SCENE I.--_A Hall in Timon's House._

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. III.--JUNE, 1859.--NO. XX.

SHAKSPEARE'S ART.

"Yet must I not give Nature all; thy Art,

My gentle SHAKSPEARE, must enjoy a part.

For though the poet's matter Nature be,

His Art doth give the fashion."--Ben Jonson.

Whoever would learn to think naturally, clearly, logically, and to

express himself intelligibly and earnestly, let him give his days and

nights to WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. His ear will thus accustom itself to forms

of phrase whose only mannerism is occasioned by the fulness of thought

and the directness of expression; and he will not easily, through the

habits which either his understanding or his ear will acquire, fall into

the fluent cadences of that sort of writing in which words are used

without discrimination of their nice meanings,--where the sentences are

only a smoothly-undulating current of common phrases, in which it takes

a page to say weakly what should be said forcibly in a few periods.

These are somewhat novel arguments for the study of one whom all the

world has so long reverenced as "the great poet of Nature." But they may

properly serve to introduce a consideration of the sense in which

that phrase should be understood,--an attempt, in short, to look

into Shakspeare's modes of creation, and define his relations, as an

_artist_, with Nature.

We shall perhaps be excused the suggestion, that a poet cannot be

natural in the same sense that a fool may be; he cannot be _a_

natural,--since, if he is, he is not a poet. For to be a poet implies

the ability to use ideas and forms of speech artistically, as well as to

have an eye in a fine frenzy rolling. This is a distinction which all

who write on poets or poetry should forever seek to keep clear by new

illustrations. The poet has poetic powers that are born with him; but he

must also have a power over language, skill in arrangement, a thousand,

yes, a myriad, of powers which he was born with only the ability to

acquire, and to use after their acquirement. In ranking Shakspeare the

great poet of Nature, it is meant that he had the purpose and the power

to think what was natural, and to select and follow it,--that, among his

thick-coming fancies, he could perceive what was too fine, what tinged

with personal vanity, what incongruous, unsuitable, feeble, strained, in

short, unnatural, and reject it. His vision was so strong that he saw

his characters and identified himself with them, yet preserving his cool

judgment above them, and subjecting all he felt through them to its

test, and developing it through this artificial process of writing. This

vision and high state of being he could assume and keep up and work out

through days and weeks, foreseeing the end from the beginning, retaining

himself, and determining long before how many acts his work should be,

what should be its plot, what the order of its scenes, what personages

he would introduce, and where the main passions of the work should be

developed. His fancy, which enabled him to see the stage and all its

characters,--almost to _be_ them,--was so under the control of his

imagination, that it did not, through any interruptions while he was at

his labor, beguile him with caprices. The _gradation_ or action of his

work, opens and grows under his creative hand; twenty or more characters

appear, (in some plays nearly forty, as in "Antony and Cleopatra" and

the "First Part of Henry the Sixth,") who are all distinguished, who

are all more or less necessary to the plot or the underplots, and who

preserve throughout an identity that is life itself; all this is done,

and the imagined state, the great power by which this evolution of

characters and scene and story be carried on, is always under the

control of the poet's will, and the direction of his taste or critical

judgment. He chooses to set his imagination upon a piece of work, he

selects his plot, conceives the action, the variety of characters, and

all their doings; as he goes on reflecting upon them, his imagination

warms, and excites his fancy; he sees and identifies himself with his

characters, lives a secondary life in his work, as one may in a dream

which he directs and yet believes in; his whole soul becomes more active

under this fervor of the imagination, the fancy, and all the powers of

suggestion,--yet, still, the presiding judgment remains calm above all,

guiding the whole; and above or behind that, the will which elects to do

all this, perchance for a very simple purpose,--namely, for filthy lucre,

the purchase-money of an estate in Stratford.

To say that he "followed Nature" is to mean that he permits his thoughts

to flow out in the order in which thoughts naturally come,--that he

makes his characters think as we all fancy we should think under the

circumstances in which he places them,--that it is the truth of his

thoughts which first impresses us. It is in this respect that he is

so universal; and it is by his universality that his naturalness is

confirmed. Not all his finer strokes of genius, but the general scope

and progress of his mind, are within the path all other minds travel;

his mind _answers_ to all other men's minds, and hence is like the voice

of Nature, which, apart from particular association, addresses all

alike. The cataracts, the mountains, the sea, the landscapes, the

changes of season and weather have each the same general meaning to

all mankind. So it is with Shakspeare, both in the conception and

development of his characters, and in the play of his reflections and

fancies. All the world recognizes his sanity, and the health and beauty

of his genius.

Not all the world, either. Nature's poet fares no better than Nature

herself. Half the world is out of the pale of knowledge; a good part

of the rest are stunted by cant in its Protean shapes, or by inherited

narrowness and prejudice, and innumerable soul-cankers. They neither

know nor think of Nature or Poetry. Just as there are hundreds in all

great cities who never leave their accustomed streets winter or summer,

until finally they lose all curiosity, and cease to feel the yearnings

of that love which all are born with for the sight of the land and

sea,--the dear face of our common mother. Or the creatures who compose

the numerical majority of the world are rather like the children of some

noble lady stolen away by gypsies, and taught to steal and cheat and

beg, and practised in low arts, till they utterly forget the lawns

whereon they once played; and if their mother ever discovers them, their

natures are so subdued that they neither recognize her nor wish to go

with her.

Without fearing that Shakspeare can ever lose his empire while the

language lasts, it is humiliating to be obliged to acknowledge one

great cause that is operating to keep him from thousands of our young

countrymen and women, namely, the wide-spread _mediocrity_ that is

created and sustained by the universal diffusion of our so-called

cheap literature;--dear enough it will prove by and by!--But this is

needlessly digressing.

The very act of writing implies an art not born with the poet. This

process of forming letters and words with a pen is not natural, nor

will the poetic frenzy inspire us with the art to go through it. In

conceiving the language of passion, the _natural_ impulse is to imitate

the passion in gesture; there is something artificial in sitting quietly

at a table and hollaing, "Mortimer!" through a quill. If Hotspur's

language is in the highest degree natural, it is because the poet felt

the character, and words suggested themselves to him which he chose and

wrote down. The act of choice might have been almost spontaneous with

the feeling of the character and the situation, yet it was there,--the

conscious judgment was present; and if the poet wrote the first words

that came, (as no doubt he usually did,) it was because he was satisfied

with them at the time; there was no paroxysm of poetic inspiration,--the

workings of his mind were sane. His fertility was such that he was not

obliged to pause and compare every expression with all others he could

think of as appropriate;--judgment may decide swiftly and without

comparison, especially when it is supervising the suggestions of a vivid

fancy, and still be judgment, or taste, if we choose to call it by that

name. We know by the result whether it was present. The poet rapt into

unconsciousness would soon betray himself. Under the power of the

imagination, all his faculties waken to a higher life; his fancies are

more vivid and clear; all the suggestions that come to him are more

apt and congruous; and his faculties of selection, his perceptions of

fitness, beauty, and appropriateness of relation are more keen and

watchful. No lapse in what he writes at such times indicates aught

like dreaming or madness, or any condition of mind incompatible with

soundness and health,--with that perfect sanity in which all the mental

powers move in order and harmony under the control of the rightful

sovereign, Reason.

These observations are not intended to bear, except remotely, upon the

question, Which is the true Dramatic Art, the romantic or the ancient?

We shall not venture into that land of drought, where dry minds forever

wander. We can admit both schools. In fact, even the countrymen of

Racine have long since admitted both,--speculatively, at least,--though

practically their temperament will always confine them to artificial

models. We may consider the question as set at rest in these words of M.

Guizot:--"Everything which men acknowledge as beautiful in Art owes its

effect to certain combinations, of which our reason can always detect

the secret when our emotions have attested its power. The science--or

the employment of these combinations--constitutes what we call Art.

Shakspeare had his own. We must detect it in his works, and examine the

means he employs and the results he aims at." Although we should be

far from admitting so general a definition of Art as this, yet it is

sufficient as an answer to the admirers of the purely classic school.

But it has become necessary in this "spasmodic" day to vindicate

our great poet from the supposition of having written in a state of

somnambulism,--to show that he was even an _artist_, without reference

to schools. The scope of our observations is to exhibit him in that

light; we wish to insist that he was a man of forethought,--that, though

possessing creative genius, he did not dive recklessly into the sea of

his fancy without knowing its depth, and ready to grasp every pebble for

a pearl-shell; we wish to show that he was not what has been called, in

the cant of a class who mistake lawlessness for liberty, an "earnest

creature,"--that he was not "fancy's child" in any other sense than as

having in his power a beautifully suggestive fancy, and that he "warbled

his native wood-notes wild" in no other meaning than as Milton warbled

his organ-notes,--namely, through the exercise of conscious Art, of Art

that displayed itself not only in the broad outlines of his works, but

in their every character and shade of color. With this purpose we

have urged that he was "natural" from taste and choice,--artistically

natural. To illustrate the point, let us consider his Art alone in a few

passages.

We will suppose, preliminarily, however, that we are largely interested

in the Globe Theatre, and that, in order to keep it up and continue to

draw good houses, we must write a new piece,--that, last salary-day,

we fell short, and were obliged to borrow twenty pounds of my Lord

Southampton to pay our actors. Something must be done. We look into our

old books and endeavor to find a plot out of ancient story, in the same

manner that Sir Hugh Evans would hunt for a text for a sermon. At length

one occurs that pleases our fancy; we revolve it over and over in our

mind,--and at last, after some days' thought, elaborate from it the plot

of a play,--"TIMON OF ATHENS,"--which plot we make a memorandum of,

lest we should forget it. Meantime, we are busy at the theatre with

rehearsals, changes of performance, bill-printing, and a hundred

thousand similar matters that must be each day disposed of. But we keep

our newly-thought-of play in mind at odd intervals, good things occur to

us as we are walking in the street, and we begin to long to be at it.

The opening scenes we have quite clearly in our eye, and we almost know

the whole; or it may be, _vice versa_, that we work out the last scenes

first; at all events, we have them hewn out in the rough, so that we

work the first with an intention of making them conform to a something

which is to succeed; and we are so sure of our course that we have no

dread of the something after,--nothing to puzzle the will, or make us

think too precisely on the event. Such is the condition of mind in which

we finally begin our labor. Some Wednesday afternoon in a holiday-week,

when the theatres are closed, we find ourselves sitting at a desk before

a sea-coal fire in a quaintly panelled rush-strewn chamber, the pen in

our hand, nibbed with a "Rogers's" pen-knife, [A] and the blank page

beneath it.

[Footnote A: "A Shefeld thwitel bare he in his hose."--CHAUCER. _The

Reve's Tale._]

We desire the reader to close his eyes for a moment and endeavor to

fancy himself in the position of William Shakspeare about to write a

piece,--the play abovenamed. This may be attempted without presumption.

We wish to recall and make real the fact that our idol was a man,

subject to the usual circumstances of men living in his time, and to

those which affect all men at all times,--that he had the same round of

day and night to pass through, the same common household accidents which

render "no man a hero to his valet." The world was as real to him as it

is to us. The dreamy past, of two hundred and fifty years since, was to

him the present of one of the most stirring periods in history, when

wonders were born quite as frequently as they are now.

And having persuaded the reader to place himself in Shakspeare's

position, we will make one more very slight request, which is, that he

will occupy another chair in the same chamber and fancy that he sees the

immortal dramatist begin a work,--still keeping himself so far in his

position that he can observe the workings of his mind as he writes.

Shakspeare has fixed upon a name for his piece, and he writes it,--he

that the players told Ben Jonson "never blotted a line." It is the

tragedy,--

TIMON OF ATHENS.

He will have it in five acts, as the best form; and he has fixed upon

his _dramatis personae_, at least the principal of them, for he names

them on the margin as he writes. He uses twelve in the first scene, some

of whom he has no occasion for but to bring forward the character of his

hero; but they are all individualized while he employs them. The scene

he has fixed upon; this is present to his mind's eye; and as he cannot

afterwards alter it without making his characters talk incongruously and

being compelled to rewrite the whole, he writes it down thus:--

ACT I.

SCENE I.--_A Hall in Timon's House._

Now he has reflected that his first object is to interest his audience

in the action and passion of the piece,--at the very outset, if

possible, to catch their fancies and draw them into the mimic life of

the play,--to beguile and attract them without their knowing it. He has

reflected upon this, we say,--for see how artfully he opens the scene,

and how soon the empty stage is peopled with life! He chooses to begin

by having two persons enter from opposite wings, whose qualities are

known at once to the reader of the play, but not to an audience. The

stage-direction informs us:--

[_Enter Poet, Painter, Jeweller, Merchant, and others, at several

doors._

We shall see how at the same time they introduce and unfold their own

characters and awaken an interest in the main action. In writing, we

are obliged to name them. They do not all enter quite at once. At first

comes

_Poet._ Good day, Sir.

_Painter._ I am glad to see you well.

_Poet._ I have not seen you long; how goes the world?

_Painter._ It wears, Sir, as it grows.

This shows them to be acquaintances.--While the next reply is made, in

which the Poet begins to talk in character even before the audience know

him, two others enter from the same side, as having just met, and others

in the background.

_Poet._ Ay, that's well known:--

But what particular rarity? what strange,

That manifold record not matches? See,

And we fancy him waving his hand in an enthusiastic manner,--

Magic of bounty! all these spirits thy power

Hath conjured to attend.

Which manner is only a high-flowing habit, for he adds in the same

breath, dropping his figure suddenly,--

I know the merchant.

_Painter._ I know them both; t'other's a jeweller.

It is certainly natural that painters should know jewellers,--and,

perhaps, that poets should be able to recognize merchants, though the

converse might not hold. We now know who the next speakers are, and soon

distinguish them.

_Merchant._ Oh, 'tis a worthy lord!

_Jeweller._ Nay, that's most fixed.

_Merchant._ A most incomparable man; breathed as it were

To an untirable and continuate goodness:

He passes.

_Jeweller._ I have a jewel here.

The Jeweller being known, the Merchant is; and, it will be noticed that

the first speaks in a cautious manner.

_Merchant._ Oh, pray, let's see it! For the lord Timon, Sir?

_Jeweller._ If he will touch the estimate; but, for that----

We begin to suspect who is the "magic of bounty" and the "incomparable

man," and also to have an idea that all these people have come to his

house to see him.--While the Merchant examines the jewel, the first who

spoke, the high-flown individual, is pacing and talking to himself near

the one he met:--

_Poet. When we for recompense have praised the vile,

It stains the glory in that happy verse

Which aptly sings the good._

Perhaps he is thinking of himself. The Merchant and Jeweller do not hear

him;--they stand in twos at opposite sides of the stage.

_Merchant_. 'Tis a good form.

[_Looking at the jewel._

He observes only that the stone is well cut; but the Jeweller adds,--

_Jeweller_. And rich: here is a water, look you.

While they are interested in this and move backward, the two others come

nearer the front.

_Painter_. You are rapt, Sir, in some work, some dedication

To the great lord.

This is said, of course, with reference to the other's recent soliloquy.

And now we are going to know them.

_Poet_. A thing slipped idly from me.

Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes

From whence 'tis nourished. The fire i' the flint

Shows not till it be struck; our gentle flame

Provokes itself, and like the current files

Each bound it chafes.--What have you there?

We perceive that he is a poet, and a rather rhetorical than sincere one.

He has the art, but, as we shall see, not the heart.

_Painter_. A picture, Sir.--And when comes your book forth?

_Poet_. Upon the heels of my presentment, Sir--

Let's see your piece.

_Painter_. 'Tis a good piece.

We know that the Poet has come to make his presentment. The Painter,

the more modest of the two, wishes his work to be admired, but is

apprehensive, and would forestall the Poet's judgment. He means, it is a

"tolerable" piece.

_Poet_. So 'tis: this comes off well and excellent.

_Painter_. Indifferent.

_Poet_. Admirable. How this grace

Speaks his own standing! What a mental power

This eye shoots forth! How big imagination

Moves in this lip! To the dumbness of the gesture

One might interpret.

He, at all events, means to flatter the Painter,--or he is so habituated

to ecstasies that he cannot speak without going into one. But with what

Shakspearean nicety of discrimination! The "grace that speaks his own

standing," the "power of the eye," the "imagination of the lip," are all

true; and so is the natural impulse, in one of so fertile a brain as a

poet from whom verse "oozes" to "interpret to the dumb gesture,"--to

invent an appropriate speech for the figure (Timon, of course) to be

uttering. And all this is but to preoccupy our minds with a conception

of the lord Timon!

_Painter_. It is a pretty mocking of the life.

Here's a touch; is't good?

_Poet_. I'll say of it

It tutors Nature: artificial strife

Lives in these touches livelier than life.

He has thought of too fine a phrase; but it is in character with all his

fancies.

[_Enter certain Senators, and pass over._

_Painter_. How this lord's followed!

_Poet_. The senators of Athens: happy men!

This informs us who they are that pass over. The Poet also keeps up the

Ercles vein; while the Painter's eye is caught.

_Painter_. Look, more!

_Poet_. You see this confluence, this great flood of visitors.

I have, in this rough work, shaped out a man

Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug

With amplest entertainment: my free drift

Halts not particularly, but moves itself

In a wide sea of wax: no levelled malice

Infects one comma in the course I hold:

But flies an eagle flight, bold, and forth on,

Leaving no tract behind.

This flight of rhetoric is intended to produce a sort of musical effect,

in preparing us by its lofty sound for readily apprehending the lord

Timon with "amplest entertainment." The same is true of all that

follows. The Poet and Painter do but sound a lordly note of preparation,

and move the curtain that is to be lifted before a scene of profusion.

Call it by what name we please, it surely was not accident or

unconscious inspiration,--a rapture or frenzy,--which led Shakspeare to

open this play in this manner. If we remember the old use of choruses,

which was to lift up and excite the fancy, we may well believe that he

intended this flourishing Poet to act as a chorus,--to be a "mighty

whiffler," going before, elevating "the flat unraised spirits" of his

auditory, and working on their "imaginary forces." He is a rhetorical

character, designed to rouse the attention of the house by the pomp

of his language, and to set their fancies in motion by his broad

conceptions. How well he does it! No wonder the Painter is a little

confused as he listens to him.

_Painter_. How shall I understand you?

_Poet_. I'll unbolt to you.

You see how all conditions, how all minds,

(As well of glib and slippery creatures, as

Of grave and austere quality,) tender down

Their services to Lord Timon; his large fortune,

Upon his good and gracious nature hanging,

Subdues and properties to his love and tendance

All sorts of hearts; yea, from the glass-faced flatterer

To Apemantus, that few things loves better

Than to abhor himself; even he drops down

The knee before him, and returns in peace,

Most rich in Timon's nod.

There was almost a necessity that the spectator should be made

acquainted with the character of Timon before his appearance; for his

profuseness could be illustrated, after being known, better than it

could make itself known in dialogue and action in which he should bear a

part. And of the hundreds of English plays opening with an explanation

or narrative of foregone matters, there is none where the formality is

concealed by a more ingenious artifice than is used in this scene. The

spectator is fore-possessed with Timon's character, and (in the outline

the Poet is proceeding to give) with a suspicion that he is going to see

him ruined in the course of the piece; and this is accomplished in

the description of a panegyric, incidentally, briefly, picturesquely,

artfully, with an art that tutors Nature, and which so well conceals

itself that it can scarcely be perceived except in this our microscopic

analysis. Here also we have Apemantus introduced beforehand. And with

all this, the Painter and Poet speak minutely and broadly in character;

the one sees scenes, the other plans an action (which is just what his

own creator had done) and talks in poetic language. It is no more

than the text warrants to remark that the next observation, primarily

intended to break the poet's speech, was also intended to be the natural

thought and words of a

_Painter_. I saw them speak together.

_Poet_. Sir, I have upon a high and pleasant hill

Feigned Fortune to be throned: the base of

the mount

Is ranked with all deserts, all kinds of natures

That labor on the bosom of this sphere

To propagate their states; amongst them all,

Whose eyes are on this sovereign lady fixed,

One do I personate of Lord Timon's frame,

Whom Fortune with her ivory hand wafts to her;

Whose present grace to present slaves and servants

Translates his rivals.

_Painter_. 'Tis conceived to scope.

This throne, this Fortune, and this hill, methinks,

With one man beckoned from the rest below,

Bowing his head against the steepy mount

To climb his happiness, would be well expressed

In our condition.

_Poet_. Nay, Sir, but hear me on.

The artifice is to secure the attention of the spectator. The

interruptions give naturalness and force to the narrative; and the

questions and entreaties, though addressed to each other by the

personages on the stage, have their effect in the front. The same

artifice is employed in the most obvious manner where Prospero (Tempest,

Act i. Sc. 2) narrates his and her previous history to Miranda. The Poet

continues:--

All those which were his fellows but of late

(Some better than his value) on the moment

Follow his strides, his lobbies fill with tendance,

Rain sacrificial whisperings in his ear,

Make sacred even his stirrup, and through him

Drink the free air.

_Painter_. Ay, marry, what of these?

The Poet has half deserted his figure, and is losing himself in a new

description, from which the Painter impatiently recalls him. The text

is so artificially natural that it will bear the nicest natural

construction.

_Poet_. When Fortune, in her shift and

change of mood,

Spurns down her late beloved, all his dependants,

Which labored after him to the mountain's

top,

Even on their knees and hands, let him slip

down,

Not one accompanying his declining foot.

_Painter_. 'Tis common:

A thousand moral paintings I can show

That shall demonstrate these quick blows of

Fortune

More pregnantly than words. Yet you do

well

To show Lord Timon that mean eyes have

seen

The foot above the head.

[_Trumpets sound. Enter Timon, attended; the

servant of Ventidius talking with him_.

Thus far (and it is of no consequence if we have once or twice forgotten

it while pursuing our analysis) we have fancied ourselves present,

seeing Shakspeare write this, and looking into his mind. But although

divining his intentions, we have not made him intend any more than his

words show that he did intend. Let us presently fancy, that, before

introducing his principal character, he here turns back to see if he has

brought in everything that is necessary. It would have been easier to

plan this scene after the rest of the play had been done,--and, as

already remarked, it may have been so written; but when the whole

coheres, the artistic purpose is more or less evident in every part; and

the order in which each was put upon paper is of as little consequence

as the place or time or date or the state of the weather. Wordsworth has

been particular enough to let it be known, where he composed the last

verse of a poem first. With some artists the writing is a mere copying

from memory of what is completely elaborated in the whole or in long

passages: Milton wrote thus, through a habit made necessary by his

blindness; and so Mozart, whose incessant labors trained his genius in

the paths of musical learning, or brought learning to be its slave, till

his first conceptions were often beyond the reach of elaboration, and

remained so clear in his own mind that he could venture to perform

in public concertos to which he had written only the orchestral or

accessory parts. Other artists work _seriatim_; some can work only when

the pen is in their hands; and the blotted page speaks eloquently

enough of the artistic processes of mind to which their most passionate

passages are subjected before they come to the reader's eye. Think of

the fac-simile of Byron's handwriting in "Childe Harold"! It shows a

soul rapt almost beyond the power of writing. But the blots and erasures

were not made by a "fine frenzy"; _they_ speak no less eloquently for an

artistic taste and skill excited and alert, and able to guide the frenzy

and give it a contagious power through the forms of verse,--this

taste and this skill and control being the very elements by which his

expressions become an echo of the poet's soul,--pleasing, or, in the

uncultivated, helping to form, a like taste in the hearer, and exciting

a like imagined condition of feeling and poetic vision.

Yet if it were made a question, to be decided from internal evidence,

whether the scene here analyzed was written before or after the rest of

the piece, a strong argument for its being written before might be found

in the peculiar impression it leaves upon the fancy. Let us suppose we

follow the author while he runs it over, which he does quite rapidly,

since there are no blotted lines, but only here and there a comma to

be inserted. He designed to open his tragedy. He finds he has set a

scene,--in his mind's eye the entrance-hall to an Athenian house, which

he thinks he has presently intimated plainly enough to be Timon's house.

Here he has brought forward four actors and made them speak as just

meeting; they come by twos from different ways, and the first two

immediately make it known that the other two are a merchant and

jeweller, and almost immediately that they themselves are, one a

painter, the other a poet. They have all brought gifts or goods for

the lord Timon. The Athenian Senators pass over, and, as becomes

their dignity, are at once received in an inner hall,--the first four

remaining on the stage. All is so far clear. He has also, by the

dialogue of the Painter and Poet, made in itself taking to the attention

through the picture and the flighty recitation, suggested and interested

us incidentally in the character of Timon, and conveyed a vague

misgiving of misfortune to come to him. And there is withal a swelling

pomp, three parts rhetorical and one part genuinely poetical, in the

Poet's style, which gives a tone, and prepares the fancy to enter

readily into the spirit of the tragedy. This effect the author wished to

produce; he felt that the piece required it; he was so preoccupied with

the Timon he conceived that he sets to work with a Timon-rich hue of

fancy and feeling; to this note he pitches himself, and begins his

measured march "bold and forth on." What he has assumed to feel he

wishes spectators to feel; and he leaves his style to be colored by his

feeling, because he knows that such is the way to make them feel it. And

we do feel it, and know also that we are made thus to feel through an

art which we can perceive and admire. On the whole, this introduction

opens upon the tragedy with just such a display of high-sounding

phrases, such a fine appropriateness, such a vague presentiment, and

such a rapid, yet artful, rising from indifference to interest, that it

seems easiest to suppose the author to be writing while his conceptions

of what is to follow are freshest and as yet unwrought out. We cannot

ask him; even while we have overlooked him in his labor, his form has

faded, and we are again in this dull every-day Present.

We have seen him take up his pen and begin a tragedy; or, to drop the

fancy, we have made it real to ourselves in what manner Shakspeare's

writing evidences that he wrought as an _artist_,--one who has an idea

in his mind of an effect he desires to produce, and elaborates it with

careful skill, not in a trance or ecstasy, but "in clear dream and

solemn vision." The subtile tone of feeling to be struck is as much a

matter of art as the action or argument to be opened. And it is no less

proper to judge (as we have done) of the presence of art by its result

in this respect than in respect to what relates to the form or story.

An introduction is before us, a dramatic scene, in which characters are

brought forward and a dialogue is given, apparently concerning a picture

and poem that have been made, but having a more important reference to a

character yet to be unfolded. Along with this there is also expressed,

in the person of a professed panegyrist, a certain lofty and free

opinion of his own work, in a confident declamatory style of

description,--

"Sir, I have upon a high and pleasant hill

Feigned Fortune to be throned," etc.,--

that is levelled with exquisite tact just on the verge of bombast. This

is not done to make the hearer care for the thing described, which is

never heard of after, but to give a hint of Timon and what is to befall

him, and to create a _melodic effect_ upon the hearer's sense which

shall put him in a state to yield readily to the illusion of the piece.

It is not possible to conceive Shakspeare reviewing his lines and

thinking to himself, "That is well done; my genius has not deserted me;

I could not have written anything more to my liking, if I had set about

it deliberately!" But it is easy to see him running it over with a

sensation of "This will serve; my poet will open their eyes and ears;

and now for the hall and banquet scene."

The sense of fitness and relation operates among thoughts and feelings

as well as among fancies, and its results cannot be mistaken for

accident. Ariel and his harpies could not interrupt a scene with a more

discordant action than the phase of feeling or the poetic atmosphere

pervading it would be interrupted by, if a cloud of distraction came

across the poet and the faculties of his mind rioted out of his control.

For he not only feels, but sees his feeling; he takes it up as an object

and holds it before him,--a feeling to be conveyed. Just as a sculptor

holds in his mind a form and models it out of clay, undiverted by other

forms thronging into his vision, or by the accidental forms that the

plastic substance takes upon itself in the course of his work, till it

stands forth the image of his ideal,--so the poet works out his states

of poetic feeling. He grasps and holds and sustains them amidst the

multiplicity of upflying thoughts and thick-coming fancies;--no matter

how subtile or how aspiring they may be, he fastens them in the chamber

of his imagination until his distant purpose is accomplished, and he has

found a language for them which the world will understand. And this is

where Shakspeare's art is so noble,--in that he conquers the entire

universe of thought, sentiment, feeling, and passion,--goes into the

whole and takes up and portrays characters the most extreme and diverse,

passions the most wild, sentiment the most refined, feelings the most

delicate,--and does this by an art in which he must make his characters

appear real and we looking on, though he cannot use, to develop his

dramas, a hundred-thousandth part of the words that would be used in

real life,--that is, in Nature. He also always approaches us upon the

level of our common sense and experience, and never requires us to yield

it,--never breaks in or jars upon our judgment, or shocks or alarms any

natural sensibility. After enlarging our souls with the stir of whatever

can move us through poetry, he leaves us where he found us, refreshed by

new thoughts, new scenes, and new knowledge of ourselves and our kind,

more capable, and, if we choose to be so, more wise. His art is so great

that we almost forget its presence,--almost forget that the Macbeth and

Othello we have seen and heard were Shakspeare's, and that he MADE them;

we can scarce conceive how he could feign as if felt, and retain and

reproduce such a play of emotions and passions from the position of

spectator, his own soul remaining, with its sovereign reason, and all

its powers natural and acquired, far, far above all its creations,--a

spirit alone before its Maker.

The opening of "Timon" was selected on account of its artful preparation

for and relation to what it precedes. It shows the forethought and skill

of its author in the construction or opening out of his play, both

in respect to the story and the feeling; yet even here, in this

half-declamatory prologue, the poet's dramatic art is also evident. His

poet and painter are living men, and not mere utterers of so many words.

Was this from intuition?--or because he found it easy to make them

what he conceived them, and felt that it would add to the life of his

introduction, though he should scarcely bring them forward afterwards?

No doubt the mind's eye helps the mind in character-drawing, and that

appropriate language springs almost uncalled to the pen, especially of

a practised writer for the stage. But is his scene a dream which he can

direct, and which, though he knows it all proceeds from himself, yet

seems to keep just in advance of him,--his fancy shooting ahead and

astonishing him with novelties in dialogue and situation? There are

those who have experienced this condition in sickness, and who have

amused themselves with listening to a fancied conversation having

reference to subjects of their own choosing, yet in which they did not

seem to themselves to control the cause of the dialogue or originate the

particular things said, until they could actually hear the voices rising

from an indistinct whisper to plain speech. I knew an instance, (which

at least is not related in the very curious work of M. Boismont on the

"Natural History of Hallucinations,") where an invalid, recovering

from illness, could hear for half a night the debates and doings of an

imaginary association in the next chamber, the absurdity of which often

made him laugh so that he could with difficulty keep quiet enough to

listen; while occasionally extracts would be read from books written in

a style whose precision and eloquence excited his admiration, or whose

affecting solemnity moved him deeply, though he knew perfectly well that

the whole came from his own brain. This he could either cause or permit,

and could in an instant change the subject of the conversation or

command it into silence. He would sometimes throw his pillow against the

wall and say, "Be still! I'll hear no more till daybreak!" And this has

taken place when he was in calm health in mind, and, except weakness, in

body, and broad awake. What was singular, the voices would cease at his

bidding, and in one instance (which might have startled him, had he not

known how common it is for persons to wake at an hour they fix) they

awoke him at the time appointed. Their language would bear the ordinary

tests of sanity, and was like that we see in daily newspapers; but the

various knowledge brought in, the complicated scenes gone through, made

the whole resemble intricate concerted music, from the imperfect study

of which possibly came the power to fabricate them. That they were owing

to some physical cause was shown by their keeping a sort of cadence with

the pulse, and in the fact, that, though not disagreeable, they were

wearisome; especially as they always appeared to be got up with some

remote reference to the private faults and virtues of that tedious

individual who is always forcing his acquaintance upon us, avoid him

however we may,--one's self.

Shall we suppose that Shakspeare wrote in such an _opium dream_ as this?

Did his "wood-notes wild" come from him as tunes do from a barrel-organ,

where it is necessary only to set the machine and disturb the bowels of

it by turning? Was it sufficient for him to fore-plan the plots of his

plays, the story, acts, scenes, persons,--the general rough idea, or

argument,--and then to sit at his table, and, by some process analogous

to mesmeric manipulations, put himself into a condition in which his

_genius_ should elaborate and shape what he, by the aid of his poetic

taste and all other faculties, had been able to rough-hew? How far did

his consciousness desert him?--only partially, as in the instance just

given, so that he marvelled, while he wrote, at his own fertility,

power, and truth?--or wholly, as in a Pythonic inspiration, so that the

frenzy filled him to his fingers' ends, and he wrote, he knew not what,

until he re-read it in his ordinary state? In fine, was he the mere

conduit of a divinity within him?--or was he in his very self, in the

nobility and true greatness of his being and the infinitude of his

faculties, a living fountain,--he, he alone, in as plain and common a

sense as we mean when we say "a man," the divinity?

These are "questions not to be asked," or, at least, argued, any

more than the question, Whether the blessed sun of heaven shall eat

blackberries. The quality of Shakspeare's writing renders it impossible

to suppose that it was produced in any other state than one where all

the perceptions that make good sense, and not only good, but most

excellent sense, were present and alert. Howsoever "apprehensive, quick,

forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes" his brain

may be, it never gambols from the superintendence of his reason and

understanding. In truth, it is the perfectness of the control, the

conscious assurance of soundness in himself, which leaves him so free

that the control is to so many eyes invisible; they perceive nothing but

luxuriant ease in the midst of intricate complexities of passion and

character, and they think he could have followed the path he took only

by a sort of necessity which they call Nature,--that he wrote himself

quite into his works, bodily, just as he was, every thought that came

and went, and every expression that flew to his pen,--leaving out only a

few for shortness. They are so thoroughly beguiled by the very quality

they do not see, that they are like spectators who mistake the scene on

the stage for reality; they cannot fancy that a man put it all there,

and that it is by the artistic and poetic power of him, this man, who is

now standing behind or at the wing, and counting the money in the house,

that they are beguiled of their tears or thrown into such ecstasies of

mirth.

It exalts, and not degrades, the memory of Shakspeare to think of him in

this manner, as a man: for he _was_ a man; he had eyes, hands, organs,

dimensions, and so forth, the same that a Jew hath; a good many people

saw him alive. Had we lived in London between 1580 and 1610, we might

have seen him,--a man who came from his Maker's hand endowed with the

noblest powers and the most godlike reason,--who had the greatest

natural ability to become a great dramatic poet,--the native genius and

the aptness to acquire the art, and who did acquire the highest art

of his age, and went on far beyond it, exhibiting new ingenuities and

resources, and a breadth that has never been equalled, and which admits

at once and harmonizes the deepest tragedy and the broadest farce, and,

in language, the loftiest flights of measured rhetoric along with

the closest imitation of common talk;--and all this he _so used_, so

elaborated through it the poetic creations of his mind, in such glorious

union and perfection of high purpose and art and reach of soul, that he

was the greatest and most universal poet the world has known.

Rowe observes, in regard to Shakspeare,--"Art had so little and

Nature so large a share in what he did, that, for aught I know, the

performances of his youth, as they were the most vigorous, and had the

most fire and strength of imagination in them, were the best. I

would not be thought by this to mean that his fancy was so loose and

extravagant as to be independent on the rule and government of judgment;

but that what he thought was commonly so great, so justly and rightly

conceived in itself, that it wanted little or no correction, and was

immediately approved by an impartial judgment at the first sight."

The last sentence is true; but Mr. Rowe really means to say that he was

as great an artist as natural poet,--that his _creative_ and _executive_

powers wrought in almost perfect spontaneity and harmony,--the work

of the _making_ part of him being generally at once approved by the

_shaping_ part, and each and both being admirable. When a man creates

an Othello, feigns his story and his passion, assumes to be him and to

observe him at the same time, figures him so exactly that all the

world may realize him also, brings in Desdemona and Iago and the rest,

everything kept in propriety and with the minutest perfection of detail,

which does most, Art or Nature? How shall we distinguish? Where does one

leave off and the other begin? The truth of the passion, that is Nature;

but can we not perceive that the Art goes along with it? Do we not at

once acknowledge the Art when we say, "How natural!"? In such as Iago,

for example, it would seem as if the least reflective spectator must

derive a little critical satisfaction,--if he can only bring himself to

fancy that Iago is not alive, but that the great master painted him and

wrote every word he utters. As we read his words, can we not see how

boldly he is drawn, and how highly colored? There he is, right in the

foreground, prominent, strong, a most miraculous villain. Did Nature put

the words into his mouth, or Art? The question involves a consideration

of how far natural it is for men to make Iagos, and to make them

speaking naturally. Though it be natural, it is not common; and if its

naturalness is what must be most insisted on, it may be conceded, and we

may say, with Polixenes, "The Art itself is Nature."

There is a strong rapture that always attends the full exercise of our

highest faculties. The whole spirit is raised and quickened into a

secondary life. This was felt by Shakspeare,--felt, and at the same

time controlled and guided with the same strictness over all thoughts,

feelings, passions, fancies, that thronged his mind at such moments, as

he had over those in his dull every-day hours. When we are writing, how

difficult it is to avoid pleasing our own vanity! how hard not to step

aside a little, now and then, for a brilliant thought or a poetic fancy,

or any of the thousand illusions that throng upon us! Even for the sake

of a well-sounding phrase we are often tempted to turn. The language of

passion,--how hard it is to feign, to write it! how harder than all, to

keep the tone, serious, or whatever it may be, with which we begin, so

that no expressions occur to break it,--lapses of thought or speech,

that are like sudden stumbles or uneasy jolts! And if this is so in

ordinarily elevated prose, how much more must it be so in high dramatic

poetry, where the poet rides on the whirlwind and tempest of passion and

"directs the storm." There must go to the conception and execution of

this sort of work a resolved mind, strong fancies, thoughts high and

deep, in fine, a multitude of powers, all under the grand creative,

sustaining imagination. When completed, the work stands forth to all

time, a great work of Art, and bulwark of all that is high against all

that is low. It is a great poetic work, the work of a maker who gives

form and direction to the minds of men.

In a certain sense, it is not an extravagance to say that all who are

now living and speak English have views of life and Nature modified by

the influence of Shakspeare. We see the world through his eyes; he has

taught us how to think; the freedom of soul, the strong sense, the

grasp of thought,--above all, the honor, the faith, the love,--who has

imparted such noble ideas of these things as he? Not any one, though

there were giants in those days as well as he. Hence he has grown to

seem even more "natural" than he did in his own day, his judges being

mediately or immediately educated by him. The works are admired, but the

nobleness of soul in him that made them is not perceived, and his genius

and power are degraded into a blind faculty by unthinking minds, and by

vain ones that flatter themselves they have discovered the royal road to

poetry. What they seem to require for poetry is the flash of thought

or fancy that starts the sympathetic thrill,--the little jots,--the

striking, often-quoted lines or "gems." The rest is merely introduced to

build up a piece; these are the "pure Nature," and all that.

And it is not to be denied that they are pure Nature; for they are true

to Nature, and are spontaneous, beautiful, exquisite, deserving to be

called gems, and even diamonds.

"The sweet South,

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odor":--

thousands of such lines we keep in our memories' choicest cells; yet

they are but the exterior adornments of a great work of Art. They are

the delightful finishes and lesser beauties which the great work admits,

and, indeed, is never without, but which are not to be classed among its

essentials. Their beauty and fitness are not those of the grand columns

of the temple; they are the sculptures upon the frieze, the caryatides,

or the graceful interlacings of vines. They catch the fancy of those

whose field of vision is not large enough to take in the whole, and

upon whom all excellences that are not little are lost. Beautiful in

themselves, their own beauty is frequently all that is seen; the beauty

of their propriety, the grace and charm with which they come in, are

overlooked. Many people will have it that nothing is poetry or poetic

but these gems of poetry; and because the apparent spontaneousness of

them is what makes them so striking, these admirers are unwilling to see

that it is through an art that they are brought in so beautifully in

their spontaneousness and give such finish to larger effects. And

we have no end of writers who are forever trying to imitate them,

forgetting that the essence of their beauty is in their coming unsought

and in their proper places as unexpected felicities and fine touches

growing out of and contributing to some higher purpose. They are natural

in this way:--when the poet is engaged upon his work, these delicate

fancies and choice expressions throng into his mind; he instantly, by

his Art-sense, accepts some, and rejects more; and those he accepts are

such as he wants for his ulterior purpose, which will not admit the

appearance of art; hence he will have none that do not grow out of his

feeling and harmonize with it. All this passes in an instant, and the

apt simile or the happy epithet is created,--an immortal beauty, both in

itself and as it occurs in its place. It was put there by an art;

the poet knew that the way to make expressions come is to assume the

feeling; he knew that he

"But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

Could force his soul so to his own conceit"

that his whole function would suit with expressions to his conceit.

He then withdrew his judgment from within, and cheated his fancy into

supposing he had given her the rein, letting the feigned state be as

real to him as it could, and writing from that primarily,--humoring

Nature by his art in leaving her to do what she alone could do. So that

the very gems we admire as natural are the offspring of Nature creating

under Art. To make streaked gillyflowers, we marry a gentler scion to

the wildest stock, and Nature does the rest. So in poetry, we cannot

get at the finest excellences by seeking for them directly, but we put

Nature in the way to suggest them. We do not strive to think whether

"the mobled queen" is good; we do not let our vanity keep such a

strict look-out upon Nature; she will not desert us, if we follow her

modes,--which we must do with all the art and fine tact we can acquire

and command, not only in order to gain the minute beauties, but to

compass the great whole.

The analogies that might be drawn from music would much assist in making

all this clear, if they could be used with a chance of being understood.

But, unfortunately, the ability to comprehend a great work, as a whole,

is even rarer in music than in poetry. The little taking bits of melody

are all that is thought of or perceived; the great _epos_ or rhapsody,

the form and meaning of the entire composition,--which is a work of Art

in no other sense than a poem is one, except that it uses, instead of

speech, musical forms, of greater variety and symmetry,--are not at all

understood. Nor is the subtile and irresistible coherence in successions

of clear sunny melody, in which Mozart so abounds, in any great degree

understood, even by some who call themselves artists. They think only

of the sudden flashes, the happinesses, and, if such a word may be used

once only, the smartnesses,--like children who care for nothing in their

cake but the frosting and the plums. But in continuing the study of the

art with such notions of its expression, the relish for it soon cloys,

the mind ceases to advance, the enthusiasm deadens, progress becomes

hopeless, and the little gained is soon lost; whereas, if the student is

familiarized with the most perfect forms of the art, and led on by them,

both by committing a few of them to memory, and by fully understanding

their structure, it will soon be evident that an intellectual study of

music, pursued with a true love of it, can, more than any other study,

strengthen the imaginative faculty.

The forms of poetry have only the rhythmic analogy, as forms, to those

of music; but in their foundation in the same Nature, and in their

manner of development, there is a closer resemblance. Both in music and

poetry, the older artists regarded with most strictness the carrying

through of the whole; they cared little for the taking tunes or the

striking passages; they looked with eyes single to their ultimate

purposes. Shakspeare came, and accomplished at once, for dramatic art,

what the fathers of modern music began for their art nearly a century

later. He made the strict form yield to and take new shape from natural

feeling. This feeling, whose expression is the musical element of

poetry, he brought up to its proper relation with all the other

qualities. Look at the terrific bombast which preceded him,--the mighty

efforts of mighty men to draw music or the power of sound into their

art; Hieronymo is like some portentous convulsion of Nature,--the

upheaval of a new geological era. The writers felt that there must be

style suited to passion, and that they must attain it,--but how? By

artificial pomp?--or by yielding with artful reserve to the natural

eloquence of passion?

Shakspeare has answered the question for all time; and he uses both,

each in its proper place. Nothing, even in music, ever showed an art

growing out of a nicer sensibility in sound than his variety and

appropriateness in style. For an art it is, and we cannot make a

definition of that word which shall include other forms of art and not

include it. If the passion and the feeling make the style, it is the

poet's art that leaves them free to do it; he superintends; he feigns

that which he leaves to make; he shares his art with "great creating

Nature." All is unreal; all comes out of him; and all that has to do

with the form and expression of his products is, of course, included

in the manifest when his ship of fancy gets its clearance at the

custom-house of his judgment. The style he assumes cannot but be present

to his consciousness in the progress of a long drama. He must perceive,

as he writes, if he has the common penetration of humanity, that the

flow and cadence of his "Henry the Eighth" are not like those of his

"Midsummer Night's Dream"; and he must preserve his tone, with, at

times, direct art, not leaving everything to the feeling. That he does

so is as evident as if he had chosen a form of verse more remote

from the language of Nature and obliged himself to conform to its

requirements. The terrible cursing of Margaret in "Richard III.," for

example, is not the remorseless, hollow monotony of it, while it so

heightens the passion, as evident to Shakspeare as to us; or had he no

ear for verse, and just let his words sound on as they would, looking

only at the meaning, and counting his iambics on his fingers,--not too

carefully either? If the last supposition is to be insisted on, we must

confine our notions of his perceptions and powers within very ordinary

bounds, and make dramatic art as unpoetic as the art of brickmaking.

The beauty of Shakspeare's art is in its comprehensiveness. It takes in

every quality of excellence. It looks at the great whole, and admits

the little charms and graces. It includes constructiveness in story,

character-drawing, picturesqueness, musicalness, naturalness,--in fine,

whatever art may combine with poetry or the soul of poetry admit in art.

To the young and unobservant, and all who are unable to consider the

poet's writing, as we have in this article endeavoured to study a single

passage of it, _from his position_, the art is not apparent; the mimic

scene is reality, or some supernatural inspiration or schoolboy-like

enthusiasm has produced the work. But there are others, created with

different faculties, who begin to perceive the art almost as soon as

they feel its power, and who love to study it and to live in the spirit

of poetry that breathes through it; these come gradually to think of the

man, as well as of his works,--to feel more and more the influence upon

them of his greatness and beauty of soul, and, as years pass by, to find

consolation and repose in the loftiness of his wisdom.

* * * * *

MIEN-YAUN.

I.

Young Mien-yaun had for two years been the shining centre of the

aristocratic circles of Pekin. Around him revolved the social system.

He was the vitalizing element in fashionable life,--the radiant sun,

diffusing conventional warmth of tone and brilliancy of polish. He

created modes. He regulated reputations.

His smile or his frown determined the worldly fate of thousands. His

ready assurance gave him preeminence with one sex, and his beauty made

him the admiration of the other. When he talked, Mandarins listened;

when he walked, maidens' eyes glistened. He was, in short, the

rage,--and he knew it, and meant to remain so. He was a wonderful

student, and understood politics like a second Confucius. With the

literature of all ages, from the Shee-king, written four thousand

years ago, down to the latest achievements of the modern poets, he was

intimately acquainted. His accomplishments were rich and varied, and his

Tartar descent endowed him with a spirit and animation that enabled him

to exhibit them to every advantage. He sang like a veritable Orpheus,

and sensitive women had been known to faint under the excitement of his

Moo-lee-wha, or national song. He even danced,--a most rare faculty in

Pekin, as in all China,--but this was frowned upon, as immoral, by his

family. Comely indeed he was, especially on state occasions, when he

appeared in all the radiance of rosy health, overflowing spirits, and

the richest crapes and satins,--decorated with the high order of the

peacock's feather, the red button, and numberless glittering ornaments

of ivory and lapis-lazuli. Beloved or envied by all the men, and with

all the women dying for him, he was fully able to appreciate the

comforts of existence. Considering the homage universally accorded him,

he was as little of a dandy as could reasonably be expected.

His family connections were very exalted. All his relatives belonged to

the Tse,--the learned and governing class. His father had been one of

the Tootche-yuen, a censor of the highest board, and was still a member

of the council of ministerial Mandarins. His uncle was a personal noble,

a prince, higher in rank than the best of the Mandarins, and directed

the deliberations of the Ping-pu, the Council of War. Thus his station

gave him access to all the best society. His career was a path of roses.

He never knew a sorrow. All were friendly to him, even the jealous,

because it was the fashion. The doors of the mighty opened at his

approach, and the smiles of the noble greeted him. He lived in an

atmosphere of adulation, and yet resisted the more intoxicating

influences of his dangerous elevation. Young as he was, he had

penetrated the social surface, and, marking its many uncertainties,

had laid out for himself a system of diplomacy which he believed best

calculated to fortify him in his agreeable position of master of modes

and dictator of fashionable public opinion.

The course he adopted was thoroughly effective. His sway was never

disputed for a moment. He knew his personal charms, and determined to

enhance their value by displaying them sparingly. Accordingly, he began

by refusing forty-nine out of every fifty public invitations,--his

former habit having been to refuse but one in five. He appeared on the

promenade only twice in three weeks, but on these occasions he always

artfully contrived to throw the community into the wildest excitement.

One day, he appeared arrayed from head to foot in yellow Nankin, a

color always considered a special abomination in Pekin, but which was

nevertheless instantly adopted by all the gallants about town,--a

proceeding which caused so much scandal that an imperial edict had to

be issued, forbidding the practice in future. Another time, he came out

with an unparalleled twist to his tail, the construction of which had

occupied his mind for some days, and which occasioned the death by

suicide of three over-ambitious youths who found themselves unable to

survive the mortification of an unsuccessful attempt to imitate it.

Again, to the infinite horror of the Mandarins, he paraded himself one

afternoon with decacuminated finger-nails, and came very near producing

a riot by his unwillingness to permit them to grow again, besides

calling forth another imperial decree, threatening ignominious death to

all nobles throughout the empire who should encourage the practice.

All these eccentricities served only to add to the consequence of the

multipotent Mien-yaun. Then again, he was gifted with a bewitching

smile; but he steadily refrained from making any use of it oftener than

once a month, at which times the enthusiasm of his adherents knew no

bounds, and it might have been supposed that all Pekin had administered

unto itself a mild preparation of laughing-gas, so universal were the

grimaces. On very rare and distinguished occasions, Mien-yaun permitted

himself to be persuaded to sing; but as ladies sometimes swooned under

his melodious influence, the natural goodness of his heart prevented him

from frequent indulgence in the exercise of this accomplishment.

It may naturally be supposed that the popular and fascinating young

Chinese nobleman was the devoted object of much matrimonial speculation.

Managing mammas and aspiring daughters gave the whole of their minds to

him. To look forward to the possible hope of sharing through life his

fortunes and his fame was the continual employment of many a high-born

damsel. And they the more readily and unreservedly indulged these

fancies, as nothing in the laws of China could prevent Mien-yaun from

taking as many wives as he chose, provided he could support them all,

and supply all their natural wants. But our hero knew his value. He was

fully conscious that a member of the Tse, a son of an ex-censor of the

highest board, a nephew of a personal noble and the Secretary of War,

and, above all, the brightest ornament of aristocratic society, was by

no means the sort of person to throw himself lightly away upon any woman

or any set of women. He preferred to wait.

His family had high hopes of him. He was largely gifted with filial

piety, which is everything in China. Politics, religion, literature,

government, all rest upon the broad principle of filial piety. Being

very filially pious, of course Mien-yaun was eminent in all these varied

accomplishments. Consequently his family had a right to have high hopes

of him. The great statesman, Kei-ying,--who has very recently terminated

a life of devoted patriotism and heroic virtues by a sublime death on

the scaffold,--undertook his instruction in Chinese politics. One lesson

completed his education. "Lie, cheat, steal, and honor your parents,"

were the elementary principles which Kei-ying inculcated. The readiness

with which Mien-yaun mastered them inspired his tutor with a lively

confidence in the young man's future greatness. He was pronounced a

rising character. His popularity increased. His name was in everybody's

mouth. He shunned society more sedulously than ever, and assumed new and

loftier airs. He was seized with fits of ambition, each of which lasted

a day, and then gave place to some new aspiration. First, he would be a

poet; but, after a few hours' labor, he declared the exertion of hunting

up rhymes too great an exertion. Next, he would be a moral philosopher,

and commenced a work, to be completed in sixty volumes, on the Whole

Duty of Chinamen; but he never got beyond the elementary principles he

had imbibed from Kei-ying. Again, he would become a great painter; but,

having in an unguarded moment permitted the claims of perspective to be

recognized, he was discouraged from this attempt by a deputation of the

first artists of the empire, who waited upon him, and with great respect

laid before him the appalling effects that would inevitably follow any

public recognition of perspective in painting. Finally, he renounced

all ambition but that of ruling his fellow-creatures with a rod more

tyrannical than that of political authority, and more respected than the

sceptre of government itself.

II.

Satiated with success, Mien-yaun at length became weary of the ceaseless

round of flattering triumphs, and began to lament that no higher step on

the social staircase remained for him to achieve. Alas that discontent

should so soon follow the realization of our brightest hopes! What, in

this world, is enough? More than we have! Mien-yaun felt all the pangs

of anxious aspiration, without knowing how to alleviate them. He was

only conscious of a deep desolation, for which none of the elementary

principles he had learned from Kei-ying afforded the slightest

consolation. He now avoided publicity from inclination, rather than from

any systematic plan of action. He dressed mostly in blue, a sufficient

sign of a perturbed spirit. He discarded the peacock's feather, as

an idle vanity, and always came forth among the world arrayed in

ultramarine gowns and cerulean petticoats. His stockings, especially,

were of the deepest, darkest, and most beautiful blue. The world of

fashion saw, and was amazed; but in less than, a week all Pekin had the

blues. Annoyed at what a few months before he would have delighted in as

another convincing proof of his influential position, Mien-yaun fled

the city, and sought relief in a cruise up and down the Peiho, in his

private junk. As he neared the Gulf of Pe-tche-lee, the sea-breeze

brought calm to his troubled spirit and imparted renewed vigor to his

wearied mind. A degree of resolution, to which he had heretofore been

a stranger, possessed him. His courage returned. He would go back to

Pekin. He would renounce those vain pursuits in which he had passed his

unworthy life. Henceforth he would strive for nobler aims. Something

great and wonderful he certainly would accomplish,--the exact nature of

which, however, he did not pause to consider.

As he reëntered the city, he was obliged to pass through that quarter

which is inhabited by the Kung,--the working and manufacturing classes.

His attention was suddenly arrested by feminine cries of distress; and,

turning a corner, he came upon a domestic scene so common in China

that it would hardly have attracted his notice but for a peculiar

circumstance. A matron, well advanced in years, was violently beating

a young and beautiful girl with a bit of bamboo; and the peculiar

circumstance that enforced Mien-yaun's interest was, that, as the maiden

turned her fair face towards him, she smiled through her tears and

telegraphed him a fragrant kiss, by means of her fair fingers. Naturally

astounded, he paused, and gazed upon the pair. The younger female was

the loveliest maid he had ever looked upon. She had the smallest eyes in

the world, the most tempting, large, full, pouting lips, the blackest

and most abundant hair, exquisitely plaited, and feet no bigger than her

little finger. As these are the four characteristics of female beauty

dearest to a Chinaman's heart, it is no wonder that Mien-yaun thought

her a paragon. The old woman, on the contrary, was hideously ugly. Her

teeth were gone, and her eyes sought the comforting assistance of an

ill-fitting pair of crystal spectacles. She had no hair, and her feet

might have supported an elephant. As he rested his eyes wistfully upon

them, the young woman discharged a second rapturous salute. His heart

beat with singular turbulence, and he approached.

"What has the child done?" he asked.

Now the law of China is, that parents shall not be restrained from

beating and abusing their children as often and as soundly as is

convenient. The great principle of filial piety knows no reciprocity.

Should a child occasionally be killed, the payment of a small fine will

satisfy the accommodating spirit of the authorities. The ill-favored

mother was not, therefore, in any way bound to answer this somewhat

abrupt question; but, observing the appearance of high gentility, and

touched by the engaging manner of the interrogator, she answered, that

her appetite had of late been uncertain, and that she was endeavoring to

restore it by a little wholesome exercise.

So reasonable an explanation admitted of no reply; and Mien-yaun was

about to resume his way with a sigh, when the young lady insinuated a

third osculatory hint, more penetrating than either of the others,

and bestowed on him, besides, a most ravishing smile. He fluttered

internally, but succeeded in preserving his outward immobility. He

entered into conversation with the elderly female, observing that it was

a fine day, and that it promised to continue so, although destiny was

impenetrable, and clouds might overshadow the radiant face of Nature at

any unexpected moment. To these and other equally profound and original

remarks the old woman graciously assented, and finally invited the young

gentleman to partake of a cup of scau-tcheou. Now scau-tcheou, which is

the most ardent of Chinese spirits, was Mien-yaun's abomination; but he

concealed his disgust, and quietly observed that he should prefer a cup

of tea.

The old woman was delighted, and ran off to prepare the desired

refreshment, so that Mien-yaun was at length rewarded by the opportunity

of a few private words with the daughter.

"Tell me, Miss," said he,--"why did the sweetest of lips perform their

most delicate office when the brightest of eyes first turned upon me?"

The young lady, confused and blushing, answered, that the brilliancy of

the jewel which Mien-yaun wore in his hat had dazzled her vision, and

that she mistook him for an intimate friend of her youth,--that was all.

He knew this was a lie; but as lying was in exact accordance with the

elementary principles laid down by the learned Kei-ying, he was rather

pleased by it. Moreover, it was a very pretty lie, worthy of so pretty a

girl; and Mien-yaun, whose wits were fast leaving him, removed the jewel

from his hat, and begged the maiden to accept it. She, declaring that

she never could think of such a thing, deposited it in her bosom.

Evidently the twain were on the brink of love; a gentle push only was

needed to submerge them.

Mien-yaun speedily learned that his fair friend's name was Ching-ki-pin;

that she was the daughter of a wealthy manufacturer, named Tching-whang,

who owned extensive porcelain-factories at the North, and was besides a

considerable tobacco-planter; that her father was very kind to her,

but that the old woman, who was not her own mother, treated her very

cruelly; that her father married this ancient virago for her wealth, and

now repented the rash step, but found it impossible to retrace it, as

the law of China allows no divorces excepting when the wife has parents

living to receive and shelter her; and the obnoxious woman being nearly

a hundred years old herself, this was out of the question. When he

had learned so much, they were interrupted by the reappearance of the

Antique, who brought with her the cup of tea, most carefully prepared.

In deep abstraction, Mien-yaun seized it, and, instead of drinking the

boiling beverage, poured it upon the old woman's back, scalding her to

such a degree that her shrieks resounded through the neighborhood. Then

dropping the cup upon the ground, he put his heel into it, and, with a

burning glance of love at Ching-ki-pin, strode, melancholy, away.

III.

All that night, Mien-yaun's heart was troubled. The tranquillizing

finger of Sleep never touched his eyelids. At earliest dawn he arose,

and devoted some hours to the consideration of his costume. Never before

had he murmured at his wardrobe; now everything seemed unworthy of

the magnitude of the occasion. Finally, after many doubts and inward

struggles, and much bewilderment and desperation, the thing was done. He

issued forth in a blaze of splendor, preceded by two servants bearing

rare and costly presents. His raiment was a masterpiece of artistic

effect. He wore furs from Russia, and cotton from Bombay; his breast

sparkled with various orders of nobility; his slippers glistened with

gems; his hat was surmounted with the waving feather of the peacock.

Turning neither to the right nor to the left, he made his way to the

residence of Tching-whang. At the portal he paused, and sent in before

him his card,--a sheet of bright red paper,--with a list of the presents

he designed to offer the family whose acquaintance he desired to

cultivate.

As he had expected, his reception was most cordial. Though his person

was unknown, the magic of his name was not unfelt, even in the regions

of the Kung. A prince of the peacock's feather was no common visitor to

the home of a plebeian manufacturer; and when that prince was found

to be in addition the leader of the fashions and the idol of the

aristocracy, the marvel assumed a miraculous character. The guest was

ushered in with many low obeisances. How the too gay Ching-ki-pin

regretted those unlucky telegraphic kisses! What would he think of her?

She, too, had passed a most unquiet night, but had been able to relieve

her feelings to some extent at the sewing-circle, which had met at

her home, and at which she poured into the eager ears of her young

companions rapturous accounts of the beauty, elegance, dignity, and

tenderness of the enchanting stranger, and displayed before their

dazzled eyes the lustrous jewel he had presented to her. Having excited

a great deal of envy and jealousy, she was able to rest more in peace

than would otherwise have been possible. But she had never dreamed of

the real rank of her admirer. It came upon her like a lightning-flash,

and almost reduced her to a condition of temporary distraction. As for

the mother-in-law, she would infallibly have gone off into hysterics,

but for the pain in her back, which the barbers--who are also the

physicians in China--had not been able to allay. But the sight of a

peacock's feather under her roof was better than balm to her tortured

spine. Tching-whang lost his presence of mind altogether, and violated

the common decencies of life by receiving his visitor with his hat

off, and taking the proffered presents with one hand,--the other being

occupied in pulling his ear, to assure himself he was not dreaming.

Mien-yaun spoke. His voice fell like soft music on the ears of his

hosts, and went straight to the innermost core of Ching-ki-pin's heart.

He had come, he said, to give utterance to his deep grief at the mishap

of yesterday, the recollection of which had harrowed his soul. The

thought of that venerable blistered back had taken away his repose, and

seriously interfered with his appetite. At the same time he could not

forget his own great loss, occasioned by the unlucky spilling of the

precious cup. He was sure, that Madam, in the kindness of her heart,

would overlook his fault, and consent to bestow on him another cheering,

but not inebriating draught.

The Antique was overcome by so much condescension. She could not say

a word. Tching-whang, too, remained paralyzed. But the beauteous

Ching-ki-pin, who had recovered her composure, answered with the

sweetest air imaginable, and succeeded in winding another amorous chain

around the already sufficiently-enslaved heart of her lover.

Presently the ice of constraint was broken, and the Antique, having once

put her foot in it, plunged off into conversation with remarkable vigor.

She entertained Mien-yaun with a detailed account of her family trials,

so interminable, that, with all his politeness, the young noble could

not avoid gaping desperately. Tching-whang, observing his visitor's

strait, interposed.

"What the women have lost in their feet, they have added to their

tongues," said he, quoting a Chinese proverb of great popularity.

As the Antique persisted, her husband gently reminded her that excessive

talkativeness is an allowed ground for divorce in China, and, by

suggesting the idea that she might possibly become the dismembered

fragment of a shattered union, at length succeeded in shaming her into

silence.

This Tching-whang was a fine old fellow. He was not a bit fashionable,

and Mien-yaun liked him the better for it. He had been educated by the

bamboo, and not by masters in the arts of courtesy. But he was a shrewd,

cunning, jolly old Chinaman, and was evidently perfectly familiar with

the elementary principles according to Kei-ying. After an animated

discussion of some ten minutes, it would have been difficult to

determine which of the two gentlemen was most deeply imbued with a sense

of the righteousness of the elementary principles.

After a proper time had elapsed, Mien-yaun was permitted the luxury of

a private chat with his charmer. What sighs, what smiles, what pleasing

tremors, what soft murmurings, what pressings of the hand and throbbings

of the heart were there! The Antique, who watched the course of

proceedings through a contiguous keyhole, subsequently declared that she

had never in all her life witnessed so affecting a spectacle, and she

was prevented from giving way to her excessive agitation only by

the thought that the interruption might seriously endanger her

daughter-in-law's prospects. The lovers, unconscious of scrutiny, made

great progress. Some doubt appeared at one time to exist as to which

had first experienced the budding passion which had now blossomed so

profusely; but in due time it was settled that both had suffered love at

precisely the same moment, and that the first gleam of the other's eye

had kindled the flame in the bosom of each.

Towards evening, the Antique came in with a cup of tea worthy to excite

a poet's inspiration,--and poets in China have sung the delights of tea,

and written odes to teacups, too, before now. Mien-yaun sipped it with

an air of high-breeding that neither Ching-ki-pin nor her respectable

mother-in-law had ever seen before. Soon after, the enamored couple

parted, with many fond protestations of faith, avowed and betrothed

lovers.

Mien-yaun went home in an amatory ecstasy, and immediately exploded four

bunches of crackers and blazed a Bengal light, as a slight token of his

infinite happiness.

IV.

All Pekin was in an uproar. That is to say, the three thousand eminent

individuals who composed the aristocracy had nearly lost their wits.

The million and a half of common people were, of course, of no account.

Mien-yaun had given out that he was about to be married; but to whom,

or to how many, remained a mystery. No further intelligence passed his

lips. Consequently, in less than twenty-four hours there were four

hundred and fifty persons who knew the lady's name, as many more who had

conversed with her upon the subject, twice as many who knew the day on

which the ceremony was to take place, at least one thousand who had been

invited to assist, and an infinitely greater number who simply shook

their heads. In two days the names of some hundreds of young and comely

damsels were popularly accepted as the chosen future partner of the

glass of fashion and the mould of form. Fifty different days and hours

were fixed as the appointed time. All the most noted bonzes in Pekin

were in turn declared to be the fortunate sacred instrument by which

the union was to be effected. In the course of a week, public feeling

reached such a height that business was neglected and property declined

in value. A panic was feared. Mien-yaun shut himself up, and did not

stir abroad for a month, lest he should be tracked, and his secret

discovered. He contrived, however, to maintain a constant correspondence

with the light of his soul.

He was a little disturbed to find that his much revered father, the

ex-censor of the highest board, took no notice of what was going on, and

never alluded to the subject in any manner. Mien-yaun was too deeply

impressed with a sense of filial obligation to intrude his humble

affairs upon the old gentleman's

[Transcriber's note: Page missing in original.]

There were lanterns--without number, and of the largest size; there were

the richest and most luxurious couches disposed about for the general

comfort; there were consultations of cooks, headed by a professor from

Ning-po, a city famed throughout China for its culinary perfection, with

a view to producing an unrivalled gastronomic sensation; there were

tailors who tortured their inventive brains to realize the ideal raiment

which Mien-yaun desired to appear in. The panic ceased as suddenly as it

had arisen. A little while ago, and there was a surplus of supply and no

demand; now, the demand far exceeded the supply. Artists in apparel were

driven frantic. In three days the entire fashionable world of Pekin had

to be new clad, and well clad, for the great occasion. One tailor,

in despair at his inability to execute more than the tenth of his

commissions, went and drowned himself in the Peiho River, a proceeding

which did not at all diminish the public distress. The loss of the

tailor was nothing, to be sure, but his death was a fatal blow to the

hopes of at least a hundred of the first families. As for the women,

they were beside themselves, and knew not which way to turn. It was

evident that nothing had occurred within a half-century to create

anything like the excitement that existed. Mien-yaun's prospects of

eternal potency never seemed so cheering.

All this time, our hero's father, the ex-censor of the highest board,

preserved a profound silence.

VI.

The three days passed so rapidly, that even Mien-yaun's anxiety, great

as it was, could hardly keep pace with the swift hours. The morning

of the New Year came. For the first time in his life, the dictator of

fashion lost his mind. His head whirled like a tee-to-tum, and his

pulses beat sharp and irregular as the detonations of a bundle of

crackers. He was obliged to resign himself to fate and his valet, and

felt compelled to have recourse to many cups of tea to calm his fevered

senses. At length it became necessary for him to descend to the gardens.

Nerving himself by a powerful effort, he advanced among his guests.

What a gorgeous array of rank and beauty was there! The customary calls

of the New Year had been forgotten. Curiosity had alike infected all,

and the traditionary commemoration of two thousand years was for the

first time neglected. Why this tremor at our hero's heart? Was he not

lord of all that he surveyed? Reigned he not yet with undisputed sway?

Or was it that, an undefined presentiment of dire misfortune had settled

upon him? He strove to banish his melancholy, but with slight success.

His troubled air did not escape the scrutinizing eyes of the company.

The women whispered; the men shook their heads. But all greeted him with

enthusiasm, and asked after his bride with eagerness.

A crash of gongs was heard. The gates of a pavilion flew open, and the

beauteous Ching-ki-pin stepped forth, glowing with loveliness and hope.

As she stood an instant timidly on the portal, she seemed almost a

divinity,--at least, Mien-yaun thought so. Her sweet face was surmounted

by a heavy coronet of black hair, plaited to perfection, and glistening

with gum. Her little eyes beamed lovingly on her betrothed, and a flush

of expectancy overspread her countenance. Her costume was in the best

Chinese taste. An embroidered tunic of silk fell from her neck almost to

her ankles, and just temptingly revealed the spangled trowsers and the

richly jewelled slippers. A murmur of admiration diffused itself around.

Then followed many anxious inquiries. Who was she? Whence came she? To

whom belonged she? Her face was strange to all that high-born throng. In

a minute, however, her father appeared, bearing on his arm the Antique,

who looked more hideous than ever. A flash of intelligence quivered

through the multitude. Many of the nobility purchased their porcelain

and tobacco of Tching-whang, and recognized him immediately. It is

astonishing how like lightning unpleasant facts do fly. In less than two

minutes, every soul in the gardens knew that Mien-yaun, the noble, the

princely, the loftily-descended, the genteel, was going to marry a

tradesman's daughter.

Now that the great secret was out, everybody had thought so. Some had

been sure of it. Others had told you so. It was the most natural thing

in the world. Where there was so much mystery, there must, of necessity,

be some peculiar reason for it. A great many had always thought him a

little crazy. In fact, the whole tide of public sentiment instantly

turned. Mien-yaun, without knowing it, was dethroned. Upstarts, who

that morning had trembled at his frown, and had very properly deemed

themselves unworthy to braid his tail, now swept by him with swaggering

insolence, as if to compensate in their new-found freedom for the years

of social enslavement they had been subjected to. Leers and shrugs and

spiteful whispers circulated extensively. But the enraptured Mien-yaun,

blind to everything except his own overwhelming happiness, saw and heard

them not.

Little time was afforded for these private expressions of amiable

feeling. The grand repast was declared ready, and the importance of this

announcement overweighed, for a short period, the claims of scandal and

ill-nature. The company quickly found their way to the tables, which, as

the "Pekin Gazette" of the next morning said, in describing the _fête_,

"literally groaned beneath the weight of the delicacies with which they

were loaded." The consultations of the Ning-po cook and his confederates

had produced great results. The guests seated themselves, and delicately

tasted the slices of goose and shell-fish, and the pickled berries, and

prawns, and preserves, which always compose the prefatory course of a

Chinese dinner of high degree. Then porcelain plates and spoons of the

finest quality, and ivory chopsticks tipped with pearl, were distributed

about, and the birds'-nest soup was brought on. After a sufficient

indulgence in this luxury, came sea-slugs, and shark stews, and crab

salad, all served with rich and gelatinous sauces, and cooked to a

charm. Ducks' tongues and deers' tendons, from Tartary, succeeded, with

stewed fruits and mucilaginous gravy. Every known and some unknown

luxuries were lavishly provided. The Ning-po cook had invented a

new dish expressly for the occasion,--"Baked ice _à la_

Ching-ki-pin,"--which was highly esteemed. The ice was enveloped in a

crust of fine pastry, and introduced into the oven; the paste being

baked before the ice--thus protected from the heat--had melted, the

astonished visitors had the satisfaction of biting through a burning

crust, and instantly cooling their palates with the grateful contents.

The Chinese never cook except on substantial principles; and it was the

principle of contrast which regulated this sublime _chef-d'oeuvre_ of

the Ning-po artist.

Of course, the rarest beverages were not wanting. A good dinner without

good wine is nought. Useless each without the other. Those whose fancy

rested upon medicated _liqueurs_ found them in every variety. Those who

placed a higher value upon plain light wines had no reason to complain

of the supply set before them. Those whose unconquerable instinct

impelled them to the more invigorating sam-shu had only to make known

their natural desires. As the feast progressed, and the spirits of

the company rose, the charms of music were added to the delights of

appetite. A band of singsong girls gently beat their tom-toms, and

carolled in soft and soothing strains. As they finished, a general

desire to hear Mien-yaun was expressed. Willing, indeed, he was, and,

after seven protestations that he could not think upon it, each fainter

than the other, he suffered himself to be prevailed over, and, casting

a fond look upon his betrothed, he rose, and sang the following verses

from the Shee-king,--a collection of odes four thousand years old, and,

consequently, of indisputable beauty:--

"The peach-tree, how graceful! how fair!

How blooming, how pleasant its leaves!

Such is a bride when she enters to share

The home of her bridegroom, and every care

Her family from her receives."[A]

[Footnote A: The following is Sir William Jones's less literal and more

poetic paraphrase of the same selection:--

"Gay child of Spring, the garden's queen,

Yon peach-tree charms the roving sight;

Its fragrant leaves how richly green!

Its blossoms how divinely bright!

"So softly smiles the blooming bride

By love and conscious virtue led

O'er her new mansion to preside,

And placid joys around her spread."]

VII.

The festivities were at their height, the sam-shu was spreading its

benign influences over the guests, the deep delight of satiated appetite

possessed their bosoms, when the entrance of a stern and fat old

gentleman arrested universal attention. It was the respected father of

Mien-yaun, the ex-censor of the highest board, and Councillor of the

Empire. The company rose to greet him; but he, with gracious suavity,

begged them not to discompose themselves. Approaching that part of the

table occupied by the bridal party, he laid his hand upon his heart, and

assured Tching-whang that he was unable to express the joy he felt at

seeing him and his family.

Mien-yaun's father was a perfect master of the elementary principles.

Turning then to his son, he pleasantly requested him to excuse himself

to the assemblage, and follow him for a few minutes to a private

apartment.

As soon as they were alone, the adipose ex-censor of the highest board

said:--"My son, have you thought of wedding this maiden?"

"Nothing shall divert me from that purpose, O my father," confidently

answered Mien-yaun.

"Nothing but my displeasure," said the ex-censor of the highest board.

"You will not marry her."

Mien-yaun was thunderstruck. When he had said that nothing should

awe him from the career of his humor, he had never contemplated the

appalling contingency of the interposition of paternal authority. He

wept, he prayed, he raved, he gnashed his teeth, he tore out as much of

his hair as was consistent with appearances. He went through all the

various manifestations of despair, but without producing the slightest

effect upon the inexorable ex-censor of the highest board. That worthy

official briefly explained his objections to a union between his son,

the pride and joy of the Tse, and a daughter of one of the Kung, and

then, taking the grief-stricken lover by the hand, he led him back to

the gardens.

"Good friends," said he, "my son has just conveyed to me his lively

appreciation of the folly he was about to commit. He renounces all

connection with the black-haired daughter of the Kung, whom he now

wishes a very good evening."

And the ex-censor of the highest board gravely and gracefully bowed the

family of Tching-whang out of the premises. The moment they crossed the

threshold, Mien-yaun and Ching-ki-pin went into a simultaneous fit.

VIII.

Mien-yaun now abandoned himself to grief. He laid away the peacock's

feather on a lofty shelf, and took to cotton breeches. Mien-yaun in

cotton breeches! What stronger confirmation could be needed of his utter

desolation? As he kept himself strictly secluded, he knew nothing of

the storm of ridicule that was sweeping his once illustrious name

disgracefully through the city. He knew not that a popular but

unscrupulous novelist had caught up the sad story and wrought it into

three thrilling volumes,--nor that an enterprising dramatist had

constructed a closely-written play in five acts, founded on the event,

and called "The Judgment of Taoli, or Vanity Rebuked," which had been

prepared, rehearsed, and put upon the stage by the second night after

the occurrence. He would gladly have abdicated the throne of fashion;

he cared nothing for that;--but it was well that he was spared the

humiliation of seeing his Ching-ki-pin's name held up to public scorn;

that would have destroyed the feeble remains of intellect which yet

inhabited his bewildered brain.

Occasionally he would address the most piteous entreaties to his

cruel parent, but always unavailingly. He had not the spirit to show

resentment, even if the elementary principles would have permitted

it. The reaction of his life had come. This first great sorrow had

completely overwhelmed him, and, like most young persons in the agony of

a primal disappointment, he believed that the world had now no charms

for him, and that in future his existence would be little better than

a long sad bore. He looked back upon his career of gaudy magnificence

without regret, and felt like a _blasé_ butterfly, who would gladly

return to the sober obscurity of the chrysalis. He found that wealth and

station, though they might command the admiration of the world, could

not insure him happiness; and he thought how readily he would resign all

the gifts and glories which Fortune had showered on him for the joyous

hope, could he dare to indulge it, of a cottage on the banks of the

Grand Canal, with his darling Ching-ki-pin at his side.

Thus passed away some months. At last, one day, he ventured forth, in

hope of meeting some former friend, in whose confiding ear he might

whisper his many sorrows. He had not proceeded twenty paces before a

group of young gallants, who in earlier days had been the humblest

of his satellites, brushed rudely by him, without acknowledging his

courteous salutation. Thinking that anguish might have changed his

features beyond recognition, he walked on, and soon met one with whom

his intimacy had been unlimited. He paused, and accosted him.

The other stared coldly upon him, said he had a faint remembrance of

Mien-yaun, but Mien-yaun was _passé_ now, since that affair with old

Tching-whang's daughter, and he must really be excused from entering

into conversation with any one so excessively behind the fashionable

times.

Mien-yaun seized the offender by the tail, whirled him violently to the

ground, and strode haughtily back to his home, whence he could not be

persuaded to stir, until after the occurrence of a very remarkable

event.

IX.

When Mien-yaun had pined nearly half away, and was considering within

himself whether it was expedient to commence upon the other half, word

was brought to him, one day, that his father, whom he had not seen for

some weeks, had met with an accident. Further inquiry revealed the fact,

that the worthy ex-censor of the highest board had so far forgotten

himself as to sneeze in the presence of the Emperor; and as nothing in

the elementary principles could be found to justify so gross a breach

of etiquette, the ex-censor's head had been struck off by the public

executioner, and his property, which was immense, had been confiscated

to the state. Some of Mien-yaun's friends, who had sedulously shunned

him for six months, lost no time in hastening to him with the agreeable

intelligence that he was an orphan and a pauper. After kicking them out

of doors, he sat down and pondered upon the matter.

On the whole, he saw no great cause for grief. The Chinese law, which

is strict in the enforcement of all duties of a son to a living parent,

does not compel excessive lamentation for the dead. Mien-yaun could not

but perceive that the only obstacle to his union with Ching-ki-pin was

now removed. The sudden flood of joy which this thought gave rise

to came very near upsetting him again, and he had to resort to an

opium-pipe to quiet his nerves. He attended personally to the ceremonies

of interring the decollated deceased, and then shut himself up for a

week, to settle his mind.

At the expiration of this time, he started out, one early morning, alone

and in humble garb, to seek his lost love. He threaded the familiar

streets, and, with heart beating high in delightful expectation, he

stood before the door of Tching-whang's mansion. He entered, and found

the Antique alone.

Then followed a woful scene. The Antique began by informing him that

Mien-yaun rich and famous, and Mien-yaun poor and in disgrace, were two

very different persons. She went on to show that things were not now as

they used to be,--that, though her daughter-in-law had permitted his

addresses when he was in prosperity, she could not think of listening to

them under the present circumstances. _Pei_ was one thing, and _pin_ was

another. She concluded by recommending him, as he seemed in distress, to

take a dose of gin-seng and go to bed. After which she opened the door,

and gently eliminated him.

X.

Deeper than ever plummet sounded was Mien-yaun's wretchedness now.

Desperation took possession of him. Nothing prevented him from severing

his carotid artery but the recollection that only the vulgar thus

disposed of themselves. He thought of poison, whose sale was present

death in Pekin, according to established law. Suicide by poison being a

forbidden luxury, it recommended itself nimbly unto Mien-yaun's senses.

He did remember an apothecary whose poverty, if not his will, would

consent to let him have a dram of poison. He was about acting on this

inspiration, when a message was brought to him from Tching-whang, that,

at his daughter's most earnest prayer, one solitary interview would be

permitted the lovers.

Like an arrow, Mien-yaun flew to the arms of Ching-ki-pin. She was,

then, true to him. She told him so; she swore it. Hope revived. He

thought no longer of the apothecary. Since Ching-ki-pin was faithful, he

asked no higher bliss.

A hundred plans were discussed, and all declared ineffectual to

accomplish their union. Still they suggested impracticabilities.

"Let us run away," said Mien-yaun.

"Think of my feet," said Ching-ki-pin, reproachfully;--"am I a Hong-Kong

woman, that I should run?"

It is only in Hong-Kong that the Chinese women permit their feet to

grow.

Mien-yaun was full of heroic resolutions. Hitherto, besides being born

great, he had had greatness thrust upon him. Now he would achieve

greatness. He would secure not only wealth, but also a more enduring

fame than he had before enjoyed. He saw many avenues to eminence opening

before him. He would establish a periodical devoted to pictorial

civilization. If civilization did not bring it success, he would

illustrate great crimes and deadly horrors, in the highest style of Art,

and thus command the attention of the world. Or he would establish a

rival theatre. Two playhouses already existed in Pekin, each controlled

by men of high integrity, great tact, and undenied claims to public

support. He would overturn all that. He would start without capital,

sink immense sums, pay nobody, ruin his company, and retire in triumph.

Or he would become a successful politician, which was easier than

all, for nothing was needed in this career but strong lungs and a

cyclopaedia. Many other methods of achieving renown did he rehearse, all

of which seemed feasible.

Ching-ki-pin, too, thought she might do something to acquire wealth. She

painted beautifully, with no sign of perspective to mar her artistic

productions. She warbled like a nightingale. She understood botany

better than the great Chin-nong, who discovered in one day no less than

seventy poisonous plants, and their seventy antidotes. Could she not

give lessons to select classes of young ladies in all these several

accomplishments? She was dying to do something to help defeat the

machinations of their evil Quei-shin, the mother-in-law.

Finally, without coming to any particular conclusion, and after

interchanging eternal vows, they parted much comforted, and looking

forward to a brighter future.

XI.

Mien-yaun went to his home,--no longer the splendid mansion of his early

days, but a poor cottage, in an obscure quarter of the city. As he threw

himself upon a bench, a sharp bright thought flashed across his mind.

His brain expanded with a sudden poetic ecstasy. He seized upon a fresh

white sheet, and quickly covered it with the mute symbols of his fancy.

Another sheet, and yet another. Faster than his hand could record them,

the burning thoughts crowded upon him. No hesitation now, as in his

former efforts to effect his rhymes. Experience had taught him how to

think, and much suffering had filled his bosom with emotions that longed

to be expressed. Still he wrote on. Towards midnight he kicked off his

shoes, and wrote on, throwing the pages over his shoulder as fast as

they were finished. Morning dawned, and found him still at his task. He

continued writing with desperate haste until noon, and then flung away

his last sheet; his poem was done.

He rose, and moistened his lips with a cup of fragrant Hyson, which,

according to the great Kian-lung, who was both a poet and an emperor,

and therefore undoubted authority on all subjects, drives away all the

five causes of disquietude which come to trouble us. Then he walked up

and down his narrow apartment many times, carefully avoiding the piles

of eloquence that lay scattered around. Then he sat down, and, gathering

up the disordered pages, resigned himself to the dire necessity--that

curse of authorship--of revising and correcting his verses. By

nightfall, this, too, was completed.

In the morning, he ran to the nearest publisher. His poem was

enthusiastically accepted. In a week, it was issued anonymously,

although the author's name was universally known the same day.

As Mien-yaun himself was afterwards accustomed to say,--after six months

of ignominious obscurity, he awoke one morning and found himself famous!

In two days the first edition was exhausted, and a second, with

illustrations, was called for. In two more, it became necessary to issue

a third, with a biography of the author, in which it was shown that

Mien-yaun was the worst-abused individual in the world, and that Pekin

had forever dishonored itself by ill-treating the greatest genius that

city had ever produced. In the fourth edition, which speedily followed,

the poet's portrait appeared.

It was soon found that Mien-yaun's poem was a versified narration of his

own experiences. There was the romantic youth, the beautiful maiden, the

obdurate papa, the villanous mother-in-law, and the shabby public. This

discovery augmented its popularity, and ten editions were disposed of in

a month.

At length the Emperor was induced to read it. He underwent a new

sensation, and, in the exuberance of his delight, summoned the author

to a grand feast. When the Antique heard of this, she swallowed her

chopsticks in a fit of rage and spite, and died of suffocation.

Mien-yaun was then satisfied. He went to the dinner. The noble and the

mighty again lavished their attentions upon him, but he turned from them

with disgust. He saw through the flimsy tissue of flattery they would

fain cast over his eyes. The most appetizing delicacies were set before

him, but, like a true poet, he refused to take anything but biscuits and

soda-water. As neither of these articles had been provided, he consented

to regale himself with a single duck's tongue. In short, he behaved so

singularly, and gave himself so many airs, that everybody present, from

the Emperor to the cook, was ready to bow down and worship him.

At the close of the repast, the Emperor begged to be informed in what

way he could be permitted to testify his appreciation of the towering

talents of his gifted subject.

"Son of Heaven," answered Mien-yaun, "grant me only the hand in marriage

of my beauteous Ching-ki-pin. No other ambition have I."

The Emperor was provoked at the modesty of the demand. In truth, he

would have been glad to see the young poet united to one of his own

daughters. But his imperial word was pledged,--and as Mien-yaun willed

it, so it was.

XII.

Their home is a little cottage on the bank of the Peiho; finery never

enters it, and neatness never leaves it. The singing of birds, the

rustling of the breeze, the murmuring of the waters are the only sounds

that they hear. Their windows will shut, and their door open,--but

to wise men only; the wicked shun it. Truth dwells in their hearts,

innocence guides their actions. Glory has no more charms for them than

wealth, and all the pleasures of the world cost them not a single wish.

The enjoyment of ease and solitude is their chief concern. Leisure

surrounds them, and discord shuns them. They contemplate the heavens and

are fortified. They look on the earth and are comforted. They remain in

the world without being of it. One day leads on another, and one year is

followed by another; the last will conduct them safe to their eternal

rest, and they will have lived for one another.[B]

[Footnote B: The concluding lines are from a modern Chinese poem.]

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