The Literati of New York City — 1902 historical reading — reading text

to these epithets — but I must say that the conclusions reached are only in part my own. Not that they are too bold, by any means — too novel, too startling, or too dangerous in their consequences, but that in their attainment too many premises have been distorted and too many analogical inferences left altogether out of sight. I mean to say that the intention of the Deity as regards sexual differences — an intention which can be distinctly comprehended only by throwing the exterior (more sensitive) portions of the mental retina casually over the wide field of universal analogy — I mean to say that this intention has not been sufficiently considered. Miss Fuller has erred, too, through her own excessive objectiveness. She judges woman by the heart and intellect of Miss Fuller, but there are not more than one or two dozen Miss Fullers on the whole face of the earth. Holding these opinions in regard to “Woman in the Nineteenth Century,” I still feel myself called upon to disavow the silly, condemnatory criticism of the work which appeared in one of the earlier numbers of “The Broadway Journal.” That article was not written by myself, and was written by my associate Mr. Briggs. The most favorable estimate of Miss Fuller's genius (for high genius she unquestionably possesses) is to be obtained, perhaps, from her contributions to “The Dial,” and from her “Summer on the Lakes.” Many of the descriptions in this volume are unrivalled for graphicality, (why is there not such a word?) for the force with which they convey the true by the novel or unexpected, by the introduction of touches which other artists would be sure to omit as irrelevant to the subject. This faculty, too, springs from her subjectiveness, which leads her to paint a scene less by its features than by its effects. Here, for example, is a portion of her account of Niagara: — “Daily these proportions widened and towered more and more upon my sight, and I got at last a proper foreground for these sublime distances. Before coming away, I think I really saw the full wonder of the scene. After awhile it so drew me into itself as to inspire an undefined dread, such as I never knew before, such as may be felt when death is about to usher us into a new existence. The perpetual trampling of the waters seized my senses. I felt that no other sound, however near, could be heard, and would start and look behind me for a foe. I realized the identity of that mood of nature in which these waters were poured down with such absorbing force, with that in which the Indian was shaped on the same soil. For continually upon my mind came, unsought and unwelcome, images, such as had never haunted it before, of naked savages stealing behind me with uplifted tomahawks. Again and again this illusion recurred, and even after I had thought it over and tried to shake it off, I could not help starting and looking behind me. What I liked best was to sit on Table Rock close to the great fall; there all power of observing details, all separate consciousness was quite lost.” The truthfulness of the passages italicized will be felt by all; the feelings described are, perhaps, experienced by every (imaginative) person who visits the fall; but most persons, through predominant subjectiveness, would scarcely be conscious of the feelings, or, at best, would never think of employing them in an attempt to convey to others an impression of the scene. Hence so many desperate failures to convey it on the part of ordinary tourists. Mr. William W. Lord, to be sure, in his poem “Niagara,” is sufficiently objective; he describes not the fall, but very properly the effect of the fall upon him. He says that it made him think of his own greatness, of his own superiority, and so forth, and so forth; and it is only when we come to think that the thought of Mr. Lord's greatness is quite idiosyncratic, confined exclusively to Mr. Lord, that we are in condition to understand how, in despite of his objectiveness, he has failed to convey an idea of anything beyond one Mr. William W. Lord. From the essay entitled “Philip Van Artevelde,” I copy a paragraph which will serve at once to exemplify Miss Fuller's more earnest (declamatory) style, and to show the tenor of her prospective speculations: — “At Chicago I read again ‘Philip Van Artevelde,’ and certain passages in it will always be in my mind associated with the deep sound of the lake, as heard in the night. I used to read a short time at night, and then open the blind to look out. The moon would be full upon the lake, and the calm breath, pure light, and the deep voice, harmonized well with the thought of the Flemish hero. When will this country have such a man? It is what she needs — no thin Idealist, no coarse Realist, but a man whose eye reads the heavens while his feet step firmly on the ground, and his hands are strong and dextrous in the use of human instruments. A man, religious, virtuous, and — sagacious; a man of universal sympathies, but self-possessed; a man who knows the region of emotion, though he is not its slave; a man to whom this world is no mere spectacle or fleeting shadow, but a great, solemn game, to be played with good heed, for its stakes are of eternal value, yet who, if his own play be true, heeds not what he loses by the falsehood of others. A man who lives from the past, yet knows that its honey can but moderately avail him; whose comprehensive eye scans the present, neither infatuated by its golden lures nor chilled by its many ventures; who possesses prescience, as the wise man must, but not so far as to be driven mad to-day by the gift which discerns to-morrow. When there is such a man for America, the thought which urges her on will be expressed.” From what I have quoted a general conception of the prose style of the authoress may be gathered. Her manner, however, is infinitely varied. It is always forcible — but I am not sure that it is always anything else, unless I say picturesque. It rather indicates than evinces scholarship. Perhaps only the scholastic, or, more properly, those accustomed to look narrowly at the structure of phrases, would be willing to acquit her of ignorance of grammar — would be willing to attribute her slovenliness to disregard of the shell in anxiety for the kernel; or to waywardness, or to affectation, or to blind reverence for Carlyle — would be able to detect, in her strange and continual inaccuracies, a capacity for the accurate. “I cannot sympathize with such an apprehension: the spectacle is capable to swallow up all such objects.” “It is fearful, too, to know, as you look, that whatever has been swallowed by the cataract, is like to rise suddenly to light.” “I took our mutual friends to see her.” “It was always obvious that they had nothing in common between them.” “The Indian cannot be looked at truly except by a poetic eye.” “McKenney's Tour to the Lakes gives some facts not to be met with elsewhere.” “There is that mixture of culture and rudeness in the aspect of things as gives a feeling of freedom,” etc., etc., etc. These are merely a few, a very few instances, taken at random from among a multitude of wilful murders committed by Miss Fuller on the American of President Polk. She uses, too, the word “ignore,” a vulgarity adopted only of late days (and to no good purpose, since there is no necessity for it) from the barbarisms of the law, and makes no scruple of giving the Yankee interpretation to the verbs “witness” and “realize,” to say nothing of “use,” as in the sentence, “I used to read a short time at night.” It will not do to say, in defence of such words, that in such senses they may be found in certain dictionaries — in that of Bolles’, for instance; — some kind of “authority” may be found for any kind of vulgarity under the sun. In spite of these things, however, and of her frequent unjustifiable Carlyleisms, (such as that of writing sentences which are no sentences, since, to be parsed, reference must be had to sentences preceding,) the style of Miss Fuller is one of the very best with which I am acquainted. In general effect, I know no style which surpasses it. It is singularly piquant, vivid, terse, bold, luminous — leaving details out of sight, it is everything that a style need be. I believe that Miss Fuller has written much poetry, although she has published little. That little is tainted with the affectation of the transcendentalists, (I used this term, of course, in the sense which the public of late days seem resolved to give it,) but is brimful of the poetic sentiment. Here, for example, is some thing in Coleridge's manner, of which the author of “Genevieve” might have had no reason to be ashamed: — “A maiden sat beneath a tree; Tear-bedewed her pale cheeks be, And she sigheth heavily. “From forth the wood into the light A hunter strides with carol light, And a glance so bold and bright. “He careless stopped and eyed the maid: ‘Why weepest thou?’ he gently said; ‘I love thee well, be not afraid.’ “He takes her hand and leads her on — She should have waited there alone, For he was not her chosen one. “He leans her head upon his breast — She knew ’t was not her home of rest, But, ah, she had been sore distrest. “The sacred stars looked sadly down; The parting moon appeared to frown, To see thus dimmed the diamond crown. “Then from the thicket starts a deer — The huntsman, seizing on his spear Cries, ‘Maiden, wait thou for me here.’ “She sees him vanish into night — She starts from sleep in deep affright, For it was not her own true knight. “Though but in dream Gunhilda failed — Though but a fancied ill assailed — Though she but fancied fault bewailed — “Yet thought of day makes dream of night; She is not worthy of the knight; The inmost altar burns not bright. “If loneliness thou canst not bear — Cannot the dragon's venom dare — Of the pure meed thou shouldst despair. “Now sadder that lone maiden sighs; Far bitterer tears profane her eyes; Crushed in the dust her heart's flower lies.” To show the evident carelessness with which this poem was constructed, I have italicized an identical rhyme (of about the same force in versification as an identical proposition in logic) and two grammatical improprieties. To lean is a neuter verb, and “seizing on” is not properly to be called a pleonasm, merely because it is — nothing at all. The concluding line is difficult of pronunciation through excess of consonants. I should have preferred, indeed, the ante-penultimate tristich as the finale of the poem. The supposition that the book of an author is a thing apart from the author's self, is, I think, ill-founded. The soul is a cipher, in the sense of a cryptograph; and the shorter a cryptograph is, the more difficulty there is in its comprehension — at a certain point of brevity it would bid defiance to an army of Champollions. And thus he who has written very little, may in that little either conceal his spirit or convey quite an erroneous idea of it — of his acquirements, talents, temper, manner, tenor and depth (or shallowness) of thought — in a word, of his character, of himself. But this is impossible with him who has written much. Of such a person we get, from his books, not merely a just, but the most just representation. Bulwer, the individual, personal man, in a green velvet waistcoat and amber gloves, is not by any means the veritable Sir Edward Lytton, who is discoverable only in “Ernest Maltravers,” where his soul is deliberately and nakedly set forth. And who would ever know Dickens by looking at him or talking with him, or doing anything with him except reading his “Curiosity Shop?” What poet, in especial, but must feel at least the better portion of himself more fairly represented in even his commonest sonnet, (earnestly written) than in his most elaborate or most intimate personalities? I put all this as a general proposition, to which Miss Fuller affords a marked exception