largely into American life and literature. He was thoroughly human. He
was strong, and strength with eccentricities--and Cooper had these--is
more attractive and moving than mild weakness attended by the graces
of propriety. He was proud without vanity; a good hater, yet beloved
to devotion in his home; severe, yet holding himself to a high
standard of justice; of mighty passions, yet also of mighty will for
their control; loyal to what he would esteem right principle;
patriotic though the severest critic of his country; a Puritan in
character though condemning the Puritan character of New England;
frank, fearless, truthful. He lacked tact, and for the lack he paid
the penalty of obloquy; there was little of the compromising or
conciliatory in his nature. But he had what men of tact are in peril
of lacking--the heroic qualities of mind and heart and will and
conscience. He was a faithful husband, a loving father. So
scrupulously careful was he of the interests of his children that his
own daughter says she was not permitted to read her father's books
before she was eighteen. His influence is ever in favor of simple
truth and simple righteousness. As Mr. James Russell Lowell says: "I
can conceive of no healthier reading for a boy, or girl either, than
Scott's novels, or Cooper's, to speak only of the dead. I have found
them very good reading, at least, for one young man, for one
middle-aged man, and for one who is growing old. No, no--banish the
Antiquary, banish Leather-Stocking, and banish all the world! Let us
not go about to make life duller than it is."
[Signature of the author.]
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT[14]
[Footnote 14: Reprinted by permission from Appletons'
Journal.]
By RICHARD HENRY STODDARD
(1794-1878)
The life of William Cullen Bryant covers what to me is the most
interesting period in the history of American letters. We cannot be
said to have had a literature when he was born (certainly nothing
worthy of the name), and if we have one now, we owe whatever is of
value therein to three or four writers, among whom he will always
stand first. We were waiting for it, as the English were waiting for a
new-growth in their literature, and it came at last, though later to
us than to them. The same seed blossomed in both countries, only it
was native there, being first sown in "Percy's Reliques," while here
it was transplanted at second-hand from the pages of a new race of
English poets, particularly Wordsworth. They returned to nature in
literature; we, who had no literature, discovered it in nature. That
both the English and ourselves have gone astray after other gods is
certain, but all is not lost yet; Greek atheism will no more satisfy
them forever, than the "barbaric yawp" of the rough will satisfy us.
William Cullen Bryant was born at Cummington, Mass., on November 3,
1794. He was happy in his parentage, his father, who was a physician,
being a studious and thoughtful man, while his mother was a woman of
strong understanding. The infant poet is said to have been remarkable
for an immense head, which was not pleasing in the sight of his
father, who ordered him to be ducked every morning in a spring near
the house. He resisted the treatment, as what child of tender years
would not? but to no purpose--he was predestined to be ducked. Whether
the cold water arrested the cerebral development, we are not told, but
it strengthened his frail _physique_, and made him a hardy little lad.
He began early to write verses, a pursuit in which he was encouraged
by his father, who directed him to what were then considered the best
models, taught him the value of correctness of expression and
condensation of statement, and pointed out the difference between true
and false eloquence in verse. The father of Pope is said to have
performed the same good offices for his rickety little son: "These be
good rhymes, Alexander;" or the reverse, when his couplets were
unfinished. Allibone states that Master Bryant's first effusions were
translations from some of the Latin poets, but, as these were written
and printed in his tenth year, the account is scarcely credible. He
began at ten years of age to write verses (says another authority),
which were printed in the Northampton newspaper of that day--the
_Hampshire Gazette_.
When he was fourteen he had verse enough on hand to make a little
pamphlet volume, which was published (we are not told where) in 1808.
A second edition, corrected and enlarged, was brought out at Boston in
the ensuing year. It was entitled "The Embargo; or, Sketches of the
Times--a Satire," and is described as being a reflection, in heroic
measure, of the anti-Jeffersonian Federalism of New England. "If the
young bard," said the Aristarchus of the _Monthly Anthology_ for June,
1808; "if the young bard has received no assistance in the composition
of this poem, he certainly bids fair, should he continue to cultivate
his talents, to gain a respectable station on the Parnassian mount,
and to reflect credit on the literature of his country." Besides the
"Embargo," the volume contained an "Ode to Connecticut," and a copy of
verses entitled "Drought," written in his thirteenth year.
In 1810 the young poet entered Williams College, a sophomore, and
remained two years. He is said to have distinguished himself greatly,
and we can readily believe it. We can believe anything of the youth
who conceived "Thanatopsis." When this noble poem was written is
variously stated; one account says in 1812, and another 1813. It is of
no great consequence, however, whether Bryant was eighteen or nineteen
at the time. No other poet ever wrote so profound a poem at so early
an age. In whatever light we consider it, "Thanatopsis" is without a
parallel in the history of literature. The train of thought it awakens
is the most universal with which the soul of man can be touched,
belonging to no age and no clime, but to all climes and ages, and
embracing all that pertains to him on earth. It is his life-hymn and
his death-anthem. It is mortality. Poets from immemorial time have
brooded over life and death, but none with the seriousness and
grandeur of this young American. There are moments in the life of man
when he stands face to face with nature, and sees her as she is, and
himself as he is, and the relation of everything in the universe. Such
a moment is fixed for all time in "Thanatopsis."
It would be interesting to know what authors the youthful student read
with most avidity and attention. The influence of Pope is visible in
"The Embargo," as the influence of Wordsworth is visible in
"Thanatopsis." But between the writing of these poems--a space of four
or five years--other poets than those named must have stimulated his
thoughts and colored his style. Cowper, we imagine, was one, and
Akenside, perhaps, another. He may have read Scott, and Southey, and
Coleridge, although there are no traces of either in anything that he
has written. That Wordsworth was more to him at this period than any
other English poet, we have the testimony of the elder Dana. "I shall
never forget," he writes, "with what feeling my friend Bryant, some
years ago, described to me the effect upon him of his meeting for the
first time with Wordsworth's ballads. He lived, when quite young,
where but few works of poetry were to be had; at a period, too, when
Pope was still the great idol of the Temple of Art. He said that, upon
opening Wordsworth, a thousand springs seemed to gush up at once in
his heart, and the face of nature, of a sudden, to change into a
strange freshness and life." Wordsworth may have been the master of
Bryant, but it was only as Ramsay was the master of Burns, and Chaucer
of Keats, and Keats himself of Tennyson. That is to say, the disciple
found in the master a kindred spirit. The eyes with which Bryant
looked on nature were his own. Wordsworth never imparted to him "the
vision and the faculty divine." It should be observed, also, that he
was favorably situated in his youth; not like so many poets, in the
heart of a great city, but in the quiet of the country, amid green
fields and woods, in sight of rivers and mountains, and beneath a sky
which was nowhere obstructed by man. The scenery around Cummington is
said to be beautiful, and, immediately around the Bryant homestead, of
a rich pastoral character. It haunted him like a passion from the
beginning, and appeared again and again in his poetry, always with a
fresh and added charm.
After leaving Williams College, Mr. Bryant studied law, first with
Judge Howe, of Washington, and afterward with Mr. William Baylies, of
Bridgewater. Admitted to the bar at Plymouth in 1815, he practised one
year at Plainfield, and then removed to Great Barrington, where, in
1821, he married Miss Frances Fairchild. Of this lady, who survived
until within a few years, there are several graceful and touching
memorials in the poetry of her husband. She was the ideal celebrated
in the poem beginning, "Oh, fairest of the rural maids;" and it is to
her that "The Future Life" and "The Life that Is" are addressed.
Whether Mr. Bryant was a successful lawyer, we are not told; but, as
he lived at Great Barrington nine years in the practice of law, it is
to be supposed that he was. However this may be, he still cultivated
his poetry, which was now bringing him into notice. "Thanatopsis" was
published in 1816 in the _North American Review_, though not
precisely as we have it now; as was also the "Inscription for the
Entrance to a Wood"--a study from nature, at Cummington, and the
well-known lines "To a Water-fowl," which were written while he was
studying his profession at Bridgewater.
The next four or five years of Mr. Bryant's life were comparatively
unproductive; at least, we hear of nothing from his pen until 1821,
when he delivered "The Ages" before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at
Cambridge. It was published there during the same year, at the
suggestion of some of his friends, in a little volume which contained,
in addition to the three poems already mentioned, the pleasant
pastoral, "Green River," previously contributed to Dana's "Idle Man."
That law had by this time become distasteful to him, we gather from
its concluding stanza:
"Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men,
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen."
In 1824 we find him writing for the _Literary Gazette_, a favorite
weekly published at Boston, and edited by Theophilus Parsons. His
contributions to this journal were "The Murdered Traveller," "The Old
Mans' Funeral," "The Forest Hymn," and the spirited lyric "March." The
next year he removed to New York, and became one of the editors of the
_New York Review and Athenaeum Magazine_. It was the wisest step that
he could have taken, although New York, at that time, was of less
importance in the literary world than Boston or Philadelphia. The
_Review_ was not a success, so it was merged, in 1826, in a work of
similar character, _The United States Review and Literary Gazette_,
which closed with the second volume in September, 1827. Mr. Bryant's
brief residence in New York had enlarged his circle of friends, among
whom were Robert C. Sands, who was associated with him in the _New
York Review_, Fitz-Greene Halleck, Gulian C. Verplanck, and others;
and it had added to his popularity as a writer, the excellence and
variety of his poems embracing a wider range of subjects than he had
hitherto chosen. The most noticeable of these were "The African
Chief," "The Disinterred Warrior," "The Indian Girl's Lament," and
"The Death of the Flowers." It is not too much to say of the last that
it is the most exquisite poem of the kind in the language--as perfect,
in its way, as Keats' "Ode to Autumn," which it resembles in grace and
delicacy of conception, and surpasses in fidelity and picturesqueness
of description. It is interesting, also, from the light which it sheds
upon a painful incident in the life of the poet--the early death of a
beloved and beautiful sister:
"In the cold, moist earth we laid her, when the forests cast the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief:
Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers."
There are other allusions to this "fair, meek blossom" in Mr. Bryant's
poems. The sonnet, "Consumption," was addressed to her; and she
mingled with his solemn musings in "The Past."
The _United States Review_ ceased, as we have seen, in 1827. Its
editor seems to have foreseen its fate in advance, and provided for
it; for, before it happened, he had become connected with the _Evening
Post_. This was in 1826, from which time dates Mr. Bryant's connection
with American journalism--a connection which he never relinquished,
and which, while it may have lessened his poetic productiveness,
undoubtedly added largely to his influence with his countrymen. The
_Evening Post_ had just completed the first quarter of a century of
its existence, and stood foremost among the journals of New York.
Perhaps it was the foremost, all things considered. But, however this
may be, it was a journal for which a gentleman could write. It was
respectable and dignified, and it was able and sarcastic. The age of
personalities, through which the American press is now passing, had
not commenced. Editors were neither horsewhipped in the streets, nor
deserved to be, and that impertinent eavesdropper and babbler, the
interviewer, was unknown. Happy age for editors--and readers!
The lives of editors, like the lives of most men of letters, are not
very interesting to the world, whatever they may be to themselves and
their friends. They are passed in a routine from which there is no
escape, and, if they are now and then enlivened by warfare, it is not
usually of the kind to attract the sympathy of indifferent spectators.
For the most part, the life editorial is a waste of the brain, and a
weariness of the flesh. That it did not prove so in Mr. Bryant's case
is owing, no doubt, to his love of literature, an inherent and
unconquerable love, which never forsook him, even in the busiest years
of journalism. While still a young man, and we may suppose not an
affluent one, for his first position on the _Evening Post_ was that of
assistant editor, he wrote largely for _The Talisman_, the entire
contents of which were furnished by himself and his friends Sands and
Verplanck. It was the best annual ever brought out in America, equal,
it is said, to the best of the English annuals, which is not saying
much of those of a later date, but is high praise as regards the
earlier volumes, to which even Scott did not disdain to contribute.
Besides editing and writing for _The Talisman_, which was published
for three years (1827-29-30), Mr. Bryant furnished several papers for
"Tales of the Glauber Spa," a collection of entertaining stories, the
work of Sands, Verplanck, Paulding, Leggett, Miss Sedgwick, and
himself. This was published in 1832, as was also the first collected
edition of his poems. In 1834 he took a vacation from his editorial
labors, and sailed with his family for Europe, leaving the _Evening
Post_ in charge of Leggett. He resided in Italy and Germany, which
were not so overrun with travelling Americans as at present, and were
all the more pleasant to a quiet family on that account. It was his
intention to remain abroad three years, but the sudden illness of
Leggett, which threatened to result disastrously to the _Evening
Post_, compelled him to return in 1836.
In 1840 Mr. Bryant published a new collection of his poetical
writings--"The Fountain, and other Poems," and, during the next year,
visited the Southern States, and lived for a time in East Florida.
"The White-footed Deer, and other Poems," appeared in 1844. A year
later, he visited England and Scotland for the first time. That the
mother-land impressed him, we may be sure; yet it is worthy of remark
that nothing which he saw there--no place which he visited, and no
association it awakened--is recorded in his verse. We have Italian
poems from him, or poems in which Italian localities are indicated,
and we have, if not German poems, several spirited translations from
German song. But we recall nothing, in his verse, of which England
alone was the inspiration. Yet he was, and is, admired in the land of
his fathers. A proof of this fact is contained in the second volume of
Beattie's "Life of Campbell." "I went with him one evening," says the
writer (May 29, 1841), "to the opening of the Exhibition, in Suffolk
Place. It had been arranged that he should read something, and he
chose the 'Thanatopsis' of Bryant. A deep silence followed; the
audience crowded round him; but when he came to the closing paragraph,
his admiration almost choked his voice: 'Nothing finer had ever been
written!'"
The first illustrated edition of Mr. Bryant's poetical works was
published in 1846, at Philadelphia. It was a creditable piece of art
work, considering the then condition of art in America--the designs
being drawn by Leutz, an accomplished academician of the Duesseldorf
school, who strove to make up in vigor and picturesqueness what he
lacked in sentiment and feeling. A second illustrated edition was
issued a few years later in New York. The illustrations were drawn on
wood, many by Birket Foster, and the engraving and printing were done
in England. This method of producing a fine edition of a favorite
American writer would hardly suit a protectionist, but, then, Mr.
Bryant was not a protectionist--as who is in literature?
The last twenty-five years of Mr. Bryant's life differed but little
from those which preceded them. That is to say, they were spent in
journalism, diversified, now and then, by the publication of a new
volume of poems, and by several journeys on the Continent. The result
of these journeys was given to the public in the shape of letters in
the _Evening Post_, which letters have been collected in two or three
volumes. Mr. Bryant's prose is admirable--a model of good English,
simple, manly, felicitous. That its excellence has not been
universally recognized and--what generally follows recognition in this
country--imitated, is owing to several circumstances; as that it
originally appeared in the crowded columns of a daily journal; that
the American's appetite for works of travel demands more stimulating
food than Mr. Bryant chose to give it, and that his poetry has
overshadowed everything else that he did. Few believe that a poet can
write well in prose, and those who do, prefer his poetry to his prose.
The preference is a just one, but it proves nothing, for literary
history shows that a good poet is always a good prose-writer.
Mr. Bryant's last great labor--it is almost superfluous to state--was
a new translation of Homer. The task was worthy of him; for, though it
has been performed many times, it has never been performed so well
before. Scores have tried their hands at it, from Chapman down; but
all have failed in some important particular--Pope, perhaps, most of
all. Lord Derby's version of the "Iliad" was the best before Mr.
Bryant's; it is second best now, and will soon be as antiquated as
Pope's, or Cowper's, or Chapman's. No English poet ever undertook and
performed so great a task as this of Mr. Bryant's so late in life. It
is like Homer himself singing in his old age.
THOMAS CARLYLE
By W. WALLACE
(1795-1881)
[Illustration: Thomas Carlyle.]
Thomas Carlyle was born December 4, 1795, at Ecclesfechan, in the
parish of Hoddam, Annandale, Dumfriesshire, a small Scottish
market-town, the Entipfuhl of "Sartor Resartus," six miles inland from
the Solway, and about sixteen by road from Carlisle. He was the second
son of James Carlyle, stone-mason, but his first son by his second
wife, Margaret Aitken. James Carlyle, who came of a family which,
although in humble circumstances, was an offshoot of a Border clan,
was a man of great physical and moral strength, of fearless
independence, and of, in his son's opinion, "a natural faculty" equal
to that of Burns; and Margaret Aitken was "a woman of the fairest
descent, that of the pious, the just, and the wise." Frugal,
abstemious, prudent, though not niggardly, James Carlyle was
prosperous according to the times, the conditions of his trade, and
the standard of Ecclesfechan. He was able, therefore, to give such of
his sons (he had a family of ten children in all, five sons and five
daughters) as showed an aptitude for culture an excellent Scottish
education. Thomas seems to have been taught his letters and elementary
reading by his mother, and arithmetic by his father. His home-teaching
was supplemented by attendance at the Ecclesfechan school, where he
was "reported complete in English" at about seven, made satisfactory
progress in arithmetic, and took to Latin with enthusiasm. Thence he
proceeded, in 1805, to Annan Academy, where he learned to read Latin
and French fluently, "some geometry, algebra, arithmetic thoroughly
well, vague outlines of geography, Greek to the extent of the alphabet
mainly." His first two years at Annan Academy were among the most
miserable in his life, from his being bullied by some of his
fellow-pupils, whom he describes as "coarse, unguided, tyrannous
cubs." But he "revolted against them, and gave them shake for shake."
In his third year, Carlyle had his first glimpse of Edward Irving, who
was five years his senior, and had been a pupil at Annan Academy, but
was then attending classes at Edinburgh University. In November, 1809,
Carlyle himself entered that university, travelling on foot all the
way, a hundred miles, between Ecclesfechan and the Scottish capital.
Except in one department, Carlyle's college curriculum was not
remarkable. In "the classical field" he describes himself "truly as
nothing," and learned to read Homer in the original with difficulty.
He preferred Homer and Aeschylus to all other classical authors, found
Tacitus and Virgil "really interesting," Horace "egotistical,
leichtfertig," and Cicero "a windy person, and a weariness." Nor did
he take much to metaphysics or moral philosophy. In geometry, however,
he excelled, perhaps because Professor (subsequently Sir John) Leslie,
"alone of my professors had some genius in his business, and awoke a
certain enthusiasm in me." But even in the mathematical class he took
no prize.
In 1813 Carlyle's attendance at the Arts course in Edinburgh
University came to an end, and he began formal, though fitful,
preparation for the ministry of the Church of Scotland by enrolling
himself, on November 16th of the same year, as a student at its
Divinity Hall. In the summer of 1814 he competed successfully at
Dumfries for the mathematical mastership of Annan Academy. The post
was worth only between L60 and L70 a year; but it enabled Carlyle, who
was as frugal as his parents, to relieve his father of the expense of
his support, and to save a few pounds. Meanwhile he read widely, and
wrote of his reading at great length, and with considerable power of
satiric characterization, to some of his college friends. But he found
himself "abundantly lonesome, uncomfortable, and out of place" in
Annan, and from the first disliked teaching; while his "sentiments on
the clerical profession" were "mostly of the unfavorable kind."
In 1816 Carlyle accepted the post of assistant to the teacher of the
parish (or grammar) school of Kirkcaldy, with "an emolument rated
about a hundred a year," and all actual scholastic duties to perform.
This change brought him into intimate relations with Edward Irving,
who, having acquired a reputation as a teacher in Haddington, had been
induced by the patrons of an adventure school, in Kirkcaldy, to
undertake the management of it. The two, though professionally rivals,
became fast friends, and read and made excursions into different parts
of Scotland together. Carlyle was also introduced by Irving to various
Kirkcaldy families, including that of Mr. Martin, the parish minister,
one of whose daughters his friend subsequently married. He himself
became attached to an ex-pupil of Irving's, a Miss Margaret Gordon,
with some of whose graces he afterward endowed the dark and fickle
Blumine, of "Sartor Resartus." She reciprocated Carlyle's affection,
but the aunt with whom she lived put a stop to some talk of an
engagement.