Part 2

’Twould be endless to tell you the things that he knew, Each a separate fact, undeniably true, But with him or each other they’d nothing to do; No power of combining, arranging, discerning, Digested the masses he learned into learning; There was one thing in life he had practical knowledge for (And this, you will think, he need scarce go to college for),-- Not a deed would he do, nor a word would he utter, Till he’d weighed its relations to plain bread and butter. When he left Alma Mater, he practised his wits In compiling the journals’ historical bits,-- Of shops broken open, men falling in fits, Great fortunes in England bequeathed to poor printers, And cold spells, the coldest for many past winters,-- Then, rising by industry, knack, and address, Got notices up for an unbiased press, With a mind so well poised, it seemed equally made for Applause or abuse, just which chanced to be paid for; From this point his progress was rapid and sure, To the post of a regular heavy reviewer.

And here I must say he wrote excellent articles On Hebraical points, or the force of Greek particles; They filled up the space nothing else was prepared for, And nobody read that which nobody cared for; If any old book reached a fiftieth edition, He could fill forty pages with safe erudition: He could gauge the old books by the old set of rules, And his very old nothings pleased very old fools; But give him a new book, fresh out of the heart, And you put him at sea without compass or chart,-- His blunders aspired to the rank of an art; For his lore was engraft, something foreign that grew in him, Exhausting the sap of the native and true in him, So that when a man came with a soul that was new in him, Carving new forms of truth out of Nature’s old granite, New and old at their birth, like Le Verrier’s planet, Which, to get a true judgment, themselves must create In the soul of their critic the measure and weight, Being rather themselves a fresh standard of grace, To compute their own judge, and assign him his place, Our reviewer would crawl all about it and round it, And, reporting each circumstance just as he found it, Without the least malice,--his record would be Profoundly æsthetic as that of a flea, Which, supping on Wordsworth, should print, for our sakes, Recollections of nights with the Bard of the Lakes, Or, lodged by an Arab guide, ventured to render a Comprehensive account of the ruins of Denderah.

As I said, he was never precisely unkind, The defect in his brain was just absence of mind; If he boasted, ’twas simply that he was self-made, A position which I, for one, never gainsaid, My respect for my Maker supposing a skill In His works which our Hero would answer but ill; And I trust that the mould which he used may be cracked, or he, Made bold by success, may enlarge his phylactery, And set up a kind of a man-manufactory,-- An event which I shudder to think about, seeing That Man is a moral, accountable being.

He meant well enough, but was still in the way, As dunces still are, let them be where they may; Indeed, they appear to come into existence To impede other folks with their awkward assistance; If you set up a dunce on the very North Pole All alone with himself, I believe, on my soul, He’d manage to get betwixt somebody’s shins, And pitch him down bodily, all in his sins, To the grave polar bears sitting round on the ice, All shortening their grace, to be in for a slice; Or, if he found nobody else there to pother, Why, one of his legs would just trip up the other, For there’s nothing we read of in torture’s inventions, Like a well-meaning dunce with the best of intentions.

A terrible fellow to meet in society, Not the toast that he buttered was ever so dry at tea; There he’d sit at the table and stir in his sugar, Crouching close for a spring, all the while, like a cougar; Be sure of your facts, of your measures and weights, Of your time,--he’s as fond as an Arab of dates; You’ll be telling, perhaps, in your comical way, Of something you’ve seen in the course of the day; And, just as you’re tapering out the conclusion, You venture an ill-fated classic allusion,-- The girls have all got their laughs ready, when, whack! The cougar comes down on your thunderstruck back! You had left out a comma,--your Greek’s put in joint, And pointed at cost of your story’s whole point. In the course of the evening you find chance for certain Soft speeches to Anne, in the shade of the curtain: You tell her your heart can be likened to _one_ flower, “And that, O most charming of women ’s the sunflower, Which turns”--here a clear nasal voice, to your terror, From outside the curtain, says, “That’s all an error.” As for him, he’s--no matter, he never grew tender, Sitting after a ball, with his feet on the fender, Shaping somebody’s sweet features out of cigar smoke (Though he’d willingly grant you that such doings are smoke); All women he damns with _mutabile semper_, And if ever he felt something like love’s distemper, ’Twas tow’rds a young lady who spoke ancient Mexican, And assisted her father in making a lexicon; Though I recollect hearing him get quite ferocious About Mary Clausum, the mistress of Grotius, Or something of that sort,--but, no more to bore ye With character-painting, I’ll turn to my story.

Now, Apollo, who finds it convenient sometimes To get his court clear of the makers of rhymes, The _genus_, I think it is called, _irritabile_, Every one of whom thinks himself treated most shabbily, And nurses a--what is it?--_immedicabile_, Which keeps him at boiling-point, hot for a quarrel, As bitter as wormwood, and sourer than sorrel, If any poor devil but look at a laurel;-- Apollo, I say, being sick of their rioting (Though he sometimes acknowledged their verse had a quieting Effect after dinner, and seemed to suggest a Retreat to the shrine of tranquil siesta), Kept our Hero at hand, who, by means of a bray, Which he gave to the life, drove the rabble away; And if that wouldn’t do, he was sure to succeed, If he took his review out and offered to read; Or, failing in plans of this milder description, He would ask for their aid to get up a subscription, Considering that authorship wasn’t a rich craft, To print the “American drama of Witchcraft.” “Stay, I’ll read you a scene,”--but he hardly began, Ere Apollo shrieked “Help!” and the authors all ran: And once, when these purgatives acted with less spirit, And the desperate case asked a remedy desperate, He drew from his pocket a foolscap epistle As calmly as if ’twere a nine-barrelled pistol, And threatened them all with the judgment to come, Of “A wondering Star’s first impressions of Rome.” “Stop! stop!” with their hands o’er their ears, screamed the Muses, “He may go off and murder himself, if he chooses, ’Twas a means self-defence only sanctioned his trying, ’Tis mere massacre now that the enemy’s flying; If he’s forced to ’t again, and we happen to be there, Give us each a large handkerchief soaked in strong ether.”

I called this a “Fable for Critics”; you think it’s More of a display of my rhythmical trinkets; My plot, like an icicle, ’s slender and slippery, Every moment more slender, and likely to slip awry, And the reader unwilling _in loco desipere_ Is free to jump over as much of my flippery As he fancies, and, if he’s a provident skipper, he May have like Odysseus control of the gales, And get safe to port, ere his patience quite fails; Moreover, although ’tis a slender return For your toil and expense, yet my paper will burn, And, if you have manfully struggled thus far with me, You may e’en twist me up, and just light your cigar with me: If too angry for that, you can tear me in pieces, And my _membra disjecta_ consign to the breezes, A fate like great Ratzau’s, whom one of those bores Who beflead with bad verses poor Louis Quatorze Describes (the first verse somehow ends with _victoire_), As _dispersant partout et ses membres et sa gloire_; Or, if I were over-desirous of earning A repute among noodles for classical learning, I could pick you a score of allusions, i-wis, As new as the jests of _Didaskalos tis_; Better still, I could make out a good solid list From authors recondite who do not exist,-- But that would be naughty: at least, I could twist Something out of Absyrtus, or turn your inquiries After Milton’s prose metaphor, drawn from Osiris;-- But, as Cicero says he won’t say this or that (A fetch, I must say, most transparent and flat), After saying whate’er he could possibly think of,-- I simply will state that I pause on the brink of A mire, ankle-deep, of deliberate confusion, Made up of old jumbles of classic allusion: So, when you were thinking yourselves to be pitied, Just conceive how much harder your teeth you’d have gritted, An ’twere not for the dulness I’ve kindly omitted.

I’d apologize here for my many digressions, Were it not that I’m certain to trip into fresh ones (’Tis so hard to escape if you get in their mesh once;) Just reflect, if you please, how ’tis said by Horatius, That Mæonides nods now and then, and, my gracious! It certainly does look a little bit ominous When he gets under way with _ton d’apameibomenos_. (Here a something occurs which I’ll just clap a rhyme to, And say it myself, ere a Zoilus have time to,-- Any author a nap like Van Winkle’s may take, If he only contrive to keep readers awake, But he’ll very soon find himself laid on the shelf, If _they_ fall a-nodding when he nods himself.)

Once for all, to return, and to stay, will I, nill I-- When Phœbus expressed his desire for a lily, Our Hero, whose homœopathic sagacity With an ocean of zeal mixed his drop of capacity, Set off for the garden as fast as the wind (Or, to take a comparison more to my mind, As a sound politician leaves conscience behind), And leaped the low fence, as a party hack jumps O’er his principles, when something else turns up trumps.

He was gone a long time, and Apollo, meanwhile, Went over some sonnets of his with a file, For, of all compositions, he thought that the sonnet Best repaid all the toil you expended upon it; It should reach with one impulse the end of its course, And for one final blow collect all of its force; Not a verse should be salient, but each oneshould tend With a wave-like up-gathering to break at the end; So, condensing the strength here, there smoothing a wry kink, He was killing the time, when up walked Mr. D----; At a few steps behind him, a small man in glasses Went dodging about, muttering, “Murderers! asses!” From out of his pocket a paper he’d take, With a proud look of martyrdom tied to its stake, And, reading a squib at himself, he’d say, “Here I see ’Gainst American letters a bloody conspiracy, They are all by my personal enemies written; I must post an anonymous letter to Britain, And show that this gall is the merest suggestion Of spite at my zeal on the Copyright question; For, on this side the water, ’tis prudent to pull O’er the eyes of the public their national wool, By accusing of slavish respect to John Bull All American authors who have more or less Of that anti-American humbug--success, While in private we’re always embracing the knees Of some twopenny editor over the seas, And licking his critical shoes, for you know ’tis The whole aim of our lives to get one English notice; My American puffs I would willingly burn all (They’re all from one source, monthly, weekly, diurnal) To get but a kick from a transmarine journal!”

So, culling the gibes of each critical scorner As if they were plums, and himself were Jack Horner, He came cautiously on, peeping round every corner, And into each hole where a weasel might pass in, Expecting the knife of some critic assassin, Who stabs to the heart with a caricature, Not so bad as those daubs of the Sun, to be sure, Yet done with a dagger-o’-type, whose vileportraits Disperse all one’s good and condense all one’s poor traits.

Apollo looked up, hearing footsteps approaching, And slipped out of sight the new rhymes he was broaching,-- “Good day, Mr. D----, I’m happy to meet, With a scholar so ripe, and a critic so neat, Who through Grub Street the soul of a gentleman carries; What news from that suburb of London and Paris Which latterly makes such shrill claims to monopolize The credit of being the New World’s metropolis?”

“Why, nothing of consequence, save this attack On my friend there, behind, by some pitiful hack, Who thinks every national author a poor one That isn’t a copy of something that’s foreign, And assaults the American Dick ----”

“Nay, ’tis clear That your Damon there’s fond of a flea in his ear, And, if no one else furnished them gratis, on tick He would buy some himself, just to hear the old click; Why, I honestly think, if some fool in Japan Should turn up his nose at the ‘Poems on Man’ (Which contain many verses as fine, by the bye, As any that lately came under my eye), Your friend there by some inward instinct would know it, Would get it translated, reprinted, and show it; As a man might take off a high stock to exhibit The autograph round his own neck of the gibbet; Nor would let it rest so, but fire column after column, Signed Cato, or Brutus, or something as solemn, By way of displaying his critical crosses, And tweaking that poor transatlantic proboscis, His broadsides resulting (this last there’s no doubt of) In successively sinking the craft they’re fired out of. Now nobody knows when an author is hit, If he have not a public hysterical fit; Let him only keep close in his snug garret’s dim ether, And nobody’d think of his foes--or of him either; If an author have any least fibre of worth in him, Abuse would but tickle the organ of mirth in him; All the critics on earth cannot crush with their ban One word that’s in tune with the nature of man.”

“Well, perhaps so; meanwhile I have brought you a book, Into which if you’ll just have the goodness to look, You may feel so delighted (when once you are through it) As to deem it not unworth your while to review it, And I think I can promise your thoughts, if you do, A place in the next Democratic Review.”

“The most thankless of gods you must surelyhave thought me, For this is the forty-fourth copy you’ve brought me, I have given them away, or at least I have tried, But I’ve forty-two left, standing all side by side (The man who accepted that one copy died),-- From one end of a shelf to the other they reach ‘With the author’s respects’ neatly written in each. The publisher, sure, will proclaim a Te Deum, When he hears of that order the British Museum Has sent for one set of what books were first printed In America, little or big,--for ’tis hinted That this is the first truly tangible hope he Has ever had raised for the sale of a copy. I’ve thought very often ’twould be a good thing In all public collections of books, if a wing Were set off by itself, like the seas from the dry lands, Marked _Literature suited to desolate islands_, And filled with such books as could never ber ead Save by readers of proofs, forced to do it for bread,-- Such books as one’s wrecked on in small countryt averns, Such as hermits might mortify over in caverns, Such as Satan, if printing had then been invented, As the climax of woe, would to Job have presented, Such as Crusoe might dip in, although there are few so Outrageously cornered by fate as poor Crusoe; And since the philanthropists just now are banging And gibbeting all who’re in favor of hanging (Though Cheever has proved that the Bible and Altar Were let down from Heaven at the end of a halter, And that vital religion would dull and grow callous, Unrefreshed, now and then, with a sniff of the gallows),-- And folks are beginning to think it looks odd, To choke a poor scamp for the glory of God; And that He who esteems the Virginia reel A bait to draw saints from their spiritual weal, And regards the quadrille as a far greater knavery Than crushing His African children with slavery,-- Since all who take part in a waltz or cotillion Are mounted for hell on the Devil’s own pillion, Who, as every true orthodox Christian well knows, Approaches the heart through the door of the toes,-- That He, I was saying, whose judgments are stored For such as take steps in despite of His word, Should look with delight on the agonized prancing Of a wretch who has not the least ground for his dancing, While the State, standing by, sings a verse from the Psalter About offering to God on his favorite halter, And, when the legs droop from their twitching divergence, Sells the clothes to a Jew, and the corpse to the surgeons;-- Now, instead of all this, I think I can direct you all To a criminal code both humane and effectual;-- I propose to shut up every doer of wrong With these desperate books, for such term, short or long, As by statute in such cases made and provided, Shall be by your wise legislators decided: Thus: Let murderers be shut, to grow wiser and cooler, At hard labor for life on the works of Miss ----; Petty thieves, kept from flagranter crimes by their fears, Shall peruse Yankee Doodle a blank term of years,-- That American Punch, like the English, no doubt,-- Just the sugar and lemons and spirit left out.

“But stay, here comes Tityrus Griswold, and leads on The flocks whom he first plucks alive, and then feeds on,-- A loud-cackling swarm, in whose feathers warm-drest, He goes for as perfect a--swan as the rest.

“There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one, Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on, Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse, the Lord knows, Is some of it pr-- No, ’tis not even prose; I’m speaking of metres; some poems have welled From those rare depths of soul that have ne’er been excelled; They’re not epics, but that doesn’t matter a pin, In creating, the only hard thing’s to begin; A grass-blade’s no easier to make than an oak; If you’ve once found the way, you’ve achieved the grand stroke; In the worst of his poems are mines of rich matter, But thrown in a heap with a crash and a clatter; Now it is not one thing nor another alone Makes a poem, but rather the general tone, The something pervading, uniting the whole, The before unconceived, unconceivable soul, So that just in removing this trifle or that, you Take away, as it were, a chief limb of the statue; Roots, wood, bark, and leaves singly perfect may be, But clapt hodge-podge together, they don’t make a tree.

“But, to come back to Emerson (whom, by the way, I believe we left waiting),--his is, we may say, A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range Has Olympus for one pole, for t’other the Exchange; He seems, to my thinking (although I’m afraid The comparison must, long ere this, have been made), A Plotinus-Montaigne, where the Egyptian’s gold mist And the Gascon’s shrewd wit cheek-by-jowl coexist; All admire, and yet scarcely six converts he’s got To I don’t (nor they either) exactly know what; For though he builds glorious temples, ’tis odd He leaves never a doorway to get in a god. ’Tis refreshing to old-fashioned people like me To meet such a primitive Pagan as he, In whose mind all creation is duly respected As parts of himself--just a little projected; And who’s willing to worship the stars and the sun, A convert to--nothing but Emerson. So perfect a balance there is in his head, That he talks of things sometimes as if they were dead; Life, nature, love, God, and affairs of that sort, He looks at as merely ideas; in short, As if they were fossils stuck round in a cabinet, Of such vast extent that our earth’s a mere dab in it; Composed just as he is inclined to conjecture her, Namely, one part pure earth, ninety-nine parts pure lecturer; You are filled with delight at his clear demonstration, Each figure, word, gesture just fits the occasion, With the quiet precision of science he’ll sort’em, But you can’t help suspecting the whole a _post mortem_.

“There are persons, mole-blind to the soul’s make and style, Who insist on a likeness ’twixt him and Carlyle; To compare him with Plato would be vastly fairer, Carlyle’s the more burly, but E. is the rarer; He sees fewer objects, but clearlier, truelier, If C.’s as original, E.’s more peculiar; That he’s more of a man you might say of the one, Of the other, he’s more of an Emerson; C.’s the Titan, as shaggy of mind as of limb,-- E. the clear-eyed Olympian, rapid and slim; The one’s two thirds Norseman, the other half Greek, Where the one’s most abounding, the other’s to seek; C.’s generals require to be seen in the mass,-- E.’s specialties gain if enlarged by the glass; C. gives nature and God his own fits of theblues, And rims common-sense things with mystical hues,-- E. sits in a mystery calm and intense, And looks coolly around him with sharp common-sense; C. shows you how every-day matters unite With the dim transdiurnal recesses of night,-- While E., in a plain, preternatural way, Makes mysteries matters of mere every day; C. draws all his characters quite _à la_ Fuseli,-- Not sketching their bundles of muscles and thews illy, He paints with a brush so untamed and profuse, They seem nothing but bundles of muscles and thews; E. is rather like Flaxman, lines strait and severe, And a colorless outline, but full, round, and clear;-- To the men he thinks worthy he frankly accords The design of a white marble statue in words. C. labors to get at the centre, and then Take a reckoning from there of his actions and men; E. calmly assumes the said centre as granted, And, given himself, has whatever is wanted.

“He has imitators in scores, who omit No part of the man but his wisdom and wit,-- Who go carefully o’er the sky-blue of his brain, And when he has skimmed it once, skim it again; If at all they resemble him, you may be sure it is Because their shoals mirror his mists andobscurities, As a mud-puddle seems deep as Heaven for a minute, While a cloud that floats o’er is reflected within it.