The Function of the Poet and Other Essays Part 6

Long time in the cold they lay there, Under lock and key a long time; From the cold shall I forth bring them?

Bring my lays from out the frost there 'Neath this roof so wide-renowned?

Here my song-chest shall I open, Chest with runic lays o'errunning?

Shall I here untie my bundle, And begin my skein unwinding?

Now my lips at last must close them And my tongue at last be fettered; I must leave my lay unfinished, And must cease from cheerful singing; Even the horses must repose them When all day they have been running; Even the iron's self grows weary Mowing down the summer gra.s.ses; Even the water sinks to quiet From its rushing in the river; Even the fire seeks rest in ashes That all night hath roared and crackled; Wherefore should not music also, Song itself, at last grow weary After the long eve's contentment And the fading of the twilight?

I have also heard say often, Heard it many times repeated, That the cataract swift-rushing Not in one gush spends its waters, And in like sort cunning singers Do not spend their utmost secret, Yea, to end betimes is better Than to break the thread abruptly.

Ending, then, as I began them, Closing thus and thus completing, I fold up my pack of ballads, Roll them closely in a bundle, Lay them safely in the storeroom, In the strong bone-castle's chamber, That they never thence be stolen, Never in all time be lost thence, Though the castle's wall be broken, Though the bones be rent asunder, Though the teeth may be pried open, And the tongue be set in motion.

How, then, were it sang I always Till my songs grew poor and poorer, Till the dells alone would hear me, Only the deaf fir-trees listen?

Not in life is she, my mother, She no longer is aboveground; She, the golden, cannot hear me, 'T is the fir-trees now that hear me, 'T is the pine-tops understand me, And the birch-crowns full of goodness, And the ash-trees now that love me!

Small and weak my mother left me, Like a lark upon the cliff-top, Like a young thrush 'mid the flintstones In the guardianship of strangers, In the keeping of the stepdame.

She would drive the little orphan.

Drive the child with none to love him, To the cold side of the chimney, To the north side of the cottage.

Where the wind that felt no pity, Bit the boy with none to shield him.

Larklike, then, I forth betook me, Like a little bird to wander.

Silent, o'er the country straying Yon and hither, full of sadness.

With the winds I made acquaintance Felt the will of every tempest.

Learned of bitter frost to shiver, Learned too well to weep of winter.

Yet there be full many people Who with evil voice a.s.sail me, And with tongue of poison sting me, Saying that my lips are skilless, That the ways of song I know not, Nor the ballad's pleasant turnings.

Ah, you should not, kindly people, Therein seek a cause to blame me, That, a child, I sang too often, That, unfledged, I twittered only.

I have never had a teacher, Never heard the speech of great men, Never learned a word unhomely, Nor fine phrases of the stranger.

Others to the school were going, I alone at home must keep me, Could not leave my mother's elbow, In the wide world had her only; In the house had I my schooling, From the rafters of the chamber.

From the spindle of my mother, From the axehelve of my father, In the early days of childhood; But for this it does not matter, I have shown the way to singers, Shown the way, and blazed the tree-bark, Snapped the twigs, and marked the footpath; Here shall be the way in future, Here the track at last be opened For the singers better-gifted, For the songs more rich than mine are, Of the youth that now are waxing, In the good time that is coming!

Like Virgil's husbandman, our minstrel did not know how well off he was to have been without schooling. This, I think, every one feels at once to be poetry that sings itself. It makes its own tune, and the heart beats in time to its measure. By and by poets will begin to say, like Goethe, "I sing as the bird sings"; but this poet sings in that fashion without thinking of it or knowing it. And it is the very music of his race and country which speaks through him with such simple pathos.

Finland is the mother and Russia is the stepdame, and the listeners to the old national lays grow fewer every day. Before long the Fins will be writing songs in the manner of Heine, and dramas in imitation of "Faust." Doubtless the material of original poetry lies in all of us, but in proportion as the mind is conventionalized by literature, it is apt to look about it for models, instead of looking inward for that native force which makes models, but does not follow them. This rose of originality which we long for, this bloom of imagination whose perfume enchants us--we can seldom find it when it is near us, when it is part of our daily lives.

REVIEWS OF CONTEMPORARIES

HENRY JAMES

JAMES'S TALES AND SKETCHES[1]

[Footnote 1: _A Pa.s.sionate Pilgrim, and Other Tales_. By Henry James, Jr.

Boston: J.R. Osgood & Co.

_Transatlantic Sketches_. By the same author.]

Whoever takes an interest, whether of mere curiosity or of critical foreboding, in the product and tendency of our younger literature, must have had his attention awakened and detained by the writings of Mr.

James. Whatever else they may be, they are not common, and have that air of good breeding which is the token of whatever is properly called literature. They are not the overflow of a shallow talent for improvisation too full of self to be contained, but show everywhere the marks of intelligent purpose and of the graceful ease that comes only of conscientious training. Undoubtedly there was a large capital of native endowment to start from--a mind of singular subtlety and refinement; a faculty of rapid observation, yet patient of rectifying afterthought; senses daintily alive to every aesthetic suggestion; and a frank enthusiasm, kept within due bounds by the double-consciousness of humor.

But it is plain that Mr. James is fortunate enough to possess, or to be possessed by, that finer sixth sense which we call the artistic, and which controls, corrects, and discontents. His felicities, therefore, are not due to a lucky turn of the dice, but to forethought and afterthought. Accordingly, he is capable of progress, and gives renewed evidence of it from time to time, while too many of our authors show premature marks of arrested development. They strike a happy vein of starting, perhaps, and keep on grubbing at it, with the rude helps of primitive mining, seemingly unaware that it is daily growing more and more slender. Even should it wholly vanish, they persist in the vain hope of recovering it further on, as if in literature two successes of precisely the same kind were possible Nay, most of them have hit upon no vein at all, but picked up a nugget rather, and persevere in raking the surface of things, if haply they may chance upon another. The moral of one of Hawthorne's stories is that there is no element of treasure-trove in success, but that true luck lies in the deep and a.s.siduous cultivation of our own plot of ground, be it larger or smaller. For indeed the only estate of man that savors of the realty is in his mind.

Mr. James seems to have arrived early at an understanding of this, and to have profited by the best modern appliances of self-culture. In conception and expression is he essentially an artist and not an irresponsible _trouvere_. If he allow himself an occasional carelessness, it is not from incaution, but because he knows perfectly well what he is about. He is quite at home in the usages of the best literary society. In his writing there is none of that hit-or-miss playing at snapdragon with language, of that clownish bearing-on in what should be the light strokes, as if mere emphasis were meaning, and naturally none of the slovenliness that offends a trained judgment in the work of so many of our writers later, unmistakably clever as they are. In short, he has _tone_, the last result and surest evidence of an intellect reclaimed from the rudeness of nature, for it means self-restraint. The story of Handel's composing always in full dress conveys at least the useful lesson of a gentlemanlike deference for the art a man professes and for the public whose attention he claims. Mr.

James, as we see in his sketches of travel, is not averse to the lounging ease of a shooting-jacket, but he respects the usages of convention, and at the canonical hours is sure to be found in the required toilet. He does not expect the company to pardon his own indolence as one of the necessary appendages of originality. Always considerate himself, his readers soon find reason to treat him with consideration. For they soon come to see that literature may be light and at the same time thoughtful; that lightness, indeed, results much more surely from serious study than from the neglect of it.

We have said that Mr. James was emphatically a man of culture, and we are old-fashioned enough to look upon him with the more interest as a specimen of exclusively _modern_ culture. Of any cla.s.sical training we have failed to detect the traces in him. His allusions, his citations, are in the strictest sense contemporary, and indicate, if we may trust our divination, a preference for French models, Balzac, De Musset, Feuillet, Taine, Gautier, Merimee, Sainte-Beuve, especially the three latter. He emulates successfully their suavity, their urbanity, their clever knack of conveying a fuller meaning by innuendo than by direct bluntness of statement. If not the best school for substance, it is an admirable one for method, and for so much of style as is attainable by example. It is the same school in which the writers of what used to be called our cla.s.sical period learned the superior efficacy of the French small-sword as compared with the English cudgel, and Mr. James shows the graceful suppleness of that excellent academy of fence in which a man distinguishes by effacing himself. He has the dexterous art of letting us feel the point of his individuality without making us obtrusively aware of his presence. We arrive at an intimate knowledge of his character by confidences that escape egotism by seeming to be made always in the interest of the reader. That we know all his tastes and prejudices appears rather a compliment to our penetration than a proof of indiscreetness on his part. If we were disposed to find any fault with Mr. James's style, which is generally of conspicuous elegance, it would be for his occasional choice of a French word or phrase (like _bouder, se reconnait, ba.n.a.l_, and the like), where our English, without being driven to search her coffers round, would furnish one quite as good and surer of coming home to the ordinary reader. We could grow as near surly with him as would be possible for us with a writer who so generally endears himself to our taste, when he foists upon us a disagreeable alien like _abandon_ (used as a noun), as if it could show an honest baptismal certificate in the registers of Johnson or Webster.

Perhaps Mr. James finds, or fancies, in such words a significance that escapes our obtuser sense, a sweetness, it may be, of early a.s.sociation, for he tells us somewhere that in his boyhood he was put to school in Geneva. In this way only can we account for his once slipping into the rusticism that "remembers of" a thing.

But beyond any advantage which he may have derived from an intelligent study of French models, it is plain that a much larger share of Mr.

James's education has been acquired by travel and through the eyes of a thoughtful observer of men and things. He has seen more cities and manners of men than was possible in the slower days of Ulysses, and if with less gain of worldly wisdom, yet with an enlargement of his artistic apprehensiveness and scope that is of far greater value to him.

We do not mean to imply that Mr. James lacks what is called knowledge of the world. On the contrary, he has a great deal of it, but it has not in him degenerated into worldliness, and a mellowing haze of imagination ransoms the edges of things from the hardness of over-near familiarity.

He shows on a.n.a.lysis that rare combination of qualities which results in a man of the world, whose contact with it kindles instead of dampening the ardor of his fancy. He is thus excellently fitted for the line he has chosen as a story-teller who deals mainly with problems of character and psychology which spring out of the artificial complexities of society, and as a translator of the impressions received from nature and art into language that often lacks only verse to make it poetry. Mr.

James does not see things with his eyes alone. His vision is always modified by his imaginative temperament. He is the last man we should consult for statistics, but his sketches give us the very marrow of sensitive impression, and are positively better than the actual pilgrimage. We are tolerably familiar with the scenes he describes, but hardly knew before how much we had to be grateful for. _Et ego in Arcadia_, we murmur to ourselves as we read, but surely this was not the name we found in our guide-book. It is always _Dichtung und Wahrheit_ (Goethe knew very well what he was about when he gave precedence to the giddier sister)--it is always fact seen through imagination and transfigured by it. A single example will best show what we mean. "It is partly, doubtless, because their mighty outlines are still unsoftened that the aqueducts are so impressive. _They seem the very source of the solitude in which they stand_; they look like architectural spectres, and loom through the light mists of their gra.s.sy desert, as you recede along the line, with the same insubstantial vastness as if they rose out of Egyptian sands." Such happy touches are frequent in Mr. James's pages, like flecks of sunshine that steal softened through every chance crevice in the leaves, as where he calls the lark a "disembodied voice,"

or says of an English country-church that "it made a Sunday where it stood." A light-fingered poet would find many a temptation in his prose.

But it is not merely our fancies that are pleased. Mr. James tempts us into many byways of serious and fruitful thought. Especially valuable and helpful have we found his _obiter dicta_ on the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture; for example, when he says of the Tuscan palaces that "in their large dependence on pure symmetry for beauty of effect, [they] reproduce more than other modern styles the simple n.o.bleness of Greek architecture." And we would note also what he says of the Albani Antinous. It must be a nimble wit that can keep pace with Mr.

James's logic in his aesthetic criticism. It is apt to spring airily over the middle term to the conclusion, leaving something in the likeness of a ditch across the path of our slower intelligences, which look about them and think twice before taking the leap. Courage! there are always fresh woods and pastures new on the other side. A curious reflection has more than once flashed upon our minds as we lingered with Mr. James over his complex and refined sensations: we mean the very striking contrast between the ancient and modern traveller. The former saw with his bodily eyes, and reported accordingly, catering for the curiosity of homely wits as to the outsides and appearances of things.

Even Montaigne, habitually introspective as he was, sticks to the old method in his travels. The modern traveller, on the other hand, superseded by the guide-book, travels in himself, and records for us the scenery of his own mind as it is affected by change of sky and the various weather of temperament.

Mr. James, in his sketches, frankly acknowledges his preference of the Old World. Life--which here seems all drab to him, without due lights and shades of social contrast, without that indefinable suggestion of immemorial antiquity which has so large a share in picturesque impression--is there a dome of many-colored gla.s.s irradiating both senses and imagination. We shall not blame him too gravely for this, as if an American had not as good a right as any ancient of them all to say, _Ubi libertas, ibi patria_. It is no real paradox to affirm that a man's love of his country may often be gauged by his disgust at it. But we think it might fairly be argued against him that the very absence of that distracting complexity of a.s.sociations might help to produce that solitude which is the main feeder of imagination. Certainly, Hawthorne, with whom no modern European can be matched for the subtlety and power of this marvellous quality, is a strong case on the American side of the question.

Mr. James's tales, if without any obvious moral, are sure to have a clearly defined artistic purpose. They are careful studies of character thrown into dramatic action, and the undercurrent of motive is, as it should be, not in the circ.u.mstances but in the characters themselves. It is by delicate touches and hints that his effects are produced. The reader is called upon to do his share, and will find his reward in it, for Mr. James, as we cannot too often insist, is first and always an artist. Nowhere does he show his fine instinct more to the purpose than in leaving the tragic element of tales (dealing as they do with contemporary life, and that mainly in the drawing-room) to take care of itself, and in confining the outward expression of pa.s.sion within the limits of a decorous amenity. Those who must have their intellectual gullets tingled with the fiery draught of coa.r.s.e sensation must go elsewhere for their dram; but whoever is capable of the aroma of the more delicate vintages will find it here. In the volume before us "Madame de Mauves" will ill.u.s.trate what we mean. There is no s.p.a.ce for detailed a.n.a.lysis, even if that were ever adequate to give the true impression of stories so carefully worked out and depending so much for their effect on a gradual c.u.mulation of particulars each in itself unemphatic. We have said that Mr. James shows promise as well as accomplishment, gaining always in mastery of his material. It is but a natural inference from this that his "Roderick Hudson" is the fullest and most finished proof of his power as a story-teller. Indeed, we may say frankly that it pleases us the more because the characters are drawn with a bolder hand and in more determined outline, for if Mr. James need any friendly caution, it is against over-delicacy of handling.

LONGFELLOW

THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH

The introduction and acclimatization of the _hexameter_ upon English soil has been an affair of more than two centuries. The attempt was first systematically made during the reign of Elizabeth, but the metre remained a feeble exotic that scarcely burgeoned under gla.s.s. Gabriel Harvey,--a kind of Don Adriano de Armado,--whose chief claim to remembrance is, that he was the friend of Spenser, boasts that he was the first to whom the notion of transplantation occurred. In his "Foure Letters" (1592) he says, "If I never deserve anye better remembraunce, let mee rather be Epitaphed, the Inventour of the English Hexameter, whome learned M. Stanihurst imitated in his Virgill, and excellent Sir Phillip Sidney disdained not to follow in his Arcadia and elsewhere."

This claim of invention, however, seems to have been an afterthought with Harvey, for, in the letters which pa.s.sed between him and Spenser in 1579, he speaks of himself more modestly as only a collaborator with Sidney and others in the good work. The Earl of Surrey is said to have been the first who wrote thus in English. The most successful person, however, was William Webb, who translated two of Virgil's Eclogues with a good deal of spirit and harmony. Ascham, in his "Schoolmaster" (1570), had already suggested the adoption of the ancient hexameter by English poets; but Ascham (as afterwards Puttenham in his "Art of Poesie") thought the number of monosyllabic words in English an insuperable objection to verses in which there was a large proportion of dactyls, and recommended, therefore, that a trial should be made with iambics.

Spenser, at Harvey's instance, seems to have tried his hand at the new kind of verse. He says:

I like your late Englishe Hexameters so exceedingly well, that I also enure my penne sometimes in that kinde.... For the onely or chiefest hardnesse, whych seemeth, is in the Accente, which sometime gapeth, and, as it were, yawneth ilfauouredly, coming shorte of that it should, and sometime exceeding the measure of the Number, as in _Carpenter_; the middle sillable being vsed shorte in Speache, when it shall be read long in Verse, seemeth like a lame Gosling that draweth one legge after hir and _Heaven_, being used shorte as one sillable, when it is in Verse stretched out with a _Diastole_, is like a lame dogge that holdes up one legge. But it is to be wonne with Custome, and rough words must be subdued with Vse. For why a G.o.d's name may not we, as else the Greekes, have the kingdome of our owne Language, and measure our Accentes by the Sounde, reserving the Quant.i.tie to the Verse?

The amiable Edmonde seems to be smiling in his sleeve as he writes this sentence. He instinctively saw the absurdity of attempting to subdue English to misunderstood laws of Latin quant.i.ties, which would, for example, make the vowel in "debt" long, in the teeth of use and wont.

We give a specimen of the hexameters which satisfied so entirely the ear of Master Gabriel Harvey,--an ear that must have been long by position, in virtue of its place on his head.

Not the like _Discourser_, for Tongue and head to be found out; Not the like _resolute Man_, for great and serious affayres; Not the like _Lynx_, to spie out secretes and priuities of States; _Eyed_ like to _Argus_, _Earde_ like to _Midas_, _Nosd_ like to _Naso_, Winged like to _Mercury_, fittst of a Thousand for to be employed.

And here are a few from "worthy M. Stanyhurst's" translation of the "Aeneid."

Laoc.o.o.n storming from Princelie Castel is hastning, And a far of beloing: What fond phantastical harebraine Madnesse hath enchaunted your wits, you townsmen unhappie?

Weene you (blind hodipecks) the Greekish nauie returned, Or that their presents want craft? is subtil Vlisses So soone forgotten? My life for an haulfpennie (Trojans), etc.

Mr. Abraham Fraunce translates two verses of Heliodorus thus:--

Now had fyery Phlegon his dayes reuolution ended, And his snoring snowt with salt waues all to bee washed.