seriously missed, and many knights set out in search of him. Among
others was Sir Gawain, who pursued his search till it was time to return
to the court. He came into the forest of Broceliande, lamenting as he
went along. Presently, he heard the voice of one groaning on his right
hand; looking that way, he could see nothing save a kind of smoke which
seemed like air, and through which he could not pass; and this
impediment made him so wrathful that it deprived him of speech.
Presently he heard a voice which said, 'Gawain, Gawain, be not out of
heart, for everything which must happen will come to pass.' And when he
heard the voice which thus called him by his right name, he replied,
'Who can this be who hath spoken to me?' 'How,' said the voice, 'Sir
Gawain, know you me not? You were wont to know me well, but thus things
are interwoven and thus the proverb says true, "Leave the court and the
court will leave you." So is it with me. Whilst I served King Arthur, I
was well known by you and by other barons, but because I have left the
court, I am known no longer, and put in forgetfulness, which I ought not
to be if faith reigned in the world.' When Sir Gawain heard the voice
which spoke to him thus, he thought it was Merlin, and he answered,
'Sir, certes I ought to know you well, for many times I have heard your
words. I pray you appear before me so that I may be able to recognize
you.' 'Ah, sir,' said Merlin, 'you will never see me more, and that
grieves me, but I cannot remedy it, and when you shall have departed
from this place, I shall nevermore speak to you nor to any other person,
save only my mistress; for never other person will be able to discover
this place for anything which may befall; neither shall I ever go out
from hence, for in the world there is no such strong tower as this
wherein I am confined; and it is neither of wood, nor of iron, nor of
stone, but of air, without anything else; and made by enchantment so
strong, that it can never be demolished while the world lasts, neither
can I go out, nor can any one come in, save she who hath enclosed me
here, and who keeps me company when it pleaseth her: she cometh when she
listeth, for her will is here.' 'How, Merlin, my good friend,' said Sir
Gawain, 'are you restrained so strongly that you cannot deliver yourself
nor make yourself visible unto me; how can this happen, seeing that you
are the wisest man in the world?' 'Rather,' said Merlin, 'the greatest
fool; for I well knew that all this would befall me, and I have been
fool enough to love another more than myself, for I taught my mistress
that whereby she hath imprisoned me in such manner that none can set me
free.' 'Certes, Merlin,' replied Sir Gawain, 'of that I am right
sorrowful, and so will King Arthur, my uncle, be, when he shall know it,
as one who is making search after you throughout all countries.' 'Well,'
said Merlin, 'it must be borne, for never will he see me, nor I him;
neither will any one speak with me again after you, it would be vain to
attempt it; for you yourself, when you have turned away, will never be
able to find the place: but salute for me the king and the queen, and
all the barons, and tell them of my condition. You will find the king at
Carduel in Wales; and when you arrive there you will find there all the
companions who departed with you, and who at this day will return. Now
then go in the name of God, who will protect and save the King Arthur,
and the realm of Logres, and you also, as the best knights who are in
the world.' With that Sir Gawain departed joyful and sorrowful; joyful
because of what Merlin had assured him should happen to him, and
sorrowful that Merlin had thus been lost."
_Morals._--We are sometimes apprised that there is a mental power and
creation more excellent than anything which is commonly called
philosophy and literature; that the high poets,--that Homer, Milton,
Shakspeare, do not fully content us. How rarely they offer us the
heavenly bread! The most they have done is to intoxicate us once and
again with its taste. They have touched this heaven and retain
afterwards some sparkle of it: they betray their belief that such
discourse is possible. There is something--our brothers on this or that
side of the sea do not know it or own it; the eminent scholars of
England, historians and reviewers, romancers and poets included, might
deny and blaspheme it--which is setting us and them aside and the whole
world also, and planting itself. To true poetry we shall sit down as the
result and justification of the age in which it appears, and think
lightly of histories and statutes. None of your parlor or piano
verse,--none of your carpet poets, who are content to amuse, will
satisfy us. Power, new power, is the good which the soul seeks. The
poetic gift we want, as the health and supremacy of man,--not rhymes and
sonneteering, not bookmaking and bookselling; surely not cold spying and
authorship.
Is not poetry the little chamber in the brain where is generated the
explosive force which, by gentle shocks, sets in action the intellectual
world? Bring us the bards who shall sing all our old ideas out of our
heads, and new ones in; men-making poets; poetry which, like the verses
inscribed on Balder's columns in Breidablik, is capable of restoring the
dead to life;--poetry like that verse of Saadi, which the angels
testified "met the approbation of Allah in Heaven";--poetry which finds
its rhymes and cadences in the rhymes and iterations of nature, and is
the gift to men of new images and symbols, each the ensign and oracle of
an age; that shall assimilate men to it, mould itself into religions and
mythologies, and impart its quality to centuries;--poetry which tastes
the world and reports of it, upbuilding the world again in the thought;
"Not with tickling rhymes,
But high and noble matter, such as flies
From brains entranced, and filled with ecstasies."
Poetry must be affirmative. It is the piety of the intellect. "Thus
saith the Lord," should begin the song. The poet who shall use nature as
his hieroglyphic must have an adequate message to convey thereby.
Therefore, when we speak of the Poet in any high sense, we are driven to
such examples as Zoroaster and Plato, St. John and Menu, with their
moral burdens. The Muse shall be the counterpart of Nature, and equally
rich. I find her not often in books. We know Nature, and figure her
exuberant, tranquil, magnificent in her fertility, coherent; so that
every creation is omen of every other. She is not proud of the sea, of
the stars, of space or time, or man or woman. All her kinds share the
attributes of the selectest extremes. But in current literature I do not
find her. Literature warps away from life, though at first it seems to
bind it. In the world of letters how few commanding oracles! Homer did
what he could,--Pindar, Æschylus, and the Greek Gnomic poets and the
tragedians. Dante was faithful when not carried away by his fierce
hatreds. But in so many alcoves of English poetry I can count only nine
or ten authors who are still inspirers and lawgivers to their race.
The supreme value of poetry is to educate us to a height beyond itself,
or which it rarely reaches;--the subduing mankind to order and virtue.
He is the true Orpheus who writes his ode, not with syllables, but men.
"In poetry," said Goethe, "only the really great and pure advances us,
and this exists as a second nature, either elevating us to itself, or
rejecting us." The poet must let Humanity sit with the Muse in his head,
as the charioteer sits with the hero in the Iliad. "Show me," said
Sarona in the novel, "one wicked man who has written poetry, and I will
show you where his poetry is not poetry; or rather, I will show you in
his poetry no poetry at all."[3]
I have heard that there is a hope which precedes and must precede all
science of the visible or the invisible world; and that science is the
realization of that hope in either region. I count the genius of
Swedenborg and Wordsworth as the agents of a reform in philosophy, the
bringing poetry back to nature,--to the marrying of nature and mind,
undoing the old divorce in which poetry had been famished and false, and
nature had been suspected and pagan. The philosophy which a nation
receives, rules its religion, poetry, politics, arts, trades, and whole
history. A good poem--say Shakspeare's "Macbeth," or "Hamlet," or the
"Tempest"--goes about the world offering itself to reasonable men, who
read it with joy and carry it to their reasonable neighbors. Thus it
draws to it the wise and generous souls, confirming their secret
thoughts, and, through their sympathy, really publishing itself. It
affects the characters of its readers by formulating their opinions and
feelings, and inevitably prompting their daily action. If they build
ships, they write "Ariel" or "Prospero" or "Ophelia" on the ship's
stern, and impart a tenderness and mystery to matters of fact. The
ballad and romance work on the hearts of boys, who recite the rhymes to
their hoops or their skates if alone, and these heroic songs or lines
are remembered and determine many practical choices which they make
later. Do you think Burns has had no influence on the life of men and
women in Scotland,--has opened no eyes and ears to the face of nature
and the dignity of man and the charm and excellence of woman?
We are a little civil, it must be owned, to Homer and Æschylus, to
Dante and Shakspeare, and give them the benefit of the largest
interpretation. We must be a little strict also, and ask whether, if we
sit down at home, and do not go to Hamlet, Hamlet will come to us?
whether we shall find our tragedy written in his,--our hopes, wants,
pains, disgraces, described to the life,--and the way opened to the
paradise which ever in the best hour beckons us? But our overpraise and
idealization of famous masters is not in its origin a poor Boswellism,
but an impatience of mediocrity. The praise we now give to our heroes we
shall unsay when we make larger demands. How fast we outgrow the books
of the nursery,--then those that satisfied our youth. What we once
admired as poetry has long since come to be a sound of tin pans; and
many of our later books we have outgrown. Perhaps Homer and Milton will
be tin pans yet. Better not to be easily pleased. The poet should
rejoice if he has taught us to despise his song; if he has so moved us
as to lift us,--to open the eye of the intellect to see farther and
better.
In proportion as a man's life comes into union with truth, his thoughts
approach to a parallelism with the currents of natural laws, so that he
easily expresses his meaning by natural symbols, or uses the ecstatic or
poetic speech. By successive states of mind all the facts of nature are
for the first time interpreted. In proportion as his life departs from
this simplicity, he uses circumlocution,--by many words hoping to
suggest what he cannot say. Vexatious to find poets, who are by
excellence the thinking and feeling of the world, deficient in truth of
intellect and of affection. Then is conscience unfaithful, and thought
unwise. To know the merit of Shakspeare, read "Faust." I find "Faust" a
little too modern and intelligible. We can find such a fabric at several
mills, though a little inferior. "Faust" abounds in the disagreeable.
The vice is prurient, learned, Parisian. In the presence of Jove,
Priapus may be allowed as an offset, but here he is an equal hero. The
egotism, the wit, is calculated. The book is undeniably written by a
master, and stands unhappily related to the whole modern world; but it
is a very disagreeable chapter of literature, and accuses the author as
well as the times. Shakspeare could, no doubt, have been disagreeable,
had he less genius, and if ugliness had attracted him. In short, our
English nature and genius has made us the worst critics of Goethe,
"We, who speak the tongue
That Shakspeare spake, the faith and manners hold
Which Milton held."
It is not style or rhymes, or a new image more or less, that imports,
but sanity; that life should not be mean; that life should be an image
in every part beautiful; that the old forgotten splendors of the
universe should glow again for us;--that we should lose our wit, but
gain our reason. And when life is true to the poles of nature, the
streams of truth will roll through us in song.
_Transcendency._--In a cotillon some persons dance and others await
their turn when the music and the figure come to them. In the dance of
God there is not one of the chorus but can and will begin to spin,
monumental as he now looks, whenever the music and figure reach his
place and duty. O celestial Bacchus! drive them mad,--this multitude of
vagabonds, hungry for eloquence, hungry for poetry, starving for
symbols, perishing for want of electricity to vitalize this too much
pasture, and in the long delay indemnifying themselves with the false
wine of alcohol, of politics, or of money.
Every man may be, and at some time a man is, lifted to a platform whence
he looks beyond sense to moral and spiritual truth; and in that mood
deals sovereignly with matter, and strings worlds like beads upon his
thought. The success with which this is done can alone determine how
genuine is the inspiration. The poet is rare because he must be
exquisitely vital and sympathetic, and, at the same time, immovably
centred. In good society, nay, among the angels in heaven, is not
everything spoken in fine parable, and not so servilely as it befell to
the sense? All is symbolized. Facts are not foreign, as they seem, but
related. Wait a little and we see the return of the remote hyperbolic
curve. The solid men complain that the idealist leaves out the
fundamental facts; the poet complains that the solid men leave out the
sky. To every plant there are two powers; one shoots down as rootlet,
and one upward as tree. You must have eyes of science to see in the seed
its nodes; you must have the vivacity of the poet to perceive in the
thought its futurities. The poet is representative,--whole man,
diamond-merchant, symbolizer, emancipator; in him the world projects a
scribe's hand and writes the adequate genesis. The nature of things is
flowing, a metamorphosis. The free spirit sympathizes not only with the
actual form, but with the power or possible forms; but for obvious
municipal or parietal uses, God has given us a bias or a rest on
to-day's forms. Hence the shudder of joy with which in each clear moment
we recognize the metamorphosis, because it is always a conquest, a
surprise from the heart of things. One would say of the force in the
works of nature, all depends on the battery. If it give one shock, we
shall get to the fish form, and stop; if two shocks, to the bird; if
three, to the quadruped; if four, to the man. Power of generalizing
differences men. The number of successive saltations the nimble thought
can make, measures the difference between the highest and lowest of
mankind. The habit of saliency, of not pausing but going on, is a sort
of importation or domestication of the Divine effort in a man. After the
largest circle has been drawn, a larger can be drawn around it. The
problem of the poet is to unite freedom with precision; to give the
pleasure of color, and be not less the most powerful of sculptors. Music
seems to you sufficient, or the subtle and delicate scent of lavender;
but Dante was free imagination,--all wings,--yet he wrote like Euclid.
And mark the equality of Shakspeare to the comic, the tender and sweet,
and to the grand and terrible. A little more or less skill in whistling
is of no account. See those weary pentameter tales of Dryden and others.
Turnpike is one thing and blue sky another. Let the poet, of all men,
stop with his inspiration. The inexorable rule in the muses' court,
_either inspiration or silence_, compels the bard to report only his
supreme moments. It teaches the enormous force of a few words and in
proportion to the inspiration checks loquacity. Much that we call poetry
is but polite verse. The high poetry which shall thrill and agitate
mankind, restore youth and health, dissipate the dreams under which men
reel and stagger, and bring in the new thoughts, the sanity and heroic
aims of nations, is deeper hid and longer postponed than was America or
Australia, or the finding of steam or of the galvanic battery. We must
not conclude against poetry from the defects of poets. They are, in our
experience, men of every degree of skill,--some of them only once or
twice receivers of an inspiration, and presently falling back on a low
life. The drop of _ichor_ that tingles in their veins has not yet
refined their blood, and cannot lift the whole man to the digestion and
function of ichor,--that is, to godlike nature. Time will be when ichor
shall be their blood, when what are now glimpses and aspirations shall
be the routine of the day. Yet even partial ascents to poetry and ideas
are forerunners, and announce the dawn. In the mire of the sensual life,
their religion, their poets, their admiration of heroes and benefactors,
even their novel and newspaper, nay, their superstitions also, are hosts
of ideals,--a cordage of ropes that hold them up out of the slough.
Poetry is inestimable as a lonely faith, a lonely protest in the uproar
of atheism.
But so many men are ill-born or ill-bred,--the brains are so marred, so
imperfectly formed, unheroically,--brains of the sons of fallen
men,--that the doctrine is imperfectly received. One man sees a spark or
shimmer of the truth, and reports it, and his saying becomes a legend or
golden proverb for ages, and other men report as much, but none wholly
and well. Poems,--we have no poem. Whenever that angel shall be
organized and appear on earth, the Iliad will be reckoned a poor
ballad-grinding. I doubt never the riches of nature, the gifts of the
future, the immense wealth of the mind. O yes, poets we shall have,
mythology, symbols, religion, of our own. We, too, shall know how to
take up all this industry and empire, this Western civilization, into
thought, as easily as men did when arts were few; but not by holding it
high, but by holding it low. The intellect uses and is not used,--uses
London and Paris and Berlin, east and west, to its end. The only heart
that can help us is one that draws, not from our society, but from
itself, a counterpoise to society. What if we find partiality and
meanness in us? The grandeur of our life exists in spite of us,--all
over and under and within us, in what of us is inevitable and above our
control. Men are facts as well as persons, and the involuntary part of
their life so much as to fill the mind and leave them no countenance to
say aught of what is so trivial as their selfish thinking and doing.
Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair
and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.
[Footnote 1: Niebuhr, Letters, etc., Vol. III. p. 196.]
[Footnote 2: Heimskringla, Vol. I. p. 221.]
[Footnote 3: Miss Shepard's "Counterparts," Vol. I. p. 67.]
SOCIAL AIMS.
SOCIAL AIMS.
MUCH ill-natured criticism has been directed on American manners. I do
not think it is to be resented. Rather, if we are wise, we shall listen
and mend. Our critics will then be our best friends, though they did not
mean it. But in every sense the subject of manners has a constant
interest to thoughtful persons. Who does not delight in fine manners?
Their charm cannot be predicted or overstated. 'Tis perpetual promise of
more than can be fulfilled. It is music and sculpture and picture to
many who do not pretend to appreciation of those arts. It is even true
that grace is more beautiful than beauty. Yet how impossible to overcome
the obstacle of an unlucky temperament, and acquire good manners, unless
by living with the well-bred from the start; and this makes the value of
wise forethought to give ourselves and our children as much as possible
the habit of cultivated society.
'Tis an inestimable hint that I owe to a few persons of fine manners,
that they make behavior the very first sign of force,--behavior, and not
performance, or talent, or, much less, wealth. Whilst almost everybody
has a supplicating eye turned on events and things and other persons, a
few natures are central and forever unfold, and these alone charm us. He
whose word or deed you cannot predict, who answers you without any
supplication in his eye, who draws his determination from within, and
draws it instantly,--that man rules.
The staple figure in novels is the man of _aplomb_, who sits, among the
young aspirants and desperates, quite sure and compact, and, never
sharing their affections or debilities, hurls his word like a bullet
when occasion requires, knows his way, and carries his points. They may
scream or applaud, he is never engaged or heated. Napoleon is the type
of this class in modern history; Byron's heroes in poetry. But we, for
the most part, are all drawn into the _charivari_; we chide, lament,
cavil, and recriminate.
I think Hans Andersen's story of the cobweb cloth woven so fine that it
was invisible,--woven for the king's garment,--must mean manners, which
do really clothe a princely nature. Such a one can well go in a blanket,
if he would. In the gymnasium or on the sea-beach his superiority does
not leave him. But he who has not this fine garment of behavior is
studious of dress, and then not less of house and furniture and pictures
and gardens, in all which he hopes to lie _perdu_, and not be exposed.
"Manners are stronger than laws." Their vast convenience I must always
admire. The perfect defence and isolation which they effect makes an
insuperable protection. Though the person so clothed wrestle with you,
or swim with you, lodge in the same chamber, eat at the same table, he
is yet a thousand miles off, and can at any moment finish with you.
Manners seem to say, _You are you, and I am I_. In the most delicate
natures, fine temperament and culture build this impassable wall. Balzac
finely said: "Kings themselves cannot force the exquisite politeness of
distance to capitulate, hid behind its shield of bronze."
Nature values manners. See how she has prepared for them. Who teaches
manners of majesty, of frankness, of grace, of humility,--who but the
adoring aunts and cousins that surround a young child? The babe meets
such courting and flattery as only kings receive when adult; and, trying
experiments, and at perfect leisure with these posture-masters and
flatterers all day, he throws himself into all the attitudes that
correspond to theirs. Are they humble? he is composed. Are they eager?
he is nonchalant. Are they encroaching? he is dignified and inexorable.
And this scene is daily repeated in hovels as well as in high houses.
Nature is the best posture-master. An awkward man is graceful when
asleep, or when hard at work, or agreeably amused. The attitudes of
children are gentle, persuasive, royal, in their games and in their
house-talk and in the street, before they have learned to cringe. 'Tis
impossible but thought disposes the limbs and the walk, and is masterly
or secondary. No art can contravene it, or conceal it. Give me a
thought, and my hands and legs and voice and face will all go right. And
we are awkward for want of thought. The inspiration is scanty, and does
not arrive at the extremities.
It is a commonplace of romances to show the ungainly manners of the
pedant who has lived too long in college. Intellectual men pass for
vulgar, and are timid and heavy with the elegant. But, if the elegant
are also intellectual, instantly the hesitating scholar is inspired,
transformed, and exhibits the best style of manners. An intellectual
man, though of feeble spirit, is instantly reinforced by being put into
the company of scholars, and, to the surprise of everybody, becomes a
lawgiver. We think a man unable and desponding. It is only that he is
misplaced. Put him with new companions, and they will find in him
excellent qualities, unsuspected accomplishments, and the joy of life.
'Tis a great point in a gallery, how you hang pictures; and not less in
society, how you seat your party. The circumstance of circumstance is
timing and placing. When a man meets his accurate mate, society begins,
and life is delicious.
What happiness they give,--what ties they form! Whilst one man by his
manners pins me to the wall, with another I walk among the stars. One
man can, by his voice, lead the cheer of a regiment; another will have
no following. Nature made us all intelligent of these signs, for our
safety and our happiness. Whilst certain faces are illumined with
intelligence, decorated with invitation, others are marked with
warnings: certain voices are hoarse and truculent; sometimes they even
bark. There is the same difference between heavy and genial manners as
between the perceptions of octogenarians and those of young girls who
see everything in the twinkling of an eye.
Manners are the revealers of secrets, the betrayers of any disproportion
or want of symmetry in mind and character. It is the law of our
constitution that every change in our experience instantly indicates
itself on our countenance and carriage, as the lapse of time tells
itself on the face of a clock. We may be too obtuse to read it, but the
record is there. Some men may be obtuse to read it, but some men are not
obtuse and do read it. In Borrow's "Lavengro," the gypsy instantly
detects, by his companion's face and behavior, that some good fortune
has befallen him, and that he has money. We say, in these days, that
credit is to be abolished in trade: is it? When a stranger comes to buy
goods of you, do you not look in his face and answer according to what
you read there? Credit is to be abolished? Can't you abolish faces and
character, of which credit is the reflection? As long as men are born
babes they will live on credit for the first fourteen or eighteen years
of their life. Every innocent man has in his countenance a promise to
pay, and hence credit. Less credit will there be? You are mistaken.
There will always be more and more. Character _must_ be trusted; and,
just in proportion to the morality of a people, will be the expansion of
the credit system.
There is even a little rule of prudence for the young experimenter which
Dr. Franklin omitted to set down, yet which the youth may find
useful,--Do not go to ask your debtor the payment of a debt on the day
when you have no other resource. He will learn by your air and tone how
it is with you, and will treat you as a beggar. But work and starve a
little longer. Wait till your affairs go better, and you have other
means at hand; you will then ask in a different tone, and he will treat
your claim with entire respect.