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diff --git a/13088-0.txt b/13088-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..49837b8 --- /dev/null +++ b/13088-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4861 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13088 *** + + EMERSON + + AND OTHER ESSAYS + + + + BY + JOHN JAY CHAPMAN + + + AMS PRESS + + NEW YORK + + + _Second Printing 1969_ + + Reprinted from the edition of 1899, New York + First AMS EDITION published 1965 + Manufactured in the United States of America + + + Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-108126 + SEN: 404-00619-1 + + + + + CONTENTS + + + EMERSON 3 + + WALT WHITMAN 111 + + A STUDY OF ROMEO 131 + + MICHAEL ANGELO'S SONNETS 153 + + THE FOURTH CANTO OF THE INFERNO 173 + + ROBERT BROWNING 185 + + ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 217 + + + + + + EMERSON + + + I + + + "Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, + lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need + not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede + anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and + draw individuals out of them. The worst of charity is that the lives + you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving. Masses! The + calamity is the masses. I do not wish any mass at all, but honest + men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished women only, and no + shovel-handed, narrow-brained, gin-drinking million stockingers or + lazzaroni at all. If government knew how, I should like to see it + check, not multiply the population. When it reaches its true law of + action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential. Away + with this hurrah of masses, and let us have the considerate vote of + single men spoken on their honor and their conscience." + +This extract from The Conduct of Life gives fairly enough the leading +thought of Emerson's life. The unending warfare between the individual +and society shows us in each generation a poet or two, a dramatist or a +musician who exalts and deifies the individual, and leads us back again +to the only object which is really worthy of enthusiasm or which can +permanently excite it,--the character of a man. It is surprising to find +this identity of content in all great deliverances. The only thing we +really admire is personal liberty. Those who fought for it and those who +enjoyed it are our heroes. + +But the hero may enslave his race by bringing in a system of tyranny; +the battle-cry of freedom may become a dogma which crushes the soul; one +good custom may corrupt the world. And so the inspiration of one age +becomes the damnation of the next. This crystallizing of life into death +has occurred so often that it may almost be regarded as one of the laws +of progress. + +Emerson represents a protest against the tyranny of democracy. He is the +most recent example of elemental hero-worship. His opinions are +absolutely unqualified except by his temperament. He expresses a form of +belief in the importance of the individual which is independent of any +personal relations he has with the world. It is as if a man had been +withdrawn from the earth and dedicated to condensing and embodying this +eternal idea--the value of the individual soul--so vividly, so vitally, +that his words could not die, yet in such illusive and abstract forms +that by no chance and by no power could his creed be used for purposes +of tyranny. Dogma cannot be extracted from it. Schools cannot be built +on it. It either lives as the spirit lives, or else it evaporates and +leaves nothing. Emerson was so afraid of the letter that killeth that he +would hardly trust his words to print. He was assured there was no such +thing as literal truth, but only literal falsehood. He therefore +resorted to metaphors which could by no chance be taken literally. And +he has probably succeeded in leaving a body of work which cannot be made +to operate to any other end than that for which he designed it. If this +be true, he has accomplished the inconceivable feat of eluding +misconception. If it be true, he stands alone in the history of +teachers; he has circumvented fate, he has left an unmixed blessing +behind him. + +The signs of those times which brought forth Emerson are not wholly +undecipherable. They are the same times which gave rise to every +character of significance during the period before the war. Emerson is +indeed the easiest to understand of all the men of his time, because his +life is freest from the tangles and qualifications of circumstance. He +is a sheer and pure type and creature of destiny, and the +unconsciousness that marks his development allies him to the deepest +phenomena. It is convenient, in describing him, to use language which +implies consciousness on his part, but he himself had no purpose, no +theory of himself; he was a product. + +The years between 1820 and 1830 were the most pitiable through which +this country has ever passed. The conscience of the North was pledged to +the Missouri Compromise, and that Compromise neither slumbered nor +slept. In New England, where the old theocratical oligarchy of the +colonies had survived the Revolution and kept under its own waterlocks +the new flood of trade, the conservatism of politics reinforced the +conservatism of religion; and as if these two inquisitions were not +enough to stifle the soul of man, the conservatism of business +self-interest was superimposed. The history of the conflicts which +followed has been written by the radicals, who negligently charge up to +self-interest all the resistance which establishments offer to change. +But it was not solely self-interest, it was conscience that backed the +Missouri Compromise, nowhere else, naturally, so strongly as in New +England. It was conscience that made cowards of us all. The white-lipped +generation of Edward Everett were victims, one might even say martyrs, +to conscience. They suffered the most terrible martyrdom that can fall +to man, a martyrdom which injured their immortal volition and dried up +the springs of life. If it were not that our poets have too seldom +deigned to dip into real life, I do not know what more awful subject for +a poem could have been found than that of the New England judge +enforcing the fugitive slave law. For lack of such a poem the heroism of +these men has been forgotten, the losing heroism of conservatism. It was +this spiritual power of a committed conscience which met the new forces +as they arose, and it deserves a better name than these new forces +afterward gave it. In 1830 the social fruits of these heavy conditions +could be seen in the life of the people. Free speech was lost. + +"I know no country," says Tocqueville, who was here in 1831, "in which +there is so little independence of mind and freedom of discussion as in +America." Tocqueville recurs to the point again and again. He cannot +disguise his surprise at it, and it tinged his whole philosophy and his +book. The timidity of the Americans of this era was a thing which +intelligent foreigners could not understand. Miss Martineau wrote in her +Autobiography: "It was not till months afterwards that I was told that +there were two reasons why I was not invited there [Chelsea] as +elsewhere. One reason was that I had avowed, in reply to urgent +questions, that I was disappointed in an oration of Mr. Everett's; and +another was that I had publicly condemned the institution of slavery. I +hope the Boston people have outgrown the childishness of sulking at +opinions not in either case volunteered, but obtained by pressure. But +really, the subservience to opinion at that time seemed a sort of +mania." + +The mania was by no means confined to Boston, but qualified this period +of our history throughout the Northern States. There was no literature. +"If great writers have not at present existed in America, the reason is +very simply given in the fact that there can be no literary genius +without freedom of opinion, and freedom of opinion does not exist in +America," wrote Tocqueville. There were no amusements, neither music nor +sport nor pastime, indoors or out of doors. The whole life of the +community was a life of the intelligence, and upon the intelligence lay +the weight of intellectual tyranny. The pressure kept on increasing, and +the suppressed forces kept on increasing, till at last, as if to show +what gigantic power was needed to keep conservatism dominant, the +Merchant Province put forward Daniel Webster. + +The worst period of panic seems to have preceded the anti-slavery +agitations of 1831, because these agitations soon demonstrated that the +sky did not fall nor the earth yawn and swallow Massachusetts because of +Mr. Garrison's opinions, as most people had sincerely believed would be +the case. Some semblance of free speech was therefore gradually +regained. + +Let us remember the world upon which the young Emerson's eyes opened. +The South was a plantation. The North crooked the hinges of the knee +where thrift might follow fawning. It was the era of Martin Chuzzlewit, +a malicious caricature,--founded on fact. This time of humiliation, when +there was no free speech, no literature, little manliness, no reality, +no simplicity, no accomplishment, was the era of American brag. We +flattered the foreigner and we boasted of ourselves. We were +over-sensitive, insolent, and cringing. As late as 1845, G.P. Putnam, a +most sensible and modest man, published a book to show what the country +had done in the field of culture. The book is a monument of the age. +With all its good sense and good humor, it justifies foreign contempt +because it is explanatory. Underneath everything lay a feeling of +unrest, an instinct,--"this country cannot permanently endure half slave +and half free,"--which was the truth, but which could not be uttered. + +So long as there is any subject which men may not freely discuss, they +are timid upon all subjects. They wear an iron crown and talk in +whispers. Such social conditions crush and maim the individual, and +throughout New England, as throughout the whole North, the individual +was crushed and maimed. + +The generous youths who came to manhood between 1820 and 1830, while +this deadly era was maturing, seem to have undergone a revulsion against +the world almost before touching it; at least two of them suffered, +revolted, and condemned, while still boys sitting on benches in school, +and came forth advancing upon this old society like gladiators. The +activity of William Lloyd Garrison, the man of action, preceded by +several years that of Emerson, who is his prophet. Both of them were +parts of one revolution. One of Emerson's articles of faith was that a +man's thoughts spring from his actions rather than his actions from his +thoughts, and possibly the same thing holds good for society at large. +Perhaps all truths, whether moral or economic, must be worked out in +real life before they are discovered by the student, and it was +therefore necessary that Garrison should be evolved earlier than +Emerson. + +The silent years of early manhood, during which Emerson passed through +the Divinity School and to his ministry, known by few, understood by +none, least of all by himself, were years in which the revolting spirit +of an archangel thought out his creed. He came forth perfect, with that +serenity of which we have scarce another example in history,--that union +of the man himself, his beliefs, and his vehicle of expression that +makes men great because it makes them comprehensible. The philosophy +into which he had already transmuted all his earlier theology at the +time we first meet him consisted of a very simple drawing together of a +few ideas, all of which had long been familiar to the world. It is the +wonderful use he made of these ideas, the closeness with which they +fitted his soul, the tact with which he took what he needed, like a bird +building its nest, that make the originality, the man. + +The conclusion of Berkeley, that the external world is known to us only +through our impressions, and that therefore, for aught we know, the +whole universe exists only in our own consciousness, cannot be +disproved. It is so simple a conception that a child may understand it; +and it has probably been passed before the attention of every thinking +man since Plato's time. The notion is in itself a mere philosophical +catch or crux to which there is no answer. It may be true. The mystics +made this doctrine useful. They were not content to doubt the +independent existence of the external world. They imagined that this +external world, the earth, the planets, the phenomena of nature, bore +some relation to the emotions and destiny of the soul. The soul and the +cosmos were somehow related, and related so intimately that the cosmos +might be regarded as a sort of projection or diagram of the soul. + +Plato was the first man who perceived that this idea could be made to +provide the philosopher with a vehicle of expression more powerful than +any other. If a man will once plant himself firmly on the proposition +that _he is_ the universe, that every emotion or expression of his mind +is correlated in some way to phenomena in the external world, and that +he shall say how correlated, he is in a position where the power of +speech is at a maximum. His figures of speech, his tropes, his +witticisms, take rank with the law of gravity and the precession of the +equinoxes. Philosophical exaltation of the individual cannot go beyond +this point. It is the climax. + +This is the school of thought to which Emerson belonged. The sun and +moon, the planets, are mere symbols. They signify whatever the poet +chooses. The planets for the most part stay in conjunction just long +enough to flash his thought through their symbolism, and no permanent +relation is established between the soul and the zodiac. There is, +however, one link of correlation between the external and internal +worlds which Emerson considered established, and in which he believed +almost literally, namely, the moral law. This idea he drew from Kant +through Coleridge and Wordsworth, and it is so familiar to us all that +it hardly needs stating. The fancy that the good, the true, the +beautiful,--all things of which we instinctively approve,--are somehow +connected together and are really one thing; that our appreciation of +them is in its essence the recognition of a law; that this law, in fact +all law and the very idea of law, is a mere subjective experience; and +that hence any external sequence which we coördinate and name, like the +law of gravity, is really intimately connected with our moral +nature,--this fancy has probably some basis of truth. Emerson adopted it +as a corner-stone of his thought. + +Such are the ideas at the basis of Emerson's philosophy, and it is fair +to speak of them in this place because they antedate everything else +which we know of him. They had been for years in his mind before he +spoke at all. It was in the armor of this invulnerable idealism and with +weapons like shafts of light that he came forth to fight. + +In 1836, at the age of thirty-three, Emerson published the little +pamphlet called Nature, which was an attempt to state his creed. +Although still young, he was not without experience of life. He had been +assistant minister to the Rev. Dr. Ware from 1829 to 1832, when he +resigned his ministry on account of his views regarding the Lord's +Supper. He had married and lost his first wife in the same interval. He +had been abroad and had visited Carlyle in 1833. He had returned and +settled in Concord, and had taken up the profession of lecturing, upon +which he in part supported himself ever after. It is unnecessary to +review these early lectures. "Large portions of them," says Mr. Cabot, +his biographer, "appeared afterwards in the Essays, especially those of +the first series." Suffice it that through them Emerson had become so +well known that although Nature was published anonymously, he was +recognized as the author. Many people had heard of him at the time he +resigned his charge, and the story went abroad that the young minister +of the Second Church had gone mad. The lectures had not discredited the +story, and Nature seemed to corroborate it. Such was the impression +which the book made upon Boston in 1836. As we read it to-day, we are +struck by its extraordinary beauty of language. It is a supersensuous, +lyrical, and sincere rhapsody, written evidently by a man of genius. It +reveals a nature compelling respect,--a Shelley, and yet a sort of +Yankee Shelley, who is mad only when the wind is nor'-nor'west; a mature +nature which must have been nourished for years upon its own thoughts, +to speak this new language so eloquently, to stand so calmly on its +feet. The deliverance of his thought is so perfect that this work adapts +itself to our mood and has the quality of poetry. This fluency Emerson +soon lost; it is the quality missing in his poetry. It is the +efflorescence of youth. + + "In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing + a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, + without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good + fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the + brink of fear. In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the + snake his slough, and at what period soever of life is always a + child. In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of + God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, + and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand + years.... It is the uniform effect of culture on the human mind, not + to shake our faith in the stability of particular phenomena, as + heat, water, azote; but to lead us to regard nature as phenomenon, + not a substance; to attribute necessary existence to spirit; to + esteem nature as an accident and an effect." + +Perhaps these quotations from the pamphlet called Nature are enough to +show the clouds of speculation in which Emerson had been walking. With +what lightning they were charged was soon seen. + +In 1837 he was asked to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration at Cambridge. +This was the opportunity for which he had been waiting. The mystic and +eccentric young poet-preacher now speaks his mind, and he turns out to +be a man exclusively interested in real life. This recluse, too tender +for contact with the rough facts of the world, whose conscience has +retired him to rural Concord, pours out a vial of wrath. This cub puts +forth the paw of a full-grown lion. + +Emerson has left behind him nothing stronger than this address, The +American Scholar. It was the first application of his views to the +events of his day, written and delivered in the heat of early manhood +while his extraordinary powers were at their height. It moves with a +logical progression of which he soon lost the habit. The subject of it, +the scholar's relation to the world, was the passion of his life. The +body of his belief is to be found in this address, and in any adequate +account of him the whole address ought to be given. + +"Thus far," he said, "our holiday has been simply a friendly sign of the +survival of the love of letters amongst a people too busy to give to +letters any more. As such it is precious as the sign of an +indestructible instinct. Perhaps the time is already come when it ought +to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard intellect of this +continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the postponed +expectation of the world with something better than the exertions of +mechanical skill.... The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the +first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it +the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into +him life; it went out from him truth.... Yet hence arises a grave +mischief. The sacredness which attaches to the act of creation, the act +of thought, is transferred to the record. The poet chanting was felt to +be a divine man: henceforth the chant is divine, also. The writer was a +just and wise spirit: henceforward it is settled the book is perfect; as +love of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly the book +becomes noxious: the guide is a tyrant.... Books are the best of things, +well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the +one end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to +inspire.... The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. +This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, +although in almost all men obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul +active sees absolute truth and utters truth, or creates. In this action +it is genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the +sound estate of every man.... Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of +genius by over-influence. The literature of every nation bears me +witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakspearized now for two +hundred years.... These being his functions, it becomes him to feel all +confidence in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. He, and he +only, knows the world. The world of any moment is the merest appearance. +Some great decorum, some fetish of a government, some ephemeral trade, +or war, or man, is cried up by half mankind and cried down by the other +half, as if all depended on this particular up or down. The odds are +that the whole question is not worth the poorest thought which the +scholar has lost in listening to the controversy. Let him not quit his +belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable of +the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom." + +Dr. Holmes called this speech of Emerson's our "intellectual +Declaration of Independence," and indeed it was. "The Phi Beta Kappa +speech," says Mr. Lowell, "was an event without any former parallel in +our literary annals,--a scene always to be treasured in the memory for +its picturesqueness and its inspiration. What crowded and breathless +aisles, what windows clustering with eager heads, what enthusiasm of +approval, what grim silence of foregone dissent!" + +The authorities of the Divinity School can hardly have been very careful +readers of Nature and The American Scholar, or they would not have +invited Emerson, in 1838, to deliver the address to the graduating +class. This was Emerson's second opportunity to apply his beliefs +directly to society. A few lines out of the famous address are enough to +show that he saw in the church of his day signs of the same decadence +that he saw in the letters: "The prayers and even the dogmas of our +church are like the zodiac of Denderah and the astronomical monuments of +the Hindoos, wholly insulated from anything now extant in the life and +business of the people. They mark the height to which the waters once +rose.... It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not +was; that he speaketh, not spake. The true Christianity--a faith like +Christ's in the infinitude of man--is lost. None believeth in the soul +of man, but only in some man or person old and departed. Ah me! no man +goeth alone. All men go in flocks to this saint or that poet, avoiding +the God who seeth in secret. They cannot see in secret; they love to be +blind in public. They think society wiser than their soul, and know not +that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world." + +It is almost misleading to speak of the lofty utterances of these early +addresses as attacks upon society, but their reception explains them. +The element of absolute courage is the same in all natures. Emerson +himself was not unconscious of what function he was performing. + +The "storm in our wash-bowl" which followed this Divinity School +address, the letters of remonstrance from friends, the advertisements by +the Divinity School of "no complicity," must have been cheering to +Emerson. His unseen yet dominating ambition is shown throughout the +address, and in this note in his diary of the following year:-- + + "_August_ 31. Yesterday at the Phi Beta Kappa anniversary. Steady, + steady. I am convinced that if a man will be a true scholar he + shall have perfect freedom. The young people and the mature hint at + odium and the aversion of forces to be presently encountered in + society. I say No; I fear it not." + +The lectures and addresses which form the latter half of the first +volume in the collected edition show the early Emerson in the ripeness +of his powers. These writings have a lyrical sweep and a beauty which +the later works often lack. Passages in them remind us of Hamlet:-- + + "How silent, how spacious, what room for all, yet without space to + insert an atom;--in graceful succession, in equal fulness, in + balanced beauty, the dance of the hours goes forward still. Like an + odor of incense, like a strain of music, like a sleep, it is inexact + and boundless. It will not be dissected, nor unravelled, nor + shown.... The great Pan of old, who was clothed in a leopard skin to + signify the beautiful variety of things and the firmament, his coat + of stars,--was but the representative of thee, O rich and various + man! thou palace of sight and sound, carrying in thy senses the + morning and the night and the unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain, the + geometry of the City of God; in thy heart, the bower of love and the + realms of right and wrong.... Every star in heaven is discontent + and insatiable. Gravitation and chemistry cannot content them. Ever + they woo and court the eye of the beholder. Every man who comes into + the world they seek to fascinate and possess, to pass into his mind, + for they desire to republish themselves in a more delicate world + than that they occupy.... So it is with all immaterial objects. + These beautiful basilisks set their brute glorious eyes on the eye + of every child, and, if they can, cause their nature to pass through + his wondering eyes into him, and so all things are mixed." + +Emerson is never far from his main thought:-- + + "The universe does not attract us till it is housed in an + individual." "A man, a personal ascendency, is the only great + phenomenon." + + "I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of + the sacredness of private integrity." + +On the other hand, he is never far from his great fear: "But Truth is +such a fly-away, such a sly-boots, so untransportable and unbarrelable a +commodity, that it is as bad to catch as light." "Let him beware of +proposing to himself any end.... I say to you plainly, there is no end +so sacred or so large that if pursued for itself will not become +carrion and an offence to the nostril." + +There can be nothing finer than Emerson's knowledge of the world, his +sympathy with young men and with the practical difficulties of applying +his teachings. We can see in his early lectures before students and +mechanics how much he had learned about the structure of society from +his own short contact with the organized church. + + "Each finds a tender and very intelligent conscience a + disqualification for success. Each requires of the practitioner a + certain shutting of the eyes, a certain dapperness and compliance, + an acceptance of customs, a sequestration from the sentiments of + generosity and love, a compromise of private opinion and lofty + integrity.... The fact that a new thought and hope have dawned in + your breast, should apprise you that in the same hour a new light + broke in upon a thousand private hearts.... And further I will not + dissemble my hope that each person whom I address has felt his own + call to cast aside all evil customs, timidity, and limitations, and + to be in his place a free and helpful man, a reformer, a benefactor, + not content to slip along through the world like a footman or a spy, + escaping by his nimbleness and apologies as many knocks as he can, + but a brave and upright man who must find or cut a straight road to + everything excellent in the earth, and not only go honorably + himself, but make it easier for all who follow him to go in honor + and with benefit...." + +Beneath all lay a greater matter,--Emerson's grasp of the forms and +conditions of progress, his reach of intellect, which could afford fair +play to every one. + +His lecture on The Conservative is not a puzzling _jeu d'esprit_, like +Bishop Blougram's Apology, but an honest attempt to set up the opposing +chessmen of conservatism and reform so as to represent real life. Hardly +can such a brilliant statement of the case be found elsewhere in +literature. It is not necessary to quote here the reformer's side of the +question, for Emerson's whole life was devoted to it. The conservatives' +attitude he gives with such accuracy and such justice that the very +bankers of State Street seem to be speaking:-- + + "The order of things is as good as the character of the population + permits. Consider it as the work of a great and beneficent and + progressive necessity, which, from the first pulsation in the first + animal life up to the present high culture of the best nations, has + advanced thus far.... + + "The conservative party in the universe concedes that the radical + would talk sufficiently to the purpose if we were still in the + garden of Eden; he legislates for man as he ought to be; his theory + is right, but he makes no allowance for friction, and this omission + makes his whole doctrine false. The idealist retorts that the + conservative falls into a far more noxious error in the other + extreme. The conservative assumes sickness as a necessity, and his + social frame is a hospital, his total legislation is for the present + distress, a universe in slippers and flannels, with bib and + pap-spoon, swallowing pills and herb tea. Sickness gets organized as + well as health, the vice as well as the virtue." + +It is unnecessary to go, one by one, through the familiar essays and +lectures which Emerson published between 1838 and 1875. They are in +everybody's hands and in everybody's thoughts. In 1840 he wrote in his +diary: "In all my lectures I have taught one doctrine, namely, the +infinitude of the private man. This the people accept readily enough, +and even with commendation, as long as I call the lecture Art or +Politics, or Literature or the Household; but the moment I call it +Religion they are shocked, though it be only the application of the same +truth which they receive elsewhere to a new class of facts." To the +platform he returned, and left it only once or twice during the +remainder of his life. + +His writings vary in coherence. In his early occasional pieces, like the +Phi Beta Kappa address, coherence is at a maximum. They were written for +a purpose, and were perhaps struck off all at once. But he earned his +living by lecturing, and a lecturer is always recasting his work and +using it in different forms. A lecturer has no prejudice against +repetition. It is noticeable that in some of Emerson's important +lectures the logical scheme is more perfect than in his essays. The +truth seems to be that in the process of working up and perfecting his +writings, in revising and filing his sentences, the logical scheme +became more and more obliterated. Another circumstance helped make his +style fragmentary. He was by nature a man of inspirations and exalted +moods. He was subject to ecstasies, during which his mind worked with +phenomenal brilliancy. Throughout his works and in his diary we find +constant reference to these moods, and to his own inability to control +or recover them. "But what we want is consecutiveness. 'T is with us a +flash of light, then a long darkness, then a flash again. Ah! could we +turn these fugitive sparkles into an astronomy of Copernican worlds!" + +In order to take advantage of these periods of divination, he used to +write down the thoughts that came to him at such times. From boyhood +onward he kept journals and commonplace books, and in the course of his +reading and meditation he collected innumerable notes and quotations +which he indexed for ready use. In these mines he "quarried," as Mr. +Cabot says, for his lectures and essays. When he needed a lecture he +went to the repository, threw together what seemed to have a bearing on +some subject, and gave it a title. If any other man should adopt this +method of composition, the result would be incomprehensible chaos; +because most men have many interests, many moods, many and conflicting +ideas. But with Emerson it was otherwise. There was only one thought +which could set him aflame, and that was the thought of the unfathomed +might of man. This thought was his religion, his politics, his ethics, +his philosophy. One moment of inspiration was in him own brother to the +next moment of inspiration, although they might be separated by six +weeks. When he came to put together his star-born ideas, they fitted +well, no matter in what order he placed them, because they were all +part of the same idea. + +His works are all one single attack on the vice of the age, moral +cowardice. He assails it not by railings and scorn, but by positive and +stimulating suggestion. The imagination of the reader is touched by +every device which can awake the admiration for heroism, the +consciousness of moral courage. Wit, quotation, anecdote, eloquence, +exhortation, rhetoric, sarcasm, and very rarely denunciation, are +launched at the reader, till he feels little lambent flames beginning to +kindle in him. He is perhaps unable to see the exact logical connection +between two paragraphs of an essay, yet he feels they are germane. He +takes up Emerson tired and apathetic, but presently he feels himself +growing heady and truculent, strengthened in his most inward vitality, +surprised to find himself again master in his own house. + +The difference between Emerson and the other moralists is that all these +stimulating pictures and suggestions are not given by him in +illustration of a general proposition. They have never been through the +mill of generalization in his own mind. He himself could not have told +you their logical bearing on one another. They have all the vividness of +disconnected fragments of life, and yet they all throw light on one +another, like the facets of a jewel. But whatever cause it was that led +him to adopt his method of writing, it is certain that he succeeded in +delivering himself of his thought with an initial velocity and carrying +power such as few men ever attained. He has the force at his command of +the thrower of the discus. + +His style is American, and beats with the pulse of the climate. He is +the only writer we have had who writes as he speaks, who makes no +literary parade, has no pretensions of any sort. He is the only writer +we have had who has wholly subdued his vehicle to his temperament. It is +impossible to name his style without naming his character: they are one +thing. + +Both in language and in elocution Emerson was a practised and consummate +artist, who knew how both to command his effects and to conceal his +means. The casual, practical, disarming directness with which he writes +puts any honest man at his mercy. What difference does it make whether a +man who can talk like this is following an argument or not? You cannot +always see Emerson clearly; he is hidden by a high wall; but you always +know exactly on what spot he is standing. You judge it by the flight of +the objects he throws over the wall,--a bootjack, an apple, a crown, a +razor, a volume of verse. With one or other of these missiles, all +delivered with a very tolerable aim, he is pretty sure to hit you. These +catchwords stick in the mind. People are not in general influenced by +long books or discourses, but by odd fragments of observation which they +overhear, sentences or head-lines which they read while turning over a +book at random or while waiting for dinner to be announced. These are +the oracles and orphic words that get lodged in the mind and bend a +man's most stubborn will. Emerson called them the Police of the +Universe. His works are a treasury of such things. They sparkle in the +mine, or you may carry them off in your pocket. They get driven into +your mind like nails, and on them catch and hang your own experiences, +till what was once his thought has become your character. + + "God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take + which you please; you can never have both." "Discontent is want of + self-reliance; it is infirmity of will." "It is impossible for a man + to be cheated by any one but himself." + +The orchestration with which Emerson introduces and sustains these +notes from the spheres is as remarkable as the winged things themselves. +Open his works at a hazard. You hear a man talking. + + "A garden is like those pernicious machineries we read of every + month in the newspapers, which catch a man's coat-skirt or his hand, + and draw in his arm, his leg, and his whole body to irresistible + destruction. In an evil hour he pulled down his wall and added a + field to his homestead. No land is bad, but land is worse. If a man + own land, the land owns him. Now let him leave home if he dare. + Every tree and graft, every hill of melons, row of corn, or quickset + hedge, all he has done and all he means to do, stand in his way like + duns, when he would go out of his gate." + +Your attention is arrested by the reality of this gentleman in his +garden, by the first-hand quality of his mind. It matters not on what +subject he talks. While you are musing, still pleased and patronizing, +he has picked up the bow of Ulysses, bent it with the ease of Ulysses, +and sent a shaft clear through the twelve axes, nor missed one of them. +But this, it seems, was mere byplay and marksmanship; for before you +have done wondering, Ulysses rises to his feet in anger, and pours +flight after flight, arrow after arrow, from the great bow. The shafts +sing and strike, the suitors fall in heaps. The brow of Ulysses shines +with unearthly splendor. The air is filled with lightning. After a +little, without shock or transition, without apparent change of tone, +Mr. Emerson is offering you a biscuit before you leave, and bidding you +mind the last step at the garden end. If the man who can do these things +be not an artist, then must we have a new vocabulary and rename the +professions. + +There is, in all this effectiveness of Emerson, no pose, no literary +art; nothing that corresponds even remotely to the pretended modesty and +ignorance with which Socrates lays pitfalls for our admiration in +Plato's dialogues. + +It was the platform which determined Emerson's style. He was not a +writer, but a speaker. On the platform his manner of speech was a living +part of his words. The pauses and hesitation, the abstraction, the +searching, the balancing, the turning forward and back of the leaves of +his lecture, and then the discovery, the illumination, the gleam of +lightning which you saw before your eyes descend into a man of +genius,--all this was Emerson. He invented this style of speaking, and +made it express the supersensuous, the incommunicable. Lowell wrote, +while still under the spell of the magician: "Emerson's oration was more +disjointed than usual, even with him. It began nowhere, and ended +everywhere, and yet, as always with that divine man, it left you feeling +that something beautiful had passed that way, something more beautiful +than anything else, like the rising and setting of stars. Every possible +criticism might have been made on it but one,--that it was not noble. +There was a tone in it that awakened all elevating associations. He +boggled, he lost his place, he had to put on his glasses; but it was as +if a creature from some fairer world had lost his way in our fogs, and +it was _our_ fault, not his. It was chaotic, but it was all such stuff +as stars are made of, and you couldn't help feeling that, if you waited +awhile, all that was nebulous would be whirled into planets, and would +assume the mathematical gravity of system. All through it I felt +something in me that cried, 'Ha! ha!' to the sound of the trumpets." + +It is nothing for any man sitting in his chair to be overcome with the +sense of the immediacy of life, to feel the spur of courage, the victory +of good over evil, the value, now and forever, of all great-hearted +endeavor. Such moments come to us all. But for a man to sit in his chair +and write what shall call up these forces in the bosoms of others--that +is desert, that is greatness. To do this was the gift of Emerson. The +whole earth is enriched by every moment of converse with him. The shows +and shams of life become transparent, the lost kingdoms are brought +back, the shutters of the spirit are opened, and provinces and realms of +our own existence lie gleaming before us. + +It has been necessary to reduce the living soul of Emerson to mere dead +attributes like "moral courage" in order that we might talk about him at +all. His effectiveness comes from his character; not from his +philosophy, nor from his rhetoric nor his wit, nor from any of the +accidents of his education. He might never have heard of Berkeley or +Plato. A slightly different education might have led him to throw his +teaching into the form of historical essays or of stump speeches. He +might, perhaps, have been bred a stonemason, and have done his work in +the world by travelling with a panorama. But he would always have been +Emerson. His weight and his power would always have been the same. It is +solely as character that he is important. He discovered nothing; he +bears no relation whatever to the history of philosophy. We must regard +him and deal with him simply as a man. + +Strangely enough, the world has always insisted upon accepting him as a +thinker: and hence a great coil of misunderstanding. As a thinker, +Emerson is difficult to classify. Before you begin to assign him a +place, you must clear the ground by a disquisition as to what is meant +by "a thinker", and how Emerson differs from other thinkers. As a man, +Emerson is as plain as Ben Franklin. + +People have accused him of inconsistency; they say that he teaches one +thing one day, and another the next day. But from the point of view of +Emerson there is no such thing as inconsistency. Every man is each day a +new man. Let him be to-day what he is to-day. It is immaterial and waste +of time to consider what he once was or what he may be. + +His picturesque speech delights in fact and anecdote, and a public which +is used to treatises and deduction cares always to be told the moral. It +wants everything reduced to a generalization. All generalizations are +partial truths, but we are used to them, and we ourselves mentally make +the proper allowance. Emerson's method is, not to give a generalization +and trust to our making the allowance, but to give two conflicting +statements and leave the balance of truth to be struck in our own minds +on the facts. There is no inconsistency in this. It is a vivid and very +legitimate method of procedure. But he is much more than a theorist: he +is a practitioner. He does not merely state a theory of agitation: he +proceeds to agitate. "Do not," he says, "set the least value on what I +do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle +anything as false or true. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me +sacred, none are profane. I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no +past at my back." He was not engaged in teaching many things, but one +thing,--Courage. Sometimes he inspires it by pointing to great +characters,--Fox, Milton, Alcibiades; sometimes he inspires it by +bidding us beware of imitating such men, and, in the ardor of his +rhetoric, even seems to regard them as hindrances and dangers to our +development. There is no inconsistency here. Emerson might logically +have gone one step further and raised inconsistency into a jewel. For +what is so useful, so educational, so inspiring, to a timid and +conservative man, as to do something inconsistent and regrettable? It +lends character to him at once. He breathes freer and is stronger for +the experience. + +Emerson is no cosmopolitan. He is a patriot. He is not like Goethe, +whose sympathies did not run on national lines. Emerson has America in +his mind's eye all the time. There is to be a new religion, and it is to +come from America; a new and better type of man, and he is to be an +American. He not only cared little or nothing for Europe, but he cared +not much for the world at large. His thought was for the future of this +country. You cannot get into any chamber in his mind which is below this +chamber of patriotism. He loves the valor of Alexander and the grace of +the Oxford athlete; but he loves them not for themselves. He has a use +for them. They are grist to his mill and powder to his gun. His +admiration of them he subordinates to his main purpose,--they are his +blackboard and diagrams. His patriotism is the backbone of his +significance. He came to his countrymen at a time when they lacked, not +thoughts, but manliness. The needs of his own particular public are +always before him. + + "It is odd that our people should have, not water on the brain, but + a little gas there. A shrewd foreigner said of the Americans that + 'whatever they say has a little the air of a speech.'" + + "I shall not need to go into an enumeration of our national defects + and vices which require this Order of Censors in the State.... The + timidity of our public opinion is our disease, or, shall I say, the + publicness of opinion, the absence of private opinion." + + "Our measure of success is the moderation and low level of an + individual's judgment. Dr. Channing's piety and wisdom had such + weight in Boston that the popular idea of religion was whatever this + eminent divine held." + + "Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity, the squalid + contentment of the times." + +The politicians he scores constantly. + + "Who that sees the meanness of our politics but congratulates + Washington that he is long already wrapped in his shroud and forever + safe." The following is his description of the social world of his + day: "If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by + distinction _society_, he will see the need of these ethics. The + sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become + timorous, desponding whimperers." + +It is the same wherever we open his books. He must spur on, feed up, +bring forward the dormant character of his countrymen. When he goes to +England, he sees in English life nothing except those elements which are +deficient in American life. If you wish a catalogue of what America has +not, read English Traits. Emerson's patriotism had the effect of +expanding his philosophy. To-day we know the value of physique, for +science has taught it, but it was hardly discovered in his day, and his +philosophy affords no basis for it. Emerson in this matter transcends +his philosophy. When in England, he was fairly made drunk with the +physical life he found there. He is like Caspar Hauser gazing for the +first time on green fields. English Traits is the ruddiest book he ever +wrote. It is a hymn to force, honesty, and physical well-being, and ends +with the dominant note of his belief: "By this general activity and by +this sacredness of individuals, they [the English] have in seven hundred +years evolved the principles of freedom. It is the land of patriots, +martyrs, sages, and bards, and if the ocean out of which it emerged +should wash it away, it will be remembered as an island famous for +immortal laws, for the announcements of original right which make the +stone tables of liberty." He had found in England free speech, personal +courage, and reverence for the individual. + +No convulsion could shake Emerson or make his view unsteady even for an +instant. What no one else saw, he saw, and he saw nothing else. Not a +boy in the land welcomed the outbreak of the war so fiercely as did this +shy village philosopher, then at the age of fifty-eight. He saw that war +was the cure for cowardice, moral as well as physical. It was not the +cause of the slave that moved him; it was not the cause of the Union for +which he cared a farthing. It was something deeper than either of these +things for which he had been battling all his life. It was the cause of +character against convention. Whatever else the war might bring, it was +sure to bring in character, to leave behind it a file of heroes; if not +heroes, then villains, but in any case strong men. On the 9th of April, +1861, three days before Fort Sumter was bombarded, he had spoken with +equanimity of "the downfall of our character-destroying civilization.... +We find that civilization crowed too soon, that our triumphs were +treacheries; we had opened the wrong door and let the enemy into the +castle." + +"Ah," he said, when the firing began, "sometimes gunpowder smells good." +Soon after the attack on Sumter he said in a public address, "We have +been very homeless for some years past, say since 1850; but now we have +a country again.... The war was an eye-opener, and showed men of all +parties and opinions the value of those primary forces that lie beneath +all political action." And it was almost a personal pledge when he said +at the Harvard Commemoration in 1865, "We shall not again disparage +America, now that we have seen what men it will bear." + +The place which Emerson forever occupies as a great critic is defined by +the same sharp outlines that mark his work, in whatever light and from +whatever side we approach it. A critic in the modern sense he was not, +for his point of view is fixed, and he reviews the world like a +search-light placed on the top of a tall tower. He lived too early and +at too great a distance from the forum of European thought to absorb the +ideas of evolution and give place to them in his philosophy. Evolution +does not graft well upon the Platonic Idealism, nor are physiology and +the kindred sciences sympathetic. Nothing aroused Emerson's indignation +more than the attempts of the medical faculty and of phrenologists to +classify, and therefore limit individuals. "The grossest ignorance does +not disgust me like this ignorant knowingness." + +We miss in Emerson the underlying conception of growth, of development, +so characteristic of the thought of our own day, and which, for +instance, is found everywhere latent in Browning's poetry. Browning +regards character as the result of experience and as an ever changing +growth. To Emerson, character is rather an entity complete and eternal +from the beginning. He is probably the last great writer to look at life +from a stationary standpoint. There is a certain lack of the historic +sense in all he has written. The ethical assumption that all men are +exactly alike permeates his work. In his mind, Socrates, Marco Polo, and +General Jackson stand surrounded by the same atmosphere, or rather stand +as mere naked characters surrounded by no atmosphere at all. He is +probably the last great writer who will fling about classic anecdotes as +if they were club gossip. In the discussion of morals, this assumption +does little harm. The stories and proverbs which illustrate the thought +of the moralist generally concern only those simple relations of life +which are common to all ages. There is charm in this familiar dealing +with antiquity. The classics are thus domesticated and made real to us. +What matter if Æsop appear a little too much like an American citizen, +so long as his points tell? + +It is in Emerson's treatment of the fine arts that we begin to notice +his want of historic sense. Art endeavors to express subtle and ever +changing feelings by means of conventions which are as protean as the +forms of a cloud; and the man who in speaking on the plastic arts makes +the assumption that all men are alike will reveal before he has uttered +three sentences that he does not know what art is, that he has never +experienced any form of sensation from it. Emerson lived in a time and +clime where there was no plastic art, and he was obliged to arrive at +his ideas about art by means of a highly complex process of reasoning. +He dwelt constantly in a spiritual place which was the very focus of +high moral fervor. This was his enthusiasm, this was his revelation, and +from it he reasoned out the probable meaning of the fine arts. "This," +thought Emerson, his eye rolling in a fine frenzy of moral feeling, +"this must be what Apelles experienced, this fervor is the passion of +Bramante. I understand the Parthenon." And so he projected his feelings +about morality into the field of the plastic arts. He deals very freely +and rather indiscriminately with the names of artists,--Phidias, +Raphael, Salvator Rosa,--and he speaks always in such a way that it is +impossible to connect what he says with any impression we have ever +received from the works of those masters. + +In fact, Emerson has never in his life felt the normal appeal of any +painting, or any sculpture, or any architecture, or any music. These +things, of which he does not know the meaning in real life, he yet uses, +and uses constantly, as symbols to convey ethical truths. The result is +that his books are full of blind places, like the notes which will not +strike on a sick piano. + +It is interesting to find that the one art of which Emerson did have a +direct understanding, the art of poetry, gave him some insight into the +relation of the artist to his vehicle. In his essay on Shakespeare there +is a full recognition of the debt of Shakespeare to his times. This +essay is filled with the historic sense. We ought not to accuse Emerson +because he lacked appreciation of the fine arts, but rather admire the +truly Goethean spirit in which he insisted upon the reality of arts of +which he had no understanding. This is the same spirit which led him to +insist on the value of the Eastern poets. Perhaps there exist a few +scholars who can tell us how far Emerson understood or misunderstood +Saadi and Firdusi and the Koran. But we need not be disturbed for his +learning. It is enough that he makes us recognize that these men were +men too, and that their writings mean something not unknowable to us. +The East added nothing to Emerson, but gave him a few trappings of +speech. The whole of his mysticism is to be found in Nature, written +before he knew the sages of the Orient, and it is not improbable that +there is some real connection between his own mysticism and the +mysticism of the Eastern poets. + +Emerson's criticism on men and books is like the test of a great chemist +who seeks one or two elements. He burns a bit of the stuff in his +incandescent light, shows the lines of it in his spectrum, and there an +end. + +It was a thought of genius that led him to write Representative Men. The +scheme of this book gave play to every illumination of his mind, and it +pinned him down to the objective, to the field of vision under his +microscope. The table of contents of Representative Men is the dial of +his education. It is as follows: Uses of Great Men; Plato, or The +Philosopher; Plato, New Readings; Swedenborg, or The Mystic; Montaigne, +or The Sceptic; Shakespeare, or The Poet; Napoleon, or The Man of the +World; Goethe, or The Writer. The predominance of the writers over all +other types of men is not cited to show Emerson's interest in The +Writer, for we know his interest centred in the practical man,--even his +ideal scholar is a practical man,--but to show the sources of his +illustration. Emerson's library was the old-fashioned gentleman's +library. His mines of thought were the world's classics. This is one +reason why he so quickly gained an international currency. His very +subjects in Representative Men are of universal interest, and he is +limited only by certain inevitable local conditions. Representative Men +is thought by many persons to be his best book. It is certainly filled +with the strokes of a master. There exists no more profound criticism +than Emerson's analysis of Goethe and of Napoleon, by both of whom he +was at once fascinated and repelled. + + + II + + +The attitude of Emerson's mind toward reformers results so logically +from his philosophy that it is easily understood. He saw in them people +who sought something as a panacea or as an end in itself. To speak +strictly and not irreverently, he had his own panacea,--the development +of each individual; and he was impatient of any other. He did not +believe in association. The very idea of it involved a surrender by the +individual of some portion of his identity, and of course all the +reformers worked through their associations. With their general aims he +sympathized. "These reforms," he wrote, "are our contemporaries; they +are ourselves, our own light and sight and conscience; they only name +the relation which subsists between us and the vicious institutions +which they go to rectify." But with the methods of the reformers he had +no sympathy: "He who aims at progress should aim at an infinite, not at +a special benefit. The reforms whose fame now fills the land with +temperance, anti-slavery, non-resistance, no-government, equal labor, +fair and generous as each appears, are poor bitter things when +prosecuted for themselves as an end." Again: "The young men who have +been vexing society for these last years with regenerative methods seem +to have made this mistake: they all exaggerated some special means, and +all failed to see that the reform of reforms must be accomplished +without means." + +Emerson did not at first discriminate between the movement of the +Abolitionists and the hundred and one other reform movements of the +period; and in this lack of discrimination lies a point of extraordinary +interest. The Abolitionists, as it afterwards turned out, had in fact +got hold of the issue which was to control the fortunes of the republic +for thirty years. The difference between them and the other reformers +was this: that the Abolitionists were men set in motion by the primary +and unreasoning passion of pity. Theory played small part in the +movement. It grew by the excitement which exhibitions of cruelty will +arouse in the minds of sensitive people. + +It is not to be denied that the social conditions in Boston in 1831 +foreboded an outbreak in some form. If the abolition excitement had not +drafted off the rising forces, there might have been a Merry Mount, an +epidemic of crime or insanity, or a mob of some sort. The abolition +movement afforded the purest form of an indulgence in human feeling that +was ever offered to men. It was intoxicating. It made the agitators +perfectly happy. They sang at their work and bubbled over with +exhilaration. They were the only people in the United States, at this +time, who were enjoying an exalted, glorifying, practical activity. + +But Emerson at first lacked the touchstone, whether of intellect or of +heart, to see the difference between this particular movement and the +other movements then in progress. Indeed, in so far as he sees any +difference between the Abolitionists and the rest, it is that the +Abolitionists were more objectionable and distasteful to him. "Those," +he said, "who are urging with most ardor what are called the greatest +benefits to mankind are narrow, conceited, self-pleasing men, and affect +us as the insane do." And again: "By the side of these men [the +idealists] the hot agitators have a certain cheap and ridiculous air; +they even look smaller than others. Of the two, I own I like the +speculators the best. They have some piety which looks with faith to a +fair future unprofaned by rash and unequal attempts to realize it." He +was drawn into the abolition cause by having the truth brought home to +him that these people were fighting for the Moral Law. He was slow in +seeing this, because in their methods they represented everything he +most condemned. As soon, however, as he was convinced, he was ready to +lecture for them and to give them the weight of his approval. In 1844 he +was already practically an Abolitionist, and his feelings upon the +matter deepened steadily in intensity ever after. + +The most interesting page of Emerson's published journal is the +following, written at some time previous to 1844; the exact date is not +given. A like page, whether written or unwritten, may be read into the +private annals of every man who lived before the war. Emerson has, with +unconscious mastery, photographed the half-spectre that stalked in the +minds of all. He wrote: "I had occasion to say the other day to +Elizabeth Hoar that I like best the strong and worthy persons, like her +father, who support the social order without hesitation or misgiving. I +like these; they never incommode us by exciting grief, pity, or +perturbation of any sort. But the professed philanthropists, it is +strange and horrible to say, are an altogether odious set of people, +whom one would shun as the worst of bores and canters. But my +conscience, my unhappy conscience respects that hapless class who see +the faults and stains of our social order, and who pray and strive +incessantly to right the wrong; this annoying class of men and women, +though they commonly find the work altogether beyond their faculty, and +their results are, for the present, distressing. They are partial, and +apt to magnify their own. Yes, and the prostrate penitent, also,--he is +not comprehensive, he is not philosophical in those tears and groans. +Yet I feel that under him and his partiality and exclusiveness is the +earth and the sea and all that in them is, and the axis around which the +universe revolves passes through his body where he stands." + +It was the defection of Daniel Webster that completed the conversion of +Emerson and turned him from an adherent into a propagandist of +abolition. Not pity for the slave, but indignation at the violation of +the Moral Law by Daniel Webster, was at the bottom of Emerson's anger. +His abolitionism was secondary to his main mission, his main enthusiasm. +It is for this reason that he stands on a plane of intellect where he +might, under other circumstances, have met and defeated Webster. After +the 7th of March, 1850, he recognized in Webster the embodiment of all +that he hated. In his attacks on Webster, Emerson trembles to his inmost +fibre with antagonism. He is savage, destructive, personal, bent on +death. + +This exhibition of Emerson as a fighting animal is magnificent, and +explains his life. There is no other instance of his ferocity. No other +nature but Webster's ever so moved him; but it was time to be moved, and +Webster was a man of his size. Had these two great men of New England +been matched in training as they were matched in endowment, and had they +then faced each other in debate, they would not have been found to +differ so greatly in power. Their natures were electrically repellent, +but from which did the greater force radiate? Their education differed +so radically that it is impossible to compare them, but if you translate +the Phi Beta Kappa address into politics, you have something stronger +than Webster,--something that recalls Chatham; and Emerson would have +had this advantage,--that he was not afraid. As it was, he left his +library and took the stump. Mr. Cabot has given us extracts from his +speeches:-- + + "The tameness is indeed complete; all are involved in one hot haste + of terror,--presidents of colleges and professors, saints and + brokers, lawyers and manufacturers; not a liberal recollection, not + so much as a snatch of an old song for freedom, dares intrude on + their passive obedience.... Mr. Webster, perhaps, is only following + the laws of his blood and constitution. I suppose his pledges were + not quite natural to him. He is a man who lives by his memory; a man + of the past, not a man of faith and of hope. All the drops of his + blood have eyes that look downward, and his finely developed + understanding only works truly and with all its force when it stands + for animal good; that is, for property. He looks at the Union as an + estate, a large farm, and is excellent in the completeness of his + defence of it so far. What he finds already written he will defend. + Lucky that so much had got well written when he came, for he has no + faith in the power of self-government. Not the smallest municipal + provision, if it were new, would receive his sanction. In + Massachusetts, in 1776, he would, beyond all question, have been a + refugee. He praises Adams and Jefferson, but it is a past Adams and + Jefferson. A present Adams or Jefferson he would denounce.... But + one thing appears certain to me: that the Union is at an end as soon + as an immoral law is enacted. He who writes a crime into the + statute book digs under the foundations of the Capitol.... The words + of John Randolph, wiser than he knew, have been ringing ominously in + all echoes for thirty years: 'We do not govern the people of the + North by our black slaves, but by their own white slaves.' ... They + come down now like the cry of fate, in the moment when they are + fulfilled." + +The exasperation of Emerson did not subside, but went on increasing +during the next four years, and on March 7, 1854, he read his lecture on +the Fugitive Slave Law at the New York Tabernacle: "I have lived all my +life without suffering any inconvenience from American Slavery. I never +saw it; I never heard the whip; I never felt the check on my free speech +and action, until the other day, when Mr. Webster, by his personal +influence, brought the Fugitive Slave Law on the country. I say Mr. +Webster, for though the bill was not his, it is yet notorious that he +was the life and soul of it, that he gave it all he had. It cost him his +life, and under the shadow of his great name inferior men sheltered +themselves, threw their ballots for it, and made the law.... Nobody +doubts that Daniel Webster could make a good speech. Nobody doubts that +there were good and plausible things to be said on the part of the +South. But this is not a question of ingenuity, not a question of +syllogisms, but of sides. _How came he there_? ... But the question which +history will ask is broader. In the final hour when he was forced by the +peremptory necessity of the closing armies to take a side,--did he take +the part of great principles, the side of humanity and justice, or the +side of abuse, and oppression and chaos? ... He did as immoral men +usually do,--made very low bows to the Christian Church and went through +all the Sunday decorums, but when allusion was made to the question of +duty and the sanctions of morality, he very frankly said, at Albany, +'Some higher law, something existing somewhere between here and the +heaven--I do not know where.' And if the reporters say true, this +wretched atheism found some laughter in the company." + +It was too late for Emerson to shine as a political debater. On May 14, +1857, Longfellow wrote in his diary, "It is rather painful to see +Emerson in the arena of politics, hissed and hooted at by young law +students." Emerson records a similar experience at a later date: "If I +were dumb, yet would I have gone and mowed and muttered or made signs. +The mob roared whenever I attempted to speak, and after several +beginnings I withdrew." There is nothing "painful" here: it is the +sublime exhibition of a great soul in bondage to circumstance. + +The thing to be noted is that this is the same man, in the same state of +excitement about the same idea, who years before spoke out in The +American Scholar, in the Essays, and in the Lectures. + +What was it that had aroused in Emerson such Promethean antagonism in +1837 but those same forces which in 1850 came to their culmination and +assumed visible shape in the person of Daniel Webster? The formal +victory of Webster drew Emerson into the arena, and made a dramatic +episode in his life. But his battle with those forces had begun thirteen +years earlier, when he threw down the gauntlet to them in his Phi Beta +Kappa oration. Emerson by his writings did more than any other man to +rescue the youth of the next generation and fit them for the fierce +times to follow. It will not be denied that he sent ten thousand sons to +the war. + +In speaking of Emerson's attitude toward the anti-slavery cause, it has +been possible to dispense with any survey of that movement, because the +movement was simple and specific and is well remembered. But when we +come to analyze the relations he bore to some of the local agitations of +his day, it becomes necessary to weave in with the matter a discussion +of certain tendencies deeply imbedded in the life of his times, and of +which he himself was in a sense an outcome. In speaking of the +Transcendentalists, who were essentially the children of the Puritans, +we must begin with some study of the chief traits of Puritanism. + +What parts the factors of climate, circumstance, and religion have +respectively played in the development of the New England character no +analysis can determine. We may trace the imaginary influence of a harsh +creed in the lines of the face. We may sometimes follow from generation +to generation the course of a truth which at first sustained the spirit +of man, till we see it petrify into a dogma which now kills the spirits +of men. Conscience may destroy the character. The tragedy of the New +England judge enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law was no new spectacle in +New England. A dogmatic crucifixion of the natural instincts had been in +progress there for two hundred years. Emerson, who is more free from +dogma than any other teacher that can be named, yet comes very near +being dogmatic in his reiteration of the Moral Law. + +Whatever volume of Emerson we take up, the Moral Law holds the same +place in his thoughts. It is the one statable revelation of truth which +he is ready to stake his all upon. "The illusion that strikes me as the +masterpiece in that ring of illusions which our life is, is the timidity +with which we assert our moral sentiment. We are made of it, the world +is built by it, things endure as they share it; all beauty, all health, +all intelligence exist by it; yet we shrink to speak of it or range +ourselves by its side. Nay, we presume strength of him or them who deny +it. Cities go against it, the college goes against it, the courts snatch +any precedent at any vicious form of law to rule it out; legislatures +listen with appetite to declamations against it and vote it down." + +With this very beautiful and striking passage no one will quarrel, nor +will any one misunderstand it. + +The following passage has the same sort of poetical truth. "Things are +saturated with the moral law. There is no escape from it. Violets and +grass preach it; rain and snow, wind and tides, every change, every +cause in Nature is nothing but a disguised missionary." ... + +But Emerson is not satisfied with metaphor. "We affirm that in all men +is this majestic perception and command; that it is the presence of the +eternal in each perishing man; that it distances and degrades all +statements of whatever saints, heroes, poets, as obscure and confused +stammerings before its silent revelation. _They_ report the truth. _It_ +is the truth." In this last extract we have Emerson actually affirming +that his dogma of the Moral Law is Absolute Truth. He thinks it not +merely a form of truth, like the old theologies, but very +distinguishable from all other forms in the past. + +Curiously enough, his statement of the law grows dogmatic and incisive +in proportion as he approaches the borderland between his law and the +natural instincts: "The last revelation of intellect and of sentiment is +that in a manner it severs the man from all other men; makes known to +him _that the spiritual powers are sufficient to him if no other being +existed_; that he is to deal absolutely in the world, as if he alone +were a system and a state, and though all should perish could make all +anew." Here we have the dogma applied, and we see in it only a new form +of old Calvinism as cruel as Calvinism, and not much different from its +original. The italics are not Emerson's, but are inserted to bring out +an idea which is everywhere prevalent in his teaching. + +In this final form, the Moral Law, by insisting that sheer conscience +can slake the thirst that rises in the soul, is convicted of falsehood; +and this heartless falsehood is the same falsehood that has been put +into the porridge of every Puritan child for six generations. A grown +man can digest doctrine and sleep at night. But a young person of high +purpose and strong will, who takes such a lie as this half-truth and +feeds on it as on the bread of life, will suffer. It will injure the +action of his heart. Truly the fathers have eaten sour grapes, therefore +the children's teeth are set on edge. + + * * * * * + +To understand the civilization of cities, we must look at the rural +population from which they draw their life. We have recently had our +attention called to the last remnants of that village life so reverently +gathered up by Miss Wilkins, and of which Miss Emily Dickinson was the +last authentic voice. The spirit of this age has examined with an almost +pathological interest this rescued society. We must go to it if we would +understand Emerson, who is the blossoming of its culture. We must study +it if we would arrive at any intelligent and general view of that +miscellaneous crop of individuals who have been called the +Transcendentalists. + +Between 1830 and 1840 there were already signs in New England that the +nutritive and reproductive forces of society were not quite wholesome, +not exactly well adjusted. Self-repression was the religion which had +been inherited. "Distrust Nature" was the motto written upon the front +of the temple. What would have happened to that society if left to +itself for another hundred years no man can guess. It was rescued by the +two great regenerators of mankind, new land and war. The dispersion +came, as Emerson said of the barbarian conquests of Rome, not a day too +soon. It happened that the country at large stood in need of New England +as much as New England stood in need of the country. This congested +virtue, in order to be saved, must be scattered. This ferment, in order +to be kept wholesome, must be used as leaven to leaven the whole lump. +"As you know," says Emerson in his Eulogy on Boston, "New England +supplies annually a large detachment of preachers and schoolmasters and +private tutors to the interior of the South and West.... We are willing +to see our sons emigrate, as to see our hives swarm. That is what they +were made to do, and what the land wants and invites." + +For purposes of yeast, there was never such leaven as the Puritan stock. +How little the natural force of the race had really abated became +apparent when it was placed under healthy conditions, given land to +till, foes to fight, the chance to renew its youth like the eagle. But +during this period the relief had not yet come. The terrible pressure of +Puritanism and conservatism in New England was causing a revolt not only +of the Abolitionists, but of another class of people of a type not so +virile as they. The times have been smartly described by Lowell in his +essay on Thoreau:-- + + "Every possible form of intellectual and physical dyspepsia brought + forth its gospel. Bran had its prophets.... Everybody had a Mission + (with a capital M) to attend to everybody else's business. No brain + but had its private maggot, which must have found pitiably short + commons sometimes. Not a few impecunious zealots abjured the use of + money (unless earned by other people), professing to live on the + internal revenues of the spirit. Some had an assurance of instant + millennium so soon as hooks and eyes should be substituted for + buttons. Communities were established where everything was to be + common but common sense.... Conventions were held for every hitherto + inconceivable purpose." + +Whatever may be said of the Transcendentalists, it must not be forgotten +that they represented an elevation of feeling, which through them +qualified the next generation, and can be traced in the life of New +England to-day. The strong intrinsic character lodged in these recusants +was later made manifest; for many of them became the best citizens of +the commonwealth,--statesmen, merchants, soldiers, men and women of +affairs. They retained their idealism while becoming practical men. +There is hardly an example of what we should have thought would be +common in their later lives, namely, a reaction from so much ideal +effort, and a plunge into cynicism and malice, scoundrelism and the +flesh-pots. In their early life they resembled the Abolitionists in +their devotion to an idea; but with the Transcendentalists self-culture +and the aesthetic and sentimental education took the place of more +public aims. They seem also to have been persons of greater social +refinement than the Abolitionists. + +The Transcendentalists were sure of only one thing,--that society as +constituted was all wrong. In this their main belief they were right. +They were men and women whose fundamental need was activity, contact +with real life, and the opportunity for social expansion; and they +keenly felt the chill and fictitious character of the reigning +conventionalities. The rigidity of behavior which at this time +characterized the Bostonians seemed sometimes ludicrous and sometimes +disagreeable to the foreign visitor. There was great gravity, together +with a certain pomp and dumbness, and these things were supposed to be +natural to the inhabitants and to give them joy. People are apt to +forget that such masks are never worn with ease. They result from the +application of an inflexible will, and always inflict discomfort. The +Transcendentalists found themselves all but stifled in a society as +artificial in its decorum as the court of France during the last years +of Louis XIV. + +Emerson was in no way responsible for the movement, although he got the +credit of having evoked it by his teaching. He was elder brother to it, +and was generated by its parental forces; but even if Emerson had never +lived, the Transcendentalists would have appeared. He was their victim +rather than their cause. He was always tolerant of them and sometimes +amused at them, and disposed to treat them lightly. It is impossible to +analyze their case with more astuteness than he did in an editorial +letter in The Dial. The letter is cold, but is a masterpiece of good +sense. He had, he says, received fifteen letters on the Prospects of +Culture. "Excellent reasons have been shown us why the writers, +obviously persons of sincerity and elegance, should be dissatisfied with +the life they lead, and with their company.... They want a friend to +whom they can speak and from whom they may hear now and then a +reasonable word." After discussing one or two of their proposals,--one +of which was that the tiresome "uncles and aunts" of the enthusiasts +should be placed by themselves in one delightful village, the dough, as +Emerson says, be placed in one pan and the leaven in another,--he +continues: "But it would be unjust not to remind our younger friends +that whilst this aspiration has always made its mark in the lives of men +of thought, in vigorous individuals it does not remain a detached +object, but is satisfied along with the satisfaction of other aims." +Young Americans "are educated above the work of their times and country, +and disdain it. Many of the more acute minds pass into a lofty +criticism ... which only embitters their sensibility to the evil, and +widens the feeling of hostility between them and the citizens at +large.... We should not know where to find in literature any record of +so much unbalanced intellectuality, such undeniable apprehension without +talent, so much power without equal applicability, as our young men +pretend to.... The balance of mind and body will redress itself fast +enough. Superficialness is the real distemper.... It is certain that +speculation is no succedaneum for life." He then turns to find the cure +for these distempers in the farm lands of Illinois, at that time already +being fenced in "almost like New England itself," and closes with a +suggestion that so long as there is a woodpile in the yard, and the +"wrongs of the Indian, of the Negro, of the emigrant, remain +unmitigated," relief might be found even nearer home. + +In his lecture on the Transcendentalists he says: "... But their +solitary and fastidious manners not only withdraw them from the +conversation, but from the labors of the world: they are not good +citizens, not good members of society; unwillingly they bear their part +of the public and private burdens; they do not willingly share in the +public charities, in the public religious rites, in the enterprises of +education, of missions foreign and domestic, in the abolition of the +slave-trade, or in the temperance society. They do not even like to +vote." A less sympathetic observer, Harriet Martineau, wrote of them: +"While Margaret Fuller and her adult pupils sat 'gorgeously dressed,' +talking about Mars and Venus, Plato and Goethe, and fancying themselves +the elect of the earth in intellect and refinement, the liberties of the +republic were running out as fast as they could go at a breach which +another sort of elect persons were devoting themselves to repair; and my +complaint against the 'gorgeous' pedants was that they regarded their +preservers as hewers of wood and drawers of water, and their work as a +less vital one than the pedantic orations which were spoiling a set of +well-meaning women in a pitiable way." Harriet Martineau, whose whole +work was practical, and who wrote her journal in 1855 and in the light +of history, was hardly able to do justice to these unpractical but +sincere spirits. + +Emerson was divided from the Transcendentalists by his common sense. His +shrewd business intellect made short work of their schemes. Each one of +their social projects contained some covert economic weakness, which +always turned out to lie in an attack upon the integrity of the +individual, and which Emerson of all men could be counted on to detect. +He was divided from them also by the fact that he was a man of genius, +who had sought out and fought out his means of expression. He was a +great artist, and as such he was a complete being. No one could give to +him nor take from him. His yearnings found fruition in expression. He +was sure of his place and of his use in this world. But the +Transcendentalists were neither geniuses nor artists nor complete +beings. Nor had they found their places or uses as yet. They were men +and women seeking light. They walked in dry places, seeking rest and +finding none. The Transcendentalists are not collectively important +because their _Sturm und Drang_ was intellectual and bloodless. Though +Emerson admonish and Harriet Martineau condemn, yet from the memorials +that survive, one is more impressed with the sufferings than with the +ludicrousness of these persons. There is something distressing about +their letters, their talk, their memoirs, their interminable diaries. +They worry and contort and introspect. They rave and dream. They peep +and theorize. They cut open the bellows of life to see where the wind +comes from. Margaret Fuller analyzes Emerson, and Emerson Margaret +Fuller. It is not a wholesome ebullition of vitality. It is a nightmare, +in which the emotions, the terror, the agony, the rapture, are all +unreal, and have no vital content, no consequence in the world outside. +It is positively wonderful that so much excitement and so much suffering +should have left behind nothing in the field of art which is valuable. +All that intelligence could do toward solving problems for his friends +Emerson did. But there are situations in life in which the intelligence +is helpless, and in which something else, something perhaps possessed by +a ploughboy, is more divine than Plato. + +If it were not pathetic, there would be something cruel--indeed there is +something cruel--in Emerson's incapacity to deal with Margaret Fuller. +He wrote to her on October 24, 1840: "My dear Margaret, I have your +frank and noble and affecting letter, and yet I think I could wish it +unwritten. I ought never to have suffered you to lead me into any +conversation or writing on our relation, a topic from which with all +persons my Genius warns me away." + +The letter proceeds with unimpeachable emptiness and integrity in the +same strain. In 1841 he writes in his diary: "Strange, cold-warm, +attractive-repelling conversation with Margaret, whom I always admire, +most revere when I nearest see, and sometimes love; yet whom I freeze +and who freezes me to silence when we promise to come nearest." + +Human sentiment was known to Emerson mainly in the form of pain. His +nature shunned it; he cast it off as quickly as possible. There is a +word or two in the essay on Love which seems to show that the inner and +diaphanous core of this seraph had once, but not for long, been shot +with blood: he recalls only the pain of it. His relations with Margaret +Fuller seem never normal, though they lasted for years. This brilliant +woman was in distress. She was asking for bread, and he was giving her a +stone, and neither of them was conscious of what was passing. This is +pitiful. It makes us clutch about us to catch hold, if we somehow may, +of the hand of a man. + +There was manliness in Horace Greeley, under whom Miss Fuller worked on +the New York Tribune not many years afterward. She wrote: "Mr. Greeley I +like,--nay, more, love. He is in his habit a plebeian, in his heart a +nobleman. His abilities in his own way are great. He believes in mine +to a surprising degree. We are true friends." + +This anæmic incompleteness of Emerson's character can be traced to the +philosophy of his race; at least it can be followed in that philosophy. +There is an implication of a fundamental falsehood in every bit of +Transcendentalism, including Emerson. That falsehood consists in the +theory of the self-sufficiency of each individual, men and women alike. +Margaret Fuller is a good example of the effect of this philosophy, +because her history afterward showed that she was constituted like other +human beings, was dependent upon human relationship, and was not only a +very noble, but also a very womanly creature. Her marriage, her Italian +life, and her tragic death light up with the splendor of reality the +earlier and unhappy period of her life. This woman had been driven into +her vagaries by the lack of something which she did not know existed, +and which she sought blindly in metaphysics. Harriet Martineau writes of +her: "It is the most grievous loss I have almost ever known in private +history, the deferring of Margaret Fuller's married life so long. That +noble last period of her life is happily on record as well as the +earlier." The hardy Englishwoman has here laid a kind human hand on the +weakness of New England, and seems to be unconscious that she is making +a revelation as to the whole Transcendental movement. But the point is +this: there was no one within reach of Margaret Fuller, in her early +days, who knew what was her need. One offered her Kant, one Comte, one +Fourier, one Swedenborg, one the Moral Law. You cannot feed the heart on +these things. + +Yet there is a bright side to this New England spirit, which seems, if +we look only to the graver emotions, so dry, dismal, and deficient. A +bright and cheery courage appears in certain natures of which the sun +has made conquest, that almost reconciles us to all loss, so splendid is +the outcome. The practical, dominant, insuppressible active temperaments +who have a word for every emergency, and who carry the controlled force +of ten men at their disposal, are the fruits of this same spirit. +Emerson knew not tears, but he and the hundred other beaming and +competent characters which New England has produced make us almost envy +their state. They give us again the old Stoics at their best. + +Very closely connected with this subject--the crisp and cheery New +England temperament--lies another which any discussion of Emerson must +bring up,--namely, Asceticism. It is probable that in dealing with +Emerson's feelings about the plastic arts we have to do with what is +really the inside, or metaphysical side, of the same phenomena which +present themselves on the outside, or physical side, in the shape of +asceticism. + +Emerson's natural asceticism is revealed to us in almost every form in +which history can record a man. It is in his philosophy, in his style, +in his conduct, and in his appearance. It was, however, not in his +voice. Mr. Cabot, with that reverence for which every one must feel +personally grateful to him, has preserved a description of Emerson by +the New York journalist, N.P. Willis: "It is a voice with shoulders in +it, which he has not; with lungs in it far larger than his; with a walk +which the public never see; with a fist in it which his own hand never +gave him the model for; and with a gentleman in it which his parochial +and 'bare-necessaries-of-life' sort of exterior gives no other betrayal +of. We can imagine nothing in nature (which seems too to have a type for +everything) like the want of correspondence between the Emerson that +goes in at the eye and the Emerson that goes in at the ear. A heavy and +vase-like blossom of a magnolia, with fragrance enough to perfume a +whole wilderness, which should be lifted by a whirlwind and dropped into +a branch of aspen, would not seem more as if it could never have grown +there than Emerson's voice seems inspired and foreign to his visible and +natural body." Emerson's ever exquisite and wonderful good taste seems +closely connected with this asceticism, and it is probable that his +taste influenced his views and conduct to some small extent. + +The anti-slavery people were not always refined. They were constantly +doing things which were tactically very effective, but were not +calculated to attract the over-sensitive. Garrison's rampant and +impersonal egotism was good politics, but bad taste. Wendell Phillips +did not hesitate upon occasion to deal in personalities of an +exasperating kind. One sees a certain shrinking in Emerson from the +taste of the Abolitionists. It was not merely their doctrines or their +methods which offended him. He at one time refused to give Wendell +Phillips his hand because of Phillips's treatment of his friend, Judge +Hoar. One hardly knows whether to be pleased at Emerson for showing a +human weakness, or annoyed at him for not being more of a man. The +anecdote is valuable in both lights. It is like a tiny speck on the +crystal of his character which shows us the exact location of the orb, +and it is the best illustration of the feeling of the times which has +come down to us. + +If by "asceticism" we mean an experiment in starving the senses, there +is little harm in it. Nature will soon reassert her dominion, and very +likely our perceptions will be sharpened by the trial. But "natural +asceticism" is a thing hardly to be distinguished from functional +weakness. What is natural asceticism but a lack of vigor? Does it not +tend to close the avenues between the soul and the universe? "Is it not +so much death?" The accounts of Emerson show him to have been a man in +whom there was almost a hiatus between the senses and the most inward +spirit of life. The lower register of sensations and emotions which +domesticate a man into fellowship with common life was weak. Genial +familiarity was to him impossible; laughter was almost a pain. "It is +not the sea and poverty and pursuit that separate us. Here is Alcott by +my door,--yet is the union more profound? No! the sea, vocation, +poverty, are seeming fences, but man is insular and cannot be touched. +Every man is an infinitely repellent orb, and holds his individual being +on that condition.... Most of the persons whom I see in my own house I +see across a gulf; I cannot go to them nor they come to me." + +This aloofness of Emerson must be remembered only as blended with his +benignity. "His friends were all that knew him," and, as Dr. Holmes +said, "his smile was the well-remembered line of Terence written out in +living features." Emerson's journals show the difficulty of his +intercourse even with himself. He could not reach himself at will, nor +could another reach him. The sensuous and ready contact with nature +which more carnal people enjoy was unknown to him. He had eyes for the +New England landscape, but for no other scenery. If there is one supreme +sensation reserved for man, it is the vision of Venice seen from the +water. This sight greeted Emerson at the age of thirty. The famous city, +as he approached it by boat, "looked for some time like nothing but New +York. It is a great oddity, a city for beavers, but to my thought a most +disagreeable residence. You feel always in prison and solitary. It is as +if you were always at sea. I soon had enough of it." + +Emerson's contempt for travel and for the "rococo toy," Italy, is too +well known to need citation. It proceeds from the same deficiency of +sensation. His eyes saw nothing; his ears heard nothing. He believed +that men travelled for distraction and to kill time. The most vulgar +plutocrat could not be blinder to beauty nor bring home less from Athens +than this cultivated saint. Everything in the world which must be felt +with a glow in the breast, in order to be understood, was to him +dead-letter. Art was a name to him; music was a name to him; love was a +name to him. His essay on Love is a nice compilation of compliments and +elegant phrases ending up with some icy morality. It seems very well +fitted for a gift-book or an old-fashioned lady's annual. + +"The lovers delight in endearments, in avowals of love, in comparisons +of their regards.... The soul which is in the soul of each, craving a +perfect beatitude, detects incongruities, defects, and disproportion in +the behavior of the other. Hence arise surprise, expostulation, and +pain. Yet that which drew them to each other was signs of loveliness, +signs of virtue; and these virtues are there, however eclipsed. They +appear and reappear and continue to attract; but the regard changes, +quits the sign and attaches to the substance. This repairs the wounded +affection. Meantime, as life wears on, it proves a game of permutation +and combination of all possible positions of the parties, to employ all +the resources of each, and acquaint each with the weakness of the +other.... At last they discover that all which at first drew them +together--those once sacred features, that magical play of charms--was +deciduous, had a prospective end like the scaffolding by which the house +was built, and the purification of the intellect and the heart from year +to year is the real marriage, foreseen and prepared from the first, and +wholly above their consciousness.... Thus are we put in training for a +love which knows not sex nor person nor partiality, but which seeks +wisdom and virtue everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue and +wisdom.... There are moments when the affections rule and absorb the +man, and make his happiness dependent on a person or persons. But in +health the mind is presently seen again," etc. + +All this is not love, but the merest literary coquetry. Love is +different from this. Lady Burton, when a very young girl, and six years +before her engagement, met Burton at Boulogne. They met in the street, +but did not speak. A few days later they were formally introduced at a +dance. Of this she writes: "That was a night of nights. He waltzed with +me once, and spoke to me several times. I kept the sash where he put his +arm around me and my gloves, and never wore them again." + +A glance at what Emerson says about marriage shows that he suspected +that institution. He can hardly speak of it without some sort of caveat +or precaution. "Though the stuff of tragedy and of romances is in a +moral union of two superior persons whose confidence in each other for +long years, out of sight and in sight, and against all appearances, is +at last justified by victorious proof of probity to gods and men, +causing joyful emotions, tears, and glory,--though there be for heroes +this _moral union_, yet they too are as far as ever from, an +intellectual union, and the moral is for low and external purposes, like +the corporation of a ship's company or of a fire club." In speaking of +modern novels, he says: "There is no new element, no power, no +furtherance. 'Tis only confectionery, not the raising of new corn. Great +is the poverty of their inventions. _She was beautiful, and he fell in +love_.... Happy will that house be in which the relations are formed by +character; after the highest and not after the lowest; the house in +which character marries and not confusion and a miscellany of +unavowable motives.... To each occurs soon after puberty, some event, or +society or way of living, which becomes the crisis of life and the chief +fact in their history. In women it is love and marriage (which is more +reasonable), and yet it is pitiful to date and measure all the facts and +sequel of an unfolding life from such a youthful and generally +inconsiderate period as the age of courtship and marriage.... Women more +than all are the element and kingdom of illusion. Being fascinated they +fascinate. They see through Claude Lorraines. And how dare any one, if +he could, pluck away the coulisses, stage effects and ceremonies by +which they live? Too pathetic, too pitiable, is the region of affection, +and its atmosphere always liable to mirage." + +We are all so concerned that a man who writes about love shall tell the +truth that if he chance to start from premises which are false or +mistaken, his conclusions will appear not merely false, but offensive. +It makes no matter how exalted the personal character of the writer may +be. Neither sanctity nor intellect nor moral enthusiasm, though they be +intensified to the point of incandescence, can make up for a want of +nature. + +This perpetual splitting up of love into two species, one of which is +condemned, but admitted to be useful--is it not degrading? There is in +Emerson's theory of the relation between the sexes neither good sense, +nor manly feeling, nor sound psychology. It is founded on none of these +things. It is a pure piece of dogmatism, and reminds us that he was bred +to the priesthood. We are not to imagine that there was in this doctrine +anything peculiar to Emerson. But we are surprised to find the pessimism +inherent in the doctrine overcome Emerson, to whom pessimism is foreign. +Both doctrine and pessimism are a part of the Puritanism of the times. +They show a society in which the intellect had long been used to analyze +the affections, in which the head had become dislocated from the body. +To this disintegration of the simple passion of love may be traced the +lack of maternal tenderness characteristic of the New England nature. +The relation between the blood and the brain was not quite normal in +this civilization, nor in Emerson, who is its most remarkable +representative. + +If we take two steps backward from the canvas of this mortal life and +glance at it impartially, we shall see that these matters of love and +marriage pass like a pivot through the lives of almost every individual, +and are, sociologically speaking, the _primum mobile_ of the world. The +books of any philosopher who slurs them or distorts them will hold up a +false mirror to life. If an inhabitant of another planet should visit +the earth, he would receive, on the whole, a truer notion of human life +by attending an Italian opera than he would by reading Emerson's +volumes. He would learn from the Italian opera that there were two +sexes; and this, after all, is probably the fact with which the +education of such a stranger ought to begin. + +In a review of Emerson's personal character and opinions, we are thus +led to see that his philosophy, which finds no room for the emotions, is +a faithful exponent of his own and of the New England temperament, which +distrusts and dreads the emotions. Regarded as a sole guide to life for +a young person of strong conscience and undeveloped affections, his +works might conceivably be even harmful because of their unexampled +power of purely intellectual stimulation. + + * * * * * + +Emerson's poetry has given rise to much heart-burning and disagreement. +Some people do not like it. They fail to find the fire in the ice. On +the other hand, his poems appeal not only to a large number of +professed lovers of poetry, but also to a class of readers who find in +Emerson an element for which they search the rest of poesy in vain. + +It is the irony of fate that his admirers should be more than usually +sensitive about his fame. This prophet who desired not to have +followers, lest he too should become a cult and a convention, and whose +main thesis throughout life was that piety is a crime, has been calmly +canonized and embalmed in amber by the very forces he braved. He is +become a tradition and a sacred relic. You must speak of him under your +breath, and you may not laugh near his shrine. + +Emerson's passion for nature was not like the passion of Keats or of +Burns, of Coleridge or of Robert Browning; compared with these men he is +cold. His temperature is below blood-heat, and his volume of poems +stands on the shelf of English poets like the icy fish which in Caliban +upon Setebos is described as finding himself thrust into the warm ooze +of an ocean not his own. + +But Emerson is a poet, nevertheless, a very extraordinary and rare man +of genius, whose verses carry a world of their own within them. They are +overshadowed by the greatness of his prose, but they are authentic. He +is the chief poet of that school of which Emily Dickinson is a minor +poet. His poetry is a successful spiritual deliverance of great +interest. His worship of the New England landscape amounts to a +religion. His poems do that most wonderful thing, make us feel that we +are alone in the fields and with the trees,--not English fields nor +French lanes, but New England meadows and uplands. There is no human +creature in sight, not even Emerson is there, but the wind and the +flowers, the wild birds, the fences, the transparent atmosphere, the +breath of nature. There is a deep and true relation between the +intellectual and almost dry brilliancy of Emerson's feelings and the +landscape itself. Here is no defective English poet, no Shelley without +the charm, but an American poet, a New England poet with two hundred +years of New England culture and New England landscape in him. + +People are forever speculating upon what will last, what posterity will +approve, and some people believe that Emerson's poetry will outlive his +prose. The question is idle. The poems are alive now, and they may or +may not survive the race whose spirit they embody; but one thing is +plain: they have qualities which have preserved poetry in the past. They +are utterly indigenous and sincere. They are short. They represent a +civilization and a climate. + +His verse divides itself into several classes. We have the single +lyrics, written somewhat in the style of the later seventeenth century. +Of these The Humble Bee is the most exquisite, and although its tone and +imagery can be traced to various well-known and dainty bits of poetry, +it is by no means an imitation, but a masterpiece of fine taste. The +Rhodora and Terminus and perhaps a few others belong to that class of +poetry which, like Abou Ben Adhem, is poetry because it is the +perfection of statement. The Boston Hymn, the Concord Ode, and the other +occasional pieces fall in another class, and do not seem to be +important. The first two lines of the Ode, + + "O tenderly the haughty day + Fills his blue urn with fire." + +are for their extraordinary beauty worthy of some mythical Greek, some +Simonides, some Sappho, but the rest of the lines are commonplace. +Throughout his poems there are good bits, happy and golden lines, +snatches of grace. He himself knew the quality of his poetry, and wrote +of it, + + "All were sifted through and through, + Five lines lasted sound and true." + +He is never merely conventional, and his poetry, like his prose, is +homespun and sound. But his ear was defective: his rhymes are crude, and +his verse is often lame and unmusical, a fault which can be +countervailed by nothing but force, and force he lacks. To say that his +ear was defective is hardly strong enough. Passages are not uncommon +which hurt the reader and unfit him to proceed; as, for example:-- + + "Thorough a thousand voices + Spoke the universal dame: + 'Who telleth one of my meanings + Is master of all I am.'" + +He himself has very well described the impression his verse is apt to +make on a new reader when he says,-- + + "Poetry must not freeze, but flow." + +The lovers of Emerson's poems freely acknowledge all these defects, but +find in them another element, very subtle and rare, very refined and +elusive, if not altogether unique. This is the mystical element or +strain which qualifies many of his poems, and to which some of them are +wholly devoted. + +There has been so much discussion as to Emerson's relation to the +mystics that it is well here to turn aside for a moment and consider +the matter by itself. The elusiveness of "mysticism" arises out of the +fact that it is not a creed, but a state of mind. It is formulated into +no dogmas, but, in so far as it is communicable, it is conveyed, or +sought to be conveyed, by symbols. These symbols to a sceptical or an +unsympathetic person will say nothing, but the presumption among those +who are inclined towards the cult is that if these symbols convey +anything at all, that thing is mysticism. The mystics are right. The +familiar phrases, terms, and symbols of mysticism are not meaningless, +and a glance at them shows that they do tend to express and evoke a +somewhat definite psychic condition. + +There is a certain mood of mind experienced by most of us in which we +feel the mystery of existence; in which our consciousness seems to +become suddenly separated from our thoughts, and we find ourselves +asking, "Who am I? What are these thoughts?" The mood is very apt to +overtake us while engaged in the commonest acts. In health it is always +momentary, and seems to coincide with the instant of the transition and +shift of our attention from one thing to another. It is probably +connected with the transfer of energy from one set of faculties to +another set, which occurs, for instance, on our waking from sleep, on +our hearing a bell at night, on our observing any common object, a chair +or a pitcher, at a time when our mind is or has just been thoroughly +preoccupied with something else. This displacement of the attention +occurs in its most notable form when we walk from the study into the +open fields. Nature then attacks us on all sides at once, overwhelms, +drowns, and destroys our old thoughts, stimulates vaguely and all at +once a thousand new ideas, dissipates all focus of thought and dissolves +our attention. If we happen to be mentally fatigued, and we take a walk +in the country, a sense of immense relief, of rest and joy, which +nothing else on earth can give, accompanies this distraction of the mind +from its problems. The reaction fills us with a sense of mystery and +expansion. It brings us to the threshold of those spiritual experiences +which are the obscure core and reality of our existence, ever alive +within us, but generally veiled and sub-conscious. It brings us, as it +were, into the ante-chamber of art, poetry, and music. The condition is +one of excitation and receptiveness, where art may speak and we shall +understand. On the other hand, the condition shows a certain +dethronement of the will and attention which may ally it to the +hypnotic state. + +Certain kinds of poetry imitate this method of nature by calling on us +with a thousand voices at once. Poetry deals often with vague or +contradictory statements, with a jumble of images, a throng of +impressions. But in true poetry the psychology of real life is closely +followed. The mysticism is momentary. We are not kept suspended in a +limbo, "trembling like a guilty thing surprised," but are ushered into +another world of thought and feeling. On the other hand, a mere +statement of inconceivable things is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of +poetry, because such a statement puzzles the mind, scatters the +attention, and does to a certain extent superinduce the "blank +misgivings" of mysticism. It does this, however, _without_ going further +and filling the mind with new life. If I bid a man follow my reasoning +closely, and then say, "I am the slayer and the slain, I am the doubter +and the doubt," I puzzle his mind, and may succeed in reawakening in him +the sense he has often had come over him that we are ignorant of our own +destinies and cannot grasp the meaning of life. If I do this, nothing +can be a more legitimate opening for a poem, for it is an opening of the +reader's mind. Emerson, like many other highly organized persons, was +acquainted with the mystic mood. It was not momentary with him. It +haunted him, and he seems to have believed that the whole of poetry and +religion was contained in the mood. And no one can gainsay that this +mental condition is intimately connected with our highest feelings and +leads directly into them. + +The fault with Emerson is that he stops in the ante-chamber of poetry. +He is content if he has brought us to the hypnotic point. His prologue +and overture are excellent, but where is the argument? Where is the +substantial artistic content that shall feed our souls? + +The Sphinx is a fair example of an Emerson poem. The opening verses are +musical, though they are handicapped by a reminiscence of the German way +of writing. In the succeeding verses we are lapped into a charming +reverie, and then at the end suddenly jolted by the question, "What is +it all about?" In this poem we see expanded into four or five pages of +verse an experience which in real life endures an eighth of a second, +and when we come to the end of the mood we are at the end of the poem. + +There is no question that the power to throw your sitter into a +receptive mood by a pass or two which shall give you his virgin +attention is necessary to any artist. Nobody has the knack of this more +strongly than Emerson in his prose writings. By a phrase or a common +remark he creates an ideal atmosphere in which his thought has the +directness of great poetry. But he cannot do it in verse. He seeks in +his verse to do the very thing which he avoids doing in his prose: +follow a logical method. He seems to know too much what he is about, and +to be content with doing too little. His mystical poems, from the point +of view of such criticism as this, are all alike in that they all seek +to do the same thing. Nor does he always succeed. How does he sometimes +fail in verse to say what he conveys with such everlasting happiness in +prose! + + "I am owner of the sphere, + Of the seven stars and the solar year, + Of Cæsar's hand and Plato's brain, + Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain." + +In these lines we have the same thought which appears a few pages later +in prose: "All that Shakespeare says of the king, yonder slip of a boy +that reads in the corner feels to be true of himself." He has failed in +the verse because he has thrown a mystical gloss over a thought which +was stronger in its simplicity; because in the verse he states an +abstraction instead of giving an instance. The same failure follows him +sometimes in prose when he is too conscious of his machinery. + +Emerson knew that the sense of mystery accompanies the shift of an +absorbed attention to some object which brings the mind back to the +present. "There are times when the cawing of a crow, a weed, a +snowflake, a boy's willow whistle, or a farmer planting in his field is +more suggestive to the mind than the Yosemite gorge or the Vatican would +be in another hour. In like mood, an old verse, or certain words, gleam +with rare significance." At the close of his essay on History he is +trying to make us feel that all history, in so far as we can know it, is +within ourselves, and is in a certain sense autobiography. He is +speaking of the Romans, and he suddenly pretends to see a lizard on the +wall, and proceeds to wonder what the lizard has to do with the Romans. +For this he has been quite properly laughed at by Dr. Holmes, because he +has resorted to an artifice and has failed to create an illusion. +Indeed, Dr. Holmes is somewhere so irreverent as to remark that a gill +of alcohol will bring on a psychical state very similar to that +suggested by Emerson; and Dr. Holmes is accurately happy in his jest, +because alcohol does dislocate the attention in a thoroughly mystical +manner. + +There is throughout Emerson's poetry, as throughout all of the New +England poetry, too much thought, too much argument. Some of his verse +gives the reader a very curious and subtle impression that the lines are +a translation. This is because he is closely following a thesis. Indeed, +the lines are a translation. They were thought first, and poetry +afterwards. Read off his poetry, and you see through the scheme of it at +once. Read his prose, and you will be put to it to make out the +connection of ideas. The reason is that in the poetry the sequence is +intellectual, in the prose the sequence is emotional. It is no mere +epigram to say that his poetry is governed by the ordinary laws of prose +writing, and his prose by the laws of poetry. + +The lines entitled Days have a dramatic vigor, a mystery, and a music +all their own:-- + + "Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, + Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, + And marching single in an endless file, + Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. + To each they offer gifts after his will, + Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all. + I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, + Forgot my morning wishes, hastily + Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day + Turned and departed silent. I, too late, + Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn." + +The prose version of these lines, which in this case is inferior, is to +be found in Works and Days: "He only is rich who owns the day.... They +come and go like muffled and veiled figures, sent from a distant +friendly party; but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts +they bring, they carry them as silently away." + +That Emerson had within him the soul of a poet no one will question, but +his poems are expressed in prose forms. There are passages in his early +addresses which can be matched in English only by bits from Sir Thomas +Browne or Milton, or from the great poets. Heine might have written the +following parable into verse, but it could not have been finer. It comes +from the very bottom of Emerson's nature. It is his uttermost. Infancy +and manhood and old age, the first and the last of him, speak in it. + + "Every god is there sitting in his sphere. The young mortal enters + the hall of the firmament; there is he alone with them alone, they + pouring on him benedictions and gifts, and beckoning him up to + their thrones. On the instant, and incessantly, fall snowstorms of + illusions. He fancies himself in a vast crowd which sways this way + and that, and whose movements and doings he must obey; he fancies + himself poor, orphaned, insignificant. The mad crowd drives hither + and thither, now furiously commanding this thing to be done, now + that. What is he that he should resist their will, and think or act + for himself? Every moment new changes and new showers of deceptions + to baffle and distract him. And when, by and by, for an instant, the + air clears and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods still + sitting around him on their thrones,--they alone with him alone." + +With the war closes the colonial period of our history, and with the end +of the war begins our national life. Before that time it was not +possible for any man to speak for the nation, however much he might long +to, for there was no nation; there were only discordant provinces held +together by the exercise on the part of each of a strong and +conscientious will. It is too much to expect that national character +shall be expressed before it is developed, or that the arts shall +flourish during a period when everybody is preoccupied with the fear of +revolution. The provincial note which runs through all our literature +down to the war resulted in one sense from our dependence upon Europe. +"All American manners, language, and writings," says Emerson, "are +derivative. We do not write from facts, but we wish to state the facts +after the English manner. It is the tax we pay for the splendid +inheritance of English Literature." But in a deeper sense this very +dependence upon Europe was due to our disunion among ourselves. The +equivocal and unhappy self-assertive patriotism to which we were +consigned by fate, and which made us perceive and resent the +condescension of foreigners, was the logical outcome of our political +situation. + +The literature of the Northern States before the war, although full of +talent, lacks body, lacks courage. It has not a full national tone. The +South is not in it. New England's share in this literature is so large +that small injustice will be done if we give her credit for all of it. +She was the Academy of the land, and her scholars were our authors. The +country at large has sometimes been annoyed at the self-consciousness of +New England, at the atmosphere of clique, of mutual admiration, of +isolation, in which all her scholars, except Emerson, have lived, and +which notably enveloped the last little distinguished group of them. The +circumstances which led to the isolation of Lowell, Holmes, Longfellow, +and the Saturday Club fraternity are instructive. The ravages of the war +carried off the poets, scholars, and philosophers of the generation +which immediately followed these men, and by destroying their natural +successors left them standing magnified beyond their natural size, like +a grove of trees left by a fire. The war did more than kill off a +generation of scholars who would have succeeded these older scholars. It +emptied the universities by calling all the survivors into the field of +practical life; and after the war ensued a period during which all the +learning of the land was lodged in the heads of these older worthies who +had made their mark long before. A certain complacency which piqued the +country at large was seen in these men. An ante-bellum colonial posing, +inevitable in their own day, survived with them. When Jared Sparks put +Washington in the proper attitude for greatness by correcting his +spelling, Sparks was in cue with the times. It was thought that a great +man must have his hat handed to him by his biographer, and be ushered on +with decency toward posterity. In the lives and letters of some of our +recent public men there has been a reminiscence of this posing, which we +condemn as absurd because we forget it is merely archaic. Provincial +manners are always a little formal, and the pomposity of the colonial +governor was never quite worked out of our literary men. + +Let us not disparage the past. We are all grateful for the New England +culture, and especially for the little group of men in Cambridge and +Boston who did their best according to the light of their day. Their +purpose and taste did all that high ideals and good taste can do, and no +more eminent literati have lived during this century. They gave the +country songs, narrative poems, odes, epigrams, essays, novels. They +chose their models well, and drew their materials from decent and likely +sources. They lived stainless lives, and died in their professors' +chairs honored by all men. For achievements of this sort we need hardly +use as strong language as Emerson does in describing contemporary +literature: "It exhibits a vast carcass of tradition every year with as +much solemnity as a new revelation." + +The mass and volume of literature must always be traditional, and the +secondary writers of the world do nevertheless perform a function of +infinite consequence in the spread of thought. A very large amount of +first-hand thinking is not comprehensible to the average man until it +has been distilled and is fifty years old. The men who welcome new +learning as it arrives are the picked men, the minor poets of the next +age. To their own times these secondary men often seem great because +they are recognized and understood at once. We know the disadvantage +under which these Humanists of ours worked. The shadow of the time in +which they wrote hangs over us still. The conservatism and timidity of +our politics and of our literature to-day are due in part to that +fearful pressure which for sixty years was never lifted from the souls +of Americans. That conservatism and timidity may be seen in all our +past. They are in the rhetoric of Webster and in the style of Hawthorne. +They killed Poe. They created Bryant. + +Since the close of our most blessed war, we have been left to face the +problems of democracy, unhampered by the terrible complications of +sectional strife. It has happened, however, that some of the tendencies +of our commercial civilization go toward strengthening and riveting upon +us the very traits encouraged by provincial disunion. Wendell Phillips, +with a cool grasp of understanding for which he is not generally given +credit, states the case as follows:-- + + "The general judgment is that the freest possible government + produces the freest possible men and women, the most individual, the + least servile to the judgment of others. But a moment's reflection + will show any man that this is an unreasonable expectation, and + that, on the contrary, entire equality and freedom in political + forms almost invariably tend to make the individual subside into the + mass and lose his identity in the general whole. Suppose we stood in + England to-night. There is the nobility, and here is the church. + There is the trading class, and here is the literary. A broad gulf + separates the four; and provided a member of either can conciliate + his own section, he can afford in a very large measure to despise + the opinions of the other three. He has to some extent a refuge and + a breakwater against the tyranny of what we call public opinion. But + in a country like ours, of absolute democratic equality, public + opinion is not only omnipotent, it is omnipresent. There is no + refuge from its tyranny, there is no hiding from its reach; and the + result is that if you take the old Greek lantern and go about to + seek among a hundred, you will find not one single American who has + not, or who does not fancy at least that he has, something to gain + or lose in his ambition, his social life, or his business, from the + good opinion and the votes of those around him. And the consequence + is that instead of being a mass of individuals, each one fearlessly + blurting out his own convictions, as a nation, compared to other + nations, we are a mass of cowards. More than all other people, we + are afraid of each other." + +If we take a bird's-eye view of our history, we shall find that this +constant element of democratic pressure has always been so strong a +factor in moulding the character of our citizens, that there is less +difference than we could wish to see between the types of citizenship +produced before the war and after the war. + +Charles Pollen, that excellent and worthy German who came to this +country while still a young man and who lived in the midst of the social +and intellectual life of Boston, felt the want of intellectual freedom +in the people about him. If one were obliged to describe the America of +to-day in a single sentence, one could hardly do it better than by a +sentence from a letter of Follen to Harriet Martineau written in 1837, +after the appearance of one of her books: "You have pointed out the two +most striking national characteristics, 'Deficiency of individual moral +independence and extraordinary mutual respect and kindness.'" + +Much of what Emerson wrote about the United States in 1850 is true of +the United States to-day. It would be hard to find a civilized people +who are more timid, more cowed in spirit, more illiberal, than we. It is +easy to-day for the educated man who has read Bryce and Tocqueville to +account for the mediocrity of American literature. The merit of Emerson +was that he felt the atmospheric pressure without knowing its reason. He +felt he was a cabined, cribbed, confined creature, although every man +about him was celebrating Liberty and Democracy, and every day was +Fourth of July. He taxes language to its limits in order to express his +revolt. He says that no man should write except what he has discovered +in the process of satisfying his own curiosity, and that every man will +write well in proportion as he has contempt for the public. + +Emerson seems really to have believed that if any man would only +resolutely be himself, he would turn out to be as great as Shakespeare. +He will not have it that anything of value can be monopolized. His +review of the world, whether under the title of Manners, Self-Reliance, +Fate, Experience, or what-not, leads him to the same thought. His +conclusion is always the finding of eloquence, courage, art, intellect, +in the breast of the humblest reader. He knows that we are full of +genius and surrounded by genius, and that we have only to throw +something off, not to acquire any new thing, in order to be bards, +prophets, Napoleons, and Goethes. This belief is the secret of his +stimulating power. It is this which gives his writings a radiance like +that which shone from his personality. + +The deep truth shadowed forth by Emerson when he said that "all the +American geniuses lacked nerve and dagger" was illustrated by our best +scholar. Lowell had the soul of the Yankee, but in his habits of writing +he continued English tradition. His literary essays are full of charm. +The Commemoration Ode is the high-water mark of the attempt to do the +impossible. It is a fine thing, but it is imitative and secondary. It +has paid the inheritance tax. Twice, however, at a crisis of pressure, +Lowell assumed his real self under the guise of a pseudonym; and with +his own hand he rescued a language, a type, a whole era of civilization +from oblivion. Here gleams the dagger and here is Lowell revealed. His +limitations as a poet, his too much wit, his too much morality, his +mixture of shrewdness and religion, are seen to be the very elements of +power. The novelty of the Biglow Papers is as wonderful as their +world-old naturalness. They take rank with greatness, and they were the +strongest political tracts of their time. They imitate nothing; they are +real. + +Emerson himself was the only man of his times who consistently and +utterly expressed himself, never measuring himself for a moment with the +ideals of others, never troubling himself for a moment with what +literature was or how literature should be created. The other men of his +epoch, and among whom he lived, believed that literature was a very +desirable article, a thing you could create if you were only smart +enough. But Emerson had no literary ambition. He cared nothing for +belles-lettres. The consequence is that he stands above his age like a +colossus. While he lived his figure could be seen from Europe towering +like Atlas over the culture of the United States. + +Great men are not always like wax which their age imprints. They are +often the mere negation and opposite of their age. They give it the lie. +They become by revolt the very essence of all the age is not, and that +part of the spirit which is suppressed in ten thousand breasts gets +lodged, isolated, and breaks into utterance in one. Through Emerson +spoke the fractional spirits of a multitude. He had not time, he had not +energy left over to understand himself; he was a mouthpiece. + +If a soul be taken and crushed by democracy till it utter a cry, that +cry will be Emerson. The region of thought he lived in, the figures of +speech he uses, are of an intellectual plane so high that the +circumstances which produced them may be forgotten; they are +indifferent. The Constitution, Slavery, the War itself, are seen as mere +circumstances. They did not confuse him while he lived; they are not +necessary to support his work now that it is finished. Hence comes it +that Emerson is one of the world's voices. He was heard afar off. His +foreign influence might deserve a chapter by itself. Conservatism is not +confined to this country. It is the very basis of all government. The +bolts Emerson forged, his thought, his wit, his perception, are not +provincial. They were found to carry inspiration to England and +Germany. Many of the important men of the last half-century owe him a +debt. It is not yet possible to give any account of his influence +abroad, because the memoirs which will show it are only beginning to be +published. We shall have them in due time; for Emerson was an outcome of +the world's progress. His appearance marks the turning-point in the +history of that enthusiasm for pure democracy which has tinged the +political thought of the world for the past one hundred and fifty years. +The youths of England and Germany may have been surprised at hearing +from America a piercing voice of protest against the very influences +which were crushing them at home. They could not realize that the chief +difference between Europe and America is a difference in the rate of +speed with which revolutions in thought are worked out. + +While the radicals of Europe were revolting in 1848 against the abuses +of a tyranny whose roots were in feudalism, Emerson, the great radical +of America, the arch-radical of the world, was revolting against the +evils whose roots were in universal suffrage. By showing the identity in +essence of all tyranny, and by bringing back the attention of political +thinkers to its starting-point, the value of human character, he has +advanced the political thought of the world by one step. He has pointed +out for us in this country to what end our efforts must be bent. + + * * * * * + + + + + WALT WHITMAN + + +It would be an ill turn for an essay-writer to destroy Walt +Whitman,--for he was discovered by the essayists, and but for them his +notoriety would have been postponed for fifty years. He is the mare's +nest of "American Literature," and scarce a contributor to The Saturday +Review but has at one time or another raised a flag over him. + +The history of these chronic discoveries of Whitman as a poet, as a +force, as a something or a somebody, would write up into the best +possible monograph on the incompetency of the Anglo-Saxon in matters of +criticism. + +English literature is the literature of genius, and the Englishman is +the great creator. His work outshines the genius of Greece. His wealth +outvalues the combined wealth of all modern Europe. The English mind is +the only unconscious mind the world has ever seen. And for this reason +the English mind is incapable of criticism. There has never been an +English critic of the first rank, hardly a critic of any rank; and the +critical work of England consists either of an academical bandying of a +few old canons and shibboleths out of Horace or Aristotle, or else of +the merest impressionism, and wordy struggle to convey the sentiment +awakened by the thing studied. + +Now, true criticism means an attempt to find out what something is, not +for the purpose of judging it, or of imitating it, nor for the purpose +of illustrating something else, nor for any other ulterior purpose +whatever. + +The so-called canons of criticism are of about as much service to a +student of literature as the Nicene Creed and the Lord's Prayer are to +the student of church history. They are a part of his subject, of +course, but if he insists upon using them as a tape measure and a +divining-rod he will produce a judgment of no possible value to any one, +and interesting only as a record of a most complex state of mind. + +The educated gentlemen of England have surveyed literature with these +time-honored old instruments, and hordes of them long ago rushed to +America with their theodolites and their quadrants in their hands. They +sized us up and they sized us down, and they never could find greatness +in literature among us till Walt Whitman appeared and satisfied the +astrologers. + +Here was a comet, a man of the people, a new man, who spoke no known +language, who was very uncouth and insulting, who proclaimed himself a +"barbaric yawp," and who corresponded to the English imagination with +the unpleasant and rampant wildness of everything in America,--with +Mormonism and car factories, steamboat explosions, strikes, repudiation, +and whiskey; whose form violated every one of their minor canons as +America violated every one of their social ideas. + +Then, too, Whitman arose out of the war, as Shakespeare arose out of the +destruction of the Armada, as the Greek poets arose out of the repulse +of the Persians. It was impossible, it was unprecedented, that a +national revulsion should not produce national poetry--and lo! here was +Whitman. + +It may safely be said that the discovery of Whitman as a poet caused +many a hard-thinking Oxford man to sleep quietly at night. America was +solved. + +The Englishman travels, but he travels after his mind has been burnished +by the university, and at an age when the best he can do in the line of +thought is to make an intelligent manipulation of the few notions he +leaves home with. He departs an educated gentleman, taking with him his +portmanteau and his ideas. He returns a travelled gentleman, bringing +with him his ideas and his portmanteau. He would as soon think of +getting his coats from Kansas as his thoughts from travel. And therefore +every impression of America which the travelling Englishman experienced +confirmed his theory of Whitman. Even Rudyard Kipling, who does not in +any sense fall under the above description, has enough Anglo-Saxon blood +in him to see in this country only the fulfilment of the fantastic +notions of his childhood. + +But imagine an Oxford man who had eyes in his head, and who should come +to this country, never having heard of Whitman. He would see an +industrious and narrow-minded population, commonplace and monotonous, so +uniform that one man can hardly be distinguished from another, +law-abiding, timid, and traditional; a community where the individual is +suppressed by law, custom, and instinct, and in which, by consequence, +there are few or no great men, even counting those men thrust by +necessary operation of the laws of trade into commercial prominence, +and who claim scientific rather than personal notice. + +The culture of this people, its architecture, letters, drama, etc., he +would find were, of necessity, drawn from European models; and in its +poetry, so far as poetry existed, he would recognize a somewhat feeble +imitation of English poetry. The newspaper verses very fairly represent +the average talent for poetry and average appreciation of it, and the +newspaper verse of the United States is precisely what one would expect +from a decorous and unimaginative population,--intelligent, +conservative, and uninspired. + +Above the newspaper versifiers float the minor poets, and above these +soar the greater poets; and the characteristics of the whole hierarchy +are the same as those of the humblest acolyte,--intelligence, +conservatism, conventional morality. + +Above the atmosphere they live in, above the heads of all the American +poets, and between them and the sky, float the Constitution of the +United States and the traditions and forms of English literature. + +This whole culture is secondary and tertiary, and it truly represents +the respectable mediocrity from which it emanates. Whittier and +Longfellow have been much read in their day,--read by mill-hands and +clerks and school-teachers, by lawyers and doctors and divines, by the +reading classes of the republic, whose ideals they truly spoke for, +whose yearnings and spiritual life they truly expressed. + +Now, the Oxford traveller would not have found Whitman at all. He would +never have met a man who had heard of him, nor seen a man like him. + +The traveller, as he opened his Saturday Review upon his return to +London, and read the current essay on Whitman, would have been faced by +a problem fit to puzzle Montesquieu, a problem to floor Goethe. + +And yet Whitman is representative. He is a real product, he has a real +and most interesting place in the history of literature, and he speaks +for a class and type of human nature whose interest is more than local, +whose prevalence is admitted,--a type which is one of the products of +the civilization of the century, perhaps of all centuries, and which has +a positively planetary significance. + +There are, in every country, individuals who, after a sincere attempt to +take a place in organized society, revolt from the drudgery of it, +content themselves with the simplest satisfactions of the grossest need +of nature, so far as subsistence is concerned, and rediscover the +infinite pleasures of life in the open air. + +If the roadside, the sky, the distant town, the soft buffeting of the +winds of heaven, are a joy to the aesthetic part of man, the freedom +from all responsibility and accountability is Nirvana to his moral +nature. A man who has once tasted these two joys together, the joy of +being in the open air and the joy of being disreputable and unashamed, +has touched an experience which the most close-knit and determined +nature might well dread. Life has no terrors for such a man. Society has +no hold on him. The trifling inconveniences of the mode of life are as +nothing compared with its satisfactions. The worm that never dies is +dead in him. The great mystery of consciousness and of effort is quietly +dissolved into the vacant happiness of sensation,--not base sensation, +but the sensation of the dawn and the sunset, of the mart and the +theatre, and the stars, the panorama of the universe. + +To the moral man, to the philosopher or the business man, to any one who +is a cog in the wheel of some republic, all these things exist for the +sake of something else. He must explain or make use of them, or define +his relation to them. He spends the whole agony of his existence in an +endeavor to docket them and deal with them. Hampered as he is by all +that has been said and done before, he yet feels himself driven on to +summarize, and wreak himself upon the impossible task of grasping this +cosmos with his mind, of holding it in his hand, of subordinating it to +his purpose. + +The tramp is freed from all this. By an act as simple as death, he has +put off effort and lives in peace. + +It is no wonder that every country in Europe shows myriads of these men, +as it shows myriads of suicides annually. It is no wonder, though the +sociologists have been late in noting it, that specimens of the type are +strikingly identical in feature in every country of the globe. + +The habits, the physique, the tone of mind, even the sign-language and +some of the catch-words, of tramps are the same everywhere. The men are +not natally outcasts. They have always tried civilized life. Their early +training, at least their early attitude of mind towards life, has +generally been respectable. That they should be criminally inclined +goes without saying, because their minds have been freed from the +sanctions which enforce law. But their general innocence is, under the +circumstances, very remarkable, and distinguishes them from the criminal +classes. + +When we see one of these men sitting on a gate, or sauntering down a +city street, how often have we wondered how life appeared to him; what +solace and what problems it presented. How often have we longed to know +the history of such a soul, told, not by the police-blotter, but by the +poet or novelist in the heart of the man! + +Walt Whitman has given utterance to the soul of the tramp. A man of +genius has passed sincerely and normally through this entire experience, +himself unconscious of what he was, and has left a record of it to +enlighten and bewilder the literary world. + +In Whitman's works the elemental parts of a man's mind and the fragments +of imperfect education may be seen merging together, floating and +sinking in a sea of insensate egotism and rhapsody, repellent, divine, +disgusting, extraordinary. + +Our inability to place the man intellectually, and find a type and +reason for his intellectual state, comes from this: that the revolt he +represents is not an intellectual revolt. Ideas are not at the bottom of +it. It is a revolt from drudgery. It is the revolt of laziness. + +There is no intellectual coherence in his talk, but merely pathological +coherence. Can the insulting jumble of ignorance and effrontery, of +scientific phrase and French paraphrase, of slang and inspired +adjective, which he puts forward with the pretence that it represents +thought, be regarded, from any possible point of view, as a philosophy, +or a system, or a belief? Is it individualism of any statable kind? Do +the thoughts and phrases which float about in it have a meaning which +bears any relation to the meaning they bear in the language of thinkers? +Certainly not. Does all the patriotic talk, the talk about the United +States and its future, have any significance as patriotism? Does it +poetically represent the state of feeling of any class of American +citizens towards their country? Or would you find the nearest equivalent +to this emotion in the breast of the educated tramp of France, or +Germany, or England? The speech of Whitman is English, and his metaphors +and catch-words are apparently American, but the emotional content is +cosmic. He put off patriotism when he took to the road. + +The attraction exercised by his writings is due to their flashes of +reality. Of course the man was a poseur, a most horrid mountebank and +ego-maniac. His tawdry scraps of misused idea, of literary smartness, of +dog-eared and greasy reminiscence, repel us. The world of men remained +for him as his audience, and he did to civilized society the continuous +compliment of an insane self-consciousness in its presence. + +Perhaps this egotism and posturing is the revenge of a stilled +conscience, and we ought to read in it the inversion of the social +instincts. Perhaps all tramps are poseurs. But there is this to be said +for Whitman, that whether or not his posing was an accident of a +personal nature, or an organic result of his life, he was himself an +authentic creature. He did not sit in a study and throw off his saga of +balderdash, but he lived a life, and it is by his authenticity, and not +by his poses, that he has survived. + +The descriptions of nature, the visual observation of life, are +first-hand and wonderful. It was no false light that led the Oxonians to +call some of his phrases Homeric. The pundits were right in their +curiosity over him; they went astray only in their attempt at +classification. + +It is a pity that truth and beauty turn to cant on the second delivery, +for it makes poetry, as a profession, impossible. The lyric poets have +always spent most of their time in trying to write lyric poetry, and the +very attempt disqualifies them. + +A poet who discovers his mission is already half done for; and even +Wordsworth, great genius though he was, succeeded in half drowning his +talents in his parochial theories, in his own self-consciousness and +self-conceit. + +Walt Whitman thought he had a mission. He was a professional poet. He +had purposes and theories about poetry which he started out to enforce +and illustrate. He is as didactic as Wordsworth, and is thinking of +himself the whole time. He belonged, moreover, to that class of +professionals who are always particularly self-centred, autocratic, +vain, and florid,--the class of quacks. There are, throughout society, +men, and they are generally men of unusual natural powers, who, after +gaining a little unassimilated education, launch out for themselves and +set up as authorities on their own account. They are, perhaps, the +successors of the old astrologers, in that what they seek to establish +is some personal professorship or predominance. The old occultism and +mystery was resorted to as the most obvious device for increasing the +personal importance of the magician; and the chief difference to-day +between a regular physician and a quack is, that the quack pretends to +know it all. + +Brigham Young and Joseph Smith were men of phenomenal capacity, who +actually invented a religion and created a community by the apparent +establishment of supernatural and occult powers. The phrenologists, the +venders of patent medicine, the Christian Scientists, the single-taxers, +and all who proclaim panaceas and nostrums make the same majestic and +pontifical appeal to human nature. It is this mystical power, this +religious element, which floats them, sells the drugs, cures the sick, +and packs the meetings. + +By temperament and education Walt Whitman was fitted to be a prophet of +this kind. He became a quack poet, and hampered his talents by the +imposition of a monstrous parade of rattletrap theories and professions. +If he had not been endowed with a perfectly marvellous capacity, a +wealth of nature beyond the reach and plumb of his rodomontade, he +would have been ruined from the start. As it is, he has filled his work +with grimace and vulgarity. He writes a few lines of epic directness and +cyclopean vigor and naturalness, and then obtrudes himself and his +mission. + +He has the bad taste bred in the bone of all missionaries and palmists, +the sign-manual of a true quack. This bad taste is nothing more than the +offensive intrusion of himself and his mission into the matter in hand. +As for his real merits and his true mission, too much can hardly be said +in his favor. The field of his experience was narrow, and not in the +least intellectual. It was narrow because of his isolation from human +life. A poet like Browning, or Heine, or Alfred de Musset deals +constantly with the problems and struggles that arise in civilized life +out of the close relationships, the ties, the duties and desires of the +human heart. He explains life on its social side. He gives us some more +or less coherent view of an infinitely complicated matter. He is a +guide-book or a note-book, a highly trained and intelligent companion. + +Walt Whitman has no interest in any of these things. He was fortunately +so very ignorant and untrained that his mind was utterly incoherent and +unintellectual. His mind seems to be submerged and to have become almost +a part of his body. The utter lack of concentration which resulted from +living his whole life in the open air has left him spontaneous and +unaccountable. And the great value of his work is, that it represents +the spontaneous and unaccountable functioning of the mind and body in +health. + +It is doubtful whether a man ever enjoyed life more intensely than Walt +Whitman, or expressed the physical joy of mere living more completely. +He is robust, all tingling with health and the sensations of health. All +that is best in his poetry is the expression of bodily well-being. + +A man who leaves his office and gets into a canoe on a Canadian river, +sure of ten days' release from the cares of business and housekeeping, +has a thrill of joy such as Walt Whitman has here and there thrown into +his poetry. One might say that to have done this is the greatest +accomplishment in literature. Walt Whitman, in some of his lines, breaks +the frame of poetry and gives us life in the throb. + +It is the throb of the whole physical system of a man who breathes the +open air and feels the sky over him. "When lilacs last in the dooryard +bloomed" is a great lyric. Here is a whole poem without a trace of +self-consciousness. It is little more than a description of nature. The +allusions to Lincoln and to the funeral are but a word or two--merest +suggestions of the tragedy. But grief, overwhelming grief, is in every +line of it, the grief which has been transmuted into this sensitiveness +to the landscape, to the song of the thrush, to the lilac's bloom, and +the sunset. + +Here is truth to life of the kind to be found in King Lear or Guy +Mannering, in Æschylus or Burns. + +Walt Whitman himself could not have told you why the poem was good. Had +he had any intimation of the true reason, he would have spoiled the +poem. The recurrence and antiphony of the thrush, the lilac, the thought +of death, the beauty of nature, are in a balance and dream of natural +symmetry such as no cunning could come at, no conscious art could do +other than spoil. + +It is ungrateful to note Whitman's limitations, his lack of human +passion, the falseness of many of his notions about the American people. +The man knew the world merely as an observer, he was never a living part +of it, and no mere observer can understand the life about him. Even his +work during the war was mainly the work of an observer, and his poems +and notes upon the period are picturesque. As to his talk about comrades +and Manhattanese car-drivers, and brass-founders displaying their brawny +arms round each other's brawny necks, all this gush and sentiment in +Whitman's poetry is false to life. It has a lyrical value, as +representing Whitman's personal feelings, but no one else in the country +was ever found who felt or acted like this. + +In fact, in all that concerns the human relations Walt Whitman is as +unreal as, let us say, William Morris, and the American mechanic would +probably prefer Sigurd the Volsung, and understand it better than +Whitman's poetry. + +This falseness to the sentiment of the American is interwoven with such +wonderful descriptions of American sights and scenery, of ferryboats, +thoroughfares, cataracts, and machine-shops that it is not strange the +foreigners should have accepted the gospel. + +On the whole, Whitman, though he solves none of the problems of life and +throws no light on American civilization, is a delightful appearance, +and a strange creature to come out of our beehive. This man committed +every unpardonable sin against our conventions, and his whole life was +an outrage. He was neither chaste, nor industrious, nor religious. He +patiently lived upon cold pie and tramped the earth in triumph. + +He did really live the life he liked to live, in defiance of all men, +and this is a great desert, a most stirring merit. And he gave, in his +writings, a true picture of himself and of that life,--a picture which +the world had never seen before, and which it is probable the world will +not soon cease to wonder at. + + * * * * * + + + + + A STUDY OF ROMEO + + +The plays of Shakespeare marshal themselves in the beyond. They stand in +a place outside of our deduction. Their cosmos is greater than our +philosophy. They are like the forces of nature and the operations of +life in the vivid world about us. We may measure our intellectual growth +by the new horizons we see opening within them. So long as they continue +to live and change, to expand and deepen, to be filled with new harmony +and new suggestion, we may rest content; we are still growing. At the +moment we think we have comprehended them, at the moment we see them as +stationary things, we may be sure something is wrong; we are beginning +to petrify. Our fresh interest in life has been arrested. There is, +therefore, danger in an attempt to "size up" Shakespeare. We cannot help +setting down as a coxcomb any man who has done it to his own +satisfaction. He has pigeon-holed himself. He will not get lost. If you +want him, you can lay your hand on him. He has written an autobiography. +He has "sized up" himself. + +In writing about Shakespeare, it is excusable to put off the armor of +criticism, and speak in a fragmentary and inconclusive manner, lest by +giving way to conviction, by encouraging ourselves into positive +beliefs, we hasten the inevitable and grow old before our time. + +Perhaps some such apology is needed to introduce the observations on the +character of Romeo which are here thrown together, and the remarks about +the play itself, the acting, and the text. + +It is believed by some scholars that in the second quarto edition of +Romeo and Juliet, published in 1599, Shakespeare's revising hand can be +seen, and that the differences between the first and second editions +show the amendments, additions, and corrections with which Shakespeare +saw fit to embellish his work in preparing it for the press. If this +were actually the case; if we could lay the two texts on the table +before us, convinced that one of them was Shakespeare's draft or acting +copy, and the other Shakespeare's finished work; and if, by comparing +the two, we could enter into the workshop and forge of his mind,--it +would seem as if we had at last found an avenue of approach towards this +great personality, this intellect the most powerful that has ever +illumined human life. No other literary inquiry could compare in +interest with such a study as this; for the relation which Shakespeare +himself bore to the plays he created is one of the mysteries and blank +places in history, a gap that staggers the mind and which imagination +cannot overleap. + +The student who examines both texts will be apt to conclude that the +second is by no means a revised edition of the first, but that +(according to another theory) the first is a pirated edition of the +play, stolen by the printer, and probably obtained by means of a +reporter who took down the lines as they were spoken on the stage. The +stage directions in the first edition are not properly the stage +directions of a dramatist as to what should be done on the stage, but +seem rather the records of an eye-witness as to what he saw happen on +the stage. The mistakes of the reporter (or the perversions of the +actors) as seen in the first edition generally injure the play; and it +was from this circumstance--the frequency of blotches in the first +edition--that the idea gained currency that the second edition was an +example of Shakespeare's never-failing tact in bettering his own lines. + +Perhaps, after all, it would little advance our understanding of the +plays, or solve the essential puzzle,--that they actually had an +author,--if we could follow every stroke of his revising pen. We should +observe, no doubt, refinement of characterization, changes of stage +effect, the addition of flourishes and beauties; but their origin and +true meaning, the secret of their life, would be as safe as it is at +present, as securely lost in the midst of all this demonstration as the +manuscripts themselves were in the destruction of the Globe Theatre. + +If we must then abandon the hope of seeing Shakespeare in his workshop, +we may, nevertheless, obtain from the pirated text some notion of the +manner in which Shakespeare was staged in his own day, and of how he +fared at the hands of the early actors. Romeo and Juliet is an +exceptionally difficult play to act, and the difficulties seem to have +been about the same in Shakespeare's time as they are to-day. They are, +in fact, inherent in the structure of the work itself. + +As artists advance in life, they develop, by growing familiar with the +conditions of their art, the power of concealing its limitations,--a +faculty in which even the greatest artists are often deficient in their +early years. There is an anecdote of Schumann which somewhat crudely +illustrates this. It is said that in one of his early symphonies he +introduced a passage leading up to a climax, at which the horns were to +take up the aria in triumph. At the rehearsal, when the moment came for +the horns to trumpet forth their message of victory, there was heard a +sort of smothered braying which made everybody laugh. The composer had +arranged his climax so that it fell upon a note which the horns could +not sound except with closed stops. The passage had to be rewritten. The +young painter is frequently found struggling with subjects, with effects +of light, which are almost impossible to render, and which perhaps an +older man would not attempt. It is not surprising to find among the +early works of Shakespeare that some of the characters, however true to +life,--nay, because true to life,--are almost impossible to be +represented on the stage. Certainly Romeo presents us with a character +of the kind. + +Shakespeare's knowledge of human nature seems to have antedated his +knowledge of the stage. In imagining the character of Romeo, a character +to fit the plot of the old story, he took little thought for his actors. +In conjuring up the probabilities which would lead a man into such a +course of conduct as Romeo's, Shakespeare had in his mind the +probabilities and facts in real life rather than the probabilities +demanded by the stage. + +Romeo must be a man almost wholly made up of emotion, a creature very +young, a lyric poet in the intensity of his sensations, a child in his +helplessness beneath the ever-varying currents and whirlpools of his +feeling. He lives in a walking and frenzied dream, comes in contact with +real life only to injure himself and others, and finally drives with the +collected energy of his being into voluntary shipwreck upon the rocks of +the world. + +This man must fall in love at first sight. He must marry clandestinely. +He must be banished for having taken part in a street fight, and must +return to slay himself upon the tomb of his beloved. + +Shakespeare, with his passion for realism, devotes several scenes at the +opening of the play to the explanation of Romeo's state of mind. He will +give us a rationalistic account of love at first sight by bringing on +this young poet in a blind chaos of emotion owing to his rejection by a +woman not otherwise connected with the story. It is perfectly true that +this is the best and perhaps the only explanation of love at first +sight. The effect upon Romeo's very boyish, unreal, and almost +unpleasant lovesickness of the rejection (for which we must always +respect Rosaline) is to throw him, and all the unstable elements of +which he is made, into a giddy whirl, which, after a day or two, it will +require only the glance of a pair of eyes to precipitate into the very +elixir of true love. + +All this is true, but no audience cares about the episode or requires +the explanation. Indeed, it jars upon the sentimental notion of many +persons to this day, and in many stage versions it is avoided. + +These preparatory scenes bring out in a most subtle way the egoism at +the basis of Romeo's character,--the same lyrical egoism that is in all +his language and in all his conduct. When we first see Romeo, he is +already in an uneasy dream. He is wandering, aloof from his friends and +absorbed in himself. On meeting Juliet he passes from his first dream +into a second dream. On learning of the death of Juliet he passes into +still a third and quite different dream,--or stage of dream,--a stage in +which action is necessary, and in which he displays the calculating +intellect of a maniac. The mental abstraction of Romeo continues even +after he has met Juliet. In Capulet's garden, despite the directness of +Juliet, he is still in his reveries. The sacred wonder of the hour turns +all his thoughts, not into love, but into poetry. Juliet's anxieties are +practical. She asks him about his safety, how he came there, how he +expects to escape. He answers in madrigals. His musings are almost +impersonal. The power of the moonlight is over him, and the power of the +scene, of which Juliet is only a part. + + "With love's light wings did I o'er-perch these walls; + For stony limits cannot hold love out, + And what love can do that dares love attempt; + Therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me. + + * * * * * + + Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear + That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops-- + + * * * * * + + It is my soul that calls upon my name: + How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night, + Like softest music to attending ears." + +These reflections are almost "asides." They ought hardly to be spoken +aloud. They denote that Romeo is still in his trance. They have, +however, another and unfortunate influence: they retard the action of +the play. As we read the play to ourselves, this accompaniment of +lyrical feeling on Romeo's part does not interfere with our enjoyment. +It seems to accentuate the more direct and human strain of Juliet's +love. + +But on the stage the actor who plays Romeo requires the very highest +powers. While speaking at a distance from Juliet, and in a constrained +position, he must by his voice and gestures convey these subtlest shades +of feeling, throw these garlands of verse into his talk without +interrupting its naturalness, give all the "asides" in such a manner +that the audience feels they are in place, even as the reader does. It +is no wonder that the rôle of Romeo is one of the most difficult in all +Shakespeare. The demands made upon the stage are almost more than the +stage can meet. The truth to nature is of a kind that the stage is +almost powerless to render. + +The character of Romeo cannot hope to be popular. Such pure passion, +such unreasonable giving way, is not easily forgiven in a man. He must +roll on the floor and blubber and kick. There is no getting away from +this. He is not Romeo unless he cries like a baby or a Greek hero. This +is the penalty for being a lyric poet. Had he used his mind more upon +the problems of his love, and less upon its celebration in petalled +phrases, his mind would not have deserted him so lamentably in the hour +of his need. In fact, throughout the play, Romeo, by the exigencies of +the plot, is in fair danger of becoming contemptible. For one instant +only does he rise into respectability,--at the moment of his quarrel +with Tybalt. At this crisis he is stung into life by the death of +Mercutio, and acts like a man. The ranting manner in which it is +customary to give Romeo's words in this passage of the play shows how +far most actors are from understanding the true purport of the lines; +how far from realizing that these few lines are the only opportunity the +actor has of establishing the character of Romeo as a gentleman, a man +of sense and courage, a formidable fellow, not unfit to be the hero of a +play:-- + + "Alive, in triumph! and Mercutio slain! + Away to heaven, respective lenity, + And fire-ey'd fury be my conduct now! + Now, Tybalt, take the 'villain' back again + That late thou gay'st me;--for Mercutio's soul + Is but a little way above our heads, + Staying for thine to keep him company: + Either thou, or I, or both, must go with him." + +The first three lines are spoken by Romeo to himself. They are a +reflection, not a declamation,--a reflection upon which he instantly +acts. He assumes the calmness of a man of his rank who is about to +fight. More than this, Romeo, the man of words and moods, when once +roused, as we shall see later, in a worser cause,--when once pledged to +action,--Romeo shines with a sort of fatalistic spiritual power. He is +now visibly dedicated to this quarrel. We feel sure that he will kill +Tybalt in the encounter. The appeal to the supernatural is in his very +gesture. The audience--nay, Tybalt himself--gazes with awe on this +sudden apparition of Romeo as a man of action. + +This highly satisfactory conduct is soon swept away by his behavior on +hearing the news of his banishment. The boy seems to be without much +stamina, after all. He is a pitiable object, and does not deserve the +love of fair lady. + +At Mantua the tide of his feelings has turned again, and by one of those +natural reactions which he himself takes note of he wakes up +unaccountably happy, "and all this day an unaccustom'd spirit lifts him +above the ground with cheerful thoughts." It is the lightning before the +thunderbolt. + + "Her body sleeps to Capel's monument, + And her immortal part with angels lives. + I saw her laid low in her kindred's vault, + And presently took post to tell it you." + +Balthasar makes no attempt to break the news gently. The blow descends +on Romeo when he least expects it. He is not spared. The conduct of +Romeo on hearing of Juliet's death is so close to nature as to be nature +itself, yet it happens to be conduct almost impossible to be given on +the stage. _He does nothing._ He is stunned. He collapses. For fully +five minutes he does not speak, and yet in these five minutes he must +show to the audience that his nature has been shaken to its foundations. +The delirium of miraculously beautiful poetry is broken. His words are +gone. His emotion is paralyzed, but his mind is alert. He seems suddenly +to be grown up,--a man, and not a boy,--and a man of action. "Is it even +so?" is all he says. He orders post-horses, ink and paper, in a few +rapid sentences; it is evident that before speaking at all he has +determined what he will do, and from now on to the end of the play Romeo +is different from his old self, for a new Romeo has appeared. He is in a +state of intense and calm exultation. All his fluctuating emotions have +been stilled or stunned. He gives his orders in staccato. We feel that +he knows what he is going to do, and will certainly accomplish it. +Meanwhile his mind is dominant. It is preternaturally active. His +"asides," which before were lyrical, now become the comments of an acute +intellect. His vivid and microscopic recollection of the apothecary +shop, his philosophical bantering with the apothecary, his sudden +violence to Balthasar at the entrance to the tomb, and his as sudden +friendliness, his words and conflict with Paris, whom he kills +incidentally, absent-mindedly, and, as it were, with his left hand, +without malice and without remorse,--all these things show an intellect +working at high pressure, while the spirit of the man is absorbed in +another and more important matter. + +There is a certain state of mind in which the will to do is so soon +followed by the act itself that one may say the act is automatic. The +thought has already begun to be executed even while it is being formed. +This occurs especially where the intent is to do some horrid deed which +requires preparation, firmness of purpose, ingenuity, and, above all, +external calmness. + + "Between the acting of a dreadful thing + And the first motion, all the interim is + Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream. + The genius and the mortal instruments + Are then in council; and the state of man, + Like to a little kingdom, suffers then + The nature of an insurrection." + +This is the phase through which Romeo is passing on the way from Mantua +to Verona. His own words give us a picture of him during that ride:-- + + "What said my man when my betossed soul + Did not attend him as we rode?" + +He has come like an arrow, his mind closed to the external world, +himself in the blind clutch of his own deadly purpose, driving on +towards its fulfilment. Only at the end, when he stands before the bier +of Juliet, sure of his will, beyond the reach of hindrance, alone for +the first time,--only then is his spirit released in floods of +eloquence; then does his triumphant purpose break into speech, and his +words soar up like the flames of a great bonfire of precious incense +streaming upward in exultation and in happiness. + +The whole course of these last scenes of Romeo's life, which are +scarcely longer than this description of them, is in the highest degree +naturalistic; but the scenes are in the nature of things so difficult to +present on the stage as to be fairly impossible. The very long, the very +minute description of the apothecary's shop, given by a man whose heart +has stopped beating, but whose mind is at work more actively and more +accurately than it has ever worked before, is a thing highly sane as to +its words. It must be done quietly, rapidly, and yet the impression must +be created, which is created upon Balthasar, that Romeo is not in his +right mind. A friend seeing him would cross the street to ask what was +the matter. + +The whole character of Romeo, from the beginning, has been imagined with +reference to this self-destroying consummation. From his first speech we +might have suspected that something destructive would come out of this +man. + +There is a type of highly organized being, not well fitted for this +world, whose practical activities are drowned in a sea of feeling. +Egoists by their constitution, they become dangerous beings when vexed, +cornered, or thwarted by society. Their fine energies have had no +training in the painful constructive processes of civilization. Their +first instincts, when goaded into activity, are instincts of +destruction. They know no compromise. If they are not to have all, then +no one shall possess anything. Romeo is not suffering in this final +scene. He is experiencing the greatest pleasure of his life. He glories +in his deed. It satisfies his soul. It gives him supreme spiritual +activity. The deed brings widespread desolation, but to this he is +indifferent, for it means the destruction of the prison against which +his desires have always beaten their wings, the destruction of a +material and social universe from which he has always longed to be free. + + "O, here + Will I set up my everlasting rest, + And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars + From this world-wearied flesh." + +How much of all this psychology may we suppose was rendered apparent to +the motley collection of excitable people who flocked to see the +play--which appears to have been a popular one--in the years 1591-97? +Probably as much as may be gathered by an audience to-day from a +tolerable representation of the piece. The subtler truths of Shakespeare +have always been lost upon the stage. In turning over the first quarto +of Romeo and Juliet, we may see that many such matters were pruned +ruggedly off by the actors. The early audiences, like the popular +audiences of to-day, doubtless regarded action as the first merit of a +play, and the stage managers must have understood this. It is noticeable +that, in the authentic text, the street fight with which this play opens +is a carefully-worked-up scene, which comes to a climax in the entry of +the prince. The reporter gives a few words only to a description of the +scene. No doubt, in Shakespeare's time, the characters spoke very +rapidly or all at once. It is impossible that the longer plays, like +King Lear, should have been finished in an evening, unless the scenes +moved with a hurry of life very different from the declamatory leisure +with which our actors move from scene to scene. To make plain the course +of the story was evidently the chief aim of the stage managers. The +choruses are finger-posts. It is true that the choruses in Shakespeare +are generally so overloaded with curious ornament as to be +incomprehensible except as explanations of things already understood. +The prologue to Romeo and Juliet is a riddle to which the play is the +answer. One might at first suppose that the need of such finger-posts +betrayed a dull audience, but no dull person was ever enlightened by +Shakespeare's choruses. They play variations on the theme. They instruct +only the instructed. + +If interest in the course of the story be the first excitement to the +theatre-goer, interest in seeing a picture of contemporary manners is +probably the second. Our chief loss in reading Shakespeare is the loss +of the society he depicts, and which we know only through him. In every +line and scene there must be meanings which have vanished forever with +the conditions on which they comment. A character on the stage has need, +at the feeblest, of only just so much vitality as will remind us of +something we know in real life. The types of Shakespeare which have been +found substantial enough to survive the loss of their originals must +have had an interest for the first audiences, both in nature and in +intensity, very different from their interest to us. The high life +depicted by Shakespeare has disappeared. No one of us has ever known a +Mercutio. Fortunately, the types of society seem to change less in the +lower orders than in the upper classes. England swarms with old women +like Juliet's nurse; and as to these characters in Shakespeare whose +originals still survive, and as to them only, we may feel that we are +near the Elizabethans. + +We should undoubtedly suffer some disenchantment by coming in contact +with these coarse and violent people. How much do the pictures of +contemporary England given us by the novelists stand in need of +correction by a visit to the land! How different is the thing from the +abstract! Or, to put the same thought in a more obvious light, how +fantastic are the ideas of the Germans about Shakespeare! How Germanized +does he come forth from their libraries and from their green-rooms! + +We in America, with our formal manners, our bloodless complexions, our +perpetual decorum and self-suppression, are about as much in sympathy +with the real element of Shakespeare's plays as a Baptist parson is with +a fox-hunt. Our blood is stirred by the narration, but our constitution +could never stand the reality. As we read we translate all things into +the dialect of our province; or if we must mouth, let us say that we +translate the dialect of the English province into the language of our +empire; but we still translate. Mercutio, on inspection, would turn out +to be not a gentleman,--and indeed he is not; Juliet, to be a most +extraordinary young person; Tybalt, a brute and ruffian, a type from the +plantation; and the only man with whom we should feel at all at ease +would be the County Paris, in whom we should all recognize a perfectly +bred man. "What a man!" we should cry. "Why, he's a man of wax!" + + * * * * * + + + + MICHAEL ANGELO'S SONNETS + + +Michael Angelo is revealed by his sonnets. He wears the triple crown of +painter, poet, and sculptor, and his genius was worshipped with a kind +of awe even while he lived, yet we know the man best through these +little pieces of himself which he broke off and gave to his friends. The +fragments vibrated with the life of the man, and were recognized as +wonderful things. Even in his lifetime they were treasured and collected +in manuscript, and at a later day they were seized upon by the world at +large. + +The first published edition of the sonnets was prepared for the press +many years after the death of the author by his grandnephew, who edited +them to suit the taste of the seventeenth century. The extent and +atrocity of his emendations can be realized by a comparison of texts. +But the sonnets survived the improvements, and even made headway under +them; and when, in 1863, Guasti gave the original readings to the +public, the world was prepared for them. The bibliography of editions +and translations which Guasti gives is enough to show the popularity of +the sonnets, their universal character, their international currency. + +There are upward of one hundred sonnets in every stage of perfection, +and they have given rise not only to a literature of translations, but +to a literature of comment. Some years ago Mrs. Ednah Cheney published a +selection of the sonnets, giving the Italian text, together with English +translations by various hands. This little volume has earned the +gratitude of many to whom it made known the sonnets. The Italians +themselves have gone on printing the corrupt text in contempt of +Guasti's labors. But it has not been left to the Italians to protect the +treasures of their land. The barbarians have been the devoutest +worshippers at all times. The last tribute has come from Mr. John +Addington Symonds, who has done the sonnets into the English of the +pre-Raphaelites, and done them, on the whole, amazingly well. His +translations of the more graceful sonnets are facile, apt, and charming, +and rise at times into beauty. He has, however, insisted on polishing +the rugged ones. Moreover, being deficient in reverence, Mr. Symonds +fails to convey reverence. Nevertheless, to have boldly planned and +carried out the task of translating them all was an undertaking of so +much courage, and has been done with so much success, that every rival +must give in his admiration. + +The poems are exceedingly various, some being rough and some elegant, +some obvious and some obscure, some humorous, some religious. Yet they +have this in common, that each seems to be the bearer of some deep +harmony, whose vibrations we feel and whose truth we recognize. From the +very beginning they seem to have had a provocative and stimulating +effect upon others; ever since they were written, cultivated people have +been writing essays about them. One of them has been the subject of +repeated academical disquisition. They absorb and reflect the spirit of +the times; they appeal to and express the individual; they have done +this through three centuries and throughout who shall say how many +different educational conditions. Place them in what light you will, +they gleam with new meanings. This is their quality. It is hard to say +whence the vitality comes. They have often a brilliancy that springs +from the juxtaposition of two thoughts,--a brilliancy like that +produced by unblended colors roughly but well laid on. They have, as it +were, an organic force which nothing can render. The best of them have +the reflective power which gives back light from the mind of the reader. +The profounder ones appear to change and glow under contemplation; they +re-echo syllables from forgotten voices; they suggest unfathomable +depths of meaning. These sonnets are protean in character; they +represent different things to different people,--religion to one, love +to another, philosophy to a third. + +It is easy to guess what must be the fate of such poems in translation. +The translator inevitably puts more of himself than of Michael Angelo +into his version. Even the first Italian editor could not let them +alone. He felt he must dose them with elegance. This itching to amend +the sonnets results largely from the obscurity of the text. A translator +is required to be, above all things, comprehensible, and, therefore, he +must interpret, he must paraphrase. He is not at liberty to retain the +equivocal suggestiveness of the original. The language of a translation +must be chastened, or, at least, grammatical, and Michael Angelo's verse +is very often neither the one nor the other. + +The selections which follow are not given as representative of the +different styles in the original. They have been chosen from among those +sonnets which seemed most capable of being rendered into English. + +The essential nature of the sonnet is replete with difficulty, and +special embarrassments are encountered in the Italian sonnet. The +Italian sonnet is, both in its form and spirit, a thing so foreign to +the English idea of what poetry should be, that no cultivation can ever +domesticate it into the tongue. The seeds of flowers from the Alps may +be planted in our gardens, but a new kind of flower will come up; and +this is what has happened over and over again to the skilled gardeners +of English literature in their struggles with the Italian sonnet. In +Italy, for six hundred years, the sonnet has been the authorized form +for a disconnected remark of any kind. Its chief aim is not so much to +express a feeling as an idea--a witticism--a conceit--a shrewd saying--a +clever analogy--a graceful simile--a beautiful thought. Moreover, it is +not primarily intended for the public; it has a social rather than a +literary function. + +The English with their lyrical genius have impressed the form, as they +have impressed every other form, into lyrical service, and with some +success, it must be admitted. But the Italian sonnet is not lyrical. It +is conversational and intellectual, and many things which English +instinct declares poetry ought not to be. We feel throughout the poetry +of the Latin races a certain domination of the intelligence which is +foreign to our own poetry. But in the sonnet form at least we may +sympathize with this domination. Let us read the Italian sonnets, then, +as if they were prose; let us seek first the thought and hold to that, +and leave the eloquence to take care of itself. It is the thought, after +all, which Michael Angelo himself cared about. He is willing to +sacrifice elegance, to truncate words, to wreck rhyme, prosody, and +grammar, if he can only hurl through the verse these thoughts which were +his convictions. + +The platonic ideas about life and love and art, which lie at the bottom +of most of these sonnets, are familiar to us all. They have been the +reigning commonplace ideas of educated people for the last two thousand +years. But in these sonnets they are touched with new power; they become +exalted into mystical importance. We feel almost as if it were Plato +himself that is talking, and the interest is not lessened when we +remember that it is Michael Angelo. It is necessary to touch on this +element in the sonnets, for it exists in them; and because while some +will feel chiefly the fiery soul of the man, others will be most struck +by his great speculative intellect. + +It is certain that the sonnets date from various times in Michael +Angelo's life; and, except in a few cases, it must be left to the +instinct of the reader to place them. Those which were called forth by +the poet's friendship for Vittoria Colonna were undoubtedly written +towards the close of his life. While he seems to have known Vittoria +Colonna and to have been greatly attached to her for many years, it is +certain that in his old age he fell in love with her. The library of +romance that has been written about this attachment has added nothing to +Condivi's simple words:-- + + "He greatly loved the Marchesana of Pescara, with whose divine + spirit he fell in love, and was in return passionately beloved of + her; and he still keeps many of her letters, which are full of most + honest and tenderest love, such as used to issue from a heart like + hers; and he himself had written her many and many a sonnet full of + wit and tenderness. She often left Viterbo and other places, where + she had gone for pleasure, and to pass the summer, and came to Rome + for no other reason than to see Michael Angelo. And in return he + bore her so much love that I remember hearing him say that he + regretted nothing except that when he went to see her on her + death-bed he had not kissed her brow and her cheek as he had kissed + her hand. He was many times overwhelmed at the thought of her death, + and used to be as one out of his mind." + +It seems, from reading the sonnets, that some of those which are +addressed to women must belong to a period anterior to his friendship +with Vittoria. This appears from the internal evidence of style and +feeling, as well as by references in the later sonnets. + +One other fact must be mentioned,--both Vittoria and Michael Angelo +belonged to, or at least sympathized with, the Piagnoni, and were in a +sense disciples of Savonarola. Now, it is this religious element which +makes Michael Angelo seem to step out of his country and out of his +century and across time and space into our own. This religious feeling +is of a kind perfectly familiar to us; indeed, of a kind inborn and +native to us. Whether we be reading the English prayer-book or listening +to the old German Passion Music, there is a certain note of the spirit +which, when we hear it, we perfectly recognize as a part of ourselves. +What we recognize is, in fact, the Protestantism which swept over Europe +during the century of Michael Angelo's existence; which conquered +Teutonic Europe, and was conquered, but not extinguished, in Latin +Europe; and a part of which survives in ourselves. If one wishes to feel +the power of Savonarola, one may do so in these sonnets. We had +connected Michael Angelo with the Renaissance, but we are here face to +face with the Reformation. We cannot help being a little surprised at +this. We cannot help being surprised at finding how well we know this +man. + +Few of us are familiar enough with the language of the plastic arts to +have seen without prompting this same modern element in Michael Angelo's +painting and sculpture. We might, perhaps, have recognized it in the +Pieta in St. Peter's. We may safely say, however, that it exists in all +his works. It is in the Medicean statues; it is in the Julian marbles; +it is in the Sistine ceiling. What is there in these figures that they +leave us so awestruck, that they seem so like the sound of trumpets +blowing from a spiritual world? The intelligence that could call them +forth, the craft that could draw them, have long since perished. But the +meaning survives the craft. The lost arts retain their power over us. We +understand but vaguely, yet we are thrilled. We cannot decipher the +signs, yet we subscribe to their import. The world from which Michael +Angelo's figures speak is our own world, after all. That is the reason +they are so potent, so intimate, so inimitably significant. We may be +sure that the affinity which we feel with Michael Angelo, and do not +feel with any other artist of that age, springs from experiences and +beliefs in him which are similar to our own. + +His work speaks to the moral sense more directly and more powerfully +than that of any one,--so directly and so powerfully, indeed, that we +whose physical senses are dull, and whose moral sense is acute, are +moved by Michael Angelo, although the rest of the _cinque cento_ culture +remain a closed book to us. + +It is difficult, this conjuring with the unrecoverable past, so rashly +done by us all. Yet we must use what light we have. Remembering, then, +that painting is not the reigning mode of expression in recent times, +and that in dealing with it we are dealing with a vehicle of expression +with which we are not spontaneously familiar, we may yet draw +conclusions which are not fantastic, if we base them upon the identity +of one man's nature some part of which we are sure we understand. We may +throw a bridge from the ground in the sonnets, upon which we are sure we +stand firmly, to the ground in the frescos, which, by reason of our own +ignorance, is less certain ground to us, and we may walk from one side +to the other amid the elemental forces of this same man's mind. + + + + XXXVIII + + Give me again, ye fountains and ye streams, + That flood of life, not yours, that swells your front + Beyond the natural fulness of your wont. + I gave, and I take back as it beseems. + And thou dense choking atmosphere on high + Disperse thy fog of sighs--for it is mine, + And make the glory of the sun to shine + Again on my dim eyes.--O, Earth and Sky + Give me again the footsteps I have trod. + Let the paths grow where I walked them bare, + The echoes where I waked them with my prayer + Be deaf--and let those eyes--those eyes, O God, + Give me the light I lent them.--That some soul + May take my love. Thou hadst no need of it. + +This rough and exceedingly obscure sonnet, in which strong feeling has +condensed and distorted the language, seems to have been written by a +man who has been in love and has been repulsed. The shock has restored +him to a momentary realization of the whole experience. He looks at the +landscape, and lo! the beauty has dropped out of it. The stream has lost +its power, and the meadow its meaning. Summer has stopped. His next +thought is: "But it is I who had lent the landscape this beauty. That +landscape was myself, my dower, my glory, my birthright," and so he +breaks out with "Give me back the light I threw upon you," and so on +till the bitter word flung to the woman in the last line. The same +clearness of thought and obscurity of expression and the same passion is +to be found in the famous sonnet--"_Non ha l' ottimo artista alcun +concetto_,"--where he blames himself for not being able to obtain her +good-will--as a bad sculptor who cannot hew out the beauty from the +rock, although he feels it to be there; and in that heart-breaking one +where he says that people may only draw from life what they give to it, +and says no good can come to a man who, looking on such great beauty, +feels such pain. + +It is not profitable, nor is it necessary for the comprehension of the +poems, to decide to whom or at what period each one was written. There +is dispute about some of them as to whether they were addressed to men +or women. There is question as to others whether they are prayers +addressed to Christ or love poems addressed to Vittoria. In this latter +case, perhaps, Michael Angelo did not himself know which they were. + +Vittoria used to instruct him in religion, and he seems to have felt for +her a love so deep, so reverent, so passionate, and so touching that the +words are alive in which he mentions her. + +"I wished," he writes beneath a sonnet which he sent her, evidently in +return for some of her own religious poems, "I wished, before taking the +things that you had many times deigned to give me, in order that I might +receive them the less unworthily, to make something for you from my own +hand. But then, remembering and knowing that the grace of God may not be +bought, and that to accept it reluctantly is the greatest sin, I confess +my fault, and willingly receive the said things, and when they shall +arrive, not because they are in my house, but I myself as being in a +house of theirs, shall deem myself in Paradise." + +We must not forget that at this time Michael Angelo was an old man, +that he carried about with him a freshness and vigor of feeling that +most people lose with their youth. A reservoir of emotion broke loose +within him at a time when it caused his hale old frame suffering to +undergo it, and reillumined his undimmed intellect to cope with it. A +mystery play was enacted in him,--each sonnet is a scene. There is the +whole of a man in each of many of these sonnets. They do not seem so +much like poems as like microcosms. They are elementally complete. The +soul of man could be evolved again from them if the formula were lost. + + + XL + + I know not if it be the longed for light + Of its creator which the soul perceives, + Or if in people's memory there lives + A touch of early grace that keeps them bright + Or else ambition,--or some dream whose might + Brings to the eyes the hope the heart conceives + And leaves a burning feeling when it leaves-- + That tears are welling in me as I write. + + The things I feel, the things I follow and the things + I seek--are not in me,--I hardly know the place + To find them. It is others make them mine. + It happens when I see thee--and it brings + Sweet pain--a yes,--a no,--sorrow and grace + Surely it must have been those eyes of thine. + +There are others which give a most touching picture of extreme piety in +extreme old age. And there are still others which are both love poems +and religious poems at the same time. + + + LV + + Thou knowest that I know that thou dost know + How, to enjoy thee, I did come more near. + Thou knowest, I know thou knowest--I am here. + Would we had given our greetings long ago. + If true the hope thou hast to me revealed, + If true the plighting of a sacred troth, + Let the wall fall that stands between us both, + For griefs are doubled when they are concealed. + If, loved one,--if I only loved in thee + What thou thyself dost love,--'tis to this end + The spirit with his belovéd is allied. + The things thy face inspires and teaches me + Mortality doth little comprehend. + Before we understand we must have died. + + + LI + + Give me the time when loose the reins I flung + Upon the neck of galloping desire. + Give me the angel face that now among + The angels,--tempers Heaven with its fire. + Give the quick step that now is grown so old, + The ready tears--the blaze at thy behest, + If thou dost seek indeed, O Love! to hold + Again thy reign of terror in my breast. + If it be true that thou dost only live + Upon the sweet and bitter pains of man + Surely a weak old man small food can give + Whose years strike deeper than thine arrows can. + Upon life's farthest limit I have stood-- + What folly to make fire of burnt wood. + +The occasion of the following was probably some more than wonted favor +shown to him by Vittoria. + + + XXVI. + + Great joy no less than grief doth murder men. + The thief, even at the gallows, may be killed + If, while through every vein with fear he's chilled, + Sudden reprieve do set him free again. + + Thus hath this bounty from you in my pain + Through all my griefs and sufferings fiercely thrilled, + Coming from a breast with sovereign mercy filled, + And more than weeping, cleft my heart in twain. + + Good news, like bad, may bring the taker death. + The heart is rent as with the sharpest knife, + Be it pressure or expansion cause the rift. + Let thy great beauty which God cherisheth + Limit my joy if it desire my life-- + The unworthy dies beneath so great a gift. + + + XXVIII + + The heart is not the life of love like mine. + The love I love thee with has none of it. + For hearts to sin and mortal thought incline + And for love's habitation are unfit. + God, when our souls were parted from Him, made + Of me an eye--of thee, splendor and light. + Even in the parts of thee which are to fade + Thou hast the glory; I have only sight. + Fire from its heat you may not analyze, + Nor worship from eternal beauty take, + Which deifies the lover as he bows. + Thou hast that Paradise all within thine eyes + Where first I loved thee. 'T is for that love's sake + My soul's on fire with thine, beneath thy brows. + +The German musicians of the seventeenth century used to write +voluntaries for the organ, using the shorthand of the older notation; +they jotted down the formulas of the successive harmonies expressed in +terms of the chords merely. The transitions and the musical explanation +were left to the individual performer. And Michael Angelo has left +behind him, as it were, the poetical equivalents of such shorthand +musical formulas. The harmonies are wonderful. The successions show a +great grasp of comprehension, but you cannot play them without filling +them out. + +"Is that music, after all," one may ask, "which leaves so much to the +performer, and is that poetry, after all, which leaves so much to the +reader?" It seems you must be a Kapellmeister or a student, or +dilettante of some sort, before you can transpose and illustrate these +hieroglyphics. There is some truth in this criticism, and the modesty of +purpose in the poems is the only answer to it. They claim no comment. +Comment claims them. Call them not poetry if you will. They are a window +which looks in upon the most extraordinary nature of modern times,--a +nature whose susceptibility to impressions of form through the eye +allies it to classical times; a nature which on the emotional side +belongs to our own day. + +Is it a wonder that this man was venerated with an almost superstitious +regard in Italy, and in the sixteenth century? His creations were +touched with a superhuman beauty which his contemporaries felt, yet +charged with a profoundly human meaning which they could not fathom. No +one epoch has held the key to him. There lives not a man and there never +has lived a man who could say, "I fully understand Michael Angelo's +works." It will be said that the same is true of all the very greatest +artists, and so it is in a measure. But as to the others, that truth +comes as an afterthought and an admission. As to Michael Angelo, it is +primary and overwhelming impression. "We are not sure that we comprehend +him," say the centuries as they pass, "but of this we are sure: _Simil +ne maggior uom non nacque mai_." + + * * * * * + + + + THE FOURTH CANTO OF THE INFERNO + + +There are many great works of fiction where the interest lies in the +situation and development of the characters or in the wrought-up climax +of the action, and where it is necessary to read the whole work before +one can feel the force of the catastrophe. But Dante's poem is a series +of disconnected scenes, held together only by the slender thread of the +itinerary. The scenes vary in length from a line or two to a page or +two; and the power of them comes, one may say, not at all from their +connection with each other, but entirely from the language in which they +are given. + +A work of this kind is hard to translate because verbal felicities, to +use a mild term, are untranslatable. What English words can render the +mystery of that unknown voice that calls out of the deep,-- + + "Onorate 'l altissimo poeta, + Torna sua ombra che era dipartita"? + +The cry breaks upon the night, full of awful greeting, proclamation, +prophecy, and leaves the reader standing next to Virgil, afraid now to +lift up his eyes to the poet. Awe breathes in the cadence of the words +themselves. And so with many of the most splendid lines in Dante, the +meaning inheres in the very Italian words. They alone shine with the +idea. They alone satisfy the spiritual vision. + +Of all the greatest poets, Dante is most foreign to the genius of the +English race. From the point of view of English-speaking people, he is +lacking in humor. It might seem at first blush as if the argument of his +poem were a sufficient warrant for seriousness; but his seriousness is +of a nature strange to northern nations. There is in it a gaunt and +sallow earnestness which appears to us inhuman. + +In the treatment of the supernatural the Teutonic nations have generally +preserved a touch of humor. This is so intrinsically true to the +Teutonic way of feeling that the humor seems to go with and to heighten +the terror of the supernatural. When Hamlet, in the scene on the +midnight terrace, addresses the ghost as "old mole," "old truepenny," +etc., we may be sure that he is in a frenzy of excitement and +apprehension. Perhaps the explanation of this mixture of humor and +terror, is that when the mind feels itself shaken to its foundations by +the immediate presence of the supernatural,--palsied, as it were, with +fear,--there comes to its rescue, and as an antidote to the fear itself, +a reserve of humor, almost of levity. Staggered by the unknown, the mind +opposes it with the homely and the familiar. The northern nations were +too much afraid of ghosts to take them seriously. The sight of one made +a man afraid he should lose his wits if he gave way to his fright. Thus +it has come about that in the sincerest terror of the north there is a +touch of grotesque humor; and this touch we miss in Dante. The hundred +cantos of his poem are unrelieved by a single scene of comedy. The +strain of exalted tragedy is maintained throughout. His jests and wit +are not of the laughing kind. Sometimes they are grim and terrible, +sometimes playful, but always serious and full of meaning. This lack of +humor becomes very palpable in a translation, where it is not disguised +by the transcendent beauty of Dante's style. + +There is another difficulty peculiar to the translating of Dante into +English. English is essentially a diffuse and prodigal language. The +great English writers have written with a free hand, prolific, +excursive, diffuse. Shakespeare, Sir Thomas Browne, Sir Walter Scott, +Robert Browning, all the typical writers of English, have been +many-worded. They have been men who said everything that came into their +heads, and trusted to their genius to make their writings readable. The +eighteenth century in England, with all its striving after classical +precision, has left behind it no great laconic English classic who +stands in the first rank. Our own Emerson is concise enough, but he is +disconnected and prophetic. Dante is not only concise, but logical, +deductive, prone to ratiocination. He set down nothing that he had not +thought of a thousand times, and conned over, arranged, and digested. We +have in English no prototype for such condensation. There is no native +work in the language written in anything which approaches the style of +Dante. + + My heavy sleep a sullen thunder broke, + So that I shook myself, springing upright, + Like one awakened by a sudden stroke, + And gazed with fixed eyes and new-rested sight + Slowly about me,--awful privilege,-- + To know the place that held me, if I might. + In truth I found myself upon the edge + That girds the valley of the dreadful pit, + Circling the infinite wailing with its ledge. + Dark, deep, and cloudy, to the depths of it + Eye could not probe, and though I bent mine low, + It helped my vain conjecture not a whit. + "Let us go down to the blind world below," + Began the poet, with a face like death, + "I shall go first, thou second." "Say not so," + Cried I when I again could find my breath, + For I had seen the whiteness of his face, + "How shall I come if thee it frighteneth?" + And he replied: "The anguish of the place + And those that dwell there thus hath painted me + With pity, not with fear. But come apace; + The spur of the journey pricks us." Thus did he + Enter himself, and take me in with him, + Into the first great circle's mystery + That winds the deep abyss about the brim. + + Here there came borne upon the winds to us, + Not cries, but sighs that filled the concave dim, + And kept the eternal breezes tremulous. + The cause is grief, but grief unlinked to pain, + That makes the unnumbered peoples suffer thus. + I saw great crowds of children, women, men, + Wheeling below. "Thou dost not seek to know + What spirits are these thou seest?" Thus again + My master spoke. "But ere we further go, + Thou must be sure that these feel not the weight + Of sin. They well deserved,--and yet not so.-- + They had not baptism, which is the gate + Of Faith,--thou holdest. If they lived before + The days of Christ, though sinless, in that state + God they might never worthily adore. + And I myself am such an one as these. + For this shortcoming--on no other score-- + We are lost, and most of all our torment is + That lost to hope we live in strong desire." + Grief seized my heart to hear these words of his, + Because most splendid souls and hearts of fire + I recognized, hung in that Limbo there. + "Tell me, my master dear, tell me, my sire," + Cried I at last, with eager hope to share + That all-convincing faith,--"but went there not + One,--once,--from hence,--made happy though it were + Through his own merit or another's lot?" + "I was new come into this place," said he, + Who seemed to guess the purport of my thought, + "When Him whose brows were bound with Victory + I saw come conquering through this prison dark. + He set the shade of our first parent free, + With Abel, and the builder of the ark, + And him that gave the laws immutable, + And Abraham, obedient patriarch, + David the king, and ancient Israel, + His father and his children at his side, + And the wife Rachel that he loved so well, + And gave them Paradise,--and before these men + None tasted of salvation that have died." + + We did not pause while he was talking then, + But held our constant course along the track, + Where spirits thickly thronged the wooded glen. + And we had reached a point whence to turn back + Had not been far, when I, still touched with fear, + Perceived a fire, that, struggling with the black, + Made conquest of a luminous hemisphere. + The place was distant still, but I could see + Clustered about the fire, as we drew near, + Figures of an austere nobility. + "Thou who dost honor science and love art, + Pray who are these, whose potent dignity + Doth eminently set them thus apart?" + The poet answered me, "The honored fame + That made their lives illustrious touched the heart + Of God to advance them." Then a voice there came, + "Honor the mighty poet;" and again, + "His shade returns,--do honor to his name." + And when the voice had finished its refrain, + I saw four giant shadows coming on. + They seemed nor sad nor joyous in their mien. + And my good master said: "See him, my son, + That bears the sword and walks before the rest, + And seems the father of the three,--that one + Is Homer, sovran poet. The satirist + Horace comes next; third, Ovid; and the last + Is Lucan. The lone voice that name expressed + That each doth share with me; therefore they haste + To greet and do me honor;--nor do they wrong." + + Thus did I see the assembled school who graced + The master of the most exalted song, + That like an eagle soars above the rest. + When they had talked together, though not long, + They turned to me, nodding as to a guest. + At which my master smiled, but yet more high + They lifted me in honor. At their behest + I went with them as of their company, + And made the sixth among those mighty wits. + + Thus towards the light we walked in colloquy + Of things my silence wisely here omits, + As there 'twas sweet to speak them, till we came + To where a seven times circled castle sits, + Whose walls are watered by a lovely stream. + This we crossed over as it had been dry, + Passing the seven gates that guard the same, + And reached a meadow, green as Arcady. + People were there with deep, slow-moving eyes + Whose looks were weighted with authority. + Scant was their speech, but rich in melodies. + The walls receding left a pasture fair, + A place all full of light and of great size, + So we could see each spirit that was there. + And straight before my eyes upon the green + Were shown to me the souls of those that were, + Great spirits it exalts me to have seen. + Electra with her comrades I descried, + I saw Æneas, and knew Hector keen, + And in full armor Cæsar, falcon-eyed, + Camilla and the Amazonian queen, + King Latin with Lavinia at his side, + Brutus that did avenge the Tarquin's sin, + Lucrece, Cornelia, Martia Julia, + And by himself the lonely Saladin. + + The Master of all thinkers next I saw + Amid the philosophic family. + All eyes were turned on him with reverent awe; + Plato and Socrates were next his knee, + Then Heraclitus and Empedocles, + Thales and Anaxagoras, and he + That based the world on chance; and next to these, + Zeno, Diogenes, and that good leech + The herb-collector, Dioscorides. + Orpheus I saw, Livy and Tully, each + Flanked by old Seneca's deep moral lore, + Euclid and Ptolemy, and within their reach + Hippocrates and Avicenna's store, + The sage that wrote the master commentary, + Averois, with Galen and a score + Of great physicians. But my pen were weary + Depicting all of that majestic plain + Splendid with many an antique dignitary. + My theme doth drive me on, and words are vain + To give the thought the thing itself conveys. + The six of us were now cut down to twain. + My guardian led me forth by other ways, + Far from the quiet of that trembling wind, + And from the gentle shining of those rays, + To places where all light was left behind. + + * * * * * + + + + + ROBERT BROWNING + + +There is a period in the advance of any great man's influence between +the moment when he appears and the moment when he has become historical, +during which it is difficult to give any succinct account of him. We are +ourselves a part of the thing we would describe. The element which we +attempt to isolate for purposes of study is still living within us. Our +science becomes tinged with autobiography. Such must be the fate of any +essay on Browning written at the present time. + +The generation to whom his works were unmeaning has hardly passed away. +The generation he spoke for still lives. His influence seems still to be +expanding. The literature of Browning dictionaries, phrase-books, +treatises, and philosophical studies grows daily. Mr. Cooke in his Guide +to Browning (1893) gives a condensed catalogue of the best books and +essays on Browning, which covers many finely printed pages. This class +of book--the text-book--is not the product of impulse. The text-book is +a commercial article and follows the demand as closely as the reaper +follows the crop. We can tell the acreage under cultivation by looking +over the account books of the makers of farm implements. Thousands of +people are now studying Browning, following in his footsteps, reading +lives of his heroes, and hunting up the subjects he treated. + +This Browningism which we are disposed to laugh at is a most interesting +secondary outcome of his influence. It has its roots in natural piety, +and the educational value of it is very great. + +Browning's individuality created for him a personal following, and he +was able to respond to the call to leadership. Unlike Carlyle, he had +something to give his disciples beside the immediate satisfaction of a +spiritual need. He gave them not only meal but seed. In this he was like +Emerson; but Emerson's little store of finest grain is of a different +soil. Emerson lived in a cottage and saw the stars over his head through +his skylight. Browning, on the other hand, loved pictures, places, +music, men and women, and his works are like the house of a rich man,--a +treasury of plunder from many provinces and many ages, whose manners +and passions are vividly recalled to us. In Emerson's house there was +not a peg to hang a note upon,--"this is his bookshelf, this his bed." +But Browning's palace craves a catalogue. And a proper catalogue to such +a palace becomes a liberal education. + +Robert Browning was a strong, glowing, whole-souled human being, who +enjoyed life more intensely than any Englishman since Walter Scott. He +was born among books; and circumstances enabled him to follow his +inclinations and become a writer,--a poet by profession. He was, from +early youth to venerable age, a centre of bounding vitality, the very +embodiment of spontaneous life; and the forms of poetry in which he so +fully and so accurately expressed himself enable us to know him well. +Indeed, only great poets are known so intimately as we know Robert +Browning. + +Religion was at the basis of his character, and it was the function of +religious poetry that his work fulfilled. Inasmuch as no man invents his +own theology, but takes it from the current world and moulds it to his +needs, it was inevitable that Robert Browning should find and seize upon +as his own all that was optimistic in Christian theology. Everything +that was hopeful his spirit accepted; everything that was sunny and +joyful and good for the brave soul he embraced. What was distressing he +rejected or explained away. In the world of Robert Browning _everything_ +was right. + +The range of subject covered by his poems is wider than that of any +other poet that ever lived; but the range of his ideas is exceedingly +small. We need not apologize for treating Browning as a theologian and a +doctor of philosophy, for he spent a long life in trying to show that a +poet is always really both--and he has almost convinced us. The +expositors and writers of text-books have had no difficulty in +formulating his theology, for it is of the simplest kind; and his views +on morality and art are logically a part of it. The "message" which +poets are conventionally presumed to deliver, was, in Browning's case, a +very definite creed, which may be found fully set forth in any one of +twenty poems. Every line of his poetry is logically dedicated to it. + +He believes that the development of the individual soul is the main end +of existence. The strain and stress of life are incidental to growth, +and therefore desirable. Development and growth mean a closer union with +God. In fact, God is of not so much importance in Himself, but as the +end towards which man tends. That irreverent person who said that +Browning uses "God" as a pigment made an accurate criticism of his +theology. In Browning, God is adjective to man. Browning believes that +all conventional morality must be reviewed from the standpoint of how +conduct affects the actor himself, and what effect it has on his +individual growth. The province of art and of all thinking and working +is to make these truths clear and to grapple with the problems they give +rise to. + +The first two fundamental beliefs of Browning--namely: (1) that, +ultimately speaking, the most important matter in the world is the soul +of a man; and (2) that a sense of effort is coincident with +development--are probably true. We instinctively feel them to be true, +and they seem to be receiving support from those quarters of research to +which we look for light, however dim. In the application of his dogmas +to specific cases in the field of ethics, Browning often reaches +conclusions which are fair subjects for disagreement. Since most of our +conventional morality is framed to repress the individual, he finds +himself at war with it--in revolt against it. He is habitually pitted +against it, and thus acquires modes of thought which sometimes lead him +into paradox--at least, to conclusions at odds with his premises. It is +in the course of exposition, and incidentally to his main purpose as a +teacher of a few fundamental ideas, that Browning has created his +masterpieces of poetry. + +Never was there a man who in the course of a long life changed less. +What as a boy he dreamed of doing, that he did. The thoughts of his +earliest poems are the thoughts of his latest. His tales, his songs, his +monologues, his dramas, his jests, his sermons, his rage, his prayer, +are all upon the same theme: whatever fed his mind nourished these +beliefs. His interest in the world was solely an interest in them. He +saw them in history and in music; his travels and studies brought him +back nothing else but proofs of them; the universe in each of its +manifestations was a commentary upon them. His nature was the simplest, +the most positive, the least given to abstract speculation, which +England can show in his time. He was not a thinker, for he was never in +doubt. He had recourse to disputation as a means of inculcating truth, +but he used it like a lawyer arguing a case. His conclusions are fixed +from the start. Standing, from his infancy, upon a faith as absolute as +that of a martyr, he has never for one instant undergone the experience +of doubt, and only knows that there is such a thing because he has met +with it in other people. The force of his feelings is so much greater +than his intellect that his mind serves his soul like a valet. Out of +the whole cosmos he takes what belongs to him and sustains him, leaving +the rest, or not noting it. + +There never was a great poet whose scope was so definite. That is the +reason why the world is so cleanly divided into people who do and who do +not care for Browning. One real glimpse into him gives you the whole of +him. The public which loves him is made up of people who have been +through certain spiritual experiences to which he is the antidote. The +public which loves him not consists of people who have escaped these +experiences. To some he is a strong, rare, and precious elixir, which +nothing else will replace. To others, who do not need him, he is a +boisterous and eccentric person,--a Heracles in the house of mourning. + +Let us remember his main belief,--the value of the individual. The needs +of society constantly require that the individual be suppressed. They +hold him down and punish him at every point. The tyranny of order and +organization--of monarch or public opinion--weights him and presses him +down. This is the inevitable tendency of all stable social arrangements. +Now and again there arises some strong nature that revolts against the +influence of conformity which is becoming intolerable,--against the +atmosphere of caste or theory; of Egyptian priest or Manchester +economist; of absolutism or of democracy. + +And this strong nature cries out that the souls of men are being +injured, and that they are important; that your soul and my soul are +more important than Cæsar--or than the survival of the fittest. Such a +voice was the voice of Christ, and the lesser saviors of the world bring +always a like message of revolt: they arise to fulfil the same +fundamental need of the world. + +Carlyle, Emerson, Victor Hugo, Browning, were prophets to a generation +oppressed in spirit, whose education had oppressed them with a Jewish +law of Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham and Malthus, of Clarkson and +Cobden,--of thought for the million, and for man in the aggregate. "To +what end is all this beneficence, all this conscience, all this theory?" +some one at length cries out. "For whom is it in the last analysis that +you legislate? You talk _of man_, I see only _men_." + +To men suffering from an age of devotion to humanity came Robert +Browning as a liberator. Like Carlyle, he was understood first in this +country because we had begun earlier with our theoretical and practical +philanthropies, and had taken them more seriously. We had suffered more. +We needed to be told that it was right to love, hate, and be angry, to +sin and repent. It was a revelation to us to think that we had some +inheritance in the joys and passions of mankind. We needed to be told +these things as a tired child needs to be comforted. Browning gave them +to us in the form of a religion. There was no one else sane or deep or +wise or strong enough to know what we lacked. + +If ever a generation had need of a poet,--of some one to tell them they +might cry and not be ashamed, rejoice and not find the reason in John +Stuart Mill; some one who should justify the claims of the spirit which +was starving on the religion of humanity,--it was the generation for +whom Browning wrote. + +Carlyle had seized upon the French Revolution, which served his ends +because it was filled with striking, with powerful, with grotesque +examples of individual force. In his Hero Worship he gives his +countrymen a philosophy of history based on nothing but worship of the +individual. Browning with the same end in view gave us pictures of the +fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in France and Italy. He glorified what +we had thought crime and error, and made men of us. He was the apostle +to the educated of a most complex period, but such as he was, he was +complete. Those people to whom he has been a poet know what it is for +the heart to receive full expression from the lips of another. + +The second thesis which Browning insists on--the identity of spiritual +suffering with spiritual growth--is the one balm of the world. It is +said that recent physiological experiment shows that muscles do not +develop unless exercised up to what is called the "distress point." If +this shall prove to be an instance of a general law,--if the struggles +and agony of the spirit are really signs of an increase of that +spiritual life which is the only sort of life we can conceive of now or +hereafter,--then the truth-to-feeling of much of Browning's poetry has a +scientific basis. It cannot be denied that Browning held firmly two of +the most moving and far-reaching ideas of the world, and he expanded +them in the root, leaf, flower, and fruit of a whole world of poetic +disquisition. + +It is unnecessary at this day to point out the beauties of Browning or +the sagacity with which he chose his effects. He gives us the sallow +wife of James Lee, whose soul is known to him, Pippa the silk-spinning +girl, two men found in the morgue, persons lost, forgotten, or +misunderstood. He searches the world till he finds the man whom +everybody will concur in despising, the mediæval grammarian, and he +writes to him the most powerful ode in English, the mightiest tribute +ever paid to a man. His culture and his learning are all subdued to what +he works in; they are all in harness to draw his thought. He mines in +antiquity or drags his net over German philosophy or modern +drawing-rooms,--all to the same end. + +In that miracle of power and beauty--The Flight of the Duchess--he has +improvised a whole civilization in order to make the setting of contrast +which shall cause the soul of the little duchess to shine clearly. In +Childe Roland he creates a cycle, an epoch of romance and mysticism, +because he requires it as a stage property. In A Death in the Desert you +have the East in the first century--so vividly given that you wish +instantly to travel there, Bible in hand, to feel the atmosphere with +which your Bible ought always to have been filled. His reading brings +him to Euripides. He sees that Alcestis can be set to his theme; and +with a week or two of labor, while staying in a country house, he draws +out of the Greek fable the world of his own meaning and shows it shining +forth in a living picture of the Greek theatre which has no counterpart +for vitality in any modern tongue. + +The descriptive and narrative powers of Browning are above, beyond, and +outside of all that has been done in English in our time, as the odd +moments prove which he gave to the Pied Piper, The Ride from Ghent to +Aix, Incident in the French Camp. These chips from his workshop passed +instantly into popular favor because they were written in familiar +forms. + +How powerfully his gifts of utterance were brought to bear upon the +souls of men will be recorded, even if never understood, by literary +historians. It is idle to look to the present generation for an +intelligible account of One Word More, Rabbi Ben Ezra, Prospice, Saul, +The Blot on the 'Scutcheon. They must be judged by the future and by men +who can speak of them with a steady lip. + +It must be conceded that the conventional judgments of society are +sometimes right, and Browning's mission led him occasionally into +paradox and _jeux d'esprit_. Bishop Blougram is an attempt to discover +whether a good case cannot be made out for the individual hypocrite. The +Statue and the Bust is frankly a _reductio ad absurdum_, and ends with a +query. + +There is more serious trouble with others. The Grammarian's Funeral is +false to fact, and will appear so to posterity. The grammarian was not a +hero, and our calmer moments show us that the poem is not a great ode. +It gave certain people the glow of a great truth, but it remains a +paradox and a piece of exaggeration. The same must be said of a large +part of Browning. The New Testament is full of such paradoxes of +exaggeration, like the parable of the unjust steward, the rich man's +chance for heaven, the wedding garment; but in these, the truth is +apparent,--we are not betrayed. In Browning's paradoxes we are often led +on and involved in an emotion over some situation which does not +honestly call for the emotion. + +The most noble quality in Browning is his temper. He does not proceed, +as liberators generally do, by railing and pulling down. He builds up; +he is positive, not negative. He is less bitter than Christianity +itself. + +While there is no more doubt as to the permanent value of the content of +Browning than of the value of the spiritual truths of the New Testament, +there is very little likelihood that his poems will be understood in the +remote future. At present, they are following the waves of influence of +the education which they correct. They are built like Palladio's Theatre +at Vicenza, where the perspective converges toward a single seat. In +order to be subject to the illusion, the spectator must occupy the +duke's place. The colors are dropping from the poems already. The +feeblest of them lose it first. There was a steady falling off in power +accompanied by a constant increase in his peculiarities during the last +twenty years of his life, and we may make some surmise as to how +Balaustion's Adventure will strike posterity by reading Parleyings with +Certain People. + +The distinctions between Browning's characters--which to us are so +vivid--will to others seem less so. Paracelsus and Rabbi Ben Ezra, Lippo +Lippi, Karshish, Caponsacchi, and Ferishtah will all appear to be run in +the same mould. They will seem to be the thinnest disguises which a poet +ever assumed. The lack of the dramatic element in Browning--a lack +which is concealed from us by our intense sympathy for him and by his +fondness for the trappings of the drama--will be apparent to the +after-comers. They will say that all the characters in The Blot on the +'Scutcheon take essentially the same view of the catastrophe of the +play; that Pippa and Pompilia and Phene are the same person in the same +state of mind. In fact, the family likeness is great. They will say that +the philosophic monologues are repetitions of each other. It cannot be +denied that there is much repetition,--much threshing out of old straw. +Those who have read Browning for years and are used to the monologues +are better pleased to find the old ideas than new ones, which they could +not understand so readily. When the later Browning takes us on one of +those long afternoon rambles through his mind,--over moor and fen, +through jungle, down precipice, past cataract,--we know just where we +are coming out in the end. We know the place better than he did himself. +Nor will posterity like Browning's manners,--the dig in the ribs, the +personal application, and _de te fabula_ of most of his talking. These +unpleasant things are part of his success with us to whom he means +life, not art. Posterity will want only art. We needed doctrine. If he +had not preached, we would not have listened to him. But posterity +evades the preachers and accepts only singers. Posterity is so dainty +that it lives on nothing but choice morsels. It will cull such out of +the body of Browning as the anthologists are beginning to do already, +and will leave the great mass of him to be rediscovered from time to +time by belated sufferers from the philosophy of the nineteenth century. + +There is a class of persons who claim for Browning that his verse is +really good verse, and that he was a master of euphony. This cannot be +admitted except as to particular instances in which his success is due +to his conformity to law, not to his violation of it. + +The rules of verse in English are merely a body of custom which has +grown up unconsciously, and most of which rests upon some simple +requirement of the ear. + +In speaking of the power of poetry we are dealing with what is +essentially a mystery, the outcome of infinitely subtle, numerous, and +complex forces. + +The rhythm of versification seems to serve the purpose of a prompter. It +lets us know in advance just what syllables are to receive the emphasis +which shall make the sense clear. There are many lines in poetry which +become obscure the instant they are written in prose, and probably the +advantages of poetry over prose, or, to express it modestly, the excuse +for poetry at all, is that the form facilitates the comprehension of the +matter. Rhyme is itself an indication that a turning-point has been +reached. It punctuates and sets off the sense, and relieves our +attention from the strain of suspended interest. All of the artifices of +poetical form seem designed to a like end. Naturalness of speech is +somewhat sacrificed, but we gain by the sacrifice a certain uniformity +of speech which rests and exhilarates. We need not, for the present, +examine the question of euphony any further, nor ask whether euphony be +not a positive element in verse,--an element which belongs to music. + +The negative advantages of poetry over prose are probably sufficient to +account for most of its power. A few more considerations of the same +negative nature, and which affect the vividness of either prose or +verse, may be touched upon by way of preface to the inquiry, why +Browning is hard to understand and why his verse is bad. + +Every one is more at ease in his mind when he reads a language which +observes the ordinary rules of grammar, proceeds by means of sentences +having subjects and predicates, and of which the adjectives and adverbs +fall easily into place. A doubt about the grammar is a doubt about the +sense. And this is so true that sometimes when our fears are allayed by +faultless grammar we may read absolute nonsense with satisfaction. We +sometimes hear it stated as a bitter epigram, that poetry is likely to +endure just in proportion as the form of it is superior to the content. +As to the "inferiority" of the content, a moment's reflection shows that +the ideas and feelings which prevail from age to age, and in which we +may expect posterity to delight, are in their nature, and of necessity, +commonplace. And if by "superiority of form" it is meant that these +ideas shall be conveyed in flowing metres,--in words which are easy to +pronounce, put together according to the rules of grammar, and largely +drawn from the vulgar tongue,--we need not wonder that posterity should +enjoy it. In fact, it is just such verse as this which survives from age +to age. + +Browning possesses one superlative excellence, and it is upon this that +he relies. It is upon this that he has emerged and attacked the heart +of man. It is upon this that he may possibly fight his way down to +posterity and live like a fire forever in the bosom of mankind. + +His language is the language of common speech; his force, the immediate +force of life. His language makes no compromises of any sort. It is not +subdued to form. The emphasis demanded by the sense is very often not +the emphasis demanded by the metre. He cuts off his words and forces +them ruthlessly into lines as a giant might force his limbs into the +armor of a mortal. The joints and members of the speech fall in the +wrong places and have no relation to the joints and members of the +metre. + +He writes like a lion devouring an antelope. He rends his subject, +breaks its bones, and tears out the heart of it. He is not made more, +but less, comprehensible by the verse-forms in which he writes. The +sign-posts of the metre lead us astray. He would be easier to understand +if his poems were printed in the form of prose. That is the reason why +Browning becomes easy when read aloud; for in reading aloud we give the +emphasis of speech, and throw over all effort to follow the emphasis of +the metre. This is also the reason why Browning is so unquotable--why he +has made so little effect upon the language--why so few of the phrases +and turns of thought and metaphor with which poets enrich a language +have been thrown into English by him. Let a man who does not read poetry +take up a volume of Familiar Quotations, and he will find page after +page of lines and phrases which he knows by heart--from Tennyson, +Milton, Wordsworth--things made familiar to him not by the poets, but by +the men whom the poets educated, and who adopted their speech. Of +Browning he will know not a word. And yet Browning's poetry is full of +words that glow and smite, and which have been burnt into and struck +into the most influential minds of the last fifty years. + +But Browning's phrases are almost impossible to remember, because they +are speech not reduced to poetry. They do not sing, they do not carry. +They have no artificial buoys to float them in our memories. + +It follows from this uncompromising nature of Browning that when, by the +grace of inspiration, the accents of his speech do fall into rhythm, his +words will have unimaginable sweetness. The music is so much a part of +the words--so truly spontaneous--that other verse seems tame and +manufactured beside his. + +Rhyme is generally so used by Browning as not to subserve the true +function of rhyme. It is forced into a sort of superficial conformity, +but marks no epoch in the verse. The clusters of rhymes are clusters +only to the eye and not to the ear. The necessity of rhyming leads +Browning into inversions,--into expansions of sentences beyond the +natural close of the form,--into every sort of contortion. The rhymes +clog and distress the sentences. + +As to grammar, Browning is negligent. Some of his most eloquent and +wonderful passages have no grammar whatever. In Sordello grammar does +not exist; and the want of it, the strain upon the mind caused by an +effort to make coherent sentences out of a fleeting, ever-changing, +iridescent maze of talk, wearies and exasperates the reader. Of course +no one but a school-master desires that poetry shall be capable of being +parsed; but every one has a right to expect that he shall be left +without a sense of grammatical deficiency. + +The Invocation in The Ring and the Book is one of the most beautiful +openings that can be imagined. + + "O lyric love, half angel and half bird, + And all a wonder and a wild desire--Boldest + of hearts that ever braved the sun, + Took sanctuary within the holier blue, + And sang a kindred soul out to his face-- + Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart-- + When the first summons from the darkling earth + Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue, + And bared them of the glory--to drop down, + To toil for man, to suffer or to die-- + This is the same voice: can thy soul know change? + Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help! + Never may I commence my song, my due + To God who best taught song by gift of thee, + Except with bent head and beseeching hand-- + That still, despite the distance and the dark + What was, again may be; some interchange + Of grace, some splendor once thy very thought, + Some benediction anciently thy smile;-- + Never conclude, but raising hand and head + Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn + For all hope, all sustainment, all reward, + Their utmost up and on--so blessing back + In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home, + Some whiteness, which, I judge, thy face makes proud, + Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall." + +These sublime lines are marred by apparent grammatical obscurity. The +face of beauty is marred when one of the eyes seems sightless. We +re-read the lines to see if we are mistaken. If they were in a foreign +language, we should say we did not fully understand them. + +In the dramatic monologues, as, for instance, in The Ring and the Book +and in the innumerable other narratives and contemplations where a +single speaker holds forth, we are especially called upon to forget +grammar. The speaker relates and reflects,--pours out his ideas in the +order in which they occur to him,--pursues two or three trains of +thought at the same time, claims every license which either poetry or +conversation could accord him. The effect of this method is so +startling, that when we are vigorous enough to follow the sense, we +forgive all faults of metre and grammar, and feel that this natural +Niagara of speech is the only way for the turbulent mind of man to get +complete utterance. We forget that it is possible for the same thing to +be done, and yet to be subdued, and stilled, and charmed into music. + +Prospero is as natural and as individual as Bishop Blougram. His grammar +is as incomplete, yet we do not note it. He talks to himself, to +Miranda, to Ariel, all at once, weaving all together his passions, his +philosophy, his narrative, and his commands. His reflections are as +profuse and as metaphysical as anything in Browning, and yet all is +clear,--all is so managed that it lends magic. The characteristic and +unfathomable significance of this particular character Prospero comes +out of it. + + "_Prospero_. My brother and thy uncle, called Antonio-- + I pray thee mark me,--that a brother should + Be so perfidious!--he whom next thyself, + Of all the world I lov'd, and to him put + The manage of my state; as at that time + Through all the seignories it was the first, + And Prospero, the Prime Duke, being so reputed + In dignity and for the liberal arts, + Without a parallel: those being all my study, + The government I cast upon my brother, + And to my state grew stranger, being transported + And wrapped in secret studies. Thy false uncle-- + Dost thou attend me?" + +It is unnecessary to give examples from Browning of defective verse, of +passages which cannot be understood, which cannot be construed, which +cannot be parodied, and which can scarcely be pronounced. They are +mentioned only as throwing light on Browning's cast of mind and methods +of work. His inability to recast and correct his work cost the world a +master. He seems to have been condemned to create at white heat and to +stand before the astonishing draft, which his energy had flung out, +powerless to complete it. + +We have a few examples of things which came forth perfect, but many of +even the most beautiful and most original of the shorter poems are +marred by some blotches that hurt us and which one feels might have +been struck out or corrected in half an hour. How many of the poems are +too long! It is not that Browning went on writing after he had completed +his thought,--for the burst of beauty is as likely to come at the end as +at the beginning,--but that his thought had to unwind itself like web +from a spider. He could not command it. He could only unwind and unwind. + +Pan and Luna is a sketch, as luminous as a Correggio, but not finished. +Caliban upon Setebos, on the other hand, shows creative genius, beyond +all modern reach, but flounders and drags on too long. In the poems +which he revised, as, for instance, Hervé Riel, which exists in two or +more forms, the corrections are verbal, and were evidently done with the +same fierce haste with which the poems were written. + +We must not for an instant imagine that Browning was indolent or +indifferent; it is known that he was a taskmaster to himself. But he +_could_ not write other than he did. When the music came and the verse +caught the flame, and his words became sweeter, and his thought clearer, +then he could sweep down like an archangel bringing new strains of +beauty to the earth. But the occasions when he did this are a handful +of passages in a body of writing as large as the Bible. + +Just as Browning could not stop, so he found it hard to begin. His way +of beginning is to seize the end of the thread just where he can, and +write down the first sentence. + + "She should never have looked at me, + If she meant I should not love her!" + + "Water your damned flowerpots, do--" + + "No! for I'll save it! Seven years since." + + "But give them me, the mouth, the eyes, the brow!" + + "Fear Death? to feel the fog in my throat." + +Sometimes his verse fell into coils as it came, but he himself, as he +wrote the first line of a poem, never knew in what form of verse the +poem would come forth. Hence the novel figures and strange counterpoint. +Having evolved the first group of lines at haphazard, he will sometimes +repeat the form (a very complex form, perhaps, which, in order to have +any organic effect, would have to be tuned to the ear most nicely), and +repeat it clumsily. Individual taste must be judge of his success in +these experiments. Sometimes the ear is worried by an attempt to trace +the logic of the rhymes which are concealed by the rough jolting of the +metre. Sometimes he makes no attempt to repeat the first verse, but +continues in irregular improvisation. + +Browning never really stoops to literature; he makes perfunctory +obeisance to it. The truth is that Browning is expressed by his defects. +He would not be Robert Browning without them. In the technical part of +his art, as well as in his spirit, Browning represents a reaction of a +violent sort. He was too great an artist not to feel that his violations +of form helped him. The blemishes in The Grammarian's Funeral--_hoti's +business, the enclitic de_--were stimulants; they heightened his +effects. They helped him make clear his meaning, that life is greater +than art. These savageries spoke to the hearts of men tired of +smoothness and platitude, and who were relieved by just such a breaking +up of the ice. Men loved Browning not only for what he was, but also for +what he was not. + +These blemishes were, under the circumstances, and for a limited +audience, strokes of art. It is not to be pretended that, even from this +point of view, they were always successful, only that they are organic. +The nineteenth century would have to be lived over again to wipe these +passages out of Browning's poetry. + +In that century he stands as one of the great men of England. His +doctrines are the mere effulgence of his personality. He himself was the +truth which he taught. His life was the life of one of his own heroes; +and in the close of his life--by a coincidence which is not sad, but +full of meaning--may be seen one of those apparent paradoxes in which he +himself delighted. + +Through youth and manhood Browning rose like a planet calmly following +the laws of his own being. From time to time he put forth his volumes +which the world did not understand. Neglect caused him to suffer, but +not to change. It was not until his work was all but finished, not till +after the publication of The Ring and the Book, that complete +recognition came to him. It was given him by men and women who had been +in the nursery when he began writing, who had passed their youth with +his minor poems, and who understood him. + +In later life Browning's powers declined. The torrent of feeling could +no longer float the raft of doctrine, as it had done so lightly and for +so long. His poems, always difficult, grew dry as well. + +But Browning was true to himself. He had all his life loved converse +with men and women, and still enjoyed it. He wrote constantly and to his +uttermost. It was not for him to know that his work was done. He wrote +on manfully to the end, showing, occasionally, his old power, and always +his old spirit. And on his death-bed it was not only his doctrine, but +his life that blazed out in the words:-- + + "One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward, + Never doubted clouds would break, + Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph. + Held, we fall to rise--are baffled to fight better-- + Sleep to wake." + + * * * * * + + + + + ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON + + +In the early eighties, and in an epoch when the ideals of George Eliot +were still controlling, the figure of Stevenson rose with a sort of +radiance as a writer whose sole object was to entertain. Most of the +great novelists were then dead, and the scientific school was in the +ascendant. Fiction was entering upon its death grapple with sociology. +Stevenson came, with his tales of adventure and intrigue, out-of-door +life and old-time romance, and he recalled to every reader his boyhood +and the delights of his earliest reading. We had forgotten that novels +could be amusing. + +Hence it is that the great public not only loves Stevenson as a writer, +but regards him with a certain personal gratitude. There was, moreover, +in everything he wrote an engaging humorous touch which made friends for +him everywhere, and excited an interest in his fragile and somewhat +elusive personality supplementary to the appreciation of his books as +literature. Toward the end of his life both he and the public +discovered this, and his railleries or sermons took on the form of +personal talk. + +Beneath these matters lay the fact, known to all, that the man was +fighting a losing battle against mortal sickness, and that practically +the whole of his work was done under conditions which made any +productivity seem a miracle. The heroic invalid was seen through all his +books, still sitting before his desk or on his bed, turning out with +unabated courage, with increasing ability, volume after volume of +gayety, of boys' story-book, and of tragic romance. + +There is enough in this record to explain the popularity, running at +times into hero-worship and at times into drawing-room fatuity, which +makes Stevenson and his work a fair subject for study. It is not +impossible that a man who met certain needs of the times so fully, and +whom large classes of people sprang forward to welcome, may in some +particulars give a clew to the age. + +Any description of Stevenson's books is unnecessary. We have all read +them too recently to need a prompter. The high spirits and elfin humor +which play about and support every work justifies them all. + +One of his books, The Child's Garden of Verses, is different in kind +from the rest. It has no prototype, and is by far the most original +thing that he did. The unsophisticated and gay little volume is a work +of the greatest value. Stevenson seems to have remembered the +impressions of his childhood with accuracy, and he has recorded them +without affectation, without sentimentality, without exaggeration. In +depicting children he draws from life. He is at home in the mysteries of +their play and in the inconsequent operations of their minds, in the +golden haze of impressions in which they live. The references to +children in his essays and books show the same understanding and +sympathy. There is more than mere literary charm in what he says here. +In the matter of childhood we must study him with respect. He is an +authority. + +The slight but serious studies in biography--alas! too few--which +Stevenson published, ought also to be mentioned, because their merit is +apt to be overlooked by the admirers of his more ambitious works. His +understanding of two such opposite types of men as Burns and Thoreau is +notable, and no less notable are the courage, truth, and penetration +with which he dealt with them. His essay on Burns is the most +comprehensible word ever said of Burns. It makes us love Burns less, +but understand him more. + +The problems suggested by Stevenson are more important than his work +itself. We have in him that rare combination,--a man whose theories and +whose practice are of a piece. His doctrines are the mere description of +his own state of mind while at work. + +The quality which every one will agree in conceding to Stevenson is +lightness of touch. This quality is a result of his extreme lucidity, +not only of thought, but of intention. We know what he means, and we are +sure that we grasp his whole meaning at the first reading. Whether he be +writing a tale of travel or humorous essay, a novel of adventure, a +story of horror, a morality, or a fable; in whatever key he plays,--and +he seems to have taken delight in showing mastery in many,--the reader +feels safe in his hands, and knows that no false note will be struck. +His work makes no demands upon the attention. It is food so thoroughly +peptonized that it is digested as soon as swallowed and leaves us +exhilarated rather than fed. + +Writing was to him an art, and almost everything that he has written has +a little the air of being a _tour de force_. Stevenson's books and +essays were generally brilliant imitations of established things, done +somewhat in the spirit of an expert in billiards. In short, Stevenson is +the most extraordinary mimic that has ever appeared in literature. + +That is the reason why he has been so much praised for his style. When +we say of a new thing that it "has style," we mean that it is done as we +have seen things done before. Bunyan, De Foe, or Charles Lamb were to +their contemporaries men without style. The English, to this day, +complain of Emerson that he has no style. + +If a man writes as he talks, he will be thought to have no style, until +people get used to him, for literature means _what has been written_. As +soon as a writer is established, his manner of writing is adopted by the +literary conscience of the times, and you may follow him and still have +"style." You may to-day imitate George Meredith, and people, without +knowing exactly why they do it, will concede you "style." Style means +tradition. + +When Stevenson, writing from Samoa in the agony of his South Seas (a +book he could not write because he had no paradigm and original to copy +from), says that he longs for a "moment of style," he means that he +wishes there would come floating through his head a memory of some other +man's way of writing to which he could modulate his sentences. + +It is no secret that Stevenson in early life spent much time in +imitating the styles of various authors, for he has himself described +the manner in which he went to work to fit himself for his career as a +writer. His boyish ambition led him to employ perfectly phenomenal +diligence in cultivating a perfectly phenomenal talent for imitation. + +There was probably no fault in Stevenson's theory as to how a man should +learn to write, and as to the discipline he must undergo. Almost all the +greatest artists have shown, in their early work, traces of their early +masters. These they outgrow. "For as this temple waxes, the inward +service of the mind and soul grows wide withal;" and an author's own +style breaks through the coverings of his education, as a hyacinth +breaks from the bulb. It is noticeable, too, that the early and +imitative work of great men generally belongs to a particular school to +which their maturity bears a logical relation. They do not cruise about +in search of a style or vehicle, trying all and picking up hints here +and there, but they fall incidentally and genuinely under influences +which move them and afterwards qualify their original work. + +With Stevenson it was different; for he went in search of a style as +Coelebs in search of a wife. He was an eclectic by nature. He became a +remarkable, if not a unique phenomenon,--for he never grew up. Whether +or not there was some obscure connection between his bodily troubles and +the arrest of his intellectual development, it is certain that Stevenson +remained a boy till the day of his death. + +The boy was the creature in the universe whom Stevenson best understood. +Let us remember how a boy feels about art, and why he feels so. The +intellect is developed in the child with such astonishing rapidity that +long before physical maturity its head is filled with ten thousand +things learned from books and not drawn directly from real life. + +The form and setting in which the boy learns of matters sticks in the +mind as a part of the matters themselves. He cannot disentangle what is +conventional from what is original, because he has not yet a first-hand +acquaintance with life by which to interpret. + +Every schoolboy of talent writes essays in the style of Addison, because +he is taught that this is the correct way of writing. He has no means +of knowing that in writing in this manner he is using his mind in a very +peculiar and artificial way,--a way entirely foreign to Addison himself; +and that he is really striving not so much to say something himself as +to reproduce an effect. + +There is one thing which young people do not know, and which they find +out during the process of growing up,--and that is that good things in +art have been done by men whose entire attention was absorbed in an +attempt to tell the truth, and who have been chiefly marked by a deep +unconsciousness. + +To a boy, the great artists of the world are a lot of necromancers, +whose enchantments can perhaps be stolen and used again. To a man, they +are a lot of human beings, and their works are parts of them. Their +works are their hands and their feet, their organs, dimensions, senses, +affections, passions. To a man, it is as absurd to imitate the manner of +Dean Swift in writing as it would be to imitate the manner of Dr. +Johnson in eating. But Stevenson was not a man, he was a boy; or, to +speak more accurately, the attitude of his mind towards his work +remained unaltered from boyhood till death, though his practice and +experiment gave him, as he grew older, a greater mastery over his +materials. It is in this attitude of Stevenson's mind toward his own +work that we must search for the heart of his mystery. + +He conceived of himself as "an artist," and of his writings as +performances. As a consequence, there is an undertone of insincerity in +almost everything which he has written. His attention is never wholly +absorbed in his work, but is greatly taken up with the notion of how +each stroke of it is going to appear. + +We have all experienced, while reading his books, a certain undefinable +suspicion which interferes with the enjoyment of some people, and +enhances that of others. It is not so much the cream-tarts themselves +that we suspect, as the motive of the giver. + + "I am in the habit," said Prince Florizel, "of looking not so much + to the nature of the gift as to the spirit in which it is offered." + + "The spirit, sir," returned the young man, with another bow, "is one + of mockery." + +This doubt about Stevenson's truth and candor is one of the results of +the artistic doctrines which he professed and practised. He himself +regards his work as a toy; and how can we do otherwise? + +It seems to be a law of psychology that the only way in which the truth +can be strongly told is in the course of a search for truth. The moment +a man strives after some "effect," he disqualifies himself from making +that effect; for he draws the interest of his audience to the same +matters that occupy his own mind; namely, upon his experiment and his +efforts. It is only when a man is saying something that he believes is +obviously and eternally true, that he can communicate spiritual things. + +Ultimately speaking, the vice of Stevenson's theories about art is that +they call for a self-surrender by the artist of his own mind to the +pleasure of others, for a subordination of himself to the production of +this "effect" in the mind of another. They degrade and belittle him. Let +Stevenson speak for himself; the thought contained in the following +passage is found in a hundred places in his writings and dominated his +artistic life. + + "The French have a romantic evasion for one employment, and call its + practitioners the Daughters of Joy. The artist is of the same + family, he is of the Sons of Joy, chose his trade to please himself, + gains his livelihood by pleasing others, and has parted with + something of the sterner dignity of men. The poor Daughter of Joy + carrying her smiles and her finery quite unregarded through the + crowd, makes a figure which it is impossible to recall without a + wounding pity. She is the type of the unsuccessful artist." + +These are the doctrines and beliefs which, time out of mind, have +brought the arts into contempt. They are as injurious as they are false, +and they will checkmate the progress of any man or of any people that +believes them. They corrupt and menace not merely the fine arts, but +every other form of human expression in an equal degree. They are as +insulting to the comic actor as they are to Michael Angelo, for the +truth and beauty of low comedy are as dignified, and require of the +artist the same primary passion for life for its own sake, as the truth +and beauty of The Divine Comedy. The doctrines are the outcome of an +Alexandrine age. After art has once learnt to draw its inspiration +directly from life and has produced some masterpieces, then imitations +begin to creep in. That Stevenson's doctrines tend to produce imitative +work is obvious. If the artist is a fisher of men, then we must examine +the works of those who have known how to bait their hooks: in +fiction,--De Foe, Fielding, Walter Scott, Dumas, Balzac. + +To a study of these men, Stevenson had, as we have seen, devoted the +most plastic years of his life. The style and even the mannerisms of +each of them, he had trained himself to reproduce. One can almost write +their names across his pages and assign each as a presiding genius over +a share of his work. Not that Stevenson purloined or adopted in a mean +spirit, and out of vanity. His enthusiasm was at the bottom of all he +did. He was well read in the belles lettres of England and the +romanticists of France. These books were his bible. He was steeped in +the stage-land and cloud-land of sentimental literature. From time to +time, he emerged, trailing clouds of glory and showering sparkles from +his hands. + +A close inspection shows his clouds and sparkles to be stage properties; +but Stevenson did not know it. The public not only does not know it, but +does not care whether it be so or not. The doughty old novel readers who +knew their Scott and Ainsworth and Wilkie Collins and Charles Reade, +their Dumas and their Cooper, were the very people whose hearts were +warmed by Stevenson. If you cross-question one of these, he will admit +that Stevenson is after all a revival, an echo, an after-glow of the +romantic movement, and that he brought nothing new. He will scout any +comparison between Stevenson and his old favorites, but he is ready +enough to take Stevenson for what he is worth. The most casual reader +recognizes a whole department of Stevenson's work as competing in a +general way with Walter Scott. + +Kidnapped is a romantic fragment whose original is to be found in the +Scotch scenes of the Waverley Novels. An incident near the beginning of +it, the curse of Jennet Clouston upon the House of Shaws, is transferred +from Guy Mannering almost literally. But the curse of Meg Merrilies in +Guy Mannering--which is one of the most surprising and powerful scenes +Scott ever wrote--is an organic part of the story, whereas the +transcript is a thing stuck in for effect, and the curse is put in the +mouth of an old woman whose connection with the plot is apocryphal, and +who never appears again. + +Treasure Island is a piece of astounding ingenuity, in which the manner +is taken from Robinson Crusoe, and the plot belongs to the era of the +detective story. The Treasure of Franchard is a French farce or light +comedy of bourgeois life, of a type already a little old-fashioned, but +perfectly authentic. The tone, the _mise-en-scène_, the wit, the +character-drawing, the very language, are all so marvellously reproduced +from the French, that we almost see the footlights while we read it. + +The Sieur de Maletroit's Door embodies the same idea as a well-known +French play in verse and in one act. The version of Stevenson is like an +exquisite water-color copy, almost as good as the original. + +The Isle of Voices is the production of a man of genius. No one can too +much admire the legerdemain of the magician who could produce this +thing; for it is a story out of the Arabian Nights, told with a +perfection of mannerism, a reproduction of the English in which the +later translators of the Arabian Nights have seen fit to deal, a +simulation of the movement and detail of the Eastern stories which +fairly takes our breath away. + +It is "ask and have" with this man. Like Mephistopheles in the +Raths-Keller, he gives us what vintage we call for. Olalla is an +instance in point. Any one familiar with Mérimée's stories will smile at +the naïveté with which Stevenson has taken the leading idea of Lokis, +and surrounded it with the Spanish sunshine of Carmen. But we have +"fables," moralities, and psychology, Jekyl and Hyde, Markheim, and Will +O' the Mill. We have the pasteboard feudal style, in which people say, +"Ye can go, boy; for I will keep your good friend and my good gossip +company till curfew--aye, and by St. Mary till the Sun get up again." We +must have opera bouffe, as in Prince Otto; melodrama, as in The Pavilion +on the Links; the essay of almost biblical solemnity in the manner of +Sir Thomas Browne, the essay of charming humor in the style of Charles +Lamb, the essay of introspection and egotism in the style of Montaigne. + +Let us not for a moment imagine that Stevenson has stolen these things +and is trying to palm them off on us as his own. He has absorbed them. +He does not know their origin. He gives them out again in joy and in +good faith with zest and amusement and in the excitement of a new +discovery. + +If all these many echoing voices do not always ring accurately true, yet +their number is inordinate and remarkable. They will not bear an +immediate comparison with their originals; but we may be sure that the +vintages of Mephistopheles would not have stood a comparison with real +wine. One of the books which established Stevenson's fame was the New +Arabian Nights. The series of tales about Prince Florizel of Bohemia was +a brilliant, original, and altogether delightful departure in light +literature. The stories are a frank and wholesome caricature of the +French detective story. They are legitimate pieces of literature because +they are burlesque, and because the smiling Mephistopheles who lurks +everywhere in the pages of Stevenson is for this time the acknowledged +showman of the piece. + +A burlesque is always an imitation shown off by the foil of some +incongruous setting. The setting in this case Stevenson found about him +in the omnibuses, the clubs, and the railways of sordid and complicated +London. + +In this early book Stevenson seems to have stumbled upon the true +employment of his powers without realizing the treasure trove, for he +hardly returned to the field of humor, for which his gifts most happily +fitted him. As a writer of burlesque he truly expresses himself. He is +full of genuine fun. + +The fantastic is half brother to the burlesque. Each implies some +original as a point of departure, and as a scheme for treatment some +framework upon which the author's wit and fancy shall be lavished. + +It is in the region of the fantastic that Stevenson loved to wander, +and it is in this direction that he expended his marvellous ingenuity. +His fairy tales and arabesques must be read as they were written, in the +humor of forty fancies and without any heavy-fisted intention of getting +new ideas about life. It will be said that the defect of Stevenson is +expressed by these very qualities, fancy and ingenuity, because they are +contradictory, and the second destroys the first. Be this as it may, +there are many people whose pleasure is not spoiled by elaboration and +filigree work. + +Our ability to follow Stevenson in his fantasias depends very largely +upon how far our imaginations and our sentimental interests are +dissociated from our interest in real life. Commonplace and common-sense +people, whose emotional natures are not strongly at play in the conduct +of their daily lives, have a fund of unexpended mental activity, of a +very low degree of energy, which delights to be occupied with the unreal +and the impossible. More than this, any mind which is daily occupied in +an attempt to grasp some of the true relations governing things as they +are, finds its natural relaxation in the contemplation of things as they +are not,--things as they cannot be. There is probably no one who will +not find himself thoroughly enjoying the fantastic, if he be mentally +fatigued enough. Hence the justification of a whole branch of +Stevenson's work. + +After every detraction has been allowed for, there remain certain books +of Stevenson's of an extraordinary and peculiar merit, books which can +hardly be classed as imitations or arabesques,--Kidnapped, Weir of +Hermiston, The Merry Men. These books seem at first blush to have every +element of greatness, except spontaneity. The only trouble is, they are +too perfect. + +If, after finishing Kidnapped, or The Merry Men, we take up Guy +Mannering, or The Antiquary, or any of Scott's books which treat of the +peasantry, the first impression we gain is, that we are happy. The +tension is gone; we are in contact with a great, sunny, benign human +being who pours a flood of life out before us and floats us as the sea +floats a chip. He is full of old-fashioned and absurd passages. +Sometimes he proses, and sometimes he runs to seed. He is so careless of +his English that his sentences are not always grammatical; but we get a +total impression of glorious and wholesome life. + +It is the man Walter Scott who thus excites us. This heather, these +hills, these peasants, this prodigality and vigor and broad humor, +enlarge and strengthen us. If we return now to Weir of Hermiston, we +seem to be entering the cell of an alchemist. All is intention, all +calculation. The very style of Weir of Hermiston is English ten times +distilled. + +Let us imagine that directness and unconsciousness are the great +qualities of style, and that Stevenson believes this. The greatest +directness and unconsciousness of which Stevenson himself was capable +are to be found in some of his early writings. Across the Plains, for +instance, represents his most straightforward and natural style. But it +happens that certain great writers who lived some time ago, and were +famous examples of "directness," have expressed themselves in the speech +of their own period. Stevenson rejects his own style as not good enough +for him, not direct enough, not unconscious enough; he will have theirs. +And so he goes out in quest of purity and truth, and brings home an +elaborate archaism. + +Although we think of Stevenson as a writer of fiction, his extreme +popularity is due in great measure to his innumerable essays and bits +of biography and autobiography, his letters, his journals, and travels +and miscellaneous reminiscences. + +It was his own belief that he was a very painstaking and conscientious +artist, and this is true to a great extent. On the day of his death he +was engaged upon the most highly organized and ambitious thing he ever +attempted, and every line of it shows the hand of an engraver on steel. +But it is also true that during the last years of his life he lived +under the pressure of photographers and newspaper syndicates, who came +to him with great sums of money in their hands. He was exploited by the +press of the United States, and this is the severest ordeal which a +writer of English can pass through. There was one year in which he +earned four thousand pounds. His immeasurable generosity kept him +forever under the harrow in money matters, and added another burden to +the weight carried by this dying and indomitable man. It is no wonder +that some of his work is trivial. The wonder is that he should have +produced it at all. + +The journalistic work of Stevenson, beginning with his Inland Voyage, +and the letters afterwards published as Across the Plains, is valuable +in the inverse ratio to its embellishment. Sidney Colvin suggested to +him that in the letters Across the Plains the lights were turned down. +But, in truth, the light is daylight. The letters have a freshness that +midnight oil could not have improved, and this fugitive sketch is of +more permanent interest than all the polite essays he ever wrote. + +If we compare the earlier with the later work of Stevenson as a magazine +writer, we are struck with the accentuation of his mannerisms. It is not +a single style which grows more intense, but his amazing skill in many +which has increased. + +The following is a specimen of Stevenson's natural style, and it would +be hard to find a better:-- + + "The day faded; the lamps were lit; a party of wild young men, who + got off next evening at North Platte, stood together on the stern + platform singing The Sweet By-and-By with very tuneful voices; the + chums began to put up their beds; and it seemed as if the business + of the day were at an end. But it was not so; for the train stopping + at some station, the cars were instantly thronged with the natives, + wives and fathers, young men and maidens, some of them in little + more than night-gear, some with stable lanterns, and all offering + beds for sale." + +The following is from an essay written by Stevenson while under the +influence of the author of Rab and his Friends. + + "One such face I now remember; one such blank some half a dozen of + us labor to dissemble. In his youth he was a most beautiful person, + most serene and genial by disposition, full of racy words and quaint + thoughts. Laughter attended on his coming.... From this disaster + like a spent swimmer he came desperately ashore, bankrupt of money + and consideration; creeping to the family he had deserted; with + broken wing never more to rise. But in his face there was the light + of knowledge that was new to it. Of the wounds of his body he was + never healed; died of them gradually, with clear-eyed resignation. + Of his wounded pride we knew only by his silence." + +The following is in the sprightly style of the eighteenth century:-- + + "Cockshot is a different article, but vastly entertaining, and has + been meat and drink to me for many a long evening. His manner is + dry, brisk, and pertinacious, and the choice of words not much. The + point about him is his extraordinary readiness and spirit. You can + propound nothing but he has either a theory about it ready made or + will have one instantly on the stocks, and proceed to lay its + timbers and launch it on the minute. 'Let me see,' he will say, + 'give me a moment, I should have some theory for that.'" + +But for serious matters this manner would never do, and accordingly we +find that, when the subject invites him, Stevenson falls into English as +early as the time of James I. + +Let us imagine Bacon dedicating one of his smaller works to his +physicians:-- + + "There are men and classes of men that stand above the common herd: + the soldier, the sailor, and the shepherd not unfrequently; the + artist rarely; rarelier still the clergyman; the physician almost as + a rule.... I forget as many as I remember and I ask both to pardon + me, these for silence, those for inadequate speech." + +After finishing off this dedication to his satisfaction, Stevenson turns +over the page and writes a NOTE in the language of two and one-half +centuries later. He is now the elegant _littérateur_ of the last +generation--one would say James Russell Lowell:-- + + "The human conscience has fled of late the troublesome domain of + conduct for what I should have supposed to be the less congenial + field of art: there she may now be said to rage, and with special + severity in all that touches dialect, so that in every novel the + letters of the alphabet are tortured, and the reader wearied, to + commemorate shades of mispronunciation." + +But in this last extract we are still three degrees away from what can +be done in the line of gentility and delicate effeteness of style. Take +the following, which is the very peach-blow of courtesy:-- + + "But upon one point there should be no dubiety: if a man be not + frugal he has no business in the arts. If he be not frugal he steers + directly for that last tragic scene of _le vieux saltimbanque_; if + he be not frugal he will find it hard to continue to be honest. Some + day when the butcher is knocking at the door he may be tempted, he + may be obliged to turn out and sell a slovenly piece of work. If the + obligation shall have arisen through no wantonness of his own, he is + even to be commended, for words cannot describe how far more + necessary it is that a man should support his family than that he + should attain to--or preserve--distinction in the arts," etc. + +Now the very next essay to this is a sort of intoned voluntary played +upon the more sombre emotions. + + "What a monstrous spectre is this man, the disease of the + agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged in + slumber; killing, feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of + himself; grown upon with hair like grass, fitted with eyes that move + and glitter in his face; a thing to set children screaming;--and yet + looked at nearlier, known as his fellows know him, how surprising + are his attributes." + +There is a tincture of Carlyle in this mixture. There are a good many +pages of Gothic type in the later essays, for Stevenson thought it the +proper tone in which to speak of death, duty, immortality, and such +subjects as that. He derived this impression from the works of Sir +Thomas Browne. But the solemnity of Sir Thomas Browne is like a +melodious thunder, deep, sweet, unconscious, ravishing. + + "Time sadly overcometh all things and is now dominant and sitteth + upon a sphinx and looketh upon Memphis and old Thebes, while his + sister Oblivion reclineth semi-somnous upon a pyramid, gloriously + triumphing, making puzzles of Titanian erections, and turning old + glories into dreams. History sinketh beneath her cloud. The + traveller as he passeth through these deserts asketh of her 'who + builded them?' And she mumbleth something, but what it is he heareth + not." + +The frenzy to produce something like this sadly overcomes Stevenson, in +his later essays. But perhaps it were to reason too curiously to pin +Stevenson down to Browne. All the old masters stalk like spectres +through his pages, and among them are the shades of the moderns, even +men that we have dined with. + +According to Stevenson, a certain kind of subject requires a certain +"treatment," and the choice of his tone follows his title. These +"treatments" are always traditional, and even his titles tread closely +on the heels of former titles. He can write the style of Charles Lamb +better than Lamb could do it himself, and his Hazlitt is very nearly as +good. He fences with his left hand as well as with his right, and can +manage two styles at once like Franz Liszt playing the allegretto from +the 7th symphony with an air of Offenbach twined about it. + +It is with a pang of disappointment that we now and then come across a +style which we recognize, yet cannot place. + +People who take enjoyment in the reminiscences awakened by conjuring of +this kind can nowhere in the world find a master like Stevenson. Those +persons belong to the bookish classes. Their numbers are insignificant, +but they are important because they give countenance to the admiration +of others who love Stevenson with their hearts and souls. + +The reason why Stevenson represents a backward movement in literature, +is that literature lives by the pouring into it of new words from +speech, and new thoughts from life, and Stevenson used all his powers to +exclude both from his work. He lived and wrote in the past. That this +Scotchman should appear at the end of what has been a very great period +of English literature, and summarize the whole of it in his two hours' +traffic on the stage, gives him a strange place in the history of that +literature. He is the Improvisatore, and nothing more. It is impossible +to assign him rank in any line of writing. If you shut your eyes to try +and place him, you find that you cannot do it. The effect he produces +while we are reading him vanishes as we lay down the book, and we can +recall nothing but a succession of flavors. It is not to be expected +that posterity will take much interest in him, for his point and meaning +are impressional. He is ephemeral, a shadow, a reflection. He is the +mistletoe of English literature whose roots are not in the soil but in +the tree. + +But enough of the nature and training of Stevenson which fitted him to +play the part he did. The cyclonic force which turned him from a +secondary London novelist into something of importance and enabled him +to give full play to his really unprecedented talents will be recognized +on glancing about us. + +We are now passing through the age of the Distribution of Knowledge. The +spread of the English-speaking race since 1850, and the cheapness of +printing, have brought in primers and handbooks by the million. All the +books of the older literatures are being abstracted and sown abroad in +popular editions. The magazines fulfil the same function; every one of +them is a penny cyclopedia. Andrew Lang heads an army of organized +workers who mine in the old literature and coin it into booklets and +cash. + +The American market rules the supply of light literature in Great +Britain. While Lang culls us tales and legends and lyrics from the Norse +or Provensal, Stevenson will engage to supply us with tales and legends +of his own--something just as good. The two men serve the same public. + +Stevenson's reputation in England was that of a comparatively light +weight, but his success here was immediate. We hailed him as a +classic--or something just as good. Everything he did had the very stamp +and trademark of Letters, and he was as strong in one department as +another. We loved this man; and thenceforward he purveyed "literature" +to us at a rate to feed sixty millions of people and keep them clamoring +for more. + +Does any one believe that the passion of the American people for +learning and for antiquity is a slight and accidental thing? Does any +one believe that the taste for imitation old furniture is a pose? It +creates an eddy in the Maelstrom of Commerce. It is a power like +Niagara, and represents the sincere appreciation of half educated people +for second rate things. There is here nothing to be ashamed of. In fact +there is everything to be proud of in this progress of the arts, this +importation of culture by the carload. The state of mind it shows is a +definite and typical state of mind which each individual passes through, +and which precedes the discovery that real things are better than sham. +When the latest Palace Hotel orders a hundred thousand dollars' worth of +Louis XV. furniture to be made--and most well made--in Buffalo, and when +the American public gives Stevenson an order for Pulvis et Umbra--the +same forces are at work in each case. It is Chicago making culture hum. + +And what kind of a man was Stevenson? Whatever may be said about his +imitativeness, his good spirits were real. They are at the bottom of his +success, the strong note in his work. They account for all that is +paradoxical in his effect. He often displays a sentimentalism which has +not the ring of reality. And yet we do not reproach him. He has by +stating his artistic doctrines in their frankest form revealed the +scepticism inherent in them. And yet we know that he was not a sceptic; +on the contrary, we like him, and he was regarded by his friends as +little lower than the angels. + +Why is it that we refuse to judge him by his own utterances? The reason +is that all of his writing is playful, and we know it. The instinct at +the bottom of all mimicry is self-concealment. Hence the illusive and +questionable personality of Stevenson. Hence our blind struggle to bind +this Proteus who turns into bright fire and then into running water +under our hands. The truth is that as a literary force, there was no +such man as Stevenson; and after we have racked our brains to find out +the mechanism which has been vanquishing the chess players of Europe, +there emerges out of the Box of Maelzel a pale boy. + +But the courage of this boy, the heroism of his life, illumine all his +works with a personal interest. The last ten years of his life present a +long battle with death. + +We read of his illnesses, his spirit; we hear how he never gave up, but +continued his works by dictation and in dumb show when he was too weak +to hold the pen, too weak to speak. This courage and the lovable nature +of Stevenson won the world's heart. He was regarded with a peculiar +tenderness such as is usually given only to the young. Honor, and +admiration mingled with affection followed him to his grave. Whatever +his artistic doctrines, he revealed his spiritual nature in his work. It +was this nature which made him thus beloved. + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Emerson and Other Essays, by John Jay Chapman + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13088 *** |