average culture. The class of degraded penwrights so often alluded to by
Fielding, the ferocious quarrels recorded of and by Pope and Johnson with
critics and publishers, are phases of literary life, which, if not
extinct, have become essentially modified with the progress of
civilization. Yet a quite recent quarterly reviewer speaks of this class
of men as 'a kind of ticket-of-leave lunatics;' and modern experiences, if
less dark than old annals of Grub Street, include some quite as remarkable
instances of reckless extravagance in prosperity and barbarous neglect in
adversity. The Bohemian class is confined to no epoch or country. Yet
charming is the group of authors that illustrate and signalize every
period of British history--an intellectual alleviation to the monotony of
fashionable, and the rancour of political life. Every era of French
government also has its brilliant _salon_ of philosophers and poets. Mrs.
Carter and Mrs. Montagu assembled, in their day, as exclusive a coterie as
used to cluster about Dryden's chair, dine with Sir Joshua Reynolds, keep
Burns's birthday at Edinburgh with Scott at the head of the table, rally
at Jeffrey's call, dispute with Hume, chat over Rogers's breakfast,
fraternize with the lakers at Keswick and Grasmere, or pass an evening
with Lamb. From the days of Shakspeare to those of Evelyn and Sydney
Smith, from La Fontaine to Lamartine, from Klopstock to Goëthe, and from
Mather to Channing, every cultivated city abroad and at home has boasted
its author circle, to which kindred tastes ever revert with zest, and
whose traditions as well as 'works' prolong a spell more refined and
memorable than any other social prestige. Weimar, Bordeaux, Florence,
Edinburgh, and Boston, as well as London and Paris, are thus consecrated
by reminiscences of Goëthe, Schiller, Montaigne, Alfieri, Wilson,
Mackenzie, some Concord Sage, or Spanish Historian, some Autocrat, Wizard
of the North, or Ettrick Shepherd of the pen. To have seen Niccolini on
the 'Lung' Arno; Elizabeth Browning at a Casa Guidi window; Rossini, the
historical novelist, at a bookstore in Pisa; Hillhouse under the New Haven
elms; Hawthorne at the Athenæum; Elia at his India-house desk; poor Heine
on his 'mattress grave,' or Freiligrath at his bank-counter, requires but
the perspective of time to be as impressive or winsome an experience as
the first survivors of Pope, Chatterton, Milton, or Burke realized in
rehearsing their personal cognizance of these famous authors. Such is the
instinctive attraction of congenial or eminent authorship. If this subject
were nomenclated and analyzed in the naturalistic way, there is scarcely a
sphere of humanity or a form of character which might not be identified
with or illustrated by authorship; the mad, the mendicant, the
charlatan--combative, contemplative, heroic, and sybarite,--are but a few
of the varieties which literary biography reveals. Their amours, diseases,
profits, calamities, triumphs, quarrels, personal tastes and habits,
domestic life, and most individual traits and fortunes, have been minutely
recorded, so as to form, on the whole, the best and most accessible
psychological cabinet for the student of human nature. Of no other class
of men and women with whom we never had personal acquaintance, do we know
so many details; Chatterton's despair, Young's skull-light, Milton's
organ, Berkeley's tar-water, Coleridge's opium, Swift's lady-loves,
Cowper's hymns and hares, Rogers's table-talk, Scott's dogs, Steele's
debts, Lamb's folios, are as familiar to us as if they appertained to some
neighbour or kinsman. The prisons of Cervantes, Raleigh, Pellico, Hunt,
and Montgomery, have a pathetic charm which no other record of captivity
boasts. Even the self-delusions of authors awaken a considerate interest;
the mistaken judgment of Petrarch and Milton, in regard to the comparative
merit of their writings; and the exaggerated estimate of their own verses
by such able statesmen as Frederic and Richelieu, tend to enhance the
mysteries of the craft and sanction its illusions. But it must be
confessed that the romance of authorship is fast disappearing in its
reality; so numerous have become the votaries of a once rare pursuit, so
common the renown, so universal the practice, that the individual and
characteristic, the curious and interesting elements thereof, are more and
more merged in the commonplace and familiar.
A distinction has often been insisted on between the critical and the
creative in literature; but modern criticism, in its best development, is
essentially reproductive; so intimate, deep, and affluent is its dealing
with authors, that they often are restored in all their vital worth; and
the process has endeared such writers as Lamb, Hazlitt, Carlyle, Arnold,
and St. Beuve, as true intellectual benefactors. Such philosophical and
æsthetic interpreters of authorship have engendered an eclectic
appreciation and enjoyment of authors, and made us what Allston calls
'wide likers.' Hence the prevalence and promise of what may be called a
cosmopolitan, in distinction to a provincial taste, whereby we learn to
value the greatest diversities of style, subject, and character in
literature. Fastidious and severely disciplined minds, indeed, coldly
ignore certain authors, and warmly espouse others; but to a spirit at once
generous and cultivated, sympathetic and intelligent, though a special
charm will invest favourite authors, all of the fraternity who are genuine
have a recognized claim to grateful recognition; and even the unequal and
incongruous development of modern English literature, incident to the
absence of what Matthew Arnold calls 'any centre of intelligent and urbane
spirit,' like the French Academy. Desirable as such a discipline and
standard is in quelling eccentricity and incorrectness, the free and
energetic development, the honest, though sometimes rude, exercise of
authorship in our vernacular, is no small compensation. We confess a
partiality for the richly-diversified phases of mental life thus
induced--an eclectic relish for the varieties of national and personal
characteristics. The artistic French, the meditative German, the practical
English writers, have each their attraction and use; the desultory style
of Richter, the quaint individuality of Lamb, the verbose dignity of
Johnson, the mosaic finish of Gray, the grotesque eloquence of Carlyle,
the flowing rhetoric of Macaulay, Wordsworth's pastoral isolation, Scott's
feudal enthusiasm, Byron's intense consciousness, Shelley's disinterested
idealism, the homely images of Crabbe, and the sensuous luxury of Keats,
are all, in their way and at times, accordant with our mental wants,
congenial to our receptive moods. Why should not we tolerate and enjoy the
various elements of literature as fully and fondly as those of nature and
society? Does it not argue a narrowness of mind inconsistent with genuine
intellectual and moral health to perversely confine our appreciation of
authorship to certain schools, forms, and individuals? Are not the
philosophical, the piquant, the earnest, the playful, the solemn, gay,
impressive, winsome, acute, wise, and humorous traits and triumphs of
written thought as legitimate, in their infinite variety, as means of
human culture, discipline, and pleasure, as the myriad tints and tones of
nature, and the diversities of character and manners? A true lover of
authors will not only find something to enjoy and appropriate in the most
diverse forms of expression and qualities of genius, both in the
literature of power and in that of knowledge as finely discriminated by De
Quincey; but will separate the inspired and the journeyman work of each
author, and do justice to what is genuine while repudiating the
conventional. If what Goëthe maintained is literally true, and genuine
authorship is the reflex of consciousness upon outward life, then all its
spontaneous products must have a vital element of human life, love, and
truth, more or less congenial to all readers of candid, clear, and humane
instincts: for we agree with a liberal and acute critic, when he says that
the gift of literary genius 'lies in the faculty of being happily inspired
by a certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere--by a certain order of
ideas; of dealing divinely with these ideas, presenting them in the most
effective and attractive combinations, making beautiful works of them.'
It is a new and glorious era in our experience of books when the vital
significance of authorship is heartily realized; dilletantism, excusable
in the novice, gives place to the worship of truth. To write for the mere
sake of writing, to amuse with the pen, becomes in our estimation what it
is--a thing of less interest than the most simple and familiar phenomena
of nature. As life reveals itself, and character matures, we long, above
all, for reality; we perceive that growth is our welfare, and that
earnestness, faith, and new truth are the only joy of a manly intellect.
Then we read to nerve our moral energies, to extend the scope of
perception, and to deepen the experience of the soul: the butterflies of
literature allure no longer; the imitators we pass by; but the deep
thinkers, the original, the brave, lead us on to explore, analyze, and
conquer. 'Literature,' says Schlegel, 'according to the spirit in which it
is pursued, is an infamy, a pastime, a dry labour, a handicraft, an art, a
science, a virtue;' and this diversity is true, not only of authors in
general, but sometimes of the same individual. Many a poet, whose early
utterance was inspired, has degenerated into a hack, a truckster, and a
mercenary penman; and many a youthful dabbler in letters, by some deep
experience, has been matured into the bold advocate or heroic pioneer in
the world of thought.
We soon learn heartily to sympathize with one of the unfortunate originals
of Goëthe's _Werther_, and declare with him,--'I have resolved in future
to take good care how I write anything to an author, save what all the
world may see;' only extending the prudential resolve to
conversation,--for whatever advance has been made in refinement in the use
of language, in the abuse of confidence modern writers are so destitute of
scruples, that the sanctities of life and social intercourse have no
greater or more profane intruder than the author.
Nor is the 'heart of courtesy' the only high quality risked by the
vocation; it almost seems, in vain and unchivalric natures, to sap manhood
itself. Some one has said,--'The man who has learned to read has lost one
portion of his courage; if he writes verses, he has lost a double
portion.' There is a fatal fluency, an arrogant expressiveness, whereby
the robust and honest material of character is, as it were, evaporated in
words; for nothing characterizes the genuine author more than a reticent
tone, an integrity of utterance, which makes it apparent that his
authorship, instead of a graft, is a growth of his best humanity. So
proverbial is the social barrenness of the craft, in its average
conventional scope, that a facetious Florentine barber, in one of the best
of modern historical novels, _Romola_, is quite appropriately made to
say,--'I am sorely afraid that the good wine of my understanding is going
to run off at the spigot of authorship, and I shall be left an empty cask,
with an odour of dregs, like many other incomparable geniuses of my
acquaintance.' All meanness is disenchanting; but selfish economy of
intellectual treasures, and egotistical insensibility to the merit of
others, not only robs the author of all sympathetic charm, but almost
invariably signalizes his essential mediocrity or unfounded pretensions.
Under the two diverse aspects of an inspiration and a career, authorship
thus offers the extremes of attraction and antagonism to candid and
earnest souls; if the spontaneous gift and charm of the former are justly
endeared to all lovers of humanity, the artificial conditions, worldly
motives, and forced relations of the latter, often dispel the illusions
of fame in the realities of vulgar notoriety and mercenary zeal. We can
well understand how a reverent, delicate, and true nature, like Maurice de
Guèrin, shrinks from professional authorship, when the original beauty and
truth of his utterances led his friends to urge that vocation upon him:
'The literary career,' he writes, 'seems to me unreal, both in its own
essence and in the rewards one seeks from it; and, therefore, fatally
marred by a secret absurdity.'
At this moment our vernacular is the only tongue in which men can express
themselves fearlessly; it appropriately enshrines the literature of
freedom. We seldom realize this noble distinction of the English language.
I was half-asleep one afternoon, in the cabin of a steamer in the Bay of
Naples, when suddenly the violent pitching of the vessel ceased, and I
hastened on deck to learn the reason of the change, and found, to my
surprise, that we were returning into the harbour, the captain having
decided that it was too great a risk to venture to sea in such a gale.
Pleasant as was the transition from tossing waves to smooth water, every
traveller in that region who has gone through the business of a
departure--the passport signatures, the tussle with porters, drivers, and
boatmen, the leave-takings, packing-ups, directions at post-office and
banker's, an embarkation in the midst of cries, rushings to and fro,
disputes for gratuities, beggars, missing baggage, attempts to secure a
berth, wringing of hands, waving of handkerchiefs, and, it may be,
embraces at parting,--every traveller, cognizant of this experience, will
understand how vexatious it was, within an hour after this tantalizing
process, to find one's self, in travelling costume, once more in the city
for the afternoon, with no lodging, no appointment, and no sight-seeing to
do. I was not long in resolving to visit once more my old dining-place,
the '_Corona di Ferro_.' At the opposite table to that at which I was
seated, appeared a handsome young man, with a dark, intelligent eye, and a
bearing indicative of spirit and courtesy. Seeing me hesitate over the
_carte_, he suggested a dish which had proved _molto buono_ that day, and
having followed the kindly counsel, we engaged in a desultory chat about
the weather, the opera, the last news from France, &c., and by the time
dessert came on, had established quite a pleasant understanding. At length
he made an inquiry based upon the idea that he was addressing an
Englishman. I corrected the error, and his politeness at once warmed into
enthusiasm at the discovery that he was talking with an American. After
dinner he invited me to his apartments. I found the sitting-room adorned
with pictures and littered with books. Having ordered coffee, we were soon
engaged in a serious discussion of literary subjects, in which my new
friend proved a tasteful votary. He wished for a definite statement as to
the extent of the liberty of the press in the United States. I explained
it; and he became highly excited, paced the room, quoted Alfieri, sighed,
pressed his brow, and at length flung himself into a chair, declaring
that, if it were not for kindred who had claims upon him, he would
emigrate at once to America. To account for his feelings, he showed me a
pile of MSS., the publication of which had been prohibited by the
government censors on account of their liberal sentiment. He then
exhibited several beautiful poems founded on scientific truths, yet
mystically involving great and humane principles--a _ruse_ he had been
compelled to resort to in order to express publicly his opinions. As I
recognized the evidences of genius, watched his chafed mood, and noted his
manly spirit, I felt deeply the crushing influence of despotism upon
authorship, and realized the natural antagonism between poets and kings.
There is no greater fallacy than that involved in the notion of an
essential diversity between an author and his books. Professed opinions do
not reveal the truth of character, but unconscious phases of style, habits
of thought, and tones of expression, like what is called natural
language, make us thoroughly acquainted with the man. Is not Jeremy
Taylor's religious sentiment manifest in the very method of his utterance?
Can we not see at a glance the improvidence and the fascination of
Sheridan in the tenor of his plays? Who would not avouch the honesty of
John L. Stephens after reading his travels? What reverent heart is not
magnetized by the genuineness of devotion in Watts, however crudely
expressed? Is not prudence signified in the very style of Franklin? Are we
not braced with the self-confident frankness of Cooper in the spirit as
well as the characters of his nautical and forest tales? Critics betray
their arrogant temper under the most courteous phrases; a gentleman is
still a gentleman, and a puppy a puppy, on paper as in life; the sham and
the true are equally discernible in print and in society. Montaigne
exhibits his worldly wisdom as plainly in his essays as he ever did in his
acts. It is not, therefore, the insidious but the obvious perils of
authorship that threaten the novice. Lamentable is it to see mediocre men
take up as a vocation either literature or art, for in both a certain
amount of _character_ alone insures respectability; and this is less
requisite in pursuits that do not so openly challenge observation.
One day, I was told a gentleman had called and waited for me in the
drawing-room. As I entered, he was gazing from the window in the shadow of
a damask curtain, which threw a warm tint upon as strongly moulded a face
as I remembered to have seen in one so young. His forehead was compactly
rounded, his hair curly and raven, and his eye dark and luminous. As I
approached, he handed me a note of introduction from a friend, refused the
proffered seat, and wore so earnest and grave an expression that I almost
thought he was the bearer of a challenge. 'Sir,' he began, 'I have come to
you for sympathy in a great undertaking. I wish to be cheered in a
mission, encouraged in a career, advised in an experiment.' There was a
certain wildness in the manner of this sententious address which breathed
of an excited fancy. I expressed a willingness to aid him to the extent of
my humble ability. He drew a thick packet from his coat, and proceeded: 'I
am a native of a little village in a neighbouring State. My father is an
agriculturist, and has endeavoured to render me content with that lot; but
there is something _here_'--and he laid a large red hand on his capacious
breast--'that rebels against the decree. I aspire to the honours of
literature. I long to utter myself to the world. Here is a tragedy and
some lyrics; and I have come to town to test my fortune as an author.' I
saw that he was an enthusiast, and calmly pointed out the obstacles to
success. He became impatient. I enlarged on the healthfulness and wisdom
of a country life, on the precarious subsistence incident to pencraft. His
eye flashed with anger. I urged him to consider well the risk he incurred,
the danger of failure, the advantages of a reliable vocation, the comfort
of an independent though secluded existence. He advanced toward me with an
indignant stride. 'Sir,' he exclaimed, 'I have been misinformed; you are
not the man I took you for; farewell, for ever!' and he rushed from the
house. Six months had elapsed, and I was sitting over a book in my quiet
room one day, when a terrific knock at the door aroused me, and an instant
after the stranger entered and impetuously grasped my hand. 'Sir--my dear
friend, I mean,'--he said, 'I have done you injustice, and I have come to
apologize. For a month after my former interview, I passed a feverish
novitiate, hawking my manuscripts around, deceived by plausible members of
the trade, snubbed by managers, frozen out of the sanctums of editors,
yawned at by casual audiences, baffled at every turn, until worn out,
mortified, and despairing, I went home. The feel of the turf, the breath
of the wind, the lowing of the kine, the very scent of hay was refreshing.
I thought over your counsel, and found it true. I now farm the paternal
acres on shares, write verses during the long winter evenings, lead the
choir on Sundays, am to marry the pride of the village next week, and am
here to beg your pardon, and invite you to my wedding.'
The delectable quality of authorship is its impersonality. Consider a
moment the privilege and the immunity. If we address a multitude or an
individual, the impression may be pleasing or wearisome, but courtesy
requires that it be endured with equanimity. A book is unobtrusive,
silent, objective. It can be taken up or let alone. In it, if genuine,
there is a thought that craves hospitality to be caught in a favourable
mood, as the fallow hillock receives the seed borne on the vagrant wind.
It may take root, and the originator thereof has unconsciously given birth
to an undying impulse or yielded spiritual refreshment. The whole process
is like that of nature,--unostentatious, benign, and of inestimable
benefit; and yet how latent, beyond observation, secreted in
consciousness! All power of expression--whether by means of pen, colour,
or chisel,--all artistic development, is but a new vocabulary that reveals
character. The author and the artist differ from their less gifted fellows
simply in this--that they have more language; the endowment does not
change their natures; if coarse, artificial, vain,--if brave, truthful, or
shallow,--they thus appear in books and marble, or on canvas; and hence it
is that character is the true gauge of authorship, and wins or repels
confidence, respect, and love, in the same proportion as do living men.
'By their fruit shall ye know them.' Therefore authors themselves most
effectually disenchant readers. They are disloyal to their high mission;
they compromise their own ideal, write gossip instead of truth, describe
themselves instead of nature, dip their pens in the venom of malevolence,
corrupt their style with vulgarity, keep no faith with aspiration, truckle
to power and interest, and so bring their vocation itself into merited
disdain.
How charming, on the other hand, is the spontaneous bard, who sings from
an overflowing and musical nature! There is a court in one of the most
populous quarters of London which rejoices in the name of Spring Gardens.
Doubtless the spot, at one time, was a rural domain; at present, a few
trees peering over a wall, and a retired and quaint look about some of the
brick domiciles that line the street, alone justify the pleasant name it
bears. In one of these houses is the office of the Commissioners of
Lunacy; and there, one winter morning, I had the satisfaction of a brief
_tête-à-tête_ with Procter. His plainly-cut frock-coat, long and black,
his white hair and quiet bearing, made him appear a curate such as
Goldsmith portrayed. It is a curious vocation for a poet--that of testing
the wits of people suspected of being out of their mind,--and a painful
one for a sensitive nature, to inspect the asylums devoted to their use.
But I remembered that Procter's early taste drew him into intimate love
and recognition of the old English dramatists, whose natural element was
the terrible in human passion and woe; I considered the profound
tenderness of his muse, and I felt that even the tragic scenes it was his
duty to witness and to study, were not without a certain sad affinity with
genius. Kean visited madhouses to perfect his conception of Lear; and he
who sings of human weal and sorrow is taught to deepen and hallow his
strain by the misery as well as the amenities of his life. The heart of
courtesy, the mood of aspiration, have not been quelled in Procter by the
stern professional business which is his daily task. They loomed up even
in that dusky office, and kept faith with my previous ideal; but it was
especially in the poet's eye that I read the spirit of his muse; ineffably
mild and tender is its expression, deepening under the influence of
emotion like the tremulous cadence of music that is born of sentiment. I
saw there the soul that dictated 'How many summers, love, hast thou been
mine?' 'Send down thy pitying angel, God!' and so many other lays of
affection endeared to all who can appreciate the genuine lyrics of the
heart identified with the name of Barry Cornwall.
With all its occasional disenchantment, my love of authors imparted a
singular charm to the experience of travel; the lapse of time and new
localities united then to revive the dreams of youth. What a new grace the
first view of the hills of Spain derived from the memory of Cervantes, and
the gleanings in that romantic field of Lockhart and Irving; how rife with
associations was the dreary night-ride beyond Terracina, near the scene of
Cicero's murder; and what an intense life awoke in desolate Ravenna, at
the sight of Dante's tomb! The rustling of dry reeds in the gardens of
Sallust had an eloquent significance; the figures on Alfieri's monument,
in Santa Croce, seemed to breathe in the twilight; the rosemary plucked in
Rousseau's old garden at Montmorency had a scent of fragrant memory; in
the _cafés_ at Venice, Goldoni's characters appeared to be talking, and
Byron's image floated on her waters like a sculptor's dream; in the
Florentine villa Boccacio's spirit lingered; in the Cenci palace Shelley's
deep eyes glistened; in the shade of the pyramid of Cestus the muse of
Keats scattered flowers; on the shores of Como hovered the creations of
Manzoni, and a cliff in Brittany rose like a cenotaph to Chateaubriand;
while the cadence of Virgil's line chimed with the lapsing wave on the
beach at Naples. I thought, at Lausanne, of Gibbon's last touch to the
_Rise and Fall_, and his reverie that night; sought the tablet that covers
Parnell's dust at Chester, craved Montgomery's blessing at Sheffield,
looked for Sterne's monk at Calais, and beheld the crown on Tasso's cold
temples beneath the cypresses of St. Onofrio. Defoe lighted up gloomy
Cripplegate, Addison walked in the groves of Oxford, Johnson threaded the
crowd in Fleet Street, and Milton's touch seemed to wake the organ-keys of
St. Giles. But it is not requisite to wander from home for such
experiences.