Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860

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Then a Queen;--a solitary woman, proud of her solitude, isolated in her
regnant splendor, a dead planet like the moon, sung and pictured and
adored, but keeping on her majestic path in awful beauty, deaf to human
entreaty, cold to human love; a great statesman in a queen's robes; a keen,
subtle politician, coifed and farthingaled; a revengeful sovereign; a
deadly enemy; a woman who forgave nothing to a woman, and retaliated
everything upon a man; she who brought unshrinkingly to death a sister
queen discrowned and captive, a sister whose grace and loveliness and
kindly aspect might have moved the lions of the arena to fawn upon her, but
nowise disarmed the tigress who lapped her blood; she who banished and slew
the man she would not stoop to love, because he dared to love another; and
when death stared her in the face, and open-eyed judgment shook her soul,
rose from that death-pallet to grapple and abuse a false woman, penitent
for and confessing her falseness; a virgin-monarch, pitiless, relentless,
cruel as jealousy; an anomalous woman, were she not a stone-born child of
the Sphinx!

Or a great General, before whose iron will horse and horseman quailed and
fled, like dry stubble before flame; who wielded the sword of Gideon, and
cut off the armies of his kindred people and his anointed king as a mower
fells the glittering grass on a summer dawn, heedless that he, too, shall
be cut down from his flourishing. On his track fire and blood spread their
banners, and the raven scented his trophies afar off; age and youth alike
were crushed under the tread of his war-horse; honor and valor and life's
best prime opposed him as summer opposes the Arctic hail-fury, and lay
beaten into mire at his feet. Hated, feared, followed to the death;
victorious or vanquished, the same strong, imperturbable, sullen nature;
persistent rather than patient in effort, vigorously direct in action; a
minister of unconscious good, of half-conscious evil; stern and gloomy to
the sacrilegious climax of his well-battled life, even in the regicidal act
going as one driven to his deeds by Fate that forgot God;--was he to be
wondered at, whose life, in ages far gone, began among the stony Sphinx
children?

Nor alone in these great landmarks of their dwelling have the Sphinx's
children haunted Earth. Poets have sung them under myriad names; History
has chronicled them in groups; Painting and Sculpture have handed down
their aspect to a gazing world. From them sprung the Eumenides, pursuers
and destroyers of men. They wore the garb of Roman legionaries, when Ramah
wept for her children dashed against the walls of the Holy City, and not
one stone stood upon another in Zion. They crowded the offices of the
Inquisition, and tested the endurance of its victims, with steady finger on
the flickering pulse, and calm eye on the death-sweating brow and bitten
lip. They put on the Druid's robe and wreath, and held the human sacrifice
closer to its altar. In the Asiatic jungle, lurking behind the palm-trunk,
they waited, lithe and swarthy Thugs, treacherously to slay whatever victim
passed by alone; or in the fair Pacific islands kept horrid jubilee above
their feasts of human flesh, and streaked themselves with kindred blood in
their carousals. Holland tells its fearful story of their Spanish
rule. Russian serfs record their despotism, cowering at the memory of the
knout. France cringes yet at the names of the black few who guided her
roaring Revolution as one might guide the ravages of a tiger with curb of
adamant and rein of linked steel.

Africa stretches out her hands to testify of their presence. Too well those
golden shores recall the wail of women and the yelling curses of men,
driven, beast-fashion, to their pen, and floated from home to hell,
or,--happier fate!--dragged up, in terror of pursuit, and thrown overboard,
a brief agony for a long one. They know them, too, whose continual cry of
separation, starvation, insult, agony, and death rises from the heart of
freedom like the steam of a great pestilence,--Pity them, hearts of flesh!
pity also the captors,--the Sphinx children, the flint-hearts! pity those
who cannot feel, far beyond those who can,--though it be but to suffer!

New England knew them, in band and steeple-hat, hanging and pressing to
death helpless women, bewitched with witchcraft. Acadia knew them, when its
depopulated shores lay barren before the sun, and its homes sent up no
smoke to heaven.

Greece quivers at the phantasm of their Turkish turbans and gleaming
sabres, their skill at massacre and their fiendish tortures; Italy, fair
and sad, "woman-country," droops shuddering at sight of their Austrian
uniforms; and the Brahmin sees them in scarlet, blood-dyed, hurling from
the cannon's mouth helpless captives,--killing, not converting.

Wherever, all the wide world over, a nation shrinks from its oppressors, or
a slave from his master,--wherever a child flees from the face of a parent
who knows neither justice nor mercy, or a wife goes mad under the secret
tyranny of her inevitable fate,--wherever pity and mercy and love veil
their faces and wring their hands outside the threshold,--there abide the
Sphinx's children.

For this she longed and hoped and waited in the Desert! for this she envied
the red fox and the ostrich! for this her dumb lips parted, in their
struggle after speech, to ask of earth and air some solace to her solitude!
for this, for these, she poured out her dim life in one strong, wilful
aspiration!

Happy Sphinx, to be left even of that dull existence! blessedly unconscious
of that granted desire! mouldering away in the curling sand-hills, the prey
of hostile elements, the mysterious symbol of a secret yearning and a vain
desire! Not for thee the bitterness of success! not for thee the conscious
agony of penitence,--the falling temple of the will crushing its idolater!
No wild voices in the wind reproach the wilder pulses of a slow-breaking
heart; no keen words of taunt sting thee into madness; Memory hurls at thee
no flying javelins; broken-winged Hope flutters about thee no more! Thy day
is over, thine hour is past!

_"Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead, more than the living
which are yet alive!"_

* * * * *

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Dies Irae:_ in Thirteen Original Versions. By Abraham Coles, M.D. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. 1859. pp. xxxiv., 70.

It is pleasant to see how many wiles Nature employs to draw off into side
channels the enthusiasm which is always secreting itself and gathering in
the human brain. She knows what a dangerous clement it may become, if the
individual rills of it run together, and, with united forces, take for a
time a single direction. So she taps it at its sources, and leads it away
to various ends, useful because they are harmless. Bibliomania,
tulipomania, potichomania, squaring the circle, perpetual motion, a
religious epic, the northwest passage,--anything will serve the
purpose. _Divide et impera_ is her motto. The hobby is the safeguard of
society. Once mounted, every enthusiast ambles quietly off on some errand
of his own, caring little what direction he takes, provided only it be _the
other_. The Fifth-Monarchy men might have been troublesome, but for the
Beast in Revelation;--each insisted on a Beast to himself. Protestantism
might have become Democracy, had either Luther or Calvin been willing to
ride behind. The five points of the Charter are blunted to a Lancashire
weaver who is fattening a prize-gooseberry.

We sympathize heartily with such gentle enthusiasms as this of
Dr. Coles. It is the interest of all Grub Street that men should be
encouraged whose amiable weakness it is to fall in love with pieces of
poetry. In this case, to be sure, the verses are Latin, and the author more
nameless even than Junius; but who knows but some one's turn shall come
next whose verses were at least meant to be English, and whose name
is--Legion? If some translator, charged from the other pole of Dr. Coles's
enthusiasm, should favor us with thirteen Latin versions of some modern
English poems, it would give them a chance of being more generally
intelligible to the laity. Nay, even if such a baker's-dozen of
mediaeval-Latin renderings of Mrs. Browning's last poem--and by this term we
mean, of course, the rather shady Latin of middle-aged men--should be
shuffled together, we are not sure that it would not be a help to the
understanding of the Coptic original. But this, perhaps, is hoping too
much.

In the case of Dr. Coles, how lucky the direction of the superfluous
energy! how wise the humane precaution of Nature! For there is no
destructive agency like a doctor with a hygienic hobby. If your
constitution be a salt or sugar one, he will melt you away with damp sheets
and duckings; if you are as exsanguine as a turnip, his scientific delight
in getting blood out of you will be only heightened. For such erratic
enthusiasms as this of Dr. Coles we want a milder term than monomania.
Something like _monowhimsia_ would do. It is seldom that an oddity takes so
pleasant a turn. He has published a dainty little volume, with a
well-written introduction, giving the history of the "Dies Irae," and an
account of the various versions of it; this is followed by his own thirteen
translations; and an appendix tells us what is meant by a Sequence, has a
page or two on the origin of rhyming Latin, and concludes with the music of
the hymn itself. The book is illustrated by delicate photographs from the
Last Judgments of Michel Angelo, Rubens, and Cornelius, and from the
"Christus Remunerator" of Ary Scheffer. It is exquisitely printed at the
Riverside Press, which is doing such good service to everybody but the
spectacle-makers.

We hold the translation of any first-rate poem, nay, even of any
second-rate one which has any peculiar charm of rhythm or tone, to be an
impossibility. The translation of rhyming Latin verses presents peculiar
difficulties. The rhythm is always simple and strongly accented, it is
true; but the ear-filling sonority, the variety of female rhymes, and the
simple directness of expression cannot be echoed by our muffling
consonants, our endings in _ing_ and _ed_, and _a_-s, _the_-s, and _of
the_-s. For example, the stanza,

"Tuba, mirum spargens sonum
Per sepulchra regionum,
Coget omnes ante thronum,"

is very inadequately represented by

"Trumpet, scattering sounds of wonder
Rending sepulchres asunder,
Shall resistless summons thunder,"

in which, to speak of nothing else, there are thirteen _s_-s to five in the
original. Even Crashaw, whose translation of Strada's "Music's Duel" is a
masterpiece for litheness of phrase and sinuous suppleness of rhythm,
quails before the "Dies Irae," and contents himself with a largely watered
paraphrase. No one has ever yet succeeded more than tolerably with the
opening stanza,--

"Dies Irae, dies illa,
Solvet saeclum in favilla,
Teste David cum Sibylla."

The difficulty is increased where the Latin word has some special force of
theological or other meaning which has no single equivalent in English.

Doctor Coles has made, we think, the most successful attempt at an English
translation of the hymn that we have ever seen. He has done all that could
be done, where complete success was out of the question. Out of his first
two versions, which seem to us the best, a very satisfactory rendering of
the original can be made up by choosing the better stanzas from each. In
his first trial he misses the pathetic force of the

"Rex tremendae majestatis,
Qui salvandos salvas gratis,
Salva me, fons pietatis!"

where the petition is piercingly individualized by the accentual stress
thrown on the _me_. He gives it thus:--

"King Almighty and All-knowing,
Grace to sinners freely showing,
Save me, Fount of Good o'erflowing!"
His second attempt is better:--

"Awful King, who nothing cravest,
Since Thyself full ransom gavest,
Save thou me, who freely savest!"

Here the emphatic _me_ is preserved, but in neither version is the true
meaning of _salvandos_ even hinted at, and in both we miss the tenderness
of the _fons pietatis_, with which the _tremenda majestas_ is balanced and
softened.

There are three or four of these Latin hymns that for simple force and
pathos have never been matched in their kind, and never approached, except
by a few of the more fortunate poems of Herbert, Vaughan, and Quarles. We
know not why it is that what is called religious poetry is commonly so
bad. The thing gives the lie to both the adjective and the noun of its
title. Anything more flat and flavorless, whether in sentiment or language,
is beyond the conception even of an editor with the nightmare. Men have
been hanged for more venial murders than some have been praised for who
have choked out the immortal soul of the Psalms of David. We have, however,
the consolation of thinking that the Devil's Psalter of convivial songs is
quite as bad.

Dr. Coles has done so well that we hope he will try his hand on some of the
other Latin hymns. He cannot expect to satisfy those who have been
penetrated by the almost inexplicable charm of the originals; but by
rendering them in their own metres, and with so large a transfusion of
their spirit as characterizes his present attempt, he will be doing a real
service to the lovers of that kind of religious poetry in which neither the
religion nor the poetry is left out. As we said before, to translate
rhyming Latin without losing its peculiar _tang_ is wellnigh
impossible. Even Father Prout himself would be staggered by Walter Mapes's
"Mihi est propositum" or "Testamentum Goliae"; but perhaps the spirit of
the hymns is more easily caught, and Dr. Coles has shown that he knows the
worth of faithfulness.

_Mademoiselle Mori_; A Tale of Modern Rome. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1860.
Author's Edition. 16mo. pp. 526.

This is a reprint of a remarkable book. It is the book of a person familiar
with Rome and with the Romans, who has thought seriously and felt deeply in
regard to their character and fortunes, who has studied with keen and
sympathetic imagination the hearts of the people, and observed closely the
outward aspect and common shows of the city. The story is well constructed,
and has the essential merit of interest. Not only are the characters
distinctly presented, but there is in them, what it is rare to find in the
personages of our modern novelists, a real and natural development, which
is exhibited not so much by what is said about them as by their own
apparently unconscious words and acts. So just a view is given in this
novel of Italian habits of thought and tones of feeling, so true an
appreciation is shown of the peculiarities of national disposition and
temperament, and so intimate and exact an acquaintance with public events
and the course of politics in Rome, as to lead to the conclusion that the
author writes from the fulness of personal experience, and was no stranger
to the interests of the stirring period in which the scenes of the story
are laid.

The book, indeed, has a double character. It is not a mere novel; for it
contains, in addition to its story, a sketch of the course of public
affairs in Rome during the three memorable years from the accession of Pius
IX. to the fall of the Republic and the entry of the French troops into the
city, which they still hold in subjection to rulers who claim to govern it
for the spiritual interests of the world. And while it may be warmly
recommended to such readers as only desire to find an interesting story, it
deserves not less hearty recommendation to such as may care to understand
one of the most striking and dramatic episodes of modern history, and to
gain an acquaintance with events which throw great illustration on the
present condition and hopes of Italy. In this respect, as well as in the
ability with which it is written, it may fairly be classed with the novels
of Ruffini,--"Lorenzo Benoni" and "Doctor Antonio." To those who have read
these two books it need not be said that this is high praise.

History is not treated by the author of "Mademoiselle Mori" after the
common fashion of novelists. Events are not misrepresented in it, nor are
the characters of the prominent actors in public affairs distorted to suit
any theory, or to advance the interest of the story. The chief value of the
book, and that which ought to secure for it a permanent place, does not,
however, consist in any formal narrative of events, or in its pictures of
noted individuals, but in its representation of the states of mind and
feeling of the Romans during the first years of the pontificate of the
present Pope, of the objects and methods of action of the various parties
that were then called into active existence, of the occasions of the rapid
changes in the popular disposition from the time when Pius IX. was the idol
of the crowd to that when he was a faithless fugitive to Gaeta, and of the
causes which led to the bitter disappointment and utter failure of the
efforts of the Roman patriots.

We do not know of any book in which so intelligent and so true an account
of these things, which were the springs from which events issued, and which
underlie all their currents, is to be found. The sympathies of the author
are with the liberal party, with the party that labored for reform, but not
for a republic, and whose hopes and plans were crushed by the horrible
assassination of Rossi. It is one of the most calamitous results of a
tyranny like that exercised at Rome, that it renders a gradual progress of
reform at any time when it may be undertaken almost an impossibility, and
sows the seed of inevitable violence and of revolution, which is apt to
end, as in the Roman instance, in a return of despotism. The view given of
the Roman revolution and republic of 1849 by the author of "Mademoiselle
Mori" coincides in the main with that taken by Farini, and the other chief
Italian statesmen of the present day; and its accuracy and good sense are
confirmed by the course of recent events, not merely in Rome, but in other
parts of Italy as well. It is vain to predict the future of a state so
anomalous as that of Rome; but it is safe to say that the Romans learned
much from their last revolution, and are learning much from its results, so
that, when another opportunity arrives for them to gain some share of that
freedom which Northern Italy has been so happy in securing, they will not
repeat their former mistakes, and will not be found less competent for
liberty than the Tuscans or the people of the Romagna. Perhaps the failure
of 1849 may then turn out to have been a dark blessing; and the blood of
those who fell on the Roman walls, and the tears of those who have wept in
Roman prisons, may not have been shed in vain.

The cause of Italy deserves the heartiest sympathy, and, if need be, a
personal sacrifice on the part of every lover of liberty and of justice in
the world. The question of Italian unity and independence is the most
important that has been presented in Europe in our time. The issue involved
in it is that of the advance or the degradation of a nation so noble that
none can be called nobler,--of the rights of the many, as against the power
of the few,--of the rights of thought, as against those of the sword,--of
the establishment of those principles which do most to make life precious,
as against those by which it is made vile and wretched. The last year has
seen a part of the great work of freeing Italy accomplished. If Sardinia
can but have time allowed her in which to knit her forces, if she can for a
time escape from foreign attacks and from internal divisions, Italy is
secure. Venice, Rome, and Naples will not long languish under the tyranny
of Austrian, of priest, and of Bourbon.

We return for a few words to "Mademoiselle Mori." The readers of
Mr. Hawthorne's imaginative Italian romance will be pleased to find in this
book further illustrations of the Rome he has so admirably pictured. The
author has not the genius of Mr. Hawthorne, but the descriptions which the
book contains of Roman scenes and places are full of truth, and render the
common, every-day aspect of streets and squares, of gardens and churches,
of popular customs and social habits, with equal spirit and fidelity. The
interest of the story is sustained by the distinctness with which the
localities in which it passes are depicted. The style of the book is so
excellent that we the more regret a few careless and clumsy expressions,
and some awkward sentences, which a little pains might have prevented. We
regret also that the Italian words and phrases which appear in the volume
are sometimes grievously disfigured by misprints. The distinguished name of
Saffi is travestied by being misprinted Gaffi,--and there are other
blunders of the same sort, in which the Riverside Press has but too
faithfully followed the English edition.

_Critical and Miscellaneous Essays_. Collected and republished by THOMAS
CARLYLE. In Four Volumes. Boston: Brown and Taggard. 1860.

Carlyle's Essays need at the present day no introduction or commendation to
American readers. Their place is established, and they will hold it
permanently, in spite of the wild philosophy, and in spite of
characteristics of style which would ruin weaker writings. As Ben Jonson
said of a volume of poems, now quite forgotten, by his friend Sir John
Beaumont,--

"This book will live; it hath a genius; this Above his reader or his
praiser is."

There is no fear that these Essays will be forgotten; for, beside their
intrinsic merits and interest, they are at once introductory and
supplementary to their author's more important works,--to his "French
Revolution" and his "Life of Frederic the Great."

This new edition of the Essays is a reprint of the last English edition
revised by the author, and both printer and publisher deserve high credit
for the beauty of the volumes. The paper, press-work, and binding are all
excellent, and of a sort not only to please the general public, but to
satisfy the demands of the exacting lover of good books. We are glad to
welcome Messrs. Brown and Taggard among our publishing houses, on occasion
of the issue of a book so creditable alike to their taste and to their
judgment, and we hope that the success of this edition of these Essays may
he such as to encourage them to follow it with a reprint of the other
volumes of the revised edition of Mr. Carlyle's works.

We trust, that, though the words "Author's Edition" are not found upon the
back of the title-page, it is not because the moral, if not legal rights
which the author possesses have been disregarded.

_The Mill on the Floss_. By GEORGE ELIOT, Author of "Scenes of Clerical
Life" and "Adam Bede." New York: Harper & Brothers.

It is not difficult to understand how the reader's attention may he
attracted and his interest retained by a romance of the old chivalrous days
whose very name and dim memory fill the mind with fascinating images, or by
a novel whose high-born characters claim sympathy for their dignified
sorrows and refined delights, or whose story is illuminated by the light of
artistic culture and adorned with gems of rhetoric and fine fancy; but it
is sometimes surprising to observe the favor which attends a simple tale of
humble, unobtrusive, we might almost say insignificant people, whose plane
of life appears nowhere to coincide with our own, and to whom romance and
passion seem entirely foreign. Such a tale was "Adam Bede," whose great
success as a literary venture hardly yet belongs to the chronicle of the
past; such a tale is also "The Mill on the Floss," by the author of "Adam
Bede," and such, we are confident, will also be its success.

Both books have many elements in common, but the second is the greater work
of art, and indicates more fairly the scope and vigor of the author's
mind. It is written in the same pure, hardy style, strong with Saxon words
that admit of no equivocation or misunderstanding; it is illustrated with
sketches of outward Nature and tranquil rural beauty, none the less vivid
or truthful that they are drawn with the pen rather than the brush; and it
is instinct with an honest, high-souled purpose. In these respects it
resembles "Adam Bede," but in others it surpasses its predecessor. It
displays a far keener insight into human passion, a subtler analysis of
motives and principles, and it suggests a mental and a moral philosophy
nobler in themselves and truer to humanity and religion. The pathos, too,
is more genuine; for it is not based upon the mere utterance of grief or of
entreaty,--which the eloquent and the artful may, indeed, feign,--but it is
found in that skilful combination of material circumstance and spiritual
influence which impresses upon the feeling, more than it proves to the
reason, that the hour of heart-break is at hand, and which depends less for
its effect upon the dramatic power of the imagination than upon the instant
sympathy of the soul.

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