Marginalia — 1902 historical reading — reading text

possibly, that very vox et preterea nihil which the countryman, in Catullus, mistook for a nightingale. ————— It is folly to assert, as some at present are fond of asserting, that the Literature of any nation or age was ever injured by plain speaking on the part of the Critics. As for American Letters, plain-speaking about them is, simply, the one thing needed. They are in a condition of absolute quagmire — a quagmire, to use the words of Victor Hugo, d’où on ne peut se tirer par des pèriphrases — par des quemadmodums et des verumenimveros. ————— I believe it is Montaigne who says — ”People talk about thinking, but, for my part. I never begin to think until I sit down to write.” A better plan for him would have been, never to sit down to write until he had made an end of thinking. ————— There is an old German chronicle about Reynard the Fox, when crossed in love — about how he desired to turn hermit, but could find no spot in which he could be “thoroughly alone,” until he came upon the desolate fortress of Malapart. He should have taken to reading the “American Drama” of ——. I fancy he would have found himself “thoroughly alone” in that. ————— Alas! how many American critics neglect the happy suggestion of M. Timon — “que le ministre de L’Instruction Publique doit lui-même savoir parler Françis.” ————— I cannot tell how it happens, but, unless, now and then, in a case of portrait-painting, very few of our artists can justly be held guilty of the crime imputed by Apelles to Protogenes — that of “being too natural.” ————— M——, as a matter of course, would rather be abused by the critics than not be noticed by them at all; but he is hardly to be blamed for growling a little, now and then, over their criticisms — just as a dog might do if pelted with bones. ————— To villify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness. The Crab might never have become a Constellation but for the courage it evinced in nibbling Hercules on the heel. ————— Our “blues” are increasing in number at a great rate; and should be decimated, at the very least. Have we no critic with nerve enough to hang a dozen or two of them, in terrorem? He must use a silk cord, of course — as they do, in Spain, with all grandees of the blue blood — of the “sangre azula.” ————— No doubt, the association of idea is somewhat singular — but I never can hear a crowd of people singing and gesticulating, all together, at an Italian opera, without fancying myself at Athens, listening to that particular tragedy, by Sophocles, in which he introduces a full chorus of turkeys, who set about bewailing the death of Meleager. It is noticeable in this connexion, by the way, that there is not a goose in the world who, in point of sagacity, would not feel itself insulted in being compared with a turkey. The French seem to feel this. In Paris, I am sure, no one would think of saying to Mr. F——, “What a goose you are!” — “Quel dindon tu es!” would be the phrase employed as equivalent. ————— They have ascertained, in China, that the abdomen is the seat of the soul; and the acute Greeks considered it a waste of words to employ more than a single term, φρένες, for the expression both of the mind and of the diaphragm. ————— Let us be charitable and account for M——'s repeated literary failures by the supposition that, like Lelius in the “Arcadia” he wishes to evince his skill rather in missing than in hitting his mark. ————— L—— is busy in attempting to prove that his Play was not fairly d——d — that it is only “scotched, not killed;” but if the poor Play could speak from the tomb, I fancy it would sing with the Opera heroine: “The flattering error cease to prove! Oh, let me be deceased!” —— “What does a man learn by travelling?” demanded Doctor Johnson, one day, in a great rage — ”What did Lord Charlemont learn in his travels, except that there was a snake in one of the pyramids of Egypt?” — but had Doctor Johnson lived in the days of the Silk Buckinghams, he would have seen that, so far from thinking anything of finding a snake in a pyramid, your traveller would take his oath, at a moment's notice, of having found a pyramid in a snake. ————— The next work of Carlyle will be entitled “Bow-Wow,” and the title-page will have a motto from the opening chapter of the Koran: “There is no error in this Book.” XV. [Southern Literary Messenger, September, 1849.] AMONG our men of genius whom, because they are men of genius, we neglect, let me not fail to mention William Wallace, of Kentucky. Had Mr. W. been born under the wings of that ineffable buzzard, “The North American Review,” his unusual merits would long ago have been blazoned to the world — as the far inferior merits of Sprague, Dana, and others of like calibre, have already been blazoned. Neither of these gentlemen has written a poem worthy to be compared with “The Chaunt of a Soul,” published in “The Union Magazine” for November, 1848. It is a noble composition throughout — imaginative, eloquent, full of dignity, and well sustained. It abounds in detached images of high merit — for example: Your early splendor's gone Like stars into a cloud withdrawn — Like music laid asleep In dried up fountains. —— Enough, I am, and shall not choose to die. No matter what our future Fate may be, To live is in itself a majesty. —— And Truth, arising from yon deep, Is plain as a white statue on a tall, dark steep. —— ————— Then The Earth and Heaven were fair, While only less than Gods seemed all my fellow men. Oh, the delight — the gladness — The sense, yet love, of madness — The glorious choral exultations — The far-off sounding of the banded nations — The wings of angels in melodious sweeps Upon the mountain's hazy steeps — The very dead astir within their coffined deeps — The dreamy veil that wrapt the star and sod — A swathe of purple, gold, and amethyst — And, luminous behind the billowy mist; Something that looked to my young eyes like God. I admit that the defect charged, by an envious critic, upon Bayard Taylor — the sin of excessive rhetoricianism — is, in some measure, chargeable to Wallace. He, now and then, permits enthusiasm to hurry him into bombast; but at this point, he is rapidly improving; and, if not disheartened by the cowardly neglect of those who dare not praise a poetical aspirant with genius and without influence, will soon rank as one of the very noblest of American poets. In fact, he is so now.(1) ————— “Frequently since his recent death,” says the American Editor of Hood, “he has been called a great author — a phrase used not inconsiderately or in vain.” Yet, if we adopt the conventional idea of “a great author,” there has lived, perhaps, no writer of the last half century who, with equal notoriety, was less entitled than Hood to be so called. In fact, he was a literary merchant, whose main stock in trade was littleness; for, during the larger portion of his life, he seemed to breathe only for the purpose of perpetrating puns — things of so despicable a platitude that the man who is capable of habitually committing them, is seldom found capable of anything else. Whatever merit may be discovered in a pun, arises altogether from unexpectedness. This is the pun's element and is two-fold. First, we demand that the combination of the pun be unexpected; and, secondly, we require the most entire unexpectedness in the pun per se. A rare pun, rarely appearing, is, to a certain extent, a pleasurable effect; but to no mind, however debased in taste, is a continuous effort at punning otherwise than unendurable. The man who maintains that he derives gratification from any such chapters of punnage as Hood was in the daily practice of committing to paper, should not be credited upon oath. The puns of the author of “Fair Inez,” however, are to be regarded as the weak points of the man. Independently of their ill effect, in a literary view, as mere puns, they leave upon us a painful impression; for too evidently they are the hypochondriac's struggles at mirth — the grinnings of the death's head. No one can read his “Literary Reminiscences” without being convinced of his habitual despondency — and the species of false wit in question is precise of that character which would be adopted by an author of Hood's temperament and cast of intellect, when compelled to write at an emergency. That his heart had no interest in these niaiseries, is clear. I allude, of course, to his mere puns for the pun's sake — a class of letters by which he attained his widest renown. That he did more in this way than in any other, is but a corollary from what I have already said, for, generally, he was unhappy, and almost continually he wrote invita Minerva. But his true province was a very rare and ethereal humor, in which the mere pun was left out of sight, or took the character of the richest grotesquerie; impressing the imaginative reader with remarkable force, as if by a new phase of the ideal. It is in this species of brilliant, or, rather, glowing grotesquerie, uttered with a rushing abandon vastly heightening its effect, that Hood's marked originality mainly consisted: — and it is this which entitles him, at times, to the epithet “great”: — for that undeniably may be considered great (of whatever seeming littleness in itself) which is capable of inducing intense emotion in the minds, or hearts, of those who are themselves undeniably great. The field in which Hood is distinctive is a border-land between Fancy and Fantasy. In this region he reigns supreme. Nevertheless, he has made successful and frequent incursions, although vacillatingly, into the domain of the true Imagination. I mean to say that he is never truly or purely imaginative for more than a paragraph at a time. In a word, his peculiar genius was the result of vivid Fancy impelled by Hypochondriasis. [The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 177:] 1. Griswold printed this as a separate paper. — ED.