It is difficult to exaggerate the effect that this discovery produced on
Leonard's train of thought. Some one belonging to his own humble race
had, then, preceded him in his struggling flight towards the loftier
regions of Intelligence and Desire. It was like the mariner amidst
unknown seas, who finds carved upon some desert isle a familiar household
name.
And this creature of genius and of sorrow-whose existence he had only
learned by her song, and whose death created, in the simple heart of her
sister, so passionate a grief, after the lapse of so many years--supplied
to the romance awaking in his young heart the ideal which it
unconsciously sought. He was pleased to hear that she had been beautiful
and good. He paused from his books to muse on her, and picture her image
to his fancy. That there was some mystery in her fate was evident to
him; and while that conviction deepened his interest, the mystery itself
by degrees took a charm which he was not anxious to dispel. He resigned
himself to Mrs. Fairfield's obstinate silence. He was contented to rank
the dead amongst those holy and ineffable images which we do not seek to
unveil. Youth and Fancy have many secret hoards of idea which they do
not desire to impart, even to those most in their confidence. I doubt
the depth of feeling in any man who has not certain recesses in his soul
into which none may enter.
Hitherto, as I have said, the talents of Leonard Fairfield had been more
turned to things positive than to the ideal,--to science and
investigation of fact than to poetry, and that airier truth in which
poetry has its element. He had read our greater poets, indeed, but
without thought of imitating; and rather from the general curiosity to
inspect all celebrated monuments of the human mind than from that
especial predilection for verse which is too common in childhood and
youth to be any sure sign of a poet. But now these melodies, unknown to
all the world beside, rang in his ear, mingled with his thoughts,--set,
as it were, his whole life to music. He read poetry with a different
sentiment,--it seemed to him that he had discovered its secret. And so
reading, the passion seized him, and "the numbers came."
To many minds, at the commencement of our grave and earnest pilgrimage,
I am Vandal enough to think that the indulgence of poetic taste and
revery does great and lasting harm; that it serves to enervate the
character, give false ideas of life, impart the semblance of drudgery to
the noble toils and duties of the active man. All poetry would not do
this,--not, for instance, the Classical, in its diviner masters; not the
poetry of Homer, of Virgil, of Sophocles; not, perhaps, even that of the
indolent Horace. But the poetry which youth usually loves and
appreciates the best--the poetry of mere sentiment--does so in minds
already over-predisposed to the sentimental, and which require bracing to
grow into healthful manhood.
On the other hand, even this latter kind of poetry, which is peculiarly
modern, does suit many minds of another mould,--minds which our modern
life, with its hard positive forms, tends to produce. And as in certain
climates plants and herbs, peculiarly adapted as antidotes to those
diseases most prevalent in the atmosphere, are profusely sown, as it
were, by the benignant providence of Nature, so it may be that the softer
and more romantic species of poetry, which comes forth in harsh, money-
making, unromantic times, is intended as curatives and counter-poisons.
The world is so much with us, nowadays, that we need have something that
prates to us, albeit even in too fine a euphuism, of the moon and stars.
Certes, to Leonard Fairfield, at that period of his intellectual life,
the softness of our Helicon descended as healing dews. In his turbulent
and unsettled ambition, in his vague grapple with the giant forms of
political truths, in his bias towards the application of science to
immediate practical purposes, this lovely vision of the Muse came in the
white robe of the Peacemaker; and with upraised hand pointing to serene
skies, she opened to him fair glimpses of the Beautiful, which is given
to Peasant as to Prince,--showed to him that on the surface of earth
there is something nobler than fortune, that he who can view the world as
a poet is always at soul a king; while to practical purpose itself, that
larger and more profound invention, which poetry stimulates, supplied the
grand design and the subtle view,--leading him beyond the mere ingenuity
of the mechanic, and habituating him to regard the inert force of the
matter at his command with the ambition of the Discoverer. But, above
all, the discontent that was within him finding a vent, not in deliberate
war upon this actual world, but through the purifying channels of song,
in the vent itself it evaporated, it was lost. By accustoming ourselves
to survey all things with the spirit that retains and reproduces them
only in their lovelier or grander aspects, a vast philosophy of
toleration for what we before gazed on with scorn or hate insensibly
grows upon us. Leonard looked into his heart after the Enchantress had
breathed upon it; and through the mists of the fleeting and tender
melancholy which betrayed where she had been, he beheld a new sun of
delight and joy dawning over the landscape of human life.
Thus, though she was dead and gone from his actual knowledge, this
mysterious kinswoman--"a voice, and nothing more"--had spoken to him,
soothed, elevated, cheered, attuned each discord into harmony; and if now
permitted from some serener sphere to behold the life that her soul thus
strangely influenced, verily with yet holier joy the saving and lovely
spirit might have glided onward in the Eternal Progress.
We call the large majority of human lives obscure. Presumptuous that we
are! How know we what lives a single thought retained from the dust of
nameless graves may have lighted to renown?