Part 1

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE. Vol. XIX. September, 1841. No. 3.

Contents

Fiction, Literature and Articles

The Fireside Shakspeare The Reefer of ’76 Flirtation The Saxon’s Bridal Misfortunes of a Timid Gentleman Never Bet Your Head Lame For Life, or Leslie Pierpoint Leaves from a Lawyer’s Port-Folio Cottage Piety Sports and Pastimes.—The Fowling-Piece Review of New Books

Poetry, Music and Fashion

Fragment: Written on the First Coming of Spring The Wildwood Home Reproof of a Bird Oh! A Merry Life Does a Hunter Lead The Widow’s Wealth Death Why Should I Love Thee? A Belle at a Ball To Helen The First Kiss of Love. My Bonnie Blue-Eyed Lassie, O! Latest Fashions, September, 1841

Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.

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GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XIX. PHILADELPHIA: SEPTEMBER, 1841. No. 3.

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THE FIRESIDE.

It’s rare to see the morning bleeze Like a bon-fire frae the sea— It’s fair to see the burnie kiss The lip o’ the flowery lea— An’ fine it is on green hill-side, Where hums the bonny bee— But rarer, fairer, finer far Is the _Ingle-Side_ for me.

Glens may be gilt wi’ gowans rare, The birds may fill the tree, An’ haughs hae a’ the scented ware That simmer growth can gie— But the canty hearth where cronies meet, An’ the darling o’ our e’e— That makes to us a warl complete— O the _Ingle-Side_ for me! _Old Song._

Who does not remember this glorious old song, with its simple melody, and well-managed accompaniments that seem to chime in with every word uttered by the singer, not only upholding him in his sentiment, and illustrating his positions by all kinds of impressive flourishes, but absolutely chuckling and caracoling over the unanswerable nature of the argument? If ever accompaniment expressed a positive certainty that the words of a song were the truest words in the world, it is this very accompaniment. It takes it for granted that nobody will dispute its opinion. It is as dogmatic as Aristotle, or Bob Hobbes, but yet, unlike them in some respects, it seems always to know pretty well what it is talking about. The truth is, that there are few persons who can remain altogether unconvinced by its illustrations, or at least who can remain unpersuaded by its ingenious manner of setting them forth. We say _its_ illustrations, for any one with half an eye can perceive that the “music is married to the immortal verse,” and that the twain are one. We speak of them conjointly when we maintain the force of the song’s illustrations. What indeed can be more forcibly “put,” as the lawyers say, (and sometimes the rhetoricians,) than the points of its thesis? What can be more slyly seducing—what can be more apt to take a body unawares than allusions to “canty hearths where cronies meet, an’ the darlins o’ our e’e?” To be sure, the case might have been better made out if the “morning bleeze” had been kept out of sight, or slurred over as a thing of no moment. Neither was it judicious to dwell upon the “flowery lea,” or the “bonny bee,” or the little “birds in the tree,” and that sort of thing. The song might have taken a hint, too, from our engraving, and said a word about a girl with blue eyes (we presume they are blue,) and auburn hair, (we _know_ it is auburn,) and another little girl and a little boy, both with clean faces, and a dog looking wise at one side of the ingle, with a tabby cat at the other, watching chesnuts in the act of being roasted, and congratulating herself that no fabulous monkey is present to make use of her fair hand as a cat’s paw. All this the song might have forcibly introduced—but we presume it did its best, and we are obliged to it.

Still, we are not convinced. We were never convinced of anything in our lives, and never intend to be convinced, for excellent reasons. It is said there were once seven wise men—a matter which may be very well doubted. But, admitting this point, it was of course one of the seven who first promulgated the fact that every question has two sides. Late discoveries have assured us that it would be no question at all if it had not. Some questions, indeed, are trigonal, or quadrigonal, or pentagonal, or sexagonal, or septagonal, or octagonal, or nonagonal. Some even are polygonal, while others have an infinity of sides like the mathematical circle, and thus there is found to be no end to them at all, as is the case with the ordinary circle which every body understands. These latter are questions about Tariffs, and Boundary Lines, and National Banks, questions of privilege and drivel-ege, and Congressional questions of order and disorder, with other matters of that kind. Most queries, however, appear at first glance to have no more than two sides; and it is only when we get hard and fast in the middle of an argument respecting them, so that it is as wrong to go back as it is preposterous to go forward, that we perceive each of the two sides which had appeared to a cursory view so staid and so definite, branching off, like gamblers at _Vingt Un_, into an infinitesimal series of little divisions, each as distinct and each as perverse as the original ones. For this reason and others (reasons _are_ as plenty as blackberries, John Falstaff to the contrary notwithstanding) for this reason and a thousand others, we keep clear of all argumentative discourses, as it is impossible to say when or where they may end. By keeping clear of them, we mean to say that we never indulge in them ourselves. Yet we like them very well in other people. Nothing amuses us more, for instance, than a young man who fancies himself a genius in the logical line, and who will take it upon himself, at a moment’s warning, to demonstrate that two and three blue beans do not make five. We could listen to him by the hour; and when at length he comes to find out that the blue-bean question, pretty much like all other questions, is one of the polygonal species with infinitesimal sides, we hardly know a more interesting object than he becomes, especially if you have not been so impolite as to interrupt him, and he has had all the discourse to himself.

Our retiring habits, in this particular, being thus understood, it will be seen at once that we have no design of arguing the point with the Old Song which we have quoted at the head of this paper. We cannot undertake to support the pretensions of the “flowery lea” against those of the “chimney corner.” In the case of hill-side versus ingle-side we beg leave to keep aloof. We do not say with the blue-bean gentlemen that there is much to be said on _both_ sides of the question; for the truth is we perceive at a glance that the subject has a wonderful variety of aspects, each highly important and interesting, and upon every one of which we could preach a very excellent sermon if occasion required. At a first view there is only the ordinary double-sided question, whether the ingle-side be preferable to the hill-side, or the hill-side to the ingle. But then we have at once in continuation, the concomitant sub-queries whether the hill-side be a hill-side of donkey-thistle or of purple heather—whether there be sheep on it or snakes—whether it be winter or summer—whether it be a rainy day or a sun-shiny one—whether the ingle be smoky or not smoky—whether, in the latter case, we choose to be cured like bacon or be left uncured—whether wood or coal be burnt, and whether, if coal, you have any tendency to what Dr. Blunderbuzzard calls pulmonary phthisis.

Now each of these sub-queries involves a point of especial importance, and each of these points must be definitely settled, before we begin to make up our minds on the main one, and the worst of it is that each of these points, too, may be subdivided into I cannot tell how many others, all equally momentous, if not more so, and every one of them to be fully discussed and permanently decided upon, before we can do anything at all towards drawing a judicious conclusion. So that in the end we lose both our way, and our labor, and are forced, in respect to the matter of this song, to fall back upon one of those very rare questions which have really but two sides, and base our final decision upon that. This question is simply whether the lady who sings the song, be pretty or ugly. The only difficulty about this mode of forming an opinion is that the opinion itself is apt to have something of a variable character—but then it would be no fashionable opinion if it had not.

At present we decide against the lea and give judgment for “The Fireside.”

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FRAGMENT: WRITTEN ON THE FIRST COMING OF SPRING.

BY PARK BENJAMIN.

At length has come the Spring! welcome to me Art thou, oh! wind, that journeyest to the sea!— The south-west wind, whose warm, health-bringing plume, Wafts odor from a wilderness of bloom; From groves that bend with blossoms, from broad plains Clothed in rich garments of a thousand stains— Blue, crimson, gold, green, azure, purple flowers, Given in profusion by the beauteous showers. I have heard stories of thy place of birth,— Oh! wind, that sheddest beauty on the earth!— Which make me sad, to think my life must glide Slowly and coldly by the Atlantic’s side. Thine are the “happy valleys” of our land, Shut in by mountains, and the South-sea strand; They never feel the tyranny of frost; Nor hail, nor snow is on their green laps tost; For nursed by thee successive verdures spring, And melts the sceptre of the Winter-king!

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SHAKSPEARE.

BY THEODORE S. FAY, AUTHOR OF “NORMAN LESLIE,” “THE COUNTESS IDA,” ETC.

In the Edinburgh Review for July, 1840, there is an article entitled “Recent Shakspearian Literature,” very interesting to the students of the poet. It purports to be a review of about fourteen works from _Tieck’s Dramaturgische Blätter_, published in Breslau, 1826, to _De Quincey’s Life of Shakspeare_, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 1840.

As is generally the case with similar papers in this class of the quarterlies, the article is less a _review_ of the works enumerated in the rubric than a pouring forth of the opulence of the reviewer’s own mind, on the occasion of a brief allusion to the productions criticized. The author of it, in his estimate of Shakspeare, approaches nearer the views which posterity will probably entertain of the poet, than those which have till now characterized even the most rapturous of his admirers. The mightiest bard, not only of modern times, but by far the mightiest bard that has appeared among uninspired mortals, here begins to assume a yet higher apotheosised splendor; and, if not to rank among the constellations and the gods, like the half fabulous immortalities of the ancient world, at least to take his place in the history of mankind, as the mind which has reached the point farthest removed from brute matter.

I hope the article will be widely reprinted in our own country. Its tendency is most beneficial. We are, from necessity, in the present point of our developement, a hard working, practical, matter-of-fact people—full—too full of mere worldly occupation and excitement. Subjects in no way connected with the higher exercise of the intellect absorb the public mind. Commercial and political questions unavoidably monopolize the national sympathies. We are compelled at present to strain every nerve to _make money_, that the ravages of the monetary tempest which has swept like a tornado or an earthquake, or an oriental plague over our land, may be repaired. There is danger in this state of things that we entirely forego the contemplation of those subjects, which, however without temporal pecuniary profit, repay the laborer with moral purity and elevation, which soften the asperity of the passions, infuse gentleness and liberality into opinion, strengthen the spiritual part of our nature, and ennoble and dignify life—at the same time that they cheer, guide, protect and sweeten it.

There is no repose, no patient leisure and calm tranquillity in our young and rapidly growing country. There is the same difference, I mean in respect to literary and scientific pursuits, between us and some of the European communities, Germany for instance, that there was between the Israelites travelling through the desert and the same people when gathered around the temple in the holy city. I believe we, too, are undergoing a kind of forty years’ penance, in order to shake off such of the habits and opinions of our European ancestors as are wrong—six thousand years of bloody prejudices and political errors. There will come a day of prosperity, when institutions shall be no longer doubtful, national character no longer unsettled, when we shall have a fixed standard of political morals far different from any that has hitherto prevailed in the world; and when the human mind, under these more favorable circumstances, will develop itself in a new manner.

But this depends upon ourselves. Nations, like individuals, are free agents. We can go upwards or downwards; we can hail our Messiah or we can reject him; and in order that we may mount not sink in the scale of moral being, it is desirable that we should not permit ourselves to be bound down too closely and too continually to the local and temporary but exciting exigencies of the present hour, that pecuniary and political subjects should not engross too much of our attention, lest we become altogether “of the earth, earthy.” Music, poetry, painting, sculpture, eloquence and science, the fine performances of a Forrest or a Kean, have a tendency to mingle with our daily and (when too exclusively persisted in) narrowing and degrading occupations; something that turns the spirit another way, and fills, refreshes and intellectualizes the character. Such articles as that alluded to on the wonderful and still scarcely appreciated excellences of Shakspeare, will be as softening and reviving in their effects upon thousands of minds, parched and hot under the influence of merely mechanical employments, or interested and selfish impressions, as a plentiful summer shower is to nature, when burnt and withered with a long drought.

The reading of this article has turned me again for a few evenings to my most favorite author, and raised many new ideas in my mind, which is always the case when I open those fascinating pages. I propose to furnish, in several papers, some of the thoughts which crowd upon me while reading him. I cannot bear to read him alone. It is like listening to an oration from the fiery lips of Cicero in an empty hall, or hearing Channing address deserted aisles. I want a circle to share those streams of light; I want to feel that the music-waves roll to the hearts of others beside myself. It almost seems selfish to brood over delights so ethereal, to gaze on vistas so resplendent, to enter a temple so gorgeous and so vast without some one at my side to call on in the moment of rapture.

There is, moreover, in the article of the Edinburgh Review, the following extraordinary annunciation.

“But the work which we should have most pleasure in believing to represent the state of German opinions, is Dr. Ulrici’s ‘Essay on Shakspeare’s Dramatic Art, and his relation to Calderon and Goethe.’ This book seems to us to be not only one of the most solidly philosophical pieces of criticism which have issued from the Teutonic school, but on its own absolute merits, an unusually valuable contribution to the literature of Shakspeare’s works. The theory upon which the treatise rests is assuredly partial and imperfect; and also, so far as it goes beyond opinions already received, palpably unsound; but the aspect in which it presents the poet of all nations is one which has been too often overlooked among ourselves, and grossly misunderstood by some of the most celebrated of Ulrici’s countrymen. The general discussions, which make up a considerable part of the volume, we must be allowed to waive. We cannot, especially in the way of commentary on a German text-book, attempt to investigate either the essence of the drama in general, or the essential differences between the views of life suggested respectively by Christianity and Grecian Paganism. The religious test thus indicated is that to which the critic subjects both Shakspeare and the poets with whom he compares him. ‘_Shakspeare’s peculiar character_,’ says he, ‘_consists in the greater purity and clearness, decision and completeness, with which the Christian view of life is represented in his dramas. It consists especially in this, that every where the two great elements of human life, and of the history of the world, the divine guidance and the freedom of man, stand out in their legitimate authority, in organic connexion and reciprocal action, and thus in the whole fulness of their truth and reality._’ He insists, emphatically, that he recognizes in Shakspeare’s dramas, not indeed formally taught, either theologically or ethically, but embodied in the genuine form of poetical representation, the doctrines of the universal sinfulness of man, and of divine grace in his salvation; doctrines which, as he truly adds, are altogether left out of sight in Goethe’s view of life, and by Calderon either misunderstood or unpoetically used. All this must be to many of us not a little startling; _but there lies at the bottom of it a mighty truth_, not merely important in itself, but bearing a _close relation to the great dramatist’s cast of thought_; a truth which, in one sense or other, _does_ furnish _the clue to some of the most perplexing riddles in the poet’s works_. In following out his own system, Ulrici, as was to have been expected from its one-sidedness, has been led to many conclusions which cannot possibly be admitted; but _fewer of these are to be attributed to the essential parts of his theory_, than to the peculiar way in which he has worked it out. In several instances he has literally resolved the leading idea, in which he represents the unity of each drama to consist, in a substantive enunciation of a moral precept, an error against which he himself protests. He has erred still further in acknowledging, as he seems to do almost invariably, the principle of what has been called poetical justice—a principle not involved in his own system upon any right interpretation of it, and assuredly quite alien to the far-reaching speculations of Shakspeare. But a man who thinks of poetry as Ulrici thinks, can never write of it altogether unworthily: one who is willing to consider Shakspeare as coming up to so lofty a standard, cannot fail to entertain that reverence for genius, and truth, and goodness, which is the source of all pleasure as well as soundness in criticism; and the admirable analysis of the poet’s works which constitute the latter half of the volume, shows the writer to be fully qualified for expounding such a creed.”

Startling, indeed! but, if true, this is one of the most singular discoveries ever made in literature. We have been accustomed to hear Shakspeare praised for everything but Christianity, or, indeed, any sense of religion. He has been sometimes represented even as a kind of _neutral principle_, from whom flow all opinions, all creeds, all virtues, all crimes, with a facility equally indifferent to the source which sends them forth. He has been attacked sometimes as a bigot, and sometimes as an infidel; sometimes as a whig, sometimes as a democrat; but no one before, that I am aware of, ever undertook to show him forth as a great prophet of Christianity.

I have not seen the work of Dr. Ulrici, nor are the following papers devoted exclusively to a consideration of our author in this point of view, but, in several parts of them, I have so considered him. They are not written systematically. They were commenced with the intention of saying all I had to say in a single article, but the subject is so large, and grew so under my hand, that I was obliged to let my observations run into several papers, and I soon found myself, moreover, compelled not only to confine my attention principally to one tragedy, but to leave many considerations respecting that tragedy untouched.

I wish to repeat that I am by no means _thoroughly_ acquainted with Shakspeare, and do not dream of offering any more than the mere momentary impressions which the perusal of such parts of him as I happen to read make upon me. After the great students of his works, the laborious and learned critics of different nations who have devoted years to the understanding of him, it would be presuming to attempt to throw light on him. I have only endeavored to express what I feel and see and think while reading him, and to venture here and there an examination of him upon the idea suggested by Dr. Ulrici, as it may strike a reader like myself, unacquainted with other arguments concerning it than those probabilities existing in the plays. The theory of Ulrici is so beautiful and so consonant to the lofty rank which our poet occupies, that one cannot help wishing, and scarcely believing, that it may be true. It has the force and convincingness which characterize the solution of an enigma. And, in this view, it possesses something of the solemnity of the creation itself. The creation is an enigma of which Christianity is the solution. Without that, all is vague, contradictory, dark; an existing impossibility—powerless omnipotence—fiendish generosity and love—the omnipresence of a Divinity everywhere absent—a mockery—a paradox. Christianity makes all clear and simple. It scarcely requires _proof_ more than the solution of any other enigma. When the Divine secret is revealed, it is self-evident.

With all reverence be it advanced, the suggestion of this theory, in reference to the works of Shakspeare, has something of the same fitness. The _creation_ of the poet was, before, in many places, dark and inexplicable; but the light shed upon him by the word Christianity makes many things clear and intelligible. It raises him to something of the magnitude of a prophet, and the most stupendous fabric of profane literature acquires a more solemn grandeur by this connection with the sacred work of God.

During Shakspeare’s life, he was, it is well known, celebrated beyond his expectations, and many of those acquainted with him and his productions thought quite beyond his merits. He was one of the fashionable poets of England; his verses were familiar to the lips of kings and queens, and himself, besides having acquired a pecuniary independence by his pen, received the highest honors, as he thought, which could be bestowed on him. He was, in short, a successful writer, and he passed away from the earth with the agreeable consciousness of having procured for himself a niche in the temple of Fame.