To Mrs. David Lane.
SHEFFIELD, July 9, 1866.
DEAR FRIEND,--I am etonne, as the French have it; at least Moliere
and Corneille--whom I have been reading by and large of late, having
read all the new things I could get hold of-are continually having
their personages etonned. Or, I feel like Dominie Sampson, and say,
"Pro-di-gi-ous!" Not as he said it to Meg Merrilies, but rather to Miss
Julia Mannering, when he was confounded with her vivacity. What! two
letters to my one! I do believe you are going to be literary.
And then,--was ever seen such an ambitious woman! Reading Mill, and
going to read Herbert Spencer! And I suppose Kant will come next.
But bravo! I say. I am very much pleased with you. And don't say, "I
wish,--but what 's the use!" You are through with the great absorbing
mother's cares, and can undertake studies, and I believe there is
no study so worthy of our attention as our literature. I confess
that I have come [289] to a somewhat new thought of this matter of
late. What is there on the earth upon which we stand,--what is there
that offers to help us, to lift and build us up, that can compare
with the productions of the greatest minds which are gathered up in
our literature? Whether we would study human nature or the Nature
Divine,-whether we would study religion, science, nature in the world
around us, in the life within us,--these are the lights that shine
upon our path. For those who have time to read, it seems a deplorable
mistake not to turn their thoughts distinctly to what the greatest
minds have said; that is, upon as many subjects as they can compass.
If I were to undertake anything in the way of education, I would
set up in New York an Institute of English Literature. I do not
know but--might do something of the kind,--have a house and receive
classes that should come once or twice in a week and read in the
mean time under her direction, and teach them by reading to them, by
commenting, talking, pointing out and opening up to them the best
things in the best authors, the poets, the essayists, the historians,
the fiction-writers, and thus making them acquainted with the finest
productions of the English mind; and, what is better, inspiring them
with an enthusiasm and taste for pursuing, for reading such things,
instead of sensation novels and such stuff.
Moliere and Corneille have struck me much on this reading,--the first
with the tenuity of his thought, the slender thread on which he weaves
his entertaining and life-like drama, making it to live through the
ages simply by sticking to nature, making his personages speak so
naturally; and the second, with the real dramatic [290] grandeur of
his genius. I feel that I have never done justice to Corneille before,
I have been so dissatisfied with the formal rhyme, the want of the
natural dramatic play of language in his work, the stilted rhetoric.
And when I heard Rachel in the Cid, I thought, by the rapid, undramatic
way in which she hurried through his declamations, while, in a few
exclamatory bursts, she swept everything before her, that she justified
my criticism. But this was the misfortune of Corneille; he walked in
shackles imposed by the taste of his time. Yet it was a lofty stride. I
am particularly struck with his grand moral ideals. I wish I had a good
life of him. He must have been a good man. Like Beethoven and Michael
Angelo, he does not seem to have liked flattery, court, or ceremony.
But I guess that is the case with most men of the higher genius. . . .
As ever,