THE COFFEE CLUB.
No. III
“At last he is as welcome as a storm; he that is abroad shelters himself from it, and he that is at home shuts the door. If he intrudes himself yet, some with their jeering tongues give him many a gird, but his brazen impudence feels nothing; and let him be armed on free-scot with the pot and the pipe, he will give them leave to shoot their flouts at him till they be weary.”Fuller’s Profane State.
“At last he is as welcome as a storm; he that is abroad shelters himself from it, and he that is at home shuts the door. If he intrudes himself yet, some with their jeering tongues give him many a gird, but his brazen impudence feels nothing; and let him be armed on free-scot with the pot and the pipe, he will give them leave to shoot their flouts at him till they be weary.”
Fuller’s Profane State.
Summer, with its transforming influence upon all things natural and artificial, has come, and the Coffee Club feels somewhat of its power. We introduced you, reader, to our room in the depth of winter, we welcomed you with a blazing hearth and the cheerful light of an astral, and our mystic tripod lustily bore witness to the strife of the hostile elements. But now the aspect of the room and the temper of its occupants is changed. A solitary taper withallits light, can scarce effect a dim obscure—the thick warm carpet is superseded by a flimsier texture of straw—the point of concentration is transferred from the glowing fire to the open window—the center-table is drawn back and relieved from its superincumbent load, that the eye may not be oppressed with a sense of heaviness—in every chair you find a lazy pillow, and even the sofa which would once contain all four, will scarce suffice for the extended length of Apple Dumpling—our coffee simmers over the sickly flame of a spirit lamp, and is quaffed in cooler draughts, and from comparatively tiny cups.
The temper of its occupants is likewise changed. That equable hilarity which seldom rose to jollity andneversank below cheerfulness, is gone; and its place is ill supplied by a fitful state of noisy mirth and moody silence. Tristo is alternately more melancholy and less so—Nescio, more entirely sensual, or more acutely intellectual, as the whim seizes him—Pulito is absorbed in attention to earthly nymphs one week, and shuts himself up in his room with the heaven-born muses the next—and Apple, who formerly, like some auxiliary verbs, had but onemood, is now variable through the whole paradigm. The disturbing influence of warm weather and bewitching moonlight is also perceptible in the irregularity of our meetings. But few, very few times have we been together this term, and then we have employed ourselves in the most random conversation. Even to-night we have but an unpromising prospect before us. Pulito and Apple are not here, and Tristo and myself have hitherto kept ourthoughts to ourselves with most unsocial chariness. But hark! Pulito’s ‘light fantastic toe’ is on the stairs, and he must saysomethingas he enters.
Pulito.“Good evening, gentlemen. You certainly have the true atrabilious aspect; ’twould spoil my face for a week to sit in close proximity with two such melancholy phizes. With your leave, therefore, Messieurs, I will take a cup, adjust my flowing locks, and be off. What beautiful little acorn-goblets you have here, Nescio, and then the delicacy of the beverage, so nicely adapted to the season. You have a rare taste in these matters, Quod.”
Tristo.“Ah! Pulito, you are always the same careless fellow, and ’twere vain to hope for any thing else from you; but cannot you sit down for one evening and have a long and sober talk. You know some of us leave town soon, and we may not have another opportunity.”
Pulito.“Indeed, Tristo, I am sorry to disappoint you; butthisevening I have an engagement from which I really cannot get excused; the rest of the term I am entirely at your service.”
Nescio.“I’ll wager any thing from a pin’s head to ‘this great globe itself’ that there’s a lady in the case.”
Pulito.“Weel, an there be, gude Maister Quod.”
Nescio.“Why you remember your boastful resolution to eschew all connection with any thing more substantial than ‘Fancy’s daughters three,’ during the hot weather.”
Pulito.“And whether these be ‘Faith, Hope and Charity,’ or ‘Wine, Women and Coxcombry,’ depends very much upon thefancier’s temperament.”
Tristo.“I am afraid, my dear Pulito, that your aspirations after learning are becoming less ardent; and unless you are more earnest, your poetic ambition will fain be contented with being laureate of the Coffee Club.”
Pulito.“‘What is learning but a cloak-bag of books, cumbersome for a gentleman to carry? and the muses fit to make wives for farmers’ sons?’ What Fuller, in his ‘degenerous gentleman’ says in irony, I would adopt in sober earnest.”
Nescio.“Well, I perceive we shall get nothing from you to-night, so you may go. But first tell us if you have seen any thing of Apple.”
Pulito.“Indeed, I have, and bring quite a message from him, which, but for your suggestion, I should have forgotten. By my troth, in my head, ‘dies truditur die,’—one idea thrusts out another. But for the story—I met Apple walking most abstractedly with the huge roll of his autobiography under his arm. When I asked him what he was thinking about, he obstinately confined his information to the mysterious remark that he was ‘coming up’ this evening. As soon, however, as he discovered that I did not intend to be there, he unfolded his whole purpose—under an express injunction of secrecy,which I ought to keep, and which I will keep—though I will give you an inkling of it, as it may afford you some sport. He will probably appear particularly brilliant, and converse more like himself, his peculiar self. Verb. sat sap. Make fun of him if you can, for I owe him a grudge for a spiteful pun, which he made on a lady’s name. However, my masters, after I have given my neck-kerchief the blameless tie, and curled my hair with the twist extatic, I will leave you to your dull coffee, and bask me in the warmth of thy sunny eyes, oh beautiful *—— *——.”
Here Pulito made his exit, singing “di tutti palpiti,” with an air of Cox-comical affectation, half assumed, half natural.
Tristo.“A handsome fellow, and a bright. But the day will come when a strong mind, and a well-stored memory, will be worth more than the vanished rapture of a woman’s smile. What a pity youth can never temper pleasure with——, hist! that stumbling step sounds like Apple’s.”
Nescio.“’Tis his,—let’s slip into the bed-room and see what Dumpling will do.”
Tristo.“Agreed; I promise myself materiel for laughter.”
[EnterApple, with a look of pleased importance, and a mouth apparently ready to discharge a witticism.] “Ha! Pulito! Tristo! Quod! What, not a soul here but myself, who amsolus, he! he! pretty good! I’ll lay that by, and use it when they come. What an ass that Tristo must be, never to laugh at my puns. However, he cannot help himself to-night. I have various good things, aside from puns. If the conversation turns upon wit, I shall say, ‘A witty sentence should be like a scorpion, the sting in the tail, but should not, like a scorpion, sting itself to death!’ If Tristo goes to rating me for smoking, I shall say, ‘A cigar is thesummum bonum, pity itsfumesare notperfumes!’ If Nescio says, ‘I am your host’—‘Yes,’ quoth I, ‘and in yourself anhost.’ That stone will kill two birds; it is at once a pun and a compliment. Ah me! what is the literary world coming to? They all seem bent upon being dull, and the greatest of scriptorial (scriptural?) sins is to say a witty thing. Volumes of poetry and philosophy and oratory and the like come forth, and never a bit of fun in ’em all. Now in my view even a sermon would be vastly better, if the preacher, especially in the application, would discharge at the hearer a few judicious puns of a devotionalcast. Bless me! where—where—confusion worse confounded! where are my cigars? I can never shine without them. I should be like Sampson shorn of his locks. I shall have to go by a dozen colleges to ——’s to get some. Well! ‘leve fit, quod bene fertur,’ ‘that’s a light fit, which is well borne.’ Ha, ha, good! remember that.”
As Apple leaves the room, Quod and Tristo, bursting with laughter, issue from theirlatebræ.
Tristo.“Bravo, Dumpling, bravo.”
Nescio.“Capital! capital! What if we appear to have just come in when he returns, and give him a chance to be witty—ha, ha!”
Tristo.“Constat—it is a covenant. But here he comes.”
[Enter Apple, puffing with haste, a bunch of cigars in his hand, and a lighted one in his mouth.]
Apple, (amazed.) “What! you here.”
TristoandQuod. “Yes, we’ve just stept in. You, I suppose, didn’t think there was a soul here.”
Apple, (chuckling.) “No, faith: I expected to besolus, myself!”
Quod.“Why, Dumpling, you are witty to-night.”
Apple.“A witty sentence should be like a scorpion, the sting in the tail, but should not, like a scorpion, sting itself to death, ha! ha!”
Tristo.“Excellent! but do, dear Apple, fling away your vile cigars.”
Apple, (winking.) “A cigar, my dear fellow, is thesummum bonum—pity itsfumesare notperfumes.”
Tristo.“Your wit should not hinder your politeness. I dislike them, and I am your host.”
Apple.“Yes, and in yourself anhost, ha! ha!”
Nescio.“Why, Apple, where on earth do you get so many good things?”
Apple, (vainly.) “Oh! I don’t know: I believe it comes natural—impromptus.”
Nescio.“Impromptus! Ha! Ha! Why, Apple, we were in the bed-room here, when you came in before, and heard you practising on your impromptus!”
Apple, (coloring with shame, vexation, and alarm.) “How—how—what, you did, did you? Pretty good hoax, though, wasn’t it? Don’t tell the fellows ’twasyourhoax. But being Dumpling, I’ve got thedumps, ha! ha! so I think I’ll go home and write on my autobiography.”
Tristo.“Do so, and don’t forget this chapter.”
(Exit Apple with a hang-dog air.)
Tristo.“Incorrigible!”
Nescio.“Utterly! ha! ha! it’s worth a dozen comedies.”
As if by a secret and common impulse, the laugh and jest ceased, and both became silent. Nescio sat by one window, emitting from a fragrant Havana languid and infrequent puffs. His varying countenance expressed a train of thoughts as motley as his mind, where the weighty and the sober were linked and mingled with the light and the ludicrous, and feelings and reflections came trooping by, robed in a livery of serio-comic strangeness. He was thinking of the mystic links that bind together the seen and the unseen—of the glorious, expansive, elastic mind—that ‘sine fine fines’—of the invisible shadings of the mental into the passionate, and of the passionate intothe corporeal—of the attenuated conduits that bear reciprocally between the mind and body a gush of joy or a thrill of anguish. He turned from the puzzling maze, and by no unnatural diversion, his thoughts passed to some of the most wonderful emanations from this mysterious source—the productions of the ‘world’s sole demigod’—Ariel and Caliban and Puck—the sisters three, and Titania with her faery train—and Falstaff, and the good king Malcolm, and the maddened Lear—poor, shattered Hamlet, and Othello ‘the dusky Moor,’
——“Whose hand,Like the base Judæan, threw a pearl awayRicher than all his tribe.”
——“Whose hand,Like the base Judæan, threw a pearl awayRicher than all his tribe.”
——“Whose hand,Like the base Judæan, threw a pearl awayRicher than all his tribe.”
——“Whose hand,
Like the base Judæan, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe.”
Then came up in re-awakened life the fond musings of his own early boyhood, and he was pleased with the contemplation, all groundless and fruitless as they were, for he smiled at his former folly, and thought himself too wise to be again deceived.
They had crowded one after another upon ‘Fancy’s ardent eye,’ bright and incessant like waves from the sun; and as he thought of their number and their futility, his mind was neither spent with weariness, nor darkened by regret. His feelings were still as vigorous and varied, as they were, before they went forth in quest of happiness and returned without even an olive-branch, as an earnest of security and peace. He had been thus vibrating between thought and revery for perhaps an hour, when he started from his waking dream, and remembered that he was not alone. Tristo was sitting at the other window, with averted face and eyes gazing on vacancy, while in his hand lay an open volume of the sensitive and melancholy Cowper. Nescio, I grieve to say it, is not always felicitous in his address. He lacks that quick tact, which may be denominated an instinctive sense of present propriety. He felt a reaction in himself, and wished to confirm the dominion of mirth in his own breast, by awakening it in that of others. He laid his hand on Tristo’s shoulder, and giving him a friendly shake, said “Wake up, man, what are you dreaming of? Come, sing us a song,pour passer le temps. Pray Heaven, no pretty girl has crossed your line of vision. If so, be not thou cast down—I can give you a charm, a very talisman to gain her, in the whiff of a cigar,ut ait Apple. Sigh and flatter, sit up late o’ nights so as to appear pale—seem for a time to prefer another, and then assure her that your heart is, was and will be all, all her own. In that moment of delighted conviction press hard—the fort is yours.” Tristo was too sad to be angry. He merely replied while his lip quivered with emotion—“Nescio, you know not how you wound me.”
Nescio.“Indeed, indeed, I did not mean it, youknowIcouldnot. But why should you be always so gloomy? It vexes me tosee you thus. Why should you not smile more often and more willingly?”
Tristo.“Do I not smile?”
Nescio.“O such a smile! ’tis worse than tears—’tis like the forced laugh in the play. ‘Male qui mihi volunt, sic rideant.’ But why should your thoughts be so dark amidst the glittering activity of life?”
Tristo.“And why should they not beentirelydark? The breath of this vast world sounds in my ear as the up-going of one deep and universal sigh, and can the thought be other than a thought of pain. My grief is not for myself alone, though that were enough. But where is the man who is happy at all? unless, indeed, it be the happiness ofapathy. Where is the man of open heart and aspiring mind, whose plans succeed even in the outline, or if the outline be realized, the filling up is not a mixture of care and vexings—and failure and regret? When we have reached some fancied goal of youthful promise, which shone to the far off eye like the battlements of Heaven, does not widowed hope put on her weeds, and mourn over her children, and refuse to be comforted because they are not?”
Nescio.“With such views of human life, where do you find any relief from your melancholy?”
Tristo.“To what should a mind saddened by its own afflictions look for consolation. The world ofrealities, as I have said, presents but a gloomy and scarred waste. Ah! then the greatness of thepoet’spower and the dignity of his art are most manifest. Then, that which in our grosser moods, we had deemed light, pretty, and only fit to while away an hour, becomesmighty, andalmostadorable. For the wearied and broken spirit, which all the riches of learning could not soothe, nor the gift of kingdoms elate, may by the witchery of poetry be wrapt into a calm, satisfied enjoyment.”
Nescio.“I wonder not that an early father, in holy abhorrence, called poesy,vinum dæmonum, the wine of fiends, if its influence be such as you assert. For surely it supplies to the educated and refined, the same refuge from corroding thought and disturbing conscience, which the intoxicating cup offers to the sensual and brutish.”
Tristo.“It is so in some measure, but with this difference, which will immediately rescue this ‘divina facultas’ from injurious reflections. The inebriating draught, the actual ‘uvæ succus’ offers its poor and transient relief toall. The unfortunate and the guilty, those upon whom melancholy has settled like a mist from the ground, causeless and undeserved, though unavoidable—and those upon whom an outraged conscience inflicts its scourgings in righteous retribution, may there seek and find oblivion. But only a pure life, a cultivated mind, areligious nature, (let not the phrase breed heresy,) can secure to one the healing influence of poetry.”
Nescio.“The idea is a sublime one. But is it not merely a beautifulidea? Can you bring forward any evidence to make it manifest, or even any illustration to render it probable?”
Tristo.“With ease. Indeed, were I to search far and wide through the whole circle of English poetry, I could not find a more pertinent illustration than in the passage which I have just been reading, and on which my finger now rests.”
Nescio.“What is it? Read it.”
Tristo.“Even its title is affecting. ‘On the receipt of my mother’s picture.’ It must be familiar to you, yet I will read a few lines.
‘O that those lips had language! Life has pass’dWith me but roughly since I saw thee last.Those lips are thine—thy own sweet smile I see,The same, that oft in childhood solaced me;Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,‘Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!’The meek intelligence of those dear eyes(Blessed be the art that can immortalize,The art that baffles Time’s tyrannic claimTo quench it) here shines on me still the same.’
‘O that those lips had language! Life has pass’dWith me but roughly since I saw thee last.Those lips are thine—thy own sweet smile I see,The same, that oft in childhood solaced me;Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,‘Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!’The meek intelligence of those dear eyes(Blessed be the art that can immortalize,The art that baffles Time’s tyrannic claimTo quench it) here shines on me still the same.’
‘O that those lips had language! Life has pass’dWith me but roughly since I saw thee last.Those lips are thine—thy own sweet smile I see,The same, that oft in childhood solaced me;Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,‘Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!’The meek intelligence of those dear eyes(Blessed be the art that can immortalize,The art that baffles Time’s tyrannic claimTo quench it) here shines on me still the same.’
‘O that those lips had language! Life has pass’d
With me but roughly since I saw thee last.
Those lips are thine—thy own sweet smile I see,
The same, that oft in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,
‘Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!’
The meek intelligence of those dear eyes
(Blessed be the art that can immortalize,
The art that baffles Time’s tyrannic claim
To quench it) here shines on me still the same.’
Suppose now the case of two individuals, of equal refinement, intellect, and sensibility, (save that in one the edge of all these qualities must have been blunted by moral defection) nay—that by making the parallel closer, the contrast may be more obvious—suppose them to be brothers. In early life they both were trained in the path of moral rectitude, from which the one has never swerved, but the other has been constantly making wider and wider deviations. Place them now in the situation of the poet, and let them read these lines. The image recalled, the object of their contemplation is the same—their early associations are the same. But the effect is far different. The conviction is present with one, that he has persevered in that course, which his mother toiled and wept to place him in, and in pleased sadness he will repeat with Cowper,
‘And while the wings of Fancy still are free,And I can view this mimic show of thee,Time has but half succeeded in his theft—Thyself removed, thy power to soothe me left.’
‘And while the wings of Fancy still are free,And I can view this mimic show of thee,Time has but half succeeded in his theft—Thyself removed, thy power to soothe me left.’
‘And while the wings of Fancy still are free,And I can view this mimic show of thee,Time has but half succeeded in his theft—Thyself removed, thy power to soothe me left.’
‘And while the wings of Fancy still are free,
And I can view this mimic show of thee,
Time has but half succeeded in his theft—
Thyself removed, thy power to soothe me left.’
The other is melancholy, but his is the melancholy of remorse. Each vivid recollection but ‘adds hot instance to the gushing tear,’ and all that soothed his brother, but protractshispain. He feels in all its force the solemn truth, so quaintly expressed by the old dramatist, Suckling:
‘Our sins, like to our shadowsWhen our day is in its glory, scarce appeared:Towards our evening how great and monstrousThey are!’
‘Our sins, like to our shadowsWhen our day is in its glory, scarce appeared:Towards our evening how great and monstrousThey are!’
‘Our sins, like to our shadowsWhen our day is in its glory, scarce appeared:Towards our evening how great and monstrousThey are!’
‘Our sins, like to our shadows
When our day is in its glory, scarce appeared:
Towards our evening how great and monstrous
They are!’
His feelings are sympathetically described by Byron:
‘So do the dark in soul expire,Or live like scorpion girt by fire;So withers the mind remorse hath riven,Unfit for earth, undoom’d for heaven,Darkness above, despair beneath,Around it flame, within it death.’
‘So do the dark in soul expire,Or live like scorpion girt by fire;So withers the mind remorse hath riven,Unfit for earth, undoom’d for heaven,Darkness above, despair beneath,Around it flame, within it death.’
‘So do the dark in soul expire,Or live like scorpion girt by fire;So withers the mind remorse hath riven,Unfit for earth, undoom’d for heaven,Darkness above, despair beneath,Around it flame, within it death.’
‘So do the dark in soul expire,
Or live like scorpion girt by fire;
So withers the mind remorse hath riven,
Unfit for earth, undoom’d for heaven,
Darkness above, despair beneath,
Around it flame, within it death.’
Nescio.“You have quoted Byron, rather unfortunately for your argument, I think, Tristo. For he is an instance of the existence of high poetic power, in a mind depraved by the baseness of his moral sentiments.”
Tristo.“You mistake my meaning, if you infer from it that I think theexistenceof poetic power incompatible with moral degradation, for there are many, too many instances of this kind. My position was that a pure and unsophisticated character was essential to theenjoymentof this faculty in one’s self, or as displayed by others. And of this Byron is as strong a case as I could wish. Every spark of genius, but assisted in lighting the flame, which scathed and consumed his heart. ’Twas so with Shelly, and in the later years of his life, with Burns. Moore is the only similar author who approaches to an exception to this rule. But how widely different with the opposite class of poets. Can you read a page of Cowper, or Wordsworth, without feeling that they derive pure and exquisite pleasure from their inspiration. Indeed to the former it was almost hisonlysource of enjoyment—without it he would have been wretched, in truth, for his nature was too sensitive for a rough and jostling world.”
Nescio.“I cannot deny it. You have, however, a higher idea of the value and interest and influence of poetry than is current now-a-days. I myself have been disposed to regard the high pretensions of this ‘divina gens’ with something of distrust. I have dipped into our poetic literature as extensively, probably, as most of my age; I have been pleased and profited, but never have I been blessed with an admission into thepenetralia. My most diligent search (as Pausanias records of the petitioner at Pion’s tomb) has been rewarded bysmoke.”
Tristo.“I know that to the unreflecting crowd the life and labors of the poet seem poor and paltry. He is one by himself—a flower-gathering, shade-loving idler in a garden, where others are busily plying the mattock and the spade. To them he appears engaged neither in lessening the evils, nor in adding to the blessings oflife. His musings they deem like the dreams of the sleeper, where fancy, and vanity, and passion, draw scenes of glory and of pleasure with the bold tracery of an unfettered hand; but to the waking eye in the light of reason, those pictures are changed to the ungraceful lines, and uncolored objects of ordinary life.”
Nescio.“I am by no means satisfied that their view is not a correct one. It seems to me that the allurements of poetry and the splendors of romance are all lymphatic draughts to inebriate the mind, and, as ‘the subtle blood of the grape,’ exalts and quickens the animal spirits, only thereafter to retard and depress, so do these unearthly potations elevate the soul, but leave it dull, drooping and disgusted. Especially pernicious in their influence are the trashy productions of ephemeral minds, which ‘dream false dreams and see lying visions,’ which clothe the children of their fancy in perfections to which man is a stranger, and fill the untaught soul with hopes and aspirations, which earth can never realize. Byron certainly, and, I think, even Shakspeare, exert an evil influence in their portraitures of character. Their actors are so sublime, or so lovely, that they first inspire the mind with false hope, and then fill it with vain despair.”
Tristo.“You speak the language of a half philosopher, who generalizes a few isolated facts into an all-embracing theory. Even Byron’s evil influence results not from the unnatural beauty of his characters and scenery, but rather from the fact that he does not seem to conceive of virtue even in the abstract; he no where shows regard for aught but self, and no where recognizes even by accident a standard of right and wrong. As for Shakspeare, nature is visible in all his writings; virtue and vice are strangely mingled, even as among the scenes and occurrences of life. If he ever deviates from the actual and the known, it is either in the delineation of some creature of professedly ideal existence, such as Ariel and Puck; or else in the combination of circumstances which produces characters, that all will allow to be natural, though such they have never seen in actual life and motion.”
Nescio.“Suffer me for a moment to interrupt you, and ask what isnature? Shakspeare is certainly more natural than most of his successors, and yet, for the life of me I cannot point out the difference, where it is, or in what it consists. For the incidents of that great master are sometimes not merely improbable, but impossible.”
Tristo.“The difference is this, Shakspeare brings together improbable occurrences in almost impossible conjunctions; yet healwaysmakes thewordsandactionsof his characters consistent. Other dramatists have their plots sufficiently probable, and their junctures and transitions natural and easy—this is the effect of study; but their actors have no individuality—and this is a defect of genius, that no study nor midnight watchings can supply: their figures are sometimes one thing, sometimes another: thecontour, air, and attitude,are all shifting and various. This is more particularly observable in works of the tragic or semi-tragic cast, than in the comic productions of the older writers. In Dryden, for instance, the comedies are many of them laughable and good; but the tragedies, saving here and there a splendid spangle, are cold, inflated fustian. Even in scenes of the most intense excitement, when grief is wrought up to agony, and passion foams with ungovernable rage, he makes his characters talk, talk, talk, instead of acting. In place of some brief and stormy exclamation, such as nature prompts and passion utters, they stand still, gesticulate by rule, and bring out long similitudes of studied elegance, and elaborate perfection. Their ruined hopes they liken to a blighted tree, and coolly pursue the track of the lightning from the topmost leaf to the downmost root, showing you howhereit grazed, andtherecut to the very heart. Oh agony! Their words are hot—hot enough in all conscience, when taken one by one—minutatim—but collectively they are verbiage, not pathos.”
Nescio.“I have been thinking that a natural may be distinguished from an unnatural author, in that you can not only clearly conceive, but distinctly remember the form and bearing of the characters in the one, while the actors in the other leave no definite impression. The Falstaff of Shakspeare, and the Arbaces of Bulwer, are good illustrations of my meaning. Both are characters, which, we are certain, neverdidexist. How, then, is Falstaff natural, and Arbaces the reverse? The formermightexist; the latternever couldhave being. Theformeris a collection of qualities, carried, it may be, to excess; thelatteris a union of contradictions. Theformeris witty and sensual and boastful beyond reality, but not beyond possibility; thelatteris a lumbering conception of a grand and gloomysomething—a shadow of magnificent shapelessness—it has noidentity, and its shifting outline it would puzzle Proteus to trace. In the language of the schools, Falstaff is inposse, but not inesse—while Arbaces is neither inesse, norposse, nor any where else save in Bulwer’s head.”
Tristo.“I believe you are right. But I was about to state why poetry is a valuable—aye, anin-valuable gift. Now, observe—I mean, not rhyme, ‘the drowsy tintinnabulum of song’—nor the display of those poetical words, which, like trite coins, have no image nor superscription left—nor yet, ‘in linked sweetness long-drawn out,’ those brilliant figures, which have come down unimpaired from Homer, and serve to conceal the deficiency of sense—but I mean the pure ‘poetry of the heart’—the rich essence of feeling and of thought—whether its expression be prose or verse, ‘oratio soluta,’ vel ‘constricta.’ It is true, without exception, that the purer and less hackneyed are the feelings, the richer and more gushing is this ‘poetry of the heart.’ And this proves its excellence. To the eye and the ear of childhood, the ‘visible face of nature,’ the green beneath,and the ‘skyey blue’ above, with the thousand voices, that come quivering from the forest-depths, are all one vastpoem, modulated to a measure of dulcet melody, and awakening sympathies inexplicably sweet. Thought to them is a rambling revery, and existence is a thrilling dream. As they lie upon the green grass, and view the sky, and gaze, and gaze upon the unutterable depths, the yearnings for something beyond, beyond,beyond, are quick, and strange, and powerful within them. As they grow old, and hardened, and thankless, and wicked, does not poetry vanish, and fancy flee? Are not the dreams of purity, and kindness, and affection, which were but the strugglings of the youthful spirit to attain the blessedness it was made for, supplanted by hard plans, and cold calculations of wealth, and luxury, and restlessness, and pride? Hope and Love, the birds of Paradise, that nestled in the boyish heart, and fluttered with many-colored wings over their warm progeny of kindling wishes, and bright resolves, are banished from their early home, and in their place, with gloomy pinions, settle a thousand cormorant birds, with the vultures of remorseless Ambition, and Greediness formore. Who does not feel that it is only in his holier and nobler hours that poesy creeps through him like a spirit, and thoughts of grandeur cause his flesh to quiver, even as the forest is shaken by the footsteps of the wind? Can one, who has but now stained his soul with knavery or meanness, read that unparalleled monologue of Hamlet, and surrender his heart to the greatness of its power? Can any, save he whose spirit is daily and deeply filled with the sublimity of rectitude, appreciate Milton’s sonnet upon his blindness, a specimen of moral grandeur in thought and purpose, which has found no equal in the walks of mind? I say not that even in the bosoms of the vicious and the hardened, the perusal of sublime or lovely conceptions will fail to produce emotion—deep, strong emotion—for, wound and abuse it as you may, there will still, even at three-score years and ten, remain something of that ardent pulse, which, in boyhood, burned at the sight of beauty, and bounded at the voice of song. But poesy will no longer gush continually upward from the fountains of his heart, like refreshing waters from a perennial spring. And what a glorious thing must it be for a Pitt or a Webster, when worn in the defense of Freedom, and weary with the hopelessness of their toil, in the pages of Scott to bury for a time the projects of ambition, and the chicanery of courts! When they bow their own mighty intellects at the still mightier shrines of Milton or of Shakspeare, is not theirs the sacred thrill of the eastern pilgrim, when he falls and worships at the tomb of his fathers? Wo be to him, who would lessen his hours of poetic enthusiasm; for those hours are a backward vista to an earlier and better state. True poetry is the basis of devotion; and devotion added to poetry is the ‘Pelion upon Ossa,’ by which mortals may climb once more to the heaven from which they fell.”
Ego.