The Tell-Tale Heart - The Pioneer, January 1843 — reading text

which bind them template the universal laws of soul, they harmoniously together, she is to be revered find some fragment of the broken tables of and cherished. ‘The poet has a fresher me- God’s law, and interpret it, half conscious of mory of Eden, and of the path leading back its mighty import. While philosophers are thereto, than other men; so that we might wrangling, and politicians playing at snap- almost deem him to have been conceived, at dragon with the destinies of millions, the poet, least, if not born and nursed, beneath the am- in the silent deeps of his soul, listens to those brosial shadow of those dimly remembered mysterious pulses which, from one central heart bowers, and to have had his infant ears filled send life and beauty through the finest veins with the divine converse of angels, who then of the universe, and utters truths to be sneered talked face to face with his sires, as with be- at, perchance, by contemporaries, but which loved younger brethren, and of whose golden become religion to posterity. Not unwisely words only the music remained to him, vibrat- ordered is that eternal destiny which renders ing forever in his soul, and making him yearn the seer despised of men, since thereby he is to have all sounds of earth harmonize there- but the more surely taught to lay his head with. In the poet’s lofty heart, Truth hangs meekly upon the mother-breast of Nature, and her aery, and there Love flowers, scattering hearken to the musical soft beating of her thence her winged seeds over all the earth bounteous heart. with every wind of heaven. In all ages the That Poesy, save as she can soar nearer to poet’s fiery words have goaded men to remem- the blissful throne of the Supreme Beauty, is ber and regain their ancient freedom, and, of no more use than all other beautiful things when they had regained it, have tempered it are, we are fain to grant. ‘That she does not with a love of beauty, so as that it should add to the outward wealth of the body, and accord with the freedom of Nature, and be as that she is only so much more excellent than unmovably eternal as that. The dreams of any bodily gift, as spirit is more excellent than poets are morning-dreams, coming to them in matter, we must also yield. But, inasmuch as the early dawn and day-breaking of great all beautiful things are direct messages and re- truths, and are surely fulfilled at last. They velations of himself, given us by our Father, repeat them, as children do, and all Christ-  THE PLAYS OF THOMAS MIDDLETON. 33 endom, if it be not too busy with quarrel- majesty, as if they were not truly the words of ling about the meaning of creeds, which have no men, but only more distinct utterances of those meaning at all, listens with a shrug of the far-heard voices which, in the too fleeting mo- shoulders and a smile of pitying incredulity; ments of a higher and clearer being, come to for reformers are always madmen in their own us from the infinite deep with a feeling of age, and infallible saints in the next. something heard in childhood, but long ago We love to go back to the writings of our drowned in the din of life. It is a lesson also, old poets, for we find in them the tender germs for those who would be teachers of men that of many a thought, which now stands like a theirs must be rather the humbly obedient huge oak in the inward world, an ornament voice than the unconquerable will, and that and a shelter. We cannot help reading with he speaks best who has listened longest. And awful interest what has been written or rudely yet there is something beautiful, too, in the scrawled upon the walls of this our earthly universal longing which men feel to see the prison-house, by former dwellers therein. From bodily face of that soul whose words have that which centuries have established, too, we strengthened or refreshed them. It is, per- may draw true principles of judgment for the haps, the result of an unconscious remem- poetry of our own day. A right knowledge brance of a perished faith in the power of and apprehension of the past teaches humble- spirit over matter, whereby the beautiful soul ness and self-sustainment to the present. Show- builds for itself out of clay a dwelling worthy ing us what has been, it also reveals what and typical of its majesty. Let Orpheus, then, can be done. Progress is Janus-faced, looking be a shadow, Homer a name, and our divine to the by-gone as well as to the coming ; and Shakspeare a mystery ; — we might despise the Radicalism should not so much busy itself with ambrosia if we saw too plainly the earthen dish lopping off the dead or seemingly dead limbs, in which it was offered to us. ‘Their spirits as with clearing away that poisonous rotten- are a part of theair we breathe. Nothing that ness around the roots, from which the tree has was truly theirs has perished, or ever can drawn the principle of death into its sap. A perish. If a sparrow fall not to the ground love of the beautiful and harmonious, which without His knowledge, shall a word of truth must be the guide and forerunner to every on- be of less esteem in His eyes than a sparrow ? ward movement of humanity, is created and No, buffeted and borne about as it may be, by cherished more surely by pointing out what the shifting winds of prejudice, that deathless beauty dwells in anything, even the most de- seed always takes root in the warm bosom of formed, (for there is something in that, also, the earth at last ; — buried for centuries haply else it could not even be,) than by searching in the dark and dreary catacombs of supersti- out and railing at all the foulnesses in nature. tion, the life is yet new and strong within it, Not till we have patiently studied beauty can and in God’s good time it springs up and blos- we safely venture to look at defects, for not till soms, in an age to which it was more needful then can we do it in that spirit of earnest than to that in which it was entombed. love, which gives more than it takes away. It is of Middleton’s tragedies chiefly that we Exultingly as we hail all signs of progress, we shall speak, both because they are very fine venerate the past also. The tendrils of the ones, and because from them we can more heart, like those of ivy, cling but the more safely draw an estimate of his character. A closely to what they have clung to long, and good tragedy is, perhaps, the hardest thing to even when that which they entwine crumbles write. Nothing is easier than to draw tears beneath them, they still run greenly over the from the reader ; nothing surely is more rare ruin, and beautify those defects which they than the power of drawing them rightly, or of cannot hide. ‘The past, as well as the present, touching that deepest string of our being which moulds the future, and the features of some God, that he might give us the most meaning remote progenitor will revive again freshly in the lesson of universal .brotherhood, has ordained latest offspring of the womb of time. Our should never quiver at the touch of our private earth hangs well nigh silent now, amid the sorrows, how soul-piercing soever. There are chorus of her sister orbs, and not till past and a thousand who can write pathetically, for one present move harmoniously together, will music who has in any measure of fullness the tragic once more vibrate on this iong silent chord in faculty. Many may touch the heart, but none the symphony of the universe. save a master can bring up for us the snowy Of Thomas Middleton little is known. In- pearls which sleep in the deep abysses and deed it seems to be the destiny of poets that caverns of the soul. ‘That our tears are so men should not be familiar with their personal ready has a beautiful significance, —for they history —a destiny which to the thoughtful are the birthright of angelic natures, while it has a true and beautiful meaning. For it is the curse of utterly fallen spirits that none of seems meant to chide men for their too ready this sweet dew should ever shed its coolness preference of names and persons to things, by upon their parched and burning cheeks. Viewed showing them the perishableness of the one, rightly, every fact of our being enfolds a and the immortality of the other, and to give to clear recognition of the divinity of our nature. those divine teachings of theirs which remain In childhood we see this more readily, though to us, something of a mysterious and oracular unwittingly ; every flower which we pluck at VOL. I.— NO. I. 5  34 THE PIONEER. random in the pure morning of life, and cast pus and Othello. The master of pathos must from us with a prodigality of beauty which we be minute and circumstantial, he must tell us grow charier of in more thoughtful years, all he knows, and depend on a cumulative circles in its fragrant heart the dew-drop effect ; while for the higher tragic, there are which, small as it is, mirrors the universe. In many things too real and common-place ; — the ehildhood, too, and in women, (who never naked skeleton, which leaves the imagination wander far thence,) the source of this never free to work, is more effective and appalling, — turbid fountain of our