“At last he is as welcome as a storm; he that is abroad shelters
himself from it, and he that is at home shuts the door. If he intrudes
himself yet, some with their jeering tongues give him many a gird, but
his brazen impudence feels nothing; and let him be armed on free-scot
with the pot and the pipe, he will give them leave to shoot their
flouts at him till they be weary.”
_Fuller’s Profane State._
Summer, with its transforming influence upon all things natural and
artificial, has come, and the Coffee Club feels somewhat of its
power. We introduced you, reader, to our room in the depth of winter,
we welcomed you with a blazing hearth and the cheerful light of an
astral, and our mystic tripod lustily bore witness to the strife of
the hostile elements. But now the aspect of the room and the temper of
its occupants is changed. A solitary taper with _all_ its light, can
scarce effect a dim obscure--the thick warm carpet is superseded by a
flimsier texture of straw--the point of concentration is transferred
from the glowing fire to the open window--the center-table is drawn
back and relieved from its superincumbent load, that the eye may not
be oppressed with a sense of heaviness--in every chair you find a lazy
pillow, and even the sofa which would once contain all four, will
scarce suffice for the extended length of Apple Dumpling--our coffee
simmers over the sickly flame of a spirit lamp, and is quaffed in
cooler draughts, and from comparatively tiny cups.
The temper of its occupants is likewise changed. That equable hilarity
which seldom rose to jollity and _never_ sank below cheerfulness, is
gone; and its place is ill supplied by a fitful state of noisy mirth
and moody silence. Tristo is alternately more melancholy and less
so--Nescio, more entirely sensual, or more acutely intellectual, as
the whim seizes him--Pulito is absorbed in attention to earthly nymphs
one week, and shuts himself up in his room with the heaven-born muses
the next--and Apple, who formerly, like some auxiliary verbs, had but
one _mood_, is now variable through the whole paradigm. The disturbing
influence of warm weather and bewitching moonlight is also perceptible
in the irregularity of our meetings. But few, very few times have we
been together this term, and then we have employed ourselves in the
most random conversation. Even to-night we have but an unpromising
prospect before us. Pulito and Apple are not here, and Tristo and
myself have hitherto kept our thoughts to ourselves with most unsocial
chariness. But hark! Pulito’s ‘light fantastic toe’ is on the stairs,
and he must say _something_ as he enters.
_Pulito._ “Good evening, gentlemen. You certainly have the true
atrabilious aspect; ’twould spoil my face for a week to sit in close
proximity with two such melancholy phizes. With your leave, therefore,
Messieurs, I will take a cup, adjust my flowing locks, and be off. What
beautiful little acorn-goblets you have here, Nescio, and then the
delicacy of the beverage, so nicely adapted to the season. You have a
rare taste in these matters, Quod.”
_Tristo._ “Ah! Pulito, you are always the same careless fellow, and
’twere vain to hope for any thing else from you; but cannot you sit
down for one evening and have a long and sober talk. You know some of
us leave town soon, and we may not have another opportunity.”
_Pulito._ “Indeed, Tristo, I am sorry to disappoint you; but _this_
evening I have an engagement from which I really cannot get excused;
the rest of the term I am entirely at your service.”
_Nescio._ “I’ll wager any thing from a pin’s head to ‘this great globe
itself’ that there’s a lady in the case.”
_Pulito._ “Weel, an there be, gude Maister Quod.”
_Nescio._ “Why you remember your boastful resolution to eschew all
connection with any thing more substantial than ‘Fancy’s daughters
three,’ during the hot weather.”
_Pulito._ “And whether these be ‘Faith, Hope and Charity,’ or
‘Wine, Women and Coxcombry,’ depends very much upon the _fancier_’s
temperament.”
_Tristo._ “I am afraid, my dear Pulito, that your aspirations after
learning are becoming less ardent; and unless you are more earnest,
your poetic ambition will fain be contented with being laureate of the
Coffee Club.”
_Pulito._ “‘What is learning but a cloak-bag of books, cumbersome for a
gentleman to carry? and the muses fit to make wives for farmers’ sons?’
What Fuller, in his ‘degenerous gentleman’ says in irony, I would adopt
in sober earnest.”
_Nescio._ “Well, I perceive we shall get nothing from you to-night, so
you may go. But first tell us if you have seen any thing of Apple.”
_Pulito._ “Indeed, I have, and bring quite a message from him, which,
but for your suggestion, I should have forgotten. By my troth, in my
head, ‘_dies truditur die_,’--one idea thrusts out another. But for
the story--I met Apple walking most abstractedly with the huge roll of
his autobiography under his arm. When I asked him what he was thinking
about, he obstinately confined his information to the mysterious
remark that he was ‘_coming up_’ this evening. As soon, however, as he
discovered that I did not intend to be there, he unfolded his whole
purpose--under an express injunction of secrecy, which I ought to
keep, and which I will keep--though I will give you an inkling of it,
as it may afford you some sport. He will probably appear particularly
brilliant, and converse more like himself, his peculiar self. Verb. sat
sap. Make fun of him if you can, for I owe him a grudge for a spiteful
pun, which he made on a lady’s name. However, my masters, after I have
given my neck-kerchief the blameless tie, and curled my hair with the
twist extatic, I will leave you to your dull coffee, and bask me in the
warmth of thy sunny eyes, oh beautiful *---- *----.”
Here Pulito made his exit, singing “di tutti palpiti,” with an air of
Cox-comical affectation, half assumed, half natural.
_Tristo._ “A handsome fellow, and a bright. But the day will come when
a strong mind, and a well-stored memory, will be worth more than the
vanished rapture of a woman’s smile. What a pity youth can never temper
pleasure with----, hist! that stumbling step sounds like Apple’s.”
_Nescio._ “’Tis his,--let’s slip into the bed-room and see what
Dumpling will do.”
_Tristo._ “Agreed; I promise myself materiel for laughter.”
[Enter _Apple_, with a look of pleased importance, and a mouth
apparently ready to discharge a witticism.] “Ha! Pulito! Tristo! Quod!
What, not a soul here but myself, who am _solus_, he! he! pretty
good! I’ll lay that by, and use it when they come. What an ass that
Tristo must be, never to laugh at my puns. However, he cannot help
himself to-night. I have various good things, aside from puns. If the
conversation turns upon wit, I shall say, ‘A witty sentence should
be like a scorpion, the sting in the tail, but should not, like a
scorpion, sting itself to death!’ If Tristo goes to rating me for
smoking, I shall say, ‘A cigar is the _summum bonum_, pity its _fumes_
are not _per_fumes!’ If Nescio says, ‘I am your host’--‘Yes,’ quoth
I, ‘and in yourself an _host_.’ That stone will kill two birds; it
is at once a pun and a compliment. Ah me! what is the literary world
coming to? They all seem bent upon being dull, and the greatest of
scriptorial (scriptural?) sins is to say a witty thing. Volumes of
poetry and philosophy and oratory and the like come forth, and never
a bit of fun in ’em all. Now in my view even a sermon would be vastly
better, if the preacher, especially in the application, would discharge
at the hearer a few judicious puns of a devotional _cast_. Bless me!
where--where--confusion worse confounded! where are my cigars? I can
never shine without them. I should be like Sampson shorn of his locks.
I shall have to go by a dozen colleges to ----’s to get some. Well!
‘_leve fit, quod bene fertur_,’ ‘that’s a light fit, which is well
borne.’ Ha, ha, good! remember that.”
As Apple leaves the room, Quod and Tristo, bursting with laughter,
issue from their _latebræ_.
_Tristo._ “Bravo, Dumpling, bravo.”
_Nescio._ “Capital! capital! What if we appear to have just come in
when he returns, and give him a chance to be witty--ha, ha!”
_Tristo._ “Constat--it is a covenant. But here he comes.”
[Enter Apple, puffing with haste, a bunch of cigars in his hand, and a
lighted one in his mouth.]
_Apple_, (amazed.) “What! you here.”
_Tristo_ and _Quod_. “Yes, we’ve just stept in. You, I suppose, didn’t
think there was a soul here.”
_Apple_, (chuckling.) “No, faith: I expected to be _solus_, myself!”
_Quod._ “Why, Dumpling, you are witty to-night.”
_Apple._ “A witty sentence should be like a scorpion, the sting in the
tail, but should not, like a scorpion, sting itself to death, ha! ha!”
_Tristo._ “Excellent! but do, dear Apple, fling away your vile cigars.”
_Apple_, (winking.) “A cigar, my dear fellow, is the _summum
bonum_--pity its _fumes_ are not _per_fumes.”
_Tristo._ “Your wit should not hinder your politeness. I dislike them,
and I am your host.”
_Apple._ “Yes, and in yourself an _host_, ha! ha!”
_Nescio._ “Why, Apple, where on earth do you get so many good things?”
_Apple_, (vainly.) “Oh! I don’t know: I believe it comes
natural--impromptus.”
_Nescio._ “Impromptus! Ha! Ha! Why, Apple, we were in the bed-room
here, when you came in before, and heard you practising on your
impromptus!”
_Apple_, (coloring with shame, vexation, and alarm.) “How--how--what,
you did, did you? Pretty good hoax, though, wasn’t it? Don’t tell the
fellows ’twas _your_ hoax. But being Dumpling, I’ve got the _dumps_,
ha! ha! so I think I’ll go home and write on my autobiography.”
_Tristo._ “Do so, and don’t forget this chapter.”
(Exit Apple with a hang-dog air.)
_Tristo._ “Incorrigible!”
_Nescio._ “Utterly! ha! ha! it’s worth a dozen comedies.”
* * * * *
As if by a secret and common impulse, the laugh and jest ceased, and
both became silent. Nescio sat by one window, emitting from a fragrant
Havana languid and infrequent puffs. His varying countenance expressed
a train of thoughts as motley as his mind, where the weighty and
the sober were linked and mingled with the light and the ludicrous,
and feelings and reflections came trooping by, robed in a livery of
serio-comic strangeness. He was thinking of the mystic links that bind
together the seen and the unseen--of the glorious, expansive, elastic
mind--that ‘_sine fine fines_’--of the invisible shadings of the mental
into the passionate, and of the passionate into the corporeal--of the
attenuated conduits that bear reciprocally between the mind and body a
gush of joy or a thrill of anguish. He turned from the puzzling maze,
and by no unnatural diversion, his thoughts passed to some of the most
wonderful emanations from this mysterious source--the productions of
the ‘world’s sole demigod’--Ariel and Caliban and Puck--the sisters
three, and Titania with her faery train--and Falstaff, and the good
king Malcolm, and the maddened Lear--poor, shattered Hamlet, and
Othello ‘the dusky Moor,’
----“Whose hand,
Like the base Judæan, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe.”
Then came up in re-awakened life the fond musings of his own early
boyhood, and he was pleased with the contemplation, all groundless and
fruitless as they were, for he smiled at his former folly, and thought
himself too wise to be again deceived.
They had crowded one after another upon ‘Fancy’s ardent eye,’ bright
and incessant like waves from the sun; and as he thought of their
number and their futility, his mind was neither spent with weariness,
nor darkened by regret. His feelings were still as vigorous and varied,
as they were, before they went forth in quest of happiness and returned
without even an olive-branch, as an earnest of security and peace.
He had been thus vibrating between thought and revery for perhaps an
hour, when he started from his waking dream, and remembered that he
was not alone. Tristo was sitting at the other window, with averted
face and eyes gazing on vacancy, while in his hand lay an open volume
of the sensitive and melancholy Cowper. Nescio, I grieve to say it, is
not always felicitous in his address. He lacks that quick tact, which
may be denominated an instinctive sense of present propriety. He felt
a reaction in himself, and wished to confirm the dominion of mirth in
his own breast, by awakening it in that of others. He laid his hand on
Tristo’s shoulder, and giving him a friendly shake, said “Wake up, man,
what are you dreaming of? Come, sing us a song, _pour passer le temps_.
Pray Heaven, no pretty girl has crossed your line of vision. If so, be
not thou cast down--I can give you a charm, a very talisman to gain
her, in the whiff of a cigar, _ut ait Apple_. Sigh and flatter, sit up
late o’ nights so as to appear pale--seem for a time to prefer another,
and then assure her that your heart is, was and will be all, all her
own. In that moment of delighted conviction press hard--the fort is
yours.” Tristo was too sad to be angry. He merely replied while his lip
quivered with emotion--“Nescio, you know not how you wound me.”
_Nescio._ “Indeed, indeed, I did not mean it, you _know_ I _could_ not.
But why should you be always so gloomy? It vexes me to see you thus.
Why should you not smile more often and more willingly?”
_Tristo._ “Do I not smile?”
_Nescio._ “O such a smile! ’tis worse than tears--’tis like the forced
laugh in the play. ‘_Male qui mihi volunt, sic rideant._’ But why
should your thoughts be so dark amidst the glittering activity of life?”
_Tristo._ “And why should they not be _entirely_ dark? The breath
of this vast world sounds in my ear as the up-going of one deep and
universal sigh, and can the thought be other than a thought of pain.
My grief is not for myself alone, though that were enough. But where
is the man who is happy at all? unless, indeed, it be the happiness of
_apathy_. Where is the man of open heart and aspiring mind, whose plans
succeed even in the outline, or if the outline be realized, the filling
up is not a mixture of care and vexings--and failure and regret? When
we have reached some fancied goal of youthful promise, which shone
to the far off eye like the battlements of Heaven, does not widowed
hope put on her weeds, and mourn over her children, and refuse to be
comforted because they are not?”
_Nescio._ “With such views of human life, where do you find any relief
from your melancholy?”
_Tristo._ “To what should a mind saddened by its own afflictions look
for consolation. The world of _realities_, as I have said, presents
but a gloomy and scarred waste. Ah! then the greatness of the _poet’s_
power and the dignity of his art are most manifest. Then, that which in
our grosser moods, we had deemed light, pretty, and only fit to while
away an hour, becomes _mighty_, and _almost_ adorable. For the wearied
and broken spirit, which all the riches of learning could not soothe,
nor the gift of kingdoms elate, may by the witchery of poetry be wrapt
into a calm, satisfied enjoyment.”
_Nescio._ “I wonder not that an early father, in holy abhorrence,
called poesy, _vinum dæmonum_, the wine of fiends, if its influence be
such as you assert. For surely it supplies to the educated and refined,
the same refuge from corroding thought and disturbing conscience, which
the intoxicating cup offers to the sensual and brutish.”
_Tristo._ “It is so in some measure, but with this difference,
which will immediately rescue this ‘divina facultas’ from injurious
reflections. The inebriating draught, the actual ‘uvæ succus’ offers
its poor and transient relief to _all_. The unfortunate and the guilty,
those upon whom melancholy has settled like a mist from the ground,
causeless and undeserved, though unavoidable--and those upon whom an
outraged conscience inflicts its scourgings in righteous retribution,
may there seek and find oblivion. But only a pure life, a cultivated
mind, a _religious nature_, (let not the phrase breed heresy,) can
secure to one the healing influence of poetry.”
_Nescio._ “The idea is a sublime one. But is it not merely a beautiful
_idea_? Can you bring forward any evidence to make it manifest, or even
any illustration to render it probable?”
_Tristo._ “With ease. Indeed, were I to search far and wide
through the whole circle of English poetry, I could not find a more
pertinent illustration than in the passage which I have just been
reading, and on which my finger now rests.”
_Nescio._ “What is it? Read it.”
_Tristo._ “Even its title is affecting. ‘On the receipt of
my mother’s picture.’ It must be familiar to you, yet I will read a few
lines.
‘O that those lips had language! Life has pass’d
With me but roughly since I saw thee last.
Those lips are thine--thy own sweet smile I see,
The same, that oft in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,
‘Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!’
The meek intelligence of those dear eyes
(Blessed be the art that can immortalize,
The art that baffles Time’s tyrannic claim
To quench it) here shines on me still the same.’
Suppose now the case of two individuals, of equal refinement,
intellect, and sensibility, (save that in one the edge of all these
qualities must have been blunted by moral defection) nay--that by
making the parallel closer, the contrast may be more obvious--suppose
them to be brothers. In early life they both were trained in the path
of moral rectitude, from which the one has never swerved, but the other
has been constantly making wider and wider deviations. Place them
now in the situation of the poet, and let them read these lines. The
image recalled, the object of their contemplation is the same--their
early associations are the same. But the effect is far different. The
conviction is present with one, that he has persevered in that course,
which his mother toiled and wept to place him in, and in pleased
sadness he will repeat with Cowper,
‘And while the wings of Fancy still are free,
And I can view this mimic show of thee,
Time has but half succeeded in his theft--
Thyself removed, thy power to soothe me left.’
The other is melancholy, but his is the melancholy of remorse. Each
vivid recollection but ‘adds hot instance to the gushing tear,’ and all
that soothed his brother, but protracts _his_ pain. He feels in all its
force the solemn truth, so quaintly expressed by the old dramatist,
Suckling:
‘Our sins, like to our shadows
When our day is in its glory, scarce appeared:
Towards our evening how great and monstrous
They are!’
His feelings are sympathetically described by Byron:
‘So do the dark in soul expire,
Or live like scorpion girt by fire;
So withers the mind remorse hath riven,
Unfit for earth, undoom’d for heaven,
Darkness above, despair beneath,
Around it flame, within it death.’
_Nescio._ “You have quoted Byron, rather unfortunately for your
argument, I think, Tristo. For he is an instance of the existence of
high poetic power, in a mind depraved by the baseness of his moral
sentiments.”
_Tristo._ “You mistake my meaning, if you infer from it that I think
the _existence_ of poetic power incompatible with moral degradation,
for there are many, too many instances of this kind. My position
was that a pure and unsophisticated character was essential to the
_enjoyment_ of this faculty in one’s self, or as displayed by others.
And of this Byron is as strong a case as I could wish. Every spark of
genius, but assisted in lighting the flame, which scathed and consumed
his heart. ’Twas so with Shelly, and in the later years of his life,
with Burns. Moore is the only similar author who approaches to an
exception to this rule. But how widely different with the opposite
class of poets. Can you read a page of Cowper, or Wordsworth, without
feeling that they derive pure and exquisite pleasure from their
inspiration. Indeed to the former it was almost his _only_ source of
enjoyment--without it he would have been wretched, in truth, for his
nature was too sensitive for a rough and jostling world.”
_Nescio._ “I cannot deny it. You have, however, a higher idea of the
value and interest and influence of poetry than is current now-a-days.
I myself have been disposed to regard the high pretensions of this
‘divina gens’ with something of distrust. I have dipped into our poetic
literature as extensively, probably, as most of my age; I have been
pleased and profited, but never have I been blessed with an admission
into the _penetralia_. My most diligent search (as Pausanias records of
the petitioner at Pion’s tomb) has been rewarded by _smoke_.”
_Tristo._ “I know that to the unreflecting crowd the life and
labors of the poet seem poor and paltry. He is one by himself--a
flower-gathering, shade-loving idler in a garden, where others are
busily plying the mattock and the spade. To them he appears engaged
neither in lessening the evils, nor in adding to the blessings of
life. His musings they deem like the dreams of the sleeper, where
fancy, and vanity, and passion, draw scenes of glory and of pleasure
with the bold tracery of an unfettered hand; but to the waking eye
in the light of reason, those pictures are changed to the ungraceful
lines, and uncolored objects of ordinary life.”
_Nescio._ “I am by no means satisfied that their view is not a correct
one. It seems to me that the allurements of poetry and the splendors of
romance are all lymphatic draughts to inebriate the mind, and, as ‘the
subtle blood of the grape,’ exalts and quickens the animal spirits,
only thereafter to retard and depress, so do these unearthly potations
elevate the soul, but leave it dull, drooping and disgusted. Especially
pernicious in their influence are the trashy productions of ephemeral
minds, which ‘dream false dreams and see lying visions,’ which clothe
the children of their fancy in perfections to which man is a stranger,
and fill the untaught soul with hopes and aspirations, which earth can
never realize. Byron certainly, and, I think, even Shakspeare, exert
an evil influence in their portraitures of character. Their actors are
so sublime, or so lovely, that they first inspire the mind with false
hope, and then fill it with vain despair.”
_Tristo._ “You speak the language of a half philosopher, who
generalizes a few isolated facts into an all-embracing theory. Even
Byron’s evil influence results not from the unnatural beauty of his
characters and scenery, but rather from the fact that he does not seem
to conceive of virtue even in the abstract; he no where shows regard
for aught but self, and no where recognizes even by accident a standard
of right and wrong. As for Shakspeare, nature is visible in all his
writings; virtue and vice are strangely mingled, even as among the
scenes and occurrences of life. If he ever deviates from the actual
and the known, it is either in the delineation of some creature of
professedly ideal existence, such as Ariel and Puck; or else in the
combination of circumstances which produces characters, that all will
allow to be natural, though such they have never seen in actual life
and motion.”
_Nescio._ “Suffer me for a moment to interrupt you, and ask what
is _nature_? Shakspeare is certainly more natural than most of his
successors, and yet, for the life of me I cannot point out the
difference, where it is, or in what it consists. For the incidents of
that great master are sometimes not merely improbable, but impossible.”
_Tristo._ “The difference is this, Shakspeare brings together
improbable occurrences in almost impossible conjunctions; yet he
_always_ makes the _words_ and _actions_ of his characters consistent.
Other dramatists have their plots sufficiently probable, and their
junctures and transitions natural and easy--this is the effect of
study; but their actors have no individuality--and this is a defect of
genius, that no study nor midnight watchings can supply: their figures
are sometimes one thing, sometimes another: the _contour_, air, and
attitude, are all shifting and various. This is more particularly
observable in works of the tragic or semi-tragic cast, than in the
comic productions of the older writers. In Dryden, for instance, the
comedies are many of them laughable and good; but the tragedies,
saving here and there a splendid spangle, are cold, inflated fustian.
Even in scenes of the most intense excitement, when grief is wrought
up to agony, and passion foams with ungovernable rage, he makes his
characters talk, talk, talk, instead of acting. In place of some brief
and stormy exclamation, such as nature prompts and passion utters,
they stand still, gesticulate by rule, and bring out long similitudes
of studied elegance, and elaborate perfection. Their ruined hopes
they liken to a blighted tree, and coolly pursue the track of the
lightning from the topmost leaf to the downmost root, showing you
how _here_ it grazed, and _there_ cut to the very heart. Oh agony!
Their words are hot--hot enough in all conscience, when taken one by
one--_minutatim_--but collectively they are verbiage, not pathos.”
_Nescio._ “I have been thinking that a natural may be distinguished
from an unnatural author, in that you can not only clearly conceive,
but distinctly remember the form and bearing of the characters in
the one, while the actors in the other leave no definite impression.
The Falstaff of Shakspeare, and the Arbaces of Bulwer, are good
illustrations of my meaning. Both are characters, which, we are
certain, never _did_ exist. How, then, is Falstaff natural, and Arbaces
the reverse? The former _might_ exist; the latter _never could_ have
being. The _former_ is a collection of qualities, carried, it may be,
to excess; the _latter_ is a union of contradictions. The _former_
is witty and sensual and boastful beyond reality, but not beyond
possibility; the _latter_ is a lumbering conception of a grand and
gloomy _something_--a shadow of magnificent shapelessness--it has no
_identity_, and its shifting outline it would puzzle Proteus to trace.
In the language of the schools, Falstaff is in _posse_, but not in
_esse_--while Arbaces is neither in _esse_, nor _posse_, nor any where
else save in Bulwer’s head.”
_Tristo._ “I believe you are right. But I was about to state why
poetry is a valuable--aye, an _in_-valuable gift. Now, observe--I
mean, not rhyme, ‘the drowsy tintinnabulum of song’--nor the display
of those poetical words, which, like trite coins, have no image
nor superscription left--nor yet, ‘in linked sweetness long-drawn
out,’ those brilliant figures, which have come down unimpaired from
Homer, and serve to conceal the deficiency of sense--but I mean
the pure ‘poetry of the heart’--the rich essence of feeling and of
thought--whether its expression be prose or verse, ‘oratio soluta,’ vel
‘constricta.’ It is true, without exception, that the purer and less
hackneyed are the feelings, the richer and more gushing is this ‘poetry
of the heart.’ And this proves its excellence. To the eye and the ear
of childhood, the ‘visible face of nature,’ the green beneath, and the
‘skyey blue’ above, with the thousand voices, that come quivering from
the forest-depths, are all one vast _poem_, modulated to a measure of
dulcet melody, and awakening sympathies inexplicably sweet. Thought to
them is a rambling revery, and existence is a thrilling dream. As they
lie upon the green grass, and view the sky, and gaze, and gaze upon
the unutterable depths, the yearnings for something beyond, beyond,
_beyond_, are quick, and strange, and powerful within them. As they
grow old, and hardened, and thankless, and wicked, does not poetry
vanish, and fancy flee? Are not the dreams of purity, and kindness,
and affection, which were but the strugglings of the youthful spirit
to attain the blessedness it was made for, supplanted by hard plans,
and cold calculations of wealth, and luxury, and restlessness, and
pride? Hope and Love, the birds of Paradise, that nestled in the boyish
heart, and fluttered with many-colored wings over their warm progeny
of kindling wishes, and bright resolves, are banished from their early
home, and in their place, with gloomy pinions, settle a thousand
cormorant birds, with the vultures of remorseless Ambition, and
Greediness for _more_. Who does not feel that it is only in his holier
and nobler hours that poesy creeps through him like a spirit, and
thoughts of grandeur cause his flesh to quiver, even as the forest is
shaken by the footsteps of the wind? Can one, who has but now stained
his soul with knavery or meanness, read that unparalleled monologue of
Hamlet, and surrender his heart to the greatness of its power? Can any,
save he whose spirit is daily and deeply filled with the sublimity of
rectitude, appreciate Milton’s sonnet upon his blindness, a specimen
of moral grandeur in thought and purpose, which has found no equal in
the walks of mind? I say not that even in the bosoms of the vicious
and the hardened, the perusal of sublime or lovely conceptions will
fail to produce emotion--deep, strong emotion--for, wound and abuse
it as you may, there will still, even at three-score years and ten,
remain something of that ardent pulse, which, in boyhood, burned at
the sight of beauty, and bounded at the voice of song. But poesy will
no longer gush continually upward from the fountains of his heart,
like refreshing waters from a perennial spring. And what a glorious
thing must it be for a Pitt or a Webster, when worn in the defense of
Freedom, and weary with the hopelessness of their toil, in the pages of
Scott to bury for a time the projects of ambition, and the chicanery of
courts! When they bow their own mighty intellects at the still mightier
shrines of Milton or of Shakspeare, is not theirs the sacred thrill
of the eastern pilgrim, when he falls and worships at the tomb of his
fathers? Wo be to him, who would lessen his hours of poetic enthusiasm;
for those hours are a backward vista to an earlier and better state.
True poetry is the basis of devotion; and devotion added to poetry is
the ‘Pelion upon Ossa,’ by which mortals may climb once more to the
heaven from which they fell.”
Ego.