Diversions of the Echo Club: Night the Sixth
NIGHT THE SIXTH.
(Enter ZOïLUS, last, the others being already assembled : he throws down a newspaper on the table.)
ZOILUS. There! Read that notice of my last article in-, and tell me whether such criticism is apt to encourage the development of an American literature !
THE GANNET (taking the paper). I see where it is, by the dint of your thumb-nail; there are only half a dozen lines, in what I should call the sneering-oracular style ; but, Zoilus, you have yourself done a great deal of this thing. Now the poisoned chalice is commended to your own lips. It is singular how little sympathy we have for others, in such cases. When I am abused, somebody always sends the paper to me with lines drawn around the article, so that I shall not miss it ; and all my friends are sure to ask, “ Have you seen what So-and-so says ? ” When I am praised, nobody sends the paper, and my friends take it for granted that I have read the article. I don’t complain of them : they are naturally silent when they agree, and aroused when they disagree, with the criticism.
THE ANCIENT. This notice is not fair, of course ; but it is only a part of the prevalent fashion of criticism. One never can be sure, in such cases, whether the writer is really sincere in his judgment, or whether he has seized an opportunity to make a little literary capital for himself at the expense of the author. But I firmly believe in the ultimate triumph of good work over all these airs of superior knowledge and patronage and contemptuous depreciation. A friend of mine once devoted a great deal of time to a very careful and thorough article upon a poet who wrote in a dialect with which not ten men in this country are familiar. He afterwards showed me the critical notices it drew forth, and those which treated the subject with the coolest possible air of knowledge were written by men who knew nothing whatever about it.
GALAHAD. Then how is the ordinary reader ever to be enlightened ?
THE ANCIENT. Most readers, I imagine, simply like, or dislike, what they read. Authors greatly exaggerate the effect of inadequate criticism. Why, do you know that critical genius is much rarer than poetical? You are not afraid of the crude poets’, who publish in newspaper corners, pushing you from your stools of song : why should you be annoyed by the critics who stand upon the same intellectual plane ? Let me repeat to you what the greatest of critics, Lessing, said : “ What is tolerable in my labors is owing solely to the critical faculty. I am, therefore, always ashamed or grieved whenever I hear anything said to the disadvantage of that faculty. It is said to crush genius, and I flattered myself that I had received in it something akin to genius.” After Lessing, we can only accept Jeffrey with certain reservations, until we come to Sainte-Beuve. In this country, I call Lowell the first critic, though Whipple and Ripley have high and honorable places. A true critic must not only be a universal scholar, but as clear-conscienced as a saint and as tenderly impressible as a woman. After that he may be rigid as Minos.
ZOïLUS. But you will certainly agree with me, that a critical literature of the kind you describe — intelligent, appreciative, sympathetic, and rigidly just — is much needed ?
THE ANCIENT. Never more than just now.
ZOILUS. What then, frankly, do you think of the tone of this paper, and the-and the-?
THE ANCIENT (smiling). They remind me so much of a little satirical poem of Uhland, “ The Spring-Song of the Critic,” that I am comforted and amused, when I might otherwise be most annoyed. There never was a more admirable picture of that fine, insidious egotism of the spurious critic, which makes him fear to praise, lest admiration should imply inferiority. I can’t remember the original lines, or I would translate it for you ; but I might try an American paraphrase.
OMNES. By all means ! (THE ANCIENT writes.)
ZOILUS. I feel as if I had had whiskey poured into an open wound. You made me smart savagely for a few minutes ; but I am already getting comfortable.
THE GANNET. There is no real comfort until you grow pachydermatous ; I don’t envy Galahad the seasoning that awaits him.
GALAHAD. I have part of my experience vicariously, in Zoilus.
ZOILUS. The devil you have ! wait, my boy, until you publish your next poem : I ’ll return it to you, with interest !
THE ANCIENT. Uhland makes the critic walk out in the spring-time, and patronize Nature in his usual tone, the very tone of which Zoilus complains. This is a rough imitation : —
And must be noticed, therefore ;
Not that a flower, a brook, or bird
Is what we greatly care for.
Yet them, no doubt, admire some : One leaf comes like another, sure,
And on the whole it’s tiresome.
The song is vague and mystic :
Some notes, we grant, are smooth and clear,
But not at all artistic.
Those ferns that wave and spread so :
’ T is safe to doubt the things that strike
The eye at once ; we’ve said so.
There must be violets nigh us :
Quite passable ! (For Shakespeare’s verse,
This time, will justify us.)
Some, now, would call it pleasant,
But, really, we would rather not
Commit ourselves, at present.
Neglecting our position ;
To scourge the stupid public taste
Is our peculiar mission.
(Those ignorant human brothers !)
That we the Spring enjoyed, we’d seem
No better than the others !
OMNES. Good! It reads like an original.
THE ANCIENT. It is one, properly: I have not translated any of Uhland’s phrases. However, let us change the theme, for this is a dangerous hobby of mine, and we have other work before us. How many names are there still undrawn ?
THE GANNET (looking in the hat). A dozen yet!
THE ANCIENT (drawing). James Russell Lowell, — I must gird up my loins.
THE GANNET. Bayard Taylor.
ZOILUS. Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
GALAHAD. George H. Boker.
THE GANNET. The supply will be exhausted in two or three nights more, and then all our fun must come to an end. There will be nothing left for us, but to travesty each other.
THE CHORUS. An excellent idea! Four times four, each doing each other and himself also, will give us sixteen imitations.
ZOILUS. NO doubt you would enjoy it hugely. Turn to Lucretius for a picture of the delight of sitting on the safe shore and looking at the waves in a storm !
THE CHORUS. “ The swelling and falling of the waves is the life of the sea.”
ZOILUS. Go to, with your quotations ! How easy it is to apply a high moral stimulus to somebody else’s mind ! Every poet, in his secret soul, admits his exquisite, quivering sensitiveness for the children of his brain. He may hide it from the sight of every one ; but it is there, or he would not be a poet ; and he is always most artlessly surprised at the betrayal of the same feeling in another. I, of course, should coolly bear any amount of travesty; but how would it be with the Ancient, the Gannet, and Galahad ?
THE GANNET. ZoÏlus, you ’re a humbug ! Take your pencil and begin your work : see how the Ancient is reeling off his lines !
(They write steadily for fifteen or twenty minutes; then all have finished except THE ANCIENT.)
THE ANCIENT. Mine is no easy task, and I’m afraid I have laid it out on too extensive a plan.
OMNES. Go on : we will wait.
THE ANCIENT (ten minutes later). You will sympathize with me, Galahad, for you know how much I like Lowell’s poetry. I have followed him from the start, when he seemed like a vigorous young oak, and like an oak he has grown slowly, strongly, and with everbroadening branches. But one can sport, as well as pray, under your large trees. (Reads-)
THE SAGA OF AHAB DOOLITTLE.
Feeling the stubbed pin-feathers pricking through
His greenish gosling-down, but straight misdeems
Himself anointed ? They must run their course,
These later measles of tire fledgling mind,
Pitting the adolescent rose with brown,
And after, leaving scars ; and we must bear,
Who come of other stirp, no end of roil,
Slacken our strings, disorient ourselves.
And turn our ears to huge conchyliar valves
To hear the shell-hum that would fain be sea.
Exasperation ! Did we clip thee dose,
Disarm ourselves with non-resistent shears,
And leave our minds demassachusetted,
What fence ’gainst inroad of the spouting throng?
For Fame’s a bird that in her wayward sweep
Gossips to all ; then, raven-like, comes home
Hoarse-voiced as autumn, and, as autumn leaves
Behind her, blown by all the postal winds,
Letters and manuscripts from unknown hands.
Thus came not Ahab’s : his he brought himself,
One morn, so clear with impecunious gold,
I said : “ Chaucer yet lives, and Calderon ! ”
And, letting down the gangways of the mind
For shipment from the piers of common life,
O’er Learning’s ballast meant some lighter freight
To stow, for export to Macarian Isles.
But it was not to be ; a tauroid knock
Shook the ash-panels of my door with pain,
And to my vexed “ Come in ! ” Ahab appeared.
Homespun, at least, — thereat I swiftly felt
Somewhat of comfort, — tall, knock-kneed, and gaunt :
Face windy-red, hands horny, large, and loose,
That groped for mine, and finding, dropped at once
As half ashamed ; and thereupon he grinned.
I waited, silent, till the silence grew
Oppressive; but he bore it like a man ;
Then, as my face still queried, opened wide
The stiff portcullis of his rustic speech,
Whence issued words : “ You’d hardly kalkelate
That I ’m a poet, but I kind o’ guess
I be one ; so the people say, to hum.”
Then from his cavernous armpit drew and gave
The singing leaves, not such as erst I knew,
But strange, disjointed, where the unmeasured feet
Staggered allwhither in pursuit of rhyme.
And could not find it : assonance instead,
Cases and verbs misplaced — remediable those —
Broad-shouldered coarseness, fondly meant for wit.
I turned the leaves ; his small, gray, hungry eye
Stuck like a burr ; agape with hope his mouth.
What could I say? the worn conventional phrase
We use on such occasions, — better wait,
Verse must have time ; its seed, like timothy-grass,
Sown in the fall to sprout the following spring,
Is often winter-killed ; none can decide ;
A single rain-drop prints the eocene,
While crow-bars fail on lias ; so with song :
The Doom is born in each thing’s primitive stuff.
Some hypodermic hope within his flesh,
Unconsciously ; erelong he came again.
Would I but see his latest ? I did see ;
Shuddered, and answered him in sterner wise.
I love to put the bars up, shutting out
My pasture from the thistle-cropping beasts
Or squealing hybrids, who have range enough
On our New England commons, — whom the Fiend,
Encouragement-of-Native-Talent, feeds
With windy provender, in Waverley,
And Flag, and Ledger, weakly manger-racks.
What “ Free from Ahab ! ” seemed, and I believed.
But, issuing forth one autumn morn, that shone
As Earth were made October twenty-seventh
(Some ancient Bible gives the date), he shot
Across my path as sped from Ensign’s bow,
More grewsome, haggard seeming than before.
Ere from his sinister armpit his right hand
Could pluck the sheets, I thundered forth, “ Aroint! ”
Not using the Anglo-Saxon shibboleth,
But exorcismal terms, unusual, fierce,
Such as would make a saint disintimate.
The witless terror in his face nigh stayed
My speech, but I was firm and passed him by.
Ah, not three weeks were sped, ere he again
Waylaid me in the meadows, with these words :
“ I saw thet suthin’ riled you, the last time ;
Be you in sperrits now? ’’ — and drew again — But why go on ? I met him yesterday,
The nineteenth time, — pale, sad, but patient still.
Though but a thrall’s, beside the eagle-helms,
For him who rhymed instead of rougher work,
For speech is thwarted deed : the Berserk fire
But smoulders now in strange attempts at verse,
While hammering sword-blows mend the halting rhyme,
Give mood and tense unto the well-thewed arm,
And turn these ignorant Ahnbs into bards!
ZOÏLUS. Faith ! I think each of us imitates most amusingly the very authors whom he most admires. I might have made something fiercer, but it would n’t have been more characteristic.
THE GANNET. When you seem dissatisfied with Lowell’s work, I can still see that you recognize his genius. I agree with you that he sometimes mistakes roughness for strength, and is sometimes consciously careless ; but neither his faults nor his virtues are of the common order. I like him for the very quality out of which both grow, — his evident faith in the inspiration of the poet. In “ The Cathedral ” he says “ second - thoughts are prose,” which is always true of the prime conception ; but he seems often to apply it to the details of verse. His sympathy with the Norse and Nibelungen elements in literature, and with the old English ballads, is natural and very strong. Perhaps it is not always smoothly fused with the other spirit which is born of his scholarship and taste and artistic feeling. I care less for that: to my mind, he is always grandly tonic and stimulating.
THE ANCIENT. I think the objection which Zoïlus makes comes simply from the fact that many of Lowell’s poems are over-weighted with ideas. Instead of pouring a thin, smooth stream, he tilts the bottle a little too much, and there is an impetuous, uneven crowding of thought. But I should rather say that he is like his own “ Cathedral,” large, Gothic, with many a flying buttress, pinnacles melting in the air, and now and then a grotesque gargoyle staring down upon you. There is a great range between Hosea Biglow and the Harvard Ode.
ZOÏLUS. I confess I don’t like unmixed enthusiasm, and I ’m frequently provoked to spy out the weak points of any author who gets much of it. How I should feel if it were bestowed on me, I can’t tell ; probably as complacent as the rest of you.
THE GANNET. O ZoÏlus, when you know that I’ m only considered “brilliant,” and get the most superficial praise !
THE ANCIENT. Come, come ! This is a sort of personality. Who’s next ?
GALAHAD. ZoÏlus was ready first.
ZOÏLUS. Yes, and none too soon. Mrs. Barrett Browning was a tough subject for me, and I was glad to get her off my hands. Do you know that it is much more difficult to travesty a woman’s poem than a man’s? (Reads.)
GWENDOLINE.
That shadowed her so finely ;
It was the hair that swept her brows,
And framed her face divinely ;
Her lawny hair, her purple eyes,
The spirit was ensphered in,
That took you with such swift surprise,
Provided you had peered in.
And on the daisies patted,
As, querulous with sense of loss,
It tore the herbage matted :
“ And come he early, come he late,”
She saith, “ it wiil undo me ;
The sharp fore-speeded shaft of fate
Already quivers through me.
I knew what aim impelled it ;
And that dim scarf of silver brede,
I guessed for whom he held it :
I recked not, while he flaunted by,
Of Love’s relentless vi’lence,
Yet o'er me crashed the summer sky,
In thunders of blue silence.
But left behind their lava ;
What should have been my woman’s mail
Grew jellied as guava :
I looked him proud, but 'neath my pride
I felt a boneless tremor ;
He was the Beer, I descried,
And I was but the Seemer !
And bid him seem that is so I
We always tangle threads we dreamed,
And contravene our bliss so.
I see the red-roan steed again !
He looks, as something sought he :
Why, hoity toity ! — he is fain,
So I ’ll be cold and haughty ! “
THE ANCIENT. YOU have done about as well as could be expected ; but I am not sure that I should have recognized it, without the red-roan steed and the thunders of blue silence. However, Mrs. Browning’s force is always so truly feminine that one cannot easily analyze it. There is an underlying weakness —or, at least, a sense of reliance — when she is most vigorous, and you feel the beating of an excited pulse when she is most calmly classic. She often slips into questionable epithets and incongruous images, I grant you ; but I can see the first form of her thought through them.
GALAHAD. Has any other woman readied an equal height in English poetry ?
THE CHORUS. No!
THE GANNET. George Eliot ?
ZOïLUS. Now you bring the two squarely before my mind, I also say, No ! I do not rightly know where to place George Eliot.
THE ANCIENT. Among the phenomena,— unsurpassed as a prose writer, and with every quality of the poet except the single one which is born and never acquired. It is amazing to see how admirable her verse is, and how near to high poetry, — as if only a sheet of plate glass were between, — and yet it is not poetry. Her lines are like the dancing figures on a frieze, symmetry itself, but they do not move. When I read them I am always on the very verge of recognizing her as a poet, always expecting the warm-blooded measures which sing their way into my own blood, and yet I never cross the invisible boundary.
THE GANNET. Shall we go on ? I have Bayard Taylor, who took possession of me readily enough. I know his earlier Oriental belter than his later poems. He does n’t seem to have any definite place yet as a poet.
ZOïLUS. Then it comes of having too many irons in the fire.
GALAHAD. He may have made some mistakes ; indeed, I think so, myself; but I find signs of a struggle towards some new form of development in his later poems, and mean to give him a little more opportunity. His rhetoric is at the same time his strength and his weakness, for it has often led him away from the true substance of poetry.
THE ANCIENT. There you are right, Galahad. Nature and the sensuous delight of life for a while got the upper hand of him, and he wrote many things which aimed to be more, and were not. I think better of his later direction ; but how far it will carry him depends on his industry and faith. Let us have the echo!
THE GANNET. (Reads.)
HADRAMAUT.
That stand empanoplied in utmost thought.
With dazzling ramparts front the Indian sea,
Down there in Hadramaut.
And leaves them open ; there the vibrant calm
Of life magniloquent pervades forlorn
The giant fronds of palm.
The armadillo fluctuates o’er the hill ;
And like a flag, incarnadined in dreams,
All crimsonly I thrill!
So, folded grandly in translucent mist,
I let the tight stream down my jasper arm,
And o’er my opal fist.
An Adamite of old, primeval Earth,
I see the Sphinx upon the porphyry shore,
Deprived of utterance ages ere her birth,
As I am, —only more !
Or paper symbols, backed like malachite?
Let gaunt reformers objurgate and scold,
I gorge me with delight.
I give the winds the passionate gifts I sought;
And slumber fiercely on the torrid coast,
Down there in Hadramaut !
GALAHAD. That is extravagantly and absurdly like some of his poems. You seem to have had in your mind the very feature I mentioned, — his rhetoric. I doubt whether I shall succeed as well with Boker. He and Bayard Taylor are both Pennsylvanians, of nearly the same age, yet they are not at all alike.
THE ANCIENT. I remember Boker’s first volume. There was a flavor of the Elizabethan English about it, which was unusual at the time. Then came his tragedy of “ Calaynos,” one of the few successful modern plays formed on the old classic models ; it ran for nearly a hundred nights in England. But you cannot imitate his best work, which is in this and the later plays ; you must choose between his ballads and his sonnets. GALAHAD. I have tried something half ballad and half song, in his style. (Reads.)
PHFBE THE FAIR.
Ah, welladay !
The blue of her eyes, the brown of her hair,
The elbows that dance and the ankles that gleam,
As she bends at her washing-tub there by the stream, Disdaining to see me, so what can I say
But, ah, welladay !
Alas and alack !
Bewitchingly hooded with mufflers of wool ;
Her cloak of gray duffle she w'ore to a charm,
So boldly 1 offered the maiden my arm,
But she coolly responded, “ You take the hack track !”
Alas and alack !
Sing hey, nonny nonny !
Though I’ve but a hammer and he has a sword.
When he leans from his destrier Phebe to greet,
I could smash him to cinders before her white feet,
For lords have no business with maidens so bonny,
Slug hey, nonny nonny I
Ah, welladay, Phebe !
But the snow of your bosom by love is unthawed ;
The hues of my life are all fading, I guess,
As the calico fades in the suds that you bless :
You are scouring the heart of your languishing G. B.,
Alt, welladay, Phebe !
THE GANNET. I remember those ballads, with a curious antique flavor about them ; but T am best acquainted with Boker’s sonnets. I don’t think they have been appreciated as they deserve ; but then, there are hardly twelve sonnets in the English language which can be called popular. Take one of Keats, three of Wordsworth, three of Milton, possibly Blanco White’s one, and four or five of Shakespeare, and you have nearly all that are familiarly known. I ’ll try my hand at an imitation of Boker’s grave, sustained measure. {Writes.)
THE ANCIENT. NO one of our authors is so isolated as he, and it is a double disadvantage. When Philadelphia ceased to be a literary centre, which happened very suddenly and unexpectedly, the tone of society there seemed to change. Instead of the open satisfaction of Boston in her brilliant circle of authors, or the passive indifference of our New York, there is almost a positive depreciation of home talent in Philadelphia. Boker is most disparaged in his native city, and most appreciated in New England. There is always less of petty envy where the range of culture is highest.
ZOÏLUS. NO, there is not less, granting the culture to be higher ; there is only more tact and policy in expressing it.
THE GANNET. Listen to Boker’s 999th sonnet, dictated through me ! (Reads.)
That fair revolt which rested on thy name,
Nor burden with uncomprehended blame
The speech, which still eludes my swooning sense.
Though this poor rhyme at least were some defence
Against thy chill suspicion : yet, if Fame
Lift up and burnish what is now my shame,
’T would mitigate a passion so intense.
This trampled verse awhile my heart relieves
From stringent pain, that cleft me as I turned
Away from beauty, graciously displayed ;
And still one dominant emotion cleaves
The clouds, whereon thy passing lustre burned,
And leaves behind it gulfs of blacker shade.
GALAIIAD. HOW could you echo the tone and atmosphere of a sonnet, without adding one particle of sense ?
THE GANNET. Attribute it to my empty head, if you please. I really cannot explain how these imitations arise in my mind. In the “trance condition,” you know, one is void of all active consciousness.
ZOÏLUS. If you go on indulging such an idea, you will end by becoming a professional medium.
THE GANNET. Well, — at least I ’ll dictate to the world better verse than has ever yet come, in that way, from the unfortunate dead poets.
GALAHAD. Could you equal Demosthenes ?
THE ANCIENT. For the sake of Human Reason let us drop that subject! There are some aberrations which dishearten us, and it is best simply to turn our backs on them. For my part, I crave music. Zoilus, give us Herrick’s “Julia,” before the stirrupcup !