since that far-away day when mankind became sufficiently sophisticated
to covet posthumous distinction. Yet, in reality, it is not so
surprising that people should be forgotten as that they should be
remembered, and remembered often for the sake of one swift, brave deed
that cost no effort, or of a few lovely words thrown to the world in a
moment of unconscious inspiration, when the writer little dreamed he was
forging a chain strong enough to link him with the future. Occasionally,
too, a species of immortality is conferred upon respectable mediocrity
by the affection or the abhorrence it excites. The men whom Pope rhymed
about because he hated them, the men to whom Lamb wrote so delightfully
because he loved them, all live for us in the indestructible land of
letters. It would be a hard matter to reckon up the sum of indebtedness
which is thus innocently incurred by those who have no coin of their
own for payment.
Not long ago a writer of distinction was idling his way pleasantly
through a volume of Mrs. Browning’s poetry, when his attention was
arrested by a quotation which stood at the head of that rather nebulous
effusion, “A Rhapsody of Life’s Progress.” It was but a single line,
“Fill all the stops of life with tuneful breath,”
and it was accredited to Cornelius Mathews, author of “Poems on Man.” A
foot-note,--people were more generous in the matter of foot-notes forty
years ago than now--gave the additional and somewhat startling
information that “Poems on Man” was “a small volume by an American poet,
as remarkable in thought and manner for a vital sinewy vigour as the
right arm of Pathfinder.” This was stout praise. “The right arm of
Pathfinder.” We all know what sinewy vigor was _there_; but of Cornelius
Mathews, it would seem, no man knew anything at all. Yet his poems had
traveled far when they lay in Mrs. Browning’s path, and of her
admiration for them she had left us this unstinted proof. Moreover the
one line,
“Fill all the stops of life with tuneful breath”
had in it enough of character and sweetness to provoke an intelligent
curiosity. As a scholar and a man of letters, the reader felt his
interest awakened. He replaced Mrs. Browning on the book shelf, and made
up his mind with characteristic distinctness he would read the poems of
this forgotten American author.
It was not an easy resolution to keep. A confident appeal to the public
libraries of New York and Philadelphia brought to light the astonishing
fact that no copy of the “Poems on Man” was to be found within their
walls. The work had been published in several editions by Harper and
Brothers between the years 1838 and 1843; but no forlorn and dust
covered volume still lingered on their shelves. The firm, when
interrogated, knew no more about Cornelius Mathews than did the rest of
the reading world. The next step was to advertise for a second-hand
copy; but for a long while it seemed as though even second-hand copies
had disappeared from the face of the continent. The book was so
exceedingly rare that it must have been a universal favorite for the
lighting of household fires. In the end, however, persevering effort was
crowned with its inevitable success. “The works of Cornelius Mathews”
were unearthed from some dim corner of obscurity, and suffered to see
the genial light of day.
They comprise a great deal of prose and a very little verse, all bound
up together, after the thrifty fashion of our fathers, in one portly
volume, with dull crimson sides, and double columns of distressingly
fine print. The “Poems on Man” are but nineteen in number, and were
originally published in a separate pamphlet. They are arranged
systematically, and are designed to do honor to American citizenship
under its most sober and commonplace aspect. The author is in no way
discouraged by the grayness of his atmosphere, nor by the unheroic
material with which he has to deal. On the contrary, he is at home with
farmers, and mechanics, and merchants; and ill at ease with painters and
soldiers, to whom it must be confessed he preaches a little too
palpably. It is painful to consider what bad advice he gives to the
sculptor in this one vicious line,
“Think not too much what other climes have done.”
Yet, in truth, he is neither blind to the past, nor unduly elated with
the present. He feels the splendid possibilities of a young nation with
all its life before it; and earnestly, and with dignity, he pleads for
the development of character, and for a higher system of morality. If
his verse be uneven and mechanical, and the sinewy vigor of Pathfinder
be not so apparent as might have been reasonably expected, I can still
understand how these simple and manly sentiments should have awakened
the enthusiasm of Mrs. Browning, who was herself no student of form, and
who sincerely believed that poetry was a serious pursuit designed for
the improvement of mankind.
In his narrower fashion, Mr. Cornelius Mathews shared this pious creed,
and strove, within the limits of his meagre art, to awaken in the hearts
of his countrymen a patriotism sober and sincere. He calls on the
journalist to tell the truth, on the artisan to respect the interests
of his employer, on the merchant to cherish an old-time honor and
honesty, on the politician to efface himself for the good of his
constituency.
“Accursed who on the Mount of Rulers sits,
Nor gains some glimpses of a fairer day;
Who knows not there, what there his soul befits,--
Thoughts that leap up and kindle far away
The coming time! Who rather dulls the ear
With brawling discord and a cloud of words;
Owning no hopeful object, far or near,
Save what the universal self affords.”
This is not heroic verse, but it shows an heroic temper. The writer has
evidently some knowledge of things as they are, and some faith in things
as they ought to be, and these twin sources of grace save him from
bombast and from cynicism. Never in all the earnest and appealing lines
does he indulge himself or his readers in that exultant
self-glorification which is so gratifying and so inexpensive. His
patriotism is not of the shouting and hat-flourishing order, but has its
roots in an anxious and loving regard for the welfare of his fatherland.
Occasionally he strikes a poetic note, and has moments of brief but
genuine inspiration.
“The elder forms, the antique mighty faces,”
which lend their calm and shadowy presence to the farmer’s toil, bring
with them swift glimpses of a strong pastoral world. Not a blithe world
by any means. No Pan pipes in the rushes. No shaggy herdsmen sing in
rude mirthful harmony. No sun-burnt girls laugh in the harvest-field.
Rusticity has lost its native grace, and the cares of earth sit at the
fireside of the husbandman. Yet to him belong moments of deep content,
and to his clean and arduous life are given pleasures which the artisan
has never known.
“Better to watch the live-long day
The clouds that come and go,
Wearying the heaven they idle through,
And fretting out its everlasting blue.
Though sadness on the woods may often lie,
And wither to a waste the meadowy land,
Pure blows the air, and purer shines the sky,
For nearer always to Heaven’s gate you stand.”
The most curious characteristic of Mr. Mathew’s work is the easy and
absolute fashion in which it ignores the influence, and indeed the very
existence of woman. The word “man” must here be taken in its literal
significance. It is not of the human race that the author sings, but of
one half of it alone. No troublesome flutter of petticoats disturbs his
serene meditations; no echo of passion haunts his placid verse. Even in
his opening stanzas on “The Child,” there is no allusion to any mother.
The infant appears to have come into life after the fashion of Pallas
Athene, and upon the father only depends its future weal or woe. The
teacher apparently confines his labors to little boys; the preacher has
a congregation of men; the reformer, the scholar, the citizen, the
friend, all dwell in a cool masculine world, where the seductive voice
of womankind never insinuates itself to the endangering of sober and
sensible behavior. This enforced absence of “The Eternal Feminine” is
more striking when we approach the realms of art. Does the painter
desire subjects for his brush?
“The mountain and the sea, the setting sun,
The storm, the face of men, and the calm moon,”
are considered amply sufficient for his needs. Does the sculptor ask for
models? They are presented him in generous abundance.
“Crowned heroes of the early age,
Chieftain and soldier, senator and sage;
The tawny ancient of the warrior race,
With dusky limb and kindling face.”
Or, should he prefer less conventional types--
“Colossal and resigned, the gloomy gods
Eying at large their lost abodes,
Towering and swart, and knit in every limb;
With brows on which the tempest lives,
With eyes wherein the past survives,
Gloomy, and battailous, and grim.”
With all these legitimate subjects at his command, why indeed should the
artist turn aside after that beguiling beauty which Eve saw reflected in
the clear waters of Paradise, and which she loved with unconscious
vanity or ever Adam met her amorous gaze. Only to the poet is permitted
the smallest glimpse into the feminine world. In one brief half-line,
Mr. Mathews coldly and chastely allows that “young Love” may whisper
something--we are not told what--which is best fitted for the poetic
ear.
What an old-fashioned bundle of verse it is, though written a bare half
century ago! How far removed from the delicate conceits, the
inarticulate sadness of our modern versifiers; from the rondeaux, and
ballades, and pastels, and impressions, and nocturnes, with which we
have grown bewilderingly familiar. How these titles alone would have
puzzled the sober citizen who wrote the “Poems on Man,” and who
endeavored with rigid honesty to make his meaning as clear as English
words would permit. There is no more chance to speculate over these
stanzas than there is to speculate over Hogarth’s pictures. What is
meant is told, not vividly, but with steadfast purpose, and with an
innocent hope that it may be of some service to the world. The world,
indeed, has forgotten the message, and forgotten the messenger as well.
Only in a brief foot-note of Mrs. Browning’s there lingers still the
faint echo of what once was life. For such modest merit there is no
second sunrise; and yet a quiet reader may find an hour well spent in
the staid company of these serious verses, whose best eloquence is their
sincerity.
DIALOGUES.
Dialogues have come back into fashion and favor. Editors of magazines
look on them kindly, and readers of magazines accept them as
philosophically as they accept any other form of instruction or
entertainment which is provided in their monthly bills of fare. Perhaps
Mr. Oscar Wilde is in some measure responsible for the revival; perhaps
it may be traced more directly to the serious and stimulating author of
“Baldwin,” whose discussions are sufficiently subtle and relentless to
gratify the keenest discontent. The restless reader who embarks on
Vernon Lee’s portly volume of conversations half wishes he knew people
who could discourse in that fashion, and is half grateful that he
doesn’t. To converse for hours on “Doubts and Pessimism,” or “The Value
of the Ideal,” is no trivial test of endurance, especially when one
person does three-fourths of the talking. We hardly know which to admire
most: Baldwin, who elucidates a text--and that text, evolution--for six
pages at a breath, or Michael, who listens and “smiles.” Even the
occasional intermissions, when “Baldwin shook his head,” or “they took a
turn in silence,” or “Carlo’s voice trembled,” or “Dorothy pointed to
the moors,” do little to relieve the general tension. It is no more
possible to support conversation on this high and serious level than it
is possible to nourish it on Mr. Wilde’s brilliant and merciless
epigrams. Those sparkling dialogues in which Cyril might be Vivian, and
Vivian, Cyril; or Gilbert might be Ernest, and Ernest, Gilbert, because
all alike are Mr. Wilde, and speak with his voice alone, dazzle us only
to betray. They are admirable pieces of literary workmanship; they are
more charming and witty than any contemporaneous essays. But if we will
place by their side those few and simple pages in which Landor permits
Montaigne and Joseph Scaliger to gossip together for a brief half hour
at breakfast time, we will better understand the value of an element
which Mr. Wilde excludes--humanity, with all its priceless sympathies
and foibles.
Nevertheless, it is not Landor’s influence, by any means, which is felt
in the random dialogues of to-day. He is an author more praised than
loved, more talked about than read, and his unapproachable delicacy and
distinction are far removed from all efforts of facile imitation. Our
modern “imaginary conversations,” whether openly satiric, or gravely
instructive, are fashioned on other models. They have a faint flavor of
Lucian, a subdued and decent reflection of the “Noctes;” but they never
approach the classic incisiveness and simplicity of Landor. There is a
delightfully witty dialogue of Mr. Barrie’s called “Brought Back from
Elysium,” in which the ghosts of Scott, Fielding, Smollett, Dickens, and
Thackeray are interviewed by five living novelists, who kindly undertake
to point out to them the superiority of modern fiction. In this
admirable little satire, every stroke tells, every phantom and every
novelist speaks in character, and the author, with dexterous art, fits
his shafts of ridicule into the easy play of a possible conversation.
Nothing can be finer than the way in which Scott’s native modesty, of
which not even Elysium and the Grove of Bay-trees have robbed him,
struggles with his humorous perception of the situation. Fielding is
disposed to be angry, Thackeray severe, and Dickens infinitely amused.
But Sir Walter, dragged against his will into this unloved and alien
atmosphere, is anxious only to give every man his due. “How busy you
must have been, since my day,” he observes with wistful politeness, when
informed that the stories have all been told, and that intellectual men
and women no longer care to prance with him after a band of archers, or
follow the rude and barbarous fortunes of a tournament.
For such brief bits of satire the dialogue affords an admirable medium,
if it can be handled with ease and force. For imparting opinions upon
abstract subjects it is sure to be welcomed by coward souls who think
that information broken up into little bits is somewhat easier of
digestion. I am myself one of those weak-minded people, and the
beguiling aspect of a conversation, which generally opens with a
deceptive air of sprightliness, has lured me many times beyond my mental
depths. Nor have I ever been able to understand why Mr. Ruskin’s
publishers should have entreated him, after the appearance of “Ethics of
the Dust,” to “write no more in dialogues.” To my mind, that charming
book owes its quality of readableness to the form in which it is cast,
to the breathing-spells afforded by the innocent questions and comments
of the children.
Mr. W. W. Story deals more gently with us than any other imaginary
conversationalist. From the moment that “He and She” meet unexpectedly
on the first page of “A Poet’s Portfolio,” until they say good-night
upon the last, they talk comprehensively and agreeably upon topics in
which it is easy to feel a healthy human interest. They drop into poetry
and climb back into prose with a good deal of facility and grace. They
gossip about dogs and spoiled children; they say clever and true things
about modern criticism; they converse seriously, but not solemnly, about
life and love and literature. They do not resolutely discuss a given
subject, as do the Squire and Foster in Sir Edward Strachey’s “Talk at a
Country House;” but sway from text to text after the frivolous fashion
of flesh and blood; a fashion with which Mr. Story has made us all
familiar in his earlier volumes of conversations. He is a veteran master
of his field; yet, nevertheless, the Squire and Foster are pleasant
companions for a winter night. I like to feel how thoroughly I disagree
with both, and how I long to make a discordant element in their friendly
talk; and this is precisely the charm of dialogues as a medium for
opinions and ideas. Whether the same form can be successfully applied to
fiction is at least a matter of doubt. Laurence Alma Tadema has essayed
to use it in “An Undivined Tragedy,” and the result is hardly
encouraging. The mother tells the tale in a simple and touching manner;
and the daughter’s ejaculations and comments are of no use save to
disturb the narrative. It is hard enough to put a story into letters
where the relator suffers no ill-timed interruptions; but to embody it
in a dialogue--which is at the same time no play--is to provide a
needless element of confusion, and to derange the boundary line which
separates fiction from the drama.
A CURIOUS CONTENTION.
What an inexhaustible fund of quarrelsomeness lies at the bottom of the
human heart! Since the beginning of the world, men have fought and
wrangled with one another; and now women seem to find their keenest
pleasure and exhilaration in fighting and wrangling with men. In
literature, in journalism, in lectures, in discussions of every kind,
they are lifting up their voices with an angry cry which sounds a little
like Madame de Sévigné’s “respectful protestation against Providence.”
They are tired, apparently, of being women, and are disposed to lay all
the blame of their limitations upon men.
There is nothing very healthful in such an attitude, nothing dignified,
nothing morally sustaining. Life is not easy to understand, but it seems
tolerably clear that two sexes were put upon the world to exist
harmoniously together, and to do, each of them, a share of the world’s
work. Their relation to one another has been a matter of vital interest
from the beginning, and no new light has dawned suddenly upon this
century or this people. The shrill contempt heaped by a few vehement
women upon men, the bitter invectives, the wholesale denunciations are
as valueless and as much to be regretted as the old familiar
Billingsgate which once expressed what Mr. Arnold termed “the current
compliments” of theology. It is not convincing to hear that “man has
shrunk to his real proportions in our estimation,” because we are still
in the dark as to what these proportions are. It is doubtless true that
he is “imperfect from the woman’s point of view,” and imperfect, let us
conclude, from his own; but whether we have attained that sure
superiority which will enable us to work out his salvation is at least a
matter for dispute. There is an ancient and unpopular virtue called
humility which might be safely recommended to a woman capable of writing
such a passage as this, which is taken from an article published
recently in the “North American Review.” “We know the weakness of man,
and will be patient with him, and help him with his lesson. It is the
woman’s place and pride and pleasure to teach the child, _and man
morally is in his infancy_. Woman holds out a strong hand to the
child-man, and insists, but with infinite tenderness and pity, upon
helping him along.”
The fine unconscious humor of this suggestion ought to put everybody in
a good temper, and clear the air with a hearty laugh. But the desire to
lead other people rather than to control one’s self, though not often so
naively stated, is by no means new in the history of morals. It must
have fallen many times under the observation of Thomas à Kempis before
he wrote this gentle word of reproof. “In judging others a man usually
toileth in vain. For the most part he is mistaken, and he easily
sinneth. But in judging and scrutinizing himself, he always laboreth
with profit.”
And, indeed, though it be true that in civilized communities a larger
proportion of women than of men live lives of cleanliness and
self-restraint, yet it should be remembered that the great leaders of
spiritual thought, the great reformers of minds and morals, have
invariably been men. All that is best in word and example, all that is
upholding, stimulating, purifying, and strenuous has been the gift of
these faltering creatures, whom we are now invited to take in hand, and
conduct with “tenderness and pity” on their paths. It might also be
worth while to remind ourselves occasionally that although we women may
be destined to do the work of the future, men have done the work of the
past, and have struggled not altogether in vain, for the physical and
intellectual welfare of the world. This is a point which is sometimes
ignored in a very masterly manner. Eliza Burt Gamble who has written a
book on “The Evolution of Woman. An Inquiry into the Dogma of her
Inferiority to Man,” is exceedingly severe on theologians, priests, and
missionaries, by whom she considers our sex has been held in subjection.
She lays great stress on certain material facts, as, for example, the
excess of male births in times of war, famine, or pestilence; and the
excess of female births in periods of peace and plenty, when better
nutrition brings about this higher and happier result. She asserts that
there are more male than female idiots, and that reversions to a lower
type are more common among men than women. She has a great deal to say
about the ancient custom of wife-capture as a token of female
superiority, and about the supremacy of woman in all primitive and
prehistoric life, a supremacy founded upon her finer organization, and
upon the altruistic principles which rule her conduct. But even in this
spirited and elaborate argument no attempt is made to put side by side
the work of woman and of man; no comparison is offered of their relative
contributions to civilization, social progress, art, science,
literature, music, or religion. Yet these are the tests by which
preëminence is judged, and to ignore them is to confess a failure. “If
you wish me to believe that you are witty, I must really trouble you to
make a joke.” If you are better than the workers of the world, show me
the fruits of your labor.
Against this reasonable demand it is urged that never in the past, or at
least never since those pleasant primitive days, of which, unhappily, no
distinct record has been preserved, have women been permitted free scope
for their abilities. They have been kept down by the tyranny of men, and
have afforded through all the centuries a living proof that the strong
and good can be ruled by the weak and bad, physical force alone having
given to man the mastery. It was reserved for our generation to
straighten this tangled web, and to assign to each sex its proper limits
and qualifications. The greatest change the world has ever seen is
taking place to-day.
“However full the air may be of other sounds,” said a recent lecturer on
this subject, “the cry that rises highest and swells the loudest comes
from the throats of women who in the last years of the nineteenth
century of the Christian era are just beginning to live. Men cannot
appreciate this as we do. From time out of mind they have used their
brains and their instincts as they chose, and they cannot understand the
ecstacy we feel as we stretch the limbs which have been cramped so long.
What does it matter if they do not? One thing is sure. New wine is not
put into old bottles. The village that has become a city does not return
to its villageship. The man does not put on the child’s garments again.
So, whether men hate us or love us, we have outgrown the cage in which
we sang. The woman of the past is dead.”
It is not highly probable that universal hate will ever supplant that
older emotion which must be held responsible for the existence and the
circumstances of human life. But “the woman of the past” is a broad
term, and admits of a good deal of variety, The chaste Susanna and
Potiphar’s wife; Cornelia and Messalina; Jeanne d’Arc and Madame de
Pompadour; Hannah More and Aphra Behn, these are divergent types, and
the singing bird in her cage does not stand very distinctly for any of
them. Humanity is a large factor, and must be taken into serious account
before we assure ourselves too confidently that the old order is passing
away. For good or for ill, women have lived their lives with some
approach to entirety during the slow progress of the ages. It can hardly
be claimed that either Cleopatra or St. Theresa was cramped by
confinement out of her broadest and amplest development.