_Dies Irae:_ in Thirteen Original Versions. By Abraham Coles, M.D. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. 1859. pp. xxxiv., 70.
It is pleasant to see how many wiles Nature employs to draw off into side
channels the enthusiasm which is always secreting itself and gathering in
the human brain. She knows what a dangerous clement it may become, if the
individual rills of it run together, and, with united forces, take for a
time a single direction. So she taps it at its sources, and leads it away
to various ends, useful because they are harmless. Bibliomania,
tulipomania, potichomania, squaring the circle, perpetual motion, a
religious epic, the northwest passage,--anything will serve the
purpose. _Divide et impera_ is her motto. The hobby is the safeguard of
society. Once mounted, every enthusiast ambles quietly off on some errand
of his own, caring little what direction he takes, provided only it be _the
other_. The Fifth-Monarchy men might have been troublesome, but for the
Beast in Revelation;--each insisted on a Beast to himself. Protestantism
might have become Democracy, had either Luther or Calvin been willing to
ride behind. The five points of the Charter are blunted to a Lancashire
weaver who is fattening a prize-gooseberry.
We sympathize heartily with such gentle enthusiasms as this of
Dr. Coles. It is the interest of all Grub Street that men should be
encouraged whose amiable weakness it is to fall in love with pieces of
poetry. In this case, to be sure, the verses are Latin, and the author more
nameless even than Junius; but who knows but some one's turn shall come
next whose verses were at least meant to be English, and whose name
is--Legion? If some translator, charged from the other pole of Dr. Coles's
enthusiasm, should favor us with thirteen Latin versions of some modern
English poems, it would give them a chance of being more generally
intelligible to the laity. Nay, even if such a baker's-dozen of
mediæval-Latin renderings of Mrs. Browning's last poem--and by this term we
mean, of course, the rather shady Latin of middle-aged men--should be
shuffled together, we are not sure that it would not be a help to the
understanding of the Coptic original. But this, perhaps, is hoping too
much.
In the case of Dr. Coles, how lucky the direction of the superfluous
energy! how wise the humane precaution of Nature! For there is no
destructive agency like a doctor with a hygienic hobby. If your
constitution be a salt or sugar one, he will melt you away with damp sheets
and duckings; if you are as exsanguine as a turnip, his scientific delight
in getting blood out of you will be only heightened. For such erratic
enthusiasms as this of Dr. Coles we want a milder term than monomania.
Something like _monowhimsia_ would do. It is seldom that an oddity takes so
pleasant a turn. He has published a dainty little volume, with a
well-written introduction, giving the history of the "Dies Iræ," and an
account of the various versions of it; this is followed by his own thirteen
translations; and an appendix tells us what is meant by a Sequence, has a
page or two on the origin of rhyming Latin, and concludes with the music of
the hymn itself. The book is illustrated by delicate photographs from the
Last Judgments of Michel Angelo, Rubens, and Cornelius, and from the
"Christus Remunerator" of Ary Scheffer. It is exquisitely printed at the
Riverside Press, which is doing such good service to everybody but the
spectacle-makers.
We hold the translation of any first-rate poem, nay, even of any
second-rate one which has any peculiar charm of rhythm or tone, to be an
impossibility. The translation of rhyming Latin verses presents peculiar
difficulties. The rhythm is always simple and strongly accented, it is
true; but the ear-filling sonority, the variety of female rhymes, and the
simple directness of expression cannot be echoed by our muffling
consonants, our endings in _ing_ and _ed_, and _a_-s, _the_-s, and _of
the_-s. For example, the stanza,
"Tuba, mirum spargens sonum
Per sepulchra regionum,
Coget omnes ante thronum,"
is very inadequately represented by
"Trumpet, scattering sounds of wonder
Rending sepulchres asunder,
Shall resistless summons thunder,"
in which, to speak of nothing else, there are thirteen _s_-s to five in the
original. Even Crashaw, whose translation of Strada's "Music's Duel" is a
masterpiece for litheness of phrase and sinuous suppleness of rhythm,
quails before the "Dies Iræ," and contents himself with a largely watered
paraphrase. No one has ever yet succeeded more than tolerably with the
opening stanza,--
"Dies Iræ, dies illa,
Solvet sæclum in favillâ,
Teste David cum Sibyllâ."
The difficulty is increased where the Latin word has some special force of
theological or other meaning which has no single equivalent in English.
Doctor Coles has made, we think, the most successful attempt at an English
translation of the hymn that we have ever seen. He has done all that could
be done, where complete success was out of the question. Out of his first
two versions, which seem to us the best, a very satisfactory rendering of
the original can be made up by choosing the better stanzas from each. In
his first trial he misses the pathetic force of the
"Rex tremendæ majestatis,
Qui salvandos salvas gratis,
Salva me, fons pietatis!"
where the petition is piercingly individualized by the accentual stress
thrown on the _me_. He gives it thus:--
"King Almighty and All-knowing,
Grace to sinners freely showing,
Save me, Fount of Good o'erflowing!"
His second attempt is better:--
"Awful King, who nothing cravest,
Since Thyself full ransom gavest,
Save thou me, who freely savest!"
Here the emphatic _me_ is preserved, but in neither version is the true
meaning of _salvandos_ even hinted at, and in both we miss the tenderness
of the _fons pietatis_, with which the _tremenda majestas_ is balanced and
softened.
There are three or four of these Latin hymns that for simple force and
pathos have never been matched in their kind, and never approached, except
by a few of the more fortunate poems of Herbert, Vaughan, and Quarles. We
know not why it is that what is called religious poetry is commonly so
bad. The thing gives the lie to both the adjective and the noun of its
title. Anything more flat and flavorless, whether in sentiment or language,
is beyond the conception even of an editor with the nightmare. Men have
been hanged for more venial murders than some have been praised for who
have choked out the immortal soul of the Psalms of David. We have, however,
the consolation of thinking that the Devil's Psalter of convivial songs is
quite as bad.
Dr. Coles has done so well that we hope he will try his hand on some of the
other Latin hymns. He cannot expect to satisfy those who have been
penetrated by the almost inexplicable charm of the originals; but by
rendering them in their own metres, and with so large a transfusion of
their spirit as characterizes his present attempt, he will be doing a real
service to the lovers of that kind of religious poetry in which neither the
religion nor the poetry is left out. As we said before, to translate
rhyming Latin without losing its peculiar _tang_ is wellnigh
impossible. Even Father Prout himself would be staggered by Walter Mapes's
"Mihi est propositum" or "Testamentum Goliae"; but perhaps the spirit of
the hymns is more easily caught, and Dr. Coles has shown that he knows the
worth of faithfulness.
_Mademoiselle Mori_; A Tale of Modern Rome. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1860.
Author's Edition. 16mo. pp. 526.
This is a reprint of a remarkable book. It is the book of a person familiar
with Rome and with the Romans, who has thought seriously and felt deeply in
regard to their character and fortunes, who has studied with keen and
sympathetic imagination the hearts of the people, and observed closely the
outward aspect and common shows of the city. The story is well constructed,
and has the essential merit of interest. Not only are the characters
distinctly presented, but there is in them, what it is rare to find in the
personages of our modern novelists, a real and natural development, which
is exhibited not so much by what is said about them as by their own
apparently unconscious words and acts. So just a view is given in this
novel of Italian habits of thought and tones of feeling, so true an
appreciation is shown of the peculiarities of national disposition and
temperament, and so intimate and exact an acquaintance with public events
and the course of politics in Rome, as to lead to the conclusion that the
author writes from the fulness of personal experience, and was no stranger
to the interests of the stirring period in which the scenes of the story
are laid.
The book, indeed, has a double character. It is not a mere novel; for it
contains, in addition to its story, a sketch of the course of public
affairs in Rome during the three memorable years from the accession of Pius
IX. to the fall of the Republic and the entry of the French troops into the
city, which they still hold in subjection to rulers who claim to govern it
for the spiritual interests of the world. And while it may be warmly
recommended to such readers as only desire to find an interesting story, it
deserves not less hearty recommendation to such as may care to understand
one of the most striking and dramatic episodes of modern history, and to
gain an acquaintance with events which throw great illustration on the
present condition and hopes of Italy. In this respect, as well as in the
ability with which it is written, it may fairly be classed with the novels
of Ruffini,--"Lorenzo Benoni" and "Doctor Antonio." To those who have read
these two books it need not be said that this is high praise.
History is not treated by the author of "Mademoiselle Mori" after the
common fashion of novelists. Events are not misrepresented in it, nor are
the characters of the prominent actors in public affairs distorted to suit
any theory, or to advance the interest of the story. The chief value of the
book, and that which ought to secure for it a permanent place, does not,
however, consist in any formal narrative of events, or in its pictures of
noted individuals, but in its representation of the states of mind and
feeling of the Romans during the first years of the pontificate of the
present Pope, of the objects and methods of action of the various parties
that were then called into active existence, of the occasions of the rapid
changes in the popular disposition from the time when Pius IX. was the idol
of the crowd to that when he was a faithless fugitive to Gaeta, and of the
causes which led to the bitter disappointment and utter failure of the
efforts of the Roman patriots.
We do not know of any book in which so intelligent and so true an account
of these things, which were the springs from which events issued, and which
underlie all their currents, is to be found. The sympathies of the author
are with the liberal party, with the party that labored for reform, but not
for a republic, and whose hopes and plans were crushed by the horrible
assassination of Rossi. It is one of the most calamitous results of a
tyranny like that exercised at Rome, that it renders a gradual progress of
reform at any time when it may be undertaken almost an impossibility, and
sows the seed of inevitable violence and of revolution, which is apt to
end, as in the Roman instance, in a return of despotism. The view given of
the Roman revolution and republic of 1849 by the author of "Mademoiselle
Mori" coincides in the main with that taken by Farini, and the other chief
Italian statesmen of the present day; and its accuracy and good sense are
confirmed by the course of recent events, not merely in Rome, but in other
parts of Italy as well. It is vain to predict the future of a state so
anomalous as that of Rome; but it is safe to say that the Romans learned
much from their last revolution, and are learning much from its results, so
that, when another opportunity arrives for them to gain some share of that
freedom which Northern Italy has been so happy in securing, they will not
repeat their former mistakes, and will not be found less competent for
liberty than the Tuscans or the people of the Romagna. Perhaps the failure
of 1849 may then turn out to have been a dark blessing; and the blood of
those who fell on the Roman walls, and the tears of those who have wept in
Roman prisons, may not have been shed in vain.
The cause of Italy deserves the heartiest sympathy, and, if need be, a
personal sacrifice on the part of every lover of liberty and of justice in
the world. The question of Italian unity and independence is the most
important that has been presented in Europe in our time. The issue involved
in it is that of the advance or the degradation of a nation so noble that
none can be called nobler,--of the rights of the many, as against the power
of the few,--of the rights of thought, as against those of the sword,--of
the establishment of those principles which do most to make life precious,
as against those by which it is made vile and wretched. The last year has
seen a part of the great work of freeing Italy accomplished. If Sardinia
can but have time allowed her in which to knit her forces, if she can for a
time escape from foreign attacks and from internal divisions, Italy is
secure. Venice, Rome, and Naples will not long languish under the tyranny
of Austrian, of priest, and of Bourbon.
We return for a few words to "Mademoiselle Mori." The readers of
Mr. Hawthorne's imaginative Italian romance will be pleased to find in this
book further illustrations of the Rome he has so admirably pictured. The
author has not the genius of Mr. Hawthorne, but the descriptions which the
book contains of Roman scenes and places are full of truth, and render the
common, every-day aspect of streets and squares, of gardens and churches,
of popular customs and social habits, with equal spirit and fidelity. The
interest of the story is sustained by the distinctness with which the
localities in which it passes are depicted. The style of the book is so
excellent that we the more regret a few careless and clumsy expressions,
and some awkward sentences, which a little pains might have prevented. We
regret also that the Italian words and phrases which appear in the volume
are sometimes grievously disfigured by misprints. The distinguished name of
Saffi is travestied by being misprinted Gaffi,--and there are other
blunders of the same sort, in which the Riverside Press has but too
faithfully followed the English edition.
_Critical and Miscellaneous Essays_. Collected and republished by THOMAS
CARLYLE. In Four Volumes. Boston: Brown and Taggard. 1860.
Carlyle's Essays need at the present day no introduction or commendation to
American readers. Their place is established, and they will hold it
permanently, in spite of the wild philosophy, and in spite of
characteristics of style which would ruin weaker writings. As Ben Jonson
said of a volume of poems, now quite forgotten, by his friend Sir John
Beaumont,--
"This book will live; it hath a genius; this Above his reader or his
praiser is."
There is no fear that these Essays will be forgotten; for, beside their
intrinsic merits and interest, they are at once introductory and
supplementary to their author's more important works,--to his "French
Revolution" and his "Life of Frederic the Great."
This new edition of the Essays is a reprint of the last English edition
revised by the author, and both printer and publisher deserve high credit
for the beauty of the volumes. The paper, press-work, and binding are all
excellent, and of a sort not only to please the general public, but to
satisfy the demands of the exacting lover of good books. We are glad to
welcome Messrs. Brown and Taggard among our publishing houses, on occasion
of the issue of a book so creditable alike to their taste and to their
judgment, and we hope that the success of this edition of these Essays may
he such as to encourage them to follow it with a reprint of the other
volumes of the revised edition of Mr. Carlyle's works.
We trust, that, though the words "Author's Edition" are not found upon the
back of the title-page, it is not because the moral, if not legal rights
which the author possesses have been disregarded.
_The Mill on the Floss_. By GEORGE ELIOT, Author of "Scenes of Clerical
Life" and "Adam Bede." New York: Harper & Brothers.
It is not difficult to understand how the reader's attention may he
attracted and his interest retained by a romance of the old chivalrous days
whose very name and dim memory fill the mind with fascinating images, or by
a novel whose high-born characters claim sympathy for their dignified
sorrows and refined delights, or whose story is illuminated by the light of
artistic culture and adorned with gems of rhetoric and fine fancy; but it
is sometimes surprising to observe the favor which attends a simple tale of
humble, unobtrusive, we might almost say insignificant people, whose plane
of life appears nowhere to coincide with our own, and to whom romance and
passion seem entirely foreign. Such a tale was "Adam Bede," whose great
success as a literary venture hardly yet belongs to the chronicle of the
past; such a tale is also "The Mill on the Floss," by the author of "Adam
Bede," and such, we are confident, will also be its success.
Both books have many elements in common, but the second is the greater work
of art, and indicates more fairly the scope and vigor of the author's
mind. It is written in the same pure, hardy style, strong with Saxon words
that admit of no equivocation or misunderstanding; it is illustrated with
sketches of outward Nature and tranquil rural beauty, none the less vivid
or truthful that they are drawn with the pen rather than the brush; and it
is instinct with an honest, high-souled purpose. In these respects it
resembles "Adam Bede," but in others it surpasses its predecessor. It
displays a far keener insight into human passion, a subtler analysis of
motives and principles, and it suggests a mental and a moral philosophy
nobler in themselves and truer to humanity and religion. The pathos, too,
is more genuine; for it is not based upon the mere utterance of grief or of
entreaty,--which the eloquent and the artful may, indeed, feign,--but it is
found in that skilful combination of material circumstance and spiritual
influence which impresses upon the feeling, more than it proves to the
reason, that the hour of heart-break is at hand, and which depends less for
its effect upon the dramatic power of the imagination than upon the instant
sympathy of the soul.
The principal fault which will be found with "The Mill on the Floss," and
probably the only one, is, that the action moves too slowly and tamely in
the first three or four books, and that the author shows an undue
inclination to reflection and metaphysical digression. This will, indeed,
be a great objection to the superficial reader, who will impatiently regret
that the tedious growth of a miller's boy and girl should usurp so many
pages which might better have been filled with exciting incidents. But this
very elaboration, tardy and idle though it may seem, was necessary to the
completion of the author's plan, and--in our eyes--instead of being a
blemish upon a fair story, is one of its principal charms. On this very
account, however, the book will be less popular, and fewer persons will
admire it wholly; but, as thoughtful readers draw near to the end of the
narrative, and anxiously hasten on past trial, temptation, and conflict, to
the dreaded and yet inevitable downfall, muse mournfully over the agony and
remorse that follow, and slowly close the volume upon tender forgiveness
and final joy, they will be thankful for the far-seeing genius which, by
this gradual process of education, enabled them to understand clearly the
fateful scroll at last unfolded to them, and which, if they have read in
the true spirit, has made them wiser and better.
_Nugamenta; a Book of Verses_, By GEORGE EDWARD RICE. Boston: J. E. Tilton
& Co. 1860. pp. 146.
The author of this little volume modestly waives all claim to the title of
poet, and thus disarms severer criticism. His book, nevertheless, has the
merit of being lively and agreeable, which is more than can be said of many
more pretentious volumes of verse. His pieces are mostly of the kind called
verses of society, a variety whose range is all the way up from Concanen to
Horace. It is enough, if they are only passable; but good specimens are
easy and sprightly,--their philosophy not worldly precisely, but
man-of-the-worldly,--their morality an elegant Poor-Richardism,--their
poetry whatever may be reached by the fancy and understanding. Sometimes,
if the author have been lucky enough, like Béranger, to have enjoyed low
company, his verses will gather a richer tone, his wit will broaden into
humor, his sentiment deepen to hearty good-nature, and his worldliness
ripen into a genuine humanity.
To embody primeval sentiments, to deal with transcendent passions, and to
idealize those fatal moods by which not individuals merely, but races, are
possessed, those tidal ebbs and flows which, for want of a better name, we
call the Spirit of the Age,--this is a gift whose return among us we do not
look for with as much certainty as that of shad and salmon, but meanwhile
we are not too nice to be pleased with verses that express average thoughts
and feelings gracefully and with a dash of sentiment. It is a vast deal
wiser and better to express neatly, in language that is not alien to the
concerns of every day, feelings we have really had, than to maunder about
what we think we ought to have felt in a diction that has no more to do
with our ordinary habits of thought and expression than Monmouth with
Macedon. The contrast of matter and manner in much of our current verse is
such as to remind one of the notes which are sometimes sent to their
sweethearts by schoolboys, who cut their fingers (not too deep) that they
may asseverate the eternal constancy of the three-weeks'-vacation in that
solemn fluid proper to contracts with the Evil One.
It is pleasant to meet with one who is able to say a natural thing in a
natural way, as Mr. Rice has shown that he can do. There is a very
agreeable mingling of feeling and fun in his lighter pieces, rising into
real grace and lyric fancy in some of them, such as "New Year's Eve" and
"The Revisit."
_A Voyage down the Amoor; with a Land Journey through Siberia, and
Incidental Notices of Manchooria, Kamschatka, and Japan._ By PERRY
McDONOUGH COLLINS, United States Commercial Agent at the Amoor River, New
York: D. Appleton & Co. 1860. pp. 390.
This is a very amusing book. The introductory part of it, in which the
author recounts his adventures in Siberia before setting out on his
expedition down the Amoor, is full of bad taste, bad rhetoric, and bad
grammar. If we had read no farther, we should have thought that a more
unfit personage than this gentleman with the monumental name could not have
been chosen for any public service.
Mr. Perry McDonough Collins gives us the bill of fare of gentlemen's tables
at which he dined, tells us how much and what kinds of wine were "drank,"
and sometimes winds up his account of the feast with a compliment to the
"amiable and interesting" family of his host. Mr. Egouminoff's dinner, he
tells us, "was excellent, with several kinds of wine, closing with
Champagne. We had _also_ the pleasure of the company of Mrs. E. and her
daughter, and several other guests, besides a handsome widow." There is
something charmingly _naïf_ in thus throwing in the company as a
_succedaneum_ to the dinner, and carefully segregating the widow from the
rest of mankind as a distinct species.
Mr. Collins also reports for us carefully the orations he made on various
festive occasions,--a piece of very proper economy, since they were
delivered in English to an audience of Russians. He confesses that it is
not the custom to make after-dinner-speeches in Siberia, which proves that
the Russian Government has neglected at least one opportunity of adding to
the terrors of a Penal Colony. At one dinner he had the satisfaction of
making three of these terrible mistakes. He responds to the health of
General Mouravieff, Governor of the Province, to that of President
Buchanan, and to that of "our guests." We should like to have been present
at this display, provided we could have been speech-proofed, like the
Russians in their ignorance of English. It was certainly a proud day for
America, and the bird of our country will be glad that the eloquence has
been carefully saved by Mr, Collins for the good of his compatriots.
After this multiloquent festival, the Siberian merchants, naturally
exasperated, seized upon Mr. Collins, and an unhappy countryman of his who
was present, and tossed them after the fashion of Sancho Panza. "This
sport," adds our traveller, gravely, "is called in Russian _podkeedovate_,
or tossing-up, and is considered a mark of great respect. General
Mouravieff told me, after our return, that he had had _podkeedovate_
performed upon him in the same room." The General must be something of a
humorist.
Mr. Collins, however, has a more astounding incident to relate than even
the respectful tossing-up of a general in the army and governor of Siberia
by a party of provincial shopkeepers. In returning from an excursion,
Mr. Collins had the ill-luck to lose a horse.
"The death of that horse," he says, "was
a singular circumstance. We were galloping
rapidiy and were approaching the station,
when the animal dropped as if struck by
lightning. We were in such rapid motion
upon the smooth ice of the river, that, though
several yards from the stopping-point, the
other horses kept on, dragging the dead horse,
nor did the driver attempt to stop them, but
seemed determined to reach the station at
full speed. As soon as we had stopped, I got
out and examined the body. It was as stiff
as a poker and stirred not a muscle, the
eyes being cold and glassy. _The fact is, the
horse must have been dead before he fell, and
his muscular action was kept up some time after
life had departed._" (p. 89.)
We do not remember to have met with a more wonderful example of the force
of habit.
After Mr. Collins is fairly embarked, however, on his voyage of
exploration, his book becomes more interesting. He shows himself a
thoroughly good-humored, observant, and intelligent traveller. If, in the
earlier pages of his journal, he is indiscreetly communicative as to the
good cheer he enjoyed, in the later ones he does not waste time in
grumbling at discomforts and lenten fare. He observes minutely and
describes well all that he sees along the great river,--the people, the
productions, the scenery, and the vegetation. He gives us a lively
impression of the capabilities of the country, and of the results which are
to follow the introduction of steam-navigation on the Amoor. Like a true
American, he believes in the manifest destiny of Russia, and looks forward
to the not distant time when, with a kind of retributive justice, the
Muscovite is to swallow up the Manchew, as Charles Lamb used to call
him. Already American merchants have established themselves at the mouth of
the Amoor, and, unless Mr. Collins is oversanguine, a great trade is to
spring up between the Californians and their opposite neighbors on the
eastern coast of Asia.
On the whole, we take leave of Mr. Collins with a feeling of decided esteem
for his genuine good qualities, and can safely commend his book as both
lively and instructive.
_Revolutions in English History_. By ROBERT VAUGHAN,
D.D. Vol. I. _Revolutions of Race_. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
1860. pp. xvi., 663.
We do not think that Dr. Vaughan has been happy in his choice of a title
for his book. It is more properly an introduction to the study of English
history, than the limitation of the title would seem to import. The Saxon
occupation of England is, perhaps, the only event which may fitly be called
a revolution of race. The volume, however, is a solid and sensible one. Dr.
Vaughan is not a brilliant writer; but brilliancy is not always the best
quality in an historian, for it as often leaves readers dazzled as
taught. A decidedly matter-of-fact turn of mind prevents his being a
theorist, so that he does not formulate characters and events in accordance
with some fixed preconception. His learning seems sometimes limited by what
was accessible to him at the least expense of study,--as, for example, in
his account of the religion of the Teutonic races, where he depends almost
altogether on Mallet. His style is generally clear and unpretending, never
remarkable for any rhetorical merit, sometimes disfigured by inaccuracies,
which, had they occurred in an American book, would have been attributed by
English critics to the low grade of our culture and civilization. In one
instance he is guilty of the barbarous cockneyism of using the word _party_
as an equivalent for _person_. He speaks of the Roman Wall as having been
kept _perpetually_ guarded when he means _constantly_, of border land as
"separating between" two races, and of ornaments made "from jet."
Though we do not find in Dr. Vaughan the fascinating qualities which we
have been spoiled into expecting by some recent English and French examples
of historical composition, we can give him the praise of being fair-minded,
sensible, and clear. If he anywhere shows prejudice, it is in his somewhat
depreciatory estimate of the Normans, whom he rather gratuitously supposes
to have acquired civilization and the love of art from the Saxons,--a
supposition at war with probability as well as fact. If anything
distinguished the Norman from the Saxon, it was his aptitude for
appreciating beauty as distinguished from use,--an aptitude on which French
influence could not have been lost before the Conquest of England. The
Normans in Sicily certainly had not had the advantage of Saxon training in
aesthetics, and the poetry and architecture of the Normans in England were
no reproduction of Saxon models.
But whatever deductions are to be made on the score of want of
picturesqueness in style, of generalizing power, and of that imagination
which sets before us dramatically the mutual interaction of men and events,
Dr. Vaughan's history will be found a useful and enlightened compendium of
the facts with which it deals.
_Fresh Hearts that failed Three Thousand Years Ago; with Other Things_. By
the Author of "The New Priest in Conception Bay." Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
1860. pp. 121.
In noticing the "New Priest," in a former number of the "ATLANTIC," we had
occasion to speak of the author's remarkable beauty and vigor of style, his
keen sense of the picturesque and imaginative aspects of outward Nature,
his comic power, and his original conception of character. At the same time
we could not but feel that a certain tendency to multiplicity of detail,
and a neglect of form or insensibility to it, hindered the book of that
direct and vigorous effect which its power and variety of resource would
otherwise have produced. Something of the same impression is made by the
present volume. There are glimpses in it of real genius, but it shows
itself generally here and there only, as the natural outcrop, seldom in the
bars and ingots which give proof of patient mining and smelting at
furnace-heat, still more seldom in the beautiful shapes of artistic
elaboration. Here, again, we find the same unborrowed feeling for outward
Nature and familiarity with her moods, the same poetic beauty of
expression, and in many of the pieces the same overcrowdedness, as if the
author would fain say all he could, instead of saying only what he could
not help.
There are some of the poems that do more justice to the abilities of the
author. In "The Year is Gone" there is great tenderness of sentiment and
grace of expression; "Love Disposed of" is a pretty fancy embodied with
true lyric feeling; but the poem which over crests all the others like a
decuman wave is "The Brave Old Ship, the Orient." It is a truly masculine
poem, full of vigor and imagination, and giving evidence of true original
power in the author. There is scarce a weak verse in it, and the measure
has a swing, at once easy and stately, like that of the sea itself. We know
not if we are right in conjecturing some hint of deeper meaning in the name
"Orient," but, taking it merely as a descriptive poem, it is one of the
finest of its kind. The writer's heart seems more in the work here than in
the devotional verses. We quote a single passage from it, which seems to us
particularly fine:--
"We scanned her well, as we drifted by:
A strange old ship, with her poop built high,
And with quarter-galleries wide,
And a huge beaked prow, as no ships are builded now,
And carvings all strange, beside:
A Byzantine bark, and a ship of name and mark
Long years and generations ago;
Ere any mast or yard of ours was growing hard
With the seasoning of long Norwegian snow.
* * * * *
"Down her old black side poured the water in a tide,
As they toiled to get the better of a leak.
We had got a signal set in the shrouds,
And our men through the storm looked on in crowds:
But for wind, we were near enough to speak.
It seemed her sea and sky were in times long, long gone by,
That we read in winter-evens about;
As if to other stars
She had reared her old-world spars,
And her hull had kept an old-time ocean out."
_Hester, the Bride of the Islands_. A Poem. By SYLVESTER
B. BECKETT. Portland: Bailey & Noyes.
Mr. Beckett is evidently an admirer of Walter Scott; and it is not the
least remarkable fact in connection with "Hester," that an author with the
good sense to propose to himself such a model, disregarding the more
elaborate poets of a later date, should have proved himself so utterly
unable to follow that model, except in a few phrases, which were quite
appropriate as Scott used them, but are ludicrously out of place in his own
verse. In adopting the brief lines and irregularly recurring rhymes of
Scott, he has taken a hazardous step. The curt lines are excellent with Sir
Walter's liveliness and dash; but when dull commonplaces are to be written,
their feebleness would be more decorously concealed by a longer and more
conventional dress. The cutty sark, so appropriate when displaying the
free, vigorous stops of Maggie Lauder, is not to be worn by every
lackadaisical lady's-maid of a muse. In the moral reflections, with which
"Hester" abounds, there is a most comical imitation of Scott,--as if the
poem were written as a parody of "The Lady of the Lake," by
Mrs. Southworth, or Sylvanus Cobb, Junior.
Mr. Beckett closes some very singular stanzas, entitled an Introduction,
with the following lines:--
"Give it praise, or blame,
Or pass it without comment, as may seem
To you most meet; with me 'tis all the same.
I hymn because I must, and not for greed of fame."
These lines incline us at first to let Mr. Beckett "pass without comment,"
considering, that, as he says, he cannot help writing; but we are finally
decided to observe him more closely, inasmuch as he says it makes no
difference to him, thus relieving us of the dreadful fear of wantonly
crushing some delicate John Keats (always supposing we had him) by our
severe censure.
Instead of entering into a philosophical examination of "Hester," we shall
present some specimen pearls, making our first extract from the 21st
page:--
"The very desert would have smiled
In such a presence! yet despite
Her dimpled cheek, her soft blue eye,
Her voice so fraught with music's thrill,
The shrewd observer might espy
The traces therein of a will
That scorned restraint, the soul of fire
That slumbered in her tacit sire."
"The traces therein." Wherein? Not in the cheek, eye, or voice, clearly;
for it was "despite" all these that he would make the discovery,--they are
obstacles, entirely outside of the success. It is necessarily, then, in the
"presence," in which the unthinking desert would have smiled unsuspecting,
but in which "the shrewd observer might espy" a good deal that was ominous
of trouble. Now it is obvious that the writer intended to refer "therein"
to the cheek, eye, and voice, a reference from which he barred himself by
the word "despite." As it happens, luckily for him, there is a word to
refer to, so that his grammatical salvation is secured; but the result is
sad nonsense.