An Author's Mind Part 8

POLITICS.

Chill'd is the patriot's hope, the poet's prayer: Alas for England, and her tarnish'd crown, Her sun of ancient glory going down, Her foes triumphant in her friends' despair: What wonder should the billows overwhelm A bark so mann'd by Comus and his crew, "Youth at the prow, and pleasure at the helm?"

Yet, no!--we will not fear; the loathing realm At length has burst its chains; a motley few, The pseudo-saint, the boasting infidel, The demagogue, and courtier, hand in hand No more besiege our Zion's citadel: But high in hope comes on this n.o.bler band For G.o.d, the sovereign, and our father-land.

That last card, you may remember, must reckon as the knave; and therefore is consistently regarding an ominous trisyllable, which rhymes to "knavish tricks" in the national anthem; our suit now leads us in regular succession to the queen, a topic (it were Milesian to say a subject) whereon now, as heretofore, my loyalty shall never be found lacking. In old Rome's better antiquity, a slave was commissioned to whisper counsel in the ear of triumphant generals or emperors; and, in old England's less enlightened youth, a baubled fool was privileged to blurt out verities, which bearded wisdom dared not hint at. Now, I boast myself free, a citizen of no mean city--my commission signed by duty--my counsel guarantied by truth: and if, O still intruding Zoilus, the liberality of your nature provokes you to cla.s.s me truly in the family of fools, let your antiquarian ignorance of those licensed Gothamites blush at its abortive malice; the arrow of your sarcasm bounds from my target blunted; pick up again the harmless reed: for, not to insist upon the prevalence of knaves, and their moral postponement to mere lack-wits, let me tell you that wise men, and good men, and shrewd men, were those ancient baubled fools: therefore would I gladly be thought of their fraternity.

But our twelfth sonnet is waiting, save the mark! Stay: there ought to intervene a solemn pause; for your author's mind, on the spur of the occasion, pours forth an unpremeditated song of free-spoken, uncompromising, patriotic counsel; let its fervency atone for its presumption

Bold in my freedom, yet with homage meek, As duty prompts and loyalty commands, To thee, O, queen of empires! would I speak.

Behold, the most high G.o.d hath giv'n to thee Kingdoms and glories, might and majesty, Setting thee ruler over many lands; Him first to serve, O monarch, wisely seek: And many people, nations, languages, Have laid their welfare in thy sovereign hands; Them next to bless, to prosper and to please, n.o.bly forget thyself, and thine own ease: Rebuke ill-counsel; rally round thy state The scattered good, and true, and wise, and great: So Heav'n upon thee shed sweet influences!

And now for my Raffaellesque disguise of a vulgar baker's twelve, the largess m.u.f.fin of Mistress Fornarina: thirteen cards to a suit, and thirteen to the dozen, are proverbially the correct thing; but, as in regular succession I have come upon the king card, I am free to confess--(pen, why will you repeat again such a foolish, stale Joe-Millerism?)--the subject a dilemma. Natheless, my good nature shall give a royal chance to criticism most malign: whether candour acknowledge it or not, doubtless the author's mind reigns dominant in the author's book; and, notwithstanding the self-silence of blind Maeonides, (a right notable exception,) it holds good as a rule that the majority of original writings, directly or indirectly, concern a man's own self; his whims and his crotchets, his knowledge and his ignorance, wisdom and folly, experiences and suspicions, therein find a place prepared for them. Scott's life naturally produced his earlier novels; in the '_Corsair_,' the '_Childe_,' and the '_Don_,' no one can mistake the hero-author; Southey's works, Sh.e.l.ley's, and Wordsworth's, are full of adventure, feeling, and fancy, personal to the writers, at least equally with the sonnets of Petrarch or of Shakspeare. And as with instances ill.u.s.trious as those, so with all humbler followers, the skiffs, pinnaces, and heavy barges in the wake of those gallant ships: an author's library, and his friends, his hobbies and amus.e.m.e.nts, business and pleasure, fears and wishes, accidents of life, and qualities of soul, all mingle in his writings with a harmonizing individuality; nay, the very countenance and hand-writing, alike with choice of subject and style and method of their treatment, ill.u.s.trate, in one word, the author's mind. These things being so, what hinders it from occupying, as in honesty it does, the king's place in this pack of sonnets? Nevertheless, forasmuch as by such occupancy an ill-tempered sarcasm might charge it with conceit; know then that my humbler meaning here is to put it lowest and last, even in the place of wooden-spoon; for this also (being mindful of the twelve apostle-spoons from old time antecedent) is a legitimate thirteener: and so, while in extricating my muse from the folly of serenading a non-existent king, I have candidly avowed the general selfishness of printing, believe that, in this avowal, I take the lowest seat, so well befitting one of whom it may ungraciously be asked, Where do fools buy their logic?

List, then, oh list! while generically, not individually I claim for authorship

THE CATHEDRAL MIND.

Temple of truths most eloquently spoken, Shrine of sweet thoughts veiled round with words of power, The '_Author's Mind_,' in all its hallowed riches, Stands a cathedral: full of precious things; Tastefully built in harmonies unbroken, Cloister, and aisle, dark crypt, and aery tower: Long-treasured relics in the fretted niches, And secret stores, and heap'd-up offerings, Art's n.o.blest gems, with every fruit and flower, Paintings and sculpture, choice imaginings, Its plenitude of wealth and praise betoken: An ever-burning lamp portrays the soul; Deep music all around enchantment flings; And G.o.d's great Presence consecrates the whole.

Now at length, in all verity, I have said out my say: nor publisher nor printer shall get more copy from me: neither, indeed, would it before have been the case, for all that Damastic argument, were it not that many beginnings--and you remember my proverbial preliminarizing--should, for mere ant.i.thesis' sake, be endowed with a counterpoise of many endings. So, in this second parting, let me humbly suggest to gentle reader these: that nothing is at once more plebeian and unphilosophical than--censure, in a world where nothing can be perfect, and where apathy is held to be good-breeding; _item_, (I am quoting Scott,) that "it is much more easy to destroy than to build, to criticise than to compose;"

_item_, (Sir Walter again, _ipsissima verba_, in a letter to Miss Seward,) that there are certain literary "gentlemen who appear to be a sort of tinkers, who, unable to _make_ pots and pans, set up for _menders_ of them, and often make two holes in patching one;" _item_, that in such possible cases as "exercise" for "exorcise," "repeat" for "repent," "depreciate" for "deprecate," and the like, an indifferent scribe is always at the mercy of compositors; and lastly, that if it is, by very far, easier to read a book than to write one, it is also, by at least as much, worthier of a n.o.ble mind to give credit for good intentions, rather than for bad, or indifferent, or none at all, even where hyper-criticism may appear to prove that the effort itself has been a failure.