as a prose writer is well understood by most of those who take it in ill
part. The judgment expressed is that Emerson is the pre-eminent prose
writer of his century, not as being either a great philosopher or great
in his style of workmanship, but for the reason that he is a great
spiritual light, the purest, whitest, serenest, of a century now drawing
toward its close. This taken together is valuable praise, and converted
into disparagement by its denial to Emerson of two special distinctions;
and in respect to both, the denial is taken, I think, to cover much more
ground than it was intended to cover. To keep within the limits, I will
here attend to but one of these, where it must be confessed, Mr. Arnold
is himself to blame for the misconstruction put upon him, since he has
expressed himself in a way to facilitate, if not to invite, such a
mistake. Emerson, it is said, was the most important writer of this
century, yet was not a great writer. How should this be, unless, indeed,
the century as a whole is inferior, and prominence in it is no token of
greatness? In truth, Mr. Arnold has used the term 'writer' in two widely
different senses. In the one use it refers to the content of the
writing, to its intellectual and moral import, its spiritual
significance; in the other use it refers to the writing itself
considered as showing more or less of literary power,--that is, of power
in the ordering and verbal embodiment of thoughts and conceptions.
"Declining to be misled by this ambiguity, let us inquire what is meant,
when it is said that Emerson was not a great writer. To my apprehension
the meaning is simply that his literary execution, taken by and for
itself, was not of the highest order. A cotton fabric may be better
woven than one of silk, a chain of copper be better wrought and linked
than a chain of gold. He that should recognize the better workmanship
where it exists would not thereby set the cheaper material above the
more precious, for he would not institute a comparison to any effect
whatsoever between the two. Nor would he betray a shallow and petty
mind, as making much of things trivial. Mr. Arnold says of Emerson's
writings, the matter is gold, but the workmanship does not evince the
highest skill. Were this last urged as determining the value of the
writer we might indeed say that the critic offends by exalting a
subordinate distinction to the first place. But it is not so urged, nor
is there anything to indicate that Mr. Arnold makes perfection of
literary execution the be-all and end-all of excellence in literature;
indeed one does not see that he at all exaggerates its importance. Those
whom he mentions as great writers were for the most part second-rate
men--second-rate men that is as measured by the standard of the ages;
and it does not appear that he thinks of them otherwise than as such.
Cicero receives the title while it is not given to Marcus Antoninus; but
it is sufficiently apparent that Mr. Arnold sets a higher value upon
Marcus Antoninus than upon Cicero. Voltaire is one of the great writers;
but in the world's literature he is at best but first among the lesser
lights, and there is no sign that Matthew Arnold attributed to him a
higher importance. Or take the case of Swift. The literary talents of
this unhappy man were indeed prodigious: he performed feats to which we
cannot say that any other would have been equal: he is as unique as
Shakespeare,--though, of course, in a vastly lower way. But did he
contribute one great thought or one grand and salutary imagination to
the world's stock? Not to my knowledge. Did he shed light upon any
important province of human interest, upon religion, morals, politics,
art, science, history, education, manners or whatever else? I cannot
report that he did so. Did he lay a noble emphasis upon any great truth
or order of truths and so recommend it effectually to the attention and
consideration of mankind? Or did he even write a single sentence which
one treasures up as an imperishable jewel? In fine, does his work serve
to enlarge the souls, enlighten the minds, direct the wills or quicken
and inspire the better powers of man? Does it so much as breathe upon
them a salubrious air? Alas no! To all such questions the answer, or
mine own at least, will be negative. Yet he was indeed a great writer:
that is, he had a great, a truly wonderful power of conception and
representation. Mr. Arnold, who for aught one can discover to the
contrary, distinguishes the nature of Swift's genius and prizes it only
for what it is worth, does not claim that Emerson was a greater writer
in the same sense, but thinks his deliverance somewhat faulty,
especially as wanting that continuity which belongs to good literary
tissue, as to every other.
"Suppose him quite wrong in this, still the error is not one to be warm
about, since it leaves the Concord essayist in his place of
pre-eminence, and is put forth only by way of determining the kind of
value which shall be attributed to his writings.
"D. A. Wasson."
This was forwarded to Matthew Arnold, who was then at his own home, and
in due time this reply was received from him:
"COBHAM, SURREY,
"Jan. 7th., 1886.
"Dear Sir,
"I have just had, on my return to England, your letter and Mr. Wasson's
paper, and must thank you for them.
"Very much of what Mr. Wasson says is true; yet literary style is more
than he makes it--the mere dressing up of a material which may be
inferior; it is itself in the material and has an extraordinary value.
No great writer is to be disposed of as Mr. Wasson disposes of Addison
and Swift; he says, nothing is to be learned from Swift; why, a sense
for the blatant nonsense and claptrap which constitutes three-fourths of
our public writing and speaking, and which is a greater curse to your
country that even to ours, is to be got from him. Addison has his
valuable criticism of life too; I doubt whether to a Taine, a hundred
years hence, he will not seem of more importance than Emerson, who was
above all things of value in his own day. But I love Emerson.
"Truly yours,
"Matthew Arnold."
[Illustration: AUTOGRAPH LETTER FROM MATTHEW ARNOLD.]
[Illustration: AUTOGRAPH LETTER FROM MATTHEW ARNOLD.]
Taine, who preferred Macaulay to Carlyle, might also prefer Addison to
Emerson; but it is not likely that a future Grimm or another
Sainte-Beuve would do so. In his "Essays in Criticism," Matthew Arnold
enters a general complaint against English prose writers for a lack of
mental flexibility, and against Addison particularly for the
commonplaceness of his ideas. He was a severe and exacting critic.
DAVID A. WASSON.
Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne and Whittier were all nearly of
the same age, and formed a literary galaxy such as has been rare enough
in any country or period of history. They are distinguished, however, by
one peculiarity--a slight sentimentalism which belonged to the time in
which they grew up, and is most strongly marked in Longfellow and least
so in Hawthorne. Fifteen or twenty years later there appeared, as
usually happens, a number of talented imitators or admirers, and with
them two men of equal genius who may be looked upon as the corrective
and antidote for their predecessors. These were James Russell Lowell and
David Atwood Wasson.
They were as different as Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson. Lowell was a fine
poet, a humorist and man of the world. He wrote easily and lived easily.
He was the companion of wealthy and distinguished men. He acquired
prosperity, as it were, by natural inclination. Next to the King of
Prussia he was the most fortunate man of his time. He knew something of
sorrow, but of hardship and misfortune only by hearsay. He was the child
of summer, and revelled in it; but this continual happiness brought with
it certain limitations. Though he was a veracious man, he was rarely a
serious one. He never became thoroughly in earnest until he was
stimulated by partisan feeling. His best poems were inspired by the
anti-slavery conflict, and the rendition of Mason and Slidell; and it
was just on these occasions that his humor was most brilliant and
pleasant flavored. His productiveness was not great, and his other
writings do not make a strong impression. It is said that he often tried
to write a book, but was never able to concentrate himself on one
subject for a sufficient length of time. He is easily the first of
American humorists. The greatest compliment ever paid Thoreau was that
such a man as Lowell could not understand him.
Wasson must have been born under the constellation of the Little Bear.
As the Germans say, his life was always winter. Every possible obstacle
was placed in his way, and misfortune came to him at one time or another
in almost every shape. The difficulties he encountered in life were too
great for him, and prevented the full fruition of his genius. The wonder
is that they did not crush him altogether. He never acquired the
sufficient public influence nor received the recognition his merit
deserved. He was by nature a thinker--a seeker after truth. There was no
problem,--social, political or philosophical,--which he was not ready to
grapple with. He could plunge into these subjects like a pearl-diver who
means to touch bottom, and would never come out till his last breath was
spent. This mental habit and his continual suffering made him only too
serious, too much in earnest. Jests were not in his line, but he
sometimes wrote poetry of the very highest order. He is the first and
most original of American thinkers.
What these two dissimilar men had in common was good Anglo-Saxon
manliness--which is after all the foundation of common-sense. They
wished to live as other men had lived before them, and not in any new,
unusual, or eccentric manner. They believed that virtue was to be found
in the great world rather than out of it; among human habitations, and
in dealing with all kinds of people rather than by an isolated life at
Brook Farm or in Walden Woods. They sought not after any rare and
Utopian excellencies, but contented themselves with a plain, sensible,
every-day morality. They were neither vegetarians, teetotalers,
non-resistants, nor socialists. They considered it no sin to love a
woman or to fight a man. They may be called anti-sentimentalists.
Neither were they blind followers of custom and tradition. They wished
to be in the vanguard of civilization, and they were conscious that to
do this they must not only accept the results of others, but add
something of their own. They endeavored to become acquainted with the
best that was thought and known in their time, both in literature and in
other matters. They thus became excellent critics, as well as versatile
and many-sided men. They were among the most cultivated men of the
century, and are the most cosmopolitan of American writers. That they
should not have possessed greater influence was largely owing to the
tendencies of their time. The current of the age was too strong for
them, and in their later years they both expressed gloomy forebodings of
the future, both for their own country and the rest of the civilized
world.
Wasson went to Concord in 1859 intending to make it his permanent abode,
but the offer of a philanthropic gentleman who wished to take him into
his own house for a year and care for him, as Mr. Badams of Manchester
entertained Carlyle, induced him to emigrate again. He continued however
in friendly communication with the literary people there, often visited
them, and now lies buried in Sleepy Hollow cemetery, so that he deserves
to be classed among them, rather than with any other group of literary
men.
He was born in Brooksville, Maine, on the fourteenth of May, 1823. He
was named David for his father, and Atwood for Miss Harriet Atwood, a
female preacher and missionary who was at that time his mother's devoted
friend,--and it has been said that Wasson attributed his unusual mental
activity largely to her influence. His mother died while he was still
too young to recollect her, but her place was fortunately supplied by a
kindly and sensible stepmother; not such a rare phenomenon as some
people think. His father belonged to a class of men only to be found on
the coast of Maine, who are at once fishermen, farmers and navigators; a
much more intelligent and cultivated class than the agricultural people
of the interior. It is a beautiful sail among the islands from Rockland
to Mount Desert, and the pleasantest part of it, to me at least, is the
sight of the well kept farms with their handsome cattle and clean-shaven
hay-fields, which line the coast. Our best ship-builders have originated
among these people.
Brooksville is a thinly scattered settlement on the westerly side of a
rocky and even mountainous peninsula. A deep and narrow strait separates
it from Castine, which has to be crossed in a ferry-boat. The house of
David Wasson, Senior, is something more than half-a-mile from the ferry
landing; a large, commodious, two-story house, much better than the
average of farm-houses, with two large barns and numerous out-buildings.
Between it and the street is an orchard, and on one side a latticed
porch or piazza. West of it there is a trout-brook and beyond that a
hemlock grove, and the blue hills of Camden in the distance. On the
south side the sea comes up to the edge of the farm, and the road to
Sedgwick winds about the ridge on the East. It was a fitting birthplace
for a poet or a painter.
He has left us a valuable and quite unique sketch of his early boyhood,
[Footnote: Essays, Religious, Social, Political. D. A. Wasson. Boston:
Lee and Shepard.] in which he confesses to having been a sensitive,
excitable and passionate little fellow such as the more cool-headed and
phlegmatic sort could tease and worry at pleasure. Since he was also
very high-spirited, this resulted inevitably in a good many fights, and
from being naturally peaceable and tender-hearted he became at last the
most noted pugilist in that community. It is said that at seventeen he
could smash a door-panel with his fist. That he disliked work on the
farm is not surprising. Manual labor is injurious to boys physically and
mentally; and they should be saved from it, except perhaps in the haying
or harvesting seasons, as much as possible. Otherwise he was modest,
orderly, truthful, and the finest scholar that had ever been known about
Castine. His father recognized his superior abilities, and made an
effort to send him to Bowdoin College.
There were many obstacles in the way, however, and he did not enter
until 1845. He never told me much about his college life. He was older
than his companions and more serious. The light spirit that makes it a
joyous festival to many was not in him. Of the myrtle and ivy of sweet
two-and-twenty he knew nothing. He distinguished himself in mathematics
(especially in geometry, which is the most logical of studies) and in
the students' debating-societies. He was also an excellent gymnast.
In almost every college class there are a number of over-grown boys who
had better have been sent to the reform-school. On the occasion of a
class supper, or some such celebration, young Wasson saved half-a-dozen
of these roaring blades from disgrace and suspension, by his timely
interference. It was already far into the night, and being fairly
intoxicated, they took it into their minds to return and attend morning
prayers in the college chapel. In order to prevent this catastrophe,
Wasson arranged a bowling match for a fictitious sum of money with the
most sober man he could find, and in that way delayed the party until
the dangerous hour had passed. It was supposed to have been some of the
same set who the following autumn set fire to and consumed the college
wood-pile--a severe loss, and a dangerous precedent. No trace of the
incendiaries could be discovered and the college faculty suspended on
suspicion right and left. Among those whom the lightning struck were
several that Wasson knew or felt sure could have had nothing to do with
it; and he accordingly went to the president and argued the case with
him. This resulted in his being summoned before the next faculty
meeting. When asked whether he knew who the perpetrators of the outrage
were, he declined to answer, not because he had positive knowledge but
because he felt morally certain in regard to them. A few weeks later,
after he had gone into the country to teach school for the winter, he
received word that he had been suspended. Indignant at what he
considered an injustice to his character and scholarship, he left
Bowdoin forever: nor did he perhaps lose much by this. The philosophical
studies of the senior year could be mastered as easily by a mind like
Wasson's without an instructor as with one. He never studied for rank
and cared little or nothing for college honors or degrees.
There is no good art without a sense of delicacy; and this mental
delicacy is usually matched by some kind of physical sensitiveness.
Artists are, according to the vulgar phrase, more thin-skinned than
other people. Both at Bowdoin College, and afterwards while at the
divinity-school, Wasson worked hard in summer and taught school in
winter so as to help in defraying the expense of his education. In this
mode of life he encountered many hardships that were too severe for him.
I notice among my own classmates that very few of those who lived in
this manner reached the age of thirty-five. The food which Wasson
encountered during his winter peregrinations was anything but what human
beings are intended to eat. On one occasion he returned from his school
to dine as usual in a cold room, and found himself provided there with
the skeleton of a chicken, two large beets, a pie made of preserved
barberries, and biscuits which pulled out when separated, like a
telescope. The meat, unless fried, was always cooked too much; bread and
vegetables insufficiently. Like many another young hero he believed in
facing these obstacles, and overcoming them by main force. A strain
which he received in a wrestling match during the celebrated Tippecanoe
campaign may have done him harm; but a more serious injury was incurred
while on a trip to Bangor in one of his father's schooners the summer
after he was suspended from college. The captain of the schooner appears
to have been a sea-faring brute who had a secret grudge, a sort of
town-and-gown feeling, against the scholar, and was ready to do him any
mischief he could. They were to take on a cargo of lumber at Bangor and
the captain requested Wasson, who was not actually under his orders, to
stow it away in the hold while two men on deck handed the boards to him
as fast as possible. Wasson felt that something was wrong and might have
protested against it, but his youthful pride, and perhaps a feeling of
indifference in regard to his fate, prevented him. I believe he finally
fainted from over-exertion and the close air, and was never a well man
again. The trouble was not very bad at first, and might easily have been
cured by suitable treatment, and a quiet, methodical life: but there was
no doctor in that part of Maine who could prescribe properly for him. He
tried some short sea-voyages, but these did him little good. So Prescott
injured his eyesight through the same proud spirit; but it was this
pride which made him afterwards what he was.
His ill-health however did not prevent him from studying and writing.
The following autumn he went into the office of a lawyer and member of
Congress in Castine and read "Blackstone," "Chitty on Bills," and some
other law-books. The study of law is in itself an excellent nerve tonic,
balancing the mind and strengthening the character. Nothing could have
been better for him at this juncture, and it is an unlimited pity that
he did not continue it longer. But the law could never have satisfied
the aspirations of his nature any more than Columbus might have been
satisfied with sailing a packet in the Mediterranean. He liked the study
of it, and once spoke with great respect of "Chitty on Bills" wishing he
could find a work on theology or politics that contains so much good
sense; but he longed for something beyond it. The congressman had a good
opinion of his abilities and held out the prospect of a partnership to
him, but personal ambition was not an ingredient in Wasson's nature. He
was discontented and ready for a change.
One day in June 1849 he was sent to a distant town on what was to his
sensitive moral nature a most disgusting expedition; namely, to help a
lucrative client take the poor debtor's oath, and so avoid a partially
unjust debt. On his return home he stopped at a country store to make a
small purchase, and there at the end of the shelf he saw a cheap dingy
copy of Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." He purchased it, and read it in his
wagon by the evening light. He had tried to read it before, but failed
to make his way in it. It was the first clear message and sure token of
a spiritual life that had yet reached him. He had lived through the
"everlasting no," and here was the "everlasting yea" set plainly before
him. Years afterward M. D. Conway told Carlyle of walking in the woods
at Groveland with Wasson, and how his face became radiant with internal
light when he spoke of "Sartor Resartus."
This new-birth from above seized upon him like a fever. He now felt that
he had a mission in life; a message to mankind. And in what way could he
deliver this message? How could he make known to others what was in his
full heart, except from the pulpit? For the first time he conceived the
ministry as a high-minded and ennobling profession. He decided
accordingly to go into the church. His family were Calvinists, and
Calvinism was the only mode of faith of which he knew very much. That
such a step should have been inspired by the writings of a heretic like
Carlyle was in itself a contradiction which foreboded an ultimate
collision. Yet no man perhaps ever lived who had a clearer sense of a
Divine Presence in the universe than Thomas Carlyle, and it was this
which Wasson recognized in him. Poets and philosophers are naturally
heretical, because they take the short road of genius which others find
it difficult to follow. But all believers finally arrive at the same
destination.
He entered the theological seminary at Bangor in 1849 and graduated in
1851. It may be he went there with a youthful idea of reforming the
church. At any rate his boldness of thought and free utterance brought
him into suspicion with his fellow students, and at one time reports
were in circulation that he was to be expelled for heresy. With his
customary directness he went to the president, Dr. Pond, and inquired if
there was any truth in this. The doctor, who really liked Wasson,
received him with a kindly, patriarchal manner and said: "Do not be
troubled, my young friend, we all have our seasons of doubt. I have had
mine; but take my word for it that it is all right. For look at those
saints up there in glory. How did they get there?" Such an argument was
not likely to relieve the fermentation in his mind. Walking the streets
of Bangor at this time was Dr. Frederick Henry Hedge, the man of all
others who might have solved Wasson's doubts in a satisfactory manner,
and with whom Wasson afterwards found himself in more complete moral and
intellectual sympathy than with any other of his friends. Wasson saw him
frequently, but had no opportunity of making his acquaintance. So nearly
do we either hit it, or miss it, all through life!
The only person who sympathized with him in his progressive views of
religion was Miss Abbie Smith, the daughter of an apothecary in
Newburyport, Massachusetts. She was visiting at the house of her brother
who was one of the instructors at the Seminary. That he should have
fallen in love with her, and soon become engaged to her is therefore not
surprising. They were married the year after his graduation, and she
continued a faithful, industrious and uncomplaining wife; his mainstay
in ill-health and misfortune till the end. They were not always happy
together; but it is a rare marriage where that is the case. Wasson's
struggle with the world was often reflected in his own family,
disturbing the harmony and comfort of it. His wife once said quite
gravely, that there were others from whom her husband would probably
have made a selection if he had not offered himself to her. He was
always a favorite with the other sex, and equally fond of their society.
As he never troubled himself much as to what people said of him, this
gave rise to a good deal of talk which his opponents took advantage of
to disparage his character. He was once a witness in a divorce case, and
a rather tricky lawyer who had a remarkable faculty for what Bacon calls
"turning the cat in the pan," succeeded in making him appear at a
disadvantage; but Mrs. Wasson told me that he was in the right. If his
wife had no suspicion of him we need have none.