THISlecture of Dr. Warren is printed in a form suitable for popular distribution, while the high reputation of its author insures it respect. Readers will expect to find here those rules for daily practice taught by that plain common-sense which men possess from nature, but strangely lose sight of, amid their many inventions, and are obliged to rediscover by aid of experience and science.
Here will be found those general statements as to modes of exercise, care of the skin, choice of food, and time, and circumstances required for its digestion, which might furnish the ounce of prevention that is worth so many pounds of cure. And how much are these needed in this country, where the most barbarous ignorance prevails on the subject of cleanliness, sleeping accommodations, &c.! On these subjects improvement would be easy; that of diet is far more complicated, and is, unfortunately, one which requires great knowledge of the ways in which the human frame is affected by the changes of climate and various other influences, even wisely to discuss. If it is difficult where a race, mostly indigenous to the soil, feed upon what Mother Nature has prepared expressly for their use, and where excess or want of judgment in its use produces disease, it must be far more so where men come from all latitudes to live under new circumstances, and need a judicious adaptation of the old to the new. The dogmatism and proscription that prevail on this topic amusethe observer and distress the patient. "Touch no meat for your life," says one. "It is not meat, but sugar, that is your ruin," cries another. "No, salt is the destruction of the world," sadly and gravely declares a third. Milk, which once conciliated all regards, has its denunciators. "Water," say some, "is the bliss that shall dissolve all bane. Drink; wash—take to yourself all the water you can get." "That is madness—is far worse than useless," cry others, "unless the water be pure. You must touch none that has not been tested by a chemist." "Yes, you may at any rate drink it," say others, "and in large quantities, for the power of water to aid digestion is obvious to every observer."
"No," says Dr. Warren, "animals do not drink at the time they eat, but some hours after; and they generally take very small quantities of liquid, compared with that which is used by man. The savage, in his native wilds, takes his solid food, when he can obtain it, to satiety, reposes afterwards, and then resuming his chase through the forest, stops at the rivulet to allay his thirst. The disadvantage of taking a large quantity of liquid must be obvious to all those who consider that the digesting liquid is diluted and weakened in proportion to the quantity of drink."
What wonder is it, if even the well-disposed among the multitude, seeing such dissension among the counsellors, gathering just enough from their disputes to infer that they have no true philosophical basis for their opinions, and seeing those who would set the example in practice of this art without science of dietetics generally among the most morbid and ill-developed specimens of humanity, just throw aside all rule upon the subject, partake of what is set before them, trust to air, exercise, and good intentions to ward off the worst effects of the promiscuous fare?
Yet, while hopeless at present of selecting the right articles, and building up, so far as hereditary taint will permit, a pure and healthful body from feeding on congenial substances, weknow at least this much, that stimulants and over-eating—not food—are injurious, and may take care enough of ourselves to avoid these.
The other branches we can really act wisely in, Dr. Warren, after giving the usual directions (rarely followed as yet) for airing beds, and sleeping-rooms, adds,—
"The manner in which children sleep will readily be acknowledged to be important; yet very little attention is paid to this matter. Children are crowded together in small, unventilated rooms, often two or three in a bed, and on beds composed of half prepared feathers, from which issues a noxious effluvia, infecting the child at a period when he is least able to resist its influence; so that in the morning, instead of feeling the full refreshment and vigor natural to his age, he is pale, languid, and for some time indisposed to exertion.
"The rooms in which children are brought up should be well aired, by having a fireplace, which should be kept open the greater part of the year. There never should be more than one in the same bed; and this remark may be applied with equal propriety to adults. The substance on which they lie should be hair, thoroughly prepared, so that it should have no bad smell. In winter it may be of cotton, or of hair and cotton. It would be very desirable, however, to place children in separate apartments, as well as in separate beds.
"It has been justly said that adults as well as children had better employ single instead of double beds; this remark is intended to apply universally. The use of double beds has been very generally adopted in this country, perhaps in part as a matter of economy; but this practice is objectionable, for more reasons than can be stated here."
On the subject of exercise, he mentions particularly the triangle, and we copy what he says, because of the perfect ease and convenience with which one could be put up and used in every bed-chamber.
"The exercising the upper limbs is too much neglected; and it is important to provide the means of bringing them into action, as well to develop their powers as to enlarge and invigorate the chest, with which they are connected, and which they powerfully influence. The best I know of is the use of the triangle. This admirably exerts the upper limbs and the muscles of the chest, and, indeed, when adroitly employed, those of the whole body. The triangle is made of a stick of walnut wood, four feet long, and an inch and a half in diameter. To each end is connected a rope, the opposite extremities of which being confined together at such height as to allow the motion of swinging by the hands."
We have ourselves derived the greatest benefit from this simple means. Gymnastic exercises, and if possible in the open air, are needed by every one who is not otherwise led to exercise all parts of the body by various kinds of labor. Some, though only partial provision, is made for boys by gymnasia and riding-schools. In wiser nations, such have been the care of the state. And in despotic governments, the jealousy of a tyrant was never more justly awakened than when the youth of the land, by a devotion to gymnastic exercises, showed their aspiration to reach the healthful stature of manhood. For every one who possesses a strong mind in a sane body is heir presumptive to the kingdom of this world; he needs no external credentials, but has only to appear and make clear his title. But for such a princely form the eye searches the street, the mart, and the council-chamber, in vain.
Those who feel that the game of life is so nearly up with them that they cannot devote much of the time that is left to the care of wise living in their own persons, should, at least, be unwilling to injure the next generation by the same ignorance which has blighted so many of us in our earliest year. Such should attend to the work of Mr. Combe,[14]among othergood books. Mr. Combe has done much good already in this country, and this book should be circulated every where, for many of its suggestions are too obviously just not to be adopted as soon as read.
Dr. Warren bears his testimony against the pernicious effects that follow upon the use of tobacco, and we cannot but hope that what he says of its tendency to create cancer will have weight with some who are given to the detestable habit of chewing. This practice is so odious to women, that we must regard its prevalence here as a token of the very light regard in which they are held, and the consequent want of refinement among men. Dr. Warren seems to favor the practice of hydropathy to some extent, but must needs bear his testimony in full against homœopathy. No matter; the little doses will insinuate their way, and cure the ills that flesh is heir to,
FREDERICKDOUGLASShas been for some time a prominent member of the abolition party. He is said to be an excellent speaker—can speak from a thorough personal experience—and has upon the audience, besides, the influence of a strong character and uncommon talents. In the book before us he has put into the story of his life the thoughts, the feelings, and the adventures that have been so affecting through the living voice; nor are they less so from the printed page. He has had the courage to name persons, times, and places, thus exposing himself to obvious danger, and setting the seal on his deep convictions as to the religious need of speaking the whole truth. Considered merely as a narrative, we have never read one more simple, true, coherent, and warm with genuine feeling. It is an excellent piece of writing, and on that score to be prized as a specimen of the powers of the black race, which prejudice persists in disputing. We prize highly all evidence of this kind, and it is becoming more abundant. The cross of the Legion of Honor has just been conferred in France on Dumas and Souliè, both celebrated in the paths of light literature. Dumas, whose father was a general in the French army, is a mulatto; Souliè, a quadroon. He went from New Orleans, where, though to the eye a white man, yet, as known to have African blood in his veins, he could never have enjoyed the privileges due to a human being. Leaving the land of freedom, he found himself free to develop the powers that God had given.
Two wise and candid thinkers—the Scotchman Kinmont, prematurely lost to this country, of which he was so faithful and generous a student, and the late Dr. Channing,—both thought that the African race had in them a peculiar element, which, if it could be assimilated with those imported among us from Europe, would give to genius a development, and to the energies of character a balance and harmony, beyond what has been seen heretofore in the history of the world. Such an element is indicated in their lowest estate by a talent for melody, a ready skill at imitation and adaptation, an almost indestructible elasticity of nature. It is to be remarked in the writings both of Souliè and Dumas, full of faults, but glowing with plastic life and fertile in invention. The same torrid energy and saccharine fulness may be felt in the writings of this Douglass, though his life, being one of action or resistance, has been less favorable tosuchpowers than one of a more joyous flow might have been.
The book is prefaced by two communications—one from Garrison, and one from Wendell Phillips. That from the former is in his usual over-emphatic style. His motives and his course have been noble and generous; we look upon him with high respect; but he has indulged in violent invective and denunciation till he has spoiled the temper of his mind. Like a man who has been in the habit of screaming himself hoarse to make the deaf hear, he can no longer pitch his voice on a key agreeable to common ears. Mr. Phillips's remarks are equally decided, without this exaggeration in the tone. Douglass himself seems very just and temperate. We feel that his view, even of those who have injured him most, may be relied upon. He knows how to allow for motives and influences. Upon the subject of religion, he speaks with great force, and not more than our own sympathies can respond to. The inconsistencies of slaveholding professors of religion cry to Heaven. We are not disposed to detest, or refuse communion with them. Their blindness is but oneform of that prevalent fallacy which substitutes a creed for a faith, a ritual for a life. We have seen too much of this system of atonement not to know that those who adopt it often began with good intentions, and are, at any rate, in their mistakes worthy of the deepest pity. But that is no reason why the truth should not be uttered, trumpet-tongued, about the thing. "Bring no more vain oblations;" sermons must daily be preached anew on that text. Kings, five hundred years ago, built churches with the spoils of war; clergymen to-day command slaves to obey a gospel which they will not allow them to read, and call themselves Christians amid the curses of their fellow-men. The world ought to get on a little faster than this, if there be really any principle of improvement in it. The kingdom of heaven may not at the beginning have dropped seed larger than a mustard-seed, but even from that we had a right to expect a fuller growth than we can believe to exist, when we read such a book as this of Douglass. Unspeakably affecting is the fact that he never saw his mother at all by daylight.
"I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone."
The following extract presents a suitable answer to the hackneyed argument drawn by the defender of slavery from the songs of the slave, and is also a good specimen of the powers of observation and manly heart of the writer. We wish that every one may read his book, and see what a mind might have been stifled in bondage—what a man may be subjected to the insults of spendthrift dandies, or the blows of mercenary brutes, in whom there is no whiteness except of the skin, no humanity except in the outward form, and of whom the Avenger will not fail yet to demand, "Where is thy brother?"
"The Home Plantation of Colonel Lloyd wore the appeaanceof a country village. All the mechanical operations for all the farms were performed here. The shoemaking and mending, the blacksmithing, cartwrighting, coopering, weaving, and grain-grinding, were all performed by the slaves on the Home Plantation. The whole place wore a business-like aspect very unlike the neighboring farms. The number of houses, too, conspired to give it advantage over the neighboring farms. It was called by the slaves theGreat House Farm. Few privileges were esteemed higher, by the slaves of the out-farms, than that of being selected to do errands at the Great House Farm. It was associated in their minds with greatness. A representative could not be prouder of his election to a seat in the American Congress, than a slave on one of the out-farms would be of his election to do errands at the Great House Farm. They regarded it as evidence of great confidence reposed in them by their overseers; and it was on this account, as well as a constant desire to be out of the field, from under the driver's lash, that they esteemed it a high privilege, one worth careful living for. He was called the smartest and most trusty fellow who had this honor conferred upon him the most frequently. The competitors for this office sought as diligently to please their overseers as the office-seekers in the political parties seek to please and deceive the people. The same traits of character might be seen in Colonel Lloyd's slaves, as are seen in the slaves of the political parties.
"The slaves selected to go to the Great House Farm, for the monthly allowance for themselves and their fellow-slaves, were peculiarly enthusiastic. While on their way, they would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness. They would compose and sing as they went along, consulting neither time nor tune. The thought that came up came out,—if not in the word, in the sound,—and as frequently in the one as in the other. They would sometimessing the most pathetic sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous sentiment in the most pathetic tone. Into all their songs they would manage to weave something of the Great House Farm. Especially would they do this when leaving home. They would then sing most exultingly the following words:—
'I am going away to the Great House Farm!O, yea! O, yea! O!'
This they would sing as a chorus to words which to many would seem unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do.
"I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek. To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds. If any one wishes to be impressed with the soul-killingeffects of slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd's plantation, and, on allowance day, place himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that shall pass through the chambers of his soul; and if he is not thus impressed, it will only be because 'there is no flesh in his obdurate heart.'
"I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing among slaves as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy and singing for joy were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion."
THESEvolumes have met with as warm a reception "as ever unripe author's quick conceit," to use Mr. Taylor's own language, could hope or wish; and so deservedly, that the critic's happy task, in examining them, is to point out, not what is most to be blamed, but what is most to be praised.
With joy we hail a new poet. Star after star has been withdrawn from our firmament, and when that of Coleridge set, we seemed in danger of being left, at best, to a gray and confounding twilight; but, lo! a "ray of pure white light" darts across the obscured depths of ether, and allures our eyes and hearts towards the rising orb from which it emanates. Let us tremble no more lest our summer pass away without its roses, but receive our present visitor as the harbinger of a harvest of delights.
The natural process of the mind in forming a judgment is comparison. The office of sound criticism is to teach that this comparison should be made, not between the productions of differently-constituted minds, but between any one of these and a fixed standard of perfection. Nevertheless it is not contrary to the canon to take a survey of the labors of many artists with reference to one, if we value them, not according to the degree of pleasure we have experienced from them, which must always depend upon our then age, the state of the passions and relations with life, but according to the success of the artist in attaining the object he himself had in view. To illustrate: In the same room hang two pictures, Raphael'sMadonna and Martin's Destruction of Nineveh. A person enters, capable of admiring both, but young, excitable; he is delighted with the Madonna, but probably far more so with the other, because his imagination is at that time more developed than the pure love for beauty which is the characteristic of a taste in a higher state of cultivation. He prefers the Martin, because it excites in his mind a thousand images of sublimity and terror, recalls the brilliancy of Oriental history, and the stern pomp of the old prophetic day, and rouses his mind to a high state of action,thenas congenial with its wants as at a later day would be the feeling of contented absorption, of perfect satisfaction with a production of the human soul, which one of Raphael's calmly beautiful creations is fitted to cause. Now, it would be very unfair for this person to pronounce the Martin superior to the Raphael, because it then gave him more pleasure. But if he said, the one is intended to excite the imagination, the other to gratify the taste, that which fulfils its object most completely must be the best, whether it give me most pleasure or no; he would be on the right ground, and might consider the two pictures relatively to one another, without danger of straying very far from the truth.
Thisis the ground we would assume in a hasty sketch, which will not, we hope, be deemed irrelevant, of the most prominent essays to which the last sixty years have given rise in the department of the work now before us, previous to stating our opinion of its merits. Many, we are aware, ridicule the idea of filling reviews with long dissertations, and say they only want brief accounts of such books as are coming out, by way of saving time. With such we cannot agree. We think the office of the reviewer is, indeed, in part, to point out to the public attention deserving works, which might otherwise slumber too long unknown on the bookseller's shelves, but still more to present to the reader as large a cluster of objects round one point as possible, thus, by suggestion,stimulating him to take a broader or more careful view of the subject than his indolence or his business would have permitted.
The terms Classical and Romantic, which have so long divided European critics, and exercised so powerful an influence upon their decisions, are not much known or heeded among us,—as, indeed,belles-lettrescannot, generally, in our busy state of things, be important or influential, as among a less free and more luxurious people, to whom the more important truths are proffered through those indirect but alluring mediums. Here, where every thing may be spoken or written, and the powers that be, abused without ceremony on the very highway, the Muse has nothing to do with dagger or bowl; hardly is the censor's wand permitted to her hand. Yet is her lyre by no means unheeded, and if it is rather by refining our tastes than by modelling our opinions that she influences us, yet is that influence far from unimportant. And the time is coming, perhaps in our day, we may (if war do not untimely check the national progress) even see and temper its beginning, when the broad West shall swarm with an active, happy, and cultivated population; when the South, freed from the incubus which now oppresses her best energies, shall be able to do justice to the resources of her soil and of her mind; when the East, gathering from every breeze the riches of the old world, shall be the unwearied and loving agent to those regions which lie far away from the great deep, our bulwark and our minister. Then will the division of labor be more complete; then will a surplus of talent be spared from the mart, the forum, and the pulpit; then will the fine arts assume their proper dignity, as the expression of what is highest and most ethereal in the mind of a people. Then will our quarries be thoroughly explored, and furnish materials for stately fabrics to adorn the face of all the land, while our ports shall be crowded with foreign artists flocking to take lessons in the school of American architecture.Then will our floral treasures be arranged into harmonious gardens, which, environing tasteful homes, shall dimple all the landscape. Then will our Allstons and our Greenoughs preside over great academies, and be raised far above any need, except of giving outward form to the beautiful ideas which animate them; and ornament from the exhaustless stores of genius the marble halls where the people meet to rejoice, or to mourn, or where dwell those wise and good whom the people delight to honor. Then shall music answer to and exalt the national spirit, and the poet's brows shall be graced with the civic as well as the myrtle crown. Then shall we have an American mind, as well as an American system, and, no longer under the sad necessity of exchanging money for thoughts, traffic on perfectly equal terms with the other hemisphere. Then—ah, not yet!—shall our literature make its own laws, and give its own watchwords; till then we must learn and borrow from that of nations who possess a higher degree of cultivation though a much lower one of happiness.
The term Classical, used in its narrow sense, implies a servile adherence to the Unities, but in its wide and best sense, it means such a simplicity of plan, selection of actors and events, such judicious limitations on time and range of subject, as may concentrate the interest, perfect the illusion, and make the impression most distinct and forcible. Although no advocates for the old French school, with its slavish obedience to rule, which introduces follies greater than those it would guard against, we lay the blame, not on their view of the drama, but on the then bigoted nationality of the French mind, which converted the Mussulman prophet into a De Retz, the Roman princess into a French grisette, and infected the clear and buoyant atmosphere of Greece with the vapors of the Seine. We speak of the old French Drama: with the modern we do not profess to be acquainted, having met with scarcely any specimens in our own bookstores or libraries; but if it hasbeen revolutionized with the rest of their literature, it is probably as unlike as possible to the former models.
We shall speak of productions in the classical spirit first; because Mr. Taylor is a disciple of the other school, though otherwise we should have adopted a contrary course.
The most perfect specimens of this style with which we are acquainted are the Filippo, the Saul, and the Myrrha of Alfieri; the Wallenstein of Schiller; the Tasso and the Iphigenia of Gœthe. England furnishes nothing of the sort. She is thoroughly Shakspearian.
There is no higher pleasure than to see a genius of a wild, impassioned, many-sided eagerness, restraining its exuberance by its sense of fitness, taming its extravagance beneath the rule its taste approves, exhibiting the soul within soul, and the force of the will over all that we inherit. Theabandonof genius has its beauty—far more beautiful its voluntary submission to wise law. A picture, a description, has beauty, the beauty of life; these pictures, these descriptions, arranged upon a plan, made subservient to a purpose, have a higher beauty—that of the mind of man acting upon life. Art is nature, but nature new-modelled, condensed, and harmonized. We are not merely like mirrors, to reflect our own times to those more distant. The mind has a light of its own, and by it illumines what it re-creates.
This is the ground of our preference for the classical school, and for Alfieri beyond all pupils of that school. We hold that if a vagrant bud of poesy here and there be blighted by conforming to its rules, our loss is more than made up to us by our enjoyment of plan, of symmetry, of the triumph of genius over multiplied obstacles.
It has been often said that the dramas of Alfieri contrast directly with his character. This is, perhaps, not true; we do but see the depths of that volcano which in early days boiled over so fiercely. The wild, infatuated youth often becomes the stern, pitiless old man. Alfieri did but bendhis surplus strength upon literature, and became a despot to his own haughty spirit, instead of domineering over those of others.
We have selected his three masterpieces, though he, to himself an inexorable critic, has shown no indulgence to his own works, and the least successful of those which remain to us, Maria Stuarda, is marked by great excellence.
Filippo has been so ably depicted in a work now well known, "Carlyle's Life of Schiller," that we need not dwell upon it. All the light of the picture, the softer feelings of the hapless Carlos and Elizabeth, is so cast, as to make more visible the awing darkness of the tyrant's perverted mind, deadened to all virtue by a false religion, cold and hopeless as the dungeons of his own Inquisition, and relentless as death. Forced by the magic wand of genius into the stifling precincts of this mind, horror-struck that we must sympathize with such a state as possible to humanity, we rush from the contemplation of the picture, and would gladly curtain it over in our hall of imagery forever. Yet stigmatize not our poet as a dark master, courting the shade, and hating the glad lights which love and hope cast upon human nature. The drama has a holy meaning, a patriot moral, and we, above all, should reverence him, the aristocrat by birth, by education, and by tastes, whose love of liberty could lead him to such conclusions.
In "Saul," a bright rainbow rises, by the aid of the Sun of Righteousness, above the commotion of the tempest. David, the faithful, the hopeful, combining the æsthetic culture, the winged inspiration of the poet with the noble pride of Israel's chosen warrior, contrasts finely with the unfortunate Saul, his mind darkened and convulsed by jealousy, vain regrets, and fear of the God he has forgotten how to love. The other three actors shade in the picture without attracting our attention from the two principal personages. The Hebrew spirit breathes through the whole. The beauty of the lyric effusionsis so generally felt, that encomium is needless; we shall only observe that in them Alfieri's style, usually so severe, becomes flexible, melodious, and glowing; thus we may easily perceive what he might have done, had not the simplicity of his genius disdained the foreign aid of ornament upon its Doric proportions.
Myrrha is, however, the highest exertion of his genius. The remoteness of time and manners, the subject, at once so hackneyed and so revolting, these great obstacles he seizes with giant grasp, and moulds them to his purpose. Our souls are shaken to the foundation; all every-day barriers fall with the great convulsion of passion. We sorrow, we sicken, we die with the miserable girl, so pure under her involuntary crime of feeling, pursued by a malignant deity in her soul's most sacred recesses, torn from all communion with humanity, and the virtue she was framed to adore. The perfection of plan, the matchless skill with which every circumstance is brought out! The agonizing rapidity with which her misery "va camminando al fine"! No! never was higher tragic power exhibited; never were love, terror, pity, fused into a more penetrating draught! Myrrha is a favorite acting-play in Italy—a fact inconceivable to an English or American mind; for (to say nothing of other objections) we should think such excess of emotion unbearable. But in those meridian climes they drink deep draughts of passion too frequently to taste them as we do.
We pass to works of far inferior power, but of greater beauty. We have selected Iphigenia and Tasso as the most finished results of their author's mature views of art. On his plays in the Romantic style, we shall touch in another place. If any one ask why we do not class Faust with either, we reply, that is a work without a parallel; one of those few originals which have their laws within themselves, and should always be discussed singly.
The unity of plan in Iphigenia is perfect. There is onepervading idea. The purity of Iphigenia's mind must be kept unsullied, that she may be a fit intercessor to the gods in behalf of her polluted family. Gœthe, in his travels through Italy, saw a picture of a youthful Christian saint—Agatha, we think; struck by the radiant purity of her expression, he resolved his heathen priestess should not have one thought which could revolt the saint of the true religion. This idea is wonderfully preserved throughout a drama so classic in its coloring and manners. The happiest development of character, an interest in the denouement which is only so far tempered by our trust in the lovely heroine, as to permit us to enjoy all the minuter beauties on our way, (this the breathless interest of Alfieri's dramas hardly allows, on a fourth or fifth reading,) exquisite descriptive touches, and expressions of sentiment, unequalled softness and harmony of style, distinguish a drama not to be surpassed in its own department. Torquato Tasso[17]is of inferior general, but greater particular beauty. The two worldly, the two higher characters, with that of Alphonso halting between, are shaded with equal delicacy and distinctness. The inward-turning imagination of the ill-fated bard, and the fantastic tricks it plays with life, are painted as only a poet's soul of equal depth, of greater versatility, could have painted them. In analysis of the passions, and eloquent descriptions of their more hidden workings, some parts may vie with Rousseau; while several effusions of feeling are worthy of Tasso's own lyre, with its "breaking heartstring's tone." The conduct of the piece being in perfect accordance with the plan, gives the satisfaction we have mentioned in speaking of Raphael's Madonna.
Schiller's Wallenstein does not strictly belong to this class, yet we are disposed to claim it as observing the unities oftime and interest; the latter especially is entire, notwithstanding the many actors and side-scenes which are introduced. Numberless touches of nature arrest our attention, bright lights are flashed across many characters, but our interest, momently increasing, is for Wallenstein—for the perversion, the danger, the ruin of that monarch soul, that falling son of the morning. Even that we feel in Max, with his celestial bloom of heart, in Thekla's sweet trustfulness, is subsidiary. This work, generally known to the reader through Mr. Coleridge's translation, affords an imperfect illustration of our meaning. Miss Baillie's plays on the passions hold a middle place. Unity of purpose there is—no unity of plan or conduct. Bold, fine outline—very bad coloring. Profound, beautifully-expressed reflections on the passions—utter want of skill in showing them out; a thorough feeling, indeed, of the elements of tragedy,—had but the vitalizing energy been added. Her plays are failures; but since she has given us nothing else, we cannot but rejoice in having these. 'Tis great pity that the authoress of De Montfort and Basil should not have attempted a narrative poem.
Coleridge and Byron are signal instances how peculiar is the kind of talent required for the drama; one a philosopher, both men of great genius and uncommon mastery over language, both conversant with each side of human nature, both considering the drama in its true light as one of the highest departments of literature, both utterly wanting in simplicity, pathos, truth of passion and liveliness of action—in that thrilling utterance of heart to heart, whose absencehere, no other excellence can atone for. Of Maturin and Knowles we do not speak, because theirs, though very good acting plays, are not, like Mr. Taylor's, written for the closet; of Milman, because not sufficiently acquainted with his plays. We would here pay a tribute to our countryman Hillhouse, whose Hadad, read at a very early age, we remember with much delight. Probably our judgment now might be different;but a work which could make so deep an impression on any age, must have genius. We are sorry we have never since met it in any library or parlor, and are not competent to speak of it more particularly.
It will be seen that Mr. Taylor has not attempted the sort of dramatic poetry which we consider the highest, but has labored in that which the great wizard of Avon adopted, because it lay nearest at hand to clothe his spells withal, and consecrated it, with his world-embracing genius, to the (in our judgment) no small detriment of his country's taste. Having thus declared that we cannot grant him our very highest meed of admiration, (though we will not say that he might not win it if he made the essay,) we hasten to meet him on his own ground. "Dramatica Poesis est veluti Historia spectabilis," is his motto, taken from Bacon, who formed his taste on Shakspeare. We would here mention that Gœthe's earlier works, Gœtz von Berlichingen and Egmont are of this school—brilliant fragments of past days, ballads acted out, historical scenes and personages clustered round a hero; and we have seen that his ripened taste preferred the form of Iphigenia and Tasso.
We cannot too strongly express our approbation of the opinions maintained in his short preface to this work. We rejoice to see a leader coming forward who is likely to un-Hemansize and un-Cornwallize literature. We too have been sick, we too have been intoxicated withwordstill we could hardly appreciate thoughts; perhaps our present writing shows traces of this Lower-Empire taste; but we have sense enough left to welcome the English Phocion, who would regenerate public feeling. The candor and modest dignity with which these opinions are offered charm us. The remarks upon Shelley, whom we have loved, and do still love passing well, brought truth home to us in a definite shape. With regard to the lowness of Lord Byron's standard of character, every thing indeed has been said which could bebut not as Mr. Taylor has said it; and we opine that his refined and gentle remarks will find their way to ears which have always been deaf to the harsh sarcasms unseasoned by wit, which have been current on this topic.
Our author too, notwithstanding his modest caveat, has acted upon his principles, and furnished a forcible illustration of their justice. For dignity of sentiment, for simplicity of manner, for truth to life, never infringing upon respect for the ideal, we look to such a critic, and we are not disappointed.
The scene is laid in Ghent, in the fourteenth century. The Flemish mobocracy are brought before us with a fidelity and animation surpassing those displayed in Egmont. Their barbarism, and the dissimilar, but not inferior barbarism of their would-be lords, the bold, bad men, the shameless crime and brainless tumult of those days, live before us. Amid these clashing elements moves Philip Van Artevelde, with the presence, not of a god, but of a great man, too superior to be shaken, too wise to be shocked by their rude jarrings. He becomes the leader of his people, and despite pestilence, famine, and their own untutored passions, he leads them on to victory and power.
In the second part we follow Van Artevelde from his zenith of glory to his decline. The tarnishing influence of prosperity on his spirit, and its clear radiance again in adversity, are managed as the noble and well-defined conception of the character deserves.
The boy king and his courtly, intriguing counsellors are as happily portrayed as Vauclaire and the fierce commonalty he ruled, or resisted with rope or sword, as the case might demand.
The two loves of Van Artevelde are finely imagined, as types of the two states of his character. Both are lovely; the one how elevated! the other how pity-moving in her loveliness! On the interlude of Elena we must beallowed to linger fondly, though the author's self condemn our taste.
We are no longer partial to the machinery of portents and presentiments. Wallenstein's were the last we liked, but Van Artevelde's make good poetry, and have historical vouchers. They remind us of those of Fergus Mac Ivor.
We shall extract a speech of Van Artevelde's, in which a leading idea of the work is expressed.
Fain would we extract Van Artevelde's reply to the French envoy—the oration of the dying Van den Bosch in the market-place of Ypres, the last scene between the hero and the double-dyed dastard and traitor, Sir Heurant of Heurlée, and many, many more, had we but space enough.
We have purposely avoided telling the story, as is usual in an article of this kind, because we wish that every one should buy and read Van Artevelde, instead of resting content with the canvas side of the carpet.
A few words more, and we shall conclude these, we fear, already too prolonged remarks. We would compare Mr. Taylor with the most applauded of living dramatists, the Italian Alessandro Manzoni.
To wide and accurate historical knowledge, to purity of taste, to the greatest elevation of sentiment, Manzoni unites uncommon lyric power, and a beautiful style in the most beautiful language of the modern world. The conception of both his plays is striking, the detached beauties of thought and imagery are many; but where are the life, the glow, the exciting march of action, the thorough display of character which charm us in Van Artevelde? Weliveat Ghent and Senlis; wethinkof Italy. Van Artevelde dies,—and our hearts die with him. When Elena says, "The body,—O!" we could echo that "long, funereal note," and weep as if the sun of heroic nobleness were quenched from our own horizon. "Carmagnola, Adelchis die,"—we calmly shut the book, and think how much we have enjoyed it. Manzoni can deeply feel goodness and greatness, but he cannot localize them in the contours of life before our eyes. His are capital sketches, poems of a deep meaning,—but this, yes! thisisa drama.
We cannot conclude more fitly, nor inculcate a precept on the reader more forcibly, than in Mr. Taylor's own words, with a slight alteration: "To say that I admire him is to admit that I owe him much; for admiration is never thrown away upon the mind of him who feels it, except when it ismisdirected or blindly indulged. There is perhaps nothing which more enlarges or enriches the mind than the disposition to lay it genially open to impressions of pleasure, from the exercise of every species of talent; nothing by which it is more impoverished than the habit of undue depreciation. What is puerile, pusillanimous, or wicked, it can do us no good to admire; but let us admire all that can be admired without debasing the dispositions or stultifying the understanding."
SLIGHTas the intercourse held by the Voyager with the South Sea Islands is, his narrative is always more prized by us than those of the missionary and traders, who, though they have better opportunity for full and candid observation, rarely use it so well, because their minds are biased towards their special objects. It is deeply interesting to us to know how much and how little God has accomplished for the various nations of the larger portion of the earth, before they are brought into contact with the civilization of Europe and the Christian religion. To suppose it so little as most people do, is to impugn the justice of Providence. We see not how any one can contentedly think that such vast multitudes of living souls have been left for thousands of years without manifold and great means of instruction and happiness. To appreciate justly how much these have availed them, to know how far they are competent to receive new benefits, is essential to the philanthropist as a means of aiding them, no less than it is important to one philosopher who wishes to see the universe as God made it, not as some men think heought tohave made it.
The want of correct knowledge, and a fair appreciation of the uncultivated man as he stands, is a cause why even the good and generous fail to aid him, and contact with Europe has proved so generally more of a curse than a blessing. It is easy enough to see why our red man, to whom the white extends the Bible or crucifix with one hand, and the rum-bottle with the other, should look upon Jesus as only one more Manitou, and learn nothing from his precepts or thecivilization connected with them. The Hindoo, the South American Indian, who knew their teachers first as powerful robbers, and found themselves called upon to yield to violence not only their property, personal freedom, and peace, but also the convictions and ideas that had been rooted and growing in their race for ages, could not be otherwise than degraded and stupefied by a change effected through such violence and convulsion. But not only those who came with fire and sword, crying, "Believe or die;" "Understand or we will scourge you;" "Understandandwe will only plunder and tyrannize over you,"—not only these ignorant despots, self-deceiving robbers, have failed to benefit the people they dared esteem more savage than themselves, but the worthy and generous have failed from want of patience and an expanded intelligence. Would you speak to a man? first learn his language. Would you have the tree grow? learn the nature of the soil and climate in which you plant it. Better days are coming, we do hope, as to these matters—days in which the new shall be harmonized with the old, rather than violently rent asunder from it; when progress shall be accomplished by gentle evolution, as the stem of the plant grows up, rather than by the blasting of rocks, and blindness or death of the miners.
The knowledge which can lead to such results must be collected, as all true knowledge is, from the love of it. In the healthy state of the mind, the state of elastic youth, which would be perpetual in the mind if it were nobly disciplined and animated by immortal hopes, it likes to learn just how the facts are, seeking truth for its own sake, not doubting that the design and cause will be made clear in time. A mind in such a state will find many facts ready for its use in these volumes relative to the South Sea Islanders, and other objects of interest.
DOESany shame still haunt the age of bronze—a shame, the lingering blush of an heroic age, at being caught in doing any thing merely for amusement? Is there a public still extant which needs to excuse its delinquencies by the story of a man who liked to lie on the sofa all day and read novels, though he could, at time of need, write the gravest didactics? Live they still, those reverend seigniors, the object of secret smiles to our childish years, who were obliged to apologize for midnight oil spent in conning story-books by the "historic bearing" of the novel, or the "correct and admirable descriptions of certain countries, with climate, scenery, and manners therein contained," wheat, for which they, industrious students, were willing to winnow bushels of frivolous love-adventures? We know not, but incline to think the world is now given over to frivolity so far as to replace by the novel the minstrel's ballad, the drama, and even those games of agility and strength in which it once sought pastime. For, indeed,merepass-time is sometimes needed; the nursery legend comprised a primitive truth of the understanding and the wisdom of nations in the lines,—
We have reversed the order of arrangement to suit our present purpose. For we, O useful reader! being ourselves so far of the useful class as to be always wanted somewhere, have also to fight a good fight for our amusements, either with the foils of excuse, like the reverend seigniors abovementioned, or with the sharp weapons of argument, or maintenance of a view of our own without argument, which we take to be the sharpest weapon of all.
Thus far do we defer to the claims of the human race, with its myriad of useful errands to be done, that we read most of our novels in the long sunny days, which call all beings to chirp and nestle, or fly abroad as the birds do, and permit the very oxen to ruminate gently in the just-mown fields.
On such days it was well, we think, to read "Sybil, or the Two Worlds." We have always felt great interest in D'Israeli. He is one of the many who share the difficulty of our era, which Carlyle says, quoting, we believe, from his Master, consists in unlearning the false in order to arrive at the true. We think these men, when they have once taken their degree, can be of far greater use to their brethren than those who have always kept their instincts unperverted.
In "Vivian Grey," the young D'Israeli, an educated Englishman, but with the blood of sunnier climes glowing and careering in his veins, gave us the very flower and essence of factitious life. That book sparkled and frothed like champagne; like that, too, it produced no dull and imbecile state by its intoxication, but one witty, genial, spiritual even. A deep, soft melancholy thrilled through its gay mockeries; the eyes of nature glimmered through the painted mask, and a nobler ambition was felt beneath the follies of petty success and petty vengeance. Still, the chief merit of the book, as a book, was the light and decided touch with which its author took up the follies and poesies of the day, and brought them all before us. The excellence of the foreign part, with its popular superstitions, its deep passages in the glades of the summer woods, and above all, the capital sketch of the prime minister with his original whims and secret history of romantic sorrows, were beyond the appreciation of most readers.
Since then, D'Israeli has never written any thing to be compared with this first jet of the fountain of his mind in thesunlight of morning. The "Young Duke" was full of brilliant sketches, and showed a soul struggling, blinded by the gaudy mists of fashion, for realities. The "Wondrous Tale of Alroy" showed great power of conception, though in execution it is a failure. "Henrietta Temple" Mr. Willis, with his usual justness of perception, has praised, as containing a collection of the best love-letters ever written; and which show that excellence, signal and singular among the literary tribe, of which D'Israeli never fails, of daring to write a thing down exactly as it rises in his mind.
Now he has come to be a leader of Young England, and a rooted plant upon her soil. If the performance of his prime do not entirely correspond with the brilliant lights of its dawn, it is yet aspiring, and with a large kernel of healthy nobleness in it. D'Israeli shows now not only the heart, but the soul of a man. He cares for all men; he wishes to care wisely for all.
"Coningsby" was full of talent, yet its chief interest lay in this aspiration after reality, and the rich materials taken from contemporary life. There is nothing in it good after the original manner of D'Israeli, except the sketches of Eton, and above all, the noble schoolboy's letter. The picture of the Jew, so elaborately limned, is chiefly valuable as affording keys to so many interesting facts.
"Sybil" is an attempt to do justice to the claims of the laboring classes, and investigate the duties of those in whose hands the money is at present, towards the rest. It comes to no result: it only exhibits some truths in a more striking light than heretofore. D'Israeli shows the taint of old prejudice in the necessity he felt to marry the daughter of the people to onenotof the people. Those worthy to be distinguished must still have good blood, or rather old blood, for what is called good needs now to be renovated from a homelier source. But his leaders must haveoldblood; the fresh ichor, the direct flow from heaven, is not enough to animate their lives to the deeds now needed.
D'Israeli is another of those who give testimony in behalf of our favorite idea that a leading feature of the new era will be in new and higher developments of the feminine character. He looks at women as a man does who is truly in love. He does not paint them well, that is, not with profound fidelity to nature. But, ideally, he sees them well, for they are to him the inspirers and representatives of what is holy, tender, and simply great.
There are good sketches of the manufacturers at home, not the overseers, but the real makers.
Sue is a congenial activity with D'Israeli, but with clearer notions of what he wants. His "De Rohan" is a poor book, though it contains some things excellent. But it is faulty,—even more so than is usual with him, in heavy exaggerations, and is less redeemed by brilliant effects, good schemes, and lively strains of feeling. The wish to unmask Louis XIV. is defeated by the hatred with which the character inspired him, the liberal of the nineteenth century. The Grand Monarque was really brutally selfish and ignorant, as Sue represents him; but then therewasa native greatness, which justified, in some degree, the illusion he diffused, and which falsifies all Sue's representation. It is not by an inventory of facts or traits that what is most vital in character, and which makes its due impression on contemporaries, can be apprehended or depicted. "De Rohan" is worth reading for particulars of an interesting period, put together with accuracy and with a sense of physiological effects, if not of the spiritual realities that they represented.
"Self, by the Author of Cecil," is one of the worst of a paltry class of novels—those which aim at representing the very dregs in a social life, now at its lowest ebb. If it has produced a sensation, that only shows the poverty of life among those who can be interested in it. I have known more life lived in a day among factory girls, or in a village school, than informs these volumes, with all their great pretensionand affected vivacity. It is not worth our while to read this class of English novels; they are far worse than the French, morally as well as mentally. This has no merits as to the development of character or exposition of motives; it is a poor, external, lifeless thing.
"Dashes at Life," by N. P. Willis. The life of Mr. Willis is too European for him to have a general or permanent fame in America. We need a life of our own, and a literature of our own. Those writers who are dearest to us, and really most interesting, are those who are at least rooted to the soil. If they are not great enough to be the prophets of the new era, they at least exhibit the features of their native clime, and the complexion given by its native air. But Mr. Willis is a son of Europe, and his writings can interest only the fashionable world of this country, which, by imitating Europe, fails entirely of a genius, grace, and invention of its own. Still, in their way, they are excellent. They are most lively pictures, showing the fine natural organization of the writer, on whom none, the slightest symptom of what he is looking for, is thrown away; sparkling with bold, light wit, succinct, and colored with glow, and for a full light. Some of them were new to us, and we read them through, missing none of the words, and laughed with a full heart, and without one grain of complaisance, which is much, very much, to say in these days. We said these sketches would not have a permanent fame, and yet we may be wrong. The new, full, original, radiant, American life may receive them as an heirloom from this transition state we are in now, and future generations may stare at the mongrel products of Saratoga, and maidens still laugh till they cry at the "Letter of Jane S. to her Spirit-Bridegroom."
All these story-books show, even to the languor of the hottest day, the solemn signs of revolution. Life has become too factitious; it has no longer a leg left to stand upon, and cannot be carried much farther in this way. England—ah! whocan resist visions of phalansteries in every park, and the treasures of art turned into public galleries for the use of the artificers who will no longer be unwashed, but raised and educated by the refinements of sufficient leisure, and the instructions of genius. England must glide, or totter, or fall into revolution; there is not room for such selfish elves, and unique young dukes, in a country so crowded with men, and with those who ought to be women, and are turned into work-tools. There are very impressive hints on this last topic in "Sybil, or the Two Worlds," (of the rich and poor.) God has time to remember the design with which he made this world also.
WEare very glad to see this handsome copy of Shelley ready for those who have long been vainly inquiring at all the bookstores for such a one.
In Europe the fame of Shelley has risen superior to the clouds that darkened its earlier days, hiding his true image from his fellow-men, and from his own sad eyes oftentimes the common light of day. As a thinker, men have learned to pardon what they consider errors in opinion for the sake of singular nobleness, purity, and love in his main tendency or spirit. As a poet, the many faults of his works having been acknowledged, there are room and place to admire his far more numerous and exquisite beauties.
The heart of the man, few, who have hearts of their own, refuse to reverence, and many, even of devoutest Christians, would not refuse the book which contains Queen Mab as a Christmas gift. For it has been recognized that the founder of the Christian church would have suffered one to come unto him, who was in faith and love so truly what he sought in a disciple, without regard to the form his doctrine assumed.
The qualities of his poetry have often been analyzed, and the severer critics, impatient of his exuberance, or unable to use their accustomed spectacles in the golden mist that broods over all he has done, deny him high honors; but the soul of aspiring youth, untrammelled by the canons of taste, and untamed by scholarly discipline, swells into rapture at his lyric sweetness, finds ambrosial refreshment from his plenteousfancies, catches fire at his daring thought, and melts into boundless weeping at his tender sadness—the sadness of a soul betrothed to an ideal unattainable in this present sphere.
For ourselves, we dispute not with thedoctrinairesor the critics. We cannot speak dispassionately of an influence that has been so dear to us. Nearer than the nearest companions of life actual has Shelley been to us. Many other great ones have shone upon us, and all who ever did so shine are still resplendent in our firmament, for our mental life has not been broken and contradictory, but thus far we "see what we foresaw." But Shelley seemed to us an incarnation of what was sought in the sympathies and desires of instinctive life, a light of dawn, and a foreshowing of the weather of this day.
When still in childish years, the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" fell in our way. In a green meadow, skirted by a rich wood, watered by a lovely rivulet, made picturesque by a mill a little farther down, sat a party of young persons gayer than, and almost as inventive, as those that told the tales recorded by Boccaccio. They were passing a few days in a scene of deep seclusion, there uncared for by tutor or duenna, and with no bar of routine to check the pranks of their gay, childish fancies. Every day they assumed parts which through the waking hours must be acted out. One day it was the characters in one of Richardson's novels; and most solemnly we "my deared" each other with richest brocade of affability, and interchanged in long, stiff phrase our sentimental secrets and prim opinions. But to-day we sought relief in personating birds or insects; and now it was the Libellula who, tired of wild flitting and darting, rested on the grassy bank and read aloud the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," torn by chance from the leaf of a foreign magazine.
It was one of those chances which we ever remember as the interposition of some good angel in our fate. Solemn tears marked the change of mood in our little party and with the words
"Have I not kept my vow?"
began a chain of thoughts whose golden links still bind the years together.
Two or three years passed. The frosty Christmas season came; the trees cracked with their splendid burden of ice, the old wooden country house was banked up with high drifts of the beautiful snow, and the Libellula became the owner of Shelley's Poems. It was her Christmas gift, and for three days and three nights she ceased not to extract its sweets; and how familiar still in memory every object seen from the chair in which she sat enchanted during those three days, memorable to her as those of July to the French nation! The fire, the position of the lamp, the variegated shadows of that alcoved room, the bright stars up to which she looked with such a feeling of congeniality from the contemplation of this starry soul,—O, could but a De Quincey describe those days in which the bridge between the real and ideal rose unbroken! He would not do it, though, asSuspiria de Profundis, but as sighs of joy upon the mountain height.
The poems we read then are what every one still reads, the "Julian and Maddalo," with its profound revelations of the inward life; "Alastor," the soul sweeping like a breeze through nature; and some of the minor poems. "Queen Mab," the "Prometheus," and other more formal works we have not been able to read much. It was not when he tried to express opinions which the wrongs of the world had put into his head, but when he abandoned himself to the feelings which nature had implanted in his own breast, that Shelley seemed to us so full of inspiration, and it is so still.
In reply to all that can be urged against him by people of whom we do not wish to speak ill,—for surely "they know not what they do,"—we are wont simply to refer to the fact that he was the only man who redeemed the human race from suspicion to the embittered soul of Byron. "Why," said Byron, "he is a man who would willingly die for others.I am sure of it."
Yes! balance that against all the ill you can think of himthat he was a man able to live wretched for the sake of speaking sincerely what he supposed to be truth, willing to die for the good of his fellows!
Mr. Foster has spoken well of him as a man: "Of Shelley's personal character it is enough to say that it was wholly pervaded by the same unbounded and unquestioning love for his fellow-men—the same holy and fervid hope in their ultimate virtue and happiness—the same scorn of baseness and hatred of oppression—which beam forth in all his writings with a pure and constant light. The theory which he wrote was the practice which his whole life exemplified. Noble, kind, generous, passionate, tender, with a courage greater than the courage of the chief of warriors, for it couldendure—these were the qualities in which his life was embalmed."