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

here ’s the case, says he, If Lery A I must ery B, attitudes are faithfully preserved. And so go on to C and D, And that won’t do, but still there ’s Jod Nature, A ParasLe: A Porm in Seven Booxs. Lurks in the way with X Y Zod, By the Rev. John Brande Morris, M. A., Fellow of . And so no end I find there ’ll be Exeter College, Oxford. i6mo. pp. 367. J. G. F. ‘If I but once learn A BC.” and J. Rivington, London, 1842. (Here the astounding intelligence bursts upon us The famous “ Tracts for the times ” have wrought that the boy's blockishness was but that of another a convulsion in England, and in the church establish- Brutus, and that he knew the alphabet as well as the ment there, some quiverings of which have not been best of them. His motives are matter of serious unfelt in this country. The aim of Puseyism, so far conjecture, which we leave to the historical societies.) as we understand it, is to create a life under those * But as things stand, I will not do it, outward forms * of the service, which, merely as Tho’ sure I am one day to rue it. forms, are but ribs of death, — to bring back the old At this cross rate the dunce went on poetic romance of belief which took a sorrowful leave Till one at length a means thought on.” of the church when the painter and sculptor were (We are left in doubt as to who thought of the locked out of it, and to unite once more religion and happy expedient, but imagine, from the inventive fac- beauty, whom God had joined, but whom man had ulty he displays, it could have been no other than our striven to put asunder. The Puritans went too far in poet. What the plant was, is also left in sublime their iconoclasm. In breaking the form and image, vagueness, which finds a parallel in Milton’s famous they too often shattered the substance and spirit also, * dreaded name of Demogorgon.’’) and we cannot but think that there was as much image-worship, and perhaps more pride, in their own * A plant, says he, grows near the wood,” adoration of close-cropt plainness as in that bowing of (What Homeric minuteness! not in the wood, but the knee to paintings and statues which they so near it.) fiercely warred upon with tongue and sword. Those “ That will not fail to do him good, divine shadowings forth of the Maid-mother, and And cure his fits while in the bud. those venerable effigies of holy saints and martyrs, This plant, adds he, will cure his sight, who, in their dim Gothic oratories, with clasped hands And with a touch make him grow bright, At eyes and nose ’t will purge the skull and lifted eyes, continued unchanged their silent, And drain off all that makes him dull.” marble supplication for generation after generation of the fleshly worshippers below, — these were not meant But a better day has dawned. We have the charm- by the Roman Church (however ignorance and super- ing “Rollo” series, and now Mr. Hawthorne is making our New England history as delightful to the stition may have perverted their first pure intent) as children as he has already to the parents. We hope objects of worship. They were not put there as he will not let his labors for the youthful deprive us means whereby the spirit might reach the pure, eter- nal source of all spirit, but rather as material types of his instructions for the more mature, for we all by which the bodily senses might also be led upward need him, old as well as young. Like a true genius, and be no longer a clog and hindrance to their heaven- he has made his own heart the centre from which all his artistic power has emanated, and found his mate- ward inmate. They were but the illuminations of the missal, the outward emblems and mottos of a rials around his very door. He has woven the soften- ing halo of romance around the iron visages of the spiritual, inward meaning. We cannot venerate an puritans, and intertwined the gentle flowers of love establishment like that of the English Church, but and poesy with the self-inflicted crown of thorns we sympathize with those of its members who (if we which encircled their gloomy and sallow brows. He rightly understand their object, from a very superficial has painted the old New England character in true, glance) are striving to bring back the old simple faith in its outward observances ; for we are well assured but soft and harmonious, colors, and illustrated the gentle and more graceful elements of it by the retired that belief in anything is better food for the soul than simplicity of his life. May the tears which his own the dry husks of an uninterested acquiescence, or a tender and exquisite pathos draw from us, be all that concealed, blasé unbelief. To attain their end, they have argued and persuaded in prose, they have we shall ever be called on to shed for him! gone back to the early fathers, (as if to revivify the La Fontaine's Fasies. Boston: Tappan and Den- dead body of their ritual by touching it with the nett, bones of the buried prophets,) and they have enlisted the golden mouth of poesy in their catise. We are glad that Mr. Wright has published this The object of the volume before us, is to point out cheap edition of his faithful and terse translation, for it in nature the reality of those physical types made use can now be put within the reach of all, and give in- of in Scripture, and in the forms of church worship, structive delight to many a poor little child whose to interpret spiritual mysteries. It is a Chureh-of- means of intellectual enjoyment are limited to the England exposition of the Swedenborgian doctrine of scanty superfluity which is left from the hard earnings correspondences. Dr. Johnson kicked his foot against a of its parents, after the wants of life are supplied. stone in answer to the deniers of the existence of mat- The wood cuts are exceedingly well reduced by Hartwell from the wonderful originals of Grandville, * “ Forms are like barrels, only of value when they the Hogarth of the brute creation, and painter of low are full.””— Guesses at Truth.  —. Ey vy 44 THE PIONEER. ter, and a foolish old philosopher (a word which means By faith not otherwise than distance doth, one who makes a puzzle of simple things) endured Or other temporary foe to love. martyrdom for this immaterial theory, by suffering himself to be run over by achariot which he contended And so the change which death to saints supplies May be with kindred circumstance of life was but a type or spiritual appearance. But to prove Attended. They are haply looking back the existence of matter does not accouné for its exist- Upon the childhood of existence here ence. Indeed the utmost of proof is only as to its As we may look upon our infancy hardness and capability of impressing matter, for it And feel whereto its lessons bent their way. Haply to him the vegetable world is no less an existence, whether it be called a sign or Is opened into a transcendent scheme, a reality. Poets from the first, have been uncon- And he is marvelling how men can walk sciously accounting for it by metaphorically showing Unawed among prophetic presences, that every fact which we discern in spirit has its in- Or harshly breaking symbols delicate.’ — dex or “ marginal finger” in matter. To them every- The metre of the poem seems to be founded on the thing in matter is a metaphor for something in spirit, blank verse of Milton, and his parenthetic style (or and the great universe itself an allegory expanded trick, as it might be called,) has been caught by our into numberless cantos. author to such a degree as renders him often obscure The attempt of Mr. Morris, then, is to render this and tiresome. The spirit of the book is good, though semi-conscious belief into a philosophical system. there is too decided a leaning toward asceticism, both Philosophy should always be the groundwork of poet- spiritual and bodily. There is less bigotry than was ry, but whether poetry can be made a fit vehicle for to have been expected, indeed there is scarce any, ex- it, may well be doubted. The pyramidal form has cept what must necessarily result from a firm belief long been known as the true one for grouping in art, in the principles of that church of which the author and as the most enduring in architecture, but in order