the exalted notions he entertained of the value of his own productions.
‘I have published,’ he says in the conversation with Hare, ‘five
volumes of _Imaginary Conversations_; cut the most of them through the
middle, and there will remain in the decimal fraction enough to satisfy
my appetite for fame. I shall dine late, but the dining-room will be
well lighted, the guests few and select.’ ‘Be patient!’ he says in
another place. ‘From the higher heavens of poetry it is long before the
radiance of the brightest star can reach the world below. We hear that
one man finds out one beauty, another man finds out another, placing
his observatory and instruments on the poet’s grave. The worms must
have eaten us before we rightly know what we are. It is only when we
are skeletons that we are boxed, and ticketed, and shown. Be it so! I
shall not be tired of waiting.’ Knowing, he again writes, that in two
thousand years there have not been five volumes of prose (the work of
one man) equal to his _Conversations_, he could indeed afford to wait.
If conscious of earthly things, we fear he may be waiting still.
With better reason than Southey and Landor, Wordsworth nourished in his
breast a sublime self-complacency, and, in spite of adverse criticisms,
wrote calmly on, ‘in the full assurance that his poems would be
unpopular, and in the full assurance that they would be immortal.’ To a
friend who wrote condoling with him about the severity with which his
poems were criticised in the _Edinburgh Review_, he replied: ‘Trouble
not yourself about their present reception; of what moment is that
compared with what I trust is their destiny? To console the afflicted;
to add sunshine to daylight, by making the happy happier; to teach the
young and gracious of every age to see, to think, and to feel, and
therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous—this is their
office, which I trust they will faithfully perform long after we—that
is, all that is mortal of us—are mouldering in our graves.’ Again: ‘I
doubt not that you will share with me an invincible confidence that my
writings, and among them these little poems, will co-operate with the
benign tendencies in human nature and society, wherever found, and that
they will, in their degree, be efficacious in making men happier and
wiser.’
Byron, to whom Macaulay denied the possession of any high critical
faculty, was no better judge of his own poetry than he was of other
people’s. His _Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage_ he thought inferior to his
_Hints from Horace_, a feeble imitation of Pope and Johnson, which he
repeatedly designed to publish, and was withheld from doing only by
the solicitations of his friends, whom, to his astonishment, he could
never bring to think of the matter as he did. Scott, who had few of
the weaknesses common to literary men, was free from any tendency
to unduly estimate his own writings. He always said that his poetry
would never live, and was not to be compared with that of many of
his contemporaries. He felt that though Wordsworth, Coleridge, and
Shelley were then comparatively neglected, the time would come when
they would be recognised as having possessed more of the sacred fire of
inspiration than he. ‘I promise you,’ he says in an epistle to an old
friend, ‘my oaks will outlast my laurels; and I pique myself more on my
compositions for manure, than on any other compositions to which I was
ever accessory.’ This was, of course, in great part badinage. But he
repeatedly, both in writing and conversation, placed literature below
some other professions, and especially the military, of whose greatest
representative then living, the Duke of Wellington, his admiration knew
no bounds.
‘There are two things,’ said Dr Johnson to Reynolds, ‘which I am
confident I can do very well: one is an introduction to any literary
work, stating what it is to contain, and how it should be executed in
the most perfect manner; the other is a conclusion proving from various
causes why the execution has not been equal to what the author promised
to himself and the public.’ The Doctor was, on the whole, a very honest
critic of his own productions. ‘I showed him,’ writes Boswell, ‘as a
curiosity that I had discovered, his translation of Lobo’s Account of
Abyssinia, which Sir John Pringle had lent me, it being then little
known as one of his works. He said: “Take no notice of it,” or,
“Don’t talk of it.” He seemed to think it beneath him, though done
at six-and-twenty. I said to him: “Your style, sir, is much improved
since you translated this.” He answered with a sort of triumphant
smile: “Sir, I hope it is.”’ On one occasion, when some person read his
_Irene_ aloud, he left the room, saying he did not think it had been so
bad. Reviewing the _Rambler_ late in life, he shook his head, and said
it was ‘too wordy.’
A good specimen of honest, manly self-criticism is afforded by a letter
of Sydney Smith’s to Jeffrey, who had written to him complaining that
he treated grave subjects in too jocular a vein. ‘You must consider,’
he writes, ‘that Edinburgh is a very grave place, and that you live
with philosophers who are very intolerant of nonsense. I write for the
London, not for the Scotch market, and perhaps more people read my
nonsense than your sense. The complaint was loud and universal about
the extreme dullness and lengthiness of the _Edinburgh Review_. Too
much, I admit, would not do of my style; but the proportion in which it
exists enlivens the _Review_, if you appeal to the whole public, and
not to the eight or ten grave Scotchmen with whom you live.... Almost
any one of the sensible men who write for the _Review_ could have done
a much wiser and more profound article than I have done upon the Game
Laws. I am quite certain nobody would obtain more readers for his essay
on such a subject, and I am equally certain that the principles are
right, and that there is no lack of sense in it.’
Macaulay also may be ranked among the writers who have formed correct
judgments of their own works. ‘I have written,’ he wrote with great
candour, to Macvey Napier, ‘several things on historical, political,
and moral questions, of which, on the fullest reconsideration, I am
not ashamed, and by which I should be willing to be estimated. But
I have never written a page of criticism on poetry or the fine arts
which I would not burn if I had the power. I leave it to yourself to
make the comparison. I am sure that on reflection you will agree with
me. Hazlitt used to say of himself, “I am nothing if not critical.”
The case with me is directly the reverse. I have a strong and acute
enjoyment of great works of the imagination; but I have never
habituated myself to dissect them.’ Not less sound was his estimate
of his great History. A fortnight before its publication, he wrote
in his Diary: ‘The state of my own mind is this: when I compare my
own work with what I imagine history ought to be, I feel dejected and
ashamed; but when I compare it with some Histories which have a high
repute, I feel re-assured.’ At a subsequent stage of the publication,
he writes: ‘I dawdled over my book most of the day, sometimes in good,
sometimes in bad spirits about it. On the whole, I think that it must
do. The only competition, so far as I perceive, it has to dread is that
of the two former volumes. Certainly no other History of William’s
reign is either so trustworthy or so agreeable.’ The following entry
is interesting: ‘I looked through ——’s two volumes. He is, I see, an
imitator of me. But I am a very unsafe model. My manner is, I think,
and the world thinks, on the whole a good one; but it is very near to a
bad manner indeed, and those characteristics of my style which are most
easily copied are the most questionable.’
Of all classes of writers, perhaps the most vain are amateur poets and
great classical scholars. An amusing instance of conceit in one of the
former class is given in Cyrus Redding’s _Recollections_. Once meeting
with Colton, the author of _Lacon_, they entered into conversation,
and Colton invited him to his house, and quoted many lines from a poem
he was composing called _Hypocrisy_. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘do you think any
lines of Pope more euphonical than these?’
His conceit at first surprised Redding; but seeing his weak side, he
flattered him. ‘Really, they are very good, and very like’——
‘There, sir; I think these will convince you I write verses of some
merit.’
This anecdote reminds one of a certain amateur versifier whom
Thomas Davidson, the ‘Scottish Probationer,’ once met with in his
peregrinations, who used to read to his suffering auditor long poems of
his own composition. When Davidson did violence to his conscience by
praising any of them, the poetaster complacently remarked: ‘Yes, it’s
capital.’ How differently puerile vanity like this affects one, from
the lofty words some great writers have used of their own works. How
fine, for example, is the address of Bacon: ‘Those are the Meditations
of Francis of Verulam, which that posterity should be possessed of,
he deemed _their_ interest.’ Horace, in one of his finest odes, says
of himself: ‘I have erected a monument more durable than brass, and
more lofty than the regal height of the pyramids.’ In a similar strain,
Shakspeare writes in one of his sonnets:
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this lofty rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
It would fail us to repeat all the anecdotes that might be told of the
vanity of scholars. Richard Bentley, whom Macaulay calls the greatest
scholar that has appeared in Europe since the revival of learning,
always spoke, wrote, and acted as if he considered a great scholar the
greatest of men. In the preface to his edition of Horace, he describes
at some length the characteristics of the ideal critic, and pretty
plainly indicates that he regarded himself as that model individual.
If, in scholarship, Samuel Parr was inferior to Bentley, his vanity
was at least equally colossal. ‘Shepherd,’ he once said to one of his
friends, ‘the age of great scholars is past. I am the only one now
remaining of that race of men.’ ‘No man’s horse carries more Latin
than mine,’ he one day observed to an acquaintance with whom he was
out riding. In signal contrast to the opinions these two worthies
entertained of themselves was the verdict which Porson, the greatest
Greek scholar England has seen, passed on himself. Being once asked why
he had produced so little original matter, he replied: ‘I doubt if I
could produce any original work which could command the attention of
posterity. I can only be known by my notes; and I am quite satisfied
if, three hundred years hence, it shall be said that one Porson lived
towards the close of the eighteenth century who did a good deal for the
text of Euripides.’
BURIED ALIVE.
Of all the horrible and appalling calamities that can befall mortal
man, we can imagine none more ghastly than that of being buried alive,
and well authenticated records have placed beyond a doubt that it has
occasionally happened. The case of the lady whose ring, cut from her
finger by midnight violators of her tomb, was the means of saving her
from a dreadful fate, has been often told. Her son, the eminent Dr L——,
born many years after his mother had been buried, was the physician and
friend of the family of the writer, one of whose earliest recollections
is the hearing the story from the lips of an aged relative, while
forming one of a group of small listeners gathered round and hanging
with ’bated breath on the narration. Children love to have the same
stories told over and over again in the same words. They like to know
what is coming—to watch with thrills of expectation for each detail.
And these details, graphically given by one who had them from the very
actors in the scene, were weird and vivid. The vault at midnight—the
cutting off of the finger—the ghastly terror of the ruffians, when
the dead woman sat up in her coffin and blood began to flow—the
familiar knock coming to the house-door in the dead of night, heard
by terrified maids, who, thinking their mistress’s ghost was there,
buried their faces, trembling, in their pillows. The bereaved husband
lying sleepless in his grief, heard it too, and started at the sound.
‘If my dear wife were not gone,’ he thought, ‘I should say that was her
knock;’ and when, more faintly, it again smote his ear, rising at last
and going to the door, he was confronted by the resuscitated woman. All
this was listened to with an interest intensified by the fact of its
being true.
A curious coincidence respecting this event is that an exactly
similar story is recorded in the annals of the family of the Earls of
Mount-Edgcumbe. In them we read that the mother of Richard Edgcumbe,
created first Baron in 1742, being at the time young and childless,
died, apparently, at their seat, Cothele, near Plymouth. She was
buried with a valuable ring on her finger; and the cutting this off
by violators of the tomb, as in the case of Mrs L——, restored her to
consciousness. Five years afterwards, she gave birth to a son.
In the year 1838, a remarkable instance of burying alive occurred at
Cambray, in France. M. Marbois, a farmer residing at Sisoy, in that
neighbourhood, had reared a large family, and acquired by his industry
and good conduct, wealth and consideration, so that he was chosen
principal churchwarden of his parish, and appointed deputy-mayor. He
had lived in harmony with his family, until the subject of a marriage
his eldest son wished to contract, became the cause of a quarrel,
and brought on fierce disputes between him and his children. Marbois
was a man of violent passions; opposition made him frantic; and on
one occasion, when the dispute ran higher than usual, he became so
infuriated that he rose up and pronounced a fearful malediction upon
his family. No sooner had the words passed his lips, than his whole
frame suddenly collapsed; his face grew livid, his eyes fixed, his
limbs stiffened, and he fell to the ground. Medical aid was called in;
but all pulsation had ceased. Soon the body became cold, and his death
was decidedly pronounced—the cause, a stoppage of the heart’s action
produced by violent excitement. This occurred on the 13th of January;
and on the 16th the interment took place. There had been a severe
frost, and the extreme hardness of the ground prevented the grave from
being properly dug. It was therefore left shallow, with the intention
of deepening it when the thaw should come. By the 23d the ground became
sufficiently softened, and men were set to work to raise the body and
finish the grave. On lifting the coffin, they fancied that they heard
a sigh, and on listening attentively, they found the sounds of life
repeated. Breaking open the coffin, and perceiving that faint actions
of pulsation and respiration were going on to a certain extent, the men
hurried off with the body to the house of the parish doctor, by whose
efforts Marbois was at last restored to consciousness.
When the resuscitated man was able to recall what had taken place, he
became overwhelmed with contrition, regarding the fate from which he
so narrowly escaped as the deserved punishment of his sin. He sent for
the clergyman of Sisoy, whom he entreated to mediate with his children,
expressing his anxiety to make his peace with them and to recall his
malediction. The result was a return to mutual understanding and the
re-establishment of harmony in the household.
The distinguished physician Sir Henry Marsh, used to describe an event
which occurred at the beginning of his medical career, many years
before he had reached the eminence to which he afterwards attained. He
was called in by the family doctor—a country practitioner—to attend
upon Colonel H——, struck down suddenly by apoplexy. The fit was a
severe one. All efforts to save the sick man proved unavailing; he
never rallied, and at the end of a few days, to all appearance breathed
his last. On the morning of the funeral, the two medical attendants
deemed it right, as a last attention, to go and take leave of the
remains of their patient before the coffin was screwed down. The
family doctor, a jovial florid personage, on whom professional cares
sat lightly, had been a friend, and ofttimes boon-companion, of the
deceased. A bottle of port and glasses stood on a table near the coffin.
‘Ah, my poor friend!’ he said, pouring out a bumper and tossing it
off; ‘this was his favourite drink. Rare wine, too. He knew what was
good, and never spared it. Many a generous glass we have had together.
I’ll drink another to his memory,’ he cried; and another, and another
followed, until the wine rapidly gulped down, and at so unwonted an
hour, began to tell upon the man, and make his eyes glisten and his
speech grow thick.
‘Why should you not pledge me now for the last time?’ exclaimed the
excited doctor, while he approached the corpse, and, to Sir Henry’s
inexpressible disgust at such revolting levity, pressed the glass to
the pale lips. The contents went down the colonel’s throat!
Sir Henry stood amazed; his eyes, which he was turning away from the
unbecoming spectacle, were riveted on the corpse.
The jovial doctor, sobered in a moment, staggered back. ‘Can a dead man
drink?’ he cried.
‘Give him more—more!’ exclaimed Sir Henry, recovering his presence of
mind and seizing the bottle.
A tinge so slight that only a medical eye could have detected it, began
faintly to suffuse the white face. The doctor tore away the shroud and
placed his hand upon the heart. There was no movement; but they lifted
the body out of the coffin and proceeded to adopt the measures proper
for resuscitation.
Meanwhile, the hearse stood at the door; the funeral guests were
assembling outside—carriages arriving; while within, all was commotion
and suspense—servants hurrying to and fro fetching hot bricks,
stimulants, restoratives, in obedience to the doctors’ commands; the
latter plying every means skill could devise to keep the flickering
spark of life from dying out; and the startled family, half paralysed
by the sudden revulsion, standing around, gathered in anxious, silent
groups.
Breathlessly they watched for tidings. For a long time the result
seemed doubtful—doubtful whether the hearse before the door, the gaping
coffin, the graveclothes lying scattered about and trampled under foot,
all the grim paraphernalia of death, hastily discarded in the first
wild moment of hope—might not yet be needed to fulfil their mournful
office. But no! Breath, pulsation, consciousness, were slowly returning.
Colonel H—— was given back to his family and home, filling again
the place that it was thought would know him no more. And not until
five-and-twenty years had passed away after that memorable morning,
were his friends summoned—this time to pay him the last tribute.
A young officer returned from China related, apropos of burying alive,
the following experience.
‘On our passage home,’ he said, ‘we had in the transport, besides our
own troops, a large draft of French soldiers. Disease soon broke out
among the closely packed men, and deaths were of daily occurrence. The
French dealt summarily with their dead. As soon as a poor fellow had
breathed his last, he was stripped, a twenty-pound shot tied to his
heels, and his body thrust through a porthole into the sea. John Bull’s
prejudices rebelled against such rapid proceedings. When we lost any of
our comrades, they were allowed to lie for twelve hours covered with
the Union-jack, and the burial service was read over them before they
were committed to the deep. One day, a French sergeant, who had just
fallen a victim to the pestilence, was brought up on deck in the sheet
in which he had died, to be thrown overboard. The twenty-pound shot
had been fastened to his feet and the sheet removed, when, in pushing
him through the porthole, he was caught by a protruding hook or nail
at the side, and stuck fast. A few more vigorous thrusts sent the body
further through; and in so doing, the flesh was torn by the hook, and
blood began to flow. The attention of the bystanders was attracted to
this; and, moreover, they fancied that they saw about the corpse other
startling symptoms. “The man’s alive!” flew from mouth to mouth. In an
instant, willing hands were pressing eagerly to the rescue, and before
the body could touch the water, it was caught and brought up on deck.
‘The French sergeant was one of the soundest men on board the
transport-ship when we landed.’
CAMEO-CUTTING.
The best American artist in cameo-cutting has recently, says a
contemporary, been interviewed upon his costly art. He was found
pounding up diamonds with a pestle and mortar. This, he explained,
was not the only costly part of cameo-making, which takes eyesight,
a great deal of time and patience, and years of experience. Then the
onyx stones, from which the cameos are made, are expensive, costing
sometimes as much as fifty dollars. The choicest have a layer of
cream-coloured stone on a dark chocolate-coloured base. But many
persons like the red, orange, black, or shell pink stones just as well.
They are found in the Uruguay Mountains and in Brazil. The onyx is a
half-precious stone of the quartz family. It is taken to Europe, and
cut into oval or oblong shapes, and Americans have to pay ten per cent.
duty to get it through the custom-house. The cameo-cutter turned to
his lathe by the window, and, rubbing some of the diamond dust, which
he had mixed with sperm oil, on the end of a small drill, began his
work. He was making for a cabinet piece a large cameo, two by two and
a half inches, one of the largest ever cut, of an old gentleman in
Germany, whose portrait was placed before him. ‘I have one hundred and
twenty-five of these soft iron drills,’ he remarked; ‘they are made
soft so as to catch the diamond dust, which is the only thing that will
cut a cameo. A cameo is indestructible, except you take a hammer and
smash it. It is an old art, and was practised by the Romans, Greeks,
and Egyptians. Dr Schliemann found some cameos in good preservation
that were probably three thousand years old. It takes several weeks
to cut a large piece like this. Afterwards, it has to be polished
with tripoli, first being smoothed with emery and oil, using the
lead instruments similar to those for cutting. It is easier to cut a
profile than a full-face portrait. Some people prefer intaglios, in
which the portrait is depressed instead of raised. They are made on
sards and cornelians, the former being a dark-reddish brown, and the
latter a clear red. They are harder to make than cameos. I have to take
impressions of the work in wax as I go on. I usually cut portraits
from photographs, but sometimes have done them from life, and also
from casts of dead persons.’ Among portraits which the artist had cut
are those of ex-President Hayes, Mrs Hayes, William Cullen Bryant,
Bayard Taylor, Peter Cooper, and others. A large cameo copy of Gerôme’s
‘Cleopatra before Cæsar’ was valued at fifteen hundred dollars.
ANGEL VISITORS.
In the graveyard gray and chill,
Veiled in shadow, hushed and still,
’Neath one drooping cypress tree,
They are laid, my darlings three—
Merry Robin, brave and bold;
Baby May, with locks of gold;
Darling Dolly, shy and fair,
With the grave-dust on her hair.
Now their joyous feet no more
Patter o’er the cottage floor;
Still they hover near, I know—
Lovely spirits, white as snow!
Ringing sounds of boyish mirth
Never round my childless hearth
In the morning light are heard,
Welcoming the early bird;
In the evening, drear and long,
Never maiden’s vesper song
Bids discordant voices cease,
Fills the slumberous hush with peace;
Yet when bowed in tearful prayer,
Lo! they mount the silent stair!
Whispering, fluttering, to and fro—
Lovely spirits, white as snow!
Heavenly wisdom in their eyes,
Downward from the starlit skies,
On the moonbeams pale they glide,
Smiling angels side by side!
Folded in their loving arms,
Swiftly fade life’s vague alarms.
When I feel their flowery breath
Fan my cheek, I long for death.
How my heart in rapture sings,
Listening to their rustling wings,
Making music sweet and low—
Lovely spirits, white as snow!