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 lofter
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 in 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
reverie 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, now-a-days, that we need
have something that prates to us, albeit even in too fine an 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?