One of the greatest pleasures that an author can have, is to record
the delight which he has derived from other authors; after a long
career of intellectual enjoyment, to pay the due tribute of gratitude
to those writers of an antecedent period who have laid the foundations
of his taste, and stimulated him in that career which has made his
happiness. This is always an act of love, an act of reverence and
regard, which is full of its own peculiar pleasure. But how much is
this pleasure augmented, when this tribute can be paid to the living;
to one who preceded us, and yet is still among us; to the teacher of
the past, to the patriarch of the present! Of the writers, and
especially the poets, who charmed our young and inexperienced spirits,
how few are those whose works will bear the test of time; how few to
whom we can turn, at a mature age, and find them all that we ever
believed them to be! Mr. Rogers is one of this rare class. Among the
very earliest literary pleasures which I can remember, was that of
reading--and that time after time--his Pleasures of Memory: and the
reading of this poem is now, after nearly half-a-century, not only one
of my pleasures of memory, but, on reperusal, is equally fresh,
equally true to nature, and equally attractive, by the soundness and
the beauty of its sentiments. Mr. Rogers stands among us, if not the
very oldest living literary man, yet by far the oldest of our poets;
and it is a welcome testimony to the good sense and feeling of the
age, that he stands among us with all the affectionate respect and the
honor which he has so well won. Mr. Rogers, I believe, has never met
with that species of Mohawk criticism, that scalping and scarifying
literary assault and battery, which so many of his cotemporaries have
had to undergo. There was a gentleness and a calm suavity about his
writings which disarmed the most eager assailant of merit. There was
in him an absence of that militant and antagonistic spirit which
provokes the like animus. There was felt only the purity of taste, the
deep love of beauty in art and nature, the vivid yet tender sympathy
with humanity, which put every one dreadfully in the wrong who should
attempt to strike down their possessor. The very first line of
criticism applied to the writings of Mr. Rogers, was in the Monthly
Review, on his Ode to Superstition, with some other Poems, published
by Cadell, in 1786, and was this--"In these pieces we perceive the
hand of a master."
The master thus discovered in the first essay of his power, has never
ceased since to be acknowledged. In 1792, or six years afterward, he
published the Pleasures of Memory, which was received with universal
and delighted acclamation. It took hold, at once, of the English
heart; and became, and remains, and is likely to remain, one of the
classic beauties of our national poetry. From that day, to so late a
period as 1830, Mr. Rogers, at leisurely but tolerably regular
intervals, has gone on adding to the riches of our hoards of taste and
genius. In 1798, or in another six years, he published his Epistle,
with other Poems; in 1812, or fourteen years afterward, The Voyage of
Columbus; two years after that, Jacqueline, _i.e._, in 1814; five
years later, or in 1819, Human Life; and, finally, in 1830, or when he
was sixty-seven years of age, his Italy.
These works have steadily extended his fame; and amid the truest
enjoyment of that fame, Mr. Rogers has lived a long and honored, and,
singularly for a poet, fortunate life. His wealth and position in
society, not less than his wealth and position in the world of mind,
have drawn around him all the distinguished characters of his time;
and his house, filled from top to bottom with evidences of his taste,
and of his means of indulging it, has been the resort of most of those
who have given its intellectual stamp to the age. Amid the great
struggles and events of that period, the wars, the revolutions, and
the social contests which have communicated their fiery elements to
the spirit of genius, and produced works of a like extreme character,
the mind of Rogers, calm and self-balanced, has pursued its course,
apparently uninfluenced by all that moved around him. With human
nature, and human life in general, he sympathized; but the love of the
true and beautiful in it has prevailed over the contagion of the vast
and violent: he has dealt rather with the pure and touching incidents
of existence, than with the passionate and the tragic. Many, on this
account, have been disposed to attribute to him a want of power and
greatness, forgetting that the predominating character of his taste
has inevitably decided the character of his subjects, and that to
these subjects he has given all the power and beauty which they were
capable of. Mr. Rogers is a great master in his own department. In him
taste lives as strongly as genius. He is a poetic artist. The
beautiful and the refined mingle themselves with the structure as
inseparably as with the material of his compositions. He knows that
there is greatness in the broad champagne, with its woods and towns,
as well as in the huge and splendid mountain; in the lofty but pure
and placid sky, as well as in the stormy ocean. It is not the creator
only of the Laocoon in all his agonies, that is a great artist--the
Apollo Belvedere, and the Venus de Medicis, and the Mourning Psyche,
calm in most perfect repose, or depressed with grief, equally
demonstrate the hand of a master. There is often the most consummate
display of genius in the stillest statue. Poussin or Claude are not
the less admirable because they do not affect the robust horrors of
Rubens, or the wildness of Salvator. In Rogers, the true, the
pathetic, all those feelings, and sentiments, and associations, that
are dear to us as life itself, are evolved with a skill that is
unrivaled; and the language is elaborated to a perfection that
resembles the finish of a beautiful picture, or the music to
inimitable words. If we need the excitement of impetuous emotions, we
would turn to Byron; if the influence of calm, and soothing, and
harmonizing ones, we would sit down to Rogers. Each is eminent in his
own department, each will exercise the supremacy of his genius upon
us.
In the Pleasures of Memory we are forcibly reminded of Goldsmith and
the Deserted Village. We feel how deeply the genius of that exquisite
writer had affected the mind of Rogers in his youth. There is a
striking similarity of style, of imagery, and of subject. It is not a
deserted village, but a deserted mansion, which is described, and
where we are led to sympathize with all that is picturesque in nature,
and dear to the heart in domestic life.
"Mark yon old mansion peering through the trees,
Whose hollow turret woos the whistling breeze.
That casement, arched with ivy's brownest shade,
First to these eyes the light of heaven conveyed.
The moldering gateway shows the grass-grown court,
Once the calm scene of many a simple sport;
When nature pleased, for life itself was new,
And the heart promised what the fancy drew.
See, through the fractured pediment revealed,
Where moss inlays the rudely sculptured shield,
The martin's old hereditary nest--
Long may the ruin spare its hallowed guest!
As jars the hinge, what sullen echoes call!
Oh haste, unfold the hospitable hall!
That hall, where once in antiquated state,
The chair of justice held the grave debate.
Now stained with dews, with cobwebs darkly hung,
Oft has its roof with peals of rapture rung;
When round yon ample board in due degree,
We sweetened every meal with social glee.
The heart's light laugh pursued the exciting jest;
And all was sunshine in each little breast.
'Twas here we traced the slipper by the sound.
And turned the blindfold hero round and round.
'Twas here, at eve, we formed our fairy ring;
And Fancy fluttered on her wildest wing.
Giants and genii chained each wondering ear;
And orphan sorrows drew the ready tear.
Oft with the babes we wandered in the wood,
Or viewed the forest feats of Robin Hood.
Oft, fancy-led, at midnight's fearful hour,
With startling step we scaled the lonely tower,
O'er infant innocence to hang and weep,
Murdered by ruffian hands, when smiling in its sleep.
Ye household deities! whose guardian eye
Marked each pure thought we registered on high;
Still, still ye walk the consecrated ground,
And breathe the soul of inspiration round.
As o'er the dusky furniture I bend,
Each chair awakes the feelings of a friend.
The storied arras, source of fond delight,
With old achievement charms the wildered sight;
And still with heraldry's red hues impressed,
On the dim window glows the pictured crest;
The screen unfolds its many colored chart;
The clock still points its moral to the heart--
That faithful monitor 'twas heaven to hear,
When soft it spoke a promised pleasure near;
And has its sober hand, its simple chime,
Forgot to trace the feathered feet of Time?
That massive beam with curious carvings wrought,
Whence the caged linnet soothed my pensive thought;
Those muskets cased with venerable rust.
Those once-loved forms still breathing through their dust,
Still from the frame in mold gigantic cast,
Starting to life--all whisper of the past!"
This is so exquisite and old-English that it will continue to charm as
long as there are hearts and memories. The whole of the first part of
the poem is of the like tone and feature; the old garden, the old
school and its porch, the Gipsy group, the old beggar, the village
church and church-yard--
"On whose gray stone, that fronts the chancel door,
Worn smooth by tiny feet now seen no more,
Each eve we shot the marble through the ring,
When the heart danced, and life was in the spring."
As it advances, however, it takes a wider range, and gradually
embraces higher topics and more extensive regions. History, and death,
and eternity, all swell into its theme.
A new element of style also marks the progress of this poem. There are
more animated invocations, and a greater pomp of versification. It
looks as if the muse of Darwin had infused its more ambitious tone,
without leading the poet away from his purely legitimate subjects. By
whatever passing influences, or what processes of thought, this change
was produced, there it is. This poem, and this peculiar style of
versification, soon caught the ear and fascinated the mind of
Campbell, when a very young man, and out of the Pleasures of Memory
sprung the Pleasures of Hope. The direct imitation of both style,
manner, subject, and cast of subject, by Campbell, is one of the most
striking things in the language; the peculiarities of the style and
phraseology only, as was natural by an enthusiastic youth, much
exaggerated. In Campbell, that which in Rogers is somewhat sounding
and high-toned, becomes, with all its beauty, turgid, and often
bordering on bombast. The very epithets are the same. "The wild bee's
wing"--"the war-worn courser," and "pensive twilight in her dusky
car," continually in the Pleasures of Hope remind you of the Pleasures
of Memory.
"Hark, the bee winds her small but mellow horn,
Blithe to salute the sunny smile of morn.
O'er thymy downs she bends her busy course,
And many a stream allures her to its source.
'Tis noon, 'tis night. That eye so finely wrought,
Beyond the reach of sense, the soar of thought,
Nor vainly asks the scenes she left behind:
Its orb so full, its vision so confined!
Who guides the patient pilgrim to her cell?
Who bids her soul with conscious triumph swell?
With conscious truth retrace the mazy clew
Of summer scents, that charmed her as she flew?
Hail, Memory, hail! thy universal reign
Guards the least link of being's glorious chain."--_Rogers._
In the disciple the manner is reproduced, and yet modified as in these
lines:--
"Auspicious Hope! in thy sweet garden grow
Wreaths for each toil, a charm for every woe;
Won by their sweets, in Nature's languid hour.
The way-worn pilgrim seeks thy summer bower;
There as the wild bee murmurs on the wing,
What peaceful dreams thy handmaid spirits bring!
What viewless forms th' Æolian organ play,
And sweep the furrowed lines of conscious thought away."
How the master and the scholar may be again recognized in the
following passages:--
"So, when the mild TUPIA dared explore
Arts yet untaught, and worlds unknown before;
And with the sons of science wooed the gale,
That rising, swelled their strange expanse of sail;
So when he breathed his firm, yet fond adieu,
Borne from his leafy hut, his carved canoe,
And all his soul best loved, such tears he shed
While each soft scene of summer beauty fled.
Long o'er the wave a wistful look he cast,
Long watched the streaming signal from the mast;
Till twilight's dewy tints deceived his eye,
And fairy forests fringed the evening sky."--_Rogers_.
"And such thy strength-inspiring aid, that bore
The hardy Byron to his native shore,--
In horrid climes where Chiloe's tempests sweep
Tumultuous murmurs o'er the troubled deep,
'Twas his to mourn misfortune's rudest shock,
Scourged by the winds, and cradled on the rock,
To wake each joyless morn and search again
The famished haunts of solitary men;
Whose race, unyielding as their native storm,
Know not a trace of nature but the form;
Yet at thy call the hardy tar pursued,
Pale, but intrepid, sad, but unsubdued;
Pierced the deep woods, and hailing from afar
The moon's pale planet, and the northern star;
Paused at each dreary cry unheard before,
Hyenas in the wild, and mermaids on the shore;
Till led by thee o'er many a cliff sublime,
He found a warmer world, a milder clime,
A home to rest, or shelter to defend,
Peace and repose, a Briton and a friend!"--_Campbell_.