
of provisions for the troops. General Greene soon began to feel the good
effects of this movement; it enabled him to make the most of his little
army by compelling his adversary to divide his forces, and leaving him
at a loss which way to direct his efforts. By advancing against the
American commander, he would expose his posts at Ninety-Six and Augusta,
or Morgan, hovering upon his flanks or his rear, might seize the
critical moment for aiming a blow in concert with the main army.
Cornwallis, on discovering the movements of Greene, and finding that
there was no time to be lost, dispatched Colonel Tarlton with a strong
detachment, amounting in horse and foot to nearly a thousand men, for
the protection of Ninety-Six, with orders to bring General Morgan, if
possible, to battle. With numbers greatly superior to Morgan, he
advanced with a menacing aspect, and compelled him at first to fall back
rapidly. He accordingly continued for a few days to retire before his
adversary, receiving at every step new accessions of strength from the
inhabitants of the country through which he passed, alarmed by the
presence, and irritated by the cruelty of the enemy. Relying with
confidence on the firmness of his regulars, and glorying in action,
Morgan halted at the Cowpens, and prepared to give his adversary battle.
Tarlton seized the opportunity, and the conflict, which was severe and
stoutly contested, ended in a complete victory obtained by the
Americans. Tarlton fled, leaving one hundred and eighty-four men on the
field, and more than five hundred as prisoners in the hands of the
victor. Two field-pieces, eight hundred muskets, one hundred
dragoon-horses, with a very large supply of tents and ammunition, which
constituted, in the present state of the American army, one of the most
welcome fruits of the victory. This battle of the Cowpens, although
achieved under the immediate command of Morgan, was the first stroke of
General Greene’s fortunate career at the South.
The disappointment of Cornwallis was severe, for he had looked with
confidence for victory under the accomplished Tarlton. Still he received
the tidings with serenity, and immediately gave orders for pursuing the
victorious army, whose retreat he yet hoped to cut off; and in order to
prepare for the effort, and free himself from every thing that could
encumber or retard his march, he ordered that all the baggage at
head-quarters should be committed to the flames.
This was done, and the example was followed by his faithful soldiers
with cheerfulness, reserving but a small supply of clothing for each
man, and a few wagons for the conveyance of hospital stores, ammunition,
and of the sick and wounded. Every thing else was burned. While these
desperate measures were going on in the British camp, Greene reached
Morgan’s head-quarters on the banks of the Catawba.
To his great mortification, Lord Cornwallis now perceived that in two of
his objects, the destruction of Morgan’s detachment, and the prevention
of its union with the main division, he was completely frustrated by the
activity of Greene. But he still hoped to cut off the retreat of the
Americans into Virginia, after their union, and to compel them to
action, was still perhaps practicable; and to the achievement of this he
now directed his undivided energies.
Notwithstanding the vigilance and activity of the British commander,
Greene brought his men in safety into Virginia, without any loss of
either men or ammunition. Soon after his arrival in Virginia he received
reinforcements, and also effected a junction with a continental
regiment. Upon these accessions, he was determined on attacking the
British commander without loss of time, and accordingly commenced his
march toward Guildford Court-House, the British then lying at twelve
miles distance. His army had now increased to four thousand five hundred
men, that of the British about two thousand four hundred. General Greene
arrived at Guildford Court-House on the 14th of March, and on the
morning of the 15th Cornwallis marched to meet him. He disposed his army
in three lines—the militia of North Carolina were in front; the second
line was composed of those of Virginia; and the third, which was the
flower of the army, was formed of continental troops, near fifteen
hundred in number. They were posted on a rising ground, a mile and a
half from Guildford Court-House.
The engagement commenced by a brisk cannonade, after which the British
advanced in three columns and attacked the first line composed of North
Carolina militia. Many of the latter had never been in action before,
and panic-struck, ran away without firing a gun, or being fired upon,
and even before the British had come near them. The conflict lasted an
hour and a half, and was terminated by General Greene’s ordering a
retreat, when he found the enemy about encircling his troops.
This was a hard fought battle, and the exertions of the two rival
generals, both in preparing for this action and during the course of it,
were never surpassed. Forgetful of every thing but the fortune of the
day, they on several occasions, mingled in the danger like common
soldiers. The Americans lost in this battle about 400; several of the
number were officers of distinction. The result of this conflict, though
literally a defeat, was eventually a victory; for on the part of General
Greene it will be seen that it placed him on higher ground toward his
adversary than he had previously occupied. Believing that Lord
Cornwallis would follow him, he kept retreating slowly until he had
gained an advantageous position, where he could renew the contest
whenever his adversary came in view. But Cornwallis, not being in a
condition to pursue, commenced his retreat, leaving behind him about
seventy of his wounded, whom he recommended, in a handsome letter,
written by himself, to the humanity and attention of the American
commander. Had General Greene been in a situation to have pursued his
lordship, the destruction of that officer and his army would have been
inevitable; and Carolina would have witnessed that momentous event which
was reserved for Virginia. But the exhaustion of General Greene’s
military stores, suspended his movements till he had received a supply.
These having arrived, he immediately pursued the enemy; but the advanced
position of Lord Cornwallis, and the bad state of the roads, determined
him to halt, in order to indulge his troops with that repose which they
so much needed. Having abandoned the pursuit of the enemy, General
Greene found himself encircled with new difficulties. Of that part of
the Union over which General Greene’s command extended, the enemy was in
force in three large and important sections. South Carolina and Georgia
being entirely in possession of the enemy, and Cornwallis had taken post
in the maritime district of North Carolina, and part of Virginia was
occupied by a powerful detachment of British troops, under the command
of General Phillips. Greene, under all these difficulties, was at a loss
to determine in which of these points he should act in person, and on
consulting with officers, he found them greatly divided in opinion. He
accordingly decided to penetrate South Carolina, and after dividing his
army into two columns, attack and harass the enemy at their different
posts, without permitting them to concentrate their forces, and thus
recover that rich and important member of the Union.
General Greene commenced his march South, and arrived at Hobkirk’s Hill,
in front of Camden, the head-quarters of Lord Rawdon, then the
commander-in-chief of the British forces in that section. In order to
prevent supplies from being brought in, and to take advantage of such
favorable circumstances as might occur, he encamped at about a mile from
the town. Lord Rawdon’s situation was extremely delicate. His supplies
also were very precarious; and should General Greene’s reinforcements
arrive, which were hourly expected, he might be so closely invested as
to be at length obliged to surrender. In this dilemma, the only
expedient that presented itself, appeared to be a bold attack; for which
purpose he armed every person with him capable of carrying a musket, not
excepting even his musicians. On the 25th of April he made the attack
upon General Greene in his camp.
The defense was obstinate, and for some time appeared to be in favor of
America. At one time Lieut. Colonel Washington, who commanded the
cavalry, had not less than two hundred British prisoners.
However, by the inadvertence of one of the American regiments, victory
was snatched from General Greene, who was compelled to retreat, with a
loss of about two hundred killed, wounded, and prisoners. The British
general lost about two hundred and fifty-eight. The evacuation of
Camden, with the vigilance of General Greene, and the several officers
under him, gave entirely a new complexion to affairs in South Carolina,
where the British ascendency declined more rapidly than it had been
established.
Nearly every fort, with the exception of fort Ninety-Six, garrisoned by
the enemy, with military stores and artillery, fell into the hands of
the Americans.
The next attempt was the siege of Ninety-Six, but which proved
unsuccessful, and Greene was obliged to retreat over the Saluda. Lord
Rawdon now prepared to evacuate the garrison of Ninety-Six, and return
to Charleston; and General Greene became in reality the pursuing party,
exceedingly anxious to bring the enemy to battle. But this did not take
place till September; the British at that time were posted at Eutaw
Springs, where General Greene, who had assembled about two thousand men,
prepared to follow and attack them.
The American force was drawn up in two lines; the first, composed of
Carolina militia, was commanded by Generals Marion and Pickens, and
Colonel de Malmedy. The second, which consisted of continental troops
from North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, was commanded by General
Sumpter, Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell, and Colonel Williams. As the
Americans approached toward an attack, they fell in with some advanced
parties of the enemy, at about three miles ahead of the main body.
These being driven back, the action soon became general. In the very
heat of the engagement General Greene ordered the Maryland and Virginia
continentals to charge with trailed arms. This decided the fate of the
day. “Nothing,” says Dr. Ramsay, “could surpass the intrepidity of both
officers and men on this occasion. They rushed on in good order through
a heavy cannonade, and a shower of musketry, with such unshaken
resolution that they bore down all before them.” The British were
broken, closely pursued, and upward of eleven hundred of them killed and
taken prisoners; the loss of the Americans was about five hundred.
Judge Johnson, in his life of General Greene, says—“At the battle of
the Eutaw Springs, Greene says, that hundreds of my men were naked as
they were born. Posterity will scarcely believe that the bare loins of
many brave men who carried death into the enemy’s ranks at the Eutaw,
were galled by their cartouche-boxes, while a folded rag or a tuft of
moss protected the shoulders from sustaining the same injury from the
musket. Men of other times will inquire by what magic was the army kept
together? By what supernatural power was it made to fight?”
General Greene in his letter to the Secretary of War says—“We have
three hundred men without arms, and more than one thousand so naked that
they can be put on duty only in cases of a desperate nature.”
Again he says—“Our difficulties are so numerous, and our wants so
pressing, that I have not a moment’s relief from the most painful
anxieties. I have more embarrassment than it is proper to disclose to
the world. Let it suffice to say that this part of the United States has
had a narrow escape. _I have been seven months in the field without
taking off my clothes._” Such then was the issue of the battle of Eutaw,
and the last essay in arms in which it was the fortune of General Greene
to command.
The surrender of Cornwallis at the battle of Yorktown soon followed, and
the happy moment arrived when by the virtue and bravery of her sons,
America, aided by the bounty of Heaven, compelled her invaders to
acknowledge her independence; her armies quitted the tented field, and
retired to cultivate the arts of peace and happiness.
General Greene now returned to his native state, where he remained two
years in the adjustment of his private affairs, and in October, 1785,
settled with his family on his estate near Savannah, Georgia. The three
Southern States, South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia, who had
been most essentially benefited by his valor and services, manifested
their sense of justice and gratitude by liberal donations. South
Carolina presented to General Greene an estate valued at ten thousand
pounds sterling. Georgia, with an estate, a few miles from Savannah,
worth five thousand pounds; and North Carolina, with twenty-five
thousand acres of land in the State of Tennessee. In writing from his
new home, he speaks of his plantation with a kind of buoyant joy, which
is constantly breaking out in gay and cheerful expressions; of his
garden, and his flowers, the mocking-birds that sing around him morning
and evening, and the mild and balmy atmosphere, with the same interest
with which he would once have spoken of his troops, of their bravery and
their discipline. But this felicity was to be of short duration. On
Monday, the 12th of June, 1786, he went down to Savannah with his wife,
and on their return the following day they paid a visit to an old
friend, at whose house he was seized with an inflammation of the brain,
which caused him to sink into a torpor, from which he never again was
roused; he expired on Monday the 19th of June. The melancholy tidings
soon reached Savannah, calling forth the strongest expressions of public
grief. They had known him first as the champion of the South, in the
hour of her greatest need, then as a fellow citizen, kind-hearted and
benevolent, endearing himself to all by his social and civil virtues;
and now, in the prime of manhood, he was suddenly snatched away, and a
grave was all they could give him.
On the following day the body of the deceased was conveyed to Savannah,
and at the request of the inhabitants, was interred in a private
cemetery with military honors.
On the 12th of August of the year in which General Greene died, the
Congress of the United States unanimously resolved—“That a monument be
erected to the memory of the honorable Nathaniel Greene, at the seat of
the federal government, with the following inscription—
SACRED
TO THE
MEMORY
OF THE
HON. NATHANIEL GREENE,
who departed this life
the 19th of June, 1786.
Late MAJOR-GENERAL
in the service of the United States,
and commander of the army in the
Southern Department.
The United States in Congress assembled
in honor of
his patriotism, valor and ability,
have erected this
monument.”
His relative and biographer very appropriately remarks—“More than sixty
years have elapsed since the body of Greene was consigned to the tomb;
and thus far, a medal for the Eutaws, two pieces of cannon for his
general services, and a vote for a monument, _which has never been
erected_, are the only tributes which the general government has ever
paid to his memory. The spot in which his ashes repose has long been
forgotten, and the chances of the preservation of the simple silver slab
on which his name was engraved, are the only hopes which remain of ever
distinguishing his bones from those, which during this long interval,
have silently mouldered by their side. Not a statue, not a bust, not a
portrait of him, adorns the halls of our national councils; and of the
many objects of interest which command the admiration of the stranger at
the seat of government, there is not one which recalls his memory.”
General Greene had just completed his forty-fourth year, when he was
thus suddenly taken from his friends and his country.
Of all those who had distinguished themselves during the war of the
Revolution, he was, next to Washington, the one who will ever hold the
highest place in public esteem; and few men, if any, have ever built
themselves a name upon purer or more durable foundations.
From the governor to the humble citizen, General Greene was regarded as
the object of every eye, the praise of every tongue, he closed a life of
deep, pure, devoted patriotism to his country, and love and good-will to
all mankind.
* * * * *
THE DYING STUDENT.
BY D. ELLEN GOODMAN.
I FEEL the fever’s hot breath flashing
In deep and deadly strife,
From my pale, parched lips slowly dashing
The golden cup of life!
Disease, with cold and icy fingers,
Now creeps about my heart,
And Death but for a moment lingers,
To snap its chords apart!
My heavy pulse is weaker growing;
Life’s lamp burns feebly now,
And the long locks are darkly flowing
Upon my damp, cold brow.
I hear a voice, low, faint and broken,
Falling upon my heart;
Its tones in solemn awe have spoken
That I must soon depart.
And must my wild dreams coldly perish,
And wither in the dust!
The golden hopes I fondly cherish—
My earthly joy and trust!
The schemes my soul has long been forming,
Just bursting into light,
And tones of love my fond heart warming,
All—_all_ be quenched in night!
Full many a bud of hope was wreathing
About my thornless path,
In mellow tones of music breathing
Of all but blight and death;
I had not thought to see them fading
And dying at their birth—
To view this cloud of darkness shading
The beautiful of earth.
Oh, there were softest whispers telling
Of greatness and of fame;
Of rapture in the bosom swelling,
And of an honored name;
And how the knee of genius bending,
Should own a deeper sway,
And shouts of joy the blue skies rending,
Bear higher deeds away.
And there were gentle voices finding
A way to my deep soul,
_Love’s_ own sweet angel softly binding
My heart to her control;
And in my dreams of fame and glory,
Beamed ever her meek eyes,
Telling a fond and pleasant story
Of mingled smiles and sighs.
That tone—’twas music, ever hushing
My panting heart to rest—
And glorious dreams like sunlight gushing,
Thrilled through my peaceful breast,
Those dreams like summer buds have faded,
That tone hath died away,
Death’s cloud my beaming skies hath shaded,
And quenched the light of day.
I lay me down, faint, lone, and weary,
No hand upon my brow;
Through the dark valley, cold and dreary,
No voice to cheer me now.
My life has been a dream; in vain
Have soft eyes shed their light;
Frail phantoms of a fevered brain—
Their ray has sunk in night.
And thus, when earthly trust hath perished,
And earthly joy hath fled—
When hopes my fond heart loved and cherished
Are lying with the dead—
Oh! may there not in yonder heaven
Be for my brow a wreath,
Whose fadeless flowers shall ne’er be riven
By the rude hand of Death!
Father above, wilt thou now hearken
Unto my feeble cry—
Dispel the mists that coldly darken
And dim my failing eye?
I bless thee—for the cloud hath parted
That hid thy glorious face;
Joyful and glad, yet humble-hearted,
I sink in thine embrace.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _G. CATTERMOLE. H. ROSS_
A DANGEROUS STUDENT.
Engraved expressly for Graham’s Magazine.]
* * * * *
TO —— IN ABSENCE.
BY GRACE GREENWOOD.
WHEN first we met, beloved, rememberest thou
How all my nature was athirst and faint?
My soul’s high powers lay wasting still and slow,
While my sad heart sighed forth its ceaseless plaint.
For frowning pride life’s summer waves did lock
Away from light, their restless murmuring hushed—
But thou didst smite the cold, defying rock,
And full and fast the living waters gushed!
Oh, what a summer glory life put on!
What morning freshness those swift waters gave
That leaped from darkness forth into the sun,
And mirrored heaven in every smallest wave!
. . . . . . . . .
The cloud that darkened long our sky of love,
And flung a shadow o’er life’s Eden bloom,
Hath deepened into night, around, above—
But night beneficent and void of gloom.
The dews of peace and faith’s sweet quiet bringing,
And memory’s starlight, as joy’s sunlight fades,
While, like the nightingale’s melodious singing,
The voice of Hope steals out amid the shades.
Now it hath come and gone, the shadowed day,
The time of farewells that beheld us part,
I miss thy presence from my side alway—
Thy smile’s sweet comfort raining on my heart.
Yes, we are parted. Now I call thy name,
And listen long, but no dear voice replies;
I miss thine earnest praise, thy gentle blame,
And the mute blessing of thy loving eyes.
Yet no, _not parted_. Still in life and power
Thy spirit cometh over wild and wave,
Is ever near me in the trial-hour,
A ready help, a presence strong and brave.
Thy love breathes o’er me in the winds of heaven—
Floats to me on the tides of morning light—
Descends upon me in the calms of even,
And fills with music all the dreamy night.
It falleth as a robe of pride around me,
A royal vesture, rich with purple gleams—
It is the glory wherewith life hath crowned me,
The large fulfillment of my soul’s long dreams!
It is a paean drowning notes of sadness—
It is a great light shutting out all gloom—
It is a fountain of perpetual gladness—
It is a garden of perpetual bloom.
But to _thy_ nature pride and power belong,
And death-defying courage; what to thee,
With thy great life, thy spirit high and strong,
May my one love in all its fullness be?
An inward joy, sharp e’en to pain, yet dear
As thy soul’s life—a warmth, a light serene,
A low, deep, voice which none save thou may hear—
A living presence, constant, though unseen.
Yet shalt thou fold it closer to thy breast,
In the dark days, when other loves depart—
And when thou liest down for the long rest,
Then, oh, beloved, ’twill sleep upon thy heart!
* * * * *
WILD-BIRDS OF AMERICA.
BY PROFESSOR FROST.
[Illustration: THE QUA BIRD. (_Ardea Nycticorax._ WILSON.)]
THIS bird, otherwise known as the Night Heron, and the Rail, is found
both in Europe and America. Its habits are somewhat different on the two
continents, but the American bird may be safely considered as the type
of the species. It is called Qua Bird on account of the rough guttural
sound, _qua, qua_, which it utters while seeking its prey; and by some,
Night Heron, from the circumstance of seeking its prey at night. During
the day the Qua Birds perch in silence on high trees, and it seems
probable that their eye cannot sustain the rays of the sun. But at night
few birds are more active or enterprising. They are generally found in
flocks, in the vicinity of deep swamps, or marshy woods, partially
submerged by water. From these places troops of Qua Birds issue at
twilight, and scatter themselves along ditches and by the river shore,
to search for food. “On entering the swamp,” says Wilson, “in the
neighborhood of one of these breeding places, the noise of the old and
the young would almost induce one to suppose that two or three hundred
Indians were choking or throttling each other. The instant an intruder
is discovered, the whole rise in the air in silence, and remove to the
tops of the trees in another part of the woods, while parties of from
eight to ten make occasional circuits over the spot, to see what is
going on. When the young are able they climb to the highest part of the
trees, but, knowing their inability, do not attempt to fly. Though it is
probable that these nocturnal birds do not see well during the day, yet
their faculty of hearing must be exquisite, as it is almost impossible,
with all the precautions one can use, to penetrate near their residence
without being discovered. Several species of hawks hover around, making
an occasional sweep among the young; and the Bald-Eagle himself has been
seen reconnoitering near the spot, probably with the same design.”
Until recently the young of this bird was considered as the female. The
close observations of Wilson detected the error; and his dissections
proved that the male and the female were so similar in external
appearance as to be distinguished only by a practiced eye. The length of
the full grown bird is two feet four inches; extent of the wings four
feet; the bill four inches and a quarter long from the corners of the
mouth to the tip. The general color of the under plumage is white,
tinged with cream; the wings are ash; and the back a glossy blue,
inclining to green. From the hinder part of the head flows three long
tapering feathers, about nine inches long, and so united, when the bird
is quiet, as to appear but one. When alarmed or angry, the Qua Bird
erects these singular appendages, which then give it a strange and
threatening appearance. The eye of the species is noted for its beauty,
the pupil being black and the iris blood-red. The young of the first
year differs both in color and shape from the parent bird. Their food is
composed of small fish, which the birds labor for with great industry at
night.
The Qua Bird extends over a large portion of North America. It arrives
in Pennsylvania about the beginning of April; and invariably chooses
each season the building place occupied the season before. If that place
has been disturbed by the advances of cultivation, the bird chooses a
similar spot as near to it as possible; although instances have
occurred, that, when persecuted by man, or teased by other birds, the
Qua flock have departed in a body, for parts unknown. The eggs are four
in number, of a pale blue color. This bird is found in India; but it is
smaller than the American variety, and builds on the ground among reeds.
The European bird is smaller than the Indian, but closely resembles it
in other respects. It is, however, undoubtedly the same species as that
which we have described.
[Illustration: THE ROSEATE SPOON-BILL. (_Platalea Ajaja._ WILSON.)]
The group to which this bird belongs, form a connecting link between the
Herons and the Tantali, and receive their name from the singular shape
of the bill. Like the Herons, they live in flocks, preying in the
twilight upon fish and aquatic animals. They are said to search the mud
with their bills, in the manner of ducks, straining out the insects and
other small animals, upon which they feed when nothing better can be
obtained. The European Spoon-bills breed on trees by the sea-side, and
sometimes take their prey from other birds. At such seasons they are
very noisy, and will often attack birds larger than themselves. They are
sometimes tamed, and their flesh is esteemed equal to that of the goose.
Of the habits of the species under consideration not much is known. It
is found along the seashore from Brazil to Carolina, and has been seen
in the northern parts of Louisiana. It is not very common, however, in
any of the Southern States, but is frequently seen in Mexico and the
West Indies. It is generally in the water, sometimes swimming about
gracefully, at others diving and then searching for its prey. This
consists of insects, fish, shell-fish and small crabs. Wilson gives the
following account of a specimen, which he received from a friend, and
which had been shot in the neighborhood of Natchez.
“The Roseate Spoon-bill now before us measured two feet six inches in
length, and near four feet in extent; the bill was six inches and a half
long from the corner of the mouth, seven from its upper base, two inches
over at its greatest width, and three-quarters of an inch where
narrowest; of a black color for half its length, and covered with hard,
scaly protuberances, like the edges of oyster-shells; these are of a
whitish tint, stained with red; the nostrils are oblong, and placed in
the centre of the upper mandible; from the lower end of each there runs
a deep groove along each side of the mandible, and about a quarter of an
inch from its edge; whole crown and chin bare of plumage, and covered
with a greenish skin; that below the under mandible dilatable, like
those of the genus Pelicanus; space round the eye, orange; irides,
blood-red; cheeks and hind head, a bare black skin; neck, long, covered
with short white feathers, some of which, on the upper part of the neck,
are tipped with crimson; breast, white, the sides of which are tinged
with a brown, burnt color; from the upper part of the breast proceeds a
long tuft of fine, hair-like plumage, of a pale rose color; back, white,
slightly tinged with brownish; wings, a pale wild rose color, the shafts
lake; the shoulders of the wings are covered with a long, hairy plumage,
of a deep and splendid carmine; upper and lower tail coverts, the same
rich red; belly, rosy; rump, paler; tail, equal at the end, consisting
of twelve feathers of a bright brownish orange, the shafts reddish; legs
and naked part of the thighs, dark dusky red; feet, half webbed; toes,
very long, particularly the hind one. The upper part of the neck had the
plumage partly worn away, as if occasioned by resting it on the back, in
the manner of the Ibis. The skin on the crown is a little wrinkled; the
inside of the wing a much richer red than the outer.”
* * * * *
MEMORY—THE GLEANER.
BY ANSON G. CHESTER, A. B.
THE harvest-field of Boaz. Like a host
Drawn up for battle stands its yellow grain,
Rustling its own sweet music. Brawny men
Are there to steal its beauty—and the noise
Of the keen sickle blends with random songs.
Close on their track the agile binders haste
To form the lately fallen grain in sheaves,
Which throng the field with golden monuments
To Industry and Labor.
Glance again—
Woman upon the field, the sweet and frail!
Like a young lily in a waste of thorns,
So she among the workmen. See! she bends—
And with a graceful, stainless hand collects
The single stalks that else would perish there.
’Tis gentle Ruth, the meek and beautiful,
Around whose name are wreathed the rarest flowers
Of generous remembrance—whom, though years
Counted by centuries have come and gone,
Woman delights to love and man to praise.
Oh! who can gaze upon her slender form,
Intent upon its labor, or can catch
The mild expression of her lovely face,
Nor feel his veins thrill deeper! Filial Ruth!
While that blest page endures that chronicles
Thy winning history for after times,
Love shall embalm thy name in benisons,
And hearts shall be thy home!
Another scene—
Behold before thine eye a mightier field—
Th’ unmeasured, the illimitable Past!
Yonder, well-busied with her ceaseless toil,
Lo! MEMORY—THE GLEANER. Not like her,
The gentle Moabitess, laboring for love,
But as another Nemesis in look and work.
One gleaned to succor life—affection led
Her footsteps to the field and cheered her toil—
The other gleans for justice—hoarding up
A store of testimony in her garner-place,
For judgment and for Heaven. Pause awhile—
View her vocation and its circumstance—
Give wing to Thought—expand Reflection’s sails—
And thy salvation may be thy reward.
She stretcheth forth her hand and gleaneth. Day
And cheerless night are each to her the same;
A stranger to vicissitude and change,
She gathers up material for Heaven.
Mark what is in her grasp—lo! thrifty tares,
Old, unrepented sins thou hast forgotten—
And thistles, too, thine unforgiven wrongs—
And worthless weeds, thy lost and squandered hours—
And flowers, thy deeds of common charity,
Which Pity’s ardent hot-bed forced to shoot,
Not Duty’s tardy but unerring soil—
Life’s sweet embellishments, which make it fair,
Yet have no signal claim to merit—these
Were but unwelcome witnesses when thou
Art summoned for thy last account to meet
With thine accuser, Memory—and these,
If these were _all_ to testify of thee,
Would seal thy doom with rayless misery:
It is alone the rich, ripe, perfect grain
Of Goodness and of Virtue that can win
For thee the taintless wealth of Paradise.
. . . . . . . . .
Our lives are what we make them—human will
Moulds human destiny—spirits on earth
But leave and bud, the blossom is the Future’s—
Earth, like a cunning sculptor, fashioneth
The form and features of Eternity.
Like Jacob’s dream-known angels we can rise
Upon “celestial stairs” to his and their fruition—
Or, like to him who burned and glowed in Heaven,
Be quenched amid the mists of endless night.
. . . . . . . . .
As thou shalt sow, man-brother, she shall glean—
Like maketh like—the seed thou scatterest
Into Life’s furrows shall produce its kind
In generous abundance. Oh! reflect
That thou art sowing for Eternity—that this
Thine earthly labor shall be known on high:
_For as thou sowest, Memory will glean—_
_And as she gleans so shall thy portion be_.
Her store-house shall be opened—from its depths
Her treasured evidence shall be produced,
Hoary with years, yet firm and forcible.
All else is worthless—but, if thou hast left
Upon thy pathway pure and sterling grain,
And Memory’s hand has gathered it for thee,
Then shalt thou tread the golden streets of Heaven,
And thy clear brow shall wear a seraph’s crown.
Scatter, oh! scatter on thine earthly way
The perfect seed of Goodness, Truth and Love:
That, when thou meetest Memory on high,
Bearing the tokens of thy life’s employ,
Thou shalt embrace her as an olden friend:—
And, counted with the angels, shalt remain
In the eternal childhood of the skies.
* * * * *
[Illustration: COME REST IN THIS BOSOM.]
* * * * *
GEMS FROM MOORE’S IRISH MELODIES.
NO. III.—COME REST IN THIS BOSOM.
[SEE ENGRAVING.]
WHILE engaged in writing songs to the native airs of his country, Moore,
in a letter to the Countess of Donegal, makes these remarks on Irish
music:
“It has been often said, and still oftener felt, that in our music is
found the truest of all comments upon our history. The tone of defiance
succeeded by the languor of despondency—a burst of turbulence, dying
away into softness the sorrows of one moment lost in the levity of the
next—and all that romantic mixture of mirth and sadness, which is
naturally produced by the efforts of a lively temperament to shake off,
or forget the wrongs which lie upon it. Such are the features of our
history and character, which we find strongly and faithfully reflected
in our music; and there are even many airs, which it is difficult to
listen to, without recalling some period or event to which their
expression seems applicable. Sometimes, for instance, when the strain is
open and spirited, yet here and there shaded by a mournful recollection,
we can fancy that we behold the brave allies of Montrose, marching to
the aid of the royal cause, notwithstanding all the perfidy of Charles
and his ministers, and remembering just enough of past sufferings to
enhance the generosity of their present sacrifice. The plaintive
melodies of Carolan take us back to the times in which he lived, when
our poor countrymen were driven to worship their God in caves, or to
quit, forever, the land of their birth—like the bird that abandons the
nest which human touch has violated.”
In writing to these melodies, the poet’s task, a most difficult one, was
to express sentiments in harmony with the air. To give an intelligible
utterance to the feelings pent up in music, whether gay, solemn or
mournful. At the time he wrote, Irish patriotism was in the ascendant,
and many of the songs had a political bearing. So apparent was this,
that the fact was noticed, we believe, by the government, or at least by
some high in office. In the following well-known song, so full of the
purest pathos, it is not clear to what the poet particularly alluded. If
there was an allusion, as is not improbable, to Emmett and Miss Curren,
Moore deemed it but an act of prudence to withhold the fact.
“Come, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer,
Though the herd has fled from thee, thy home is still here;
Here still is the smile that no cloud can o’ercast,
And a heart and a hand all thy own to the last.
“Oh! what was love made for, if ’tis not the same,
Through joy and through torment, through glory and shame?
I know not, I ask not, if guilt’s in that heart,
I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art.
“Thou hast called me thy Angel in moments of bliss,
And thy Angel I’ll be, ’mid the horrors of this—
Through the furnace, unshrinking, thy steps to pursue,
And shield thee, and save thee—or perish there too.”
At any rate, the sentiments of this song might well be applied to the
personages mentioned, even if the poet himself had another application
in his mind. Their tenderness is scarcely surpassed by any thing in the
language; and there are states of mind with every one in which their
repetition would bring tears.
* * * * *
REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.
_Representative Men: Seven Lectures. By R. W. Emerson. Boston:
Phillips, Sampson & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._
The subjects of these lectures, originally delivered before New England
Lyceums, are Uses of Great Men; Plato, or the Philosopher; Swedenborg,
or the Mystic; Montaigne, or the Skeptic; Shakspeare, or the Poet;
Napoleon, or the Man of the World; and Goethe, or the Writer; subjects
calculated to test the most various powers of the greatest mind, and, as
treated by Mr. Emerson, appearing always in an original and fascinating,
if not always a true light. The volume we consider, on the whole, the
best of Mr. Emerson’s works. It is not, rhetorically speaking, so
carefully written as his “Essays,” but it has more human interest, deals
more generously with facts, and indicates a broader and more stalwort
individuality. It is certainly one of the most fascinating books ever
written, whether we consider its subtle verbal felicities, its deep and
shrewd observation, its keen criticism, its beautiful mischievousness,
its wit or learning, its wisdom or beauty. The best passages may be
found in the lectures on Plato, Shakspeare, and Swedenborg; but the best
lecture is probably that on Montaigne, which must have been written _con
amore_. Indeed, the author seems a kind of Montaigne-Plato, with his
eyes wide open both to material and spiritual facts, without a hearty
self-surrender to either. There are in the volumes some speculative
audacities which, in common with the rest of the human race, we consider
equally erroneous and hurtful. In matters of religious faith it may be
confidently asserted that mankind is right and Mr. Emerson wrong. Our
author puts objectionable doctrines in language which shocks the minds
of his readers without conveying to them his real ideas—a blunder,
equally as regards prudence and expression.
The excellence of the book is not so much in its representations of the
representative men who form its subjects, as in the representation of
Mr. Emerson himself; and we doubt if, in all literature, there are
revealed many individualities so peculiar, and so powerful in its
peculiarity, as the individuality stamped upon every page of the present
volume. We would not presume, in our limits, to attempt an analysis of
an intellect so curiously complex as Mr. Emerson’s—with traits which
strike us as a Parthian’s arrows, shot while he is flying, and which
both provoke and defy the pursuit of criticism; but we will extract
instead, a few of the beautiful and brilliant sentences which are
inserted, like gems, in almost every lecture, and in each of which some
sparkle of the writer’s quality appears. The lecture on Goethe is a
perfect diamond necklace, shooting out light in every direction, with
some flashes that illumine, for the instant, labyrinths of thought which
darkness is considered to hold as exclusively her own.
In speaking of the acting of Shakspeare’s plays, he translates into
words an emotion which everyone has felt, but which we never dreamed
could be perfectly expressed. “The recitation,” he says, “begins; one
golden word leaps out immortal from all this painted pedantry, _and
sweetly torments us with invitations to its own inaccessible homes_.”
Again, he remarks that Shakspeare is inconceivably wise; all other
writers conceivably. “A good reader,” he says, “can, in a sort, _nestle
into Plato’s brain_, and think from thence; but not into Shakspeare’s.
_We are still out of doors._” Speaking of Montaigne’s use of language,
he exclaims, “but these words, and they would bleed; they are vascular
and alive.” Of Mr. Emerson’s peculiar wit the present volume is full of
Examples. Thus he speaks of “the heaven of law, and the pismire of
performance under it;” of Plato as having “clapped copyright on the
world;” of the possibility, as regards marriage, of dividing the human
race into two classes; “those who are out and want to get in, and those
who are in and want to get out;” but quotation of small sentences is
impertinent, where so many paragraphs are thoroughly pervaded with the
quality.
In speaking of Plato’s mind, Mr. Emerson gives us some of his keenest
and most characteristic sentences—sentences in which the thought seems
to go in straight lines right at the mark, but to lack a comprehension
of relations. In Plato, he says, “the freest abandonment is united with
the precision of a geometer. His daring imagination gives him the more
solid grasp of facts; as the birds of the highest flight have the
strongest alar bones.” . . . “His strength,” he says, a few pages after,
“is like the momentum of a falling planet; and his discretion, the
return of its due and perfect curve.” Perhaps the best passage, however,
in the lecture on Plato, is that in which he describes the divine
delirium, in which the philosopher rises into the seer. “He believes
that poetry, prophecy, and the high insight, are from a wisdom of which
man is not master; that the gods never philosophize; but, by a celestial
mania, these miracles are accomplished. Horsed on these winged steeds,
he sweeps the dim regions, visits worlds which flesh cannot enter; he
saw the souls in pain; he hears the doom of the judge; he beholds the
penal metempsychosis; the Fates, with the rock and shears; _and hears
the intoxicating hum of their spindle_.”
Sentences, bright and beautiful as these, might be extracted from this
volume to such an extent as to bring upon us an action for violating the
copyright. For fineness of wit, imagination, observation, satire and
sentiment, the book hardly has its equal in American literature; with
its positive opinions we have little to do. With respect to these, it
may be generally said, that Mr. Emerson is always beneath the surface,
and never at the centre.
* * * * *
_The Seaside and the Fireside. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 16mo._
We have not space this month to do much more than refer to this
beautiful collection of poems, instinct with sentiment and imagination,
and with that drapery of beauty over the whole which constitutes the
charm equally of Longfellow’s narratives and meditations. The first poem
in the volume is “The Building of the Ship,” a worthy counterpart of
Schiller’s “Song of the Bell,” and a grand example of the union of the
common with the beautiful. We doubt if any of the poet’s longer
compositions will equal it in popularity. To this succeed a number of
pieces relating to the sea, of which “The Light House,” and “The Fire of
Drift Wood,” appear to us the best. The poems “by the fireside,”
commence with “Resignation,” an elegy warm from the author’s heart and
imagination, and whose exquisite pathos has been felt and acknowledged
all over the country. “The Open Window,” and “The Sand of the Desert,”
belonging to this portion of the volume, are fine specimens of two
processes of Longfellow’s mind—its subtle suggestiveness and its clear
pictorial power. A long poem of twenty-seven pages, translated from the
Gascon of Jasmin, entitled “The Blind Girl of Castèl-Cuillè,” is a
tragedy whose power, sweetness, and pathos the dullest reader cannot
resist. We wish that Mr. Longfellow would give us more specimens of this
charming poet, as worthily “Englished” as the present.
We think that none of Mr. Longfellow’s volumes will be received with
more favor than this, embodying as it does the best qualities of his
muse, and leaving little for even the critic to grumble at but the
smallness of its bulk.
* * * * *
_Old Portraits and Modern Sketches. By John G. Whittier. Boston:
Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 12mo._
This elegantly printed volume, from the press of a firm celebrated all
over the country for tasteful books, is one of Mr. Whittier’s most
characteristic productions. It contains strongly marked representations
of John Bunyan, Thomas Ellwood, James Naylor, Andrew Marvell, John
Roberts, Samuel Hopkins, Richard Baxter, William Leggett, Nathaniel P.
Rogers, and Robert Dinsmoore. If sympathy be, as Carlyle says, the first
condition of insight, there can be no doubt that these striking
individualities have sat to the right artist for their portraits. The
best pieces in the volume are John Bunyan, Naylor, Marvell and Baxter,
which are really mental portraits, glowing with life and meaning. The
inspiration of Whittier is impassioned conscience—a conscience as bold
and resolute as it is quick and delicate; and wit, imagination,
understanding and learning, all work under the direction of this moral
force. His general taste is for the strong and daring in action and
meditation; his field, the region of great ideas and universal
sentiments; but at the same time he has a capacity for embodying the
delicacies and refinements of thought and emotion, and in pure pathos
and beauty he has few American superiors. All these qualities are
displayed in this volume in their most genial action, and the result is
a book of equal fineness and power.
* * * * *
_History of Spanish Literature. By George Ticknor. New York:
Harper & Brothers. 3 vols. 8vo._
Ben Jonson was wont to congratulate himself that his solid dramas were
called “works,” while the dramatic productions of his contemporaries
were but “plays.” Professor Ticknor’s History is eminently a “work,” the
result of twenty years of thought and research. To its erudition no
other epithet can apply than Dominie Sampson’s epithet of “prodigious.”
Every department of the literature of a whole nation, through some ten
centuries of existence, the author has thoroughly mastered. No
intellectual history with which we are acquainted rests on such a solid
basis of authorities. As the author has had the subject in his thoughts
from his youth, his erudition, immense as it is, does not encumber his
mind. It does not use him, but he uses it; and the result is that the
work has the great merit of clear statement. It is not only full of
knowledge, but the knowledge is so presented as to be communicated to
every reader. Those who are little interested in the subject as a whole,
will still find the work attractive from its biographical matter, its
analysis of the plot and characters of different plays, and its fine
translations of particular poems and ballads. The accounts given of the
stories forming the plots of some of the dramas, are interesting as mere
tales.
There are few American books which are so much calculated to raise the
foreign estimate of American Scholarship and intelligence as this
History of Spanish Literature, and we doubt if there be many men, in
Spain or out of Spain, who could have written it.
* * * * *
_People I have Met; or Pictures of Society and People of Mark.
Drawn under a Thin Veil of Fiction. By N. Parker Willis. New
York: Baker & Scribner. 1 vol. 12mo._
In this elegant volume we have a collection of Mr. Willis’s tales and
sketches, recording the results of his intercourse with society on both
sides of the Atlantic. It indicates that the author’s practical
observation of men and things is as acute and sure as if his head did
not contain the most trickery and exuberant of human fancies. No one can
read the volume without delight, and without having his knowledge of
society increased. It is a fit companion to the “Rural Letters,” being
as full of the world as those are of nature. The writer’s sunny and
sportive, keen and sparkling mind, glances and gleams through every
story and sketch; and over the whole there is that indefinable grace,
which the poet alone can communicate to the things of convention, and
which almost lifts them into an ideal region of existence.
* * * * *
_Monuments of Egypt; or Egypt a Witness for the Bible. By
Francis L. Hawks, D. D., LL. D. With Notes of a Voyage up the
Nile. By an American. New York; Geo. P. Putnam. 1 vol. 8vo._
Mr. Putnam has got up this volume with his usual indifference to
expense, and his usual regard for typographical beauty. The illustrative
engravings are exactly what the reader wants to assist him in the
comprehension of the text. Dr. Hawks refuses, in the preface, the name
of author, preferring the more modest appellation of compiler; but we
should like to see many more compilations from the same source. He has
carefully studied the works of the great English and French savons and
travelers relating to the subject, and has presented in clear language
the truths which they have established. We commend the book to all who
are desirous of accurate information about a most interesting country,
in its past and present condition.
* * * * *
_A System of Ancient and Mediæval Geography, for the Use of
Schools and Colleges. By Charles Anthon, LL. D. New York: Harper
& Brothers. 1 vol. 8vo._
This solid and well printed volume is but one out of many proofs of the
author’s extensive erudition and classical enthusiasm. We are
incompetent to speak of its value as a class-book, but certainly can
bear testimony to its wealth of information relating to ancient
countries, and its interest to all who are students of ancient history.
The work rests on a solid foundation of over a hundred authorities,
German, English, and French, and indicates on every page a scholarship
as minute in details as it is large in its grasp. In the limits of some
seven hundred and fifty octavo pages, crammed rather than filled with
matter, Dr. Anthon has almost compressed a library of knowledge.
* * * * *
_The King of the Hurons. By the Author of “The First of the
Knickerbockers,” and “The Young Patroon.” New York: Geo. P.
Putnam. 1 vol. 12mo._
In the press of this month’s publications we trust that this novel, the
work of a man of shrewd and accurate observation, graceful fancy, and
brilliant style, will not be lost in the crowd. The author’s wit and
humor sparkle over his narrative, and lend an increased fascination even
to the engrossing interest of the characters and incidents.
* * * * *
_Essay on Christian Baptism. By Baptist W. Noel, M. A. New York:
Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 16mo._
The author of this little volume has already attained great notoriety by
his volume directed against the union of church and state. The object of
his present work is to declare himself by conviction a Baptist, and to
exhibit the train of scriptural argumentation by which he came to the
conclusion that believers have the exclusive right to Christian baptism.
The work is well written, and the reasoning indicates a conscientious
inquirer after truth.
* * * * *
_Fairy Tales from all Nations. By Anthony R. Montalba. New York:
Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 12mo._
The Harpers fairly bewilder critics by the number and variety of their
publications. In following their books we have to make the most violent
ascents and descents to and from one department of letters to another.
We had hardly finished a survey of a Latin Dictionary before we came
directly upon this delicious volume of fairy stories, containing a
representation of supernatural novelties from Denmark, Germany, France,
Sweden, Russia, Poland, Norway, Italy, Hungary, Iceland, Bohemia, and
some Eastern countries. The collection is one of the most fascinating we
have ever seen, and its interest is much increased to the younger class
of readers by some thirty grotesque illustrations.
* * * * *
_The History of England. By David Hume. Vol. 5. Boston:
Phillips, Sampson & Co._
This volume of the cheap Boston edition of Hume is devoted to Charles I.
and the Commonwealth; contains the principal alleged offences of the
author against the principles of civil and religious liberty, and is,
accordingly, that part of his great work which has been made the subject
of the most vehement controversies. It is, perhaps, the ablest in style
and matter of the whole, and may be profitably read in connection with
Macaulay’s views on the same subjects.
* * * * *
_Saint Leger, or The Threads of Life. New York: Geo. P. Putnam.
1 vol. 12mo._
This is the work of a man of intense conceptions, whose style is urged
on by the _furor_ of his thinking, and who, by sheer strength, drags the
readers along with him from the first to the last page. The detail of
the hero’s personal experience, if given with less vividness, would
certainly tire, but as expressed in the author’s vehement style, it
fastens attention as much as the incidents.
* * * * *
_The Whale and his Captors; or The Whaleman’s Adventures, and
The Whale’s Biography. By Rev. Henry T. Cheever. New York:
Harper & Brothers. 1 vol. 16mo._
This volume is the production of a scholar, a man of letters, and a
clergyman; and the characteristics of all three are modified by a sort
of assumed Jack-Tarism, always racy, if sometimes in questionable taste.
It is spirited in style, full of a landsman’s exultation in the
incidents and scenery of sea life, and laden with interesting
information pleasantly told.
* * * * *
EDITOR’S TABLE.
THE LATE EDGAR ALLAN POE.
_Grif._ Noble madam,
Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues
We write in water. May it please your highness
To hear me speak his good now?
_Kath._ Yes, good Griffith;
I were malicious else.
_Grif._ This cardinal,
Though from an humble stock, undoubtedly,
Was fashioned to much honor from his cradle.
He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one;
Exceeding wise, fair spoken, and persuading;
Lofty, and sour, to them that loved him not;
But, to those men that sought him, sweet as summer.
KING HENRY VIII.
MY DEAR WILLIS,—In an article of yours, which accompanies the two
beautiful volumes of the writings of Edgar Allan Poe,[2] you have spoken
with so much truth and delicacy of the deceased, and with the magical
touch of genius have called so warmly up before me the memory of our
lost friend, as you and I both seem to have known him, that I feel
warranted in addressing to you the few plain words I have to say in
defense of his character, as set down by Dr. Rufus W. Griswold. Although
the article, it seems, appeared originally in the New York Tribune, it
met my eye for the first time in the volumes before me. I now purpose to
take exception to it in the most public manner. I knew Mr. Poe well—far
better than Mr. Griswold; and by the memory of old times, when he was an
editor of “Graham,” I pronounce this exceedingly ill-timed and
unappreciative estimate of the character of our lost friend _unfair and
untrue_. It must have been made in a moment of spleen, written out and
laid aside, and handed to the printer, when his death was announced,
with a sort of chuckle. It is Mr. Poe, as seen by the writer while
laboring under a fit of the nightmare; but so dark a picture has no
resemblance to the _living_ man. Accompanying these beautiful volumes,
it is an immortal infamy—the death’s head over the entrance to the
garden of beauty—a horror that clings to the brow of morning,
whispering of murder. It haunts the memory through every page of his
writings, leaving upon the heart a sensation of utter gloom, a feeling
almost of terror. The only relief we feel, is in knowing that it is not
true—that it is a fancy sketch of a perverted, jaundiced vision. The
man who could deliberately say of Edgar Allan Poe, in a notice of his
life and writings, prefacing the volumes which were to become a
priceless souvenir to all who loved him—that his death might startle
many, “_but that few would be grieved by it_”—and blast the whole fame
of the man by such a paragraph as follows, is a judge dishonored. He is
not Mr. Poe’s peer, and I challenge him before the country, even as a
juror in the case.
“His harsh experience had deprived him of all faith in man or
woman. He had made up his mind upon the numberless complexities
of the social world, and the whole system with him was an
imposture. This conviction gave a direction to his shrewd and
naturally unamiable character. Still, though he regarded society
as _composed altogether of villains_, the sharpness of his
intellect was not of that kind which enabled him to cope with
villany, while it continually caused him by overshots to fail of
the success of honesty. He was in many respects like Francis
Vivian in Bulwer’s novel of ”The Caxtons.“ Passion, in him,
comprehended many of the worst emotions which militate against
human happiness. You could not contradict him, but you raised
quick choler; _you could not speak of wealth, but his cheek
paled with gnawing envy_. The astonishing natural advantages of
this poor boy—his beauty, his readiness, the daring spirit that
breathed around him like a fiery atmosphere—had raised his
constitutional self-confidence into an arrogance that turned his
very claims to admiration into prejudices against him.
_Irascible, envious—bad enough_, but not the worst, for these
salient angles were all varnished over with a cold, repellent
cynicism, his passions vented themselves in sneers. _There
seemed to him no moral susceptibility_; and, _what was more
remarkable in a proud nature, little or nothing of the true
point of honor_. He had, to a morbid excess, that desire to rise
which is vulgarly called ambition, but no wish for the esteem or
the love of his species; only the hard wish to succeed—not
shine, not serve—succeed, that he might have the right to
despise a world which galled his self-conceit.”
Now, this is dastardly, and, what is worse, it is false. It is very
adroitly done, with phrases very well turned, and with gleams of truth
shining out from a setting so dusky as to look devilish. Mr. Griswold
does not feel the worth of the man he has undervalued—he had no
sympathies in common with him, and has allowed old prejudices and old
enmities to steal, insensibly perhaps, into the coloring of his picture.
They were for years totally uncongenial, if not enemies, and during that
period Mr. Poe, in a scathing lecture upon The Poets of America, gave
Mr. Griswold some raps over the knuckles of force sufficient to be
remembered. He had, too, in the exercise of his functions as critic, put
to death, summarily, the literary reputation of some of Mr. Griswold’s
best friends; and their ghosts cried in vain for him to avenge them
during Poe’s life-time—and it almost seems, as if the present hacking
at the cold remains of him who struck them down, is a sort of
compensation for duty long delayed—for reprisal long desired but
deferred. But without this—the opportunities afforded Mr. Griswold to
estimate the character of Poe occurred, in the main, after his stability
had been wrecked, his whole nature in a degree changed and with all his
prejudices aroused and active. Nor do I consider Mr. Griswold
_competent_—with all the opportunities he may have cultivated or
acquired—to set as his judge—to dissect that subtle and singularly
fine intellect—to probe the motives and weigh the actions of that proud
heart. His whole nature—that distinctive presence of the departed which
now stands impalpable, yet in strong outline before me, as I knew him
and _felt_ him to be—eludes the rude grasp of a mind so warped and
uncongenial as Mr. Griswold’s.
But it may be said, my dear Willis, that Mr. Poe himself deputed him to
set as his literary executor, and that he must have felt some confidence
in his ability at least—if not in his integrity—to perform the
functions imposed with discretion and honor. I do not purpose, now, to
enter into any examination of the appointment of Mr. Griswold—nor of
the wisdom of his appointment to the solemn trust of handing the fair
fame of the deceased unimpaired to that posterity to which the dying
poet bequeathed his legacy—but simply to question its faithful
performance. Among the true friends of Poe in this city—and he had some
such here—there are those I am sure that he did not class among
_villains_; nor do _they_ feel easy when they see their old friend
dressed out, in his grave, in the habiliments of a scoundrel. There is
something to them in this mode of procedure on the part of the literary
Executor, that does not chime in with their notions of “the true point
of honor.” It looks so much like a breach of trust, that, to their plain
understandings, it is a proceeding that may very fairly be questioned.
They may, perhaps, being plain business men, be somewhat unschooled in
legacies, and obligations of this sort, but it shocks all their notions
of fair dealing. They had been led to suppose, that thus to fritter away
an estate was, to say the least of it, not of that high kind of
integrity which courts of justice alone recognize in a settlement in
ordinary affairs. As heirs, in part, to the inheritance left by their
lost friend, they find the fairest part of the domain ravaged, and the
strong castle battered down; and do not think because the hedges have
been a little trimmed up, and the gateway set in fashion, that the
property has been improved—on the contrary, they think the estate is
ruined. They had all of them looked upon our departed friend as
singularly indifferent to wealth for its own sake, but as very positive
in his opinions that the scale of social merit was not of the
highest—that MIND, somehow, was apt to be left out of the estimate
altogether—and, partaking somewhat of his free way of thinking, his
friends are startled to find they have entertained very unamiable
convictions. As to his “quick choler” when he was contradicted, it
depended a good deal upon the party denying, as well as upon the subject
discussed. He was quick, it is true, to perceive mere quacks in
literature, and somewhat apt to be hasty when pestered with them; but
upon most other questions his natural amiability was not easily
disturbed. Upon a subject that he understood thoroughly, he felt some
right to be positive, if not arrogant, when addressing pretenders. His
“astonishing natural advantages” had been very assiduously
cultivated—his “daring spirit” was the anointed of genius—his self
confidence the proud conviction of both—and it was with something of a
lofty scorn that he _attacked_, as well as repelled, a crammed scholar
of the hour, who attempted to palm upon him his ill-digested learning.
Literature with him was religion; and he, its high-priest, with a whip
of scorpions scourged the money-changers from the temple. In all else he
had the docility and kind-heartedness of a child. No man was more
quickly touched by a kindness—none more prompt to atone for an injury.
For three or four years I knew him intimately, and for eighteen months
saw him almost daily; much of the time writing or conversing at the same
desk; knowing all his hopes, his fears, and little annoyances of life,
as well as his high-hearted struggle with adverse fate—yet he was
always the same polished gentleman—the quiet, unobtrusive, thoughtful
scholar—the devoted husband—frugal in his personal expenses—punctual
and unwearied in his industry—_and the soul of honor_, in all his
transactions. This, of course, was in his better days, and by them _we_
judge the man. But even after his habits had changed, there was no
literary man to whom I would more readily advance money for labor to be
done. He kept his accounts, small as they were, with the accuracy of a
banker. I append an account sent to me in his own hand, long after he
had left Philadelphia, and after all knowledge of the transactions it
recited had escaped my memory. I had returned him the story of “The Gold
Bug,” at his own request, as he found that he could dispose of it very
advantageously elsewhere.
“We were square when I sold you the
‘Versification’ article; for which you
gave me first 25, and afterward 7—in
all $32 00
Then you bought ‘The Gold Bug’ for 52 00
———
I got both these back, so that I owed $84 00
You lent Mrs. Clemm 12 50
———
Making in all $96 50
The review of ‘Flaccus’ was 3¾ pp,
which, at $4, is 15 00
Lowell’s poem is 10 00
The review of Channing, 4 pp. is 16, of
which I got 6, leaving 10 00
The review of Halleck, 4 pp. is 16, of
which I got 10, leaving 6 00
The review of Reynolds, 2 pp. 8 00
The review of Longfellow, 5 pp. is 20,
of which I got 10, leaving 10 00
———
So that I have paid in all 59 00
———
Which leaves still due by me $37 50 ”
This I find was his uniform habit with others, as well as
myself—carefully recalling to mind his indebtedness, with the fresh
article sent. And this is the man who had “no moral susceptibility,” and
little or nothing of the “true point of honor.” It may be a very plain,
business view of the question, but it strikes his friends that it may
pass as something, as times go.
I shall never forget how solicitous of the happiness of his wife and
mother-in-law he was, whilst one of the editors of Graham’s
Magazine—his whole efforts seemed to be to procure the comfort and
welfare of his home. Except for their happiness—and the natural
ambition of having a magazine of his own—I never heard him deplore the
want of wealth. The truth is, he cared little for money, and knew less
of its value, for he seemed to have no personal expenses. What he
received from me in regular monthly instalments, went directly into the
hands of his mother-in-law for family comforts—and _twice_ only, I
remember his purchasing some rather expensive luxuries for his house,
and then he was nervous to the degree of misery until he had, by extra
articles, covered what he considered an imprudent indebtedness. His love
for his wife was a sort of rapturous worship of the spirit of beauty
which he felt was fading before his eyes. I have seen him hovering
around her when she was ill, with all the fond fear and tender anxiety
of a mother for her first-born—her slightest cough causing in him a
shudder, a heart-chill that was visible. I rode out one summer evening
with them, and the remembrance of his watchful eyes eagerly bent upon
the slightest change of hue in that loved face, haunts me yet as the
memory of a sad strain. It was this hourly _anticipation_ of her loss,
that made him a sad and thoughtful man, and lent a mournful melody to
his undying song.
It is true that later in life Poe had much of those morbid feelings
which a life of poverty and disappointment is so apt to engender in the
heart of man—the sense of having been ill-used, misunderstood, and put
aside by men of far less ability, and of none, which preys upon the
heart and clouds the brain of many a child of song: A consciousness of
the inequalities of life, and of the abundant power of mere wealth
allied even to vulgarity, to over-ride all distinctions, and to thrust
itself bedaubed with dirt and glittering with tinsel, into the high
places of society, and the chief seats of the synagogue; whilst he, a
worshiper of the beautiful and true, who listened to the voices of
angels, and held delighted companionship with them as the cold throng
swept disdainfully by him, was often in danger of being thrust out,
houseless, homeless, beggared upon the world, with all his fine feelings
strung to a tension of agony when he thought of his beautiful and
delicate wife dying hourly before his eyes. What wonder, that he then
poured out the vials of a long-treasured bitterness upon the injustice
and hollowness of all society around him.
The very natural question—“Why did he not work and thrive?” is easily
answered. It will not be _asked_ by the many who know the precarious
tenure by which literary men hold a mere living in this country. The
avenues through which they can profitably reach the country are few, and
crowded with aspirants for bread as well as fame. The unfortunate
tendency to cheapen every literary work to the lowest point of beggarly
flimsiness in price and profit, prevents even the well-disposed from
extending any thing like an adequate support to even a part of the great
throng which genius, talent, education, and even misfortune, force into
the struggle. The character of Poe’s mind was of such an order, as not
to be very widely in demand. The class of educated mind which he could
readily and profitably address, was small—the channels through which he
could do so at all, were few—and publishers all, or nearly all,
contented with such pens as were already engaged, hesitated to incur the
expense of his to an extent which would sufficiently remunerate him;
hence, when he was fairly at sea, connected permanently with no
publication, he suffered all the horrors of prospective destitution,
with scarcely the ability of providing for immediate necessities; and at
such moments, alas! the tempter often came, and, as you have truly said,
“_one glass_” of wine, made him a madman. Let the moralist who stands
upon tufted carpet, and surveys his smoking board, the fruits of his
individual toil or mercantile adventure, pause before he lets the
anathema, trembling upon his lips, fall upon a man like Poe! who,
wandering from publisher to publisher, with his fine, print-like
manuscript, scrupulously clean and neatly rolled, finds no market for
his brain—with despair at heart, misery ahead for himself and his loved
ones, and gaunt famine dogging at his heels, thus sinks by the wayside,
before the demon that watches his steps and whispers, OBLIVION. Of all
the miseries which God, or his own vices inflict upon man, none are so
terrible as that of having the strong and willing arm struck down to a
child-like inefficiency, while the Heart and Will, have the purpose and
force of a giant’s out-doing. We must remember, too, that the very
organization of such a mind as that of Poe—the very tension and tone of
his exquisitely strung nerves—the passionate yearnings of his soul for
the beautiful and true, utterly unfitted him for the rude jostlings and
fierce competitorship of trade. The only drafts of his that could be
honored, were those upon his brain. The unpeopled air—the caverns of
ocean—the decay and mystery that hang around old castles—the thunder
of wind through the forest aisles—the spirits that rode the blast, by
all but him unseen—and the deep metaphysical creations which floated
through the chambers of his soul, were his only wealth, the High Change
where only his signature was valid for rubies.
Could he have stepped down and chronicled small beer, made himself the
shifting toady of the hour, and with bow and cringe, hung upon the steps
of greatness, sounding the glory of third-rate ability with a penny
trumpet, he would have been feted alive, and, _perhaps_, been praised
when dead. But no! his views of the duties of the critic were stern, and
he felt that in praising an unworthy writer, he committed dishonor. His
pen was regulated by the highest sense of DUTY. By a keen analysis he
separated and studied each piece which the skillful mechanist had put
together. No part, however insignificant or apparently unimportant,
escaped the rigid and patient scrutiny of his sagacious mind. The
unfitted joint proved the bungler—the slightest blemish, was a palpable
fraud. He was the scrutinising lapidary, who detected and exposed the
most minute flaw in diamonds. The gem of first water shone the brighter,
for the truthful setting of his calm praise. He had the finest touch of
soul for beauty—a delicate and hearty appreciation of worth. If his
praise appeared tardy, it was of priceless value when given. It was true
as well as sincere. It was the stroke of honor, that at once knighted
the receiver. It was in the world of MIND that he was king; and with a
fierce audacity he felt and proclaimed himself autocrat. As critic he
was Despotic, Supreme. He waved his sceptre, and countless heads fell
from proud shoulders. With a world arrayed in hostile argument, he
combated each step. The shrieks of the slaughtered were incense to
unseen spirits, who to his eye nodded approval, and danced for joy. The
accused were tried by the most subtle of laws—their works passed
through the alembic of a most powerful and penetrating intellect; to
them the decrees of an unseen court—and friend or foe, saint or sinner,
were pardoned with grave rebuke, or gibbeted without mercy. Yet no man
with more readiness would soften a harsh expression at the request of a
friend, or if he himself felt that he had infused too great a degree of
bitterness into his article, none would more readily soften it down,
after it was in type—though still maintaining the justness of his
critical views. I do not believe that he wrote to give pain; but in
combating what he conceived to be error, he used the strongest word that
presented itself, even in conversation. He labored, not so much to
reform, as to _exterminate_ error, and thought the shortest process was
to pull it up by the roots.
He was a worshiper of INTELLECT—longing to grasp the power of mind that
moves the stars—to bathe his soul in the dreams of seraphs. He was
himself all ethereal, of a fine essence, that moved in an atmosphere of
spirits—of spiritual beauty overflowing and radiant—twin brother with
the angels, feeling their flashing wings upon his heart, and almost
clasping them in his embrace. Of them, and as an expectant archangel of
that high order of intellect, stepping out of himself, as it were, and
interpreting the time, he reveled in delicious luxury in a world beyond,
with an audacity which we fear in madmen, but in genius worship as the
inspiration of heaven.
But my object in throwing together a few thoughts upon the character of
Edgar Allan Poe, was not to attempt as elaborate criticism, but to say
what might palliate grave faults that have been attributed to him, and
to meet by facts, unjust accusation—in a word, to give a mere outline
of the man as he lived before me. I think I am warranted in saying to
Mr. Griswold, that he must review his decision. It will not stand the
calm scrutiny of his own judgment, or of time, while it must be regarded
by all the friends of Mr. Poe as an ill-judged and misplaced calumny
upon that gifted Son of Genius.
Yours truly,
GEO. R. GRAHAM.
To N. P. WILLIS, Esq.
_Philadelphia, Feb. 2, 1850._
P. S. I should fail in my whole duty to the memory of Edgar Allan Poe,
if I did not mention that his works have been issued by Mr. Redfield,
for the benefit of Mrs. Maria Clemm, the mother-in-law of the deceased,
whose comfort in her coming days is in a great degree dependent upon an
extensive sale of the work. The readers of Graham, who have been so
often delighted by his pen, will, I am sure, eagerly embrace this
opportunity to preserve his complete collected writings; and it will
afford me pleasure to be the medium of the transmission of their
subscriptions to the publisher.
G. R. G.
-----
[2] _The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe: With Notices of His life and
Genius, by N. P. Willis, J. R. Lowell, and R. W. Griswold. In Two
Volumes. New York: J. S. Redfield, Clinton Hall._
* * * * *
[Illustration:
Anaïs Toudouze
LE FOLLET
PARIS Boulevart S^{t}. Martin 61
_Chapeaux de M^{me}._ Baudry, _r. Richelieu, 87—Robes et pardessus de_
Camille.
_Fleurs de_ Chagot ainé, _r. Richelieu, 81_
Graham’s Magazine.]
* * * * *
THOU ART LOVELIER.
WRITTEN BY
RICHARD HOWITT.
MUSIC BY
MARIA B. HAWES.
[Illustration: musical score]
Thou art lovelier than the coming
Of the fairest flow’rs of spring,
When the wild bee wanders humming,
Like a blessed fairy thing.
Thou art lovelier than the breaking
Of the Orient crimson’d morn,
When the gentlest winds are shaking
The
[Illustration: musical score]
dew-drops from the thorn
Thou art lovelier than the coming
Of the fairest flower of spring,
When the wild bee wanders humming,
Like a blessed fairy thing.
SECOND VERSE.
I have seen the wild flow’rs springing
In field, in wood, in glen,
Where a thousand birds are singing,
And my thoughts were of thee then;
For there’s nothing gladsome round me,
Nothing beautiful to see,
Since thy beauty’s spell hath bound me,
But is eloquent of thee.
Thou art lovelier than the coming
Of the fairest flow’rs of spring,
When the wild bee wanders humming
Like a blessed fairy thing.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Table of Contents has been added for reader convenience. Archaic
spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious type-setting and
punctuation errors have been corrected without note. Other errors have
been corrected as noted below. For illustrations, some caption text may
be missing or incomplete due to condition of the originals available for
preparation of the eBook.
page 171, Or Cythereas breath; ==> Or Cytherea’s breath;
page 171, pearled Acturi of the ==> pearled Arcturi of the
page 172, the same harrassed air ==> the same harassed air
page 180, pointless harrangues “nay, ==> pointless harangues “nay,
page 181, for her to pursuade ==> for her to persuade
page 188, “I will commisserate the ==> “I will commiserate the
page 192, offend, he plead his early ==> offend, he pleaded his early
page 208, PORTRAIT OF GENERAL GREENE. ==> caption was missing in available
scans so caption used is based on entry in the index for the volume.
page 208, LIFE OF GENERAL NATHANIEL GREENE ==> correct spelling is
‘Nathanael’, but the ‘Nathaniel’ spelling throughout the article has been
left as printed.
[End of Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVI, No. 3, March 1850]