Diversions of the Echo Club: Night the Fifth
ALL were on hand at the usual hour, fresh and eager for a continuation of the performances. The Gannett, addressing Zoïlus, opened the conversation : —
“ I can guess one thing you have been thinking of since we met, — of Tennyson’s place in literature ?”
ZOÏLUS. YOU have just hit it ! I did n’t fully agree with the Ancient, but there was no time left for discussion. There must be some good reason for Tennyson’s influence on the poetry of our day ; yet, if his is a genuine flower, it could n’t be made a weed by being sown everywhere. There is no doubt of the individuality of his manner, but I am not yet ready to say that it is pure, as Collins’s, or Gray’s, for instance, or even Wordsworth’s. He is sometimes like a perfume which cloys the sense from over-richness. Now, a very slight change in the odor of the tuberose might make it unpleasant ; and it seems to me that some of Tennyson’s younger followers have made just such a change.
GALAHAD. Almost the same thought occurred to me the other day. I was trying to recall some lines of the Ancient’s imitation, and then went over in my mind the numbers of blankverse idyls more or less in Tennyson’s manner, which have been written by others. He drew from a very far source, as I think Stedman has clearly shown in his paper on “Theocritus and Tennyson”; but they, drawing from him, cannot conceal theirs. I never before felt so keenly the difference between the poetry which rises out of a man’s own nature and that which is impressed upon it, or communicated, like an infection, by another mind. I even went so far as to try my hand alone, on an imitation of this idyllic school, which I now see is itself an echo.
THE ANCIENT. Read it to us, then ! Who was your immediate model ?
GALAHAD (taking a paper from his pocket). Why, no one in particular. Now, that I look over the lines, I see that I must have been thinking of the echoes of the “Princess,” rather than of those of the short idyls of modem life. It is the craziest burlesque of the mediæval themes, revived in that form : it is absurd, and nothing else.
ZOÏLUS. That will do very well, for variety.
GALAHAD. Then, as Eustace Green says, if I must, I must. (Reads.)
SIR EGGNOGG.
Sir Eggnogg of the Rampant Lily, named
From that embrasure of his argent shield
Given by a thousand leagues of heraldry
On snuffy parchments drawn, — so forth he fared,
By bosky boles and autumn leaves he fared,
Where grew the juniper with berries black,
The sphery mansions of the future gin.
But naught of this decoyed his mind, so bent
On fair Miasma, Saxon-blooded girl,
Who laughed his loving lullabies to scorn,
And would have snatched his hero-sword to deck
Her haughty brow, or warm her hands withal,
So scornful she : and thence Sir Eggnogg cursed
Between his teeth, and chewed his iron boots
In spleen of love. But ere the morn was high
In the robustious heaven, the postern-tower
Clang to the harsh, discordant, slivering scream
Of the tire-woman, at the window bent
To dress her crisped hair. She saw, ah woe !
The fair Miasma, overbalanced, hurled
O'er the flamboyant parapet which ridged
The muffled coping of the castle’s peak,
Prone on the ivory pavement of the court,
Which caught and cleft her fairest skull, and sent
Her rosy brains to fleck the Orient floor.
This saw Sir Eggnogg, in his stirrups poised,
Saw he and cursed, with many a deep-mouthed oath,
And, finding nothing more could reunite
The splintered form of fair Miasma, rode
On his careering palfrey to the wars,
And there found death, another death than hers.
ZOÏLUS. After this, write another such idyl yourself, if you dare !
GALAHAD. I never shall ; but when you have done the thing ignorantly, and a magazine wants it on account of the temporary popularity of the theme and manner, is an author much to blame for publishing ?
THE GANNET. Let your conscience rest, Galahad! “Hunger and request of friends ” were always valid pleas. If a poet invariably asked himself, “ Is this original ? Is it something that must be written ? Is it likely to be immortal ? ” I suspect our stock of verse would soon be very short. At least, only the Chiverses and Tuppers and —— would still be fruitful.
THE ANCIENT. Did you ever guess at the probable permanence of the things which seem best when they appear ? It is a wholesome experiment. Macaulay first suggested it to me, in speaking of the three per cent of Southey which might survive: since then, I have found that the Middle Ages are an immense graveyard of poems, but nothing to what this century will be. I doubt whether many authors would write, in the mere hope of posthumous fame.
THE GANNET. I would n’t! My idea of literature is, the possession of a power which you can wield to some purpose while you live. It may also be wealth, another power ; it may be yoked with politics, which is better still; it may —
GALAHAD (interrupting). Stop! don’t make me feel that your gift, which I have believed in, is so entirely selfish !
ZOÏLUS (shaking the hat). Here would soon be a precious row between you two ; draw your names and go to work !
THE GANNET. What ? Henry T. Tuckerman ?
ZOÏLUS. To be sure! I have — Longfellow!
GALAHAD. Mine is William D. Howells.
THE ANCIENT. I have drawn Richard Henry Stoddard. Now, no changing, remember ! We are better suited than the last time, unless it be Zoïlus, of whom I have my doubts. All imitations cannot be equally fortunate, and I ’m not sure that any of us would succeed better, if he should -take his own time and pains for the task, instead of trusting to the first random suggestion.
ZOÏLUS. Then, why are you doubtful about me ? I have my random suggestion already.
THE ANCIENT. Work it out! I think you understand my doubt, nevertheless. The Gannet is chuckling to himself, as if he were on the track of something wicked : I foresee that I must use my authority to-night, if I have any left. (Writes.)
THE CHORUS (whispering together). They are very evenly matched. Could any inference be drawn from the manner of each, as he writes ? The Gannet has the most sarcastic air, Zoïlus is evidently satisfied with his performance, Galahad seems earnest and a little perplexed, and the Ancient is cool and business-like. They have all learned something by practice ; they work much more rapidly than at first.
THE GANNET (after all have finished). When you try to grasp anything smooth, your hand slips. In Tuckerman there is only proper smoothness which can be travestied, and you know how difficult that is. (Reads.)
ODE TO PROPRIETY.
Look on me from thine undisturbed domain ;
Thy well-adjusted leaflets let me bind,
As once on youthful, now on manly brain.
Thy careful drapery falleth as it should :
Thy face is grave ; thy scrutinizing eye
Sees only that which hath been stamped as good.
That speaks at will, regardless of old rule;
To thee no neologic lays are brought,
But models of the strictly classic school.
To no imaginative heights misled,
My verse moves onward with a step secure,
Nor hastes with rapture, nor delays with dread.
But am her master, justified by thee :
All measures must obey me as I choose,
So long as they are thine, Propriety !
And lyric rage a strange, disturbing spell :
Let fools attempt the torrent and the flood,
Beside the pensive, placid pond I dwell !
ZOÏLUS. You have too much alliteration in the last line : that is not at all proper.
THE GANNET. Then it shows the impossibility of reproducing the tone of Pope and Gray in our day. I do not know that Tuckerman attempts this in his verse ; but I suspect that his prose model is still Addison.
ZOÏLUS. That is really getting to be a sign of originality! Mix Addison and Imagination together, and sublimate in a French retort, and where could you have a finer modern style? Tuckerman has all tradition on his side ; he represents a conservative element in literature, which — though I don’t admire it much — I think necessary, to keep the wild modern schools in order.
GALAHAD. It is something new, to hear you take this side.
ZOÏLUS. You must not always credit me with being wholly in earnest. I think I am a natural iconoclast ; but one might as well assail respectability in society as the “classic” spirit in literature. It is impervious to all our shots ; every blow slides off its cold polish. But, candidly, there are times when it seems to refresh me, or, at least, to give me a new relish for something warmer and more pungent.
THE ANCIENT. I believe you, fully. We should all fare badly, were it not for the colder works which we hear so often depreciated. They make a fireproof temple, in which we may build fires at will. Now, let us hear how you have treated an author who is already a classic, though without the cold polish of which you speak. Very few poets have been complimented by so many ordinary parodies.
ZOÏLUS. I am aware of that, and I have tried to get as far away as possible from the risk of resembling them. (Reads.)
NAUVOO.
Let me survey the spot where the Mormons builded their temple.
Much have I mused on the wreck and ruin of ancient religions,
Scandinavian, Greek, Assyrian, Zend, and the Sanskrit,
Yea, and explored the mysteries hidden in Talmudic targums,
Caught the gleam of Chrysaor’s sword and occulted Orion,
Backward spelled the lines of the Hebrew graveyard at Newport,
Studied Ojibwa symbols and those of the Quarry of Pipe-stone,
Also the myths of the Zulus whose questions converted Colenso,
So, methinks, it were well I should muse a little at Nauvoo.
Hardly for poetry fit, though using the Urim and Thummim.
Had he but borrowed Levitical trappings, the girdle and ephod,
Fine-twined linen, and ouches of gold, and bells and pomegranates,
That, indeed, might have kindled the weird necromancy of fancy.
Had he but set up mystical forms, like Astarte or Peor,
Balder, or Freya, Quetzalcoatl, Perun, Manabozhe,
Verily, though to the sense theologic it might be offensive,
Great were the gain to the pictured, flashing speech of the poet.
Yet the Muse that delights in Mesopotamian numbers,
Vague and vast as the roar of the wind in a forest of pine-trees,'
Now must tune her strings to the names of Joseph and Brigham.
Hebrew, the first ; and a Smith before the Deluge was Tubal,
Thor of the East, who first made iron ring to the hammer ;
So on the iron heads of the people about him, the latter,
Striking the sparks of belief and forging their faith in the Good Time
Coming, the Latter Day, as he called it, — the King dom of Zion.
Then, in the words of Philip the Eunuch unto Belshazzar,
Came to him multitudes wan, diseased and decrepit of spirit,
Came and heard and believed, and builded the temple at Nauvoo.
Brigham went with the others over the prairies to Salt Lake.
Answers now to the long, disconsolate wail of the steamer,
Hoarse, inarticulate, shrill, the rolling and bounding of ten-pins, —
Answers the voice of the bar-tender, mixing the smash and the julep,
Answers, precocious, the boy, and bites a chew of tobacco.
Lone as the towers of Afrasiab now is the seat of the Prophet,
Mournful, inspiring to verse, though seeming utterly vulgar:
Also — for each thing now is expected to furnish a moral — Teaching innumerable lessons for whoso believes and is patient.
Thou, that readest, be resolute, learn to be strong and to suffer !
Let the dead Past bury its dead and act in the Present !
Bear a banner of strange devices, “ Forever” and “ Never ” !
Build in the walls of time the fane of a permanent Nauvoo,
So that thy brethren may see it and say, “ Go thou and do likewise ! ”
GALAHAD. Zoïlus, you are incorrigible.
ZOÏLUS (laughing). Just what I expected you to say! But it’s no easy thing to be funny in hexameters : the Sapphic verse is much more practicable. I heaped together everything I could remember, to increase my chances. In some of Longfellow’s earlier poems the theme and moral are like two sides of a medal ; but I could n’t well copy that peculiarity.
THE GANNET. You will only find it in “ The Beleaguered City ” and “ Seaweed.” Longfellow is too genuine an artist to fall into that or any other “peculiarity.” Just his best, his most purely imaginative poems are those which have not been popular, because the reader must be half a poet to appreciate them. What do you consider his best work ?
ZOÏLUS. “ Evangeline,” of course.
THE GANNET. No, it is the “ Golden Legend ” ! That is the spirit of the Middle Ages, and the feeling of all ages, set to modern melodies. I think I could write an imitation of Longfellow’s higher strains — not of those which are so well known and so much quoted — which would be fairer than yours.
ZOÏLUS. Do it, and good luck to you. (THE GANNET writes.)
THE ANCIENT. Not one of our poets has deserved better of his countrymen than Longfellow : he has advanced the front rank of our culture. His popularity has naturally brought envy and disparagement upon him ; but it has carried far and wide among the people the influence of his purity, his refinement, and his constant reference to an ideal of life which so many might otherwise forget. As a nation, we are still full of crudity and confusion, and his influence, so sweet and clear and steady, has been, and is, more than a merely poetic leaven.
GALAHAD. I have felt that, without ever thinking of putting it into words. The sweetness of Longfellow’s verse is its most necessary quality, when we consider his literary career in this light; but I never could see how exquisite finish implies any lack of power. What was that line of Goethe which you quoted to me once, Ancient ?
THE ANCIENT. Nur aus vollendeter Kraft blicket die Anmuth hervor, — only perfected Strength discloses Grace. There are singular ideas in regard to “ power ” afloat in literary circles. Why, the sunbeam is more powerful than a thousand earthquakes ! I judge the power of an author by the influence of his works.
ZOÏLUS. Well, for my part, I don’t appreciate “power,” unless it strikes me square between the eyes. What I understand by “ power ” is something regardless of elegance, of the conventional ideas of refinement, of what you call “ laws of art,” — something primitive, lawless, forcing you, with a strong hand, to recognize its existence.
THE ANCIENT. Give me a few instances !
ZOÏLUS (after a pause). Carlyle, — Poe, — Swinburne, — Emily Bronté’s “ Wuthering Heights ” !
GALAHAD. Why not Artemus Ward and Joaquin Miller ?
THE GANNET. There ! I never quite succeed when I assume a certain ability. I had in my mind, Zoïlus, the “ Prometheus and Epimetheus,” the “ Palingenesis,” and other poems in the same key; but it was so difficult to imitate them that I came down one grade and struck into a style more easy to be recognized. It may not be better than yours, but it is not so horribly coarse. (Reads.)
THE SEWING-MACHINE.
My vagrant steps delayed,
And half abstracted, like an ancient Hindoo,
I paused beneath the shade.
Louder than bees in spring?
As unto prayer the murmurous answer coming,
Shed from Sandalphon’s wing.
That now usurpeth play ?
Our harsher substitute for pipe and tabor,
Ghittern and virelay ?
By spiritual hearing heard ?
Nearer I drew, to listen with precision,
Detecting not a word.
Myself the while unseen,
I marked a maiden seated by the window,
Sewing with a machine.
Her gentle hand the seam :
My fancy said, it were a bliss to peddle
Those shirts, as in a dream !
Some imperceptible taste ;
The rural swain, who buys it for a dollar,
By beauty is embraced.
Only the Poet sees
The true significance, the high position
Of such small things as these.
Deform the maiden’s hand ;
Her implement its soft sonata merges
In songs of sea and land.
Blent with her rhythmic tread,
Shall still be heard, when virelays are forgotten,
And troubadours are dead.
ZOÏLUS. Ah, you could n’t avoid the moral application !
THE ANCIENT. Neither can you, in imitating Bryant and Whittier. In Longfellow — excepting some half-dozen of his earlier poems — the moral element is so skilfully interfused with the imaginative, that one hardly suspects its presence. I should say, rather, that it is an inherent quality of his genius, and, therefore, can never offend like an assumed purpose. I abominate as much as you, Zoïlus, possibly can, the deliberate intention to preach moral doctrines in poetry. That is turning the glorious guild of authors into a higher kind of Tract Society ! But the purer the poetic art, the nearer it approaches the loftiest morality ; this is a truth which Longfellow illustrates. I have always defended the New England spirit against your prejudices, but this I must admit, that there is a large class of second-rate writers there who insist that every wayward little brook, whose murmur and sparkle are reason enough for its existence, must be made to turn some utilitarian mill. Over and over again, I have seen how their literary estimate of our poets is gauged by the assumed relation of the latter to some variety of “ Reform.” The Abolition of Slavery, first, then Temperance, and now Woman Suffrage, or Spiritualism, or the Labor Question, are dragged by the head and heels into the temple, and sometimes laid upon the very altar, of Letters. The wonder is, that this practice does n’t retrospectively affect their judgment, and send Dante and Shakespeare and Milton to their chaotic limbo !
ZOÏLUS. Thanks for that much support ; but let us hear Galahad !
GALAHAD. Howells, at least, has escaped some of the troubles through which the older authors have been obliged to pass. His four years in Venice made a fortunate separation between his youthful period and his true sphere of activity. He did not change front, as the rest of us must do, in the press of battle. I was very much puzzled what to select, as specially distinctive, and allowed myself, at last, to be guided by two or three short poems. (Reads.)
PREVARICATION.
THE ANCIENT. I think I know what you had in your mind. But I was expecting to hear something in hexameters : you know his — .... 1
ZOILUS. Yes, but , . . . 2
GALAHAD. It is true to some extent. Still, on the other hand, he .... 3 ZOÏLUS. Well, after all, we seem to agree tolerably well. All our younger poets are tending towards greater finish and elegance. It is about time to expect the appearance of a third generation, with all the beauties and faults of their new youth about them. Why, we have hardly any known writer much less than thirty-five years old! Our lights scarcely begin to burn until the age when Keats’s, Shelley’s, Byron’s, and Burns’s went out. Is there something in our atmosphere that hinders development ? I always supposed it possessed a greater stimulus.
THE ANCIENT. If you look back a little, you will find that Bryant, Willis, Longfellow, and Lowell were known and popular authors at twenty-five. But I have noticed the lack of a younger generation of poets. It is equally true of England, France, and Germany ; none of those who have made a strong impression, whether good or bad, can be called young, with the single exception of Swinburne. Rossetti, though he has appeared so recently, must be forty-five years old ; and in Germany the most popular poets —Geibel, Bodenstedt, Hamerling, and Redwitz — are all in middle age. I think a careful study of the literary history of the last hundred years would show that we have had both the heroes and the epigonoi; and now nature requires a little rest. Of course, all theories on the subject must be merely fanciful ; half a dozen young fellows of the highest promise may turn up in a month ; but I rather expect to see a good many fallow years.
GALAHAD. Then I, at least, have fallen on evil times. If I live after our stars have set, and no new ones have arisen, it will be —
ZOÏLUS. Your great luck ! Parmi les aveugles, you know ; but we are forgetting the Ancient’s imitation.
THE ANCIENT. Stoddard’s last volume shows both variety and inequality, but the most of it has the true ring. I was delighted with his gift of poetic narration, in “ The Wine-Cup” and “ The King’s Sentinel ” ; yet, even in them, there is an undertone of sadness. One can only make a recognizable echo of his verse, in the minor key. (Reads.)
THE CANTELOPE.
Amid its ebb and flow,
We walked together one autumn morn ;
(’T was many years ago !)
(Both Memory and Hope ! )
You stopped and bought me at the stall
A spicy cantelope.
We cast the seeds away ;
I slipped and fell on the moony rinds,
And you took me home on a dray !
I limp from the fall I had ;
The snow-flakes muffle the empty stall,
And everything is sad.
It splashes the world with gloom ;
The earth is full of skeleton bones,
And the sea is a wobbling tomb !
ZOÏLUS. I might have written that ; what do you say, Galahad ?
GALAHAD. It is fully as rollicking as yours, but not quite so coarse. I always find in Stoddard a most true and delicate ear for the melody of verse, and I thoroughly enjoy his brief snatches, or “catches,” of song. When I disagree with him, it is usually on account of the theme rather than the execution. His collection of “ Melodies and Madrigals ” gave me the key to his own taste and talent ; he seems to have wandered down to us from the times of Charles I. What has the Gannet been writing all this while ?
THE GANNET. Something not on our programme. After trying my hand on Tuckerman and then on Longfellow, I felt fresh for one task more ; and we have had so few ladies introduced into our diversions, that I turned to Mrs. Stoddard for a new inspiration. You know how I like her poems, as the efforts of a not purely rhythmic mind to express itself rhythmically. They interest me greatly, as every embodiment of struggle does. A commonplace, conventional intellect would never dare to do the things she does, both in prose and verse ; she defies the usual ways to popularity with a most indomitable perseverance.
GALAHAD. Is not that the way to reach it in the end ?
THE GANNET. No man knoweth; because no one can foresee how the tastes or whims of the mercurial public may turn. Some authors predict their own popularity ; some secretly expect it, and never get it; and some, again, leave works which may seem dead and buried, but are dug up as if by accident, after two or three centuries, and become new and delightful to a different race of men. Shall I read you my imitation ?
THE ANCIENT. We wait.
THE GANNET. (Reads.)
THE NETTLE.
This darkness cannot hide from me the plant
I seek : I know it by the rasping touch.
The moon is wrapped in bombazine of cloud ;
The capes project like crooked lobster-shears
Into the bobbery of the waves ; the marsh,
At ebb, has now a miserable smell.
I will not be delayed nor hustled back,
Though every wind should muss my outspread hair.
I snatch the plant that seems my coming fate :
I pass the crinkled satin of the rose,
The violets, frightened out of all their wits,
And other flowers, to me so commonplace,
And cursed with showy mediocrity,
To cull the foliage which repels and stings.
Weak hands may bleed; but mine are tough with pride,
And I but smile where others sob and screech.
The draggled flounces of the willows lash
My neck ; I tread upon the bouncing rake,
Which bangs me sorely, but I hasten on,
With teeth firm-set as biting on a wire,
And feet and fingers clenched in bitter pain.
This, few would comprehend ; but, if they did,
I should despise myself and merit scorn.
We all are riddles which we cannot guess ;
Each has his gimcracks and his thingumbobs,
And mine are night and nettles, mud and mist,
Since others hate them, cowardly avoid.
Things are mysterious when you make them so,
And the slow-pacing days are mighty queer;
But Fate is at the bottom of it all,
And something somehow turns up in the end.
ZOÏLUS. That is an echo with a vengeance ! But the exaggeration of peculiarities is the best part of our fun ; there you had the advantage. And this proves what I have said, that the “classic ” style is nearly impregnable. How could you exaggerate it ? You might as well undertake an architectural burlesque of the Parthenon. It is the Gothic, Byzantine, Moresque styles in literature which give the true material for travesty, just as they allow the greatest intellectual freedom.
THE ANCIENT. We shall have to dub you “ the Pugin of Poetry.” You ’ve been taking a hint from Clough’s Bothie.
THE GANNET. Which Zoïlus does n’t like, because of the hexameters, although there never were lighter and less encumbered lines. With all Clough’s classicism, his is a thoroughly SaxonGothic mind. Where will you find a more remarkable combination of richness and subtlety, of scholarly finish and the frankest realism ? He is the only man who has ever made English phrase flow naturally in elegiac cadence. You, certainly, must remember, Ancient ?
Where amid odorous copse bridle-paths wander and wind,
Where under mulberry branches the diligent rivulet sparkles,
Or amid cotton and maize peasants their waterworks ply,
Where, over fig-tree and orange in tier upon tier still repeated,
Garden on garden upreared, balconies step to the sky, —
Ah, that I were, far away from the crowd and the streets of the city,
Under the vine-trellis laid, O my beloved, with thee ! ”
ZOÏLUS. O, if you once begin to quote, I surrender.
THE ANCIENT. Let us all part on good terms ; that is, each holding to his own opinion.
[Exeunt.
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