Life Without and Life Within Part 10

'I am going away to the Great House Farm!

O, yea! O, yea! O!'

This they would sing as a chorus to words which to many would seem unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do.

"I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to G.o.d for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek. To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery.

I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds. If any one wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd's plantation, and, on allowance day, place himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him, in silence, a.n.a.lyze the sounds that shall pa.s.s through the chambers of his soul; and if he is not thus impressed, it will only be because 'there is no flesh in his obdurate heart.'

"I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing among slaves as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy and singing for joy were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion."

PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE.[16]

These volumes have met with as warm a reception "as ever unripe author's quick conceit," to use Mr. Taylor's own language, could hope or wish; and so deservedly, that the critic's happy task, in examining them, is to point out, not what is most to be blamed, but what is most to be praised.

With joy we hail a new poet. Star after star has been withdrawn from our firmament, and when that of Coleridge set, we seemed in danger of being left, at best, to a gray and confounding twilight; but, lo! a "ray of pure white light" darts across the obscured depths of ether, and allures our eyes and hearts towards the rising orb from which it emanates. Let us tremble no more lest our summer pa.s.s away without its roses, but receive our present visitor as the harbinger of a harvest of delights.

The natural process of the mind in forming a judgment is comparison. The office of sound criticism is to teach that this comparison should be made, not between the productions of differently-const.i.tuted minds, but between any one of these and a fixed standard of perfection.

Nevertheless it is not contrary to the canon to take a survey of the labors of many artists with reference to one, if we value them, not according to the degree of pleasure we have experienced from them, which must always depend upon our then age, the state of the pa.s.sions and relations with life, but according to the success of the artist in attaining the object he himself had in view. To ill.u.s.trate: In the same room hang two pictures, Raphael's Madonna and Martin's Destruction of Nineveh. A person enters, capable of admiring both, but young, excitable; he is delighted with the Madonna, but probably far more so with the other, because his imagination is at that time more developed than the pure love for beauty which is the characteristic of a taste in a higher state of cultivation. He prefers the Martin, because it excites in his mind a thousand images of sublimity and terror, recalls the brilliancy of Oriental history, and the stern pomp of the old prophetic day, and rouses his mind to a high state of action, _then_ as congenial with its wants as at a later day would be the feeling of contented absorption, of perfect satisfaction with a production of the human soul, which one of Raphael's calmly beautiful creations is fitted to cause.

Now, it would be very unfair for this person to p.r.o.nounce the Martin superior to the Raphael, because it then gave him more pleasure. But if he said, the one is intended to excite the imagination, the other to gratify the taste, that which fulfils its object most completely must be the best, whether it give me most pleasure or no; he would be on the right ground, and might consider the two pictures relatively to one another, without danger of straying very far from the truth.

_This_ is the ground we would a.s.sume in a hasty sketch, which will not, we hope, be deemed irrelevant, of the most prominent essays to which the last sixty years have given rise in the department of the work now before us, previous to stating our opinion of its merits. Many, we are aware, ridicule the idea of filling reviews with long dissertations, and say they only want brief accounts of such books as are coming out, by way of saving time. With such we cannot agree. We think the office of the reviewer is, indeed, in part, to point out to the public attention deserving works, which might otherwise slumber too long unknown on the bookseller's shelves, but still more to present to the reader as large a cl.u.s.ter of objects round one point as possible, thus, by suggestion, stimulating him to take a broader or more careful view of the subject than his indolence or his business would have permitted.

The terms Cla.s.sical and Romantic, which have so long divided European critics, and exercised so powerful an influence upon their decisions, are not much known or heeded among us,--as, indeed, _belles-lettres_ cannot, generally, in our busy state of things, be important or influential, as among a less free and more luxurious people, to whom the more important truths are proffered through those indirect but alluring mediums. Here, where every thing may be spoken or written, and the powers that be, abused without ceremony on the very highway, the Muse has nothing to do with dagger or bowl; hardly is the censor's wand permitted to her hand. Yet is her lyre by no means unheeded, and if it is rather by refining our tastes than by modelling our opinions that she influences us, yet is that influence far from unimportant. And the time is coming, perhaps in our day, we may (if war do not untimely check the national progress) even see and temper its beginning, when the broad West shall swarm with an active, happy, and cultivated population; when the South, freed from the incubus which now oppresses her best energies, shall be able to do justice to the resources of her soil and of her mind; when the East, gathering from every breeze the riches of the old world, shall be the unwearied and loving agent to those regions which lie far away from the great deep, our bulwark and our minister. Then will the division of labor be more complete; then will a surplus of talent be spared from the mart, the forum, and the pulpit; then will the fine arts a.s.sume their proper dignity, as the expression of what is highest and most ethereal in the mind of a people. Then will our quarries be thoroughly explored, and furnish materials for stately fabrics to adorn the face of all the land, while our ports shall be crowded with foreign artists flocking to take lessons in the school of American architecture. Then will our floral treasures be arranged into harmonious gardens, which, environing tasteful homes, shall dimple all the landscape. Then will our Allstons and our Greenoughs preside over great academies, and be raised far above any need, except of giving outward form to the beautiful ideas which animate them; and ornament from the exhaustless stores of genius the marble halls where the people meet to rejoice, or to mourn, or where dwell those wise and good whom the people delight to honor. Then shall music answer to and exalt the national spirit, and the poet's brows shall be graced with the civic as well as the myrtle crown. Then shall we have an American mind, as well as an American system, and, no longer under the sad necessity of exchanging money for thoughts, traffic on perfectly equal terms with the other hemisphere. Then--ah, not yet!--shall our literature make its own laws, and give its own watchwords; till then we must learn and borrow from that of nations who possess a higher degree of cultivation though a much lower one of happiness.

The term Cla.s.sical, used in its narrow sense, implies a servile adherence to the Unities, but in its wide and best sense, it means such a simplicity of plan, selection of actors and events, such judicious limitations on time and range of subject, as may concentrate the interest, perfect the illusion, and make the impression most distinct and forcible. Although no advocates for the old French school, with its slavish obedience to rule, which introduces follies greater than those it would guard against, we lay the blame, not on their view of the drama, but on the then bigoted nationality of the French mind, which converted the Mussulman prophet into a De Retz, the Roman princess into a French grisette, and infected the clear and buoyant atmosphere of Greece with the vapors of the Seine. We speak of the old French Drama: with the modern we do not profess to be acquainted, having met with scarcely any specimens in our own bookstores or libraries; but if it has been revolutionized with the rest of their literature, it is probably as unlike as possible to the former models.

We shall speak of productions in the cla.s.sical spirit first; because Mr.

Taylor is a disciple of the other school, though otherwise we should have adopted a contrary course.

The most perfect specimens of this style with which we are acquainted are the Filippo, the Saul, and the Myrrha of Alfieri; the Wallenstein of Schiller; the Ta.s.so and the Iphigenia of Goethe. England furnishes nothing of the sort. She is thoroughly Shakspearian.

There is no higher pleasure than to see a genius of a wild, impa.s.sioned, many-sided eagerness, restraining its exuberance by its sense of fitness, taming its extravagance beneath the rule its taste approves, exhibiting the soul within soul, and the force of the will over all that we inherit. The _abandon_ of genius has its beauty--far more beautiful its voluntary submission to wise law. A picture, a description, has beauty, the beauty of life; these pictures, these descriptions, arranged upon a plan, made subservient to a purpose, have a higher beauty--that of the mind of man acting upon life. Art is nature, but nature new-modelled, condensed, and harmonized. We are not merely like mirrors, to reflect our own times to those more distant. The mind has a light of its own, and by it illumines what it re-creates.

This is the ground of our preference for the cla.s.sical school, and for Alfieri beyond all pupils of that school. We hold that if a vagrant bud of poesy here and there be blighted by conforming to its rules, our loss is more than made up to us by our enjoyment of plan, of symmetry, of the triumph of genius over multiplied obstacles.

It has been often said that the dramas of Alfieri contrast directly with his character. This is, perhaps, not true; we do but see the depths of that volcano which in early days boiled over so fiercely. The wild, infatuated youth often becomes the stern, pitiless old man. Alfieri did but bend his surplus strength upon literature, and became a despot to his own haughty spirit, instead of domineering over those of others.

We have selected his three masterpieces, though he, to himself an inexorable critic, has shown no indulgence to his own works, and the least successful of those which remain to us, Maria Stuarda, is marked by great excellence.

Filippo has been so ably depicted in a work now well known, "Carlyle's Life of Schiller," that we need not dwell upon it. All the light of the picture, the softer feelings of the hapless Carlos and Elizabeth, is so cast, as to make more visible the awing darkness of the tyrant's perverted mind, deadened to all virtue by a false religion, cold and hopeless as the dungeons of his own Inquisition, and relentless as death. Forced by the magic wand of genius into the stifling precincts of this mind, horror-struck that we must sympathize with such a state as possible to humanity, we rush from the contemplation of the picture, and would gladly curtain it over in our hall of imagery forever. Yet stigmatize not our poet as a dark master, courting the shade, and hating the glad lights which love and hope cast upon human nature. The drama has a holy meaning, a patriot moral, and we, above all, should reverence him, the aristocrat by birth, by education, and by tastes, whose love of liberty could lead him to such conclusions.

In "Saul," a bright rainbow rises, by the aid of the Sun of Righteousness, above the commotion of the tempest. David, the faithful, the hopeful, combining the aesthetic culture, the winged inspiration of the poet with the n.o.ble pride of Israel's chosen warrior, contrasts finely with the unfortunate Saul, his mind darkened and convulsed by jealousy, vain regrets, and fear of the G.o.d he has forgotten how to love. The other three actors shade in the picture without attracting our attention from the two princ.i.p.al personages. The Hebrew spirit breathes through the whole. The beauty of the lyric effusions is so generally felt, that encomium is needless; we shall only observe that in them Alfieri's style, usually so severe, becomes flexible, melodious, and glowing; thus we may easily perceive what he might have done, had not the simplicity of his genius disdained the foreign aid of ornament upon its Doric proportions.

Myrrha is, however, the highest exertion of his genius. The remoteness of time and manners, the subject, at once so hackneyed and so revolting, these great obstacles he seizes with giant grasp, and moulds them to his purpose. Our souls are shaken to the foundation; all every-day barriers fall with the great convulsion of pa.s.sion. We sorrow, we sicken, we die with the miserable girl, so pure under her involuntary crime of feeling, pursued by a malignant deity in her soul's most sacred recesses, torn from all communion with humanity, and the virtue she was framed to adore. The perfection of plan, the matchless skill with which every circ.u.mstance is brought out! The agonizing rapidity with which her misery "va camminando al fine"! No! never was higher tragic power exhibited; never were love, terror, pity, fused into a more penetrating draught! Myrrha is a favorite acting-play in Italy--a fact inconceivable to an English or American mind; for (to say nothing of other objections) we should think such excess of emotion unbearable. But in those meridian climes they drink deep draughts of pa.s.sion too frequently to taste them as we do.

We pa.s.s to works of far inferior power, but of greater beauty. We have selected Iphigenia and Ta.s.so as the most finished results of their author's mature views of art. On his plays in the Romantic style, we shall touch in another place. If any one ask why we do not cla.s.s Faust with either, we reply, that is a work without a parallel; one of those few originals which have their laws within themselves, and should always be discussed singly.

The unity of plan in Iphigenia is perfect. There is one pervading idea.

The purity of Iphigenia's mind must be kept unsullied, that she may be a fit intercessor to the G.o.ds in behalf of her polluted family. Goethe, in his travels through Italy, saw a picture of a youthful Christian saint--Agatha, we think; struck by the radiant purity of her expression, he resolved his heathen priestess should not have one thought which could revolt the saint of the true religion. This idea is wonderfully preserved throughout a drama so cla.s.sic in its coloring and manners. The happiest development of character, an interest in the denouement which is only so far tempered by our trust in the lovely heroine, as to permit us to enjoy all the minuter beauties on our way, (this the breathless interest of Alfieri's dramas hardly allows, on a fourth or fifth reading,) exquisite descriptive touches, and expressions of sentiment, unequalled softness and harmony of style, distinguish a drama not to be surpa.s.sed in its own department. Torquato Ta.s.so[17] is of inferior general, but greater particular beauty. The two worldly, the two higher characters, with that of Alphonso halting between, are shaded with equal delicacy and distinctness. The inward-turning imagination of the ill-fated bard, and the fantastic tricks it plays with life, are painted as only a poet's soul of equal depth, of greater versatility, could have painted them. In a.n.a.lysis of the pa.s.sions, and eloquent descriptions of their more hidden workings, some parts may vie with Rousseau; while several effusions of feeling are worthy of Ta.s.so's own lyre, with its "breaking heartstring's tone." The conduct of the piece being in perfect accordance with the plan, gives the satisfaction we have mentioned in speaking of Raphael's Madonna.

Schiller's Wallenstein does not strictly belong to this cla.s.s, yet we are disposed to claim it as observing the unities of time and interest; the latter especially is entire, notwithstanding the many actors and side-scenes which are introduced. Numberless touches of nature arrest our attention, bright lights are flashed across many characters, but our interest, momently increasing, is for Wallenstein--for the perversion, the danger, the ruin of that monarch soul, that falling son of the morning. Even that we feel in Max, with his celestial bloom of heart, in Thekla's sweet trustfulness, is subsidiary. This work, generally known to the reader through Mr. Coleridge's translation, affords an imperfect ill.u.s.tration of our meaning. Miss Baillie's plays on the pa.s.sions hold a middle place. Unity of purpose there is--no unity of plan or conduct.

Bold, fine outline--very bad coloring. Profound, beautifully-expressed reflections on the pa.s.sions--utter want of skill in showing them out; a thorough feeling, indeed, of the elements of tragedy,--had but the vitalizing energy been added. Her plays are failures; but since she has given us nothing else, we cannot but rejoice in having these. 'Tis great pity that the auth.o.r.ess of De Montfort and Basil should not have attempted a narrative poem.

Coleridge and Byron are signal instances how peculiar is the kind of talent required for the drama; one a philosopher, both men of great genius and uncommon mastery over language, both conversant with each side of human nature, both considering the drama in its true light as one of the highest departments of literature, both utterly wanting in simplicity, pathos, truth of pa.s.sion and liveliness of action--in that thrilling utterance of heart to heart, whose absence _here_, no other excellence can atone for. Of Maturin and Knowles we do not speak, because theirs, though very good acting plays, are not, like Mr.

Taylor's, written for the closet; of Milman, because not sufficiently acquainted with his plays. We would here pay a tribute to our countryman Hillhouse, whose Hadad, read at a very early age, we remember with much delight. Probably our judgment now might be different; but a work which could make so deep an impression on any age, must have genius. We are sorry we have never since met it in any library or parlor, and are not competent to speak of it more particularly.

It will be seen that Mr. Taylor has not attempted the sort of dramatic poetry which we consider the highest, but has labored in that which the great wizard of Avon adopted, because it lay nearest at hand to clothe his spells withal, and consecrated it, with his world-embracing genius, to the (in our judgment) no small detriment of his country's taste.

Having thus declared that we cannot grant him our very highest meed of admiration, (though we will not say that he might not win it if he made the essay,) we hasten to meet him on his own ground. "Dramatica Poesis est veluti Historia spectabilis," is his motto, taken from Bacon, who formed his taste on Shakspeare. We would here mention that Goethe's earlier works, Goetz von Berlichingen and Egmont are of this school--brilliant fragments of past days, ballads acted out, historical scenes and personages cl.u.s.tered round a hero; and we have seen that his ripened taste preferred the form of Iphigenia and Ta.s.so.

We cannot too strongly express our approbation of the opinions maintained in his short preface to this work. We rejoice to see a leader coming forward who is likely to un-Hemansize and un-Cornwallize literature. We too have been sick, we too have been intoxicated with _words_ till we could hardly appreciate thoughts; perhaps our present writing shows traces of this Lower-Empire taste; but we have sense enough left to welcome the English Phocion, who would regenerate public feeling. The candor and modest dignity with which these opinions are offered charm us. The remarks upon Sh.e.l.ley, whom we have loved, and do still love pa.s.sing well, brought truth home to us in a definite shape.

With regard to the lowness of Lord Byron's standard of character, every thing indeed has been said which could be but not as Mr. Taylor has said it; and we opine that his refined and gentle remarks will find their way to ears which have always been deaf to the harsh sarcasms unseasoned by wit, which have been current on this topic.

Our author too, notwithstanding his modest caveat, has acted upon his principles, and furnished a forcible ill.u.s.tration of their justice. For dignity of sentiment, for simplicity of manner, for truth to life, never infringing upon respect for the ideal, we look to such a critic, and we are not disappointed.

The scene is laid in Ghent, in the fourteenth century. The Flemish mobocracy are brought before us with a fidelity and animation surpa.s.sing those displayed in Egmont. Their barbarism, and the dissimilar, but not inferior barbarism of their would-be lords, the bold, bad men, the shameless crime and brainless tumult of those days, live before us. Amid these clashing elements moves Philip Van Artevelde, with the presence, not of a G.o.d, but of a great man, too superior to be shaken, too wise to be shocked by their rude jarrings. He becomes the leader of his people, and despite pestilence, famine, and their own untutored pa.s.sions, he leads them on to victory and power.

In the second part we follow Van Artevelde from his zenith of glory to his decline. The tarnishing influence of prosperity on his spirit, and its clear radiance again in adversity, are managed as the n.o.ble and well-defined conception of the character deserves.

The boy king and his courtly, intriguing counsellors are as happily portrayed as Vauclaire and the fierce commonalty he ruled, or resisted with rope or sword, as the case might demand.

The two loves of Van Artevelde are finely imagined, as types of the two states of his character. Both are lovely; the one how elevated! the other how pity-moving in her loveliness! On the interlude of Elena we must be allowed to linger fondly, though the author's self condemn our taste.

We are no longer partial to the machinery of portents and presentiments.

Wallenstein's were the last we liked, but Van Artevelde's make good poetry, and have historical vouchers. They remind us of those of Fergus Mac Ivor.

We shall extract a speech of Van Artevelde's, in which a leading idea of the work is expressed.

Father,--

So! with the chivalry of Christendom I wage my war,--no nation for my friend, Yet in each nation having hosts of friends.

The bondsmen of the world, that to their lords Are bound with chains of iron, unto me Are knit by their affections. Be it so.

From kings and n.o.bles will I seek no more Aid, friendship, or alliance. With the poor I make my treaty; and the heart of man Sets the broad seal of its allegiance there, And ratifies the compact. Va.s.sals, serfs, Ye that are bent with unrequited toil, Ye that have whitened in the dungeon's darkness, Through years that know not change of night nor day, Tatterdemalions, lodgers in the hedge, Lean beggars with raw backs, and rumbling maws, Whose poverty was whipped for starving you,-- I hail you my auxiliars and allies, The only potentates whose help I crave!

Richard of England, thou hast slain Jack Straw, But thou hast left unquenched the vital spark That set Jack Straw on fire. The spirit lives; And as when he of Canterbury fell, His seat was filled by some no better clerk, So shall John Ball, that slew him, be replaced.

Fain would we extract Van Artevelde's reply to the French envoy--the oration of the dying Van den Bosch in the market-place of Ypres, the last scene between the hero and the double-dyed dastard and traitor, Sir Heurant of Heurlee, and many, many more, had we but s.p.a.ce enough.

We have purposely avoided telling the story, as is usual in an article of this kind, because we wish that every one should buy and read Van Artevelde, instead of resting content with the canvas side of the carpet.

A few words more, and we shall conclude these, we fear, already too prolonged remarks. We would compare Mr. Taylor with the most applauded of living dramatists, the Italian Alessandro Manzoni.

To wide and accurate historical knowledge, to purity of taste, to the greatest elevation of sentiment, Manzoni unites uncommon lyric power, and a beautiful style in the most beautiful language of the modern world. The conception of both his plays is striking, the detached beauties of thought and imagery are many; but where are the life, the glow, the exciting march of action, the thorough display of character which charm us in Van Artevelde? We _live_ at Ghent and Senlis; we _think_ of Italy. Van Artevelde dies,--and our hearts die with him. When Elena says, "The body,--O!" we could echo that "long, funereal note,"

and weep as if the sun of heroic n.o.bleness were quenched from our own horizon. "Carmagnola, Adelchis die,"--we calmly shut the book, and think how much we have enjoyed it. Manzoni can deeply feel goodness and greatness, but he cannot localize them in the contours of life before our eyes. His are capital sketches, poems of a deep meaning,--but this, yes! this _is_ a drama.

We cannot conclude more fitly, nor inculcate a precept on the reader more forcibly, than in Mr. Taylor's own words, with a slight alteration: "To say that I admire him is to admit that I owe him much; for admiration is never thrown away upon the mind of him who feels it, except when it is misdirected or blindly indulged. There is perhaps nothing which more enlarges or enriches the mind than the disposition to lay it genially open to impressions of pleasure, from the exercise of every species of talent; nothing by which it is more impoverished than the habit of undue depreciation. What is puerile, pusillanimous, or wicked, it can do us no good to admire; but let us admire all that can be admired without debasing the dispositions or stultifying the understanding."