The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index
by unknown · English · Gutenberg #29145 · 436,070 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index
Editor: Henry Cabot Lodge
Francis W. Halsey
Release date: June 17, 2009 [eBook #29145]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29145
Credits: Produced by Joseph R. Hauser, Sankar Viswanathan, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEST OF THE WORLD'S CLASSICS, RESTRICTED TO PROSE, VOL. X (OF X) - AMERICA - II, INDEX ***
Produced by Joseph R. Hauser, Sankar Viswanathan, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: POE, LOWELL, LONGFELLOW, PARKMAN]
THE BEST
_of the_
WORLD'S CLASSICS
RESTRICTED TO PROSE
HENRY CABOT LODGE
_Editor-in-Chief_
FRANCIS W. HALSEY
_Associate Editor_
With an Introduction, Biographical and
Explanatory Notes, etc.
IN TEN VOLUMES
Vol. X
AMERICA--II
INDEX
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
NEW YORK AND LONDON
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
* * * * *
The Best of the World's Classics
VOL. X
AMERICA--II
1807-1909
* * * * *
CONTENTS
VOL. X--AMERICA--II
_Page_
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW--(Born in 1807, died in 1882.)
Musings in Père Lachaise.
(From "Outre-Mer") 3
EDGAR ALLAN POE--(Born in 1809, died in 1849.)
I The Cask of Amontillado.
(Published originally in _Godey's Magazine_ in 1846) 11
II Of Hawthorne and the Short Story.
(From a review of Hawthorne's "Twice Told Tales"
and "Mosses from an Old Manse" published
in _Godey's Magazine_ in 1846) 19
III Of Willis, Bryant, Halleck and Macaulay.
(Passages selected from articles printed in
Volume II of the "Works of Poe") 25
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES--(Born in 1809, died in 1894.)
I Of Doctors, Lawyers and Ministers.
(From Chapter V of "The Poet at the Breakfast Table") 31
II Of the Genius of Emerson.
(From an address before the Massachusetts Historical
Society in 1882) 36
III The House in Which the Professor Lived.
(From Part X of "The Autocrat of the Breakfast
Table") 42
IV Of Women Who Put on Airs.
(From Part XI of "The Autocrat of the Breakfast
Table") 49
MARGARET FULLER--(Born in 1810, lost in a shipwreck off
Fire Island in 1850.)
I Her Visit to George Sand.
(From a letter to Elizabeth Hoar) 52
II Two Glimpses of Carlyle.
(From a letter to Emerson) 54
HORACE GREELEY--(Born in 1811, died in 1872.)
The Fatality of Self-Seeking in Editors and Authors.
(Printed with the "Miscellanies" in the "Recollections
of a Busy Life") 58
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY--(Born in 1814, died in 1877.)
I Charles V and Philip II in Brussels.
(From Chapter I of "The Rise of the Dutch Republic") 63
II The Arrival of the Spanish Armada.
(From Chapter XIX of the "History of the United
Netherlands") 74
III "The Spanish Fury."
(From Part IV, Chapter V, of
"The Rise of the Dutch Republic") 84
RICHARD HENRY DANA, THE YOUNGER--(Born in 1815, died in 1882.)
A Fierce Gale under a Clear Sky.
(From "Two Years Before the Mast") 93
HENRY DAVID THOREAU--(Born in 1817, died in 1862.)
I The Building of His House at Walden Pond.
(From Chapter I of "Walden, or, Life in the Woods") 99
II How to Make Two Small Ends Meet.
(From Chapters I and II of "Walden") 103
III On Reading the Ancient Classics.
(From Chapter III of "Walden") 115
IV Of Society and Solitude.
(From Chapter IV of "Walden") 120
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL--(Born in 1819, died in 1891.)
I The Poet as Prophet.
(From an essay contributed to _The Pioneer_ in 1843) 125
II The First of the Moderns.
(From the first essay in the first series, entitled
"Among My Books") 129
III Of Faults Found in Shakespeare.
(From the essay entitled "Shakespeare Once More,"
printed in the first series entitled "Among My Books") 133
IV Americans as Successors of the Dutch.
(From the essay entitled "On a Certain Condescension
in Foreigners," printed in "From My Study Window") 138
CHARLES A. DANA--(Born in 1819, died in 1897.)
Greeley as a Man of Genius.
(From an article printed in the New York _Sun_,
December 5, 1872) 146
JAMES PARTON--(Born in 1822, died in 1891.)
Aaron Burr and Madame Jumel.
(From his "Life of Burr") 150
FRANCIS PARKMAN--(Born in 1823, died in 1893.)
I Champlain's Battle with the Iroquois.
(From Chapter X of "The Pioneers of France
in the New World") 157
II The Death of La Salle.
(From Chapter XXV of "La Salle and the Discovery
of the Great West") 161
III The Coming of Frontenac to Canada.
(From Chapters I and II of "Count Frontenac and
New France") 167
IV The Death of Isaac Jogues.
(From Chapters XVI and XX of "The Jesuits in
North America") 171
V Why New France Failed.
(From the Introduction to "The Pioneers of France
in the New World") 176
VI The Return of the Coureurs-de-Bois.
(From Chapter XVIII of "The Old Régime in Canada") 179
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS--(Born in 1824, died in 1892.)
Our Cousin the Curate.
(From Chapter VII of "Prue and I") 183
ARTEMUS WARD--(Born in 1824, died in 1867.)
Forrest as Othello.
(From "Artemus Ward, His Book") 191
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH--(Born in 1836, died in 1908.)
I A Sunrise in Stillwater.
(From Chapter I of "The Stillwater Tragedy") 195
II The Fight at Slatter's Hill.
(From Chapter XIII of "The Story of a Bad Boy") 198
III On Returning from Europe.
(From Chapter IX of "From Ponkapog to Pesth") 204
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS--(Born in 1837.)
To Albany by the Night Boat.
(From Chapter III of "The Wedding Journey") 207
JOHN HAY--(Born in 1838, died in 1905.)
Lincoln's Early Fame.
(From Volume X, Chapter XVIII of "Abraham Lincoln,
A History") 211
HENRY ADAMS--(Born in 1838.)
Jefferson's Retirement.
(From the "History of the United States") 219
BRET HARTE--(Born in 1839, died in 1902.)
I Peggy Moffat's Inheritance.
(From "The Twins of Table Mountain") 224
II John Chinaman.
(From "The Luck of Roaring Camp") 236
III M'liss Goes to School.
(From "M'liss," one of the stories in "The Luck
of Roaring Camp") 240
HENRY JAMES--(Born in 1843.)
I Among the Malvern Hills.
(From "A Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales") 246
II Turgeneff's World.
(From "French Poets and Novelists") 252
INDEX TO THE TEN VOLUMES 255
* * * * *
VOL. X
AMERICA--II
1807-1909
* * * * *
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Born in 1807, died in 1882; graduated from Bowdoin in 1825;
traveled in Europe in 1826-29; professor at Bowdoin in
1829-35; again visited Europe in 1835-86; professor at
Harvard in 1836-54; published "Voices of the Night" in 1839,
"Evangeline" in 1847, "Hiawatha" in 1855, "Miles Standish"
in 1858; "Tales of a Wayside Inn" in 1863, a translation of
Dante in 1867-70, "The Divine Tragedy" in 1871, and many
other volumes of verse; his prose writings include
"Outre-Mer," published in 1835, and two novels, "Hyperion,"
published in 1839, and "Kavanagh," in 1849.
MUSINGS IN PÈRE LACHAISE[1]
The cemetery of Père Lachaise is the Westminster Abbey of Paris. Both
are the dwellings of the dead; but in one they repose in green alleys
and beneath the open sky--in the other their resting place is in the
shadowy aisle and beneath the dim arches of an ancient abbey. One is a
temple of nature; the other a temple of art. In one the soft
melancholy of the scene is rendered still more touching by the warble
of birds and the shade of trees, and the grave receives the gentle
visit of the sunshine and the shower: in the other no sound but the
passing footfall breaks the silence of the place; the twilight steals
in through high and dusky windows; and the damps of the gloomy vault
lie heavy on the heart, and leave their stain upon the moldering
tracery of the tomb.
[Footnote 1: From "Outre-Mer."]
Père Lachaise stands just beyond the Barrière d'Aulney, on a hillside
looking toward the city. Numerous gravel walks, winding through shady
avenues and between marble monuments, lead up from the principal
entrance to a chapel on the summit. There is hardly a grave that has
not its little enclosure planted with shrubbery, and a thick mass of
foliage half conceals each funeral stone. The sighing of the wind, as
the branches rise and fall upon it--the occasional note of a bird
among the trees, and the shifting of light and shade upon the tombs
beneath have a soothing effect upon the mind; and I doubt whether any
one can enter that enclosure, where repose the dust and ashes of so
many great and good men, without feeling the religion of the place
steal over him, and seeing something of the dark and gloomy expression
pass off from the stern countenance of Death.
It was near the close of a bright summer afternoon that I visited this
celebrated spot for the first time. The first object that arrested my
attention on entering was a monument in the form of a small Gothic
chapel which stands near the entrance, in the avenue leading to the
right hand. On the marble couch within are stretched two figures,
carved in stone and drest in the antique garb of the Middle Ages. It
is the tomb of Abélard and Héloïse. The history of these two
unfortunate lovers is too well known to need recapitulation; but
perhaps it is not so well known how often their ashes were disturbed
in the slumber of the grave. Abélard died in the monastery of St.
Marcel, and was buried in the vaults of the church. His body was
afterward removed to the convent of the Paraclete, at the request of
Héloïse, and at her death her body was deposited in the same tomb.
Three centuries they reposed together; after which they were separated
to different sides of the church, to calm the delicate scruples of the
lady abbess of the convent. More than a century afterward they were
again united in the same tomb; and when at length the Paraclete was
destroyed, their moldering remains were transported to the church of
Nogent-sur-Seine. They were next deposited in an ancient cloister at
Paris, and now repose near the gateway of the cemetery of Père
Lachaise. What a singular destiny was theirs! that, after a life of
such passionate and disastrous love--such sorrows, and tears, and
penitence--their very dust should not be suffered to rest quietly in
the grave!--that their death should so much resemble their life in its
changes and vicissitudes, its partings and its meetings, its
inquietudes and its persecutions!--that mistaken zeal should follow
them down to the very tomb--as if earthly passion could glimmer, like
a funeral lamp, amid the damps of the charnel house, and "even in
their ashes burn their wonted fires"!
As I gazed on the sculptured forms before me, and the little chapel
whose Gothic roof seemed to protect their marble sleep, my busy memory
swung back the dark portals of the past, and the picture of their sad
and eventful lives came up before me in the gloomy distance. What a
lesson for those who are endowed with the fatal gift of genius! It
would seem, indeed, that He who "tempers the wind to the shorn lamb"
tempers also His chastisements to the errors and infirmities of a
weak and simple mind--while the transgressions of him upon whose
nature are more strongly marked the intellectual attributes of the
Deity are followed, even upon earth, by severer tokens of the Divine
displeasure. He who sins in the darkness of a benighted intellect sees
not so clearly, through the shadows that surround him, the countenance
of an offended God; but he who sins in the broad noonday of a clear
and radiant mind, when at length the delirium of sensual passion has
subsided and the cloud flits away from before the sun, trembles
beneath the searching eye of that accusing Power which is strong in
the strength of a godlike intellect. Thus the mind and the heart are
closely linked together, and the errors of genius bear with them their
own chastisement, even upon earth. The history of Abélard and Héloïse
is an illustration of this truth. But at length they sleep well. Their
lives are like a tale that is told; their errors are "folded up like a
book"; and what mortal hand shall break the seal that death has set
upon them?
Leaving this interesting tomb behind me, I took a pathway to the left,
which conducted me up the hillside. I soon found myself in the deep
shade of heavy foliage, where the branches of the yew and willow
mingled, interwoven with the tendrils and blossoms of the honeysuckle.
I now stood in the most populous part of this city of tombs. Every
step awakened a new train of thrilling recollections, for at every
step my eye caught the name of some one whose glory had exalted the
character of his native land and resounded across the waters of the
Atlantic. Philosophers, historians, musicians, warriors, and poets
slept side by side around me; some beneath the gorgeous monument, and
some beneath the simple headstone. But the political intrigue, the
dream of science, the historical research, the ravishing harmony of
sound, the tried courage, the inspiration of the lyre--where are they?
With the living, and not with the dead! The right hand has lost its
cunning in the grave; but the soul, whose high volitions it obeyed,
still lives to reproduce itself in ages yet to come.
Amid these graves of genius I observed here and there a splendid
monument, which had been raised by the pride of family over the dust
of men who could lay no claim either to the gratitude or remembrance
of posterity. Their presence seemed like an intrusion into the
sanctuary of genius. What had wealth to do there? Why should it crowd
the dust of the great? That was no thoroughfare of business--no mart
of gain! There were no costly banquets there; no silken garments, nor
gaudy liveries, nor obsequious attendants! "What servants," says
Jeremy Taylor, "shall we have to wait upon us in the grave? what
friends to visit us? what officious people to cleanse away the moist
and unwholesome cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides of the
weeping vaults, which are the longest weepers for our funerals?"
Material wealth gives a factitious superiority to the living, but the
treasures of intellect give a real superiority to the dead; and the
rich man, who would not deign to walk the street with the starving and
penniless man of genius, deems it an honor, when death has redeemed
the fame of the neglected, to have his ashes laid beside him, and to
claim with him the silent companionship of the grave.
I continued my walk through the numerous winding paths, as chance or
curiosity directed me. Now I was lost in a little green hollow
overhung with thick-leaved shrubbery, and then came out upon an
elevation, from which, through an opening in the trees, the eye caught
glimpses of the city, and the little esplanade at the foot of the hill
where the poor lie buried. There poverty hires its grave and takes but
a short lease of the narrow house. At the end of a few months, or at
most of a few years, the tenant is dislodged to give place to another,
and he in turn to a third. "Who," says Sir Thomas Browne, "knows the
fate of his bones, or how often he is to be buried? Who hath the
oracle of his ashes, or whither they are to be scattered?"
Yet even in that neglected corner the hand of affection had been busy
in decorating the hired house. Most of the graves were surrounded with
a slight wooden paling, to secure them from the passing footstep;
there was hardly one so deserted as not to be marked with its little
wooden cross and decorated with a garland of flowers; and here and
there I could perceive a solitary mourner, clothed in black, stooping
to plant a shrub on the grave, or sitting in motionless sorrow beside
it.
As I passed on amid the shadowy avenues of the cemetery, I could not
help comparing my own impressions with those which others have felt
when walking alone among the dwellings of the dead. Are, then, the
sculptured urn and storied monument nothing more than symbols of
family pride? Is all I see around me a memorial of the living more
than of the dead, an empty show of sorrow, which thus vaunts itself in
mournful pageant and funeral parade? Is it indeed true, as some have
said, that the simple wild flower which springs spontaneously upon the
grave, and the rose which the hand of affection plants there, are
fitter objects wherewith to adorn the narrow house? No! I feel that it
is not so! Let the good and the great be honored even in the grave.
Let the sculptured marble direct our footsteps to the scene of their
long sleep; let the chiseled epitaph repeat their names, and tell us
where repose the nobly good and wise! It is not true that all are
equal in the grave. There is no equality even there. The mere handful
of dust and ashes, the mere distinction of prince and beggar, of a
rich winding sheet and a shroudless burial, of a solitary grave and a
family vault--were this all, then, indeed it would be true that death
is a common leveler. Such paltry distinctions as those of wealth and
poverty are soon leveled by the spade and mattock; the damp breath of
the grave blots them out forever. But there are other distinctions
which even the mace of death can not level or obliterate. Can it break
down the distinction of virtue and vice? Can it confound the good with
the bad? the noble with the base? all that is truly great, and pure,
and godlike, with all that is scorned, and sinful, and degraded? No!
Then death is not a common leveler!...
Before I left the graveyard the shades of evening had fallen, and the
objects around me grown dim and indistinct. As I passed the gateway, I
turned to take a parting look. I could distinguish only the chapel on
the summit of the hill, and here and there a lofty obelisk of
snow-white marble, rising from the black and heavy mass of foliage
around, and pointing upward to the gleam of the departed sun, that
still lingered in the sky, and mingled with the soft starlight of a
summer evening.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
Born in 1809, died in 1849; his father and mother actors;
adopted by John Allan of Richmond after his mother's death;
educated in Richmond, in England, at the University of
Virginia, and at West Point; published "Tamerlane" in 1827;
settled in Baltimore and devoted himself to literature;
editor of several magazines 1835-44; published "The Raven"
in 1845, "Al Aaraaf" in 1829, "Tales of the Grotesque and
Arabesque" in 1840.
I
THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO[2]
It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the
carnival season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me with
excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man wore motley.
He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was
surmounted by the conical cap and bells. I was so pleased to see him
that I thought I should never have done wringing his hand.
[Footnote 2: Published in _Godey's Magazine_ in 1846.]
I said to him: "My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkable
well you are looking to-day! But I have received a pipe of what passes
for Amontillado, and I have my doubts."
"How?" said he. "Amontillado? A pipe? Impossible! And in the middle of
the carnival!"
"I have my doubts," I replied; "and I was silly enough to pay the full
Amontillado price without consulting you in the matter. You were not
to be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain."
"Amontillado!"
"I have my doubts--"
"Amontillado!"
"And I must satisfy them."
"Amontillado!"
"As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchesi. If any one has a
critical turn, it is he. He will tell me--"
"Luchesi can not tell Amontillado from Sherry."
"And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for your
own."
"Come, let us go."
"Whither?"
"To your vaults."
"My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I perceive
you have an engagement. Luchesi--"
"I have no engagement; come."
"My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold with
which I perceive you are afflicted. The vaults are insufferably damp.
They are encrusted with niter."
"Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing. Amontillado! You
have been imposed upon. And as for Luchesi, he can not distinguish
Sherry from Amontillado."
Thus speaking, Fortunato possest himself of my arm. Putting on a mask
of black silk, and drawing a _roquelaure_ closely about my person, I
suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo.
There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make merry in
honor of the time. I had told them that I should not return until the
morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the
house. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their
immediate disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was turned.
I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to Fortunato,
bowed him through several suites of rooms to the archway that led into
the vaults. I passed down a long and winding staircase, requesting him
to be cautious as he followed. We came at length to the foot of the
descent, and stood together on the damp ground of the catacombs of the
Montresors.
The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap jingled
as he strode.
"The pipe," said he.
"It is farther on," said I; "but observe the white web-work which
gleams from these cavern walls."
He turned toward me, and looked into my eyes with two filmy orbs that
distilled the rheum of intoxication.
"Niter?" he asked, at length.
"Niter," I replied. "How long have you had that cough?"
"Ugh! ugh! ugh--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh! ugh! ugh!--ugh!
ugh! ugh!"
My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes.
"It is nothing," he said, at last.
"Come," I said, with decision, "we will go back; your health is
precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy,
as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter. We
will go back; you will be ill, and I can not be responsible. Besides,
there is Luchesi--"
"Enough," he said; "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me.
I shall not die."
"True--true," I replied; "and, indeed, I had no intention of alarming
you unnecessarily--but you should use all proper caution. A draft of
this Medoc will defend us from the damps."
Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long row
of its fellows that lay upon the mold.
"Drink," I said, presenting him the wine.
He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me
familiarly, while his bells jingled.
"I drink," he said, "to the buried that repose around us."
"And I to your long life."
He again took my arm, and we proceeded.
"These vaults," he said, "are extensive."
"The Montresors," I replied, "were a great and numerous family."
"I forget your arms."
"A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent
rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel."
"And the motto?"
_"Nemo me impune lacessit."_
"Good!" he said.
The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own fancy grew
warm with the Medoc. We had passed through walls of piled bones, with
casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the
catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold to seize
Fortunato by an arm above the elbow.
"The niter!" I said; "see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon the
vaults. We are below the river's bed. The drops of moisture trickle
among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too late. Your
cough--"
"It is nothing," he said; "let us go on. But first, another draft of
the Medoc."
I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grave. He emptied it at a
breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw the
bottle upward with a gesticulation I did not understand.
I looked at him in surprize. He repeated the movement--a grotesque
one.
"You do not comprehend!" he said.
"Not I," I replied.
"Then you are not of the brotherhood."
"How?"
"You are not of the masons."
"Yes, yes," I said, "yes, yes."
"You? Impossible! A mason?"
"A mason," I replied.
"A sign," he said.
"It is this," I answered, producing a trowel from beneath the folds of
my _roquelaure_.
"You jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "But let us proceed
to the Amontillado."
"Be it so," I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak, and again
offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily. We continued our route
in search of the Amontillado. We passed through a range of low arches,
descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt,
in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glow
than flame.
At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less
spacious. Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the
vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three
sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner.
From the fourth the bones had been thrown down, and lay promiscuously
upon the earth, forming at one point a mound of some size. Within the
walls thus exposed by the displacing of the bones, we perceived a
still interior recess, in depth about four feet, in width three, in
height six or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for no special
use within itself, but formed merely the interval between two of the
colossal supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed by one
of their circumscribing walls of solid granite.
It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavored to
pry into the depth of the recess. Its termination the feeble light did
not enable us to see.
"Proceed," I said, "herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchesi--"
"He is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stept unsteadily
forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he
had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress
arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I
had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron staples,
distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of
these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock. Throwing the
links about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure
it. He was too much astounded to resist. Withdrawing the key I stept
back from the recess.
"Pass your hand," I said, "over the wall; you can not help feeling the
niter. Indeed it is very damp. Once more let me implore you to return.
No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render you all
the little attentions in my power."
"The Amontillado!" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his
astonishment.
"True," I replied; "the Amontillado."
As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones of which
I have before spoken. Throwing them aside, I soon uncovered a quantity
of building stone and mortar. With these materials and with the aid of
my trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the niche.
I had scarcely laid the first tier of the masonry when I discovered
that the intoxication of Fortunato had in a great measure worn off.
The earliest indication I had of this was a low moaning cry from the
depth of the recess. It was _not_ the cry of a drunken man. There was
then a long and obstinate silence. I laid the second tier, and the
third, and the fourth; and then I heard the furious vibrations of the
chain. The noise lasted for several minutes, during which, that I
might harken to it with the more satisfaction, I ceased my labors and
sat down upon the bones. When at last the clanking subsided, I resumed
the trowel, and finished without interruption the fifth, the sixth,
and the seventh tier. The wall was now nearly upon a level with my
breast. I again paused, and holding the flambeaux over the mason-work,
threw a few feeble rays upon the figure within.
A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the
throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a
brief moment I hesitated--I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I began
to grope with it about the recess; but the thought of an instant
reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs,
and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall. I replied to the yells of
him who clamored. I reechoed--I aided--I surpassed them in volume and
in strength. I did this, and the clamorer grew still.
It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I had
completed the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth tier. I had finished a
portion of the last and the eleventh; there remained but a single
stone to be fitted and plastered in. I struggled with its weight; I
placed it partially in its destined position. But now there came from
out the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It was
succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognizing as
that of the noble Fortunato. The voice said:
"Ha! ha! ha!--he! he!--a very good joke--indeed--an excellent jest. We
will have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo--he! he! he!--over
our wine--he! he! he!"
"The Amontillado!" I said.
"He! he! he!--he! he! he!--yes, the Amontillado. But is it not getting
late? Will they not be awaiting us at the palazzo, the Lady Fortunato
and the rest? Let us be gone."
"Yes," I said, "let us be gone."
"For the love of God, Montresor!"
"Yes," I said, "for the love of God!"
But to these words I harkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I
called aloud: "Fortunato!"
No answer. I called again: "Fortunato!"
No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and
let it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of the
bells. My heart grew sick--on account of the dampness of the
catacombs. I hastened to make an end of my labor. I forced the last
stone into its position; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I
reerected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no
mortal has disturbed them. _In pace requiescat!_
II
OF HAWTHORNE AND THE SHORT STORY[3]
The reputation of the author of "Twice-Told Tales" has been confined,
until very lately, to literary society; and I have not been wrong,
perhaps, in citing him as the example, par excellence, in this
country, of the privately admired and publicly-unappreciated man of
genius. Within the last year or two, it is true, an occasional critic
has been urged, by honest indignation, into very warm approval. Mr.
Webber,[4] for instance (than whom no one has a keener relish for that
kind of writing which Mr. Hawthorne has best illustrated), gave us, in
a late number of _The American Review_, a cordial and certainly a full
tribute to his talents; and since the issue of the "Mosses from an Old
Manse" criticisms of similar tone have been by no means infrequent in
our more authoritative journals. I can call to mind few reviews of
Hawthorne published before the "Mosses." One I remember in _Arcturus_
(edited by Matthews and Duyckinck[5]) for May, 1841; another in the
_American Monthly_ (edited by Hoffman[6] and Herbert) for March, 1838;
a third in the ninety-sixth number of _The North American Review_.
These criticisms, however, seemed to have little effect on the popular
taste--at least, if we are to form any idea of the popular taste by
reference to its expression in the newspapers, or by the sale of the
author's book. It was never the fashion (until lately) to speak of
him in any summary of our best authors....
[Footnote 3: From a review of Hawthorne's "Twice Told Tales" and
"Mosses from an Old Manse," published in _Godey's Magazine_ in 1846.
Except for an earlier notice by Longfellow in _The North American
Review_, this was the first notable recognition Hawthorne's stories
received from a contemporary critic.]
[Footnote 4: Charles Wilkens Webber, magazine writer and author of a
dozen books now forgotten, was a native of Kentucky who settled in New
York. In 1855 he joined William Walker in his filibustering expedition
to Central America, and was killed in the battle of Rivas.]
[Footnote 5: Evert A. Duyckinck, joint editor with his brother of the
"Cyclopedia of American Literature."]
[Footnote 6: Charles Fenno Hoffman, poet, novelist, and critic, was
related to Mathilda Hoffman, the sweetheart of Washington Irving.]
Beyond doubt, this inappreciation of him on the part of the public
arose chiefly from the two causes to which I have referred--from the
facts that he is neither a man of wealth nor a quack; but these are
insufficient to account for the whole effect. No small portion of it
is attributable to the very marked idiosyncrasy of Mr. Hawthorne
himself. In one sense, and in great measure, to be peculiar is to be
original, and than the true originality there is no higher literary
virtue. This true or commendable originality, however, implies not the
uniform, but the continuous peculiarity--a peculiarity springing from
ever-active vigor of fancy--better still if from ever-present force of
imagination, giving its own hue, its own character to everything it
touches, and, especially, self-impelled to touch everything....
The pieces in the volumes entitled "Twice-Told Tales" are now in their
third republication, and, of course, are thrice-told. Moreover, they
are by no means all tales, either in the ordinary or in the legitimate
understanding of the term. Many of them are pure essays. Of the Essays
I must be content to speak in brief. They are each and all beautiful,
without being characterized by the polish and adaptation so visible in
the tales proper. A painter would at once note their leading or
predominant feature, and style it repose. There is no attempt at
effect. All is quiet, thoughtful, subdued. Yet this repose may exist
simultaneously with high originality of thought; and Mr. Hawthorne has
demonstrated the fact. At every turn we meet with novel combinations;
yet these combinations never surpass the limits of the quiet. We are
soothed as we read; and withal is a calm astonishment that ideas so
apparently obvious have never occurred or been presented to us before.
Herein our author differs materially from Lamb or Hunt or
Hazlitt--who, with vivid originality of manner and expression, have
less of the true novelty of thought than is generally supposed, and
whose originality, at best, has an uneasy and meretricious quaintness,
replete with startling effects unfounded in nature, and inducing
trains of reflection which lead to no satisfactory result. The essays
of Hawthorne have much of the character of Irving, with more of
originality, and less of finish; while, compared with the _Spectator_,
they have a vast superiority at all points. The Spectator, Mr. Irving
and Hawthorne have in common that tranquil and subdued manner which I
have chosen to denominate repose; but, in the ease of the two former,
this repose is attained rather by the absence of novel combination, or
of originality, than otherwise, and consists chiefly in the calm,
quiet, unostentatious expression of commonplace thoughts, in an
unambitious, unadulterated Saxon. In them, by strong effort, we are
made to conceive the absence of all. In the essays before me the
absence of effort is too obvious to be mistaken, and a strong
undercurrent of suggestion runs continuously beneath the upper stream
of the tranquil thesis. In short, these effusions of Mr. Hawthorne are
the product of a truly imaginative intellect, restrained, and in some
measure represt by fastidiousness of taste, by constitutional
melancholy, and by indolence.
But it is of his tales that I desire principally to speak. The tale
proper, in my opinion, affords unquestionably the fairest field for
the exercise of the loftiest talent which can be afforded by the wide
domains of mere prose. Were I bidden to say how the highest genius
could be most advantageously employed for the best display of its own
powers, I should answer, without hesitation--in the composition of a
rimed poem, not to exceed in length what might be perused in an hour.
Within this limit alone can the highest order of true poetry exist. I
need only here say, upon this topic, that, in almost all classes of
composition, the unity of effect or impression is a point of the
greatest importance. It is clear, moreover, that this unity can not be
thoroughly preserved in productions whose perusal can not be completed
at one sitting. We may continue the reading of a prose composition,
from the very nature of prose itself, much longer than we can
persevere, to any good purpose, in the perusal of a poem. This latter,
if truly fulfilling the demands of the poetic sentiment, induces an
exaltation of the soul which can not be long sustained. All high
excitements are necessarily transient. Thus a long poem is a paradox.
And, without unity of impression, the deepest effects can not be
brought about. Epics were the offspring of an imperfect sense of art,
and their reign is no more. A poem too brief may produce a vivid, but
never an intense or enduring impression. Without a certain continuity
of effort--without a certain duration or repetition of purpose--the
soul is never deeply moved. There must be the dropping of the water
upon the rock. De Béranger has wrought brilliant things--pungent and
spirit-stirring--but, like all impassive bodies, they lack momentum,
and thus fail to satisfy the poetic sentiment. They sparkle and
excite, but, from want of continuity, fail deeply to impress. Extreme
brevity will degenerate into epigrammatism; but the sin of extreme
length is even more unpardonable. _In medio tutissimus ibis._ Were I
called upon, however, to designate that class of composition which,
next to such a poem as I have suggested, should best fulfil the
demands of high genius--should offer it the most advantageous field of
exertion--I should unhesitatingly speak of the prose tale, as Mr.
Hawthorne has here exemplified it. I allude to the short prose
narrative, requiring from a half-hour to one or two hours in its
perusal.
Of Mr. Hawthorne's "Tales" we would say, emphatically that they belong
to the highest region of art--an art subservient to genius of a very
lofty order.... We know of few compositions which the critic can more
honestly commend than these "Twice-Told Tales." As Americans, we feel
proud of the book.
Mr. Hawthorne's distinctive trait is invention, creation, imagination,
originality--a trait which, in the literature of fiction, is
positively worth all the rest. But the nature of the originality, so
far as regards its manifestation in letters, is but imperfectly
understood. The inventive or original mind as frequently displays
itself in novelty of tone as in novelty of matter. Mr. Hawthorne is
original in all points. It would be a matter of some difficulty to
designate the best of these tales; we repeat that, without exception,
they are beautiful.
He has the purest style, the finest taste, the most available
scholarship, the most delicate humor, the most touching pathos, the
most radiant imagination, the most consummate ingenuity; and with
these varied good qualities he has done well as a mystic. But is there
any one of these qualities which should prevent his doing doubly as
well in a career of honest, upright, sensible, prehensible and
comprehensible things? Let him mend his pen, get a bottle of visible
ink, come out from the "Old Manse," cut Mr. Alcott, hang (if possible)
the editor of The Dial, and throw out of the window to the pigs all
his odd numbers of _The North American Review_.
III
OF WILLIS, BRYANT, HALLECK, AND MACAULAY[7]
Whatever may be thought of Mr. Willis's talents, there can be no doubt
about the fact that, both as an author and as a man, he has made a
good deal of noise in the world--at least for an American. His
literary life, in especial, has been one continual emeute; but then
his literary character is modified or impelled in a very remarkable
degree by his personal one. His success (for in point of fame, if of
nothing else, he has certainly been successful) is to be attributed
one-third to his mental ability and two-thirds to his physical
temperament--the latter goading him into the accomplishment of what
the former merely gave him the means of accomplishing.... At a very
early age, Mr. Willis seems to have arrived at an understanding that,
in a republic such as ours, the mere man of letters must ever be a
cipher, and endeavored, accordingly, to unite the eclat of the
litterateur with that of the man of fashion or of society. He "pushed
himself," went much into the world, made friends with the gentler sex,
"delivered" poetical addresses, wrote "scriptural" poems, traveled,
sought the intimacy of noted women, and got into quarrels with
notorious men. All these things served his purpose--if, indeed, I am
right in supposing that he had any purpose at all. It is quite
probable that, as before hinted, he acted only in accordance with his
physical temperament; but, be this as it may, his personal greatly
advanced, if it did not altogether establish his literary fame. I have
often carefully considered whether, without the physique of which I
speak, there is that in the absolute morale of Mr. Willis which would
have earned him reputation as a man of letters, and my conclusion is
that he could not have failed to become noted in some degree under
almost any circumstances, but that about two-thirds (as above stated)
of his appreciation by the public should be attributed to those
adventures which grew immediately out of his animal constitution.
[Footnote 7: Passages selected from articles now printed in Volume II
of the "Works of Poe," as published in New York in 1876.]
Mr. Bryant's position in the poetical world is, perhaps, better
settled than that of any American. There is less difference of opinion
about his rank; but, as usual, the agreement is more decided in
private literary circles than in what appears to be the public
expression of sentiment as gleaned from the press. I may as well
observe here, too, that this coincidence of opinion in private circles
is in all cases very noticeable when compared with the discrepancy of
the apparent public opinion. In private it is quite a rare thing to
find any strongly-marked disagreement--I mean, of course, about mere
authorial merit.... It will never do to claim for Bryant a genius of
the loftiest order, but there has been latterly, since the days of Mr.
Longfellow and Mr. Lowell, a growing disposition to deny him genius in
any respect. He is now commonly spoken of as "a man of high poetical
talent, very 'correct,' with a warm appreciation of the beauty of
nature and great descriptive powers, but rather too much of the
old-school manner of Cowper, Goldsmith and Young." This is the truth,
but not the whole truth. Mr. Bryant has genius, and that of a marked
character, but it has been overlooked by modern schools, because
deficient in those externals which have become in a measure symbolical
of those schools.
The name of Halleck is at least as well established in the poetical
world as that of any American. Our principal poets are, perhaps, most
frequently named in this order--Bryant, Halleck, Dana, Sprague,[8]
Longfellow, Willis, and so on--Halleck coming second in the series,
but holding, in fact, a rank in the public opinion quite equal to that
of Bryant. The accuracy of the arrangement as above made may, indeed,
be questioned. For my own part, I should have it thus--Longfellow,
Bryant, Halleck, Willis, Sprague, Dana; and, estimating rather the
poetic capacity than the poems actually accomplished, there are three
or four comparatively unknown writers whom I would place in the series
between Bryant and Halleck, while there are about a dozen whom I
should assign a position between Willis and Sprague. Two dozen at
least might find room between Sprague and Dana--this latter, I fear,
owing a very large portion of his reputation to his quondam editorial
connection with _The North American Review_. One or two poets, now in
my mind's eye, I should have no hesitation in posting above even Mr.
Longfellow--still not intending this as very extravagant praise....
Mr. Halleck, in the apparent public estimate, maintains a somewhat
better position than that to which, on absolute grounds, he is
entitled. There is something, too, in the bonhomie of certain of his
compositions--something altogether distinct from poetic merit--which
has aided to establish him; and much also must be admitted on the
score of his personal popularity, which is deservedly great. With all
these allowances, however, there will still be found a large amount of
poetical fame to which he is fairly entitled.... Personally he is a
man to be admired, respected, but more especially beloved. His address
has all the captivating bonhomie which is the leading feature of his
poetry, and, indeed, of his whole moral nature. With his friends he
is all ardor, enthusiasm and cordiality, but to the world at large he
is reserved, shunning society, into which he is seduced only with
difficulty, and upon rare occasions. The love of solitude seems to
have become with him a passion.
[Footnote 8: Charles Sprague, born in Boston in 1791, was known in his
own day as "the American Pope."]
Macaulay has obtained a reputation which, altho deservedly great, is
yet in a remarkable measure undeserved. The few who regard him merely
as a terse, forcible and logical writer, full of thought, and
abounding in original views, often sagacious and never otherwise than
admirably exprest--appear to us precisely in the right. The many who
look upon him as not only all this, but as a comprehensive and
profound thinker, little prone to error, err essentially themselves.
The source of the general mistake lies in a very singular
consideration--yet in one upon which we do not remember ever to have
heard a word of comment. We allude to a tendency in the public mind
toward logic for logic's sake--a liability to confound the vehicle
with the conveyed--an aptitude to be so dazzled by the luminousness
with which an idea is set forth as to mistake it for the luminousness
of the idea itself. The error is one exactly analogous with that which
leads the immature poet to think himself sublime wherever he is
obscure, because obscurity is a source of the sublime--thus
confounding obscurity of expression with the expression of obscurity.
In the case of Macaulay--and we may say, _en passant_, of our own
Channing--we assent to what he says too often because we so very
clearly understand what it is that he intends to say. Comprehending
vividly the points and the sequence of his argument, we fancy that we
are concurring in the argument itself. It is not every mind which is
at once able to analyze the satisfaction it receives from such essays
as we see here. If it were merely beauty of style for which they were
distinguished--if they were remarkable only for rhetorical
flourishes--we would not be apt to estimate these flourishes at more
than their due value. We would not agree with the doctrines of the
essayist on account of the elegance with which they were urged. On the
contrary, we would be inclined to disbelief. But when all ornament
save that of simplicity is disclaimed--when we are attacked by
precision of language, by perfect accuracy of expression, by
directness and singleness of thought, and above all by a logic the
most rigorously close and consequential--it is hardly a matter for
wonder that nine of us out of ten are content to rest in the
gratification thus received as in the gratification of absolute
truth.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Born in 1809, died in 1894; professor in the Medical School
of Harvard in 1847-82; wrote for the _Atlantic Monthly_ "The
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" in 1857-58, "The Professor
at the Breakfast Table" in 1859, "The Poet at the Breakfast
Table" in 1872; published "Elsie Venner" in 1861, "The
Guardian Angel" in 1868, "A Mortal Antipathy" in 1885; a
collection of verse entitled "Songs in Many Keys" in 1861,
"Humorous Poems" in 1865, "Songs of Many Seasons," in 1874,
"Before the Curfew" in 1888; also wrote volumes of essays
and memoirs of Emerson and Motley.
I
OF DOCTORS, LAWYERS, AND MINISTERS[9]
"What is your general estimate of doctors, lawyers, and ministers?"
said I.
"Wait a minute, till I have got through with your first question,"
said the Master. "One thing at a time. You asked me about the young
doctors, and about our young doctors, they come home _très bien
chaussés_, as a Frenchman would say, mighty well shod with
professional knowledge. But when they begin walking round among their
poor patients--they don't commonly start with millionaires--they find
that their new shoes of scientific acquirements have got to be broken
in just like a pair of boots or brogans. I don't know that I have put
it quite strong enough. Let me try again. You've seen those fellows at
the circus that get up on horseback, so big that you wonder how they
could climb into the saddle. But pretty soon they throw off their
outside coat, and the next minute another one, and then the one under
that, and so they keep peeling off one garment after another till
people begin to look queer and think they are going too far for strict
propriety. Well, that is the way a fellow with a real practical turn
serves a good many of his scientific wrappers--flings 'em off for
other people to pick up, and goes right at the work of curing
stomach-aches and all the other little mean unscientific complaints
that make up the larger part of every doctor's business. I think our
Dr. Benjamin is a worthy young man, and if you are in need of a doctor
at any time I hope you will go to him; and if you come off without
harm, I will--recommend some other friend to try him."
[Footnote 9: From Chapter V of "The Poet at the Breakfast Table."
Copyright, 1872, 1891, by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Published by
Houghton, Mifflin Company.]
I thought he was going to say he would try him in his own person; but
the Master is not fond of committing himself.
"Now I will answer your other question," he said. "The lawyers are the
cleverest men, the ministers are the most learned, and the doctors are
the most sensible."
"The lawyers are a picked lot, 'first scholars,' and the like, but
their business is as unsympathetic as Jack Ketch's. There is nothing
humanizing in their relations with their fellow creatures. They go for
the side that retains them. They defend the man they know to be a
rogue, and not very rarely throw suspicion on the man they know to be
innocent. Mind you, I am not finding fault with them--every side of a
case has a right to the best statement it admits of; but I say it does
not tend to make them sympathetic. Suppose in a case of Fever _vs._
Patient, the doctor should side with either party according to whether
the old miser or his expectant heir was his employer. Suppose the
minister should side with the Lord or the devil, according to the
salary offered, and other incidental advantages, where the soul of a
sinner was in question. You can see what a piece of work it would make
of their sympathies. But the lawyers are quicker witted than either of
the other professions, and abler men generally. They are good-natured,
or if they quarrel, their quarrels are above-board. I don't think they
are as accomplished as the ministers; but they have a way of cramming
with special knowledge for a case, which leaves a certain shallow
sediment of intelligence in their memories about a good many things.
They are apt to talk law in mixt company; and they have a way of
looking round when they make a point, as if they were addressing a
jury, that is mighty aggravating--as I once had occasion to see when
one of 'em, and a pretty famous one, put me on the witness stand at a
dinner party once.
"The ministers come next in point of talent. They are far more curious
and widely interested outside of their own calling than either of the
other professions. I like to talk with 'em. They are interesting men:
full of good feelings, hard workers, always foremost in good deeds,
and on the whole the most efficient civilizing class--working downward
from knowledge to ignorance, that is; not so much upward,
perhaps--that we have. The trouble is that so many of 'em work in
harness, and it is pretty sure to chafe somewhere. They feed us on
canned meats mostly. They cripple our instincts and reason, and give
us a crutch of doctrine. I have talked with a great many of 'em, of
all sorts of belief; and I don't think they are quite so easy in their
minds, the greater number of them, nor so clear in their convictions
as one would think to hear 'em lay down the law in the pulpit. They
used to lead the intelligence of their parishes; now they do pretty
well if they keep up with it, and they are very apt to lag behind it.
Then they must have a colleague. The old minister thinks he can hold
to his old course, sailing right into the wind's eye of human nature,
as straight as that famous old skipper John Bunyan; the young minister
falls off three or four points, and catches the breeze that left the
old man's sails all shivering. By-and-by the congregation will get
ahead of him, and then it must have another new skipper. The priest
holds his own pretty well; the minister is coming down every
generation nearer and nearer to the common level of the useful
citizen--no oracle at all, but a man of more than average moral
instincts, who, if he knows anything, knows how little he knows. The
ministers are good talkers, only the struggle between nature and grace
makes some of 'em a little awkward occasionally. The women do their
best to spoil 'em, as they do the poets. You find it pleasant to be
spoiled, no doubt; so do they. Now and then one of 'em goes over the
dam; no wonder--they're always in the rapids."
By this time our three ladies had their faces all turned toward the
speaker, like the weathercocks in a northeaster, and I thought it best
to switch off the talk on to another rail.
"How about the doctors?" I said.
"Theirs is the least learned of the professions, in this country at
least. They have not half the general culture of the lawyers, nor a
quarter of that of the ministers. I rather think, tho, they are more
agreeable to the common run of people than the men with the black
coats or the men with green bags. People can swear before 'em if they
want to, and they can't very well before ministers. I don't care
whether they want to swear or not, they don't want to be on their good
behavior. Besides, the minister has a little smack of the sexton about
him; he comes when people are _in extremis_, but they don't send for
him every time they make a slight moral slip--tell a lie, for
instance, or smuggle a silk dress through the custom-house: but they
call in the doctor when the child is cutting a tooth or gets a
splinter in its finger. So it doesn't mean much to send for him, only
a pleasant chat about the news of the day; for putting the baby to
rights doesn't take long. Besides, everybody doesn't like to talk
about the next world; people are modest in their desires, and find
this world as good as they deserve: but everybody loves to talk
physic. Everybody loves to hear of strange cases; people are eager to
tell the doctor of the wonderful cures they have heard of; they want
to know what is the matter with somebody or other who is said to be
suffering from "a complication of diseases," and above all to get a
hard name, Greek or Latin, for some complaint which sounds altogether
too commonplace in plain English. If you will only call a headache a
_Cephalalgia_, it acquires dignity at once, and a patient becomes
rather proud of it. So I think doctors are generally welcome in most
companies."
II
OF THE GENIUS OF EMERSON[10]
Emerson's was an Asiatic mind, drawing its sustenance partly from the
hard soil of our New England, partly, too, from the air that has known
Himalaya and the Ganges. So imprest with this character of his mind
was Mr. Burlingame,[11] as I saw him, after his return from his
mission, that he said to me, in a freshet of hyperbole, which was the
overflow of a channel with a thread of truth running in it, "There are
twenty thousand Ralph Waldo Emersons in China."
[Footnote 10: From an address before the Massachusetts Historical
Society in 1862. Published by Houghton, Mifflin Company.]
[Footnote 11: Anson Burlingame, famous in his time for treaties
negotiated between China and the United States, England, Denmark,
Sweden, Holland, and Prussia. His son, E. I. Burlingame, has long been
the editor of _Scribner's Magazine_.]
What could we do with this unexpected, unprovided for, unclassified,
half-unwelcome new-comer, who had been for a while potted, as it
were, in our Unitarian cold green-house, but had taken to growing so
fast that he was lifting off its glass roof and letting in the
hailstorms? Here was a protest that outflanked the extreme left of
liberalism, yet so calm and serene that its radicalism had the accents
of the gospel of peace. Here was an iconoclast without a hammer, who
took down our idols from their pedestals so tenderly that it seemed
like an act of worship.
The scribes and pharisees made light of his oracular sayings. The
lawyers could not find the witnesses to subpoena and the documents
to refer to when his case came before them, and turned him over to
their wives and daughters. The ministers denounced his heresies, and
handled his writings as if they were packages of dynamite, and the
grandmothers were as much afraid of his new teachings as old Mrs.
Piozzi[12] was of geology. We had had revolutionary orators,
reformers, martyrs; it was but a few years since Abner Kneeland had
been sent to jail for expressing an opinion about the great First
Cause; but we had had nothing like this man, with his seraphic voice
and countenance, his choice vocabulary, his refined utterance, his
gentle courage, which, with a different manner, might have been called
audacity, his temperate statement of opinions which threatened to
shake the existing order of thought like an earthquake.
[Footnote 12: Hester Lynch Salisbury, who married first Henry Thrale,
the English brewer, and second an Italian musician named Piozzi; but
her fame rests on her friendship of twenty years with Doctor Samuel
Johnson, of whom she wrote reminiscences, described by Carlyle as
"Piozzi's ginger beer."]
His peculiarities of style and of thinking became fertile parents of
mannerisms, which were fair game for ridicule as they appeared in his
imitators. For one who talks like Emerson or like Carlyle soon finds
himself surrounded by a crowd of walking phonographs, who mechanically
reproduce his mental and vocal accents. Emerson was before long
talking in the midst of a babbling Simonetta of echoes, and not
unnaturally was now and then himself a mark for the small-shot of
criticism. He had soon reached that height in the "cold thin
atmosphere" of thought where
"Vainly the fowler's eye
Might mark his distant flight to do him wrong."
I shall add a few words, of necessity almost epigrammatic, upon his
work and character. He dealt with life, and life with him was not
merely this particular air-breathing phase of being, but the spiritual
existence which included it like a parenthesis between the two
infinities. He wanted his daily drafts of oxygen like his neighbors,
and was as thoroughly human as the plain people he mentions who had
successively owned or thought they owned the house-lot on which he
planted his hearthstone. But he was at home no less in the
interstellar spaces outside of all the atmospheres. The
semi-materialistic idealism of Milton was a gross and clumsy medium
compared to the imponderable ether of "The Over-soul" and the
unimaginable vacuum of "Brahma." He followed in the shining and daring
track of the _Graius homo_ of Lucretius:
_"Vivida vis animi pervicit, et extra
Processit longe flammantia moenia mundi."_
It always seemed to me as if he looked at this earth very much as a
visitor from another planet would look upon it. He was interested, and
to some extent curious about it, but it was not the first spheroid he
had been acquainted with, by any means. I have amused myself with
comparing his descriptions of natural objects with those of the Angel
Raphael in the seventh book of Paradise Lost. Emerson talks of his
titmouse as Raphael talks of his emmet. Angels and poets never deal
with nature after the manner of those whom we call naturalists.
To judge of him as a thinker, Emerson should have been heard as a
lecturer, for his manner was an illustration of his way of thinking.
He would lose his place just as his mind would drop its thought and
pick up another, twentieth cousin or no relation at all to it. This
went so far at times that one could hardly tell whether he was putting
together a mosaic of colored fragments, or only turning a kaleidoscope
where the pieces tumbled about as they best might. It was as if he had
been looking in at a cosmic peep-show, and turning from it at brief
intervals to tell us what he saw. But what fragments these colored
sentences were, and what pictures they often placed before us, as if
we too saw them! Never has this city known such audiences as he
gathered; never was such an Olympian entertainment as that which he
gave them.
It is very hard to speak of Mr. Emerson's poetry; not to do it
injustice, still more to do it justice. It seems to me like the robe
of a monarch patched by a New England housewife. The royal tint and
stuff are unmistakable, but here and there the gray worsted from the
darning-needle crosses and ekes out the Tyrian purple. Few poets who
have written so little in verse have dropped so many of those "jewels
five words long" which fall from their setting only to be more
choicely treasured. _E pluribus unum_ is scarcely more familiar to our
ears than "He builded better than he knew," and Keats's "thing of
beauty" is little better known than Emerson's "beauty is its own
excuse for being." One may not like to read Emerson's poetry because
it is sometimes careless, almost as if carefully so, tho never
undignified even when slipshod; spotted with quaint archaisms and
strange expressions that sound like the affectation of negligence, or
with plain, homely phrases such as the self-made scholar is always
afraid of. But if one likes Emerson's poetry he will be sure to love
it; if he loves it, its phrases will cling to him as hardly any others
do. It may not be for the multitude, but it finds its place like
pollen-dust and penetrates to the consciousness it is to fertilize and
bring to flower and fruit.
I have known something of Emerson as a talker, not nearly so much as
many others who can speak and write of him. It is unsafe to tell how a
great thinker talks, for perhaps, like a city dealer with a village
customer, he has not shown his best goods to the innocent reporter of
his sayings. However that may be in this case, let me contrast in a
single glance the momentary effect in conversation of the two
neighbors, Hawthorne and Emerson. Speech seemed like a kind of travail
to Hawthorne. One must harpoon him like a cetacean with questions to
make him talk at all. Then the words came from him at last, with
bashful manifestations, like those of a young girl, almost--words that
gasped themselves forth, seeming to leave a great deal more behind
them than they told, and died out discontented with themselves, like
the monologue of thunder in the sky, which always goes off mumbling
and grumbling as if it had not said half it wanted to, and ought to
say....
To sum up briefly what would, as it seems to me, be the text to be
unfolded in his biography, he was a man of excellent common sense,
with a genius so uncommon that he seemed like an exotic transplanted
from some angelic nursery. His character was so blameless, so
beautiful, that it was rather a standard to judge others by than to
find a place for on the scale of comparison. Looking at life with the
profoundest sense of its infinite significance, he was yet a cheerful
optimist, almost too hopeful, peeping into every cradle to see if it
did not hold a babe with the halo of a new Messiah about it. He
enriched the treasure-house of literature, but, what was far more, he
enlarged the boundaries of thought for the few that followed him, and
the many who never knew, and do not know to-day, what hand it was
which took down their prison walls. He was a preacher who taught that
the religion of humanity included both those of Palestine, nor those
alone, and taught it with such consecrated lips that the narrowest
bigot was ashamed to pray for him, as from a footstool nearer to the
throne. "Hitch your wagon to a star": this was his version of the
divine lesson taught by that holy George Herbert whose words he
loved. Give him whatever place belongs to him in our literature, in
the literature of our language, of the world, but remember this: the
end and aim of his being was to make truth lovely and manhood
valorous, and to bring our daily life nearer and nearer to the
eternal, immortal, invisible.
III
THE HOUSE IN WHICH THE PROFESSOR LIVED[13]
"This is the shortest way," she said, as we came to a corner.
"Then we won't take it," said I. The schoolmistress laughed a little,
and said she was ten minutes early, so she could go around.
[Footnote 13: From Part X of "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table."
Published by Houghton, Mifflin Company.]
We walked around Mr. Paddock's row of English elms. The gray squirrels
were out looking for their breakfasts, and one of them came toward us
in light, soft, intermittent leaps, until he was close to the rail of
the burial ground. He was on a grave with a broad blue slate-stone at
its head, and a shrub growing on it. The stone said this was the grave
of a young man who was the son of an honorable gentleman, and who died
a hundred years ago and more. Oh, yes, died--with a small triangular
mark in one breast, and another smaller opposite, in his back, where
another young man's rapier had slid through his body; and so he lay
down out there on the Common, and was found cold the next morning,
with the night dews and the death dews mingled on his forehead.
"Let us have one look at poor Benjamin's grave," said I. "His bones
lie where his body was laid so long ago, and where the stone says they
lie--which is more than can be said of most of the tenants of this and
several other burial grounds....
"Stop before we turn away, and breathe a woman's sigh over poor
Benjamin's dust. Love killed him, I think. Twenty years old, and out
there fighting another young fellow on the common, in the cool of that
old July evening; yes, there must have been love at the bottom of it."
The schoolmistress dropt a rosebud she had in her hand through the
rails, upon the grave of Benjamin Woolbridge. That was all her comment
upon what I told her. "How women love Love!" said I; but she did not
speak.
We came opposite the head of a place or court running eastward from
the main street. "Look down there," I said; "my friend, the Professor,
lived in that house, at the left hand, next the further corner, for
years and years. He died out of it, the other day." "Died?" said the
schoolmistress. "Certainly," said I. "We die out of houses, just as we
die out of our bodies. A commercial smash kills a hundred men's homes
for them, as a railroad crash kills their mortal frames and drives out
the immortal tenants. Men sicken of houses until at last they quit
them, as the soul leaves its body when it is tired of its infirmities.
The body has been called 'the house we live in'; the house is quite
as much the body we live in. Shall I tell you some things the
Professor said the other day?" "Do!" said the schoolmistress.
"'A man's body,' said the Professor, 'is whatever is occupied by his
will and his sensibility. The small room down there, where I wrote
those papers you remember reading, was much more a part of my body
than a paralytic's senseless and motionless arm or leg is of his.
"'The soul of a man has a series of concentric envelopes around it,
like the core of an onion, or the innermost of a nest of boxes. First,
he has his natural garment of flesh and blood. Then his artificial
integuments, with their true skin of solid stuffs, their cuticle of
lighter tissues, and their variously tinted pigments. Third, his
domicile, be it a single chamber or a stately mansion. And then, the
whole visible world, in which Time buttons him up as in a loose
outside wrapper.
"'You shall observe,' the Professor said, for like Mr. John Hunter and
other great men, he brings in that 'shall' with great effect
sometimes, 'you shall observe that a man's clothing or series of
envelopes after a certain time mold themselves upon his individual
nature. We know this of our hats, and are always reminded of it when
we happen to put them on wrong side foremost. We soon find that the
beaver is a hollow cast of the skull, with all its irregular bumps and
depressions. Just so all that clothes a man, even to the blue sky
which caps his head--a little loosely--shapes itself to fit each
particular being beneath it. Farmers, sailors, astronomers, poets,
lovers, condemned criminals, all find it different, according to the
eyes with which they severally look.
"'But our houses shape themselves palpably on our inner and outer
natures. See a householder breaking up and you will be sure of it.
There is a shellfish which builds all manner of smaller shells into
the walls of its own. A house is never a home until we have crusted it
with the spoils of a hundred lives besides those of our own past. See
what these are, and you can tell what the occupant is.
"'I had no idea,' said the Professor, 'until I pulled up my domestic
establishment the other day, what an enormous quantity of roots I had
been making the years I was planted there. Why, there wasn't a nook or
a corner that some fiber had not worked its way into; and when I gave
the last wrench, each of them seemed to shriek like a mandrake, as it
broke its hold and came away.
"'There is nothing that happens, you know, which must not inevitably,
and which does not actually, photograph itself in every conceivable
aspect and in all dimensions. The infinite galleries of the Past await
but one brief process, and all their pictures will be called out and
fixt forever. We had a curious illustration of the great fact on a
very humble scale. When a certain bookcase, long standing in one
place, for which it was built, was removed, there was the exact image
on the wall of the whole, and of many of its portions. But in the
midst of this picture was another--the precise outline of a map which
hung on the wall before the bookcase was built. We had all forgotten
everything about the map until we saw its photograph on the wall.
Then we remembered it, as some day or other we may remember a sin
which has been built over and covered up, when this lower universe is
pulled away from the wall of Infinity, where the wrongdoing stands,
self-recorded.'
"The Professor lived in that house a long time--not twenty years, but
pretty near it. When he entered that door, two shadows glided over the
threshold; five lingered in the doorway when he passed through it for
the last time--and one of the shadows was claimed by its owner to be
longer than his own. What changes he saw in that quiet place! Death
rained through every roof but his; children came into life, grew to
maturity; wedded, faded away, threw themselves away; the whole drama
of life was played in that stock company's theater of a dozen houses,
one of which was his, and no deep sorrow or severe calamity ever
entered his dwelling. 'Peace be to those walls forever,' the Professor
said, for the many pleasant years he has passed within them.
"The Professor has a friend, now living at a distance, who has been
with him in many of his changes of place, and who follows him in
imagination with tender interest wherever he goes. In that little
court, where he lived in gay loneliness so long--in his autumnal
sojourn by the Connecticut, where it comes loitering down from its
mountain fastnesses like a great lord, swallowing up the small
proprietary rivulets very quietly as it goes, until it gets proud and
swollen and wantons in huge luxurious oxbows about the fair
Northampton meadows, and at last overflows the oldest inhabitant's
memory in profligate freshets at Hartford and all along its lower
shores--up in that caravansary on the banks of the stream where
Ledyard launched his log canoe, and the jovial old Colonel used to
lead the commencement processions--where blue Ascutney looked down
from the far distance, and the hills of Beulah, as the Professor
always called them, rolled up the opposite horizon in soft climbing
masses, so suggestive of the Pilgrim's Heavenward Path that he used to
look through his old 'Dollond' to see if the Shining Ones were not
within range of sight--sweet visions, sweetest in those Sunday walks
that carried them by the peaceful common, through the solemn village
lying in cataleptic stillness under the shadows of the rod of Moses,
to the terminus of their harmless stroll--the 'patulous fage,' in the
Professor's classic dialect--the spreading beech, in more familiar
phrase--[stop and breathe here a moment, for the sentence is not done
yet, and We have another long journey before us.]
"--and again once more up among those other hills that shut in the
amber-flowing Housatonic--dark stream, but clear, like the lucid orbs
that shine beneath the lids of auburn-haired, sherry-wine-eyed
demiblondes--in the home overlooking the winding stream and the
smooth, flat meadow; looked down upon by wild hills, where the tracks
of bears and catamounts may yet sometimes be seen upon the winter
snow; facing the twin summits which rise in the far North, the highest
waves of the great land storm in this billowy region--suggestive to
mad fancies of the breasts of a half-buried Titaness, stretched out by
a stray thunderbolt, and hastily hidden away beneath the leaves of
the forest--in that home where seven blest summers were passed, which
stand in memory like the seven golden candlesticks in the beatific
vision of the holy dreamer--
"--in that modest dwelling we were just looking at, not glorious, yet
not unlovely in the youth of its drab and mahogany--full of great and
little boys' playthings from top to bottom--in all these summer or
winter nests he was always at home and always welcome.
"This long articulated sigh of reminiscences--this calenture which
shows me the maple-shadowed plains of Berkshire and the
mountain-circled green of Grafton beneath the salt waves that come
feeling their way along the wall at my feet, restless and
soft-touching as blind men's busy fingers--is for that friend of mine
who looks into the waters of the Patapsco and sees beneath them the
same visions that paint themselves for me in the green depths of the
Charles."
Did I talk all this off to the schoolmistress? Why, no--of course not.
I have been talking with you, the reader, for the last ten minutes.
You don't think I should expect any woman to listen to such a sentence
as that long one, without giving her a chance to put in a word?
What did I say to the schoolmistress? Permit me one moment. I don't
doubt your delicacy and good-breeding; but in this particular case, as
I was allowed the privilege of walking alone with a very interesting
young woman, you must allow me to remark, in the classic version of a
familiar phrase, used by our Master Benjamin Franklin, it is _nullum
tui negotii_.
When the schoolmistress and I reached the schoolroom door, the damask
roses I spoke of were so much heightened in color by exercise that I
felt sure it would be useful to her to take a stroll like this every
morning, and made up my mind I would ask her to let me join her again.
IV
OF WOMEN WHO PUT ON AIRS[14]
I can't say just how many walks she (the schoolmistress) and I had
taken together before this one. I found the effect of going out every
morning was decidedly favorable on her health. Two pleasing dimples,
the places for which were just marked when she came, played, shadowy,
in her freshening cheeks when she smiled and nodded good-morning to me
from the schoolhouse steps.
[Footnote 14: From Part XI of "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table."
Published by Houghton, Mifflin Company.]
I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking. At any rate, if I
should try to report all that I said during the first half-dozen walks
we took together, I fear that I might receive a gentle hint from my
friends the publishers that a separate volume, at my own risk and
expense, would be the proper method of bringing them before the
public.
I would have a woman as true as death. At the first real lie which
works from the heart outward she should be tenderly chloroformed into
a better world, where she can have an angel for a governess, and feed
on strange fruits which will make her all over again, even to her
bones and marrow. Whether gifted with the accident of beauty or not,
she should have been molded in the rose-red clay of love before the
breath of life made a moving mortal of her. Love capacity is a
congenital endowment; and I think, after a while, one gets to know the
warm-hued natures it belongs to from the pretty pipe-clay counterfeits
of it. Proud she may be, in the sense of respecting herself; but
pride, in the sense of contemning others less gifted than herself,
deserves the two lowest circles of a vulgar woman's Inferno, where the
punishments are smallpox and bankruptcy. She who nips off the end of a
brittle courtesy, as one breaks the tip of an icicle, to bestow upon
those whom she ought cordially and kindly to recognize, proclaims the
fact that she comes not merely of low blood, but of bad blood.
Consciousness of unquestioned position makes people gracious in proper
measure to all; but if a woman puts on airs with her real equals, she
has something about herself or her family she is ashamed of, or ought
to be. Middle, and more than middle-aged people, who know family
histories, generally see through it. An official of standing was rude
to me once. "Oh, that is the maternal grandfather," said a wise old
friend to me, "he was a boor." Better too few words, from the woman we
love, than too many: while she is silent, Nature is working for her;
while she talks, she is working for herself. Love is sparingly soluble
in the words of men; therefore they speak much of it; but one
syllable of woman's speech can dissolve more of it than a man's heart
can hold.
Whether I said any or all of these things to the schoolmistress or
not--whether I stole them put of Lord Bacon--whether I cribbed them
from Balzac--whether I dipt them from the ocean of Tupperian
wisdom--or whether I have just found them in my head (laid there by
that solemn fowl, Experience, who, according to my observation,
cackles oftener than she drops real, live eggs), I can not say. Wise
men have said more foolish things--and foolish men, I don't doubt,
have said as wise things. Anyhow, the schoolmistress and I had
pleasant walks and long talks, all of which I do not feel bound to
report.
You are a stranger to me, Ma'am.--I don't doubt you would like to know
all I said to the schoolmistress.--I shan't do it; I had rather get
the publishers to return the money you have invested in this. Besides,
I have forgotten a good deal of it. I shall tell only what I like of
what I remember.
MARGARET FULLER
Born in Massachusetts in 1810; lost in a shipwreck off Fire
Island in 1850; edited _The Dial_ in 1840-42; literary
critic for the New York _Tribune_ in 1844-46; went to Europe
in 1846; married the Marquis d'Ossoli in 1847; in Rome
during the Revolution of 1848-49; published "A Summer on the
Lakes" in 1843, "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" in 1845,
"Papers on Art and Literature" in 1846.
I
HER VISIT TO GEORGE SAND[15]
It is the custom to go and call on those to whom you bring letters,
and push yourself upon their notice; thus you must go quite ignorant
whether they are disposed to be cordial. My name is always murdered by
the foreign servants who announce me. I speak very bad French; only
lately have I had sufficient command of it to infuse some of my
natural spirit in my discourse. This has been a great trial to me, who
am eloquent and free in my own tongue, to be forced to feel my
thoughts struggling in vain for utterance.
[Footnote 15: From a letter to Elizabeth Hoar, written in 1847 and
printed in the "Memoirs."]
The servant who admitted me was in the picturesque costume of a
peasant, and as Madame Sand afterward told me, her goddaughter, whom
she had brought from her province. She announced me as "Madame
Salère," and returned into the anteroom to tell me, "Madame says she
does not know you." I began to think I was doomed to rebuff among the
crowd who deserve it. However, to make assurance sure, I said, "Ask if
she has received a letter from me." As I spoke Madame Sand opened the
door, and stood looking at me an instant. Our eyes met.
I never shall forget her look at that moment. The doorway made a frame
for her figure; she is large but well formed. She was drest in a robe
of dark-violet silk, with a black mantle on her shoulders, her
beautiful hair drest with the greatest taste; her whole appearance and
attitude, in its simple and ladylike dignity, presented an almost
ludicrous contrast to the vulgar caricature idea of George Sand. Her
face is a very little like the portraits, but much finer; the upper
part of the forehead and eyes are beautiful, the lower strong and
masculine, expressive of a hardy temperament and strong passions, but
not in the least coarse; the complexion olive, and the air of the
whole head Spanish (as, indeed, she was born at Madrid, and is only on
one side of French blood).
All these I saw at a glance; but what fixt my attention was the
expression of goodness, nobleness, and power that pervaded the
whole--the truly human heart and nature that shone in the eyes. As our
eyes met, she said, "_C'est vous_," and held out her hand. I took it,
and went into her little study; we sat down a moment; then I said,
"_Il me fait de bien de vous voir_," and I am sure I said it with my
whole heart, for it made me very happy to see such a woman, so large
and so developed in character, and everything that is good in it so
really good. I loved, shall always love her.
She looked away, and said, _"Ah! vous m'avez écrit une lettre
charmante_." This was all the preliminary of our talk, which then went
on as if we had always known one another.... Her way of talking is
just like her writing--lively, picturesque, with an undertone of deep
feeling, and the same happiness in striking the nail on the head every
now and then with a blow.... I heartily enjoyed the sense of so rich,
so prolific, so ardent a genius. I liked the woman in her, too, very
much; I never liked a woman better.... For the rest, she holds her
place in the literary and social world of France like a man, and seems
full of energy and courage in it. I suppose she has suffered much, but
she has also enjoyed and done much.
II
TWO GLIMPSES OF CARLYLE[16]
Of the people I saw in London you will wish me to speak first of the
Carlyles. Mr. Carlyle came to see me at once, and appointed an evening
to be passed at their house. That first time I was delighted with him.
He was in a very sweet humor--full of wit and pathos, without being
overbearing or oppressive. I was quite carried away with the rich
flow of his discourse; and the hearty, noble earnestness of his
personal being brought back the charm which once was upon his writing,
before I wearied of it. I admired his Scotch, his way of singing his
great full sentences, so that each one was like the stanza of a
narrative ballad. He let me talk, now and then, enough to free my
lungs and change my position, so that I did not get tired. That
evening he talked of the present state of things in England, giving
light, witty sketches of the men of the day, fanatics and others, and
some sweet, homely stories he told of things he had known of the
Scotch peasantry. Of you he spoke with hearty kindness; and he told
with beautiful feeling a story of some poor farmer or artizan in the
country, who on Sunday lays aside the cark and care of that dirty
English world, and sits reading the "Essays" and looking upon the
sea....
[Footnote 16: From a letter to Emerson, written in 1846, and printed
in the "Memoirs."]
The second time Mr. Carlyle had a dinner party, at which was a witty,
French, flippant sort of a man, named Lewes,[17] author of a "History
of Philosophy," and now writing a life of Goethe, a task for which he
must be as unfit as irreligion and sparkling shallowness can make him.
But he told stories admirably, and was allowed sometimes to interrupt
Carlyle a little--of which one was glad, for that night he was in his
acrid mood; and tho much more brilliant than on the former evening,
grew wearisome to me, who disclaimed and rejected almost everything
he said....
[Footnote 17: George Henry Lewes, whose relations to George Eliot
began after Margaret Fuller's visit. Lewes was not a Frenchman, but of
Welsh descent, born in London, and a grandson of Charles Lee Lewes,
the actor.]
Accustomed to the infinite wit and exuberant richness of his writings,
his talk is still an amazement and a splendor scarcely to be faced
with steady eyes. He does not converse, only harangues. It is the
usual misfortune of such marked men--happily not one invariable or
inevitable--that they can not allow other minds room to breathe, and
show themselves in their atmosphere, and thus miss the refreshment and
instruction which the greatest never cease to need from the experience
of the humblest. Carlyle allows no one a chance, but bears down all
opposition, not only by his wit and onset of words, resistless in
their sharpness as so many bayonets, but by actual physical
superiority--raising his voice and rushing on his opponent with a
torrent of sound. This is not in the least from unwillingness to allow
freedom to others. On the contrary, no man would more enjoy a manly
resistance in his thoughts. But it is the impulse of a mind accustomed
to follow out its own impulse, as the hawk its prey, and which knows
not how to stop in the chase.
Carlyle indeed is arrogant and overbearing; but in his arrogance there
is no littleness, no self-love. It is the heroic arrogance of some old
Scandinavian conqueror; it is his nature, and the untamable impulse
that has given him power to crush the dragons. He sings rather than
talks. He pours upon you a kind of satirical, heroical, critical poem,
with regular cadences, and generally catching up, near the beginning,
some singular epithet which serves as a refrain when his song is
full, or with which, as with a knitting-needle, he catches up the
stitches, if he has chanced now and then to let fall a row. For the
higher kinds of poetry he has no sense, and his talk on that subject
is delightfully and gorgeously absurd. He sometimes stops a minute to
laugh at it himself, then begins anew with fresh vigor; for all the
spirits he is driving before him as Fata Morgana,[18] ugly masks, in
fact, if he can but make them turn about; but he laughs that they seem
to others such dainty Ariels. His talk, like his books, is full of
pictures; his critical strokes masterly. Allow for his point of view,
and his survey is admirable. He is a large subject. I can not speak
more or wiselier of him now, nor needs it; his works are true, to
blame and praise him--the Siegfried of England, great and powerful, if
not quite invulnerable, and of a might rather to destroy evil than
legislate for good.
[Footnote 18: Fata (a fairy) Morgana, sister of King Arthur, is a
leading figure in the "Morte d'Arthur" and other romances, including
Italian.]
HORACE GREELEY
Born in New Hampshire in 1811, died in 1872; came to New
York in 1831, where he edited the _Log Cabin_ during the
Harrison-Tyler campaign; in 1841 founded _The Tribune;_
member of Congress in 1848-49; prominent as an anti-slavery
leader and supporter of the Union cause; nominated for
president by the Liberal-Republican and Democratic parties
in 1872, but defeated by Gen. Grant; published
"Recollections of a Busy Life" in 1868, and "The American
Conflict" in 1864-66.
I
THE FATALITY OF SELF-SEEKING IN EDITORS AND AUTHORS[19]
It only remains to me to speak more especially of my own vocation--the
editor's--which bears much the same relation to the author's that the
bellows-blower's bears to the organist's, the player's to the
dramatist's, Julian or Liszt to Weber or Beethoven. The editor, from
the absolute necessity of the case, can not speak deliberately; he
must write to-day of to-day's incidents and aspects, tho these may be
completely overlaid and transformed by the incidents and aspects of
to-morrow. He must write and strive in the full consciousness that
whatever honor or distinction he may acquire must perish with the
generation that bestowed them--with the thunders of applause that
greeted Kemble or Jenny Lind, with the ruffianism that expelled
Macready, or the cheerful laugh that erewhile rewarded the sallies of
Burton or Placide.[20]
[Footnote 19: Printed with the "Miscellanies" In the "Recollections of
a Busy Life."]
[Footnote 20: Henry Placide, an American actor born in Charleston, who
excelled in the parts of Sir Peter Teazle and Sir Anthony Absolute.]
No other public teacher lives so wholly in the present as the editor;
and the noblest affirmations of unpopular truth--the most
self-sacrificing defiance of a base and selfish public sentiment that
regards only the most sordid ends, and values every utterance solely
as it tends to preserve quiet and contentment, while the dollars fall
jingling into the merchant's drawer, the land-jobber's vault, and the
miser's bag--can but be noted in their day, and with their day
forgotten. It is his cue to utter silken and smooth sayings--to
condemn vice so as not to interfere with the pleasures or alarm the
conscience of the vicious--to praise and champion liberty so as not to
give annoyance or offense to slavery, and to commend and glorify labor
without attempting to expose or repress any of the gainful
contrivances by which labor is plundered and degraded. Thus sidling
dextrously between somewhere and nowhere, the able editor of the
nineteenth century may glide through life respectable and in good
ease, and lie down to his long rest with the non-achievements of his
life emblazoned on the very whitest marble, surmounting and glorifying
his dust.
There is a different and sterner path--I know not whether there be any
now qualified to tread it--I am not sure that even one has ever
followed it implicitly, in view of the certain meagerness of its
temporal rewards and the haste wherewith any fame acquired in a sphere
so thoroughly ephemeral as the editor's must be shrouded by the dark
waters of oblivion. This path demands an ear ever open to the plaints
of the wronged and the suffering, tho they can never repay advocacy,
and those who mainly support newspapers will be annoyed and often
exposed by it; a heart as sensitive to oppression and degradation in
the next street as if they were practised in Brazil or Japan; a pen as
ready to expose and reprove the crimes whereby wealth is amassed and
luxury enjoyed in our own country at this hour as if they had only
been committed by Turks or pagans in Asia some centuries ago.
Such an editor, could one be found or trained, need not expect to lead
an easy, indolent, or wholly joyous life--to be blest by archbishops
or followed by the approving shouts of ascendent majorities; but he
might find some recompense for their loss in the calm verdict of an
approving conscience; and the tears of the despised and the
friendless, preserved from utter despair by his efforts and
remonstrances, might freshen for a season the daisies that bloomed
above his grave.
Literature is a noble calling, but only when the call obeyed by the
aspirant issues from a world to be enlightened and blest, not from a
void stomach clamoring to be gratified and filled. Authorship is a
royal priesthood; but wo to him who rashly lays unhallowed hands on
the ark or the altar, professing a zeal for the welfare of the race
only that he may secure the confidence and sympathies of others, and
use them for his own selfish ends! If a man have no heroism in his
soul--no animating purpose beyond living easily and faring
sumptuously--I can imagine no greater mistake on his part than that of
resorting to authorship as a vocation. That such a one may achieve
what he regards as success I do not deny; but, if so, he does it at
greater risk and by greater exertion than would have been required to
win it in any other pursuit. No; it can not be wise in a selfish, or
sordid, or sensual man to devote himself to literature; the fearful
self-exposure incident to this way of life--the dire necessity which
constrains the author to stamp his own essential portrait on every
volume of his works, no matter how carefully he may fancy he has
erased, or how artfully he may suppose he has concealed it--this
should repel from the vestibule of the temple of fame the foot of
every profane or mocking worshiper.
But if you are sure that your impulse is not personal nor sinister,
but a desire to serve and ennoble your race, rather than to dazzle and
be served by it; that you are ready joyfully to "scorn delights, and
live laborious days," so that thereby the well-being of mankind may be
promoted--then I pray you not to believe that the world is too wise to
need further enlightenment, nor that it would be impossible for one so
humble as yourself to say aught whereby error may be dispelled or good
be diffused. Sell not your integrity; barter not your independence;
beg of no man the privilege of earning a livelihood by authorship;
since that is to degrade your faculty, and very probably to corrupt
it; but seeing through your own clear eyes, and uttering the impulses
of your own honest heart, speak or write as truth and love shall
dictate, asking no material recompense, but living by the labor of
your hands, until recompense shall be voluntarily tendered to secure
your service, and you may frankly accept it without a compromise of
your integrity or a peril to your freedom. Soldier in the long warfare
for man's rescue from darkness and evil, choose not your place on the
battle-field, but joyfully accept that assigned you; asking not
whether there be higher or lower, but only whether it is here that you
can most surely do your proper work, and meet your full share of the
responsibility and the danger.
Believe not that the heroic age is no more; since to that age is only
requisite the heroic purpose and the heroic soul. So long as ignorance
and evil shall exist so long there will be work for the devoted, and
so long will there be room in the ranks of those who, defying obloquy,
misapprehension, bigotry, and interested craft, struggle and dare for
the redemption of the world. "Of making many books there is no end,"
tho there is happily a speedy end of most books after they are made;
but he who by voice or pen strikes his best blow at the impostures and
vices whereby our race is debased and paralyzed may close his eyes in
death, consoled and cheered by the reflection that he has done what he
could for the emancipation and elevation of his kind.
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY
Born in 1814, died in 1877; graduated from Harvard in 1831;
studied at Göttingen and Berlin; returned to America in 1834
and admitted to the bar, but soon took up the study of
history; United States minister to Austria in 1861-68, and
to Great Britain in 1869-70; published his "Rise of the
Dutch Republic" in 1856, "History of the United Netherlands"
in 1860-67, and "John of Barneveld" in 1874.
I
CHARLES V AND PHILIP II IN BRUSSELS[21]
(1555)
The Emperor, like many potentates before and since, was fond of great
political spectacles. He knew their influence upon the masses of
mankind. Altho plain even to shabbiness in his own costume, and
usually attired in black, no one ever understood better than he how to
arrange such exhibitions in a striking and artistic style. We have
seen the theatrical and imposing manner in which he quelled the
insurrection at Ghent, and nearly crusht the life forever out of that
vigorous and turbulent little commonwealth. The closing scene of his
long and energetic reign he had now arranged with profound study, and
with an accurate knowledge of the manner in which the requisite
effects were to be produced. The termination of his own career, the
opening of his beloved Philip's, were to be dramatized in a manner
worthy the august characters of the actors, and the importance of the
great stage where they played their parts. The eyes of the whole world
were directed upon that day toward Brussels; for an imperial
abdication was an event which had not, in the sixteenth century, been
staled by custom.
[Footnote 21: From Chapter I of the "The Rise of the Dutch Republic."
Published by Harper & Brothers. After his abdication Charles V retired
to a monastery, where he died three years later.]
The gay capital of Brabant--of that province which rejoiced in the
liberal constitution known by the cheerful title of the "joyful
entrance"--was worthy to be the scene of the imposing show. Brussels
had been a city for more than five centuries, and at that day numbered
about one hundred thousand inhabitants. Its walls, six miles in
circumference, were already two hundred years old. Unlike most
Netherland cities, lying usually upon extensive plains, it was built
along the sides of an abrupt promontory. A wide expanse of living
verdure--cultivated gardens, shady groves, fertile cornfields--flowed
round it like a sea. The foot of the town was washed by the little
river Senne, while the irregular but picturesque streets rose up the
steep sides of the hill like the semicircles and stairways of an
amphitheater. Nearly in the heart of the place rose the audacious and
exquisitely embroidered tower of the town-house, three hundred and
sixty-six feet in height; a miracle of needlework in stone, rivaling
in its intricate carving the cobweb tracery of that lace which has for
centuries been synonymous with the city, and rearing itself above a
façade of profusely decorated and brocaded architecture. The crest of
the elevation was crowned by the towers of the old ducal palace of
Brabant, with its extensive and thickly wooded park on the left, and
by the stately mansions of Orange, Egmont, Aremberg, Culemburg, and
other Flemish grandees, on the right....
The palace where the states-general were upon this occasion convened
had been the residence of the dukes of Brabant since the days of John
the Second, who had built it about the year 1300. It was a spacious
and convenient building, but not distinguished for the beauty of its
architecture. In front was a large open square, enclosed by an iron
railing; in the rear an extensive and beautiful park, filled with
forest trees, and containing gardens and labyrinths, fish-ponds and
game preserves, fountains and promenades, race-courses and archery
grounds. The main entrance to this edifice opened upon a spacious
hall, connected with a beautiful and symmetrical chapel. The hall was
celebrated for its size, harmonious proportions, and the richness of
its decorations. It was the place where the chapters of the famous
order of the Golden Fleece were held. Its walls were hung with a
magnificent tapestry of Arras, representing the life and achievements
of Gideon the Midianite, and giving particular prominence to the
miracle of the "fleece of wool," vouchsafed to that renowned champion,
the great patron of the Knights of the Fleece.
On the present occasion there were various additional embellishments
of flowers and votive garlands. At the western end a spacious platform
or stage, with six or seven steps, had been constructed, below which
was a range of benches for the deputies of the seventeen provinces.
Upon the stage itself there were rows of seats, covered with tapestry,
upon the right hand and upon the left. These were respectively to
accommodate the knights of the order and the guests of high
distinction. In the rear of these were other benches for the members
of the three great councils. In the center of the stage was a splendid
canopy, decorated with the arms of Burgundy, beneath which were placed
three gilded arm-chairs. All the seats upon the platform were vacant;
but the benches below, assigned to the deputies of the provinces, were
already filled. Numerous representatives from all the States but
two--Gelderland and Overyssel--had already taken their places. Grave
magistrates in chain and gown, and executive officers in the splendid
civic uniforms for which the Netherlands were celebrated, already
filled every seat within the space allotted. The remainder of the hall
was crowded with the more favored portion of the multitude, which had
been fortunate enough to procure admission to the exhibition. The
archers and halbardiers of the body-guard kept watch at all the doors.
The theater was filled, the audience was eager with expectation, the
actors were yet to arrive.
As the clock struck three, the hero of the scene appeared. Cæsar, as
he was always designated in the classic language of the day, entered,
leaning on the shoulder of William of Orange. They came from the
chapel, and were immediately followed by Philip the Second and Queen
Mary of Hungary. The Archduke Maximilian, the Duke of Savoy, and
other great personages came afterward, accompanied by a glittering
throng of warriors, councilors, governors, and Knights of the Fleece.
Many individuals of existing or future historic celebrity in the
Netherlands, whose names are so familiar to the student of the epoch,
seemed to have been grouped, as if by premeditated design, upon this
imposing platform, where the curtain was to fall forever upon the
mightiest emperor since Charlemagne, and where the opening scene of
the long and tremendous tragedy of Philip's reign was to be
simultaneously enacted. There was the bishop of Arras, soon to be
known throughout Christendom by the more celebrated title of Cardinal
Granvelle--the serene and smiling priest, whose subtle influence over
the destinies of so many individuals then present, and over the
fortunes of the whole land, was to be so extensive and so deadly.
There was that flower of Flemish chivalry, the lineal descendant of
ancient Frisian kings, already distinguished for his bravery in many
fields, but not having yet won those two remarkable victories which
were soon to make the name of Egmont like the sound of a trumpet
throughout the whole country. Tall, magnificent in costume, with dark
flowing hair, soft brown eye, smooth cheek, a slight mustache, and
features of almost feminine delicacy--such was the gallant and
ill-fated Lamoral Egmont. The Count of Hoorne,[22] too, with bold,
sullen face, and fan-shaped beard--a brave, honest, discontented,
quarrelsome, unpopular man; those other twins in doom, the Marquis
Berghen and the Lord of Montigny; the Baron Berlaymont, brave,
intensely loyal, insatiably greedy for office and wages, but who at
least never served but one party; the Duke of Arschot, who was to
serve all, essay to rule all, and to betray all--a splendid seignior,
magnificent in cramoisy velvet, but a poor creature, who traced his
pedigree from Adam according to the family monumental inscriptions at
Louvain, but who was better known as grandnephew of the Emperor's
famous tutor Chièvres; the bold, debauched Brederode, with handsome,
reckless face and turbulent demeanor; the infamous Noircarmes, whose
name was to be covered with eternal execration for aping toward his
own compatriots and kindred as much of Alva's atrocities and avarice
as he was permitted to exercise; the distinguished soldiers Meghen and
Aremberg--these, with many others whose deeds of arms were to become
celebrated throughout Europe, were all conspicuous in the brilliant
crowd. There, too, was that learned Frisian, President Viglius,
crafty, plausible, adroit, eloquent--a small, brisk man, with long
yellow hair, glittering green eyes, round, tumid, rosy cheeks, and
flowing beard. Foremost among the Spanish grandees, and close to
Philip, stood the famous favorite, Ruy Gomez, or, as he was familiarly
called, "_Re y Gomez_" (King and Gomez)--a man of meridional aspect,
with coal-black hair and beard, gleaming eyes, a face pallid with
intense application, and slender but handsome figure; while in
immediate attendance upon the Emperor was the immortal Prince of
Orange.
[Footnote 22: See Prescott's account of the execution of Egmont and
Hoorne, in Volume IX of this collection.]
Such were a few only of the most prominent in that gay throng, whose
fortunes in part it will be our humble duty to narrate; how many of
them passing through all this glitter to a dark and mysterious gloom!
some to perish on public scaffolds, some by midnight assassination;
others, more fortunate, to fall on the battle-field; nearly all,
sooner or later, to be laid in bloody graves!
All the company present had risen to their feet as the Emperor
entered. By his command, all immediately after resumed their places.
The benches at either end of the platform were accordingly filled with
the royal and princely personages invited--with the Fleece Knights,
wearing the insignia of their order, with the members of the three
great councils, and with the governors. The Emperor, the King, and the
Queen of Hungary were left conspicuous in the center of the scene. As
the whole object of the ceremony was to present an impressive
exhibition, it is worth our while to examine minutely the appearance
of the two principal characters.
Charles the Fifth was then fifty-five years and eight months old; but
he was already decrepit with premature old age. He was of about the
middle height; and had been athletic and well proportioned. Broad in
the shoulders, deep in the chest, thin in the flank, very muscular in
the arms and legs, he had been able to match himself with all
competitors in the tourney and the ring, and to vanquish the bull with
his own hand in the favorite national amusement of Spain. He had been
able in the field to do the duty of captain and soldier, to endure
fatigue and exposure, and every privation except fasting. These
personal advantages were now departed. Crippled in hands, knees, and
legs, he supported himself with difficulty upon a crutch, with the aid
of an attendant's shoulder. In face he had always been extremely ugly,
and time had certainly not improved his physiognomy. His hair, once of
a light color, was now white with age, close-clipt and bristling; his
beard was gray, coarse, and shaggy. His forehead was spacious and
commanding; the eye was dark-blue, with an expression both majestic
and benignant. His nose was aquiline but crooked. The lower part of
his face was famous for its deformity. The under lip, a Burgundian
inheritance, as faithfully transmitted as the duchy and county, was
heavy and hanging; the lower jaw protruding so far beyond the upper
that it was impossible for him to bring together the few fragments of
teeth which still remained, or to speak a whole sentence in an
intelligible voice. Eating and talking, occupations to which he was
always much addicted, were becoming daily more arduous in consequence
of this original defect; which now seemed hardly human, but rather an
original deformity.
So much for the father. The son, Philip the Second, was a small,
meager man, much below the middle height, with thin legs, a narrow
chest, and the shrinking, timid air of a habitual invalid. He seemed
so little upon his first visit to his aunts, the Queens Eleanor and
Mary, accustomed to look upon proper men in Flanders and Germany, that
he was fain to win their favor by making certain attempts in the
tournament, in which his success was sufficiently problematical. "His
body," says his profest panegyrist, "was but a human cage, in which,
however brief and narrow, dwelt a soul to whose flight the
immeasurable expanse of heaven was too contracted." The same wholesale
admirer adds that "his aspect was so reverend that rustics who met him
alone in the wood, without knowing him, bowed down with instinctive
veneration." In face he was the living image of his father; having the
same broad forehead and blue eye, with the same aquiline, but better
proportioned, nose. In the lower part of the countenance the
remarkable Burgundian deformity was likewise reproduced: he had the
same heavy, hanging lip, with a vast mouth, and monstrously protruding
lower jaw. His complexion was fair, his hair light and thin, his beard
yellow, short, and pointed. He had the aspect of a Fleming, but the
loftiness of a Spaniard. His demeanor in public was still, silent,
almost sepulchral. He looked habitually on the ground when he
conversed, was chary of speech, embarrassed and even suffering in
manner. This was ascribed partly to a natural haughtiness, which he
had occasionally endeavored to overcome, and partly to habitual pains
in the stomach, occasioned by his inordinate fondness for pastry.
Such was the personal appearance of the man who was about to receive
into his single hand the destinies of half the world; whose single
will was, for the future, to shape the fortunes of every individual
then present, of many millions more in Europe, America, and at the
ends of the earth, and of countless millions yet unborn....
The Emperor then rose to his feet. Leaning on his crutch, he beckoned
from his seat the personage upon whose arm he had leaned as he
entered the hall. A tall, handsome youth of twenty-two came forward: a
man whose name from that time forward, and as long as history shall
endure, has been and will be more familiar than any other in the
mouths of Netherlanders. At that day he had rather a southern than a
German or Flemish appearance. He had a Spanish cast of features, dark,
well chiseled, and symmetrical. His head was small and well placed
upon his shoulders. His hair was dark brown, as were also his mustache
and peaked beard. His forehead was lofty, spacious, and already
prematurely engraved with the anxious lines of thought. His eyes were
full, brown, well opened, and expressive of profound reflection. He
was drest in the magnificent apparel for which the Netherlanders were
celebrated above all other nations, and which the ceremony rendered
necessary. His presence being considered indispensable at this great
ceremony, he had been summoned but recently from the camp on the
frontier, where, notwithstanding his youth, the Emperor had appointed
him to command his army in chief against such antagonists as Admiral
Coligny and the Duc de Nevers.
Thus supported upon his crutch and upon the shoulder of William of
Orange, the Emperor proceeded to address the States, by the aid of a
closely written brief which he held in his hand. He reviewed rapidly
the progress of events from his seventeenth year up to that day.
Turning to Philip, he observed that for a dying father to bequeath so
magnificent an empire to his son was a deed worthy of gratitude; but
that when the father thus descended to the grave before his time, and
by an anticipated and living burial sought to provide for the welfare
of his realms and the grandeur of his son, the benefit thus conferred
was surely far greater. He added that the debt would be paid to him
and with usury, should Philip conduct himself in his administration of
the province with a wise and affectionate regard to their true
interests....
Sobs were heard throughout every portion of the hall, and tears poured
profusely from every eye. The Fleece Knights on the platform and the
burghers in the background were all melted with the same emotion. As
for the Emperor himself, he sank almost fainting upon his chair as he
concluded his address. An ashy paleness overspread his countenance,
and he wept like a child. Even the icy Philip was almost softened, as
he rose to perform his part in the ceremony. Dropping upon his knees
before his father's feet, he reverently kissed his hand. Charles
placed his hands solemnly upon his son's head, made the sign of the
cross, and blest him in the name of the Holy Trinity. Then raising him
in his arms he tenderly embraced him, saying, as he did so, to the
great potentates around him, that he felt a sincere compassion for the
son on whose shoulders so heavy a weight had just devolved, and which
only a lifelong labor would enable him to support....
The orations and replies having now been brought to a close, the
ceremony was terminated. The Emperor, leaning on the shoulders of the
Prince of Orange and of the Count de Buren, slowly left the hall,
followed by Philip, the Queen of Hungary, and the whole court; all in
the same order in which they had entered, and by the same passage into
the chapel.
II
THE ARRIVAL OF THE SPANISH ARMADA[23]
(1588)
Almost at that very instant intelligence had been brought from the
court to the Lord Admiral at Plymouth that the Armada, dispersed and
shattered by the gales of June, was not likely to make its appearance
that year; and orders had consequently been given to disarm the four
largest ships and send them into dock. Even Walsingham had
participated in this strange delusion.
[Footnote 23: From Chapter XIX of the "History of the United
Netherlands." Published by Harper & Brothers. See Hume's account of
the arrival of the Armada in Volume IV, page 113, of this collection.]
Before Howard[24] had time to act upon this ill-timed suggestion--even
had he been disposed to do so--he received authentic intelligence that
the great fleet was off the Lizard. Neither he nor Francis Drake were
the men to lose time in such an emergency; and before that Friday
night was spent, sixty of the best English ships had been warped out
of Plymouth harbor.
[Footnote 24: Lord Howard of Effingham, commander of the English
fleet.]
On Saturday, 30th July, the wind was very light at southwest, with a
mist and drizzling rain; but by three in the afternoon the two fleets
could descry and count each other through the haze.
By nine o'clock, 31st July, about two miles from Looe on the Cornish
coast, the fleets had their first meeting. There were one hundred and
thirty-six sail of the Spaniards, of which ninety were large ships;
and sixty-seven of the English. It was a solemn moment. The
long-expected Armada presented a pompous, almost a theatrical
appearance. The ships seemed arranged for a pageant, in honor of a
victory already won. Disposed in form of a crescent, the horns of
which were seven miles asunder, those gilded, towered, floating
castles, with their gaudy standards and their martial music, moved
slowly along the channel, with an air of indolent pomp. Their
captain-general, the golden duke, stood in his private shot-proof
fortress, on the deck of his great galleon the _St. Martin_,
surrounded by generals of infantry and colonels of cavalry, who knew
as little as he did himself of naval matters.
The English vessels, on the other hand--with a few exceptions light,
swift, and easily handled--could sail round and round those unwieldy
galleons, hulks, and galleys rowed by fettered slave gangs. The
superior seamanship of free Englishmen commanded by such experienced
captains as Drake, Frobisher,[25] and Hawkins[26]--from infancy at
home on blue water--was manifest in the very first encounter. They
obtained the weather-gage at once, and cannonaded the enemy at
intervals with considerable effect; easily escaping at will out of
range of the sluggish Armada, which was incapable of bearing sail in
pursuit, altho provided with an armament which could sink all its
enemies at close quarters. "We had some small fight with them that
Sunday afternoon," said Hawkins.
[Footnote 25: Sir Martin Frobisher, who in 1576 commanded an
expedition in search of the Northwest Passage, and discovered the bay
since called after him.]
[Footnote 26: Sir John Hawkins at this time was a rear-admiral. He was
knighted after the defeat of the Armada.]
Medina Sidonia[27] hoisted the royal standard at the fore; and the
whole fleet did its utmost, which was little, to offer general battle.
It was in vain. The English, following at the heels of the enemy,
refused all such invitations, and attacked only the rear-guard of the
Armada, where Recalde commanded. That admiral, steadily maintaining
his post, faced his nimble antagonists, who continued to tease, to
maltreat, and to elude him, while the rest of the fleet proceeded
slowly up the Channel closely followed by the enemy. And thus the
running fight continued along the coast, in full view of Plymouth,
whence boats with reenforcements and volunteers were perpetually
arriving to the English ships, until the battle had drifted quite out
of reach of the town.
[Footnote 27: The Duke of Medina Sidonia, who commanded the Armada.]
Already in this first "small fight" the Spaniards had learned a
lesson, and might even entertain a doubt of their invincibility. But
before the sun set there were more serious disasters. Much powder and
shot had been expended by the Spaniard to very little purpose, and so
a master-gunner on board Admiral Oquendo's flag-ship was reprimanded
for careless ball-practise. The gunner, who was a Fleming, enraged
with his captain, laid a train to the powder-magazine, fired it, and
threw himself into the sea. Two decks blew up. The great castle at the
stern rose into clouds, carrying with it the paymaster-general of the
fleet, a large portion of treasure, and nearly two hundred men. The
ship was a wreck, but it was possible to save the rest of the crew. So
Medina Sidonia sent light vessels to remove them, and wore with his
flag-ship to defend Oquendo, who had already been fastened upon by his
English pursuers. But the Spaniards, not being so light in hand as
their enemies, involved themselves in much embarrassment by their
maneuver, and there was much falling foul of each other, entanglement
of rigging, and carrying away of yards. Oquendo's men, however, were
ultimately saved and taken to other ships.
Meantime Don Pedro de Valdez, commander of the Andalusian squadron,
having got his galleon into collision with two or three Spanish ships
successively, had at last carried away his foremast close to the deck,
and the wreck had fallen against his main-mast. He lay crippled and
helpless, the Armada was slowly deserting him, night was coming on,
the sea was running high, and the English, ever hovering near, were
ready to grapple with him. In vain did Don Pedro fire signals of
distress. The captain-general--even as tho the unlucky galleon had not
been connected with the Catholic fleet--calmly fired a gun to collect
his scattered ships, and abandoned Valdez to his fate. "He left me
comfortless in sight of the whole fleet," said poor Pedro; "and
greater inhumanity and unthankfulness I think was never heard of among
men."
Yet the Spaniard comported himself most gallantly. Frobisher, in the
largest ship of the English fleet, the _Triumph_, of eleven hundred
tons, and Hawkins in the _Victory_, of eight hundred, cannonaded him
at a distance, but night coming on, he was able to resist; and it was
not till the following morning that he surrendered to the _Revenge_.
Drake then received the gallant prisoner on board his flag-ship--much
to the disgust and indignation of Frobisher and Hawkins, thus
disappointed of their prize and ransom money--treated him with much
courtesy, and gave his word of honor that he and his men should be
treated fairly like good prisoners of war. This pledge was redeemed;
for it was not the English, as it was the Spanish custom, to convert
captives into slaves, but only to hold them for ransom. Valdez
responded to Drake's politeness by kissing his hand, embracing him,
and overpowering him with magnificent compliments. He was then sent on
board the Lord Admiral, who received him with similar urbanity, and
exprest his regret that so distinguished a personage should have been
so coolly deserted by the Duke of Medina. Don Pedro then returned to
the _Revenge_, where, as the guest of Drake, he was a witness to all
subsequent events up to the 10th of August; on which day he was sent
to London with some other officers, Sir Francis claiming his ransom as
his lawful due.
Here certainly was no very triumphant beginning for the Invincible Armada.
On the very first day of their being in presence of the English fleet--then
but sixty-seven in number, and vastly their inferior in size and weight of
metal--they had lost the flagships of the Guipuzcoan and of the Andalusian
squadrons, with a general-admiral, four hundred and fifty officers and men,
and some one hundred thousand ducats of treasure. They had been
outmaneuvered, outsailed, and thoroughly maltreated by their antagonists,
and they had been unable to inflict a single blow in return. Thus the
"small fight" had been a cheerful one for the opponents of the Inquisition,
and the English were proportionally encouraged....
Never, since England was England, had such a sight been seen as now
revealed itself in those narrow straits between Dover and Calais.
Along that long, low, sandy shore, and quite within the range of the
Calais fortifications, one hundred and thirty Spanish ships--the
greater number of them the largest and most heavily armed in the
world--lay face to face, and scarcely out of cannon-shot, with one
hundred and fifty English sloops and frigates, the strongest and
swiftest that the island could furnish, and commanded by men whose
exploits had rung through the world.
Farther along the coast, invisible, but known to be performing a most
perilous and vital service, was a squadron of Dutch vessels of all
sizes, lining both the inner and outer edges of the sandbanks off the
Flemish coasts, and swarming in all the estuaries and inlets of that
intricate and dangerous cruising-ground between Dunkirk and
Walcheren. Those fleets of Holland and Zeeland, numbering some one
hundred and fifty galleons, sloops, and fly-boats, under Warmond,
Nassau, Van der Does, De Moor, and Rosendael, lay patiently blockading
every possible egress from Newport, or Gravelines, or Sluys, or
Flushing, or Dunkirk; and longing to grapple with the Duke of Parma,
so soon as his fleet of gunboats and hoys, packed with his Spanish and
Italian veterans, should venture to set forth upon the sea for their
long-prepared exploit.
It was a pompous spectacle that midsummer night upon those narrow
seas. The moon, which was at the full, was rising calmly upon a scene
of anxious expectation. Would she not be looking, by the morrow's
night, upon a subjugated England, a reenslaved Holland--upon the
downfall of civil and religious liberty? Those ships of Spain, which
lay there with their banners waving in the moonlight, discharging
salvos of anticipated triumph and filling the air with strains of
insolent music--would they not, by daybreak, be moving straight to
their purpose, bearing the conquerors of the world to the scene of
their cherished hopes?
That English fleet, too, which rode there at anchor, so anxiously on
the watch--would that swarm of nimble, lightly handled, but slender
vessels, which had held their own hitherto in hurried and desultory
skirmishes, be able to cope with their great antagonist, now that the
moment had arrived for the death grapple? Would not Howard, Drake,
Frobisher, Seymour, Winter, and Hawkins be swept out of the straits at
last, yielding an open passage to Medina, Oquendo, Recalde, and
Farnese? Would those Hollanders and Zeelanders cruising so vigilantly
among their treacherous shallows dare to maintain their post now that
the terrible "Holoferness," with his invincible legions, was resolved
to come forth?
And the impatience of the soldiers and sailors on board the fleet was
equal to that of their commanders. There was London almost before
their eyes--a huge mass of treasure, richer and more accessible than
those mines beyond the Atlantic which had so often rewarded Spanish
chivalry with fabulous wealth. And there were men in those galleons
who remembered the sack of Antwerp eleven years before; men who could
tell, from personal experience, how helpless was a great commercial
city when once in the clutch of disciplined brigands; men who in that
dread "fury of Antwerp" had enriched themselves in an hour with the
accumulations of a merchant's lifetime, and who had slain fathers and
mothers, sons and daughters, brides and bridegrooms, before each
other's eyes, until the number of inhabitants butchered in the blazing
streets rose to many thousands, and the plunder from palaces and
warehouses was counted by millions, before the sun had set on the
"great fury." Those Spaniards, and Italians, and Walloons were now
thirsting for more gold, for more blood; and as the capital of England
was even more wealthy and far more defenseless than the commercial
metropolis of the Netherlands had been, so it was resolved that the
London "fury" should be more thorough and more productive than the
"fury of Antwerp," at the memory of which the world still shuddered.
And these professional soldiers had been taught to consider the
English as a pacific, delicate, effeminate race; dependent on good
living, without experience of war, quickly fatigued and discouraged,
and even more easily to be plundered and butchered than were the
excellent burghers of Antwerp.
And so these southern conquerors looked down from their great galleons
and galeasses upon the English vessels. More than three-quarters of
them were merchantmen. There was no comparison whatever between the
relative strength of the fleets. In number they were about equal,
being each from one hundred and thirty to one hundred and fifty
strong; but the Spaniards had twice the tonnage of the English, four
times the artillery, and nearly three times the number of men....
As the twilight deepened, the moon became totally obscured, dark cloud
masses spread over the heavens, the sea grew black, distant thunder
rolled, and the sob of an approaching tempest became distinctly
audible. Such indications of a westerly gale were not encouraging to
those cumbrous vessels, with the treacherous quicksands of Flanders
under their lee.
At an hour past midnight it was so dark that it was difficult for the
most practised eye to pierce far into the gloom. But a faint drip of
oars now struck the ears of the Spaniards as they watched from the
decks. A few moments afterward the sea became suddenly luminous; and
six flaming vessels appeared at a slight distance, bearing steadily
down upon them before the wind and tide.
There were men in the Armada who had been at the siege of Antwerp
only three years before. They remembered with horror the devil-ships
of Gianibelli--those floating volcanoes which had seemed to rend earth
and ocean, whose explosion had laid so many thousands of soldiers dead
at a blow, and which had shattered the bridge and floating forts of
Farnese as tho they had been toys of glass. They knew too that the
famous engineer was at that moment in England.
In a moment one of those horrible panics which spread with such
contagious rapidity among large bodies of men, seized upon the
Spaniards. There was a yell throughout the fleet--"The fire-ships of
Antwerp! the fire-ships of Antwerp!" and in an instant every cable was
cut, and frantic attempts were made by each galleon and galeasse to
escape what seemed imminent destruction. The confusion was beyond
description. Four or five of the largest ships became entangled with
each other. Two others were set on fire by the flaming vessels and
were consumed. Medina Sidonia, who had been warned, even before his
departure from Spain, that some such artifice would probably be
attempted, and who had even, early that morning, sent out a party of
sailors in a pinnace to search for indications of the scheme, was not
surprized or dismayed. He gave orders--as well as might be--that every
ship, after the danger should be passed, was to return to its post and
await his further orders. But it was useless in that moment of
unreasonable panic to issue commands. The despised Mantuan, who had
met with so many rebuffs at Philip's court, and who--owing to official
incredulity--had been but partially successful in his magnificent
enterprise at Antwerp, had now, by the mere terror of his name,
inflicted more damage on Philip's Armada than had hitherto been
accomplished by Howard and Drake, Hawkins and Frobisher combined.
So long as night and darkness lasted, the confusion and uproar
continued. When the Monday morning dawned, several of the Spanish
vessels lay disabled, while the rest of the fleet was seen at a
distance of two leagues from Calais, driving toward the Flemish coast.
The threatened gale had not yet begun to blow; but there were fresh
squalls from the W. S. W., which, to such awkward sailors as the
Spanish vessels, were difficult to contend with. On the other hand,
the English fleet were all astir, and ready to pursue the Spaniards,
now rapidly drifting into the North Sea.
III
"THE SPANISH FURY"[28]
(1576)
Meantime, while the short November day was fast declining, the combat
still raged in the interior of the city (Antwerp). Various currents of
conflict, forcing their separate way through many streets, had at last
mingled in the Grande Place. Around this irregular, not very spacious
square, stood the gorgeous Hotel de Ville, and the tall, many-storied,
fantastically gabled, richly decorated palaces of the guilds. Here a
long struggle took place. It was terminated for a time by the cavalry
of Vargas, who, arriving through the streets of Saint Joris,
accompanied by the traitor Van Ende, charged decisively into the
mêlée. The masses were broken, but multitudes of armed men found
refuge in the buildings, and every house became a fortress. From every
window and balcony a hot fire was poured into the square, as, pent in
a corner, the burghers stood at last at bay. It was difficult to carry
the houses by storm, but they were soon set on fire. A large number of
sutlers and other varlets had accompanied the Spaniards from the
citadel, bringing torches and kindling materials for the express
purpose of firing the town. With great dexterity, these means were now
applied, and in a brief interval the city hall and other edifices on
the square were in flames. The conflagration spread with rapidity,
house after house, street after street, taking fire. Nearly a thousand
buildings, in the most splendid and wealthy quarter of the city, were
soon in a blaze, and multitudes of human beings were burned with them.
In the city hall many were consumed, while others leapt from the
windows to renew the combat below. The many tortuous streets which led
down a slight descent from the rear of the town-house to the quays
were all one vast conflagration. On the other side, the magnificent
cathedral, separated from the Grande Place by a single row of
buildings, was lighted up, but not attacked by the flames. The tall
spire cast its gigantic shadow across the last desperate conflict. In
the street called the Canal au Sucre, immediately behind the
town-house, there was a fierce struggle, a horrible massacre. A crowd
of burghers, grave magistrates, and such of the German soldiers as
remained alive still confronted the ferocious Spaniards. There, amid
the flaming desolation, Goswyn Verreyck, the heroic margrave of the
city, fought with the energy of hatred and despair. The burgomaster
Van der Meere lay dead at his feet; senators, soldiers, citizens fell
fast around him, and he sank at last upon a heap of slain. With him
effectual resistance ended. The remaining combatants were butchered,
or were slowly forced downward to perish in the Scheld. Women,
children, old men were killed in countless numbers, and still, through
all this havoc, directly over the heads of the struggling throng,
suspended in mid-air above the din and smoke of the conflict, there
sounded, every half-quarter of every hour, as if in gentle mockery,
from the belfry of the cathedral, the tender and melodious chimes.
[Footnote 28: From Part IV of Chapter V of "The Rise of the Dutch
Republic." Published by Harper & Brothers. The name "Spanish Fury" was
given to the sack of Antwerp by the Spaniards.]
Never was there a more monstrous massacre, even in the blood-stained
history of the Netherlands. It was estimated that, in the course of
this and the two following days, not less than eight thousand human
beings were murdered. The Spaniards seemed to cast off even the vizard
of humanity. Hell seemed emptied of its fiends. Night fell upon the
scene before the soldiers were masters of the city; but worse horrors
began after the contest was ended. This army of brigands had come
thither with a definite, practical purpose, for it was not
blood-thirst, nor lust, nor revenge, which had impelled them, but it
was avarice, greediness for gold. For gold they had waded through all
this blood and fire. Never had men more simplicity of purpose, more
directness in its execution. They had conquered their India at last;
its golden mines lay all before them, and every sword should open a
shaft. Riot and rape might be deferred; even murder, tho congenial to
their taste, was only subsidiary to their business. They had come to
take possession of the city's wealth, and they set themselves
faithfully to accomplish their task. For gold, infants were dashed out
of existence in their mothers' arms; for gold, parents were tortured
in their children's presence; for gold, brides were scourged to death
before their husbands' eyes. Wherever treasure was suspected, every
expedient which ingenuity, sharpened by greediness, could suggest, was
employed to extort it from its possessors. The fire, spreading more
extensively and more rapidly than had been desired through the
wealthiest quarter of the city, had unfortunately devoured a vast
amount of property. Six millions, at least, had thus been swallowed; a
destruction by which no one had profited. There was, however, much
left. The strong boxes of the merchants, the gold, silver, and
precious jewelry, the velvets, satins, brocades, laces, and similar
well concentrated and portable plunder, were rapidly appropriated. So
far the course was plain and easy, but in private houses it was more
difficult. The cash, plate, and other valuables of individuals were
not so easily discovered.
Torture was, therefore, at once employed to discover the hidden
treasures. After all had been given, if the sum seemed too little, the
proprietors were brutally punished for their poverty or their supposed
dissimulation. A gentlewoman, named Fabry, with her aged mother and
other females of the family, had taken refuge in the cellar of her
mansion. As the day was drawing to a close, a band of plunderers
entered, who, after ransacking the house, descended to the cellarage.
Finding the door barred, they forced it open with gunpowder. The
mother, who was nearest the entrance, fell dead on the threshold.
Stepping across her mangled body, the brigands sprang upon her
daughter, loudly demanding the property which they believed to be
concealed. They likewise insisted on being informed where the master
of the house had taken refuge. Protestations of ignorance as to hidden
treasure, or the whereabouts of her husband, who, for aught she knew,
was lying dead in the streets, were of no avail. To make her more
communicative, they hanged her on a beam in the cellar, and after a
few moments cut her down before life was extinct. Still receiving no
satisfactory reply, where a satisfactory reply was impossible, they
hanged her again. Again, after another brief interval, they gave her a
second release, and a fresh interrogatory. This barbarity they
repeated several times, till they were satisfied that there was
nothing to be gained by it, while, on the other hand, they were losing
much valuable time. Hoping to be more successful elsewhere, they left
her hanging for the last time, and trooped off to fresher fields.
Strange to relate, the person thus horribly tortured survived. A
servant in her family, married to a Spanish soldier, providentially
entered the house in time to rescue her perishing mistress. She was
restored to existence, but never to reason. Her brain was hopelessly
crazed, and she passed the remainder of her life wandering about her
house, or feebly digging in her garden for the buried treasure which
she had been thus fiercely solicited to reveal.
A wedding-feast was rudely interrupted. Two young persons, neighbors
of opulent families, had been long betrothed, and the marriage-day had
been fixt for Sunday, the fatal 4th of November. The guests were
assembled, the ceremony concluded, and the nuptial banquet in
progress, when the horrible outcries in the streets proclaimed that
the Spaniards had broken loose. Hour after hour of trembling
expectation succeeded. At last, a thundering at the gate proclaimed
the arrival of a band of brigands. Preceded by their captain, a large
number of soldiers forced their way into the house, ransacking every
chamber, no opposition being offered by the family and friends, too
few and powerless to cope with this band of well-armed ruffians. Plate
chests, wardrobes, desks, caskets of jewelry were freely offered,
eagerly accepted, but not found sufficient, and to make the luckless
wretches furnish more than they possest, the usual brutalities were
employed. The soldiers began by striking the bridegroom dead. The
bride fell shrieking into her mother's arms, whence she was torn by
the murderers, who immediately put the mother to death, and an
indiscriminate massacre then followed the fruitless attempts to
obtain by threats and torture treasure which did not exist. The bride,
who was of remarkable beauty, was carried off to the citadel. Maddened
by this last outrage, the father, who was the only man of the party
left alive, rushed upon the Spaniards. Wresting a sword from one of
the crew, the old man dealt with it so fiercely that he stretched more
than one enemy dead at his feet, but it is needless to add that he was
soon dispatched.
Meantime, while the party were concluding the plunder of the mansion,
the bride was left in a lonely apartment of the fortress. Without
wasting time in fruitless lamentation, she resolved to quit the life
which a few hours had made so desolate. She had almost succeeded in
hanging herself with a massive gold chain which she wore, when her
captor entered the apartment. Inflamed, not with lust, but with
avarice, excited not by her charms, but by her jewelry, he rescued her
from her perilous position. He then took possession of her chain and
the other trinkets with which her wedding-dress was adorned, and
caused her to be entirely stript of her clothing. She was then
scourged with rods till her beautiful body was bathed in blood, and at
last alone, naked, nearly mad, was sent back into the city. Here the
forlorn creature wandered up and down through the blazing streets,
among the heaps of dead and dying, till she was at last put out of her
misery by a gang of soldiers.
Such are a few isolated instances, accidentally preserved in their
details, of the general horrors inflicted on this occasion. Others
innumerable have sunk into oblivion. On the morning of the 5th of
November Antwerp presented a ghastly sight. The magnificent marble
town-house, celebrated as a "world's wonder," even in that age and
country, in which so much splendor was lavished on municipal palaces,
stood a blackened ruin--all but the walls destroyed, while its
archives, accounts, and other valuable contents had perished. The more
splendid portion of the city had been consumed, at least five hundred
palaces, mostly of marble or hammered stone, being a smoldering mass
of destruction. The dead bodies of those fallen in the massacre were
on every side, in greatest profusion around the Place de Meer, among
the Gothic pillars of the Exchange, and in the streets near the
town-house. The German soldiers lay in their armor, some with their
heads burned from their bodies, some with legs and arms consumed by
the flames through which they had fought. The Margrave Goswyn
Verreyck, the burgomaster Van der Meere, the magistrates Lancelot Van
Urselen, Nicholas Van Boekholt, and other leading citizens lay among
piles of less distinguished slain. They remained unburied until the
overseers of the poor, on whom the living had then more importunate
claims than the dead, were compelled by Roda to bury them out of the
pauper fund. The murderers were too thrifty to be at funeral charges
for their victims. The ceremony was not hastily performed, for the
number of corpses had not been completed. Two days longer the havoc
lasted in the city. Of all the crimes which men can commit, whether
from deliberate calculation or in the frenzy of passion, hardly one
was omitted, for riot, gaming, rape, which had been postponed to the
more stringent claims of robbery and murder, were now rapidly added to
the sum of atrocities. History has recorded the account indelibly on
her brazen tablets; it can be adjusted only at the judgment-seat
above.
Of all the deeds of darkness yet compassed in the Netherlands this was
the worst. It was called The Spanish Fury, by which dread name it has
been known for ages. The city, which had been a world of wealth and
splendor, was changed to a charnel-house, and from that hour its
commercial prosperity was blasted. Other causes had silently girdled
the yet green and flourishing tree, but the Spanish Fury was the fire
which consumed it to ashes. Three thousand dead bodies were discovered
in the streets, as many more were estimated to have perished in the
Scheld, and nearly an equal number were burned or destroyed in other
ways. Eight thousand persons undoubtedly were put to death. Six
millions of property were destroyed by the fire, and at least as much
more was obtained by the Spaniards.
RICHARD HENRY DANA THE YOUNGER
Born in Cambridge, Mass., in 1815; died in 1882; being in
ill health, shipped before the mast in 1834, making a voyage
to the Pacific, described in his book "Two Years Before the
Mast," published in 1840; one of the founders of the Free
Soil party in 1848; edited Wheaton's "Elements of
International Law," published in 1866.
A FIERCE GALE UNDER A CLEAR SKY[29]
We had been below but a short time before we had the usual
premonitions of a coming gale--seas washing over the whole forward
part of the vessel, and her bows beating against them with a force and
sound like the driving of piles. The watch, too, seemed very busy
trampling about decks and singing out at the ropes. A sailor can tell
by the sound what sail is coming in; and in a short time we heard the
top-gallant-sails come in, one after another, and then the flying jib.
This seemed to ease her a good deal, and we were fast going off to the
land of Nod, when--bang, bang, bang on the scuttle, and "All hands,
reef topsails, ahoy!" started us out of our berths, and it not being
very cold weather, we had nothing extra to put on, and were soon on
deck.
[Footnote 29: From "Two Years Before the Mast."]
I shall never forget the fineness of the sight. It was a clear and
rather a chilly night; the stars were twinkling with an intense
brightness, and as far as the eye could reach there was not a cloud
to be seen. The horizon met the sea in a defined line. A painter could
not have painted so clear a sky. There was not a speck upon it. Yet it
was blowing great guns from the northwest. When you can see a cloud to
windward, you feel that there is a place for the wind to come from;
but here it seemed to come from nowhere. No person could have told
from the heavens, by their eyesight alone, that it was not a still
summer's night. One reef after another we took in the topsails, and
before we could get them hoisted up we heard a sound like a short
quick rattling of thunder, and the jib was blown to atoms out of the
bolt-rope. We got the topsails set, and the fragments of the jib
stowed away, and the foretopmast staysail set in its place, when the
great mainsail gaped open, and the sail ripped from head to foot. "Lay
up on that main yard and furl the sail, before it blows to tatters!"
shouted the captain; and in a moment we were up, gathering the remains
of it upon the yard. We got it wrapt round the yard, and passed
gaskets over it as snugly as possible, and were just on deck again,
when with another loud rent, which was heard throughout the ship, the
foretopsail, which had been double-reefed, split in two athwartships,
just below the reef-band, from earing to earing. Here again it
was--down yard, haul out reef-tackles, and lay out upon the yard for
reefing. By hauling the reef-tackles chock-a-block we took the strain
from the other earings, and passing the close-reef earing, and
knotting the points carefully, we succeeded in setting the sail, close
reefed.
We had but just got the rigging coiled up, and were waiting to hear
"Go below the watch!" when the main royal worked loose from the
gaskets, and blew directly out to leeward, flapping and shaking the
mast like a wand. Here was a job for somebody. The royal must come in
or be cut adrift, or the mast would be snapt short off. All the light
hands in the starboard watch were sent up one after another, but they
could do nothing with it. At length John, the tall Frenchman, the head
of the starboard watch (and a better sailor never stept upon a deck),
sprang aloft, and by the help of his long arms and legs succeeded
after a hard struggle--the sail blowing over the yard-arm to leeward,
and the skysail adrift directly over his head--in smothering it and
frapping it with long pieces of sinnet. He came very near being blown
or shaken from the yard several times, but he was a true sailor, every
finger a fish-hook. Having made the sail snug, he prepared to send the
yard down, which was a long and difficult job; for frequently he was
obliged to stop and hold on with all his might for several minutes,
the ship pitching so as to make it impossible to do anything else at
that height. The yard at length came down safe, and after it the fore
and mizzen royal yards were sent down. All hands were then sent aloft,
and for an hour or two we were hard at work, making the booms well
fast, unreefing the studding sail and royal and skysail gear, getting
rolling-ropes on the yard, setting up the weather breast-backstays,
and making other preparations for a storm. It was a fine night for a
gale, just cool and bracing enough for quick work, without being
cold, and as bright as day. It was sport to have a gale in such
weather as this. Yet it blew like a hurricane. The wind seemed to come
with a spite, an edge to it, which threatened to scrape us off the
yards. The force of the wind was greater than I had ever felt it
before; but darkness, cold, and wet are the worst parts of a storm to
a sailor.
Having got on deck again, we looked round to see what time of night it
was, and whose watch. In a few minutes the man at the wheel struck
four bells, and we found that the other watch was out and our own half
out. Accordingly, the starboard watch went below, and left the ship to
us for a couple of hours, yet with orders to stand by for a call.
Hardly had they got below before away went the foretopmast staysail,
blown to ribbons. This was a small sail, which we could manage in the
watch, so that we were not obliged to call up the other watch. We laid
upon the bowsprit, where we were under water half the time, and took
in the fragments of the sail; and as she must have some headsail on
her, prepared to bend another staysail. We got the new one out into
the nettings; seized on the tack, sheets, and halyards, and the hanks;
manned the halyards, cut adrift the frapping-lines, and hoisted away;
but before it was half-way up the stay it was blown all to pieces.
When we belayed the halyards, there was nothing left but the
bolt-rope. Now large eyes began to show themselves in the foresail;
and knowing that it must soon go, the mate ordered us upon the yard to
furl it. Being unwilling to call up the watch, who had been on deck
all night, he roused out the carpenter, sailmaker, cook, and steward,
and with their help we manned the foreyard, and after nearly half an
hour's struggle, mastered the sail and got it well furled round the
yard.
The force of the wind had never been greater than at this moment. In
going up the rigging it seemed absolutely to pin us down to the
shrouds; and on the yard there was no such thing as turning a face to
windward. Yet there was no driving sleet and darkness and wet and cold
as off Cape Horn; and instead of stiff oilcloth suits, southwester
caps, and thick boots, we had on hats, round jackets, duck trousers,
light shoes, and everything light and easy. These things make a great
difference to a sailor. When we got on deck the man at the wheel
struck eight bells (four o'clock in the morning), and "All
starbowlines, ahoy!" brought the other watch up, but there was no
going below for us. The gale was now at its height, "blowing like
scissors and thumb-screws"; the captain was on deck; the ship, which
was light, rolling and pitching as tho she would shake the long sticks
out of her, and the sails were gaping open and splitting in every
direction. The mizzen-topsail, which was a comparatively new sail and
close reefed, split from head to foot in the bunt; the foretopsail
went in one rent from clew to earing, and was blowing to tatters; one
of the chain bobstays parted; the spritsailyard sprung in the slings,
the martingale had slued away off to leeward; and owing to the long
dry weather the lee rigging hung in large bights at every lurch. One
of the main-topgallant shrouds had parted; and to crown all, the
galley had got adrift and gone over to leeward, and the anchor on the
lee bow had worked loose and was thumping the side. Here was work
enough for all hands for half a day. Our gang laid out on the
mizzen-top-sailyard, and after more than half an hour's hard work
furled the sail, tho it bellied out over our heads, and again, by a
slat of the wind, blew in under the yard with a fearful jerk and
almost threw us off from the foot-ropes....
It was now eleven o'clock, and the watch was sent below to get
breakfast, and at eight bells (noon), as everything was snug, altho
the gale had not in the least abated, the watch was set and the other
watch and idlers sent below. For three days and three nights the gale
continued with unabated fury, and with singular regularity. There were
no lulls, and very little variation in its fierceness. Our ship, being
light, rolled so as almost to send the fore yard-arm under water, and
drifted off bodily to leeward. All this time there was not a cloud to
be seen in the sky, day or night; no, not so large as a man's hand.
Every morning the sun rose cloudless from the sea, and set again at
night in the sea in a flood of light. The stars, too, came out of the
blue one after another, night after night, unobscured, and twinkled as
clear as on a still frosty night at home, until the day came upon
them. All this time the sea was rolling in immense surges, white with
foam, as far as the eye could reach, on every side; for we were now
leagues and leagues from shore.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Born in Concord, Mass., in 1817; died in 1862; graduated
from Harvard in 1837; taught school; practised surveying;
lived alone at Walden Pond in 1845-47; a friend of Emerson
and Alcott; imprisoned for refusal to pay a tax he believed
to be unjust; published "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac
Rivers" in 1849, and "Walden" in 1854; "Excursions"
published after his death, with a memoir, by Emerson, "The
Maine Woods" in 1864, "Cape Cod" in 1865; his "Journals" and
other works also published after his death.
I
THE BUILDING OF HIS HOUSE AT WALDEN POND[30]
When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived
alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had
built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts,
and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two
years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life
again....
[Footnote 30: From Chapter I of "Walden, or Life in the Woods."]
Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an ax and went down to the
woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house,
and began to cut down some tall arrowy white pines, still in their
youth, for timber. It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but
perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow men
to have an interest in your enterprise. The owner of the ax, as he
released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I
returned it sharper than I received it. It was a pleasant hillside
where I worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on
the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and
hickories were springing up. The ice in the pond was not yet
dissolved, tho there were some open spaces, and it was all dark
colored and saturated with water. There were some slight flurries of
snow during the days that I worked there; but for the most part when I
came out on to the railroad, on my way home, its yellow sand heap
stretched away gleaming in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone in
the spring sun, and I heard the lark and pewee and other birds already
come to commence another year with us....
I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs on two
sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side, leaving the
rest of the bark on, so that they were just as straight and much
stronger than sawed ones. Each stick was carefully mortised or tenoned
by its stump, for I had borrowed other tools by this time. My days in
the woods were not very long ones; yet I usually carried my dinner of
bread and butter, and read the newspaper in which it was wrapt, at
noon, sitting amid the green pine boughs which I had cut off, and to
my bread was imparted some of their fragrance, for my hands were
covered with a thick coat of pitch. Before I had done I was more the
friend than the foe of the pine-tree, tho I had cut down some of them,
having become better acquainted with it. Sometimes a rambler in the
wood was attracted by the sound of my ax, and we chatted pleasantly
over the chips which I had made....
I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south, where a
woodchuck had formerly dug his burrow, down through sumac and
blackberry roots, and the lowest stain of vegetation, six feet square
by seven deep, to a fine sand where potatoes would not freeze in any
winter. The sides were left shelving, and not stoned; but the sun
having never shone on them, the sand still keeps its place. It was but
two hours' work. I took particular pleasure in this breaking of
ground, for in almost all latitudes men dig into the earth for an
equable temperature. Under the most splendid house in the city is
still to be found the cellar where they store their roots as of old,
and long after the superstructure has disappeared posterity will
remark its dent in the earth. The house is still but a sort of porch
at the entrance of a burrow.
At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of my
acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion for
neighborliness than from any necessity, I set up the frame of my
house. No man was ever more honored in the character of his raisers
than I. They are destined, I trust, to assist at the raising of
loftier structures one day. I began to occupy my house on the 4th of
July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards were
carefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectly
impervious to rain; but before boarding I laid the foundation of a
chimney at one end, bringing two cartloads of stones up the hill from
the pond in my arms. I built the chimney after my hoeing in the fall,
before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing my cooking in the
meanwhile out-of-doors, on the ground, early in the morning; which
mode I still think is in some respects more convenient and agreeable
than the usual one. When it stormed before my bread was baked, I fixt
a few boards over the fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and
passed some pleasant hours in that way. In those days, when my hands
were much employed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paper
which lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much
entertainment, in fact, answered the same purpose as the Iliad.
Before winter I built a chimney, and shingled the sides of my house,
which were already impervious to rain, with imperfect and sappy
shingles made of the first slice of the log, which edges I was obliged
to straighten with a plane.
I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide by
fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a garret and a closet, a
large window on each side, two trap doors, one door at the end, and a
brick fireplace opposite. The exact cost of my house, paying the usual
price for such materials as I used, but not counting the work, all of
which was done by myself, was as follows; and I give the details
because very few are able to tell exactly what their houses cost, and
fewer still, if any, the separate cost of the various materials which
compose them:
Boards $ 8.03-1/2
Refuse shingles for roof and sides 4.00
Laths 1.25
Two second-hand windows with glass 2.43
One thousand old brick 4.00
Two casks of lime (That was high) 2.40
Hair (More than I needed) 0.31
Mantle-tree iron 0.15
Nails 3.90
Hinges and screws 0.14
Latch 0.10
Chalk 0.01
Transportation (I carried a good part
on my back) 1.40
----------
In all $28.12-1/2
These are all the materials excepting the timber, stones, and sand,
which I claimed by squatter's right. I have also a small woodshed
adjoining, made chiefly of the stuff which was left after building the
house.
II
HOW TO MAKE TWO SMALL ENDS MEET[31]
Before I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve dollars by
some honest and agreeable method, in order to meet my unusual
expenses, I planted about two acres and a half of light and sandy soil
near it chiefly with beans, but also a small part with potatoes,
corn, peas, and turnips. The whole lot contains eleven acres, mostly
growing up to pines and hickories, and was sold the preceding season
for eight dollars and eight cents an acre. One farmer said that it was
"good for nothing but to raise cheeping squirrels on." I put no manure
whatever on this land, not being the owner, but merely a squatter, and
not expecting to cultivate so much again, and I did not quite hoe it
all once. I got out several cords of stumps in plowing, which supplied
me with fuel for a long time, and left small circles of virgin mold,
easily distinguishable through the summer by the greater luxuriance of
the beans there. The dead and for the most part unmerchantable wood
behind my house, and the driftwood from the pond, have supplied the
remainder of my fuel. I was obliged to hire a team and a man for the
plowing, tho I held the plow myself. My farm outgoes for the first
season were, for implements, seed, work, etc., $14.72-1/2. The seed
corn was given me. This never costs anything to speak of, unless you
plant more than enough. I got twelve bushels of beans, and eighteen
bushels of potatoes, besides some peas and sweet corn. The yellow corn
and turnips were too late to come to anything. My whole income from
the farm was
$23.44
Deducting the outgoes 14.72-1/2
--------------
There are left $ 8.71-1/2
besides produce consumed and on hand at the time this estimate was
made of the value of $4.50--the amount on hand much more than
balancing a little grass which I did not raise. All things considered,
that is considering the importance of a man's soul and of to-day,
notwithstanding the short time occupied by my experiment, nay, partly
even because of its transient character I believe that that was doing
better than any farmer in Concord did that year.
[Footnote 31: From Chapters I and II of "Walden."]
The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all the land which I
required, about a third of an acre, and I learned from the experience
of both years, not being in the least awed by many celebrated works on
husbandry, Arthur Young among the rest, that if one would live simply
and eat only the crop which he raised, and raise no more than he ate,
and not exchange it for an insufficient quantity of more luxurious and
expensive things, he would need to cultivate only a few rods of
ground, and that it would be cheaper to spade up that than to use oxen
to plow it, and to select a fresh spot from time to time than to
manure the old, and he could do all his necessary farm work as it were
with his left hand at odd hours in the summer; and thus he would not
be tied to an ox, or horse, or cow, or pig, as at present. I desire to
speak impartially on this point, and as one not interested in the
success or failure of the present economical and social arrangements.
I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not
anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius,
which is a very crooked one, every moment. Besides being better off
than they already, if my house had been burned or my crops had failed,
I should have been nearly as well off as before....
By surveying, carpentry, and day-labor of various other kinds in the
village in the meanwhile, for I have as many trades as fingers, I had
earned $13.34. The expense of food for eight months, namely, from July
4th to March 1st, the time when these estimates were made, tho I lived
there more than two years--not counting potatoes, a little green corn,
and some peas, which I had raised, nor considering the value of what
was on hand at the last date, was
Rice $1.73-1/2}
Molasses (Cheapest form }
of the saccharine) 1.73 }
Rye meal 1.04-3/4}
Indian meal (Cheaper }
than rye) 0.99-3/4}
Pork 0.22 }
Flour (Costs more than } All Experiments
Indian meal, both } which had failed
money and trouble) 0.88 }
Sugar 0.80 }
Lard 0.65 }
Apples 0.25 }
Dried apple 0.22 }
Sweet potatoes 0.10 }
One pumpkin 0.06 }
One watermelon 0.02 }
Salt 0.03 }
Yes, I did eat $8.74, all told; but I should not thus unblushingly
publish my guilt, if I did not know that most of my readers were
equally guilty with myself, and that their deeds would look no better
in print. The next year I sometimes caught a mess of fish for my
dinner, and once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck which
ravaged my beanfield--effect his transmigration, as a Tartar would
say--and devour him, partly for experiment's sake; but tho it
afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavor, I
saw that the longest use would not make that a good practise, however
it might seem to have your woodchucks ready drest by the village
butcher.
Clothing and some incidental expenses within the same date, tho little
can be inferred from this item, amounted to
$8.40-3/4
Oil and some household utensils 2.00
So that all the pecuniary outgoes, excepting for washing and mending,
which for the most part were done out of the house, and their bills
have not yet been received--and these are all and more than all the
ways by which money necessarily goes out in this part of the
world--were
House $28.12-1/2
Farm, one year 14.72-1/2
Food, eight months 8.74
Clothing, etc., eight months 8.40-3/4
Oil, etc., eight months 2.00
-------
In all $61.99-3/4
I address myself now to those of my readers who have a living to get.
And to meet this I have for farm produce sold
$23.44
Earned by day-labor 13.34
------
In all $36.78
which subtracted from the sum of the outgoes leaves a balance of
$25.21-3/4 on the one side, this being very nearly the means with which I
started, and the measure of expenses to be incurred--and on the
other, besides the leisure and independence and health thus secured, a
comfortable house for me as long as I choose to occupy it.
These statistics, however accidental and therefore uninstructive they
may appear, as they have a certain completeness, have a certain value
also. Nothing was given me of which I have not rendered some account.
It appears from the above estimate that my food alone cost me in money
about twenty-seven cents a week. It was, for nearly two years after
this, rye and Indian meal without yeast, potatoes, rice, a very little
salt pork, molasses, and salt, and my drink water. It was fit that I
should live on rice, mainly, who loved so well the philosophy of
India. To meet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I may as
well state that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had done, and
I trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the
detriment of my domestic arrangements. But the dining out, being, as I
have stated, a constant element, does not in the least affect a
comparative statement like this.
I learned from my two years' experience that it would cost incredibly
little trouble to obtain one's necessary food, even in this latitude;
that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain
health and strength. I have made a satisfactory dinner, satisfactory
on several accounts, simply off a dish of purslane (_Portulaca
Oleracea_) which I gathered in my cornfield, boiled and salted. I give
the Latin on account of the savoriness of the trivial name. And pray
what more can a reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary
noons, than sufficient number of ears of green sweet-corn boiled,
with the addition of salt? Even the little variety which I used was a
yielding to the demands of appetite, and not of health. Yet men have
come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of
necessaries, but for want of luxuries; and I know a good woman who
thinks that her son lost his life because he took to drinking water
only.
The reader will perceive that I am treating the subject rather from an
economic than a dietetic point of view, and he will not venture to put
my abstemiousness to the test unless he has a well-stocked larder.
Bread I at first made of pure Indian meal and salt, genuine hoe-cakes,
which I baked before my fire out of doors on a shingle or the end of a
stick of timber sawed off in building my house; but it was wont to get
smoked and to have a piny flavor. I tried flour also; but have at last
found a mixture of rye and Indian meal most convenient and agreeable.
In cold weather it was no little amusement to bake several small
loaves of this in succession, tending and turning them as carefully as
an Egyptian his hatching eggs. They were a real cereal fruit which I
ripened, and they had to my senses a fragrance like that of other
noble fruits, which I kept in as long as possible by wrapping them in
cloths. I made a study of the ancient and indispensable art of
bread-making, consulting such authorities as offered, going back to
the primitive days and first invention of the unleavened kind, when
from the wildness of nuts and meats men first reached the mildness and
refinement of this diet, and traveling gradually down in my studies
through that accidental souring of the dough, which, it is supposed,
taught the leavening process, and through the various fermentations
thereafter, till I came to "good, sweet, wholesome bread," the staff
of life.
For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labor
of my hands, and I found that by working about six weeks in a year, I
could meet all the expenses of living. The whole of my winters, as
well as most of my summers, I had free and clear for study. I have
thoroughly tried school-keeping, and found that my expenses were in
proportion, or rather out of proportion, to my income, for I was
obliged to dress and train, not to say think and believe, accordingly,
and I lost my time into the bargain. As I did not teach for the good
of my fellow men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. I
have tried trade; but I found that it would take ten years to get
under way in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the
devil. I was actually afraid that I might by that time be doing what
is called a good business. When formerly I was looking about to see
what I could do for a living, some sad experience in conforming to the
wishes of friends being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I
thought often and seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely I
could do, and its small profits might suffice--for my greatest skill
has been to want but little--so little capital it required, so little
distraction from my wonted moods, I foolishly thought. While my
acquaintances went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I
contemplated this occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills
all summer to pick the berries which came in my way, and thereafter
carelessly dispose of them; so to keep the flocks of Admetus. I also
dreamed that I might gather the wild herbs, or carry evergreens to
such villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods, even to the city,
by hay-cart loads. But I have since learned that trade curses
everything it handles; and tho you trade in messages from heaven, the
whole curse of trade attaches to the business....
In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to
maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if
we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations
are still the sports of the more artificial. It is not necessary that
a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he
sweats easier than I do....
The only house I had been the owner of before, if I except a boat, was
a tent, which I used occasionally when making excursions in the
summer, and this is still rolled up in my garret; but the boat, after
passing from hand to hand, has gone down the stream of time. With this
more substantial shelter about me, I had made some progress toward
settling in the world. This frame, so slightly clad, was a sort of
crystallization around me, and reacted on the builder. It was
suggestive as a picture in outlines. I did not need to go outdoors to
take the air, for the atmosphere within had lost none of its
freshness. It was not so much within doors as behind a door where I
sat, even in the rainiest weather. The Harivansa says, "An
abode-without birds is like a meat without seasoning." Such was not my
abode, for I found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds; not by
having imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them. I was not
only nearer to some of those which commonly frequent the garden and
the orchard, but to those wilder and more thrilling songsters of the
forest which never, or rarely, serenade a villager, the wood-thrush,
the veery, the scarlet tanager, the field-sparrow, the whippoorwill,
and many others.
I was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and a half
south of the village of Concord, and somewhat higher than it, in the
midst of an extensive wood between that town and Lincoln, and about
two miles south of that our only field known to fame, Concord battle
ground; but I was so low in the woods that the opposite shore, half a
mile off, like the rest covered with wood, was my most distant
horizon. For the first week, whenever I looked out on the pond it
imprest me like a tarn high up on the side of a mountain, its bottom
far above the surface of other lakes, and, as the sun arose, I saw it
throwing off its mighty clothing of mist, and here and there, by
degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface were
revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily withdrawing in
every direction into the woods, as at the breaking up of some
nocturnal conventicle. The very dew seemed to hang upon the trees
later into the day than usual, as on the sides of mountains.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front
only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what
it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not
lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear;
nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary.
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so
sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to
cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and
reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, then to
get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to
the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be
able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men,
it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is
of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is
the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever."
Still we live meanly, like ants; tho the fable tells us that we were
long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is
error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for
its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is
frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more
than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and
lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your
affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead
of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb
nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are
the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand and one items to be
allowed for that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to
the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he
must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify.
Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary, eat but one; instead
of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion.
Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off
the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the
rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without
perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring
and the children cry--determined to make a day of it. Why should we
knock under and go with the stream? Let us not be upset and
overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner,
situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you are
safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves,
with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast
like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse
for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run? We will consider
what kind of music they are like.
III
ON READING THE ANCIENT CLASSICS[32]
The student may read Homer or Æschylus in the Greek without danger of
dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that he in some measure
emulates their heroes, and consecrates morning hours to their pages.
The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother
tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we
must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing
a larger sense than common use permits out of that wisdom and valor
and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all
its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic
writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which
they are printed as rare and curious as ever. It is worth the expense
of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an
ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the
street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocation. It is not in vain
that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has
heard. Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at
length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the
adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language
they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the
classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only
oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most
modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as
well omit to study Nature because she is old.
[Footnote 32: From Chapter III of "Walden."]
To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble
exercise, and one that will tax the reader more than any exercise
which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as
the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life
to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as
they were written. It is not enough even to be able to speak the
language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a
memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the
language heard and the language read. The one is commonly transitory,
a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn it
unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. The other is the
maturity and experience of that; if that is our mother tongue, this is
our father tongue, a reserved and select expression, too significant
to be heard by the ear, which we must be born again in order to speak.
The crowds of men who merely spoke the Greek and Latin tongues in the
Middle Ages were not entitled by the accident of birth to read the
works of genius written in those languages; for these were not written
in that Greek or Latin which they knew, but in the select language of
literature. They had not learned the nobler dialects of Greece and
Rome, but the very materials on which they were written were waste
paper to them, and they prized instead a cheap contemporary
literature. But when the several nations of Europe had acquired
distinct tho rude written languages of their own, sufficient for the
purposes of their rising literatures, then first learning revived, and
scholars were enabled to discern from that remoteness the treasures of
antiquity. What the Roman and Grecian multitude could not hear, after
the lapse of ages a few scholars read, and a few scholars only are
still reading it.
However much we may admire the orator's occasional bursts of
eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or
above the fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is
behind the clouds. There are the stars, and they who can may read
them. The astronomers forever comment on and observe them. They are
not exhalations like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. What is
called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the
study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion,
and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the
writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be
distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks
to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can
understand him.
No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions
in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. It is
something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any
other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It
may be translated into every language, and not only be read but
actually breathed from all human lips; not be represented on canvas or
in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The
symbol of an ancient man's thought becomes a modern man's speech. Two
thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature,
as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they
have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands
to protect them against the corrosion of time. Books are the treasured
wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and
nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and
rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of
their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader
his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and
irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or
emperors, exert an influence on mankind. When the illiterate and
perhaps scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his
coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles of
wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still higher
but yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible
only of the imperfection of his culture, and the vanity and
insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good sense by
the pains which he takes to secure for his children that intellectual
culture whose want he so keenly feels; and thus it is that he becomes
the founder of a family.
Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the
language in which they were written must have a very imperfect
knowledge of the history of the human race; for it is remarkable that
no transcript of them has ever been made into any modern tongue,
unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such a transcript.
Homer has never yet been printed in English, nor Æschylus, nor Virgil
even--works as refined, as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as
the morning itself; for later writers, say what we will of their
genius, have rarely, if ever, equaled the elaborate beauty and finish
and the lifelong and heroic literary labors of the ancients. They only
talk of forgetting them who never knew them. It will be soon enough to
forget them when we have the learning and the genius which will enable
us to attend to and appreciate them. That age will be rich, indeed,
when those relics which we call classics, and the still older and more
than classic but even less known scriptures of the nations, shall have
still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with
Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and
Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively
deposited their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we
may hope to scale heaven at last.
IV
OF SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE[33]
When I return to my house I find that visitors have been there and
left their cards, either a bunch of flowers, or a wreath of evergreen,
or a name in pencil on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip. They who come
rarely to the woods take some little piece of the forest into their
hands to play with by the way, which they leave, either intentionally
or accidentally. One has peeled a willow wand, woven it into a ring,
and dropt it on my table. I could always tell if visitors had called
in my absence, either by the bended twigs or grass, or the print of
their shoes, and generally of what sex or age or quality they were by
some slight trace left, as a flower dropt, or a bunch of grass plucked
and thrown away, even as far off as the railroad, half a mile distant,
or by the lingering odor of a cigar or pipe. Nay, I was frequently
notified of the passage of a traveler along the highway sixty rods off
by the scent of his pipe....
[Footnote 33: From Chapter IV of "Walden."]
I have never felt lonesome, or in the least opprest by a sense of
solitude but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods,
when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not
essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something
unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity
in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a
gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of
such sweet and beneficent society in nature, in the very pattering of
the drops and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite
and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere
sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood
significant, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pine
needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so
distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, even
in scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also
that the nearest of blood to me and humanest was not a person, nor a
villager, that I thought no place could ever be strange to me
again....
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in
company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love
to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as
solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among
men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is
always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by
the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The
really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge
College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work
alone in the field all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome,
because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he can not sit
down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where
he can "see the folks," and recreate, and, as he thinks, remunerate
himself for his day's solitude; and hence he wonders how the student
can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui
and "the blues"; but he does not realize that the student, tho in the
house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as
the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society
that the latter does, tho it may be a more condensed form of it.
Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not
having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at
meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old
musty cheese that we are. We have to agree on a certain set of rules,
called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting
tolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the
post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night;
we live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one
another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another.
Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty
communications. Consider the girls in a factory--never alone, hardly
in their dreams. It would be better if there were but one inhabitant
to a square mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in his
skin, that we should touch him.
I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning,
when nobody calls. Let me suggest a few comparisons, that some one may
convey an idea of my situation. I am no more lonely than the loon in
the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden pond itself. What
company has that lonely lake, I pray? And yet it has not the blue
devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters.
The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there sometimes appear
to be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone--but the devil, he is
far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion. I
am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or
a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a humble-bee. I am no more
lonely than the Mill brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or
the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first
spider in a new house.
I have occasional visits in the long winter evenings, when the snow
falls fast and the wind howls in the wood, from an old settler and
original proprietor, who is reported to have dug Walden pond, and
stoned it, and fringed it with pine woods; who tells me stories of old
time and of new eternity; and between us we manage to pass a cheerful
evening, with social mirth and pleasant views of things, even without
apples or cider; a most wise and humorous friend, whom I love much,
who keeps himself more secret than ever did Goffe or Whalley;[34] and
tho he is thought to be dead, none can show where he is buried. An
elderly dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to most
persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to stroll sometimes,
gathering simples and listening to her fables; for she has a genius of
unequaled fertility, and her memory runs back farther than mythology,
and she can tell me the original of every fable, and on what fact
every one is founded, for the incidents occurred when she was young. A
ruddy and lusty old dame, who delights in all weathers and seasons,
and is likely to outlive all her children yet.
[Footnote 34: The English regicides who came to America, and after
1660 lived in concealment in New England, a part of the time in a cave
near New Haven. William Goffe died in Hadley, Mass., in 1679. Edward
Whalley, who had been one of Cromwell's major generals, died also in
Hadley a year before Goffe.]
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Born in 1819, died in 1891; graduated from Harvard in 1838;
in 1855 became professor at Harvard; editor of _The Atlantic
Monthly_ in 1857-62, _The North American Review_ in 1863-72;
minister to Spain in 1877-80, and Great Britain in 1880-85;
published "A Year's Life" in 1841, "The Vision of Sir
Launfal" in 1845, "A Fable for Critics" in 1848, "The Biglow
Papers" in 1848, and a second series in 1867, "Under the
Willows" in 1868, "The Cathedral" in 1869; among his
best-known prose works, "Conversations on Some of the Old
Poets" published in 1845, "Fireside Travels" in 1864, "Among
My Books" in 1870 and 1876, "My Study Windows" in 1871; his
"Letters" edited by Charles Eliot Norton, published in 1893.
I
THE POET AS PROPHET[35]
Poets are the forerunners and prophets of changes in the moral world.
Driven by their fine nature to search into and reverently contemplate
the universal laws of the soul, they find some fragment of the broken
tables of God's law, and interpret it, half-conscious of its mighty
import. While philosophers are wrangling, and politicians playing at
snapdragon with, the destinies of millions, the poet, in the silent
deeps of his soul, listens to those mysterious pulses which, from one
central heart, send life and beauty through the finest veins of the
universe, and utters truths to be sneered at, perchance, by
contemporaries, but which become religion to posterity. Not unwisely
ordered is that eternal destiny which renders the seer despised of
men, since thereby he is but the more surely taught to lay his head
meekly upon the mother-breast of Nature, and harken to the musical
soft beating of her bounteous heart.
[Footnote 35: From an essay contributed to _The Pioneer_ in 1843.
Lowell was the founder and editor of _The Pioneer_, Robert Carter
being his associate. The magazine lived only three months. Charles
Eliot Norton, the editor of Lowell's "Letters," says it "left its
projectors burdened with a considerable debt." "I am deeply in debt,"
wrote Lowell afterward, when hesitating to undertake a journey, "and
feel a twinge for every cent I spend."]
That Poesy, save as she can soar nearer to the blissful throne of the
Supreme Beauty, is of no more use than all other beautiful things are,
we are fain to grant. That she does not add to the outward wealth of
the body, and that she is only so much more excellent than any bodily
gift as spirit is more excellent than matter, we must also yield. But,
inasmuch as all beautiful things are direct messages and revelations
of himself, given us by our Father, and as Poesy is the searcher out
and interpreter of all these, tracing by her inborn sympathy the
invisible nerves which bind them harmoniously together, she is to be
revered and cherished. The poet has a fresher memory of Eden, and of
the path leading back thereto, than other men; so that we might almost
deem him to have been conceived, at least, if not borne and nursed,
beneath the ambrosial shadow of those dimly remembered bowers, and to
have had his infant ears filled with the divine converse of angels,
who then talked face to face with his sires, as with beloved younger
brethren, and of whose golden words only the music remained to him,
vibrating forever in his soul, and making him yearn to have all sounds
of earth harmonize therewith. In the poet's lofty heart Truth hangs
her aerie, and there Love flowers, scattering thence her winged seeds
over all the earth with every wind of heaven. In all ages the poet's
fiery words have goaded men to remember and regain their ancient
freedom, and, when they had regained it, have tempered it with a love
of beauty, so as that it should accord with the freedom of nature, and
be as unmovably eternal as that. The dreams of poets are morning
dreams, coming to them in the early dawn and daybreaking of great
truths, and are surely fulfilled at last. They repeat them, as
children do, and all Christendom, if it be not too busy with
quarreling about the meaning of creeds, which have no meaning at all,
listens with a shrug of the shoulders and a smile of pitying
incredulity; for reformers are always madmen in their own age, and
infallible saints in the next.
We love to go back to the writings of our old poets, for we find in
them the tender germs of many a thought which now stands like a huge
oak in the inward world, an ornament and a shelter. We can not help
reading with awful interest what has been written or rudely scrawled
upon the walls of this our earthly prison house, by former dwellers
therein. From that which centuries have established, too, we may draw
true principles of judgment for the poetry of our own day. A right
knowledge and apprehension of the past teaches humbleness and
self-sustainment to the present. Showing us what has been, it also
reveals what can be done. Progress is Janus-faced, looking to the
bygone as well as to the coming; and radicalism should not so much
busy itself with lopping off the dead or seeming dead limbs, as with
clearing away that poisonous rottenness around the roots, from which
the tree has drawn the principle of death into its sap. A love of the
beautiful and harmonious, which must be the guide and forerunner to
every onward movement of humanity, is created and cherished more
surely by pointing out what beauty dwells in anything, even the most
deformed (for there is something in that also, else it could not even
be), than by searching out and railing at all the foulnesses in
nature.
Not till we have patiently studied beauty can we safely venture to
look at defects, for not till then can we do it in that spirit of
earnest love, which gives more than it takes away. Exultingly as we
hail all signs of progress, we venerate the past also. The tendrils of
the heart, like those of ivy, cling but the more closely to what they
have clung to long, and even when that which they entwine crumbles
beneath them, they still run greenly over the ruin, and beautify those
defects which they can not hide. Th
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/29145