he has found full play for beauty and greatness of behavior, where the circumstances are in har- mony with the man. These portraits, though mere sketches, must be valued as attempts in the very highest kind of narrative, which not only has very few examples to exhibit of any success, but very few competitors in the at- tempt. The word Character is in all mouths; it is a force which we all feel; yet who has ana- lyzed it? What is the nature of that subtle and majestic principle which attaches us to a few per- sons, not so much by personal as by the most spiritual ties? What is the quality of the per- sons who, without being public men, or literary men, or rich men, or active men, or (in the popular sense) religious men, have a certain salutary omnipresence in all our life’s history, almost giving their own quality to the atmo- sphere and the landscape? A moral force, yet wholly unmindful of creed and catechism, intel- lectual, but scornful of books, it works directly and without means, and though it may be re- sisted at any time, yet resistance to it 1s a sul- cide. For the person who stands in this lofty relation to his fellow men is always the imper- sonation to them of their conscience. It is a sufficient proof of the extreme delicacy of this 346 PAPERS FROM THE DIAL element, evanescing before any but the most sympathetic vision, that it has so seldom been employed in the drama and in novels. Mr. Landor, almost alone among living English writers, has indicated his perception of it. These merits make Mr. Landor’s position in the republic of letters one of great mark and dignity. He exercises with a grandeur of spirit the office of writer, and carries it with an air of old and unquestionable nobility. We do not recollect an example of more complete inde- pendence in literary history. He has no clan- ship, no friendships that warp him. He was one of the first to pronounce Wordsworth the great poet of the age, yet he discriminates his faults with the greater freedom. He loves Pindar, /®schylus, Euripides, Aristophanes, Demosthenes, Virgil, yet with open eyes. His position is by no means the highest in litera- ture: he is not a poet or a philosopher. He is a man full of thoughts, but not, like Coleridge, a man of ideas. Only from a mind conversant with the First Philosophy can definitions be expected. Coleridge has contributed many valuable ones to modern literature. Mr. Lan- dor’s definitions are only enumerations of par- ticulars; the generic law is not seized. But as WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 347 it is not from the highest Alps or Andes but from less elevated summits that the most at- tractive landscape 1s commanded, so is Mr. Landor the most useful and agreeable of critics. He has commented on a wide variety of writers, with a closeness and extent of view which has enhanced the value of those authors to his readers. His Dialogue on the Epicurean philo- sophy is a theory of the genius of Epicurus. The Dialogue between Barrow and Newton is the best of all criticisms on the essays of Bacon. His picture of Demosthenes in three several Dialogues is new and adequate. He has illustrated the genius of Homer, A‘schylus, Pindar, Euripides, Thucydides. Then he has examined before he has expatiated, and the minuteness of his verbal criticism gives a con- fidence in his fidelity when he speaks the language of meditation or of passion. His acquaintance with the English tongue is un- surpassed. He “hates false words, and seeks with care, difficulty and moroseness those that fit the thing.” He knows the value of his own words. ‘“‘ They are not,” he says, “ written on slate.’ He never stoops to explanation, nor uses seven words where one will do. He isa master of condensation and suppression, and 348 PAPERS FROM THE DIAL that in no vulgar way. He knows the wide difference between compression and an obscure elliptical style. The dense writer has yet ample room and choice of phrase, and even a game- some mood often between his valid words. There is no inadequacy or disagreeable con- traction in his sentence, any more than in a human face, where in a square space of a few inches is found room for every possible variety of expression."
Yet it is not as an artist that Mr. Landor commends himself to us. He is not epic or dramatic, he has not the high, overpowering method by which the master gives unity and integrity to a work of many parts. He is too wilful, and never abandons himself to his genius. His books are a strange mixture of politics, etymology, allegory, sentiment, and personal history; and what skill of transition he may possess is superficial, not spiritual. His merit must rest, at last, not on the spirit of the dia- logue or the symmetry of any of his historical portraits, but on the value of his sentences. Many of these will secure their own immor- tality in English literature; and this, rightly considered, is no mean merit. These are not plants and animals, but the genetical atoms of WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 349 which both are composed. All our great debt to the Oriental world is of this kind, not uten- sils and statues of the precious metal, but bul- lion and gold-dust. Of many of Mr. Landor’s sentences we are fain to remember what was said of those of Socrates; that they are cubes, which will stand firm, place them how or where you will.’
II! PRAYERS << Nor with fond shekels of the tested gold, Nor gems whose rates are either rich or poor As fancy values them: but with true prayers, That shall be up at heaven and enter there Ere sunrise; prayers from preservéd souls, From fasting maids, whose minds are delicate To nothing temporal.”’ —— SHAKSPEARE.!
YTHAGORAS said that the time when men are honestest is when they present them- selves before the gods. If we can overhear the prayer we shall know the man. But prayers are not made to be overheard, or to be printed, so that we seldom have the prayer otherwise than it can be inferred from the man and his fortunes, which are the answer to the prayer, and always accord with it. Yet there are scattered about in the earth a few records of these devout hours, which it would edify us to read, could they be collected in a more catholic spirit than the wretched and repulsive volumes which usurp that name. Let us not have the prayers of one sect, nor of the Christian Church} but of men in all ages and religions who have prayed well.
PRAYERS 351 PRAYERS 351 The prayer of Jesus is (as it deserves) become a form for the human race. Many men have contributed a single expression, a single word to the language of devotion, which is immedi- ately caught and stereotyped in the prayers of their church and nation. Among the remains of Euripides we have this prayer: “ Thou God of all! infuse light into the souls of men, whereby they may be enabled to know what is the root from whence all their evils spring, and by what means they may avoid them.” In the Phedrus of Plato, we find this petition in the mouth of Socrates: ‘O gracious Pan! and ye other gods who preside over this place! grant that I may be beautiful within; and that those external things which I have may be such as may best agree with a right internal disposi- tion of mine; and that I may account him to be rich, who is wise and just.” Wacic the Caliph, who died a. p. 845, ended his life, the Arabian historians tell us, with these words: “© thou whose kingdom never passes away, pity one whose dignity is so transient.’ But what led us to these remembrances was the happy accident which in this undevout age lately brought us acquainted with two or three diaries, which attest, if there be need of attestation, the 352 PAPERS FROM THE DIAL eternity of the sentiment and its equality to itself through all the variety of expression. The first is the prayer of a deaf and dumb boy:— “© When my long-attached friend comes to me, I have pleasure to converse with him, and I rejoice to pass my eyes over his countenance; but soon I am weary of spending my time causelessly and unimproved, and I desire to leave him (but not in rudeness), be- cause I wished to be engaged in my business. But thou, O my Father, knowest I always delight to commune with thee in my lone and silent heart; I am never full of thee; I am never weary of thee; Iam always desiring thee. I hunger with strong hope and affection for thee, and I thirst for thy grace and spirit.
“When I go to visit my friends, I must put on my best garments, and I must think of my manner to please them. I am tired to stay long, because my mind is not free, and they sometimes talk gossip with me. But O my Father, thou visitest me in my work, and I can lift up my desires to thee, and my heart is cheered and at rest with thy presence, and I am always alone with thee, and thou dost not steal my time by foolishness. I always ask in my heart, where can I find thee?”
The next is a voice out of a solitude as strict and sacred as that in which Nature had isolated this eloquent mute: — PRAYERS 353 «¢ My Father, when I cannot be cheerful or happy, I can be true and obedient, and I will not forget that joy has been, and may still be. If there is no hour of solitude granted me, still I will commune with thee. If I may not search out and pierce thy thought, so much the more may my living praise thee. At what- ever price, I must be alone with thee; this must be the demand J make. These duties are not the life, but the means which enable us to show forth the life. So must I take up this cross, and bear it willingly. Why should I feel reproved when a busy one enters the room? I am not idle, though I sit with folded hands, but instantly I must seek some cover. For that shame I reprove myself. Are they only the valuable members of society who labor to dress and feed it? Shall we never ask the aim of all this hurry and foam, of this aimless activity? Let the purpose for which I live be always before me; let every thought and word go to confirm and illuminate that end; namely, that I must become near and dear to thee; that now I am beyond the reach of all but thee.
“© How can we not be reconciled to thy will? I will know the joy of giving to my friend the dearest trea- sure I have. I know that sorrow comes not at once only. We cannot meet it and say, now it is overcome, but again, and yet again, its flood pours over us, and as full as at first.
<< If but this tedious battle could be fought, Like Sparta’s heroes at one rocky pass, XII 354. PAPERS FROM THE DIAL «One day be spent in dying,’ men had sought The spot, and been cut down like mower’s grass.”’
The next is ina metrical form. It is the aspi- ration of a different mind, in quite other regions of power and duty, yet they all accord at last.
<< Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself, That in my action I may soar as high, As I can now discern with this clear eye.
And next in value, which thy kindness lends, That I may greatly disappoint my friends, Howe’er they think or hope that it may be, They may not dream how thou’st distinguished me.
That my weak hand may equal my firm faith, And my life practise more than my tongue saith; That my low conduct may not show, Nor my relenting lines, That I thy purpose did not know, Or overrated thy designs.’’
The last of the four orisons is written in a singularly calm and healthful spirit, and con- tains this petition: — “© My Father: I now come to thee with a desire to thank thee for the continuance of our love, the one for the other. I feel that without thy love in me I should be alone here in the flesh. I cannot express my grati- tude for what thou hast been and continuest to be to PRAYERS 355 me. But thou knowest what my feelings are. When nought on earth seemeth pleasant to me, thou dost make thyself known to me, and teach that which is needful for me, and dost cheer my travels on. I know that thou hast not created me and placed me here on earth, amidst its toils and troubles and the fol- lies of those around me, and told me to be like thyself when I see so little of thee here to profit by; thou hast not done this, and then left me here to myself, a poor, weak man, scarcely able to earn my bread. No; thou art my Father and I will love thee, for thou didst first love me, and lovest me still. We will ever be parent and child. Wilt thou give me strength to persevere in this great work of redemption. Wilt thou show me the true means of accomplishing it...I thank thee for the knowledge that I have attained of thee by thy sons who have been before me, and especially for him who brought me so perfect a type of thy goodness and love to men...I know that thou wilt deal with me as I deserve. I place myself therefore in thy hand, knowing that thou wilt keep me from harm so long as I consent to live under thy protecting care.”
Let these few scattered leaves, which a chance (as men say, but which to us shall be holy) brought under our eye nearly at the same moment, stand as an example of innumerable similar expressions which no mortal witness has 356 PAPERS FROM THE DIAL reported, and be a sign of the times. Might they be suggestion to many a heart of yet higher secret experiences which are ineffable! But we must not tie up the rosary on which we have strung these few white beads, without adding a pearl of great price from that book of prayer, the Confessions of Saint Augustine.
“< And being admonished to reflect upon myself, I entered into the very inward parts of my soul, by thy conduct; and I was able to do it, because now thou wert become my helper. I entered and discerned with the eye of my soul (such as it was), even beyond my soul and mind itself, the Light unchangeable. Not this vulgar light which all flesh may look upon, nor as it were a greater of the same kind, as though the brightness of this should be manifold greater and with its greatness take up all space. Not such was this light, but other, yea, far other from all these. Neither was it so above my understanding, as oil swims above water, or as the heaven is above the earth. But it is above me, because it made me; and I am under it, because I was made by it. He that knows truth or verity knows what that light is, and he that knows it knows eternity, and it is known by charity. O eternal Verity! and true Charity! and dear Eternity! thou art my God, to thee do I sigh day and night. Thee when I first knew, thou liftedst me up that I might see, there was what I might see, and that I was not yet PRAYERS 357 such as to see. And thou didst beat back my weak sight upon myself, shooting out beams upon me after a vehement manner; and I even trembled between love and horror, and I found myself to be far off, and even in the very region of dissimilitude from thee.”
IV AGRICULTURE OF MASSACHUSETTS N an afternoon in April, after a long walk, I traversed an orchard where boys were graft- ing apple-trees, and found the Farmer in his cornfield. He was holding the plough, and his son driving the oxen. This man always impresses me with respect, he is so manly, so sweet-tempered, so faithful, so disdainful of all appearances; excellent and reverable in his old weather-worn cap and blue frock bedaubed with the soil of the field; so honest withal that he always needs to be watched lest he should cheat himself. I still remember with some shame that in some dealing we had together a long time ago, I found that he had been looking to my interest in the affair, and I had been looking to my interest, and nobody had looked to his part. As I drew near this brave laborer in the midst of his own acres, I could not help feeling for him the highest respect. Here is the Cesar, the Alexander of the soil, conquering and to conquer, after how many and many a hard- fought summer’s day and winter’s day; not like Napoleon, hero of sixty.battles only, but of AGRICULTURE OF MASSACHUSETTS 359 six thousand, and out of every one he has come victor; and here he stands, with Atlantic strength and cheer, invincible still. These slight and useless city limbs of ours will come to shame before this strong soldier, for his have done his own work and ours too. What good this man has or has had, he has earned. No rich father or father-in-law left him any inheritance of land or money. He borrowed the money with which he bought his farm, and has bred up a large family, given them a good education, and im- proved his land in every way year by year, and this without prejudice to himself the landlord, for here he is, a man every inch of him, and reminds us of the hero of the Robin Hood ballad, — «¢ Much, the miller’s son, There was no inch of his body But it was worth a groom.”’
Innocence and justice have written their names on his brow. Toil has not broken his spirit. His laugh rings with the sweetness and hilarity of achild; yet heis a man of astrongly intellectual taste, of much reading, and of an erect good sense and independent spirit which can neither brook usurpation nor falsehood in any shape. I walked up and down the field, as 360 PAPERS FROM THE DIAL he ploughed his furrow, and we talked as we walked. Our conversation naturally turned on the season and its new labors. He had been reading the report of the Agricultural Survey of the Commonwealth, and had found good things in it; but it was easy to see that he felt toward the author much as soldiers do toward the his- toriographer who follows the camp, more good nature than reverence for the gownsman.
The First Report, he said, is better than the last, as I observe the first sermon of a minister is often his best, for every man has one thing which he specially wishes to say, and that comes out at first. But who is this book written for? Not for farmers; no pains are taken to send it to them; it was by accident that this volume came into my hands for a few days. And it is not for them. They could not afford to follow such advice as is given here; they have sterner teachers; their own business teaches them better. No; this was written for the literary men. But in that case, the state should not be taxed to pay for it. Let us see. The account of the maple sugar,—that is very good and entertaining, and, I suppose, true. The story of the farmer’s daughter, whom education had spoiled for everything useful on a farm, — that AGRICULTURE OF MASSACHUSETTS 361 is good, too, and we have much that is like it in Thomas’s Almanack. But why this recommen- dation of stone houses? They are notso cheap, not so dry, and not so fit forus. Our roads are always changing their direction, and after a man has built at great cost a stone house, a new road is opened, and he finds himself a mile or two from the highway. Then our people are not stationary, like those of old countries, but always alert to better themselves, and will remove from town to town as a new market opens or a better farm is to be had, and do not wish to spend too much on their buildings.
The Commissioner advises the farmers to sell their cattle and their hay in the fall, and buy again in the spring. But we farmers always know what our interest dictates, and do accord- ingly. We have no choice in this matter; our way is but too plain. Down below, where manure is cheap and hay dear, they will sell their oxen in November; but for me to sell my cattle and my produce in the fall would be to sell my farm, for I should have no manure to renew acrop in thespring. Andthus Necessity farms it; necessity finds out when to go to Brighton, and when to feed in the stall, better than Mr. Colman can tell us.
362 PAPERS FROM THE DIAL But especially observe what is said through- out these Reports of the model farms and model farmers. One would think that Mr. D. and Major S. were the pillars of the Commonwealth. The good Commissioner takes off his hat when he approaches them, distrusts the value of “ his feeble praise,’ and repeats his compliments as often as their names are introduced. And yet, in my opinion, Mr. D., with all his knowledge and present skill, would starve in two years on any one of fifty poor farms in this neighborhood on each of which now a farmer manages to get a good living. Mr. D. inherited a farm, and spends on it every year from other resources; otherwise his farm had ruined him long since; —and as for the Major, he never got rich by his skill in making land produce, but in making men produce. The truth is, a farm will not make an honest man rich in money. I do not know of a single instance in which a man has honestly got rich by farming alone. It cannot be done. The way in which men who have farms grow rich is either by other resources, or by trade, or by getting their labor for nothing, or by other methods of which I could tell you many sad anecdotes. What does the Agricul- tural Surveyor know of all this? What can he AGRICULTURE OF MASSACHUSETTS 363 know? He is the victim of the Reports, that are sent him, of particular farms. He cannot go behind the estimates to know how the con- tracts were made, and how the sales were effected. The true men of skill, the poor farm- ers, who, by the sweat of their face, without an inheritance and without offence to their con- science have reared a family of valuable citizens and matrons to the state, reduced a stubborn soil to a good farm, although their buildings are many of them shabby, are the only right subjects of this Report; yet these make no figure in it. These should be holden up to imitation, and their methods detailed; yet their houses are very uninviting and inconspicuous to State Commissioners. So with these pre- miums to farms, and premiums at cattle-shows. The class that I describe must pay the pre- mium which is awarded to the rich. Yet the premium obviously ought to be given for the good management of a poor farm.
In this strain the Farmer proceeded, adding many special criticisms. He had a good opin- ion of the Surveyor, and acquitted him of any blame in the matter, but was incorrigible in his skepticism concerning the benefits conferred by legislatures on the agriculture of Massachusetts.
364 PAPERS FROM THE DIAL I believe that my friend 1s a little stiff and inconvertible in his own opinions, and that there is another side to be heard; but so much wisdom seemed to lie under all his statement that it deserved a record.
V EUROPE AND EUROPEAN BOOKS T was a brighter day than we have often known in our literary calendar, when within a twelvemonth a single London advertise- ment announced a new volume of poems by Wordsworth, poems by Tennyson, and a play by Henry Taylor. Wordsworth’s nature or character has had all the time it needed in order to make its mark and supply the want of talent. We have learned how to read him. We have ceased to expect that which he can- not give. He has the merit of just moral per- ception, but not that of deft poetic execution. How would Milton curl his lip at such slip- shod newspaper style. Many of his poems, as for example the Rylstone Doe, might be all improvised. Nothing of Milton, nothing of Marvell, of Herbert, of Dryden, could be. These are such verses as in a just state of cul- ture should be vers de société, such as every gentleman could write but none would think of printing, or of claiming the poet’s laurel on their merit. The Pindar, the Shakspeare, the Dante, whilst they have the just and open soul, 366 PAPERS FROM THE DIAL have also the eye to see the dimmest star that glimmers in the Milky Way, the serratures of every leaf, the test-objects of the microscope, and then the tongue to utter the same things in words that engrave them on all the ears of mankind. The poet demands all gifts, and not one or two only.’
The poet, like the electric rod, must reach from a point nearer the sky than all surround- ing objects, down to the earth, and into the dark wet soil, or neither is of use. The poet must not only converse with pure thought, but he must demonstrate it almost to the senses. His words must be pictures, his verses must be spheres and cubes, to be seen and smelled and handled. His fable must be a good story, and its meaning must hold as pure truth. In the debates on the Copyright Bill, in the English Parliament, Mr. Sergeant Wakley, the coroner, quoted Wordsworth’s poetry in derision, and asked the roaring House of Commons what that meant, and whether a man should have public reward for writing such stuff. Homer, Horace, Milton and Chaucer would defy the coroner. Whilst they have wisdom to the wise, he would see that to the external they have external meaning. Coleridge excellently said of EUROPE AND EUROPEAN BOOKS 367 poetry, that poetry must first be good sense; as a palace might well be magnificent, but first it must be a house.
Wordsworth is open to ridicule of this kind. And yet Wordsworth, though satisfied if he can suggest to a sympathetic mind his own mood, and though setting a private and exaggerated value on his compositions; though confound- ing his accidental with the universal conscious- ness, and taking the public to task for not admiring his poetry, is really a master of the English language, and his poems evince a power of diction that is no more rivalled by his contemporaries than 1s his poetic insight.* But. the capital merit of Wordsworth is that he has done more for the sanity of this generation than any other writer. Early in life, at a crisis it is said in his private affairs, he made his election between assuming and defending some legal rights, with the chances of wealth and a posi- tion in the world, and the inward prompt- ings of his heavenly genius; he took his part; he accepted the call to be a poet, and sat down, far from cities, with coarse clothing and plain fare to obey the heavenly vision. The choice he had made in his will manifested itself in every line to be real. We have poets who 368 PAPERS FROM THE DIAL write the poetry of society, of the patrician and conventional Europe, as Scott and Moore, and others who, like Byron or Bulwer, write the poetry of vice and disease. But Wordsworth threw himself into his place, made no reserves or stipulations; man and writer were not to be divided. He sat at the foot of Helvellyn and on the margin of Windermere, and took their lustrous mornings and their sublime midnights for his theme, and not Marlowe nor Massinger, not Horace nor Milton nor Dante. He once for all forsook the styles and standards and modes of thinking of London and Paris, and the books read there and the aims pursued, and wrote Helvellyn and Windermere and the dim spirits which these haunts harbored. There was not the least attempt to reconcile these with the spirit of fashion and selfishness, nor to show, with great deference to the superior judg- ment of dukes and earls, that although London was the home for men of great parts, yet West- moreland had these consolations for such as fate had condemned to the country life, — but with a complete satisfaction he pitied and re- buked their false lives, and celebrated his own with the religion of a true priest. Hence the antagonism which was immediately felt between EUROPE AND EUROPEAN BOOKS 369 his poetry and the spirit of the age, that here not only criticism but conscience and will were parties; the spirit of literature and the modes of living and the conventional theories of the conduct of life were called in question on wholly new grounds, — not from Platonism, not from Christianity, but from the lessons which the country muse taught a stout pedestrian climb- ing a mountain and following a river from its” parent rill down to the sea. The Cannings and Jeffreys of the capital, the Court Journals and Literary Gazettes were not well pleased, and voted the poet a bore. But that which rose in him so high as to the lips, rose in many others as high as to the heart. What he said, they were prepared to hear and confirm. The influ- ence was in the air, and was wafted up and down into lone and into populous places, re- sisting the popular taste, modifying opinions which it did not change, and soon came to be felt in poetry, in criticism, in plans of life, and at last in legislation. In this country it very early found a stronghold, and its effect may be traced on all the poetry both of England and America.
But, notwithstanding all Wordsworth’s grand merits, it was a great pleasure to know that XII 370 PAPERS FROM THE DIAL Alfred Tennyson’s two volumes were coming out in the same ship; it was a great pleasure to receive them. The elegance, the wit and subtlety of this writer, his rich fancy, his power of lan- guage, his metrical skill, his independence of any living masters, his peculiar topics, his taste for the costly and gorgeous, discriminate the musky poet of gardens and conservatories, of parks and palaces.*' Perhaps we felt the popular objection that he wants rude truth; he is too fine. In these boudoirs of damask and alabaster, one is farther off from stern Nature and human life than in Lalla Rookh and the Loves of the Angels. Amid swinging censers and perfumed lamps, amidst velvet and glory, we long for rain and frost. Otto-of-roses is good, but wild air is better. A critical friend of ours affirms that the vice which bereaved modern painters of their power is the ambition to begin where their fathers ended; to equal the masters in their exquisite finish, instead of their religious purpose. The painters are not willing to paint ill enough; they will not paint for their times, agitated by the spirit which agitates their coun- try; so should their picture picture us, and draw all men after them; but they copy the technics of their predecessors, and paint for their prede- EUROPE AND EUROPEAN BOOKS 371 cessors’ public. It seems as if the same vice had worked in poetry. Tfennyson’s compositions are not so much poems as studies in poetry, or sketches after the styles of sundry old masters. He is not the husband who builds the home- stead after his own necessity, from foundation- stone to chimney-top and turret, but a tasteful bachelor who collects quaint staircases and groined ceilings. We have no right to such superfineness. We must not make our bread of pure sugar. These delicacies and splendors are then legitimate when they are the excess of substantial and necessary expenditure. The best songs in English poetry are by that heavy, hard, pedantic poet, Ben Jonson. Jonson 1s rude, and only on rare occasions gay. Tennyson 1s always fine, but Jonson’s beauty is more grateful than Tennyson’s. It is a natural manly grace of a robust workman. Ben’s flowers are not in pots at a city florist’s, arranged on a flower- stand, but he is a countryman at a harvest-home, attending his ox-cart from the fields, loaded with potatoes and apples, with grapes and plums, with nuts and berries, and stuck with boughs of hemlock and sweetbriar, with ferns and pond- lilies which the children have gathered. But let us not quarrel with our benefactors. Perhaps 372 PAPERS FROM THE DIAL Tennyson is too quaint and elegant. What then? It is long since we have had as good a lyrist; it will be long before we have his superior. Godiva is a noble poem that will tell the legend a thousand years. The poem of all the poetry of the present age for which we predict the longest term is Abou ben Adhem, of Leigh Hunt." Fortune will still have her part in every victory, and it is strange that one of the best poems should be written by a man who has hardly written any other. And Godiva is a par- able which belongs to the same gospel. Locksley Hall and The Two Voices are meditative poems, which were slowly written to be slowly read. The Talking Oak, though a little hurt by its wit and ingenuity, is beautiful, and the most poetic of the volume. Ulysses belongs to a high class of poetry, destined to be the highest, and to be more cultivated in the next generation. CEnone was a sketch of the same kind. One of the best specimens we have of the class is Wordsworth’s Laodamia, of which no special merit it can possess equals the total merit of having selected such a subject in such a spirit.’
Next to the poetry, the novels, which come to us in every ship from England, have an importance increased by the immense extension EUROPE AND EUROPEAN BOOKS 373 of their circulation through the new cheap press, which sends them to so many willing thousands. We have heard it alleged with some evidence that the prominence given to intellectual power in Bulwer’s romances has proved a main stimu- lus to mental culture in thousands of young men in England and America. The effect on manners cannot be less sensible, and we can easily believe that the behavior of the ball- room and of the hotel has not failed to draw some addition of dignity and grace from the fair ideals with which the imagination of a novelist has filled the heads of the most imi- tative class.
We are not very well versed in these books, yet we have read Mr. Bulwer enough to see that the story is rapid and interesting; he has really seen London society, and does not draw ignorant caricatures. He is not a gentus, but his novels are marked with great energy and with a courage of experiment which in each instance had its degree of success. The story of Zanoni was one of those world-fables which is so agreeable to the human imagination that it is found in some form in the language of every country, and is always reappearing in literature. Many of the details of this novel preserve a 374 PAPERS FROM THE DIAL poetic truth. We read Zanoni with pleasure, because magic is natural. It is implied in all superior culture that a complete man would need no auxiliaries to his personal presence. The eye and the word are certainly far subtler and stronger weapons than either money or knives. Whoever looked on the hero would consent to his will, being certified that his aims were universal, not selfish; and he would be obeyed as naturally as the rain and the sunshine are. For this reason, children delight in fairy tales. Nature is described in them as the serv- ant of man, which they feel ought to be true. But Zanoni pains us and the author loses our respect, because he speedily betrays that he does not see the true limitations of the charm; because the power with which his hero is armed is a toy, inasmuch as the power does not flow from its legitimate fountains in the mind, is a power for London; a divine power converted into a burglar’s false key or a highwayman’s pistol to rob and kill with."
But Mr. Bulwer’s recent stories have given us who do not read novels occasion to think of this department of literature, supposed to be the natural fruit and expression of the age. We conceive that the obvious division of EUROPE AND EUROPEAN BOOKS 375 modern romance is into two kinds: first, the novels of costume or of circumstance, which is the old style, and vastly the most numerous. In this class, the hero, without any particular char- acter, is in a very particular circumstance; he 1s greatly in want of a fortune or of a wife, and usually of both, and the business of the piece is to provide him suitably. This is the problem to be solved in thousands of English romances, including the Porter novels and the more splendid examples of the Edgeworth and Scott romances.
It is curious how sleepy and foolish we are, that these tales will so take us. Again and again we have been caught in that old foolish trap. Had one noble thought, opening the chambers of the intellect, one sentiment from the heart of God been spoken by them, the reader had been made a participator of their triumph; he too had been an invited and eternal guest; but this reward granted them is property, all-excluding property, a little cake baked for them to eat and for none other, nay, a preference and cosseting which is rude and insulting to all but the minion.
Except in the stories of Edgeworth and Scott, whose talent knew how to give to the book 376 PAPERS FROM THE DIAL