Among all the _pioneers_ of American literature, whether prose or
poetical, there is _not one_ whose productions have not been much
over-rated by his countrymen. But this fact is more especially obvious
in respect to such of these pioneers as are no longer living,—nor is it
a fact of so deeply transcendental a nature as only to be accounted for
by the Emersons and Alcotts. In the first place, we have but to consider
that gratitude, surprise, and a species of hyper-patriotic triumph have
been blended, and finally confounded, with mere admiration, or
appreciation, in respect to the labors of our earlier writers; and, in
the second place, that Death has thrown his customary veil of the sacred
over these commingled feelings, forbidding them, in a measure, to be
_now_ separated or subjected to analysis. “In speaking of the deceased,”
says that excellent old English Moralist, James Puckle, in his “Gray Cap
for a Green Head,” “so fold up your discourse that their virtues may be
outwardly shown, while their vices are wrapped up in silence.” And with
somewhat too inconsiderate a promptitude have we followed the spirit of
this quaint advice. The mass of American readers have been, hitherto, in
no frame of mind to view with calmness, and to discuss with
discrimination, the true claims of the few who were _first_ in
convincing the mother country that her sons were not all brainless, as,
in the plentitude of her arrogance, she, at one period, half affected
and half wished to believe; and where any of these few have departed
from among us, the difficulty of bringing their pretensions to the test
of a proper criticism has been enhanced in a very remarkable degree. But
even as concerns the living: is there any one so blind as not to see
that Mr. Cooper, for example, owes much, and that Mr. Paulding, owes
_all_ of his reputation as a novelist, to his early occupation of the
field? Is there any one so dull as not to know that fictions which
neither Mr. Paulding nor Mr. Cooper _could_ have written, are daily
published by native authors without attracting more of commendation than
can be crammed into a hack newspaper paragraph? And, again, is there any
one so prejudiced as not to acknowledge that all this is because there
is no longer either reason or wit in the query,—“Who reads an American
book?” It is not because we lack the talent in which the days of Mr.
Paulding exulted, but because such talent has shown itself to be common.
It is not because we have _no_ Mr. Coopers; but because it has been
demonstrated that we might, at any moment, have as many Mr. Coopers as
we please. In fact we are now strong in our own resources. We have, at
length, arrived at that epoch when our literature may and must stand on
its own merits, or fall through its own defects. We have snapped asunder
the leading-strings of our British Grandmamma, and, better still, we
have survived the first hours of our novel freedom,—the first
licentious hours of a hobbledehoy braggadocio and swagger. _At last_,
then, we are in a condition to be criticised—even more, to be
neglected; and the journalist is no longer in danger of being impeached
for _lèse-majesté_ of the Democratic Spirit, who shall assert, with
sufficient humility, that we have committed an error in mistaking
“Kettell’s Specimens” for the Pentateuch, or Joseph Rodman Drake for
Apollo.
The case of this latter gentleman is one which well illustrates what we
have been saying. We believe it was some five years ago that Mr.
Dearborn republished the “Culprit Fay,” which then, as at the period of
its original issue, was belauded by the universal American press, in a
manner which must have appeared ludicrous—not to speak _very_
plainly—in the eyes of all unprejudiced observers. With a curiosity
much excited by comments at once so grandiloquent and so general, we
procured and read the poem. What we found it we ventured to express
distinctly, and at some length, in the pages of the “Southern
Messenger.” It is a well-versified and sufficiently fluent composition,
without high merit of any kind. Its defects are gross and superabundant.
Its plot and conduct, considered in reference to its scene, are absurd.
Its originality is none at all. Its imagination (and this was the great
feature insisted upon by its admirers,) is but a “counterfeit
presentment,”—but the shadow of the shade of that lofty quality which
is, in fact, the soul of the Poetic Sentiment—but a drivelling _effort
to be fanciful_—an effort resulting in a species of
hop-skip-and-go-merry rhodomontade, which the uninitiated feel it a duty
to call ideality, and to admire as such, while lost in surprise at the
impossibility of performing at least the latter half of the duty with
any thing like satisfaction to themselves. And all this we not only
asserted, but without difficulty _proved_. Dr. Drake has written some
beautiful poems, but the “Culprit Fay,” is not of them. We neither
expected to hear any dissent from our opinions, nor did we hear any. On
the contrary, the approving voice of every critic in the country whose
_dictum_ we had been accustomed to respect, was to us a sufficient
assurance that we had not been very grossly in the wrong. In fact the
public taste was then _approaching_ the right. The truth indeed had not,
as yet, made itself heard; but we had reached a point at which it had
but to be plainly and boldly _put_, to be, at least tacitly, admitted.
This habit of apotheosising our literary pioneers was a most
indiscriminating one. Upon _all_ who wrote, the applause was plastered
with an impartiality really refreshing. Of course, the system favored
the dunces at the expense of true merit; and, since there existed a
certain fixed standard of exaggerated commendation to which all were
adapted after the fashion of Procrustes, it is clear that the most
meritorious required _the least stretching_,—in other words, that,
although all were much over-rated, the deserving were over-rated in a
less degree than the unworthy. Thus with Brainard:—a man of
indisputable genius, who, in any more discriminate system of panegyric,
would have been long ago bepuffed into Demi-Deism; for if “M’Fingal,”
for example, is in reality what we have been told, the commentators upon
Trumbull, as a matter of the simplest consistency, should have exalted
into the seventh heaven of poetical dominion the author of the many
graceful and vigorous effusions which are now lying, in a very neat
little volume, before us.[3]
Yet we maintain that even these effusions have been overpraised, and
materially so. It is not that Brainard has not written poems which may
rank with those of any American, with the single exception of
Longfellow—but that the general merit of our whole national Muse has
been estimated too highly, and that the author of “The Connecticut
River” has, individually, shared in the exaggeration. No poet among us
has composed what would deserve the tithe of that amount of approbation
so innocently lavished upon Brainard. But it would not suit our purpose
just now, and in this department of the Magazine, to enter into any
elaborate analysis of his productions. It so happens, however, that we
open the book at a brief poem, an examination of which will stand us in
good stead of this general analysis, since it is by this very poem that
the admirers of its author are content to swear—since it is the fashion
to cite it as his best—since thus, in short, it is the chief basis of
his notoriety, if not the surest triumph of his fame.
We allude to “The Fall of Niagara,” and shall be pardoned for quoting it
in full.
The thoughts are strange that crowd into my brain
While I look upward to thee. It would seem
As if God poured thee from his hollow hand,
And hung his brow upon thine awful front,
And spoke in that loud voice which seemed to him
Who dwelt in Patmos for his Saviour’s sake
The “sound of many waters,” and had bade
Thy flood to chronicle the ages back
And notch his centuries in the eternal rocks.
Deep calleth unto deep. And what are we
That hear the question of that voice sublime?
O, what are all the notes that ever rung
From war’s vain trumpet by thy thundering side?
Yea, what is all the riot man can make
In his short life to thy unceasing roar?
And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to HIM
Who drowned a world and heaped the waters far
Above its loftiest mountains?—a light wave
That breaks and whispers of its Maker’s might.
It is a very usual thing to hear these verses called not merely the best
of their author, but the best which have been written on the subject of
Niagara. Its positive merit appears to us only partial. We have been
informed that the poet _had seen_ the great cataract before writing the
lines; but the Memoir prefixed to the present edition, denies what, for
our own part, we never believed; for Brainard was truly a poet, and no
poet could have looked upon Niagara, in the substance, and written thus
about it. If he saw it at all, it must have been in fancy—“at a
distance”—εκας—as the lying Pindar says he saw Archilocus, who died
ages before the villain was born.
To the two opening verses we have no objection; but it may be well
observed, in passing, that had the mind of the poet been really “crowded
with strange thoughts,” and not merely _engaged in an endeavor to think_
he would have entered at once upon the thoughts themselves, without
allusion to the state of his brain. His subject would have left him no
room for self.
The third line embodies an absurd, and impossible, not to say a
contemptible image. We are called upon to conceive a similarity between
the _continuous_ downward sweep of Niagara, and the momentary splashing
of some definite and of course trifling quantity of water _from a hand_;
for, although it is the hand of the Deity himself which is referred to,
the mind is irresistibly led, by the words “poured from his hollow
hand,” to that idea which has been _customarily_ attached to such
phrase. It is needless to say, moreover, that the bestowing upon Deity a
human form, is at best a low and most unideal conception.[4] In fact the
poet has committed the grossest of errors in _likening_ the fall to
_any_ material object; for the human fancy can fashion nothing which
shall not be inferior in majesty to the cataract itself. Thus bathos is
inevitable; and there is no better exemplification of bathos than Mr.
Brainard has here given.[5]
The fourth line but renders the matter worse, for here the figure is
most inartistically shifted. The handful of water becomes animate; for
it has a front—that is, a forehead, and upon this forehead the Deity
proceeds to hang a bow, that is, a rainbow. At the same time he “speaks
in that loud voice, &c.;” and here it is obvious that the ideas of the
writer are in a sad state of fluctuation; for he transfers the
idiosyncrasy of the fall itself (that is to say its sound) to the one
who pours it from his hand. But not content with all this, Mr. Brainard
commands the flood to _keep a kind of tally_; for this is the low
thought which the expression about “notching in the rocks” immediately
and inevitably induces. The whole of this first division of the poem,
embraces, we hesitate not to say, one of the most jarring,
inappropriate, mean, and in every way monstrous assemblages of false
imagery, which can be found out of the tragedies of Nat Lee, or the
farces of Thomas Carlyle.
In the latter division, the poet recovers himself, as if ashamed of his
previous bombast. His natural instinct (for Brainard was no artist) has
enabled him _to feel_ that _subjects which surpass in grandeur all
efforts of the human imagination are well depicted only in the simplest
and least metaphorical language_—a proposition as susceptible of
demonstration as any in Euclid. Accordingly, we find a material sinking
in tone; although he does not at once, discard all imagery. The “Deep
calleth unto deep” is nevertheless a great improvement upon his previous
rhetoricianism. The personification of the waters above and below would
be good in reference to any subject less august. The moral reflections
which immediately follow, have at least the merit of simplicity: but the
poet exhibits no very lofty imagination when he bases these reflections
only upon the cataract’s superiority to man _in the noise it can
create_; nor is the concluding idea more spirited, where the mere
difference between the quantity of water which occasioned the flood, and
the quantity which Niagara precipitates, is made the measure of the
Almighty Mind’s superiority to that cataract which it called by a
thought into existence.
But although “The Fall of Niagara” does not deserve all the unmeaning
commendation it has received, there are, nevertheless, many truly
beautiful poems in this collection, and even more certain evidences of
poetic power. “To a Child, the Daughter of a Friend” is exceedingly
graceful and terse. “To the Dead” has equal grace, with more vigor, and,
moreover, a touching air of melancholy. Its melody is very rich, and in
the monotonous repetition, at each stanza, of a certain rhyme, we
recognise a fantastic yet true imagination. “Mr. Merry’s Lament for Long
Tom” would be worthy of all praise were not its unusually beautiful
rhythm an imitation from Campbell, who would deserve his high poetical
rank, if only for its construction. Of the merely humorous pieces we
have little to say. Such things are not _poetry_. Mr. Brainard excelled
in them, and they are very good in their place; but that place is not in
a collection of _poems_. The prevalent notions upon this head are
extremely vague; yet we see no reason why any ambiguity should exist.
Humor, with an exception to be made hereafter, is directly
antagonistical to that which is the soul of the Muse proper; and the
omni-prevalent belief, that melancholy is inseparable from the higher
manifestations of the beautiful, is not without a firm basis in nature
and in reason. But it so happens that humor and that quality which we
have termed the soul of the Muse (imagination) are both essentially
aided in their development by the same adventitious assistance—that of
rhythm and of rhyme. Thus the only bond between humorous verse and
poetry, properly so called, is that they employ in common, a certain
tool. But this single circumstance has been sufficient to occasion, and
to maintain through long ages, a confusion of two very distinct ideas in
the brain of the unthinking critic. There is, nevertheless, an
individual branch of humor which blends so happily with the ideal, that
from the union result some of the finest effects of legitimate poesy. We
allude to what is termed “_archness_”—a trait with which popular
feeling, which is unfailingly poetic, has invested, for example, the
whole character of the fairy. In the volume before us there is a brief
composition entitled “The Tree Toad” which will afford a fine
exemplification of our idea. It seems to have been hurriedly
constructed, as if its author had felt ashamed of his light labor. But
that in his heart there was a secret exultation over these verses for
which his reason found it difficult to account, _we know_; and there is
not a really imaginative man within sound of our voice to-day, who, upon
perusal of this little “Tree Toad” will not admit it to be one of the
_truest poems_ ever written by Brainard.
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[3] _The Poems of John G. C. Brainard. A New and Authentic Collection,
with an original Memoir of his Life. Hartford: Edward Hopkins._
[4] The Humanitarians held that God was to be understood as having
really a human form.—See Clarke’s Sermons, vol. 1, page 26, fol. edit.
“The drift of Milton’s argument leads him to employ language which would
appear, at first sight, to verge upon their doctrine: but it will be
seen immediately that he guards himself against the charge of having
adopted one of the most ignorant errors of the dark ages of the
church.”—Dr. Sumner’s Notes on Milton’s “Christian Doctrine.”
The opinion could never have been very general. Andeus, a Syrian of
Messopotamia, who lived in the fourth century, was condemned for the
doctrine, as heretical. His few disciples were called Anthropmorphites.
_See Du Pin._
[5] It is remarkable that Drake, of whose “Culprit Fay,” we have just
spoken is, perhaps, the sole poet who has employed, in the description
of Niagara, imagery which does not produce a pathetic impression. In one
of his minor poems he has these magnificent lines—
How sweet ’twould be, _when all the air_
_In moonlight swims_, along the river
To couch upon the grass and hear
Niagara’s everlasting voice
Far in the deep blue West away;
That dreamy and poetic noise
We mark not in the glare of day—
Oh, how unlike its torrent-cry
When o’er the brink the tide is driven
_As if the vast and sheeted sky_
_In thunder fell from Heaven!_
* * * * *