SB 33T DbD 1 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS Two hundred aud fifty copies of this edition were on hand-made paper, March, 1893. />"/ 2 //? GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS As lu- looked when I first saw hiin.-W. W. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS DELIVERED BEFORE THE PEOPLE OF STATS If ISLAND, AT THE CASTLETON, ST. GEORGE, FEBRUARY 24, 1893 BY WILLIAM WINTER " Now is the stately column broke, The beacon-light is quenchM in smoke, The trumpet s silver sound is still, The warder silent on the hill." SIR WALTER SCOTT PRINTED FOR THE CURTIS COMMEMORATION COMMITTEE, OF STATEN ISLAND, BY MACMILLAN AND CO. NEW YORK AND LONDON COPYRIGHT 1893 BY MACMILLAN & CO. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. This brilliant throng, this daz zling array of eager faces, this gentle, fervent welcome they are not for me. They are for another. They proclaim your affectionate devotion to a gracious figure that has passed from this world; a voice that is silent ; a face that here will shine on you no more. And, surely, if the souls of the departed are aware of anything upon this earth, if those ties of affection still subsist, without 2 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, which life whether here or else where would be worthless, his sacred spirit descends upon this place, to-night, and sees into your hearts and rejoices in your love, and knows this hour and hallows it. In the days of my youth I was often privileged to sit by the fireside of the poet Longfellow. He was exceedingly kind to me, and with his encouragement and under his guidance I entered upon that service of literature to which, humbly but earnest ly, my life has been devoted. Longfellow possessed a great and peculiar fascination for youth. He was a man who nat- GEORGE WILLIAM CUKTIS. 3 urally attracted to himself all unsophisticated spirits ; and as I did not then know, but subse quently learned he was a man who naturally attracted to him self all persons who were intrin sically noble. His gentleness was elemental. His tact was inerrant. His patience never failed. As I recall him I am conscious of a beautiful spirit; an altogether lovely life ; a perfect image of continence, wisdom, dignity, sweetness, and grace. In Long fellow s home the old Craigie mansion at Cambridge on an autumn evening nearly forty years ago was assembled a bril liant company of gay ladies and 4 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. gallant gentlemen ; and as I en tered the large drawing-room, which now I believe is the library, one figure in particular attracted my gaze. It was a young man, lithe, slender, faultlessly appar elled, very handsome, who rose at my approach, turning upon me a countenance that beamed with kindness and a smile that was a welcome from the heart. His complexion was fair. His hair was brown, long, and waving. His features were regular and of exquisite refinement. His eyes were blue. His bearing was that of manly freedom and unconven tional grace, and yet it was that of absolute dignity. He had the GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 5 manner of the natural aristocrat a manner that is born, not made ; a manner that is never found ex cept in persons who are self-cen tred without being selfish ; who are intrinsically noble, wholly sim ple and wholly true. I was in troduced to him by Longfellow : and then and thus it was that I first beheld George William Curtis. From that hour until the day he died I was honored with his friendship now become a hal lowed memory. That meeting was more than once recalled be tween us ; and as I look back to it, across the varied landscape of intervening years, I see it as a precious and altogether excep- 6 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, tional experience. It was a hand dispensing nothing but blessings which bestowed that incomparable boon the illustrious and vener ated hand of the foremost poet of America. It was the splendid magnificence of Longfellow that gave the benediction of Curtis. It is not, however, only because he was a friend of mine that I have been asked to speak of him in this distinguished presence. It is because he was a friend of yours, whom you loved and hon ored living and whom you de plore in death. It is because he was a great person whose lot was cast in this community, and because this community is wish- GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 7 iul to listen to even the hum blest voice that can be raised in his honor. Not indeed that his name requires eulogy. The career of Curtis is rounded and complete. The splendid struc ture of his character stands be fore the world like a monument of gold. It is not for his sake that our tribute is laid upon the shrine of memory; it is for our own. When the grave has closed over one whom we love, our hearts instinctively strive to find a little comfort in the assurance that while it was yet possible to manifest our affection we did not fail to do so. We were never unkind (so the heart whispers), 8 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. * we were never neglectful ; we were always appreciative and sympathetic and true, and he was aware of our fidelity and found a pleasure in it. By thoughts like those the sharpness of grief is dulled and the sense of loss is made less bitter. With that motive this assemblage has con vened, in order that here, amid the scenes that he knew and loved; here, within a few paces of the home that was so beauti ful and is now so lonely ; here, in the hall from which the echoes of his melodious voice have scarcely died away, his neighbors and friends, bringing their gar lands of gentle remembrance and GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. lender affection, may utter bless ings on his name. It is the spirit of resignation for which we seek, and with it the satisfac- f action of our sense of duty. Not to express homage for a public benefactor would be to fail in self-respect. Not to rev erence a noble and exemplary character is to forego a benefit that is individual as well as social. Nowhere else can so much strength be derived as from the contemplation of men and women who pass through the vicissitudes of human expe rience, the ordeal of life and death, not without action and not without feeling, but calmly 10 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. and bravely, without fever and without fear. There is nothing greater in this world, nor can there be anything greater in the world to come, than a perfectly pure and true and res olute soul. When the old Scotch Lord Balmerino was going to the block, on Tower Hill, in expiation of his alleged treason to the House of Hanover, he spoke a few great words, that ought to be forever remembered. " The man who is not fit to die," he said, "is not fit to live." That was the voice of a hero. An image of heroism like that is of inestimable value, and it abides in the human soul as a GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 11 perpetual benediction. In Shake speare s tragedy, when the foes of Brutus are seeking to cap ture him on the field of battle, his friend Lucilius, whom they have already taken, denotes, in two consummate lines, the same inspiring ideal of superb sta bility: " When you do find him, or alive or dead, He will be found like Brutus, like himself." That might always have been said of Curtis. That was the man whom we admired and loved. That was the character we do ourselves the justice to 12 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. celebrate and reverence now. In every duty faithful ; in every trial adequate ; in every attri bute of nobility perfect " He taught us how to live, and oh, too high The price for knowledge! taught us how to die." And that announces to you the substance and the drift of my discourse. It is not the achievement of Curtis that now lingers most lovingly in the memory it is the character. The authoritative and final word upon his works will be spoken by posterity. For us it is enough that, we remind each GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 13 other of what we already know of the man. ..." When .a neigh bor dies" (so Curtis himself wrote, in his wise and sympa thetic sketch of the beloved and lamented Theodore Winthrop), " his form and quality appear clearly, as if he had been dead a thousand years. Then we see what we only felt before. He roes in history seem to us po etic because they are there. But if we should tell the simple truth of some of our neighbors it would sound like poetry." . v ; The simple truth about Curtis has that sound now, and more and more it will have that sound as time proceeds. It is the 14 GBOEGE WILLIAM CUIlTIS. story of a man of genius whose pure life and splendid powers were devoted to the ministry of beauty and to the self-sacrific ing service of mankind. The superficial facts of that story, indeed, are familiar and usual. It was the inspiration of them that made them poetic that pro found, intuitive sense of the ob ligation of noble living which controlled and fashioned and di rected his every thought and deed. The incidents customary 5n the life of a man of letters are scarcely more important than were the migrations of the Vicar of Wakefield from the brown bed to the blue and from GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, 15 the blue bed back again to the brown. He moves from place to place ; he has ill fortune and good fortune ; he gains and loses ; he rejoices and suffers ; he writes books : and he is never justly appreciated until he is dead. Curtis was a man of let ters, born sixty-nine years ago this day, in our American Venice, the New England city of Provi dence ; born nearly two months before the death of Byron (so near, in literature, we always are to the great names of the past), and a boy of eight in that dark year which ended the illus trious lives of Goethe and Sir Walter Scott. It has been usual 16 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. to ascribe the direction of his career to the influence of his juvenile experience at Brook Farm, in Roxbury, where he resided from 1840 to 1844; but it should be remembered that the Brook Farm ideal was in his mind before he went there the ideal of a social existence regu lated by absolute justice and adorned by absolute beauty. In that idyllic retreat that earthly Eden, conceived and founded by the learned and gentle George Ripley as a home for all the beatitudes and all the arts and later, at Concord, his young mind, no doubt, was stimulated by some of the most invigo- GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 17 rating forces that ever were liberated upon human thought : Theodore Parker, who was in carnate truth ; the mystical spirit of Channing ; the resolute, in trepid, humanitarian Dana ; the sombre, imaginative Hawthorne ; the audacious intellect and indom itable will of Margaret Fuller ; and, greatest of all, the heaven- eyed thought of Emerson. But the preordination of that mind to the service of justice and beauty and humanity was ger minal in itself. Curtis began wisely, because he followed the star of his own destiny. He was wise, in boyhood, when he went to Brook Farm. He was wiser 18 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. still in early manhood, having formally adopted the vocation of literature, when he sought the haunted lands of the Ori ent, and found inspiration and theme in subjects that were novel because their scene was both august and remote. On that expedition, consuming four precious years, he penetrated into the country of the Nile and he roamed in Arabia and Syria. He stood before the Sphinx and he knelt at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. It is a privilege to be able to add since he was an American that he did not endeavor to be comic. When, in later days, GEOBGE WILLIAJC CURTIS. 10 my friend Artemus Ward went to the Tower of London he looked upon the Traitor s Gate, and he remarked that apparent ly as many as twenty traitors might go in abreast. It was funny but to a reverent mind the note is a discordant note. Curtis was a humorist, but he was not the humorist who grins amid the sculptures of Westmin ster Abbey. He was a humorist as Addison was, whom he much resembled. He looked upon life with tranquil, pensive, kindly eyes. He exulted in all of goodness that it contains ; he touched its foibles with bland, whimsical drollery ; he would 20 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. have made all persons happy by making them all noble, serene, gentle, and patient. Such a mind could degrade nothing. Least of all could it degrade dignity with sport, or antiquity with ridicule. He looked at the statue of Memnon and he saw that " serene repose is the atti tude and character of godlike grandeur." " Those forms," he said, " impress man with him self. In them we no longer suc cumb to the landscape, but sit, individual and imperial, under the sky, by the mountains and the river. Man is magnified in Memnon." He stood among the ruined temples of Erment and GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 21 he saw Cleopatra, glorious in beauty upon the throne of Rame- ses, and he uttered neither a scrap of morality nor a figment of jest. " Nothing Egyptian," he said, "is so cognate to our warm human sympathy as the rich romance of Cleopatra and her Roman lovers." ..." The great persons and events," he added, " that notch time in pass ing do so because Nature gave them such an excessive and ex aggerated impulse that wherever they touch they leave their mark ; and that intense human ity secures human sympathy be yond the most beautiful balance, which, indeed, the angels love 22 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, and we are beginning to appreci ate." That was the spirit in which he rambled and saw and wrote. " The highest value of travel," he urged, "is not the accumulation of facts, but the perception of their significance." In those true words he made his comment, not simply upon the immediate and local scene, but upon the whole wide stage of human activity and experience. He was wise, when he began to labor for the present, thus to fortify himself with the meaning of the past. Those early books of his, the "Nile Notes" and the "Howadji in Syria," which have been be fore the world for more than GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 23 forty years, will always be a refreshment and a delight. They glow with the authentic vitality of nature, her warmth, and col or, and copious profusion, and exultant joy, and they are buoy ant with the ardor of an auspi cious and yet unsaddened soul. But they are exceptionally pre cious now, for their guidance to the springs of his character. In the " Syria " there is a passage that, perhaps, furnishes the key to his whole career. He is speak ing of successful persons, and he says this : . . . " Success is a delusion. It is an attainment but who attains ? It is the hori zon, always bounding our path 24 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. and therefore never gained. The Pope, triple-crowned, and borne, with flabella, through St. Peter s, is not successful, for he might be canonized into a saint. Pyg malion, before his perfect statue, is not successful, for it might live. Raphael, finishing the Sis- tine Madonna, is not success ful, for her beauty has revealed to him a finer and an unattain able beauty." ... In those words you perceive, at the outset, the spirit of comprehensive, sweet, and tolerant reason that was ever the conspicuous attribute of his mind. Those words denote, in deed, the inherent forces that governed him to the last per- GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 25 ception and practical remem brance of what has already been accomplished, and the realization that human life is not final achievement but endless endeavor. In early days Curtis wrote verse, as well as prose. As late as 1863 he delivered before the Sons of Rhode Island a poem of 418 lines, entitled " A Rhyme of Rhode Island and the Times." In that occurs his impassioned paean for the Flag of the Re public : " At last, at last, each glowing star In that pure field of heavenly blue, On every people shining far, Burns, to its utmost promise true. , 26 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 4 And when the hour seems dark with doom Our sacred banner, lifted higher. Shall flash away the gathering gloom With inextinguishable fire. "Pure as its white the future see! Bright as its red is now the sky ! Fixed as its stars the faith shall be That nerves our hands to do or die!" Those are but three of the eight stanzas. They show his patriotic ardor, and they also show the felicity of his diction in verse. That felicity is still further manifested in another GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 27 characteristic passage, denoting that in the eighteenth-century manner he also could have been expert, if he had cared to pur sue it : Admonished, by life s fluctuating scene, Of all he is and all he might have been, Man, toiling upward on the dizzy track, Still looks regretful or remorseful back; Paces old paths, remembering vows that rolled In burning words from hearts for ever cold ; Bows his sad head where once he bowed the knee 28 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. And kissed the lips that no more kissed shall be. So the sad traveller climbing from the plain Turns from the hill and sees his home again, And sighs to know that, this sweet prospect o er, The boundless world is but a foreign shore." A certain frenzy is inseparable from the temperament of the poet. He must not yield his mind absolutely to its control, but he must be capable of it and he must guide and direct its course. He must not, with Savage and with Burns, abdi cate the supremacy of the soul. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 29 He must, with Shakespeare and with Goethe (to borrow the fine figure of Addison), "ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm." The conduct of his life must not be a delirium; but the capacity of delirium must, inevitably, be a part of his nature. Conven tionality is bounded by four walls. Unless the heart of the poet be passionate he cannot move the hearts of others: and the poet who does not touch the heart is a poet of no impor tance. Curtis was a man of deep poetic sensibility. In that idyllic composition, " Prue and I," the poetic atmosphere is invariably sustained and it is invariably 30 GEOIIGE WILLIAM CURTIS. beautiful. The use of poetic quotation, wherever it occurs, throughout his writings, is re markably felicitous as in his book that we know as " Lotus- Eating," written in 1851 and it manifests the keenest apprecia tion of the poetic element. His analysis of the genius of Bry ant, in his noble oration before the Century Club in 1878, is not less subtle than potential, and it leaves nothing to be said. His perception of the ideal as when he wrote upon Hamlet, with the spiritual mind and prince-like figure of Edwin Booth in that character was equally profound and compre- GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 31 hensive, and as fine and delicate as it was unerringly true. There can be little doubt that he was conscious, originally, of a strong impulse toward poetry, but that this was restricted and presently was diverted into other channels, partly by the stress of his philo sophical temperament, and partly by the untoward force of iron circumstance. His nature was not without fervor ; but it was the fervor of moral and spirit ual enthusiasm, not of passion. His faculties and feelings were exquisitely poised, and I do not think there ever was a time in all his life when that perfect sanity was disturbed by any in- 32 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. ordinate waywardness or any blast of storm. The benign and potent but utterly dispassionate influence of Emerson touched his responsive spirit, at the begin ning of his career, and beneath that mystic and wonderful spell of Oriental contemplation and bland and sweet composure his destiny was fulfilled. Like grav itates to like. Each individual sways by that power, whatsoever it be, to which in nature he is the most closely attuned. The poetic voice of Emerson was the voice, not of the human heart, but of the pantheistic spirit : " As sunbeams stream through liberal space, GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 33 And nothing jostle nor displace, So waved the pine-tree through my < - , thought, And fanned the dreams it never brought." In Curtis the poetic voice was less remote and more human ; but it was of the same elusive qual ity. It was not often heard. It sounded very sweetly in his tender lyric of other days : " Sing the song that once you sung, When we were together young, When there were but you and I Underneath the summer sky. " Sing the song, and o er and o er But I know that nevermore Will it be the song you sung When we were together young." 34 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, There can be no higher mission than that of the poet, but there are many vocations that exact more direct practical effort and in- volve more immediate practical results. One of those vocations, meanwhile, had largely absorbed the mind of Curtis, To people of the present day it would be difficult to impart an ad equate idea of the state of politi cal feeling that existed in New England forty years ago. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, which was regarded as the cul mination of a long series of encroachments, had inspired a tremendous resentment, and the community there was seething GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 35 with bitterness and conflict. The novel of " Uncle Tom s Cabin " had blazoned the national crime of slavery, and had aroused and in flamed thousands of hearts against it, as a sin and a disgrace. Theo dore Parker that moral and intel lectual giant was preaching in the Boston Music Hall. The pas sionate soul of Thomas Starr King poured forth its melodious fervor in the old church in Hollis Street. Sumner, and Phillips, and Wilson, and Giddings, and Hale, and Bur- lingame, in Faneuil Hall and ev erywhere else, were pleading the cause of the slave and the purifi cation of the flag. The return of Anthony Burns from Boston, in 36 GEORGE WILLIAM CUKTIS. June, 1854, when the court-house was surrounded with chains and soldiers, and when State Street was commanded with cannon, although perfectly legal, was felt by every freeman as an act of monstrous tyranny, and as the consummation of national shame. The murderous assault on Sumner, committed in the United States Senate chamber by Brooks of South Carolina, had aroused all that was best of manly pride and moral purpose in the North, and from the moment when that blow was struck every man who was not blinded by folly knew that the end of human slavery in the Republic must inevitably come. GEOEGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 37 There never had been seen in our political history so wild a tide of enthusiasm as that which swept through the New England States, bearingonward the standard of Fre mont, in 1856. Statesmen, indeed, there were foreseeing and dread ing civil war who steadily coun selled moderation and compromise. Edward Everett was one of those pacificators, and Rufus Choate was another. Choate, in Faneuil Hall, delivered one of the most enchant ing orations of his life, in solemn and passionate warning against those impetuous zealots of freedom w ho as he beheld them were striving to rend asunder the col ossal crag of national unity, al- 38 GEOfiGE WILLIAM CURTIS. ready smitten by the lightning and riven from summit to base. And it must be admitted and it needs no apology that the conviction of generous patriotism in those wild days of wrath and tempest was the conviction that a Union under which every citizen of every free State was, by the law, made a hun ter of negro slaves for a Southern driver, was not only worthless but infamous. Conservatives, cynics, mercenary, scheming politicians, and timid friends of peace might hesitate, and palter with the occa sion, and seek to evade the issue and postpone the struggle ; but the general drift of New England sen timent was all the other way. Old GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 39 political lines disappeared. The everlasting bickerings of Protes tant and Catholic were for a mo ment hushed. The Know-Nothings vanished. The thin ghosts of the old silver-gray Whig party, led by Bell and Everett, moaned feebly at parting and faded into air. Elsewhere in the nation the lines of party conflict were sharply drawn ; but in New England one determination animated every bosom the determination that human slavery should perish. The spirit that walked abroad was the spirit of Concord Bridge and. Bun ker Hill. The silent voices of Samuel Adams and James Otis were silent no more. "My ances- 40 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. tor fell at Lexington," said old Joel Parker then over threescore years of age and I am ready to shed more of the same blood in the same cause." It was a tremen dous epoch in New England his tory, and we who were youths in it felt our hearts aflame with holy ardor in a righteous cause. I was myself a follower of the Pathfinder and a speaker for him, in that stormy time, assailing Choate and Caleb Gushing and other giants of the adverse faction, with the freedom and confidence that are possible only to unlimited moral enthusiasm. What a different world it was from the world of to-day ! How sure we were that all we de- GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 41 sired to do was wise and right ! How plainly we saw our duty, and how eager we were for the onset and the strife ! If we could only have foreseen the beatific con dition of the present, I wonder if that zeal would have cooled. Some of us have grown a little weary of rolling the Sisyphus stone of be nevolence for the aggrandizement of a selfish multitude, careless of everything except its sensual en joyment. But it was a glorious enthusiasm while it lasted; and, as poor Byron truly said, " There s not a joy the world can give like that it takes away, When the glow of early thought de clines in feeling s dull decay." 42 GEOHUE WILLIAM CURTIS. Into that conflict, of Right against Wrong, Curtis threw him self with all his soul. His reputa tion as a speaker had already been established. He had made his first public address in 1851 before the New York National Academy of Design discussing " Contem porary Artists of Europe," and in 1853 he had formally adopted the Platform as a vocation ; and it continued to be a part of his vo cation for the next twenty years. He was everywhere popular in the lyceum, and he now brought into the more turbulent field of politics the dignity of the scholar, the re finement and grace of the gentle man, and all the varied equipments GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 43 of the zealous and accomplished advocate, the caustic satirist, and the impassioned champion of the rights of man. I first heard him speak on politics making an ap peal for Fremont at a popular convention in the town of Fitch- burg. It was on a summer day, under canvas, but almost in the open air. The assemblage was vast. Curtis followed Horace Greeley with whose peculiar drawl and rustic aspect his prince- like demeanor and lucid and so norous rhetoric were in wonderful contrast. Neither of those men was wordly-wise ; neither was versed in political duplicity. Greeley, no doubt, had then the 44 GEORGE WILLIAM CD HTIB. advantage in political wisdom ; but Curtis was the orator and, while Curtis spoke, the hearts of that multitude were first lured and entranced by the golden tones of his delicious voice, and then were shaken, as with a whirlwind, by the righteous fervor of his mag nificent enthusiasm. It was the diamond morning blaze of that perfect eloquence which some of you have known in its noonday splendor, and all of you have known in its sunset ray. He continued to speak for that cause everywhere with great effect ; and down to the war-time, and during the war-time, the prin ciples which are at the basis of GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 45 the American Republic had no champion more eloquent or more sincere. He abandoned the plat form as a regular employment in 1873 ; but as we all gratefully remember he never altogether ceased the exercise of that match less gift of oratory for which he was remarkable and by which he was enabled to accomplish so much good and diffuse so much happiness. In this domain he came to his zenith. The art in which Curtis excelled all his contemporaries of the last thirty years was the art of oratory. Many other authors wrote better in verse, and some others wrote as well in prose. 46 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. Hawthorne, Motley, Lowell, Whip- pie, Giles, Mitchell, Warner, and Stedman were masters of style. But in the felicity of speech Curtis was supreme above all other men of his generation. My reference is to the period from 1860 to 1890. Oratory as it ex isted in America in the previous epoch has no living representative. Curtis was the last orator of the great school of Everett, Sumner, and Wendell Phillips. His model in so far as he had a model was Sumner, and the style of Sumner was based on Burke. But Curtis had heard more magi cal voices than those for he had heard Daniel Webster and Rufus GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 47 Choate ; and although he was averse to their politics, he could profit by their example. Webster and Choate each in a different way were perfection. The elo quence of Webster had the af fluent potentiality of the rising sun ; of the lonely mountain ; of the long, regular, successive surges of the resounding sea. His periods were as lucid as the light. His logic was irresistible. His facts came on in a solid phalanx of overwhelming power. His tones were crystal-clear. His mag nificent person towered in dignity and seemed colossal in its imperial grandeur. His voice grew in volume, as he became more and 48 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. more aroused, and his language glowing with the fire of cog viction, rose and swelled and broke, like the great ninth wave that shakes the solid crag. His speech, however, was addressed always to the reason, never to the imagination. The eloquence of Rufus Choate, on the other hand, was the passionate en chantment of the actor and the poet an eloquence in which you felt the rush of the tempest, and heard the crash of breakers and the howling of frantic gales and the sobbing wail of homeless winds in bleak and haunted re gions of perpetual night. He began calmly, often in a tone GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 49 that was hardly more than a whisper ; but as he proceeded the whole man was gradually absorbed and transfigured, as into a fountain of fire, which then poured forth, in one tumult uous and overwhelming torrent of melody, the iridescent splen dors of description, and appeal, and humor, and pathos, and in vective, and sarcasm, and poetry, and beauty till the listener lost all consciousness of self and was borne away as on a golden river flowing to a land of dreams. The vocabulary of that orator seemed literally to have no limit. His voice sounded every note, from a low, piercing whisper to 50 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. a shrill, sonorous scream. His remarkable appearance, further more, enhanced the magic of his speech. The tall, gaunt, vital figure, the symmetrical head, the clustered hair, once black, now faintly touched with gray, the emaciated, haggard countenance, the pallid olive complexion, the proud Arabian features, the mournful flaming brown eyes, the imperial demeanor and wild and lawless graceall those at tributes of a strange, poetic per sonality commingled with the boundless resources of his elo quence to rivet the spell of alto gether exceptional character and genius. In singular contrast GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 51 with Choate was still another great orator whom Curtis heard, and about whom he has written, that consummate scholar and rhetorician Edward Everett. There is no statelier figure in American history. If Everett had been as puissant in character as he was ample in scholarship, and as rich in emo tion as he was fine in intellect, he would have been the peerless wonder of the age. He was a person of singular beauty. His form was a little above the mid dle height and perfectly propor tioned. His head was beautifully formed and exquisitely poised. His closely clustering hair was as 52 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. white as silver. His features were regular; his eyes were dark; his countenance was pale, refined, and cold. His aspect was formal and severe. He dressed habitu ally in black, often wearing around his neck a thin gold chain, outside of his coat. His eloquence was the perfection of art. I heard him often, and in every one of his orations, except the magnificent one that he gave in Faneuil Hall on the death of Rufus Choate, which was su preme and without blemish, his art was distinctly obvious. He began in a level tone and with a formal manner. He spoke with out a manuscript, and whether his GEOEGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 53 speech was long or short he never missed a word nor made an error. As he proceeded his countenance kindled and his figure began to move. With action he was pro fuse, and every one of his ges tures had the beauty of a mathe matical curve and the certainty of a mathematical demonstration. His movement suited his word, his pauses were exactly timed; his finely modulated voice rose and fell with rhythmic beat; and his polished periods flowed from his lips with limpid fluency and delicious cadence. A distinguish ing attribute of his art was its elaborate complexity. In his noble oration on Washington, 54 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, when he came to contrast the honesty of that patriot with the mercenary greed of Marlborough, it was not with words alone that he pointed his moral, but with a graceful, energetic blow upon his pocket that mingled the jingle of coin with the accents of scorn. One speech of his I remember (as far back as 1852) contained a description of the visible planets and constellations in the midnight sky; and his verbal pageantry was so magnificent that almost, I thought, it might take its place among them. Such was the school of oratory in which Curtis studied and in which his style was formed. It GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 55 no longer exists. The oratory of the present day is characterized by colloquialism, familiarity, and comic anecdote. Curtis main tained the dignity of the old order. You all remember the charm of his manner how subtle it was, yet seemingly how sim ple ; how completely it con vinced and satisfied you ; how it clarified your intelligence ; how it ennobled your mood. One secret of it, no doubt, was its perfect sincerity. Noble himself, and speaking only for right, and truth, and beauty, he addressed nobility in others. That consid eration would explain the moral and the genial authority of his 56 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. eloquence. The total effect of it, however, was attributable to his exquisite and inexplicable art. He could make an extempora neous speech, but as a rule his speeches were carefully prepared. They had not always been written, but they had always been composed and considered. He possessed absolute self-con trol ; a keen sense of symmetry and proportion ; the faculty of logical thought and lucid state ment ; unbounded resources of felicitous illustration ; passionate earnestness, surpassing sweetness of speech, and perfect grace of action. Like Everett, whom he more closely resembled than he GEORGE WILLIAM CUETIS. 57 did any other of the great mas ters of oratory, he could trust his memory and he could trust his composure. He began with the natural deference of un studied courtesy serene, pro pitiatory, irresistibly winning. He captured the eye and the ear upon the instant, and before he had been speaking for many minutes he captured the heart. There was not much action in his delivery ; there never was any artifice. His gentle tones grew earnest. His fine face became illumined. His golden periods flowed with more and more of impetuous force, and the climax of their perfect music was always 58 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. exactly identical with the climax of their thought. There always was a certain culmination of fervent power at which he aimed, and after that a gradual subsid ence to the previous level of gracious serenity. He created and sustained the absolute illu sion of spontaneity. You never felt that you had been beguiled by art : you only felt that you had been entranced by nature. I never could explain it to myself. I cannot explain it to you. I can only say of him, as he himself said of Wendell Phillips: "The secret of the rose s sweetness, of the bird s ecstasy, of the sunset s GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 59 glory that is the secret of genius and of eloquence." While, however, the secret of his eloquence was elusive, the purpose and effect of it were per fectly clear. It dignified the subject and it ennobled the hearer. He once told me of a conversation, about poetry and oratory, between himself and the late distinguished senator, Ros- coe Conkling. That statesman, having declared that, in his judg ment, the perfection of poetry was " Casablanca," by Mrs. Hemans (" The boy stood on the burning deck "), and the perfection of oratory a passage in a Fourth- of-July oration by Charles GO GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. Sprague, desired Curtis to name a supreme specimen of eloquence. " I mentioned," said Curtis, " a passage in Emerson s Dartmouth College oration, in which, how ever, Mr. Conkling could perceive no peculiar force." That passage Curtis proceeded to repeat to me. I wish that I could say it as it was said by him ; but that is im possible. Yet the citation of it is appropriate, not only as showing his ideal but as explaining his self-devotion, not to art alone but to conscience. "You will hear every day" (so runs that pearl of noble thought and feeling) "the max ims of a low prudence. You GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 61 will hear that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. What is this Truth you seek? what is this Beauty? men will ask, with derision. If, nevertheless, God have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true ! When you shall say, As others do, so will I ; I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early vis ions ; I must eat the good of the land and let learning and romantic expectation go until a more convenient season ; then dies the man in you ; then once more perish the buds of art and poetry and science, as they have died already in a thousand, thou- 152 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. sand hearts. The hour of that choice is the crisis of your his tory : and see that you hold yourself fast by the intellect." ... It was natural that Curtis should adopt that doctrine. He would have evolved it if he had not found it. That divine law was in his nature, and from that divine law he never swerved. How should a man of genius use his gift? Setting aside the restrictive pressure of circum stance, two ways are open to him. He may cultivate himself standing aloof from the world, as Goethe did and as Tennyson did, aiming to make his pow ers of expression perfect, and to GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 63 make his expression itself uni versal, potential, irresistible, such as will sift into the lives of the human race as sunshine sifts into the trees of the forest ; or he may take an executive course and yoke himself to the plough and the harrow, aiming to ex ert an immediate influence upon his environment. The former way is not at once comprehended by the world : the latter is more obvious. In his poem of Retaliation, Goldsmith has designated Ed mund Burke as a man who, " Born for the universe, narrowed his mind. 64 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. And to party gave up what was meant for mankind." It has always seemed to me that Curtis made one sacrifice when he went into business, and another when he went into poli tics. He manifested, indeed, ster ling character and splendid abil ity in both ; yet he did not, in a practical sense, succeed in either. The end of his experi ment in business was a heavy burden of debt, which he was compelled to bear through a long period of anxious and strenuous toil. His experience was not the terrible experience of Sir Walter Scott that heroic gentleman, that supreme and in- GEORGE WILL1AAT CURTIS. 65 comparable magician of romance ! but it was an experience of the same kind. He released him self from his burden, justly and honorably, at last ; but the strain upon his mind was an injury to him, and I believe that the lite rature of his country is poorer because of the sacrifice that he was obliged to make. That " Life of Mehemet Ali," the great Pasha of Egypt, which he de signed to write, was never writ ten. On a day in 1860 I met him in Broadway, and he said to me, very earnestly, " Take ad vantage of the moment : don t delay too long that fine poem, that great novel, that you in- 66 GEOKGE WILLIAM CURTIS. tend to write." It was the wise philosophy that takes heed of the enormous values of youth and freedom. It pleases some philos ophers, indeed, to believe that a man of letters will accomplish his best expression when goaded by what Shakespeare calls " the thorny point of sharp necessity/ That practice of glorifying hard ship is sometimes soothing to human vanity. Men have thought themselves heroes because they rise early. It may possibly be true of the poets that they learn in suffering what they teach in song ; but the suffer ing must not be sordid. Lit erature was never yet en- GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 67 riched through the pressure of want. The author may write more, because of his need, but he will not write better. The best literatures of the world, the literatures of Greece and Eng land, were created in the gentlest and most propitious climates of the world. The best individual works in those literatures with little exception were produced by writers whose physical cir cumstances were those of com fort and peace. Chaucer, Shake speare, Milton, Herrick, Addison, Pope, Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, Scott, Moore, Lamb, Thackeray, Tennyson neither of them lacked 00 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. the means of reputable subsist ence. Burns, fine as he was, would have been finer still, in a softer and sweeter environment of worldly circumstance. Curtis was a man of extraordinary pa tience, concentration, and poise. He accepted the conditions in which he found himself, and he made the best of them. His in cessant industry and his compo sure, to the last, were prodigious. He never, indeed, was acquainted with want. The shackle that busi ness imposed on him was the shackle of drudgery. He was compelled to write profusely and without pause. His pen was never at rest. Once in 1873 he broke GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 69 down completely, and for several months he could not work at all. During more than forty years, however, he worked all the time. Curtis, at his best, had the grace of Addison, the kindness of Steele, the simplicity of Goldsmith, and the nervous force of the incompa rable Sterne. Writing under such conditions, however, no man can always be at his best. The won der is that his average was so fine. He attained to a high and orderly level of wise and kindly thought, of gentle fancy, and of winning ease, and he steadily maintained it. He had an exceptional faculty for choosing diversified themes, and his treatment of them was al- 70 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. ways felicitous. He wrought in many moods, but always genially and without flurry, and he gave the continuous impression of spon taneity and pleasure. A fetter, however, is not the less a fetter because it is lightly borne, and whatever is easy to read was hard to write. It may be, of course, that the troublesome business ex perience in the life of Curtis was only an insignificant incident. It may be that he fulfilled himself as an author leaving nothing un done that he had the power to do. But that is not my reading of the artistic mind, and it is not my reading of him. For me the mist was drawn too early across those GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 71 luminous and tender pictures of the Orient, those haunting shapes and old historic splendors of the Nile. For me the rich, tranquil note of tender music that breathes in " Prue and I " was too soon hushed and changed. Genius is the petrel, and like the petrel it loves the freedom of the winds and waves. " My thoughts like swallows skim the main, And bear my spirit back again, Over the earth and through the air A wild bird and a wanderer." All thinkers repudiate the nar row philosophy that would regu late one man s life by the stand- TZ GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. ard of another. "Be yourself!" is the precept of the highest wisdom. Shakespeare has writ ten his Plays. Milton has writ ten his Epic. Those things can not be done again and should not be expected. The new ge nius must mount upon its own wings, and hold its own flight, and seek the eyrie that best it loves. I recognize, and feel, and honor the nobility of Curtis as a citizen ; but I cannot cast aside the regret that he did not dedicate himself exclusively to Literature. Everything is rela tive. To such a nature as that of Curtis the pursuits of busi ness and politics are foreign GEOKGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 73 and inappropriate. He was un doubtedly equal to all their responsibilities and duties ; but he was equal to much more to things different and higher and the practical service essential to business and politics did not need him. The State, indeed, needs the virtue that he possessed but needs it in the form, not of the poet but the gladiator, who, when he goes rejoicing to battle, has no harp to leave in silence and no garlands to cast unheeded in the dust. I would send Saint Peter, with his sword, to the pri mary meeting; I would not send the apostle John. The organist should not be required to blow 74 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. the bellows. Curtis was, by na ture, a man of letters. His fac ulty in that direction was pro digious. So good a judge as Thackeray, looking at him as a young man, declared him to be the most auspicious of all our authors. It is a great vocation, and because its force, like that of nature, is deep, slow, silent, and elemental, it is the most tremen dous force concerned in human affairs. Shall I try to say what it is? The mission of the man of letters is to touch the heart ; to kindle the imagination ; to en noble the mind. He is the inter preter between the spirit of beauty that is in nature and the GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 75 general intelligence and sensibility of mankind. He sets to music the pageantry and the pathos of human life, and he keeps alive in the soul the holy enthusiasm of devotion to the ideal. He honors and perpetuates heroic conduct, and he teaches, by many devices of art by story, and poem, and parable, and essay, and drama purity of life, integrity to man, and faith in God. He is continu ally reminding you of the good ness and loveliness to which you may attain ; continually causing you to see what opportunities of nobility your life affords ; continu ally delighting you with high thoughts and beautiful pictures. 76 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. He does not preach to you. He does not attempt to regulate your specific actions. He does not assail you with the hysterical scream of the reformer. He does not carp, and vex, and meddle. He whispers to you, in your silent hours, of love and heroism and holiness and immortality, and you are refreshed and strong, and come forth into the world smiling at fortune and bearing blessings in your hands. On these bleak February nights, with the breakers clashing on our icy coasts and the trumpets of the wind resounding in our chimneys, how sweet it has been, sitting by the evening lamp, to turn the pages of " The Tern- GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 77 pest," or "The Antiquary," or " Old Mortality," or " Henry Es mond," or "The Idylls of the King," while the treasured faces of Shakespeare and Scott and Thackeray and Tennyson looked down from the library walls ! How sweet to read those ten der, romantic, imaginative pages of " Prue and I," in which the pansies and the rosemary bloom forever, and to think of him who wrote them ! " His presence haunts this room to night, A form of mingled mist and light From that far coast ! Welcome beneath this roof of mine! Welcome ! this vacant chair is thine, Dear guest and ghost." 78 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. But whether the choice that Curtis made was a sacrifice or not, we know he made it and we know why he made it. Pre figured in his character and his writings, at the outset, and illus trated in all his conduct, was the supreme law of his being practical consideration for others. The trouble of the world was his trouble. The disciple of An drew Marvel could not rest at ease in the summer - land of Keats. His heart was there; but his duty, as he saw it, steadily called him away. " Some life of men unblest He knew, which made him droop, and fill d his head. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 79 He went; his piping took a troubled sound, Of storms that rage outside our happy ground ; He could not wait their passing; he is dead." He would have rejoiced in writing more books like " Prue and I;" but the virtuous glory of the commonwealth and the honor and happiness of the peo ple were forever present to him, as the first and the most solemn responsibility. When his proto type, Sir Philip Sidney, on that fatal September morning, three hundred and seven years ago, set forth for the field of battle at Zutphen, he met a fellow- 80 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. soldier riding in light armoi, and thereupon he cast away a portion of his own mail and in so doing, as the event proved, he cast away his life in order that he might be no better pro tected than his friend. In like manner Curtis would have no advantage for himself, nor even the semblance of advantage, that was not shared by others. He could not with his superla tive moral fervor dedicate him self exclusively to letters, while there was so much wrong in the world that clamored for him to do his part in setting it right. He believed that his direct, prac tical labor was essential and GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 81 would avail, and he was eager to bestow it. Men of strong imagination begin life with il limitable ideals, with vast illu sions, with ardent and generous faith. They are invariably dis appointed, and they are usually embittered. Curtis was con trolled less by his imagination than by his moral sense. He had ideals, but they were based on reason. However much he may have loved to muse and dream, he saw the world as a fact and not as a fancy. He was often saddened by the spec tacle of human littleness, but, broadly and generally, he was not disappointed in mankind, 82 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. and he never became embittered. The belief in human nature with which he began remained his belief when he ended. Nothing could shake his conviction that man is inherently and intrinsi cally good. He believed in the people. He believed in earthly salvation for the poor, the weak, and the oppressed. He believed in chivalry toward woman. He believed in refinement, gentle ness, and grace. He believed that the world is growing better and not worse. He believed in the inevitable, final triumph of truth and right over falsehood and wrong. He believed in free dom, chanty, justice, hope, and GEORGE WILLIAM CUBTIS. 83 love. The last line that fell from the dying pen of Long fellow might have been the last word that fell from the dying lips of Curtis: " Tis daylight everywhere !" Upon the spirit in which he served the state no words can make so clear a comment as his own. " There is no nobler am bition," he said, " than to fill a great office greatly." His esti mate of Bryant culminates in the thought that " no man, no American, living or dead, has more truly and amply illustrated the scope and fidelity of re publican citizenship." . . . " The great argument for popular gov- 84 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. ernment," he declared, in his fine eulogy on Wendell Phil lips, " is not the essential right eousness of a majority, but the celestial law which subordinates the brute force of numbers to intellectual and moral ascend ency." And his stately tribute to the character of Washington reached a climax in his impas sioned homage to its lofty se renity, its moral grandeur, and its majestic repose. The quality of every man may be divined from the objects of his genu ine devotion. There could be no doubt of the patriotism of Curtis : and I will make bold to say that> in the conditions which GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 85 now confront the American Re public, conditions more perilous than ever yet existed in its experience (vicious immigration, the dangerous Indian, the still more dangerous negro, racial antagonism, discontented labor, socialism, communism, anarchy, a licentious press, a tottering church, ambitious Roman Cathol icism, the Irish vote, boss rule, ring rule, corruption in office, levity, profanity, and a generally low state of public morals), it was no slight thing that such a man as Curtis should have testified, to the last, his confi dence in the future of the Ame rican people, and to the last 86 GEORGE WILLIAM CUETIS. should have devoted his splen did powers more largely to their practical service than to any thing else. Fortunate is the man who can close the awfully true book of " Ecclesiastes" and forget its terrible lessons ! For tunate is the people that has the example, the sympathy, the sup port, and the guidance of such a man ! If the altogether high and noble principles that Curtis advocated could prevail, then in deed the Republic that Wash ington conceived would be a glorious reality. When a wise and final check is placed upon the influence of mere numbers then, and not till then, will GEORGE WILLIAM CUBTIS. 87 the ideal of Washington be ful filled ; then, and not till then, will the Republic be safe. There is no belief more delusive and per nicious than the belief that virtue and wisdom are resident in the will of the multitude. If, therefore, Curtis made a sacrifice in turning from the Muse to labor for the commonwealth, at least it was not made in vain. Nor must it be forgotten that despite his preoccupation as a publicist and as the incumbent of many unpaid and most exact ing offices his contributions to literature, especially in the domain of the Essay, were extraordinary and brilliant. When, in 1846, he 88 GEOEGE WILLIAM CURTIS. began his literary career, a young man of twenty-two, American lit erature had begun to assume the proportions of a substantial and impressive fabric. Paulding, Ir ving, Dana, Bryant, Cooper, and Percival were in the zenith. Long- fellowand Whittier were ascending. Hawthorne was slowly becoming an auspicious figure. Halleck and George Fen no Hoffman were reign ing poets. Poe had nearly finished, in penniless obscurity, his desolate strife. Holmes, aged 37, was but little beyond the threshold : and the fine genius of Stoddard was yet unknown. Griswold still held the sceptre, which Willis was pres ently to inherit. Allston and Paul- GEORGE WILLIAM CUKTIS, 89 ding were 67 years old ; Irving was 63 ; R. H. Dana was 59 ; Sprague 54; Bryant 51; Drake, Halleck, and Percival 50. Emerson was only 42. Into that company Curtis entered, as a boy among graybeards. Au thors were more numerous than they had been thirty years earlier, but they were less numerous than they are now, and, perhaps, less distinctive. It was easier to ac quire literary reputation then than it is at present; but genuine lite rary reputation was never easily obtained. Curtis made a new mark. In his oriental travels the observation was large ; the fancy delicate ; the feeling deep ; the touch light. Then came, in Put- 90 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. nam s Magazine, between 1852 and 1854, the satirical " Potiphar Pa pers" and the romantic " Prue and I " the most imaginative and the loveliest of his books. After that the limitations of circumstance be gan to constrain him. He assumed the Easy Chair of Harper s Maga zines 1854, receiving it from that Horatian classic of American letters Donald G. Mitchell, by whom it had just been started, and he oc cupied it till the last. In Harper s Weekly, in 1859-60, he wrote the novel of " Trumps" a work which will transmit to a distant future that typical American politician, prosperous and potential yester day, to-day, and forever, General GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 91 Arcularius Belch. In Harper s Ba zar he wrote a series of papers, ex tending over a period of four years, called "Manners on the Road" the Road being life, and Manners being the conduct of people in their use of it. In those papers and in the Easy Chair the Addi- sonian drift of his mind was fully displayed. Those Essays do not excel The Spectator in thought, or learning, or humor, or inven tion, or in the thousand felicities of a courtly, leisurely, lace-ruffle style ; yet they are level with The Spectator in dignity of character and beauty of form ; they surpass it in vitality ; and they surpass it in fertility of theme, sustained af- 92 GEORGE WILLIAM CUBTIS. fluence of feeling, and diversity of literary grace. The Spectator contains 635 papers, and it was written by several hands, though mostly by the hand of Addison, between March 1710 and December 1714, a period of four years and nine months. The Easy Chair con tains over 2500 articles, and it was written by Curtis alone and was prolonged, with but one short in termission, for 38 years. It was Wesley, the Methodist preacher, who objected to the custom of letting the devil have all the good music. Curtis was a moralist who objected to the cus tom of letting the rakes have all the graces. Good men are some GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 93 times so insipid that they make virtue tedious. In Curtis, not withstanding his invincible com posure and perfect decorum, there was a strain of the gypsy. He had "heard the chimes at mid night " and he had not forgotten their music. He had been a wan dering minstrel in his youth, and he had twanged the light guitar beneath the silver moon. As you turn the leaves of Lester Wallack s " Memories of Fifty Years," you find Curtis to be one of them ; you come upon him very pleas antly in the society of that brill iant actor, and you hear their youthful voices blended the robust yet gentle genius of 94 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. Thackeray being a listener in the golden cadence of Ben Jon- son s lovely Grecian lyric : " Drink to me only with thine eyec, And I will pledge with mine ; Or leave a kiss but in the cup. And I ll not look for wine." Throughout his life Curtis never lost the capacity for sentiment ; the love of music ; the worship of art and beauty; the morning glow of chivalrous emotion. He never became ascetic. He was a Puritan but he was not a bigot. He made the jest sparkle. He mingled in the dance. Without excess, but sweetly and genially, GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 95 he filled a place at the festival. From his hand, in the remote days of the Castle Garden Opera, the glorious Jenny Lind received her first bouquet in America ; and from his lips, in the last year of his life, her illustrious memory received its sweetest tribute. When he heard the distant note of the street-organ his spirit floated away in a dream of " the mellow richness of Italy :" yet he was a man who could have rid den with Cromwell s troopers at Naseby, and given his life for freedom. There was no plainness of living to which he was not suited, and equally there was no opulence of culture and art that 96 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. he could not wear with grace. The extremes of his character explain its power. There was no seventy and no sacrifice of which he was not capable, in his scorn and detestation of evil and wrong; but for human frailty he had more than the tenderness of woman. He knelt with a disciple s rever ence at the austere shrine of Washington : yet his eloquence blazed like morning sunlight upon a wilderness of roses when he touched the rugged, mournful, humorous, pathetic story of Rob ert Burns. In this evanescent and vanish ing world one thing, and only one thing, endures, the spiritual GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 97 influence of good. Out of na ture, out of literature, out of art, out of character, that alone, transmuted into conduct, sur vives ensphered when all the rest has perished. We are accus tomed, unconsciously, to speak of our possessions and our depriva tions as if we ourselves were permanent ; not remembering that, in a very little while, our places also will be empty. Our friend is dead our champion, our benefactor, our guide ! Life will be lonelier without his pres ence. The streets in which he used to walk seem vacant. The very air of our silent and slum berous island, musing at the 98 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. mysterious gateways of the sea, seems more brooding and more solitary. Yet, being dead, he far more truly lives than we do, and in far more exceeding glory, be cause in that potential influence which can never die. Still in our rambles he will meet us, with the old familiar look that always seemed to say, You also are a prince, an emperor, a man ; you also possess this wonderful heri tage of beauty, and honor, and immortal life. Still in the homes of the poor will dwell the memory of his inexhaustible goodness. Still in the abodes of the rich will live the sweetness and the power of his benignant GEOEGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 99 example : and still, when we have passed away and have been forgotten, a distant posterity, remembering the illustrious ora tor, the wise and gentle philoso pher, the serene and delicate literary artist, the incorruptible patriot, the supreme gentleman, will cherish the writings, will revere the character, and will exult in the splendid tradition of George William Curtis. I shall close this address with the Monody that I wrote not long after his death: I. ALL the flowers were in their pride On the day when Rupert died. 100 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. Dreamily, through dozing trees Sighed the idle summer breeze. Wild birds, glancing through the air, Spilled their music everywhere. Not one sign of mortal ill Told that his great heart was still. Now the grass he loved to tread Murmurs softly o er his head : Now the great green branches wave High above his lonely grave: While in grief s perpetual speech Roll the breakers on the beach. O my comrade, O my friend, Must this parting be the end? II. Weave the shroud and spread the pall ! Night and silence cover all. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 101 Howsoever we deplore, They who go return no more. Never from that unknown track Floats one answering whisper back. Nature, vacant, will not heed Lips that grieve or hearts that bleed. Wherefore now should mourning word Or the tearful dirge be heard? How shall words our grief abate? Call him noble; call him great; Say that faith, now gaunt and grim, Once was fair because of him; Say that goodness, round his way, Made one everlasting day; Say that beauty s heavenly flame Bourgeoned wheresoe er he came; Say that all life s common ways Were made glorious in his gaze ; 102 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. Say he gave us, hour by hour, Hope and patience, grace and power; Say his spirit was so true That it made us noble too; What is this, but to declare Life s bereavement, Love s despair? What is this, but just to say All we loved is torn away? Weave the shroud and spread the pall! Night and silence cover all. in. O my comrade, O my friend, Must this parting be the end? Heart and hope are growing old : Dark the night comes down, and cold: GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 103 Few the souls that answer mine, And no voice so sweet as thine. Desert wastes of care remain- Yet thy lips speak not again ! Gray eternities of space Yet nowhere thy living face! Only now the lonesome blight, Heavy day and haunted night. All the light and music reft Only thought and memory left! Peace, fond mourner! This thy boon, Thou thyself must follow soon. Peace, and let repining go! Peace, for Fate will have it so. Vainly now his praise is said; Vain the garland for his head: 104 G-LJGKGE WILLIAM CUKTIS. Yet is comfort s shadow cast From the kindness of the past. All my love could do to cheer Warmed his heart when he was here. Honor s plaudit, friendship s vow- Did not coldly wait till now. O my comrade, O my friend, If this parting be the end, Yet I hold my life divine To have known a soul like thine: And I hush the low lament, In submission, penitent. Still the sun is in the skies: He sets but I have seen him rise! APPENDIX. The following tribute to the memory of Curtis was written by me, in the New York Tribune of September I, 1892, the morning after his death. W. W. " AMONG American men of let ters no man of this gener ation has so completely filled as Curtis did the ideal of clear in tellect, pure taste, moral pur pose, chivalry of feeling, and personal refinement and grace. From the moment of his en trance into public life, as a speaker, now nearly forty years ago, he has entirely satisfied, 106 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. especially for the mind of sensi tive and generous youth, the highest conception of purity, dignity, and sweetness. His noble presence and serious de meanor, the repose and sweep and sway of his eloquence, and the crystal clearness of his liter ary style were all felt to be nat urally and spontaneously repre sentative of an exalted person ality. Upon all public occasions the tremulous sensibility of his feelings and the inflexible reti cence of his mind were not less remarkable than the absolute propriety and perfect symmetry of his language. In the element of felicity few orators have GEORGE WILLIAM CUETIS. 107 equalled him and no orator has surpassed him. He was, of course, an artist ; but the soul of his art was the virtuous and wise sincerity of a noble nature. The work was fine, but the man was finer than the work ; and of all the charms that he exerted none was so great as that of his pure and gentle spirit. His manners, indeed, were so unde monstrative and so polished as to seem cold ; but all who knew him, all who ever listened to his speech, felt and owned in him the spell of inherent, genuine nobility. There is, indeed, a conception of character and conduct which 108 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. assumes that when a man is not effusive and familiar he is aristo cratic. Curtis was reticent : yet no one ever more profoundly and practically believed than he did in the brotherhood of humanity. He was republican, through and through. His voice and his pen, his personal influence and his priv ate means, were always enlisted in the cause of the helpless, the op pressed, and the weak. Perhaps the best oration he ever delivered was that upon Robert Burns in which every word thrills with the pulsation of human kindness, and of which the spirit is love for every virtue and pity for every weak ness of the human race. But his GEOKGE WILLIAM CUETIS. 109 theory of equality was not deg radation. He desired, and he labored, to equalize the race, not by dragging people down, but by raising them up. If he was fastidious and reticent, he did not deny to others the right to be fastidious and reticent also. In this he was of the kindred of Bryant, and Washington Irving, and Longfellow, and Emerson, with whom he had much in common, and the spotless stand ard of whose art and life he loy ally and brilliantly sustained and has transmitted in light and beauty to all the younger men of letters who succeed him. In all that the word implies he was a 110 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. gentleman; and there is no worthier or more expressive trib ute that can be brought to any man s coffin than the tear that will not be repressed for life long devotion to duty, for good ness that never faltered and kindness that never failed. In the presence of death and under the instant sense of be reavement it is not easily possi ble to speak with cold judgment of his achievements as a writer. He was the master of a style as pure as that of Addison and as flexible as that of Lamb. In its characteristic quality, however, it does not resemble either of those models. The influences that GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. Ill were most intimately concerned in forming his mind were Emer son and Thackeray. He had the broad vision and the fresh, brave, aspiring spirit of the one, and he combined with those the satirical playfulness, the cordial detestation of shams, and the subtle commingling of raillery and tender sentiment that are characteristic of the other. His habitual mood was pensive, not passionate, and he was essen tially more a contemplative philosopher than either an advo cate, a partisan, a reformer, or a politician all of which parts he sometimes was constrained to assume. He was born for the 112 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. vocation of letters and his best success was gained in the literary art. His literature will survive in the affectionate admiration of his countrymen long after his political papers are forgotten. Prue and I is one of the most delicate, dreamlike books in our language, and the spirit that it discloses is full of romance, ten derness and beauty. The affec tionate heart, the lively fancy, and the subtle literary instinct of Goldsmith could not have made it finer. As an orator he had all the grace and more than the emotion of Everett, whose tra dition he has perpetuated. His rhetoric was not merely a sheen GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 113 of words, but it burned and shim mered with the vital splendor of a sincere heart. He was in earnest in all that he said and did. He has had a long and good life, and his name is noble forever. THE WORKS OF WILLIAM WINTER. SHAKESPEARE S ENGLAND. iS&to, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. GRAY DAYS AND GOLD. i8iwo, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. SHADOWS OP THE STAGE. i8MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. OLD SHRINES AND IVY. i8MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. Also a Small Limited LARGE PAPER EDITION. 4 Vols. Uniform. $8.00. WANDERERS: A Collection of Poems. NEW EDI. TION. WITH A PORTRAIT. i8MO, CLOTH, 75 CENTS. " The supreme need of this age in America is a practical conviction that progress does not consist in material prosperity, but in spiritual advancement. Utility has long been exclusively worshipped. The welfare of the future lies in the worship of beauty. To that worship these pages are devoted, with all that im plies of sympathy with the higher instincts, and faith in the divine destiny of the human race." from tht Preface to Gray Days and Gold. MACMILLAN & CO., jt FOURTH AVENUE, NEW YORK* THE NOVEL: WHAT IT IS. By F. MARION CRAWFORD, AUTHOR OK "CHILDREN OF THE KING," "A ROMAWT SINGER," " SARACINKSCA," ETC. With Photogravure Portrait of the Author. 18mo. Cloth. 73 cents. THE CHOICE OF BOOKS, AND OTHER LITERARY PIECES. By FREDERIC HARRISON, AUTHOR OF " OLIVER CROMWELL," ETC. 18tno. Cloth. 75 cents. " Mr. Harrison is an able and conscientious critic, a good logician, and a clever man ; his faults are superficial, and his book will not fail to be valu able.".^. Y. Times. Mr. JOHN MORLEY, in his speech on the study of literature at the Mansion House, a6th February, 1887, said : " Those who are curious as to what they should read in the region of pure literature will do well to peruse my friend Frederic Harrison s volume called The Choice of Books. You will find there as much wise thought, eloquently and brilliantly put, as ia any volume of its size." " Mr. Harrison furnishes a valuable contribution to the subject. It is full of suggestiveness and shrewd analytical criticism. It contains the fruits of wide reading and rich research." London Times. MACMILLAN & CO., Publishers, NEW YORK. UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME.. A TRIP TO ENGLAND, By GOLDWIN SMITH, D.C.L. 18mo. Cloth, gilt, 78 cents. "A delightful little work, telling tn a most charm- ingly rambling yet systematic way what ts to be seen of interest in England." Chicago Times. " The book makes an entertaining and useful com panion for travellers in England," Boston Herald. AMIEL S JOURNAL. The Journal Intime of Henri-Frederic Amiei. Translated, with an Introduction and Notes. With a Portrait. New Edition. 2 Vols. 18mo. $I.SO. "A wealth of thought and a power of expression which would make the fortune of a dozen less able works." Churchman. " A work of wonderful beauty, depth, and charm. . . . Will stand beside such confessions as St. Augus tine s and Pascal s. . . . It is a book to converse with again and again ; fit to stand among the choicest volumes that we esteem as friends of our souls. " Christian Register. MACMILLAN & CO., PUBLISHERS, NSW YORK. 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall 6 Mar 63LE : - " i .*. O_2 lQ^"^ :..:-.. . - P^- l6Mar 6ft|| HC.CIS.M 2 LD 21A-50m-ll, 62 (D3279slO)476B General Library University of California Berkeley " LIBRARIES THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY