REESE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 1895 
 
Copyright, 1894, by HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 All rights reserved. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 EMERSON 1 
 
 Homes of American Authors, 1854. 
 
 HAWTHORXE 31 
 
 Homes of American Authors, 1854. 
 
 THE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE ... 61 
 
 Xorth American Review, Vol. XCIX., 1S64, 
 
 RACHEL 95 
 
 Putnam s Magazine, Vol. VI., 1855. 
 
 THACKERAY IN AMERICA 127 
 
 Putnam s Magazine, Vol. L, 1S53. 
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 147 
 
 Hitherto unpublished. Written in 1857. 
 
 LONGFELLOW 181 
 
 HARPERS MAGAZINE, Vol. LXV., 1882. 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 205 
 
 HARPER S MAGAZINE, Vol. LXXXIIL, 1891. 
 
 WASHINGTON IRVING 237 
 
 Read at Ashfield, 1889. Printed by the Grolier 
 Club, 1S92. 
 
EMERSON 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 EMERSON 
 
 THE village of Concord, Massachusetts, lies an 
 hour s ride from Boston, upon the Great North 
 ern Railway. It is one of those quiet New Eng 
 land towns, whose few white houses, grouped 
 upon the plain, make but a slight impression 
 upon the mind of the busy traveller hurrying 
 to or from the city. As the conductor shouts 
 " Concord !" the busy traveller has scarcely time 
 to recall " Concord, Lexington, and Bunker Hill" 
 before the town has vanished and he is darting 
 through woods and fields as solitary as those he 
 has just left in New Hampshire. Yet as it van 
 ishes he may chance to " see " two or three spires, 
 and as they rush behind the trees his eyes fall 
 upon a gleaming sheet of water It is Walden 
 Pond or Walden Water, as Orphic Alcott used 
 to call it whose virgin seclusion was a just im 
 age of that of the little village, until one after 
 noon, some half-dozen or more years since, a 
 shriek, sharper than any that had rung from Wal 
 den woods since the last war-whoop of the last 
 
4 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 Indians of Musketaquid, announced to astonished 
 Concord, drowsing in the river meadows, that the 
 nineteenth century had overtaken it. Yet long 
 before the material force of the age bound the 
 town to the rest of the world, the spiritual force 
 of a single mind in it had attracted attention to 
 it, and made its lonely plains as dear to many 
 widely scattered minds as the groves of the Acad 
 emy or the vineyards of Vaucluse. 
 
 Except in causing the erection of the railway 
 buildings and several dwellings near it, steam has 
 not much changed Concord. It is yet one of the 
 quiet country towns whose charm is incredible to 
 all but those who, by loving it, have found it wor 
 thy of love. The shire-town of the great agricult 
 ural county of Middlesex, it is not disturbed by 
 the feverish throb of factories, nor by any roar of 
 inexorable toil but the few puffs of the locomo 
 tive. One day, during the autumn, it is thronged 
 with the neighboring farmers, who hold their high 
 festival the annual cattle-show there. But the 
 calm tenor of Concord life is not varied, even on 
 that day, by anything more exciting than fat oxen 
 and the cud-chewing eloquence of the agricultural 
 dinner. The population of the region is composed 
 of sturdy, sterling men, worthy representatives 
 of the ancestors who sowed along the Concord 
 shores, with their seed-corn and rye, the germs 
 
4*?x 
 
 UNIVERSITY) 
 
 EXER80&. . A 5 
 
 of a prodigious national greatness. At intervals 
 every day the rattle, roar, and whistle of the swift 
 shuttle darting to and from the metropolitan heart 
 of New England, weaving prosperity upon the 
 land, remind those farmers in their silent fields 
 that the great world yet wags and wrestles. And 
 the farmer-boy sweeping with flashing scythe 
 through the river meadows, whose coarse grass 
 glitters, apt for mowing, in the early June morn 
 ing pauses as the whistle dies into the distance, 
 and, wiping his brow and whetting his blade anew, 
 questions the country-smitten citizen, the amateur 
 Corydon struggling with imperfect stroke behind 
 him, of the mystic romance of city life. 
 
 The sluggish repose of the little river images 
 the fanner -boy s life. He bullies his oxen, and 
 trembles at the locomotive. His wonder and fan 
 cy stretch towards the great world beyond the 
 barn -yard and the village church as the torpid 
 stream tends towards the ocean. The river, in 
 fact, seems the thread npon which all the beads 
 of that rustic life are strung the clew to its tran 
 quil character. If it were an impetuous stream, 
 dashing along as if it claimed and required the 
 career to which every American river is entitled, 
 a career it would have. Wheels, factories, shops, 
 traders, factory - girls, boards of directors, dreary 
 white lines of boarding-houses, all the signs that 
 
6 LITER Alt? AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 indicate the spirit of the age, and of the Amer 
 ican age, would arise upon its margin. Some 
 shaven magician from State Street would run up 
 by rail, and, from proposals, maps, schedules of 
 stock, etc., educe a spacious factory as easily as 
 Aladdin s palace arose from nothing. Instead of 
 a dreaming, pastoral poet of a village, Concord 
 would be a rushing, whirling, bustling manufact 
 urer of a town, like its thrifty neighbor Lowell. 
 Many a fine equipage, flashing along city ways 
 many an Elizabethan-Gothic-Grecian rural retreat, 
 in which State Street woos Pan and grows Arca 
 dian in summer, would be reduced, in the last 
 analysis, to the Concord mills. Yet if these broad 
 river meadows grew factories instead of corn, they 
 might perhaps lack another harvest, of which the 
 poet s thought is the sickle. 
 
 "One harvest from your field 
 
 Homeward brought the oxen strong. 
 Another crop your acres yield, 
 Which I gather in a song," 
 
 sings Emerson, and again, as the afternoon light 
 strikes pensive across his memory, as over the 
 fields below him : 
 
 "Knows he who tills this lonely field, 
 
 To reap its scanty corn, 
 What mystic crops his acres yield, 
 At midnight and at morn ?" 
 
EMERSON 7 
 
 The Concord Kiver, upon whose winding shores 
 the town has scattered its few houses as if, loiter 
 ing over the plain some fervent day, it had fallen 
 asleep obedient to the slumberous spell, and had 
 not since awakened is a languid, shallow stream, 
 that loiters through broad meadows, which fringe 
 it with rushes and long grasses. Its sluggish cur 
 rent scarcely moves the autumn leaves showered 
 upon it by a few maples that lean over the Assa- 
 bet as one of its branches is named. Yellow 
 lily -buds and leathery lily -pads tessellate its sur 
 face, and the white water-lilies pale, proud La 
 dies of Shalott bare their virgin breasts to the 
 sun in the seclusion of its distant reaches. Clus 
 tering vines of wild grape hang its wooded shores 
 with a tapestry of the South and the Rhine. The 
 pickerel-weed marks with blue spikes of flowers 
 the points where small tributary brooks flow in, 
 and along the dusky windings of those brooks 
 cardinal-flowers with a scarlet splendor paint the 
 tropics upon New England green. All summer 
 long, from founts unknown, in the upper coun 
 ties, from some anonymous pond or wooded hill 
 side moist with springs, steals the gentle river 
 through the plain, spreading at one point above 
 the town into a little lake, called by the farmers 
 " Fairhaven Bay," as if all its lesser names must 
 share the sunny significance of Concord. Then, 
 
8 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 shrinking again, alarmed at its own boldness, it 
 dreams on towards the Merrimac and the sea. 
 
 The absence of factories has already implied its 
 shallowness and slowness. In truth it is a very 
 slow river, belonging much more to the Indian 
 than to the Yankee ; so much so, indeed, that until 
 within a very few years there was an annual visit 
 to its shores from a few sad heirs of its old mas 
 ters, who pitched a group of tents in the meadows, 
 and wove their tidy baskets and strung their beads 
 in unsmiling silence. It was the same thing that 
 I saw in Jerusalem among the Jews. Every Fri 
 day they repair to the remains of the old temple 
 wall, and pray and wail, kneeling upon the pave 
 ment and kissing the stones. But that passionate 
 Oriental regret was not more impressive than this 
 silent homage of a waning race, who, as they be 
 held the unchanged river, knew that, unlike it, 
 the last drops of their existence were gradually 
 flowing away, and that for their tribes there shall 
 be no ingathering. 
 
 So shallow is the stream that the amateur Cory- 
 dons who embark at morning to explore its re 
 moter shores will, not infrequently in midsum 
 mer, find their boat as suddenly tranquil and 
 motionless as the river, having placidly grounded 
 upon its oozy bottom. Or, returning at evening, 
 they may lean over the edge as they lie at length 
 
EMERSON 9 
 
 in the boat, and float with the almost impercepti 
 ble current, brushing the tips of the long water- 
 grass and reeds below them in the stream a river 
 jungle, in which lurk pickerel and trout with 
 the sensation of a bird drifting upon soft evening 
 air over the tree-tops. No available or profitable 
 craft navigate these waters, and animated gentle 
 men from the city who run up for "a mouthful of 
 fresh air" cannot possibly detect the final cause 
 of such a river. Yet the dreaming idler has a 
 place on maps and a name in history. 
 
 Near the town it is crossed by three or four 
 bridges. One is a massive structure to help the 
 railroad over. The stern, strong pile readily be 
 trays that it is part of good, solid stock, owned in 
 the right quarter. Close by it is a little arched 
 stone bridge, auxiliary to a great road leading to 
 some vague region of the world called Acton upon 
 guide-posts and on maps. Just beyond these bridges 
 the river bends and forgets the railroad, but it is 
 grateful to the graceful arch of the little stone 
 bridge for making its curve more picturesque, 
 and, as it muses towards the Old Manse, listless 
 ly brushing the lilies, it wonders if Ellery Chan- 
 ning, who lives beyond, upon a hill-side sloping 
 to the shore, wrote his poem of " The Bridge " 
 to that particular one. There are two or three 
 wooden bridges also, always combining well with 
 
 * OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 CAUFORNIA- 
 
10 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 the landscape, always making and suggesting pict 
 ures. 
 
 The Concord, as I said, has a name in history. 
 Near one of the wooden bridges you turn aside 
 from the main road, close by the Old Manse 
 whose mosses of mystic hue were gathered by 
 Hawthorne, who lived there for three years and 
 a few steps bring you to the river and to a small 
 monument upon its brink. It is a narrow, grassy 
 way ; not a field nor a meadow, but of" that shape 
 and character which would perplex the animated 
 stranger from the city, who would see, also, its 
 unfitness for a building-lot. The narrow, grassy 
 way is the old road, which in the month of April, 
 1775, led to a bridge that crossed the stream at 
 this spot. And upon the river s margin, upon 
 the bridge and the shore beyond, took place the 
 sharp struggle between the Middlesex farmers 
 and the scarlet British soldiers known in tradi 
 tion as " Concord fight." The small monument 
 records the day and the event. When it was 
 erected Emerson wrote the following hymn for 
 the ceremony : 
 
 APRIL 19, 1836. 
 
 "By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
 
 Their flag to April s breeze unfurled, 
 Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
 And fired the shot heard round the world. 
 
EMERSON 11 
 
 " The foe long since in silence slept ; 
 Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; 
 And Time the ruined bridge has swept 
 Down the dark stream that seaward creeps. 
 
 "On this green bank, by this soft stream, 
 
 We see to-day a votive stone, 
 That memory may their deed redeem, 
 When, like our sires, our sons are gone. 
 
 "Spirit that made these heroes dare 
 
 To die, or leave their children free, 
 Bid Time and Nature gently spare 
 The shaft we raise to them and Thee." 
 
 Close under the rough stone wall at the left, 
 which separates it from the little grassy orchard 
 of the Manse, is a small mound of turf and a 
 broken stone. Grave and headstone shrink from 
 sight amid the grass and under the wall, but 
 they mark the earthly bed of the first victims 
 of that first fight. A few large trees overhang 
 the ground, which Hawthorne thinks have been, 
 planted since that day, and he says that in the 
 river he has seen mossy timbers of the old bridge, 
 and on the farther bank, half hidden, the crum 
 bling stone abutments that supported it. In an 
 old house upon the main road, nearly opposite the 
 entrance to this grassy way, I knew a hale old 
 woman who well remembered the gay advance of 
 the flashing soldiers, the terrible ring and crack 
 of fire-arras, and the panic-stricken retreat of the 
 
12 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 regulars, blackened and bloody. But the placid 
 river has long since overborne it all. The alarm, 
 the struggle, the retreat, are swallowed up in its 
 supreme tranquillity. The summers of more than 
 seventy years have obliterated every trace of the 
 road with thick grass, which seeks to bury the 
 graves, as earth buried the victims. Let the sweet 
 ministry of summer avail. Let its mild iteration 
 even sap the monument and conceal its stones as 
 it hides the abutment in foliage ; for, still on the 
 sunny slopes, white with the May blossoming of 
 apple-orchards, and in the broad fields, golden to 
 the marge of the river, and tilled in security and 
 peace, survives the imperishable remembrance of 
 that day and its results. 
 
 The river is thus the main feature of the Con 
 cord landscape. It is surrounded by a wide plain, 
 from which rise only three or four low hills. One 
 is a wooded cliff over Fairhaven Bay, a mile from 
 the town ; one separates the main river from the 
 Assabeth ; and just beyond the battle-ground one 
 rises, rich with orchards, to a fine wood which 
 crowns it. The river meadows blend with broad, 
 lonely fields. A wide horizon, like that of the 
 prairie or the sea, is the grand charm of Concord. 
 At night the stars are seen from the roads cross 
 ing the plain, as from a ship at sea. The land 
 scape would be called tame by those who think no 
 
EMERSON . 13 
 
 scenery grand but that of mountains or the sea- 
 coast. But the wide solitude of that region is not 
 so accounted by those who live there. To them 
 it is rich and suggestive, as Emerson shows, by 
 saying in the essay upon "Nature," "My house 
 stands in low land, with limited outlook, and 
 on the skirt of the village. But I go with my 
 friend to the shore of our little river, and with one 
 stroke of the paddle I leave the village politics 
 and personalities, yes, and the world of villages 
 and personalities behind, and pass into a delicate 
 realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost 
 for spotted man to enter without novitiate and 
 probation. We penetrate bodily this incredible 
 beauty; we dip our hands in this painted element; 
 our eyes are bathed in these lights and forms. A 
 holiday, a villeggiatura, a royal revel, the proudest, 
 most heart-rejoicing festival that valor and beauty, 
 power and taste ever decked and enjoyed, estab 
 lishes itself upon the instant." And again, as in 
 dicating where the true charm of scenery lies : 
 " In every landscape the point to astonishment is 
 the meeting of the sky and the earth, and that 
 is seen from the first hillock, as well as from 
 the top of the Alleghanies. The stars stoop 
 down over the brownest, homeliest common, with 
 all the spiritual magnificence which they shed 
 on the Campagna or on the marble deserts of 
 
14 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 Egypt." He is speaking here, of course, of the 
 spiritual excitement of Beauty, which crops up 
 everywhere in nature, like gold in a rich re 
 gion ; but the quality of the imagery indicates 
 the character of the scenery in which the essay 
 was written. 
 
 Concord is too far from Boston to rival in gar 
 den cultivation its neighbors, West Cambridge, 
 Lexington, and Waltham ; nor can it boast, with 
 Brookline, Dorchester, and Cambridge, the hand 
 some summer homes of city wealth. But it sur 
 passes them all, perhaps, in a genuine country 
 freshness and feeling, derived from its loneliness. 
 If not touched by city elegance, neither is it in 
 fected by city meretriciousness ; it is sweet, whole 
 some country. By climbing one of the hills, your 
 eye sweeps a wide, wide landscape, until it rests 
 upon graceful Wachuset, or, farther and mistier, 
 Monadnoc, the lofty outpost of New Hampshire 
 hills. Level scenery is not tame. The ocean, the 
 prairie, the desert, are not tame, although of mo 
 notonous surface. The gentle undulations which 
 mark certain scenes a rippling landscape, in 
 which all sense of space, of breadth, and of height 
 is lost that is tame. It may be made beautiful 
 by exquisite cultivation, as it often is in England 
 and on parts of the Hudson shores, but it is, at 
 best, rather pleasing than inspiring. For a per- 
 
EMERSON 
 
 manent view the eye craves large and simple 
 forms, as the body requires plain food for its best 
 nourishment. 
 
 The town of Concord is built mainly upon one 
 side of the river. In its centre is a large open 
 square, shaded by fine elms. A white wooden 
 church, in the most classical style of Yankee- 
 Greek, stands upon the square. The Court-house 
 is upon one of the corners. In the old Court 
 house, in the days when I knew Concord, many 
 conventions were held for humane as well as 
 merely political objects. One summer day I es 
 pecially remember, when I did not envy Athens 
 its forum, for Emerson and William Henry 
 Channing spoke. In the speech of both burned 
 the sacred fire of eloquence, but in Emerson it 
 was light, and in Channing heat. 
 
 From this square diverge four roads, like high 
 ways from a forum. One leads by the Court- 
 house and under stately sycamores to the Old 
 Manse and the battle-ground, another goes direct 
 ly to the river, and a third is the main avenue 
 of the town. After passing the shops this third 
 divides, and one branch forms a fair and noble 
 street, spaciously and loftily arched with elms, 
 the houses standing liberally apart, each with its 
 garden-plot in front. The fourth avenue is the 
 old Boston road, also dividing, at the edge of the 
 
16 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 village, into the direct route to the metropolis and 
 the Lexington turnpike. 
 
 The house of Mr. Emerson stands opposite this 
 junction. It is a plain, square white dwelling- 
 house, yet it has a city air and could not be mis 
 taken for a farm-house. A quiet merchant, you 
 would say, unostentatious and simple, has here 
 hidden himself from town. But a thick grove of 
 pine and fir trees, almost brushing the two win 
 dows upon the right of the door, and occupying 
 the space between them and the road, suggests at 
 least a peculiar taste in the retired merchant, or 
 hints the possibility that he may have sold his 
 place to a poet or philosopher or to some old 
 East India sea-captain, perhaps, who cannot sleep 
 without the sound of waves, and so plants pines to 
 rustle, surf-like, against his chamber window. 
 
 The fact, strangely enough, partly supports your 
 theory. In the year 1828 Charles Coolidge, a 
 brother of J. Templeman Coolidge, a merchant of 
 repute in Boston and grandson of Joseph Cool 
 idge, a patriarchal denizen of Bowdoin Square in 
 that city, came to Concord and built this house. 
 Gratefully remembering the lofty horse-chestnuts 
 which shaded the city square, and which, perhaps, 
 first inspired him with the wish to be a nearer 
 neighbor of woods and fields, he planted a row of 
 them along his lot, which this year ripen their 
 
EMERSON 17 
 
 twenty-fifth harvest. With the liberal hospitality 
 of a Xew England merchant he did not forget 
 the spacious cellars of the city, and, as Mr. Em 
 erson writes, "he built the only good cellar that 
 had then been built in Concord." 
 
 Mr. Emerson bought the house in the year 1835. 
 He found it a plain, convenient, and thoroughly 
 built country residence. An amiable neighbor of 
 Mr. Coolidge had placed a miserable old barn ir 
 regularly upon the edge of that gentleman s lot, 
 which, for the sake of comeliness, he was forced to 
 buy and set straight and smooth into a decent de 
 pendence of the mansion house. The estate, upon 
 passing into Mr. Emerson s hands, comprised the 
 house, barn, and two acres of land. He has en 
 larged house and barn, and the two acres have 
 grown to nine. Our author is no farmer, except 
 as every country gentleman is, yet the kindly 
 slope from the rear of the house to a little brook, 
 which, passing to the calm Concord beyond, washes 
 the edge of his land, yields him at least occasional 
 beans and pease or some friend, agriculturally en 
 thusiastic and an original Brook-Farmer, experi 
 ments with guano in the garden, and produces mel 
 ons and other vines with a success that relieves 
 Brook Farm from every slur of inadequate practi 
 cal genius. Mr. Emerson has shaded his originally 
 bare land with trees, and counts near a hundred 
 2 
 
1 8 LITERAR Y AND SO CIAL ESS A YS 
 
 apple and pear trees in his orchard. The whole 
 estate is quite level, inclining only towards the 
 little brook, and is well watered and convenient. 
 
 The Orphic Alcott or Plato Skimpole, as As- 
 pasia called him well known in the transcen 
 dental history of New England, designed and with 
 his own hands erected a summer-house, which 
 gracefully adorns the lawn, if I may so call the 
 smooth grass-plot at the side of the house. Un 
 happily, this edifice promises no longer duration, 
 not being " technically based and pointed." This 
 is not a strange, although a disagreeable fact, to 
 Mr. Emerson, who has been always the most faith 
 ful and appreciative of the lovers of Mr. Alcott. 
 It is natural that the Orphic Alcott should build 
 graceful summer-houses. There are even people 
 who declare that he has covered the pleasant but 
 somewhat misty lawns of ethical speculation with 
 a thousand such edifices, which need only to be a 
 little more " technically based and pointed " to be 
 quite perfect. At present they whisper, the wind 
 blows clean through them, and no figures of flesh 
 and blood are ever seen there, but only pallid 
 phantoms with large, calm eyes, eating uncooked 
 grain, out of baskets, and discoursing in a sublime 
 shibboleth of which mortals have no key. But 
 how could Plato Skimpole, who goes down to 
 Hiugham on the sea, in a New England January, 
 
EJ1ERSON 19 
 
 clad only in a suit of linen, hope to build immor 
 tal summer-houses? 
 
 Mr. Emerson s library is the room at the right 
 of the door upon entering the house. It is a sim 
 ple square room, not walled with books like the 
 den of a literary grub, nor merely elegant like the 
 ornamental retreat of a dilettante. The books are 
 arranged upon plain shelves, not in architectural 
 bookcases, and the room is hung with a few choice 
 engravings of the greatest men. There was a fair 
 copy of Michael Angelo s " Fates," which, prop 
 erly enough, imparted that grave serenity to the 
 ornament of the room which is always apparent 
 in what is written there. It is the study of a 
 scholar. All our author s published writings, the 
 essays, orations, and poems, date from this room, 
 as much as they date from any place or moment. 
 The villagers, indeed, fancy their philosophical 
 contemporary affected by the novelist James s con 
 stancy of composition. They relate, with wide 
 eyes, that he has a huge manuscript book, in which 
 he incessantly records the ends of thoughts, bits 
 of observation and experience, and facts of all 
 kinds a kind of intellectual and scientific rag 
 bag, into which all shreds and remnants of con 
 versations and reminiscences of wayside reveries 
 are incontinently thrust. This work goes on, they 
 aver, day and night, and when he travels the rag- 
 
20 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 bag travels too, and grows more plethoric with 
 each mile of the journey. And a story, which 
 will one day be a tradition, is perpetuated in the 
 village, that one night, before his wife had become 
 completely accustomed to his habits, she awoke 
 suddenly, and hearing him groping about the room, 
 inquired anxiously, 
 
 " My dear, are you unwell ?" 
 
 " No, my love, only an idea." 
 
 The library is not only the study of a scholar, 
 it is the bower of a poet. The pines lean against 
 the windows, and to the student deeply sunk in 
 learned lore or soaring upon the daring specula 
 tions of an intrepid philosophy, they whisper a 
 secret beyond that of the philosopher s stone, and 
 sing of the springs of poetry. 
 
 The site of the house is not memorable. There 
 is no reasonable ground to suppose that so much 
 as an Indian wigwam ever occupied the spot ; nor 
 has Henry Thoreau, a very faithful friend of Mr. 
 Emerson s and of the woods and waters of his 
 native Concord, ever found an Indian arrowhead 
 upon the premises. Henry Thoreau s instinct is 
 as sure towards the facts of nature as the witch- 
 hazel towards treasure. If every quiet country 
 town in New England had a son who, with a 
 lore like Selborne s and an eye like Buffon s, had 
 watched and studied its landscape and history, and 
 
EXERSON 21 
 
 then published the result, as Thoreau has done, in 
 a book as redolent of genuine and perceptive sym 
 pathy with nature as a clover-field of honey, New 
 England would seem as poetic and beautiful as 
 Greece. Thoreau lives in the berry pastures upon 
 a bank over Walden Pond, and in a little house 
 of his own building. One pleasant summer after 
 noon a small party of us helped him raise it a bit 
 of life as Arcadian as any at Brook Farm. Else 
 where in the village he turns up arrowheads abun 
 dantly, and Hawthorne mentions that Thoreau 
 initiated him into the mystery of finding them. 
 But neither the Indians nor nature nor Thoreau 
 can invest the quiet residence of our author with 
 the dignity or even the suspicion of a legend. 
 History stops short in that direction with Charles 
 Coolidge, Esq., and the year 1828. 
 
 There is little prospect from the house. Di 
 rectly opposite a low bluff overhangs the Boston 
 road and obstructs the view. Upon the other sides 
 the level land stretches away. Towards Lexing 
 ton it is a broad, half-marshy region, and between 
 the brook behind and the river good farms lie 
 upon the outskirts of the town. Pilgrims drawn 
 to Concord by the desire of conversing with the 
 man whose written or spoken eloquence has so 
 profoundly charmed them, and who have placed 
 him in some pavilion of fancy, some peculiar resi- 
 
22 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 dence, find him in no porch of philosophy nor aca 
 demic grove, but in a plain white house by the 
 wayside, ready to entertain every comer as an am 
 bassador from some remote Cathay of speculation 
 whence the stars are more nearly seen. Bat the 
 familiar reader of our author will not be surprised 
 to find the "walking eye-ball" simply sheltered, 
 and the " endless experimenter with no past at my 
 back" housed without ornament. Such a reader 
 will have felt the Spartan severity of this intel 
 lect, arid have noticed that the realm of this imag 
 ination is rather sculpturesque than pictorial, more 
 Greek than Italian. Therefore he will be pleased 
 to alight at the little gate, and hear the breezy 
 welcome of the pines and the no less cordial salu 
 tation of their owner. For if the visitor knows 
 what he is about, he has come to this plain for 
 bracing mountain air. These serious Concord 
 reaches are no vale of Cashmere. Where Plato 
 Skimpole is architect of the summer-house, you 
 may imagine what is to be expected in the man 
 sion itself. It is always morning within those 
 doors. If you have nothing to say, if you are 
 really not an envoy from some kingdom or colony 
 of thought and cannot cast a gem upon the heaped 
 pile, you had better pass by upon the other side. 
 For it is the peculiarity of Emerson s mind to be 
 always on the alert. He eats no lotus, but for- 
 
EMERSON 23 
 
 ever quaffs the waters which engender immortal 
 thirst. 
 
 If the memorabilia of his house could find their 
 proper Xenophon, the want of antecedent arrow 
 heads upon the premises would not prove very 
 disastrous to the interest of the history. The fame 
 of the philosopher attracts admiring friends and 
 enthusiasts from every quarter, and the scholarly 
 grace and urbane hospitality of the gentleman 
 send them charmed away. Friendly foes, who 
 altogether differ from Emerson, come to break a 
 lance with him upon the level pastures of Con 
 cord, with all the cheerful and appreciative zeal 
 of those who longed 
 
 "To drink delight of battle witn their peers 
 Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy." 
 
 It is not hazardous to say that the greatest ques 
 tions of our day and of all days have been no 
 where more amply discussed, with more poetic 
 insight or profound conviction, than in the comely, 
 square white house upon the edge of the Lexing 
 ton turnpike. There have even been attempts 
 at something more formal and club-like than the 
 chance conversations of occasional guests, one of 
 which will certainly be nowhere recorded but upon 
 these pages. 
 
 It was in the year 1845 that a circle of persons 
 
24 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 of various ages, and differing very much in every 
 thing but sympathy, found themselves in Concord. 
 Towards the end of the autumn Mr. Emerson sug 
 gested that they should meet every Monday even 
 ing through the winter in his library. " Monsieur 
 Aubepine," "Miles Coverdale," and other phan 
 toms, since generally known as Nathaniel Haw 
 thorne, who then occupied the Old Manse ; the 
 inflexible Henry Thoreau, a scholastic and pas 
 toral Orson, then living among the blackberry 
 pastures of Walden Pond; Plato Skimpole, then 
 sublimely meditating impossible summer-houses 
 in a little house upon the Boston road ; the en 
 thusiastic agriculturist and Brook-Farmer already 
 mentioned, then an inmate of Mr. Emerson s 
 house, who added the genial cultivation of a 
 scholar to the amenities of the natural gentle 
 man ; a sturdy farmer neighbor, who had brave 
 ly fought his weary way through inherited em 
 barrassments to the small success of a New Eng 
 land husbandman, and whose faithful wife had 
 seven times merited well of her county ; two city 
 youths, ready for the fragments from the feast of 
 wit and wisdom ; and the host himself, composed 
 this club. Ellery Channing, who had that winter 
 harnessed his Pegasus to the New York Tribune, 
 was a kind of corresponding member. The news 
 of this world was to be transmitted through his 
 
EMERSON 25 
 
 eminently practical genius, as the club deemed it 
 self competent to take charge of tidings from all 
 other spheres. 
 
 I went, the first Monday evening, very much 
 as Ixion may have gone to his banquet. The phi 
 losophers sat dignified and erect. There was a con 
 strained but very amiable silence, which had the 
 impertinence of a tacit inquiry, seeming to ask, 
 " Who will now proceed to say the finest thing 
 that has ever been said ?" It was quite involun 
 tary and unavoidable, for the members lacked that 
 fluent social genius without which a club is impos 
 sible. It was a congress of oracles on the one 
 hand, and of curious listeners upon the other. I 
 vaguely remember that the Orphic Alcott invaded 
 the Sahara of silence with a solemn " saying," to 
 which, after due pause, the honorable member for 
 blackberry pastures responded by some keen and 
 graphic observation ; while the Olympian host, 
 anxious that so much good material should be 
 spun into something, beamed smiling encourage 
 ment upon all parties. But the conversation be 
 came more and more staccato. Miles Coverdale, a 
 statue of night and silence, sat, a little removed, 
 under a portrait of Dante, gazing imperturbably 
 upon the group; and as he sat in the shadow, his 
 dark hair and eyes and suit of sables made him, in 
 
 that society, the black thread <&f mastery which he 
 * .S rlB 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
26 LITEEAEY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 weaves into his stories, while the shifting presence 
 of the Brook-Farmer played like heat-lightning 
 around the room. 
 
 I recall little else but a grave eating of russet 
 apples by the erect philosophers, and a solemn 
 disappearance into night. The club struggled 
 through three Monday evenings. Plato was per 
 petually putting apples of gold in pictures of sil 
 ver; for such was the rich ore of his thoughts, 
 coined by the deep melody of his voice. Orson 
 charmed us with the secrets won from his inter 
 views with Pan in the Walden woods ; while 
 Emerson, with the zeal of an engineer trying to 
 dam wild waters, sought to bind the wide-flying 
 embroidery of discourse into a web of clear sweet 
 sense. But still in vain. The oracular sayings 
 were the unalloyed saccharine element; and every 
 chemist knows how much else goes to practical 
 food how much coarse, rough, woody fibre is 
 essential. The club struggled on valiantly, dis 
 coursing celestially, eating apples, and disappearing 
 in the dark, until the third evening it vanished 
 altogether. But I have since known clubs of fifty 
 times its number, whose collective genius was not 
 more than that of either one of the Dii Majores 
 of our Concord coterie. The fault was its too 
 great concentration. It was not relaxation, as a 
 club should be, but tension. Society is a play, a 
 
EMERSON 27 
 
 game, a tournament ; not a battle. It is the easy 
 grace of undress ; not an intellectual full-dress 
 parade. 
 
 I have already hinted this unbending intellect 
 ual alacrity of our author. His sport is serious 
 his humor is earnest. He stands like a sentinel. 
 His look and manner and habit of thought cry 
 " Who goes there ?" and if he does not hear the 
 countersign, he brings the intruder to a halt. It is 
 for this surprising fidelity and integrity that his 
 influence has been so deep and sure and perma 
 nent upon the intellectual life of the young men of 
 Xew England ; and of old England, too, where, in 
 Manchester, there were regular weekly meetings 
 at which his works were read. What he said long 
 ago in his preface to the American edition of 
 Carlyle s Miscellanies, that they were papers which 
 had spoken to the young men of the time " with 
 an emphasis that hindered them from sleep," is 
 strikingly true of his own writings. His first 
 slim, anonymous duodecimo, Nature, was as fair 
 and fascinating to the royal young minds who 
 met it in the course of their reading, as Egeria to 
 
 wandering in the grove. The essays, ora 
 tions, and poems followed, developing and elabo 
 rating the same spiritual and heroic philosophy, 
 applying it to life, history, and literature, with a 
 vigor and richness so supreme that not only do 
 
28 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 many account him our truest philosopher, but 
 others acknowledge him as our most characteristic 
 poet. 
 
 It would be a curious inquiry how much and 
 what kind of influence the placid scenery of Con 
 cord has exercised upon his mind. " I chide so 
 ciety, I embrace solitude," he says ; " and yet I am 
 not so ungrateful as not to see the wise, the lovely, 
 and the noble-minded, as from time to time they 
 pass my gate." It is not difficult to understand 
 his fondness for the spot. He has been always 
 familiar with it, always more or less a resident of 
 the village. Born in Boston upon the spot where 
 the Chauncey Place Church now stands, part of 
 his youth was passed in the Old Manse, which was 
 built by his grandfather and in which his father 
 was born ; and there he wrote Nature. From 
 the magnificent admiration of ancestral England 
 he was glad to return two years since to quiet 
 Concord and to acres which will not yield a sin 
 gle arrowhead. The Swiss sigh for their moun 
 tains; but the Nubians, also, pine for their des 
 ert plains. Those who are born by the sea long 
 annually to return and to rest their eyes upon its 
 living horizon. Is it because the earliest impres 
 sions, made when the mind is most plastic, are 
 most durable? or because youth is that golden 
 age bounding the confines of memory and floating 
 
EXERSON 29 
 
 forever an alluring mirage as we recede farther 
 from it ? 
 
 The imagination of the man who roams the 
 solitary pastures of Concord, or floats, dreaming, 
 down its river, will easily see its landscape upon 
 Emerson s pages. " That country is fairest," he 
 says, " which is inhabited by the noblest minds." 
 And although that idler upon the river may have 
 leaned over the Mediterranean from Genoese and 
 Neapolitan villas, or have glanced down the steep 
 green valley of Sicilian Enna, seeking " herself 
 the fairest flower," or walked the shores where 
 Cleopatra and Helen walked, yet the charm of a 
 landscape which is felt rather than seen will be 
 imperishable. " Travelling is a fool s paradise," 
 says Emerson. But he passed its gates to learn 
 that lesson. His writings, however, have no im 
 ported air. If there be something Oriental in his 
 philosophy and tropical in his imagination, they 
 have yet the strong flavor of his mother earth 
 the uuderived sweetness of the open Concord sky, 
 and the spacious breadth of the Concord horizon. 
 
HAWTHORNE 
 
HAWTHORNE 
 
 HAWTHORNE has himself drawn the picture of 
 the Old Manse in Concord. He has given to it 
 that quiet richness of coloring which ideally be 
 longs to an old country mansion. It seemed so 
 fitting a residence for one who loves to explore the 
 twilight of antiquity and the gloomier the better 
 that the visitor, among the felicities of whose 
 life was included the freedom of the Manse, could 
 not but fancy that our author s eyes first saw the 
 daylight enchanted by the slumberous orchard be 
 hind the house, or tranquillized into twilight by 
 the spacious avenue -in front. The character of 
 his imagination, and the golden gloom of its blos 
 soming, completely harmonize with the rusty, 
 gable- roofed old house upon the river -side, and 
 the reader of his books would be sure that his 
 boyhood and youth knew no other friends than 
 the dreaming river and the melancholy meadows 
 and drooping foliage of its vicinity. 
 
 Since the reader, however, would greatly mis 
 take if he fancied this, in good sooth, the ancestral 
 
34 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 halls of the Hawthornes the genuine Hawthorne- 
 den he will be glad to save the credit of his 
 fancy by learning that it was here our author s 
 bridal tour which commenced in Boston, then 
 three hours away ended, and his married life be 
 gan. Here, also, his first child was born, and here 
 those sad and silver mosses accumulated upon his 
 fancy, from which he heaped so soft a bed for our 
 dreaming. " Between two tall gate-posts of rough 
 hewn stone (the gate itself having fallen from its 
 hinges at some unknown epoch) we beheld the 
 gray front of the old parsonage, terminating the 
 vista of an avenue of black -ash trees." It was a 
 pleasant spring day in the year 1843, and as they 
 entered the house nosegays of fresh flowers, ar 
 ranged by friendly hands, welcomed them to Con 
 cord and summer. 
 
 The dark-haired man, who led his wife along 
 the avenue that afternoon, had been recently an 
 officer of the customs in Boston, before which he 
 had led a solitary life in Salem. Graduated with 
 Longfellow at Bowdoin College, in Maine, he had 
 lived a hermit in respectable Salem, an absolute 
 recluse even from his own family, walking out 
 by night and writing wild tales by day, most of 
 which were burnt in his bachelor fire, and some of 
 which, in newspapers, magazines, and annuals, led a 
 wandering, uncertain, and mostly unnoticed life. 
 
HAWTHORNE 35 
 
 Those tales among this class which were attain- 
 
 O 
 
 able he collected into a small volume, and appriz 
 ing the world that they were " twice-told," sent 
 them forth anew to make their own way, in the 
 year 1S41. But he piped to the world, and it did 
 not sing. He wept to it, and it did not inourn. 
 The book, however, as all good books do, made its 
 way into various hearts. Yet the few penetrant 
 minds which recognized a remarkable power and a 
 method of strange fascination in the stones did 
 not make the public nor influence the public mind. 
 "I was," he says in the last edition of these tales, 
 " the most unknown author in America." Full 
 of glancing wit, of tender satire, of exquisite nat 
 ural description, of subtle and strange analysis of 
 human life, darkly passionate and weird, they yet 
 floated unhailed barks upon the sea of publicity 
 unhailed, but laden and gleaming at every crev 
 ice with the true treasure of Cathay. Bancroft, 
 then Collector in Boston, prompt to recognize and 
 to honor talent, made the dreaming story-teller a 
 surveyor in the custom-house, thus opening to 
 him a new range of experience. From the soci 
 ety of phantoms he stepped upon Long Wharf 
 and plumply confronted Captain Cuttle and Dirk 
 Hatteraick. It was no less romance to our author. 
 There is no greater error of those who are called 
 " practical men " than the supposition that life is, 
 
36 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 or can be, other than a dream to a dreamer. Shut 
 him up in a counting-room, barricade him with 
 bales of merchandise, and limit his library to the 
 ledger and cash-book and his prospect to the neigh 
 boring signs ; talk " Bills receivable " and " Sun 
 dries Dr. to cash" to him forever, and you are 
 only a very amusing or very annoying phantom to 
 him. The merchant-prince might as well hope to 
 make himself a poet, as the poet a practical or 
 practicable man. He has laws to obey not at all 
 the less stringent because men of a different tem 
 perament refuse to acknowledge them, and he is 
 held to a loyalty quite beyond their conception. 
 
 So Captain Cuttle and Dirk Hatteraick were as 
 pleasant figures to our author in the picture of life 
 as any others. He went daily upon the vessels, 
 looked and listened and learned, was a favorite 
 of the sailors as such men always are, did his 
 work faithfully, and, having dreamed his dream 
 upon Long Wharf, was married and slipped up to 
 the Old Manse and a new chapter in the romance. 
 It opened in "the most delightful little nook of 
 a study that ever offered its snug seclusion to a 
 scholar." Of the three years in the Old Manse 
 the prelude to the Mosses is the most perfect his 
 tory, and of the quality of those years the Moss 
 es themselves are sufficient proof. They were 
 mostly written in the little study, and originally 
 
HAWTHORNE 37 
 
 published in the Democratic Review, then edited 
 by Hawthorne s friend O Sullivan. 
 
 To the inhabitants of Concord, however, our 
 author was as much a phantom and a fable as the 
 old pastor of the parish, dead half a century be 
 fore, and whose faded portrait in the attic was 
 gradually rejoining its original in native dust. 
 The gate, fallen from its hinges in a remote antiq 
 uity, was never rehung. "The wheel -track lead 
 ing to the door" remained still overgrown with 
 grass. Ko bold villager ever invaded the sleep of 
 "the glimmering shadows" in the avenue. At 
 evening no lights gleamed from the windows. 
 Scarce once in many months did the single old 
 knobby-faced coachman at the railroad bring a 
 fare to "Mr. Hawthorne s." "Is there anybody 
 in the old house?" sobbed the old ladies in de 
 spair, imbibing tea of a livid green. That knocker, 
 which everybody had enjoyed the right of lifting 
 to summon the good old pastor, no temerity now 
 dared to touch. Heavens ! what if the figure in 
 the mouldy portrait should peer, in answer, over 
 the eaves, and shake solemnly its decaying sur 
 plice ! Kay, what if the mysterious man himself 
 should answer the summons and come to the door ! 
 It is easy to summon spirits but if they come ? 
 Collective Concord, moving in the river mead 
 ows, embraced the better part of valor and left the 
 
38 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 knocker untouched. A cloud of romance sud 
 denly fell out of the heaven of fancy and envel 
 oped the Old Manse : 
 
 " In among the bearded barley 
 The reaper reaping late and early" 
 
 did not glance more wistfully towards the island 
 of Shalott and its mysterious lady than the reapers 
 of Concord rye looked at the Old Manse and won 
 dered over its inmate. 
 
 Sometimes in the forenoon a darkly clad figure 
 was seen in the little garden-plot putting in corn 
 or melon seed, and gravely hoeing. It was a brief 
 apparition. The farmer passing towards town and 
 seeing the solitary cultivator, lost his faith in the 
 fact and believed he had dreamed when, upon re 
 turning, he saw no sign of life, except, possibly, 
 upon some Monday, the ghostly skirt of a shirt 
 flapping spectrally in the distant orchard. Day 
 dawned and darkened over the lonely house. 
 Summer with "buds and bird-voices" came sing 
 ing in from the South, and clad the old ash-trees 
 in deeper green, the Old Manse in profounder 
 mystery. Gorgeous autumn came to visit the 
 story-teller in his little western study, and, depart 
 ing, wept rainbows among his trees. Winter im 
 patiently swept down the hill opposite, rifling the 
 trees of each last clinging bit of summer, as if 
 
HAWTHORNE 39 
 
 thrusting aside opposing barriers and determined 
 to search the mystery. But his white robes float 
 ed around the Old Manse, ghostly as the decaying 
 surplice of the old pastor s portrait, and in the 
 snowy seclusion of winter the mystery was as 
 mysterious as ever. 
 
 Occasionally Emerson or Ellery Channing or 
 Henry Thoreau some poet, as once Whittier, 
 journeying to the Merrimac, or an old Brook- 
 Farmer who remembered Miles Coverdale with 
 Arcadian sympathy went down the avenue and 
 disappeared in the house. Sometimes a close ob 
 server, had he been ambushed among the long 
 grasses of the orchard, might have seen the host 
 and one of his guests emerging at the back door 
 and, sauntering to the river-side, step into the boat, 
 and float off until they faded in the shadow. The 
 spectacle would not have lessened the romance. 
 If it were afternoon one of the spectrally sunny 
 afternoons which often bewitch that region he 
 would be only the more convinced that there was 
 something inexplicable in the whole matter of this 
 man whom nobody knew, who was never once 
 seen at town-meeting, and concerning whom it was 
 whispered that he did not constantly attend church 
 all day, although he occupied the reverend par 
 sonage of the village and had unmeasured acres 
 of manuscript sermons in his attic, besides the 
 
40 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 nearly extinct portrait of an utterly extinct clergy 
 man. Mrs. Radcliffe and Monk Lewis were noth 
 ing to this, and the awe-stricken observer, if he could 
 creep safely out of the long grass, did not fail to 
 do so quietly, fortifying his courage by remember 
 ing stories of the genial humanity of the last old 
 pastor who inhabited the Manse, and who for fif 
 ty years was the bland and beneficent Pope of 
 Concord. A genial, gracious old man, whose 
 memory is yet sweet in the village, and who, wed 
 ded to the grave traditions of New England theol 
 ogy, believed of his young relative Waldo Emer 
 son, as Miss Flite, touching her forehead, said 
 of her landlord, that he was " m, quite m," but 
 was proud to love in him the hereditary integrity 
 of noble ancestors. 
 
 This old gentleman an eminent figure in the 
 history of the Manse and in all reminiscences of 
 Concord partook sufficiently of mundane weak 
 nesses to betray his mortality. Hawthorne de 
 scribes him watching the battle of Concord from 
 his study window. But when the uncertainty of 
 that dark moment had so happily resulted, and 
 the first battle-ground of the Revolution had be 
 come a spot of hallowed and patriotic considera 
 tion, it was a pardonable pride in the good old 
 man to order his servant, whenever there was 
 company, to assist him in reaping the glory due 
 
HAWTHORNE 41 
 
 to the owner of a spot so sacred. Accordingly, 
 when some reverend or distinguished guest sat 
 with the pastor in his little parlor, or, of a sum 
 mer evening, at the hospitable door under the 
 trees, Jeremiah or Nicodemus, the cow-boy, would 
 deferentially approach and inquire, 
 
 " Into what pasture shall I turn the cow to 
 night, sir ?" 
 
 And the old gentleman would audibly reply : 
 
 " Into the battle-field, Xicodemus, into the bat 
 tle-field." 
 
 Then naturally followed wonder, inquiry, a walk 
 in the twilight to the river-bank, the old gentle 
 man s story, the corresponding respect of the lis 
 tening visitor, and the consequent quiet compla 
 cency and harmless satisfaction in the clergyman s 
 bosom. That throb of pride was the one drop 
 of peculiar advantage which the pastor distilled 
 from the Revolution. He could not but fancy 
 that he had a hand in so famous a deed accom 
 plished upon land now his own, and demeaned 
 himself accordingly with continental dignity. 
 
 The pulpit, however, was his especial sphere. 
 There he reigned supreme ; there he exhorted, re 
 buked, and advised, as in the days of Mather. 
 There he inspired that profound reverence of 
 which he was so proud, and which induced the 
 matrons of the village, when he was coming to 
 
42 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 make a visit, to bedizen the children in their Sun 
 day suits, to parade the best teapot, and to offer 
 the most capacious chair. In the pulpit he de 
 livered everything with the pompous cadence of 
 the elder New England clergy, and a sly joke is 
 told at the expense of his even temper, that on 
 one occasion, when loftily reading the hymn, he 
 encountered a blot upon the page quite obliterat 
 ing the word ; but without losing the cadence, al 
 though in a very vindictive tone at the truant 
 word, or the culprit who erased it, he finished the 
 reading as follows : 
 
 "He sits upon His throne above, 
 
 Attending angels bless, 
 While Justice, Mercy, Truth and another word 
 
 which is blotted out 
 Compose His princely dress." 
 
 "We linger around the Old Manse and its occu 
 pants as fondly as Hawthorne, but no more fondly 
 than all who have been once within the influence 
 of its spell. There glimmer in my memory a few 
 hazy days, of a tranquil and half-pensive charac 
 ter, which I am conscious were passed in and 
 around the house, and their pensiveness I know to 
 be only that touch of twilight which inhered in 
 the house and all its associations. Beside the few 
 chance visitors I have named there were city 
 friends occasionally, figures quite unknown to the 
 
HA WTHORXE 43 
 
 village, who came preceded by the steam-shriek of 
 the locomotive, were dropped at the gate-posts, 
 and were seen no more. The owner was as much 
 a vague name to me as to any one. 
 
 During Hawthorne s first year s residence in 
 Concord I had driven up with some friends to 
 an aesthetic tea at Mr. Emerson s. It was in the 
 winter, and a great wood -fire blazed upon the 
 hospitable hearth. There were various men and 
 women of note assembled, and I, who listened at 
 tentively to all the fine things that were said, was 
 for some time scarcely aware of a man who sat 
 upon the edge of the circle, a little withdrawn, 
 his head slightly thrown forward upon his breast, 
 and his bright eyes clearly burning under his black 
 brow. As I drifted down the stream of talk, this 
 person, who sat silent as a shadow, looked to me 
 as Webster might have looked had he been a 
 poet a kind of poetic "Webster. He rose and 
 walked to the window, and stood quietly there for 
 a long time, watching the dead white landscape. 
 Xo appeal was made to him, nobody looked after 
 him, the conversation flowed steadily on as if 
 every one understood that his silence was to be 
 respected. It was the same thing at table. In 
 vain the silent man imbibed aesthetic tea. What 
 ever fancies it inspired did not flower at his lips. 
 But there was a light in his eye which assured me 
 
44 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 that nothing was lost. So supreme was his silence 
 that it presently engrossed me to the exclusion 
 of everything else. There was very brilliant dis 
 course, but this silence was much more poetic and 
 fascinating. Fine things were said by the philoso 
 phers, but much finer things were implied by the 
 dumbness of this gentleman with heavy brows 
 and black hair. When he presently rose and 
 went, Emerson, with the " slow, wise smile " that 
 breaks over his face, like day over the sky, said, 
 " Hawthorne rides well his horse of the night." 
 
 Thus he remained in my memory, a shadow, a 
 phantom, until more than a year afterwards. Then 
 I came to live in Concord. Every day I passed 
 his house, but when the villagers, thinking that 
 perhaps I had some clew to the mystery, said, 
 " Do you know this Mr. Hawthorne ?" I said 
 " No," and trusted to time. 
 
 Time justified my confidence, and one day I, 
 too, went down the avenue and disappeared in 
 the house. I mounted those mysterious stairs to 
 that apocryphal study. I saw " the cheerful coat 
 of paint, and golden-tinted paper-hangings, light 
 ing up the small apartment ; while the shadow of 
 a willow-tree, that swept against the overhanging 
 eaves, attempered the cheery western sunshine." 
 I looked from the little northern window whence 
 the old pastor watched the battle, and in the small 
 
HAWTHORNE 45 
 
 dining-room beneath it, upon the first floor, there 
 were 
 
 "Dainty chicken, snow-white bread," 
 
 and the golden juices of Italian vineyards, which 
 still feast insatiable memory. 
 
 Our author occupied the Old Manse for three 
 years. During that time he was not seen, proba 
 bly, by more than a dozen of the villagers. His 
 walks could easily avoid the town, and upon the 
 river he was always sure of solitude. It was his 
 favorite habit to bathe every evening in the river, 
 after nightfall, and in that part of it over which 
 the old bridge stood, at which the battle was 
 fought. Sometimes, but rarely, his boat accom 
 panied another up the stream, and I recall the 
 silent and preternatural vigor with which, on one 
 occasion, he wielded his paddle to counteract the 
 bad rowing of a friend who conscientiously con 
 sidered it his duty to do something and not let 
 Hawthorne work alone; but who, with every 
 stroke, neutralized all Hawthorne s efforts. I sup 
 pose he would have struggled until he fell sense 
 less, rather than ask his friend to desist. His prin 
 ciple seemed to be, if a man cannot understand 
 without talking to him, it is quite useless to talk, 
 because it is immaterial whether such a man un 
 derstands or not. His own sympathy was so broad 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
46 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 and sure that although nothing had been said for 
 hours his companion knew that not a thing had 
 escaped his eve, nor had a single pulse of beauty 
 in the day or scene or society failed to thrill his 
 heart. In this way his silence was most social. 
 Everything seemed to have been said. It was a 
 Barmecide feast of discourse, from which a great 
 er satisfaction resulted than from an actual ban 
 quet. 
 
 When a formal attempt was made to desert this 
 style of conversation, the result was ludicrous. 
 Once Emerson and Thoreau arrived to pay a call. 
 They were shown into the little parlor upon the 
 avenue, and Hawthorne presently entered. Each 
 of the guests sat upright in his chair like a Ro 
 man senator. " To them " Hawthorne, like a Da- 
 cian king. The call went on, but in a most mel 
 ancholy manner. The host sat perfectly still, or 
 occasionally propounded a question which Thoreau 
 answered accurately, and there the thread broke 
 short off. Emerson delivered sentences that only 
 needed the setting of an essay to charm the world ; 
 but the whole visit was a vague ghost of the Mori- 
 day-evening club at Mr. Emerson s it was a great 
 failure. Had they all been lying idly upon the 
 river brink, or strolling in Thoreau s blackberry 
 pastures, the result would have been utterly dif 
 ferent. But imprisoned in the proprieties of a 
 
HAWTHORXE 47 
 
 parlor, each a wild man in his way, with a neces 
 sity of talking inherent in the nature of the occa 
 sion, there was only a waste of treasure. This was 
 the only " call " in which I ever knew Hawthorne 
 to be involved. 
 
 In Mr. Emerson s house, I said, it seemed always 
 morning. But Hawthorne s black -ash trees and 
 scraggy apple-boughs shaded 
 
 "a land 
 In which it seemed always afternoon." 
 
 I do not doubt that the lotus grew along the 
 grassy marge of the Concord behind his house, 
 and it was served, subtly concealed, to all his 
 guests. The house, its inmates, and its life lay, 
 dream-like, upon the edge of the little village. 
 You fancied that they all came together and be 
 longed together, and were glad that at length 
 some idol of your imagination, some poet whose 
 spell had held you and would hold you forever, 
 was housed as such a poet should be. 
 
 During the lapse of the three years since the 
 bridal tour of twenty miles ended at the "two tall 
 gate - posts of rough-hewn stone," a little wicker 
 wagon had appeared at intervals upon the avenue, 
 and a placid babe, whose eyes the soft Concord 
 day had touched with the blue of its beauty, lay 
 looking tranquilly up at the grave old trees, which 
 
48 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 sighed lofty lullabies over her sleep. The tran 
 quillity of the golden - haired Una was the living 
 and breathing type of the dreamy life of the Old 
 Manse. Perhaps, that being attained, it was as 
 well to go. Perhaps our author was not surprised 
 nor displeased when the hints came, "growing 
 more and more distinct, that the owner of the old 
 house was pining for his native air." One after 
 noon I entered the study, and learned from its 
 occupant that the last story he should ever write 
 there was written. The son of the old pastor 
 yearned for his homestead. The light of another 
 summer would seek its poet in the Old Manse, but 
 in vain. 
 
 While Hawthorne had been quietly writing in 
 the "most delightful little nook of a study," Mr. 
 Polk had been elected President, and Mr. Ban 
 croft, in the cabinet, did not forget his old friend, 
 the surveyor in the custom-house. There came 
 suggestions and offers of various attractions. Still 
 loving New England, would he tarry there, or, as 
 inspector of woods and forests in some far-away 
 island of the southern sea, some hazy strip of dis 
 tance seen from Florida, would he taste the trop 
 ics? He meditated all the chances, without im 
 mediately deciding. Gathering up his house 
 hold gods, he passed out of the Old Manse as its 
 heir entered, and before the end of summer was 
 
HA.WTHORXE 49 
 
 domesticated in the custom-house of his native 
 town of Salem. This was in the year 1846. 
 Upon leaving the Old Manse he published the 
 Mosses, announcing that it was the last collec 
 tion of tales he should put forth. Those who 
 knew him and recognized his value to our litera 
 ture trembled lest this was the last word from 
 one who spoke only pearls and rubies. It was a 
 foolish fear. The sun must shine, the sea must 
 roll, the bird must sing, and the poet write. 
 During his life in Salem, of which the introduc 
 tion to The Scarlet Letter describes the official 
 aspect, he wrote that romance. It is inspired by 
 the spirit of the place. It presents more vividly 
 than any history the gloomy picturesqtieness of 
 early Xew England life. There is no strain in 
 our literature so characteristic or more real than 
 that which Hawthorne had successfully attempted 
 in several of his earlier sketches, and of which 
 The Scarlet Letter is the great triumph. It be 
 came immediately popular, and directly placed 
 the writer of stories for a small circle among the 
 world s masters of romance. 
 
 Times meanwhile changed, and presidents with 
 them. General Taylor was elected, and the Salem 
 collector retired. It is one of the romantic points 
 of Hawthorne s quiet life that its changes have 
 been so frequently determined by political events, 
 
50 ~ LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 which, more than all others, are the most entirely 
 foreign to his tastes and habits. He retired to the 
 hills of Berkshire, the eje of the world now re 
 garding his movements. There he lived a year or 
 two in a little red cottage upon the " Stockbridge 
 Bowl," as a small lake near that town is called. 
 In this retreat he wrote The House of the Seven 
 Gables, which more deeply confirmed the literary 
 position already acquired for him by the first 
 romance. The scene is laid in Salem, as if he 
 could not escape a strange fascination in the witch- 
 haunted town of our early history. It is the same 
 black canvas upon which plays the rainbow-flash 
 of his fancy, never, in its brightest moment, more 
 than illuminating the gloom. This marks all his 
 writings. They have a terrible beauty, like the 
 siren, and their fascination is as sure. 
 
 After six years of absence Hawthorne returned 
 to Concord, where he purchased a small house 
 formerly occupied by Orphic Alcott. When that 
 philosopher came into possession it was a miser 
 able little house of two peaked gables. But the 
 genius which recreated itself in devising grace 
 ful summer-houses, like that for Mr. Emerson, 
 already noticed, soon smoothed the new resi 
 dence into some kind of comeliness. It was an 
 old house when Mr. Alcott entered it, but his 
 tasteful finger touched it with picturesque grace. 
 
HAWTHORXE 51 
 
 Not like a tired old drudge of a house, rusting 
 into unhonored decay, but with a modest fresh 
 ness that does not belie the innate sobriety of a 
 venerable New England farm-house, the present 
 residence of our author stands, withdrawn a few 
 yards from the high-road to Boston, along which 
 marched the British soldiers to Concord bridge. 
 It lies at the foot of a wooded hill, a neat house 
 of a " rusty olive hue," with a porch in front, and 
 a central peak, and a piazza at each end. The 
 genius for summer-houses has had full play upon 
 the hill behind. Here, upon the homely steppes 
 of Concord, is a strain of Persia. Mr. Alcott 
 built terraces and arbors and pavilions of boughs 
 and rough stems of trees, revealing somewhat 
 inadequately, perhaps the hanging gardens of 
 delight that adorn the Babylon of his orphic 
 imagination. The hill -side is no unapt emblem 
 of his intellectual habit, which garnishes the arid 
 commonplaces of life with a cold poetic aurora, 
 forgetting that it is the inexorable law of light to 
 deform as well as adorn. Treating life as a grand 
 epic poem, the philosophic Alcott forgets that 
 Homer must nod or we should all fall asleep. 
 The world would not be very beautiful nor inter 
 esting if it were all one huge summit of Mont 
 Blanc. 
 
 Unhappily, the terraced hill -side, like the sum- 
 
52 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 mer-house upon Mr. Emerson s lawn, " lacks tech 
 nical arrangement," and the wild winds play with 
 these architectural toys of fancy, like lions with 
 humming-birds. They are gradually falling, shat 
 tered, and disappearing. Fine locust-trees shade 
 them and ornament the hill with perennial beauty. 
 The hanging gardens of Semiramis were not more 
 fragrant than Hawthorne s hill-side during the 
 June blossoming of the locusts. A few young 
 elms, some white-pines and young oaks, complete 
 the catalogue of trees. A light breeze constantly 
 fans the brow of the hill, making harps of the 
 tree -tops and singing to our author, who, " with a 
 book in my hand, or an unwritten book in my 
 thoughts," lies stretched beneath them in the 
 shade. 
 
 From the height of the hill the eye courses, un 
 restrained, over the solitary landscape of Concord, 
 broad and still, broken only by the slight wooded 
 undulations of insignificant hillocks. The river 
 is not visible, nor any gleam of lake. "Walden 
 Pond is just behind the wood in front, and not far 
 away over the meadows sluggishly steals the river. 
 It is the most quiet of prospects. Eight acres of 
 good land lie in front of the house, across the 
 road, and in the rear the estate extends a little 
 distance over the brow of the hill. 
 
 This latter is not good garden -ground, but it 
 
BAWTHORXE 53 
 
 yields that other crop which the poet "gathers in 
 a song." Perhaps the world will forgive our au 
 thor that he is not a prize farmer, and makes but 
 an indifferent figure at the annual cattle-show. 
 We have seen that he is more nomadic than agri 
 cultural. He has wandered from spot to spot, 
 pitching a temporary tent, then striking it for 
 "fresh fields and pastures new." It is natural, 
 therefore, that he should call his house " The 
 "Wayside" a bench upon the road where he sits 
 for a while before passing on. If the wayfarer 
 finds him upon that bench he shall have rare pleas 
 ure in sitting with him, yet shudder while he stays. 
 For the pictures of our poet have more than the 
 shadows of Rembrandt. If you listen to his story, 
 the lonely pastures and dull towns of our dear old 
 homely Xew England shall become suddenly as 
 radiant with grace and terrible with tragedy as 
 any country and any time. The waning afternoon 
 in Concord, in which the blue-frocked farmers are 
 reaping and hoeing, shall set in pensive glory. 
 The woods will forever after be haunted with 
 strange forms. You will hear whispers and mu 
 sic " i the air." In the softest morning you will 
 suspect sadness ; in the most fervent noon a name 
 less terror. It is because the imagination of our 
 author treads the almost imperceptible line be 
 tween the natural and the supernatural. We are 
 
54 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 all conscious of striking it sometimes. But we 
 avoid it. We recoil and hurry away, nor dare to 
 glance over our shoulders lest we should see phan 
 toms. What are these tales of supernatural ap 
 pearances, as well authenticated as any news of 
 the day and what is the sphere which they im 
 ply ? What is the more subtle intellectual appre 
 hension of fate and its influence upon imagination 
 and life ? Whatever it is, it is the mystery of the 
 fascination of these tales. They converse with 
 that dreadful realm as with our real world. The 
 light of our sun is poured by genius upon the 
 phantoms we did not dare to contemplate, and 
 lo! they are ourselves, unmasked, and playing our 
 many parts. An unutterable sadness seizes the read 
 er as the inevitable black thread appears. For here 
 genius assures us what we trembled to suspect, but 
 could not avoid suspecting, that the black thread 
 is inwoven with all forms of life, with all develop 
 ment of character. 
 
 It is for this peculiarity, which harmonizes so 
 well with ancient places, whose pensive silence 
 seems the trance of memory musing over the 
 young and lovely life that illuminated its lost 
 years that Hawthorne is so intimately associated 
 with the Old Manse. Yet that was but the tent 
 of a night for him. Already, with the Blithedale 
 Romance^ which is dated from Concord, a new 
 
H AWT HORSE 55 
 
 interest begins to cluster around " The "Way 
 side." 
 
 I know not how I can more fitly conclude these 
 reminiscences of Concord and Hawthorne, whose 
 own stories have always a saddening close, than by 
 relating an occurrence which blighted to many 
 hearts the beauty of the quiet Concord river, and 
 seemed not inconsistent with its lonely landscape. 
 It has the further fitness of typifying the opera 
 tion of our author s imagination : a tranquil stream, 
 clear and bright with sunny gleams, crowned with 
 lilies and graceful with swaying grass, yet doing 
 terrible deeds inexorably, and therefore forever 
 after of a shadowed beauty. 
 
 Martha was the daughter of a plain Concord 
 farmer, a girl of delicate and shy temperament, 
 who excelled so much in study that she was sent 
 to a fine academy in a neighboring town, and won 
 all the honors of the course. She met at the 
 school, and in the society of the place, a refine 
 ment and cultivation, a social gayety and grace, 
 which were entirely unknown in the hard life she 
 had led at home, and which by their very novelty, 
 as well as because they harmonized with her own 
 nature and dreams, were doubly beautiful and fas 
 cinating. She enjoyed this life to the full, while 
 her timidity kept her only a spectator; and she 
 ornamented it with a fresher grace, suggestive of 
 
56 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 the woods and fields, when she ventured to engage 
 in the airy game. It was a sphere for her capac 
 ities and talents. She shone in it, and the con 
 sciousness of a true position and general apprecia 
 tion gave her the full use of all her powers. She 
 admired and was admired. She was surrounded 
 by gratifications of taste, by the stimulants and 
 rewards of ambition. The world was happy, and 
 she was worthy to live in it. But at times a cloud 
 suddenly dashed athwart the sun a shadow stole, 
 dark and chill, to the very edge of the charmed 
 circle in which she stood. She knew well what 
 it was and what it foretold, but she would not 
 pause nor heed. The sun shone again ; the future 
 smiled ; youth, beauty, and all gentle hopes and 
 thoughts bathed the moment in lambent light. 
 
 But school-days ended at last, and with the re 
 ceding town in which they had been passed the 
 bright days of life disappeared, and forever. It 
 is probable that the girl s fancy had been fed, 
 perhaps indiscreetly pampered, by her experience 
 there. But it was no fairy -land. It was an 
 academy town in New England, and the fact that 
 it was so alluring is a fair indication of the kind of 
 life from which she had emerged, and to which 
 she now returned. What could she do ? In the 
 dreary round of petty details, in the incessant 
 drudgery of a poor farmer s household, with no 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 companions of any sympathy for the family of 
 a hard-working New England farmer are not the 
 Chloes and Clarissas of pastoral poetry, nor are 
 cow-boys Corydons with no opportunity of re 
 tirement and cultivation, for reading and studying 
 which is always voted "stuff" under such cir 
 cumstances the light suddenly quenched out of 
 life, what was she to do ? 
 
 " Adapt herself to her circumstances. Why 
 had she shot from her sphere in this silly way ?" 
 demands unanimous common-sense in valiant he 
 roics. 
 
 The simple answer is, that she had only used all 
 her opportunities, and that, although it was no 
 fault of hers that the routine of her life was in 
 every way repulsive, she did struggle to accommo 
 date herself to it and failed. When she found 
 it impossible to drag on at home, she became an 
 inmate of a refined and cultivated household in 
 the village, where she had opportunity to fol 
 low her own fancies, and to associate with edu 
 cated and attractive persons. But even here 
 she could not escape the feeling that it was all 
 temporary, that her position was one of depend 
 ence ; and her pride, now grown morbid, often 
 drove her from the very society which alone was 
 agreeable to her. This was all genuine. There 
 was not the slightest strain of the fermne incom- 
 
58 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 prise in her demeanor. She was always shy and 
 silent, with a touching reserve which won interest 
 and confidence, but left also a vague sadness in 
 the mind of the observer. After a few months 
 she made another effort to rend the cloud which 
 was gradually darkening around her, and opened 
 a school for young children. But although the 
 interest of friends secured for her a partial suc 
 cess, her gravity and sadness failed to excite the 
 sympathy of her pupils, who missed in her the 
 playful gayety always most winning to children. 
 Martha, however, pushed bravely on, a figure of 
 tragic sobriety to all who watched her course. 
 The farmers thought her a strange girl, and won 
 dered at the ways of a farmer s daughter who was 
 not content to milk cows and churn butter and 
 fry pork, without further hope or thought. The 
 good clergyman of the town, interested in her 
 situation, sought a confidence she did not care 
 to bestow, and so, doling out a, b, c, to a wild 
 group of boys and girls, she found that she could 
 not untie the Gordian knot of her life, and felt, 
 with terror, that it must be cut. 
 
 One summer evening she left her father s house 
 and walked into the fields alone. Night came, but 
 Martha did not return. The family became anx 
 ious, inquired if any one had noticed the direction 
 in which she went, learned from the neighbors 
 
HAWTHORXE 59 
 
 that she was not visiting, that there was no lect 
 ure or meeting to detain her, and wonder passed 
 into apprehension. Neighbors went into the ad 
 jacent woods and called, but received no answer. 
 Every instant the awful shadow of some dread 
 event solemnized the gathering groups. Every 
 one thought what no one dared whisper, until a 
 low voice suggested " the river." Then, with the 
 swiftness of certainty, all friends, far and near, 
 were roused, and thronged along the banks of 
 the stream. Torches flashed in boats that put off 
 in the terrible search. Hawthorne, then living 
 in the Old Manse, was summoned, and the man 
 whom the villagers had only seen at morning as a 
 musing spectre in his garden, now appeared among 
 them at night to devote his strong arm and steady 
 heart to their service. The boats drifted slowly 
 down the stream the torches flared strangely 
 upon the black repose of the water, and upon the 
 long, slim grasses that, weeping, fringed the 
 marge. Upon both banks silent and awe-stricken 
 crowds hastened along, eager and dreading to find 
 the slightest trace of what they sought. Sud 
 denly they came upon a few articles of dress, 
 heavy with the night-dew. Ko one spoke, for no 
 one had doubted the result. It was clear that 
 Martha had strayed to the river and quietly asked 
 of its stillness the repose she sought. The boats 
 
60 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 gathered around the spot. With every implement 
 that could be of service the melancholy search be 
 gan. Long intervals of fearful silence ensued, but 
 at length, towards midnight, the sweet face of the 
 dead girl was raised more placidly to the stars 
 than ever it had been to the sun. 
 
 "Oh ! is it weed or fish or floating hair 
 A tress o golden hair, 
 O drowned maiden s hair. 
 
 Above the nets at sea ? 
 Was never salmon yet that shone so fair 
 
 Among the stakes on Dee." 
 
 So ended a village tragedy. The reader may 
 possibly find in it the original of the thrilling 
 conclusion of the Blithedale Romance, and learn 
 anew that dark as is the thread with which 
 Hawthorne weaves his spells, it is no darker than 
 those with which tragedies are spun, even in re 
 gions apparently so torpid as Concord. 
 
THE WORKS OF 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
THE WORKS OF 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 THE traveller by the Eastern Railroad, from 
 Boston, reaches in less than an hour the old town 
 of Salem, Massachusetts. It is chiefly composed of 
 plain wooden houses, but it has a quaint air of past 
 provincial grandeur, and has indeed been an im 
 portant commercial town. The first American 
 ship for Calcutta and China sailed from this port ; 
 and Salem ships opened our trade with New Hol 
 land and the South Seas. But its glory has long 
 since departed, with that of its stately and respect 
 able neighbors, Newburyport and Portsmouth. 
 There is still, however, a custom-house in Salem, 
 there are wharves and chandlers shops and a 
 faint show of shipping and an air of marine ca 
 pacity which no apparent result justifies. It sits 
 upon the shore like an antiquated sea-captain, grave 
 and silent, in tarpaulin and duck trousers, idly 
 watching the ocean upon which he will never sail 
 again. 
 
 But this touching aspect of age and lost pros- 
 
64 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 perity merely serves to deepen the peculiar im 
 pression of the old city, which is not derived from 
 its former commercial importance, but from other 
 associations. Salem village was a famous place in 
 the Puritan annals. The tragedy of the witchcraft 
 tortures and murders has cast upon it a ghostly 
 spell, from which it seems never to have escaped ; 
 and even the sojourner of to-day, as he loiters along 
 the shore in the sunniest morning of June, will 
 sometimes feel an icy breath in the air, chilling 
 the very marrow of his bones. Nor is he consoled 
 by being told that it is only the east wind ; for he 
 cannot help believing that an invisible host of 
 Puritan spectres have breathed upon him, revenge 
 ful, as he poached upon their ancient haunts. 
 
 The Puritan spirit was neither gracious nor 
 lovely, but nothing softer than its iron hand could 
 have done its necessary work. The Puritan char 
 acter was narrow, intolerant, and exasperating. 
 The forefathers were very "sour" in the estima 
 tion of Morton and his merry company at Mount 
 "VYollaston. But for all that, Bradstreet and Car 
 ver and Winthrop were better forefathers than the 
 gay Morton, and the Puritan spirit is doubtless the 
 moral influence of modern civilization, both in Old 
 and New England. By the fruit let the seed be 
 judged. The State to whose rough coast the May 
 flower came, and in which the Pilgrim spirit has 
 
THE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 65 
 
 been most active, is to-day the chief of all human 
 societies, politically, morally, and socially. It is 
 the community in which the average of well-being 
 is higher than in any State we know in history. 
 Puritan though it be, it is more truly liberal and 
 free than any large community in the world. But 
 it had bleak beginnings. The icy shore, the som 
 bre pines, the stealthy savages, the hard soil, the 
 unbending religious austerity, the Scriptural se 
 verity, the arrogant virtues, the angry intolerance 
 of contradiction they all made a narrow strip of 
 sad civilization between the pitiless sea and the re 
 morseless forests. The moral and physical tenacity 
 which is wrestling with the Rebellion was tough 
 ened among these flinty and forbidding rocks. 
 The fig, the pomegranate, and the almond would 
 not grow there, nor the nightingale sing ; but 
 nobler men than its children the sun never shone 
 upon, nor has the heart of man heard sweeter 
 music than the voices of James Otis and Samuel 
 Adams. Think of Plymouth in 1620, and of 
 Massachusetts to-day ! Out of strength came forth 
 sweetness. 
 
 With some of the darkest passages in Puritan 
 history this old town of Salem, which dozes ap 
 parently with the most peaceful conscience in the 
 world, is identified, and while its Fourth of July 
 bells were joyfully ringing sixty years ago 
 
66 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 thaniel Hathorne was born. He subsequently 
 chose to write the name Hawthorne, because he 
 thought he had discovered that it was the original 
 spelling. In the introduction to The Scarlet 
 Letter, Hawthorne speaks of his ancestors as com 
 ing from Europe in the seventeenth century, and 
 establishing themselves in Salem, where they 
 served the State and propitiated Heaven by join 
 ing in the persecution of Quakers and witches. 
 The house known as the Witch House is still 
 standing on the corner of Summer and Essex 
 streets. It was built in 1642 by Captain George 
 Corwin, and here in 1692 many of the unfortu 
 nates who were palpably guilty of age and ugli 
 ness were examined by the Honorable Jonathan 
 Curwiri, Major Gedney, Captain John Higginson, 
 and John Hathorn, Esquire. 
 
 The name of this last worthy occurs in one of 
 the first and most famous of the witch trials, that 
 of "Goodwife Cory," in March, 1692, only a 
 month after the beginning of the delusion at the 
 house of the minister Parris. Goodwife Cory was 
 accused by ten children, of whom Elizabeth Parris 
 was one ; they declared that they were pinched by 
 her and strangled, and that she brought them a 
 book to sign. " Mr. Hathorn, a magistrate of 
 Salem," says Eobert Calef, in More Wonders of 
 the Invisible World, "asked her why she afflicted 
 
THE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 67 
 
 these children. She said she did not afflict them. 
 He asked her who did then. She said, I do not 
 know; how should I know? She said they were 
 poor, distracted creatures, and no heed ought to be 
 given to what they said. Mr. Hathorn and Mr. 
 Xoyes replied, that it was the judgment of all that 
 were there present that they were bewitched, and 
 only she (the accused) said they were distracted. 
 She was accused by them that the Mack man 
 whispered to her in her ear now (while she was 
 upon examination), and that she had a yellow bird 
 that did use to suck between her fingers, and that 
 the said bird did suck now in the assembly." 
 John Hathorn and Jonathan Curwin were " the 
 Assistants" of Salem village, and held most of 
 the examinations and issued the warrants. Jus 
 tice Hathorn was very swift in judgment, holding 
 every accused person guilty in every particular. 
 When poor Jonathan Gary of Charlestown attend 
 ed his wife charged with witchcraft before Justice 
 Hathorn, he requested that he might hold one of her 
 hands, " but it was denied me. Then she desired 
 me to wipe the tears from her eyes and the sweat 
 from her face, which I did ; then she desired that 
 she might lean herself on me, saying she should 
 faint. Justice Hathorn replied, she had strength 
 enough to torment these persons, and she should 
 have strength enough to stand. I speaking some- 
 
68 LITERAET AND SOCIAL ESSA7S 
 
 thing against their cruel proceedings, they com 
 manded me to be silent, or else I should be turned 
 out of the room." "What a piteous picture of the 
 awful colonial inquisition and the village Torque- 
 mada! What a grim portrait of an ancestor to 
 hang in your memory, and to trace your kindred 
 to! 
 
 Hawthorne s description of his ancestors in the 
 Introduction to The Scarlet Letter is very delight 
 ful. As their representative, he declares that he 
 takes shame to himself for their sake, on account of 
 these relentless persecutions; but he thinks them 
 earnest and energetic. " From father to son, for 
 above a hundred years, they followed the sea; a 
 gray-headed ship-master, in each generation, retir 
 ing from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while 
 a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before 
 the mast, confronting the salt spray and the gale, 
 which had blustered against his sire and grand- 
 sire. The boy also, in due time, passed from the 
 forecastle to the cabin, spent a tempestuous man 
 hood, and returned from his world-wanderings, to 
 grow old, and die, and mingle his dust with the 
 natal earth." Not all, however, for the last of the 
 line of sailors, Captain Nathaniel Hathorne, who 
 married Elizabeth Clarke Manning, died at Cal 
 cutta after the birth of three children, a boy and 
 two girls. The house in which the boy was born 
 
THE WORKS OF XATHAXIEL HAWTHORXE 69 
 
 is still standing upon Union Street, which leads to 
 the Long Wharf, the chief seat of the old foreign 
 trade of Saleip. The next house, with a back 
 entrance on Union Street, is the Manning house, 
 where many years of the young Hawthorne s life 
 were spent in the care of his uncle, Robert Man 
 ning. He lived often upon an estate belonging 
 to his mother s family, in the town of Raymond, 
 near Sebago Lake, in Maine. The huge house 
 there was called Manning s Folly, and is now said 
 to be used as a meeting-house. His uncle sent 
 Hawthorne to Bowdoin College, where he gradu 
 ated in 1825. A correspondent of the Boston 
 Daily Advertiser, writing from Bowdoin at the 
 late commencement, says that he had recently 
 found " in an old drawer" some papers which 
 proved to be the manuscript "parts" of the stu 
 dents at the Junior exhibition of 182i; among 
 them was Hawthorne s "De Patribus Conscriptis 
 Romanorum." " It is quite brief," writes the 
 correspondent, "but is really curious as perhaps 
 the ouly college exercise in existence of the great 
 tragic writer of our day (has there been a greater 
 since Shakespeare?). The last sentence is as fol 
 lows (note the words which I put in italics) : Au 
 gustus equidem antiquam magnificentiam patribus 
 reddidit, sed fidgor t ant inn fuit sine fervore. 
 Xunquam in republica senatoribus potestas recu- 
 
70 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 perata, postreraum species etiara amissa est. On 
 the same occasion Longfellow had the salutatory 
 oration in Latin Oratio Latina; Anglici Poe- 
 t. 5 " 
 
 Hawthorne has given ns a charming glimpse of 
 himself as a college boy in the letter to his fellow- 
 student, Horatio Bridge, of the Navy, whose 
 Journal of an African Cruiser he afterwards 
 edited. "I know not whence your faith came; 
 but while we were lads together at a country col 
 lege, gathering blueberries, in study-hours, under 
 those tall academic pines ; or watching the great 
 logs as they tumbled along the current of the An- 
 droscoggin ; or shooting pigeons and gray squir 
 rels in the woods; or bat -fowling in the sum 
 mer twilight ; or catching trouts in that shadowy 
 little stream which, I suppose, is still wandering 
 riverward through the forest though you and I 
 will never cast a line in it again two idle lads, in 
 short (as we need not fear to acknowledge now), 
 doing a hundred things that the faculty never 
 heard of, or else it had been the worse for us, 
 still it was your prognostic of your friend s des 
 tiny that he was to be a writer of fiction." From 
 this sylvan university Hawthorne came home to 
 Salem ; " as if," he wrote later, " Salem were for 
 me the inevitable centre of the universe." 
 The old witch-hanging city had no weirder prod- 
 
THE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORXE 71 
 
 net than this dark-haired son. He has certainly 
 given it an interest which it must otherwise have 
 lacked; but he speaks of it with small affection, 
 considering that his family had lived there for 
 two centuries. " An unjoyous attachment," he 
 calls it. And, to tell the truth, there was evi 
 dently little love lost between the little city and 
 its most famous citizen. Stories still float in the 
 social gossip of the town, which represent the shy 
 author as inaccessible to all invitations to dinner 
 and tea ; and while the pleasant circle awaited his 
 coming in the drawing-room, the impracticable man 
 was at least so runs the tale quietly hobnobbing 
 with companions to whom his fame was unknown. 
 Those who coveted him as a phcenix could never 
 get him, while he gave himself freely to those who 
 saw in him only a placid barn-door fowl. The 
 sensitive youth was a recluse, upon whose imagi 
 nation had fallen the gloomy mystery of Puritan 
 life and character. Salein was the inevitable cen 
 tre of his universe more truly than he thought. 
 The mind of Justice Hathorn s descendant was 
 bewitched by the fascination of a certain devilish 
 subtlety working under the comeliest aspects in 
 human affairs. It overcame him with strange 
 sympathy. It colored and controlled his intellect 
 ual life. 
 Devoted all day to lonely reverie and musing 
 
72 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 upon the obscurer spiritual passages of the life 
 whose monuments he constantly encountered, that 
 musing became inevitably morbid. With the cre 
 ative instinct of the artist, he wrote the wild fan 
 cies into form as stories, many of which, when 
 written> he threw into the fire. Then, after 
 nightfall, stealing out from his room into the 
 silent streets of Salem, and shadowy as the ghosts 
 with which to his susceptible imagination the 
 dusky town was thronged, he glided beneath the 
 house in which the witch-trials were held, or 
 across the moonlit hill upon which the witches 
 were hung, until the spell was complete. Nor can 
 we help fancying that, after the murder of old 
 Mr. White in Salem, which happened within a 
 few years after his return from college, which 
 drew from Mr. Webster his most famous criminal 
 plea, and filled a shadowy corner of every museum 
 in New England, as every shivering little man of 
 that time remembers, with an awful reproduction 
 of the scene in wax-figures, with real sheets on the 
 bed, and the murderer, in a glazed cap, stooping 
 over to deal the fatal blow we cannot help fancy 
 ing that the young recluse who walked by night, 
 the wizard whom as yet none knew, hovered about 
 the house, gazing at the windows of the fatal 
 chamber, and listening in horror for the faint 
 .whistle of the confederate in another street. 
 
THE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 73 
 
 Three years after he graduated, in 1828, he 
 published anonymously a slight romance with the 
 motto from Southey, "Wilt thon go with me?" 
 Hawthorne never acknowledged the book, and it 
 is now seldom found; but it shows plainly the 
 natural bent of his mind. It is a dim, dreamy 
 tale, such as a Byron-struck youth of the time 
 might have written, except for that startling self- 
 possession of style and cold analysis of passion, 
 rather than sympathy with it, which showed no 
 imitation, but remarkable original power. The 
 same lurid gloom overhangs it that shadows all 
 his works. It is uncanny ; the figures of the ro 
 mance are not persons, they are passions, emo 
 tions, spiritual speculations. So the Twice-told 
 Tales that seem at first but the pleasant fancies 
 of a mild recluse, gradually hold the mind with a 
 Lamia-like fascination ; and the author says truly 
 of them, in the Preface of 1S51, " Even in what 
 purport to be pictures of actual life, we have alle 
 gory not always so warmly dressed in its habili 
 ments of flesh and blood as to be taken into the 
 reader s mind without a shiver." There are sun 
 ny gleams upon the pages, but a strange, melan 
 choly chill pervades the book. In " The Wedding 
 Knell," " The Minister s Black Veil," " The Gen- 
 tie Boy," " Wakefield," " The Prophetic Pictures," 
 " The Hollow of the Three Hills," " Dr. Heideg- 
 
74 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 ger s Experiment," " The Ambitious Guest," " The 
 White Old Maid," "Edward Fane s Eose-btid," 
 "The Lily s Quest" or in the "Legends of the 
 Province House," where the courtly provincial 
 state of governors and ladies glitters across the 
 small, sad New England world, whose very bald 
 ness jeers it to scorn there is the same fateful 
 atmosphere in which Goody Cloyse might at any 
 moment whisk by upon her broomstick, and in 
 which the startled heart stands still with unspeak 
 able terror. 
 
 The spell of mysterious horror which kindled 
 Hawthorne s imagination was a test of the charac 
 ter of his genius. The mind of this child of witch- 
 haunted Salem loved to hover between the natural 
 and the supernatural, and sought to tread the al 
 most imperceptible and doubtful line of contact. 
 He instinctively sketched the phantoms that have 
 the figures of men, but are not human ; the elu 
 sive, shadowy scenery which, like that of Gustave 
 Dore s pictures, is Nature sympathizing in her 
 forms and aspects with the emotions of terror or 
 awe which the tale excites. His genius broods 
 entranced over the evanescent phantasmagoria of 
 the vague debatable land in which the realities of 
 experience blend with ghostly doubts and won 
 ders. 
 
 But from its poisonous flowers what a wondrous 
 
THE WORKS OF XATHAXIEL HAWTHORNE 75 
 
 perfume he distilled ! Through his magic reed, 
 into what penetrating melody he blew that deathly 
 air ! His relentless fancy seemed to seek a sin 
 that was hopeless, a cruel despair that no faith 
 could throw off. Yet his naive and well-poised 
 genius hung over the gulf of blackness, and peered 
 into the pit with the steady nerve and simple face 
 of a boy. The mind of the reader follows him with 
 an aching wonder and admiration, as the bewil 
 dered old mother forester watched Undine s gam 
 bols. As Hawthorne describes Miriam in The 
 Marble Faun, so may the character of his genius 
 be most truly indicated. Miriam, the reader will 
 remember, turns to Hilda and Kenyon for sympa 
 thy. " Yet it was to little purpose that she ap 
 proached the edge of the voiceless gulf between 
 herself and them. Standing on the utmost verge 
 of that dark chasm, she might stretch out her hand 
 and never clasp a hand of theirs ; she might strive 
 to call out l Help, friends ! help ! but, as with 
 dreamers when they shout, her voice would perish 
 inaudibly in the remoteness that seemed such a 
 little way. This perception of an infinite, shiver 
 ing solitude, amid which we cannot come close 
 enough to human beings to be warmed by them, 
 and where they turn to cold, chilly shapes of 
 mist, is one of the most forlorn results of any 
 accident, misfortune, crime, or peculiarity of 
 
76 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 character, that puts an individual ajar with the 
 world." 
 
 Thus it was because the early New England life 
 made so much larger account of the supernatural 
 element than any other modern civilized society, 
 that the man whose blood had run in its veins in 
 stinctively turned to it. But beyond this alluring 
 spell of its darker and obscurer individual experi 
 ence, it seems neither to have touched his imagi 
 nation nor even to have aroused his interest. To 
 Walter Scott the romance of feudalism was pre 
 cious for the sake of feudalism itself, in which he 
 believed with all his soul, and for that of the he 
 roic old feudal figures which he honored. He was 
 a Tory in every particle of his frame, and his gen 
 ius made him the poet of Toryism. But Haw 
 thorne had apparently no especial political, relig 
 ious, or patriotic affinity with the spirit which 
 inspired him. It was solely a fascination of the in 
 tellect. And although he is distinctively the poet 
 of the Puritans, although it is to his genius that 
 we shall always owe that image of them which 
 the power of The Scarlet Letter has imprinted 
 upon literature, and doubtless henceforth upon 
 historical interpretation, yet what an imperfect 
 picture of that life it is! All its stern and mel 
 ancholy romance is there its picturesque gloom 
 and intense passion ; but upon those quivering 
 
TEE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 77 
 
 pages, as in every passage of his stories drawn from 
 that spirit, there seems to be wanting a deep, com 
 plete, sympathetic appreciation of the fine moral 
 heroism, the spiritual grandeur, which overhung 
 that gloomy life, as a delicate purple mist suffuses 
 in summer twilights the bald crags of the crystal 
 hills. It is the glare of the scarlet letter itself, 
 and all that it luridly reveals and weirdly implies, 
 which produced the tale. It was not beauty in 
 itself nor deformity, not virtue nor vice, which 
 engaged the author s deepest sympathy. It was 
 the occult relation between the two. Thus while 
 the Puritans were of all men pious, it was the in 
 stinct of Hawthorne s genius to search out and 
 trace with terrible tenacity the dark and devious 
 thread of sin in their lives. 
 
 Human life and character, whether in Xew Eng 
 land two hundred years ago or in Italy to-day, 
 interested him only as they were touched by this 
 glamour of sombre spiritual mystery ; and the at 
 traction pursued him in every form in which it 
 appeared. It is as apparent in the most perfect 
 of his smaller tales, RappacdnV s Daughter , as 
 in The Scarlet Letter, The Blithedale Romance, 
 The House of the Seven Gables, and The Marble 
 Faun. You may open almost at random, and 
 you are as sure to find it as to hear the ripple 
 in Mozart s music, or the pathetic minor in a 
 
78 LITER ARJ AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 Neapolitan melody. Take, for instance, The 
 Birth-Mark, which we might call the best of the 
 smaller stories, if we had not just said the same 
 thing of Rappaccini s Daughter for so even 
 and complete is Hawthorne s power, that, with 
 few exceptions, each work of his, like Benvenu- 
 to s, seems the most characteristic and felicitous. 
 In this story, a scholar marries a beautiful woman, 
 upon whose face is a mark which has hitherto 
 seemed to be only a greater charm. Yet in one so 
 lovely the husband declares that, although it is the 
 slightest possible defect, it is yet the mark of earth 
 ly imperfection, and he proceeds to lavish all the 
 resources of science to procure its removal. But it 
 will not disappear ; and at last he tells her that the 
 crimson hand "has clutched its grasp" into her 
 very being, and that there is mortal danger in try 
 ing the only means of removal that remains. She 
 insists that it shall be tried. It succeeds; but it 
 removes the stain and her life together. So in 
 Rappaccini s Daughter. The old philosopher 
 nourishes his beautiful child upon the poisonous 
 breath of a flower. She loves, and her lover is 
 likewise bewitched. In trying to break the spell, 
 she drinks an antidote which kills her. The point 
 of interest in both stories is the subtile connection, 
 in the first, between the beauty of Georgiana and 
 the taint of the birth-mark; and, in the second, 
 
THE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 79 
 
 the loveliness of Beatrice and the poison of the 
 blossom. 
 
 This, also, is the key of his last romance, The 
 Marble Faun, one of the most perfect works of 
 art in literature, whose marvellous spell begins 
 with the very opening words: "Four individuals, 
 in whose fortunes we should be glad to interest 
 the reader, happened to be standing in one of the 
 saloons of the sculpture-gallery in the Capitol at 
 Rome." When these words are read, the mind 
 familiar with Hawthorne is already enthralled. 
 What a journey is beginning, not a step of which 
 is trodden, and yet the heart palpitates with ap 
 prehension ! Through what delicate, rosy lights 
 of love, and soft, shimmering humor, and hopes 
 and doubts and vanishing delights, that journey 
 will proceed, on and on into utter gloom. And 
 it does so, although "Hilda had a hopeful soul, 
 and saw sunlight on the mountain-tops." It does 
 so, because Miriam and Donatello are the figures 
 which interest us most profoundly, and they are 
 both lost in the shadow. Donatello, indeed, is the 
 true centre of interest, as he is one of the most 
 striking creations of genius. But the perplexing 
 charm of Donatello, what is it but the doubt that 
 does not dare to breathe itself, the appalled won 
 der whether, if the breeze should lift those clus 
 tering locks a little higher, he would prove to be 
 
80 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 faun or man ? It never does lift them ; the doubt 
 is never solved, but it is always suggested. The 
 mystery of a partial humanity, morally irresponsi 
 ble but humanly conscious, haunts the entrancing 
 page. It draws us irresistibly on. But as the 
 cloud closes around the lithe figure of Donatello, 
 we hear again from its hidden folds the words of 
 "The Birth-Mark": "Thus ever does the gross 
 fatality of earth exult in its invariable triumph 
 over the immortal essence, which, in this dim 
 sphere of half -development, demands the com 
 pleteness of a higher state." Or still more sadly, 
 the mysterious youth, half vanishing from our 
 sympathy, seems to murmur, with Beatrice Rap- 
 paccini, " And still as she spoke, she kept her hand 
 upon her heart, * Wherefore didst thou inflict this 
 miserable doom upon thy child ? " 
 
 We have left the story of Hawthorne s life sadly 
 behind. But his life had no more remarkable 
 events than holding office in the Boston Custom 
 house under Mr. Bancroft as collector ; working for 
 some time with the Brook -Farmers, from whom 
 he soon separated, not altogether amicably ; mar 
 rying and living in the Old Manse at Concord ; 
 returning to the Custom-house in Salem as sur 
 veyor; then going to Lenox, in Berkshire, where 
 he lived in what he called "the ugliest little old 
 red farm-house that you ever saw," and where 
 
THE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 81 
 
 the story is told of his shyness, that, if he saw 
 anybody coming along the road whom he must 
 probably pass, he would jump over the wall into 
 the pasture, and so give the stranger a wide berth ; 
 back again to Concord ; then to Liverpool as con 
 sul ; travelling in Europe afterwards, and home at 
 last and forever, to " The Wayside " under the 
 Concord hill. " The hillside," he wrote to a friend 
 in 1852, "is covered chiefly with locust-trees, 
 which come into luxuriant blossom in the month 
 of June, and look and smell very sweetly, inter 
 mixed with a few young elms and some white- 
 pines and infant oaks, the whole forming rather a 
 thicket than a wood. Nevertheless, there is some 
 very good shade to be found there ; I spend de 
 lectable hours there in the hottest part of the day, 
 stretched out at my lazy length with a book in 
 my hand or an unwritten book in my thoughts. 
 There is almost always a breeze stirring along the 
 side or the brow of the hill." 
 
 It is iiot strange, certainly, that a man such as 
 has been described, of a morbid shyness, the path 
 of whose genius diverged always out of the sun 
 into the darkest shade, and to whom human beings 
 were merely psychological phenomena, should have 
 been accounted ungenial, and sometimes even hard, 
 cold, and perverse. From the bent of his intel 
 lectual temperament it happens that in his sim- 
 
82 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 plest and sweetest passages lie still seems to be 
 studying and curiously observing, rather than sym 
 pathizing. You cannot help feeling constantly 
 that the author is looking askance both at his 
 characters and you, the reader ; and many a young 
 and fresh mind is troubled strangely by his books, 
 as if it were aware of a half -Mephistophelean 
 smile upon the page. Nor is this impression alto 
 gether removed by the remarkable familiarity of 
 his personal disclosures. There was never a man 
 more shrinkingly retiring, yet surely never was an 
 author more naively frank. He is willing that you 
 should know all that a man may fairly reveal of 
 himself. The great interior story he does not tell, 
 of course, but the Introduction to the Mosses 
 from an Old Manse, the opening chapter of 
 The Scarlet Letter, and the Consular Experiences, 
 with much of the rest of Our Old Home, are as 
 intimate and explicit chapters of autobiography 
 as can be found. Nor would it be easy to find 
 anywhere a more perfect idyl than that introduc 
 tory chapter of the Mosses. Its charm is peren 
 nial and indescribable ; and why should it not be, 
 since it was written at a time in which, as he says, 
 "I was happy "? It is, perhaps, the most softly- 
 hued and exquisite work of his pen. So the 
 sketch of "The Custom-house," although prefa 
 tory to that most tragically powerful of romances, 
 
THE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 83 
 
 The Scarlet Letter, is an incessant play of the shy 
 est and most airy humor. It is like the war 
 bling of bobolinks before a thunder-burst. How 
 many other men, however unreserved with the 
 pen, would be likely to dare to paint, with the 
 fidelity of Teniers and the simplicity of Fra An- 
 gelico, a picture of the office and the companions 
 in which and with whom they did their daily 
 work? The surveyor of customs in the port of 
 Salem treated the town of Salem, in which he 
 lived and discharged his daily task, as if it had 
 been, with all its people, as vague and remote a 
 spot as the town of which he was about to treat 
 in the story. He commented upon the place 
 and the people as modern travellers in Pom 
 peii discuss the ancient town. It made a great 
 scandal. He was accused of depicting with un 
 pardonable severity worthy folks, whose friends 
 were sorely pained and indignant. But he wrote 
 such sketches as he wrote his stories. He treated 
 his companions as he treated himself and all the 
 personages in history or experience with which he 
 dealt, merely as phenomena to be analyzed and 
 described, with no more private malice or personal 
 emotion than the sun, which would have photo 
 graphed them, warts and all. 
 
 Thus it was that the great currents of human 
 sympathy never swept him away. The character 
 
84 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 of his genius isolated him, and he stood aloof from 
 the common interests. Intent upon studying men 
 in certain aspects, he cared little for man ; and the 
 high tides of collective emotion among his fellows 
 left him dry and untouched. So he beholds and 
 describes the generous impulse of humanity with 
 sceptical courtesy rather than with hopeful cordi 
 ality. 
 
 He does not chide you if you spend effort and 
 life itself in the ardent van of progress, but he 
 asks simply, " Is six so much better than half a 
 dozen ?" He will not quarrel with you if you ex 
 pect the millennium to-morrow. He only says, 
 with that glimmering smile, " So soon ?" Yet in 
 all this there was no shadow of spiritual pride. 
 Nay, so far from this, that the tranquil and per 
 vasive sadness of all Hawthorne s writings, the 
 kind of heartache that they leave behind, seem 
 to spring from the fact that his nature was related 
 to the moral world, as his own Donatello was to 
 the human. " So alert, so alluring, so noble," 
 muses the heart as we climb the Apennines 
 towards the tower of Monte Beni ; " alas ! is he 
 human ?" it whispers, with a pang of doubt. 
 
 How this directed his choice of subjects, and 
 affected his treatment of them, when drawn from 
 early history, we have already seen. It is not, 
 therefore, surprising, that the history into which 
 
THE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 85 
 
 be was born interested him only in the same 
 way. 
 
 "When he went to Europe as consul, Uncle Tom s 
 Cabin was already published, and the country shook 
 with the fierce debate which involved its life. Yet 
 eight years later Hawthorne wrote with calm en 
 nui, " No author, without a trial, can conceive of 
 the difficulty of writing a romance about a coun 
 try where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no 
 mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor 
 anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad 
 and simple daylight, as is happily the case with 
 my dear native land." Is crime never romantic, 
 then, until distance ennobles it? Or were the 
 tragedies of Puritan life so terrible that the im 
 agination could not help kindling, while the pangs 
 of the plantation are superficial and commonplace ? 
 Charlotte Bronte, Dickens, and Thackeray were 
 able to find a shadow even in " merrie England." 
 But our great romancer looked at the American 
 life of his time with these marvellous eyes, and 
 could see only monotonous sunshine. That the 
 devil, in the form of an elderly man clad in grave 
 and decent attire, should lead astray the saints of 
 Salem village, two centuries ago, and confuse right 
 and wrong in the mind of Goodman Brown, was 
 something that excited his imagination, and pro 
 duced one of his weirdest stories. But that the 
 
86 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 same devil, clad in a sombre sophism, was con 
 fusing the sentiment of right and wrong in the 
 mind of his own countrymen he did not even 
 guess. The monotonous sunshine disappeared in 
 the blackest storm. The commonplace prosper 
 ity ended in tremendous war. What other man 
 of equal power, who was not intellectually consti 
 tuted precisely as Hawthorne was, could have 
 stood merely perplexed and bewildered, harassed 
 by the inability of positive sympathy, in the vast 
 conflict which tosses us all in its terrible vortex? 
 
 In political theories and in an abstract view of 
 war men may differ. But this war is not to be 
 dismissed as a political difference. Here is an at 
 tempt to destroy the government of a country, 
 not because it oppressed any man, but because its 
 evident tendency was to secure universal justice 
 under law. It is, therefore, a conspiracy against 
 human nature. Civilization itself is at stake; 
 and the warm blood of the noblest youth is every 
 where flowing in as sacred a cause as history re 
 cords flowing not merely to maintain a certain 
 form of government, but to vindicate the rights 
 of human nature. Shall there not be sorrow and 
 pain, if a friend is merely impatient or confounded 
 by it if he sees in it only danger or doubt, and 
 not hope for the right or if he seem to insinuate 
 that it would have been better if the war had been 
 
THE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 87 
 
 avoided, even at that countless cost to human wel 
 fare by which alone the avoidance was possible? 
 
 Yet, if the view of Hawthorne s mental consti 
 tution which has been suggested be correct, this 
 attitude of his, however deeply it may be regret 
 ted, can hardly deserve moral condemnation. He 
 knew perfectly well that if a man has no ear for 
 music he had better not try to sing. But the dan 
 ger with such men is that they are apt to doubt 
 if music itself be not a vain delusion. This dan 
 ger Hawthorne escaped. There is none of the 
 shallow persiflage of the sceptic in his tone, nor 
 any affectation of cosmopolitan superiority. Mr. 
 Edward Dicey, in his interesting reminiscences of 
 Hawthorne, published in Macmillarf s Magazine, 
 illustrates this very happily. 
 
 " To make his position intelligible, let me repeat an anec 
 dote which was told me by a very near friend of his and mine, 
 who had heard it from President Pierce himself. Frank 
 Pierce had been, and was to the day of Hawthorne s death, 
 one of the oldest of his friends. At the time of the Presiden 
 tial election of 1856, Hawthorne, for once, took part in poli 
 tics, wrote a pamphlet in favor of his friend, and took a most 
 unusual interest in his success. When the result of the nom 
 ination was known, and Pierce was President-elect, Haw 
 thorne was among the first to come and wish him joy. He 
 sat down in the room moodily and silently, as he was wont 
 when anything troubled him ; then, without speaking a word, 
 he shook Pierce warmly by the hand, and at last remarked, 
 Ah, Frank, what a pity ! The moment the victory was won, 
 that timid, hesitating mind saw the evils of the successful 
 course the advantages of the one which had not been fol- 
 
88 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 lowed. So it was always. Of two lines of action, he was 
 perpetually in doubt which was the best ; and so, between 
 the two, he always inclined to letting things remain as they 
 are. 
 
 "Nobody disliked slavery more cordially than he did; 
 and yet the difficulty of what was to be done with the slaves 
 weighed constantly upon his mind. He told me once that, 
 while he had been consul at Liverpool, a vessel arrived there 
 with a number of negro sailors, who had been brought from 
 slave States, and would, of course, be enslaved again on their 
 return. He fancied that he ought to inform the men of the fact, 
 but then he was stopped by the reflection who was to pro 
 vide for them if they became free ? and, as he said, with a 
 sigh, while I was thinking, the vessel sailed. So, I recollect, 
 on the old battle-field of Manassas, in which I strolled in com 
 pany with Hawthorne, meeting a batch of runaway slaves 
 weary, foot-sore, wretched, and helpless beyond conception ; 
 we gave them food and wine, some small sums of money, and 
 got them a lift upon a train going northward ; but not long 
 afterwards Hawthorne turned to me with the remark, I am 
 not sure we were doing right after all. How can these poor 
 beings find food and shelter away from home ? Thus this 
 ingrained and inherent doubt incapacitated him from follow 
 ing any course vigorously. He thought, on the whole, that 
 Wendell Phillips and Lloyd Garrison and the Abolitionists 
 were in the right, but then he was never quite certain that 
 they were not in the wrong after all ; so that his advocacy of 
 their cause was of a very uncertain character. He saw the 
 best, to alter slightly the famous Horatian line, but he never 
 could quite make up his mind whether he altogether approved 
 of its wisdom, and therefore followed it but falteringly. 
 
 " Better to bear those ills we have, 
 
 Than fly to others that we know not of, 
 
 expressed the philosophy to which Hawthorne was thus borne 
 imperceptibly. Unjustly, but yet not unreasonably, he was 
 looked upon as a pro-slavery man, and suspected of Southern 
 sympathies. In politics he was always halting between two 
 opinions ; or, rather, holding one opinion, he could never 
 summon up his courage to adhere to it and it only." 
 
THE WORKS OF 
 
 : frf jnwTffOKVr -< 
 
 J\lLi MA \\JL21UlL~\L, ^[ 
 
 V * . . WF >A 
 
 The truth is that his own times and their peo 
 ple and their affairs were just as shadowy to him 
 as those of any of his stories, arid his mind held 
 the same curious, half-wistful poise among all the 
 conflicts of principle and passion around him, as 
 among those of which he read and mused. If you 
 ask why this was so how it was that the tragedy 
 of an old Italian garden, or the sin of a lonely Pu 
 ritan parish, or the crime of a provincial judge, 
 should so stimulate his imagination with romantic 
 appeals and harrowing allegories, while either it 
 did not see a Carolina slave -pen, or found in it 
 only a tame prosperity you must take your an 
 swer in the other question, why he did not weave 
 into any of his stories the black and bloody thread 
 of the Inquisition. His genius obeyed its law. 
 When he wrote like a disembodied intelligence of 
 events with which his neighbors hearts were quiv 
 ering when the same half-smile flutters upon his 
 lips in the essay About War Matters, sketched 
 as it were upon the battle-field, as in that upon 
 Fire Worship, written in the rural seclusion of 
 the mossy Manse ah me! it is Donatello, in his 
 tower of Monte Beni, contemplating with doubt 
 ful interest the field upon which the flower of men 
 are dying for an idea. Do you wonder, as you 
 see him and hear him, that your heart, bewildered, 
 asks and asks again, " Is he human ? Is he a man ?" 
 
90 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 Now that Hawthorne sleeps by the tranquil 
 Concord, upon whose shores the Old Manse was 
 his bridal bower, those who knew him chiefly 
 there revert beyond the angry hour to those 
 peaceful days. How dear the Old Manse was to 
 him he has himself recorded ; and in the opening 
 of the Tanglewood Tales he pays his tribute to 
 that placid landscape, which will always be re 
 called with pensive tenderness by those who, like 
 him, became familiar with it in happy hours. 
 " To me," he writes, " there is a peculiar, quiet 
 charm in these broad meadows and gentle emi 
 nences. They are better than mountains, because 
 they do not stamp and stereotype themselves into 
 the brain, and thus grow wearisome with the same 
 strong impression, repeated day after day. A few 
 summer weeks among mountains, a lifetime among 
 green meadows and placid slopes, with outlines 
 forever new, because continually fading out of the 
 memory, such would be my sober choice." He 
 used to say, in those days when, as he was 
 fond of insisting, he was the obscurest author 
 in the world, because, although he had told 
 his tales twice, nobody cared to listen that 
 he never knew exactly how he contrived to live. 
 But he was then married, and the dullest eye 
 could not fail to detect the feminine grace and 
 taste that ordered the dwelling, and perceive 
 
THE WORKS OF NATHAXIEL HA.WTHORXE 91 
 
 the tender sagacity that made all things pos 
 sible. 
 
 Such was his simplicity and frugality that, 
 when he was left alone for a little time in his 
 Arcadia, he would dismiss " the help," and, with 
 some friend of other days who came to share his 
 loneliness, he cooked the easy meal, and washed 
 up the dishes. Ko picture is clearer in the mem 
 ory of a certain writer than that of the magician, 
 in whose presence he almost lost his breath, look 
 ing at him over a dinner -plate which he was 
 gravely wiping in the kitchen, while the handy 
 friend, who had been a Western settler, scoured 
 the kettle at the door. Blithedale, where their 
 acquaintance had begun, had not allowed either 
 of them to forget how to help himself. It was 
 amusing to one who knew this native indepen 
 dence of Hawthorne, to hear, some years after 
 wards, that he wrote the " campaign " Life of 
 Franklin Pierce for the sake of getting an office. 
 That such a man should do such a work was possi 
 bly incomprehensible to those who did not know 
 him upon any other supposition, until the fact 
 was known that Mr. Pierce was an old and con 
 stant friend. Then it was explained. Hawthorne 
 asked simply how he could help his friend, and 
 he did the only thing he could do for that pur 
 pose. But although he passed some years in pub- 
 
92 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 lie office, he had neither taste nor talent for po 
 litical life. He owed his offices to works quite 
 other than political. His first and second ap 
 pointments were virtually made by his friend Mr. 
 Bancroft, and the third by his friend Mr. Pierce. 
 His claims were perceptible enough to friendship, 
 but would hardly have been so to a caucus. 
 
 In this brief essay we have aimed only to indi 
 cate the general character of the genius of Haw 
 thorne, and to suggest a key to his peculiar rela 
 tion to his time. The reader will at once see that 
 it is rather the man than the author who has been 
 described ; but this has been designedly done, for 
 we confess a personal solicitude, shared, we are 
 very sure, by many friends of Nathaniel Haw 
 thorne, that there shall not be wanting to the 
 future student of his works such light as acquaint 
 ance with the man may throw upon them, as well 
 as some picture of the impression his personality 
 made upon his contemporaries. 
 
 Strongly formed, of dark, poetic gravity of as 
 pect, lighted by the deep, gleaming eye that re 
 coiled with girlish coyness from contact with your 
 gaze ; of rare courtesy and kindliness in personal 
 intercourse, yet so sensitive that his look and man 
 ner can be suggested by the word "glimmering;" 
 giving you a sense of restrained impatience to be 
 away ; mostly silent in society, and speaking al- 
 
THE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 93 
 
 ways with an appearance of effort, but with a 
 lambent light of delicate humor playing over all 
 he said in the confidence of familiarity, and firm 
 self-possession under all, as if the glimmering 
 manner were only the tremulous surface of the 
 sea, Hawthorne was personally known to few, and 
 intimately to very few. But no one knew him 
 without loving him, or saw him without remem 
 bering him ; and the name Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
 which, when it was first written, was supposed to 
 be fictitious, is now one of the most enduring 
 facts of English literature. 
 
RACHEL 
 
EACHEL 
 
 ONE evening in Paris, we were strolling through 
 that most Parisian spot the Palais Royal, or, as it 
 was called at that moment, the Palais National. 
 It was after the revolution of February ; but, al 
 though the place was full of associations with 
 French revolutions, it seemed to have no special 
 sympathy with the trouble of the moment, and 
 was as gay as the youngest imagination conceives 
 Paris to be. There was a constant throng loitering 
 along the arcades; the cafes were lighted and 
 crowded ; men were smoking, sipping coffee, play 
 ing billiards, reading the newspapers, discuss 
 ing the debates in the Chamber and the coming 
 " Prophete " of Meyerbeer at the opera ; women 
 were chatting together in the boutiques, pretty 
 grisettes hurrying home; little blanchisseuses, with 
 their neatly -napkinned baskets, tripping among 
 the crowd ; strangers watched the gay groups, 
 paused at the windows of tailors and jewellers, 
 and felt the fascination of Paris. It was the mo 
 ment of high-tide of Parisian life. It was an epit- 
 
98 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 ome of Paris, and Paris is an epitome of the time 
 and of the world. 
 
 At the corner of the Palais Royal is the Gome- 
 die Franchise, and to that we were going. There 
 Rachel was playing. There she had recently re 
 cited the "Marseillaise" to frenzied Paris; and 
 there, in the vestibule, genius of French comedy, 
 of French intellect, and of French life, sits the 
 wonderful Voltaire of Houdon, the statue which, 
 for the first time, after the dreadful portraits which 
 misrepresent him, gives the spectator some ade 
 quate idea of the personal appearance and impres 
 sion of the man who moulded an age. You can 
 scarcely see the statue without a shudder. It is 
 remorseless intellect laid bare. The cold sweet 
 ness of the aspect, the subtle penetration of the 
 brow, the passionless supremacy of a figure which 
 is neither manly nor graceful, fill your mind with 
 apprehension and with the conviction that the 
 French Revolution you have seen is not the last. 
 
 The curtain rises, and Paris and France roll 
 away. A sad, solitary figure, like a dream of 
 tragic Greece, glides across the scene. The air 
 grows cold and thin, with a sense of the presence 
 of lost antiquity. The feeling of fate, vast, resist 
 less, and terrible, rises like a suffocating vapor; 
 and the hopeless woe of the face, the pathetic dig 
 nity of the form, assure you, before she speaks, 
 
RACHEL 99 
 
 that tins is indeed Rachel. The scenery is poor 
 and hard ; but its severe outlines and its conven 
 tional character serve to suggest Greece. The 
 drapery which hangs upon Rachel is exquisitely 
 studied from the most perfect statue. There is 
 not a fold which is not Greek and graceful, and 
 which does not seem obedient to the same law 
 which touches her face with tragedy. As she 
 slowly opens her thin lips, your own blanch; and 
 from her melancholy eyes all smiles and possi 
 bility of joy have utterly passed away. Rachel 
 stands alone, a solitary statue of fate and woe. 
 
 When she speaks, the low, thrilling, distinct 
 voice seems to proceed rather from her eyes than 
 her mouth. It has a wan sound, if we may say 
 so. It is the very tone you would have predicted 
 as coming from that form, like the unearthly mu 
 sic which accompanies the speech of the Com- 
 mendatore s statue in "Don Giovanni." That ap 
 pearance and that voice are the key of the whole 
 performance. Before she has spoken, you are filled 
 with the spirit of an age infinitely remote, and only 
 related to human sympathy now by the grandeur 
 of suffering. The rest merely confirms that im 
 pression. The whole is simple and intense. It 
 is conceived and fulfilled in the purest sense of 
 Greek art. 
 
 Of the early career and later life of Rachel 
 
100 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 such romantic stories are told and believed that 
 only to see the heroine of her own life would be 
 attraction enough to draw the world to Paris. 
 Dr. Vernon, in his Memoir es d?un Bourgeois, has 
 described her earliest appearance upon the Boule 
 vards her studies, her trials, and her triumph. 
 That triumph has been unequalled in stage annals 
 for enthusiasm and permanence. Other actors 
 have achieved single successes as brilliant; but no 
 other has held for so long the most fickle and fas 
 tidious nation thrall to her powers; owning no 
 rival near the throne, and ruling with a sway 
 whose splendor was only surpassed by its stern 
 ness. 
 
 For Rachel has never sought to ally her genius 
 to goodness, and has rather despised than courted 
 the aid of noble character. Not a lady by birth 
 or breeding, she is reported to have surpassed Mes- 
 salina in debauchery and Semiramis in luxury. 
 Paris teems with tales of her private life, which, 
 while they are undoubtedly exaggerated, yet serve 
 to show the kind of impression her career has pro 
 duced. Those modern Sybarites, the princes and 
 nobles of Russia, are the heroes of her private ro 
 mances; and her sumptuous apartments, if not a 
 Tour de Nesle, are at least a bower of Rosamond. 
 
 As if to show the independent superiority of her 
 art, she has been willing to appear, or she really 
 
RACHEL 101 
 
 is, avaricious, mean, jealous, passionate, false ; and 
 then, by her prodigious power, she has swayed the 
 public that so judged her as the wind tosses a leaf. 
 There has, alas, been disdain in her superiority. 
 Perhaps Paris has found something fascinating 
 in her very contempt, as in the Memoires du Dia- 
 Ue the heroine confesses that she loved the ferocity 
 of her lover. Nor is it a traditional fame that she 
 has enjoyed ; but whenever Rachel plays, the the 
 atre is crowded, and the terror and the tears are 
 what they were when she began. 
 
 Rachel is the greatest of merely dramatic artists. 
 Others are more beautiful ; others are more state 
 ly and imposing ; others have been fitted by exter 
 nal gifts of nature to personify characters of very 
 marked features ; others are more graceful and 
 lovely and winning; most others mingle their 
 own personality with the characters they assume, 
 but Rachel has this final evidence of genius, that 
 she is always superior to what she does ; her mind 
 presides over her own performances. It is the 
 perfection of art. In describing this peculiar su 
 premacy of genius, a scholar, in whose early death 
 a poet and philosopher was lost, says of Shake 
 speare : " He sat pensive and alone above the hun 
 dred-handed play of his imagination." And Fanny 
 Kemble, in her journal, describes a conversation 
 upon the stage, in the tomb-scene of " Romeo and 
 
102 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 Juliet," where she, as Juliet, says to Mr. Romeo 
 Keppel, " Where the devil is your dagger ?" while 
 all the tearful audience are lost in the soft woe 
 of the scene. 
 
 This is very much opposed to the general theory 
 of acting, and the story is told with great gusto of 
 a boy who was sent to see Garrick, we believe, and 
 who was greatly delighted with the fine phrasing 
 and swagger of a supernumerary, but could not 
 understand why people applauded such an ordi 
 nary bumpkin as Garrick, who did not differ a whit 
 from all the country boobies he had ever seen. It 
 is insisted that the actor must persuade the spec 
 tator that he is what he seems to be, and this is 
 gravely put as the first and final proof of good 
 acting. 
 
 This is, however, both a false view of art and a 
 false interpretation and observation of experience. 
 Shakespeare, through the mouth of Hamlet, tells 
 the players to " hold the mirror up to nature " 
 that is, to represent nature. For what is the dra 
 matic art, like all other arts, but a representation ? 
 If it aims to deceive the eye if it tries to juggle 
 the senses of the spectator it is as trivial as if a 
 painte.r should put real gold upon his canvas in 
 stead of representing gold by means of paint ; or 
 as if a sculptor should tinge the cheeks of his 
 statue to make it more like a human face. We 
 
RACHEL 103 
 
 have seen tin pans so well represented in painting 
 that the result was atrocious. For, if the object 
 intended is really a tin pan, and not the pleasure 
 produced by a conscious representation of one, 
 then why not insert the veritable pan in the 
 picture at once? If art is only a more or less 
 successful imitation of natural objects, with a 
 view to cheat the senses, it is an amusing game, 
 but it is not a noble pursuit. 
 
 It is an equally false observation of experience; 
 because, if the spectator were really deceived, if 
 the actor became, in the mind of the audience, 
 truly identical with the character he represents, 
 then, when that character was odious, the audience 
 would revolt. If we cannot quietly sit and see 
 one dog tear another, without interfering, could 
 we gravely look on and only put our handkerchiefs 
 to our eyes, when Othello puts the pillow to the 
 mouth of Desdemona? If we really supposed 
 him to be a murderous man, how instantly we 
 should leap upon the stage and rescue " the gentle 
 lady." The truth is, to state it boldly, we know 
 the roaring lion to be only Snug, the joiner. 
 
 All works of art must produce pleasure. Even 
 the sternest and most repulsive subjects must be 
 touched by art into a pensive beauty, or they fail 
 to reach the height of great works. Goethe has 
 shown this in the Laocoon, and every man feels it 
 
104 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 in constant experience. One of the grand themes 
 of modern painting is the great tragedy of history, 
 the Crucifixion. Materially it is repulsive, as the 
 spectacle of a man in excruciating bodily torture ; 
 spiritually it is overwhelming, as the symbolized 
 suffering of God for sin. If, now, the pictures 
 which treat this subject were indeed only imita 
 tions of the scene, so that the spectator listened for 
 the groans of agony and looked to see the blood 
 drop from the brow crowned with thorns, how 
 hideous and insupportable the sight would be! 
 The mind is conscious as it contemplates the pict 
 ure that it is a representation, and not a fact. 
 The mere force of actuality is, therefore, destroyed, 
 and thought busies itself with the moral signifi 
 cance of the scene. In the same way, in the trag 
 edy of " Othello," conscious that there is not the 
 actual physical suffering which there seems to be, 
 the mind contemplates the real meaning which 
 underlies that appearance, and curses jealousy and 
 the unmanly passions. 
 
 Even in a very low walk of art the same princi 
 ple is manifested. A man might not care to adorn 
 his parlor with the carcass of an ox or a hog, nor 
 invite to his table boors muzzy with beer. But 
 the most elegant of nations prizes the pictures of 
 Teniers at extraordinary prices, and hangs its gal 
 leries with works minutely representing the sham- 
 
RACHEL 105 
 
 bles. Here, again, the explanation is this: that 
 the mind, rejecting any idea of actuality in the 
 picture, is charmed with the delicacy of detail, 
 with lovely color, with tone, with tenderness, and 
 all these are qualities inseparable from the picture, 
 and do not belong by any necessity to the actual 
 carcasses of animals. In the shambles, the sense 
 of disgust and repulsion overcomes any pleasure 
 in light and color. In the parlor, if the spectator 
 were persuaded by the picture to hold his nose, 
 the thing would be as unlovely as it is in nature. 
 Imitation pleases only so far as it is known to 
 be imitation. If deception by imitation were the 
 object of art, then the material of the sculptor 
 should be wax, and not marble. Every visitor 
 mistakes the sitting figure of Cobbett, in Madame 
 Tussaud s collection of wax-works, for a real man, 
 and will very likely, as we did, speak to it. But 
 who would accost the Moses of Michael Angelo, 
 or believe the sitting Medici in his chapel to have 
 speech ? 
 
 There is something unhandsomely derogatory 
 to art in this common view. It is forgotten that 
 art is not subsidiary nor auxiliary to nature, but 
 it is a distinct ministry, and has a world of its 
 own. They are not in opposition, nor do they 
 clash. The cardinal fact of imitation in works 
 of art is evident enough. The exquisite charm of 
 
106 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 art lies in the perfection of the imitation, coexist 
 ing with the consciousness of an absolute differ 
 ence, so that the effect produced is not at all that 
 which the object itself produces, but is an intel 
 lectual pleasure arising from the perception of the 
 mingling of rational intention with the representa 
 tion of the natural object. "We can illustrate this 
 by supposing a child bringing in a fresh rose, and 
 a painter his picture of a rose. The pleasure de 
 rived from the picture is surely something better 
 than wonder at the skill with which the form and 
 color of the flower are imitated. Since imitation 
 can never attain to the dignity and worth of the 
 original, and since we live in the midst of nature, 
 it would be folly to claim for its more or less suc 
 cessful copy the position and form of a great men 
 tal and moral influence. 
 
 Of course we are not unmindful of the inevi 
 table assertion that if certain forms are to be used 
 for the expression of certain truths, the first con 
 dition is that those forms shall be accurately ren 
 dered. Hence arises the great stress laid by the 
 modern schools upon a rigorous imitation of nat 
 ure, and hence what is called the pre-Raphaelite 
 spirit, with its marvellous detail. But mere imita 
 tion does not come any nearer to great art by being 
 perfect. If it is not informed by a great intention, 
 sculpture is only wax-work and painting a juggle. 
 
RACHEL 107 
 
 It is by her instinctive recognition of these 
 fundamental principles that Rachel shows her 
 self to be an artist. She is fully persuaded 
 of the value of the modern spirit, and she be 
 longs to the time by nothing more than by her 
 instinctive and hearty adaptation of the principles 
 of art which are illustrated in all other depart 
 ments. There is nothing in Millais s or Hunt s 
 paintings more purely pre-Raphaelite than Ra 
 chel s acting in the last scenes of " Adrienne Le- 
 couvreur." It is the perfection of detail. It 
 was studied, gasp by gasp, and groan by groan, 
 in the hospital wards of Paris, where men were 
 dying in agony. It is terrible, but it is true. We 
 have seen a crowded theatre hanging in a sus 
 pense almost suffocating over that fearful scene. 
 Men grew pale, women fainted, a spell of silence 
 and awe held us enchanted. But it was all pure 
 art. The actor was superior to the scene. It was 
 the passion with which she threw herself into the 
 representation, with a distinct conception of the 
 whole, and a thorough knowledge of the means 
 necessary to produce its effect, that secured the 
 success. There was a sublimity of self-control in 
 the spectacle, for, if she had allowed herself to be 
 overwhelmed by the excitement, the play must 
 have paused ; real feeling would have invaded 
 that which was represented, and we should, by a 
 
108 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 rude shock, have been staring in wonder at the 
 weeping woman Rachel, instead of thrilling with 
 the woes of the dying, despairing Adrienne. She 
 seems to be what we know she is not. 
 
 Rachel s earlier triumphs were in the plays of 
 Racine. Certainly nothing could show the essen 
 tial worth of the old Greek dramatic material more 
 than the fact that it could be rendered into French 
 rhyme without losing all its dignity. If a man 
 should know Homer only through Pope s transla 
 tions, he could hardly understand the real great 
 ness and peculiar charm of Homer. And as most 
 of us know him in no other way, we all under 
 stand that the eminence of Homer is conceded 
 upon the force of tradition and the feeling of 
 those who have read him in the original. So, to 
 the reader of Racine, it is his knowledge of the 
 outline of the grand old Greek stories that pre 
 vents their loss of charm and loftiness when they 
 masquerade in French rhyme. They have lost 
 their sublimity, so far as treatment can effect it, 
 while they retain their general form of interest. 
 But it is the splendid triumph of Rachel that she 
 restores the original Greek grandeur to the drama. 
 We no longer wonder at Racine s idea of Phedre, 
 but we are confronted with Phedre herself. From 
 the moment she appears, through every change 
 and movement of the scene until the catastrophe, 
 
RACHEL 109 
 
 a sense of fate, the grim, remorseless, and inexo 
 rable destiny that presides over Greek story, is 
 stamped upon every look and nod and movement 
 of Kacbel. It is stated that, since the enthusiasm 
 produced in Paris by Ristori, Rachel s Italian ri 
 val, the sculptor Schlesinger has declared that his 
 statue of Rachel which he had called Tragedy was 
 only Melodrama after all. If the report be true, 
 it does not prove that Rachel, but Schlesinger, is 
 not a great artist. 
 
 It is this simplicity and grandeur that make the 
 excellence of Rachel in the characters of Racine. 
 They cease to be French and become Greek. As 
 a victim of fate, she moves, from the first scene to 
 the last, as by a resistless impulse. Her voice has 
 a low concentrated tone. Her movement is not 
 vehement, but intense. If she smiles, it is a wan 
 gleam of sadness, not of joy, as if the eyes that 
 lighten for a moment saw all the time the finger 
 of fate pointing over her shoulder. The thin 
 form, graceful with intellectual dignity, not round 
 ed with the ripeness of young womanhood, the 
 statuesque simplicity and severity of the drapery, 
 the pale cheek, the sad lips, the small eyes these 
 are accessory to the whole impression, the melan 
 choly ornaments of the tragic scene. Her fine 
 instinct avoids the romantic and melodramatic 
 touches which, however seductive to an actor who 
 
110 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 aims at effect, would destroy at once that breadth 
 and unity which characterize her best impersona 
 tions. Wherever the idea of fate inspires the 
 tragedy, or can properly be introduced as the mo 
 tive, there Rachel is unsurpassed and unapproach 
 able. Her stillness, her solemnity, her intensity ; 
 the want of mouthing, of ranting, of all extrava 
 gance ; the slight movement of the arms, and the 
 subtle inflections of the voice which are more ex 
 pressive than gestures, haunt the memory and 
 float through the mind afterwards as the figure of 
 Francesca di Rimini, in the exquisite picture of 
 Ary Scheffer, sweeps, full of woe, which every line 
 suggests, across the vision of Dante and his guide. 
 There was, naturally, the greatest curiosity and 
 a good deal of scepticism about Rachel s power in 
 the modern drama, the melodrama of Victor Hugo, 
 and the social drama of Scribe. But her appear 
 ance in the "Angelo" of Victor Hugo and in 
 "Adrienne Lecouvreur" of Scribe satisfied the 
 curiosity and routed the scepticism. It was pleas 
 ant after the vast and imposing forms, the tearless 
 tragedy of Greek story, to see the mastery of this 
 genius in the conditions of a life and spirit with 
 which we were more familiar and sympathetic. It 
 was clear that the same passionate intensity which, 
 united with the most exquisite perceptions, enabled 
 her so perfectly to restore the Greek spirit to the 
 
RACHEL 111 
 
 Greek form, would as adequately represent the 
 voluptuous southern life. If in the old drama 
 she was sculpture, so in the modern she was paint 
 ing, not only with the flowing outline, but with 
 all the purple, palpitating hues of passion. 
 
 This is best manifested in the "Angelo," of 
 which the scene is laid in old Padua and is, there 
 fore, full of the mysterious spirit of mediaeval Ital 
 ian, and especially Venetian life. Miss Gush man 
 has played in an English version of this drama, 
 called the " Actress of Padua." But it is hardly 
 grandiose enough in its proportions to be very well 
 adapted to the talent of Miss Cushman. It was re 
 markable how perfectly the genius which had, the 
 evening before, adequately represented Phedre, 
 could impersonate the ablest finesse of Italian snb- 
 tilty. The old Italian romances were made real in 
 a moment. The dim chambers, the dusky passages, 
 the sliding doors, the vivid contrast of gayety and 
 gloom, the dance in the palace and the duel in the 
 garden, the smile on the lip and the stab at the 
 heart, the capricious feeling, the impetuous action, 
 the picturesque costume of life and society all 
 the substance and the form of our ideas of char 
 acteristic Italian life, are comprised in Rachel s 
 Thisbe and Angelo. 
 
 There is one scene in that play not to be for 
 gotten. Tiie curtain rises and shows a vast, dim. 
 
112 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 chamber in the castle, with a heavily -curtained 
 bed, and massive carved furniture, and a deep 
 bay-window. It is night ; a candle burns upon the 
 table, feebly flickering in the gloom of the great 
 chamber. Angelo, whom Thisbe loves, and who 
 pretends to love her, is sitting uneasily in the 
 chamber with his mistress, whose name we have 
 forgotten, but whom he really loves. Thisbe is 
 suspicious of his want of faith, and burns with 
 jealousy, but has had no proof. 
 
 A gust of wind, the rustle of the tapestry, the 
 creak of a bough in the garden, the note of a night 
 bird, any slightest sound makes the lovers start 
 and quiver, as if they stood upon the verge of an 
 imminent peril. Suddenly they both start at a 
 low noise, apparently in the wall. Angelo rises 
 and looks about, his mistress shivers and shrinks, 
 but they discover nothing. The night deepens 
 around them. The sense of calamity and catas 
 trophe rises in the spectator s mind. They start 
 again. This time they hear a louder noise, and 
 glance helplessly around and feebly try to scofE 
 away their terror. The sound dies away, and they 
 converse in appalled and fragmentary whispers. 
 But again a low, cautious, sliding noise arrests 
 them. Angelo springs up, runs for his hat and 
 cloak, blows out the candle upon the table, and 
 escapes from the room, while his mistress totters 
 
RACHEL 113 
 
 to the bed and throws herself upon it, feigning 
 sleep. The stage is left unoccupied, while the just- 
 extinguished candle still smokes upon the table, 
 and the sidelights and footlights, being lowered, 
 wrap the vast chamber in deeper gloom. 
 
 At this moment a small secret door in the wall 
 at the bottom of the stage slips aside, and Thisbe, 
 still wearing her ball-dress, and with a head-dress of 
 gold sequins flashing in her black hair, is discov 
 ered crouching in the aperture, holding an antique 
 lamp in one hand, a little raised, and with the 
 other softly putting aside the door, while, bending 
 forward with a cat-like stillness, she glares around 
 the chamber with eager eyes, that flash upon every 
 thing at once. The picture is perfect. The light 
 falls from the raised lamp upon this jewelled fig 
 ure crouching in the darkness at the bottom of 
 the stage. Judith was not more terrible; Lucrezia 
 Borgia not more superb. Bat, magnificent as it 
 is, it is a moment of such intense interest that 
 applause is suspended. The house is breathless, 
 for it is but the tiger s crouch that precedes the 
 spring. The next instant she is upon the floor of 
 the chamber, and, still bending slightly forward to 
 express the eager concentration of her mind, she 
 glances at the bed and the figure upon it with a 
 scornful sneer, that indicates how clearly she sees 
 the pretence of sleep, and how evidently some- 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
114 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 body has been there, or something has happened 
 which justifies all her suspicion, and then, with 
 panther-like celerity, she darts about the chamber 
 to find some trace of the false lover a hat, a 
 glove, a plume, a cloak to make assurance doubly 
 sure. But there is nothing upon the floor, noth 
 ing upon the table, nothing in the bay-window, 
 nothing upon the sofa, nor in the huge carved 
 chairs ; th ere is nothing that proves the treachery 
 she suspects. But her restless eye leads her 
 springing foot from one corner of the chamber 
 to the other. Speed increases with the lessening 
 chance of proof; the eye flashes more and more 
 fiercely; the breast heaves; the hand clinches; 
 the cheek burns, until, suddenly, in the very mo 
 ment of despair, having as yet spoken no word, 
 she comes to the table, sees the candle, which still 
 smokes, and drawing herself up with fearful calm 
 ness, her cheeks grow pallid, the lips livid, the 
 hands relax, the eye deadens as with a blow, and, 
 with the despairing conviction that she is be 
 trayed, her heart-break sighs itself out in a cold 
 whisper, " Elle fume encore" 
 
 In this she is as purely dramatic as in other 
 plays she is classical. But neither in the one nor 
 the other is there a look, or a gesture, or a word, 
 which is not harmonious with the spirit of the 
 style and the character of the person represented. 
 
RACHEL H5 
 
 This is pure passion as the other is implacable 
 fate. There is something so tearfully human in 
 it that you are touched as by a picture of the 
 Magdalen. Every representation of Rachel is 
 preserved in your memory with the first sights of 
 the great statues and the famous pictures. 
 
 In the French translation of Schiller s "Mary 
 Stuart," a character which may be supposed espe 
 cially to interest Americans and English, Rachel 
 is not less excellent. The sad grace, the tender 
 resignation, the poetic enthusiasm, the petulant ca 
 price, the wilful, lovely womanliness of the lovely 
 queen, are made tragically real by her representa 
 tion. Perhaps it is not the Mary of Mignet nor 
 of history. But Mary Queen of Scots is one of 
 the characters which the imagination has chosen 
 to take from history and decorate with immortal 
 grace. It cares less for what the woman Mary 
 was, than to have a figure standing upon the fact 
 of history, but radiant with the beauty of poetry. 
 It has invested her with a loveliness that is per 
 haps unreal, with a tenderness and sweetness that 
 were possibly foreign to her character, and with 
 a general fascination and good intention which a 
 contemporary might not have discovered. 
 
 It has made her the ideal of unfortunate wom 
 anhood. For it seemed that a fate so tragic de 
 served a fame so fair. Perhaps the weakness 
 
116 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 which Mary had, and which Lady Jane Grey had 
 not, have been the very reasons why the unfort 
 unate, unhappy Queen Mary is dearer to our hu 
 man sympathies than the unfortunate Lady Jane. 
 Perhaps because it was a woman who pursued 
 her, the instinct of men has sought to restore, by 
 the canonization of Mary, the womanly ideal in 
 jured by Elizabeth. 
 
 But, whatever be the reason, there is no ques 
 tion that we judge Mary Queen of Scots more by 
 the imagination than by historical rigor ; and it is 
 Mary, as the mind insists upon having her, that 
 Rachel represents. She conspires with the imagi 
 nation to complete the ideal of Mary. It is a 
 story told in sad music to which we listen ; it is 
 a mournful panorama, unfolding itself scene by 
 scene, upon which we gaze. Lost in soft melan 
 choly, the figures of the drama move before us 
 as in a tragic dream. But after seeing Rachel s 
 Mary we can see no other. If we meet her 
 in history or romance, it is always that figure, 
 those pensive eyes, forecasting a fearful doom, 
 that voice whose music is cast in a hopeless minor. 
 It is thus that dramatic genius creates, and poetry 
 disputes with history. 
 
 Jules Janin says that Rachel is -best in those 
 parts of this play where the anger of the Queen 
 is more prominent than the grief of the woman. 
 
RACHEL 117 
 
 This is true to a certain extent. It was not diffi 
 cult to see that the fierceness was more natural 
 than the tenderness to the woman Rachel, and 
 that, therefore, those parts had a reality which the 
 tenderness had not. But the performance was 
 symmetrical, and, so far as the mere acting was 
 concerned, the woman was as well rendered as the 
 Qneen. The want of the spectacle was this, and 
 it is, we fully grant, the defect of all her similar 
 personations : you felt that it was only intellect 
 feigning heart, though with perfect success. The 
 tenderness and caprice of the woman, and the 
 pride and dignity of the Queen, are all there. She* 
 would not be the consummate artist she is if she 
 could not give them. But even through your 
 tears you see that it is art. It is, indeed, con 
 cealed by its own perfection, but it is not lost in 
 the loveliness of the character it suggests, as might 
 be the case with a greatly inferior artist. You 
 are half sure, as you own the excellence, that much 
 of the tender effect arises from your feeling that 
 Rachel, as she represents a woman so different 
 from herself, regards her role with sad longing 
 and vague regret. When we say that she is the 
 ideal Mary, we mean strictly the artistic ideal. 
 
 The late Charlotte Bronte, in her novel of Vil- 
 lette, has described Rachel with a splendor of 
 rhetoric that is very unusual with the author of 
 
118 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 Jane Eyre. But in the style of the description 
 it is very easy to see the influence of the thing de 
 scribed. It has a picturesque stateliness, a grave 
 grace and musical pomp, which all belong to the 
 genius of .Rachel. Even the soft gloom of her 
 eyes is in it ; a gloom and a fire which no one 
 could more subtly feel than Miss Bronte. Her 
 description is the best that we have seen of what 
 is, in its nature, after all indescribable. 
 
 As the fame of an actor or singer is necessarily 
 traditional, and rapidly perishes, it is not easy to 
 compare one with another when they are not con 
 temporaries, for you find yourself only comparing 
 vague impressions and reports. Of Roscius and 
 Betterton we must accept the names and allow 
 the fame. We can see Reynolds s pictures, we can 
 hear Handel s music, we can read Goldsmith s and 
 Johnson s books; but of Garrick what can we 
 have but a name, and somebody s account of what 
 he thought of Garrick? The touch of Shake 
 speare we can feel as well as did our ancestors, 
 and our great-grandchildren s great-grandchildren 
 will feel it as fully as we. But the voice of 
 Malibran lingers in only a few happy memories, 
 and we know Mrs. Siddons better by Sir Joshua s 
 portrait than by her own glories. 
 
 It is, therefore, impossible to decide what 
 relative rank among actresses Rachel occupies. 
 
RACHEL 119 
 
 Mrs. Jameson, in her Common -Place Boole of 
 Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies, says some sharp 
 things of her, and Mrs. Jameson is a critic of too 
 delicate a mind not to be heeded. The general 
 view she takes of Rachel is, that she is not a great 
 artist in the true sense of the word. She is a 
 finished actress, but not an artist fine enough to 
 conceal her art. The last scene of "Adrienne Le- 
 couvreur" seems to Mrs, Jameson a mistake and a 
 failure so beyond the limits of art, a mere imita 
 tion of a repulsive physical fact ; and finally she 
 pronounces that Rachel has talent but not genius ; 
 while it is the " entire absence of the high poetic 
 element which distinguishes Rachel as an actress, 
 and places her at such an immeasurable distance 
 from Mrs. Siddons, that it shocks me to hear their 
 names together." 
 
 It may be fairly questioned, whether a woman 
 so refined and cultivated as Mrs. Jameson may not 
 have judged Rachel rather by her wants as a wom 
 an than by her excellence as an artist. That the 
 terrible last scene of "Adrienne" is a harrowing 
 imitation of nature we have conceded. The play 
 is, in truth, a mere melodrama. It is a vaudeville 
 of costume, with a frightful catastrophe appended. 
 But as an artist she seems to us perfectly to 
 render the part. She does not make it more than 
 it is, but she makes it just what it is a proud, in- 
 
120 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 jured, and betrayed actress. Whether the ac 
 curacy of her imitation is not justified by the in 
 tention, which alone can redeem imitation, will 
 remain a question to each spectator. Mrs. Jame 
 son also insists that Rachel s power is extraneous, 
 and excites only the senses and the intellect, and 
 that she has become a hard mannerist. 
 
 In our remarks upon this celebrated actress we 
 have viewed her simply as an artist, and not as a 
 woman. She appeals to the public only in that 
 way. Perhaps the sinister stories that are told of 
 her private career only serve to confirm and deep 
 en the feeling of the intensity of her nature, she 
 so skilfully represents the most fearful passions, 
 not from the perception of genius alone, but from 
 the knowledge of actual experience. Certainly 
 no woman s character has been more freely dis 
 cussed, and no public performer of any kind ever 
 sought so little to propitiate her audience. She 
 has seemed to scorn the world she fascinated ; and 
 like a superb snake, with glittering eyes and cold 
 crest, to gloat over the terror which held her cap 
 tives thrall. Hence it is not surprising to one 
 who has seen her a great deal, and has felt the pe 
 culiarity of her power, to find in Lehmann s por 
 trait of her which is, perhaps, the most character 
 istic of all that have been taken a subtle resem 
 blance to a serpent, which is at once fascinating and 
 
RACHEL 121 
 
 startling. Mrs. Jameson mentions that when she 
 first saw her in Hermione, she was reminded of a 
 Lamia, or serpent nature in woman s form. As 
 yon look at Lehmann s portrait this feeling is irre 
 sistible. The head bends slightly forward, with 
 a darting, eager movement, yet with a fine, lithe 
 grace. The keen, bright eyes glance a little 
 askance, with a want of free confidence. There are 
 a slim smoothness, a silent alertness, in the gen 
 eral impression a nervous, susceptible intentness, 
 united with undeniable beauty, that recall the 
 deadly -nightshade among flowers and Keats s 
 " Lamia" among poems. The portrait would fully 
 interpret the poem. She looked the lovely La 
 mia upon the verge of flight, at the instant when 
 she felt the calm, inexorable eye of criticism and 
 detection. In a moment, while you gaze, that 
 form will be prone, those bright, cold eyes ma 
 lignant, that wily grace will undulate into mo 
 tion and glide away. You feel that there is no 
 human depravity that Rachel could not adequately 
 represent. Perhaps you doubt if she could be 
 Desdeinona or Imogen, 
 
 Rachel is great, but there is something greater. 
 It is not an entirely satisfactory display of human 
 power, even in its own way. Her triumph is that 
 of an actress. It is only an intellectual success. 
 For however subtly dramatic genius may seize 
 
122 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 and represent the forms of human emotion, yet 
 the representation is most perfect not, indeed, 
 as art, but as a satisfaction of the heart when 
 the personal character of the artist interests those 
 emotions to himself, and thus sympathetically 
 affects the audience. Eachel s Mary is a per 
 fect portrait of Mary; but it is only a picture, 
 after all, that expresses the difference in feeling 
 between the impression of her personation and 
 that which will be derived from another wom 
 an. The fiercer and darker passions of human 
 nature are depicted by her with terrible force- 
 power. They throb with reality ; but in the soft, 
 superior shades you still feel that it is emotion 
 intellectually discerned. 
 
 Such facts easily explain the present defection of 
 Paris from Eachel. Kistori has come up from Italy, 
 and with one woman s smile, "full of the warm 
 South," she has lured Paris to her feet. There 
 is no more sudden and entire desertion of a favor 
 ite recorded in all the annals of popular caprice. 
 The feuilletonists, who are a power in Paris, have 
 gone over in a body to the beautiful Italian. They 
 describe her triumphs precisely as they described 
 Kachel s. The old ecstasies are burnished up for 
 the new occasion. In a country like ours, where 
 there is no theatre, and where the dramatic differ 
 ences only creep into an advertisement, such an 
 
RACHEL 123 
 
 excitement as Paris feels, from such a cause and 
 at such a time, is simply incredible. It is, possi 
 bly, as real and dignified an excitement as that 
 which Xew York experienced upon the decease of 
 the late lamented William Poole. 
 
 There are various explanations of this fall of 
 Rachel, without resorting to the theory of superior 
 genius in Ristori. Undoubtedly Paris loves novel 
 ty, and has been impatient of the disdainful sway 
 of Rachel. Her reputed avarice and want of cour 
 tesy and generosity, her total failure to charm as 
 a woman while she fascinated as an artist, have, 
 naturally enough, after many years, fatigued the 
 patience and disappointed the humane sympathies 
 of a public whose mere curiosity had been long 
 satisfied. Rachel seemed only more Parisian than 
 Paris. 
 
 But when over the Alps came Ristori, lovely as 
 a woman and eminent as an artist, then there 
 was a new person who could make Paris weep at 
 her greatness upon the stage, and her goodness 
 away from it ; who, in the plenitude of her first 
 success, could shame the reported avarice of her 
 fallen rival by offers of the sincerest generosity. 
 "When Ristori came, who seemed to have a virtue 
 for every vice of Rachel, Paris, with one accord, 
 hurried with hymns and incense to the new divin 
 ity. We regard it as a homage to the woman no less 
 
124 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 than a tribute to the artist. "We regard it as say 
 ing to Kachel that if, being humane and lovely, 
 she chose, from pride, to rule by scornful supe 
 riority, she has greatly erred ; or if, being really 
 unlovely, she has held this crown only by her 
 genius, she has yet to see human nature justify 
 itself by preferring a humane to an inhuman 
 power. The most splendid illustration of this 
 kind of homage was the career of Jenny Lincl 
 in America. It was rather the fashion among 
 the dilettanti to undervalue her excellence as an 
 artist. A popular superficial criticism was fond 
 of limiting her dramatic power to inferior roles. 
 She was denied passion and great artistic skill; 
 she was accused of tricks. But, even had these 
 things been true, what a career it was ! It was 
 unprecedented, and can never be repeated. Yet it 
 was, at bottom, the success of a saint rather than 
 that of a singer. Had she been a worse or better 
 artist the homage would have been the same. If 
 the public and it is a happy fact can love the 
 woman even more than it admires the artist, her 
 triumph is assured. 
 
 We look upon the enthusiasm for Ristori by no 
 means as an unmingled tribute to superior gen 
 ius. We make no question of her actual. woman 
 ly charms. Even if appearance of generosity, of 
 simplicity, and sweetness were only deep Italian 
 
RACHEL 125 
 
 wile, and assumed, upon profound observation and 
 consideration of human nature and the circum 
 stances of Rachel s position in Paris, merely for 
 the purpose of exciting applause, that applause 
 would still be genuine, and would prove the loy 
 alty of the public mind to what is truly lovely. 
 It was our good-fortune to see Eistori in Italy, 
 where, for the last ten years, she has been account 
 ed the first Italian actress. She has there been 
 seen by all the travelling world of Europe and 
 America. It is not possible that so great a talent, 
 as the Parisians consider it, could have been so 
 long overlooked. We well remember Kistori as a 
 charming, natural, simple actress ; but of the sur 
 passing power which Paris has discovered proba 
 bly very few of us retain any recollection. 
 
THACKERAY IN AMERICA 
 
THACKERAY IN AMERICA 
 
 MR. THACKERAY S visit at least demonstrates 
 that if we are unwilling to pay English authors 
 for their books, we are ready to reward them 
 handsomely for the opportunity of seeing and 
 hearing them. If Mr. Dickens, instead of dining 
 at other people s expense, and making speeches 
 at his own, when he came to see us, had devoted 
 an evening or two in the week to lecturing, his 
 purse would have been fuller, his feelings sweet 
 er, and his fame fairer. It was a Quixotic cru 
 sade, that of the Copyright, and the excellent 
 Don has never forgiven the windmill that broke 
 his spear. 
 
 Undoubtedly, when it was ascertained that Mr. 
 Thackeray was coming, the public feeling on this 
 side of the sea was very much divided as to his 
 probable reception. " He ll come and humbug 
 us, eat our dinners, pocket our money, and go 
 home and abuse us, like that unmitigated snob 
 Dickens," said Jonathan, chafing with the re 
 membrance of that grand ball at the Park The- 
 
130 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 atre and the Boz tableaux, and the universal 
 wining and dining, to which the distinguished 
 Dickens was subject while he was our guest. 
 
 "Let him have his say," said others, "and we 
 will have our look. We will pay a dollar to hear 
 him, if we can see him at the same time ; and as 
 for the abuse, why, it takes even more than two 
 such cubs of the roaring British Lion to frighten 
 the American Eagle. Let him come, and give 
 him fair play." 
 
 He did come, and had fair play, and returned 
 to England with a comfortable pot of gold hold 
 ing $12,000, and with the hope and promise of see 
 ing us again in September, to discourse of some 
 thing not less entertaining than the witty men and 
 sparkling times of Anne. We think there was no 
 disappointment with his lectures. Those who 
 knew his books found the author in the lecturer. 
 Those who did not know his books were charmed 
 in the lecturer by what is charming in the author 
 the unaffected humanity, the tenderness, the 
 sweetness, the genial play of fancy, and the sad 
 touch of truth, with that glancing stroke of satire 
 which, lightning-like, illumines while it withers. 
 The lectures were even more delightful than the 
 books, because the tone of the voice and the ap 
 pearance of the man, the general personal mag 
 netism, explained and alleviated so much that 
 
THACKERAY IN AMERICA l$\ 
 
 would otherwise have seemed doubtful or unfair. 
 For those who had long felt in the writings of 
 Thackeray a reality quite inexpressible, there was 
 a secret delight in finding it justified in his speak 
 ing ; for he speaks as he writes simply, directly, 
 without flourish, without any cant of oratory, com 
 mending what he says by its intrinsic sense, and 
 the sympathetic and humane way in which it was 
 spoken. Thackeray is the kind of " stump orator " 
 that would have pleased Carlyle. He never thrusts 
 himself between you and his thought. If his con 
 ception of the time and his estimate of the men 
 differ from your own, you have at least no doubt 
 what his view is, nor how sincere and necessary it 
 is to him. Mr. Thackeray considers Swift a misan 
 thrope ; he loves Goldsmith and Steele and Harry 
 Fielding; he has no love for Sterne, great admira 
 tion for Pope, and alleviated admiration for Addi- 
 son. How could it be otherwise ? How could 
 Thackeray not think Swift a misanthrope and 
 Sterne a factitious sentimentalist? He is a man 
 of instincts, not of thoughts : he sees and feels. 
 He would be Shakespeare s call-boy, rather than 
 dine with the Dean of St. Patrick s. He would 
 take a pot of ale with Goldsmith, rather than a 
 glass of burgundy with the " Reverend Mr. 
 Sterne," and that simply because he is Thackeray. 
 He would have done it as Fielding would have 
 
132 LIT EH AH, F AND SOCIAL ESS A TS 
 
 done it, because he values one genuine emotion 
 above the most dazzling thought ; because he is, 
 in fine, a Bohemian, " a minion of the moon," a 
 great, sweet, generous heart. 
 
 We say this with more unction now that we 
 have personal proof of it in his public and private 
 intercourse while he was here. 
 
 The popular Thackeray - theory, before his arri 
 val, was of a severe satirist, who concealed scalpels 
 in his sleeves and carried probes in his waistcoat 
 pockets; a wearer of masks; a scoffer and sneerer, 
 and general infidel of all high aims and noble 
 character. Certainly we are justified in saying 
 that his presence among us quite corrected this 
 idea. We welcomed a friendly, genial man ; not 
 at all convinced that speech is heaven s first law, 
 but willing to be silent when there is nothing to 
 say ; who decidedly refused to be lionized not 
 by sulking, but by stepping off the pedestal and 
 challenging the common sympathies of all he met; 
 a man who, in view of the thirty-odd editions of 
 Martin Farquhar Tupper, was willing to confess 
 that every author should "think small -beer of 
 himself." Indeed, he has this rare quality, that 
 his personal impression deepens, in kind, that of 
 his writings. The quiet and comprehensive grasp 
 of the fact, and the intellectual impossibility of 
 holding fast anything but the fact, is as manifest 
 
THACKERA T /Y AMERICA 133 
 
 in the essayist upon the wits as in the author of 
 Henry Esmond and Vanity Fair. Shall we say 
 that this is the sura of his power, and the secret of 
 his satire? It is not what might be, nor what we 
 or other persons of well-regulated minds might 
 wish, but it is the actual state of things that he 
 sees and describes. How, then, can he help what 
 we call satire, if he accept Mrs. Rawdon Crawley s 
 invitation and describe her party ? There was no 
 more satire in it, so far as he is concerned, than in 
 painting lilies white. A full-length portrait of the 
 fair Lady Beatrix, too, must needs show a gay and 
 vivid figure, superbly glittering across the vista of 
 those stately days. Then, should Dab and Tab, 
 the eminent critics, step up and demand that her 
 eyes be a pale blue, and her stomacher higher 
 around the neck? Do Dab and Tab expect to 
 gather pears from peach-trees ? Or, because their 
 theory of dendrology convinces them that an ideal 
 fruit-tree would supply any fruit desired upon ap 
 plication, do they denounce the non-pear-bearing 
 peach-tree in the columns of their valuable jour 
 nal? This is the drift of the fault found with 
 Thackeray. He is not Fenelon, he is not Dickens, 
 he is not Scott; he is not poetical, he is not ideal, 
 he is not humane; he is not Tit, he is not Tat, com 
 plain the eminent Dabs and Tabs. Of course he 
 is not, because he is Thackeray a man who de- 
 
134 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 scribes what he sees, motives as well as appear 
 ances a man who believes that character is better 
 than talent that there is a worldly weakness su 
 perior to worldly wisdom that Dick Steele may 
 haunt the ale-house and be carried home muzzy, 
 and yet be a more commendable character than 
 the reverend Dean of St. Patrick s, who has gen 
 ius enough to illuminate a century, but not sym 
 pathy enough to sweeten a drop of beer. And he 
 represents this in a way that makes us see it as he 
 does, and without exaggeration ; for surely noth 
 ing could be more simple than his story of the life 
 of " honest Dick Steele." If he allotted to that 
 gentleman a consideration disproportioned to the 
 space he occupies in literary history, it only showed 
 the more strikingly how deeply the writer-lectur 
 er s sympathy was touched by Steele s honest hu 
 manity. 
 
 An article in our April number complained that 
 the tendency of his view of Anne s times was to a 
 social laxity, which might be very exhilarating but 
 was very dangerous ; that the lecturer s warm com 
 mendation of fermented drinks, taken at a very 
 early hour of the morning in tavern -rooms and 
 club houses, was as deleterious to the moral health 
 of enthusiastic young readers disposed to the lit 
 erary life as the beverage itself to their physical 
 health. 
 
TEA CKERA T IN AMERICA 135 
 
 But this is not a charge to be brought against 
 Thackeray. It is a quarrel with history and with 
 the nature of literary life. Artists and authors 
 have always been the good fellows of the world. 
 That mental organization which predisposes a man 
 to the pursuit of literature and art is made up of 
 talent combined with ardent social sympathy, ge 
 niality, and passion, and leads him to taste every 
 cup and try every experience. There is certainly 
 no essential necessity that this class should be a dis 
 sipated and disreputable class, but by their very 
 susceptibility to enjoyment they will always be 
 the pleasure lovers and seekers. And here is the 
 social compensation to the literary man for the 
 surrender of those chances of fortune which men 
 of other pursuits enjoy. If he makes less money, 
 he makes more juice out of what he does make. 
 If he cannot drink Burgundy he can quaff the nut- 
 brown ale ; while the most brilliant wit, the most 
 salient fancy, the sweetest sympathy, the most ge 
 nial culture, shall sparkle at his board more radiant 
 ly than a silver service, and give him the spirit of 
 the tropics and the Rhine, whose fruits are on oth 
 er tables. The golden light that transfigures tal 
 ent and illuminates the world, and which we call 
 genius, is erratic and erotic; and while in Milton it 
 is austere, and in Wordsworth cool, and in Southey 
 methodical, in Shakespeare it is fervent, with all 
 
136 LITERAR Y AND SO CIAL ESS A YS 
 
 the results of fervor ; in Raphael lovely, with all 
 the excesses of love ; in Dante moody, with all the 
 whims of caprice. The old quarrel of Lombard 
 Street with Grub Street is as profound as that of 
 Osiris and Typho it is the difference of sympa 
 thy. The Marquis of Westminster will take good 
 care that no superfluous shilling escapes. Oliver 
 Goldsmith will still spend his last shilling upon a 
 brave and unnecessary banquet to his friends. 
 
 Whether this be a final fact of human organiza 
 tion or not, it is certainly a fact of history. Every 
 man instinctively believes that Shakespeare stole 
 deer, just as he disbelieves that Lord-mayor Whit- 
 tington ever told a lie ; and the secret of that in- 
 stinct is the consciousness of the difference in or 
 ganization. " Knave, I have the power to hang 
 ye," says somebody in one of Beaumont and 
 Fletcher s plays. " And I do be hanged and scorn 
 ye," is the airy answer. "I had a pleasant hour 
 the other evening," said a friend to us, " over my 
 cigar and a book." " What book was that ?" " A 
 treatise conclusively proving the awful conse 
 quences of smoking." De Quincey came up to 
 London and declared war upon opium ; but dur 
 ing a little amnesty, in which he lapsed into his 
 old elysium, he wrote his best book depicting its 
 horrors. 
 
 Our readers will not imagine that we are advo- 
 
TEA CKERA Y IN AMERICA 137 
 
 eating the claims of drunkenness nor defending 
 social excess. We are only recognizing a fact and 
 stating an obvious tendency. The most brilliant 
 illustrations of every virtue are to be found in 
 the literary guild, as well as the saddest beacons of 
 warning; yet it will often occur that the last in 
 talent and the first in excess of a picked com 
 pany will be a man around whom sympathy 
 most kindly lingers. We love Goldsmith more 
 at the head of an ill-advised feast than Johnson 
 and his friends leaving it, thoughtful and gen 
 erous as their conduct was. The heart despises 
 prudence. 
 
 In the single-hearted regard we know that pity 
 has a larger share. Yet it is not so much that pity 
 is commiseration for misfortune and deficiency, as 
 that which is recognition of a necessary worldly 
 ignorance. The literary class is the most innocent 
 of all. The contempt of practical men for the 
 poets is based upon a consciousness that they are 
 not bad enough for a bad world. To a practical 
 man nothing is so absurd as the lack of worldly 
 shrewdness. The very complaint of the literary 
 life that it does not amass wealth and live in pal 
 aces is the scorn of the practical man, for he can 
 not understand that intellectual opacity which 
 prevents the literary man from seeing the neces 
 sity of the different pecuniary condition. It is 
 
138 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 clear enough to the publisher who lays up fifty 
 thousand a year why the author ends the year in 
 debt. But the author is amazed that he who deals 
 in ideas can only dine upon occasional chops, 
 while the man who merely binds and sells ideas 
 sits down to perpetual sirloin. If they should 
 change places, fortune would change with them. 
 The publisher turned author would still lay up his 
 thousands; the publishing author would still direct 
 ly lose thousands. It is simply because it is a matter 
 of prudence, economy, and knowledge of the world. 
 Thomas Hood made his ten thousand dollars a 
 year, but if he lived at the rate of fifteen thousand 
 he would hardly die rich. Mr. Jerdan, a gentle 
 man who, in his Autobiography r , advises energetic 
 youth to betake themselves to the highway rather 
 than to literature, was, we understand, in the re 
 ceipt of an easy income, and was a welcome guest 
 in pleasant houses ; but living in a careless, shift 
 less, extravagant way, he was presently poor, and, 
 instead of giving his memoirs the motto, peccavi, 
 and inditing a warning, he dashes off a truculent 
 defiance. Practical publishers and practical men 
 of all sorts invest their earnings in Michigan Cen 
 tral or Cincinnati and Dayton instead, in steady 
 works and devoted days, and reap a pleasant har 
 vest of dividends. Our friends the authors in 
 vest in prime Havanas, Rhenish, in oyster suppers, 
 
TEA CKERA T ZV AMERICA 139 
 
 ]ove and leisure, and divide a heavy percentage of 
 headache, dyspepsia, and debt. 
 
 This is as true a view, from another point, as 
 the one we have already taken. If the literary 
 life has the pleasures of freedom, it has also its 
 pains. It may be willing to resign the queen s 
 drawing-room, with the illustrious galaxy of stars 
 and garters, for the chamber with a party no 
 bler than the nobility. The author s success is of 
 a wholly different kind from that of the publisher, 
 and he is thoughtless who demands both. Mr. 
 Eoe, who sells sugar, naturally complains that Mr. 
 Doe, who sells molasses, makes money more rap 
 idly. But Mr. Tennyson, who writes poems, can 
 hardly make the same complaint of Mr. Moxon, 
 who publishes them, as was very fairly shown in a 
 number of the Westminster Review, when notic 
 ing Mr. Jerdan s book. 
 
 What we have said is strictly related to Mr. 
 Thackeray s lectures, which discuss literature. All 
 the men he commemorated were illustrations and 
 exponents of the career of letters. They all, in va 
 rious ways, showed the various phenomena of the 
 temperament. And when in treating of them the 
 critic came to Steele, he found one who was one 
 of the most striking illustrations of one of the 
 most universal aspects of literary life the simple- 
 hearted, unsuspicious, gay gallant and genial gen- 
 
140 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 tleman ; ready with his sword or his pen, with a 
 smile or a tear, the fair representative of the so 
 cial tendency of his life. It seems to us that the 
 Thackeray theory the conclusion that he is a man 
 who loves to depict madness, and has no sensibili 
 ties to the finer qualities of character crumbled 
 quite away before that lecture upon Steele. We 
 know that it was not considered the best ; we 
 know that many of the delighted audience were 
 not sufficiently familiar with literary history fully 
 to understand the position of the man in the lect 
 urer s review ; but, as a key to Thackeray, it was, 
 perhaps, the most valuable of all. We know in 
 literature of no more gentle treatment ; we have 
 not often encountered in men of the most rigorous 
 and acknowledged virtue such humane tenderness; 
 we have not often heard from the most clerical 
 lips words of such genuine Christianity. Steele s 
 was a character which makes weakness amiable : 
 it was a weakness, if you will, but it was certain 
 ly amiability, and it was a combination more at 
 tractive than many full-panoplied excellences. It 
 was not presented as a model. Captain Steele in 
 the tap-room was not painted as the ideal of virtu 
 ous manhood ; but it certainly was intimated that 
 many admirable things were consonant with a free 
 use of beer. It was frankly stated that if, in 
 that character, virtue abounded, cakes and ale did 
 
MUNIVERSITT) 
 
 TEA. CKER T ri^BigM$61{H\k^^ 141 
 
 much more abound. Captain Richard Steele 
 might have behaved much better than he did, but 
 we should then have never heard of him. A few 
 fine essays do not float a man into immortality, 
 but the generous character, the heart sweet in all 
 excesses and under all chances, is a spectacle too 
 beautiful and too rare to be easily forgotten. A 
 man is better than many books. Even a man who 
 is not immaculate may have more virtuous influ 
 ence than the discreetest saint. Let us remember 
 how fondly the old painters lingered round the 
 story of Magdalen, and thank Thackeray for his 
 full-length Steele. 
 
 We conceive this to be the chief result of Thack 
 eray s visit, that he convinced us of his intellectual 
 integrity ; he showed us how impossible it is for 
 him to see the world and describe it other than he 
 does. He does not profess cynicism, nor satirize 
 society with malice ; there is no man more hum 
 ble, none more simple ; his interests are human 
 and concrete, not abstract. We have already said 
 that he looks through and through at the fact. It 
 is easy enough, and at some future time it will be 
 done, to deduce the peculiarity of his writings 
 from the character of his mind. There is no man 
 who masks so little as he in assuming the author. 
 His books are his observations reduced to writing. 
 It seems to us as singular to demand that Dante 
 
142 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 should be like Shakespeare as to quarrel with 
 Thackeray s want of what is called ideal portrait 
 ure. Even if you thought, from reading his Van 
 ity Fair, that he had no conception of noble wom 
 en, certainly after the lecture upon Swift, after all 
 the lectures, in which every allusion to women 
 was so manly and delicate and sympathetic, you 
 thought so no longer. It is clear that his sympa 
 thy is attracted to women to that which is essen 
 tially womanly, feminine. Qualities common to 
 both sexes do not necessarily charm him because 
 he finds them in women. A certain degree of 
 goodness must always be assumed. It is only the 
 rare flowering that inspires special praise. You 
 call Amelia s fondness for George Osborne fool 
 ish, fond idolatry. Thackeray smiles, as if all love 
 were not idolatry of the fondest foolishness. What 
 was Hero s what was Francesco di Rimini s 
 what was Juliet s ? They might have been more 
 brilliant women than Amelia, and their idols of a 
 larger mould than George, but the love was the 
 same old foolish, fond idolatry. The passion of 
 love and a profound and sensible knowledge, re 
 gard based upon prodigious knowledge of charac 
 ter and appreciation of talent, are different things. 
 What is the historic and poetic splendor of love 
 but the very fact, which constantly appears in 
 Thackeray s stories, namely, that it is a glory which 
 
THA CKERA T IN AMERICA 143 
 
 dazzles and blinds. Men rarely love the women 
 they ought to love, according to the ideal stand 
 ards. It is this that makes the plot and mystery 
 of life. Is it not the perpetual surprise of all 
 Jane s friends that she should love Timothy in 
 stead of Thomas? and is not the courtly and 
 accomplished Thomas sure to surrender to some 
 accidental Lucy without position, wealth, style, 
 worth, culture without anything but heart ? This 
 is the fact, and it reappears in Thackeray, and it 
 gives his books that air of reality which they pos 
 sess beyond all modern story. 
 
 And it is this single perception of the fact 
 which, simple as it is, is the rarest intellectual 
 quality that made his lectures so interesting. The 
 sun rose again upon the vanished century, and 
 lighted those historic streets. The wits of Queen 
 Anne ruled the hour, and we were bidden to their 
 feast. Much reading of history and memoirs had 
 not so sent the blood into those old English cheeks, 
 and so moved those limbs in proper measure, as 
 these swift glances through the eyes of genius. 
 It was because, true to himself, Thackeray gave 
 us his impression of those wits as men rather than 
 authors. For he loves character more than thought. 
 He is a man of the world, and not a scholar. He 
 interprets the author by the man. When you are 
 made intimate with young Swift, Sir "William Tern- 
 
144 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 pie s saturnine secretary, you more intelligently 
 appreciate the Dean of St. Patrick s. "When the 
 surplice of Mr. Sterne is raised a little, more is 
 seen than the reverend gentleman intends. Ho 
 garth, the bluff Londoner, necessarily depicts a 
 bluff, coarse, obvious morality. The hearty Field 
 ing, the cool Addison, the genial Goldsmith, these 
 are the figures that remain in memory, and their 
 works are valuable as they indicate the man. 
 
 Mr. Thackeray s success was very great. He did 
 not visit the West, nor Canada. He went home 
 without seeing Niagara Falls. But wherever he 
 did go he found a generous and social welcome, 
 and a respectful and sympathetic hearing. He 
 came to fulfil no mission, but he certainly knit 
 more closely our sympathy with Englishmen. 
 Heralded by various romantic memoirs, he smiled 
 at them, stoutly asserted that he had been always 
 able to command a good dinner, and to pay for it; 
 nor did he seek to disguise that he hoped his 
 American tour would help him to command and 
 pay for more. He promised not to write a book 
 about us, but we hope he will, for we can ill spare 
 the criticism of such an observer. At least, we 
 may be sure that the material gathered here will 
 be worked up in some way. He found that we 
 were not savages nor bores. He found that there 
 were a hundred here for every score in England 
 
THACKERAY IN AMERICA 145 
 
 who knew well and loved the men of whom he 
 spoke. He found that the same red blood colors 
 all the lips that speak the language he so nobly 
 praised. He found friends instead of critics. He 
 found those who, loving the author, loved the 
 man more. He found a quiet welcome from those 
 who are waiting to welcome him again and as sin 
 cerely. 
 
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 
 
SIE PHILIP SIDNEY 
 
 "WEARIED of the world and saddened by the 
 ruin of his fortunes, the Italian Count Maddalo 
 turned from the street, which rang with tales of 
 disaster and swarmed with melancholy faces, into 
 his palace. Perplexed and anxious, he passed 
 through the stately rooms in which hung the por 
 traits of generations of ancestors. The day was 
 hot; his blood was feverish, but the pictures seemed 
 to him cool and remote in a holy calm. He looked 
 at them earnestly; he remembered the long his 
 tory of which his fathers were parts, he recalled 
 their valor and their patience, and asked himself 
 whether, after all, their manhood was not their 
 patent of nobility ; and stretching out his hands 
 towards them, exclaimed : " Let me feel that I 
 am indeed your son by sharing that manhood 
 which made you noble." 
 
 We Americans laugh at ancestors; and if the 
 best of them came back again, we should be as 
 likely to laugh at his wig as listen to his wisdom. 
 And in our evanescent houses and uneasy life we 
 
150 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 would no more have ancient ranges of family pict 
 ures than Arabs in their tents. Yet we are con 
 stantly building and visiting the greatest portrait 
 gallery of all in the histories we write and read; 
 and the hour is never lost which we give to it. 
 It may teach a maid humility to know that her 
 mother was fairer. It may make a youth more 
 modest to know that his grandsire was braver. 
 For if the pictures of history show us that de 
 formity is as old as grace, and that virtue was al 
 ways martyred, they also show that crime, how 
 ever prosperous for a time, is at last disastrous, 
 and that there can be no permanent peace without 
 justice and freedom. 
 
 Those pictures teach us also that character is in 
 herited like name and treasure, and that all of us 
 may have famous or infamous ancestors perhaps 
 without knowing it. The melancholy poet, eating 
 his own heart out in a city garret, is the child of 
 Tasso. Grinding Ralph Nickleby, the usurer, is 
 Shylock s grandson. The unjust judge, who de 
 clares that some men have no rights which others 
 are bound to respect, is a later Jeffries on his 
 bloody assizes, or dooming Algernon Sidney to the 
 block once more for loving liberty; while he 
 whose dull heart among the new duties of another 
 time is never quickened with public spirit, and 
 who as a citizen aims only at his own selfish ad- 
 
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 151 
 
 vantage, is a later Benedict Arnold whom every 
 generous heart despises. 
 
 From this lineage of character arises this great 
 convenience that as it is bad manners to criticise 
 our neighbors by name, we may hit them many a 
 sly rap over the shoulders of their ancestors who 
 wore turbans, or helmets, or bagwigs, and lived 
 long ago in other countries. The Church espe 
 cially finds great comfort in this resource, and the 
 backs of the whole Hebrew race must be sore with 
 the scorings they get for the sins of Christian con 
 gregations. The timid Peter, the foolish Yirgins, 
 the wicked Herod, are pilloried every Sunday in 
 the pulpit, to the great satisfaction of the Peters, 
 Yirgins, and Herods dozing in the pews. But 
 when some ardent preacher, heading out of his 
 metaphors, and jumping from Judea and the first 
 century into the United States and the nine 
 teenth, disturbs Peter s enjoyment of his ances 
 tors castigation by saying vehemently to his face 
 with all the lightning of the law in his eye, and 
 its thunders in his voice, " Thou art the man !" 
 Peter recoils with decorous horror, begs his pas 
 tor to remember that he and Herod are sheep 
 who were to be led by still waters; warns him 
 not to bring politics into the pulpit, to talk not 
 of living people, but of old pictures. So the 
 poor shepherd is driven back to his pictures, 
 
152 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 and cudgels Peter once more from behind a met 
 aphor. 
 
 But the fairest use of these old pictures is to 
 make us feel our common humanity, and to dis 
 cover that what seems to us a hopelessly romantic 
 ideal of character is a familiar fact of every day. 
 Heroism is always the same, however the fashion 
 of a hero s clothes may alter. Every hero in his 
 tory is as near to a man as his neighbor, and if 
 we should tell the simple truth of some of our 
 neighbors, it would sound like poetry. Sir Philip 
 Sidney wore doublet and hose, and died in Flanders 
 three hundred years ago. His name is the synonym 
 of manly honor, of generous scholarship, of the 
 finest nobility, of the spiritual light that most 
 irradiates human nature. Look at his portrait 
 closely ; it is no stranger that you see ; it is no 
 far-off Englishman. It is your friend, your son, 
 your brother, your lover. Whoever knew Wendell 
 Phillips knew Philip Sidney. It is the same spirit 
 in a thousand forms; a perpetual presence, a con 
 stant benediction : Look at his portrait and 
 
 "The night shall be filled with music, 
 
 And the cares that infest the day 
 Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, 
 And as silently steal away." 
 
 The gray walls, the red and peaked roof of the 
 old house of Penshurst, stand in the pleasant Eng- 
 
SIX PHILIP SIDXEY 153 
 
 lish valley of the Medway, in soft and showery 
 Kent. Kent is all garden, and there, in Novem 
 ber, 1554, Philip Sidney was born. His father, 
 Sir Henry Sidney, was a wise and honest man. 
 Bred at court, his sturdy honor was never cor 
 rupted. King Edward died in his arms, and Queen 
 Mary confirmed all his honors and offices three 
 weeks before the birth of his oldest son, whom, in 
 gratitude, he named Philip, for the queen s new 
 Spanish husband. Philip s mother was Mary Dud 
 ley, daughter of the Duke of Northumberland, 
 sister of the famous Earl of Leicester, sister also 
 of Lord Guildford Dudley and sister-in-law of 
 Lady Jane Grey. The little Philip was born 
 into a sad household. Within fifteen months his 
 grandfather and uncle had been beheaded for trea 
 son ; and his sorrowing mother, a truly noble and 
 tender woman, had been the victim of small-pox, 
 and hid her grieving heart and poor scarred face 
 in the silence and seclusion of Penshurst. On the 
 south side of the house was the old garden or 
 plaisance, sloping down to the Medway, where, in 
 those English summers of three hundred years 
 ago, when the cruel fires of Mary were busily 
 burning at Smithfield, the lovely boy Philip, 
 fair -featured, with a high forehead and ruddy 
 brown hair, almost red the same color as that of 
 his nephew Algernon walked with his shy moth- 
 
154 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 er, picking daisies and chasing butterflies, and call 
 ing to her in a soft, musical voice ; while within 
 the house the grave father, when he was not away 
 in Wales, of which he was lord -president, mused 
 upon great events that were stirring in Europe 
 the abdication of Charles Y., the fall of Calais, 
 and the accession of Queen Elizabeth to the throne 
 of England. The lordly banqueting-hall, in which 
 the politics of three centuries ago were discussed 
 at Penshurst, is still standing. You may still sit 
 upon the wooden benches where Burleigh, Spen 
 ser, Ben Jorison, James I., and his son Prince 
 Charles have sat, and where, a little later, the vic 
 tim of Prince Charles s cruel son, Algernon Sid 
 ney, dreamed of noble manhood and went forth a 
 noble man ; while in those shady avenues of beech 
 and oak outside, smooth Edmund Waller bowed 
 and smirked, and sighed compliments to his Sacha- 
 rissa, as he called Dorothy Sidney, Algernon s 
 sister. 
 
 At the age of eleven Master Sidney was put to 
 school at Shrewsbury, on the borders of Wales, of 
 which country his father was lord-president. His 
 fond friend, Fulke Greville, who was here at school 
 with him, and afterwards wrote his life, says that 
 even the masters found something in him to ob 
 serve and learn. Study probably cost him little 
 effort and few tears. We may be sure he stood at 
 
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 155 
 
 the head of his class, and was a grave, good boy 
 not good as calves and blanc-mange are, but like 
 wine and oak saplings. "Hy little Philip," as his 
 mother tenderly calls him, was no Miss Nancy. 
 When he was older he wrote to his brother Rob 
 ert, then upon his travels, that " if there were any 
 good wars he should go to them." So, at Shrews 
 bury he doubtless went to all the good wars among 
 his school-mates, while during the short intervals 
 of peace he mastered his humanities, and at last, 
 when not yet fifteen years old, he was entered 
 at Christ Church, Oxford. 
 
 Great good-fortune is the most searching test of 
 character. If a man have fine friends, fine family, 
 fine talents, and fine prospects, they are very like 
 ly to be the sirens in whose sweet singing he for 
 gets everything but the pleasure of listening to it. 
 If most of us had come of famous ancestry if our 
 father were a vice-regal governor if the sover 
 eign s favorite were our uncle, who intended us 
 for his heir if a marriage were proposed with the 
 beautiful daughter of the prime-minister, and we 
 were ourselves young, handsome, and accomplished 
 and all this were three hundred years ago, be 
 fore the rights of men and the dignity of labor had 
 been much discussed, we should probably have 
 come up to Oxford, of which our famous uncle 
 was chancellor, in a state of what would be called 
 
156 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 at Oxford to-day extreme bumptiousness. But 
 Philip Sidney was too true a gentleman not to be 
 a simple-hearted man ; and although he was even 
 then one of the most accomplished as well as fort 
 unate youths in England, he writes to Lord Bur- 
 leigh to confess with " heavy grief " that in scholar 
 ship he can neither satisfy Burleigh s expectation 
 nor his own desire. 
 
 In the month of May, 1572, Philip Sidney left 
 Oxford, and after staying a short time with his 
 parents, following the fashion of young gentlemen 
 of rank, he crossed over into France in the train 
 of the Earl of Lincoln, who was Queen Elizabeth s 
 extraordinary ambassador upon the subject of her 
 marriage with the brother of Charles IX. of France. 
 The young king immediately made Sidney a gen 
 tleman of the bedchamber, and Henry of Navarre 
 found him a fit companion for a future king. 
 The Paris that Sidney saw had then twice as many 
 inhabitants as Boston has to-day. Montaigne called 
 it the most beautiful city in the world, and it had 
 a delusive air of peace. But the witch Catherine 
 de Medici sat in the smooth-tongued court like a 
 spider in its web, spinning and spinning the mesh 
 es in which the hope of liberty was to be entan 
 gled. The gay city filled and glittered with the 
 wedding guests of Henry and the king s sister 
 Margaret among others, the hero of St. Quentin, 
 
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 157 
 
 Admiral Coligny. Gayer and gayer grew the city 
 smoother and smoother the court faster and 
 faster spun the black Italian spider until on the 
 23d of August, the Eve of St. Bartholomew, the 
 bloodiest deed in all the red annals of that metrop 
 olis was done, and the young Sidney looked shud 
 dering from "Walsingham House upon the streets 
 reeking with the blood of his fellow Huguenots. 
 
 That night made Philip Sidney a man. He 
 heard the applause of the Romish party ring 
 through Europe he heard the commendation of 
 Philip of Spain he knew that the most elo 
 quent orator of the Church, Muretus, had con 
 gratulated the pope upon this signal victory of 
 the truth. He knew that medals were stamped in 
 cornmetrroration of the brutal massacre, and he re 
 membered that the same spirit that had struck at 
 the gray head of Coligny had also murdered Eg- 
 mont and Home in the Netherlands ; had calmly 
 gazed in the person of Philip upon De Sezo per 
 ishing in the fire, and by the hand of Philip had 
 denounced death against all who wrote, sold, or 
 read Protestant books ; and he knew that the same 
 spirit, in the most thriving and intelligent country 
 of Europe, the Netherlands, was blotting out pros 
 perity in blood, and had driven at least a hundred 
 thousand exiles into England. 
 
 Pondering these things, Sidney left Paris, and 
 
158 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 at Frankfort met Hubert Languet. Languet was 
 not only a Protestant, but, at heart, a Republican. 
 He was the friend of Melancthon and of William 
 of Orange, in whose service he died. One of the 
 most accomplished scholars and shrewdest states 
 men in Europe, honored and trusted by all the 
 Protestant leaders, this wise man of fif tjvfour was 
 so enamoured of the English youth of eighteen that 
 they became life-long friends with the ardor of 
 lovers, and Languet left his employment, as Fulke 
 Greville says, " to become a nurse of knowledge 
 to this hopeful young gentleman." 
 
 As they travelled by easy stages across Ger 
 many, where the campaign of Protestantism had 
 begun, they knew that the decisive battle was yet 
 to be fought. Europe was silent. The tumult of 
 Charles Y. s reign was over, and that great mon 
 arch marched and countermarched no more from 
 the Baltic to the Mediterranean. Charles had 
 been victorious so long as he fought kings with 
 words of steel. But the monk Martin Luther 
 drew the sword of the spirit, and the conqueror 
 quailed. Luther challenged the Church of Rome 
 at its own door. The Vatican rained anathemas. 
 It might as well have tried to blow out the stars ; 
 and all the fires of the furious popes who followed 
 Leo were not sharp enough to consume the colossal 
 heresy of free thought. But king and emperor 
 
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 159 
 
 and pope fed the fire. The reign of terror blasted 
 the Netherlands, and when it had succeeded there, 
 when Italy, Austria, and Holland surrounded the 
 states of Germany, Philip knew it would be the 
 smothering coil of the serpent around the cradle 
 of religious liberty. But the young Hercules of 
 free thought throttled the serpent, and leaped 
 forth to win his victorious and immortal race. 
 
 We can see it now, but Sidney could not know 
 it. To him the future was as inscrutable as our 
 own to the eyes of thirty years ago. Yet he and 
 Languet must have discussed the time with curi 
 ous earnestness as they passed through Germany 
 until they reached Vienna. There Sidney devoted 
 himself to knightly games, to tennis, to music, and 
 especially to horsemanship, which he studied with 
 Pagliono, who, in praise of the horse, became such 
 a poet that in the Defence of Poesy Sidney says 
 that if he had not been a piece of a logician be 
 fore he came to him, Pagliono would have per 
 suaded him to wish himself a horse. 
 
 At Vienna Philip parted with Languet, and 
 arrived in Venice in the year 1573. The great 
 modern days of Italy were passed. The golden 
 age of the Medici was gone. Lorenzo the Mag 
 nificent had died nearly a century before, in the 
 same year that Columbus had discovered America. 
 His son, Pope Leo X., had eaten his last ortolan, 
 
160 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 had flown his last falcon, had listened to his last 
 comedy, and hummed his last tune, in the frescoed 
 corridors of the Vatican. Upon its shining walls 
 the fatal finger of Martin Luther, stretching out 
 of Germany, had written " Mene, Mene." Be 
 neath the terrible spell the walls were cracking 
 and the earth was shaking, but the splendid pope, 
 in his scarlet cloud of cardinals, saw only the wild 
 beauty of Raphael s Madonnas and the pleasant 
 pages of the recovered literature of pagan Greece. 
 "When Sidney stepped for the first time into his 
 gondola at Venice, the famous Italian cathedrals 
 and stately palaces were already built, and the 
 great architects were gone. Dante, Boccaccio, 
 Petrarch, who had created Italian literature, lived 
 about as long before Sidney as we live after him. 
 Cimabue and Giotto had begun; Raphael and 
 Michel Angelo had perfected that art in which 
 they have had no rivals and they were gone. 
 Andrea Doria steered the galleys of Genoa no 
 more, and since the discovery of the Cape of Good 
 Hope and the West Indies, the spices of the Indian 
 sea were brought by Portuguese ships into the 
 Baltic instead of the Adriatic. The glory of the 
 Lombards, who were the first merchants of Eu 
 rope, had passed away to the descendants of their 
 old correspondents of Bruges and Ghent, until, 
 with its five hundred ships daily coming and go- 
 
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 161 
 
 ing, and on market days eight and nine hundred; 
 with its two thousand heavy wagons creaking 
 every week through the gates from France and 
 Germany and Lorraine, Antwerp reigned in the 
 place of Venice, and the long twilight that has 
 never been broken was settling upon the Italy 
 that Sidney saw. 
 
 But the soft splendor of its decline was worthy 
 its prime. The universities of Bologna and Padua, 
 of Salerno and Pisa, had fallen from the days 
 when at Bologna alone there were twenty thou 
 sand students; but they were still thronged with 
 pupils, and taught by renowned professors. When 
 the young Sidney came to Venice, Titian was just 
 tottering into the grave, nearly a hundred years old, 
 but still holding the pencil which Charles V. had 
 picked up and handed to him in his studio. Gali 
 leo was a youth of twenty, studying mathematics 
 at Pisa. The melancholy Tasso was completing 
 his Jerusalem Delivered under the cypress trees of 
 the Villa d Este. Palestrina was composing the 
 masses which reformed church music, and the 
 Christian charity of Charles Borromeo was making 
 him a saint before he was canonized. Clad in the 
 silk and velvet of Genoa, the young Englishman 
 went to study geometry at Padua, where twenty 
 years later Galileo would have been his teacher, 
 
 and Sidney writes to Languet that he was per 
 il 
 
162 LITERACY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 plexed whether to sit to Paul Veronese or to Tin 
 toretto for his portrait. 
 
 But he had a shrewd eye for the follies of travel 
 lers, and speaks of their tendency to come home 
 " full of disguisements not only of apparel but of 
 our countenances, as though the credit of a travel 
 ler stood all upon his outside." He then adds a 
 curious prophecy, which Shakespeare made haste 
 to fulfil to the very letter. Sidney says, writing in 
 1578, " I think, ere it be long, like the mounte 
 banks in Italy, we travellers shall be made sport of 
 in comedies." Twenty years afterwards, Shake 
 speare makes Rosalind say in " As You Like It," 
 " Farewell, Monsieur Traveller. Look you ; lisp, 
 and wear strange suits. Disable all the benefits of 
 your own country. Be out of love with your na 
 tivity, and almost chide God for making you that 
 countenance you are, or I will scarce think you 
 have swam in a gondola." 
 
 But in all the gayeties and graces of his travel, 
 Philip Sidney was not content to be merely an 
 elegant lounger. He never forgot for a moment 
 that all his gifts and accomplishments were only 
 weapons to be kept burnished for his country s 
 service. He was a boy of twenty, but his boy s 
 warmth was tempered by the man s wisdom. 
 " You are not over cheerful by nature," Languet 
 writes to him; and when Sidney sat to Paul Yero- 
 
SIR PHILIP SIDXEY 163 
 
 nese, and sent his friend the portrait, Languet re 
 plies: "The painter has represented you sad and 
 thoughtful." 
 
 He had reason to be so. He had seen the Mas 
 sacre of St. Bartholomew, as many a young Sidney 
 among ourselves saw the horrors of Kansas thirty 
 years ago. He did not believe that a little timely 
 patting on the back was statesmanship. If Spain 
 were crushing the Netherlands, and hung upon the 
 southern horizon of Europe a black and threaten 
 ing cloud, he did not believe that the danger 
 would be averted by gagging those who said the 
 storm was coming. He did not hold the thermom 
 eter responsible for the weather. " I cannot think," 
 he wrote in May, 1571, " there is any man possessed 
 of common understanding who does not see to 
 what these rough storms are driving by which all 
 Christendom has been agitated now these many 
 years." He did not suppose, as so many of us in 
 our ignoble days, that while men were the same, 
 the tragical differences which had been washed 
 out with blood in all other ages could be drowned 
 in milk and water in his own. 
 
 In 1575 Sidney returned to England. Every 
 author who writes of this period breaks out into 
 the most glowing praises of him. Indeed, he is 
 the choice darling of English history. The only 
 discordant note in the chorus of praise came long 
 
164 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 afterwards in the voice of the pedantic dandy 
 Horace "Walpole, who called Goldsmith "an in 
 spired idiot." This is not surprising, for the ear 
 nestness and heroic simplicity of Sidney were as 
 incomprehensible to the affected trifler of Straw 
 berry Hill as the fresh enthusiasm of his nephew 
 Arthur to Major Pendennis. The Earl of Leices 
 ter, who seemed to love his nephew more than 
 anything except his own ambition, presented his 
 brilliant young relative to the queen, who made 
 him her cup-bearer. Sidney was now twenty-one 
 years old the finest gentleman, and one of the 
 most accomplished scholars in England. His learn 
 ing was mainly in the classics and in languages; 
 yet he confesses that he could never learn German, 
 which was then hardly worth learning, and in his 
 correspondence with Languet is very distrustful of 
 the Latin, in which language they wrote. But in 
 urging him to grapple with the German, Languet 
 says to him, and it is a striking proof of the ex 
 quisite finish of Sidney s accomplishment, "I have 
 watched you closely when speaking my own lan 
 guage (he was a Burgundian), but I hardly ever de 
 tected you pronouncing a single syllable wrongly." 
 In Sidney s time the classics had few rivals. 
 After reading Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Boccac 
 cio, with Sanazzaro s Arcadia, in Italian; Rabe 
 lais, Froissart, and Comines, in French ; Chaucer, 
 
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 165 
 
 Gower, and the Mirror for Magistrates in Eng 
 lish, what remained for an ardent young student 
 to devour ? When Sidney came home, Mon 
 taigne whom he probably saw at the French 
 court was just writing his Essays at his chateau 
 in the Gironde. The Portuguese Camoens had 
 only just published his great poem, to which his 
 own country would not listen, and of which no 
 other had heard. The Italian Tasso s Jerusalem 
 was still in manuscript, and the Spanish Ponce de 
 Leon was little known to Europe. All was yet to 
 come. In Spain, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and 
 Calderon ; in France, Corneille and Racine and 
 Moliere, Fenelon and Bossnet, Rousseau and Vol 
 taire ; in Germany, everything except the Niebe- 
 lungen and Hans Sachs s rhymes. "When Philip 
 Sidney kissed Elizabeth s hand as her cnp-bearer, 
 "William Shakespeare, a boy of eleven, was grind 
 ing out his trousers on the restless seats of the 
 free grammar-school at Stratford ; young Francis 
 Bacon, a youth of sixteen, was studying in France ; 
 a poor scholar at Cambridge, Edmund Spenser 
 was just finishing his studies, and the younger 
 brother of an old Devonshire family, Walter Ra 
 leigh, had just returned from campaigning in 
 France; indeed, all the literature of modern timesl 
 was subsequent to Philip Sidney. The young 
 man shone at court, fascinating men and women, 
 
166 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 courtiers, scholars, and divines ; and in a few 
 months was made special ambassador to condole 
 with the Austrian emperor upon the death of his 
 father. Upon this embassy he departed in great 
 state. His mission was supposed to be purely 
 complimentary ; but he was really the beautiful 
 eye with which England and Elizabeth, becoming 
 the head of the Protestant movement, watched 
 the disposition of the Protestant princes. On his 
 way home, Sidney passed into the Low Countries 
 to see William of Orange. He came, resplendent 
 with chivalric magnificence, accompanied by the 
 flower of English nobility, and met the grave 
 William, who had been the richest citizen in the 
 Netherlands, clad in an old serge cloak, and sur 
 rounded by plain Dutch burghers. But it was a 
 meeting of men of one mind and heart in the 
 great cause, and neither was disturbed by the tail 
 oring of the other. The interview was the be 
 ginning of a faithful friendship, and among all 
 the compliments Sidney received, none is so lofty 
 and touching as that of William, the greatest man 
 in Europe, who called him in their correspond 
 ence, "Philip, my master." 
 
 In 1577 Sidney was home again. He had a 
 right to expect conspicuous advancement, but he 
 got nothing. This was the more disagreeable, be 
 cause living at Elizabeth s court was an expensive 
 
SIR P2ILIP S1DNE1 167 
 
 luxury for a poor gentleman s son who had mag 
 nificent tastes. His father, Lord Henry Sidney, 
 was lord -deputy of Ireland, but he was also an 
 honest man, and, like most honest men in high 
 public office, he was not rich. He wrote to Philip, 
 begging him to remember whose son, riot whose 
 nephew, he was ; for Philip s companions, the 
 golden youth of the court, blazed in silks and vel 
 vets and jewels, until the government had to im 
 pose laws, as the subjects had brought luxury from 
 Venice, and Elizabeth, who died the happy owner 
 of three thousand dresses, issued a solemn proc 
 lamation against extravagance in dress. 
 
 At such a time, the brilliant nephew of Uncle 
 Leicester would have been a quickly ruined man if 
 he had not been Philip Sidney. He bowed and 
 flirted at court, but he chafed under inaction. A 
 marriage was planned for him with Penelope De- 
 vereux, sister of the famous Earl of Essex, one of 
 the thousand fair and unfortunate women who 
 flit across the page of history leaving only a name, 
 and that written in tears. But Philip s father 
 grew cool in the negotiation, and Philip himself 
 was perfectly passive. Yet when a few years 
 afterwards the lady was married to Lord Rich, who 
 abused her, Sidney loved her, and wrote the son 
 nets to Stella, which are his best poetry, and which 
 Charles Lamb so affectionately praised. 
 
168 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 But while he loitered at court, beating all the 
 courtiers with their own weapons in wit, in riding, 
 in games, at tournament, the tales of American 
 discovery shed a wondrous glamour upon the new 
 continent. Nothing was too beautiful for belief, 
 and the fiery feet of youth burned the English soil 
 with eagerness to tread the unutterable Tropics. 
 Francis Drake sailed from Plymouth to follow 
 Magellan around the world, and he went in a man 
 ner consonant with the popular fancy of the count 
 less riches that rewarded such adventures. His 
 cooking-vessels were of silver; his table-plate of 
 exquisite workmanship. The queen knighted 
 him, gave him a sword, and said, " Whoever strik- 
 eth at you, Drake, striketh at us." A band of 
 musicians accompanied the fleet, and the English 
 sailor went to circumnavigate the globe with the 
 same nonchalant magnificence with which in other 
 days the gorgeous Alcibiades, with flutes and soft 
 recorders blowing under silken sails, came idling 
 home from victory. 
 
 Philip Sidney, his heart alive to all romance, 
 and longing to be his companion, saw him sail 
 away. But he turned and saw the black Italian 
 spider, whose sting he had seen on Bartholomew s 
 Eve in Paris, still weaving her stealthy web, and 
 seeking to entangle Elizabeth into a match with 
 the Duke of Anjou. The queen was forty-six, 
 
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 169 
 
 and Mounseer, as the English called him, twenty- 
 three ; and while she was coaxing herself to say the 
 most fatal yes that ever woman said when Bur- 
 leigh, Leicester, Walsingham, all the safe, sound, 
 conservative old gentlemen and counsellors were 
 just ceasing to dissuade her Philip Sidney, a 
 youth of twenty-five, who knew that he had a 
 country as well as a queen, that the hope of that 
 country lay in the triumph of Protestantism, and 
 that to marry Mounseer was to abandon that hope, 
 and for the time betray mankind Philip Sidney, 
 a youth who did not believe that he could write 
 gravely of sober things because he had written 
 gayly of ladies eyebrows, knowing as the true- 
 hearted gentleman always knows that to-day it 
 may be a man s turn to sit at a desk in an office, 
 or bend over a book in college, or fashion a 
 horseshoe at the forge, or toss flowers to some 
 beauty at her window, and to-morrow to stand 
 firm against a cruel church or a despotic court, a 
 brutal snob or an ignorant public opinion this 
 youth, this immortal gentleman, wrote the letter 
 which dissuaded her from the marriage, and 
 which was as noble a triumph for Protestantism 
 and human liberty as the defeat of the Spanish 
 Armada. 
 
 I cannot follow this lovely life in detail, nor 
 linger, as I would, upon his literary retirement. 
 
 OF THE 
 IVERSI 
 
170 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 The very name of Sidney s Arcadia is aromatic 
 in the imagination, and its traditional place in our 
 literature is unquestioned. In our day it is very 
 little read, nor is it a very interesting story. But 
 under its quaint and courtly conceit its tone is so 
 pure and lofty, its courtesy and appreciation of 
 women so hearty and honorable ; it has so fine a 
 moral atmosphere, such noble thoughts, such 
 stately and beautiful descriptions, that to read it 
 is like conversing with a hero. So there is no 
 better reading than the Defence of Poesy, that 
 noble hymn of loyalty to intellectual beauty. 
 Hallam well calls Sidney " the first good prose 
 writer" in our language, and scarcely had he fin 
 ished in his Defence an exquisite criticism of 
 English poetry to that time than the full choir of 
 Elizabethan poets burst into 
 
 " the songs that fill 
 The spacious times of great Elizabeth 
 With sounds that echo still." 
 
 In 1582 Philip Sidney married the daughter of 
 Walsingham, but in his retirement, whether stead 
 fastly watching the great struggle upon the Con 
 tinent or listening to the alluring music of far-off 
 seas, he knew that the choice days of his life were 
 passing, and if a career were not opened for him 
 by the queen, he must make one for himself. 
 William of Orange had been murdered ; Eliza- 
 
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 171 
 
 beth promptly succeeded him as the active head 
 of the Protestant world ; Philip of Spain was the 
 great enemy. Strike him at home, said Sidney; 
 strike him at sea, but strike him everywhere; and 
 he arranged with Drake a descent upon Spanish 
 America. He hurried privately to Plymouth to 
 embark, but at the last moment a peer of the 
 realm arrived from the queen forbidding his de 
 parture. The loyal gentleman bowed and obeyed. 
 
 But two months after his fleet sailed, on the 7th 
 of November, 1585 (about the time that William 
 Shakespeare first came to London), Elizabeth ap 
 pointed Sidney governor of Flushing, in the 
 Netherlands. He went thither gladly on the 18th, 
 with three thousand men, to strike for the cause 
 in which he believed. He had already told the 
 queen that the spirit of the Netherlands was the 
 spirit of God, and was invincible. His uncle, the 
 Earl of Leicester, followed him as Commander-in- 
 chief. The earl was handsome at tournaments, 
 but not fit for battle-fields, and Sidney was an 
 noyed by his uncle s conduct ; but he writes to his 
 father-in-law, "Walsingham, in a strain full of the 
 music of a noble soul, and fitly precluding his 
 end : " I think a wise and constant man ought 
 never to grieve while he doth play, as a man 
 may say, his own part truly." 
 
 For that he was always ready. In the misty 
 
172 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 dawn of the 22d of September, 1586, a force of 
 three thousand Spaniards stole silently along to 
 the relief of Zutphen, on the river Isel. Sidney, at 
 the head of five hundred cavalry, rode forward to 
 meet them. In the obscurity the battle was sharp 
 and confused. Seeing his friend Lord Willonghby 
 in special danger, Sidney spurred to the rescue. 
 His horse was shot under him and fell. Spring 
 ing upon another, he dashed forward again and 
 succored his friend, but at the instant a shot struck 
 him below the knee, glancing upward. His furi 
 ous horse became unmanageable, and Sir Philip 
 was obliged to leave the field. But as he passed 
 slowly along to the rear of the soldiers, he felt 
 faint with bleeding, and called for water. A cup 
 was brought to him, but as he was lifting it to 
 bis mouth he saw a dying soldier staring at it with 
 burning eyes. Philip Sidney paused before tasting 
 it, leaned from the saddle, and handed it to the sol 
 dier, saying to him in the same soft, musical voice 
 with which the boy called to his mother in the 
 sunny garden at Penshurst, " Friend, thy necessity 
 is yet greater than mine." 
 
 He was borne on to Araheim, and lived in suf 
 fering for twenty-six days. He conversed pleas 
 antly and called for music, and said at last to his 
 brother, whom he had loved as brothers seldom 
 love: "Love my memory; cherish my friends. 
 
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 173 
 
 Their faith to me may assure you they are honest. 
 But, above all, govern your will and affections by 
 the will and word of your Creator, in me behold 
 ing the end of this world with all her vanities." 
 "And so," says old Stowe, with fond particularity, 
 " he died, the 17th day of October, between two 
 and three of the clock in the afternoon." 
 
 " The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 
 
 And all that beauty, all that wealth e er gave, 
 Await alike the inevitable hour. 
 The paths of glory lead but to the grave." 
 
 This is the story of Philip Sidney. A letter, a 
 book, a battle. How little to justify his unique 
 fame ! How invisible his performance among the 
 illustrious events of his prodigious age ! Yet is 
 not the instinct of the human heart true ; and in 
 the stately society of his time, if Bacon were the 
 philosopher, Shakespeare the poet, Burleigh the 
 counsellor, Raleigh the soldier, Drake the sailor, 
 Hooker the theologian, Essex the courtier, and 
 Greshara the merchant, was not Philip Sidney as 
 distinctively the gentleman ? Heroes stood beside 
 him in clusters, poets in constellations ; all the 
 illustrious men of the age achieved more tangible 
 results than he, yet none of them has carved his 
 name upon history more permanently and with 
 a more diamond point; for he had that happy 
 
174 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 harmony of mind and temper, of enthusiasm and 
 good sense, of accomplishment and capacity, which 
 is described by that most exquisite and most abused 
 word, gentleman. His guitar hung by a ribbon at 
 his side, but his sword hung upon leather beneath 
 it. His knee bent gallantly to the queen, but it 
 knelt reverently also to his Maker. And it was 
 the crown of the gentleman that he was neither 
 ashamed of the guitar nor of the sword ; neither 
 of the loyalty nor the prayer. For a gentleman is 
 not an idler, a trifler, a dandy ; he is not a scholar 
 only, a soldier, a mechanic, a merchant; he is the 
 flower of men, in whom the accomplishment of 
 the scholar, the bravery of the soldier, the skill of 
 the mechanic, the sagacity of the merchant, all 
 have their part and appreciation. A sense of duty 
 is his main-spring, and like a watch crusted with 
 precious stones, his function is not to look prettily, 
 but to tell the time of day. Philip Sidney was 
 not a gentleman because his grandfather was the 
 Duke of Northumberland and his father lord- 
 deputy of Ireland, but because he was himself 
 generous, simple, truthful, noble, refined. He was 
 born with a gold spoon in his mouth, but the gold 
 is only the test. In the mouths of the base it be 
 comes brass and iron. George IY., called with 
 bitter irony the first gentleman in Europe, was 
 born with the gold spoon, but his acrid humors 
 
SIR PHILIP KIDNEY 175 
 
 turned it to the basest metal, betraying his mean 
 soul. George Stephenson was born with the pew 
 ter spoon in his mouth, but the true temper of 
 his soul turned it into pure gold. The test of a 
 gentleman is his use, not his uselessness; whether 
 that use be direct or indirect, whether it be actual 
 service or only inspiring and aiding action. " To 
 what purpose should our thoughts be directed to 
 various kinds of knowledge," wrote Philip Sidney 
 in 1578, " unless room be afforded for putting it 
 into practice so that public advantage may be the 
 result ?" And Algernon Sidney said, nearly a cen 
 tury later : " I have ever had it in my mind that 
 when God cast me into such a condition as that I 
 cannot save my life but by doing an indecent thing, 
 he shows me the time has come wherein I should 
 resign it." And when that time came he did re 
 sign it; for every gentleman instinctively serves 
 justice and liberty. He feels himself personally 
 disgraced by an insult to humanity, for he, too, is 
 only a man ; and however stately his house may be 
 and murmurous with music, however glowing with 
 pictures and graceful with statues and reverend 
 with books however his horses may out-trot other 
 horses, and his yachts outsail all yachts the gen 
 tleman is king and master of these and not their 
 servant; he wears them for ornament, like the ring 
 upon his finger or the flower in his button-hole, 
 
176 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 and if they go the gentleman remains. He knows 
 that all their worth came from human genius and 
 human training; and loving man more than the 
 works of man, he instinctively shuns whatever in 
 the shape of man is degraded, outraged, and for 
 saken. He does not make the poverty of others 
 the reason for robbing them ; he does not make 
 the oppression of others the reason for oppressing 
 them, for his gentility is his religion ; and there 
 fore with simple truth and tender audacity the old 
 English dramatist Dekkar calls Him who gave the 
 name to our religion, and who destroyed the plea 
 that might makes right, " the first true gentleman 
 that ever breathed." 
 
 But not only is Philip Sidney s story the poem 
 of a gentleman, it is that of a young man. It was 
 the age of young men. No man was thought flip 
 pant, whatever his years, who could say a good 
 thing well, or do a brave thing successfully, or 
 give the right advice at the right moment. The 
 great men of the day were all young. At sixteen 
 Bacon had already sketched his Philosophy. At 
 seventeen Walter Raleigh had gone to find some 
 good wars. At seventeen Edmund Spenser had 
 first published. Before he was twenty, Alexander 
 Farnese, Prince of Parma, and the greatest general 
 of Sidney s time, had revealed his masterly genius. 
 At twenty -one Don John of Austria had been 
 
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 177 
 
 commander -in -chief against the Moors. The 
 Prince of Conde and Henry of Navarre were 
 leaders while they were yet boys. At twenty 
 Francis Drake sailed, a captain, with John Haw 
 kins; and at twenty-one the Washington of Eu 
 ropean history, to whom an American has for the 
 first time paid just homage with an enthusiasm 
 and eloquence of Sidney describing his friend at 
 twenty -one William of Orange commanded ail 
 army of Charles Y. 
 
 When England wanted leaders in those tremen 
 dous days that shaped her destiny, it did just what 
 America did in those recent perilous hours that 
 determined hers she sent young men with faith 
 in their hearts and fire in their veins not old men 
 with feathers in their hats ; and everywhere it is 
 the young men who have made history. At thirty- 
 two Alexander wept for another world to conquer. 
 On his thirty-seventh birthday Raphael lay dead 
 beneath his last picture. At thirty-six Mozart had 
 sung his swan-song. At twenty-five Hannibal was 
 cornmander-in-chief of the Carthaginian armies. 
 At thirty-three Turenne was marshal of France. 
 At twenty- seven Bonaparte was triumphant in 
 Italy. At forty-five Wellington had conquered 
 Bonaparte, and at forty -eight retired from active 
 military service. At forty-three Washington was 
 
 chief of the Continental army. On his forty-fifth 
 12 
 
178 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 birthday Sherman was piercing the heart of the 
 American Rebellion ; and before he was forty- 
 three Grant had " fought it out on this line " to 
 perfect victory. Young men ! Of course they 
 were young men. Youth is the main-spring of 
 the world. The experience of age is wise in ac 
 tion only when it is electrified by the enthusiasm 
 of youth. Show me a land in which the young 
 men are cold and sceptical and prematurely wise ; 
 which in polite indifference is called political wis 
 dom, contempt for ideas common-sense, and hon 
 esty in politics Sunday-school statesmanship show 
 me a land in which the young men are more anx 
 ious about doing well than about doing right and 
 I will show you a country in which public cor 
 ruption and ruin overtakes private infidelity and 
 cowardice, and in which, if there were originally 
 a hope for mankind, a faith in principle, and a 
 conquering enthusiasm, that faith, hope, and en 
 thusiasm are expiring like the deserted camp-fires 
 of a retiring army. Woe to a man when his heart 
 grows old ! Woe to a nation when its young men 
 shuffle in the gouty shoes and limp on the untime 
 ly crutches of age, instead of leaping along the 
 course of life with the jubilant spring of their 
 years and the sturdy play of their own muscles ! 
 Sir Philip Sidney s was the age of young men : 
 and wherever there are self-reliance, universal hu- 
 
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 179 
 
 man sympathy, and confidence in God, there is the 
 age of youth and national triumph ; just as when 
 ever Joan of Arc leads the army, or Molly Stark 
 dares to be a widow, or Rosa Bonheur paints, or 
 Hattie Hosmer carves, or Jenny Lind sings, or 
 Mrs. Patten steers the wrecked ship to port, or Flor 
 ence Kightingale walks the midnight hospital 
 these are the age and the sphere of woman. Queen 
 Elizabeth s was the age of young men ; but so it is 
 always when there are young men who can make 
 an age. 
 
 And ours is such an age. "We live in a country 
 which has been saved by its young men. Before 
 us opens a future which is to be secured by the 
 young men. I have not held up Sir Philip Sidney 
 as a reproach, but only for his brothers to admire 
 only that we may scatter the glamour of the past 
 and of history, and understand that we do not live 
 in the lees of time and the world s decrepitude. 
 There is no country so fair that ours is not fairer ; 
 there is no age so heroic that ours is not as noble ; 
 there is no youth in history so romantic and be 
 loved that in a thousand American homes you 
 may not find his peer to-day. It is the Sidneys 
 we have known who interpret this Philip of three 
 hundred years ago. Dear, noble gentleman ! he 
 does not move alone in our imaginations, for our 
 own memories supply his splendid society. "We 
 
180 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 too have seen, how often and how often, the bitter 
 fight of the misty morning on the Isel the ring 
 ing charge, the fatal fall. A thousand times we 
 saw the same true Sidney heart that, dying, gave 
 the cup of cold water to a fellow-soldier. And we, 
 for whom the Sidneys died, let us thank God for 
 showing us in our own experience, as in history, 
 that the noblest traits of human character are still 
 spanned by the rainbow of perfect beauty; and 
 that human love and faith and fidelity, like day 
 and night, like seed-time and harvest, shall never, 
 never fail. 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
LOXGFELLOW 
 
 IN the school readers of half a century ago there 
 were two poems which every boy and girl read 
 and declaimed and remembered. How much of 
 that old literature has disappeared ! How much 
 that stirred the hearts and touched the fancies of 
 those boys and girls, their children have never 
 heard of! Willis s "Saturday Afternoon" and 
 " Burial of Arnold" have floated away, almost out 
 of sight, with Pierpont s "Bunker Hill" and 
 Sprague s Fourth-of-July oration. The relentless 
 winds of oblivion incessantly blow. Scraps of 
 verse and rhetoric once so familiar are caught up, 
 wafted noiselessly away, and lodged in neglected 
 books and in the dark corners of fading memories, 
 gradually vanish from familiar knowledge. But 
 the two little poems of which we speak have sur 
 vived. One of them was Bryant s " March," and the 
 other was Longfellow s " April," and the names of 
 the two poets singing of spring were thus associat 
 ed in the spring-time of our poetry, as the fathers 
 of which they will be always honored. 
 
184 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 Both poems originally appeared in the United 
 States Literary Gazette, and were included in the 
 modest volume of selections from that journal 
 which was published in Boston in 1826. The 
 chief names in this little book are those of Bryant, 
 Longfellow, Percival, Mellen, Dawes, and Jones. 
 Percival has already become a name only ; Dawes, 
 and Greenville Mellen, who, like Longfellow, was 
 a son of Maine, are hardly known to this genera 
 tion, and Jones does not even appear in Duyc- 
 kinck s Cyclopaedia. But in turning over the 
 pages it is evident that Time has dealt justly with 
 the youthful bards, and that the laurel rests upon 
 the heads of the singers whose earliest strains fitly 
 preluded the music of their prime. Longfellow 
 was nineteen years old when the book was pub 
 lished. He had graduated at Bowdoin College the 
 year before, and the verses had been written and 
 printed in the Gazette while he was still a student. 
 
 The glimpses of the boy that we catch through 
 the recollections of his old professor, Packard, and 
 of his college mates, are of the same character as at 
 every period of his life. They reveal a modest, 
 refined, manly youth, devoted to study, of great 
 personal charm and gentle manners. It is the boy 
 that the older man suggested. To look back upon 
 him is to trace the broad and clear and beautiful 
 river far up the green meadows to the limpid rill. 
 
LONGFELLOW 185 
 
 His poetic taste and faculty were already apparent, 
 and it is related that a version of an ode of Horace 
 which he wrote in his Sophomore year so im 
 pressed one of the members of the examining 
 board that when afterwards a chair of modern lan 
 guages was established in the college, he proposed 
 as its incumbent the young Sophomore whose flu 
 ent verse he remembered. The impression made 
 by the young Longfellow is doubtlessly accurately 
 described by one of his famous classmates, Haw 
 thorne, for the class of 25 is a proud tradition of 
 Bowdoin. In "P. s Correspondence," one of the 
 Mosses from an Old Manse, a quaint fancy of a 
 letter from "my unfortunate friend P.," whose 
 wits were a little disordered, there are grotesque 
 hints of the fate of famous persons. P. talks with 
 Burns at eighty-seven ; Byron, grown old and fat, 
 wears a wig and spectacles ; Shelley is reconciled 
 to the Church of England; Coleridge finishes 
 " Christabel ;" Keats writes a religious epic on the 
 millennium ; and George Canning is a peer. On 
 our side of the sea, Dr. Channing had just pub 
 lished a volume of verses; Whittier had been 
 lynched ten years before in South Carolina ; and, 
 continues P., " I remember, too, a lad just from 
 college, Longfellow by name, who scattered some 
 delicate verses to the winds, and went to Germany, 
 and perished, I think, of intense application, at the 
 
186 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 University of Gottingen." Longfellow, in turn, 
 recalled his classmate Hawthorne a shy, dark- 
 haired youth flitting across the college grounds in 
 a coat with bright buttons. 
 
 Among these delicate verses was the poem to 
 " An April Day." As the work of a very young 
 man it is singularly restrained and finished. It has 
 the characteristic elegance and flowing melody of 
 his later verse, and its half-pensive tone is not ex 
 cessive nor immature. It is not, however, for this 
 that it is most interesting, but because, with Bry 
 ant s " March," it is the fresh and simple note of a 
 truly American strain. Perhaps the curious read 
 er, enlightened by the observation of subsequent 
 years, may find in the " March " a more vigorous 
 love of nature, and in the " April " a tenderer tone 
 of tranquil sentiment. But neither of the poems 
 is the echo of a foreign music, nor an exercise of 
 remembered reading. They both deal with the 
 sights and sounds and suggestions of the American 
 landscape in the early spring. In Longfellow s 
 " April " there are none of the bishops caps and 
 foreign ornament of illustration to which Margaret 
 Fuller afterwards objected in his verse. But these 
 early associated poems, both of the younger and 
 of the older singer, show an original movement of 
 American literary genius, and, like the months 
 which they celebrate, they foretold a summer. 
 
LONGFELLOW 187 
 
 That summer had been long awaited. In 1809, 
 Buckminster said in his Phi Beta Kappa oration at 
 Harvard College: " Our poets and historians, our 
 critics and orators, the men of whom posterity are 
 to stand in awe, and by whom they are to be in 
 structed, are yet to appear among us." Happily, 
 however, the orator thought that he beheld the 
 promise of their coming, although he does not say 
 where. But even as he spoke they were at hand. 
 Irving s Knickerbocker was published in 1809, and 
 Bryant s " Thanatopsis " was written in 1812. The 
 North American Review, an enterprise of literary 
 men in Boston and Cambridge, was begun in 1815, 
 and Bryant and Longfellow were both contribu 
 tors. But it was in the year 1821, the year in 
 which Longfellow entered college, that the begin 
 ning of a distinctive American literature became 
 most evident. There were signs of an indepen 
 dent intellectual movement both in the choice of 
 subjects and in the character of treatment. This 
 was the year of the publication of Bryant s first 
 slim volume, and of Cooper s Spy, and of Dana s 
 Idle Man. Irving s Sketch Book was already fin 
 ished, Miss Seclgwick s Hope Leslie and Percival s 
 first volume had been issued, and Halleck s and 
 Drake s " Croakers " were already popular. In 
 these works, as in all others of that time, there 
 was indeed no evidence of great creative genius. 
 
188 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 The poet and historian whom Buckminster fore 
 saw, and who were to strike posterity with awe, 
 had not yet appeared, but in the same year the 
 voice of the orator whom he anticipated was heard 
 upon Plymouth Hock in cadences massive and so 
 norous as the voice of the sea. In the year 1821 
 there was the plain evidence of an awakening orig 
 inal literary activity. 
 
 Longfellow was the youngest of the group in 
 which he first appeared. His work was graceful, 
 tender, pensive, gentle, melodious, the strain of a 
 troubadour. When he went to Europe in 1826 
 to fit himself more fully for his professorship, 
 he had but " scattered some delicate verses to the 
 winds." When he returned, and published in 1833 
 his translations of U 0oplas de Manrique" and 
 other Spanish poems, he had apparently done no 
 more. There was plainly shown an exquisite lit 
 erary artist, a very Benvenuto of grace and skill. 
 But he would hardly have been selected as the 
 poet who was to take the strongest hold of 
 the hearts of his countrymen, the singer whose 
 sweet and hallowing spell was to be so deep 
 and universal that at last it would be said in an 
 other country that to it also his death was a na 
 tional loss. 
 
 The qualities of these early verses, however, 
 were never lost. The genius of the poet steadily 
 
LONGFELLOW 189 
 
 and beautifully developed, flowering according to 
 its nature. The most urbane and sympathetic of 
 men, never aggressive, nor vehement, nor self- 
 asserting, he was yet thoroughly independent, and 
 the individuality of his genius held its tranquil 
 way as surely as the river Charles, whose placid 
 beauty he so often sang, wound through the mead 
 ows calm and free. When Longfellow came to 
 Cambridge, the impulse of Transcendentalism in 
 lN"ew England was deeply affecting scholarship and 
 literature. It was represented by the most origi 
 nal of American thinkers and the typical Ameri 
 can scholar, Emerson, and its elevating, purifying, 
 and emancipating influences are memorable in our 
 moral and intellectual history. Longfellow lived 
 in the very heart of the movement. Its leaders 
 were his cherished friends. He too was a scholar 
 and a devoted student of German literature, who 
 had drunk deeply also of the romance of German 
 life. Indeed, his first important works stimulated 
 the taste for German studies and the enjoyment of 
 its literature more than any other impulse in this 
 country. But he remained without the charmed 
 Transcendental circle, serene and friendly and at 
 tentive. There are those whose career was wholly 
 moulded by the intellectual revival of that time. 
 But Longfellow was untouched by it, except as his 
 sympathies were attracted by the vigor and purity 
 
190 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 of its influence. His tastes, his interests, his activ 
 ities, his career, would have been the same had that 
 great light never shone. If he had been the duc 
 tile, echoing, imitative nature that the more ardent 
 disciples of the faith supposed him to be, he would 
 have been absorbed and swept away by the flood. 
 But he was as untouched by it as Charles Lamb by 
 the wars of Napoleon. 
 
 It was in the first flush of the Transcendental 
 epoch that Longfellow s first important works ap 
 peared. In 1839, his prose romance of Hyperion 
 was published, following the sketches of travel 
 called Outre-Mer. He was living in Cambridge, 
 in the famous house in which he died, and in which 
 Hyperion and all of his familiar books were writ 
 ten. Under the form of a slight love tale, Hy 
 perion is the diary of a poet s wandering in a 
 storied and picturesque land, the hearty, home-like 
 genius of whose life and literature is peculiarly 
 akin to his own. The book bubbles and sings 
 with snatches of the songs of the country; it 
 reproduces the tone and feeling of the land 
 scape, the grandeur of Switzerland, the rich ro 
 mance of the Rhine; it decorates itself with a 
 quaint scholarship, and is so steeped in the spirit 
 of the country, so glowing with the palpitating 
 tenderness of passion, that it is still eagerly bought 
 at the chief points which it commemorates, and is 
 
LOXGFELLOW 191 
 
 cherished by young hearts as no prose romance 
 was ever cherished before. 
 
 Hyperion, indeed, is a poet s and lover s ro 
 mance. It is full of deep feeling, of that intense 
 and delighted appreciation of nature in her grander 
 forms, and of scenes consecrated bj poetic tradi 
 tion, which belongs to a singularly fine, sensitive, 
 and receptive nature, when exalted by pure and 
 lofty affection ; and it has the fulness and swing 
 of youth, saddened by experience indeed, yet ris 
 ing with renewed hope, like a field of springing 
 grain in May bowed by the west wind, and 
 touched with the shadow of a cloud, but presently 
 lifting itself again to heaven. A clear sweet hu 
 mor and blitheness of heart blend in this romance. 
 "What is called its artificial tone is not insincerity ; 
 it is the play of an artist conscious of his skill and 
 revelling in it, even while his hand and his heart 
 
 O 
 
 are deeply in earnest. Werther is a romance, Dis 
 raeli s Wondrous Tale of Alroy is a romance, but 
 they belong to the realm of Beverley and Julia in 
 Sheridan s JRivals. In Hyperion, with all its elab 
 orate picturesqueness, its spicy literary atmosphere, 
 and imaginative outline, there is a breezy fresh 
 ness and simplicity and healthiness of feeling 
 which leaves it still unique. 
 
 In the same year with Hyperion came the 
 Voices of the Night, a volume of poems which 
 
192 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 contained the " Coplas de Manrique " and the 
 translations, with a selection from the verses of the 
 Literary Gazette, which the author playfully re 
 claims in a note from their vagabond and precari 
 ous existence in the corners of newspapers gath 
 ering his children from wanderings in lanes and 
 alleys, and introducing them decorously to the 
 world. A few later poems were added, and these, 
 with the Hyperion, showed a new and distinctive 
 literary talent. In both of these volumes there is 
 the purity of spirit, the elegance of form, the ro 
 mantic tone, the airy grace, which were already 
 associated with Longfellow s name. But there are 
 other qualities. The boy of nineteen, the poet of 
 Bowdoin, has become a scholar and a traveller. 
 The teeming hours, the ample opportunities of 
 youth, have not been neglected or squandered, 
 but, like a golden-banded bee, humming as he 
 sails, the young poet has drained all the flowers of 
 literature of their nectar, and has built for himself 
 a hive of sweetness. More than this, he had 
 proved in his own experience the truth of Irving s 
 tender remark, that an early sorrow is often the 
 truest benediction for the poet. 
 
 Through all the romantic grace and elegance of 
 the Voices of the Night and Hyperion, however, 
 there is a moral earnestness which is even more re 
 markable in the poems than in the romance. JS"o 
 
volume of poems ever published in the country was 
 so popular. Severe critics indeed, while acknowledg 
 ing its melody and charm, thought it too morally 
 didactic, the work of a student too fondly enam 
 oured of foreign literatures. But while they con 
 ceded taste and facility, two of the poems at least 
 the "Psalm of Life" and the " Footsteps of An 
 gels " penetrated the common heart at once, and 
 have held it ever since. A young Scotchman saw 
 them reprinted in some paper or magazine, and, 
 meeting a literary lady in London, repeated them 
 to her, and then to a literary assembly at her 
 house ; and the presence of a new poet was at once 
 acknowledged. If the " Midnight Mass for the 
 Dying Year " in its form and phrase and concep 
 tion recalled a land of cathedrals and a historic re 
 ligious ritual, and had but a vague and remote 
 charm for the woodman in the pine forests of 
 Maine and the farmer on the Illinois prairie, yet 
 the " Psalm of Life " was the very heart-beat of 
 the American conscience, and the " Footsteps of 
 Angels " was a hymn of the fond yearning of ev 
 ery loving heart. 
 
 During the period of more than forty years 
 from the publication of the Voices of the Night to 
 his death, the fame of Longfellow constantly in 
 creased. It was not because his genius, like that 
 of another scholarly poet, Gray, seldom blossomed 
 
 13 
 
194 LITER AEY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 in song, so that his renown rested upon a few gem- 
 like verses. He was not intimidated by his own 
 fame. During those forty years he wrote and 
 published constantly. Other great fames arose 
 around him. New poets began to sing. Popular 
 historians took their places. But still with Bryant 
 the name of Longfellow was always associated at 
 the head of American singers, and far beyond 
 that of any other American author was his name 
 known through all the reading world. The vol 
 ume of Voices of the Night was followed by simi 
 lar collections, then by The Spanish Student, 
 Eoangeline, The Golden Legend, Hiawatha, The 
 Courtship of Miles Standish, The Tales of a Way 
 side Inn, The New England Tragedies, The 
 Masque of Pandora, The Hanging of the Crane, 
 the Morituri Salutamus, the Keramos. But all 
 of these, like stately birds 
 
 " Sailing with supreme dominion 
 Through the upper realms of air," 
 
 were attended by shorter poems, sonnets, "birds 
 of passage," as the poet called his swallow flights 
 of song. In all these larger poems, while the 
 characteristics of the earlier volumes were more 
 amply developed and illustrated, and the subtle 
 beauty of the skill became even more exquisite, 
 
LOXGFELLOW 195 
 
 tlie essential qualities of the work remain un 
 changed, and the charm of a poet and his signifi 
 cance in the literature and development of his 
 country were never more readily defined. 
 
 Child of New England, and trained by her best 
 influences ; of a temperament singularly sweet and 
 serene, and with the sturdy rectitude of his race ; 
 refined and softened by wide contact with other 
 lands and many men ; born in prosperity, accom 
 plished in all literatures, and himself a literary 
 artist of consummate elegance, he was the fine 
 flower of the Puritan stock under its changed mod 
 ern conditions. Out of strength had come forth 
 sweetness. The grim iconoclast, "humming a 
 surly hymn," had issued in the Christian gentle 
 man. Captain Miles Standish had risen into Sir 
 Philip Sidney. The austere morality that relent 
 lessly ruled the elder New England reappeared in 
 the genius of this singer in the most gracious and 
 captivating form. The grave nature of Bryant in 
 his early secluded life among the solitary hills of 
 Western Massachusetts had been tinged by them 
 with their own sobriety. There was something of 
 the sombre forest, of the gray rocky face of stern 
 New England in his granitic verse. But what deli 
 cate wild -flowers nodded in the clefts! What 
 scent of the pine-tree, what music of gurgling wa 
 ter, filled the cool air ! What bird high poised 
 
196 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 upon its solitary way through heaven-taught faith 
 to him who pursued his way alone ! 
 
 But while the same moral tone in the poetry 
 hoth of Bryant and of Longfellow shows them to 
 be children of the same soil and tradition, and 
 shows also that they saw plainly, what poets of the 
 greatest genius have often not seen at all, that 
 in the morality of human life lies its true beauty, 
 the different aspect of Puritan development which 
 they displayed was due to difference of tempera 
 ment and circumstance. The foundations of our 
 distinctive literature were largely laid in New Eng 
 land, and they rest upon morality. Literary New 
 England had never a trace of literary Bohemia. 
 The most illustrious group, and the earliest, of 
 American authors and scholars and literary men, 
 the Boston and Cambridge group of the last gen 
 eration Channing, the two .Danas, Sparks, Ever 
 ett, Bancroft, Ticknor, Prescott, Norton, Ripley, 
 Palfrey, Emerson, Parker, Hawthorne, Longfel 
 low, Holmes, Whittier, Agassiz, Lowell, Motley 
 have been all sober and industrious citizens of 
 whom Judge Sewall would have approved. Their 
 lives as well as their works have ennobled litera 
 ture. They have illustrated the moral sanity of 
 genius. 
 
 Longfellow shares this trait with them all. It is 
 the moral purity of his verse which at once charms 
 
LONGFELLOW 197 
 
 the heart, and in his first most famous poem, the 
 "Psalm of Life," it is the direct inculcation of a 
 moral purpose. Those who insist that literary art, 
 like all other art, should not concern itself posi 
 tively with morality, must reflect that the heart of 
 this age has been touched as truly by Longfellow, 
 however differently, as that of any time by its 
 master-poet. This, indeed, is his peculiar dis 
 tinction. Among the great poetic names of the 
 century in English literature, Burns, in a general 
 way, is the poet of love ; Wordsworth, of lofty 
 contemplation of nature; Byron, of passion; Shel 
 ley, of aspiration ; Keats, of romance ; Scott, of 
 heroic legend ; and not less, and quite as distinc 
 tively, Longfellow, of the domestic affections. He 
 is the poet of the household, of the fireside, of the 
 universal home feeling. The infinite tenderness 
 and patience, the pathos, and the beauty of daily 
 life, of familiar emotion, and the common scene, 
 these are the significance of that verse whose beau 
 tiful and simple melody, softly murmuring for 
 more than forty years, made the singer the most 
 widely beloved of living men. 
 
 Longfellow s genius was not a great creative 
 force. It burst into no tempests of mighty pas 
 sion. It did not wrestle with the haughtily veiled 
 problems of fate and free-will absolute. It had no 
 dramatic movement and variety, no eccentricity 
 
198 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 and grotesqueness and unexpectedness. It was 
 not Lear, nor Faust, nor Manfred, nor Romeo. A 
 carnation is not a passion-flower. Indeed, no poet 
 of so universal and sincere a popularity ever sang 
 so little of love as a passion. None of his smaller 
 poems are love poems ; and Evangeline is a tale, 
 not of fiery romance, but of affection " that hopes 
 and endures and is patient," of the unwasting 
 "beauty and strength of woman s devotion," of the 
 constantly tried and tested virtue that makes up 
 the happiness of daily life. No one has described 
 so well as Longfellow himself the character and in 
 fluence of his own poetry : 
 
 "Come read to me some poem, 
 
 Some simple and heart-felt lay, 
 That shall soothe this restless feeling, 
 And banish the thoughts of day. 
 
 "Not from the grand old masters, 
 
 Not from the bards sublime, 
 Whose distant footsteps echo 
 Through the corridors of Time. 
 
 " Such songs have power to quiet 
 
 The restless pulse of care, 
 
 And come like the benediction 
 
 That follows after prayer." 
 
 This was the office of Longfellow in literature, 
 and how perfectly it was fulfilled ! It was not 
 
LONGFELLOW 199 
 
 a wilful purpose, but he carefully guarded the 
 fountain of his song from contamination or diver 
 sion, and this was its natural overflow. During 
 the long period of his literary activity there were 
 many " schools " and styles and fashions of poetry. 
 The influence first of Byron, then of Keats, is 
 manifest in the poetry of the last generation, and 
 in later days a voluptuous vagueness and barbaric 
 splendor, as of the lower empire in literature, have 
 corroded the vigor of much modern verse. But 
 no perfumed blandishment of doubtful goddesses 
 won Longfellow from his sweet and domestic 
 Muse. The clear thought, the true feeling, the 
 pure aspiration, is expressed with limpid simplic 
 ity: 
 
 "Strong without rage; without o erflo wing, full." 
 
 The most delightful picture in Goldsmith s life 
 is that of the youth wandering through rural 
 Europe, stopping at the little villages in the peace 
 ful summer sunset, and sweetly playing melodies 
 upon his flute for the lads and lasses to dance upon 
 the green. Who that reads "The Traveller" and 
 " The Deserted Tillage " does not hear in their 
 pensive music the far-away fluting of that kind- 
 hearted wanderer, and see the lovely idyl of that 
 simple life ? So sings this poet to the young men 
 and maidens in the soft summer air. They follow 
 
200 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 his measures with fascinated hearts, for they hear 
 in them their own hearts singing ; they catch the 
 music of their dearest hope, of their best endeav 
 or; they hear the voices of the peaceful joy that 
 hallows faithful affection, of the benediction that 
 belongs to self-sacrifice and devotion. And now 
 that the singer is gone, and his voice is silent, 
 those hushed hearts recall the words of Father 
 Felicien, Evangeline s pastor : 
 
 "Forty years of my life have I labored among you, and 
 
 taught you 
 Not in word alone, but in deed, to love one another." 
 
 It is this fidelity of his genius to itself, the uni 
 versal feeling to which he gives expression, and 
 the perfection of his literary workmanship, which 
 is sure to give Longfellow a permanent place in 
 literature. His poems are apples of gold in pict 
 ures of silver. There is nothing in them exces- 
 Isive, nothing overwrought, nothing strained into 
 turgidity, obscurity, and nonsense. There is some 
 times, indeed, a fine stateliness, as in the "Arsenal 
 at Springfield," and even a resounding splendor of 
 diction, as in " Sandalphon." But when the mel 
 ody is most delicate it is simple. The poet throws 
 nothing into the mist to make it large. How pure 
 ly melodious his verse can be without losing the 
 
LONGFELLOW 201 
 
 thought or its most transparent expression is seen 
 in "The Evening Star" and " Snow- Flakes." 
 
 The literary decoration of his style, the aroma 
 and color and richness, so to speak, which it de 
 rives from his ample accomplishment in literature, 
 are incomparable. His verse is embroidered with 
 allusions and names and illustrations wrought with 
 a taste so true and a skill so rare that the robe, 
 though it be cloth of gold, is as finely flexible as 
 linen, and still beautifully reveals, not conceals, 
 the living form. 
 
 This scholarly allusion and literary tone were at 
 one time criticised as showing that Longfellow s 
 genius was really an exotic grown under glass, or 
 a smooth-throated mocking-bird warbling a foreign 
 melody. A recent admirable paper in the Even 
 ing Post intimates that the kindly poet took the 
 suggestion in good part, and modified his strain. 
 But there was never any interruption or change in 
 the continuity of his work. Evangelhie and Hia 
 watha and The Courtship of Miles Standish blos 
 som as naturally out of his evident and character 
 istic taste and tendency as The Golden Legend or 
 the Masque of Pandwa. In the Tales of a Way 
 side Inn the " Ride of Paul Revere " is as natural 
 a play of his power as " King Robert of Sicily." 
 The various aspect and character of nature upon 
 the American continent is nowhere so fully, beau- 
 
202 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 tifully, and accurately portrayed as in Evangeline. 
 The scenery of the poem is the vast American 
 landscape, boundless prairie and wooded hill, brim 
 ming river and green valley, sparkling savanna 
 and broad bayou, city and village, camp and wig 
 wam, peopled with the children of many races, 
 and all the blended panorama seen in the magic 
 light of imagination. So, too, the poetic character 
 of the Indian legend is preserved with conscien 
 tious care and fit monotony of rippling music in 
 Hiawatha. But this is an accident and an inci 
 dent. It is not the theme which determines the 
 poet. All Scotland, indeed, sings and glows in the 
 verse of Burns, but very little of England is seen 
 or heard in that of Byron. 
 
 In no other conspicuous figure in literary his 
 tory are the man and the poet more indissolubly 
 blended than in Longfellow. The poet was the 
 man, and the man the poet. What he was to the 
 stranger reading in distant lands, by 
 
 " The long wash of Australasian seas," 
 
 that he was to the most intimate of his friends. 
 His life and character were perfectly reflected in 
 his books. There is no purity or grace or feeling 
 or spotless charm in his verse which did not belong 
 to the man. There was never an explanation to 
 be offered for him ; no allowance was necessary for 
 
LONGFELLOW 203 
 
 the eccentricity or grotesqueness or wilfulness or 
 humor of genius. Simple, modest, frank, manly, 
 he was the good citizen, the self-respecting gentle 
 man, the symmetrical man. 
 
 He lived in an interesting historic house in a 
 venerable university town, itself the suburb of a 
 great city ; the highway running by his gate and 
 dividing the smooth grass and modest green ter 
 races about the house from the fields and meadows 
 that sloped gently to the placid Charles, and the 
 low range of distant hills that made the horizon. 
 Through the little gate passed an endless proces 
 sion of pilgrims of every degree and from every 
 country to pay homage to their American friend. 
 Every morning came the letters of those who could 
 not come in person, and with infinite urbanity and 
 sympathy and patience the master of the house re 
 ceived them all, and his gracious hospitality but 
 deepened the admiration and affection of the 
 guests. His nearer friends sometimes remonstrat 
 ed at his sweet courtesy to such annoying " devas 
 tators of the day." But to an urgent complaint of 
 his endless favor to a flagrant offender, Longfellow 
 only answered, good-humoredly, "If I did not 
 speak kindly to him, there is not a man in the 
 world who would." On the day that he was taken 
 ill, six days only before his death, three school 
 boys came out from Boston on their Saturday hoi- 
 
204 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 iday to ask his autograph. The benign lover of 
 children welcomed them heartily, showed them a 
 hundred interesting objects in his house, then 
 wrote his name for them, and for the last time. 
 
 Few men had known deeper sorrow. But no 
 man ever mounted upon his sorrow more surely 
 to higher things. Blessed and beloved, the singer is 
 gone, but his song remains, and its pure and im 
 perishable melody is the song of the lark in the 
 morning of our literature : 
 
 " Type of the wise who soar but never roam, 
 True to the kindred points of heaven and home." 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
OLIYEK WENDELL HOLMES 
 
 IN 1817 Bryant s "Thanatopsis" was published 
 in the North American Review. Richard Henry 
 Dana, the elder, who was then one of the editors, 
 said that it could not be an American poem, for 
 there was no American who could have written it. 
 But it does not seem to have produced a remark 
 able impression upon the public mind. The plan 
 et rose silently and unobserved. Ten years after 
 wards, in 1827, Dana s own " Buccaneer " was pub 
 lished, and Christopher North, in Blackwood, sa 
 luted it as " by far the most original and power 
 ful of American poetical compositions." But it 
 produced in this country no general effect which is 
 remembered. Nine years later, in 1836, Holmes s 
 " Metrical Essay " was delivered before the Phi 
 Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College, and was 
 as distinct an event in literary circles as Edward 
 Everett s oration before the same society in 1824, 
 or Ralph Waldo Emerson s in 1837, or Horace 
 Bushnell s in 1848, or Wendell Phillips s in 1881. 
 Holmes was then twenty-seven years old, and had 
 
208 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 just returned from liis professional studies in Eu 
 rope, where, as in his college days at Cambridge, 
 where he was born, he had toyed with many 
 Muses, yet still, with native Yankee prudence, 
 held fast the hand of ^Esculapius. His poem, 
 like the address of Emerson in the next year, 
 showed how completely the modern spirit of re 
 fined and exquisite literary cultivation and of free 
 and undaunted thought had superseded the un 
 couth literary form and stern and rigid Calvinism 
 of the Mathers and early Boston. 
 
 The melody and grace of Goldsmith s line, but 
 with a fresh local spirit, have not been more per 
 fectly reproduced, nor with a more distinct revela 
 tion of a new spirit, than in this poem. It is ret 
 rospective and contemplative, but it is also full 
 of the buoyancy of youth, of the consciousness of 
 poetic skill, and of blithe anticipation. Its tender 
 reminiscence and occasional fond elegiac strain are 
 but clouds of the morning. Its literary form is 
 exquisite, and its general impression is that of 
 bright, elastic, confident power. It was by no 
 means, however, a first work, nor was the poet 
 unknown in his own home. But the " Metrical 
 Essay" introduced him to a larger public, while 
 the fugitive pieces already known were the assur 
 ance that the more important poem was not a 
 happy chance, but the development of a quality 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 209 
 
 already proved. Seven years before, in 1829, the 
 year he graduated at Harvard, Holmes began to 
 contribute to The Collegian, a college magazine. 
 Two years later, in 1831, appeared the New 
 England jtfagazine, in which the young writer, 
 as he might himself say, took the road with his 
 double team of verse and prose, holding the rib 
 bons with unsurpassed lightness and grace and 
 skill, now for two generations guiding those fleet 
 and well-groomed coursers, which still show their 
 heels to panting rivals, the prancing team behind 
 which we have all driven and are still driving with 
 constant and undirninished delight. 
 
 Mr. F. B. Sanborn, whose tribute to Holmes on 
 his eightieth birthday shows how thorough was 
 his research for that labor of love, tells us that his 
 first contribution to the New England Magazine 
 was published in the third or September number 
 of the first year, 1831. It was a copy of verses of 
 an unpromising title " To an Insect." But that 
 particular insect, seemingly the creature of a day, 
 proved to be immortal, for it was the katydid, 
 whose voice is perennial : 
 
 "Thou sayest an undisputed thing 
 In such a solemn way." 
 
 In the contributions of the young graduate the 
 high spirits of a frolicsome fancy effervesce and 
 
 14 
 
210 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 sparkle. But their quality of a new literary tone 
 and spirit is very evident. The ease and fun of 
 these bright prolusions, without impudence or 
 coarseness, the poetic touch and refinement, were 
 as unmistakable as the brisk pungency of the gibe. 
 The stately and scholarly Boston of Channing, 
 Dana, Everett, and Ticknor might indeed have 
 looked askance at the literary claims of such lines 
 as these " Thoughts in Dejection " of a poet won 
 dering if the path to Parnassus lay over Charles- 
 town or Chelsea bridge : 
 
 " What is a poet s fame ? 
 
 Sad hints about his reason, 
 And sadder praise from gazetteers, 
 To be returned in season. 
 
 " For him the future holds 
 
 No civic wreath above him ; 
 Nor slated roof nor varnished chair, 
 Nor wife nor child to love him. 
 
 "Maid of the village inn, 
 
 Who workest woe on satin, 
 The grass in black, the graves in green, 
 The epitaph in Latin, 
 
 " Trust not to them who say 
 
 In stanzas they adore thee ; 
 Oh, rather sleep in church-yard clay, 
 With maudlin cherubs o er thee 1" 
 
 The lines to the katydid, with a L Inconnue " 
 "Is thy name Mary, maiden fair ?" 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 211 
 
 published in the magazine at about the same time, 
 disclose Holmes s natural melody and his fine in 
 stinct for literary form. But his lyrical fervor 
 finds its most jubilant expression at this time in 
 " Old Ironsides," written at the turning-point in 
 the poet s life, when he had renounced the study 
 of the law, and was deciding upon medicine as his 
 profession. The proposal to destroy the frigate 
 Constitution, fondly and familiarly known as " Old 
 Ironsides," kindled a patriotic frenzy in the sensi 
 tive Boston boy, which burst forth into the noble 
 
 lyric, 
 
 " Ay, tear her tattered ensign down !" 
 
 I There had been no American poetry with a 
 truer lilt of song than these early verses, and there 
 has been none since. Two years later, in 1833, 
 Holmes went to complete his medical studies in 
 Paris, and the lines to a grisette 
 
 "Ah, Clemence, when I saw thee last 
 Trip down the Rue de Seine !" 
 
 published upon his return in his first volume of 
 verse, are a charming illustration of his lyrical 
 genius. His limpid line never flowed more clearly 
 than in this poem. It has the pensive tone of all 
 his best poems of the kind, but it is the half-happy 
 sadness of youth. 
 
 All these early verses have an assured literary 
 
212 LITERAR Y AND SOCIAL ESS A TS 
 
 form. The scope and strain were new, but their 
 most significant quality was not melody nor pen- 
 // sive grace, but humor. This was ingrained and 
 genuine. Sometimes it was rollicking, as in " The 
 Height of the Kidiculous" and "The Septem 
 ber Gale." Sometimes it was drolly meditative, 
 as in "Evening, by a Tailor." Sometimes it 
 was a tearful smile of the deepest feeling, as in 
 the most charming and perfect of these poems, 
 " The Last Leaf," in which delicate and searching 
 
 I pathos is exquisitely fused with tender gayety. 
 
 j The haunting music and meaning of the lines, 
 
 "The mossy marbles rest 
 On the lips that he has pressed 
 
 In their bloom, 
 
 And the names he loved to hear 
 Have been carved for many a year 
 
 On the tomb," 
 
 lingered always in the memory of Lincoln, whose 
 simple sincerity and native melancholy would in 
 stinctively have rejected any false note. It is in 
 such melody as that of the " Last Leaf " that we 
 feel how truly the grim old Puritan strength has 
 become sweetness. 
 
 To this poetic grace and humor and music, 
 which at that time were unrivalled, although the 
 early notes of a tuneful choir of awakening song 
 sters were already heard, the young Holmes added 
 
 II 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 213 
 
 the brisk and crisp and sparkling charm of his 
 prose. From the beginning his coursers were 
 paired, and with equal pace they have constantly 
 held the road. In the New England Magazine 
 for November in the same year, 1831, a short 
 paper was published called the u Autocrat of the 
 Breakfast Table." The tone of placid dogmatism 
 and infallible finality with which the bulls of the 
 domestic pope are delivered is delightfully famil 
 iar. This earliest one has perhaps more of the 
 cardinal s preliminary scarlet than of the mature 
 papal white, but in its first note the voice of the 
 Autocrat is unmistakable : 
 
 " Somebody was rigmarolling the other day about the 
 artificial distinctions of society. 
 
 " Madam, said I, society is the same in all large 
 places. I divide it thus : 
 
 1. People of cultivation who live in large houses. 
 
 2. People of cultivation who live in small houses. 
 
 3. People without cultivation who live in large houses. 
 
 4. People without cultivation who live in small houses. 
 
 5. Scrubs. 
 
 An individual at the upper end of the table turned pale 
 and left the room as I finished with the monosyllable." 
 
 " Tis sixty years since," but that drop is of the 
 same characteristic transparency and sparkle as in 
 the latest Tea-Cup. 
 
 The time in which the New England Maga 
 zine was published, and these firstlings of Holmes s 
 muse appeared, was one of prophetic literary stir 
 
214 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 in New England. There were other signs than 
 those in letters of the breaking -up of the long 
 Puritan winter. A more striking and extreme 
 reaction from the New England tradition could 
 not well be imagined than that which was offered 
 by Nathaniel Parker Willis, of whom Holmes 
 himself says "that he was at the time something 
 between a remembrance of Count D Orsay and an 
 anticipation of Oscar Wilde." Willis was a kind 
 ly saunterer, the first Boston dandy, who began 
 his literary career with grotesque propriety as a 
 sentimentalizer of Bible stories, a performance 
 which Lowell gayly called inspiration and water. 
 In what now seems a languid, Byronic way, he 
 figured as a Yankee Pelham or Vivian Grey. 
 Yet in his prose and verse there was a tacit pro 
 test against the old order, and that it was felt is 
 shown by the bitterness of ridicule and taunt and 
 insult with which, both publicly and privately, 
 this most amiable youth was attacked, who, at 
 that time, had never said an ill-natured word of 
 anybody, and who was always most generous in 
 his treatment of his fellow-authors. 
 
 The epoch of Willis and the New England Mag 
 azine is very notable in the history of Ameri 
 can literature. The traditions of that literature 
 were grave and even sombre. Irving, indeed, in 
 his Knickerbocker and Rip Yan Winkle and Ich- 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 215 
 
 abod Crane, and in the general gayety of his liter 
 ary touch, had emancipated it from strict alle 
 giance to the solemnity of its precedents, and had 
 lighted it with a smile. He supplied a quality of 
 grace and cheerfulness which it had lacked, and 
 without unduly magnifying his charming genius, 
 it had a natural, fresh, and smiling spirit, which, 
 amid the funereal, theologic gloom, suggests the 
 sweetness and brightness of morning. In its ef 
 fect it is a breath of Chaucer. When Knicker 
 bocker was published, Joel Barlow s "Hasty- 
 Pudding " was the chief achievement of American 
 literary humor. Mark Twain and Charles Dudley 
 Warner were not yet "the wits of Hartford." 
 Those who bore that name held it by brevet. In 
 deed, the humor of our early literature is pathetic. 
 In no State was the ecclesiastical dominance more 
 absolute than in Connecticut, and nothing shows 
 more truly how absolute and grim it was than the 
 fact that the performances of the " wits " in that 
 State were regarded gravely, it must have been 
 as humor. 
 
 For a long time there was no vital response in 
 Kew England to the chord touched by Irving. 
 Yet Boston was then unquestionably the chief 
 seat of American letters. Dennie had established 
 his Portfolio in Philadelphia in 1801, but in 1805 
 the Monthly Antholoqy* which 
 
216 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 reproduced in the North American Review, ap 
 peared in Boston, and was the organ or illustration 
 of the most important literary and intellectual 
 life of the country at that time. The opening of 
 the century saw the revolt against the supremacy 
 of the old Puritan Church of New England a 
 revolt within its own pale. This clerical protest 
 against the austere dogmas of Calvinism in its an 
 cient seat was coincident with the overthrow in 
 the national government of Federalism and the 
 political triumph of Jefferson and his party. Si 
 multaneously also with the religious and political 
 disturbance was felt the new intellectual and liter 
 ary impulse of which the Anthology was the or 
 gan. But the religious and literary movements 
 were not in sympathy with the political revolu 
 tion, although they were all indications of emanci 
 pation from the dominance of old traditions, the 
 mental restlessness of a people coming gradually 
 to national consciousness. 
 
 Mr. Henry Adams, in remarking upon this sit 
 uation in his history of Madison s administration, 
 points out that leaders of the religious protest 
 which is known as the Unitarian Secession in New 
 England were also leaders in the intellectual and 
 literary awakening of the time, but had no sym 
 pathy with Jefferson or admiration of France. 
 Bryant s father was a Federalist; the club that 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 217 
 
 conducted the Anthology and the North Ameri 
 can Review was composed of Federalists ; and the 
 youth whose " Thanatopsis " is the chief distinction 
 of the beginning of that Review, and the morning 
 star of American poetry, was, as a boy of thirteen, 
 the author of the "Embargo," a performance in 
 which the valiant Jack gave the giant Jefferson 
 no quarter. The religious secession took its defi 
 nite form in Dr. Channing s sermon at the ordina 
 tion of Jared Sparks in Baltimore in 1819, which 
 powerfully arraigned the dominant theology of 
 the time. This was the year in which Irving s 
 Sketch Book was published. Bryant s first vol 
 ume followed a year or two later, and our dis 
 tinctive literary epoch opened. 
 
 Ten years afterwards, when Bryant had left New 
 England, Dr. Channing was its most dignified and 
 characteristic name in literature. But he was dis 
 tinctively a preacher, and his serene and sweet 
 genius never unbent into a frolicsome mood. As 
 early as 1820 a volume of Robert Burns s poems 
 fell into Whittier s hands like a spark into tinder, 
 and the flame that has so long illuminated and 
 cheered began to blaze. It was, however, a soft 
 ened ray, not yet the tongue of lyric fire which it 
 afterwards became. But none of the poets smiled 
 as they sang. The Muse of New England was 
 staid and stately or was she, after all, not a true 
 
218 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 daughter of Jove, but a tenth Muse, an Anne 
 Bradstreet? The rollicking laugh of Knickerbocker 
 was a solitary sound in the American air until the 
 blithe carol of Holmes returned a kindred echo. 
 
 Willis was the sign of the breaking spell. But 
 his light touch could not avail. The Puritan 
 spell could be broken only by Puritan force, and 
 it is the lineal descendants of Puritanism, often the 
 sons of clergymen Emerson and Holmes and 
 Longfellow and Hawthorne and Whittier who 
 emancipated our literature from its Puritan sub 
 jection. In 1829 Willis, as editor of Peter Par- 
 ley^s Token and the American Monthly Magazine, 
 was aided by Longfellow and Hawthorne and 
 Motley and Hildreth and Mrs. Child and Mrs. 
 Sigourney, and the elder Bishop Doane, Park Ben 
 jamin and George B. Cheever, Albert Pike and 
 Rufus Dawes, as contributors. Willis himself was 
 a copious writer, and in the American Monthly 
 first appeared the titles of "Inkling of Adventure" 
 and "Pencillings by the Way," which he after 
 wards reproduced for some of his best literary 
 work. The Monthly failed, and in 1831, the year 
 that the New England Magazine began, it was 
 merged in the New York Mirror, of which Willis 
 became associate editor, leaving his native city 
 forever, and never forgiving its injustice towards 
 him. In the heyday of his happy social career in 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 219 
 
 England he wrote to liis mother, "The mines of 
 Golconda would not tempt me to return and live 
 in Boston." 
 
 This was the literary situation when Holmes 
 was preluding in the magazine. The acknowl 
 edged poets in Boston were Dana, Sprague, and 
 Pierpont. Are these names familar to the readers 
 of this essay ? How much of their poetry can 
 those readers repeat? Ko one knows more surely 
 than he who writes of a living author how hard it 
 is to forecast fame, and how dangerous is prophecy. 
 When Edward Everett saluted Percival s early vol 
 ume as the harbinger of literary triumphs, and Em 
 erson greeted Walt Whitman at " the opening of a 
 great career," they generalized a strong personal 
 impression. They identified their own preference 
 with the public taste. On the other hand, Haw 
 thorne says truly of himself that he was long the 
 most obscure man of letters in America. Yet he 
 had already published the Twice-told Tales and 
 the Mosses from an Old Manse^ the two series of 
 stories in which the character and quality of his 
 genius are fully disclosed. But although Long 
 fellow hailed the publication of the first collection 
 as the rising of a new star, the tone of his com 
 ment is not that of the discoverer of a planet shin- 
 ing for all, but of an individual poetic pleasure. 
 The prescience of fame is very infrequent. The 
 
220 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 village gazes in wonder at the return of the fa 
 mous man who was born on the farm under the 
 hill, and whose latent greatness nobody suspected ; 
 while the youth who printed verses in the corner 
 of the county paper, and drew the fascinated 
 glances of palpitating maidens in the meeting 
 house, and seemed to the farmers to have associat 
 ed himself at once with Shakespeare and Tupper 
 and the great literary or "littery folks," never 
 emerges from the poet s department in the paper 
 in which unconsciously and forever he has been 
 cornered. It would be a grim Puritan jest if that 
 department had been named from the corner of 
 the famous dead in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 If the Boston of sixty years ago had ventured 
 to prophesy for itself literary renown, it is easy 
 to see upon what reputations of the time it would 
 have rested its claims. But if the most familiar 
 names of that time are familiar no longer, if Kettell 
 and poems from the United States Gazette seem 
 to be cemeteries of departed reputations, the fate 
 of the singers need not be deplored as if Fame 
 had forgotten them. Fame never knew them. 
 Fame does not retain the name of every minstrel 
 who passes singing. But to say that Fame does 
 not know them is not dispraise. They sang for 
 the hearers of their day, as the players played. Is 
 it nothing to please those who listen, because those 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 221 
 
 who are out of hearing do not stop and applaud ? 
 If we recall the names most eminent in our litera 
 ture, whether they were destined for a longer or 
 shorter date, we shall see that they are undeni 
 ably illustrations of the survival of the fittest. 
 Turning over the noble volumes of Stedman and 
 Miss Hutchinson, in which, as on a vast plain, the 
 whole line of American literature is drawn up for 
 inspection and review, and marches past like the 
 ghostly midnight columns of Napoleon s grand 
 army, we cannot quarrel with the verdict of time, 
 nor feel that injustice has been done to Thamis or 
 to Cawdor. There are singers of a day, but not 
 less singers because they are of a day. The insect 
 that flashes in the sunbeam does not survive like 
 the elephant. The splendor of the most gorgeous 
 butterfly does not endure with the faint hue of 
 the hills that gives Athens its Pindaric name. And 
 there are singers who do not sing. What says 
 Holmes, with eager sympathy and pity, in one of 
 his most familiar and most beautiful lyrics? 
 
 "We count the broken lyres that rest 
 
 Where the sweet waiting singers slumber, 
 But o er their silent sister s breast 
 
 The wild flowers who will stoop to number ? 
 A few can touch the magic string, 
 
 And noisy fame is proud to win them ; 
 Alas, for those that never sing, 
 
 And die with all their music in them !" 
 
222 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 But as he says also that the capacities of listen 
 ers at lectures differ widely, some holding a gallon, 
 others a quart, and others only a pint or a gill, so of 
 the singers who are not voiceless, their voices dif 
 fer in volume. Some are organs that fill the air 
 with glorious and continuous music; some are 
 trumpets blowing a ringing peal, then sinking 
 into silence ; some are harps of melancholy but 
 faint vibration ; still others are flutes and pipes, 
 whose sweet or shrill note has a dying fall. Some 
 are heard as the wind or sea is heard ; some like 
 the rustle of leaves ; some like the chirp of birds. 
 Some are heard long and far away; others across 
 the field ; others hardly across the street. Fame is 
 perhaps but the term of a longer or shorter fight 
 with oblivion ; but it is the warrior who " drinks 
 delight of battle with his peers," and holds his 
 own in the fray, who finally commands the eye 
 and the heart. There were poets pleasantly sing 
 ing to our grandfathers whose songs we do not 
 hear, but the unheeded voice of the youngest song 
 ster of that time is a voice we heed to-day. Holmes 
 wrote but two "Autocrat" papers in the New 
 England Magazine one in November, 1831, and 
 the other in February, 1832. The year after the 
 publication of the second paper he went to Paris, 
 where for three years he studied medicine, not as 
 a poet, but as a physician, and he returned in 1836 
 
OLIVER WEXDELL HOLMES 223 
 
 an admirably trained and highly accomplished pro 
 fessional man. But the Phi Beta Kappa poem of 
 that year, like the tender lyric to Clemence upon 
 leaving Paris, shows not only that the poet was 
 not dead, but that he did not even sleep. The 
 "Metrical Essay" was the serious announcement 
 that the poet was not lost in the man of science, 
 an announcement which was followed by the pub 
 lication in the same year (1836) of his first volume 
 of poems. This was three years before the publi 
 cation of Longfellow s first volume of verses, The 
 Voices of the Night. 
 
 Holmes s devotion to the two Muses of science 
 and letters was uniform and untiring, as it was 
 also to the two literary forms of verse and prose. 
 But although a man of letters, like the other em 
 inent men of letters in Kew England, he had no 
 trace of the Bohemian. Willis was the only noted 
 literary figure that ever mistook Boston for a sea 
 port in Bohemia, and he early discovered his error. 
 The fraternity which has given to Boston its liter 
 ary primacy has been always distinguished not 
 only for propriety of life and respectability in its 
 true sense of worthiness and respect, but for the 
 possession of the virtues of fidelity, industry, and 
 good sense, which have carried so far both the 
 influence and the renown of Isew England. Xo- 
 
 O 
 
 where has the Bohemian tradition been more 
 
224 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 happily and completely shattered than in the cir 
 cle to which Holmes returned from his European 
 studies to take his place. American citizenship in 
 its most attractive aspect has been signally illus 
 trated in that circle, and it is not without reason 
 that the government has so often selected from it 
 our chief American representatives in other coun 
 tries. 
 
 Dr. Holmes, as he was now called, and has con 
 tinued to be called, practised his profession in Bos 
 ton ; but whether because of some lurking popular 
 doubt of a poet s probable skill as a physician, or 
 from some lack of taste on his part for the de 
 tails of professional practice, like his kinsman, 
 "Wendell Phillips, and innumerable other young be 
 ginners, he sometimes awaited a professional call 
 longer than was agreeable. But he wrote medical 
 papers, and was summoned to lecture to the medi 
 cal school at Dartmouth College in New Hamp 
 shire, and later at Pittsfield in Massachusetts, 
 while his unfailing charm as an occasional poet 
 gave him a distinctive name. Holmes s felicity 
 in occasional poems is extraordinary. The " Met 
 rical Essay " was the first and chief of the long 
 series of such verses, among which the songs of 
 29, the poems addressed year after year to his 
 college classmates of that year, have a delightful 
 and endless grace, tenderness, wit, and point. Peg- 
 
OZ7PZ72 WENDELL HOLMES 225 
 
 asus draws well in harness the triumphant chariot 
 of 29, in which the lucky classmates of the poet 
 move to a unique and happy renown. 
 
 As a reader, Holmes was the permanent chal 
 lenge of Mrs. Browning s sighing regret that poets 
 never read their own verses to their worth. Park 
 Benjamin, who heard the Phi Beta Kappa poem, 
 said of its delivery : " A brilliant, airy, and spirit- 
 uelle manner varied with striking flexibility to the 
 changing sentiment of the poem, now deeply im 
 passioned, now gayly joyous and nonchalant, and 
 anon springing up into almost an actual flight of 
 rhapsody, rendered the delivery of this poem a 
 rich, nearly a dramatic entertainment." This was 
 no less true in later years when he read some of 
 his poems in New York at Bishop Potter s, then 
 rector of Grace Church, or of the reading of the 
 poem at the doctors dinner given to him by the 
 physicians of New York a little later. 
 
 Holmes s readings were like improvisations. The 
 poems were expressed and interpreted by the 
 whole personality of the poet. The most subtle 
 touch of thought, the melody of fond regret, the 
 brilliant passage of description, the culmination of 
 latent fun exploding in a keen and resistless jest, 
 all these were vivified in the sensitive play of man 
 ner and modulation of tone of the reader, so that 
 a poem by Holmes at the Harvard Commence- 
 
 15 
 
226 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 ment dinner was one of the anticipated delights 
 which never failed. This temperament implied 
 an oratorical power which naturally drew the poet 
 into the lecture lyceum when it was in its prime, 
 in the decade between 1850 and 1860. During 
 that time the popular lecture was a distinct and 
 effective public force, and not the least of its ser 
 vices was its part in instructing and training the 
 public conscience for the great contest of the Civil 
 War. 
 
 The year 1831, in which Holmes s literary ac 
 tivity began, was also the year on whose first day 
 the first number of Garrison s Liberator appeared, 
 and the final period of the slavery controversy 
 opened. But neither this storm of agitation nor 
 the transcendental mist that a few years later over 
 hung intellectual New England greatly affected the 
 poet. 
 
 In the first number of the " Autocrat " there is 
 a passage upon puns, which, crackling with fun, 
 shows his sensitive scepticism. The " Autocrat " 
 says : " In a case lately decided before Miller, J., 
 Doe presented Roe a subscription paper, and 
 urged the claims of suffering humanity. Roe re 
 plied by asking when charity was like a top. It 
 was in evidence that Doe preserved a dignified si 
 lence. Roe then said, When it begins to hum. 
 There are temperaments of a refined suspicious- 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 227 
 
 ness to which, when the plea of reform is urged, 
 the claims of suffering humanity at once begin to 
 hum. The very word reform irritates a peculiar 
 kind of sensibility, as a red flag stirs the fury of a 
 bull. A noted party leader said, with inexpressi 
 ble scorn, When Dr. Johnson defined the word 
 patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel, he had 
 not learned the infinite possibilities of the word 
 refa-a-r-m. J " 
 
 The acridity of this jest is wholly unknown to 
 the " Autocrat," who has moved always with reform, 
 if not always with reformers, and whose protest 
 against bigotry is as searching as it is sparkling. 
 !N"ot only has his ear been quick to detect the 
 hum of Mr. Honeythunder s loud appeal, but his 
 eye to catch the often ludicrous aspect of honest 
 whimsey. During all the early years of his liter 
 ary career he flew his flashing darts at all the 
 "isms," and he fell under the doubt and censure 
 of those earnest children of the time whom the 
 gay and clever sceptics derided as apostles of the 
 newness. When Holmes appeared upon the lect 
 ure platform it was to discourse of literature or 
 science, or to treat some text of social manners or 
 morals with a crisp Poor Richard sense and moth 
 er wit, and a brilliancy of illustration, epigram, and 
 humor that fascinated the most obdurate "come- 
 outer." Holmes s lectures on the English poets at 
 
228 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 the Lowell Institute were among the most noted 
 of that distinguished platform, and everywhere the 
 poet was one of the most popular of " attractions." 
 There were not wanting those who maintained 
 that his use of the platform was the correct one, 
 and that the orators who, often by happy but in 
 cisive indirection, fought the good fight of the 
 hour abused their opportunity. 
 
 It was while Holmes was still a professor, but 
 still also touching the lyre and writing scientific 
 essays and charming the great audiences of the 
 lecture lyceum. that in the first number of the 
 Atlantic Monthly, in November, 1857, the "Auto 
 crat of the Breakfast Table " remarked, " I was 
 just going to say, when I was interrupted," and 
 resumed the colloquies of the New England Mag 
 azine. He had been interrupted twenty-two years 
 before. But as he began again it was plain that 
 it was the same voice, yet fuller, stronger, richer, 
 and that we were listening to one of the wisest of 
 wits and sharpest of observers. Emerson warns 
 us that superlatives are to be avoided. But it will 
 not be denied that the " Autocrat " belongs in the 
 highest rank of modern magazine or periodical lit 
 erature, of which the essays of " Elia " are the 
 type. The form of the "Autocrat" a semi- 
 dramatic, conversational, descriptive monologue 
 is not peculiar to Holmes s work, but the treat- 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 229 
 
 ment of it is absolutely original. The manner is 
 as individual and unmistakable as that of Elia him 
 self. It would be everywhere recognized as the 
 Autocrat s. During the intermission of the pa 
 pers the more noted Macaulay flowers of litera 
 ture, as the Autocrat calls them, had bloomed ; 
 Carlyle s Sartor Resartm and reviews, Christo 
 pher North s Nodes (now fallen into ancient 
 night), Thackeray s Roundabout Papers, Lowell s 
 Hosea Biglow a whole library of magazine and 
 periodical literature of the first importance had ap 
 peared. But the Autocrat began again, after a 
 quarter of a century, musical with so rich a chor 
 us, and his voice was clear, penetrating, master 
 ful, and distinctively his own. 
 
 The cadet branch of English literature the 
 familiar colloquial periodical essay, a comment 
 upon men and manners and life is a delight 
 ful branch of the family, and traces itself back to 
 Dick Steele and Addison. Hazlitt, who belonged 
 to it, said that he preferred the T-atler to the 
 Spectator ; and Thackeray, who consorted with 
 it proudly, although he was of the elder branch, 
 restored Sir Richard, whose habits had cost him a 
 great deal of his reputation, to general favor. The 
 familiar essay is susceptible, as the eighteenth 
 and nineteenth centuries show, of great variety 
 and charm of treatment. What would the Chris- 
 
230 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 tian Hero, writing to his Prue that he would be 
 with her in a pint of wine s time, have said to 
 "Blakesmoor" and "Oxford in the Vacation"? 
 Yet Lamb and Steele are both consummate mas 
 ters of the essay, and Holmes, in the " Autocrat," 
 has given it a new charm. The little realm of the 
 Autocrat, his lieges of the table, the persons of the 
 drama, are at once as definitely outlined as Sir 
 Roger s club. Unconsciously and resistlessly we 
 are drawn within the circle ; we are admitted ad 
 eundem, and become the targets of the wit, the 
 irony, the shrewd and sharp epigram, the airy 
 whim, the sparkling fancy, the curious and recon 
 dite thought, the happy allusion, the felicitous 
 analogy, of the sovereign master of the feast. 
 
 The index of the Autocrat is in itself a unique 
 work. It reveals the whimsical discursiveness of 
 the book ; the restless hovering of that brilliant 
 talk over every topic, fancy, feeling, fact ; a hum 
 ming-bird sipping the one honeyed drop from every 
 flower ; or a huma, to use its own droll and capi 
 tal symbol of the lyceum lecturer, the bird that 
 never lights. There are few books that leave more 
 distinctly the impression of a mind teeming with 
 riches of many kinds. It is, in the Yankee phrase, 
 thoroughly wideawake. There is no languor, and 
 it permits none in the reader, who must move 
 along the page warily, lest in the gay profusion 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 231 
 
 of the grove, unwittingly defrauding himself of 
 delight, he miss some flower half hidden, some 
 gem chance-dropped, some darting bird. Howells s 
 Letters was called a chamber-window book, a book 
 supplying in solitude the charm of the best soci 
 ety. We could all name a few such in our own 
 literature. Would any of them, or many, take 
 precedence of the Autocrat of the Breakfast 
 Table? 
 
 It is in this book that the value of the scientific 
 training to the man of letters is illustrated, not 
 only in furnishing noble and strong analogies, but 
 in precision of observation and accuracy of state 
 ment. In Holmes s style, the definiteness of form 
 and the clearness of expression are graces and virt 
 ues which are due to his exact scientific study, as 
 well as to the daylight quality of his mind. 
 
 The delicate apprehension of the finer and ten 
 derer feelings which is disclosed in the little pas 
 sages of narrative in the record of the Autocrat 
 and of his legitimate brothers, the Professor and 
 the Poet, at the Breakfast Table, gives a grace and 
 a sweetness to the work which naturally flow into 
 the music of the poems with which the diary of 
 a conversation often ends. These traits in the 
 Autocrat suggested that he would yet tell a dis 
 tinct story, which indeed came while the trilogv 
 of the Breakfast Table was yet proceeding. Elsie 
 
232 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 Venner and the Guardian Angel, the two novels 
 of Holmes s, are full of the same briskness and 
 acuteness of observation, the same effusiveness of 
 humor and characteristic Americanism, as the Au 
 tocrat. Certain aspects of New England life and 
 character are treated in these stories with incom 
 parable vivacity and insight. Holmes s picture is 
 of a later New England than Hawthorne s, but it 
 is its lineal descendant. It is another facet of the 
 Puritan diamond which flashes with different light 
 in the genius of Hawthorne, Emerson, Lowell, 
 Whittier, Longfellow, Holmes, and Judd in Mar 
 garet. For, with all his lyrical instinct and rol 
 licking humor, Holmes is essentially a New-Eng- 
 lander, and one of the most faithful and shrewd 
 interpreters of New England. 
 
 The colloquial habit of the Autocrat is not lost 
 in the stories, and it is so marked generally in 
 Holmes s writings as to be called distinctive. It 
 is a fascinating gift, when it is so restrained by 
 taste and instinctive refinement as not to become 
 what is known as bumptiousness. Thackeray, 
 even in his novels, is apt to drop into this vein, to 
 talk about the persons of his drama with his read 
 er, instead of leaving them to play out their part 
 alone. This trait offends some of Thackeray s au 
 dience, to whom it seems like the manager s hand 
 thrust into the box to help out the play of the 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 233 
 
 puppets. They resent not "the damnable faces" 
 of the actors, but the damnable sermonizing of 
 the author, and exhort him to permit the play to 
 begin. Thackeray frankly acknowledged his ten 
 dency to preach, as he called it. But it was part 
 of the man. Without the private personal touch 
 of the essayist in his stories they would not be his. 
 This colloquial habit is very winning when gov 
 erned by a natural delicacy and an exquisite liter 
 ary instinct. It is the quality of all the authors 
 who are distinctly beloved as persons by their 
 readers, and it is to this class that Holmes es 
 pecially belongs. 
 
 It is not a quality which is easily analyzed, bul 
 it blends a power of sympathetic observation anc 
 appreciation both of the thing observed and the 
 reader to whom the observation is addressed. The 
 Autocrat, as he converses, brightens with his own 
 clear thought, with the happy quip, the airy fan 
 cy. He is sure of your delight, not only in the 
 thought, but in its deft expression. He in turn is 
 delighted with your delight. He warms to the re 
 sponsive mind and heart, and feels the mutual joy. 
 The personal relation is established, and the Auto 
 crat s audience become his friends, to whom he de 
 scribes with infinite glee the effect of his remarks 
 upon his lieges at table. No other author takes 
 the reader into his personal confidence in ore close- 
 
 r^ OFTHE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
234 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 ly than Holmes, and none reveals his personal 
 temperament more clearly. This confidential re 
 lation becomes even more simple and intimate as 
 time chastens the eagerness of youth and matures 
 the keen brilliancy of the blossom into the softer 
 bloom of the fruit. The colloquies of the Auto 
 crat under the characteristic title of " Over the 
 Tea-Cups " are full of the same shrewd sense and 
 wise comment and tender thought. The kindly 
 mentor takes the reader by the button or lays his 
 hand upon his shoulder, not with the rude famili 
 arity of the bully or the boor, but with the cour 
 tesy of Montaigne, the friendliness of John Au 
 brey, or the wise cheer of Selden. The reader 
 glows with the pleasure of an individual greeting, 
 and a wide diocese of those whom the Autocrat 
 never saw plume themselves proudly upon his per 
 sonal acquaintance. 
 
 In this discursive talk about one of the Ameri 
 can authors who have vindicated the position of 
 American letters in the literature of the language 
 we have not mentioned all his works. It is the 
 quality rather than the quantity with which we 
 are concerned, the upright, honorable, pure qual 
 ity of the poet, the wit, the scholar, for whom the 
 most devoted reader is called to make no plea, no 
 apology. The versatility of his power is obvious, 
 but scarcely less so the uniformity of his work. 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 935 
 
 It is a power which was early mature. For many 
 a year he has dwelt upon a high table-land where 
 the air is equable and inspiring, yet, as we have 
 hinted, ever softer and sweeter. The lyric of to 
 day glows with the same ardor as the fervent apos 
 trophe to " Old Ironsides " or the tripping saluta 
 tion to the remembered and regretted Clemence : 
 
 O 
 
 it is only less eager. The young Autocrat who re 
 marked that the word " scrub" dismissed from 
 table a fellow-boarder who turned pale, now with 
 the same smiling acuteness remarks the impru 
 dent politeness which tries to assure him that it is 
 no matter if he is a little older. Did anybody say 
 so? The easy agility with which he cleared "the 
 seven-barred gate " has carried him over the eight 
 bars, and we are all in hot pursuit. For just sixty 
 years since his first gay and tender note was heard, 
 Holmes has been fulfilling the promise of his 
 matin song. He has become a patriarch of our 
 literature, and all his countrymen are his lovers. 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING 
 
WASHINGTON IKYING 
 
 FORTY years ago, upon a pleasant afternoon, you 
 might have seen tripping with an elastic step 
 along Broadway, in New York, a figure which 
 even then would have been called quaint. It was 
 a man of about sixty-six or sixty-seven years old, 
 of a rather solid frame, wearing a Talma, as a short 
 cloak of the time was called, that hung from the 
 shoulders, and low shoes, neatly tied, which were 
 observable at a time when boots were generally 
 worn. The head was slightly declined to one 
 side, the face was smoothly shaven, and the eyes 
 twinkled with kindly humor and shrewdness. 
 There was a chirping, cheery, old-school air in the 
 whole appearance, an undeniable Dutch aspect, 
 which, in the streets of New Amsterdam, irresist 
 ibly recalled Diedrich Knickerbocker. The ob 
 server might easily have supposed that he saw 
 some later descendant of the renowned Wouter 
 Yan Twiller refined into a nineteenth-century 
 gentleman. The occasional start of interest as the 
 figure was recognized by some one in the passing 
 
240 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 throng, the respectful bow, and the sudden turn 
 to scan him more closely, indicated that he was 
 not unknown. Indeed, he was the American of 
 his time universally known. This modest and 
 kindly man was the creator of Diedrich Knicker 
 bocker and Rip Yan Winkle. He was the father 
 of our literature, and at that time its patriarch. 
 He was Washington Irving. 
 
 At the same time you might have seen another 
 man, of slight figure and rustic aspect, with an air 
 of seriousness, if not severity, moving with the 
 crowd, but with something remote and reserved in 
 his air, as if in the city he bore with him another 
 atmosphere, and were still secluded among solitary 
 hills. In the bright and busy street of the city 
 which was always cosmopolitan, and in which 
 there lingers a tradition, constantly renewed, of 
 good-natured banter of the losel Yankee, this fig 
 ure passed like the grave genius of New England. 
 By a little play of fancy the first figure might have 
 seemed the smiling spirit of genial cheerfulness 
 and humor, of kindly sympathy even with the foi 
 bles and weaknesses of poor human nature ; and 
 the other the mentor of its earnest endeavor and 
 serious duty. For he was the first of our poets, 
 whose " Thanatopsis" was the hymn of his medita 
 tions among the primeval forests of his native 
 hills, and who, in his last years, sat at the door of 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING 241 
 
 his early home and looked across the valley of the 
 "West-field to the little town of Plain field upon the 
 wooded heights beyond, whose chief distinction is 
 that there he wrote the " Waterfowl " ; for this 
 graver figure was the poet Bryant. 
 
 If in the same walk you had passed those two 
 figures, you would have seen not only the first of 
 our famous prose writers and the first of our ac 
 knowledged poets, but also the representatives of 
 the two fundamental and distinctive qualities of 
 our American literature, as of all literature its 
 grave, reflective, earnest character, and its sport 
 ive, genial, and humorous genius. 
 
 At the time of which I speak another figure 
 also was familiar in Broadway, but less generally 
 recognized as it passed than either of the others, 
 although, perhaps, even more widely known to 
 fame than they. This was Cooper, who gave us 
 so many of the heroes of our childhood s delight, 
 but who at this time was himself the hero of in 
 numerable lawsuits, undertaken to chastise the 
 press for what he believed to be unjust and libel- 
 ous comments upon himself. Now that the up 
 roar of that litigation is silent, and its occasion for 
 gotten, it seems comical that a man for whom 
 fame had already rendered a favorable judgment 
 should be busily seeking the opinion of local 
 courts upon transitory newspaper opinions of hiin- 
 
 16 
 
242 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 self and his writings. It is as if Dickens, when 
 the whole English-reading world judges on the 
 bench and bishops in their studies, cobblers in their 
 stalls and grooms in the stables were all laughing 
 over Pickwick, should have sued the Eatanswill 
 Gazette for calling him a clown. Thackeray pro 
 nounces Cooper s Long Tom Coffin one of the 
 prizemen of fiction. That is a final judgment by 
 the chief-justice. But who knows what was the 
 verdict in Cooper s lawsuits to vindicate himself, 
 and who cares? When Cooper died there was a 
 great commemorative meeting in New York. 
 Daniel Webster presided, and praised the story 
 teller; Bryant read a discourse upon him, while 
 Irving sat by his side. One of the triumvirate of 
 our early literature was gone, and two remained 
 to foresee their own future in the honors paid to 
 him. Indeed, it was to see them, quite as much 
 as to hear of their dead comrade, that the multi 
 tude assembled that evening; and the one who 
 was seen with the most interest was Irving, the 
 one in whom the city of New York naturally feels 
 a peculiar right and pride, as the most renowned 
 of her children. 
 
 If I say that he made personally the same im 
 pression that his works make, you can easily see 
 the man. As you read the story of his life you 
 feel its constant gayety and cheerfulness. It was 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING 243 
 
 the life of a literary man and a man of society a 
 life without events, or only the events of all our 
 lives, except that it lacks the great event of mar 
 riage. In place of it there is a tender and pathetic 
 romance. Irving lived to be seventy-six years old. 
 At twenty-six he was engaged to a beautiful girl, 
 who died. He never married ; but after his death, 
 in a little box of which he always kept the key, 
 was found the miniature of a lovely girl, and with 
 it a braid of fair hair, and a slip of paper on which 
 was written the name Matilda Hoffman, with some 
 pages upon which the writing was long since 
 faded. That fair face Irving kept all his life in a 
 more secret and sacred shrine. It looks out, now 
 and then, with unchanged loveliness from some 
 pensive passage, which he seems to write with 
 wistful melancholy of remembrance. That fond 
 and immortal presence constantly renewed the 
 gentle humanity, the tenderness of feeling, the 
 sweet healthfulness and generous sympathy which 
 never failed in his life and writings. 
 
 He was born in the city of New York in 1T83, 
 the year in which the Revolution ended in the ac 
 knowledgment of American independence. The 
 British army marched out of the city, and the 
 American army, with Washington at the head, 
 marched in. " The patriot s work is ended just 
 as my boy is born," said the patriotic mother, 
 
244 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 "and the boy shall be named Washington." Six 
 years later, when Washington returned to New 
 York to be inaugurated President, he was one day 
 going into a shop when the boy s Scotch nurse 
 democratically stopped the new republican chief 
 magistrate and said to him, "Please your honor, 
 here s a bairn was named for you." The great 
 man turned and looked kindly on his little name 
 sake, laid his hand upon his head, and blessed his 
 future biographer. 
 
 The name of no other American has been so 
 curiously confused with Washington s as that of 
 Irving. Many a young fellow puzzles over the 
 connection which the name seerns vaguely to im 
 ply, and in other lands the identity of the men is 
 confounded. When Irving first went to Europe, 
 a very young man, well-educated, courteous, with 
 great geniality of manner and charm of conversa 
 tion, he was received by Prince Torlonia, the bank 
 er, in Rome, with unusual and flattering civility. 
 His travelling companion, who had been treat 
 ed by the prince with entire indifference, was 
 perplexed at the warmth of Irving s welcome. 
 Irving laughingly said that it only proved the 
 prince s remarkable discrimination. But the 
 young travellers laughed still more when the 
 prince unconsciously revealed the secret of his 
 attentions by taking his guest aside, and asking 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING 245 
 
 him how nearly he was related to General Wash 
 ington. 
 
 Many years afterwards, when he had become fa 
 mous, an English lady and her daughter paused in 
 an Italian gallery before a bust of Washington. 
 "And who was Washington, mamma?" asked the 
 daughter. " Why, my dear, I am surprised at 
 your ignorance," answered the mother, " he was 
 the author of the Sketch Book" Long ago in 
 Berlin I was talking with some American friends 
 one evening at a cafe, and observed a German in 
 tently listening to our conversation as if trying his 
 ability to understand the language. Presently he 
 said to me, politety, "You are English, no?" But 
 when I replied " No, we are Americans" " Ameri 
 cans! he exclaimed enthusiastically, grasping my 
 hand and shaking it warmly, "Americans, ach ! we 
 all know your great General Washington Irving." 
 
 Irving s father was a Presbyterian deacon, iu 
 whose heart the sterner traditions of the Cove 
 nanters lingered. He tried hard to teach his son to 
 contemn amusement, and to impale his youth upon 
 the five points of Calvinism, rather than to play 
 ball. But it was John Knox trying to curb the 
 tricksy Ariel. Perhaps from some bright mater 
 nal ancestor the boy had derived his sweet gayety 
 of nature which nothing could repress. His airy 
 spirits bubbled like a sunny fountain in that some- 
 
246 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 what arid household. He read at ten a transla 
 tion of the Orlando Furioso, and his father s yard, 
 doubtless trim and well kept as beseemed a dea 
 con s yard, became at once a field of chivalry. 
 Candles were forbidden him in his chamber, but 
 when he made the acquaintance of Robinson Cru 
 soe and Sindbad the Sailor, he secreted lights to il 
 luminate his innocent revels with those immortal 
 playmates. 
 
 The amusements which were permitted were of 
 too depressing a character to be tolerated by the 
 healthy boy, who, like the duck taking to the water 
 from under the wing of the astonished hen, some 
 times escaped from the serious house at night by 
 dropping from a window, and with a delight that 
 must have torn his father s heart with anguish 
 had he known it, tasted the forbidden fruit of the 
 theatre. It was a Presbyterian boy who tasted it 
 then ; but in the same city many years afterwards it 
 was a Quaker boy whom I knew who was also enam 
 oured of the play. " John," said his grieved father, 
 " is this dreadful thing true that I hear of thee ? 
 Has thee ever been to see the play-actress Frances 
 Kemble ?" " Yes, father," answered the heroic 
 John. " I hope thee has not been more than once, 
 John," said the afflicted father. " Yes, father," 
 replied John, resolved to make a clean breast of 
 his sins, " more than thirty times." 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING 247 
 
 It is useless to try to prevent blue-birds from 
 flying in the spring. The blithe creatures made 
 to soar and sing will not be restrained. The same 
 kind Providence that made Calvin made Shake 
 speare. The sun is higher than the clouds, and 
 smiles are as heaven-born as tears. In Emerson s 
 poem the squirrel says to the mountain : 
 
 "You re not so small as I, 
 And not half so spry : 
 
 If I cannot carry forests on my back 
 Neither can you crack a nut." 
 
 It was in vain to try to thwart the young Irving s 
 genius. Yet the boy who a little later was to light 
 with rosy cheer the air which, as Wendell Phillips 
 said, was still black with sermons ; who was to give 
 to our literature its first distinctly humorous strain, 
 and innocently to amuse the world, was somehow 
 or other, as he said, " taught to feel that everything 
 pleasant was wicked." 
 
 If that were so, what a sinner Washington Irv 
 ing was ! If to make life easier by making it 
 pleasanter, if to outwit trouble by gay banter, if 
 with satire that smiles but never stings to correct 
 foibles and to quicken good impulses; if to deepen 
 and strengthen human sympathy, is not to be a 
 human benefactor, what makes one ? When Dr. 
 
248 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 Johnson said of Garrlck that his death eclipsed 
 the gayety of nations, he did not mean merely 
 that the player would no longer make men laugh, 
 but that he could no longer make them better. 
 "If, however," said Irving and Willis selected 
 the words for the motto of his second volume 
 of verse published in 1827 "I can by a lucky 
 chance, in these days of evil, rub out one wrin 
 kle from the brow of care, or beguile the heavy 
 heart of one moment of sadness ; if I can, now and 
 then, penetrate the gathering film of misanthropy, 
 prompt a benevolent view of human nature, and 
 make my reader more in good-humor with his 
 fellow -beings and himself, surely, surely I shall 
 not then have written entirely in vain." 
 
 That cannot be said to have been the spirit of 
 any American author before Irving. Our colo 
 nial literature was mainly political and theolog 
 ical. You have only to return to the early New 
 England days in the stories of Hawthorne, the 
 magician who restores with a shuddering spell 
 that old, sombre life, to understand the character 
 of its reading. The books that were not treatises 
 upon special topics all seemed to say with one of 
 the grim bards of Calvinism : 
 
 "My thoughts on awful subjects roll, 
 Damnation and the dead." 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING 249 
 
 Literature, in its proper sense, there was none. 
 There was no imaginative creation, no play of 
 fancy and humor, no subtle charm of the ideal 
 life, no grace and delight of expression, which are 
 essential to literature. The perpetual twilight and 
 chill of the New England Puritan world were an 
 arctic winter in which no flower of poesy bloomed 
 and no bird sang. One of the French players 
 who came to this country with Rachel says, in his 
 journal, with a startled air, as if he had remarked 
 in Americans a universal touch of lunacy, that he 
 was invited to take a pleasure-drive to Greenwood 
 Cemetery. Evidently he was not familiar with 
 Froissart s epigram nor with the annals of the 
 Puritan fathers, or he would have known that 
 their favorite pleasure-ground was the graveyard. 
 Judge SewelPs Journal, the best picture of daily 
 New England life in the seventeenth and eigh 
 teenth centuries, is a portrait framed in black and 
 hung with thick crape. It is a register of funer 
 als a book which seems to require a suit of sables 
 for its proper reading. 
 
 The early Christians dwelt so often and so long 
 in the catacombs that when they emerged, accus 
 tomed to associate life with the tomb, they doubt 
 less regarded the whole world as a cemetery. The 
 American Puritans inherited the disposition from 
 their early confessors, and so powerful was the 
 
250 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 tendency that it laid its sombre spirit upon the 
 earliest enduring poem in our literature, and the 
 fresh and smiling nature of the new world was first 
 depicted by our literary art as a tomb : 
 
 "The hills, 
 
 Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun ; the vales 
 Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 
 The venerable woods ; rivers that move 
 In majesty; and the complaining brooks 
 That make the meadows green ; and, poured round all, 
 Old ocean s gray and melancholy waste, 
 Are but the solemn decorations all 
 Of the great tomb of man." 
 
 " Thanatopsis " is the swan-song of Puritanism. 
 Indeed, when New England Puritanism could 
 sing, as for the first time it did in the verse of 
 Bryant, the great change was accomplished. Out 
 of strength had come forth sweetness. I am not 
 decrying the Puritans. They were the stern build 
 ers of the modern world, the unconscious heralds 
 of wider liberty, and a kindlier future for mankind. 
 
 But 
 
 God works in a mysterious way 
 His wonders to perform," 
 
 and never more mysteriously than when he chose 
 as the pioneers of religious liberty in the New 
 World those who hung Quakers, and as the found 
 ers of civil equality those who permitted only mem 
 bers of their own Church to vote. 
 
WA SHIXG TON IR VINO 251 
 
 Irving was not a studious boy. He did not go 
 to college. He read some law at sixteen, but he 
 read much more literature, and sauntered in the 
 country about New York with his gun and fish 
 ing-rod. He sailed up the Hudson, and explored 
 for the first time the realm that was presently to 
 be his forever by the right of eminent domain of 
 the imagination. New York was a snug little city 
 in those days. At the beginning of the century 
 it was all below the present City Hall, and the 
 young fellow, who was born a cosmopolitan, great 
 ly enjoyed the charms of the modest society in 
 which the Dutch and the English circles were still 
 somewhat separated, and in which such literary 
 cultivation as there was was necessarily foreign. 
 But while he enjoyed he observed, and his literary 
 instinct began to stir. 
 
 Under the name of "Jonathan Oldstyle," the 
 young Irving printed in his brother s newspaper es 
 says in the style of the Spectator, discussing topics of 
 the town, and the modest theatre in John Street and 
 its chance actors, as if it had been Drury Lane with 
 Garrick and Mrs. Siddons. The little town kindly 
 smiled upon the lively efforts of the Presbyterian 
 deacon s son ; and its welcome of his small essays, 
 the provincial echo of the famous Queen Anne s 
 men in London, is a touching revelation of our 
 scant and spare native literary talent. The essays 
 
252 LITER AR Y AND SO CIAL ESS A YS 
 
 are forgotten now, but they were enough to bring 
 Charles Brockden Brown to find the young author, 
 and to tempt him, but in vain, to write for The 
 Literary Magazine and American Register, which 
 the novelist was just beginning in Philadelphia, 
 a pioneer of American literary magazines, which 
 Brown sustained for five years. 
 
 The youthful Addison of New Amsterdam was 
 a delicate lad, and when he came of age he sailed 
 for France and the Mediterranean, and passed two 
 years in travelling. Napoleon Bonaparte was em 
 peror, and at war with England, and the young 
 American, despite his passport, was everywhere 
 believed to be an Englishman. Travelling was 
 hard work in those days of war, but the cheery 
 youth proved the truth of the proverb that a light 
 heart and a whole pair of breeches go round the 
 world. At Messina, in Sicily, he saw Nelson s 
 fleet pass through the strait, looking for the 
 French ships ; and before the year ended the fa 
 mous battle of Trafalgar had been fought, and at 
 Greenwich in England Irving saw the body of 
 the great sailor lying in state, wrapped in his flag 
 of victory. At Rome he made the acquaintance 
 of Washington Allston, and almost resolved to be 
 a painter. In Paris he saw Madame de Stael, who 
 overwhelmed him with eager questions about his 
 remote and unknown country, and in London he 
 
was enchanted by Mrs. Siddons. Some years after 
 wards, when the Sketch Book had made him fa 
 mous, he was presented to Mrs. Siddons, and the 
 great actress said to him, in her deepest voice and 
 with her stateliest manner, "You ve made me 
 weep." The modest young author was utterly 
 abashed, and could say nothing. After the publi 
 cation of his Bracebridge Hall he was once more 
 presented to her, and again with gloomy grandeur 
 she said to him, "You ve made me weep again." 
 This time Irving received the solemn salute with 
 more composure, and doubtless retorted with a 
 compliment magnificent enough even for the sov 
 ereign Queen of Tragedy, who, as her niece Mrs. 
 Fanny Kemble said of her, never laid aside her 
 great manner, and at the dinner-table brandished 
 her fork and stabbed the potatoes. 
 
 Irving returned from this tour with established 
 health =a refined, agreeable, exceedingly handsome 
 and charming gentleman ; with a confirmed taste 
 for society, and a delightful store of interesting 
 recollection and anecdote. "With a group of culti 
 vated and lively friends of his own age he dined 
 and supped and enjoyed the town, and a little an 
 ecdote which he was fond of telling shows that 
 the good old times were not unlike the good new 
 times : One morning, after a gay dinner, Irving 
 met one of his fellow-revellers, who told him that 
 
254 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 on the way home, after draining the parting bump 
 er, he had fallen through a grating in the side 
 walk, which had been carelessly left open, into the 
 vault beneath. It was impossible to climb out, 
 and at first the solitude was rather dismal, he said; 
 but several of the other guests fell in, in the course 
 of the evening, and, on the whole, they had quite 
 a pleasant time of it. 
 
 In the midst of this frolicking life, and grow 
 ing out of it, Irving s real literary career began. 
 With his brother William, and his friend James K. 
 Paulding, who afterwards wrote the Dutchman^ 
 Fireside^ and was one of the recognized American 
 authors of fifty years ago, he issued every fort 
 night a periodical, which ran for twenty numbers, 
 and stopped in the midst of its success. It was 
 modelled upon the Spectator and Goldsmith s Citi 
 zen of the World) describing and criticising the 
 manners and morals of the town with extravagant 
 humor and pungency, and a rollicking indepen 
 dence which must have been both startling and 
 stimulating. 
 
 Perhaps, also, the town was secretly pleased to 
 discover that it was sufficiently important to be 
 worthy of such bright raillery and humorous re 
 proof. Salmagundi was only a Yiv el j j end esprit, 
 and Irving was never proud of it. " I know," 
 said Paulding, writing to him in later life, " you 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING 255 
 
 consider old Sal as a sort of saucy, flippant trol- 
 lope, belonging to nobody, and not worth father 
 ing." But, nevertheless, Irving s genius was try 
 ing its wings in it, and pluming itself for flight. 
 Salmagundi undoubtedly, to a later taste, is rather 
 crude and cumbrous fun, but it is interesting as 
 the immediate forerunner of our earliest work of 
 sustained humor, and of the wit of Holmes and 
 Lowell at a later date. When it was discontinued, 
 at the beginning of 1SOS, Irving and his brother 
 began the History of New York, which was orig 
 inally designed to be a parody of a particular 
 book. But the work was interrupted by the busi 
 ness difficulties of the brother, and at last Irving 
 resumed it alone, recast it entirely, and as he fin 
 ished it the engagement with Matilda Hoffman 
 ended with her death, and the long and secret ro 
 mance of his life began. 
 
 Knickerbocker s History was published just be 
 fore Christmas, 1809, and made a merry Christ 
 mas for our grandfathers and grandmothers eighty 
 years ago. The fun began before the book was 
 published. In October the curiosity of the town 
 of eighty thousand inhabitants was awakened by a 
 series of skilful paragraphs in the Evening Post. 
 The art of advertising was never more ingeniously 
 illustrated. Mr. Fulkerson himself would have 
 paid homage to the artist. One day the quid- 
 
256 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 mines found this paragraph in the paper. It was 
 
 headed, 
 
 "DISTRESSING. 
 
 "Left his lodgings, some time since, and has not since 
 been heard of, a small elderly gentleman, dressed in an old 
 black coat and cocked hat, by the name of Knickerbocker. 
 As there are some reasons for believing that he is not entirely 
 in his right mind, and, as great anxiety is entertained about 
 him, any information concerning him left either at the Co 
 lumbian Hotel, Mulberry Street, or at the office of this paper, 
 will be thankfully received. 
 
 " P. S. Printers of newspapers would be aiding the cause 
 of humanity by giving an insertion to the above. 
 
 " October 25th." 
 
 This was followed within a fortnight by another 
 ingenious lure : 
 
 " To the Editor of the Evening Post: 
 
 " SIR, Having read in your paper of the 26th October last 
 a paragraph respecting an old gentleman by the name of 
 Knickerbocker, who was missing from his lodgings, if it 
 would be any relief to his friends, or furnish them with any 
 clue to discover where he is, you may inform them that a 
 person answering the description was seen by the passengers 
 of the Albany stage early in the morning, about four or five 
 weeks ago, resting himself by the side of the road, a little 
 above Kingsbridge. He had in his hands a small bundle, tied 
 in a red bandana handkerchief. He appeared to be travel 
 ling northward, and was very much fatigued and exhausted. 
 
 " November 6. A TRAVELLER." 
 
 Ten days after came a letter signed by Seth Hari- 
 daside, landlord of the Independent Handaside : 
 
 "COLUMBIAN HOTEL, Mulberry Street. 
 
 "SiR, You have been kind enough to publish in your 
 paper a paragraph about Mr. Diedrich Knickerbocker, who 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING 25*7 
 
 was missing so strangely from his lodgings some time since. 
 Nothing satisfactory has been heard from the old gentleman 
 since, but a very curious written Book has been found in his 
 room in his own handwriting. Now, I wish you to notice 
 him, if he is still alive, that if he does not return and pay off 
 his bill for board and lodging, I shall have to dispose of his 
 Book to satisfy me for the same." 
 
 This is very simple jesting, but at that time it 
 was very effective in a town that enjoyed the high 
 spirits of Salmagundi. Moreover, the book which 
 was announced in this lively strain was as unprece 
 dented as the announcement. It was a very seri 
 ous time and country, and the work of the small 
 elderly gentleman who carried a little bundle tied 
 in a red bandana handkerchief appeared in the 
 midst of the sober and dry effusions of our Puri 
 tan literature, and of an eager and energetic life 
 still engrossed with the subjection of a continent 
 and the establishment of a new nation. It was 
 the work of a young man of twenty-six, who lived 
 fifty years afterwards with constantly increasing 
 fame, making many and admirable contributions 
 to literature. But nothing that followed sur 
 passed the joyous brilliancy and gay felicity of 
 his first book, which was at once acknowledged as 
 the wittiest book that America had produced. 
 
 Knickerbocker s History is a prolonged and elab 
 orate and audacious burlesque of the early an 
 nals of New Amsterdam. The undaunted Goth 
 
258 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 of the legend who plucked the Roman senator by 
 the beard was not a more ruthless iconoclast than 
 this son of New Amsterdam, who drew its grave 
 ancestors from venerable obscurity by flooding 
 them with the cheerful light of blameless fun. To 
 pass the vague and venerable traditions of the aus 
 tere and heroic founders of the city through the 
 alembic of a youth s hilarious creative humor, and 
 to turn them out in forms resistlessly grotesque, 
 but with their identity unimpaired, was a stroke 
 as daring as it was successful. But the skill and 
 power with which this is done can be best appre 
 ciated by those who are most familiar with the 
 history which the gleeful genius burlesques. 
 
 Irving follows the actual story closely, and the 
 characters that he develops faithfully, although 
 with rollicking caricature, are historical. Indeed, 
 the fidelity is so absolute that the fiction is welded 
 with the fact. The days of the Dutch ascendency 
 in New York are inextricably associated with this 
 ludicrous narrative. It is impossible not to think 
 of the forefathers of New Amsterdam as Knicker 
 bocker describes them. The Wouter Van Twil- 
 ler, the Wilhemus Kieft, the Peter Stuyvesant, 
 who are familiarly and popularly known, are not 
 themselves, but the figures drawn by Diedrich 
 Knickerbocker. In comical despair, the historian 
 Grahame, whose Colonial History is still among 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING 259 
 
 the best, says of Knickerbocker: "If Sancho Panza 
 bad been a real governor, misrepresented by the 
 wit of Cervantes, his future historian would have 
 found it no easy matter to bespeak a grave atten 
 tion to the annals of his administration." 
 
 The gayety of this blithe genius bursting in 
 upon our staid literature is irresistible. Irving s 
 temperament, his travels, his humor, gave him a 
 cosmopolitan point of view ; and his little native 
 city, with its local sense of importance, and its 
 droll aristocratic traditions springing from Dutch 
 burgomasters and traders, impressed his merry 
 genius like a complacent Cranford or Tarascon 
 taking itself with a provincial seriousness, which, 
 to his sympathetic fancy, was an exhaustless foun 
 tain of fun. Part of the fun to us, and perhaps 
 to Irving, was the indignation with which it was 
 received by the descendants of the Dutch families 
 in the city and State. The excited drawing-rooms 
 denounced it as scandalous satire and ridicule. 
 Even Irving s friend, Gulian Yerplanck, nine years 
 afterwards, deepening the comedy of his remark 
 by his evident unconsciousness of the drollery of 
 his gravity, grieved that the author s exuberance 
 of genuine humor should be wasted on a coarse 
 caricature. Irving, who was then in Europe, saw 
 Yerplanck s strictures just as he had written Hip 
 Van Winkle, and he wrote to a friend at home 
 
260 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 that he could not help laughing at Verplanck s out 
 burst of filial feeling for his ancestors, adding, in 
 the true Knickerbocker vein, " Eemember me 
 heartily to him, and tell him that I mean to grow 
 wiser and better and older every day, and to lay 
 the castigation he has given seriously to heart." 
 
 The success of Knickerbocker s History was im 
 mediate, and it was the first American work of lit 
 erature which arrested attention in Europe. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott, who was then the most famous 
 of English poets, and was about to publish the first 
 of the Waverley Novels, was delighted with a hu 
 mor which he thought recalled Swift s, and a sen 
 timent that seemed to him as tender as Sterne s. 
 He wrote a generous acknowledgment to the 
 American friend who had sent him the book, and 
 in later years he welcomed Diedrich Knicker 
 bocker at Abbotsford, and the American has given 
 a charming and vivid picture of Scott s home and 
 its master. 
 
 But the success of his book did not at once de 
 termine Irving s choice of a career. He was still 
 a gilded youth who enjoyed the gay idleness of 
 society, and who found in writing only another 
 and pleasant recreation. He had been bred in the 
 conservative tradition which looked upon liveli 
 hood by literature as the deliberate choice of Grub 
 Street, and the wretchedness of Goldsmith as the 
 
WASHING TO.V IRVING 261 
 
 necessary and natural fate of authors; but it is 
 droll that, although he recoiled from the uncer 
 tainty of support by literary labor, he was willing 
 to try the very doubtful chances of office-holding 
 as a means of securing leisure for literary pursuits. 
 He offered himself as a candidate for appointment 
 as the clerk of a court in the city. By tradition and 
 sympathy he was a Federalist, but he had taken no 
 active part in politics, and his chance was slight. 
 He went to Albany, however, and in a lively let 
 ter he paints a familiar picture of the crowd of 
 office-hunters who, he says, " like a cloud of lo 
 custs, have descended upon the city to devour 
 every plant and herb and every green thing." He 
 was sick with a cold, and stifled in rooms heated by 
 stoves, and was utterly disgusted, as he says, " by 
 the servility and duplicity and rascality I have wit 
 nessed among the swarms of scrub politicians who 
 crawl about the great metropolis of our State like 
 so many vermin about the head of the body poli 
 tic." 
 
 Again the good old times were apparently very 
 much like the good new times. Thirty-nine years 
 after Irving s discomfiture in trying to get a pub 
 lic office, Hawthorne was turned out of one that he 
 held, and wrote to a friend : " It seems to me that 
 an inoffensive man of letters, having obtained a 
 pitiful little office on no other plea than his pitiful 
 
262 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 little literature, ought not to be left at the mercy of 
 these thick-skulled and no-hearted ruffians." The 
 language is strong, but the epithets are singularly 
 well-chosen. The distinctive qualities of the ring 
 leaders, whether of high or low degree, in the 
 degradation of public trusts into private and party 
 spoils, have never been more accurately or effec 
 tively described than by the words" thick-skulled" 
 and " no-hearted." 
 
 The story of the sturdy beggar who asked Gen 
 eral Jackson to give him the mission to France, 
 and finally carne down to a request for an old coat, 
 well illustrates a system which regards public office 
 not as a public trust, but as private alms. The ser 
 vice of the State, whether military or civil, is an 
 object of high and generous ambition, because it 
 involves the leadership of men. But if Irving and 
 Hawthorne thought that what is called office-seek 
 ing is disgusting, it was not because the public ser 
 vice is not noble and dignified, but because we 
 choose to allow it to be so often dependent, not 
 upon fitness and character, but upon the personal 
 or political favor of the " thick-skulled " and " no- 
 hearted." 
 
 But the problem of a career was soon solved. 
 In the year 1810 Irving formed a business con 
 nection with two of his brothers, and the next five 
 years were passed in New York, Philadelphia, and 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING 263 
 
 "Washington, forming various literary plans, look 
 ing out for his business interests, sparkling in 
 society ; and when war with England began, serv 
 ing upon the governor s military staff as Colonel 
 Washington Irving. In the spring of 1815 he sailed 
 to roam again through Europe, but the illness of 
 his brother compelled him to remain in England 
 in charge of the business. " London," as a shrewd 
 and celebrated American recently said, " was then 
 as it is now, the social centre of the world." Irving 
 saw famous men and women, and his charming 
 sweetness and humor opened all doors and hearts. 
 But the business fell into distress, then into disas 
 ter, and in the beginning of 1818 the house failed. 
 He was now thrown wholly upon his literary re 
 sources, which did not fail, and in the spring of 
 1819, when he was thirty-six years old, the first 
 number of the Sketch Book was issued in New 
 York. 
 
 The merry, exuberant, satirical Diedrich Knick 
 erbocker was transformed into the genial, urbane, 
 and tender-hearted Geoffrey Crayon. Our fathers 
 and grandfathers knew him well. They had been, 
 bred upon Addison and Goldsmith, the essayists 
 and the poets of the eighteenth century, and in 
 Geoffrey Crayon they recognized and welcomed 
 another member of that delightful literary soci 
 ety. He was all the more wejcome that be was 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
264 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 an American one of themselves. The bland and 
 courteous Geoffrey, indeed, had few rivals among 
 his countrymen. In our little American world 
 of letters at that time he came and conquered. 
 Bryant s " Thanatopsis," had been published only 
 two years before; Halleck s and Drake s lively 
 but strictly local " Croakers " were still appear 
 ing, and Edward Everett had just hailed Percival s 
 first volume as authorizing great expectations. 
 
 But prophecy is always dangerous. The year 
 before, Sydney Smith had said, in the Edinburgh 
 JReview, "Literature the Americans have none 
 no native literature we mean. It is all imported. 
 They had a Franklin, indeed, and may afford to 
 live half a century on his fame. There is, or was, 
 a Mr. Dwight, who wrote some poems, and his 
 baptismal name was Timothy. There is also a 
 small account of Virginia by Jefferson, and an 
 epic poem by Mr. Joel Barlow, and some pieces 
 of pleasantry by Mr. Irving. But why should 
 Americans write books, when a six weeks pas 
 sage brings them, in their own tongue, our sense, 
 science, and genius, on bales and hogsheads ? 
 Prairies, steamboats, grist-mills are their natural 
 objects for centuries to come. Then, when they 
 have got to the Pacific Ocean, epic poems, plays, 
 pleasures of memory, and all the elegant gratifica 
 tions of an ancient people who have tamed the 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING 265 
 
 wild earth, and sat down to amuse themselves. 
 This is the natural march of human affairs." 
 As the sarcastic Yorkshire canon, sitting on the 
 Edinburgh Olympus, wiped his pen, the /Sketch 
 Book was published. The good canon was right 
 as to our small literary product, but even an Ed 
 inburgh Review could not wisely play the prophet. 
 This Mr. Everett also discovered, for his "great 
 expectations" of Percival were not fulfilled. A 
 desponding student of our poetry recently sighs 
 that Percival is a forgotten poet, and then, seizing 
 a promiscuous assortment of names, exclaims that 
 Charles Sprague, William "Wirt, Washington Irv 
 ing, and Jack Downing may be referred to as 
 forgotten authors. But this is the luxury of woe. 
 Why should not Percival be a forgotten poet? 
 That is to say, what is there in the verse of Per 
 cival that should command interest and attention 
 to-day ? He was a remarkably accomplished man 
 and a most excellent gentleman, and his name is 
 very familiar in the reading - books of the time 
 when grandfathers of to-day were going to school. 
 But he was a noted poet not because he took rank 
 with his contemporaries with Byron and Scott 
 and Keats and Shelley and Coleridge and Words 
 worth but because there were very few Ameri 
 cans who wrote verses, and our fathers patrioti 
 cally stood by them. 
 
266 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 Yet because the note of a singer of another day 
 is not heard by us, it does not follow that he did 
 not touch the heart of his time. Grenville Mel- 
 len is a forgotten poet also, and Rufus Dawes and 
 John Neal and James Gr. Eastburn. If the gentle 
 reader will turn to the pages of Kettell, or any 
 early American anthology, he will seem to him 
 self to be walking among tombs. Upon each page 
 might be suitably inscribed, " Sacred to the mem 
 ory " of almost every one of the singers. But can 
 we say with honest reproach, " forgotten poets " ? 
 The loiterer in the wood hears the song of the 
 wood-thrush, but is the hermit-bird wronged, or is 
 his song less sweet, because it is not echoed round 
 the world? Is Fame to be held responsible for 
 not retaining the name of every minstrel who loi 
 ters by and touches his harp lightly, and sings a 
 sweet song as he passes on ? Is it a hard fate to 
 give pleasure to those who listen because those out 
 of hearing do not applaud ? 
 
 Many an author may have a tone and a touch 
 which please the ear and taste of his own day, and 
 which, as characteristic of a time, may be only cu 
 rious to a later taste, like the costumes and dances 
 of our great-grandmothers. But young America, 
 sauntering at the club and at Newport, would not 
 willingly wear the boots of Beau Nash, nor even 
 the cloak of Beau Brummel. The law which pro- 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING 267 
 
 vides that nothing shall be lost is equally observa 
 ble in the realm of literary fame. Is anything of 
 literature lost that deserves longer remembrance? 
 or, more properly, can it be lost ? A fair answer 
 to the question can be found in the reply to an 
 other, whether delving in Kettell, or in any other 
 anthology, reveals treasures dropped by Fame as 
 precious as those she carries. 
 
 There are two wa} r s in which authors survive : 
 one by the constant reading of his works, the 
 other by his name. Is Milton a forgotten au 
 thor ? But how much is he read, compared with 
 the contemporary singers ? Is Plato forgotten ? 
 Yet how many know him except by name ? Irving 
 thus far holds both. Time, like a thrifty husband 
 man, winnows its wheat, blowing away much 
 chaff, but the golden grain remains. This is true 
 not only of the whole multitude of authors, but of 
 the works of each author. How many of them 
 really survive in the anthology only? Astoria 
 and Captain Bonnemlle and Mahomet and other 
 books of Irving will disappear; but Knicker 
 bocker and Rip Van Winkle still buffet the re 
 lentless wave of oblivion, and their buoyancy is 
 undiminished. 
 
 As for Sprague a mild, genial, charming gen 
 tleman, who carried his simple freshness of nature 
 and of manner to the end, and about whose vener- 
 
268 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 able head in State Street always shone the faint 
 halo of early poetic renown his literary talent 
 was essentially for a day, not for all time. But 
 what then ? On Christmas Eve we hear the pass 
 ing music in the street that supplies for us the 
 song of the waits. Distant and melodious, it pen 
 sively recalls the days and the faces and the voices 
 that are no more. But the singers are not the 
 same waits that we heard long ago ; still less are 
 they those that the youth of a century ago heard 
 with the same musing melancholy. But the 
 substance of the song, and the emotion which 
 it awakens, and the tender pathos of association 
 these are all the same. Sprague was a wait of 
 yesterday, of last year, of fifty years ago. Others 
 sing in the street the song that he sang, and, sing 
 ing, they pass on, and the sweet strain grows 
 fainter, softer, and fainter and fainter, and the 
 echoes answer, "Dying, dying, dying," and it is 
 gone. 
 
 See how tenderly Mr. Stedman speaks of the 
 troubadours who are singing for us now, whose 
 names are familiar, who trill and twitter in the 
 magazines, and in tasteful and delicate volumes, 
 which seem to tempt the stream of time to suf 
 fer such light and graceful barks to slip along 
 unnoted to future ages. But the kindly critic s 
 tone forecasts the fate of the sparkling ventures. 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING 269 
 
 Moore tells us of the Indian maids upon the banks 
 of the Ganges who light a tiny taper, and, on a 
 frail little chip, set it afloat upon the river. It 
 twinkles and dwindles, and flashes and expires. 
 Mr. Stedman watches the minor poets trimming 
 their tapers and carefully launching their chips 
 upon the brimming river. " Pleasant journey," 
 he cries cheerily from the shore, as if he were 
 speaking to hearty Captain Cook going up the 
 side of his great ship, and shaking out his mighty 
 canvas to circumnavigate the globe. " Pleasant 
 journey," cries the cheery critic ; but there is a 
 wistful something in his tone that betrays a con 
 sciousness of the swift extinction of the pretty 
 perfumed flickering flame. 
 
 So scant, indeed, was the blossom of our liter 
 ature when the Sketch Book was published, that 
 even twenty years later, when Emerson described 
 the college Commencement Day as the only 
 tribute of a country too busy to give to letters 
 any more, Geoffrey Crayon, with the exception 
 of Cooper, had really no American competitors. 
 Long afterwards I met Mr. Irving one morning at 
 the office of Mr. Putnam, his publisher, and in his 
 cordial way, with a twinkle in his eye, and in his 
 pleasant husky voice, he said, " You young liter 
 ary fellows to-day have a harder time than we old 
 fellows had. You trip over each other s heels; 
 
270 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 there are so many of you. We had it all our own 
 way. But the account is square, for you can make 
 as much by a lecture as we made by a book." 
 Then, laughing slyly, he added, " A pretty figure 
 I should make lecturing in this voice." Indeed, 
 his modesty forbade him to risk that voice in pub 
 lic addresses. 
 
 Irving, I think, made but one speech. It was 
 at the dinner given to him upon his return from 
 Europe in 1832, after his absence of seventeen 
 years. Like other distinguished Americans who 
 have felt the fascination of the old home of their 
 ancestors, and who have not thought that a nar 
 row heart and a barbaric disdain of everything 
 foreign attested the truest patriotism, he was sus 
 pected of some alienation from his country. His 
 speech was full of emotion, and his protestation of 
 love for his native land was received with bound 
 less acclamation. But he could not overcome his 
 aversion to speech-making. When Dickens came, 
 and the great dinner was given to him in New 
 York, Irving was predestined to preside. No 
 body else could be even mentioned. He was him 
 self conscious of it, and was filled with melancholy 
 forebodings. Professor Felton, of Harvard, com 
 pared Irving s haunting terror and dismay at the 
 prospect of this speech to that of Mr. Pickwick at 
 the prospect of leading that dreadful horse all day. 
 
tJHIVEH 
 
 WASHINGTON IRVING^ 271 
 
 
 Poor Irving went about muttering, " I shall cer 
 tainly break down. I know I shall break down." 
 At last the day, the hour, and the very moment 
 itself arrived, and he rose to propose the health of 
 Dickens. He began pleasantly and smoothly in 
 two or three sentences, then hesitated, stammered, 
 smiled, and stopped ; tried in vain to begin again, 
 then gracefully gave it up, announced the toast 
 " Charles Dickens, the guest of the nation " then 
 sank into his chair amid immense applause, whis 
 pering to his neighbor, " There, I told you I should 
 break down, and I ve done it." 
 
 When Thackeray came, Irving consented to pre 
 side at a dinner if speeches were absolutely forbid 
 den. The condition was faithfully observed, but 
 it was the most extraordinary instance of Ameri 
 can self-command on record. Whenever two or 
 three Americans are gathered together, somebody 
 must make a speech ; and no wonder, because 
 somebody always speaks so well. The custom is 
 now so confirmed that it is foolish and useless to 
 oppose it. 
 
 I remember a few years since that a dinner was 
 given to a famous American artist long resident 
 abroad, and, as the condition of the attendance of 
 a distinguished guest whose presence was greatly 
 desired, the same agreement was made that Irving 
 required at the Thackeray dinner. It was a com- 
 
272 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 pany of exceedingly clever and brilliant men, but 
 the gayety of the feast was extinguished by the 
 general consciousness that the situation was abnor 
 mal. It was a fruit without flavor, a flower with 
 out fragrance, a symphony without melody, a din 
 ner without speeches. But the dinner of which I 
 speak, when the condition of Irving s presence was 
 that there should be no speeches, was the great ex 
 ception. It was the only dinner of the kind that 
 I have ever known. But Irving s cheery anec 
 dote and gayety, the songs and banter of the com 
 pany, the happy chat and sparkling wit, took the 
 place of eloquence, and I recall no dinner more de 
 lightful. 
 
 However scant was our literature when the 
 Sketch Book appeared, it is a mistake to suppose 
 that Irving owes his success to English admiration. 
 That was, undoubtedly, very agreeable to him and 
 to his countrymen. But it is well to correct a mis 
 apprehension which is still cherished. Many years 
 ago an English critic said that Irving was much more 
 relished and admired in England than in his own 
 country, and added : " It is only recently critics on 
 the lookout for a literature have elevated him to 
 his proper and almost more than his proper place. 
 This docility to English guidance in the case of 
 their best, or almost their best, prose writer, may 
 perhaps be followed by a similar docility in the 
 
WASHINGTON IRVIXG 2T3 
 
 case of their best, or almost their best, poet, Poe, 
 whom also England had preceded the United 
 States in recognizing." This comical patron is all 
 the more amusing from his comparative estimate 
 of Poe. 
 
 If it were true that Irving s countrymen had 
 not recognized and honored him from the first, it 
 might be suspected that it was because they were 
 descendants of the people who showed little con 
 temporaneous appreciation of Shakespeare. But 
 it is certainly creditable to the literary England 
 which was busy idolizing Scott and Byron, that 
 it recognized also the charming genius of Irving, 
 and that Leslie, the painter, could truly write of 
 him, " Geoffrey Crayon is the most fashionable 
 fellow of the day." 
 
 But while the English appreciation of Irving is 
 very creditable to England, English conceit must 
 not go so far as to suppose that it was that apprecia 
 tion which commended him to his own country 
 men. At the time when Sydney Smith wrote the 
 article from which we have quoted there was ap 
 parently an almost literary sterility in this country, 
 and the professional critics of the critical journals 
 were, as Professor Lounsbury says in his admi 
 rable Life of Cooper, undoubtedly greatly affected 
 by English opinion. But there was an American 
 reading public independent of the few literary 
 
 18 
 
274 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 periodicals, as was shown when Cooper s Spy was 
 published at the end of 1821, the year in which 
 Bryant s first volume of poems and Dana s Idle Man 
 appeared. Cooper had published his Precaution 
 in 1819, a book which Professor Lounsbury is one 
 of the very few men who are known to have read. 
 He was an unknown author. But the Spy was in 
 stantly successful. Some of the timid English jour 
 nals awaited the English opinion, for Murray had 
 declined, upon Gifford s advice, to publish the 
 book. But a publisher was found, and England and 
 Europe followed America in their approval. Coop 
 er always said, and truly, that it was to his country 
 men alone that he owed his first success, and his 
 biographer concedes that the success of the Spy 
 was determined before the opinion of Europe was 
 known. 
 
 Nearly three years before, in May, 1819, the first 
 number of Irving s Sketch Book was published. 
 He sent the manuscript to his brother, who had re 
 gretted Irving s refusal of a government place in 
 the Navy Board, and to whom he wrote, "My tal 
 ents are merely literary, and all my habits of think 
 ing, reading, etc., have been in a different direction 
 from that required for the active politician. . . . 
 In fact, I consider myself at present as making a 
 literary experiment, in the course of which I only 
 care to be kept in bread and cheese. Should it 
 
WASHING TON IR VINO 275 
 
 not succeed should my writings not acquire criti 
 cal applause I am content to throw up the pen, 
 and that to any commonplace employment. But 
 if they should succeed, it would repay me for a 
 world of care and privation to be placed among 
 the established authors of my country, and to win 
 the affection of my countrymen." 
 
 The first number of the Sketch Book was pub 
 lished simultaneously in New York, Boston, Phil 
 adelphia, and Baltimore. Its success was imme 
 diate. In September, 1819, Irving wrote : " The 
 manner in which the work has been received, and 
 the eulogiums that have been passed upon it in 
 the American papers and periodical works, have 
 quite overwhelmed me. ... I feel almost appalled 
 by such success." The echo of the acclamation 
 reached England. Murray at first declined to pub 
 lish it, as he had at first declined Cooper s Spy. 
 But when England ascertained that the American 
 judgment was correct, and that it was a popular 
 work, Murray was willing to publish it. 
 
 The delightful genius which his country had 
 recognized with joy it never ceased proudly and 
 tenderly to honor. When, in 1832, he returned 
 to his native land, as his latest biographer, Mr. 
 "Warner, records, "America greeted her most fa 
 mous literary man with a spontaneous outburst of 
 love and admiration." It was in his own country 
 
276 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 that lie had published his works. It was his own 
 countrymen whose applause apprised England of 
 the charm of the new author; and it is a humor 
 ous mentor who now teaches us that it was our 
 happy docility to English guidance which enabled 
 us to recognize and honor him. 
 
 Was it docility to the same beneficent guidance 
 which enabled us to perceive the genius of Car- 
 ]yle, whose works we first collected, and taught 
 England to read and admire? Did it enable us, 
 also, to inform England that in Robert Browning 
 she had another poet? Was it the same docility 
 which enabled us to reveal to England one of her 
 most philosophic observers in Herbert Spencer, 
 and to offer to Darwin his most appreciative cor 
 respondents and interpreters in Chauncey Wright, 
 John Fiske, and Professors Gray and Wyman ? 
 There are many offences to be scored against us, 
 but failure to know our own literary genius is riot 
 one of them. 
 
 Indeed, there is not one great literary fame in 
 America that was not first recognized here. Not 
 to one of them has docility to English literary 
 opinion conducted us, as is often believed. Bry 
 ant and Cooper and Irving, Bancroft and Pres- 
 cott and Motley, Emerson and Channing, Long 
 fellow, Hawthorne, Lowell, Whittier, and Holmes 
 were authors whom we were content to admire 
 
WASHINGTON IR YING 377 
 
 and love without knowing or asking whether Eng 
 land had heard of them, or what she thought of 
 them. The "greatness" of Poe England may 
 have preceded us in recognizing. That is an as 
 sertion which we are not disposed to dispute. 
 But Walter Scott was not more immediately pop 
 ular and beloved in England than was Washington 
 Irving in America; and American guidance led 
 England to Scott quite as much as English guid 
 ance drew America to Irving. 
 
 The first number of the Sketch Book contained 
 the tale of Rip Van Winkle, one of the most 
 charming and suggestive of legends, whose hero 
 is an exceedingly pathetic creation. It is, indeed, 
 a mere sketch, a hint, a suggestion ; but the imag-j 
 ination readily completes it. It is the more rej 
 markable and interesting because, although the 
 first American literary creation, it is not in the 
 least characteristic of American life, but, on the 
 contrary, is a quiet and delicate satire upon it. 
 The kindly vagabond asserts the charm of loiter 
 ing idleness in the sweet leisure of woods and 
 fields against the characteristic American excite-^ 
 ment of the overflowing crowd and crushing com 
 petition of the city, its tremendous energy and 
 incessant devotion to money-getting. ( 
 
 It is not necessary to defend poor Rip, or to 
 justify the morality of his example. It is the im- 
 
278 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 agination that interprets him ; and how soothing 
 to those who give their lives to the furious accu 
 mulation of the means of living to behold that 
 figure stretched by the brook, or finding nuts with 
 the children, or sauntering homeward at sunset ! 
 Later figures of our literature allure us Hester 
 Prynne, wrapped in her cloak of Versus, the Scar 
 let Letter, Hosea Biglow, Evangeline, Uncle 
 Tom, and Topsy but the charm of this figure is 
 unfading. The new writers introduce us to their 
 worlds, and with pleasure we make the acquaint 
 ance of new friends. The new standards of an 
 other literary spirit are raised, a fresh literary im 
 pulse surrounds us ; but it is not thunder that we 
 hear in the Kaatskills on a still summer afternoon 
 it is the distant game of Hen d rick Hudson and 
 his men ; and on the shore of our river, rattling 
 and roaring with the frenzied haste and endless ac 
 tivity of prosperous industry, still Kip Yan Win-| 
 kle lounges idly by, an unwasted figure of the im-i 
 agination, the constant and unconscious satirist of U 
 American life. 
 
 He seems to me peculiarly congenial with the 
 temperament of Irving. He, too, was essentially 
 a loiterer. He had the same freshness of sympa 
 thy, the same gentleness of nature, the same taste 
 for leisure and repose. His genius was reminis 
 cent, and, as with all humorists, its climate was 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING 279 
 
 that of April. The sun and the shower chased 
 each other. Irving s intellectual habit was emo 
 tional rather than thoughtful. In politics and 
 public affairs he took no part, although office was 
 often urged upon him, as when the friends of 
 General Jackson wished him to go as representa 
 tive to Congress, or President Yan Buren offered 
 him the secretaryship of the navy, or Tammany 
 Hall, in ]^ew York, unanimously and vocifer 
 ously nominated him for mayor, an incident in 
 the later annals of the city which transcends the 
 most humorous touch in Knickerbockers History. 
 He was appointed secretary of legation in Eng 
 land in 1829, and in 1842, when Daniel Webster 
 was secretary of state, minister to Spain. 
 
 But what we call practical politics was always 
 distasteful to him. The spirit which I once heard 
 laugh at a young man new in politics because he 
 treated "the boys" with his own good cigars in 
 stead of buying bad ones at the saloon the spirit 
 which I once heard assure a man of public ability 
 and fitness that he could never reach political of 
 fice unless he pushed himself, and paid agents to 
 buy votes, because no man could expect an office 
 to be handed to him. on a gold plate the spirit 
 which, to my knowledge, displayed a handful of 
 bank-notes in the anteroom of a legislature, and 
 
 O ? 
 
 exclaimed, "That s what makes the laws!" this 
 
280 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 was a spirit which, like other honorable men and 
 patriotic Americans, Irving despised. 
 
 He was a gentleman of manly feeling and of 
 moral refinement, who had had glimpses of what 
 is called "the inside" of politics; and, as he be 
 lieved these qualities would make participation in 
 politics uncomfortable, he abstained. To those of 
 us who are wiser than he, who know that simple 
 honesty and public spirit and self-respect and con 
 tempt of sneaking and fawning and bribery and 
 crawling are the conditions of political prefer 
 ment, Irving, in not perceiving this, must natu 
 rally seem to be a queer, wrong-headed, and rather 
 super-celestial American, who had lived too much 
 in the heated atmosphere of European aristocra 
 cies and altogether too little in the pure and brac 
 ing air of American ward politics and caucuses and 
 conventions. To use an old New York phrase, Irv 
 ing preferred to stroll and fish and chat with Rip 
 Yan Winkle rather than to "run wid der machine." 
 
 The Sketch Book made Irving famous, and with 
 its predecessor, Knickerbocker, and its successor, 
 Bracebridge Hall, disclosed the essential quality 
 of his genius. But all these books performed an 
 other and greater service than that of winning the 
 world to read an American book: this was the 
 restoration of a kindlier feeling between the two 
 countries which, by all ties, should be the two 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING 281 
 
 most friendly countries on the globe. The books 
 were written when onr old bitterness of feeling 
 against England had been renewed by the later 
 war. In the thirty years since the Revolution 
 ended we had patriotically fostered the quarrel 
 with John Bull. Our domestic politics had turned 
 largely upon that feeling, and the game of French 
 and English was played almost as fiercely upon our 
 side of the ocean as upon their own. 
 
 The great epoch of our extraordinary material 
 development and prosperity had not opened, and, 
 even had John Bull been friendlier than he was, 
 it would have been the very flattery of falsehood 
 had he complimented our literature, our science, 
 our art. Sydney Smith s question, " Who reads 
 an American book ?" was contemptuous and exas 
 perating. But here was an American who wrote 
 books which John Bull was delighted to read, and 
 was compelled to confess that they depicted the 
 most characteristic and attractive aspects of his 
 own life with more delicate grace than that of 
 any living Englishman. 
 
 It was Irving who recalled the old English 
 Christmas. It was his cordial and picturesque 
 description of the great holiday of Christendom 
 which preceded and stimulated Dickens s Christ 
 mas Carols and Thackeray s Holiday Tales. It 
 was the genial spirit of Christmas, native to his 
 
282 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 gentle heart and his happy temperament, which 
 made Irving, as Thackeray called him, a peace 
 maker between the mother-country and her proud 
 and sensitive offspring of the West. He showed 
 John Bull that England is ours as well as his. 
 
 " Old fellow," he said, "you cannot help } T our- 
 self. It is the same blood that flows in our veins, 
 the same language that we speak, the same tradi 
 tions that we cherish. If you love liberty, so do 
 we ; if you will see fair play, so will we. It is 
 natural to you, so it is to us. We cannot escape 
 our blood. Shakespeare is not your poet more 
 than ours. If your ancestors danced round the 
 Maypole, so did our ancestors in your ancestors 
 shoes. If Old England cherished Christmas and 
 New England did not, Bradford and Endicott and 
 Cotton were Englishmen, not Americans. If old 
 English life and customs and traditions are dear 
 to you, listen to my story, and judge whether they 
 are less dear to us." Then, with a merry smile, 
 the voting stranger holds out his hand to John 
 
 t/ O 
 
 Bull, and exclaims, " Behold, here is my arm ! I 
 bare it before your eyes, and here it is it is the 
 strawberry-mark ; come to my bosom, I am your 
 long-lost brother." 
 
 It was an incalculable service which Irving ren 
 dered in renewing a common feeling between 
 England and America. It was involuntary, be- 
 
WASHINGTON IRVISO 283 
 
 cause in writing he had no such purpose. lie was 
 only following the bent of his own taste, and his 
 works reflected only his individual sympathies. 
 But it was this very fact it was the English in 
 stinct in the American, the appreciation native in 
 the heart of the Western stranger of the true po 
 etic charm of England which was the spell of the 
 magician. Irving had the same imaginative en 
 thusiasm for traditional and poetic England that 
 Burke had for political England. Indeed, it is 
 an England which never actually existed except 
 in the English and American imagination. The 
 coarse, mercenary, material England which Lecky 
 photographs in his history of the eighteenth cen 
 tury was the same England in which Burke lived, 
 and which his glowing imagination exalted into 
 
 Z5 fj O 
 
 the magnificent image of constitutional liberty be 
 fore which he bowed his great head. So with the 
 old England that Irving drew. He saw with po 
 etic fancy a rural Arcadia, and reproduced the 
 vision with airy grace and called it England. Ko 
 wonder that John Bull was delighted with an ar 
 tist who could paint so fascinating a picture, and 
 write under it John Bull s portrait. 
 
 To change a word in Marvell s noble lines, when 
 Irving was in England 
 
 " He nothing common saw or mean 
 Upon that memorable scene." 
 
284 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 Only an American could have seen England as he 
 described it, and invested it with an enchantment 
 which the mass of Englishmen had neither sus 
 pected nor perceived. Irving s instinct was that 
 of Hawthorne afterwards, who called England 
 " Our Old Home." There is a foolish American 
 habit growing patriotically out of our old conten 
 tions with England, and politically out of our de 
 sire to conciliate the Irish vote in this country, of 
 branding as servile and un-American the natural 
 susceptibility of people of English descent, but na 
 tives of another land, to the charm of their ances 
 tral country. But the American is greatly to be 
 pitied who thinks to prove the purity of his patri 
 otism by flouting the land in which he has a legiti 
 mate right, the land of Alfred and Runnymede, 
 of Chaucer and Shakespeare and Milton, of Hamp- 
 den and Cromwell, of Newton and Bunyan, of Som- 
 ers and Chatham and Edmund Burke, the cradle 
 of constitutional liberty and parliamentary govern 
 ment. If the great body of the literature of our lan 
 guage in which we delight, if the sources of our law 
 and politics, if the great exploits of contemporary 
 scholarship and science, are largely beyond our boun 
 daries, yet are legitimately ours as well as all that 
 we have ourselves achieved, why should we spurn 
 any of our just and hereditary share in the great 
 English traditions of civilization and freedom? 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING 285 
 
 Irving returned to America in 1832, and here 
 be afterwards remained, except during bis absence 
 as minister in Spain. In an earlier visit to that 
 country be bad felt the spell of its romantic his 
 tory, and had written the Life of Columbus, the 
 Conquest of Granada, and the Chronicles of the 
 Alhambra. During all his later years be was 
 busy with bis pen, and, while the modest author 
 bad risen to the chief place in American litera 
 ture, its later constellation was rising into the 
 heavens. 
 
 But his intrinsic modesty never disappeared 
 either from the works or the character of the be 
 nign writer. In the height of his renown there 
 was no kind of presumption or conceit in his sim 
 ple and generous breast. Some time after his re 
 turn from his long absence in Europe, and before 
 Putnam became bis publisher, Irving found some 
 disinclination upon the part of publishers to issue 
 new editions of his books, and be expressed, with 
 entire good humor, the belief that he had bad his 
 day. 
 
 It is doubtless true, as Blackwood remarked, with 
 what we may call Blackwood courtesy, when Mr. 
 Lowell was American minister in England, that 
 Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Addison, Pope, and 
 so many more " will not be replaced by Mr. Wash 
 ington Irving and Mr. Lowell." But it is equally 
 
286 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 true that, since Swift, Blackwood cannot find in 
 English literature political satire more trenchant, 
 humorous, forcible, and effective than the Biglow 
 Papers, and nothing in Swift more original. It 
 is said that it is ludicrous to compare the mild hu 
 mor of Rip Van Winkle with the " robustious fun 
 of Swift." But this is a curious " derangement of 
 epitaphs." Swift has wit, and satiric power, and 
 burning invective, and ribaldry, and caustic, scorn 
 ful humor ; but fun, in any just sense, he has not. 
 He is too fierce to be funny. The tender and im 
 aginative play of Rip Yan Winkle are wholly be 
 yond the reach of Swift. 
 
 Irving and other American writers are not the 
 rivals of their British associates in the literature of 
 the English language they are worthy comrades. 
 Wordsworth and Byron are not Shakespeare and 
 Milton, but they are nevertheless Wordsworth and 
 Byron, and their place is secure. So the brows 
 of Irving and Cooper, of Bryant and Longfellow, 
 and of Lowell, of Emerson and Hawthorne do not 
 crave the laurels of any other master. The per 
 turbed spirit of Blackwood may rest in the con 
 fident assurance that no generous and intelligent 
 student of our literature admires Gibbon less be 
 cause he enjoys Macaulay, or depreciates Bacon be 
 cause he delights in Emerson, or denies the sting 
 of Gulliver because he feels the light touch of 
 
WASHING Toy LRVLNG 287 
 
 Knickerbocker. It is with good fame as with true 
 love: 
 
 "True love in this differs from gold and clay, 
 That to divide is not to take away." 
 
 In the year that Irving published the Sketch 
 Book, Cooper published his first novel, and two 
 years before Bryant s Thanatopsis had been pub 
 lished. When, forty years afterwards, in the last 
 year of his life, the last volume of the Life of 
 Washington was issued, Irving and Bryant and 
 Cooper were no longer the solitary chiefs of our 
 literature. An illustrious company had received 
 the torch unextinguished from their hands 
 Whittier, Hawthorne, Emerson, Longfellow, 
 Holmes, Lowell, Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, 
 Parkman, Mrs. Stowe, had all taken their places, 
 yet all gladly and proudly acknowledged Irving 
 as the patriarch. It is our happy fortune that 
 these names, of which we are all proud, are not 
 those of men of letters only, but of typical Amer 
 ican citizens. The old traditions of the literary \ 
 life, the mad roystering, the dissipation, Grub 
 Street, the sponging-house, the bailiff, the garret, 
 and the jail, genius that fawns for place and flat 
 ters for hire, the golden talent wrapped in a nap 
 kin, and often a dirty and ragged napkin, have 
 vanished in our American annals of letters. Pure, 
 
288 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 upright, faithful, industrious, honorable, and hon 
 ored, there is scarcely one American author of em- 
 Jnence who may not be counted as a good and 
 useful citizen of the Eepublic of the Union, and a 
 shining light of the Republic of Letters. 
 
 Of Washington Irving, as of so many of this no 
 ble company, it is especially true that the author 
 was the man. The healthy fun and merry satire 
 of Diedrich Knickerbocker, the sweet humor and 
 quick sympathy and simple pathos of Geoffrey 
 Crayon, were those of the modest master of Sun- 
 ^ nyside. Every literary man of Irving s time, 
 whether old or young, had nothing but affection 
 ate praise of his artless urbanity and exhaustless 
 good-nature. These qualities are delightfully re 
 flected in Thackeray s stories of him in the Round 
 about Papers upon Irving and Macaulay, " the 
 Goldsmith and the Gibbon of our time." 
 
 "He came to one of my lectures in Washing- 
 tori," Thackeray says, "and the retiring President, 
 Mr. Fill more, and his successor, Mr. Pierce, were 
 present. Two kings of Brentford smelling at one 
 rose, said Irving, with his good-natured smile. 
 In his little bower of a home at Sunnyside he was 
 always accessible. One English newspaper man 
 came and introduced himself, and partook of lunch 
 eon with the f amity, and, while the host fell into a 
 little doze, as was his habit, the wary Englishman 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING 289 
 
 took a swift inventory of everything in the house, 
 and served up the description to the British pub 
 lic, including the nap of his entertainer. At an 
 other time, Irving said, Two persons came to me, 
 and one held me in conversation while the other 
 miscreant took my portrait. " Thackeray tells these 
 little stories with admiring sympathy. His manly 
 heart always grew tender over his fellow-authors 
 who had no acrid drop in their humor, and Irv- 
 ing s was as sweet as dew. 
 
 It is late for a fresh compliment to be paid to 
 him, but the London Spectator paid it in 1883, the 
 year of his centenary, by saying, " Since the time 
 of Pope more than one hundred essayists have at 
 tempted to excel or to equal the Tatler and Spec 
 tator. One alone, in a few of his best efforts, may 
 be said to have rivalled them, and he is Washing 
 ton Irving." The Spectator adds that one has sur 
 passed them, " the incomparable Elia." 
 
 Irving s temperament, however, was much more 
 congenial with that of the early essayists than 
 Charles Lamb s, and his pictures of English coun 
 try life in Bracebridge Hall have just the delicate, 
 imaginative touch of the sketches of Sir Roger de 
 Coverley. But in treating distinctively English 
 topics, however airy and vivid his touch may be, 
 Irving is manifestly enthralled by his admiration 
 for the literary masters of the Anne time, and by 
 
 19 
 
290 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAJS 
 
 the spirit of their writing. It is in the Knicker 
 bocker world that he is characteristically at home. 
 Indeed, it is his humorous and graphic fancy 
 more than the sober veracity of history which has 
 given popular and perpetual form to the early life 
 of New York, and it is Irving who has enriched it 
 with romantic tradition such as suffuses the story 
 of no other State. 
 
 The bay, the river, the city, the Kaatskill Moun 
 tains, as Choate said of Faneuil Hall and Webster, 
 breathe and burn of him. He has charmed the 
 Hudson with a peculiar spell. The quaint life of 
 its old Dutch villages, the droll legend of Sleepy 
 Hollow, the pathetic fate of Rip Yan Winkle, 
 the drowsy wisdom of Communipaw, the marvel 
 lous municipality of New Amsterdam, and the 
 Nose of Anthony guarding the Highlands, with 
 the myriad sly and graphic allusions and descrip 
 tions strewn all through his books, have made the 
 river Irving s river, and the state Irving s state, 
 and the city Irving s city, so that the first instinc 
 tive question of every lover of Irving from beyond 
 the state, as he enters Central Park and beholds 
 its memorial statues, is, " Where is the statue of 
 Irving?" 
 
 Unhappily, echo, and not the park guide-book, 
 answers. There is, indeed, a bust, and, in a gen 
 eral sense, " Si monumentum " may serve for a re- 
 
WASHINGTON IH VINO 291 
 
 ply. From that point of view, indeed, "Westmin 
 ster Abbey, as the monument of English heroes 
 in letters and arms, in the Church and the State, 
 would be superfluous. But the abbey is a shrine 
 of pilgrimage because of the very fact that it is 
 the burial-place of famous Englishmen. The Cen 
 tral Park, in New York, is already a Walhalla of 
 famous men, and the statue that would first sug 
 gest itself as peculiarly fitting for the Park is of 
 the New- Yorker who first made New York dis 
 tinctively famous in literature the New-Yorker 
 whose kindly genius first made American litera 
 ture respected by the world. 
 
 Keversing the question, "Where be the bad 
 people buried ?" the wondering pilgrim in the Park 
 asks, "Where be Irving and Bryant and Coop 
 er ?" They were not Americans only, but, by birth 
 or choice, New-Yorkers, and the three distinctive 
 figures of our early literature. It was very touch 
 ing to see the venerable Bryant, in the soft May 
 sunshine, when the statue of Halleck was unveiled, 
 standing with bare head and speaking of his old 
 friend and comrade. But who that listened could 
 not see, through tender mists of years, the grave and 
 reverend form of the speaker himself, transformed 
 to marble or bronze, sitting serene forever beneath 
 the shadowing trees, side by side with the poet of 
 Faust and the worshipper of Highland Mary ? 
 
292 LITERARY AND SOCIAL ESSAYS 
 
 But Bryant would have been the first to name 
 Washington Irving as the most renowned distinc 
 tively American man of letters whose figure, repro 
 duced characteristically and with simple quaint- 
 ness, should decorate the Park. To a statue of 
 "Washington Irving all the gates should open, as 
 every heart would open, in welcome. That half- 
 humorous turn of the head and almost the twink 
 ling eye, that brisk and jaunty air, that springing 
 step, that modest and gentle and benign presence, 
 all these could be suggested by the artist, and in 
 their happy combination the pleased loiterer would 
 perceive old Diedrich Knickerbocker and the sum 
 mer dreamer of the Hudson legends, the charm 
 ing biographer of Columbus and of Goldsmith, the 
 cheerful gossip of Wolfert s Roost, and the mellow 
 and courteous Geoffrey Crayon, who first taught 
 incredulous Europe that beyond the sea there were 
 men also, and that at last all the world must read 
 an American book. 
 
 Irving was seventy-six years old when he died, 
 late in 1859. Born in the year in which the Rev- 
 lution ended, he died on the eve of the civil war. 
 His life exactly covered the period during which 
 the American republic was an experiment. It 
 ended just as the invincible power of free institu 
 tions was to be finally demonstrated. His life had 
 been one of singular happiness, both of tempera- 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING 293 
 
 rnent and circumstance. His nature was too sim 
 ple and gentle to breed rivalries or to tolerate ani 
 mosities. Through the sharpest struggles of our 
 politics he passed without bitterness of feeling 
 and with universal respect, and his eyes happily 
 closed before seeing a civil war which, although 
 the most righteous of all wars, would have broken 
 his heart. The country was proud of him: the 
 older authors knew in him not a rival, but a friend, 
 the younger loved him as a father. Such love, I 
 think, is better than fame. On the day of his 
 burial in the ground overlooking the Hudson and 
 the valley of Sleepy Hollow, unable to reach Tar- 
 rytown in time for the funeral, I came down the 
 shore of the river which he loved and immortal 
 ized. As the train hastened and wound along, I 
 saw the Catskills draped in autumnal mist, not 
 concealing, but irradiating them with lingering 
 and pathetic splendor. Far away towards the 
 south the river-bank on which his home lay was 
 Sunnyside still, for the sky was cloudless and soft 
 with serene sunshine. I could not but remember 
 his last words to me, more than a year before, 
 when his book was finished and his health was 
 failing: " I am getting ready to go ; I am shutting 
 up my doors and windows," and I could not but 
 feel that they were all open now, and bright with 
 the light of eternal morning. 
 
 :i Y 
 H* 
 
BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 
 
 ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES OF GEORGE WILLIAM CUR 
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 LETTERS OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Edited 
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 These letters are full of the most delightful aud stimulat 
 ing reflections on men and affairs, on books and on nat 
 ure, expressed in a manner which is simply the perfection 
 of familiar correspondence. London Times. 
 
 Every page is a piece of literature, and seldom do we 
 find one that does, not sparkle with wisdom, generosity, and 
 humor. . . . We are sure the reader will keep the volumes 
 for days or weeks as regular companions at home, and that 
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 ing as any he ever experienced. . . . There, joined in one, 
 we have Lowell tbe man of learning, and Lowell the man 
 with sound and spacious heart. N. Y. Times. 
 
 Great as has been the interest with which these volumes 
 have been awaited on both sides of the Atlantic . . . much 
 as was expected, there will be no disappointment. . . . Now 
 all the world may feel assured that Mr. Lowell was genu 
 inely the man he seemed to be, not only to his compara 
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 quaintance. Aihenceum, London. 
 
 He was the prince of letter-writers. . . . Volumes which 
 all students of American literature ought to read, and will 
 read, with pleasure. N. . Mail and Express. 
 
 Better than a biography. . . . Mr. Norton s two volumes 
 could not fail to be interesting, and very interesting they 
 are. Speaker, London. 
 
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