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(P-'
D
EMOCRATIC VISTAS, AND
OTHER PAPERS. BY
WALT WHITMAN.
\Published by afrangemcnl with the Author^
» I
LONDON
WALTER SCOTT, 24 WARWICK LANE
TORONTO : W. J. GAGE & CO.
1888
i
I
- ■
i('
CONTENTS.
PAUE
DKMOCRATIC VISTAS I
MY BOOK AND I 84
A BACKWARD GLANCE ON MV OWN ROAD . . .95
OUR EMINENT VISITORS (PAST, PRESENT, AND "UTURE) lOO
A THOUGHT ON SHAKESPEARE I06
WHAT LURKS BEHIND SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORICAL PLAYS I09
ROBERT BURNS AS POET AND PERSON . . . . IIJ
A WORD ABOUT TENNYSON II 5
"how I MADE A book" I30
FIVE THOUSAND POEMS 140
NOri'S LEFT OVER 1 42
A LETTER 1 74
PREFACE.
MAINLY I think I should base the request to
weigh the following pages on the assumption
that they present, however indirectly, some views of
the West and Modern, or of a distinctly western and
modern (American) tendency, about certain matters.
Then too, the pages include (by attempting to
illustrate it,) a theory herein immediately mentioned.
For another and different point of the issue, the
Enlightenment, Democracy and Fair-show of the
bulk, the common people of America (from sources
representing not only the British Islands, but all the
world,) means, at least, eligibility to Enlightenment,
Democracy and Fair-show for the bulk, the common
people of all civilized nations.
That positively " the dry land has appeared," at any
rate, is an important fact.
America is really the great test or trial case for all
the problems and promises and speculations of
humanity, and of the past and present.
PREFACE.
I say, too, we* are not to look so much to changes,
ameliorations, and adaptations in Politics as to those
of Literature and (thence) domestic Sociology. I
have accordingly in the following melange introduced
many themes besides political ones.
Several of the pieces are ostensibly in explanation of
my own writings ; but in that very process they best
include and set forth their side of principles and general-
ities pressing vehemently for consideration our age.
Upon the whole, it is on the atmosphere they are
born in, and, (I hppe) give out, more than any specific
piece or trait, I would care to rest.
I think Literature — a new, superb, democratic
literature — is to be the medicine and lever, and (with
Art) the chief influence in modern civilization. I
have myself not so much made a dead set at this
theory, or attempted to present it directly, as
admitted it to color and sometimes dominate what I
had to say. In both Europe and America we have
serried phalanxes who promulge and defend the
political claims : I go for an equal force to uphold
the other.
WALT WHITMAN.
Camden, New Jersey,
April 1888.
* We who, in many departments, ways, make the building up of the
masses, by building tip grand ittdividuals, our shibboleth : and in brief
that is the marrow of this book.
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
AS the greatest lessons of Nature through the universe
are perhaps the lessons of variety and freedom, the
same present the greatest lessons also in New World
politics and progress. If a man were ask'd, for instance,
the distinctive points contrasting modern European and
American political and other life with the old Asiatic cultus,
as lingering-bequeath'd yet in China and Turkey, he might
find the amount of them in John Stuart Mill's profound
essay on Liberty in the future, where he demands two main
constituents, or sub-strata, for a truly grand nationality —
I St, a large variety of character — and 2d, full play for
human nature to expand itself in numberless and even con-
flicting directions — (seems to be for general humanity much
like the influences that make up, in their limitless field, that
perennial health-action of the air we call the weather — an
infinite number of currents and forces, and contributions,
and temperatures, and cross purposes, whose ceaseless play
of counterpart upon counterpart brings constant restoration
and vitality.) With this thought — and not for itself alone,
but all it necessitates, and draws after it — let me begin my
speculations.
America, filling the present with greatest deeds and
problems, cheerfully accepting the past, including feudalism,
(as, indeed, the present is but the legitimate birth of the
I
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
past, including feudalism,) counts, as I reckon, for her
justification and success, (for who, as yet, dare claim
success ?) almost entirely on the future. Nor is that hope
unwarranted. To-day, ahead, though dimly yet, we see, in
vistas, a copious, sane, gigantic offspring. For our New
World I consider far less important for what it has done, or
what it is, than for results to come. Sole among nation-
alities, these States have assumed the task to put in forms
of lasting power and practicality, on areas of amplitude
rivaling the operations of the physical kosmos, the moral
political speculations of ages, long, long deferr'd, the
democratic republican principle, and the theory of develop-
ment and perfection by voluntary standards, and self-
reliance. Who else, indeed, except the United States,
in history, so far, have accepted in unwitting faith, and,
as we now see, stand, act upon, and go security for, these
things ?
But preluding no longer, let me strike the key-note of the
following strain. First premising that, though the passages
of it have been written at widely different times, (it is,
in fact, a collection of memoranda, perhaps for future
designers, comprehenders,) and though it may be open
to the charge of one part contradicting another — for there
are opposite sides to the great question of democracy, as to
every great question — I feel the parts harmoniously blended
in my own realization and convictions, and present them to
be read only in such oneness, each page and each claim
and assertion modified and tempered by the others. Bear
in mind, too, that they are not the result of studying up in
political economy, but of the ordinary sense, observing,
wandering among men, these States, these stirring years of
war and peace. I will not gloss over the appaling dangers
of universal suffrage in the United States. In fact, it is to
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. 5
admit and face these dangers I am writing. To him or her
within whose thought rages the battle, advancing, retreating,
between democracy's convictions, aspirations, and the
people's crudeness, vice, caprices, I mainly write this essay.
I shall use the words America and democracy as con-
vertible terms. Not an ordinary one is the issue. The
United States are destined either to surmount the gorgeous
history of feudalism, or else prove the most tremendous
failure of time. Not the least doubtful am I on any
prospects of their material success. The triumphant future
of their business, geographic and productive departments,
on larger scales and in more varieties than ever, is certain.
In those respects the republic must soon (if she does not
already) outstrip all examples hitherto afforded, and
dominate the world.*
* " From a territorial area of less than nine hundred thousand
square miles, the Union has expanded into over four millions and a
half— fifteen times larger than that of Great Britain and France com-
bined — with a shore-line, including Alaska, equal to the entire cir-
cumference of the earth, and with a domain within these lines far
wider than that of the Romans in their proudest days of conquest and
renown. With a river, lake, and coastwise commerce estimated at
over two thousand millions of dollars per year ; with a railway traffic
of four to six thousand millions per year, and the annual domestic
exchanges of the country running up to nearly ten thousand millions
per year ; with over two thousand millions of dollars invested in
manufacturing, mechanical, and mining industry ; with over five
hundred millions of acres of land in actual occupancy, valued, with
their appurtenances, at over seven thousand millions of dollars, and
producing annually crops valued at over three thousand millions of
dollars ; with a realm which, if the density of Belgium's population
were possible, would be vast enough to include all the present in-
habitants of the world ; and with equal rights guaranteed to even the
poorest and humblest of our forty millions of people — we can, with a
manly pride akin to that which distinguish'd the palmiest days of
4 . DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
Admitting all this, with the priceless value of our political
institutions, general suffrage, (and fully acknowledging the
latest, widest opening of the doors,) I say that, far deeper
than these, what finally and only is to make of our western
world a nationality superior to any hither known, and
outtopping the past, must be vigorous, yet unsuspected
Literatures, perfect personalities and sociologies, original,
transcendental, and expressing (what, in hight.st sense, are
not yet express'd at all,) democracy and the modern. With
these, and out of these, I promulgate new races of Teachers,
and of perfect Women, indispensable to endow the birth-
stock of a New World. For feudalism, caste, the
ecclesiastic traditions, though palpably retreating from
political institution^ still hold essentially, by their spirit.
Rome, claim," &c., &c., &c. — Vice-President Col/ax's Speech^ July ^^
1870.
LATEK-^London " Times," {Weekly,) /une 23, '82.
" The wonderful wealth-producing power of the United States defies
and sets at naught the grave drawbacks of a mischievous; protective
tariff, and has already obliterated, almost wholly, the traces of the
greatest of modern civil wars. What is especially remarkable in the
present development of American energy and success is it? wide and
equable distribution. North and south, east and west, on the shores
of the Atlantic and the Pacific, along the chain of the great lakes,
in the valley of the Mississippi, and on the coasts of the gulf of
Mexico, the creation of wealth and the increase of population are
signally exhibited. It is quite true, as has been shown by the recent
apportionment of population in the House of Representatives, that
some sections of the Union have advanced, relatively to the rest, in
an extraordinary and unexpected degree. But this does not imply
that the States which have gain'd no additional representatives or
ha^'e actually lost some have been stationary or have receded. The
feet is that the present tide of prosperity has risen so high that it
has overflow'd all barriers, and has fiU'd up the back-waters, and
establisb'd something like an approach to uniform success."
, ' !
, as matters now stand in our civilized world, is the only
scheme worth working from, as warranting results like those
of Nature's laws, reliable, when once established, to carry
on themselves.
The argument of the matter is extensive, and, we admit,
by no means all on one side. What we shall offer will be
far, far from sufficient. But while leaving unsaid much that
should properly even prepare the way for the treatment of
i
II
lings IS
he last,
its own
super-
ividual-
icter to
ither to
^eneral-
lity and
tportant
on the
f in the
ilership,
ing the
nee — is,
dicules,
at all
train'd
a law,
oviding
lations
e other
proved
itions,
e only
those
carry
I admit,
nil be
:h that
lent of
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
19
this many-sided question of political liberty, equality, or
republicanism — leaving the whole history and consideration
of the feudal plan and its products, embodying humanity,
its politics and civilization, through the retrospect of past
time, (which plan and products, indeed, make up all of the
past, and a large part of the present) — leaving unanswer'd,
at least by any specific and local answer, many a well-
wrought argument and instance, and many a conscientious
declamatory cry and warning — as, very lately, from an
eminent and venerable person abroad* — things, problems,
full of doubt, dread, suspense, (not new to me, but old
occupiers of many an anxious hour in city's din, or night's
silence,) we still may give a page or so, whose drift is
opportune. Time alone can finally answer these things.
But as a substitute in passing, let us, even if fragmentarily,
throw forth a short direct or indirect suggestion of the
premises of that other plan, in the new spirit, under the
new forms, started here in our America.
As to the political section of Democracy, which intro-
duces and breaks ground for further and vaster sections,
few probably are the minds, even in these republican States,
that fully comprehend the aptness of that phrase, "the
GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE
* " Shooting Niagara."— I was at first roused to much anger
and abuse by this essay from Mr. Carlyle, so insulting to the theory
of America — but happening to think afterwards how I had more than
once been in the like mood, during which his essay was evidently
cast, and seen persons and things in the same light, (indeed some
might say there are signs of the same feeling in these Vistas) — I
have since read it again, not only as a study, expressing as it does
certain judgments from the highest feudal point of view, but have
read it with respect as coming from an earnest soul, and as con-
tributing certain sharp-cutting metallic grains, which, if not gold or
silver, may be good hard, honest iron.
I
; l|
f
do
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
M
People," which we inherit from the lips of Abraham
Lincoln ; a formula whose verbal shape is homely wit, but
whose scope includes both the totality and all minutiae of
the lesson.
The People ! Like our huge earth itself, which, to
ordinary scansion, is full of vulgar contradictions and
offence, man, viewed in the lump, displeases, and is a
constant puzzle and affront to the merely educated classes.
The rare, cosmical, artist-mind, lit with the Infinite, alone
confronts his manifold and oceanic qualities — but taste,
intelligence and culture, (so-called,) have been against the
masses, and remain so. There is plenty of glamour about
the most damnable crimes and hoggish meannesses, special
and general, of the feudal and dynastic world over there,
with its perso7inel of lords and queens and courts, so well-
dress'd and so handsome. But the People are ungram-
matical, untidy, and their sins gaunt and ill-bred.
Literature, strictly consider'd, has never recognized the
People, and, whatever may be said, does not to-day.
Speaking generally, the tendencies of literature, as hitherto
pursued, have been to make mostly critical and querulous
men. It seems as if, so far, there were some natural
repugnance between a literary and professional life, and the
rude rank spirit of the democracies. There is, in later
literature, a treatment of benevolence, a charity business, rife
enough it is true ; but I know nothing more rare, even in this
country, than a fit scientific estimate and reverent appreciation
of the People — of their measurless wealth of latent power and
capacity, their vast, artistic contrasts of lights and shades —
with, in America, their entire reliability in emergencies, and
a certain breadth of historic grandeur, of peace or war, far
surpassing all the vaunted samples of book-heroes, or any
haut ion coteries, in all the records of the world.
I
lous
ral
the
later
rife
this
Ition
land
IS —
and
far
any
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
21
The movements of the late secession war, and their
results, to any sense that studies well and comprehends
them, show that popular democracy, whatever its faults and
dangers, practically justifies itself beyond the proudest
claims and wildest hopes of its enthusiasts. Probably no
future age can know, but I well know, how the gist of this
fiercest and most resolute of the world's war-like conten-
tions resided exclusively in the unnamed, unknown rank
and file ; and how the brunt of its labor of death was, to all
essential purposes, volunteer'd. The People, of their own
choice, fighting, dying for their own idea, insolently
attack*d by the secession-slave-power, and its very existence
imperil'd. Descending to detail, entering any of the
armies, and mixing with the private soldiers, we see and
have seen august spectacles. We have seen the alacrity
with which the American-born populace, the peaceablest
and most good-natured race in the world, and the most
personally independent and intelligent, and the least fitted .
to submit to the irksomeness and exasperation of regimental
discipline, sprang, at the first tap of the drum, to arms — not
for gain, nor even glory, nor to repel invasion — but for an
emblem, a mere abstraction — for the life, the safely of the
flag. We have seen the unequal'd docility and obedience
of these soldiers. We have seen them tried long and long
by hopelessness, mismanagement, and by defeat ; have seen
the incredible slaughter toward or through which the
armies, (as at first Fredericksburg, and afterward at the
Wilderness,) still unhesitatingly obey'd orders to advance.
We have seen them in trench, or crouching behind breast-
work, or tramping in deep mud, or amid pouring rain or
thick-falling snow, or under forced marches in hottest
summer (as on the road to get to Gettysburg) — vast suffocat-
ing swarms, divisions, corps, with every single man so
39
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
grimed and black with sweat and dust, his own mother
would not have known him — his clothes all dirty, stain'd
and torn, with sour, accumulated sweat for perfume — many
a comrade, perhaps a brother, sun-struck, staggering out,
dying, by the roadside, of exhaustion — yet the great bulk
bearing steadily on, cheery enough, hollow-bellied from
hunger, but sinewy with unconquerable resolution.
We have seen this race proved by wholesale, by drearier,
yet more fearful tests — the wound, the amputation, the
shattered face or limb, the slow hot fever, long impatient
anchorage in bed, and all the forms of maiming, operation
and disease. Alas ! America have we seen, though only in
her early youth, already to hospital brought. There have
we watch'd these soldiers, many of them only boys in
years — mark'd their decorum, their religious nature and
fortitude, and their sweet affection. Wholesale, truly. For
at the front, and through the camps, in countless tents,
stood the regimental, brigade and division hospitals ; while
everywhere amid the land, in or near cities, rose clusters of
huge, white-wash'd, crowded, one-story wooden barracks;
and there ruled agony with bitter scourge, yet seldom
brought a cry ; and there stalk'd death by day and night
along the narrow aisles between the rows of cots, or by the
blankets on the ground, and touch'd lightly many a poor
sufferer, often with blessed, welcome touch.
I know not whether I shall be understood, but I realize
that it is finally from what I learn'd personally mixing in
such scenes that I am now penning these pages. One
night in the gloomiest period of the war, in the Patent
office hospital in Washington city, as I stood by the bedside
of a Pennsylvania soldier, who lay, conscious of quick
approaching death, yet perfectly calm, and with noble,
spiritual manner, the veteran surgeon, turning aside, said to
I
.
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
23
s of
ent
ide
ick
)le,
to
me, that though he had witness'd many, many deaths of
soldiers, and had been a worker at Bull Run, Antietam,
Fredericksburg, &c., he had not seen yet the first case of
man or boy that met the approach of dissolution with
cowardly qualms or terror. My own observation fully
bears out the remark.
What have we here, if not, towering above all talk and
argument, the plentifully-supplied, last-needed proof of
democracy, in its personalities? Curiously enough, too,
the proof on this point comes, I should say, every bit as
much from the south, as from the north. Although I have
spoken only of the latter, yet I deliberately include all.
Grand, common stock ! to me the accomplish'd and con-
vincing growth, prophetic of the future ; proof undeniable
to sharpest sense, of perfect beauty, tenderness and puck,
that never feudal lord, nor Greek, nor Roman breed, yet
rival'd. Let no tongue ever speak in disparagement of the
American races, north or south, to one who has been
through the war in the great army hospitals.
Meantime, general humanity, (for to that we return, as,
for our purposes, what it really is, to bear in mind,) has
always, in every department, been full of perverse malefi-
cence, and is so yet. In downcast hours the soul thinks it
always will be — but soon recovers from such sickly moods.
I myself see clearly enough the crude, defective streaks in
all the strata of the common people ; the specimens and
vast collections of the ignorant, the credulous, the unfit and
uncouth, the incapable, and the very low and poor. The
eminent person just mentioned sneeringly asks whether we
expect to elevate and improve a nation's politics by absorb-
ing such morbid collections and qualities therein. The
point is a formidable one, and there will doubtless always
be numbers of solid and reflective citizens who will never
■ f
24
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS,
get over it Our answer is general, and is involved in the
scope and letter of this essay. We believe the ulterior
object of political and all other government, (having, of
course, provided for the police, the safety of life, property,
and for the basic statute and common law, and their admin-
istration, always first in order,) to be among the rest, not
merely to rule, to repress disorder, &c., but to develop, to
open up to cultivation, to encourage the possibilities of all
beneficent and manly outcroppage, and of that aspiration
for independence, and the pride and self-respect latent in
all characters. (Or, if there be exceptions, we cannot,
fixing our eyes on them alone, make theirs the rule for
all.) , ^
I say the mission of government, henceforth, in civilized
lands, is not repression alone, and not authority alone, not
even of law, nor by that favorite standard of the eminent
writer, the rule of the best men, the bom heroes and
captains of the race, (as if such ever, or one time out of a
hundred, get into the big places, elective or dynastic) — but
higher than the highest arbitrary rule, to train communities
through all their grades, beginning with individuals and
ending there again, to rule themselves. What Christ
appear'd for in the moral-spiritual field for human-kind,
namely, that in respect to the absolute soul, there is in the
possession of such by each single individual, something so
transcendent, so incapable of gradations, (like life,) that, to
that extent, it places all beings on a common level, utterly
regardless of the distinctions of intellect, virtue, station, or
any height or lowliness whatever — is tallied in like manner,
in this other field, by democracy's rule that men, the nation,
as a common aggregate of living identities, affording in each
a separate and complete subject for freedom, worldly thrift
and happiness, and for a fair chance for growth, and for
M
) \
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
as
in the
ulterior
ing, of
operty,
admin-
est, not
slop, to
s of all
piration
Ltent in
cannot,
rule for
civilized
3ne, not
eminent
Des and
3ut of a
c)— but
nunities
als and
Christ
m-kind,
5 in the
hing so
that, to
utterly
Ltion, or
(nanner,
nation,
I in each
ly thrift
md for
protection in citizenship, &c., must, to the political extent
of the suffrage or vote, if no further, be placed, in each and
in the whole, on one broad, primary, universal, common
platform. , •
The purpose is not altogether direct ; perhaps it is more
indirect. For it is not that democracy is of exhaustive
account, in itself. Perhaps, indeed, it is, (like Nature,) of
no account in itself. It is that, as we see, it is the best,
perhaps only, fit and full means, formulater, general caller-
forth, trainer, for the million, not for grand material
personalities only, but for immortal souls. To be a voter
with the rest is not so much ; and this, like every institute,
will have its imperfections. But to become an enfranchised
man, and now, impediments removed, to stand and start
(srithout humiliation, and equal with the rest ; to commence,
or have the road clear'd to commence, the grand experi-
ment of development, whose end, (perhaps requiring several
generations,) may be the forming of a full-grown man or
woman — that is something. To ballast the State is also
secured, and in our times is to be secured, in no other way.
We do not, (at any rate I do not,) put it either on the
ground that the People, the masses, even the best of them,
are, in their latent or exhibited qualities, essentially
sensible and good — nor on the ground of their rights ; but
that good or bad, rights or no rights, the democratic
formula is the only safe and preservative one for coming
times. We endow the masses with the suffrage for their
own sake, no doubt ; then, perhaps still more, from another
point of view, for community's sake. Leaving the rest to
the sentimentalists, we present freedom as sufficient in its
scientific aspect, cold as ice, reasoning, deductive, clear and
passionless as crystal.
Democracy too is law, and of the strictest, amplest kind.
^ (
96
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
Many suppose, (and often in its own ranks the error,) that
it means a throwing aside of law, and running riot But,
briefly, it is the superior law, not alone that of physical
force, the body, which, adding to, it supersedes with that of
the spirit Law is the unshakable order of the universe
forever ; and the law over all, and law of laws, is the law of
successions ; that of the superior law, in time, gradually
supplanting and overwhelming the inferior one. (While,
for myself, I would cheerfully agree — first covenanting that
the formative tendencies shall be administer'd in favor,
or at least not against it, and that this reservation be closely
construed — that until the individual or community show
due signs, or be so minor and fractional as not to endanger
the State, the condition of authoritative tutelage may
continue, and self-government must abide its time.) Nor
is the esthetic point, always an important one, without
fascination for highest aiming souls. The common
ambition strains for elevations, to become some privileged
exclusive. The master sees greatness and health in being
part of the mass; nothing will do as well as common
ground. Would you have in yourself the divine, vast,
general law ? Then merge yourself in it.
And, topping democracy, this most alluring record, that
it alone can bind, and ever seeks to bind, all nations, all
men, of however various and distant lands, into a brother-
hood, a family. It is the old, yet ever-modern dream of
earth, out of her eldest and her youngest, her fond
philosophers and poets. Not that half only, individualism,
which isolates. There is another half, which is adhesive-
ness or love, that fuses, ties and aggregates, making the
races conirades, and fraternizing all. Both are to be
vitalized by religion, (sole worthiest elevator of man or
State,) breathing into the proud, material tissues, the
IS
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS,
27
or
the
breath of life. For I say at the core of democracy, finally,
is the religious element. All the religions, old and new,
are there. Nor may the scheme step forth, clothed in
resplendent beauty and command, till these, bearing the
best, the latest fruit, the spiritual, shall fully appear.
A portion of our pages we might indite with reference
toward Europe, especially the British part of it, more than
our own land, perhaps not absolutely needed for the home
reader. But the whole question hangs together, and
fastens and links all peoples. The liberalist of to-day has
this advantage over antique or medieval times, that his
doctrine seeks not only to individualize but to universalize.
The great word Solidarity has arisen. Of all dangers to a
nation, as things exist in our day, there can be no greater
one than having certain portions of the people set off from
the rest by a line drawn — they not privileged as others, but
degraded, humiliated, made of no account. Much quackery
teems, of course, even on democracy's side, yet does not
really affect the orbic quality of the matter. To work in, if
we may so term it, and justify God, his divine aggregate, the
People, (or, the veritable horn'd and sharp-tail'd Devil,
his aggregate, if there be who convulsively insist upon it) —
this, I say, is what democracy is for ; and this is what our
America means, and is doing — may I not say, has done ?
If not, she means nothing more, and does nothing more,
than any other land. And as, by virtue of its kosmical,
antiseptic power. Nature's stomach is fully strong enough
not only to digest the morbific matter always presented,
not to be turn'd aside, and perhaps, indeed, intuitively
gravitating thither — but even to change such contributions
into nutriment for highest use and life — so American
democracy's. That is the lesson we, these days, send over
to European lands by every western breeze.
K
rit
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS,
And truly, whatever may be said in the way of abstract
argument, for or against the theory of a wider democratizing
of institutions in any civihzed country, much trouble might
well be saved to all European lands by recognizing this
palpable fact, (for a palpable fact it is,) that some form of
such democratizing is about the only resource now left.
That^ or chronic dissatisfaction continued, mutterings which
grow annually louder and louder, till, in due course, and
pretty swiftly in most cases, the inevitable crisis, crash,
dynastic ruin. Anything worthy to be call'd statesmanship
in the Old World, I should say, among the advanced
students, adepts, or men of any brains, does not debate to-
day whether to» hold on, attempting to lean back and
monarchize, or to look forward and democratize — but how^
and in what degree and part, most prudently to demo-
cratize.
The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers
and revolutionists are indispensable, to counterbalance the
inertness and fossilism making so large a part of human
institutions. The latter will always take care of themselves
— the danger being that they rapidly tend to ossify us.
The former is to be treated with indulgence, and even with
respect. As circulation to air, so is agitation and a plentiful
degree of speculative license to political and moral sanity.
Indirectly, but surely, goodness, virtue, law, (of the very
best,) follow freedom. These, to democracy, are what the
keel is to the ship, or saltness to the ocean.
The true gravitation-hold of liberalism in the United
States will be a more universal ownership of property,
general homesteads, general comfort — a vast, intertwining
reticulation of wealth. As the human frame, or, indeed,
any object in this manifold universe, is best kept together
by the simple miracle of its own cohesion, and the
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
29
necessity, exercise and profit thereof, so a great and varied
nationality, occupying millions of square miles, were firmest
held and knit by the principle of the safety and endurance
of the aggregate of its middling property owners. So that,
from another point of view, ungracious as it may sound, and
a paradox after what we have been saying, democracy looks
with suspicious, ill-satisfied eye upon the very poor, the
ignorant, and on those out of business. She asks for men
and women with occupations, well-off, owners of houses and
acres, and with cash in the bank — and with some cravings
for literature, too; and must have them, and hastens to
make them. Luckily, the seed is already well-sown, and
has taken ineradicable root*
Huge and mighty are our days, our republican lands —
and most in their rapid shiftings, their changes, all in the
interest of the cause. As I write this particular passage,
(November, 1868,) the din of disputation rages around me.
Acrid the temper of the parties, vital the pending questions.
Congress convenes ; the President sends his message ; re-
construction is still in abeyance ; the nomination and the
contest for the twenty-first Presidentiad draw close, with
* For fear of mistake, I may as well distinctly specify, as cheerfully
included in the model and standard of these Vistas, a practical, stirring,
worldly, money-making, even materialistic character. It is undeniable
that our farms, stores, ofHces, dry-goods, coal and groceries, enginery,
cash-accounts, trades, earnings, markets, &c., should be attended to in
earnest, and actively pursued, just as if they had a real and permanent
existence. I perceive clearly that the extreme business energy, and
this almost maniacal appetite for wealth prevalent in the United States,
are parts of amelioration and progress, indispensably needed to prepare
the very results I demand. My theory includes riches, and the getting
of riches, and the amplest products, power, activity, inventions, move-
ments, &c. Upon them, as upon substrata, I raise the edifice designed
in these Vistas.
30
DEMOCJUnC VISTAS.
i
ii
\
i
loudest threat and bustle. Of these, and all the like of
these, the eventuations I know not ; but well I know that
behind them, and whatever their eventuations, the vital
things remain safe and certain, and all the needed work
goes on. Time, with soon or later superciliousness, dis-
poses of Presidents, Congressmen, party platforms, and
such. Anon, it clears the stage of each and any mortal
shred that thinks itself so potent to its day ; and at and after
which, (with precious, golden exceptions once or twice in a
century,) all that relates to sir potency is flung to moulder
in a burial-vault, and no one bothers himself the least bit
about it afterward, But the People ever remain, tendencies
continue, and all the idiocratic transfers in unbroken chain
go on.
In a few years the dominion-heart of America will be far
inland, toward the West. Our future national capital may
not be where the present one is. It is possible, nay likely,
that in less than fifty years, it will migrate a thousand or
two miles, will be re-founded, and every thing belonging to
it made on a different plan, original, far more superb. The
main social, political, spine-character of the States will
probably run along the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi
rivers, and west and north of them, including Canada.
Those regions, with the group of powerful brothers toward
the Pacific, (destined to the mastership of that sea and its
countless paradises of islands,) will compact and settle the
traits of America, with all the old retain'd, but more ex-
panded, grafted on newer, hardier, purely native stock. A
giant growth, composite from the rest, getting their contri-
bution, absorbing it, to make it more illustrious. From
the north, intellect, the sun of things, also the idea of
unswayable justice, anchor amid the last, the wildest
tempests. From the south the living soul, the animus of
(1
1
I I
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS,
31
like of
w that
le vital
i work
ss, dis-
is, and
mortal
nd after
ice in a
noulder
east bit
idencies
n chain
1 be far
ital may
,y likely,
sand or
nging to
The
.tes will
ississippi
ICanada.
toward
and its
ittle the
ore ex-
ick. A
|r contri-
From
idea of
wildest
limus of
good and bad, haughtily admitting no demonstration but its
own. While from the west itself comes solid personality,
with blood and brawn, and the deep quality of all-accepting
fusion. *
Political democracy, as it exists and practically works in
America, with all its threatening evils, supplies a training-
school for making first-class men. It is life's gymnasium,
not of good only, but of all. We try often, though we fall
back often. A brave delight, fit for freedom's athletes, fills
these arenas, and fully satisfies, out of the action in them,
irrespective of success. Whatever we do not attain, we at
any rate attain the experiences of the fight, the hardening
of the strong campaign, and throb with currents of attempt
at least. Time is ample. Let the victors come after us.
Not for nothing does evil play its part among us. Judging
from the main portions of the history of the world, so far,
justice is always in jeopardy, peace walks amid hourly
pit-falls, and of slavery, misery, meanness, the craft of
tyrants and the credulity of the populace, in some of their
protean forms, no voice can at any time say. They are not.
The clouds break a little, and the sun shines out— but soon
and certain the lowering darkness falls again, as if to last
forever. Yei is there an immortal courage and prophecy in
every sane soul that cannot, must not, under any circum-
stances, capitulate. Vive^ the attack — the perennial assault !
Vive^ the unpopular cause — the spirit that audaciously aims
— the never-abandon'd efforts, pursued the same amid
opposing proofs and precedents.
Once, before the war, (Alas ! I dare not say how many
times the mood has come !) I, too, was fill'd with doubt and
gloom. A foreigner, an acute and good man, had im-
pressively said to me, that day — putting in form, indeed, my
own observations: "I have travel'd much in the United
11^
32
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
States, and watch 'd their politicians, and V.sten'd to the
speeches of the candidates^ and read the journals, and gone
into the public houses, and heard the unguarded talk of
men. And I have found your vaunted America honey-
comb'd from top to toe with infidelism, even to itself and
its own programme. I have mark'd the brazen hell-faces of
secession and slavery gazing defiantly from all the windows
and doorways. I have everywhere found, primarily, thieves
and scallivvags arranging the nominations to offices, and
sometimes filling the offices themselves. I have found the
north just as full of bad stuff as the south. Of the holders
of public ofldce in the Nation or the States or their muni-
cipalities, I have fouiid that not one in a hundred has been
chosen by any spontaneous selection of the outsiders, the
people, but all have been nominated and put through by
little or large caucuses of the politicians, and have got in
by corrupt rings and electioneering, not capacity or desert.
I have noticed how the millions of sturdy farmers and
mechanics are thus the helpless supple-jacks of com-
paratively few politicians. And I have noticed more and
more, the alaiming spectacle of parties usurping the
government, and openly and shamelessly wielding it for
party purposes."
Sad, serious, deep truths. Yet are there other, still
deeper, amply confronting, dominating truths. Over those
politicians and great and little rings, and over all their
insolence and wiles, and over the powerfulest parties, looms
a power, too sluggish maybe, but ever holding decisions
and decrees in hand, ready, with stern process, to execute
them as soon as plainly needed — and at times, indeed, sum-
marily crushing to atoms the mightiest parties, even in the
hour of their pride.
In saner hours far different are the amounts of these
;
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
33
still
those
I their
)oms
Isions
icute
Isum-
the
llhese
5 VX
things from what, at first sight, they appear. Though it is
no doubt important who is elected governor, mayor, or
legislator (and full of dismay when incompetent or vile ones
get elected, as they sometimes do), there are other, quieter
contingencies, infinitely more important. Shams, &c., will
always be the show, like ocean's scum ; enough, if waters
deep and clear make up the rest. Enough, that while the
piled embroidered shoddy gaud and fraud spreads to the
superficial eye, the hidden warp and weft are genuine, and
will wear forever. Enough, in short, that the race, the
land which could raise such as the late rebellion, could also
put it down.
The average man of a land at last only is important.
He, in these States, remains immortal owner and boss,
deriving good uses, somehow, out of any sort of servant in
office, even the basest; (certain universal requisites, and
their settled regularity and protection, being first secured,)
a nation like ours, in a sort of geological formation state,
trying continually new experiments, choosing new delega-
tions, is not served by the best men only, but sometimes
more by those that provoke it — by the combats they
arouse. Thus national rage, fury, discussion, &c., better
than content. Thus, also, the warning signals, invaluable
for after times.
What is more dramatic than the spectacle we have seen
repeated, and doubtless long shall see — the popular judg-
ment taking the successful candidates on trial in the offices
— standing off, as it were, and observing them and their
doings for a while, and always giving, finally, the fit, exactly
due reward? I think, after all, the sublimest part of
political history, and its culmination, is currently issuing
from the American people. I know nothing grander, better
exercise, better digestion, more positive proof of the past,
3
34
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS,
the triumphant result of faith in human kind, than a well-
contested American national election.
Then still the thought returns, (like the thread-passage in
overtures,) giving the key and echo to these pages. When I
pass to and fro, different latitudes, different seasons, behold-
ing the crowds of the great cities, New York, Boston, Phila-
delphia, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, New
Orleans, Baltimore — when I mix with these interminable
swarms of alert, turbulent, good-natured, independent citi-
zens, mechanics, clerks, young persons — at the idea of this
mass of men, so fresh and free, so loving and so proud, a
singular awe falls upon me. I feel, with dejection and
amazement, that among our geniuses and talented writers
or speakers, few or none have yet really spoken to this
people, created a single image-making work for them, or
absorb'd the central spirit and the idiosyncrasies which are
theirs — and which, thus, in highest ranges, so far remain
entirely uncelebrated, unexpress'd.
Dominion strong is the body's ; dominion stronger is the
mind's. What has fill'd, and fills to-day our intellect, our
fancy, furnishing the standards therein, is yet foreign. The
great poems, Shakspere included, are poisonous to the idea
of the pride and dignity of the common people, the life-
blood of democracy. The models of our literature, as we
get it from other lands, ultramarine, have had their birth in
courts, and bask'd and grown in castle sunshine ; all smells
of princes' favors. Of workers of a certain sort, we have,
indeed, plenty, contributing after their kind ; many elegant,
many learn'd, all complacent. But touch'd by the national
test, or tried by the standards of democratic personality,
they wither to ashes. I say I have not seen a single writer,
artist, lecturer, or what not, that has confronted the voice-
less but ever erect and active, pervading, underlying will
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
35
well-
ige in
"hen I
ehold-
Phila-
I, New
linable
It citi-
of this
:oud, a
n and
writers
to this
lem, or
lich are
1 remain
r is the
;ct, our
. The
he idea
he life-
s, as we
birth in
smells
e have,
jlegant,
Rational
fonality,
writer,
voice-
!ng will
and typic aspiration of the land, in a spirit kindred to itself.
Do you call those genteel little creatures American poets ?
Do you term that perpetual, pistareen, paste-pot work,
American art, American drama, taste, verse? I think I
hear, echoed as from some mountain-top afar in the west,
the scornful laugh of the Genius of these States.
Democracy, in silence, biding its time, ponders its own
ideals, not of literature and art only — not of men only, but
of women. The idea of the women of America, (extricated
from this daze, this fossil and unhealthy air which hangs
about the word lady^) develop'd, raised to become the
robust equals, workers, and, it may be, even practical and
political deciders with the men — ^greater than man, we may
admit, through their divine maternity, always their towering,
emblematical attribute — but great, at any rate, as man, in
all departments; or, rather, capable of being so, soon as
they realize it, and can bring themselves to give up toys and
fictions, and launch forth, as men do, amid real, independent,
stormy life.
Then, as towards our thought's finalb, (and, in that, over-
arching the true scholar's lesson,) we have to say there can
be no complete or epical presentation of democracy in the
aggregate, or anything like it, at this day, because its
doctrines will only be effectually incarnated in any one
branch, when, in all, their spirit is at the root and centre.
Far, far, indeed, stretch, in distance, our Vistas! How
much is still to be disentangled, freed ! How long it takes
to make this American world see that it is, in itself, the final
authority and reliance !
Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for
elections, for politics, and for a party name? I say
democracy is only of use there that it may pass on and
come to its flower and fruits in manners, in the highest
36
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
forms of interaction between men, and their beliefs — in
religion, literature, colleges, and schools — democracy in all
public and private life, and in the army and navy.* I have
intimated that, as a paramount scheme, it has yet few or no
full realizers and believers. I do not see, either, that it
owes any serious thanks to noted propagandists or cham-
pions, or has been essentially help'd, though often harm'd,
by them. It has been and is carried on by all the moral
forces, and by trade, finance, machinery, intercommunica-
tions, and, in fact, by all the developments of history, and
can no more be stopp'd than the tides, or the earth in its
orbit Doubtless, also, it resides, crude and latent, well
down in the hearts of the fair average of the American-born
people, mainly in the agricultural regions. But it is not yet,
there or anywhere, the fully-receiv'd, the fervid, the absolute
faith.
I submit, therefore, that the fruition of democracy, on
aught like a grand scale, resides altogether in the future.
As, under any profound and comprehensive view of the
gorgeous-composite feudal world, we see in it, through the
long ages and cycles of ages, the results of a deep, integral,
human and divine principle, or fountain, from which issued
laws, ecclesia, manners, institutes, costumes, personalities,
poems, (hitherto unequall'd,) faithfully partaking of their
source, and indeed only arising either to betoken it, or to
furnish parts of that varied-flowing display, whose centre
was one and absolute — so, long ages hence, shall the due
* The whole present system of the officering and personnel of the
army and navy of these States, and the spirit and letter of their trebly-
aristocratic rules and regulations, is a monstrous exotic, a nuisance and
revolt, and belong here just as much as orders of nobility, or the Pope's
council of cardinals. I say if the present theory of our army and navy
is sensible and true, then the rest of America in an unmitigated fraud.
\i
sfs— in
r in all
I have
V or no
that it
cham-
harm'd,
» moral
munica-
jry, and
;h in its
int, well
:an-born
not yet,
absolute
■
racy, on
future.
of the
ugh the
integral,
1 issued
snalities,
of their
it, or to
centre
the due
nel of the
eir trebly-
|sance and
Jhe Pope's
and navy
Ld fraud.
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
37
historian or critic make at least an equal retrospect, an
equal history for the democratic principle. It too must be
adorn'd, credited with its results — then, when it, with im-
perial power, through amplest time, has dominated mankind
— has been the source and test of all the moral, esthetic,
social, political, and religious expressions and institutes of
the civilized world — has begotten them in spirit and in form,
and has carried them to its own unprecedented heights —
has had, (it is possible,) monastics and ascetics, more
numerous, more devout than the monks and priests of all
previous creeds — has sway'd the ages with a breadth and
rectitude tallying Nature's own — has fashion'd, system-
atized, and triumphantly finished and carried out, in its
own interest, and with unparallel'd success, a new earth
and a new man.
Thus we presume to write, as it were, upon things that
exist not, and travel by maps yet unmade, and a blank.
But the throes of birth are upon us ; and we have some-
thing of this advantage in seasons of strong formations,
doubts, suspense — for then the afflatus of such themes
haply may fall upon us, more or less ; and then, hot from
surrounding war and revolution, our speech, though without
polish'd coherence, and a failure by the standard called
criticism, comes forth, real at least as the lightnings.
And may-be we, these days, have, too, our own reward —
(for there are yet some, in all lands, worthy to be so
encouraged.) Though not for us the joy of entering at the
last the conquer'd city — not ours the chance ever to see
with our own eyes the peerless power and splendid eclat of
the democratic principle, arriv'd at meridian, filling the
world with effulgence and majesty far beyond those of past
history's kings, or all dynastic sway — there is yet, to who-
ever is eligible among us, the prophetic vision, the joy of
"•■IB— ifT n-wn
38
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
being toss'd in the brave turmoil of these times — the
promulgation and the path, obedient, lowly reverent to the
voice, the gesture of the god, or holy ghost, which others
see not, hear not — with the proud consciousness tliat amid
whatever clouds, seductions, or heart-wearying postpone-
ments, we have never deserted, never despair'd, never
abandon'd the faith.
So much contributed, to be conn'd well, to help prepare
and brace our edifice, our plann'd Idea — we still proceed to
give it in another of its aspects — perhaps the main, the high
fa§ade of all. For to democracy, the leveler, the unyielding
principle of the average, surely join'd another principle,
equally unyielding, closely tracking the first, indispensable
to it, opposite (as the sexes are opposite), and whose exist-
ence, confronting and ever modifying the other, often
clashing, paradoxical, yet neither of highest avail without
the other, plainly supplies to these grand cosmic politics of
ours, and to the launched forth mortal dangers of republican-
ism, to-day, or any day, the counterpart and offset whereby
Nature restrains the deadly original relentlessness of all her
first-class laws. This second principle is individuality, the
pride and centripetal isolation of a human being in himself
— identity — ^personalism. Whatever the name, its accept-
ance and thorough infusions through the organizations of
political commonalty now shooting Aurora-like about the
world, are of utmost importance, as the principle itself is
needed for very life's sake. It forms, in a sort, or is to
form, the compensating balance-wheel of the successful
working machinery of aggregate America.
And, if we think of it, what does civilization itself rest
upon — ^and what object has it, what its religions, arts,
schools, &c., but rich, luxuriant, varied personalism? To
that, all bends; and it is because toward such result
les — the
t to the
ti others
iat amid
ostpone-
1, never
» prepare
oceed to
the high
lyielding
jrinciple,
ipensable
ose exist-
er, often
1 without
)olitics of
publican-
whereby
all her
ality, the
himself
accept-
ations of
bout the
itself is
or is to
uccessful
tself rest
ns, arts,
m? To
:h result
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
39
democracy alone, on anything like Nature's scale, breaks
lip the limitless fallows of humankind, and plants the seed,
and gives fair play, that its claims now precede the rest.
The literature, songs, esthetics, &c., of a country are of
importance principally because they furnish the materials
and suggestions of personality for the women and men of
that country, and enforce them in a thousand effective
ways.* As the topmost claim of a strong consolidating of
the nationality of these States, is, that only by such powerful
compaction can the separate States secure that full and free
* After the rest is satiated, all interest culminates in the field of
persons, and never flags there. Accordingly in this field have the
great poets and literatuses signally toil'd. They too, in all ages,
all lands, have been creators, fashioning, making types of men and
women, as Adam and Eve are made in the divine fable. Behold,
shaped, bred by orientalism, feudalism, through their long growth and
culmination, and breeding back in return — (when shall we have an equal
series, typical of democracy?) — behold, commencing in primal Asia,
(apparently formulated, in what beginning we know, in the gods of
the mythologies, and coming down thence), a few samples out of the
countless product, bequeath'd to the moderns, bequeath'd to America
as studies. For the men, Yudishtura, Rama, Arjuna, Solomon, most
of the Old and New Testament characters ; Achilles, Ulysses, Theseus,
Prometheus, Hercules, i^neas, Plutarch's heroes ; the Merlin of Celtic
bards ; the Cid, Arthur and his knights, Siegfried and Hagen in the
Nibelungen ; Roland and Oliver ; Roustam in the Shah-Nemah ; and
so on to Milton's Satan, Cervantes' Don Quixote, Shakspere's Hamlet,
Richard H., Lear, Marc Antony, &c., and the modern Faust. These,
I say, are models, combined, adjusted to other standards than
America's, but of priceless value to her and hers.
Among women, the goddesses of the Egyptian, Indian and Greek
mythologies, certain Bible characters, especially the Holy Mother;
Cleopatra, Penelope ; the portraits of Brunhelde and Chriemhilde in
the Nibelungen ; Oriana, Una, &c. ; the modern Consuelo, Walter
Scott's Jeanie and Effie Deans, &c., &c. (Yet woman portray'd or
outlin'd at her best, or as perfect human mother, does not hitherto, it
seems to me, fully appear in literature.)
£»S
sbssa
' I
I
, i
\'
40
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
swing within their spheres, which is beconning to them,
each after its kind, so will individuality, and unimpeded
branchings, flourish best under imperial republican forms.
Assuming Democracy to be at present in its embryo
condition, and that the only large and satisfactory justifica-
tion of it resides in the future, mainly through the copious
production of perfect characters among the people, and
through the advent of a sane and pervading religiousness, it
is with regard to the atmosphere and spaciousness fit for
such characters, and of certain nutriment and cartoon-
draftings proper for them, and indicating them for New
World purposes, that I continue the present statement — an
exploration, as of new ground, wherein, like other primitive
surveyors, I must d6 the best I can, leaving it to those who
come after me to do much better. (The service, in fact, if
any, must be to break a sort of first path or track, no matter
how rude and ungeometrical.)
We have frequently printed the word Democracy. Yet
I cannot too often repeat that it is a word the real gist of
which still sleeps, quite unawaken'd, notwithstanding the
resonance and the many angry tempests out of which its
syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a great
word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because
that history has yet to be enacted. It is, in some sort,
younger brother of another great and often-used word,
Nature, whose history also waits unwritten. As I perceive,
the tendencies of our day, in the States, (and I entirely
respect them,) are toward those vast and sweeping move-
ments, influences, moral and physical, of humanity, now
and always current over the planet, on the scale of the
impulses of the elements. Then it is also good to reduce
the whole matter to the consideration of a single self, a
man, a woman, on permanent grounds. Even for the
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
41
, Yet
gist of
g the
lich its
great
lecause
sort,
word,
ceive,
itirely
move-
now
if the
:educe
|self, a
X the
treatment of the universal, in poHtics, metaphysics, or any-
thing, sooner or later we come down to one single, solitary
soul.
There is, in sanest hours, a consciousness, a thought that
rises, independent, lifted out from all else, calm, like the
stars, shining eternal. This is the thought of identity —
yours for you, whoever you are, as mine for me. Miracle
of miracles, beyond statement, most spiritual and vaguest of
earth's dreams, yet hardest basic fact, and only entrance to
all facts. In such devout hours, in the midst of the signifi-
cant wonders of heaven and earth, (significant only because
of the Me in the centre,) creeds, conventions, fall away and
become of no .ccount before this simple idea. Under the
luminousness of real vision, it alone takes possession, takes
value. Like the shadowy dwarf in the fable, once liberated
and look'd upon, it expands over the whole earth, and
spreads to the roof of heaven.
The quality of BeIng, in the object's self, according to
its own central idea and purpose, and of growing therefrom
and thereto — not criticism by other standards, and adjust-
ments thereto — is the lesson of Nature. True, the full man
wisely gathers, culls, absorbs ; but if, engaged dispropor-
tionately in that, he slights or overlays the precious idiocrasy
and special nativity and intention that he is, the man's self,
the main thing, is a failure, however wide his general cul-
tivation. Thus, in our times, refinement and delicatesse
are not only attended to sufficiently, but threaten to eat us
up, like a cancer. Already, the democratic genius watches,
ill-pleased, these tendencies. Provision for a little healthy
rudeness, savage virtue, justification of what one has in
one's self, whatever it is, is demanded. Negative qualities,
even deficiencies, would be a relief. Singleness and
normal simplicity and separation, amid this more and more
4^
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS,
I I
complex, more and more artificialized state of society — how
pensively we yearn for them ! how we would welcome their
return !
In some such direction, then — at any rate enough to pre-
serve the balance— we feel called upon to throw what weight
we can, not for absolute reasons, but current ones. To
prune, gather, trim, conform, and ever cram and stuff, and
be genteel and proper, is the pressure of our days. While
aware that much can be said even in behalf of all this, we
perceive that we have not now to consider the question of
what is demanded to serve a half-starved and barbarous
nation, or set of nations, but what is most applicable, most
pertinent, for numerous congeries of conventional, over-cor-
pulent societies, already becoming stifled and rotten with
flatulent, infidelistic literature, and polite conformity and
art. In addition to establish'd sciences, we suggest a
science as it were of healthy average personalism, on
original-universal grounds, the object of which should be to
raise up and supply through the States a copious race of
superb American men and women, cheerful, religious, ahead
of any yet known.
America has yet morally and artistically originated
nothing. She seems singularly unaware that the models of
persons, books, manners, &c., appropriate for former con-
ditions and for European lands, are but exiles and exotics
here. No current of her life, as shown on the surfaces of
what is authoritatively called her society, accepts or runs
into social or esthetic democracy ; but all the currents set
squarely against it. Never, in the Old World, was
thoroughly upholster'd exterior appearance and show, men-
tal and other, built entirely on the idea of caste, and on the
sufficiency of mere outside acquisition — never were glibness,
verbal intellect, more the test, the emulation — more loftily
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
43
y — how
ne their
to pre-
t weight
:s. To
uff, and
While
this, we
istion of
irbarous
le, most
)ver-cor-
en with
lity and
iggest a
ism, on
Id be to
race of
5, ahead
iginated
odels of
ler con-
exotics
faces of
or runs
ents set
Id, was
»r, men-
on the
;Hbness,
loftily
elevated as head and sample— than they arc on the surface
of our republican States this day. The writers of a time
hint the mottoes of its gods. The word of the modern, say
these voices, is the word Culture.
We find ourselves abruptly in close quarters with the
enemy. This word Culture, or what it has come to repre-
sent, involves, by contrast, our whole theme, and has been,
indeed, the spur, urging us to engagement. Certain
questions arise. As now taught, accepted and carried out,
are not the processes of culture rapidly creating a class of
supercilious infidels, who believe in nothing ? Shall a man
lose himself in countless masses of adjustments, and be
so shaped with reference to this, that, and the other, that
the simply good and healthy and brave parts of him are
reduced and clipp'd away, like the bordering of box in
a garden ? You can cultivate corn and roses and orchards
— but who shall cultivate the mountain peaks, the ocean,
and the tumbling gorgeousness of the clouds ? Lastly — is
the readily-given reply that culture only seeks to help,
systematize, and put in attitude, the elements of fertility
and power, a conclusive reply ?
I do not so much object to the name, or word, but I
should certainly insist, for the purposes of these States, on
a radical change of category, in the distribution of prece-
dence. I should demand a programme of culture, drawn
out, not for a single class alone, or for the parlors or
lecture-rooms, but with an eye to practical life, the west,
the working-men, the facts of farms and jack-planes and
engineers, and of the broad range of the women also of the
middle and working strata, and with reference to the perfect
equality of women, and of a grand and powerful mother-
hood. I should demand of this programme or theory a
scope generous enough to include the widest human area.
%
, I
■|
M
44
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
w
It must have for its spinal meaning the formation of a
typical personality of character, eligible to the uses of the
high average of men — and not restricted by conditions
ineligible to the masses. The best culture will always be
that of the manly and courageous instincts, and loving
perceptions, and of self-respect — aiming to form, over this
continent, an idiocrasy of universalism, which, true child of
America, will bring joy to its mother, returning to her in
her own spirit, recruiting myriads of offspring, able, natural,
perceptive, tolerant, devout believers in her, America, and
with some definite instinct why and for what she has arisen,
most vast, most formidable of historic births, and is, now
and here, with wonderful step, journeying through Time.
r The problem, as it seems to me, presented to the New
World, is, under permanent law and order, and after pre-
serving cohesion, (ensemble-Individuality,) at all hazards,
to vitalize man's free play of special Personalism, recogniz-
ing in it something that calls ever more to be considered,
fed, and adopted as the substratum for the best that
belongs to us, (government indeed is for it,) including the
new esthetics of our future.
To formulate beyond this present vagueness — to help
line and put before us the species, or a specimen of the
species, of the democratic ethnology of the future, is a
work toward which the genius of our land, with peculiar
encouragement, invites her well-wishers. Already certain
limnings, more or less grotesque, more or less fading and
watery, have appear'd. We too, (repressing doubts and
qualms,) will try our hand.
Attempting, then, however crudely, a basic model or
portrait of personality for general use for the manliness of
the States, (and doubtless that is most useful which is most
simple and comprehensive for all, and toned low enough,)
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
45
help
>f the
., is a
Icuhar
lertain
and
and
lei or
;ss of
most
we should prepare the canvas well beforehand. Parentage
must consider itself in advance. (Will the time hasten
when fatherhood and motherhood shall become a science —
and the noblest science ?) To our model, a clear-blooded,
strong-fibred physique, is indispensable ; the questions of
food, drink, air, exercise, assimilation, digestion, can never
be intermitted. Out of these we descry a well-begotten
selfhood — in youth, fresh, ardent, emotional, aspiring, full
of adventure ; at maturity, brave, perceptive, under control,
neither too talkative nor too reticent, neither flippant nor
sombre j of the bodily figure, the movements easy, the com-
plexion showing the best blood, somewhat flush'd, breast
expanded, an erect attitude, a voice whose sound outvies
music, eyes of calm and steady gaze, yet capable also of
flashing — and a general presence that holds its own in the
company of the highest. (For it is native personality, and
that alone, that endows a man to stand before presidents or
generals, or in any distinguished collection, with aplomb — and
not culture, or any knowledge or intellect whatever.)
With regard to the mental-educational part of our model,
enlargement of intellect, stores of cephalic knowledge, &c.,
the concentration thitherward of all the customs of our age,
especially in America, is so overweening, and provides so
fully for that part, that, important and necessary as it is, it
really needs nothing from us here — except, indeed, a
phrase of warning and restraint. Manners, costumes, too,
though important, we need not dwell upon here. Like
beauty, grace of motion, &c., they are results. Causes,
original things, being attended to, the right manners
unerringly follow. Much is said, among artists, of "the
grand style," as if it were a thing by itself. When a man,
artist or whoever, has health, pride, acuteness, noble
aspirations, he has the motive-elements of the grandest
I
oorly
given
jlf the
►ssible
Lsually
is and
)art of
Ibibles
soul,
itself
Personalism fuses this, and favors it I should say,'
indeed, that only in the perfect uncontamination and
solitarinesss of individuality may the spirituality of religion
positively come forth at all. Only here, and on such terms, i
the meditation, the devout ecstasy, the soaring flight. Only/
here, communion with the mysteries, the eternal problems,
whence ? whither ? Alone, and identity, and the mood —
and the soul emerges, and all statements, churches, sermons,
melt away like vapors. Alone, and silent thought and awe,
and aspiration — and then the interior consciousness, like
a hitherto unseen inscription, in magic ink, beams out its
wondrous lines to the sense. Bibles may convey, and
priests expound, but it is exclusively for the noiseless opera-
tion of one's isolated Self, to enter the pure ether of
veneration, reach the divine levels, and commune with the
unutterable.
To practically enter into politics is an important part of
American personalism. To every young man, north and
south, earnestly studying these things, I should here, as an
offset to what I have said in former pages, now also say,
that may-be to views of very large scope, after all, perhaps
the political, (perhaps the literary and sociological,)
America goes best about its development its own way —
sometimes, to temporary sight, appaling enough. It is the
fashion among dillettants and fops (perhaps I myself am not
guiltless,) to decry the whole formulation of the active
politics of America, as beyond redemption, and to be care-
fully kept away from. See you that you do not fall into
this error. America, it may be, is doing very well upon the
whole, notwithstanding these antics of the parties and their
leaders, these half-brain'd nominees, the many ignorant
ballots, and many elected failures and blatherers. It is the
dillettants, and all who shirk their duty, who are not doing
I i
■.J
I
i;!
il
i
f.
^
• K
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS,
well As for you, I advise you to enter more strongly yet
into politics. I advise every young man to do so. Always
inform yourself; always do the best you can ; always vote.
Disengage yourself from parties. They have been useful,
and to some extent remain so ; but the floating, uncom-
mitted electors, farmers, clerks, mechanics, the masters of
parties — watching aloof, inclining victory this side or that
side — such are the ones most needed, present and future.
For America, if eligible at all to downfall and ruin, is eli-
gible within herself, not without ; for I see clearly that the
combined foreign world could not beat her down. But
these savage, wolfish parties alarm me. Owning no law
but their own will, more and more combative, less and less
tolerant of the idea of ensemble and of equal brotherhood,
the perfect equality of the States, the ever-overarching
American ideas, it behooves you to convey yourself im-
plicitly to no party, nor submit blindly to their dictators, but
steadily hold yourself judge and master over all of them.
So much, (hastily toss'd together, and leaving far more
unsaid,) for an ideal, or intimations of an ideal, toward
American manhood. But the other sex, in our land,
requires at least a basis of suggestion.
I have seen a young American woman, one of a large
family of daughters, who, some years since, migrated from
her meagre country home to one of the northern cities, to
gain her own support She soon became an expert seam-
stress, but finding the employment too confining for health
and comfort, she went boldly to work for others, to house-
keep, cook, clean, &c. After trying several places, she fell
upon one where she was suited. She has told me that she
finds nothing degrading in her position; it is not incon-
sistent with personal dignity, self-respect, and the respect of
others. She confers benefits and receives them. She has
.^If?*.
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS,
49
gly yet
Mways
s vote.
useful,
uncom-
jters of
or that
future.
I, is eli-
;hat the
n. But
no law
and less
lerhood,
rarching
rself im-
tors, but
hem.
ar more
toward
: land,
a large
fed from
titles, to
h seam-
health
house-
she fell
lat she
incon-
|pect of
She has
good health ; her presence itself is healthy and bracing ;
her character is unstain'd ; she has made herself understood,
and preserves her independence, and has been able to help
her parents, and educate and get places for her sisters ; and
her course of life is not without opportunities for mental
improvement, and of much quiet, uncosting happiness and
love.
I have seen another woman who, from taste and necessity
conjoined, has gone into practical affairs, carries on a
mechanical business, partly works at it herself, dashes out
more and more into real hardy life, is not abash'd by the
coarseness of the contact, knows how to be firm and silent
at the same time, holds her own with unvarying coolness
and decorum, and will compare, any day, with superior
carpenters, farmers, and even boatmen and drivers. For all
that, she has not lost the charm of the womanly nature, but
preserves and bears it fully, though through such rugged
presentation.
Then there is the wife of a mechanic, mother of two
children, a woman of merely passable English education,
but of fine wit, with all her sex's grace and intuitions, who
exhibits, indeed, such a noble female personality, that I am
fain to record it here. Never abnegating her own proper
independence, but always genially preserving it, and what
belongs to it — cooking, washing, child-nursing, house-
tending — she beams sunshine out of all these duties, and
makes them illustrious. Physiologically sweet and sound,
loving work, practical, she yet knows that there are intervals,
however few, devoted to recreation, music, leisure, hospi-
tality — and affords such intervals. Whatever she does, and
wherever she is, that charm, that indescribable perfume of
genuine womanhood attends her, goes with her, exhales
from her, which belongs of right to all the sex, and is, or
4
I !
i
'•SO
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
ouglit to be, the invariable atmosphere and common aureola
of old as well as young.
My dear mother once described to me a resplendent
person, down on Long Island, whon* she knew in early
days. She was known by the name of the Peacemaker.
She was well toward eighty years old, of happy and sunny
temperament, had always lived on a farm, and was very
neighborly, sensible and discreet, an invariable and welcom'd
favorite, especially with young married women. She had
numerous children and grandchildren. She was uneducated,
but possess'd a native dignity. She had come to be a
tacitly agreed upon domestic regulator, judge, settler of
difficulties, shepherdess, and reconciler in the land. She
was a sight to draw near and look upon, with her large
figure, her profuse snow-white hair, (uncoif d by any head-
dress or cap,) dark eyes, clear complexion, sweet breath,
and peculiar personal magnetism.
The foregoing portraits, I admit, are frightfully out of
line from these imported models of womanly personality —
the stock feminine characters of the current novelists, or of
the foreign court poems, (Ophelias, Enids, princesses, or
ladies of one thing or another,) which fill the envying
dreams of so many poor girls, and are accepted by our men,
too, as supreme ideals of feminine excellence to be sought
after. But I present mine just for a change.
Then there are mutterings, (we will not now stop to heed
them here, but they must be heeded,) of something more
revolutionary. The day is coming when the deep questions
of woman's entrance amid the arenas of practical life,
politics, the suflVage, &c., will not only be argued all around
us, but may be put to decision, and real experiment.
Of course, in these States, for both man and woman, we
must entirely recast the types of highest personality from
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
t-K :[
fi
areola
indent ^^
early
maker,
sunny
LS very
;lcom'd
he bad
ucated,
o be a
ttler of
d. Sbe
er large
ly head-
breatb,
out of
nality —
ts, or of
jsses, or
envying
)ur men,
sougbt
to beed
ig more
luestions
leal life,
around
ban, we
lity from
what the oriental, feudal, ecclesiastical worlds bequeatli us,
and which yet possess the imaginative and esthetic fields of
the United States, pictorial and melodramatic, not without
use as studies, but making sad work, and forming a strange
anachronism upon the scenes and exigencies around us.
Of course, the old undying elements remain. The task is,
to successfully adjust them to new combinations, our own
days. Nor is this so incredible. I can conceive a com-
munity, to-day and here, in which, on a sufficient scale, the
perfect personalities, without noise meet; say in some
pleasant western settlement or town, where a couple of
hundred best men and women, of ordinary worldly status,
have by luck been drawn together, with nothing extra of
genius or wealth- but virtuous, chaste, industrious, cheerful,
resolute, friendly and devout. I can conceive such a com-
munity organized in running order, powers judiciously
delegated — farming, building, trade, courts, mails, schools,
elections, all attended to ; and then the rest of life, the
main thing, freely branching and blossoming in each
individual, and bearing golden fruit. I can see there, in
every young and old man, after his kind, and in every
woman after hers, a true personality, develop'd, exercised
proportionately in body, mind, and spirit. I can imagine
this case as one not necessarily rare or difficult, but in
buoyant accordance with the municipal and general require-
ments of our times. And I can realize in it the culmination
of something better than any stereotyped eclat of history or
poems. Perhaps, unsung, undramatized, unput in essays
or biographies — perhaps even some such community already
exists, in Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, or somewhere, practically
fulfilling itself, and thus outvying, in cheapest vulgar life, all
that has been hitherto shown in best ideal pictures.
In short, and to sum up, America, betaking herself to
'S«
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
i!
formative action, (as it is about time for more solid achieve-
ment, and less windy promise,) must, for her purposes,
cease to recognize a theory of character grown of feudal
aristocracies, or form'd by merely literary standards, or from
any ultramarine, full-dress formulas of culture, polish, caste,
&c., and must sternly promulgate her own new standard,
yet old enough, and accepting the old, the perennial
elements, and combining them into groups, unities, appro-
priate to the modern, the democratic, the west, and to the
practical occasions and needs of our own cities, and of the
agricultural regions. Ever the most precious In the com-
mon. Ever the fresh breeze of field, or hill or lake, is more
than any palpitation of fans, though of ivory, and redolent
with perfume; and the air is more than the costliest
perfumes.
And now, for fear of mistake, we may not intermit to beg
our absolution from all that genuinely is, or goes along
with, even Culture. Pardon us, venerable shade ! if we
have seem'd to speak lightly of your office. The whole
civilization of the earth, we know, is yours, with all the
glory and the light thereof. It is, indeed, in your own
spirit, and seeking to tally the loftiest teachings of it, that
we aim these poor utterances. For you, too, mighty
minister ! know that there is something greater than you,
namely, the fresh, eternal qualities of Being. From them,
and by them, as you, at your best, we too evoke the last,
the needed he'p, to vitalize our country and our days. Thus
we pronounce not so much against the principle of culture ;
we only supervise it, and promulgate along with it, as deep,
perhaps a deeper, principle. As we have shown the New
World including in itself the all-leveling aggregate of
democracy, we show it also including the all-varied, all-
permitting, all free theorem of individuality, and erecting
]
<
\
r
r
e
f<
tl
u:
lil
Pi
m
sa
m
til
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
r
*."*
53
iieve-
^oses,
feudal
r from
caste,
tid-'-rd,
ennial
appro-
to the
of the
e com-
s more
edolent
costliest
\. to beg
along
if we
whole
all the
ir own
it, that
mighty
m you,
them,
e last,
Thus
ulture ;
s deep,
e New
ate of
led, all-
recting
tlierefor a lo'ty and hitherto unoccupied framework or plat-
form, broad enough for all, eligible to every farmer and
mechanic — to the female equally with the male — a towering
self-hood, not physically perfect only — not satisfied with the
mere mind's and learning's stores, but religious, possessing
the idea of the infinite, (rudder and compass sure amid
this troublous voyage, o'er darkest, wildest wave, through
stormiest wind, of man's or nation's progress) — realizing,
above the rest, that known humanity, in deepest sense, is
fair adhesion to itself, for purposes beyond — and that,
finally, the personality of mortal life is most important with
reference to the immortal, the unknown, the spiritual, the
only permanei)tly real, which as the ocean waits for and
receives the rivers, waits for us each and all
Much is there, yet, demanding line and outline in our
Vistiis, not only on these topics, but others quite unwritten.
Indeed, we could talk the matter, and expand it, through
lifetime. But it is necessary to return to our original
premises. In view of them, we have again pointedly to
confess that all the objective grandeurs of the world, for
highest purposes, yield themselves up, and depend on
mentality alone. Here, and here only, all balances, all
rests. For the mind, which alone builds the permanent
edifice, haughtily builds it to itself. By it, with what
follows it, are conve/d to mortal sense the culminations of
the materialistic, the known, and a prophecy of the
unknown. To take expression, to incarnate, to endow a
literature with grand and archetypal models — to fill with
pride and love the utmost capacity, and to achieve spiritual
meanings, and suggest the future — these, and these only,
satisfy the soul. We must not say one word against real
materials ; but the wise know that they do not become real
till touched by emotions, the mind. Did we call the latter
U .1
•fl
54
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
imponderable? Ah, let us rather proclaim that the
slightest song-tune, the countless ephemera of passions
arous'd by orators and tale-tellers, are more dense, more
weighty than the engines there in the great factories, or the
granite blocks in their foundations.
Approaching thus the momentous spaces, and considering
with reference to a new and greater personalism, the needs
and possibilities of American imaginative literature, through
the medium-light of what we have already broach'd, it will
at once be appreciated that a vast gulf of difference
separates the present accepted condition of these spaces,
inclusive of what is floating in them, from any condition
adjusted to, or fit tor, the world, the America, there sought
to be indicated, and the copious races of complete
men and women, along these Vistas crudely outlined. It
is, in some sort, no less a difference than lies between that
long-continued nebular state and vagueness of the astron-
omical worlds, compared with the subsequent state, the
definitely-form'd worlds themselves, duly compacted, clus-
tering in systems, hung up there, chandeliers of the universe,
beholding and mutually lit by each other's lights, serving for
ground of all substantial foothold, all vulgar uses — yet
serving still more as an undying chain and echelon of
spiritual proofs and shows. A boundless field to fill ! A
new creation, with needed orbic works launch'd forth, to
revolve in free and lawful circuits — to move, self-poised,
through the ether, and shine like heaven's own suns ! With
such, and nothing less, we suggest that New World literature,
fit to rise upon, cohere, and signalize in time, these States.
What, however, do we more definitely mean by New
World literature? Are we not doing well enough here
already ? Are not the United States this day busily using,
working, more printer's type, more presses, than any other
I I
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
55
■
country ? uttering and absorbing more publications than any
other? Do not our publishers fatten quicker and deeper?
(helping themselves, under shelter of a delusive and sneaking
law, or rather absence of law, to most of their forage, poeti-
cal, pictorial, historical, romantic, even comic, without money
and without price — and fiercely resisting the timidest pro-
posal to pay for it.) Many will come under this delusion —
but my purpose is to dispel it. I say that a nation may
hold and circulate rivers and oceans of very readable print,
journals, magazines, novels, library-books, " poetry," &c. —
such as the States to-day possess and circulate — of unques-
tionable aid and value — hundreds of new volumes annually
composed and brought out here, respectable enough, in-
deed unsurpass'd in smartness and erudition — with further
hundreds, or rather millions, (as by free forage or theft
aforemention'd,) also thrown into the market — and yet, all
the while, the said nation, land, strictly speaking, may
possess no literature at all.
Repeating our inquiry, what, then, do we mean by real
literature ? especially the democratic literature of the
future ? Hard questions to meet. The clues are inferen-
tial, and turn us to the past. At best, we can only offer
suggestions, comparisons, circuits.
It must still be reiterated, as, for the purpose of these
memoranda, the deep lesson of history and time, that all
else in the contributions of a nation or age, through iis
politics, materials, heroic personalities, military eclat, &c.,
remains crude, and defers, in any close and thorough-going
estimate, until vitalized by national, original archetypes in
literature. They only put the nation in form, finally tell
anything — prove, complete anything — perpetuate anything
Without doubt, some of the richest and most powerful and
populous communities of the antique world, and some of
s«
DE\fOCRATTC VIS TAX
it
the grandest pcrsutialilics and events, have, to alter and
present times, left themselves entirely unbequeath'd. Doubt-
less, greater than any that have come down to us, were
among those lands, heroisms, persons, that have not come
down to us at all, even by name, date, or location. Others
have arrived safely, as from voyages over wide, century-
stretching seas. The little ships, the miracles that have
buoy'd them, and by incredible chances safely convey'd
them, (or the best of them, their meaning and essence,)
over long wastes, darkness, lethargy, ignorance, &c., have
been a few inscriptions — a few immortal compositions,
small in size, yet compassing what measureless values of
reminiscence, contemporary portraitures, manners, idioms
and beliefs, with deepest inference, hint and thought, to tie
and touch forever the old, new body, and the old, new
soul ! These ! and still these I bearing the freight so dear
— dearer than pride — dearer than love. All the best
experience of humanity, folded, saved, freighted to us here.
Some of these tiny ships we call Old and New Testament,
Homer, Eschylus, Plato, Juvenal, &c. Precious minims I
I think, if were forced to choose, rather than have you, and
the likes of you, and what belongs to, and has grown of
you, blotted out and gone, we could better afford, appaling
as that would be, to lose all actual ships, this day fasten'd
by wharf, or floating on wave, and see them, with all their
cargoes, scuttled and sent to the bottom.
Gather'd by geniuses of city, race or age, and put by
them in highest of art's forms, namely, the literary form,
the peculiar combinations and the outshows of that city,
age, or race, its particular modes of the universal attributes
and passions, its faiihs, heroes, lovers and gods, wars, tra-
ditions, struggles, crimes, emotions, joys, (or the subtle
spirit of these,) having been pass'd on to us to illuroine ovff
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS,
own selihood, and its experiences — what they supply, indis-
pensabL' and highest, if taken away, nothing else in all the
world's boundless storehouses could make up to us, or ever
again return. •
For us, along the great highways of time, those monu-
ments stand — those forms of majesty and beauty. For us
those beacons burn through all the nights. Unknown
Egyptians, graving hieroglyphs; Hindus, with hymn and
apothegm and endless epic ; Hebrew prophet, with spirit-
uality, as in flashes of lightning, conscience like red-hot
iron, plaintive songs and screams of vengeance for tyrannies
and enslavement; Christ, with bent head, brooding love
and peace, like a dove ; Greek, creating eternal shapes of
physical and esthetic proportion ; Roman, lord of satire,
the sword, and the codex ; — of the figures, some far off and
veii'd, others nearer and visible ; Dante, stalkinsj with lean
form, nothing but fibre, not a grain of superfluous flesh ;
Angelo, and the great painters, architects, musicians ; rich
Shakspere, luxuriant as the sun, artist and singer of feudal-
ism in its sunset, with all the gorgeous colors, owner thereof,
and using them at will ; and so to such as German Kant
and Hegel, where they, though near us, leaping over the
ages, sit again, impassive, imperturbable, like the Egyptian
gods. Of these, and the like of these, is it too much,
indeed, to return to our favorite figure, and view them as
orbs and systems of orbs, moving in free paths in the spaces
of that other heaven, the kosmic intellect, the soul ?
Ye powerful and resplendent ones I ye were, in your
atmospheres, grown not for America, but rather for her foes,
the feudal and the old — while our genius is democratic and
modern. Yet could ye, indeed, but breathe your breath of
life into our New World's nostrils — not to enslave us, as
now, but, for our needs, to breed a spirit like your own—
58
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
'\\ V
% W:
iii
i!:l
perhaps, (dare we to say it ?) to dominate, even destroy,
what you yourselves have left ! On your plane, and no less,
but even higher and wider, must we mete and measure for
to-day and here. I demand races of orbic bards, with
unconditional uncompromising sway. Come forth, sweet
democratic despots of the west I
By points like these we, in reflection, token what we mean
by any land's or people's genuine literature. And thus
compared and tested, judging amid the influence of loftiest
products only, what do our current copious fields of print,
covering in manifold forms, the United States, better, for an
ainalogy, present, than, as in certain regions of the sea,
those spreading, undulating masses of squid, through which
the whale swimming, with head half out, feeds ?
Not but that doubtless our current so-called literature,
(like an endless supply of small coin,) performs a certain
service, and may-be too, the service needed for the time,
(the preparation-service, as children learn to spell.) Every-
body reads, and truly nearly everybody writes, either books,
or for the magazines or journals. The matter has magnitude,
too, after a sort. But is it really advancing? or, lias it
advanced for a long while ? There is something impressive
about the huge editions of the dailies and weeklies, the
mountain-stacks of white paper piled in the press-vaults, and
the proud, crashing, ten-cylinder presses, which I can stand
and watch any time by the half hour. Then, (though the
States in the field of imagination present not a single first-
class work, not a single great literatus,) the main objects, to
amuse, to titillate, to pass away time, to circulate the news,
and rumors of news, to rhyme and read rhyme, are yet
attain'd, and on a scale of infinity. To-day, in books, in
the rivalry of writers, especially novelists, success, (so-call'd,)
is for him or her who strikes the mean flat
average.
the
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
r-
19
sensational appetite for stimulus, incident, persiflage, &c.,
and depicts, to the common calibre, sensual, exterior life.
To such, or the luckiest of them, as we see, the audiences
are limitless and profitable; but they cease presently.
While this day, or any day, to workmen portraying interior
or spiritual life, the audiences were limited, and often
laggard — but they last forever.
Compared with the past, our modern science soars, and
our journals serve — but ideal and even ordinary romantic
literature, does not, I think, substantially advance. Behold
the prolific brood of the contemporary novel, magazine-tale,
theatre-play, &c. The same endless thread of tangled and
superlative love-story, inherited, apparently from the
Amadises and Palmerins of the 13th, 14th, and 15th
centuries over there in Europe. The costumes and
associations brought down to date, the seasoning hotter and
more varied, the dragons and ogres left out — but the things
I should say, has not advanced — is just as sensational,
just as strain'd — remains about the same, nor more, nor
less.
What is the reason our time, our lands, that we see no
fresh local courage, sanity, of our own — the Mississippi,
stalwart Western men, real mental and physical facts,
Southerners, &c., in the body of our literature ? especially
the poetic part of it. But always, instead, a parcel of
dandies and ennuyees, dapper little gentlemen from abroad,
who flood us with their thin sentiment of parlors, parasols,
piano-songs, tinkling rhymes, the five-hundredth importation
— or whimpering and crying about something, chasing one
aborted conceit after another, and forever occupied in
dyspeptic amours with dyspeptic women. While, current
and novel, the grandest events and revolutions, and
stormiest passions of history, are crossing to-day with
6o
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
il
III'
Ml
!. ill
uiiparallel'd rapidity and magnificence over the stages of our
own and all the continents, offering new materials, opening
new vistas, with largest needs, inviting the daring launching
forth of conceptions in literature, inripired by them, soaring
in highest regions, serving art in its highest, (which is only
the other name for serving God, and serving humanity,)
where is the man of letters, where is the book, with any
nobler aim than to follow in the old track, repeat what has
been said before — and, as its utmost triumph, sell well, and
be erudite or elegant ?
Mark the roads, the processes, through which these
States have arrived, standing easy, henceforth ever-equal,
ever-compact, in their range to-day. European adventures ?
the most antique ? Asiatic or African ? old history — miracles
— romances ? Rather, our own unquestion'd facts. They
hasten, incredible, blazing bright as fire. From the deeds
and days of Columbus down to the present, and including
the present — and especially the late Secession war — when I
con them, I feel, every leaf, like stopping to see if I have
not made a mistake, and fall'n on the splendid figments of
some dream. But it is no dream. We stand, live, move, in
the huge flow of our age's materialism — in its spirituality.
\Vq have had founded for us the most positive of lands.
The foundCiS have pass'd to other spheres — but what are
these terrible duties they have left us ?
Their politics the United States have, in my opinion,
with all their faults, already substantially establish'd, for
good, on their own native, sound, long-vista'd principles,
never to be overturn'd, offering a sure basis for all the rest.
With that, their future religious forms, sociology, literature,
teachers, schools, costumes, &c., are of course to make a
compact whole, uniform, on tallying principles. For how
can we remain, divided, contradicting ourselves, this
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
6i
way?* I say we can only attain harmony and stability by con-
sulting ensemble and the ethic purports, and faithfully build-
ing upon them. For the New World, indeed, after two
grand stages of preparation-strata, I perceive that now a third
stage, being ready for, (and without which the other two
were useless,) with unmistakable signs appears. Tlje First
stage was the planning and putting on record the political
foundation rights of immense masses of people — indeed all
people — in the organization of republican National, State, /
and municipal governments, all constructed with reference 1
to each, and each to all. This is the American programme, \
not for classes, but for universal man, and is embodied in
the compacts of the Declaration of Independence, and, as
it began and has now grown, with its amendments, the
Federal Constitution — and in the State governments, with
all their interiors, and with general suffrage \ those having
the sense not only of what is in themselves, but that their
certain several things started, planted, hundreds of others in .
the same direction duly arise and loUow. The Second /
staoe relates to material prosperity, wealth, produce, labor- [
saving machines, iron, cotton, local. State and continental!
railways, intercommunication and trade with all lands, '
steamships, mining, general employment, organization of
great cities, cheap appliances for comfort, numberless tech-
nical schools, books, newspipers, a currency for money
* Note, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict. Science,
(twin, in its fields, of Demo'^iacy in its)— Science, testing absolutely all
thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon the world — a sun,
mounting, most illuminating, most glorious — surely never again to set.
But against it, deeply entrench'd, holding possession, yet remains, (not
only through the churches and schools, but by imaginative literature,
and unregenerate poetry,) the fossil theology of the mythic-materialistic,
superstitious, untaught and credulous, fable-loving, i)riniilivc' ages uf
humanity.
I
62
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
circulation, &c. The Third stage, rising out of the previous
ones, to make them and all illustrious, I, now, for one,
promulge, announcing a native expression-spirit, getting into
form, adult, and through mentality, for these States, self-
contain'd, different from others, more expansive, more rich
and free, to be evidenced by original authors and poets to
come, by American personalities, plenty of them, male and
female, traversing the States, none excepted — and by native
superber tableaux and growths of language, songs, operas,
orations, lectures, architecture — and by a sublime and
\ serious Religious Democracy sternly taking command, dis-
^ solving the old, sloughing off surfaces, and from its own
interior and vital' principles, reconstructing, democratizing
society.
For America, type of progress, and of essential faith in
man, above all his errors and wickedness — few suspect how
deep, how deep it really strikes. The world evidently sup
poses, and we have evidently supposed so too, that the
States are merely to achieve the equal franchise, an elective
government — to inaugurate the respectability of labor, and
become a nation of practical operatives, law-abiding, orderly
and well-off. Yes, those are indeed parts of the task of
America ; but they not only do not exhaust the progressive
conception, but rather arise, teeming with it, as the mediums
of deeper, higher progress. Daughter of a physical revolu-
tion — mother of the true revolutions, which are of the
interior life, and of the arts. For so long as the spirit is
not changed, any change of appearance is of no avail.
The old men, I remember as a boy, were always talking
of American independence. What is independence ? Free-
dom from all laws or bonds except those of one's own being,
controi'd by the universal ones. To lands, to man, to
woman, what is there at last to each, but the inherent soul,
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
6.3
nativity, idiocrasy, free, highest-poised, soaring its own flight,
following out itself?
At present, these States, in their theology and social
standards, (of greater importance than their political institu-
tions,) are entirely held possession of by foreign lands. We
see the sons and daughters of the New World, ignora' t of
its genius, not yet inaugurating the native, the universal, and
the near, still importing the distant, the partial, and the
dead. We see London, Paris, Italy — not original, superb,
as where they belong — but second-hand here, where they
do not belong. We see the shreds of Hebrews, Romans,
Greeks ; but where, on her own soil, do we see, in any
faithful, highest, proud expression, America herself? I
sometimes question whether she has a corner in her own
house.
Not but that in one sense, and a very grand one, good
theology, good art, or good literature, has certain features
shared in common. The combination fraternizes, ties the
races — is, in many particulars, under laws applicable indif-
ferently to all, irrespective of climate or date, and, from
whatever source, appeals to emotions, pride, love, spiritual-
ity, common to humankind. Nevertheless, they touch a
man closest, (perhaps only actually touch him,) even in
these, in their expression through autochthonic lights and
shades, flavors, fondnesses, aversions, specific incidents,
illustrations, out of his own nationality, geography, surround-
ings, antecedents, &c. The spirit and the form are one,
and depend far more on association, identity and place,
than is supposed. Subtly interwoven with the materiality
and personality of a land, a race — Teuton, Turk, Califor-
nian, or what not — there is always something — I can hardly
tell what it is — history but describes the results of it — it is
the same as the uulcllable look of some human faces.
11' 1
\m ■
% il
iliili
BMi
:|; 1 il'
'if/'
.)!
I!
!'-!'
64
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
Nature, too, in her stolid forms, is full of it — but to most
it is there a secret. This something is rooted in the in-
visible roots, the profoundest meanings of that place, race,
or nationality ; and to absorb and again effuse it, uttering
words and products as from its midst, and carrying it into
highest regions, is the work, or a main part of the work, of
any country's true author, poet, historian, lecturer, and
perhaps even priest and philosoph. Here, and here only,
are the foundations for our really valuable and permanent
verse, drama, &c.
But at present, (judged by any higher scale than that
which finds the chief ends of existence to be to feverishly
make money dtfring one-half of it, and by some " amuse-
ment," or perhaps foreign travel, flippantly kill time, the
other half,) and consider'd with reference to purposes of
patriotism, health, a noble personality, religion, and the
democratic adjustments, all these swarms of poems, literary
magazines, dramatic plays, resultant so far from American
intellect, and the formation of our best ideas, are useless
and a mockery. They strengthen and nourish no one,
express nothing characteristic, give decision and purpose to
no one, and suffice only the lowest level of vacant minds.
Of what is called the drama, or dramatic presentation in
the United States, as now put forth at the theatres, I should
say it deserves to be treated with the same gravity, and on
a par with the questions of ornamental confectionery at
public dinners, or the arrangement of curtains and hangings
in a ball-room — nor more, nor less. Of the other, I will not
insult the reader's intelligence, (once really entering into the
atmosphere of these Vistas,) by supposing it necessary to
show, in detail, why the copious dribble, either of our little
or well-known rhymesters, does not fulfil, in any respect, the
needb and aiigubt occasions of thi.s lanJ. America demands
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
65
.0 most
the in-
e, race,
Littering
y it into
ivork, of
•er, and
;re only,
rmanent
lan that
everishly
*' amuse-
time, the
rposes of
and the
s, literary
.merican
•e useless
no one,
iurpose to
Iminds.
tation in
I should
r, and on
lionery at
hangings
[l will not
into the
;essary to
our little
Ispect, the
dciiandb
a poetry that is bold, modern, and all-surrounding and
kosmical, as she is herself. It must in no respect ignore
science or the modern, but inspire itself with science and
the modern. It must bend its vision toward the future,
more than the past. Like America, it must extricate itself
from even the greatest models of the past, and, while
courteous to them, must have entire faith in itself, and the
products of its own democratic spirit only. Like her, it
must place in the van, and hold up at all hazards, the
banner of the divine pride of man in himself, (the radical
foundation of the new religion.) Long enough have the
People been listening to poems in which common human-
ity, deferential, bends low, humiliated, acknowledging
superiors. But America listens to no such poems. Erect,
inflated, and fully self-esteeming be the chant ; and then
America will listen with pleased ears.
Nor may the genuine gold, the gems, when brought to
light at last, be probably usher'd forth from any of the
quarters currently counted on. To-day, doubtless, the
infant genius of American poetic expression, (eluding those
highly-refined imported and gilt-edged themes, and senti-
mental and butterfly flights, pleasant to orthodox pub-
lishers—causing tender spasms in the coteries, and warranted
not to chafe the sensitive cuticle of the most exquisitely
artificial gossamer delicacy,) lies sleeping far away, happily
unrecognized and uninjur'd by the coteries, the art-write»*s,
the talkers and critics of the saloons, or the lecturers in the
colleges — lies sleeping, aside, unrecking itself, in some
western idiom, or native Michigan or Tennessee repartee,
or stump-speech — or in Kentucky or Georgia, or the
Carolinas — or in some slang or local song or allusion of the
Manhattan, Boston, Philadelphia or Baltimore mechanic —
or up in the Maine woods — or off in the hut of the Galifornia
5
4
\4
4
65
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
r>
miner, or crossing the Rocky mountains, or along the
Pacific railroad — or on the breasts of the young farmers of
the northwest, or Canada, or boatmen of the lakes. Rude
and coarse nursing-beds, these ; but only from such begin-
nings and stocks, indigenous here, may haply arrive, be
grafted, and sprout, in time, flowers of genuine American
aroma, and fruits truly and fully our own.
I say it were a standing disgrace to these States — I say it
were a disgrace to any nation, distinguish'd above others by
the variety and vastness of its territories, its materials, its
inventive activity, and the splendid practicality of its people,
not to rise and soar above others also in its original styles
in literature and art, and its own supply of intellectual and
esthetic masterpieces, archetypal, and consistent with itsel*.
I know not a land except ours that has not, to some extent,
however small, made its title clear. The Scotch have their
born ballads, subtly expressing their past and present, and
expressing character. The Irish have theirs. England,
Italy, France, Spain, theirs. What has America ? With ex-
haustless mines of the richest ore of epic, lyric, tale, tune,
picture, &c., in the Four Years' War ; with, indeed, I some-
times think, the richest masses of material ever afforded a
nation, more variegated, and on a larger scale — the first sign
of proportionate, native, imaginative Soul, and first-class
works to match, is, (I cannot too often repeat,) so far
wanting.
Long ere the second centennial arrives, there will be
some forty to fifty great Stales, among them Canada and
Cuba. When the present century closes, our poj)ulation
will be sixty or seventy millions. The Pacific will be ours,
and the Atlantic mainly ours. There will be daily electric
communication with every part of the glol e. What an
age 1 What a land ! Where, elsewhere, one so great ?
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
67
mg the
mcrs of
Rude
1 begin-
rive, be
.merican y
-I say it
>thers by
srials, its
5 people,
lal styles
:tual and
ith itsel*.
le extent,
lave their
sent, and
England,
With ex-
ale, tune,
I some-
iforded a
first sign
Ifirst-clas3
|,) so far
will be
lada and
)pulation
be ours,
electric
^Vhat an
great ?
The individuality of one nation must then, as always, lead
the world. Can there be any doubt who the leader ought
to be ? Bear in mind, though, that nothing less than the
mightiest original non-subordinated Soul has ever really,
gloriously led, or ever can lead. (This Soul — its other
name, in these Vistas, is Literature.)
In fond fancy leaping those hundred years ahead, let us
survey America's works, poems, philosophies, fulfilling
prophecies, and giving form and decision to best ideals.
Much that is now undream'd of, we might then perhaps sec
establish'd, luxuriantly cropping forth, richness, vigor of
letters and of artistic expression, in whose products
character will be a main requirement, and not merely
erudition or elegance.
Intense and loving comradeship, the personal and
passionate attachment of man to man — which, hard to
define, underlies the lessons and ideals of the profound
saviours of every land and age, and which seems to promise,
when thoroughly develop'd, cultivated and recognized in
manners and literature, the most substantial hope and
safety of the future of these States, will then be fully
express'd.*
A strong fibred joyousness and faith, and the sense of health
alfresco^ may well enter into the preparation of future noble
American authorship. Part of the test of a great literatus
* It is to the development, identification, and general prevalence
of that fervid comradeship, (the adhesive love, at least rivaling the
amative love hitherto possessing imaginative literature, if not going
beyond it,) that I look for the counterbalance and offset of our
materialistic and vulgar American democracy, and for the spiritual-
ization thereof. Many will say it is a dream, and will not follow
my inferences : but I confidently expect a time when there will be
seen, running like a half-hid warp through all the myriad audible
68
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
v\ i \
shall be the absence in him of the idea of the covert, the
lurid, the maleficent, the devil, the grim estimates inherited
from the Puritans, hell, natural depravity, and the like.
The great literatus will be known, among the rest, by his
cheerful simplicity, his adherence to natural standards, his
limitless faith in God, his reverence, and by the absence in
him of doubt, ennui, burlesque, persiflage, or any strain'd
and temporary fashion.
Nor must I fail, again and yet again, to clinch, reiterate
more plainly still, (O that indeed such survey as we fancy,
may show in time this part completed also !) the lofty aim,
surely the proudest and the purest, in whose service the
future literatus, of whatever field, may gladly labor. As we
have intimated, offsetting the material civilization of our
race, our nationality, its wealth, territories, factories, popu-
lation, products, trade, and military and naval strength, and
breathing breath of life into all these, and more, must be its
moral civilization — the formulation, expression, and aidancy
whereof, is the very highest height of literature. The
climax of this loftiest range of civilization, rising above all
the gorgeous shows and results of wealth, intellect, power,
and art, as such — above even theology and religious fervor
— is to be its development, from the eternal bases, and the
fit expression, of absolute Conscience, moral soundness,
Justice. Even in religious fervor there is a touch of animal
and visible worldly interests of America, threads of manly friendship,
fond and loving, pure and sweet, strong and life-long, carried to
degrees hitherto unknown — not only giving lone to individual char-
acter, and making it unprecedently emotional, muscular, heroic, and
refmcd, but having the deepest relations to general politics. I say
democracy infers such loving comradeship, as its most inevitable twin
or counterpart, without which it will be incomplete, in vain, and
incapable of perpetuating itselfi
rt, the ^
lerited
e like,
by his
ds, his
mce ill
itrain'd
literate
5 fancy,
"ty aim,
ice the
As we
of our
, popu-
;th, and
it be its
aidancy
The
lOve all
power,
Is fervor
ind the
Indness,
animal
[endship,
irried to
lal char-
|roic, and
I say
ile twin
lin, and
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
69
heat. But moral conscientiousness, crystalline, without
flaw, not Godlike only, entirely human, awes and enchants
forever. Great is emotional love, even in the order of tlie
rational universe. But, if we must make gradations, 1 am
clear there is something greater. Power, love, veneration,
products, genius, esthetics, tried by subtlest comparison?,
analyses, and in serenest moods, somewhere fail, somehow
become vain. Then noiseless, with flowing steps, the lord,
the sun, the last ideal comes. By the names right, justice,
truth, we suggest, but do not describe it. To the world of
men it remains a dream, an idea as they call it. But no
dream is it to the wise — but the proudest, almost only solid
lasting thing of all. Its analogy in the material universe is
what holds together this world, and every object upon it,
and carries its dynamics on forever sure and safe. Its lack,
and the persistent shirking of it, as in life, sociology,
literature, politics, business, and even sermonizing, these
times, or any times, still leaves the abysm, the mortal flaw
and smutch, mocking civilization to-day, with all its
unquestion'd triumphs, and all the civilization so far
known.*
Present literature, while magnificently fulfilling certain
popular demands, with plenteou? knowledge and verbal
smartness, is profoundly sophisticated, insane, and its very
* I am reminded as I write that out of this very conscience, or idea
of conscience, of intense moral right, and in its name and strain'd
construction, the worst fanaticisms, wars, persecutions, murders, &c.,
have yet, in all lands, in the past, been broach'd, and have come
to their devilish fruition. Much is to be said — but I may say here,
and in response, that side by side with the unflagging stimulation
of the elements of religion and conscience must henceforth move with
equal sway, science, absolute reason, and the general proportionate
development of the whole man. These scientific facts, deductions,
are divine too — precious counted parts of moral civilization^ and, with
If
'V I
I <
70
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
'^
joy is morbid. It needs tally and express Nature, and the
spirit of Nature, and to know and obey the standards.
I say the question of Nature, largely consider'd, involves
the questions of the esthetic, the emotional, and the religious
— and involves happiness. A fitly born and bred race,
growing up in right conditions of out-door as much as
in-door harmony, activity and development, would probably,
from and in those conditions, find it enough merely /o live
— and would, in their relations to the sky, air, water,
trees, &c., and to the countless common shows, and in the
fact of life itself, discover and achieve happiness— with
Being suffused night and day by wholesome extasy,
surpassing all the pleasures that wealth, amusement, and
even gratified intellect, erudition, or the sense of art, can
give.
In the prophetic literature of these States (the reader of
my speculations will miss their principal stress unless he
allows well for the point that a new Literature, perhaps a
new Metaphysics, certainly a new Poetry, are to be, in my
opinion, the only sure and worthy supports and expressions
of the American Democracy,) Nature, true Nature, and the "
true idea of Nature, long absent, must, above all, become fully
restored, enlarged, and must furnish the pervading atmos^
phere to poems, and the test of all high literary and esthetic
compositions. I do not mean the smooth walks, trimm'd
\
physical health, indispensable to it, to prevent fanaticism. For
abstract religion, I perceive, is easily led astray, ever credulous, and
is capable of devouring, remorseless, like fire and flame. Conscience,
too, isolated from all else, and from the emotional nature, may but
attain the beauty and purity of glacial, snowy ice. We want, for these
States, for the general character, a cheerful, religious fervor, endued
with the ever-present modifications of the human emotions, friendship,
benevolence, with a fair field for scientific inquiry, the right of indi-
vidual judgment, and always the cooling influences of material Nature. -
i I
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
n
d the
iards.
krolvcs
igious
race,
ch as
bably,
to live
water,
in the
—with
extasy,
It, and
irt, can
ader of
less he
rhaps a
in my
essions
le fully
atmos-^
jsthetic
Irimm'd
H. For
5US, and
iscience,
|niay but
for these
endued
lendship,
of indi-
lalure.
hedges, poseys and nightingales of the English poet?', but the
whole orb, with its geologic history, the kosmos, carrying
fire and snow, that rolls through the illimitable areas, light
as a feather, though weighing billions of tons. Further-
more, as by what we now partially call Nature is intended,
at most, only what is entertainable by the physical con-
science, the sense of matter, and of good animal health —
on these it must be distinctly accumulated, incorporated,
that man, comprehending these, has, in towering superad-
dition, the moral and spiritual consciences, indicating his
destination beyond the ostensible, the mortal.
To the heights of such estimate of Nature indeed ascend-
ing, we proceed to make observations for our Vistas,
breathing rarest air. What is I believe called Idealism seem
to me to suggest, (guarding against extravagance, and ever
modified even by its opposite,) the course of inquiry and
desert of favor for our New World metaphysics, their
foundation of and in literature, giving hue to all.*
* The culmination and fruit of literary artistic expression, and its
final fields of pleasure for the human soul, are in metaphysics, in-
cluding the mysteries of the spiritual world, the soul itself, and the
question of the immortal continuation of our identity. In all ages, the
mind of man has brought up here — and always will. Here, at least, of
whatever race or era, we stand on common ground. Applause, too,
is unanimous, antique or modern. Those authors who work well in
this field — though their reward, instead of a handsome percentage, or
royalty, may be but simply the laurel-crown of the victors in the great
Olympic games — will be dearest to humanity, and their works, how-
ever esthetically defective, will be treasur'd forever. The altitude of
literature and poetry has always been religion — and always will be.
The Indian Vedas, the Naokas of Zoroaster, the Talmud of the Jews,
the Old Testament, the Gospel of Christ and his disciples, Plato's
works, the Koran of Mohammed, the Edda of Snorro, and so on to-
ward our own day, to Swcdenborg, and to the invaluable contributions
of Leibnitz, Kant and Hegel — these, with such poems only in which.
4
yJ
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72
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS,
The elevating and cthercalizing ideas of the unknown and
of unreality must be brought forward with authority, as they
arc the legitimate heirs of the known, and of reality, and at
least as great as their parents. Fearless of scoffing, and of
the ostent, let us take our stand, our ground, and never
desert it, to confront the growing excess and arrogance of
(while sin{;ing well of persons and events, of the passions of man,
and the shows of the material universe,) the religious tone, the con-
sciousness of mystery, the recognition of the future, of the unknown,
of Deity over and under all, and of the divine purpose, are never absent,
but indirectly give tone to all — exhibit literature's real heights and
elevations, towering up like the great mountains of the earth.
.Standing on this ground— the last, the highest, only permanent
ground — and sternly criticising, from it, all works, either of the literary,
or any art, we have peremptorily to dismiss every pretensive produc-
tion, however fine its esthetic or intellectual points, which violates or
ignores, or even does not celebrate, the central divine idea of All,
suffusing universe, of eternal trains of purpose, in the development, by
however slow degrees, of the physical, moral, and spiritual kosmos. I
say he has studied, meditated to no profit, whatever nay be his mere
erudition, who has not absorb'd this simple consciousness and faith.
It is not entirely new — but it is for Democracy to elalx)rate it, and look
to build upon and expand from it, with uncompromising reliance.
Above the doors of teaching the inscription is to appear. Though
little or nothing can be absolutely known, perceiv'd, except from a
point of view which is evanescent, yet we know at !eist one perman-
ency, that Time and Space, in the will of God, furnish successive chains,
completions of material births and beginnings, solve all discrepancies,
fears and doubts, and eventually fulfil happiness— and that the prophecy
of those births, namely spiritual results, throws the true arch over all
teaching, all science. The local consid .rations of sin, disease,
deformity, ignorance, death, iS:c., and their measurement by the super-
ficial mind, and ordinary legislation and theology, are to be met by
science, boldly accepting, promulging this faith, and planting the seeds
of superber laws — of the explication of the physical universe through
the spiritual — and clearing the way for a religion, sweet and unim*
pugnable alike to little child or great savan«
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
n
vn and
[IS ihey
and at
and of
I never
ance of
of man,
the con-
inknown,
:r absent,
ghts and
ermanent
e literary,
e produc-
riolates or
ja of All,
)ment, by
jsmos. I
his mere
ind faith,
and look
reliance.
Thougli
Dt from a
J perman-
ire chains,
epancies,
prophecy
over all
disease,
he supcr-
|e met by
the seeds
through
id unim*
realism. To the cry, now victorious — the cry of sense,
science, flesh, incomes, farms, merchandise, logic, intellect,
demonstrations, solid perpetuities, buildings of brick and
iron, or even the facts of the shows of trees, earth, rocks,
&c., fear not, my bretliren, my sisters, to sound out with
equally determin'd voice, that conviction brooding within
the recesses of every envision'd soul — illusions! apparitions!
figments all! True, we must not condemn the show,
neither absolutely deny it, for the indispensability of its
meanings ; but how clearly we see that, migrate in soul to
what we can already conceive of superior and spiritual
points of view, and palpable as it seems under present
relations, it all and several might, nay certainly would, fall
apart and vanish.
I hail with joy the oceanic, variegated, intense practical
energy, the demand for facts, even the business materialism
of the current age, our States. But wo to the age and land
in which these things, movements, stopping at themselves,
do not tend to ideas. As fuel to flame, and flame to the
heavens, so must wealth, science, materialism — even this
democracy of which we make so much — unerringly feed the
hi;^hest mind, the soul. Infinitude the flight : fathomless the
mystery. Man, so diminutive, dilates beyond the sensible
universe, competes with, outcopes space and time, medi-
tating even one great idea. Thus, and thus only, does a
human being, his spirit, ascend above, and justify, objective
Nature, which, probably nothing in itself, is incredibly and
divinely serviceable, indispensable, real, here. And as the
purport of objective Nature is doubtless folded, hidden,
somewhere here — as somewhere here is what this globe and
its manifold forms, and the light of day, and night's dark-
ness, and life itself, with all its experiences, are for — it is
here the great literature, especially verse, must get its
4
m
74
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
U
; t
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i ^
inspiratior and throbbing blood. Then may we attain to a
poetry worthy the immortal soul of man, and which, while
absorbing materials, and, in their own sense, the shows of
'Nature, will, above all, have, both directly and indirectly, a
'freeing, fluidizing, expanding, religious character, exulting
with science, fructifying the moral elements, and stimulating
aspirations, and meditations on the unknown.
The process, so far, is indirect and peculiar, and though
it may be suggested, cannot be defined. Observing,
rapport, and with intuition, the shows and forms presented
by Nature, the sensuous luxuriance, the beautiful in living
men and women, the actual play of passions, in history and
life — and, above all, from those developments either in
Nature or human personality in which power, (dearest of all
to the sense of the artist,) transacts itself — out of these, and
seizing what is in them, the poet, the esthetic worker in any
field, by the divine magic of his genius, projects them, their
analogies, by curious removes, indirections, in literature and
art. (No useless attempt to repeat the material creation,
by daguerreotyping the exact likeness by mortal mental
means.) This is the image-making faculty, coping with
material creation, and rivaling, almost triumphing over it.
This alone, when all the other parts of a specimen of
literature or art are ready and waiting, can breathe into it
the breath of life, and endow it with identity.
" The true question to ask," says the librarian of Con-
gress in a paper re d before the Social Science Convention
at New York, October, 1869, "The true question to ask
respecting a book, is, ^as it helfd any human soulV This
is the hint, statement, not only of the great literatus, his
book, but of every great artist. It may be that all works of
art are to be first tried by their art qualities, their image-
forming talent, and their dramatic, pictorial, plot-constructing,
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
75
1 to a
while
3WS of
ctly, a
:ulting
ilating
:hough
erving,
sented
i living
try and
her in
it of all
se, and
■ in any
n, their
lire and
reation,
mental
wiih
over it.
men of
into it
)f Con-
vention
to ask
This
tus, his
orks of
image-
ructing,
euphonious and other talents. Then, whenever claiming
to be first-class works, they are to be strictly and sternly
tried by iheir foundation in, and radiation, in the highest
sense, and always indirectly, of the ethic principles, and
eligibility to free, arouse, dilate.
As, within the purposes of the Kosmos, and vivifying all
meteorology, and all the congeries of the mineral, vegetable
and animal worlds — all the physical growth and develop-
ment of man, and all the history of the race of politics,
religions, wars, &c., there is a moral purpose, a visible oi
invisible intention, certainly underlying all — its results and
proof needing to be patiently waited for — needing intuition,
faith, idiosyncrasy, to its realization, which many, and
especially the intellectual, do not have — so in the product,
or congeries of the product, of the greatest literatus. This
is the last, profoundest measure and test of a first-class
literary or esthetic achievement, and when understood and
put in force must fain, I say, lead to works, books, nobler
then any hitherto known. Lo ! Nature, (the only complete,
actual poem,) existing calmly in the divine scheme, con-
taining all, content, careless of the criticisms of a day, or
these endless and wordy chatterers. And lo ! to the con-
sciousness of the soul, the permanent identity, the thought,
the something, before which the magnitude even of
democracy, art, literature, &c., dwindles, becomes partial,
measurable — something that fully satisfies, (which those do
not.) That something is the All, and the idea of All, with
the accompanying idea of eternity, and of itself, the soul,
buoyant, indestructible, sailing space forever, visiting every
region, as a ship the sea. And again lo 1 the pulsations in
all matter, all spirit, throbbing forever — the eternal beats,
eternal systole and diastole of life in things — where^^rom I
feel and know that death is not the ending, as was thought}
II
I'
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m
:jS
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76
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
but rather the real beginning— and that nothing ever is or
can be lost, nor ever die, nor soul, nor matter.
In the future of these States must arise poets immenscr
far, and make great poems of death. The poems of life are
great, but there must be the poems of the purports of life,
not only in itself, but beyond itself. I have eulogized
Homer, the sacred bards of Jewry, Eschylus, Juvenal,
Shakspere, &c., and acknowledged their inestimable value.
But, (with perhaps the exception, in some, not all respects,
of the second-mention'd,) I say there must, for future and
democratic purposes, appear poets, (dare I to say so?) of
higher class even than any of those — poets not only pcs-
sess'd of the religious fire and abandon of Isaiah, luxuriant
in the epic talent of Homer, or for proud characters as in
Shakspere, but consistent with the Hegelian formulas, and
consistent with modern science. America needs, and the
world needs, a class of bards who will, now and ever, so
link and tally the rational physical being of man, with the
ensembles of time and space, and with this vast and multi-
form show, Najijxs^ surrounding him, ever tantalizing him,
equally a part, and yet not a part of him, as to essentially
harmonise, satisfy, and put at rest. Faith, very old, now
scared away by science, must be restored, brought back by
the same power that caused her departure — restored with
new sway, deeper, wider, higher than ever. Surely, this
universal ennui, this coward fear, this shuddering at death,
these low, degrading views, are not always to rule the
spirit pervading future society, as it has the past, and does
the present. What the Roman Lucretius sought most
nobly, yet all too bhndly, negatively to do for his age and
its successors, must be done positively by some great com-
ing litcratus, especially poet, who, while remaining fully
poet, will absorb whatever science indicates, with spiritualism.
?r IS or
nenscr
life are
of life,
logiz^d
uvenal,
; value,
aspects,
ire and
50?) of
nly pcs-
ixuiiant
s as in
las, and
and the
icvcr, so
vith the
d multi-
him,
entially
Id, now
3ack by
sd with
ly, this
death,
le the
d does
t most
ige and
It com-
Ig fully
lualism,
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
11
and out of them, and out of his own genius, will com-
pose the great poem of death. Then will man indeed
con'ront Nature, and confront time and space, both with
science, and con aviore^ and take his right place, prepared
for life, master of fortune and misfortune. And then that
which was long wanted will be supplied, and the ship that
had it not before in all her voyages, will have an anchor.
There are still other standards, suggestions, for products
of high literatuses. That which really balances and con-
serves the social and political world is not so much legisla-
tion, police, treaties, and dread of punishment, as the latent
eternal intuitional sense, in humanity, of fairness, manliness,
decorum, &c. Indeed, this perennial regulation, control,
and oversight, by self-suppliance, is sine qua non to demo-
cracy; and a highest widest aim of democratic literature
.may well be to bring forth, cultivate, brace, and strengthen
this sense, in individuals and society. A strong mastership
of the general inferior self by the superior self, is to be
aided, secured, indirectly, but surely, by the literatu.-., in his
works, shaping, for individual or aggregate democracy, a
great passionate body, in and along with which goes a great
masterful spirit.
And still, providing lor contingencies, I fain confront the
fact, the need of powerful native philosophs and orators and
bards, these States, as rallying points to come, in times of
danger, and to fend off ruin and defection. For history is
long, long, long. Shift and turn the combinations of the
statement as we may, the problem of the future of Amcrira,
is in certain respects as dark as it is vast. Pride, compeii-
tion, segregation, vicious wilfulness, and license beyond
example, brood already upon us. Unwieldy and immense,
who shall hold in behemoth? who bridle leviathan ? Flaunt
it as we choose, athwart and over the roads of our progress
ff
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•f ;
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78
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
loom huge uncertainty, and dreadful, threatening gloom.
It is useless to deny it : Democracy grows rankly up the
thickest, noxious, deadliest plants and fruits of all — brings
worse and worse invaders — needs newer, larger, stronger,
keener compensations and compellers.
Our lands, embracing so much, (embracing indeed the
whole, rejecting none,) hold in their breast that flame also,
capable of consuming themselves, consuming us all. Short
as the span of our national life has been, already have death
and downfall crowded close upon us — and will again crowd
close, no doubt, even if warded off. Ages to come may
never know, but I know, how narrowly during the late
secession war — and more than once, and more than twice
or thrice — our Nationality, (wherein bound up, as in a ship
in a storm, depended, and yet depend, all our best life, all
hope, all value,) just grazed, just by a hair escaped destruc-
tion. Alas 1 to think of them ! the agony and Moody
sweat of certain of those hours ! those cruel, sharp, suspended
crises !
Even to-day, amid these whirls, incredible flippancy, and
blind fury of parties, infidelity, entire lack of first-class
captains and leaders, added to the plentiful meanness and
vulgarity of the ostensible masses — that problem, the labor
question, beginning to open like a yawning gulf, rapidly
widening every year — what prospect have we ? We sail a
dangerous sea of seething currents, cross and under-currents,
vortices — all so dark, untried — and whither shall we turn ?
It seems as if the Almighty had spread before this nation
charts of imperial destinies, dazzling as the sun, yet with
many a deep intestine difliculty, and human aggregate of
cankerous imperfection, — saying, lo ! the roads, the only
plans of development, long and varied with all terrible balks
and ebullitions. You said in your soul, I will be empire of
DEMOCRATIC VISTAS.
79
glootn.
up the
—brings
tronger,
eed the
me also,
. Short
ve death
in crowd
►me may
the late
;an twice
in a ship
St life, all
I destruc-
i bloody
jspended
incy, and
first-class
mess and
he labor
rapidly
e sail a
currents,
A'C turn?
lis nation
yet with
egate of
the only
Ible balks
:mpire of
empires, overshadowing all else, past and present, putting
the history of old-world dynasties, conquests behind me, as
of no account — making a new history, a history of
democracy, making old history a dwarf — I alone inaugura-
ting largeness, culminating time. If these, O lands of
America, are indeed the prizes, the determinations of your
soul, be it so. But behold the cost, and already specimens
of the cost. Thought you greatness was to ripen for you
like a pear ? If you would have greatness, know that you
must conquer it through ages, centuries — must pay for it
with a proportionate price. For you too, as for all lands,
the struggle, the traitor, the wily person in ofifice, scrofulous
wealth, the surfeit of prosperity, the demonism of greed, the
hell of passion, the decay of faith, the long postponement,
the fossil-like lethargy, the ceaseless need of revolutions,
prophets, thunderstorms, deaths, births, new projections and
invigorations of ideas and men.
Yet I have dream'd, merged in that hidden-tangled
problem of our fate, whose long unraveling stretches
mysteriously through time — dream'd out, portray'd, hinted
already — a little or a larger band — a band of brave and true,
unprecedented yet — arm'd and equipt at every point — the
members separated, it may be, by different dates and States,
01 south, or north, or east, or west — Pacific, Atlantic,
Southern, Canadian — a year, a century here, and other
centuries there — but always one, compact in soul, conscience-
conserving, God-inculcating, inspired achievers, not only
in literature, the greatest art, but achievers in all art — a
new, undying order, dynasty, from age to age transmitted — ■
a band, a class, at least as fit to cope with current years,
our dangers, needs, as those who, for th( 'r times, so long,
so well, in armour or in cowl, iiplield and made illustrious,
that far-back feudal, priestly world. To offset chivalry.
\ ,1
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MY BOOK AND /.
I have at least enough philosophy not to be too absoUitely ;
certain of any thing or any results. In the second place,
the volume is a j^r/zV, — whether to prove triumphant and
conquer its field of aim and escape and construction,
nothing less than a hundred years from now can fully
answer. I consider the point that I have positively gained
a hearing to far more than make up for any and all other
lacks and withholdings. Essentially M^/ was from the first,
and has remained throughout, the main object. Now it is
achieved, I am certainly contented to waive any otherwise
momentous drawbacks, as of little account.
After continued personal ambition and effort, as a young
fellow, to enter with the rest into competition for the usual
rewards, business, political, literary, etc., — to take part in
the great mi/ie, both for victory's prize itself and to do some
good, — ^after years of those aims and pursuits, I found
myself remaining possessed, at the age of thirty-three to
thirty-five, with a special desire and conviction. Or rather,
to be quite exact, a desire and conviction that had been
mor J or less flitting through my previous life, or hovering on
the flanks, mostly indefinite hitherto, had steadily advanced
to the front, defined itself, and finally dominated everything
else. This was a feeling or ambition to articulate and
faithfully express in literary form and uncompromisingly my
own physical, emotional, moral, intellectual, and aesthetic
Personality, in the midst of, and tallying, the momentous
spirit and facts of its immediate days and of current
America, — and to exploit that Personality in a far more
candid and comprehensive sense than any hitherto book.
Perhaps this is in brief or suggests all I have sought to
do. Given the nineteenth century with the United States
and what they furnish as areas and points of view, " Leaves
of Grass " is, or seeks to be, simply a faithful and doubtless
i-^
I I
MY BOOK AND I.
87
ibsolutely \
nd place,
hant and
struction,
can fully
;ly gained
all other
I the first,
Now it is
otherwise
3 a young
the usual
e part in
) do some
I found
'-three to
Dr rather,
lad been
vering on
advanced
i^erything
late and
iingly my
{esthetic
)mentous
current
ar more
)Ook.
ought to
:d States
" Leaves
loubtless
self-willed record. In the midst of all it gives one man's —
the author's — identity, ardors, observations, faiths, and
thoughts, colored hardly at all with any coloring from other
faiths, other authors, other identities or times. Plenty of
songs had been sung, — beautiful, matchless songs — adjusted
to other lands than these — other days, another spirit and
stage of evolution ; but I would sing, and leave out or put
in, solely with reference to America and myself and to-day.
Modern science and democracy seemed to be throwing out
their challenge to Poetry to put them in its statements in
contradistinction to the songs and myths of the past. As I
see it now (perhaps too late), I have unwittingly taken up
that challenge and made an attempt at such statements, —
which I certainly would not assume to do now, knowing
more clearly what it means.
For grounds for " Leaves of Grass," as poetry, I have
abandoned the conventional themes, which do not appear
in it : none of the stock ornamentation, or choice plots of
love or war, or high, exceptional personages of Old-World
song ; nothing, as I may say, for beauty's sake, — no legend,
or myth, or romance, nor euphemism, nor rhyme. But
the broadest average of humanity and its identities in the
now ripening nineteenth century, and especially in each of
their countless examples and practical occupations in the
United States to day.
One main contrast of the ideas behind every page of my
verses, compared with established poems, is (as I have said
once before) their different relative attitude towards God,
towards the objective universe, and still more (by reflection,
confession, assumption, etc.) the quite changed attitude of
the ego, the one chanting or talking, towards himself and
towards his fellow-humanity. It is certainly time for
America, above all, to begin this readjustment in the
)>
:
I
P
88
MY BOOK AND /.
I .'
scope of vevse, for everything else has changed. As I write, '
I see in an article on Wcrdsworth, in one of the current
English magazines, the lines, ** A few weeks ago an eminent
French critic said that, owing to the special tendency to
science and to its all-devouring force, poetry would cease
to be read in fifty years." But I anticipate ihe very con-
trary. Only a firmer, vastly broader, new area begins to
exist — nay, is already formed — to which the poetic genius
must emigrate. Whatever may have been the case in yearj ,
gone by, the true use for the imaginative faculty of modern
times is to give ultimate vivification to facts, to science, and ,
to common lives, endowing them with the glows and glories
and final illustriousness which belong to every real thing,
and to real things only. Without that ultimate vivification
— which the poet or other artist alone can give — reality
would seem incomplete, and science, democracy, and life
itself finally in vain. w . '
Few appreciate the moral revolutions, our age, which
have been profounder far than the material or inventive or
war-produced ones. The nineteenth century, now well
towards its close (and ripening into fruit the seeds of the
two preceding centuries*), — the uprisings of national masses
and shiftings of boundary lines, — the historical and other
prominent facts of the United States, — the Secession War,
— the stormy rush and haste of nebulous forces, — never can
future years witness more excitement and din of action —
never completer change of army front along the whole line,
* The ferment and germination even of the United States to day,
dating back to, and in my opinion mainly founded on, the Elizabethan
age in English history, the age of Francis Bacon and Shakespeare.
Inde d, when we pursue it, what growth or advent is there that does
not date back, back, until lost— perhaps its most tantalizing clues lost
—in the recorded horizons of the past ?
i
: I
MY BOOK AND I.
89
I write, '
current
eminent
lency to
Id cease
ery con-
egins to
z genius
in yeari
modern
nee, and
d glories
al thing,
^ification
— reality
and life
?, whicli
jntive or
low well
s of the
masses
id other
ion War,
ever can
action —
ole line,
C3 to (lay,
izal>cthaii
xkcspeare.
that does
clues lost
the whole civilized world. For all these new and evolu-
tionary facts, meanings, purposes, new messages, new forms
and expressions, are inevitable.
My Book and I, — what a period we have presumed to
span I those thirty years from 1850 to '80 — and America in
them I Proud, proud indeed may we be if we have culled
enough of that period in its own spirit to worthily waft a
few live breaths of it to the future I
Let me not dare, here or anywhere, to attempt any
definition of Poetry, nor answer the question what it is.
Like Religion, Love, Nature, while those terms are indis-
pensable, and we all give a sufficiently accurate meaning 1 3
them, no definition that has ever been made sufficiently
encloses the name Poetry ; nor can any rule or convention
ever so absolutely obtain but some great exception may
arise and disregard and overturn it.
Also it must be carefully remembered that first-class
literature does not shine by any luminosity of its own, nor
do its poems. They grow of circumstances, and are evolu-
tionary. The actual living light is always from elsewhere, —
follows unaccountable sources, and is lunar and relative at
the best There aie, I know, certain controlling themes that
seem endlessly appropriated to the poets, — as war, in the
past, — in the Bible, religious rapture and adoration, — always
love, beauty, some plot, or some pensive or other emotion.
But, strange as it may sound at first, I will say there is
something far deeper and towering far higher than those
themes for the elements of modern song.
Just as all the old imaginative works rest, afier their kind,
on long trains of presuppositions, often entirely unmcr.-
tioned by themselves, yet supplying the most important
parts or bases of them, and without which they ccuU have
had no reason for being, so " Leaves of Grass," bctore a
90
MY BOOK AND I
ii !
line was written, presupposed something different from any
other, and as it stands is the result of such presupposition.
I should say, indeed, it were useless to attempt reading the
book without first carefully tallying that preparatory back-
ground and quality in the mind. Think of the United
States to-day — the facts of these thirty- eight or forty empires
soldered in one — fifty or sixty millions of equals, with their
lives, their passions, their future — these incalculable and
seething multitudes around us, and of which we are in-
separable parts 1 Think, in comparison, of the petty
environage and limited area of the poets of past or present
Europe, no matter how great their genius. Think of the
absence and ignorance, in all cases hitherto, of the multi-
tudinousness, vitality, and the unprecedented stimulants of
to-day and here. It almost seems as if a poetry with any-
thing like cosmic features were never possible befoic. It is
certain that a poetry of absolute faith and equality for the
use of the modern never was.
In estimating first-class song, a sufficient nationality, or,
on the other hand, what may be called the negative and
lack of it (as in Goethe's case, it sometimes seems to me), is
often, if not always, the first element. One needs only a little
penetration to see, at more or less removes, the material
facts of their country and radius, with the coloring of the
moods of humanity at the time, and its gloomy or hopeful
prospects, behind all poets and each poet, and forming their
birth-marks. I know very well that my " Leaves " could
not possibly have emerged from any other era than the
latter half of the nineteenth century, nor any other land
than America, and from the absolute triumph of the
National Union arms.
And whether my friends claim it for me or not, I know
well enough, too, that in respect to pictorial talent,
§
MY BOOK Ai\D I
9J
om any
)osition.
ling the
ry back-
United
empires
ith iheir
ble and
are in-
,e petty
: present
c of the
le multi-
ilants of
rith any-
c. It is
' for the
ality, or,
tive and
o me), is
ly a little
material
g of the
hopeful
ing their
" could
han the
ler land
of the
I know
talent,
I
dramatic situations, and especially in verbal melody and all
the conventional technique of poetry, not only the divine
works that to-day stand ahead in the world's reading, but
dozens more, transcend (some of them immeasurably tran-
scend) all I have done, or could do. But it seemed to me,
as the objects in nature, the themes of sestheticism, and
all special exploitations of the mind and soul, involve not
only their own inherent quality, but the quality, just as
inherent and important, of iheir point ofview^ the time had
come to reflect all themes and things, old and new, in the
lights thrown on them by the advent of America and
democracy — to chant thoss themes through the utterance ot
one, not only the grateful and reverent legatee of the past,
but the born child of the New World — to illustrate all
through the genesis and ensemble of to-day — and that such
illustration and ensemble ate the chief demands of
America's prospective imaginative literature. Not to carry
out, in the approved style, some choice plot or fancy, or
fine thoughts, or incidents, or courtesies, — all of which has
been done overwhelmingly and well, probably never to be
excelled, — but that while in such aesthetic presentation o!
objects, passions, plots, thoughts, etc, our lands and days
do not want, and probably will never have, anything better
than they already possess from the bequests of the past, it
still remains to be said that there is even towards all those
a subjective and democratic point of view appropriate to
ourselves alone, and to our new genius and environments,
different from anything hitherto, and that such conception
of current life and art is for us the only means of their
assimilation consistent with the Western world.
Indeed, and anyhow, to put it specifically, has not the
* According to Immanuel Kant, the essential reality, giving shape and
significance to all the rest
Si.
MY BOOK AND L
\
i /
time arrived when, for highest current and future aims,
there must imperatively come a readjustment of the whole
theory and nature of Poetry ? The question is important,
and I may turn the argument over and repeat it : Docs
not the best thought of our day conceive of a birth and
spirit of song superior to anything past or present ? To the
effectual and moral consolidation of America (already, as
materially established, the greatest factor in known history,
and far, far greater through what it preludes and necessi-
tates, and is to be in future) — to conform with and build on
the concrete realities and theories of the universe furnished
by modem scierce, and the only irrefragable basis for any-
thing, verse included — to root both influences in the
emotional and imaginative action of our time and any time,
and dominate all that precedes or opposes them — is not
a radically new verteber of the best song indispensable ?
The New World receives with joy the poems of the
antique, with European feudalism's rich fund of epics, plays,
ballads — seeks not in the least to deaden or displace those
voices from our present time and area — holds them indeed
as indispensable studies, influences, records, comparisons.
But though the dawn-dazzle of the sun of literature is in
those poems for us of to-day — though the best parts of
current character in nations, social groups, or any man's or
woman's individuality. Old World or New, are from them — •
and though if I were asked to name the most precious
bequest to American civilization from all the hitherto ages,
I am not sure but I would name those old and less old
songs ferried hither from east and west, — some serious
words and debits remain; some acrid considerations
demand a hearing. Of the great poems received from
abroad and from the ages, and to-day enveloping and
penetrating America, is there one that is consistent with
' f
i
MY BOOK AND I.
93
: aims,
I whole
tortant,
Docs
th and
To the
ady, as
history,
neccssi-
luild on
rnished
or any-
in the
ly time,
—is not
ble ? V
I of the
s, plays,
those
indeed
larisons.
re is in
parts of
nan's or
them —
)recious
to ages,
ess old
serious
erations
from
ng and
nt with
these United States, or essentially applicable to them as
they are and are to be ? Is there one whose underlying
basis is not a denial and insult to democracy ? What a
comment it forms, anyhow, on this era of literary fulfilment,
with the splendid day-rise of science and resuscitation of
history, that our chief leligious and pof Meal works are not
our own, but have been furnished by far-back ages out .of
their an iere and darkness, or, at most, twilight ! What is
there in those works that so imperiously and scornfully
dominates all our advancement, boasted civilization, and
culture ?
Even Shakespeare, who so suffuses current literature and
art (which indeed have in most degrees grown out of him),
he too belongs essentially to the buried past. Only he
holds the proud distinction for certain important phases of
that past, of being the loftiest of the singers life has yet
given voice lo. All, however, relate to and rest upon con-
ditions, standards, politics, sociologies, ranges of belief, that
have been quite eliminated from the Eastern hemisphere,
and never existed at all in the Western. As authoritative
types of song they belong in America just about as much as
the persons and institutes they depict True, it may be
said, the emotional, moral, and aesthetic natures of humanity
have not changed — that in these the old poems apply to our
times and all times, irrespective of dale ; and that they are
of incalculable value as pictures of the past. I willingly
make those admissions, and to their fullest extent ; then ad-
vance the points herewith as of serious, even paramount
importance.
I have indeed put on record elsewhere my reverence and
eulogy for those never-to-be-excelled poetic bequests, and
their indescribable preciousness as heirlooms for America.
Another and separate point must now be candidly stated.
I
II
II
1.
94
JIfY BOOK AND I.
ir I had not stood before those poems with uncovered head,
fully aware of their colossal grandeur and beauty of form
and spirit, I could not have written *' Leaves of Grass."
My verdict and conclusions as illustrated in its pages are
arrived at through the temper and inculcation of the old
works as much as through anything else, — perhaps more
than through anything else. As America fully and fairly
construed is the legitimate result and evolutionary outcome
of the past, so I would dare to claim for my verse. With-
out stopping to qualify the averment, the Old World has
had the poems of myths, fictions, feudalism, conquest, caste,
dynastic wars, and splendid exceptional characters and
affairs, which have been great ; but the New World needs
the poems of realities and science and of the democratic
average and basic equality, which shall be greater. In the
centre of all, and object of all, stands the Human Being,
towards whose heroic and spiritual evolution poems and
everything directly or indirectly tend, Old World or New.
'
H
' t
• /
d head,
of form
Grass."
iges are
the old
[)s more
id fairly
3Utcome
With-
Drld has
St, caste,
ters and
Id needs
mocratic
In the
,n Being,
ems and
I New.
A BACKWARD GLANCE ON MY
OWN ROAD.
IT is probably best at once to give warning, (even more
specific than in the head-line,) that the following
paragraphs have my ' Leaves of Grass,' and some of its
reasons and aims, for their radiating centre. Altogether,
they form a backward glimpse along my own road and
journey the last thirty years.
Many consider the expression of poetry and art to come
under certain inflexible standards, set patterns, fixed and
immovable, like iron castings. Really, nothing of the sort
As, in the theatre of to-day, * each new actor of real merit
(for Hamlet or any eminent r61e) recreates the persons of
the older drama, sending traditions to the winds, and
producing a new character on the stage,' the adaptation,
development, incarnation, of his own traits, idiosyncrasy,
and environment — * there being not merely one good way
of representing a great part, but as many ways as there arc
great actors ' — so in constructing poems. Another illustra-
tion would be that for delineating purposes, the melange of
existence is but an eternal font of type, and may be set up
to any text, however different — with room and welcome, at
whatever time, for new compositors.
I should say real American poetry — nay, within any high
i
ii ^!i
' J
.»
96
A BACKWARD GLANCE.
sense, American literature — is something yet to be. So far,
the aims and stress of the book-making business here — the
miscellaneous and fashionable parts of it, the majority —
seem entirely adjusted (like American society life,) to certain
fine-drawn, surface, imported ways and examples, having no
deep root or hold in our soil. I hardly know a volume
emanating American nativity, manliness, from its centre.
It is true, the numberless issues of our day and land (the
leading monthlies are the best,) as they continue feeding the
insatiable public appetite, convey the kind of provender
temporarily wanted — and with certain magnificently copious
mass results. But as surely as childhood and youth pass to
maturity, all that now exists, after going on for a while will
meet with a grand revulsion — nay, its very self works
steadily toward that revulsion.
W hat a comment it is on our era of literary fulfilment,
with the splendid day-rise of science, and resuscitation of
history, that its chief religious and poetical works are not its
own, but have been furnished by far-back ages, out of their
darkness and ignorance — or, at most, twilight I What is
there in those works that so imperiously and scornfully
dominates all our advancement, boasted civilization, and
culture ?
The intellect of to-day is stupendous and keen, backed by
stores of accumulated erudition — but in a most important
phase the antique seems to have had the advantage of us.
Unconsciously, it possessed and exploited that something
there was and is in Nature immeasurably beyond, and even
altogether ignoring, what wc call the artistic, the beautiful,
the literary, and even the moral, the good. Not easy to put
one's finger on, or name in a word, this something, invisibly
permeating the old poems, religion-sources and art If I
were asked to suggest it in such single word, I should write
A BACKWARD GLANCE.
97
b. So fan
here— the
majority —
\ to certain
having no
r a volume
its centre.
, land (the
'ceding the
provender
tly copious
uth pass to
I while will
self works
fulfilment,
scitation of
I are not its
out of their
1 What is
scornfully
sation, and
, backed by
t important
ntage of us.
something
d, and even
e beautiful,
easy to put
ig, invisibly
1 art If I
hould write
(at the r'k^k of being quite misunderstood at first, at any
rate) the word physiological.
I have never wondered why so many men and women
balk at 'Leaves of Grass.' None should try it till ready to
accept (unfortunately for me, not one in a hundred, or in
several hundred, is ready) that utterance from full-grown
human personality, as of a tree growing in itself, or any
other objective result of the universe, from its own laws,
oblivious of conformity — an expression, faithful exclusively
to its own ideal and receptivity, however egotistical or enor-
mous ('All is mine, for I have it in me,' sings the old Chant
of Jupiter) — not mainly indeed with any of the usual pur-
poses of poems, or of literature, but just as much (indeed
far more) with other aims and purposes. These will only
be learned by the study of the book itself — will be arrived
at, if at all, by indirections — and even at best, the task no
easy one. The physiological point of view will almost
always have to dominate in the reader as it does in the
book — only now and then the psychological or intellectual,
and very seldom indeed the merely aesthetic.
Then I wished above all things to arrest the actual
moment, our years, the existing, and dwell on the present —
to view all else through the present. What the past has
sent forth in its incalcuable volume and variety, is of course
on record. What the next generation, or the next, may
furnish, I know not. But for indications of the individuality
and physiognomy, of the present, in America, my two
books are candidates. And though it may not appear at
first look, I am more and more fond of thinking, and
indeed am quite decided for myself, that they have for their
nciTe-centre the Secession War of 1860-65.
Then the volumes (for reasons well conned over before I
took the first step) were intended to be most decided,
7
I
f
I
U''
* i
) *
A BACKWARD GLANCE.
serious, bona fide expressions of an identical individual peiv
sonality — egotism^ if you choose, for I shall not quarrel
about the word They proceed out of, and revolve around,
express myself, an identity, and declaredly make that self
the nucleus of the whole utterance. After all is said, it is
only a concrete special personality that can finally satisfy
and vitalize the student of verse, heroism, or religion —
abstractions will do neitiicr. (Carlyle said, 'There is no
grand poem in the world but is at bottom a biography — the
life of a man.')
That I have not been accepted during my own time —
that the largely prevailing range of criticism on my book
has been either mockery or denunciation — and that I, as its
author, have been the marked object of two or three (to me
pretty serious) official buffetings — is probably no more than
I ought to have expected. I had my choice when I com-
menced. I bid neither for soft eulogies, big money returns,
nor the approbation of existing schools and conventions.
As now fulfilled after thirty years, the best of the achieve-
ment is, that I have had n.y say entirely my own way, and
put it unerringly on record— the value thereof to be decided
by time. In calculating that decision. Dr. Bucke and
William O'Connor are far more definite and peremptory
than I am. I consider the whole thing experimental — as
indeed, in a very large sense, I consider the American
Republic itself, to be.
There is always an invisible background to a high-
intentioned book — the palimpsest on which every page is
written. Apply this to my volume. The facts of these
thirty-eight or forty empires soldered in one— fifty or sixty
millions of equals, with their lives, their passions, Iheir
future — these incalculable areas and seething multitudes
around us, and of which we are inseparable parts ! Think,
A BACKWARD GLANCE,
99
,'-«p'
ndual per-
ot quarrel
ire around,
J that self
said, it is
ally satisfy
religion —
lere is no
aphy — the
m time —
my book
at I, as its
ree (to me
nore than
en I com-
2y returns,
tiventions.
; achieve-
way, and
e decided
ucke and
sremptory
lental — as
American
in comparison, of the petty environage and limited area of
the poets of past or present Europe, no matter how great
their genius.
That America necessitates for her poetry entirely new
standards of measurement is such a point with me, that I
never tire of dwelling on it. Think of the absence and
ignorance, in all cases hitherto, of the vast ensemble, multi'
tudinousness, vitality, and the unprecedented stimulants of
to-day and here. It almost seems as if a poetry with any-
thing like cosmic features were never possible before. It is
certain that a poetry of democracy and absolute faith, for
the use of the modern, never was.
*ii\
•■•■I
'J
SI
a high-
y page is
of these
r or sixty
)ns, their
mltitudes
Think,
if
1 1"
f f ''
;' t ' ;
p I'
n I'
'\
'r
! I:
OUR EMINENT VISITORS (PAST,
PRESENT, AND FUTURE).
WELCOME to them each and all ! They do good—
the deepest, widest, most needed, good — though
quite certainly not in the ways attempted — which have, at
times, to the appreciative nostril, a scent of something
irresistibly comic. Can there be anything more farcical, for
instance, than the sight of a worthy gentleman, coming
three or four thousand miles through wet and wind to
speak complacently and at great length on matters of which
he both entirely mistakes and knows nothing, before a
crowd of auditors equally complacent and equally at
fault ?
Yet welcome and thanks, we say, to those we have, and
have had, among us — and may the procession continue !
We have had Dickens and Thackeray, Froude, Herbert
Spencer, Oscar Wilde, Lord Coleridge — and now Matthew
Arnold and Irving the actor. Some have come to make
money — some for a 'good time' — some to help us along
and give us advice — and some undoubtedly to investigate,
l>o;ia fide^ this great problem, democratic America, looming
upon the world with such cumulative power -through a
hundred years, now wiih evident intention (since the
Secession War) to stay, and take a leading hand, for many
OUR EMINENT VISITORS.
loiD
^ST,
good —
-though
have, at
mething
:ical, for
coming
wind to
)f which
)efore a
lally at
ive, and
•ntinue !
Herbert
datthcw
:o make
along
jstigate,
ooming
ough a
ice the
)r many
a century to come, in civilization's and humanity's eternal
game. But alas I in that very investigation— at any rate
the method of that investigation — is where the deficit most
surely and helplessly comes in. Let not Lord Coleridge
and Mr. Arnold, (to say nothing of the illustrious actor,)
imagine that when they have met and surveyed the eliquet-
tical gatherings of our wealthy, distinguished, and sure-to-be-
put-forward-on-such-occasions citizens, (New York, Boston,
Philadelphia, etc., have certain stereotyped strings of them,
continually lined and paraded like the lists of dinner dishes
at hotel tables — you are sure to get the same over and
over again — it is very amusing,) — and the bowing and
introducing, the receptions at the swell clubs, the eating and
drinking and praising and praising back — and the next day
riding about Central Park, or doing ' the Public Institutions *
— and so passing through, one after another, the full-dress
coteries of the Atlantic cities, all grammatical and cultured
and correct, with the toned-down manners of the gentlemen,
and the kid-gloves, and luncheons and finger-glasses. — Let
not our eminent visitors, we say, suppose that they have
* seen America,' or captured any distinctive clew or purport
thereof. Not a bit of it. Of the pulse-beats that lie within
and vitalize this Commonweal to-day — of the hard-pan
purports and idiosyncrasies pursued faithfully and trium-
phantly by its bulk of men, generation after generation,
superficially unconscious of their own aims, yet none the
less pressing onward with deathless intuition age a.'ter age
— those coteries will not furnish the faintest scintilla. In
the Old World the best flavor and significance of a race
may possibly need to be looked for in its 'upper classes,'
its gentries, its court, its ifat major. In the United States
the rule is reversed. Besides, the special marks of our
grouping and design are not going to he understood in a
.:l^
. :
M
I02
OUR EMINENT VISITORS,
hurry. The lesson and scanning right on the ground are
difficult, I was going to say they are impossible to foreigners
— but I have occasionally found the clearest appreciation of
all coming from far-off quarters. Surely nothing could be
more apt, not only for our eminent visitors present and to
come, but for home study, than the following editorial
criticism of the London Times on Mr. Froude's visit and
lectures here a few years ago, and the culminating dinner
given at Delmonico's :
*We read the list,' says the Timts^ *of those who
assembled to do honor to Mr. Froude : there were Mr.
Emerson, Mr. Beecher, Mr. Curtis, Mr. Bryant ; we add
the names of thos^ who sent letters of regret that they
could not attend in person — Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Whittier.
They are names which are well known — almost as well
known and as much honored in England as in America ;
and yet what must we say in the end? The American
people outside this assemblage of writers is something vaster
and greater than they, singly or together, can comprehend.
It cannot be said of any or all of them that they can speak
for their nation. We who look on at this distance are able
perhaps on that account to see the more clearly that there
are qualities of the American people which find no repre-
sentation, no voice, among these their spokesmen. And
what is true of them is true of the English class of whom
Mr. Froude may be said to be the ambassador. Mr.
Fronde is master of a charming style. He has the gift of
grace and the gifl of sympathy. Taking any single
character as the subject of his study, he may succeed after
a very short time in io comprehending its workings as to be
able to present a living figure to the intelligence and
memory of his readers. But the movements of a nation,
ike voiceless purp«ie of a people which cannot put its own
■ \ '
)und are
ireigners
iation of
lould be
t and to
editorial
risit and
g dinner
)se who
ere Mr.
we add
lat they
iVhittier.
as well
^merica ;
merican
\g vaster
)rehend.
in speak
are able
lat there
10 repre-
1. And
)f whom
Mr.
e gift of
r single
led after
as to be
ice and
nation,
OUR EMINENT VISITORS.
r
103
tkow^his into words ^ yet acts upon them in each successive
generation, — these things do not lie within his grasp. . . .
The functions of literature such as he represents are limited
in their action ; the influence he can wield is artificial and
restricted, and, while he and his hearers please and are
pleased with pleasant periods, the great mass of national
life will flow around them unmoved in its tides by action
as powerless as that of the dwellers by the shore to direct
the currents of the ocean.'
A thought, here, that needs to be echoed, expanded,
permanently treasured, by our literary classes and edu-
cators. How few think of it, though it is the impetus and
back-ground of our whole Nationality and popular life. In
the present brief memorandum, I very likely for the first
time awake * the intelligent reader ' to the idea and
inquiry whether where isn't such a thing as the distinctive
genius of our New World, universal, immanent, bringing to
a head the best experience of the past — not specially
literary or intellectual — not even merely 'good,' (in the
Sunday School and Temperance Society sense,) — some
invisible spine and great sympathetic to these Slates, resi-
dent only in the average People, in their practical life, in
their physiology, in their emotions, in their nebulous yet fiery
patriotism, in the armies (both sides) through the whole
Secession War — an identity and character which indeed so
flir ' finds no voice among their spokesmen.'
To my mind America, vast and fruitful as it appears
to-day, is even yet, for its most important results, entirely
in the tentative state. (Its very formation-stir and whirling
trials and essays more splendid and picturesque, to my
thinking, than the accomplished growths and shows of
other lands, through European history or Greece, or all the
past.) Surely a New World literature, worthy the name, is
i
104
OUR EMINENT VISITORS,
i!
:• .,1
St
Ml
i{
1
not to be, if it ever comes, some fiction, or fancy, or bit of
sentimentalism or polished work merely by itself or in
abstraction. So long as such literature is no born branch
and offshoot of the Nationality, rooted and grown from its
roots, and filled with its fibre, it can never answer any
deep call or perennial need. Perhaps the untaught
Republic is deeper, wiser, than its teachers. The best
literature is always a result of something far greater than
itself — is not the hero, but the portrait of the hero.
Before there can be recorded history or poem there must
be the transaction. Beyond the old masterpieces, the Iliad,
the iutcrminable Hindu epics, the Greek tragedies, even the
Bible itself, range the immense facts of what must have pre-
ceded them — their sine qua non the veritable poems and
masterpieces, of which these are but shreds and cartoons.
For to-day and the States, I think the vividest, rapidest,
most stupendous processes ever known, ever performed by
man or nation, on the largest scales and in countless varie-
ties, are now and here presented. Not as our poets and
preachers are always conventionally putting it — but quite
different. Some colossal foundry, the flaming of the fire,
the melted metal, the pounding trip-hammers, the surging
crowds of workmen shifting from point to point, the murky
shadows, the rolling haze, the discord, the crudeness, the
deafening din, the disorder, the dross and clouds of dust,
the waste and extravagance of material, the shafts of darted
sunshine through the vast open roof-scuttles aloft — the
mighty castings, many of them not yet fitted, perhaps
delayed long, yet each in its due time, with definite place
and use and meaning — such, more like, is a Symbol of
America.
After all of which, returning to our starting-point, we re-
iterate, and in the whole Land's name, a welcome to our
5r bit of
If or in
branch
rrom its
ver any
ntaught
[ic best
ter than
* hero,
re must
le Iliad,
ven the
ive pre-
ms and
oons.
apidest,
lied by
>s varie-
ets and
t quite
he fire,
surging
: murky
ess, the
>f dust,
darted
ft— the
)erhaps
e place
ibol of
we re-
to our
OUR EMINENT VISITORS, f^ 105
eminent guests. Visits like theirs, and hospitalities, and
hnnd-shaking, and face meeting face, and the distant brought
near — what divine solvents they are ! Travel, reciprocity,
* interviewing,' intercommunion of lands — what are they but
Democracy's and the highest Law's best aids ? O that our
own country —that every land in the world — could annually,
continually, receive the poets, thinkers, scientists, even the
official magnates, of other lands, as honored guests. O
that the United States, CFpecially the West, could have had
a good long visit and explorative jaunt, from the noble and
melancholy Tourgudneff, before he died — or from Thomas
Carlyle, Castelar, Tennyson, Victor Hugo — were they and
we to come face to face, how is it possible but tliat the right
and amicable understanding would ensue ?
;
!;
A THOUGHT ON SHAKSPERE.
THE most distinctive poems — the most permanently
rooted and with heartiest reason for being — the
copious cycle of Arthurian legends, or the almost equally
copious Charlemagne cycle, or the poems of the Cid, or
Scandinavian Eddas, or Niebelungen, or Chaucer, or
Spenser, or Ossian, or Inferno — probably had their rise
in great historic perturbations, which they came in to sum
up and confirm, indirectly embodying results to date.
However precious to * culture,' the grandest of those poems,
it may be said, preserve and typify results offensive to the
modern spirit, and long past away. To state it briefly, and
taking the strongest examples, in Homer lives the ruthless
military prowess of Greece, and of its special god-descended
dynastic houses; — in Shakspere, the 'dragon-rancors and
stormy feudal splendor of mediaeval caste.'
Poetry, largely considered, is an evolution, sending out
improved and ever-expanded types — in one sense, the past,
even the best of it, necessarily giving place, and dying out.
For our existing world, the bases on which all the grand old
poems were built have become vacuums — and even those of
many comparatively modern ones are broken and half-gone.
For us to-day, not their own intrinsic value, vast as that is,
backs and maintains those poems, — but a mountain-high
I i
ji THOUGHT ON SHAKSTERE. A* 107
IE.
nanently
ing — the
; equally
Cid, or
Licer, or
heir rise
to sum
to date.
e poems,
e to the
efly, and
ruthless
:scended
:ors and
iing out
he past,
ing out.
rand old
those of
alf-gone.
that is,
ain-high
growth of associations, the layers of successive ages. Every-
where — their own lands included— (is there not something
terrible' in the tenacity with which the one book out of mill-
ions holds its grip ?) — the Homeric and Virgilian works, the
interminable ballad-romances of the middle ages, the utter-
ances of Dante, Spenser, and others, are upheld by their
cumulus-entrenchment in scholarship, and as precious,
always welcome, unspeakably valuable reminiscences.
Even the one who at present reigns unquestioned — of
Shakspere — for all he stands for so much in modern litera-
ture, he stands entirely for the mighty aesthetic sceptres of
the past, not for the spiritual and democratic, the sceptres
of the future. The inward and outward characteristics of
Shakspere are his vast and rich variety of persons and
themes, with his wondrous delineation of each and all — not
only limitless funds of verbal and pictorial resource, but
great excess, superfoetation — mannerism, like a fine, aristo-
cratic perfume, holding a touch of musk (Euphues, his
mark) — with boundless sumptuousness and adornment, real
velvet and gems, not shoddy nor paste — but a good deal of
bombast and fustian — (certainly some terrific mouthing in
Shakspere !)
Superb and inimitable as all is, it is mostly an objective
and physiological kind of power and beauty the soul finds
in Shakspere — a style supremely grand of the sort, but in
my opinion stopping short of the grandest sort, at any rate
for fulfilling and satisfying modern and scientific and demo-
cratic American purposes. Think, not of growths as forests
primeval, or Yosemite geysers, or Colorado ravines, but of
costly marble palaces, and palace rooms, and the noblest
fixings and furniture, and noble owners and occupants to
correspond — think of carefully built gardens from the
beautiful but sophisticated gardening art at its best, with
ill
^^
,1'f
:i
1 08
A THOUGHT ON SHAKSPERE.
walks and bowers and artificial lakes, and appropriate statue-
groups and the finest roses and lilies and japonicas in plenty
— and you have the tally of Shakspere. The low characters,
mechanics, even the loyal henchmen — ^all in themselves
nothing — serve as capital foils to the aristocracy. The
comedies (exquisite as they certainly are) bringing in
admirably portrayed common characters, have the unmis-
takable hue of plays, portraits, made for the divertiscment
only of the ^lite of the castle, and from its point of view.
The comedies are altogether non-acceptable to America and
Democracy.
But to the deepest soul, it seems a shame to pick and
choose from the riches Shakspere has left us — to criticise
his infmitely royal, multiform quality — to gauge, with optic
glasses, the dazzle of his sun-like beams.
The best poetic utterance, after all, can merely hint, or
remind, often very indirectly, or at distant removes. Aught
of real perfection, or the solution of any deep problem, or
any completed statement of the moral, the true, the beauti-
ful, eludes the greatest, deftest poet— flies away like an
always uncaught bird.
te statue-
in plenty
laracters,
lemselves
cy. The
iging in
e unmis-
rtiscment
of view,
erica and
pick and
:> criticise
ith optic
V hint, or
. Aught
>blem, or
le beauti-
like an
r
»»>
" f
WHAT LURKS BEHIND
SHAKSPERE'S HISTORICAL PLAYS.
WE all know how much mythus there is in the
Shakspere question as it stands to-day. Beneath a
few foundations of proved facts are certainly engulfed far
more dim and elusive ones, of deepest importance —
tantalizing and half suspected — suggesting explanations that
one dare not put in plain statement But coming at once
to the point, the English historical plays are to me not only
the most eminent as dramatic performances (my maturest
judgment confirming the impressions of my early years, that
the distinctiveness and glory of the Poet reside not in his
vaunted dramas of the passions, but those founded on the
contests of English dynasties, and the French wars), but
form, as we get it all, the chief in a complexity of puzzles.
Conceived out of the fullest heat and pulse of European
feudalism — ^personifying in unparalleled ways the mediaeval
aristocracy, its towering spirit of ruthless and gigantic caste,
with its own peculiar air and arrogance, no mere imitation
— only one of the * wolfish earls * so plenteous in the plays
themselves, or some born descendant and knowcr, might
seem to be the true author of those amazing works — works
in some respects greater than anything else in recorded
literature.
The start and germ-ctock of the pieces on which the
n
••in
%1
1
I'i
•I
no 5iHAKSPERES HISTORICAL PLAYS.
present speculation is founded are undoubtedly (with, at the
outset, no small amount of bungling work), in * Henry VI.'
It is plain to me that as profound and forecasting a brain and
pen as ever appeared in literature, after floundering some-
what in the first part of that trilogy — or perhaps draughting
it more or less experimentally or by accident — afterward
developed and defined his plan in the Second and Third
Parts, and from time to time, thenceforward, systematically
enlarged it to majestic and mature proportions in ' Richard
II,' 'Richard III,' 'King John,' ' Henry IV,' 'Henry V,'
and even in ' Macbeth ' and ' Lear.' For it is impossible to
grasp the whole cluster of those plays, however wide the
intervals and different circumstances of their composition,
without thinking of them as, in a free sense, the result of an
essentially controlling plan. What was that plan ? Or,
rather, what was veiled behind it? — for to me there was
certainly something so veiled. Even the episodes of Cade,
Joan of Arc, and the like (which sometimes seem to me like
interpolations allowed), may be meant to foil the possible
sleuth, and throw any too 'cute pursuer off the scent In
the whole matter I should specially dwell on, and make
much of, that inexplicable element of every highest poetic
nature which causes it to cover up and involve its real
purpose and meanings in folded removes and far recesses.
Of this trait — hiding the nest where common seekers may
never find it — the Shaksperian works afford the most
numerous and marked illustrations known to me. I would
even call that trait the leading one through the whole of
those works.
All the foregoing to premise a brief statement of how
and where I get my new light on Shakspere. Speaking
of the special English plays, my friend William O'Connor
says :
vs.
ith, at the
lenry VI.'
brain and
ing some-
iraughting
-afterward
ind Third
tematically
I * Richard
Henry V,'
possible to
r wide the
)mposition,
result of an
>lan ? Or,
there was
;s of Cade,
i to me like
le possible
scent In
and make
best poetic
Ive its real
ir recesses,
eekers may
the most
I would
le whole of
;nt of how
Speaking
O'Connor
. SHAKSPEHES HISTORICAL FLA YS 1 1 1
" They seem simply and rudely historical in their motive, as
aiming to give in the rough a tableau of warring dynasties,—-
and carry to me a lurking sense of being in aid of some ulterior
design, probably well enough understood in that age, which
perhaps time and criticism will reveal Their atmos-
phere is one of barbarous and tumultuous gloom, — they do not
make us love the times they limn and it is impossible to
believe that the greatest of the Elizabethan men could have
sought to indoctrinate the age with the love of feudalism which
his own drama in its entirety, if the view taken of it herein be
true, certainly and subtly saps and mines."
Reading the just-specified plays in the light of Mr.
O'Connor's suggestion, I defy any one to escape such new
and deep utterance-meanings, like magic ink, warmed by
the fire, and previously invisible. Will it not indeed be
strange if the author of ' Othello ' and ' Hamlet ' is destined
to live in America, in a generation or two, less as the
cunning draughtsman of the passion is, and more as putting
on record the first full expos^ — and by far the most vivid
one, immeasurably ahead of doctrinaires and economists —
of the political theory and results which America has come
on earth to abnegate and replace ?
The summary of my suggestion would be, therefore,
that while the more the rich and tangled jungle of the
Shaksperian area is traversed and studied, and the more
baffled and mixed, as so far appears, becomes the exploring
student (who at last surmises everything, and remains
certain of nothing), it is possible a future age of criticism,
diving deeper, mapping the land and lines freer, com-
pleter than hitherto, may discover in the plays named the
scientific (Baconian ?) inauguration of modern Democracy
— furnishing realistic and first class artistic portraitures of
the medioeval world, the feudal personalities, institutes, in
their morbid accumulations, deposits, upon politics and
■t]
'•I
1,'
?s
1>
[
t
1 1 2 SriAKSPERE'S HISTORICAL FLA YS.
sociology, — may penetrate to that hard-pan, far down and
back of the ostent of to-day, on which (and on which only)
the progressism of the last two centuries has built this
Democracy which now holds secure lodgment over the
whole civilized world.
Whether such was the unconscious, or (a? I think likely)
the more or less conscious, purpose of him who fashioned
those marvellous architectonics, is a secondary question.
M
'
rs.
down and
hich only)
built this
over the
ink likely)
fashioned
cstion.
ROBERT BURNS AS POET AND
PERSON.
WHAT the future will decide about Robert Burns and
his works — what place will be assigned them on
that great roster of geniuses and genius which can only be
finished by the slow but sure balancing of the centuries
with their ample average — I of course cannot tell. But as
we know him, from his recorded utterances, and after nearly
one century, and its diligence of collections, personal songs,-
letters, anecdotes, presenting the figure of the canny Scotch-
man in a fullness and detail wonderfully complete, and the
lines mainly by his own hand, he forms to-day, in some
respects, the most interesting personality among singers.
Then there are many things in Burns's poems and character
that specially endear him to America. He was essentially
a republican — would have been at home in the Western
United States, and probably become eminent there. He
was an average sample of the good-natured, warm-blooded,
proud-spirited, amative, alimentive, convivial, young and
early-middle-aged man of the decent-born middle classes
everywhere and any how. Without the race of which he is
a distinct specimen, (and perhaps his poems), America and
her powerful democracy could not exist to day — could not
project with unparalleled historic sway into the future.
Perhaps the peculiar coloring of the era of Burns, in the
8
fl
n
' I
' I
u,
1 1 1
I f
III
F'l
*
I".
•5 I'M
n
t'
IT4
ROBERT BURNS,
world's history, biography and civilization, needs always
first to be consitlered. It included the times of the '76-'83
Revolution in America, of the French Revolution, and the
unparallel'd chaos-development in Europe and elsewhere.
In every department, shining and strange names, like stars,
some rising, some in meridian, some declining — Voltaire,
Franklin, Washington, Kant, Goethe, Fulton, Napoleon,
mark the era. And while so much, and of moment, fit for
the trumpet of the ^Yorld's fame, was being transacted — that
little tragi-comedy of R. B.'s life and death was going on in
a country by-place in Scotland !
Burns's correspondence, generally collected and published
since his death, gives wonderful glints into both the amiable
and weak (and worse than weak) parts of his portraiture,
habits, good and bad luck, ambition and associations. His
letters to Mrs. Dimlop, Mrs. McLehose, (Clarinda,) Mr.
Thomson, Dr. Moore, Robert Muir, Mr. Cunningham,
Miss Margaret Chalmers, Peter Hill, Richard Brown, Mrs.
Riddel, Robert Ainslie, and Robert Graham, afford valuable
lights and shades to the outline, and with numerous others,
help to a touch here, and fill-in there, of poet and poems.
There are suspicions, it is true, of "the Genteel Letter-
Writer," with scraps and words from " the Manual of French
Quotations," and, in the love-letters, some hollow mouthings.
Yet we wouldn't Ou any account lack the letters. A full
and true portrait is always what is wanted ; veracity at every
hazard. Besides, do not we all see by this time that the
story of Burns, even for its own sake, requires the record of
the whole and several, with nothing left out? Completely
and minutely told, it fullest explains and justifies itself— (as
perhaps ah\iost any life does). He is very close to the
earth. He picked up his best words and tunes directly
from the Scotch home-singers, but tells Thomson they
I
• i
ROBERT BUHNS.
"5
ds always
;he '76-'83
ti, and the
elsewhere,
like stars,
-Voltaire,
Napoleon,
;nt, fit for
:ted— that
oing on in
published
le amiable
ortraiture,
ons. His
nda,) Mr.
iningham,
own, Mrs.
d valuable
us others,
id poems.
el Letter-
of French
louthings.
s. A full
y at every
that the
record of
ompletely
tself — (as
50 to the
5 directly
son they
I
would not please his, (T.'s), " learned lugs," adding, " I call
them simp'e — you would pron unce them silly." As before
said, the Scotch idiom was undoubtedly his happiest hit.
(Yet Dr. Moore, in 1789, writes to Burns, "If I were to
offer an opinion, it would be that in your future productions
you should abandon the Scotch stanza and dialect, and
adopt the measure and langunge of modern English
poetry " !)
As the 128th birth-anniversary of the poet draws on,
(January, 1887) with its increasing club-suppers, vehement
celebrations, letters, speeches, and so on — (mostly, as
William O'Connor says, from people who would not have
noticed R. B. at all during his actual life, nor kept his
company, or read his verses, on any account) — it may be
opportune to print some leisurely-jotted notes I find in my
budget. I take my observation of the Scottish bard by
considering him as an individual amid the crowded clusters,
galaxies, of the old world — and fairly inquiring and sug-
gesting what out of those myriads he too may be to us, to
the Western Republic. In the first place no poet on record
so fully bequeaths his own personal magnetism,* nor
illustrates more pointedly how one's verses, by time and
reading, can so curiously fuse with the versifier's own life
and death, and give light and shade to all.
I would say a large part of the fascination of Burns's
* Probably no man that ever lived — a friend has made the
statement — was so fondly loved, both by men and women, as Robert
Burns. The reason is not hard to find : he had a real heart of flesh
and blood beating in his bosom ; you could almost hear it throb.
" Some one said, that if you had shaken hands with him his hand
would have burnt yours. The gods, indeed, made him poetical, but
nature had a hand in him first. His heart was in the right place ;
he did not pile up cantos of poetic diction ; he plucked the moun-
tain daisy under his feet ; he wrote of a field-mouse hurrying from its
I
-i
V
M
1
l-
Ii6
ROBERT BURNS,
homely, simple, dialect-melodies is due, for all current and
future readers, to the poet's personal " errors," the general
bleakness of his lot, his ingrained pensiveness, his brief
dash into dazzling, tantalizing, evanescent sunshine — finally
culminating in those last years of his life, his being tabooed
and in debt, sick and sore, yawed as by contending gales,
deeply dissatisfied with everything, most of all with himself
— high-spirited too — (no man ever really higher-spirited than
Robert Burns). I think it a perfectly legitimate part too.
At any rate it has come to be an impalpable aroma
through which only, both the songs and their singer must
henceforth be received. Through that view-medium of
misfortune — of a noble spirit in low environments, and
of a squalid and premature death — we view the un-
doubted facts, (giving, as we read them now, a sad
kind of pungency,) that Burns's were, before all else,
the lyrics of illicit loves and carousing intoxication.
Perhaps even it is this strange, impalpable post-mortem
comment and influence referred to, that gives them their
contrast, attraction, the zest of their author's after fame. If
he had lived steady, fat, moral, comfortable, well-to-do
years, on his own grade, (let alone, what of course was out
of the question, the ease and velvet and rosewood and
copious royalties of Tennyson or Victor Hugo or
Longfellow), and died well-ripened and respectable, where
ruined dwelling. He held the plough or the pen with the same firm,
manly grasp." And he was loved. The simple roll of the women
who gave him their affection and their sympathy would make a long
manuscript ; and most of these were of such noble worth that, as
Robert Chambers says, " their character may stand as a testimony
in favor of that of Durns." [As I understand, the foregoing is from
an extremely rare book published by M'Kie, in Kilmarnock. I find
the whole beautiful paragraph in a capital paper on Burns, by Amelia
Barr.]
rent and ',
5 general
his brief *
; — finally
tabooed
ng gales,
h himself
•ited than
part too.
le aroma
iger must
edium of
ents, and
the un-
(W, a sad
; all else,
toxication.
osi-mortem
hem their
"ame. If
well-to-do
e was out
wood and
Hugo or
ble, where
same firm,
the women
make a long
»rlh that, as
a testimony
Ding is from
ock. I find
, by Amelia
ROBERT BURNS.
r^ii7
could have come in that burst of passionate- sobbing and
remorse which welled forth instantly and generally in
Scotland, and soon followed everywhere among English-
speaking races, on the announcement of his death, and
which, with no sign of stopping, only regulated and veined
with fitting appreciation, flows deeply, widely yet ?
Dear Rob ! manly, witty, fond, friendly, full of weak
spots as well as strong ones — essential type of so many
thousands— perhaps the average, as just said, of the decent-
born young men and the early mid-aged, not only of the
British Isles, but America too. North and South, just the
same. I think indeed one best part of Burns is the
unquestionable proof he presents of the perennial existence
among the laboring classes, especially farmers, of the finest
latent poetic elements in their blood. (How clear it is to
me that the common soil has always been, and is now,
thickly strewn with just such gems.) He is well-called the
Ploughman. "Holding the plough," said his brother
Gilbert, •' was the favorite situation with Robert for poetic
compositions, and some of his best verses were produced
while he was at that exercise." "I must return to my
humble station, and woo my rustic muse in my wonted way,
at the plough-tail." — 1787, to the Earl of Buchan, He has
no high ideal of the poet or the poet's office ; indeed quite
a low and contracted notion of both :
" Fortune ! if thou'll but gie me still
Hale breeks, a scone, an' whiskey gill,
An' rowth o' rhyme to rave at will,
Tak' a' the rest."
See also his rhymed letters to Robert Graham, invoking
patronage ; " one stronghold," Lord Glencairn, being dead,
now these appeals to '* Fintra, my other stay," (with in one
letter a copious shower of vituperation generally). In his
' *i
. ■
/ ii8
ROBERT BURNS,
'I
III
collected poems there is no particular unity, nothing that
can be called a leading theory, no unmistakable spine or
skeleton. Perhaps, indeed, their very desultoriness is one
charm of his songs : " I take up one or another," he says in
a letter to Thomson, *'just as the bee of the moment
buzzes in my bonnet-lug."
Consonantly with the customs of the time — yet markedly
inconsistent in spirit with Burns's own case, (and not a little
painful as it remains on record, as depicting some features
of the bard himself), the relation called patronage existed
between the nobility and gentry on one side, and literary
people on the other, and gives one of the strongest side-
lights to the general coloring of poems and poet. It crops
out a good deal in Burns's Letters, and even necessitated a
certain flunkeyism on occasions, through life. It probably,
with its requirements, (while it helped in money and coun-
tenance), did as much as any one cause in making that life
a chafed and unhappy one, ended by a premature and
miserable death.
Yes, there is something about Burns peculiarly acceptable
to the concrete, human points of view. He poetizes work-
a-day agricultural labor and life, (whose spirit and sym-
pathies, as well as practicalities, are much the same every-
where,) and treats fresh, often coarse, natural occurrences,
loves, persons, not like many new and some old poets in a
genteel style of gilt and china, or at second or third re-
moves, but in their own born atmosphere, laughter, sweat,
unction. Perhaps no one ever sang " lads and lasse.^ "~ -
that universal race, mainly the same, too, all ages, all lands
—down on their own plane, as he has. The surge and swell
of animal appetites, with masculinity over all, is in his
utterances from first to last. He exhibits no philosophy
worth mentioning ; his morality is hardly more than parrot-
ROBERT BURNS.
r "9
►thin? that
e spine or
less is one
he says in
e moment
t markedly
not a little
le features
%ge existed
nd literary
ngest side-
It crops
:essitated a
t probably,
and coun-
ig that life
lature and
acceptable
tizes work-
and sym-
ame every-
:currences,
poets in a
third re-
iter, swoat,
lass'^^ "~ -
all lands
2 and swell
is in his
philosophy
an parrot-
talk — not bad or deficient, but cheap, shop-worn, the plati-
tudes of old aunts and uncles to the youngsters (be good
boys and keep your noses clean). Only when he gets at
Poosie Nansie's, celebrating the "barley bree," or among
tramps, or democratic bouts and drinking generally,
('* Freedom and whiskey gang thegither,")
we have, in his own unmistakable color and warmth, those
interiors of rakehelly life and tavern fun — the cantabile of
jolly beggars in highest jinks — lights and groupings of rank
glee and brawny amorousness, outvying the best painted
pictures of the Dutch school, or any school.
By America and her democracy such a poet, I cannot
too often repeat, must be kept in loving remembrance ; but
it is best that discriminations be made. His admirers, (as
at those anniversary suppers, over the *' hot Scotch "), will
not accept for their favorite anything less than the highest
rank, alongside of Homer, Shakspere, etc. Such, in candor,
are not the true friends of the Ayrshire bard, who really
needs a different place quite by himself. The Iliad and
the Odyssey express courage, craft, full-grown heroism in
situations of danger, the sense of command and leadership,
emulation, the last and fullest evolution of self-poise as in
kings, and god-like even while animal appetites. The
Shaksperian compositions, on vertebers and framework of
the primary passions, portray, (essentially the same as
Homer's, and with that certain heroic ecstasy, which, or the
suggestion of which, is never absent in the works of the
masters — I find it plainly in Walter Scott and Tennyson),
the spirit and letter of the feudal world, the Norman lord,
ambitious and arrogant, taller and nobler than common
men — with much underplay and gusts of heat and cold,
volcanoes and stormy seas Burns, (and some will say to
I
il
120
ROBERT BURNS,
I
•■.„
<■>!,
his credit), attempts none of these themes. He poetizes
the humor, riotous blood, sulks, amorous torments, fondness
for the tavern and for cheap objective nature, with
disgust at the grim and narrow ecclesiasticism of his time
and land, of a young farmer on a bleak and hired farm in
Scotland, through the years and under the circumstances of
the British politics of that time, and of his short personal
career as author, from 1783 to 1796. He is intuitive and
affectionate, and just emerged or emerging from the shackles
of the kirk, from poverty, ignorance, and from his own low
appetites — (out of which latter, however, he never extricated
himself). It is to be said that amid not a little smoke and
gas in his poems^ there is in almost every piece a spark of
fire, and now and then the real afflatus. He has been
applauded as democratic, and with some warrant; while
Shakspere, and with the greatest warrant, has been called
monarchical or aristocratic, (which he certainly is). But
the splendid personalizations of Shakspere, formulated on
the largest, freest, most heroic, most artistic mould, are to
me far dearer as lessons, and more precious even as models
for Democracy, than the humdrum samples Burns presents.
The motives of some of his effusions are certainly discredit-
able personally — one or two of them markedly so. He has,
moreover, little or no spirituality. This last is his mortal
flaw and defect, tried by highest standards. The ideal he
never reached, (and yet I think he leads the way to it).
He gives melodies, and now and then the simplest and
sweetest ones ; but harmonies, complications, oratorios in
words, never. (I do not speak this in any deprecatory
sense. Blessed be the memory of the warm-hearted
Scotchman for what he has left us, just as it is !) He
likewise did not know himself, in more ways than one.
Though so really free and independent, he prided himself
i !''•
ROBERT BURNS,
f^'
121
poetizes
fondness
ire, with
his time
[ farm in
tances of
personal
itive and
shackles
own low
ixtricated
loke and
spark of
las been
It; while
m called
is). But
lated on
d, are to
models
^resents,
discredit-
He has,
mortal
ideal he
y to it),
lest and
orios in
)recatory
i-hearted
s!) He
lan one.
himself
s
in his songs on being a reactionist and a Jacobite — on
persistent sentimental adherency to the *' cause " of the
Stuarts — the weakest, thinnest, most faithless, brainless
dynasty that ever held a throne.
Thus, while Burns is not at all great for New-World study,
in the sense that Isaiah and ^schylus and the Book of Job
are unquestionably great — is not to be mentioned with
Shakspere — hardly even with current Tennyson or our
Emerson — he has a nestling niche' of his own, all fragrant,
fond, and quaint and homely — a lodge built near but
outside the mighty temple of the gods of song and art —
those universal strivers, through their works of harmony and
melody and power, to ever show or intimate man's crown-
ing, last, victorious fusion in himself of Real and Ideal.
Precious, too, — fit and precious beyond all singers, high or
low — will Burns ever be to the native Scotch, especially to
the working-classes of North Britain ; so intensely one of
them, and so racy of the soil, sights, and local customs.
He often apostrophizes Scotland, and is, or would be,
enthusiastically patriotic. His country has lately com-
memorated him in a statue.^ His aim is declaredly to be
* The Dumfries statue of Robert Burns was successfully unveiled
April 1 88 1 by Lord Rosebery, the occasion having been made national
in its character. Before the ceremony, a large procession paraded the
streets of the town, all the trades and societies of that part of Scotland
being represented, and at the head of which went dairymen and
ploughmen, the former driving their carts and being accompanied by
their maids. The statue is of Sicilian marble. It rests on a pedestal
of gray stone five feet high. The poet is represented as sitting easily
on an old tree root, holding in his left hand a cluster of daisies. His
face is turned toward the right shoulder, and the eyes gaze into the
distance. Near by lie a collie dog, a broad bonnet half covering a
well-thumbed song-book, and a rustic flageolet. The costume is taken
from the Nasmyth portrait, which has been followed for the features of
the face.
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ROBERl BURNS.
!
•'i><
11^
* a Rustic Bard.' His poems were all written in youth or
young manhood ; (he was little more than a young man
when he died). His collected works, in giving everything,
are nearly one half first drafts. His brightest hit is his use
of the Scotch patois, so full of terms flavored like wild fruit
or berries. Then I should make an allowance to Burns
which cannot be made for any other poet. Curiously, even
the frequent crudeness, haste, deficiencies, (flatness and
puerilities by no means absent), prove upon the whole not
out of keeping in any comprehensive collection of his
works, heroically printed, * following copy,' every piece,
every line according to originals. Other poets might
tremble for such boldness, such rawness. In *This odd
kind chiel' such points hardly mar the rest. Not only are
they in consonance with the underlying spirit of the pieces,
but complete the full abandon and veracity of the farm-
fields, and the home-brewed flavor of the Scotch vernacular.
(Is there not often something in the very neglect, unfinish,
careless nudity, slovenly hiatus, coming from intrinsic
genius, and not ' put on,' that secretly pleases the soul more
than the wrought and re-wrought polish of the most perfect
verse ?) Mark the native spice and untranslatable twang in
the very names of his songs — " O for ane and twenty, Tarn,"
" John Barleycorn," " Last May a braw Wooer," " Rattlin
roarin Willie," "O wert thou in the cauld, cauld blast,"
" Gude e'en to you, Kimmer," " Merry hae I been teething
a Heckle," " O lay ihy loof in mine, lass," and others.
The longer and more elaborated poems of Burns are just
such as would please a natural but homely taste, and cute
but average intellect, and are inimitable in their way. The
"Twa Dogs," (one of the best), with the conversation
between Caesar and Luath, the •* Brigs of Ayr," " the Cotter's
Saturday Night," " Tam O'Shanter "—all will be long read
ROBERT BURNS.
h
"3
I youth or
Dung man
jverything,
: is his use
I wild fruit
to Burns
lusly, even
tness and
whole not
on of his
2ry piece,
ets might
This odd
)t only are
he pieces,
the farm-
ernacular.
unfinish,
intrinsic
soul more
)st perfect
twang in
ty, Tam,"
" Rattlin
Id blast,"
1 teething
ers.
is are just
and cute
ay. The
iversation
e Cotter's
ong read
and re-read and admired, and ever deserve to be. With
nothing profound in any of them, what there is of moral
and plot has an inimitably fresh and racy flavor. If it came
to question, Literature could well afford to send adrift many
a pretensive poem, and even book of poems, before it could
spare these compositions.
Never indeed was there truer utterance in a certain range
of idiosyncracy than by this poet. Hardly a piece of his,
large or small, but has '' snap " and raciness. He puts in
cantering rhyme, (often doggerel), much cutting irony and
idiomatic ear-cuffing of the kirk-deacons — drily good-
natured addresses to his cronies, (he certainly would not
stop us if he were here this moment, from classing that " to
the De'il " among them) — " to Mailie and her Lambs," " to
auld Mare Maggie," ** to a Mouse,"
*' Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie : "
"to a Mountain Daisy," "to a Haggis," "to a Louse,"
**toihe Toothache," &c. — ^and occasionally to his brother
bards and lady or gentleman patrons, often with strokes
of tenderest sensibility, idiopathic humor, and genuine
poetic imagination — still oftener with shrewd, original,
sheeny, steel-flashes of wit, home-spun sense, or lance-
blade puncturing. Then, strangely, the basis of Burns's
character, with all its fun and manliness, was hypochondria,
the blues, palpable enough in "Despondency," "Man was
made to Mourn," " Address to Ruin," a " Bard's Epitaph,"
&c. From such deep-down elements sprout up, in very
contrast and paradox, those riant utterances of which a
superficial reading will not detect the hidden foundation.
Yet nothing is clearer to me than the black and desperate
background behind those pieces — as I shall now specify
them. I find his most characteristic, Nature's masterly
X94
ROBERT BURNS.
touch and luxuriant life-blood, color and heat, not in " Tain
O'Shanter," "the Cotter's Saturday Night," ''Scots wha
hae," " Highland Mary," " the Twa' Dogs," and the like,
but in "the Jolly Beggars," **Rigs of Barley," "Scotch
Drink," " the Epistle to John Rankine," " Holy Willie's
Prayer," and in " Halloween,'' &c. In these compositions,
especially the first, there is much indelicacy, (some editions
flatly leave it out), but the composer reigns alone, with
handling free and broad and true, and is an artist You
may see and feel the man indirectly in his other verses, all
of them, with more or less life-likeness — but these I have
named last call out pronouncedly in his own voice,
**' "I, Rob, am here." ' '
Finally, in any summing-up of Burns, though so much is
to be said in the way of fault-finding, drawing black marks,
and doubtless severe literary criticism — (in the present out- !■
pouring I have 'kept myself in,' rather than allowed any
free flow) — after full retrospect of his works and life, the
" odd-kind chiel " remains to my heart and brain as almost
the tenderest, manliest, (even if contradictory), dearest flesh-
and-blood figure in all the streams and clusters of by-gone
poets.
/"
n "Tam
:ots wha
the like,
" Scotch
Willie's
)ositions,
editions
ne, with
St You
erses, all ,.,
;e I have
much is
k marks,
sent out-
wed any
life, the
IS almost
est flesh-
by-gone
A WORD ABOUT TENNYSON.
BEAUTIFUL as the song was, the original • Locksley
Hall ' of half a century ago was essentially morbid,
heart-broken, finding fault with everything, especially the
fact of money's being made (as it ever must be, and perhaps
should be) the paramount matter in worldly affairs.
Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to golden keys.
First, a father, having fallen in battle, his child (the singer)
Was left a trampled crphan, and a selfish uncle's ward. *
Of course love ensues. The woman in the chant or
monologue proves a false one ; and as far as appears the
ideal of woman, in the poet's reflections, is a false one, at
any rate for America. Woman is not 'the lesser man.'
(The heart is not the brain.) The best of the piece of fifty
years since is its concluding line :
m
For the mighty wind arises roaring seaward and I go.
Then for this current 1886-7, a just-out sequel, which (as
an apparently authentic summary says) ' reviews the life of
mankind during the past sixty years, and comes to the con-
clusion that its boasted progress is of doubtful credit to the
world in general and to England in particular. A cynical
vein of denunciation of democratic opinions and aspirations
eiii:;
I
if' I
T:.!
!
^ 11:
i;
if
ft?
01. i
Hi
126
A WORD ABOUT TENNYSON,
runs throughout the pjem, in marked contrast with the
spirit of the poet's youth.' Among the most striking lines
of this sequel are the following :
Envy woars the mask of love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn,
Cries to weakest as to strongest, ' Ye are equals, equal-born.'
Equal born ! Oh yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat.
Charm us, orator, till the lion look no larger than the cat ;
Till the cat, through that mirage of overheated language, loom
Larger than the lion Demos — end in working its own doom.
Tumble nature heel o'er head, and, yelling with the yelling street,
Set the feet above the brain and swear the brain is in the feet.
Bring the old Dark Ages back, without the faith, without the hope
Beneath the State, the Church, the throne, and roll their ruins
down the slope.
I should say that all this is a legitimate consequence of the
tone and convictions of the earlier standards and points of
view. Then some reflections, down to the hard-pan of
this sort of thing.
The course of progressive politics (democracy) is so
certain and resistless, not only in America but in Europe,
that we can well afford the warning calls, threats, checks,
neutralizings, in imaginative literature, or any department,
of such deep-sounding and high-soaring voices as Carlyle's
and Tennyson's. Nay, the blindness, excesses, of the
prevalent tendency — the dangers of the urgent trends of
our times — in my opinion, need such voices almost more
than any. I should, too, call it a signal instance of demo-
cratic humanity's luck that it has such enemies to contend
with — so candid, so fervid, so heroic. But why do I say
enemy ? Upon the whole is not Tennyson — and was not
Carlyle (like an honest and stern physician) — the true
friend of our age ?
Let me assume to pass verdict, or perhaps momentary
A WORD ABOUT TENNYSOI^,
127
with the
:ing lines
scorn,
rn.'
loom
m.
g street,
feet.
the hope
:heir ruins
ce of the
points of
d-pan of
:y) is so
Europe,
1, checks,
jartment,
Carlyle's
of the
rends of
ost more
Df demo-
contend
io I say
was not
the true
>mentary
judgment, for the United Slates on this poet — a removed
and distant position giving some advantages over a nigh
one. What is Tennyson's service to his race, times, and
especially to America? First, I should say, his personal
character. He is not to be mentioned as a rugged, evolu-
tionary, aboriginal force — but (and a great lesson is in it)
he has been consistent throughout with the native, per-
sonal, healthy, patriotic spinal element and promptings of
himself. His moral line is local and conventional, but it is
vital and genuine. He reflects the upper-crust of his time,
its pale cast of thought — even its ennui. Then the simile
of my friend John Burroughs is entirely true, * his glove is
a glove of silk, but the hand is a hand of iron.' He shows
how one can be a royal laureate, quite elegant and
'aristocratic,' and a little queer and affected, and at the
same time perfectly manly and natural. As to his non-
democracy, it fits him well, and I like him the better for it.
I guess we all like to have (I am sure I do) some one who
presents those sides of a thought, or possibility, different
from our own — different, and yet with a sort of home-
likeness — a tartness and contradiction offsetting the theory
as we view it, and construed from tastes and proclivities not
all our own.
To me, Tennyson shows more than any poet I know
(perhaps has been a warning to me) how much there is in
finest verbalism. There is such a latent charm in mere
words, cunning coUocutions, and in the voice ringing them,
which he has caught and brought out, beyond all others —
as in the line,
And hollow, hollow, hollow, all delight,
in * The Passing of Arthur,' and evidenced in * The Lady
of Shalott,' ' The Deserted House,' and many other pieces.
:
\
128
A WORD ABOUT TENNYSON,
Among the best (I often linger over them again and again)
are 'Lucretius,' 'The Lotos Eaters,' and *The Northern
Farmer.* His mannerism is great, but it is a noble and
welcome mannerism. His very best work, to me, is con-
tained in the books of 'The Idyls of the King,' all of them,
and all that has grown out of them. Though indeed we ;
could spare nothing of Tennyson, however small or how-
ever peculiar — not 'Break, Break,' nor 'Flower in the
Crannied Wall' nor the old, eternally told passion of
'Edward Gray;'
Love may come and love may go,
And fly like a bird from iree to tree ;
But I will love no more, no more,
Till Ellen Adair come back to me.
Yes, Alfred Tennyson's is a superb character, and will
help give illustriousness, through the long roll of time, to
our Nineteenth Century. In its bunch of orbic names,
shining like a constellation of stars, his will be one of the
brightest. His very faults, doubts, swervings, doublings
upon himself, have been typical of our age. We are like
the voyagers of a ship, casting off for new seas, distant
shores. We would still dwell in the old suffocs Ing and
dead haunts, remembering and magnifying their pleasant
experiences only, and more than once impelled to jump
ashore before it is too late, and stay where our fathers
stayed, and live as they lived.
May-be I am non-literary and non-decorous (let me at
least be human, and pay part of my debt) in this word
about Tennyson. I want him to realize that here is a great
and ardent Nation that absorbs his songs, and has a respect
and affection for him personally, as almost for no other
foreigner. I want this word to go to the old man at
<•'
A WORD ABOUT TENNYSON,
ind again)
Northern
noble and
ne, is con-
U of them,
indeed we
.11 or how-
ler in the
passion of
129 «
Farringford as conveying no more than the simple truth ;
and that truth (a little Christmas gift) no slight one either.
I have written impromptu, and shall let it all go at that.
The readers of more than fifty millions of people in the New
World not only owe to him some of their most agreeable
and healthy hours, but he has entered into the formative
influences of character here, not only in the Atlantic cities,
but inland and far West, out in Missouri, in Kansas, and
away in Oregon, in farmer's house and miner's cabin.
Best thanks, anyhow, to Alfred Tennyson — thanks and
appreciation in America's name.
[
jr, and will
of time, to
bic names,
one of the
doublings
We are like
eas, distant
jcc Ing and
eir pleasant
id to jump
our fathers
'
(let me at
n this word
re is a great
as a respect
or no other
old man at
If
)t
i f
*' HOW I IMADE A BOOK."
MY friends have more than once suggested — or maybe
the garruHty of advancing age is possessing me —
some embryonic facts of " Leaves of Grass," and how I
entered upon them. Dr. Bucke has already fully and fairly
described the preparation of my poetic field, with the
particular and general plowing, planting, seeding and
occupation of the ground, till everything was fertilized,
rooted and ready to start its own way for good or bad.
Along in my i6th year I had become possessor of a stout,
well-crammed looo page octavo volume (I have it yet),
containing Walter Scott's poetry entire — an inexhaustible
mine and treasury of poetic study (especially the endless
forests and jungles of notes) — has been so to me for fifty
years, and remains so to this day.
Later, at intervals, I used to go off, sometimes for a week
at a stretch, down in the country, or to Long Island's
seashores — there, in the presence of outdoor influences, I
went over thoroughly the Old and New Testaments, and
absorbed (probably to better advantage for me than in any
library or indoor room — k makes such difference wAere
you read), Shakspere, Ossian, the best versions I could
get of Homer, Eschylus, Sophocles, the old German
Nibelungen, the ancient Hindoo poems and one or two
''HOW J MADE A BOOK}
131
3r maybe
ing me —
id how I
and fairly
with the
ling and
fertilized,
lad.
Df a stout,
it yet),
chaustible
endless
e for fifty
or a week
Island's
uences, I
lents, and
an in any
ce where
> I could
German
c or two
other masterpieces, Dante's among them. As it happened,
I read the latter mostly in an old wood. The Iliad
(Buckley's prose version) I read first thoroughly on the
peninsula of Orient, Northeast end of Long Island, in a
sheltered hollow of rocks and sand, with the sea on each
side. I have wondered since why I was not overwhelmed
by those mighty masters. Likely because I read them, as
described, in the full presence of nature, under the sun,
with the far-spreading landscape and vistas, or the sea
rolling in.
Toward the last I had among much else look'd over
Edgar Poe's poems — of which I was not an admirer, tho' I
always saw that beyond their lin?ited range of melody (like
perpetual chimes of music bells, ringing from lower b flat
up to g) they were expressions, and perhaps never excelled
ones, of certain pronounced phases of human morbidity.
(The Poetic area is very spacious — has so many mansions !)
But I was repaid in Poe's prose by the idea that (at any
rate for our occasion, our day) there can be no such thing
as a long poem. The same thought had been haunting my
mind before, but Poe's argument, though short, work'd the
sum out and proved it to me.
Another point had an early settlement, clearing the
ground greatly. I saw, from the time my enterprise and
questionings positively shaped themselves (how best can I
express my own era and surroundings, America, Demo-
cracy ?) that the trunk and centre whence the answer was
to radiate, and to which all should return from straying
however far a distance, must be an identical body and
soul, a Personality — which personality, after many consider-
ations and ponderings I deliberately settled should be
myself— indeed could not be any other. I felt strongly
(whether 1 have shown it or not) that to the true and full
I
132
''HOW I MADE A BOOK:'
;il: i
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If -
■.«
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estimate of the Present, both the Past and the Future are
main considerations.
These, however, and much more might have gone on and
come to naught (almost positively would have come to
naught) if a sudden, vast, terrible, direct and indirect
stimulus for new and national poetic expression had not
been given to me. It is certain, I say, that, although I had
made a start before, only from the occurrence of the Seces-
sion War, and what it show'd me by flashes of lightning,
with the emotional depths it sounded and arous'd (of
course, I don't mean in my own heart only, I saw it just as
plainly in others, in millions) — that only from the strong
flare and provocation of that war's sights and scenes, the
final reasons-for-being of an autochthonic American song
definitely came forth.
I went down to the war field in Virginia (end of 1862),
lived thenceforward in camp — saw great battles and the
days and nights afterward — all the fluctuations, glocn,
despair, hopes again arous'd, courage evoked — death readily
risk'd — the cause^ too — along and filling those agonistic and
lurid years, 1863-4-5 — the real parturition years (more than
1776-83) of this henceforth homogeneous Union. Without
those three or four years, my " Leaves of Grass," as they
stand, would not now be existing.
But I set out with the intention also of indicating or hint-
ing some point-characteristics which I since see (though I
did not then, at least not definitely) were bases and urgings
toward those " Leaves " from the first. The word I myself
put primarily for the description of them is the word Sug-
gestiveness. I round and finish little, if anything; and
could not, consistently with my scheme. The reader will
always have his or her part to do, just as much as I have
had mine. I seek less to state or display any theme or
r;pi
''HOW I MADE A BOOK."
133
ture are
\ on and
come to
indirect
had not
Th I had
e Seces-
ightning,
us'd (of
t just as
e strong
;nes, the
:an song
)f 1862),
and the
gl00.il,
h readily
istic and
ore than
Without
as they
; or hint-
ihough I
i urgings
I myself
ord Sug-
ng; and
ader will
IS I have
heme or
thought, and more to bring you, reader, into the atmos-
phere of the theme or thought — there to pursue your own
fl''3ht.
Another impetus-word is Comradeship as for all lands,
and in a more commanding and acknowledged sense than
hitherto. Other word-signs would be Good Cheer, Content
and Hope. The chief trait of any given poet is always the
spirit he brings to the observation of humanity and Nature
— the mood out of which he contemplates his subjects.
What kind of temper and what amount of faith report these
things? Up to how recent a date is the song carried?
What the equipment, and special raciness of the singer —
what his tinge of coloring ? The last value of artistic
expressers, past and present — Greek aesthetes, Shakspere, or
in our own day Tennyson, Victor Hugo, Carlyle, Emerson
— is certainly involved in such questions.
I say the profoundest service that poems or any other
writings can do for their reader is not merely to satisfy the
intellect or supply something polished and interesting, nor
even to depict great passions, or persons or events, but to
fill him with vigorous and clean manliness, religiousness,
and give him good heart as a radical possession and habit.
The educated world seems to have been growing more and
more ennuyed for ages, leaving to our time the inheritance
of it all. Fortunately there is the original inexhaustible
fund of buoyancy, normally resident in the race, forever
eligible to be appealed to and relied on.
As for native American individuality, though certain to
contain on a large scale the distinctive and ideal type of
Western character (as consistent with the operative political
and even money-making features of United States humanity
in the Nineteenth Century as chosen knights, gentlemen
and warriors were the ideals of the centuries of European
1^ !
!«
M.
'\ I
1^
If
SI !:■
'If.
Hi
it:
134
"//C> Jr I AfADE A BOOK"
feudalism) it has not yet appear'd. I have allowed the
stress of my poems from beginning to end to bear upon
American individuality and assist it — (not only because that
is a great lesson in Nature, amid all her generalizing laws,
but as counterpoise to the levelling tendencies of Democracy
— and for other reasons.
Defiant of ostensible literary and other conventions I
avowedly chant " the great pride of man in himself," and
permit it to be more or less a motif of nearly all my verse.
I think this pride indispensable to an American. I think it
not inconsistent with obedience, humility, deference and
self-questioning.
Democracy has been so retarded and jeopardized by
powerful personalities that its first instincts are fain to clip,
conform, bring in stragglers and reduce everything to a
dead level. While the ambitious thought of my song is to
help the forming of a great aggregate nation, it is, perhaps,
altogether through the forming of myriads of fully developed
and enclosing individuals. Welcome as are equality's and
fraternity's doctrines and popular education, a certain
liability accompanies them all, as we see That primal and
interior something in man, in his soul's abysms, coloring all,
and, by exceptional fruitions, giving the last majesty to him
— something continually touched upon and attained by the
old poems and ballads of feudalism and often the principal
foundation of them — modern science and democracy appear
to be endangering, perhaps eliminating.
The new influences, upon the whole, are surely preparing
the way for grander individualities than ever. To-day and
here, personal force is behind everything, just the same.
The times and depictions from the Iliad to Shakspere
inclusive can happily never again be realized — but the
elements of courageous and lofty manhood are unchanged.
''HOW I MADE A BOOK."
135
wed the
ar upon
luse that
ng laws,
mocracy
ntions I
lelf," and
ny verse.
[ think it
:nce and
dized by
1 to clip,
ing to a
ong is to
I perhaps,
eveloped
lity's and
certain
imal and
oring all,
ty to him
=d by the
principal
:y appear
)reparing
day and
le same,
hakspere
-but the
langed.
Thus the working-man and working woman were to be
in my pages from first to last. The ranges of heroism and
loftiness with which Greek and feudal poets endowed their
god-like or lordly born characters- indeed prouder and
better based and with fuller ranges than those— I was to
endow the democratic averages of America's men and
women. I was to show that we, here and to-day, are
eligible to the grandest and the best— more eligible now
than any times of old were. I will also want my utterances
(I said to myself before beginning) to be in spirit the poems
of the morning. They were founded and mainly written
in the sunny forenoon and early midday of my life. I will
want them to be the poems of women entirely as much as
men. I have wished to put the complete union of tlie
states in my songs without any partiality whatever. Hence-
forth, if they live and are read, it must be just as much
South as North— just as much along the Pacific as Atlantic
— in the valley of the Mississippi, in Canada, up in Maine,
down in Texas and on the shores of Puget Sound.
From another point of view " Leaves of Grass " is
avowedly the song of Sex and Animality — though meanings
that do not usually go along with those words are behind
all, and will duly emerge ; and all are sought to be lifted
into a different light and atmosphere. Of this feature,
intentionally palpable in a few lines, I shall only say the
espousing principle of those few lines so gives breath of life
to my whole scheme that the bulk of the pieces might as
well have been left unwritten were those lines omitted.
Difficult as it will be, it has become, in my opinion, im-
perative to achieve a shifted attitude from superior men
and women towards the thought and fact of sexuality, as an
element in character, personality, the emotions, and a theme
in literature. I am not going to argue the question by
1^6
''HOW J MADE A BOOK.''
itself; it does not stand by itself. The vitality of it is
altogether in its relations, bearings, significance — like the
clef of a symphony. At last analogy the lines I allude to
and the spirit in which they are spoken permeate all
" Leaves of Grass," and the work must stand or fall with
them, as the identified human body and soul must remain
as an entirety.
Universal as are certain facts and symptoms of communi-
ties or individuals all times, there is nothing so rare in
modern conventions and poetry as their normal recognizance.
Literature is always calling in the doctor for consultation
and confession, and always giving evasions and swathing
suppressions in place of that " heroic nudity " (" Nineteenth
Century," July, 1883) on which only a genuine diagnosis of
serious cases can be built. And in respect to editions of
"Leaves of Grass" in time to come (if there should be
such) I take occasion now to confirm those lines with the
settled convictions and deliberate renewals of thirty years,
and to hereby prohibit, as far as word of mine can do so,
any elision of them.
Then still a purpose enclosing all, and over and beneath
all. Ever since what might be called thought, or the bud-
ding of thought, fairly began in my youthful mind I had
had a desire to attempt some worthy record of that entire
faith and acceptance ("to justify the ways of God to man"
is Milton's well-known and ambitious phrase) which is the
foundation of moral America. I felt it all as positively
then in my young days as I do now in my old ones. To
formulate a poem whose every line should directly or
indirectly be an implicit belief in the wisdom, health,
mystery, beauty of every process, every concrete object,
every human or other existence, not only considered from
the point of view of all, but of each. While I can not
'<*!>
'*HOW I MADE A BOOK:'
m «
of it is
-like the
allude to
leate all
fall with
it remain
ommuni-
) rare in
gnizance.
isultation
swathing
ineteenth
[gnosis of
ditions of
hould be
j with the
rty years,
vn. do so,
I beneath
the bud-
id I had
lat entire
to man"
:h is the
Dositively
nes. To
ectly or
health,
object,
red from
can not
understand it or argue it out, I fully believe in each clue
and purpose in Nature, entire and several; and that in-
visible spiritual results, just as real and definite as the
visible, eventuate all concrete life and all materialism,
through Time. The book ought to emanate buoyancy and
gladness, too, for it was grown out of those elements and
has been the comfort of my life since it was originally com-
menced. I should be willing to jaunt the whole life over
again, with all its worldly failures and serious detriments,
deficiencies and denials, to get the happiness of retraveling
that part of the road.
One genesis-motive of the verses was my conviction that
the crowning growth of the United States is to be spiritual
and heroic. To help start and favor that growth — or even
to call attention to it, or the need of it — is the beginning,
middle and final purpose of " Leaves of Grass." In fact,
when really ciphered out and summed to the last, plowing
up in earnest the interminable average fallows of humanity,
not ** good government " merely, in the common sense, is
the justification and main purpose of these States.
Isolated advantages in any rank or grace or fortune — the
direct or indirect threads of all the poetry of the past — are
in my opinion distasteful to the republican genius, and
offer no foundation for its fitting verse. Established poems,
I know, have the very great advantage of chanting the
already performed, so full of glories, reminiscences dear to
the minds of men. But my volume is a candidate for the
future. "All original art," says Taine, anyhow, "is self-
regulated, and no original art can be regulated from with-
out ; — it carries its own counterpoise and does not receive it
from elsewhere— lives on its own blood " — a solace to mj
frequent bruises and sulky vanity.
As the present is perhaps mainly an attempt at personal
J J
I
i
1:
i
138
'*//Oiy I MADE A BOOKr
\ \
I!
il"
* /
Statement or illustration, I will allow myself as further help
to extract the following anecdote from a book, " Annals of
Old Painters," conned by me in youth. Rubens, the
Flemish painter, in one of his wanderings through the
galleries of old convents, came across a singular work.
After looking at it thoughtfully for a good while, and
listening to the criticisms of his suite of students, he said to
the latter, in answer to their questions (as to what school
the work implied or belonged, etc.) : " I do not believe the
artist, unknown and perhaps no longer living, who has
given the world this legacy ever belonged to any school, or
even painted anything but this one picture, which is a
personal affair — a piece out of a man's life.'*
No one will get at my verses who insists upon viewing
them as a literary performance, or attempt at such per-
formance, or as aiming mainly toward art or sestheticism.
I hope to go on record for something different — something
better, if I may dare to say so. If I rested " Leaves of
Grass" on the usual claims — if I did not feel that the
deepest moral, social, political purposes of America (aye, of
the modern world,) are the underlying endeavors at least of
my pages ; that the geography and hydrography of this
continent, the Prairies, the St. Lawrence, Ohio, the
Carolinas, Texas, Missouri are the real current concrete — I
should not dare to have them put in type and printed and
offered for sale.
I say no land or people or circumstances ever existed so
needing a race of singers and poems differing from all others
and rigidly their own as the land and people and circum-
stances of our United States need such singers and poems
to-day and for the future. Still further, as long as the
States continue to absorb and be domiciled by the poetry of
the Old World and to remain unsupplied with autochthonous
t'*i
''HOW I MADE A BOOK^
139
ker help
nnals of
ins, the
jgh the
X work,
ile, and
\ said to
t school
ieve the
(rho has
ihool, or
ich is a
song, to express, vitalize and give color to and define their
material and political success and minister to them dis-
tinctively, so long will they stop short of first-class
nationality and remain defective.
I conclude with two items for the imaginative genius of
the West, when it worthily rises — First, what Herder taught
to the young Goethe, that really great poetry is always (like
the Homeric or Biblical canticles) the result of a national
spirit, and not the privilege of a polished and select few ;
second, that the strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to
be sung.
viewing
iich per-
leticism.
imething
eaves of
that the
, (aye, of
t least of
of this
110, the
Crete — I
ited and
cisted so
ill others
circum-
d poems
I as the
poetry of
ithonous
//
' t
FIVE THOUSAND POEMS.
n
THERE have been collected in a cluster nearly five
thousand big and little American poems — all that
diligent and long-continued research could lay hands on !
The author of * Old Grimes is Dead ' commenced it, more
than fifty years ago ; then the cluster was passed on and
accumulated by C. F. Harris ; then further passed on and
added to by the late Senator Anthony, from whom the
whole collection has been bequeathed to Brown University.
A catalogue (such as it is) has been made and published of
these five thousand poems — and is probably the most
curious and suggestive part of the whole affair. At any
rate it has led me to some abstract reflections like the
following.
I should like, for myself, to put on record my devout ac-
knowledgment not only of the great masterpieces of the
past, but of the benefit of a// poets, past and present, and of
a// poetic utterance — in its entirety the dominant moral
factor of humanity's progress. In view of that progress and
of evolution, the religious and aesthetic elements, the dis-
tinctive and most important of any, seem to me more
indebted to poetry than to all other means and influences
combined. In a very profound sense religion is the poetry
of huiiianity. Then the points of union and rapport among
all the poems and poets of the world, however wide their
C:;
FIVE THOUSAND POEMS.
141
early five
—all that
ands on!
i it, more
1 on and
d on and
vhom the
Fniversity.
Wished of
;he most
At any
like the
evout ac-
es of the
It, and of
int moral
eress and
the dis-
ne more
nfluences
le poetry
rt among
ide their
.
separations of time and place and theme, are much more
numerous and weighty than the points of contrast. With-
out relation as they may seem at first sight, the whole
earth's poets and poetry — en masse — the Oriental, the
Greek, and what there is of Roman — the oldest myths — the
interminable ballad-romances of the Middle Ages — the
hymns and psalms of worship — the epics, plays, swarms of
lyrics of the British Islands, or the Teutonic old or new —
or modern French — or what there is in America, Bryant's,
for instance, or Whittier's or Longfellow's — the verse of all
tongues and ages, all forms, all subjects from primitive
times to our own day inclusive — really combine in one
aggregate and electric globe or universe, with all its number-
less parts and radiations, held together by a common centre
or verteber. To repeat it, all poetry thus has (to the point
of view comprehensive enough) more features of resem-
blance than difference, and becomes essentially, like the
planetary globe itself, compact and orbic and whole. Even
science has sometimes to vail or bow her majestic head to
her imaginative sister. That there should be a good deal
of waste land and many sterile spots is doubtless an inher-
ent necessity of the case — perhaps that the greater part of
the rondure should be waste (at least until brought out,
discovered). Nature seems to sow countless seeds — makes
incessant crude attempts — thankful to get now and then,
even at rare and long intervals, something approximately
good.
tfl
NOTES LEFT OVER.
I' 'I
' *l
k. I.
NATIONALITY— (AND YET.)
IT is more and more clear to me that the main sustenance
for highest separate personality, these States, is to
come from that general sustenance of the aggregate, (as air,
earth, rains, give sustenance to a tree) — and that such
personality, by democratic standards, will only be fully
coherent, grand and free, through the cohesion, grandeur
and freedom of the common aggregate, the Union. Thus
the existence of the true American continental solidarity of
the future, depending on myriads of superb, large-sized,
emotional and physically perfect individualities, of one sex
just as much as the other, the supply of such individualities,
in my opinion, wholly depends on a compacted imperial
ensemble. The theory and practice of both sovereignties,
contradictory as they are, are necessary. As the centripetal
law were fatal alone, or the centrifugal law deadly and
destructive alone, but together forming the law of eternal
kosmical action, evolution, preservation, and life — so, by
itself alone, the fullness of individuality, even the sanest,
would surely destroy itself. This is what makes the import-
ance to the identities of these States of the thoroughly
fused, relentless, dominating Union — a moral and spiritual
idea, subjecting all the parts with remorseless power, more
needed by American democracy than by any of history's
NOTES LEFT OVER.
r-tr-
M3
sustenance
ites, is to
Lte, (as air,
that such
r be fully
, grandeur
on. Thus
jlidarity of
arge-sized,
)f one sex
(ridualities,
d imperial
'ereignties,
centripetal
eadly and
of eternal
e— so, by
le sanest,
le import-
horoughly
spiritual
wer, more
history's
liitherto empires or feudalities, and the sine qua non of
( arrying out the republican principle to develop itself in the
New World through hundreds, thousands of years to come.
Indeed, what most needs fostering through the hundred
years to come, in all parts of the United States, north,
south, Mississippi valley, and Atlantic and Pacific coasts, is
this fused and fervent identity of the individual, whoever he
or she may be, and wherever the place, with the idea and
fact of American totality, and with what is meant by the
Flag, the stars and stripes. We need this conviction of
nationality as a faith, to be absorb'd in the blood and belief
of the people everywhere, south, north, west, east, to
emanate in their life, and in native literature and art We
want the germinal idea that America, inheritor of the past,
is the custodian of the future of humanity. Judging from
history, it is some such moral and spiritual ideas appropriate
to them, (and such ideas only,) that have made the pro-
foundest glory and endurance of nations in the past. The
races of Judea, the classic clusters of Greece and Rome,
and the feudal and ecclesiastical clusters of the Middle
Ages, were each and all vitalized by their separate distinc-
tive ideas, ingrain'd in them, redeeming many sins, and
indeed, in a sense, the principal reason-why for their whole
career.
Then, in the thought of nationality especially for the
United States, and making them original, and different from
all other countries, another point ever remains to be con-
sidered. There are two distinct principles — aye, paradoxes
— at the life-fountain and life-continuation of the States;
one, the sacred principle of the Union, the right of
ensemble, at whatever sacrifice — and yet another, an
equally sacred principle, the right of each State, consider'd
as a separate sovereign individual, in its owii bphere. Some
,1!
i
%\
r
■9
■t
ill
ill !
2*
1^'^
[I
144
NOTES LEFT OVER.
go zealously for one set of these rights, and some as zeal-
ously for the other set. We must have both ; or rather,
bred out of them, as out of mother and father, a third set,
the perennial result and combination of both, and neither
jeopardized. I say the loss or abdication of one set, in the
future, will be ruin to democracy just as much as the loss
of the other set. The problem is, to harmoniously adjust
the two, and the play of the two. [Observe the lesson of
the divinity of Nature, ever checking the excess of one law,
by an opposite, or seemingly opposite law — generally the
other side of the same law.] For the theory of this
Republic is, not that the General government is the
fountain of all life and power, dispensing it forth, around,
and to the remotest portions of our territory, but that the
People are, represented in both, underlying both the
General and State governments, and consider'd just as well
in their individualities and in their separate aggregates, or
States, as consider'd in one vast aggregate, the Union.
This was the original dual theory and foundation of the
United States, as distinguished from the feudal and eccle-
siastical single idea of monarchies and papacies, and the
divine right of kings. (Kings have been of use, hitherto,
as representing the idea of the identity of nations. But, lo
American democracy, both ideas must be fulfill' d, and in my
opinion the loss of vitality of either one will indeed be the
loss of vitality of the other.)
EMERSON'S BOOKS, (THE SHADOWS OF THEM.)
In the regions we call Nature, towering beyond all
measurement, with infinite spread, infinite depth and
height — in those regions, including Man, socially and
historically, with his moral-emotional influences — how small
tne as zeal-
or rather,
I third set,
nd neither
! set, in the
IS the loss
(usly adjust
le lesson of
of one law,
jnerally the
)ry of this
lent is the
th, around,
lit that THE
both the
just as well
gregates, or
the Union,
tion of the
and eccle-
es, and the
je, hitherto,
is. But, lo
, and in my
leed be the
F THEM.)
beyond all
depth and
ocially and
—how small
NOTES LEFT OVER.
MS
W
a part, (it came in my mind to-day,) has literature really
depicted — even summing up all of it, all ages. Seems at
its best some little fleet of boats, hugging the shores of
a boundless sea, and never venturing, exploring the
unmapp'd — never, Columbus-like, sailing out for New
Worlds, and to complete the orb's rondure. Emerson
writes frequently in the atmosphere of this thought, and his
books report one or two things from that very ocean and air,
and more legibly address'd to our age and American polity
than by any man yet. But I will begin by scarifying him —
thus proving that I am not insensible to his deepest lessons.
I will consider his books from a democratic and western
point of view. I will specify the shadows on these sunny
expanses. Somebody has said of heroic character that
" wherever the tallest peaks are present, must inevitably be
deep chasms and valleys." Mine be the ungracious task
(for reasons) of leaving unmention'd both sunny expanses
and sky-reaching heights, to dwell on the bare spote and
darknesses. I have a theory that no artist or work of the
very first class may be or can be without them.
First, then, these pages are perhaps too perfect, too con-
centrated. (How good, for instance, is good butter, good
sugar. But to be eating nothing but sugar and butter all
the time ! even if ever so good.) And though the author
has much to say of freedom and wildness and simplicity
and spontaneity, no performance was ever more based on
artificial scholarships and decorums at third or fourth
removes, (he calls it culture,) and built up from them. It
is always a make^ never an unconscious growth. It is the
porcelain figure or statuette of lion, or stag, or Indian
hunter — and a very choice statuette too — appropriate for the
rosewood or marble bracket of parlor or library ; never the
animal itself, or the hunter himself. Indeed, who wants
10
f
p.
.i
146
NOTES LEFT OVER,
ii
the real animal or hunter ? What would that do amid astral
and bric-a-brac and tapestry, and ladies and gentlemen talk-
ing in subdued tones of Browning and Longfellow and art ?
The least suspicion of such actual bull, or Indian, or of
Nature carrying out itself, would put all those good people
to instant terror and flight.
Emerson, in my opinion, is not most eminent as poet or
artist or teacher, though valuable in all those. He is best
as critic, or diagnoser. Not passion or imagination or warp
or weakness, or any pronounced cause or specialty,
dominates him. Cold and bloodless intellectuality dom-
inates him. (I know the fires, emotions, love, egotisms,
glow deep, perennial, as in all New Englanders — but the
fagade hides them well — they give no sign.) He does not
see or take one side, one presentation only or mainly, (as
all the poets, or most of the fine writers anyhow) — he sees
all sides. His final influence is to make his students cease
to worship anything — almost cease to believe in anything,
outside of themselves. These books will fill, and well fill,
certain stretches of life, certain stages of development — ^are,
(like the tenets or theology the author of them preach'd
when a young man,) unspeakably serviceable and precious
as a stage. But in old or nervous or solemnest or dying
hours, when one needs the impalpably soothing and vitaliz-
ing influences of abysmic Nature, or its affinities in litera-
ture or human society, and the soul resents the keenest
mere intellection, they will not be sought for.
For a philosopher, Emerson possesses a singularly
dandified theory of manners. He seems to have no notion
at all that manners are simply the signs by which the
chemist or metallurgist knows his metals. To the profound
scientist, all metals are profound, as they really are. The
little one, like the conventional world, will make much
NOTES LEFT OVER.
.r-il>
147
;i
lid astral
nen talk-
and art ?
in, or of
d people
s poet or
[e is best
1 or warp
specialty,
lity dom-
egotisms,
—but the
does not
lainly, (as
—he sees
;nts cease
anything,
I well fill,
lent — ^are,
preach'd
precious
or dying
id vitaliz-
in litera-
keenest
singularly
no notion
irhich the
profound
ire. The
ike much
of gold and silver only. Then to the real artist in
humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most
picturesque and significant of all. Suppose these books
becoming absorb'd, the permanent chyle of American
general and particular character — what a well-wash'd and
grammatical, but bloodless and helpless, race we should
turn out 1 No, no, deu* friend ; though the States want
scholars, undoubtedly, and perhaps want ladies and gentle-
men who use the bath frequently, and never laugh loud, or
talk wrong, they don't want scholars, or ladies and gentle-
men, at the expense of all the rest. They want good
farmers, sailors, mechanics, clerks, citizens — perfect busi-
ness and social relations — perfect fathers and mothers. If
we could only have these, or their approximations,
plenty of them, fine and large and sane and generous and
patriotic, they might make their verbs disagree from their
nominatives, and laugh like volleys of musketeers, if they
should please. Of course these are not all America wants,
but they are first of all to be provided on a large scale.
And, with tremendous errors and escapades, this, sub-
stantially, is what the States seem to have an intuition of,
and to be mainly aiming at. The plan of a select class,
superfined, (demarcated from the rest,) the plan of Old
World lands and literatures, is not so objectionable in itself,
but because it chokes the true plan for us, and indeed is
death to it. As to such special class, the United States can
never produce any equal to the splendid show, (far, far
beyond comparison or competition here,) of the principal
European nations, both in the past and at the present day.
But an immense and distinctive commonalty over our vast
and varied area, west and east, south and north — in fact,
for the first time in history, a great, aggregated, real
People, worthy the name, and made of develop'd heroic
I i
■ if
'¥ i
»;.
148
NOTES LEPT over.
individuals, both sexes — is America's principal, perhaps
only, reason for being. If ever accomplish'd, it will be at
least as much, (I lately think, doubly as much,) the result
of fitting and democratic sociologies, literatures and arts —
if we ever get them — as of our democratic politics.
At times it has been doubtful to me if Emerson really
knows or feels what Poetry is at its highest, as in the Bible,
for instance, or Homer or Shakspere. I see he covertly or
plainly likes best superb verbal polish, or something old or
odd — Waller's "Go, lovely rose," or Lovelace's lines "to
Lucusta " — the quaint conceits of the old French bards, and
the like. Of power he seems to have a gentleman's admir-
ation — but in his inmost heart the grandest attribute of
God and Poets is always subordinate to the octaves, con-
ceits, polite kinks, and verbs.
The reminiscence that years ago I began like most
youngsters to have a touch (though it came late, and was
only on the surface) of Emerson-on-the-brain — that I
read his writings reverently, and address'd him in print as
" Master," and for a month or so thought of him as such —
I retain ngt only with composure, but positive satisfaction.
I have noticed that most young people of eager minds pass
through this stage of exercise.
The best part of Emersonianism is, it breeds the giant
that destroys itself. Who wants to be any man's mere
follower? lurks behind every page. No teacher ever
taught, that has so provided for his pupil's setting up
independently— no truer evolutionist.
VENTURES, ON AN OLD THEME.
A Dialogue — One party says — We arrange our lives —
even the best and boldest men and women that exist, just
"If^,,
NOTES LEFT OVER,
perhaps
11 be at
le result
i arts —
in really *^
le Bible,
vertly or
ig old or
ines "to .
ards, and
's admir-
;ribute of
ives, con-
ike most
, and was
—that I
print as
las such —
tisfaction.
inds pass
the giant
m's mere
bher ever
letting up
149
I T
I)
lur lives —
exist, just
as much as the most limited — ^with reference to what society
conventionally rules and makes right We retire to our
rooms for freedom j to undress, bathe, unloose everything
in freedom. These, and much else, would not be proper
in society.
Other party answers — Such is the rule of society. Not
always so, and considerable exceptions still exist. How-
ever, it must be called the general rule, sanction'd by
immemorial usage, and will probably always remain so.
First party — Why, not, then, respect it in your poems ?
Answer — One reason, and to me a profound one, is that
the soul of a man or woman demands, enjoys compensa-
tion in the highest directions for this very restraint of
himself or herself level'd to the average, or rather mean,
low, however eternally practical, requirements of society's
intercourse. To balance this indispensable abnegation, the
free minds of poets relieve themselves, and strengthen and
enrich mankind with free flights in all the directions not
tolerated by ordinary society.
First party — But must not outrage or give offence to it.
Answer — No, not in the deepest sense — ^and do not, and
cannot. The vast averages of time and the race en masse
settle these things. Only understand that the conventional
standards and laws proper enough for ordinary society
apply neither to the action of the soul, nor its poets. In
fact the latter know no laws but the laws of themselves,
planted in them by God, and are themselves the last
standards of the law, and its final exponents — responsible to
Him directly, and not at all to mere etiquette. Often the best
service that can be done to the race, is to lift the veil, at
least for a time, from these rules and fossil-etiquettes.
New Poetry — California, Canada^ Texas — In my
opinion the time has arrived to essentially break down the
t i
*
»5o
I
NOTES LEFT OVER.
barriers of form between prose and poetry. I say the
latter is henceforth to win and maintain its character
regardless of rhyme, and the measurement-rules of iambic,
spondee, dactyl, &c., and that even if rhyme and those
measurements continue to furnish the medium for inferior
writers and themes, (especially for persiflage and the comic,
as there seems henceforward, to the perfect taste, some-
thing inevitably comic in rhyme, merely in itself, and any-
how,) the truest and greatest Poetry^ (while subtly and
necessarily always rhythmic, and distinguishable easily
enough,) can never again, in the English language, be ex-
press'd in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any more than the
greatest eloquence, or the truest power and passion. While
admitting that the venerable and heavenly forms of chiming
versification have in their time play*d great and fitting
parts — that the pensive complaint, the ballads, wars,
amours, legends of Europe, &c., have, many of them, been
inimitably render'd in rhyming verse — that there have been
very illustrious poets whose shapes the mantle of such verse
has beautifully and appropriately envelopt — ^and though the
mantle has fallen, with perhaps added beauty, on some of
our own age — it is, notwithstanding, certain to me, that the
day of such conventional rhyme is ended. In America, at
any rate, and as a medium of highest aesthetic practical or
spiritual expression, present or future, it palpably fails, and
must fail, to serve. The Muse of the Prairies, of California,
Canada, Texas, and of the peaks of Colorado, dismissing
the literary, as well as social etiquette of over-sea feudalism
and caste, joyfully enlarging, adapting itself to comprehend
the size of the whole people, with the free play, emotions,
pride, passions, experiences, that belong to them, body and
soul — to the general globe, and all its relations in astronomy,
as the savans portray them to us — to the modern, the busy
NOTES LEFT OVER.
.' -«»■«■
151
[ say the
character
)f iambic,
ind those
►r inferior
tie comic,
ste, some-
and any-
ubtly and
Die easily
Lge,
be ex-
than the
n. While
)f chiming
md fitting
ids, wars,
lem, been
have been
such verse
lOugh the
some of
;, that the
umerica, at
radical or
r fails, and
California,
dismissing
feudalism
imprehend
emotions,
body and
LStronomy,
, the busy
Nineteenth century, (as grandly poetic as any, only different,)
with steamships, railroads, factories, electric telegraphs,
cylinder presses — to the thought of the solidarity of nations,
the brotherhood and sisterhood of the entire earth — to the
dignity and heroism of the practical labor of farms, factories,
foundries, workshops, mines, or on shipboard, or on lakes
and rivers— resumes that other medium of expression, more
flexible, more eligible — soars to the freer, vast, diviner
heaven of prose.
Of poems of the third or fourth class, (perhaps even some
of the second,) it makes little or no difference who writes
them — they are good enough for what they are ; nor is it
necessary that they should be actual emanations from the
personality and life of the writers. The very reverse some-
times gives piquancy. But poems of the first class, (poems
of the depth, as distinguished from those of the surface,)
are to be sternly tallied with the poets themselves, and tried
by them and their lives. Who wants a glorification of
courage and manly defiance from a coward or a sneak ? —
a ballad of benevolence or chastity from some rhyming
hunks, or lascivious, glib rouk f
In these States, beyond all precedent, poetry will have to
do with actual facts, with the concrete States, and — for we
have not much more than begun — with the definitive
getting into shape of the Union. Indeed I sometimes
think /V alone is to define the Union, (namely, to give it
artistic character, spirituality, dignity.) What American
humanity is most in danger of is an overwhelming prosperity,
" business " worldliness, materialism : what is most lacking,
east, west, north, south, is a fervid and glowing Nationality
and patriotism, cohering all the parts into one. Who may
fend that danger, and fill that lack in the future, but a class
of loftiest poets ?
,■♦
152
NOTES LEFT OVER.
"I
111
•V:
If the United States havn't grown poets, on any scale of
grandeur, it is certain they import, print, and read more
poetry than any equal number of people elsewhere —
probably more than all the rest of the world combined.
Poetry (like a grand personality) is a growth of many
generations — many rare combinations.
To have great poets, there must be great audiences, too.
BRITISH LITERATURE.
To avoid mistake, I would say that I not only commend
the study of this literature, but wish our sources of supply
and comparison vastly enlarged. American students may
well derive from all former lands — from forenoon Greece
and Rome, down to the perturb'd medieval times, the
Crusades, and so to Italy, the German intellect —all the
older literatures, and all the newer ones — from witty and
warlike France, and markedly, and in many ways, and at
many different periods, from the enterprise and soul of the
great Spanish race — bearing ourselves always courteous,
always deferential, indebted beyond measure to the mother-
world, to all its nations dead, as all its nations living — the
offspring, this America of ours, the daughter, not by any
means of the British isles exclusively, but of the continent,
and all continents. Indeed, it is time we should realize
and fully fructify those germs we also hold from Italy,
France, Spain, especially in the best imaginative produc-
tions of those lands, which are, in many ways, loftier and
subtler than the English, or British, and indispensable to
complete our service, proportions, education, reminiscences,
&c. . . . The British element these States hold, and have
always held, enormously beyond its fit proportions. I have
already spoken of Shakspere. He seems to me of astral
^f^
NOTES LEFT OVER,
153
scale of
d more
where —
ed.
)f many
Bs, too.
ommcnd
•f supply
ints may
1 Greece
[lies, the
—all the
ritty and
3, and at
il of the
Durteous,
I mother-
ing — the
by any
ontinent,
realize
m Italy,
produc-
tier and
sable to
iscences,
.nd have
I have
of astral
genius, first class, entirely fit for feudalism. His contribu-
tions, especially to the literature of the passions, are
immense, forever dear to humanity — and his name is always
to be reverenced in America, But there is much in him
ever offensive to democracy. He is not only the tally of
feudalism, but I should say Shakspere is incarnated, uncom-
promising feudalism, in literature. Then one seems to
detect something in him — I hardly know how to describe
it — even amid the dazzle of his genius ; and, in inferior
manifestations, it is found in nearly all leading British
authors. (Perhaps we will have to import the words Snob,
Snobbish, &c., after all.) While of the great poems of
Asian antiquity, the Indian epics, the book of Job, the
Ionian Iliad, the unsurpassedly simple, loving, perfect idyls
of the life and death of Christ, in the New Testament,
(indeed Homer and the Biblical utterances intertwine
familiarly with us, in the main,) and along down, of most of
the characteristic, imaginative or romantic relics ot the
continent, as the Cid, Cervantes' Don Quixote, &c., I
should say they substantially adjust themselves to us, and,
far off as they are, accord curiously with our bed and board
today, in New York, Washington, Canada, Ohio, Texas,
California — and with our notions, both of seriousness and
of fun, and our standards of heroism, manliness, and even
the democratic requirements — those requirements are not
only not fulfilled in the Shaksperian productions, but are
insulted on every page.
I add that — ^while England is among the greatest of lands
in political freedom, or the idea of it, and in stalwart
personal character, &c. — the spirit of English literature is
not great, at least is not greatest — and its products are no
models for us. With the exception of Shakspere, there is no
first-class genius in that literature — whfch, with a truly vast
154
NOTES LEFT OVER.
I!
f if* I
if-*!
tl
amount of value, and of artificial beauty, (largely from the
classics,) is almost always material, sensual, not spiritual —
almost always congests, makes plethoric, hot frees, expands,
dilates — is cold, anti-democratic, loves to be sluggish and
stately, and shows much of that characteristic of vulgar
persons, the dread of saying or doing something not at all
improper in itself, but unconventional, and that may be
laugh'd at. In its best, the sombre pervades it ; it is
moody, melancholy, and, to give it its due, expresses, in
characters and plots, those qualities, in an unrival'd manner.
Yet not as the black thunderstorms, and in great normal,
crashing passions, of the Greek dramatists — clearing the air,
refreshing afterward, bracing with power ; but as in
Hamlet, moping, sick, uncertain, and leaving ever after a
secret taste for the blues, the morbid fascination, the luxury
of wo. . . .
I strongly recommend all the young men and young
women of the United States to whom it may be eligible, to
overhaul the well-freighted fleets, the literatures of Italy,
Spain, France, Germany, so full of those elements of
freedom, self-possession, gay-heartedness, subtlety, dilation,
needed in preparations for the future of the States. I only
wish we could have really good translations. I rejoice at
the feeling for Oriental researches and poetry, and hope it
will go on.
DARWINISM— (THEN FURTHERMORE.)
Running through prehistoric ages — coming down from
them into the daybreak of our records, founding theology,
suffusing literature, and so brought onward — (a sort of
verteber and marrow to all the antique races and lands,
Egypt, India, Greece, Rome, the Chinese, the Jews, &c.,
NOTES LEFT OVER.
-I
155
' from the
spiritual —
, expands,
ggish and
of vulgar
not at all
It may be
; it; it is
presses, in
d manner,
at normal,
ng the air,
)ut as in
rer after a
the luxury
md young
eligible, to
of Italy,
2ments of
y, dilation,
is. I only
rejoice at
nd hope it
RE.)
iown from
theology,
(a sort of
and lands,
Jews, &c.,
and giving cast and complexion to their art, poems, and
their politics as well as ecclesiasticism, all of which we more
or less inherit,) appear those venerable claims to origin
from God himself, or from gods and goddesses — ancestry
from divine beings of vaster beauty, size, and power than
ours. But in current and latest times, the theory of human
origin that seems to have most made its mark, (curiously
reversing the antique,) is that we have come on, originated,
developt, from monkeys, baboons — a theory more significant
perhaps in its indirections, or what it necessitates, than it is
even in itself. (Of the twain, far apart as they seem, and
angrily as their conflicting advocates to-day oppose each
other, are not both theories to be possibly reconciled, and
even blended? Can we, indeed, spare either of them?
Better still, out of them is not a third theory, the real one,
or suggesting the real one, to arise ?)
Of this old theory, evolution, as broach'd anew, trebled,
with indeed all-devouring claims, by Darwin, it has so much
in it, and is so needed as a counterpoise to yet widely
prevailing and unspeakably tenacious, enfeebling super-
stitions — is fused, by the new man, into such grand, modest,
truly scientific accompaniments — that the world of eru-
dition, both moral and physical, cannot but be eventually
better'd and broaden'd in its speculations, from the advent
of Darwinism. Nevertheless, the problem of origins,
human and other, is not the least whit nearer its solution.
In due time the Evolution theory will have to abate its
vehemence, cannot be allow'd to dominate every thing else,
and will have to take its place as a segment of the circle,
the cluster — as but one of many theories, many thoughts,
of profoundest value — and re-adjusting and differentiating
much, yet leaving the divine secrets just as inexplicable and
unreachable as before — may-be more so.
!
i
156
NOTES LEFT OVER.
p.
Then furthermore — What is finally to be done by priest
or poet — and by priest or poet only — amid all the
stupendous and dazzling novelties of our century, with the
advent of America, and of science and democracy — remains
just as indispensable, after all the work of the grand
astronomers, chemists, linguists, historians, and explorers of
the last hundred years — and the wondrous German and
other metaphysicians of that time — and will continue to
remain, needed, America and here, just the same as in the
world of Europe, or Asia, of a hundred, or a thousand, or
several thousand years ago. I think indeed more needed,
to furnish statements from the present points, the added
arriere, and the unspeakably immenser vistas of to-day.
Only the priests and poets of the modern, at least as exalted
as any in the past, fully absorbing and appreciating the
results of the past, in the commonalty of all humanity, all
time, (the main results already, for there is perhaps nothing
more, or at any rate not much, strictly new, only more
important modern combinations, and new relative adjust-
ments,) must indeed recast the old metal, the already
achiev'd material, into and through new moulds, current
forms.
Meantime, the highest and subtlest and broadest truths
of modern science wait for their true assignment and last
vivid flashes of light — as Democracy waits for it's — through
first-class metaphysicians and speculative philosophs —
laying the basements and foundations for those new,
more expanded, more harmonious, more melodious, freer
American poems.
"SOCIETY."
T have myself little or no hope from what is technically
called "Society" in our American cities. New York, of
by priest
all the
with the
-remains
le grand
plorers of
nan and
itinue to
as in the
Lisand, or
needed,
le added
f to-dav.
LS exalted
iting the
lanity, all
5 nothing
ily more
1 adjust-
already
current
it truths
and last
-through
)sophs —
se new,
us, freer
:hnically
iTork, of
NOTES LEFT OVER.
157
which place I have spoken so sharply, still promises some-
thing, in time, out of its tremendous and varied materials,
with a certain superiority of intuitions, and the advantage of
constant agitation, and ever new and rapid dealings of the
cards. Of Boston, with its circles of social mummies, swathed
in cerements harder than brass — its bloodless religion,
(I^nitarianism,) its complacent vaaity of scientism and
literature, lots of grammatical correctness, mere knowledge,
(always wearisome, in itself) — its zealous abstractions, ghosts
of reforms — I should say, (ever admitting its business
powers, its sharp, almost demoniac, intellect, and no lack,
in its own way, of courage and generosity) — there is, at
present, little of cheering, satisfying sign. In the West,
California, &c., " society " is yet unform'd, puerile, seemingly
unconscious of anything above a driving business, or to
liberally spend the money made by it, in the usual rounds
and shows.
Then there is, to the humorous observer of American
attempts at fashion, according to the models of foreign
courts and saloons, quite a comic side — particularly visible
at Washington city — a sort of high-life-below-stairs business.
As if any farce could be funnier, for instance, than the
scenes of the crowds, winter nights, meandering around our
Presidents and their wives, cabinet officers, western or other
Senators, Representatives, &c. ; born of good laboring me-
chanic or farmer stock and antecedents, attempting those
full-dress receptions, finesse of parlors, foreign ceremonies,
etiquettes, &c.
Indeed, consider'd with any sense of propriety, or any
sense at all, the whole of this illy-play'd fashionable play
and display, with their absorption of the best part of our
wealthier citizens' time, money, energies, &c., is ridiculously
out of place in the United States. As if our proper. man
I-.
i
158
NOTES LEFT OVER.
and woman, (far, far greater words than "gentleman" and
**lady,") could still fail to see, and presently achieve, not
this spectral business, but something truly noble, active, sane,
American — by modes, perfections of character, n. '. njrs,
costumes, social relations, &c., adjusted to standards, far,
far different from those.
Eminent and liberal foreigners, British or continental,
must at times have their faith fearfully tried by what they see
of our New World personalities. The shallowest and least
American persons seem surest to push abroad, and call
without fail on well-known foreigners, who are doubtless
affected with indescribable qualms by these queer ones.
Then, more than half of our authors and writers evidently
think it a great thing to be "aristocratic," and sneer at pro-
gress, democracy, revolution, &c. If some international
literary snobs' gallery were establish'd, it is certain that
America could contribute at least her full share of the
portraits, and some very distinguish'd ones. Observe that
the most impudent slanders, low insults, &c., on the great
revolutionary authors, leaders, poets, &c., of Europe, have
their origin and main circulation in certain circles here.
The treatment of Victor Hugo living, and Byron dead, are
samples. Both deserving so well of America, and both per-
sistently attempted to be soil'd here by unclean birds, male
and female.
Meanwhile I must still offset the like of the foregoing, and
all it infers, by the recognition of the fact, that while the
surfaces of current society here show so much that is dismal,
noisome, and vapory, there are, beyond question, inexhaust-
ible supplies, as of true gold ore, in the mines of America's
general humanity. Let us, not ignoring the dross, give fit
stress to these precious immortal values also. Let it be
distinctly admitted, that — whatever may be said of our
NOTES LEFT OVER.
159 'I
nan" and
tiieve, not
tive, sane,
n. I. lurs,
iards, far,
)ntinental,
It they see
t and least
, and call
doubtless
ueer ones.
J evidently
leer at pro-
ternational
ertain that
ire of the
jserve that
I the great
irope, have
rcles here.
1 dead, are
d both per-
birds, male
going, and
while the
is dismal,
inexhaust-
America's
)ss, give fit
Let it be
id of our
fashionable society, and of any foul fractions and episodes —
only here in America, out of the long history and manifold
presentations of the ages, has at last arisen, and now stands,
what never before took positive form and sway, the People —
and that view'd en masse, and while fully acknowledging
deficiencies, dangers, faults, this people, inchoate, latent, not
yet come to majority, nor to its own religious, literary, or
aesthetic expression, yet affords, to-day, an exultant justifi-
cation of all the faith, all the hopes and prayers and
prophecies of good men through the past — the stablest,
solidest-based government of the world — the most assured
in a future — the beaming Pharos to whose perennial light all
earnest eyes, the world over, are tending — and that already,
in and from it, the democratic principle, having been
mortally tried by severest tests, fatalities of war and peace,
now issues from the trial, unharm'd, trebly-invigorated,
perhaps to commence forthwith its finally triumphant march
around the globe.
THE TRAMP AND STRIKE QUESTIONS.
Part of a Lecture proposed, {never delivered.)
Two grim and spectral dangers — dangerous to peace, to
health, to social security, to progress — long known in con-
crete to the governments of the Old World, and there
eventuating, more than once or twi :e, in dynastic overturns,
bloodshed, days, months, of terror — seem of late years to be
nearing the New World, nay, to be gradually establishing
themselves among us. What mean these phantoms here ?
(I personify them in fictitious shapes, but they are very
real.) Is the fresh and broad demesne of America destined
also to give them foothold and lodgment, permanent
domicile ?
i6o
NOTES LEFT OVER,
Vi I
if i ! ;
Beneath the whole political world, what most presses and
perplexes to-day, sending vastest results affecting the future,
is not the abstract question of democracy, but of social and
economic organization, the treatment of working-people by
employers, and all that goes along with it — not only the
wages-payment part, but a certain ^rit and principle, to
vivify anew these relations ; all the questions of progress,
strength, tariffs, finance, &c., really evolving themselves
more or less directly out of the Poverty Question, ("the
Science of Wealth," and a dozen other names are given it,
but I prefer the severe one just used.) I will begin by
calling the reader's attention to a thought upon the matter
which may not have struck you before — the wealth of the
civilized world, as contrasted with its poverty — what does it
derivatively stand for, and represent ? A rich person ought
to have a strong stomach. As in Europe the wealth of
to-day mainly results from, and represents, the rapine,
murder, outrages, treachery, hoggishness, of hundreds of
years ago, and onward, later, so in America, after the same
token — (not yet so bad, perhaps, or at any rate not so
palpable — we have not existed long enough — but we seem
to be doing our best to make it up.)
Curious as it may seem, it is in what are call'd the
poorest, lowest characters you will sometimes, nay generally,
find glints of the most sublime virtues, eligibilities,
heroisms. Then it is doubtful whether the State is to be
saved, either in the monotonous long run, or in tremendous
special crises, by its good people only. Wiien the storm is
deadliest, and the disease most imminent, help often
comes from strange quarters — (the homoeopathic motto, you
remember, cure the bite with a hair of the same dog.)
The American Revolution of 1776 was simply a great
strike, successful for its immediate object — but whether a
NOTES LEFT OVER.
i6i
)resses and
the future,
social and
r-people by
)t only the
)rinciple, to
jf progress,
themselves
tion, ("the
ire given it,
11 begin by
1 the matter
eaith of the
what does it
>erson ought
le wealth of
the rapine,
hundreds of
;er the same
rate not so
but we seem
call'd the
ay generally,
eligibilities,
;ate is to be
tremendous
the storm is
help often
ic motto, you
dog.)
[nply a great
ut whether a
real success judged by the scale of the centuries, and the
long-striking balance of Time, yet remains to be settled.
The French Revolution was absolutely a strike, and a very
terrible and relentless one, against ages of bad pay, unjust
division of wealth-products, and the hoggish monopoly of a
few, rolling in superfluity, against the vast bulk of the work-
people, living in squalor.
If the United States, like the countries of the Old World,
are also to grow vast crops of poor, desperate, dissatisfied,
nomadic, miserably-waged populations, such as we see
looming upon us of late years- -steadily, even if slowly,
eating into them like a cancer of lungs or stomach — then
our republican experiment, notwithstanding all its surface-
successes, is at heart an unhealthy failure.
Feb.^ '79. — I saw to-day a sight I had never seen before
— and it amazed, and made me serious ; three quite good-
looking American men, of respectable personal presence,
two of them young, carrying chiffonier-bags on their
shoulders, and the usual long iron hooks in their hands,
plodding along, their eyes cast down, spying for scraps,
rags, bones, &c.
DEMOCRACY IN THE NEW WORLD,
estimated and summ'd-up to-day, having thoroughly justified
itself the past hundred years, (as far as growth, vitality and
power are concern'd,) by severest and most varied trials of
peace and war, and having established itself for good, with
all its necessities and benefits, for time to come, is now to
be seriously consider'd also in its pronounc'd and already
developt dangers. While the battle was raging, and the
result suspended, all defections and criticisms were to be
hush'd, and everything bent with vehemence unmitigated
II
■ i"»i
1
t» •
169
NOTES LEFT OVER.
I'i'} i ;
•f-r
I f
toward the urge of victory. But that victory settled, new
responsibilities advance. I can conceive of no better
service in the United States, henceforth, by democrats of
thorough and heart-felt faith, than boldly exposing the
weakness, liabilities and infinite corruptions of democracy.
By the unprecedented opening-up of humanity en-masse in
the United States, the last hundred years, under our institu-
tions, not only the good qualities of the race, but just as
much the bad ones, are prominently brought forward. Man
is about the same, in the main, whether with despotism, or
whether with freedom.
"The ideal form of human society," Canon Kingsley
declares, "is democracy. A nation — and were it even
possible, a whole world — of free men, lifting free foreheads
to God and Nature; calling no man master, for One is
their master, even God ; knowing and doing their duties
toward the Maker of the universe, and therefore to each
other ; not from fear, nor calculation of profit or loss, but
because they have seen the beauty of righteousriess, and
trust, and peace ; because the law of God is in their hearts.
Such a nation — such a society — what nobler conception of
moral existence can we form ? Would not that, indeed, be
the kingdom of God come on earth ? "
To this faith, founded in the ideal, let us hold — and
never abandon or lose it. • Then what a spectacle is
practically exhibited by our American democracy to-day I
FOUNDATION STAGES— THEN OTHERS.
!' 'J
Though I think I fully comprehend the absence of moral
tone in our current politics and business, and the almost
entire futility of absolute and simple honor as a counterpoise
against the enormous greed for worldly wealth, with the
ii:-
NOTES LEFT OVER,
163
ttkd, new
no better
nocrats of
)Osing the
lemocracy.
n-masse in
our institu-
but just as
rard. Man
ispotism, or
n Kingsley
ere it even
;e foreheads
lor One is
their duties
tore to each
or loss, but
Dusriess, and
;heir hearts.
jnception of
t, indeed, be
hold— and
spectacle is
cy to-day 1
^HERS.
nee of moral
d the almost
counterpoise
th, with the
trickeries of gaining it, all through society our day, I still do
not share the depression and despair on the subject which I
find possessing many good people. The advent of America,
the history of the past century, has been the first general
aperture and opening-up to the average h'uman commonalty,
on the broadest scale, of the eligibilities to wealth and
worldly success and eminence, and has been fully taken
advantage of ; and the example has spread hence, in ripples,
to all nations. To these eligibilities — to this limitless aper-
ture, the race has tended, en-masse, roaring and rushing and
crude, and fiercely, turbidly hastening — and we have seen
the first stages, and are now in the midst of the result of it
all, so far. But there will certainly ensue other stages, and
entirely different ones. In nothing is there more evolution
than the American mind. Soon, it will be fully realized that
ostensible wealth and money-making, show, luxury, &c.,
imperatively necessitate something beyond — namely, the
sane, eternal moral and spiritual-esthetic attributes, elements.
(We cannot have even that realization on any less terms than
the price we are now paying for it.) Soon, it will be under-
stood clearly, that the State cannot flourish, (nay, cannot
exist,) without those elements. They will gradually enter
into the chyle of sociology and literature. They will
finally make the blood and brawn of the best American
individualities of both sexes — and thus, with them, to a
certainty, (through these very processes of to-day,) dominate
the New World.
GENERAL SUFFRAGE, ELECTIONS, &c.
It still remains doubtful to me whether these will ever
secure, officially, the best wit and capacity — whether, through
them, the first-class genius of America will ever personally
1^4
NOTES LEFT OVER,
r I
appear in the high political stations, the Presidency, Congress,
the leading State offices, &c. Those offices, or the candidacy
for them, arranged, won, by caucusing, money, the favoritism
or pecuniary interest of rings, the superior manipulation of
the ins over the outs, or the outs over the ins, are, indeed,
at best, the mere business agencies of the people, are useful
as formulating, neither the best and highest, but the average
of the public judgment, sense, justice, (or sometimes want of
judgment, sense, justice.) We elect Presidents, Congress-
men &c., not so much to have them consider and decide for
us, but as surest practical means of expressing the will of
majorities on mooted questions, measures, &c.
As to general suffrage, after all, since we have gone so far,
the more general it is, the better. I favor the widest opening
of the doors. Let the ventilation and area be wide enough,
and all is safe. We can never have a bom penitentiary-bird,
or panel-thief, or lowest gambling-hell or groggery keeper,
for President — ^though such may not only emulate, but get,
high offices from localities — even from the proud and wealthy
city of New York.
WHO GETS THE PLUNDER?
The protectionists are fond of flashing to the public eye
the glittering delusion of great money-results from manu-
factures, mines, artificial exports — so many millions from this
source, and so many from that — such a seductive, unanswer-
able show — an immense revenue of annual cash from iron,
cotton, woollen, leather goods, and a hundred other things,
all bolstered up by "protection." But the really important
point of all is, into whose pockets does this plunder really go f
It would be some excuse and satisfaction if even a fair
proportion of it went to the masses of laboring-men —
NOTES LEFT OVER.
165
Congress,
:andidacy
favoritism
ulation of
e, indeed,
are useful
le average
les want of
Congress-
decide for
the will of
rone so far,
est opening
ide enough,
;ntiary-bird,
ery keeper,
ite, but get,
ind wealthy
; public eye
from manu-
ns from this
2, unanswer-
h from iron,
>ther things,
iy important
fr really go f
even a fair
oring-men —
resulting in homesteads to such, men, women, children —
myriads of actual homes in fee simple, in every State, (not
the false glamour of the stunning wealth reported in the
census, in the statistics, or tables in the newspapers,) but a
fair division and generous average to those workmen and
workwomen — lAal would be something. But the fact itself
is nothing of the kind. The profits of "protection" go
altogether to a few score select persons — who, by favors of
Congress, State legislatures, the banks, and other special
advantages, are forming a vulgar aristocracy, full as bad as
anything in the British or European castes, of blood, or the
dynasties there of the past. As Sismondi pointed out, the
true prosperity of a nation is not in the great wealth of a
special class, but is only to be really attain'd in having the
bulk of the people provided with homes or land in fee
simple. This may not be the best show, but it is the best
reality.
FRIENDSHIP, (THE REAL ARTICLE.)
Though Nature maintains, and must prevail, there will
always be plenty of people, and good people, who cannot,
or think they cannot, see anything in that last, wisest, most
envelop'd of proverbs, "Friendship rules the World."
Modern society, in its largest vein, is essentially intellectual,
infidelistic — secretly admires, and depends most on, pure
compulsion or science, its rule and sovereignty — is, in short,
in " cultivated " quarters, deeply Napoleonic.
•* Friendship," said Bonaparte, in one of his lightning-
flashes of candid garrulity, ** Friendship is but a name. I
love no one — not even my brothers; Joseph perhaps a
little. Still, if I do love him, it is from habit, because he is
the eldest of us. Duroc ? Ay, him, if any one, I love in a
w :
h]
1 66
NOTES LEIT OVER.
sort — ^but why ? He suits me ; he is cool, undemonstrative,
unfeeling — has no weak aflfections — never embraces any
one — never weeps."
I am not sure but the same analogy is to be applied,
in cases, often seen, where, with an extra development and
acuteness of the intellectual faculties, there is a mark'd
absence of the spiritual, affectional, and sometimes, though
more rarely, the highest aesthetic and moral elements of
cognition.
LACKS AND WANTS YET.
Of most foreign countries, small or large, from the
remotest times known, down to our own, each has contri-
buted after its kind, directly or indirectly, at least one great
undying song, to help vitalize and increase the valor,
vrisdom, and elegance of humanity, from the points of view
attain'd by it up to date. The stupendous epics of India,
the holy Bible itself, the Homeric canticles, the Nibelungen,
the Cid Campeador, the Inferno, Shakspere's dramas of the
passions and of the feudal lords, Burns's songs, Goethe's in
Germany, Tennyson's poems in England, Victor Hugo's in
France, and many more, are the widely various yet integral
signs or land-marks, (in certain respects the highest set up
by the human mind and soul, beyond science, invention,
political amelioration, &c.,) narrating in subtlest, best ways,
the long, long routes of history, and giving identity to the
stages arrived at by aggregate humanity, and the conclusions
assumed in its progressive and varied civilizations. . , .
Where is America's art-rendering, in any thing like the
spirit worthy of herself and the modern, to these character-
istic immortal monuments ? So far, our Democratic society,
(estimating its various strata, in the mass, as one,) possesses
nothing — nor have we contributed any characteristic music,
NOTES LEFT OVER,
1 1
167
mstrative,
aces any
! applied,
ment and
a mark'd
;s, though
^ments of
from the
las contri-
one great
the valor,
its of view
of India,
ibelungen,
nas of the
Joethe's in
Hugo's in
;t integral
est set up
invention,
best ways,
tity to the
inclusions
ions. , . I
; like the
character-
;ic society,
possesses
>tic music.
the finest tie of nationality — to make up for that glow-
ing, blood-throbbing, religious, social, emotional, artistic,
indefinable, indescribably beautiful charm and hold which
fused the separate parts of the old feudal societies together,
in their wonderful interpenetration, in Europe and Asia, of
love, belief, and loyalty, running one way like a living weft
— and picturesque responsibility, duty, and blessedness,
running like a warp the other way. (In the Southern
States, under slavery, much of the same.) ... In
coincidence, and as things now exist in the States, what is
more terrible, more alarming, than the total want of any
such fusion and mutuality of love, belief, and rapport of
interest, between the comparatively few successful rich, and
the great masses of the unsuccessful, the poor? As a
mixed political and social question, is not this full of dark
significance ? Is it not worth considering as a problem and
puzzle in our democracy — an indispensable want to be
supplied ?
RULERS STRICTLY OUT OF THE MASSES.
In the talk (which I welcome) about the need of men of
training, thoroughly school'd and experienced men, for
statesmen, I would present the following as an oflfset. It
was written by me twenty years ago — and has been
curiously verified since :
I say no body of men are fit to make Presidents, Judges,
and Generals, unless they themselves supply the best speci-
mens of the same ; and that supplying one or two such
specimens illuminates the whole body for a thousand years.
I expect to see the day when the like of the present person-
nel of the governments. Federal, State, municipal, military,
and naval, will be look'd upon with derision, and when
i68
NOTES LEFT OVER.
y\ '
qualified mechanics and young men will reach Congress
and other official stations, sent in their working costumes,
fresh from their benches and tools, and returning to them
again with dignity. The young fellows must prepare to do
credit to this destiny, for the stuflf is in them. Nothing
gives place, recollect, and never ought to give place, except
to its clean superiors. There is more rude and undevelopt
bravery, friendship, conscientiousness, clear-sightedne-s, and
practical genius for any scope of action, even the broadest
and highest, now among the American mechanics and
young men, than in all the official persons in the«e States,
legislative, executive, judicial, military, and naval, and more
than among all the literary persons. I would be much
pleased to see some heroic, shrewd, fully-inform'd, healthy-
bodied, middle-aged, beard-faced American blacksmith or
boatman come down from the West across the AUeghanies,
and walk into the Presidency, dress'd in a clean suit of
working attire, and with the tan all over his face, breast,
and arms ; I would certainly vote for that sort of man,
possessing the due requirements, before any other candi-
date.
(The facts of rank-and-file workingmen, mechanics,
Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, Garfield, brought forward from the
masses and placed in the Presidency, and swaying its mighty
powers with firm Hand — really with more sway than any
king in history, and with better capacity in using that sway
— can we not see that these facts have bearings far, far
beyond their political or party ones ?)
MONUMENTS— THE PAST AND PRESENT.
If you go to Europe, (to say nothing of Asia, more
ancient and massive still,) you cannot stir without meeting
venerable mementos — cathedrals, ruins of temples, castles,
NOTES LEFT OVER.
169
Congress
:ostumes,
to them
are to do
Nothing
;e, except
idevelopt
nc-s, and
broadest
nics and
se States,
and more
be much
, healthy-
Lsmith or
ieghanies,
n suit of
e, breast,
of man.
It candi-
echanics,
from the
s mighty
than any
hat sway
far, far
ia, more
meeting
, castles,
monuments of the great, statues and paintings, (far, far
beyond anything America can ever expect to produce,)
haunts of heroes long dead, saints, poets, divinities, with
deepest associations of ages. But here in the New World,
while those we can never emulate, we have more than
those to build, and far more greatly to build. (I am
not sure but the day for conventional monuments, statues,
memorials, &c., has pass'd away — and that they are hence-
forth superfluous and vulgar.) An enlarged general superior
humanity, (partly indeed resulting from those,) we are to
build. European, Asiatic greatness are in the past. Vaster
and subtler, America, combining, justifying the past,
yet works for a grander future, in living democratic forms.
(Here too are indicated the paths for our national bards.)
Other times, other lands, have had their missions — Art,
War, Ecclesiasticism, Literature, Discovery, Trade, Architec-
ture, &c., &c. — but that grand future is the enclosing
purport of the United States.
LITTLE OR NOTHING NEW, AFTER ALL.
How small were the best thoughts, poems, conclusions,
except for a certain invariable resemblance and uniform
standard in the final thoughts, theology, poems, &c., of all
nations, all civilizations, all centuries and times. Those
precious legacies — accumulations ! They come to us from
the far-off — from all eras, and all lands — from Egypt, and
India, and Greece, and Rome — and along through the
middle and later ages, in the grand monarchies of Europe —
born under far different institutes and conditions from ours
— but out of the insight and inspiration of the same old
humanity — the same old heart and brain — the same old
countenance yearningly, pensively, looking forth. What
we have to do to-day is to receive them cheerfully, and
lyo
NOTES LEFT OVER.
:?• ; '^sli
to give them ensemble, and a modern American and
democratic physiognomy.
A LINCOLN REMINISCENCE.
President
II
As is well known, story-telling was often wi
Lincoln a weapon which he employ'd with great skill.
Very often he could not give a point-blank reply or com-
ment — and these indirections, (sometimes funny, but not
always so,) were probably the best responses possible. In
the gloomiest period of the war, he had a call from a
large delegation of bank presidents. In the talk after
business was settled, one of the big Dons asked Mr.
Lincoln if his confidence in the permanency of the
Union was not beginning to be shaken — whereupon the
homely President told a little story : " When I was a young
man in Illinois," said he, "I boarded for a time with a
deacon ot the Presbyterian church. One night I was
roused from my sleep by a rap at the door, and I heard the
deacon's voice exclaiming, * Arise, Abraham ! the day of
judgment has come ! ' I sprang from my bed and rushed
to the window, and saw the stars falling in great showers ;
but looking back of them in the heavens I saw the grand
old constellations, with which I was so well acquainted,
fixed and true in their places. Gentlemen, the world did
not come to an end then, nor will the Union now."
FREEDOM.
It is not only true that most people entirely misunder-
stand Freedom, but I sometimes think I have not
yet met one person who rightly understands it. The
whole Universe is absolute Law. Freedom only opens
entire activity and license wider the law. To the degraded
or undevelopt — and even to too many others — the thought
I
NOTES LEFT OVER.
lyx
lean and
President
eat skill.
or com-
but not
ible. In
il from a
talk after
ked Mr.
r of the
upon the
s a young
le with a
tit I was
heard the
e day of
id rushed
showers ;
he grand
quainted,
rvorld did
tnisunder-
have not
it. The
ily opens
degraded
e thought
of freedom is a thought of escaping from law — which, of
course, is impossible. More precious than all worldly
riches is Freedom — freedom from the painful constipation
and poor narrowness of ecclesiasticism — freedom in manners,
habiliments, furniture, from the silliness and tyranny of
local fashions — entire freedom from party rings and mere
conventions in Politics — and better than all, a general
freedom of One's-Self from the tyrannic domination of
vices, habits, appetites, under which nearly every man of
us, (often the greatest brawler for freedom,) is enslaved.
Can we attain such enfranchisement — the true Democ-
racy, and the height of it? While we are from birth to
death the subjects of irresistible law, enclosing every move-
ment and minute, we yet escape, by a paradox, into true
free will. Strange as it may seem, we only attain to free-
dom by a knowledge of, and implicit obedience to. Law.
Great — unspeakably great — is the Will ! the free Soul of
man! At its greatest, understanding and obeying the
laws, it can then, and then only, maintain true liberty. For
there is to the highest, that \v.9f as absolute as any — more
absolute than any — the Law of Liberty. The shallow, as
intimated, consider liberty a release f'-om all law, from every
constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent
Law of Laws, namely, the fusion and combination of the
conscious will, or partial individual law, with those universal,
eternal, unconscious ones, which run through all Time,
pervade history, prove immortality, give moral purpose
to the entire objective world, and the last dignity to human
life.
BOOK-CLASSES— AMERICA'S LITERATURE.
For certain purposes, literary productions through all the
recorded ages may be roughly divided into two classes.
p
179
NOTES LEFT OVER.
The first consisting of only a score or two, perhaps less, of
typical, primal, representative works, different from any
before, and embodying in themselves their own main laws
and reasons for being. Then the second class, books and
writings innumerable, incessant — to be briefly described as
radiations or offshoots, or more or less imitations of the first.
The works of the first class, as said, have their own laws,
and may indeed be described as making those laws, and
amenable only to them. The sharp warning of Margaret
Fuller, unquell'd for thirty years, yet sounds in the air ; " It
does not follow that because the United States print and
read more books, magazines, and newspapers than all the
rest of the world, that they really have, therefore, a
literature."
OUR REAL CULMINATION.
The final culmination of this vast and varied Republic
will be the production and perennial establishment of
millions of comfortable city homesteads and moderate-sized
farms, healthy and independent, single separate ownership,
fee simple, life in them complete but cheap, within reach of
all. Exceptional wealth, splendor, countless manufactures,
excess of exports, immense capital and capitalists, the five-
dollar-a-day hotels well fill'd, artificial improvements, even
books, colleges, and the suffrage — all, in many respects, in
themselves, (hard as it is to say so, and sharp as a surgeon's
lance,) form, more or less, a sort of anti-democratic disease
and monstrosity, except as they contribute by curious
indirections to that culmination — seem to me mainly of
value, or worth consideration, only with reference to it.
There is a subtle something in the common earth, crops,
cattle, air, trees, &c., and in having to do at first hand with
them, that forms the only purifying and perennial element
NOTES LEFT OVER.
173
i less, of
Dm any
lin laws
oks and
ribed as
the first,
vn laws,
Lws, and
Margaret
lir; "It
rint and
I all the
efore, a
Republic
ment of
ate-sized
mership,
reach of
factures,
the five-
Its, even
pacts, in
urgeon's
disease
curious
ainly of
) it.
h, crops,
ind with
element
for individuals and for society. I must confess I want to
see the agricultural occupation of America at first hand per-
manently broaden'd. Its gains are the only ones on which
God seems to smile. What others — what business, profit,
wealth, without a taint ? What fortune else — what dollar —
does not stand for, and come from, more or less imposition,
lying, unnaturalness ?
AN AMERICAN PROBLEM.
One of the problems presented in America these times is,
how to combine one's duty and policy as a member of
associations, societies, brotherhoods or what not, and one's
obligations to the State and Nation, with essential freedom
as an individual personality, without which freedom a man
cannot grow or expand, or be full, modern, heroic, demo-
cratic, American. With all the necessities and benefits of
association, (and the world cannot get along without it,) the
true nobility and satisfaction of a man consist in his thinking
and acting for himself. The problem, I say, is to combine
the two, so as not to ignore either.
THE LAST COLLECTIVE COMPACTION.
I like well our polyglot construction-stamp, and the
retention thereof, in the broad, the tolerating, the many-
sided, the collective. All nations here — a home for every
race on earth. British, German, Scandinavian, Spanish,
French, Italian — papers published, plays acted, speeches
made, in all languages — on our shores the crowning resultant
of those distillations, c ?cantations, compactions of humanity,
that have been going on, on trial, over the earth so long.
A LETTER.
To-
\-y\
(Dresden, Saxony.)
Camden, New Jersey ^ U. S. A., Dec. 20, '81.
Dear Sir : — Your letter asking definite endorsement to
your translation of my " Leaves of Grass " into Russian is
just received, and I hasten to answer it Most warmly and
willingly I consent to the translation, and waft a prayerful
God speed to the enterprise.
You Russians and we Americans ! Our countries so dis-
tant, so unlike at first glance — such a difference in social and
political conditions, and our respective methods of moral
and practical development the last hundred years ; — and yet
in certain features, and vastest ones, so resembling each
other. The variety of stock-elements and tongues, to be
resolutely fused in a common identity and union at all
hazards — the idea, perennial through the ages, that they both
have their historic and divine mission — the fervent element
of manly friendship throughout the whole people, surpass'd
by no other races — the grand expanse of territorial limits
and boundaries — the unform'd and nebulous state of many
things, not yet permanently settled, but agreed on all hands
to be the preparations of an infinitely greater future — the
fact that both Peoples have their independent and leading
positions to hold, keep, and if necessary, fight for, against
the rest of the world — the deathless aspirations at the inmost
centre of each great community, so vehement, so mysterious,
I
A LETTER.
.''f.'
175
)
20, '81.
;ment to
assian is
rmly and
prayerful
so abysmic — are certainly features you Russians and we
Americans possess in common.
As my dearest dream is for internationality of poems and
poets, binding the lands of the earth closer than all treaties
and diplomacy — As the purpose beneath the rest in my book
is such hearty comradeship, for individuals to begin with,
and for all the nations of the earth as a result — how happy
I should be to get the hearing and emotional contact of the
great Russian peoples.
To whom, now and here, (addressing you for Russia and
Russians, and empowering you, should you see fit, to print
the present letter, in your book, as a preface,) I waft
affectionate salutation from these shores in America's name.
;s so dis-
Dcial and
of moral
—and yet
ing each
s, to be
)n at all
ley both
element
surpass'd
ial limits
of many
ill hands
ure — the
I leading
against
le inmost
rsterious,
Printed by Walter Scott, Felling, Neucastle-on-Tyne.
I
\w
\m^'
THE WORLD'S LITERARY MASTERPIECES.
The Scott Library.
Maroon Cloth, Gilt. Price Is. net per Volume.
VOLUMES ALREADY ISSUED-
1 MALORY'S ROMANCE OF KING ARTHUR AND THE
Quest of tlie Holy Qrail. Edited by Ernest Bbys.
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3 THOREAU'S "WEEK."
Will H. Dlrcks.
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ductiun, by Will H. Dircks.
WITH PREFATORY NOTE BY
EDITED, WITH AN INTRO-
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with Iiitroiluction, by Ilavelock Ellis.
WITH INTRO-
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EDITED, WITH
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ductory Note by B. J. Hnell, M.A.
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durtion by J. Addington Symonds.
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Introductory Note, by Ernest Bhys.
10 SWIFT'S PROSE WRITINGS. CHOSEN AND ARRANGED,
with Introduction, by Walter Lewin.
11 MY STUDY WINDOWS. BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
With Introduction by &. Oamett, LL.D.
12 LOWELL'S ESSAYS ON THE ENGLISH POETS. WITH
a new Introduction by Mr. Lowell.
13 THE BIGLOW PAPERS. BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
With a Prefatory Note by Ernest Rhys.
14 GREAT ENGLISH PAINTERS. SELECTED
Cunningham's Lives, Edited by William Sharp.
FROM
The Walter Scott Publishing Company, Limited,
LONDON and FELLING-ON-TYNE.
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THE SOOTT LIBRARY-continued.
15 BYRON'S LETTERS AND JOURNALS. SELECTED,
witli Introduction, by Mathildu Blind.
16 LEIGH HUNT'S ESSAYS. WITH INTRODUCTION AND
Notea by Arthur Symons.
17 LONGFELLOW'S "HYPERION," "KAVANAGH," AND
••The Trouveres." With Introduction by W. Tir«buck.
18 GREAT MUSICAL COMPOSERS. HY G. F. FERRIS.
Edited, witti Introduction, by Mra. William Sliarp.
19 THE MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS. EDITED
by Alice Ziraniern.
20 THE TEACHING OF EPICTETUS. TRANSLATED FROM
the Greek, witli Introduction and Notea, by T. W. Rolleston.
21 SELECTIONS PROM SENECA. WITH INTRODUCTION
by Walter Clode.
22 SPECIMEN DAYS IN AMERICA. BY WALT WHITMAN.
Revised by the Author, with fresh Preface.
23 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS, AND OTHER PAPERS. BY
Walt Whitman. (Published by arrangement with tlio Author.)
24 WHITE'S NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. WITH
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25 DEFOE'S CAPTAIN SINGLETON. EDITED, WITH
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POEMS OF NATURE. With Portrait of Andrew Lan^.
PRAED. With Portrait
80UTHEY. With Portrait
HUGO. With Portrait
GOETHE. With Portrait
BEBANGEB. With Portrait
HEINE. With Portrait
SEA MUSIC. With View of Corbiftre Boeki, Jeraey.
SONG-TIDE. With Portrait of PhUlp Bourke Maraton.
LADY OF LYONS. With Portrait of Bulwer Ly ton.
SHAKESPEARE : Sonn and Sonneti. With Portrait
BENJONSON. With Portrait
HORACE. With Portrait
CRAB BE. With Portrait
CRADLE SONGS. With EngraTlng from Drawtog by T. E. Mackllo.
BALLADS OF SPORT. Da do.
MATTHEW ARNOLD. With Portrait
AUSTIN'S DAYS OF THE YEAR. With Portrait
CLOUGH'S BOTHIE, and other Poems. With View.
BROWNING'S Pippa Passei. etc ^
BROWNING'S Blot in the 'Scntoheon, etc > With Portrait
BROWNING'S Dramatic Lyrlca /
MACKAY'S LOVER'S MISSAL. With Po trait
KIRKS WHITE'S POEMS. With Portnui.
LYRA NICOllANA. With Portrait
AURORA LEIGH. With Portrait of E. B. Browning.
NAVAL SONGS. With Portrait of Lord Nelson.
TENNYSON : In Memoriaro, Maud, etc With Portratt
TENNYSON: English Idyin, The Princess, etc. With View of
Farringford House.
WAR 80N08. With Portrait of Lord Roberta.
JAMES THOMSON. With Portrait
ALEXANDER SMITH. With Portrait
PAUL VCIRLAINE. With Portrait
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. With Portrait
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THE STORY OF THE ORGAN, By C. F. ABDY
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Mus. Bac. (Cantab.).
THE STORY OF THE VIOLIN. By PAUL STOEVING,
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THE STORY OF THE HARP. By WILLIAM H. GRATTAN
FLOOD, Author of " History of Irish Music."
THE STORY OF ORGAN MUSIC.
WILLIAMS, M.A., Mus. Bac.
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THE STORY OF ENGLISH MUSIC (1604- 1904): being the
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THE STORY OF MINSTRELSY. By EDMONDSTOUNE
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THE STORY OF MUSICAL FORM. By CLARENCE
LUCAS.
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THE STORY OF THE PIANOFORTE. By ALGERNON S.
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