The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

"if all want sense,
God takes the text, and preacheth patience."

Unquestionably, however, there is too much preaching in these days; too
many sermons are written, and the spirit of Christianity is less
effective than if the words concerning it were less numerous.

It is a rare satisfaction, therefore, to find such a volume of sermons
as that of Mr. Brooks, which, though not possessing the highest merit in
point of style, are the discourses of a thoughtful and cultivated man,
with a peculiar spiritual refinement, and with a devout intellect, made
clear by its combination with purity of heart and simplicity of faith.
The religious questions which are chiefly stirring the minds of men are
taken up in them and discussed with what may be called an earnest
moderation, with elevation of feeling and insight of spirit.

_Goethe's Correspondence with a Child._ Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1859.

The immediate cause of the republication of these letters is the recent
death of Bettina, the child with whom Goethe corresponded. Though this
fact, and the beauty of the volume, may quicken the sale of the work,
and draw out fresh encomiums on its excellence, it has long since passed
the critical crisis and taken its place as one of the most remarkable
series of letters which the public have ever been invited to peruse.
Something of the marvellous vanishes from them, however, when we find
that the title, "Correspondence with a Child," is a misnomer; Bettina
having been, in truth, twenty-two years of age when she first visited
Goethe. Yet while this important circumstance abates much of the wonder
with which we once read her thoughts and confessions, they really become
all the more valuable as studies in human nature when we learn that they
are the exhalations of a heart in full flower, and one upon which the
dews of morning should not linger. The poet had reached the age of sixty
when this tide of tender sentiment, original ideas, and enthusiastic
admiration began to flow in upon him. Their first interview, as Bettina
describes it, with singular freedom, in one of the letters to Goethe's
mother, will be found a useful key, though perhaps not a complete one,
by which to interpret the glowing passion which gushed from her pen.
That the poet was pleased with the homage of this sweet, graceful, and
affectionate girl, and drew her on to the revealing of her whole nature,
is readily perceived. But when we inquire, To what end? we should
remember, that, like Parrhasius, Goethe was before all things an artist;
and furthermore, the correspondence of time will show that from this
crowning knowledge the "Elective Affinities" sprang. It may be that her
admiration was for his genius alone; if so, she chose love's language
for its wealth of expression. Were it so received, it could not but be
regarded as a peerless offering, for she was certainly a kindred spirit.
There are many rare thoughts and profound confessions in these letters,
which would have commanded the praise of Goethe, had they been written
by a rival; and coming, as they did, from a devotee who declared that
she drew her inspiration from him alone, they must have filled his soul
with incense, of which that burned by the priest in the temple of the
gods is only an emblem. To be brief and compendious on this book, it
appears to be a heart unveiled. German critics throw some doubts on the
literal veracity of the book; but it belongs at any rate to the better
class of the _ben trovati_, and among its leaves, the dreamer, the
lover, and the poet will find that ambrosial fruit on which fancy loves
to feed, but whose blossoms are so generally blasted by the common air
that only the few favored ones have had their longings for it appeased.
In imagination, at least, Bettina partook of this banquet, and had the
genius to wreak on words the emotions which swept through her heart.

_Sir Rohan's Ghost._ A Romance. Boston: J. E. Tilton & Company. 1860.
pp. 352.

It is very plain that we have got a new poet,--a tremendous
responsibility both for him who will have to learn how to carry the
brimming vase of Art from the Pierian spring without squandering a drop,
and for us critics who are to reconcile ourselves to what is new in him,
and to hold him strictly to that apprenticeship to the old which is the
condition of mastery at last.

Criticism in America has reached something like the state of the old
Continental currency. There is no honest relation between the promises
we make and the specie basis of meaning they profess to represent. "The
most extraordinary book of the age" is published every week; "genius"
springs up like mullein, wherever the soil is thin enough; the yearly
catch of "weird imagination," "thrilling pathos," "splendid
description," and "sublime imagery" does not fall short of an ordinary
mackerel-crop; and "profound originality" is so plenty that one not in
the secret would be apt to take it for commonplace. Now Tithonus, whom,
as the oldest inhabitant, we have engaged to oversee the criticism of
the "Atlantic," has a prodigiously long memory,--almost as long as one
of Dickens's descriptive passages,--he remembers perfectly well all the
promising young fellows from Orpheus down, and has made a notch on the
stalk of a devil's-apron for every one who ever came to anything that
was of more consequence to the world than to himself. His tally has not
yet mounted to a baker's dozen. Accordingly, when a young enthusiast
rushes to tell Tithonus that a surprising genius has turned up, that
venerable and cautious being either puts his hand behind his ear and
absconds into an extemporary deafness, or says dryly, "American kind, I
suppose?" This coolness of our wary senior is infectious, and we confess
ourselves so far disenchanted by it, that, when we go into a library,
the lettering on the backs of nine-tenths of the volumes contrives to
shape itself into a laconic _Hic jacet_.

It is of prime necessity to bring back the currency of criticism to the
old hard-money basis. We have been gradually losing all sense of the
true relation between words and things,--the surest symptom of
intellectual decline. And this looseness of criticism reacts in the most
damaging way upon literature by continually debasing the standard, and
by confounding all distinction between fame and notoriety. Ought it to
be gratifying to the author of "Popular Sovereignty, a Poem in Twelve
Cantos," to be called the most remarkable man of the age, when he knows
that he shares that preeminence with Mr. Tupper, nay, with half the
names in the Directory? Indiscriminate eulogy is the subtlest form of
depreciation, for it makes all praise suspicious.

We look upon artistic genius as the rarest and most wayward apparition
among mankind. It cannot be predicated upon any of Mr. Buckle's
averages. Given the census, you may, perhaps, say so many murders, so
many suicides, so many misdirected letters (and men of letters), but not
so many geniuses. In this one thing old Mother Nature will be whimsical
and womanish. This is a gift that John Bull, or Johnny Crapaud, or
Brother Jonathan does not find in his stocking every Christmas. Crude
imagination is common enough,--every hypochondriac has a more than
Shakspearian allowance of it; fancy is cheap, or nobody would dream;
eloquence sits ten deep on every platform. But genius in Art is that
supreme organizing and idealizing faculty which, by combining,
arranging, modulating, by suppressing the abnormal and perpetuating the
essential, apes creation,--which from the shapeless terror or tipsy
fancy of the benighted ploughman can conjure the sisters of Fores heath
and the court of Titania,--which can make language thunder or coo at
will,--which, in short, is the ruler of those qualities any one of which
in excess is sure to overmaster the ordinary mind, and which can
crystallize helpless vagary into the clearly outlined and imperishable
forms of Art.

It is not, therefore, from any grudging incapacity to appreciate new
authors, but from a strong feeling that we are to guard the graves of
the dead from encroachment, and their fames from vulgarization, that the
"Atlantic" has been and will be sparing in its use of the word _genius_.
One may safely predicate power, nicety of thought and language, a clear
eye for scenery and character, and grace of poetic conception of a book,
without being willing to say that it gives proof of genius. For genius
is the _shaping_ faculty, the power of using material in the best way,
and may not work itself clear of the besetting temptation of personal
gifts and of circumstances in a first or even second work. It is
something capable of education and accomplishment, and the patience with
which it submits itself to this needful schooling and self-abnegation is
one of the surest tests of its actual possession. Could even
Shakspeare's poems and earlier plays come before us for judgment, we
could only say of them, as of Keats's "Endymion," that they showed
affluence, but made no sure prophecy of that artistic self-possession
without which plenty is but confusion and incumbrance.

So much by way of preface, lest we might seem cold to the very
remarkable merits of "Sir Rohan's Ghost," if we treated it as a book
worth finding fault with, instead of condemning it to the indifferent
limbo of general eulogy. It is our deliberate judgment that no first
volume by any author has ever been published in America showing more
undoubtful symptoms of genuine poetic power than this. There are
passages in it where imagination and language combine in the most
artistic completeness, and the first quatrain of the song which Sir
Rohan fancies he hears,--

----"In a summer twilight,
While yet the dew was hoar,
I went plucking purple pansies
Till my love should come to shore,"--

seems to us absolutely perfect in its simplicity and suggestiveness. It
has that wayward and seemingly accidental just-right-ness that is so
delightful in old ballads. The hesitating cadence of the third line is
impregnated with the very mood of the singer, and lingers like the
action it pictures. All those passages in the book, too, where the
symptoms of Sir Rohan's possession by his diseased memory are handled,
where we see all outward nature but as wax to the plastic will of
imagination, are to the utmost well-conceived and carried out. It was
part of the necessity of the case that the book should be conjectural
and metaphysical, for it is plain that the author is young and has
little experience of the actual. Accordingly, with a true instinct, she
(for the newspapers ascribe the authorship of the book to Miss Prescott)
calls her story a Romance, thus absolving it from any cumbersome
allegiance to fact, and lays the scene of it in England, where she can
have old castles, old traditions, old families, old servants, and all
the other olds so essential to the young writer, ready to her hand.

We like the book better for being in the main _subjective_ (to use the
convenient word Mr. Ruskin is so angry with); for a young writer can
only follow the German plan of conjuring things up "from the depths of
his inward consciousness." The moment our author quits this sure ground,
her touch becomes uncertain and her colors inharmonious.
Character-painting is unessential to a romance, belonging as it does
properly to the novel of actual life, in which the romantic element is
equally out of place. Fielding, accordingly, the greatest artist in
character since Shakspeare, hardly admits sentiment, and never romance,
into his master-pieces. Hawthorne, again, another great master, feeling
instinctively the poverty and want of sharp contrast in the externals of
our New England life, always shades off the edges of the actual, till,
at some indefinable line, they meet and mingle with the supersensual and
imaginative.

The author of "Sir Rohan" attempts character in Redruth the butler, and
in the villain and heroine of her story. We are inclined to think the
villain the best hit of the three, because he is downright scoundrel
without a redeeming point, as the Nemesis of the story required him to
be, and because he is so far a purely ideal character. But there is no
such thing possible as an ideal butler, at least in the sense our author
assumes in the cellar-scene. The better poet, the worse butler; and so
we are made impatient by his more than Redi-isms about wine, full of
fancy as they are in themselves, because they are an impertinence. For
the same reason, we forgive the heroine her rhapsodies about the figures
of the Arthur-romances, but cannot pardon her descents into real life
and her incursions on what should be the sanctuary of the
breakfast-table. The author attributes to her a dash of gypsy blood; and
if her style of humorous conversation be a fair type of that of the race
in general, we no longer wonder that they are homeless exiles from human
society. When will men learn the true nature of a pun,--that it is a
play upon ideas, and not upon sounds,--and that a perfect one is as rare
as a perfect poem?

In the prose "Edda," the dwarfs tell a monstrous fib, when they pretend
that Kvasir, the inventor of poetry, has been suffocated by his own
wisdom. Nevertheless, the little fellows showed thereby that they were
not short of intelligence; for it is almost always in their own overflow
that young poets are drowned. This superabundance seems to us the chief
defect in "Sir Rohan's Ghost." The superabundance is all very fine, of
the costliest kind; but was Clarence any the better for being done to
death in Malmsey instead of water?

This fault we look on as a fault of promise. There is always a chance
that luxuriance may be pruned, but none short of a miracle that a
broomstick may be made to blossom. There is, however, one absolute, and
not relative fault in the book, which we find it harder to forgive,
since it is one of instinct rather than of Art. The author seems to us
prone to confound the _terrible_, (the only true subject of Art) with
the _horrible_. The one rouses moral terror or aversion, the other only
physical disgust. This is one of the worst effects of the modern French
school upon literature, the inevitable result of its degrading the
sensuous into the sensual.

We have found all the fault we could with this volume, because we
sincerely think that the author of it is destined for great things, and
that she owes it to the rare gift she has been endowed with to do
nothing inconsiderately, and by honest self-culture to raise natural
qualities to conscious and beneficent powers.

RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS

RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

Essays of Elia. By Charles Lamb. A New Edition. Boston. William Veazie.
8vo. pp. 466. $1.25.

Archaia; or, Studies of the Cosmogony and Natural History of the Hebrew
Scriptures. By J. W. Dawson, LL. D., F. G. S., Principal of McGill
College, Author of "Acadian Geology," etc. Montreal. B. Dawson & Son.
12mo. pp. 406.

Manual of Public Libraries, Institutions, and Societies in the United
States and British Provinces of North America. By William J. Rhees,
Chief Clerk of the Smithsonian Institution. Philadelphia. J. B.
Lippincott & Co. 8vo. pp. xxviii., 687. $3.00.

The Oakland Stories. By George R. Taylor, of Virginia. Volume I. Kenny.
New York. Sheldon & Co. 16mo. pp. 176. 50 cts.

The Florence Stories. By Jacob Abbott. Florence and John. New York.
Sheldon & Co. 16mo. pp. 252. 60 cents.

Poems read at the Opening of the Fraternity Lectures, 1858-9. By F. B.
Sanborn and Rufus Leighton, Jr. Boston. Printed for the Fraternity.
16mo. pp. 59. 25 cts.

The Law of the Territories. Philadelphia. Printed by C. Sherman and Son.
16mo. pp. 127. 50 cts.

The Wife's Trials and Triumphs. By the Author of "Grace Hamilton's
School-Days," etc. New York. Sheldon & Co. 16mo. pp. 347. $1.00.

The Old Battle-Ground. By J. T. Trowbridge, Author of "Father
Brighthopes," etc. New York. Sheldon & Co. 24mo. pp. 276. 50 cts.

Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856. From Gales and
Seaton's Annals of Congress; from their Register of Debates; and from
the Official Reported Debates, by John C. Rives. By the Author of the
"Thirty Years' View." Volume XII. New York. Appleton & Co. 8vo. pp. 807.
$2.50.

"Woman's Right to Labor"; or, Low Wages and Hard Work: in Three
Lectures, delivered in Boston, November, 1859. By Caroline H. Dall.
Boston. Walker, Wise, & Co. 16mo. pp. xvi., 184. 50 cts.

The Diary of a Samaritan. By a Member of the Howard Association of New
Orleans. New York. Harper & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 324. $1.00.

A Popular History of the United States of America: from the Discovery of
the American Continent to the Present Time. By Mary Howitt. Illustrated
with Numerous Engravings. In Two Volumes. New York. Harper & Brothers.
12mo. pp. xii., 406; xii., 388. $2.00.

Poems. By Henry Timrod. Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. iv., 130. 50
cts.

New Miscellanies. By Charles Kingsley. Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 12mo.
pp. vi., 375. $1.00.

The Two Christmas Celebrations, A. D. 1 and 1855. A Christmas Story for
1856. By Theodore Parker, Minister of the 28th Congregational Society of
Boston. Boston. Rufus Leighton, Jr. Small 8vo. pp. 46. 50 cts.

Frank Wildman's Adventures on Land and Water. By Frederick Gerstaecker.
Translated and revised by Lascelles Wraxall. With Eight Illustrations,
printed in Oil Colors. Boston. Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 16mo. pp. viii.,
312. $1.00.

The Boy Tar; or, A Voyage in the Dark. By Captain Mayne Reid. With
Twelve Illustrations, by Charles Keene. Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.
pp. iv., 356. 75 cts.

The Crusades and the Crusaders. By John G. Edgar, Author of "Boyhood of
Great Men," etc. With Eight Illustrations, by Julian Portch. Boston.
Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. x., 380. 75 cts.

The White Hills: their Legends, Landscape, and Poetry. By Thomas Starr
King. With Sixty Illustrations, engraved by Andrew, from Drawings by
Wheelock. Boston. Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 8vo. pp. xviii., 403. $5.00.

A Look at Home; or, Life in the Poor-House of New England. By S. H.
Elliot, Author of "Rolling Ridge." New York. H. Dexter & Co. 12mo. pp.
490. $1.00.

How Could He Help It? or, The Heart Triumphant. By A. S. Roe, Author of
"I've been Thinking," etc. New York. Derby & Jackson. 12mo. pp. 443.
$1.25.

Evenings at the Microscope; or, Researches among the Minuter Organs and
Forms of Animal Life. By Philip Henry Gosse, F. R. S. With
Illustrations. New York. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. xii., 480. $1.50.

Hester, the Bride of the Islands. A Poem. By Silvester B. Beckett.
Portland. Bailey & Noyes. 12mo. pp. 336. $1.00.

Great Facts: A Popular History and Description of the most Remarkable
Inventions during the Present Century. By Frederick C. Bakewell, Author
of "Philosophical Conversations," etc. Illustrated with Numerous
Engravings. New York, Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. xii., 307. $1.00.

Prince Charlie, the Young Chevalier. By Merideth Johnes, Author of "The
Boy's Book of Modern Travel," etc. With Eight Illustrations, by N. S.
Morgan. New York. Appleton & Co. 16mo. pp. 331. 75 cts.

Edith Vaughan's Victory; or, How to Conquer. By Helen Wall Pierson,
Author of "Sophie Krantz." New York. Appleton & Co. 16mo. pp. 289. 63
cts.

A History of the Cemetery of Mount Auburn. By Jacob Bigelow, President
of the Corporation. Boston. Munroe & Co. 16mo. pp. xvi., 263. $1.00.

Here and There; or, Heaven and Earth Contrasted. New York. Appleton &
Co. 18mo. pp. 41. 25 cts.

A Report of the Celebration at Norwich, Ct., on the 200th Anniversary of
the Settlement of the Town, Sept. 7th and 8th, 1859. With an Appendix,
containing Historical Documents of Local Interest. Norwich. John W.
Stedman. 8vo. pp. 304. $1.50.

Re-Statements of Christian Doctrine, in Twenty-Five Sermons. By Henry W.
Bellows, Minister of All-Souls' Church, New York. New York. Appleton &
Co. 12mo. pp. viii., 434. $1.25.

The Great Harmonia: being a Progressive Revelation of the Eternal
Principles which inspire Mind and govern Matter. By Andrew Jackson
Davis. Vol. V. In Three Parts. New York. A. J. Davis & Co. 12mo. pp.
438. $1.00.

History of the Republic of the United States of America, as traced in
the Writings of Alexander Hamilton and his Contemporaries. By John C.
Hamilton. Vol. V. New York. Appleton & Co. 8vo. pp. xii., 603. $2.50.

Life of Lafayette. Written for Children. By E. Cecil. With Six
Illustrations. Boston. Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 16mo. pp. vi., 218. 75
cts.

Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct. By Samuel
Smiles, Author of "The Life of George Stephenson." Boston. Ticknor &
Fields. 16mo. pp. xiv., 408. 75 cts.

Bible Stories in Bible Language. New York. Appleton & Co. Square 16mo.
pp. 197. $1.25.

Martha's Hooks and Eyes. New York. Appleton & Co. 18mo. pp. 129. 37 cts.

Christian Believing and Living. Sermons. By F. D. Huntington, D.D.,
Preacher to the University, and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in
Harvard College. Boston. Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 12mo. pp. viii., 528.
$1.25.

Ernest Bracebridge; or, Schoolboy Days. By W. H. G. Kingston. Boston.
Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. iv., 344. 75 cts.

Baby Nightcaps. By the Author of "Nightcaps." New York. Appleton & Co.
18mo. pp. 140. 50 cts.

The New Nightcaps told to Charley. New York. Appleton & Co. 18mo. pp.
207. 50 cts.

Rainbow's Journey. By Jacob Abbott. New York. Harper & Brothers. 16mo.
pp. 201. 50 cts.

Harry's Summer in Ashcroft. With Illustrations. New York. Harper &
Brothers. 18mo. pp. 204. 50 cts.

Seven Years. By Julia Kavanagh, Author of "Adele," "Nathalie," etc.
Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 8vo. pp. 180. 30 cts.

The Sea-Lions; or, The Lost Sealers. By J. Fenimore Cooper. Illustrated
from Drawings by F. O. C. Darley. New York. W. A. Townsend & Co. 12mo.
pp. 490. $1.50.

The Professor at the Breakfast-Table; with the Story of Iris. By Oliver
Wendell Holmes. Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 12mo. pp. 410. $1.00.

Misrepresentation. A Novel. By Anna H. Drury, Author of "Friends and
Fortune," etc. New York. Harper & Brothers. 8vo. paper. pp. 210. 50 cts.

History of Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia. By Jacob Abbott. With
Engravings. New York. Harper & Brothers. 16mo. pp. 368. 60 cts.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19