"Dove vai, povera foglia frale?"
"Dove vai, povera foglia frale?"
To oblivion, by the briefest route, we think; and we find a pensive satisfaction in speculating upon the incidents of the journey. Shall any one challenge the wanderers in their flight, and seek to stay them? Shall they all reach an utter forgetfulness, and be resolved again into elemental milk and water, or shall one of them lodge in a dusty library, here and there, and, having ceased to be literature, lead the idle life of a curiosity? We imagine another as finding a moment's pause upon the centre-table of a country parlor. Perhaps a third, hastily bought at a railway station as the train started, and abandoned by the purchaser, may at this hour have entered upon a series of railway journeys in company with the brakeman's lamps and oil-bottles, with a fair prospect of surviving many generations of short-lived railway travellers. We figure to ourselves the heart-breaking desolation of a village-tavern, where, on the bureau under the mirror, to which the public comb and brush are chained, a fourth might linger for a while.
But in all the world shall anybody read one of these books? We fancy not even a critic; for the race so vigilantly malign in other days has lost its bitterness, or has been broken of its courage by the myriad numbers of the versifiers once so exultingly destroyed. Indeed, that cruel slaughter was but a combat with Nature,—
"So careful of the type she seems,So careless of the single life";
"So careful of the type she seems,So careless of the single life";
and from the exanimate dust of one crushed poetaster she bade a thousand rhymesters rise. Yet one cannot help thinking with a shudder of the hideous spectacle of "Eros" in the jaws of Blackwood or the mortal Quarterly, thirty years ago; or of how ruthlessly our own Raven would have plucked the poor trembling life from the "Patriotic Poems," or "The Contest," or the "Poems."
The world grows wiser and better-natured every day, and the tender statistician has long since stayed the hand of the critic. "Why strike," says the gentle sage, "when figures will do your work so much more effectually, and leave you the repose of a compassionate soul? Do you not know that but one book in a thousand survives the year of its publication?" etc., etc., etc. "And then as to the infinite reproduction of the species," adds Science, "isNature,
"'So careful of the single type?' But no,From scarped cliff and quarried stoneShe cries, 'A thousand types are gone.'"
"'So careful of the single type?' But no,From scarped cliff and quarried stoneShe cries, 'A thousand types are gone.'"
Patience! the glyptodon and the dodo have been dead for ages. Perhaps in a million years the poetaster also shall pass.
Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border.ByColonel R. B. Marcy, U. S. A. With Numerous Illustrations. New York: Harper and Brothers.
There is not much variety in frontier life, it must be confessed, though there is abundant adventure. A family likeness runs through nearly all histories of bear-fights, and one Indian-fight might readily be mistaken for another. So also bear-fighters and Indian-fighters are akin in character, and the pioneers who appear in literature leave a sense of sameness upon the reader's mind. Nevertheless, one continues to read of them with considerable patience, and likes the stories because he liked their ancestral legends when a boy.
Colonel Marcy's book offers something more than the usual attractions of the class to which it belongs; for it contains the history of his own famous passage of the Rocky Mountains in mid-winter, and notices of many frontiersmen of original and striking character (like the immortal Captain Scott), as well as much shrewd observation of Indian nature and other wild-beast nature. All topics are treated with perfect common-sense; if our soldierly author sometimes philosophizes rather narrowly, he never sentimentalizes, though he is not without poetry; and he is thoroughlyimbued with the importance of his theme. One, therefore, suffers a great deal from him, in the way of unnecessary detail, without a murmur, and now and then willingly accepts an old story from him, charmed by the simplicity and good faith with which he attempts to pass it off as new.
The style of the book is clear and direct, except in those parts where light and humorous narration is required. There it is bad, and seems to have been formed upon the style of the sporting newspapers and the local reporters, with now and then a hint from the witty passages of the circus, as in this colloquy:—
"'Mought you be the boss hossifer of that thar army?'
"'I am the commanding officer of that detachment, sir.'
"'Wall, Mr. Hossifer, be them sure 'nuff sogers, or is they only make-believe chaps, like I see down to Orleans?'
"'They have passed through the Mexican war, and I trust have proved themselves not only worthy of the appellation of real, genuine soldiers, but of veterans, sir.'"
And so forth. We like Colonel Mercy when he talks of himself better than when he talks for himself. In the latter case he is often what we see him above, and in the former he is always modest, discreet, and entertaining.
Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing.From the German ofJoseph von Eichendorff, byCharles Godfrey Leland. With Vignettes by E. B. Bensell. New York: Leypoldt and Holt.
When, as Heine says, Napoleon, who was Classic like Cæsar and Alexander, fell to the ground, and Herren August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel, who were Romantic like Puss in Boots, arose as victors, Baron von Eichendorff was one of those who shared the triumph. He wrote plays and poems and novels to the tunes set by the masters of his school, but for himself practically he was a wise man,—held comfortable offices all his life long, and, in spite of vast literary yearning, sentiment, and misanthropy, was a Philister of the Philisters. The tale which Mr. Leland translates so gracefully is an extravaganza, in marked contrast to all the other romances of Eichendorff, in so far as it is purposely farcical, and they are serious; but we imagine it does not differ from them greatly in its leading qualities of fanciful incoherency and unbridled feebleness. An idle boy, who is driven from home by his father, the miller, and is found with his violin on the road to nowhere by two great ladies and carried to their castle near Vienna,—who falls in love with one of these lovely countesses, and runs away for love of her to Italy, and, after passing through many confused adventures there, with no relation to anything that went before or comes after, returns to the castle, and finds that his lovely countess is not a countess, but a poor orphan adopted by the great folk,—and so happily marries her,—this is the Good-for-Nothing and his story. A young student of the German language, struggling through the dusty paths of the dictionary to a comprehension of the tale, would perhaps think it a wonderful romance, when once he had achieved its meaning; but being translated into our pitiless English, its poverty of wit and feeling and imagination is apparent; and one is soon weary of its mere fantasticality.