"From this frank offer it is apparent that Mary was not aware of the base part Elizabeth had acted, in purchasing her magnificentparureof pearls of Moray, for a third part of their value."
One of the most famous pearls yet discovered (there may be shells down below that hide a finer specimen) is the beautifulPeregrina. It was fished up by a little negro boy in 1560, who obtained his liberty by opening an oyster. The modest bivalve was so small that the boy in disgust was about to pitch it back into the sea. But he thought better of his rash determination, pulled the shells asunder, and, lo, the rarest of priceless pearls! [Moral.Don't despise little oysters.] La Peregrina is shaped like a pear, and is of the size of a pigeon's egg. It was presented to Philip II. by the finder's master, and is still in Spain. No sum has ever determined its value. The King's jeweller named five hundred thousand dollars, but that paltry amount was scouted as ridiculously small.
There is a Rabbinical story which aptly shows the high estimate of pearls in early ages, only one object in Nature being held worthy to be placed above them:—
"On approaching Egypt, Abraham locked Sarah in a chest, that none might behold her dangerous beauty. But when he was come to the place of paying custom, the collectors said, 'Pay us the custom': and he said, 'I will pay the custom.' They said to him, 'Thou carriest clothes': and he said, 'I will pay for clothes.' Then they said to him, 'Thou carriest gold': and he answered them, 'I will pay for my gold.' On this they further said to him, 'Surely thou bearest the finest silk': he replied, 'I will pay custom for the finest silk.' Then said they, 'Surely it must be pearls that thou takest with thee': and he only answered, 'I will pay for pearls.' Seeing that they could name nothing of value for which the patriarch was not willing to pay custom, they said, 'It cannot be but thou open the box, and let us see what is within.' So they opened the box, and the whole land of Egypt was illumined by the lustre of Sarah's beauty,—far exceeding even that of pearls."
Shakspeare, who loved all things beautiful, and embalmed them so that their lustre could lose nothing at his hands, was never tired of introducing the diamond and the pearl. They were his favorite ornaments; and we intended to point out some of the splendid passages in which he has used them. But we have room now for only one of those priceless sentences in which he has set the diamond and the pearl as they were never set before. No kingly diadem can boast such jewels as glow along these lines from "Lear":—
"You have seenSunshine and rain at one: her smiles and tearsWere like a better day: Those happy smilesThat played on her ripe lip seemed not to knowWhat guests were in her eyes; which parted thence,As pearls from diamonds dropp'd."
1.Lis Oubretode ROUMANILLE. Avignon. 1860. 12mo.
2. T. AUBANEL.La Miougrano Entreduberto.Avec Traduction littérale en regard. Avignon: J. Roumanille. 1860. 12mo.
3.Mirèio.Pouèmo Prouvençau de FREDERI MISTRAL. Avec la Traduction littérale en regard. Avignon: J. Roumanille. 1859. 8vo.
4.Las Papillôtosde JACQUES JASMIN, de l'Académie d'Agen, Maître ès Jeux-Floraux, Grand Prix de l'Académie Française. Édition populaire, avec le Français en regard, et ornée d'un Portrait. De 1822 à 1858. Paris: Firmin Didot, Frères & Cie. 1860. 12mo.
5.Lés Piaoulats d'un Reïpetit.Recueil de Poésies Patoises. Par J.B. Veyre, Instituteur à Saint-Simon (Cantal). Aurillac: Imprimerie de L. Bonnet-Picut. 1860. 8vo.
Few persons, when they consider the present greatness and prosperity of the French Empire, bear in mind the heterogeneous elements of which it is composed. For us, Paris is France, and the literature of the realm is comprised in the words, "Paris publications." We think not of the millions of Frenchmen to whom the language of the capital is a sealed letter,—of the Germans of Alsatia, the Flemings of the extreme North-East, the Bretons of the peninsula of Finisterre, the Basques, the Catalans of the mountains of Roussillon, and, more numerous than all these, the fourteen millions of the thirty-seven departments south of the Loire. These speak, to this day, with fewer modifications than have taken place in any other of the European languages during the same lapse of time, the very tongue in which wrote Bertran de Born and Pierre Vidal, the idiom in which Dante and Petrarca found some of their happiest inspirations, and which, we are told, Tasso envied for its poetic capabilities.
True, the Provinces of Gascony, Provence, Auvergne may be traversed by the stranger almost without his suspecting that other than the French, more or less badly spoken, is in common use. In hotels and shops he will hear nothing else.
The larger towns in direct communication with the capital, and all that is purely exterior in the people, are becoming more and more French every day. But in the family interior, far from the noise of affairs, the bustle of towns, in hamlets, among the vine-growers and tenders of the silk-worm, in the mountains and retired valleys, the home-tongue is again at ease. Simple, ingenuous, amber-like in its sunny tints, it is a reflection of that ardent poetical imagination which made the courts of the Counts of Toulouse the nurseries of modern poesy, when the rest of Europe was little else than one wrangling battle-field. Neither the exterminating crusade against the Albigenses, after which the idiom of Provence was wellnigh stigmatized as heretical, nor the civil and religious wars of the seventeenth century, nor even thedragonnadesof Louis XIV., have been able to outroot it. The levelling edicts of the first French Revolution were powerless against it. The Provençal, or Langue d'Oc, if you will, the Gascon, the Auvergnat, are spoken to this day in their respective provinces, universally spoken by the people, who in many instances do not understand French at all. They must be preached to in their own dialect. They have their songs, their theatre even.
Nor must this be understood as referring only to the lower strata of society. The better classes, even, retain a fondness for their mother-tongue which years of residence in Paris will not obliterate. In their very French, they still retain the inflections, the tones of the South,—a measured cadence in the phrase, which the Parisian uniformly stylesgasconner. They feel ill at ease in what they call the cold-mannered speech of theFranchiman. In the words of one of their poets, Mistral, who has proved that he was no less a master of the academic forms and rules than of the riches and power of his own Avignonais:—"Those who have not lived at the South, and especially in the midst of our rural population, can have no idea of the incompatibility, the insufficiency, the poverty of the language of the North in regard to our manners, our needs, our organization. The French language, transplanted to Provence, seems like the cast-off clothes of a Parisian dandy adapted to the robust shoulders of a harvester bronzed by the Southern sun."
The Provençal, in its two principal divisions, the Gascon and Langue d'Oc, is the current idiom south of the Loire. The South-West Provinces had, in the seventeenth century, no mean poet in Godelin; and in our own day, Jasmin has found a host of followers. The inhabitants of the South-East, however, the more immediate retainers of the language of the Troubadours, save in a few drinking-songs and Christmas carols, had forgotten the strains that once resounded beyond the limits of Provence and had first awaked the poetic emulation of Spain and Italy. The princess of song, stung by the envious spirit of persecution in the Albigensian wars, had slept for centuries, and the thick hedge of forgetfulness had grown rank about the language and its treasures. What Raynouard, Diez, Mahn, Fauriel, and others have done to bring to light again the unedited texts was little better than an autopsy. A living, breathing poet was wanting to reanimate by his touch the poesy that had slept so long. That poet was Roumanille.
The Minnesingers have found heirs and continuators in the modern writers of Germany. Side by side with the increasing tendency to unity in all national literature is working the force of races confounded under one political banner, to assert their existence as such. Congresses have shaped new kingdoms; but they have not reached or removed the limits of nationalities that have each their expression in song, whether in Moldavia or among the Czechs of Bohemia. The regeneration of local idioms, which is fast working its way from the Bosphorus to the Atlantic, was first undertaken in Provence, at the instigation of Roumanille. The son of a gardener of St. Remy, he was first struck with the insufficiency of French literature for his immediate countrymen, when, on his return from college, seeking to recite some of his earlier poems in the language of Racine to his aged mother, she failed to understand them. For her he translated, and found that his own Provençal was richer, more copious and melodious than the French itself, and, if less finical and restrained by grammatical forms, more pliant for the poet, and better answering the exigencies of primitive, spontaneous expression of feeling. From that moment his efforts were unceasingly directed towards the reintegration of his mother-tongue, which had so long played but the part of a Cinderella among the Romanic nations.
His poems, collected in 1847, under the title of "Margarideto," (Daisies,) were hailed by his countrymen with their habitual national enthusiasm. Nor did he remain inactive during the Revolution of 1848, addressing the people in home-phrase in several small volumes of prose. In 1852, he sent forth a call to his brother-writers, thefelibre, who had joined with him in his efforts. The result was the publication of "Li Prouvençalo," a charming selection from those modern Troubadours who in all ranks of society sing, because sing they must, in bright and sunny Provence, and who in very deed find poetry
"In the forge's dust and ashes, in the tissues of the loom."
The call of Roumanille was the signal for a revival. Since that time, he himself, now a publisher in Avignon, has steadily watched and fostered the movement. The new literature has rapidly gone beyond its home-limits. Within the present year, Paris has republished several of the most noted works.
The volume which has called forth these remarks, "Lis Oubreto," comprises the poems of M. Roumanille,—"Li Margarideto," "Li Nouvè," "Li Sounjarello," "La Part de Dieu," "Li Flour de Sauvi." They are characterized by an elevation in the thoughts and a religious purity of sentiment, qualities which, it has been urged, and justly too, were lacking in many of the former productions in various dialects of France. We call the poetry of Roumanille elevated, yet it always addresses itself to the people of Provence, and borrows its images from the many-colored life of those to whom it speaks; religious, but simple and ingenuous, with a tinge of mysticism,—not the mysticism that seeks the good in dreamy inaction, as in some of the Spanish authors, nor has it the obscure tinge of the transcendental English school. The religion of Roumanille is active, not dogmatic; he incites todo, rather than discuss or dream the good. There is a health, a vigor, an earnestness, in this spontaneous poesy of an idiom which six centuries ago was the language of courts, and now sings the song of toil. Side by side with the over-cultured language of the Parisian, it seems so free and frank! Where the one is hampered for fear of sinning, the other, buoyant and elastic, treads freely and fears not to be too ingenuous.
Roumanille's poems have not been translated; it is hardly likely they ever will be,—at least, the greater number. They were not made for Paris. They are not at ease in a French garb,—nor, for that matter, in any other than their own diaphanous, sun-tinted, vowelly Provençal, unless they could find their expression in somefolk-speech, as the Germans say, that could utter things of daily life without euphuistic windings, without fear of ridicule for things of home expressed in home-words.
As characterizing the nature and tendency of the new poetry, we subjoin a translation of "Li Crecho," (The Infant Asylums,) of which M. Sainte-Beuve, of the French Academy, one whose judgment as literary critic could be little biased in favor of thenaïvegraces of the original, said,—"The piece is worthy of the ancient Troubadours. The angel of the asylums and of little children in his celestial sadness could not be disavowed by the angels of Klopstock, nor by that of Alfred de Vigny."
"Li Crecho" was recited by the author at the inauguration of the Infant Asylum of Avignon, the 20th of November, 1851, and forms part of the sheaf of poems entitled "Li Flour de Sauvi."
"Among the choirs of Seraphim, whom God has created to sing eternally, transported with love, 'Glory, glory to the Father!'—among the joys of Paradise, one oftentimes, far from the happy singers, went thoughtful away.
"And his snow-white forehead inclined towards our world, as droops a flower that has no moisture in summer. Day by day he grew more dreamy. If sadness, when in God's glory, could torment the heart, I should say that this fair angel was pining with sorrow.
"Of what did he dream thus, and in secret? Why was he not of the feast?Why, alone among angels, as one that had sinned, did he bow the head?"
"Lo! he has just knelt at the feet of God. What will he say? What will he do? To see and hear him, his brethren interrupt their song of praise."
"'When Jesus, thy child, wept,—when he shivered with cold in the manger of Bethlehem,—it was my smile that consoled him, my wings that sheltered him, with my warm breath did I comfort him.
"'And since then, O God, when a child weeps, in my pitying heart his voice resounds. Therefore forever now am I sick at heart,—therefore, O Lord, am I ever thoughtful.
"'On earth, O God, I have something to do. Let me descend there. There are so many babes, poor milk-lambs, who, shivering with cold, weep and wail far from the breasts, far from the kisses of their mothers! In warm rooms will I shelter them,—will cover and tend them,—will nurse and caress them,—will lull them to rest. Instead of one mother, they shall each have twenty that shall give them suck and soothe them to sleep.'"
"And with heart and hand did the angels applaud,—a tremor of joy shot through the stars of heaven,—and, unfolding his pinions, with the rapidity of lightning the angel descended. The road-side smiled with flowers, as he passed,—and mothers trembled for joy; for infant-asylums arose wherever the child-angel trod."
One of the first to respond to the call of Roumanille for the composition of the selection "Li Prouvençalo" was Th. Aubanel, also of Avignon. The "Segaire" (Mowers) and "Lou 9 Thermidor" made it plain, that, of the thirty names, that of the young printer would soon take a prominent place among the revivers of Southern letters. And now, eight years later, the promise of M. René Taillandier, in his introduction to the selection, has become reality.
"La Miougrano Entreduberto" (The Opened Pomegranate) is printed with an accompanying French translation. Mistral, the brother-poet and friend of the author, thus announces the poems:—
"The pomegranate is of its nature wilder than other trees. It loves to grow in pebbly elevations (clapeirolo) in the full sun-rays, far from man and nearer to God. There alone, in the scorching summer-beams, it expands in secret its blood-red flowers. Love and the sun fecundate its bloom. In the crimson chalices thousands of coral-grains germ spontaneously, like a thousand fair sisters all under the same roof.
"The swollen pomegranate holds imprisoned as long as it can the roseate seeds, the thousand blushing sisters. But the birds of the moor speak to the solitary tree, saying,—'What wilt thou do with the seeds? Even now comes the autumn, even now comes the winter, that chases us beyond the hills, beyond the seas…..And shall it be said, O wild pomegranate, that we have left Provence without seeing thy beautiful coral-grains, without having a glimpse of thy thousand virgin daughters?'
"Then, to satisfy the envious birdlings of the moor, the pomegranate slowly half-opens its fruit; the thousand vermeil seeds glitter in the sun; the thousand timorous sisters with rosy cheeks peep through the arched window: and the roguish birds come in flocks and feast at ease on the beautiful coral-grains; the roguish lovers devour with kisses the fair blushing sisters.
"Aubanel—and you will say as I do, when you have read his book—is a wild pomegranate-tree. The Provençal public, whom his first poems had pleased so much, was beginning to say,—'But what is our Aubanel doing, that we no longer hear him sing?'"
Then follows an exposition of the hopeless passion of the poet,—how he took for motto,
"Quau canto,Soun mau encanto."
Hence the three books of poems now before us,—"The Book of Love," "Twilight," and "The Book of Death." "The Book of Love," "a thing excessively rare," as we are told in the Preface, "but this one written in good faith," opens with a couplet that is a key to the whole volume:—
"I am sick at heart,Andwillnot be cured."
We subjoin a literal translation of the eleventh song, line for line:—
De-la-man-d'eilà de la mar,Dins mis ouro de pantaiage,Souvènti-fes iéu fau un viage,Iéu fau souvènt un viage amar,De-la-man-d'eilà, de la mar."etc., etc.
"Far away, beyond the seas,In my hours of reverie,Oftentimes I make a voyage,I often make a bitter voyage,Far away, beyond the seas.
"Yonder far, towards the Dardanelles,With the ships I glide away,Whose long masts pierce the sky;Towards my loved one do I go,Yonder far, towards the Dardanelles.
"With the great white clouds sailing on,Driven by the wind, their master-shepherd,The great clouds which before the starsPass onwards like white flocks,With the clouds I go sailing on.
"With the swallows I take my flight,The swallows returning to the sun;Towards fair days do they go, quick, quick;And I, quick, quick, towards my love,With the swallows take my flight.
"Oh, I am very sick for home,Sick for the home that my love haunts!Far from that foreign country,As the bird far from its nest,I am very sick for home.
"From wave to wave, o'er the bitter waters,Like a corse thrown to the seas,In dreams am I borne onwardTo the feet of her that's dear,From wave to wave, o'er the bitter waters.
"On the shores I am there, dead!My love in her arms supports me;Speechless she gazes and weeps,Lays her hand upon my heart,And suddenly I live again!
"Then I clasp her, then I fold herIn my arms: 'I have suffered enough!Stay, stay! Iwillnot die!'And as a drowning one I seize her,And fold her in my arms.
"Far away, beyond the seas,In my hours of reverie,Oftentimes I make a voyage,I often make a bitter voyage,Far away, beyond the seas."
As may easily be seen, Aubanel writes not, like Roumanille, for his own people alone. His Muse is more ambitious, and seeks to interest by appealing to the sentiments in a language polished with all the art of its sister, the French. There are innumerable exquisite passages scattered through the work, which make us ready to believe in the figurative comparison of the prefacer, when he tells us that "the coral-grains of the 'Opened Pomegranate' will become in Provence the chaplet of lovers."
If Roumanille and Aubanel contented themselves with the publication of poems of no very ambitious length, the author of "Mirèio" aimed directly at enriching his language at the outset with an epic. He has given us in twelve cantos the song of Provence. He makes us see and feel the life of Languedoc,—traverse the Crau, that Arabia Petrasa of France,—see the Rhone, and the fair daughters of Arles, in their picturesque costumes,—see the wild bulls of the Camargo, the Pampas of the Mediterranean. We are among the growers of the silk-worm; we hear the home-songs and talks of the Mas, listen to the people's legends and tales of witchery, and can study the Middle-Age spirit that still in these regions endows every shrine with miracles, as we follow the pilgrimage to the chapel of the Three Marys.
"Mirèio" is all Provence living and breathing before us in a poem. No wonder, then, that, in the present dearth of poetry in France, this epic or idyl, call it as you will, was received with acclamations. M. René Taillandier has consecrated to it one of his most masterly articles in the "Revue des Deux Mondes." Lamartine has devoted to it a wholeentretienin his "Cours de Littérature." It was discussed, quoted, translated in all the journals of the capital. We may revert to it at greater length in a future number of the "Atlantic."
The name of Jasmin, the harbor-poet of Agen, is already familiar to the English public. Professor Longfellow has translated his "Blind Girl of Castel-Cuillé." His name is known in Paris as well, perhaps, as that of any other living French poet, if we except Lamartine and Victor Hugo. Accompanied with a French translation, his principal poems, "Mous Soubenis," "L'Abuglo de Castel-Cuillé," "Francouneto," "Maltro l'Innoucento," "Lous Dus Frays Bessous," "La Semmâno d'un Fil," have been read as much north of the Loire as south.
"The Curl-Papers"—for thus he styles his works—having been translated into German and English, the reputation of the author may be called European. The forty maintainers of the Floral Games of Clémence Isaure at Toulouse awarded him the title ofMaître ès Jeux-Floraux. His progress through the South was marked by ovations, and every town, from Marseilles to Bordeaux, hastened to recognize the modern Troubadour. Happier than most of his predecessors, Jasmin receives his laurels in season, and can wear the crowns that are presented him. The "Papillôtos" were formerly scattered in three costly volumes; they have now been collected in one handsome duodecimo, with an accompanying French translation of the principal pieces,—a translation which called from Ampère the remark,—"A défaut des vers de Jasmin, on ferait cent lieues pour entendre cette prose-là!"
"Lés Piaoulats d'un Reïpetit" is one of the rare productions of the written literature of Auvergne, so rich in antique legends and original popular songs. The author, at the Archaeological Concourse of Béziers, in 1838, obtained deserved encomium for his "Ode to Riquet," the creator of the great Southern French Canal, linking the Atlantic and Mediterranean. He has written in the Romanic dialect in use in Auvergne, which, if it lacks the finish and polish of the Provençal, is not wanting in grace and ingenuousness. It is characterized by a rude energy, a sombre harmony, that tallies well with the wild and rural character of the country.
At first sight, the dialect seems to have a marked affinity with that made use of by Jasmin in his "Papillôtos." It is, however, easily distinguishable by the frequent use of peculiar gutturals, the almost constant change ofaintoo, and a greater number of radicals of Celtic origin. In a recent work on Auvergne, it is argued that these Celtic words form the basis of the language. The history of the region itself would tend to corroborate this theory.
Sheltered by rocky mountain-ranges, the Dômes, the Dores, and Cantal, (Mons Celtorum) the Arverni obstinately repulsed every attempt towards the naturalization of the Roman tongue, and battled for six centuries with the same energy displayed by them, when, under Vercingetorix, they fought for their nationality and the independence of Gaul against Caesar. The Latin could exercise, therefore, but slight influence on the idiom of these regions, which has preserved since then in its vocabulary, and even in syntactical forms, a marked relationship with the Celtic, which, according to Sidonius Apollinaris, was still spoken there in the sixth century.
The actual dialect of Auvergne is peculiarly adapted to recitals of a legendary nature, owing to its vivacity of articulation, coupled with a kind of gloom in the quality of the sounds.Naïfand touching in popular song and Christmas carol, it is not divested of a certain grandeur for subjects deserving of a higher style.
The works of M. Veyre comprise the various styles of shorter poems. His "Ode to Riquet," and that in honor of Gerbert, (Pope Silvester II., a native of Auvergne,) show what the language can do in the hands of a master. In the latter he describes the career of that predestined child whom legend accompanied from his cradle to the grave.
"La Fiëro de St. Urbo," curious picture of the manners of the country, is written in that ironical and gay vein of which the older French writers possessed the secret; but that is now fast dying away. "Répopiado" and "Lou Boun Sens del Payson" show that the language of Auvergne is no less adapted to moral teachings than to the touching inspirations and free jovial songs of the country Muse.
The work of M. Veyre is the first tending to give his native province a share in the literary revival of the Romanic idioms, which is so universally felt in Southern France, and has of late produced so much.
History of the United Netherlands, from the Death of William the Silent to the Synod of Dort.With a Full View of the English—Dutch Struggle against Spain; and of the Origin and Destruction of the Spanish Armada. By JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, LL.D., D.C.L. New York: Harper & Brothers. Vols. I. and II. 8vo.
These volumes bear the unmistakable mark, not merely of historical accuracy and research, but of historical genius; and the genius is not that of Thierry or Guizot, of Gibbon or Macaulay, but has a palpable individuality of its own. They evince throughout a patient, persistent industry in investigating original documents, from the mere labor of which an Irish hod-carrier would shrink aghast, and thank the Virgin that, though born a drudge, he was not born to drudge in the bogs and morasses of unexplored domains of History; yet the genius and enthusiasm of the historian are so strong that he converts the drudgery into delight, and lives joyful, though "laborious days." There is not a page in these volumes which does not sparkle with evidences of an enjoyment far beyond any that the rich and pleasure-seeking idler can ever know; and while the materials are those of the barest and bleakest fact, the style of the narrative is that of the gayest, most genial, and most elastic spirit of romance. We have read all the best fictions which have been published during the interval which has elapsed between the publication of the "History of the Dutch Republic" and that of the "History of the United Netherlands," but we have read none which fairly exceeds, in what is called, in the slang of fifth-rate critics, "breathless interest," this novel, but authentic memorial of a past heroic age.
The first requirement of an historian in the present century is original research,—not merely research into rare printed books and pamphlets, but into unpublished and almost unknown manuscripts. No sobriety of judgment, no sagacity of insight, no brilliancy of imagination can compensate for defective information. The finest genius is degraded to the rank of a compiler, unless he sheds new light upon his subject by contributing new facts. The severest requirements of the Baconian method of induction—requirements which have been notoriously disregarded by men of science in the investigation of Nature—remain in force as regards the students of history. The powers of analysis, generalization, statement, and narrative in Macaulay's historical essays were fully equal to any powers he displayed in the "History of England from the Reign of James II." No candid critic can deny that there is little in his "History" which, as far as regards essential facts and principles, had not been previously stated in a more sententious form in his Essays. But we recollect the time when the same dignified scholars who are now insensible to his defects were blind to his merits, and with majestic dulness classed him among the inglorious company of superficial, untrustworthy, brilliant declaimers. The moment, however, he published in octavo volumes a solid history, and appended to the bottom of each page the obscure authorities on which his narrative was founded, and which plainly exhibited the capacity of the brilliant declaimer to perform all the austerest duties of the drudge, his reputation marvellously increased among the most frigid and most exacting dispensers of praise. To come nearer home, we remember the time when Bancroft's rhetoric entirely shut out from the eyes of antiquaries and men of taste Bancroft's industry and scholarship. It was not until he plainly showed his power to "toil terribly," not until he palpablyaddedto our knowledge of American history, that men who had sneered at his occasional rhapsodies of patriotism admitted his claims to be considered the historian of the United States. They resisted Bancroft as long as Bancroft gave them the slightest reason to believe that he was interposing his own mind between them and facts which they know its well as he; but when, by independent and indefatigable research, at home and abroad, he indisputably widened the sphere of their information, they pardoned the faults of the rhetorician in their gratitude to the toiling investigator who had added to their knowledge.
It is the felicity of Mr. Motley, that, like Prescott, he is not placed under the necessity of overcoming prejudices. There is nobody on either side of the Atlantic (whether we use the word as indicating its limited sense as an ocean, or its larger and more liberal moaning as a magazine) who would not rejoice in his success, and be grieved by his failure. And this good feeling on the part of the public he owes, in a great degree, to the individuality he has impressed upon his work. That individuality is not the individuality of a partisan or of a theorist, but the individuality of a broad-minded, high-minded, chivalrous gentleman. With a soul open to the finest sentiments and ideas of the age in which he lives, tolerant of frailty, but intolerant of meanness, falsehood, and malignity, and writing with the frankness with which a cultivated man of decided opinions might speak to a company of chosen associates, the most obstinate bigot can hardly fail to feel the charm of his free and cordial manner of expression. Hume, Gibbon, Hallam, and Macaulay, Sismondi, Guizot, and Michelet, all have in their characters something which invites and provokes opposition. But the spirit which underlies Mr. Motley's large scholarship is so thoroughly genial and generous, and is so purified from the pedantry of knowledge and the pedantry of opinion, that it is impossible for him to rouse in other minds any of the antipathy which is often felt for powerful individualities whose powers of mind and extent of erudition still enforce respect and extort admiration. The instinctive sympathy he thus creates is due to no lack of intrepidity in expressing his love for what is right and his hatred for what is wrong. No historian is more decisive in his judgments, or more scornful of the arts and hypocrisies by which the champions of opposite opinions are flattered and propitiated. But his spirit is that of the knight "without reproach," as well as the knight "without fear"; and even his adversaries cannot but delight in the singleness and simplicity of purpose with which he strives after the truth. Nothing in his position or in his character gives them the slightest pretence for supposing that his bold advocacy of liberal views is connected with any ulterior designs or any "fatted calf" of theory or office. While he is thus healthily free from the taint of the partisan, he is also independent of the austere insensibility of the judicial Pharisee, whose boast is that he decides questions relating to human nature without any admixture of human instinct and human feeling. Mr. Motley, throughout his History, writes from his heart as well as from his head; and we have been unable to discover that he has swerved from the truth of things by allowing his narrative to be vitiated by an undue prominence of either.
If we pass from the historian's individuality to his materials, we find, that, in a great degree, his facts are discoveries, and that, if his book possessed no literary value whatever, it would still be an' important addition to the history of Europe during the latter part of the sixteenth century. He has, of course, studied all the prominent contemporary chronicles and pamphlets of Holland, Flanders, Spain, France, Germany, and England; and if his materials had been confined to published sources of information, he would still be in possession of facts not generally known or carefully analyzed and combined; but the peculiar value of his History is due to its exhaustive examination, of unpublished private letters and political documents. The archives of Holland, England, and Spain have been opened to his investigations, and he has been particularly fortunate in being able to road the whole correspondence between Philip II., his ministers, and governors, relating to the affairs of the Netherlands, from 1584 to the death of that monarch. Placed thus at the centre from which events radiated, and understanding perfectly the real designs which Spain concealed under a cover of the most diabolical dissimulation, and which are now for the first time completely elucidated, he was able to judge of the mistakes of the other cabinets of Europe, also laid bare to his unwearied research. The study of the manuscripts in the English State-Paper Office, and in the collections of the British Museum, has given him a perfect insight into the characters and policy of the statesmen of the England of Elizabeth; and the exact relations which England bore to Holland and Spain he has for the first time clearly indicated. As a contribution to the history of England, these two volumes are of inestimable value. They will disturb, and in some cases revolutionize, the fixed opinions which the most intelligent Englishmen of the present day have formed of almost every public man of the Elizabethan era; and we cannot but wonder that this work should have been left for an American scholar to accomplish.
The present volumes of Mr. Motley's History begin with the murder of William of Orange, in 1584, and extend only to the assassination of Henry HI. of France, in 1589. These five years, however, are crowded with individuals and events of special importance, and the historian has shed new light on every topic he has touched. The determination of Philip II. to put down the revolt of the Netherlands was part of an extensive scheme, which involved the conquest of England and France, the extermination of Protestantism, and the subjection of Europe to the despotic sway of Spain and Rome. The interest of the history is therefore European. To grasp it requires a knowledge of the minutest threads of a tangled web of intrigue which spread from the Escorial to the North Sea. This knowledge Mr. Motley has obtained. The cabinets of Spain, England, and France have yielded up their inmost secrets to his indefatigable research. He peeps over the shoulder of Philip, and reads the despatch by which he intends to outwit Walsingham,—and in a second of time is peeping over the shoulder of Walsingham, to see what the latter is doing to outwit Philip. There is something inexpressibly stimulating to curiosity in watching the movements of the nimble historian as he speeds from one cabinet to another, and, the invisible spy in the councils of all, detects the misconceptions and blunders of each. In this complicated game of craft, policy, and passion, our historian is the first writer who has arrived at the knowledge of the cards which each player held in his hand at the time the game was played.
In 1584, the subjugation of the Netherlands seemed to be but a question of time; and the disparity between the power of Spain and that of her revolted provinces is thus strikingly stated:—
"The contest between those seven meagre provinces upon the sand-banks of the North Sea and the great Spanish Empire seemed at the moment with which we are now occupied a sufficiently desperate one. Throw a glance upon the map of Europe. Look at the broad, magnificent Spanish Peninsula, stretching across eight degrees of latitude and ten of longitude, commanding the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, with a genial climate, warmed in winter by the vast furnace of Africa, and protected from the scorching heats of summer by shady mountain and forest and temperate breezes from either ocean. A generous southern territory, flowing with wine and oil and all the richest gifts of a bountiful Nature,—splendid cities,—the new and daily expanding Madrid, rich in the trophies of the most artistic period of the modern world,—Cadiz, as populous at that day as London, seated by the straits where the ancient and modern systems of traffic were blending like the mingling of the two oceans,—Granada, the ancient wealthy seat of the fallen Moors,—Toledo, Valladolid, and Lisbon, chief city of the recently conquered kingdom of Portugal, counting, with its suburbs, a larger population than any city, excepting Paris, in Europe, the mother of distant colonies, and the capital of the rapidly developing traffic with both the Indies: these were some of the treasures of Spain herself. But she possessed Sicily also, the better portion of Italy, and important dependencies in Africa, while the famous maritime discoveries of the age had all inured to her aggrandizement.
"The world seemed suddenly to have expanded its wings from East to West only to bear the fortunate Spanish Empire to the most dizzy heights of wealth and power. The most accomplished generals, the most disciplined and daring infantry the world has ever known, the best-equipped and most extensive navy, royal and mercantile, of the age, were at the absolute command of the sovereign. Such was Spain.
"Turn now to the north-western corner of Europe. A morsel of territory, attached by a slight sand-hook to the continent, and half-submerged by the stormy waters of the German Ocean: this was Holland. A rude climate, with long, dark, rigorous winters and brief summers,—a territory, the mere wash of three great rivers, which had fertilized happier portions of Europe only to desolate and overwhelm this less-favored land,—a soil so ungrateful, that, if the whole of its four hundred thousand acres of arable land had been sowed with grain, it could not feed the laborers alone,—and a population largely estimated at one million of souls: these were the characteristics of the province which already had begun to give its name to the new commonwealth. The isles of Zealand—entangled in the coils of deep, slow-moving rivers, or combating the ocean without—and the ancient episcopate of Utrecht, formed the only other provinces that had quite shaken off the foreign yoke. In Friesland, the important city of Groningen was still held for the King; while Bois-le-Duc, Zutphen, besides other places in Gelderland and North Brabant, also in possession of the royalists, made the position of those provinces precarious."
The safety of the Netherlands appeared to depend so entirely on their success in gaining the assistance of foreign powers, that it is not surprising that the Estates eagerly offered the sovereignty of the country, first to France and then to England. The details of the negotiations with these powers Mr. Motley recounts at great length. When England, at last, adopted the side of the Netherlands, and caught glimpses of the fact that the struggle of the latter against Spain was her cause no less than the cause of the Dutch, the parsimony and indecision of Elizabeth, and the hesitating counsels of her favorite minister, Burleigh, prevented the English-Dutch alliance from being efficient against the common enemy. An incompetent general, the Earl of Leicester, was sent over to Holland with the English troops; yet even his incompetency might not have stood in the way of success, had he not been hampered with instructions which paralyzed what vigor and intelligence he possessed, and had not his soldiers been left to starve by the government they served. Elizabeth was trying to secure a peace with Spain, while Philip and Farnese were busy in contriving the means of an invasion of England; and up to the time the Spanish Armada appeared in the British seas, she and her government were thoroughly cajoled by Spanish craft. Mr. Motley remorselessly exposes, not only the duplicity of Philip, but the credulity of Elizabeth; he demonstrates the superiority of Spain in all the arts which were then supposed to constitute statesmanship; and shows that it was to no sagacity and vigor on the part of the English government, but to the instinctive intelligence and intrepidity of the English people, that the nation was saved from overthrow. Walsingham is almost the only English statesman who comes out from the historian's pitiless analysis with any credit; and, in respect to sagacity, Burleigh is degraded below Leicester: for Leicester at least understood that the enmity of Philip of Spain to England was unappeasable, and therefore justly considered his perfidious negotiations for peace as a mere blind to cover designs of conquest.
But we have no space, in this hurried notice of Mr. Motley's work, to linger on the fertile topics which his luminous narrative suggests. In a future article we hope to do some justice to the facts, principles, and judgments he has established. At present, after indicating his diligence in exploring original authorities, and the importance of the conclusions at which he arrives, we can only venture a few remarks on his historical genius and method.
As regards his historical genius, it is sufficient to say that he exhibits both sympathy and imagination. He has so completely assimilated his materials that his narrative of events is that of an eye-witness rather than that of a chronicler. Reproducing the passions, without participating in the errors of the age about which he writes, he intensely realizes everything he recounts. The siege of Antwerp and the defeat of the Spanish Armada are the two prominent and obvious illustrations of his power of pictorial description: in these he has presented facts with a vividness and coherence worthy of the great masters of poetry and romance; and his capacity of thus giving unmistakable reality to events is not merely exercised in harmony with the literal truth of things, but makes that truth more clearly appreciated. Desirous as he is to impress the imagination, he never sacrifices accuracy to effect.
The same picturesque truthfulness characterizes his descriptions of individuals. In the present volumes he has analyzed and represented a wide variety of human character, separated not only by personal, but national traits. Philip II., Farnese, and Mendoza,—Olden-Barneveld, Paul Buys, St. Aldegonde, Hohenlo, Martin Schenk, and Maurice of Nassau,—Henry III., Henry of Navarre, and the Duke of Guise,—Queen Elizabeth, Burleigh, Walsingham, Buckhurst, Leicester, Davison, Raleigh, Sidney, Howard, Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, and Norris,—all, as delineated by him, have vital reality, all palpably live and move before the eye of his mind.
The method which Mr. Motley has adopted is admirably calculated to insure accuracy as well as reality to his representation of events and persons. His plan is always to allow the statesmen and soldiers who appear in his work to express themselves in their own way, and convey their opinions and purposes in their own words. This mode is opposed to compression, but favorable to truth. Macaulay's method is to re-state everything in his own language, and according to his own logical forms. He never allows the Whigs and Tories, whose opinions and policy he exhibits, to say anything for themselves. He detests quotation-marks. His summaries are so clear and compact that, we are tempted to forget that they leave out the modifications which opinions receive from individual character. The reason that his statements are so often questioned is due to the fact that he insists on his readers viewing everything through the medium of his own mind. Mr. Motley is more objective in his representations; and his readers can dispute his summaries of character and expositions of policy by the abundant materials for differing judgment which the historian himself supplies.
Life of Andrew Jackson. By JAMES PARTON, Author of the "Life of Aaron Burr," etc., etc. 3 vols. 8vo. New York: Mason Brothers. 1860.
We criticized Mr. Parton's "Life of Aaron Burr" with considerable severity at the time of its appearance; and we are the more glad to meet with a book of his which we can as sincerely and heartily commend. The same quality of sympathy with his subject, which led him in his former work to palliate the moral obliquity and overlook the baseness of his hero, in consideration of brilliant gifts of intellect and person, gives vigor and spirit to his delineation of a character in most respects so different as that of Jackson. This man, who filled so large a place in our history, and left perhaps a stronger impress of himself on our politics than any other of our public men except Jefferson, was well worthy to be made a subject of careful study and elucidation. Mr. Parton has given us the means of understanding a character hitherto a puzzle, and deserves our hearty thanks for the manner in which he has done it.
We think the book remarkably fair in its tone, though perhaps Mr. Parton is now and then led to exaggerate the positive greatness of Jackson, who, as it appears to us, was rather eminent by comparison and contrast with the men around him. But there were many strong, if not great qualities in his composition, and so much that was picturesque and strange in the incidents of his career and the state of society which formed his character, that we have found this biography one of the most instructive and entertaining we ever read. If Mr. Parton sometimes exaggerates his hero's merits, he is also outspoken in regard to his faults. If here and there a little Carlylish, his style has the merit of great liveliness, and his pictures of frontier-life are full of interest and vivacity.
Mr. Parton begins his book with a new kind of genealogy, and one suited to our Western hemisphere, where men are valued more for what they themselves are than for what their grandfathers were,—for making than for wearing an illustrious name. He shows that Jackson came of a good stock,—pious, tenacious of opinion and purpose, and brave,—the Scotch-Irish. He then tells us how young Jackson imbibed his fierce patriotism, riding as a boy-trooper, and wellnigh dying a prisoner, during the last years of the Revolutionary War. He lets us see his hero cock-fighting, horse-racing, bad-whiskey-drinking, studying law, and fighting by turns, leaving behind him somewhat dubious but on the whole favorable memories, yet somehow getting on, till he is appointed District-Attorney among the wolves, wildcats, and redskins of Tennessee. The story of his emigration thither and his early life there is wonderfully picturesque, and told by Mr. Parton with the spirit which only sympathy can give.
A great part of the material is wholly new, and we are at last enabled to get at the real Jackson, and to gain something like an adequate and consistent conception, of him. We are particularly glad to learn the truth about Mrs. Jackson, after so many years of slander and misunderstanding, and to find something really touching and noble, instead of ludicrous, in the grim General's devotion to his first and only love. We get also for the first time an understandable account of the Battle of New Orleans, made up with praiseworthy impartiality from the accounts of both sides. Nor is it only here that the author gives us new light. He enables us to judge fairly of the sad story of Arbuthnot and Ambrister, and throws a great deal of light on many points of our political history which much needed honest illumination. The book is of especial interest at the present time, as it contains the best narrative we have ever seen of the Nullification troubles of 1832. Mr. Parton not only shows a decided talent for biography, but his work is characterized by a thoroughness of research and honesty of purpose that make it, on the whole, the best life yet written of any of our public men.
Poems. By ROSE TERRY. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1861. pp. 231.
We forget who it was that once charitably christened one of his volumes "Prose by a Poet," in order that the public might be put on their guard as to the difference between it and the others,—inexperienced critics are so apt to make mistakes! The example seems to us worth following, and, were this dangerous frankness made a point of honor in title-pages, we should be able at a glance to distinguish the books that must be bought from those that may be read. We should then see advertised "The Ten-Inch Bore, or Sermons by Rev. Canon So-and-so,"—"Essays to do Good, by a Victim of Original Sin,"—"Poems by a Proser,"—"Political Economy, by a Bankrupt," and the like. We should know, at least, what we had to expect.
We do not mean to apply this to Miss Terry; but her volume reminded us, by the association of opposites, of the title to which we have referred. We had long known her as a writer of picturesque and vigorous prose, as one of the most successful sketchers of New England character, abounding in humor and pathos; but we had never conceived her as a writer of verse. The readers of the "Atlantic" remember too well her "Maya, the Princess," "Metempsychosis," and "The Sphinx's Children," to need reminding that she has qualities of fancy as remarkable as her faculty for observing real life. Miss Terry seems in this volume to have sought refuge from the real in the ideal, from the jar and bustle of the outward world in the silent and shadowy interior of thought and being. Her poems have the fault of nearly all modern poetry, inasmuch as they are over-informed with thought and sadness. By far the greater number of her themes are abstract and melancholy. It appears to us that her mind moves more naturally and finds readier expression in the picturesque than in the metaphysical; and in saying this we mean to say that she is really a poet, and not a rhymer of thoughts. "Midnight" is a poem full of originality and vigor, with that suggestion of deepest meaning which is so much more effective than definite statement. "December XXXI." gives us a new and delightful treatment of a subject which the poets have made us rather shy of by their iteration. We would signalize also, as an especial favorite of ours, "The Two Villages," and still more the very striking poem "At Last." But, after all, we are not sure that the Ballads are not the best pieces in the volume. The "Frontier Ballads," in particular, quiver with strength and spirit, and have the true game-flavor of the border.
Harrington. By the Author of "What Cheer?" Boston: Thayer & Eldridge.
One of the most impossible books that man ever wrote. A book which one could almost prove never could be written, and which, as an illogical conclusion, but a stubborn fact, has been written, nevertheless. "Harrington" is an Abolition novel, the scene of which is laid in Boston, with a few introductory chapters of plantation-slavery in Louisiana. Its principal merit is its burning earnestness of feeling and purpose; and earnestness is sacred from criticism. Whenever the warm, pulse of an author's heart can be felt through the texture of his story, criticism is mere flippancy. But, at the risk of making our author's lip curl with disdain of the sordid insensibility that refuses to join in his enthusiasm throughout, we shall venture to remind him that enthusiasm is no proof of truth, whether in argument or conclusion.
The introductory chapters, containing the flight of the slave Antony through the Louisiana swamp, are almost unequalled for unfaltering power, for gorgeous wealth of color. Many of the glowing sentences belong rather to passionate poetry than to tamer prose. The agonized resolution that turns the panting fugitive's blood and body to fire,—the fear, so vividly portrayed that the reader's nerves thrill with the shock that brings the hunted negro's heart almost to his mouth with one wild throb,—the matchless picture of the forest and marsh, lengthening and widening with dizzy swell to the weary eye and failing brain,—all are the work of a master of language.
When the scene shifts to Boston, the language, which was in perfect keeping with the tropical madness of Antony's flight and the tropical splendor of the Southern forest, is extravagant to actual absurdity, when used with reference to ordinary scenes and ordinary events. All the force of contrast is lost; and contrast is the great secret of effect. The lavish richness of our author's words is as little suited to the things they describe as a mantle of gold brocade would be to the shoulders of a beggar. Even the loveliest of young women is more likely to enter a room by the ordinary mysterious mode of locomotion than to "flash" into it like a salamander. That it was possible for Muriel Eastman, in gratifying her "vaulting ambition" by a very creditable spring over the parallel bars, to "toss the air into perfume," we are not prepared to deny, having no very clear notion of the meaning of those remarkable words; but when, we are told that Mrs. Eastman was "ineffably surprised, yet more ineffably amused," we must be allowed to enter an energetic protest. Harrington himself is perhaps a trifle too "regnant" to be altogether satisfactory; and there are many similar extravagances and inaccuracies.
The social intercourse of the ladies and gentlemen in this book is particularly bad. It seems as if the author were ignorant of the usages of good society, and, impatient of the vulgar ceremony of inferior people, had seen no way to assert the superiority of his two fair ladies and their unimaginable lovers, except making them dispense with all such observances whatever. His uncertainty how people in their position really do act has hampered his powers; and he is not that rarity, an original writer, but that very common person, one who tries to be original. Real ladies and gentlemen are not reduced to the alternative of either being embarrassed by the ordinary social rules or disregarding them altogether; they take advantage of them. It is a false originality that is singular about ordinary forms; it is only the tyro in chess who is "original" in his first move; Paul Morphy, the most inventive of players, always begins with the customary advance of the king's pawn.
There is the usual partiality—one-sidedness—common to the writings and orations of our author's political school. It may well be doubted whether in reality all the virtues have been monopolized by the Antislavery men, all the vices by their opponents. Our author only hurts his own cause, when he invests with a halo of light every brawler who echoes the words of the really eminent leaders. Because one Abolitionist, who has sacrificed power and position to his creed, is entitled to praise, is another, who perhaps, by advocating the same doctrines, gains a higher position, a wider influence, perhaps an easier support, than he could in any other way, to share the credit of having made a sacrifice? One would not disparage martyrs; but Saint Lawrence on a cold gridiron, and the pilgrim who boiled his peas, are entitled to more credit for their shrewdness than their suffering. Our author, however, makes no distinction; and a natural result will be that many of his readers, knowing that in one case his praises are undeserved, will be slow to believe them just in any case. And not only are all of this particular school disinterested, but they are all among the master-intellects of the age, apparently by definition. Mr. Harrington himself is the commanding intellect of the story, perhaps because of his belief in the greatest number of heresies,—being somewhat peculiar in his religious views, believing in woman's rights, considering the marriage ceremony a silly concession to popular prejudice, giving credence to omens, active as an Abolitionist, and—to crown all—holding that Lord Bacon wrote Shakspeare's Plays! We sympathize entirely with the author's indignant protest against thinking a theory necessarily inaccurate because it contravenes the opinion of the majority. Certainly, a new thing is not necessarily wrong; but neither is a new thing necessarily right; and we are heartless enough to pronounce the "Baconian theory" rather weak than otherwise for a hero.
We cannot close our notice of this book without commending the old French fencing-master as particularly good. He talks very simply and well on matters that he understands, and is silent on those that he does not understand,—affording in both respects an excellent example to the more important characters.
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