The Catholic World Volume Ii Part 128

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5. A brother said to Abbot Sisoi: "What must I do to keep my heart?"

The old man made answer: Look to your tongue first, for it is nearest to the door.

6. Abbot Abraham said: Pa.s.sions live even in the saints here below; but they are chained.

7. Abbot John said to his brother, "I do not like working; I wish to be in peace, and to serve G.o.d without break, like an angel;" and he set off to the desert.

In a week's time he returned, and knocked at his brother's door, saying, "I am John."

His brother answered, "No, you are not; for John is an angel." He insisted, "Yes, but I am John."

His brother opened to him, saying, "If you are a man, why don't you work? If you are an angel, what do you knock for?"

From Chambers's Journal.

LITTLE THINGS.

Often, little things we hear, Often, little things we see.

Waken thoughts that long have slept, Deep down in our memory.

Strangely slight the circ.u.mstance That has force to turn the mind, Backward on the path of years, To the loved scenes far behind!

'Tis the perfume of a flower.

Or a quaint, old-fashioned tune; Or a song-bird 'mid the leaves.

Singing in the sunny June.

'Tis the evening star, mayhap.

In the gloaming silver bright; Or a gold and purple cloud Waning in the western light.

'Tis the rustling of a dress.

Or a certain tone of voice, That can make the pulses throb.

That can bid the heart rejoice.

Ah, my heart! But not of joy Must alone thy history tell.

Sorrow, shame, and bitter tears Little things recall as well.

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From The Month.

THE POEMS OF ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER. [Footnote 147]

[Footnote 147: "Legends and Lyrics." By Adelaide Anne Procter. With an Introduction by Charles d.i.c.kens. New edition, with additions.

Ill.u.s.trated by W.T.C. Dobson, A.B.A., Samuel Palmer, J. Tenniel, George H. Thomas, Lorenz Frohlich, W. H. Millais, G. du Maurier.

W.P. Burton, J.D. Watson, Charles Keene, J.M. Carrick, M.E. Edward, T. Morten. (Bell & Daldy.) "A Chaplet of Verses." (Longman.)]

The appearance of the beautiful edition of Miss Procter's poems lately issued among the Christmas gift-books of the season forms a fitting occasion for some remarks upon the special character and genius of the auth.o.r.ess whose verses are inscribed upon its delicately-toned pages.

Of both the first and second series of Miss Procters "Legends and Lyrics" numerous editions have been called for by the public: they are now collected into a quarto, ill.u.s.trated by many excellent artists, and are prefaced by a slight biographical introduction from the pen of Mr. Charles d.i.c.kens, who, being intimately acquainted with Miss Procter's family, had known her from her early girlhood, and entertained for her the truest admiration and the most cordial esteem.

In attempting an a.n.a.lysis of Miss Procter's poetry, we may well preface it by a few words concerning her life and character, because these were the roots of her verse. To speak of the dead is at all times a sacred thing, demanding heedful words and careful justice. To speak of the beloved dead is always a doubly difficult task, requiring a specially sober modesty of expression, even while giving some scope to that instinctive power of true appreciation which affection best insures. The writer of these pages knew and loved her long and well; and in so far is qualified to speak of what she was: yet of a nature which was all womanly, and which retained to its last earthly moments a singular charm of childlike playfulness and innocence--having been, as it were, at all times sheltered from life's rougher experiences--it is not quite easy so to speak as to bring out a distinctive image to those who knew it not.

Adelaide Anne Procter was born in October, 1825, in Bedford Square, London; the eldest child, the "sweet beloved first-born," of Brian Waller Procter, best known to literature as Barry Cornwall. We have often heard her described as she was at three years old--"the prettiest little fairy ever seen," with fair delicate features and great blue eyes; always frail in health, but exceedingly intelligent.

Mr. d.i.c.kens tells of a tiny alb.u.m, made of note-paper, into which her favorite pa.s.sages of poetry were copied for her by her mother's hand before she herself could write; and she very soon began to acquire foreign languages, and even to learn geometry. One of her early accomplishments was drawing--she composed little figure pieces with grace and facility; and we remember hearing from a loving relative of Miss Procter's, many long years ago, of a certain set of sketches of the Seven Ages of Man, done by her in pencil when she was yet a little girl. Being at the time still younger, we heard of it with a sort of admiring awe, which it is now pathetic to remember; considering in our own mind what a wonderful and even alarming little girl this must be.

Some five-and-twenty years later (since her death) those little sketches came to light; the sight of them smiting upon the heart with the memory of that long-ago conversation, so full of fond hope and pride.

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Miss Procter was very thoroughly educated, and from her youth went much into society, possessing in a marked degree the best characteristics of a woman of the world. Mr. d.i.c.kens says that she had nothing of the conventional poetess about her; was neither melancholy, nor affected, nor self-absorbed. What she _had_, was the ease, the polish, and the extreme readiness which we are taught to consider the traditionary charm of a Frenchwoman of the old school. To perfect self-possession she added a sort of feminine mastery of those about her. Single out any of the famous Parisians gifted with the power to win and to keep, and imagine this sort of power grafted on to a nature _au fond_ very simple and sterling; and thus the reader will attain to a conception of what she was in social life. She had deep and strong feeling, which she poured out in her poetry; but it did not come uppermost in her conversation. _That_ was always vivid and usually lively, and, moreover, edged with marvellous finesse. "Sweet-briar"

one loving friend used to call her.

Her outward life was not very varied; but her conversion to the Catholic faith, which took place when she was about four-and-twenty, gave her a wide circle of intellectual interests beyond those of ordinary English minds. Two years later she went to Piedmont, and pa.s.sed a year with a relative there. She always recalled this Italian experience with lively pleasure; and it colored many of her poems. Her letters home were very lively and pictorial, showing that she would have excelled in prose composition.

Of her first entrance into literature Mr. d.i.c.kens has given an amusing account: how she sent poems to _Household Words_ under the signature of Miss Berwick, and how at the office they all made up their minds she was a governess; and how Miss Berwick turned out, after all, to be the daughter of his old friend Barry Cornwall, who preferred to win her spurs with her visor down. When, some years later, she was with much difficulty induced to collect her poems into a volume, with her name, their success was immediate; both that volume and a second series pa.s.sed through edition after edition, till she truly became a _household word_ in England.

There is not, alas! very much more to tell. Just when she became famous, and opportunities of literary exertion were opening on every side, her health began to fail. For three or four years before her declared illness she was very delicate, and, with the fatal animation of her peculiar temperament, always overworking herself. But that dread malady, consumption, the scourge of England, can rarely be averted when once it has marked its prey. In November, 1862, her increasing illness first confined her to her room, and very shortly to her bed. For fifteen long months she lay there, wasting gradually away; yet not only was she patient and thoroughly resigned, but up to the very last her bright cheerfulness never quite deserted her. When not actually in pain, she would enter into conversation with all her old zest, taking just the same interest in her friends and their affairs; lively, sympathetic, and helpful to the end. On the very last evening of all, one of her friends, thinking to interest her in the old pursuit, brought her a little poem in proof. It was a Catholic ballad for _The Lamp_, Miss Procter was sitting up in bed, supported by pillows. She was too weak to speak any unnecessary word; but her large blue eyes roused into their wonted intelligence as she listened; and then, with the sweet sympathy which she at all times gave to others, she made a slight applauding motion with those slender wasted fingers, and smiled into the reader's face. It was such a very slight thing, and yet so utterly characteristic--courtesy and kindness and a sort of unselfish readiness surviving to the very end.

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That night, an hour after midnight, on the 2d of February, the summons came. She had been reading a little book--trying to read, rather--and as the clock was on the stroke of one she shut it up, and with some sudden mysterious rush of consciousness, having suffered greatly all the evening from oppressed breathing, she asked quietly of her mother, who was holding her in her arms:

"Do you think I am dying, mamma?"

"I think you are very, very ill tonight, my dear."

"Send for my sister. My feet are so cold--lift me up."

Her sister entering as they raised her, she said: "It has come at last."

And then, with so soft a change that the anxious eyes bent upon those sunken features could hardly detect the moment of her ceasing to breathe, death came to the beloved of so many hearts. The prayers of the Church, of which she was so devoted a child, were audibly uplifted throughout that closing scene; they were the last earthly sounds that can have reached the dulling ear. Opposite to her, as she lay upon her little bed, was a photograph from that loveliest image by Francia of the dead Saviour lying upon his mother's knees. At all times ardently religious, the last days of her frail life were elevated and cheered by the holy rites of her faith. As she lay in her coffin, a crucifix upon her breast, and camellias and violets sprinkled over her fair white garments, she looked the loveliest image of peace which a pure and pious life could bequeath to perishable clay. The delicate face was but little changed. Up to the very last it had retained its bright spiritual expression, just as her voice had retained its musical inflections, and her smile its blended charm of affectionate sympathy and childlike gaiety. In death that smile had vanished for ever, but something of its sweetness still lingered about the brow and mouth.

The tapers for which she had asked a little while previously (for the due keeping of Candlemas-day) burnt at the head of the coffin, and shed their soft light down upon that still face. When at length it was covered up from mortal sight, and all that remained of her laid in the grave at St. Mary's Cemetery, the sun shone out with the first cheerfulness of early spring. Coming from behind a little cloud, that sunshine lit up the white vestment of the priest, who, standing by her coffin in the little chapel, spoke of the joyful resurrection of the children of G.o.d. There is a little garden upon that simple grave, where fresh flowers bloom every spring; and beside it many prayers are offered up with each returning season of the year.

But we must linger no longer on memories and a.s.sociations which are almost too sacred for more than a pa.s.sing word. To the world at large Miss Procter is known through her genius only; but it is, perhaps, not too much to say, that through it she is also endeared in a singular degree to thousands who never looked upon her face. To some consideration of her poems we will therefore address ourselves; the less reluctantly that they were truly so much a revelation of her life.

If canons of criticism be based on something deeper than mere superficial rules in regard to the expression of the sublime and youthful, it must be doubly interesting to trace the causes of a wide-spread popularity attaching to any series of works from the same pen. Such an appreciation cannot be won by a trick of form, or by a deliberate appeal to well-known popular sympathies. It must arise from the touching of universal emotions; from a true correspondence with those thoughts and feelings which are the heritage of the race under its most general conditions, or which have become the common property of a people in all its various grades of culture.

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There are two theories regarding the nature of poetry and of that Genius which creates poetry, whether in literature or in the sphere of any art. They will never be harmonized; for, like many other opinions, doctrines, and theories, of which we are separately forced to acknowledge the truth, they are irreconcilable by any effort of the human understanding. One of these theories says that genius is rare, recondite, unusual; that its creations are, by the very nature of things, little likely to be appreciated; that, indeed, the higher and the deeper it is, the more likelihood there is that it will not be entered into by numbers. Such genius found its embodiment in the phantasmagoria of Blake, in the poetry of Sh.e.l.ley, in the profound insight of this or that thinker. It is the vivid but momentary flash of lightning irradiating a sombre sky; it is the gnarled and solitary pine; the deep still tarn upon the mountain-side; it is the vein of bright ore buried in the darkness of the mine; the electric thrill evoked from inert matter, interesting, delightful, and suggestive from the very strangeness of its apparition. Who shall deny this is _one_ definition of genius, one way of picturing the idea of high art?

But there is another theory, which says that genius is that which possesses the faculty of incarnating universal affections in a type readily and instinctively appropriated by the imagination; that it painted the Huguenots, and wrought out the image of Jeanie Deans; that it sung the simple melody of "Auld Robin Gray," and acc.u.mulated the ma.s.sive choruses of Handel; that--putting aside those greatest men, the Shakespeares, Groethes, and Raphaels, regarding whom criticism or definition are alike exhaustless and for ever inconclusive--the most admirable genius is that which thrills in the ballads, the religions literature, and imitative art of a people, and which a whole nation "will not willingly let die." Such genius, such art, is like the fair sunshine upon corn-fields, the rippling of the running stream, the silver surface of the lake, the profuse luxuriance of spring and autumn woodlands. It embodies light, air, and the song of birds, the solemnity of the universal twilight, and the radiance of the universal dawn. Almost every one can see and feel it in _some_ wise, though the keenness of the appreciation will be in proportion to the sensitiveness of the eye and ear. Who shall deny that this is another and equally true description of the highest genius and the n.o.blest art?