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

so. He improves wonderfully with experience. His present defects are timidity and a lurking taint of partiality, amounting to positive prejudice (in the vulgar sense) for the literature of the Puritans. I do not think, however, that he is at all aware of such prepossession. His taste is rather unexceptionable than positively good. He has not, perhaps, sufficient fire within himself to appreciate it in others. Nevertheless, he endeavours to do so, and in this endeavour is not inapt to take opinions at secondhand — to adopt, I mean, the opinions of others. He is nervous, and a very trifling difficulty disconcerts him, without getting the better of a sort of dogged perseverance, which will make a thoroughly successful man of him in the end. He is (classically) well educated. As a poet he has done better things than “Tecumseh,” in whose length he has committed a radical and irreparable error, sufficient in itself to destroy a far better book. Some portions of it are truly poetical; very many portions belong to a high order of eloquence; it is invariably well versified, and has no glaring defects, but, upon the whole, is insufferably tedious. Some of the author's shorter compositions, published anonymously in his magazine, have afforded indications even of genius. Mr. Colton is marked in his personal appearance. He is probably not more than thirty, but an air of constant thought (with a pair of spectacles) causes him to seem somewhat older. He is about five feet eight or nine in height, and fairly proportioned — neither stout nor thin. His forehead is quite intellectual. His mouth has a peculiar expression difficult to describe. Hair light and generally in disorder. He converses fluently and, upon the whole, well, but grandiloquently, and with a tone half tragical, half pulpital. In character he is in the highest degree estimable, a most sincere, high-minded and altogether honourable man. He is unmarried. ——— N. P. WILLIS. WHATEVER may be thought of MR. WILLIS’S talents, there can be no doubt about the fact that, both as an author and as a man, he has made a good deal of noise in the world — at least for an American. His literary life, in especial, has been one continual émeute; but then his literary character is modified or impelled in a very remarkable degree by his personal one. His success (for in point of fame, if of nothing else, he has certainly been successful) is to be attributed, one-third to his mental ability and two-thirds to his physical temperament — the latter goading him into the accomplishment of what the former merely gave him the means of accomplishing. At a very early age Mr. Willis seems to have arrived at an understanding that, in a republic such as ours, the mere man of letters must ever be a cipher, and endeavoured, accordingly, to unite the éclat of the littérateur with that of the man of fashion or of society. He “pushed himself,” went much into the world, made friends with the gentler sex, “delivered” poetical addresses, wrote “scriptural” poems, traveled, sought the intimacy of noted women, and got into quarrels with notorious men. All these things served his purpose — if, indeed, I am right in supposing that he had any purpose at all. It is quite probable that, as before hinted, he acted only in accordance with his physical temperament; but be this as it may, his personnel greatly advanced, if it did not altogether establish his literary fame. I have often carefully considered whether, without the physique of which I speak, there is that in the absolute morale of Mr. Willis which would have earned him reputation as a man of letters, and my conclusion is, that he could not have failed to become noted in some degree under almost any circumstances, but that about two-thirds (as above stated) of his appreciation by the public should be attributed to those adventures which grew immediately out of his animal constitution. He received what is usually regarded as a “good education” — that is to say, he graduated at college; but his education, in the path he pursued, was worth to him, on account of his extraordinary savoir faire, fully twice as much as would have been its value in any common case. No man's knowledge is more available, no man has exhibited greater tact in the seemingly casual display of his wares. With him, at least, a little learning is no dangerous thing. He possessed at one time, I believe, the average quantum of American collegiate lore — “a little Latin and less Greek,” a smattering of physical and metaphysical science, and (I should judge) a very little of the mathematics — but all this must be considered as mere guess on my part. Mr. Willis speaks French with some fluency, and Italian not quite so well. Within the ordinary range of belles lettres authorship, he has evinced much versatility. If called on to designate him by any general literary title, I might term him a magazinist — for his compositions have invariably the species of effect, with the brevity which the magazine demands. We may view him as a paragraphist, an essayist, or rather “sketcher,” a tale writer and a poet. In the first capacity he fails. His points, however good when deliberately wrought, are too recherchés to be put hurriedly before the public eye. Mr. W. has by no means the readiness which the editing a newspaper demands. He composes (as did Addison, and as do many of the most brilliant and seemingly dashing writers of the present day,) with great labour and frequent erasure and interlineation. His MSS., in this regard, present a very singular appearance, and indicate the vacillation which is, perhaps, the leading trait of his character. A newspaper, too, in its longer articles — its “leaders” — very frequently demands argumentation, and here Mr. W. is remarkably out of his element. His exuberant fancy leads him over hedge and ditch — anywhere from the main road; and, besides, he is far too readily self-dispossessed. With time at command, however, his great tact stands him instead of all argumentative power, and enables him to overthrow an antagonist without permitting the latter to see how he is overthrown. A fine example of this “management” is to be found in Mr. W.'s reply to a very inconsiderate attack upon his social standing made by one of the editors of the New York “Courier and Inquirer.” I have always regarded this reply as the highest evidence of its author's ability, as a masterpiece of ingenuity, if not of absolute genius. The skill of the whole lay in this — that, without troubling himself to refute the charges themselves brought against him by Mr. Raymond, he put forth his strength in rendering them null, to all intents and purposes, by obliterating, incidentally and without letting his design be perceived, all the impression these charges were calculated to convey. But this reply can be called a newspaper article only on the ground of its having appeared in a newspaper. As a writer of “sketches,” properly so called, Mr. Willis is unequaled. Sketches — especially of society — are his forte, and they are so for no other reason than that they afford him the best opportunity of introducing the personal Willis — or, more distinctly, because this species of composition is most susceptible of impression from his personal character. The dégagé tone of this kind of writing, too, best admits and encourages that fancy which Mr. W. possesses in the most extraordinary degree; it is in fancy that he reigns supreme: this, more than any one other quality, and, indeed, more than all his other literary qualities combined, has made him what he is.(1) It is this which gives him the originality, the freshness, the point, the piquancy, which appear to be the immediate, but which are, in fact, the mediate sources of his popularity. In tales (written with deliberation for the magazines) he has shown greater constructiveness than I should have given him credit for had I not read his compositions of this order — for in this faculty all his other works indicate a singular deficiency. The chief charm even of these tales, however, is still referable to fancy. As a poet, Mr. Willis is not entitled, I think, to so high a rank as he may justly claim through his prose; and this for the reason that, although fancy is not inconsistent with any of the demands of those classes of prose compositions which he has attempted, and, indeed, is a vital element of most of them, still it is at war (as will be understood from what I have said in the foot note) with that purity and perfection of beauty which are the soul of the poem proper. I wish to be understood as saying this generally of our author's poems. In some instances, seeming to feel the truth of my proposition, (that fancy should have no place in the loftier poesy,) he has denied it a place, as in “Melanie” and his Scriptural pieces; but, unfortunately, he has been unable to supply the void with the true imagination, and these poems consequently are deficient in vigour, in stamen. The Scriptural pieces are quite “correct,” as the French have it, and are much admired by a certain set of readers, who judge of a poem, not by its effect on themselves, but by the effect which they imagine it might have upon themselves were they not unhappily soulless, and by the effect which they take it for granted it does have upon others. It cannot be denied, however, that these pieces are, in general, tame, or indebted for what force they possess to the Scriptural passages of which they are merely paraphrastic. I quote what, in my own opinion and in that of nearly all my friends, is really the truest poem ever written by Mr. Willis. “UNSEEN SPIRITS. “The shadows lay along Broadway, 'T was near the twilight tide, And slowly there a lady fair Was walking in her pride — Alone walked she, yet viewlessly Walked spirits at her side. “Peace charmed the street beneath her feet, And honour charmed the air, And all astir looked kind on her And called her good as fair — For all God ever gave to her She kept with chary care. “She kept with care her beauties rare From lovers warm and true, For her heart was cold to all but gold, And the rich came not to woo. Ah, honoured well are charms to sell When priests the selling do! “Now, walking there was one more fair — A slight girl, lily-pale, And she had unseen company To make the spirit quail — ’T wixt want and scorn she walked forlorn, And nothing could avail. “No mercy now can clear her brow For this world's peace to pray — For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air, Her woman's heart gave way; And the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven By man is cursed alway.” There is about this little poem (evidently written in haste and through impulse) a true imagination. Its grace, dignity and pathos are impressive, and there is more in it of earnestness, of soul, than in anything I have seen from the pen of its author. His compositions, in general, have a taint of worldliness, of insincerity. The identical rhyme in the last stanza is very noticeable, and the whole finale is feeble. It would be improved by making the last two lines precede the first two of the stanza. In classifying Mr. W.'s writings I did not think it worth while to speak of him as a dramatist, because, although he has written plays, what they have of merit is altogether in their character of poem. Of his “Bianca Visconti” I have little to say; — it deserved to fail, and did, although it abounded in eloquent passages. “Tortesa” abounded in the same, but had a great many dramatic points well calculated to tell with a conventional audience. Its characters, with the exception of Tomaso, a drunken buffoon, had no character at all, and the plot was a tissue of absurdities, inconsequences and inconsistencies; yet I cannot help thinking it, upon the whole, the best play ever written by an American. Mr. Willis has made very few attempts at criticism, and those few (chiefly newspaper articles) have not impressed me