"All the initiated must be interested in the striking fact which occurred respecting one of Beethoven's last solo sonatas, (in B major, with the great fugue, Op. 106,) a sonata which hasforty-one pages of print. Beethoven had sent it to me, to London, for sale, that it might appear there at the same time as in Germany. The engraving was completed, and I in daily expectation of the letter naming the day of publication. This arrived at last, but with this extraordinary request: 'Prefix the following two notes, as a first bar, to the beginning of the adagio.' This adagio has from nine to ten pages of print. I own the thought struck me involuntarily that all might not be right with my dear old master, a rumor to that effect having often been spread. What! add two notes to a composition already worked out and out, and completed months ago? But my astonishment was yet to be heightenedby theeffectof these two notes. Never could such be found again—so striking—so important; no, not even if contemplated at the very beginning of the composition. I would advise every true lover of the art to play this adagio firstwithout, and then with these two notes which now form the first bar, and I have no doubt he will share in my opinion."
No instance could more forcibly show how in the case of Beethoven, as in that of other transcendent geniuses, the cry of insanity is raised by vulgar minds on witnessing extraordinary manifestations of power. Such geniuses perceive results so remote, are alive to combinations so subtle, that common men cannot rise high enough to see why they think or do as they do, and settle the matter easily to their own satisfaction, crying, "He is mad"—"He hath a devil." Genius perceives the efficacy of slight signs of thought, and loves best the simplest symbols; coarser minds demand coarse work, long preparations, long explanations.
But genius heeds them not, but fills the atmosphere with irresistible purity, till they also are pervaded by the delicate influence, which, too subtile for their ears and eyes, enters with the air they breathe, or through the pores of the skin.
The life of a Beethoven is written in his works; and all that can be told of his life beside, is but as marginal notes on that broad page. Yet since we have these notes, it is pleasant to have them in harmony with the page. The acts and words of Beethoven are what we should expect,—noble, leonine, impetuous,—yet tender. His faults are the faults of one so great that he found few paths wide enough for his tread, and knew not how to moderate it. They are not faults in themselves, but only in relation to the men who surrounded him. Among his peers he would not have had faults. As it is, they hardly deserve the name. His acts were generally great and benignant; only in transports of sudden passion at what he thought base did he ever injure any one. If hefound himself mistaken, he could not humble himself enough,—but far outwent, in his contrition, what was due to those whom he had offended. So it is apt to be with magnanimous and tender natures; they will humble themselves in a way that those of a coarser or colder make think shows weakness or want of pride. But they do so because a little discord and a little wrong is as painful to them as a great deal to others.
In one of his letters to a young friend, Beethoven thus magnanimously confesses his errors:—
"I could not converse with you and yours with that peace of mind which I could have desired, for the late wretched altercation was hovering before me, showing me my own despicable conduct. But so it was; and what would I not give could I obliterate from the page of my life this last action, so degrading to my character, and so unlike my usual proceedings!"
It seems this action of his was not of importance in the eyes of others. Of the causes which acted upon him at such times he gives intimations in another letter.
"I had been wrought into this burst of passion by many an unpleasant circumstance of an earlier date. I have the gift of concealing and restraining my irritability on many subjects; but if I happen to be touched at any time when I am more than usually susceptible of anger, I burst forth more violently than any one else. B. has doubtless most excellent qualities, but he thinks himself utterly without faults, and yet is most open to blame for those for which he censures others. He has a littleness of mind which I have held in contempt since my infancy."
As a correspondent example of the manner in which true greatness apologizes for its errors, we must quote a letter, lately made public, from Sir Isaac Newton to Mr. Locke.
"Sir: Being of opinion that you endeavored to embroil me with women, and by other means, I was so much affectedwith it as that, when one told me you were sickly, and would not live, I answered, ''Twere better if you were dead.' I desire you to forgive me this uncharitableness, for I am now satisfied that what you have done is just, and I beg your pardon for having had hard thoughts of you for it, and for representing that you struck at the root of morality in a principle you laid down in your book of ideas, and designed to pursue in another book, and that I took you for a Hobbist. I beg your pardon also for saying or thinking that there was a design to sell me an office, or to embroil me."I am your most humble and unfortunate servant,"ISAACNEWTON."
"Sir: Being of opinion that you endeavored to embroil me with women, and by other means, I was so much affectedwith it as that, when one told me you were sickly, and would not live, I answered, ''Twere better if you were dead.' I desire you to forgive me this uncharitableness, for I am now satisfied that what you have done is just, and I beg your pardon for having had hard thoughts of you for it, and for representing that you struck at the root of morality in a principle you laid down in your book of ideas, and designed to pursue in another book, and that I took you for a Hobbist. I beg your pardon also for saying or thinking that there was a design to sell me an office, or to embroil me.
"I am your most humble and unfortunate servant,
"ISAACNEWTON."
And this letter, observe, was quoted as proof of insanity in Newton. Locke, however, shows by his reply thathedid not think the power of full sincerity and elevation above self-love proved a man to be insane.
At a happy period Beethoven thus unveils the generous sympathies of his heart.
"My compositions are well paid, and I may say I have more orders than I can well execute; six or seven publishers, and more, being ready to take any of my works. I need no longer submit to being bargained with; I ask my terms, and am paid. You see this is an excellent thing; as, for instance, I see a friend in want, and my purse does not at the moment permit me to assist him; I have but to sit down and write, and my friend is no longer in need."
Some additional particulars are given, in the letters collected by Moscheles, of the struggles of his mind during the coming on of deafness. This calamity, falling upon the greatest genius of his time, in the prime of manhood,—a calamity which threatened to destroy not only all enjoyment of life, but the power of using the vast treasure with which he had been endowed for the use of all men,—casts common ills so into the shade that they can scarcely be seen. Who darescomplain, since Beethoven could resign himself, to such an ill at such a time as this?
"This beautiful country of mine, what was my lot in it? The hope of a happy futurity. This might now be realized if I were freed from my affliction. O, freed from that, I should compass the world! I feel it—my youth is but beginning; have I not been hitherto but a sickly creature? My physical powers have for some time been materially increasing—those of my mind likewise. I feel myself nearer and nearer the mark; I feel but cannot describe it; this alone is the vital principle of your Beethoven. No rest for me: I know of none but in sleep, and I grieve at having to sacrifice to that more time than I have hitherto deemed necessary. Take but one half of my disease from me, and I will return to you a matured and accomplished man, renewing the ties of our friendship; for you shall see me as happy as I may be in this sublunary world; not as a sufferer; no, that would be more than I could bear; I will blunt the sword of fate; it shall not utterly destroy me. How beautiful it is to live a thousand lives in one! No; I am not made for a retired life—I feel it."
Hedidblunt the sword of fate; hedidlive a thousand lives in one; but that sword had power to inflict a deep and poisoned wound; those thousand lives cost him the pangs of a thousand deaths. He, born for perpetual conquest, was condemned through life to "resignation." Let any man, disposed to complain of his own ills, read the "Will" of Beethoven; and see if he dares speak of himself above a whisper, after.
The matter of interest new to us in this English book is in notes and appendix. Schindler's biography, whose plain andnaïvestyle is fit for the subject, is ironed out and plaited afresh to suit the "genteel" English, in this translation. Elsewhere we have given in brief the strong lineaments andpiquant anecdotes from this biography;[7]here there is not room: smooth and shorn as it is, we wish the translation might be reprinted here.
We may give, at parting, two directions for the study of Beethoven's genius and the perusal of his biography in two sayings of his own. For the biography, "The limits have never yet been discovered which genius and industry could not transcend." For the music, "From the depths of the soul brought forth, she (Poesy) can only by the depths of the soul be received or understood."
WErejoice to see these reprints of Brown's novels, as we have long been ashamed that one who ought to be the pride of the country, and who is, in the higher qualities of the mind, so far in advance of our other novelists, should have become almost inaccessible to the public.
It has been the custom to liken Brown to Godwin. But there was no imitation, no second hand in the matter. They were congenial natures, and whichever had come first might have lent an impulse to the other. Either mind might have been conscious of the possession of that peculiar vein of ore, without thinking of working it for the mint of the world, till the other, led by accident, or overflow of feeling, showed him how easy it was to put the reveries of his solitary hours into words, and upon paper, for the benefit of his fellow-men.
"My mind to me a kingdom is."
Such a man as Brown or Godwin has a right to say that. Their mind is no scanty, turbid rill, rejoicing to be daily fed from a thousand others, or from the clouds. Its plenteous source rushes from a high mountain between bulwarks of stone. Its course, even and full, keeps ever green its banks, and affords the means of life and joy to a million gliding shapes, that fill its deep waters, and twinkle above its golden sands.
Life and Joy! Yes, Joy! These two have been called the dark Masters, because they disclose the twilight recesses ofthe human heart. Yet the gravest page in the history of such men is joy, compared with the mixed, shallow, uncertain pleasures of vulgar minds. Joy! because they were all alive, and fulfilled the purposes of being. No sham, no imitation, no convention deformed or veiled their native lineaments, or checked the use of their natural force. All alive themselves, they understood that there is no happiness without truth, no perception of it without real life. Unlike most men, existence was to them not a tissue of words and seemings, but a substantial possession.
Born Hegelians, without the pretensions of science, they sought God in their own consciousness, and found him. The heart, because it saw itself so fearfully and wonderfully made, did not disown its Maker. With the highest idea of the dignity, power, and beauty of which human nature is capable, they had courage to see by what an oblique course it proceeds, yet never lose faith that it would reach its destined aim. Thus their darkest disclosures are not hobgoblin shows, but precious revelations.
Brown is great as ever human writer was in showing the self-sustaining force of which a lonely mind is capable. He takes one person, makes him brood like the bee, and extract from the common life before him all its sweetness, its bitterness, and its nourishment.
We say makeshim, but it increases our own interest in Brown, that, a prophet in this respect of a better era, he has usually placed this thinking, royal mind in the body of a woman. This personage, too, is always feminine, both in her character and circumstances, but a conclusive proof that the termfeminineis not a synonyme forweak. Constantia, Clara Wieland, have loving hearts, graceful and plastic natures, but they have also noble, thinking minds, full of resource, constancy, courage. The Marguerite of Godwin, no less, is all refinement and the purest tenderness; but she is also the soul of honor, capable of deep discernment, and of acting in conformity with the inferences she draws. The Man of Brownand Godwin has not eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and been driven to sustain himself by the sweat of his brow for nothing, but has learned the structure and laws of things, and become a being, natural, benignant, various, and desirous of supplying the loss of innocence by the attainment of virtue. So his Woman need not be quite so weak as Eve, the slave of feeling or of flattery; she also has learned to guide her helm amid the storm across the troubled waters.
The horrors which mysteriously beset these persons, and against which, so far as outward facts go, they often strive in vain, are but a representation of those powers permitted to work in the same way throughout the affairs of this world. Their demoniacal attributes only represent a morbid state of the intellect, gone to excess from want of balance with the other powers. There is an intellectual as well as a physical drunkenness, and which, no less, impels to crime. Carwin, urged on to use his ventriloquism till the presence of such a strange agent wakened the seeds of fanaticism in the breast of Wieland, is in a state no more foreign to nature than that of the wretch executed last week, who felt himself drawn as by a spell to murder his victim, because he had thought of her money and the pleasures it might bring him, till the feeling possessed his brain that hurls the gamester to ruin. The victims of such agency are like the soldier of the Rio Grande, who, both legs shot off, and his life-blood rushing out with every pulse, replied serenely to his pitying comrades, that "he had now that for which the soldier enlisted." The end of the drama is not in this world, and the fiction which rounds off the whole to harmony and felicity before the curtain falls, sins against truth, and deludes the reader. The Nelsons of the human race are all the more exposed to the assaults of Fate, that they are decorated with the badges of well-earned glory. Who but feels as they fall in death, or rise again to a mutilated existence, that the end is not yet? Who, that thinks, but must feel that the recompense is, where Brownplaces it, in the accumulation of mental treasure, in the severe assay by fire that leaves the gold pure to be used some time—somewhere?
Brown,—man of the brooding eye, the teeming brain, the deep and fervent heart,—if thy country prize thee not, and had almost lost thee out of sight, it is because her heart is made shallow and cold, her eye dim, by the pomp of circumstance, the love of gross outward gain. She cannot long continue thus, for it takes a great deal of soul to keep a huge body from disease and dissolution. As there is more soul, thou wilt be more sought; and many will yet sit down with thy Constantia to the meal and water on which she sustained her full and thoughtful existence, who could not endure the ennui of aldermanic dinners, or find any relish in the imitation of French cookery. To-day many will read the words, and some have a cup large enough to receive the spirit, before it is lost in the sand on which their feet are planted.
Brown's high standard of the delights of intellectual communion and of friendship, correspond with the fondest hopes of early days. But in the relations of real life, at present, there is rarely more than one of the parties ready for such intercourse as he describes. On the one side there will be dryness, want of perception, or variety, a stupidity unable to appreciate life's richest boon when offered to its grasp; and the finer nature is doomed to retrace its steps, unhappy as those who, having force to raise a spirit, cannot retain or make it substantial, and stretch out their arms only to bring them back empty to the breast.
We were glad to see these reprints, but sorry to see them so carelessly done. Under the cheap system, the carelessness in printing and translating grows to a greater excess day by day. Please, Public, to remonstrate; else very soon all your books will be offered for two shillings apiece, and none of them in a fit state to be read.
MR. POEthrows down the gauntlet in his preface by what he says of "the paltry compensations, or more paltry commendations, of mankind." Some champion might be expected to start up from the "somewhat sizable" class embraced, or, more properly speaking, boxed on the ear, by this defiance, who might try whether the sting of Criticism was as indifferent to this knight of the pen as he professes its honey to be.
Were there such a champion, gifted with acumen to dissect, and a swift-glancing wit to enliven the operation, he could find no more legitimate subject, no fairer game, than Mr. Poe, who has wielded the weapons of criticism without relenting, whether with the dagger he rent and tore the garment in which some favored Joseph had pranked himself, secure of honor in the sight of all men, or whether with uplifted tomahawk he rushed upon the new-born children of some hapless genius, who had fancied, and persuaded his friends to fancy, that they were beautiful, and worthy a long and honored life. A large band of these offended dignitaries and aggrieved parents must be on the watch for a volume of "Poems by Edgar A. Poe," ready to cut, rend, and slash in turn, and hoping to see his own Raven left alone to prey upon the slaughter of which it is the herald.
Such joust and tournament we look to see, and, indeed, have some stake in the matter, so far as we have friends whose wrongs cry aloud for the avenger. Natheless we could nottake part in themêlée, except to join the crowd of lookers-on in the cry "heaven speed the right!"
Early we read that fable of Apollo who rewarded the critic, who had painfully winnowed the wheat,—with the chaff for his pains. We joined the gentle Affirmative School, and have confidence that if we indulge ourselves chiefly with the appreciation of good qualities, Time will take care of the faults. For Time holds a strainer like that used in the diamond mines—have but patience and the water and gravel will all pass through, and only the precious stones be left. Yet we are not blind to the uses of severe criticism, and of just censure, especially in a time and place so degraded by venal and indiscriminate praise as the present. That unholy alliance; that shameless sham, whose motto is,
that system of mutual adulation and organized puff which was carried to such perfection in the time, and may be seen drawn to the life in the correspondence, of Miss Hannah More, is fully represented in our day and generation. We see that it meets a counter-agency, from the league of Truth-tellers, few, but each of them mighty as Fingal or any other hero of the sort. Let such tell the whole truth, as well as nothing but the truth, but let their sternness be in the spirit of Love. Let them seek to understand the purpose and scope of an author, his capacity as well as his fulfilments, and how his faults are made to grow by the same sunshine that acts upon his virtues, for this is the case with talents no less than with character. The rich field requires frequent and careful weeding; frequent, lest the weeds exhaust the soil; careful, lest the flowers and grain be pulled up along with the weeds.
It has often been our lot to share the mistake of Gil Blas with regard to the Archbishop. We have taken people at their word, and while rejoicing that women could bearneglect without feeling mean pique, and that authors, rising above self-love, could show candor about their works, and magnanimously meet both justice and injustice, we have been rudely awakened from our dream, and found that chanticleer, who crowed so bravely, showed himself at last but a dunghill fowl. Yet Heaven grant we never become too worldly-wise thus to trust a generous word, and we surely are not so yet, for we believe Mr. Poe to be sincere when he says,—
"In defence of my own taste, it is incumbent upon me to say that I think nothing in this volume of much value to the public or very creditable to myself. Events not to be controlled have prevented me from making, at any time, any serious effort, in what, under happier circumstances, would have been the field of my choice."
We believe Mr. Poe to be sincere in this declaration; if he is, we respect him; if otherwise, we do not. Such things should never be said unless in hearty earnest. If in earnest, they are honorable pledges; if not, a pitiful fence and foil of vanity. Earnest or not, the words are thus far true; the productions in this volume indicate a power to do something far better. With the exception of the Raven, which seems intended chiefly to show the writer's artistic skill, and is in its way a rare and finished specimen, they are all fragments—fyttesupon the lyre, almost all of which leave a something to desire or demand. This is not the case, however, with these lines:—
To One in Paradise.Thou wast all that to me, love,For which my soul did pine—A green isle in the sea, love,A fountain and a shrine,All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,And all the flowers were mine.Ah, dream too bright to last!Ah, starry Hope! that didst ariseBut to be overcast!A voice from out the Future cries,"On! on!"—but o'er the Past(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering liesMute, motionless, aghast!For, alas! alas! with meThe light of life is o'er!No more—no more—no more(Such language holds the solemn seaTo the sands upon the shore)Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,Or the stricken eagle soar!And all my days are trances,And all my nightly dreamsAre where thy dark eye glances,And where thy footstep gleams—In what ethereal dances,By what eternal streams.
The poems breathe a passionate sadness, relieved sometimes by touches very lovely and tender:—
"Amid the earnest woesThat crowd around my earthly path(Drear path, alas! where growsNot even one lonely rose.") * * ** * * *
>"For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies,The life upon her yellow hair, but not within her eyes—The life still there, upon her hair—the death upon her eyes."
This kind of beauty is especially conspicuous, even rising into dignity, in the poem called the Haunted Palace.
The imagination of this writer rarely expresses itself in pronounced forms, but rather in a sweep of images, thronging and distant like a procession of moonlight clouds on the horizon, but like them characteristic and harmonious one with another, according to their office.
The descriptive power is greatest when it takes a shape not unlike an incantation, as in the first part of the Sleeper, where
"I stand beneath the mystic moon;An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,Exhales from out a golden rim,And, softly dripping, drop by drop,Upon the quiet mountain top,Steals drowsily and musicallyInto the universal valley."
Whyuniversal?—"resolve me that, Master Moth."
And farther on, "the lilylollsupon the wave."
This wordlolls, often made use of in these poems, presents a vulgar image to our thought; we know not how it is to that of others.
The lines which follow, about the open window, are highly poetical. So is the Bridal Ballad in its power of suggesting a whole tribe and train of thoughts and pictures, by few and simple touches.
The poems written in youth, written, indeed, we understand, in childhood, before the author was ten years old, are a great psychological curiosity. Is it the delirium of a prematurely excited brain that causes such a rapture of words? What is to be gathered from seeing the future so fully anticipated in the germ? The passions are not unfrequentlyfeltin their full shock, if not in their intensity, at eight or nine years old, but here they arereflected upon:—
The scenes from Politian are done with clear, sharp strokes; the power is rather metaphysical than dramatic. We must repeat what we have heretofore said, that we could wish to see Mr. Poe engaged in a metaphysical romance. He needs a sustained flight and far range to show what his powers really are. Let us have from him the analysis of the Passions, with their appropriate Fates; let us have his speculations clarified; let him intersperse dialogue or poem, as the occasion prompts, and give us something really good and strong, firmly wrought, and fairly blazoned.
THESEtwo publications have come to hand during the last month—a cheering gleam upon the winter of our discontent, as we saw the flood of bad translations of worse books which swelled upon the country.
We love our country well. The many false deeds and low thoughts; the devotion to interest; the forgetfulness of principle; the indifference to high and noble sentiment, which have, in so many ways, darkened her history for some years back, have not made us despair of her yet fulfilling the great destiny whose promise rose, like a star, only some half a century ago upon the hopes of the world.
Should that star be forsaken by its angel, and those hopes set finally in clouds of shame, the church which we had built out of the ruins of the ancient time must fall to the ground. This church seemed a model of divine art. It contained a labyrinth which, when threaded by aid of the clew of Faith, presented, re-viewed from its centre, the most admirable harmony and depth of meaning in its design, and comprised in its decorations all the symbols of permanent interest of which the mind of man has made use for the benefit of man. Such was to be our church, a church not made with hands, catholic, universal, all whose stones should be living stones, its officials the cherubim of Love and Knowledge, its worship wiser and purer action than has before been known to men. To such a church men do indeed constitute the state, and men indeedwe hoped from the American church and state, men so truly human that they could not live while those made in their own likeness were bound down to the condition of brutes.
Should such hopes be baffled, should such a church fall in the building, such a state find no realization except to the eye of the poet, God would still be in the world, and surely guide each bird, that can be patient, on the wing to its home at last. But expectations so noble, which find so broad a basis in the past, which link it so harmoniously with the future, cannot lightly be abandoned. The same Power leads by a pillar of cloud as by a pillar of fire—the Power that deemed even Moses worthy only of a distant view of the Promised Land.
And to those who cherish such expectations rational education, considered in various ways and bearings, must be the one great topic of interest; an enterprise in which the humblest service is precious and honorable to any who can inspire its soul. Our thoughts anticipate with eager foresight the race that may grow up from this amalgamation of all races of the world which our situation induces. It was the pride and greatness of ancient nations to keep their blood unmixed; but it must be ours to be willing to mingle, to accept in a generous spirit what each clime and race has to offer us.
It is, indeed, the case that much diseased substance is offered to form this new body; and if there be not in ourselves a nucleus, a heart of force and purity to assimilate these strange and various materials into a very high form of organic life, they must needs induce one distorted, corrupt, and degraded beyond the example of other times and places. There will be no medium about it. Our grand scene of action demands grandeur and purity; lacking these, one must suffer from so base failure in proportion to the success that should have been.
It would be the worthiest occupation of mind to ascertainthe conditions propitious for this meeting of the nations in their new home, and to provide preventions for obvious dangers that attend it. It would be occupation for which the broadest and deepest knowledge of human nature in its mental, moral, and bodily relations, the noblest freedom from prejudice, with the finest discrimination as to differences and relations, directed and enlightened by a prophetic sense as to what Man is designed by God to become, would all be needed to fit the thinker. Yet some portion of these qualities, or of some of these qualities, if accompanied by earnestness and aspiration, may enable any one to offer useful suggestions. The mass of ignorance and selfishness is such, that no grain of leaven must be despised.
And as the men of all countries come hither to find a home, and become parts of a new life, so do the books of all countries gravitate towards this new centre. Copious infusions from all quarters mingle daily with the new thought which is to grow into American mind, and develop American literature.
As every ship brings us foreign teachers, a knowledge of living contemporary tongues must in the course of fifty years become the commonest attainment. There exists no doubt in the minds of those who can judge, that the German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese tongues might, by familiar instruction andan intelligent method, be taught with perfect ease during the years of childhood, so that the child would have as distinct a sense of their several natures, and nearly as much expertness in their use, as in his own. The higher uses of such knowledge can, of course, be expected only in a more advanced state of the faculties; but it is pity that the acquaintance with the medium of thought should be deferred to a period when the mind is sufficiently grown to bend its chief attention on the thoughts themselves. Much of the most precious part of short human lives is now wasted from an ignorance of what might easily be done for children,and without taking from them the time they need for common life, play, and bodily growth, more than at present.
Meanwhile the English begins to vie with the German and French literature in the number, though not in the goodness, of the translations from other languages. The indefatigable Germans can translate, and do other things too; so that geniuses often there apply themselves to the work as an amusement: even the all-employed GÅ“the has translated one of the books before us, (Memoirs of Cellini.) But in English we know but of one, Coleridge's Wallenstein, where the reader will feel the electric current undiminished by the medium through which it comes to him. And then the profligate abuse of the power of translation has been unparalleled, whether in the choice of books or the carelessness in disguising those that were good in a hideous mask. No falsehood can be worse than this of deforming the expression of a great man's thoughts, of corrupting that form which he has watched, and toiled and suffered to make beautiful and true. We know no falsehood that should call a more painful blush to the cheek of one engaged in it.
We have no narrowness in our view of the contents of such books. We are not afraid of new standards and new examples. Only give enough of them, variety enough, and from well-intentioned, generous minds. America can choose what she wants, if she has sufficient range of choice; and if there is any real reason, any deep root in the tastes and opinions she holds at present, she will not lightly yield them. Only give her what is good of its kind. Her hope is not in ignorance, but in knowledge. We are, indeed, very fond of range, and if there is check, there should be countercheck; and in this view we are delighted to see these great Italians domesticated here. We have had somewhat too much of the French and Germans of late. We value unchangeably our sparkling and rapid French friend; still more the searching, honest, and, in highest sense, visionary German genius. Butthere is not on earth, and, we dare to say it, will not be again, geniuslikethat of Italy, or that can compare with it, in its own way.
Italy and Greece were alike in this; those sunny skies ripened their fruits perfectly. The oil and honey of Greece, the wine of Italy, not only suggest, but satisfy.Therewe find fulfilment, elsewhere great achievement only.
O, acute, cautious, calculating Yankee; O, graceful, witty, hot-blooded, flimsy Southron; and thou, man of the West, going ahead too fast to pick up a thought or leave a flower upon thy path,—look at these men with their great fiery passions, but will and intellect still greater and stronger, perfectly sincere, from a contempt of falsehood. If they had acted wrong, they said and felt that they had, and that it was base and hateful in them. They were sagacious, as children are, not from calculation, but because the fine instincts of nature were unspoiled in them. I speak now of Alfieri and Cellini. Dante had all their instinctive greatness and deep-seated fire, with the reflective and creative faculties besides, to an extent of which they never dreamed.
He who reads these biographies may take them from several points of view. As pictures of manners, as sincere transcripts of the men and their times, they are not and could not be surpassed. That truth which Rousseau sought so painfully and vainly by self-brooding, subtle analysis, they attained without an effort.Whythey felt they cared little, butwhatthey felt they surely knew; and where a fly or worm has injured the peach, its passage is exactly marked, so that you are sure the rest is fair and sound. Both as physiological and psychical histories, they are full of instruction. In Alfieri, especially, the nervous disease generated in the frame by any uncongenial tension of the brain, the periodical crises in his health, the manner in which his accesses of passion came upon him, afford infinite suggestion to one who has an eye for the circumstances which fashion the destiny of man.Let the physician compare the furies of Alfieri with the silent rages of Byron, and give the mother and pedagogue the light in which they are now wholly wanting, showing how to treat such noble plants in the early stages of growth. We think the "hated cap" would not be put a second time on the head so easily diseased.
The biography of Cellini, it is commonly said, is more interesting than any romance. Itisa romance, with the character of the hero fully brought out. Cellini lived in all the fulness of inward vigor, all the variety of outward adventure, and passed through all the signs of the Zodiac, in his circling course, occasionally raising a little vapor from the art magic. He was really the Orlando Furioso turned Goldsmith, and Angelicas and all the Peers of France joined in the show. However, he never lived deeply; he had not time; the creative energy turned outward too easily, and took those forms that still enchant the mind of Europe. Alfieri was very different in this. He was like the root of some splendid southern plant, buried beneath a heap of rubbish. Above him was a glorious sky, fit to develop his form and excite his colors; but he was compelled to a long and terrible struggle to get up where he could be free to receive its influence. Institutions, language, family, modes of education,—all were unfit for him; and perhaps no man was ever called to such efforts, after he had reached manly age, to unmake and remake himself before he could become what his inward aspiration craved. All this deepened his nature, and itwasdeep. It is his great force of will and the compression of Nature within its iron grasp, where Nature was so powerful and impulsive, that constitutes the charm of his writings. It is the man Alfieri who moves, nay, overpowers us, and not his writings, which have no flow nor plastic beauty. But we feel the vital dynamics, and imagine it all.
By us Americans, if ever such we really are to be, Alfierishould be held sacred as a godfather and holy light. He was a harbinger of what most gives this time its character and value. He was the friend of liberty, the friend of man, in the sense that Burns was—of the native nobleness of man. Soiled and degraded men he hated. He was, indeed, a man of pitiless hatred as of boundless love, and he had bitter prejudices too, but they were from antipathies too strongly intertwined with his sympathies for any hand less powerful than that of Death to rend them away.
But our space does not permit us to do any justice to such a life as Alfieri's. Let others read it, not from their habitual, but an eternal point of view, and they cannot mistake its purport. Some will be most touched by the storms of his youth, others by the exploits and conquests of his later years; but all will find him, in the words of his friend Casella, "sculptured just as he was, lofty, strange, and extreme, not only in his natural characteristics, but in every work that did not seem to him unworthy of his generous affections. And where he went too far, it is easy to perceive his excesses always flowed from some praiseworthy sentiment."
Among a crowd of thoughts suggested to the mind by reperusal of this book, to us a friend of many years standing, we hastily note the following:—
Alfieri knew how to be a friend, and had friends such as his masculine and uncompromising temper fitted him to endure and keep. He had even two or three of those noble friends. He was a perfect lover in delicacy of sentiment, in devotion, in a desire for constancy, in a high ideal, growing always higher, and he was, at last, happy in love. Many geniuses have spoken worthily of women in their works, but he speaks of woman as she wishes to be spoken of, and declares that he met the desire of his soul realized in life. This, almost alone, is an instance where a great nature was permanentlysatisfied, and the claims of man and woman equally met, where one of the parties had the impatient fire of genius. His testimony on this subject is of so rare a sort, we must copy it:—
"My fourth and last passion, fortunately for me, showed itself by symptoms entirely different from the three first. In the former, my intellect had felt little of the fires of passion; but now my heart and my genius were both equally kindled, and if my passion was less impetuous, it became more profound and lasting. Such was the flame which by degrees absorbed every affection and thought of my being, and it will never fade away except with my life. Two months satisfied me that I had now found thetrue woman; for, instead of encountering in her, as in all common women, an obstacle to literary glory, a hinderance to useful occupations, and a damper to thought, she proved a high stimulus, a pure solace, and an alluring example to every beautiful work. Prizing a treasure so rare, I gave myself away to her irrevocably. And I certainly erred not. More than twelve years have passed, and while I am writing this chit-chat, having reached that calm season when passion loses its blandishments, I cherish her more tenderly than ever; and I love her just in proportion as glide from her in the lapse of time those little-esteemed toll-gatherers of departing beauty. In her my soul is exalted, softened, and made better day by day; and I will dare to say and believe she has found in me support and consolation."
We have spoken of the peculiarities in Alfieri's physical condition. These naturally led him to seek solace in violent exercise; and as in the case of Beckford and Byron, horses were his best friends in the hour of danger. This sort of man is the modern Achilles, "the tamer of horses." In what degree the health of Alfieri was improved, and his sympathies awakened by the society and care of these noble animals, is very evident. Almost all persons, perhaps all thatare in a natural state, need to stand in patriarchal relations with the animals most correspondent with their character. We have the highest respect for this instinct and sincere belief in the good it brings; if understood, it would be cherished, not ridiculed.
TRANSLATINGDante is indeed a labor of love. It is one in which even a moderate degree of success is impossible. No great Poet can be well translated. The form of his thought is inseparable from his thought. The births of his genius are perfect beings: body and soul are in such perfect harmony that you cannot at all alter the one without veiling the other. The variation in cadence and modulation, even where the words are exactly rendered, takes not only from the form of the thought, but from the thought itself, its most delicate charm. Translations come to us as a message to the lover from the lady of his love through the lips of a confidante or menial—we are obliged to imagine what was most vital in the utterance.
These difficulties, always insuperable, are accumulated a hundred-fold in the case of Dante, both by the extraordinary depth and subtlety of his thought, and his no less extraordinary power of concentrating its expression, till every verse is like a blade of thoroughly tempered steel. You might as well attempt to translate a glance of fire from the human eye into any other language—even music cannot do that.
We think, then, that the use of Cary's translation, or any other, can never be to diffuse a knowledge of Dante. This is not in its nature diffusible; he is one of those to whom others must draw near; he cannot be brought to them. He has no superficial charm to cheat the reader into a belief that he knows him, without entrance into the same sphere.
These translations can be of use only to the translators, as a means of deliberate study of the original, or to others whoare studying the original, and wish to compare their own version of doubtful passages with that of an older disciple, highly qualified, both by devotion and mental development, for the study.
We must say a few words as to the pedantic folly with which this study has been prosecuted in this country, and, we believe, in England. Not only the tragedies of Alfieri and the Faust of Goethe, but the Divina Commedia of Dante,—a work which it is not probable there are upon earth, at any one time, a hundred minds able to appreciate,—are turned into school books for little girls who have just left their hoops and dolls, and boys whose highest ambition it is to ride a horse that will run away, and brave the tutor in a college frolic.
This is done from the idea that, in order to get acquainted with a foreign language, the student must read books that have attained the dignity of classics, and also which are "hard." Hard indeed it must be for the Muses to see their lyres turned into gridirons for the preparation of a school-girl's lunch; harder still for the younglings to be called to chew and digest thunderbolts, in lieu of their natural bread and butter.
Are there not "classics" enough which would not suffer by being put to such uses? In Greek, Homer is a book for a boy; must you give him Plato because it is harder? Is there no choice among the Latins? Are all who wrote in the Latin tongue equally fit for the appreciation of sixteen Yankee years? In Italian, have you not Tasso, Ariosto, and other writers who have really a great deal that the immature mind can enjoy, without choking it with the stern politics of Alfieri, or piling upon a brain still soft the mountainous meanings of Dante? Indeed, they are saved from suffering by the perfect ignorance of all meaning in which they leave these great authors, fancying, to their life-long misfortune, that they have read them. I have been reminded, by the remarks of my young friends on these subjects, of the Irish peasant, who, having been educated on a book prepared for his use, called"Reading made easy," blesses through life the kindness that taught him his "Radamadasy;" and of the child who, hearing her father quote Horace, observedshe"thought Latin was even sillier than French."
No less pedantic is the style in which the grown-up, in stature at least, undertakes to become acquainted with Dante. They get the best Italian Dictionary, all the notes they can find, amounting in themselves to a library, for his countrymen have not been less external and benighted in their way of regarding him. Painfully they study through the book, seeking with anxious attention to know who Signor This is, and who was the cousin of Signora That, and whether any deep papal or anti-papal meaning was couched by Dante under the remark that Such-a-one wore a great-coat. A mind, whose small chambers look yet smaller by being crowded with furniture from all parts of the world, bought by labor, not received from inheritance or won by love, asserts that he must understand Dante well, better than any other person probably, because he has studied him through in this way thirty or forty times. As well declare you have a better appreciation of Shakspeare than any one else because you have identified the birthplace of Dame Quickly, or ascertained the churchyard where the ghost of the royal Dane hid from the sight of that far more celestial spirit, his son.
O, painstaking friends! Shut your books, clear your minds from artificial nonsense, and feel that only by spirit can spirit be discerned. Dante, like each other great one, took the stuff that lay around him, and wove it into a garment of light. It is not by ravelling that you will best appreciate its tissue or design. It is not by studying out the petty strifes or external relations of his time, that you can become acquainted with the thought of Dante. To him these things were only soil in which to plant himself—figures by which to dramatize and evolve his ideas. Would you learn him, go listen in the forest of human passions to all the terrible voices heheard with a tormented but never-to-be-deafened ear; go down into the hells, where each excess that mars the harmony of nature is punished by the sinner finding no food except from his own harvest; pass through the purgatories of speculation, of struggling hope, and faith, never quite quenched, but smouldering often and long beneath the ashes. Soar if thou canst, but if thou canst not, clear thine eye to see this great eagle soar into the higher region where forms arrange themselves for stellar dance and spheral melody,—and thought, with costly-accelerated motion, raises itself a spiral which can only end in the heart of the Supreme.
He who finds in himself no fitness to study Dante in this way, should regard himself as in the position of a candidate for the ancient mysteries, when rejected as unfit for initiation. He should seek in other ways to purify, expand, and strengthen his being, and, when he feels that he is nobler and stronger, return and try again whether he is "grown up to it," as the Germans say.
"The difficulty is in the thoughts;" and this cannot be obviated by the most minute acquaintance with the history of the times. Comparison of one edition with another is of use, as a guard against obstructions through mistake. Still more useful will be the method recommended by Mr. Cary, of comparing the Poet with himself; this belongs to the intellectual method, and is the way in which to study our intellectual friend.
The versions of Cary and Lyell will be found of use to the student, if he wants to compare his ideas with those of accomplished fellow-students. The poems in the London book would aid much in a full appreciation of the comedy; they ought to be read in the original, but copies are not easily to be met here, unless in the great libraries. The Vita Nuova is the noblest expression extant of the inward life of Love, the best preface and comment to every thing else that Dante did.
'Tis pity that the designs of Flaxman are so poorly reproduced in this American book. It would have been far better to have had it a little dearer, and thus better done. The designs of Flaxman were really a noble comment upon Dante, and might help to interpret him; and we are sorry that those who can see only a few of them should see them so imperfectly. But in some, as in that of the meeting with Farinata, the expression cannot be destroyed while one line of the original remained. The "lost portrait" we do not like as preface to "La Divina Comedia." To that belongs our accustomed object of reverence, the head of Dante, such as the Florentine women saw him, when they thought his hair and beard were still singed, his face dark and sublime with what he had seenbelow.
Prefixed to the other book is a head "from a cast taken after death at Ravenna, A. D. 1321." It has the grandeur which death sometimes puts on; the fulness of past life is there, but made sacred in Eternity. It is also the only front view of Dante we have seen. It is not unworthy to mark the point
We ought to say, in behalf of this publication, that whosoever wants Cary's version will rejoice, at last, as do we, to possess it in so fair and legible guise.
Before leaving the Italians, we must mourn over the misprints of our homages to the great tragedian in the preceding review. Our manuscripts being as illegible as if we were a great genius, we never complain of these errata, except when we are made to reverse our meaning on some vital point. We did not say that Alfieri was perfectin person,nor sundry other things that are there; but we do mourn at seeming to say of our friends, "Whythey felt they care little, butwhatthey felt theyscarcelyknew," when in fact we asserted, "what they felt theysurelyknew."
In the article on the Celestial Empire we had made this assertion of the Chinese music: "Liketheirpoetry, the music is of the narrowest monotony;" in place of which stands this assertion: "Liketruepoetry, their music is of the narrowest monotony." But we trust the most careless reader would not think the merely human mind capable of so original a remark, and will put this blasphemy to account of that little demon who has so much to answer for in the sufferings of poor writers before they can get their thoughts to the eyes of their fellow-creatures, in print, that there seems scarcely a chance of his being redeemed as long as there is one author in existence to accuse him.[11]
SUCHis the title of a volume just issued from the press; a grand title, which suggests the epic poet or the philosopher. The purpose of the work, however, is modest. It is merely a compilation, from which those who have lived at some distance from the great highway may get answers to their questions, as to events and circumstances which may have escaped them. It is one of those books which will be valued in the backwoods.
It would be a great book indeed, and one that would require the eye and heart of a great man,—great as a judge, great as a seer, and great as a prophet,—that should select for us and present in harmonious outline the true American facts. To choose the right point of view supposes command of the field.
Such a man must be attentive, a quiet observer of the slighter signs of growth. But he must not be one to dwell superstitiously on details, nor one to hasten to conclusions. He must have the eye of the eagle, the courage of the lion, the patience of the worm, and faith such as is the prerogative of man alone, and of man in the highest phase of his culture.
We doubt not the destiny of our country—that she is to accomplish great things for human nature, and be the mother of a nobler race than the world has yet known. But she has been so false to the scheme made out at her nativity, that it is now hard to say which way that destiny points. We can hardly exhibit the true American facts without some idea of the real character of America. Only one thing seems clear—that the energy here at work is very great, though the men employed in carrying out its purposes may have generally nomore individual ambition to understand those purposes, or cherish noble ones of their own, than the coral insect through whose restless working new continents are upheaved from ocean's breast.
Such a man, passing in a boat from one extremity of the Mississippi to another, and observing every object on the shore as he passed, would yet learn nothing of universal or general value, because he has no principles, even in hope, by which to classify them. American facts! Why, what has been done that marks individuality? Among men there is Franklin. He is a fact, and an American fact. Niagara is another, in a different style. The way in which newspapers and other periodicals are managed is American; a go-ahead, fearless adroitness is American; so isnot, exclusively, the want of strict honor. But we look about in vain for traits as characteristic of what may be individually the character of the nation, as we can find at a glance in reference to Spain, England, France, or Turkey. America is as yet but a European babe; some new ways and motions she has, consequent on a new position; but that soul that may shape her mature life scarce begins to know itself yet. One thing is certain; we live in a large place, no less morally than physically: woe to him who lives meanly here, and knows the exhibitions of selfishness and vanity as the only American facts.
ASwe pass the old Brick Chapel our eye is sometimes arrested by placards that hang side by side. On one is advertised "the Lives of the Apostles," on the other "Napoleon and his Marshals."
Surely it is the most monstrous thing the world ever saw, that eighteen hundred years' profound devotion to a religious teacher should not preclude flagrant and all but universal violation of his most obvious precepts; that Napoleon and his Marshals should be some of the best ripened fruit of our time; that our own people, so unwearied in building up temples of wood and stone to the Prince of Peace, should be at this era mad with boyish exultation at the winning of battles, and in a bad cause too.
In view of such facts we cannot wonder that Dr. Channing, the editor of the Tribune, and others who make Christianity their standard, should find little savor in glowing expositions of the great French drama, and be disgusted at words of defence, still more of admiration, spoken in behalf of its leading actor.
We can easily admit at once that the whole French drama was anti-Christian, just as the political conduct of every nation of Christendom has been thus far, with rare and brief exceptions. Something different might have been expected from our own, because the world has now attained a clearer consciousness of right, and in our case our position would have made obedience easy. We have not been led intotemptation; we sought it. It is greed, and not want, that has impelled this nation to wrong. The paths of peace would have been for her also the paths of wisdom and of pleasantness, but she would not, and has preferred the path of the beast of prey in the uncertain forest, to the green pastures where "walks the good Shepherd, his meek temples crowned with roses red and white."
Since the state of things is such, we see no extremity of censure that should fall upon the great French leader, except that he was like the majority. He was ruthless and selfish on a larger scale than most monarchs; but we see no difference in grain, nor in principles of action.
Admit, then, that he was not a good man, and never for one moment acted disinterestedly. But do not refuse to do homage to his genius. It is well worth your while to learn to appreciatethat, if you wish to understand the work that the spirit of the time did, and is still doing, through him; for his mind is still upon the earth, working here through the tributary minds it fed. We must say, for our own part, we cannot admit the right of men severely to criticise Napoleon, till they are able to appreciate what he was, as well as see what he was not. And we see no mind of sufficient grasp, or high-placed enough to take this estimate duly, nor do we believe this age will furnish one. Many problems will have to be worked out first.
We reject the exclusively moral no less than the exclusively intellectual view, and find most satisfaction in those who, aiming neither at apology nor attack, make their observations upon the great phenomenon as partial, and to be received as partial.
Mr. Headley, in his first surprise at finding how falsely John Bull, rarely liberal enough to be fully trusted in evidence on any topic, has spoken of the acts of a hated and dreaded foe, does indeed rush too much on the other side. He mistakes the touches of sentiment in Napoleon for genuine feeling.Now we know that Napoleon loved to read Ossian, and could appreciate the beauty of tenderness: but we do not believe that he had one particle of what is properly termed heart;—that is, he could always silence sentiment at once when his projects demanded it. Then Mr. Headley finds apologies for acts where apology is out of place. They characterize the ruthless nature of the man, and that is all that can be said of them. He moved on, like the Juggernaut car, to his end, and spilled the blood that was needed for this, whether that blood were "ditch-water" or otherwise. Neither is this supposing him to be a monster. The human heart is very capable of such uncontrolled selfishness, just as it is of angelic love. "'Tis but the first step that costs"—much. Yet some compassionate hand strewed flowers on Nero's grave, and the whole world cried shame when Bonaparte's Mameluke forsook his master.
Mr. Headley does not seem to be aware that there is no trust to be put in Napoleon's own account of his actions. He seems to have been almost incapable of speaking sincerely to those about him. We doubt whether he could have forgotten with the woman he loved, that she might become his historiographer.
But granting the worst that can be said of ruthless acts in the stern Corsican, are we to reserve our anathema for him alone? He is no worse than the other crowned ones, against whom he felt himself continually in the balance. He has shed a greater quantity of blood, and done mightier wrongs, because he had more power, and followed with more fervor a more dazzling lure. We see no other difference between his conduct and that of the great Frederic of Prussia. He never did any thing so meanly wicked as has just been done in stirring up the Polish peasants to assassinate the nobles. He never did any thing so atrocious as has been done by Nicholas of Russia, who, just after his hypocritical intercourse with that "venerable man," the Pope, when he so zealously defendedhimself against the charge of scourging nuns to convert them to the Greek church, administers the knout to a noble and beautiful lady because she had given shelter for an hour to the patriot Dembinski. Why then so zealous against Napoleon only? He is but a specimen of what man must become when hewillbe king over the bodies, where he cannot over the souls, of his fellow-men. We doubt if it is any worse in the sight of God to drain France of her best blood by the conscription, than to tear the flower of Genius from the breast of Italy to perish in a dungeon, leaving her overwhelmed and broken-hearted. Leaving all this aside, and granting that Napoleon might have done more and better, had his heart been pure from ambition, which gave it such electric power to animate a vast field of being, there is no reason why we should not prize what he did do. And here we think Mr. Headley's style the only one in place. We honor him for the power he shows of admiring the genius which, in ploughing its gigantic furrow, broke up every artificial barrier that hid the nations of Europe one from the other—that has left the "career open to talent," by a gap so broad that no "Chinese alliance" can ever close it again, and in its vast plans of civic improvement half-anticipated Fourier. With him allthoughtsbecamethings; it has been spoken in blame, it has been spoken in praise; for ourselves we see not how this most practical age and country can refuse to apprehend the designs, and study the instincts of this wonderful practical genius.
The characters of the marshals are kept up with the greatest spirit, and that power of seizing leading traits that gives these sketches the greatness of dramatic poetry. The marshals are majestic figures; men vulgar and undeveloped on many sides, but always clear and strong in their own way. One mind animates them, and of that mind Napoleon is the culminating point. He did not choose them; they were a part of himself, a part of the same thought of which he wasthe most forcible expression. If sometimes inclined to disparage them, it was as a man might disparage his hand by saying it was not his head. He truly felt that he was the central force, though some of them were greater in the details of action than himself. Attempts have often been made to darken even the military fame of Napoleon and his generals—attempts disgraceful enough from a foe whom they so long held in terror. But to any unprejudiced mind there is evident in the conduct of their battles, the development of the instincts of genius in mighty force, and to inevitable results.
With all the haste of hand and inequality of touch they show, these sketches are full of strength and brilliancy, an honor to the country that produced them. There is no got-up harmony, no attempt at originality or acuteness; all is living,—the overflow of the mind; we like Mr. Headley; even in his faults he is a most agreeable contrast to the made men of the day.
In the sketches of the Marshals we have the men before us, a living reality. Massena, at the siege of Genoa, is represented with a great deal of simple force. The whole personality of Murat, with his "Oriental nature" and Oriental dress, is admirably depicted. Why had nobody ever before had the clearness of perception to see just this,and no more, in the "theatrical" Murat? Of his darling hero, Ney, the writer has implied so much all along, that he lays less stress on what he says of him directly. He thinks it is all understood, and it is.
Take this book for just what it is; do not look for cool discussion, impartial criticism, but take it as a vivacious and feeling representation of events and actors in a great era: you will find it full of truth, such as only sympathy could teach, and will derive from it a pleasure and profit lively and genuine as itself. As to denying or correcting its statements, it is very desirable that those who are able should do that part of the work; but, in doing it, let them be grateful for whatisdone, and whattheycould not do; grateful for reproduction such as he who throws himself into the genius and the persons of the time may hope for; but he never can who keeps himself composed in critical distance and self-possession. You cannot have all excellences combined in one person; let us then cheerfully work together to complete the beautiful whole,—beautiful in its unity,—no less beautiful in its variety.