Part 10

I well remember my disappointment, as a child, at being able to find so little about children in the old-fashioned novels on our bookshelves. Trollope was particularly trying, because there were illustrations which seemed to promise what I wanted, and which were wholly illusive in their character. Posy and her grandfather playing cat’s-cradle, Edith Grantly sitting on old Mr. Harding’s knee, poor little Louey Trevelyan furtively watching his unhappy parents,--I used to read all around these pictures in the hope of learning more about the children so portrayed. But they never said or did anything to awaken my interest, or played any but purely passive parts in the long histories of their grown-up relatives. I had so few books of my own that I was compelled to forage for entertainment wherever I could find it, dipping experimentally into the most unpromising sources, and retiring discomfited from the search. “Vivian Grey” I began several times with enthusiasm. The exploits of the hero at school amazed and thrilled me--as well they might; but I never comprehensively grasped his social and political career. Little Rawdon Crawley and that small, insufferable George Osborne, were chance acquaintances, introduced through the medium of the illustrations; but my real friends were the Tullivers and David Copperfield, before he went to that stupid school of Dr. Strong’s at Canterbury, and lost all semblance of his old childish self. It was not possible to grow deeply attached to Oliver Twist. He was a lifeless sort of boy, despite the author’s assurances to the contrary; and, though the most wonderful things were always happening to him, it never seemed to me that he lived up to his interesting surroundings. He would have done very well for a quiet life, but was sadly unsuited to that lively atmosphere of burglary and housebreaking. “Aladdin,” says Mr. Froude, “remained a poor creature, for all his genii.” As for Nell, I doubt if it would ever occur to a small innocent reader to think of her as a child at all. I was far from critical in those early days, and much disposed to agree with Lamb’s amiable friend that all books must necessarily be good books. Nell was, in my eyes, a miracle of courage and capacity, a creature to be believed in implicitly, to be revered and pitied; but she was not a little girl. I was a little girl myself, and I knew the difference.

It was Dickens who first gave children their prestige in fiction. Jeffrey, we are assured, shed tears over Nell; and Bret Harte, whose own pathos is so profoundly touching, describes for us the rude and haggard miners following her fortunes with breathless sympathy:

“While the whole camp with ‘Nell’ on English meadows, Wandered and lost their way.”

At present we are spared the heartrending childish deathbeds which Dickens made so painfully popular, because dying in novels has rather gone out of style. The young people live, and thrive, and wax scornful, and fill up chapter after chapter, to the exclusion of meritorious adults. What a contrast between the incidental, almost furtive manner in which Henry Kingsley introduces his delightful children into “Ravenshoe,” and the profound assurance with which Sarah Grand devotes seventy pages to a minute description of the pranks of the Heavenly Twins. Readers of the earlier novel used to feel they would like to know a little--just a little more of Gus, and Flora, and Archy, and the patient nursery cat who was quite accustomed to being held upside down, and who went out “a-walking on the leads,” when she was needed to accompany her young master to bed. Readers of “The Heavenly Twins” begin by being amused, then grow aghast, and conclude by wondering why the wretched relatives of those irrepressible children were not driven to some such expedient as that proposed by a choleric old gentleman of my acquaintance to the doting mother of an only son. “Put him in a hogshead, madam, and let him breathe through the bunghole!”

Two vastly different types of infant precocity have been recently given to the world by Mrs. Deland and Mrs. Hodgson Burnett, the only point of resemblance between their respective authors being the conviction which they share in common that children are problems which cannot be too minutely studied, and that we cannot devote too much time or attention to their scrutiny. Mrs. Deland, with less humor and a firmer touch, draws for us in “The Story of a Child,” a sensitive, highly strung, morbid and imaginative little girl, who seems born to give the lie to Schopenhauer’s comfortable verdict, that “the keenest sorrows and the keenest joys are not for women to feel.” Ellen Dale suffers as only a self-centred nature can. She thinks about her self so much that her poor little head is turned with fancied shortcomings and imaginary wrongs. Most children have these sombre moods now and again. They don’t overcome them; they forget them, which is a better and healthier thing to do. But Ellen’s humors are analyzed with a good deal of seriousness and sympathy. When she is not “agonized” over her tiny faults, she is “tasting sin with the subtle epicurean delight of the artistic temperament;” a passage which may be aptly compared with George Eliot’s tamer description of Lucy Deane trotting by her cousin Tom’s side, “timidly enjoying the rare treat of doing something naughty.” The sensations are practically the same, the methods of delineating them different.

Mrs. Burnett, on the other hand, while indulging us unstintedly in reminiscences of her own childhood, is disposed to paint the picture in cheerful, not to say roseate colors. “The One I Knew the Best of All” was evidently a very good, and clever, and pretty, and well-dressed little girl, who played her part with amiability and decorum in all the small vicissitudes common to infant years. No other children being permitted to enter the narrative, except as lay figures, our attention is never diverted from the small creature with the curls, who studies her geography, and eats her pudding, and walks in the Square, and dances occasionally at parties, and behaves herself invariably as a nice little girl should. It is reassuring, after reading the youthful recollections of Sir Richard Burton, with their irreverent and appalling candor, to be gently consoled by Mrs. Burnett, and to know with certainty that she really was such a delightful and charming child.

For Sir Richard, following the fashion of the day, has left us a spirited record of _his_ early years, and they furnish scant food for edification. There was a time when unfledged vices, like unfledged virtues, were ignored by the biographer, and forgotten even by the more conscientious writer, who compiled his own memoirs. Scott’s account of his boyhood is graphic, but all too brief. Boswell, the diffuse, speeds over Johnson’s tender youth with some not very commendatory remarks about his “dismal inertness of disposition.” Gibbon, indeed, awakens our expectations with this solemn and stately sentence:--

“My lot might have been that of a slave, a savage, or a peasant; nor can I reflect without pleasure on the bounty of nature which cast my birth in a free and civilized country, in an age of science and philosophy, in a family of honorable rank, and decently endowed with the gifts of fortune.”

After which majestic preamble, we are surprised to see how little interest he takes in his own sickly and studious childhood, and how disinclined he is to say complimentary things about his own precocity. He writes without enthusiasm:--

“For myself I must be content with a very small share of the civil and literary fruits of a public school.”

Burton, unhappily, had no share at all, and the loss of training and discipline told heavily on him all his life. His lawless and wandering childhood, so full of incident and so destitute of charm, is described with uncompromising veracity in Lady Burton’s portly volumes. He was as far removed from the virtues of Lord Fauntleroy as from the brilliant and elaborate naughtiness of the Heavenly Twins; but he has the advantage over all these little people in being so convincingly real. He fought until he was beaten “as thin as a shotten herring.” He knocked down his nurse--with the help of his brother and sister--and jumped on her. He hid behind the curtains and jeered at his grandmother’s French. He was not pretty, and he was not picturesque.

“A piece of yellow nankin would be bought to dress the whole family, like three sticks of barley sugar.”

He was not amiable, and he was not polite, and he was not a safe child on whom to try experiments of the “Harry and Lucy” order, as the following anecdote proves:

“By way of a wholesome and moral lesson of self-command and self-denial, our mother took us past Madame Fisterre’s (the pastry cook’s) windows, and bade us look at all the good things; whereupon we fixed our ardent affections on a tray of apple puffs. Then she said: ‘Now, my dears, let us go away; it is so good for little children to restrain themselves.’ Upon this we three devilets turned flashing eyes and burning cheeks on our moralizing mother, broke the window with our fists, clawed out the tray of apple puffs, and bolted, leaving poor Mother a sadder and a wiser woman, to pay the damages of her lawless brood’s proceedings.”

It is the children’s age when such a story--and many more like it--are gleefully narrated and are gladly read. Yet if we must exchange the old-time reticence for unreserved disclosures, if we must hear all about an author’s infancy from his teething to his first breeches, and from his A B C’s to his Greek and Latin, it is better to have him presented to us with such unqualified veracity. He is not attractive when seen in this strong light, but he is very much alive.

A FORGOTTEN POET.

There has been a vast deal of moralizing on the brevity of fame ever since that far-away day when mankind became sufficiently sophisticated to covet posthumous distinction. Yet, in reality, it is not so surprising that people should be forgotten as that they should be remembered, and remembered often for the sake of one swift, brave deed that cost no effort, or of a few lovely words thrown to the world in a moment of unconscious inspiration, when the writer little dreamed he was forging a chain strong enough to link him with the future. Occasionally, too, a species of immortality is conferred upon respectable mediocrity by the affection or the abhorrence it excites. The men whom Pope rhymed about because he hated them, the men to whom Lamb wrote so delightfully because he loved them, all live for us in the indestructible land of letters. It would be a hard matter to reckon up the sum of indebtedness which is thus innocently incurred by those who have no coin of their own for payment.

Not long ago a writer of distinction was idling his way pleasantly through a volume of Mrs. Browning’s poetry, when his attention was arrested by a quotation which stood at the head of that rather nebulous effusion, “A Rhapsody of Life’s Progress.” It was but a single line,

“Fill all the stops of life with tuneful breath,”

and it was accredited to Cornelius Mathews, author of “Poems on Man.” A foot-note,--people were more generous in the matter of foot-notes forty years ago than now--gave the additional and somewhat startling information that “Poems on Man” was “a small volume by an American poet, as remarkable in thought and manner for a vital sinewy vigour as the right arm of Pathfinder.” This was stout praise. “The right arm of Pathfinder.” We all know what sinewy vigor was _there_; but of Cornelius Mathews, it would seem, no man knew anything at all. Yet his poems had traveled far when they lay in Mrs. Browning’s path, and of her admiration for them she had left us this unstinted proof. Moreover the one line,

“Fill all the stops of life with tuneful breath”

had in it enough of character and sweetness to provoke an intelligent curiosity. As a scholar and a man of letters, the reader felt his interest awakened. He replaced Mrs. Browning on the book shelf, and made up his mind with characteristic distinctness he would read the poems of this forgotten American author.

It was not an easy resolution to keep. A confident appeal to the public libraries of New York and Philadelphia brought to light the astonishing fact that no copy of the “Poems on Man” was to be found within their walls. The work had been published in several editions by Harper and Brothers between the years 1838 and 1843; but no forlorn and dust covered volume still lingered on their shelves. The firm, when interrogated, knew no more about Cornelius Mathews than did the rest of the reading world. The next step was to advertise for a second-hand copy; but for a long while it seemed as though even second-hand copies had disappeared from the face of the continent. The book was so exceedingly rare that it must have been a universal favorite for the lighting of household fires. In the end, however, persevering effort was crowned with its inevitable success. “The works of Cornelius Mathews” were unearthed from some dim corner of obscurity, and suffered to see the genial light of day.

They comprise a great deal of prose and a very little verse, all bound up together, after the thrifty fashion of our fathers, in one portly volume, with dull crimson sides, and double columns of distressingly fine print. The “Poems on Man” are but nineteen in number, and were originally published in a separate pamphlet. They are arranged systematically, and are designed to do honor to American citizenship under its most sober and commonplace aspect. The author is in no way discouraged by the grayness of his atmosphere, nor by the unheroic material with which he has to deal. On the contrary, he is at home with farmers, and mechanics, and merchants; and ill at ease with painters and soldiers, to whom it must be confessed he preaches a little too palpably. It is painful to consider what bad advice he gives to the sculptor in this one vicious line,

“Think not too much what other climes have done.”

Yet, in truth, he is neither blind to the past, nor unduly elated with the present. He feels the splendid possibilities of a young nation with all its life before it; and earnestly, and with dignity, he pleads for the development of character, and for a higher system of morality. If his verse be uneven and mechanical, and the sinewy vigor of Pathfinder be not so apparent as might have been reasonably expected, I can still understand how these simple and manly sentiments should have awakened the enthusiasm of Mrs. Browning, who was herself no student of form, and who sincerely believed that poetry was a serious pursuit designed for the improvement of mankind.

In his narrower fashion, Mr. Cornelius Mathews shared this pious creed, and strove, within the limits of his meagre art, to awaken in the hearts of his countrymen a patriotism sober and sincere. He calls on the journalist to tell the truth, on the artisan to respect the interests of his employer, on the merchant to cherish an old-time honor and honesty, on the politician to efface himself for the good of his constituency.

“Accursed who on the Mount of Rulers sits, Nor gains some glimpses of a fairer day; Who knows not there, what there his soul befits,-- Thoughts that leap up and kindle far away The coming time! Who rather dulls the ear With brawling discord and a cloud of words; Owning no hopeful object, far or near, Save what the universal self affords.”

This is not heroic verse, but it shows an heroic temper. The writer has evidently some knowledge of things as they are, and some faith in things as they ought to be, and these twin sources of grace save him from bombast and from cynicism. Never in all the earnest and appealing lines does he indulge himself or his readers in that exultant self-glorification which is so gratifying and so inexpensive. His patriotism is not of the shouting and hat-flourishing order, but has its roots in an anxious and loving regard for the welfare of his fatherland. Occasionally he strikes a poetic note, and has moments of brief but genuine inspiration.

“The elder forms, the antique mighty faces,”

which lend their calm and shadowy presence to the farmer’s toil, bring with them swift glimpses of a strong pastoral world. Not a blithe world by any means. No Pan pipes in the rushes. No shaggy herdsmen sing in rude mirthful harmony. No sun-burnt girls laugh in the harvest-field. Rusticity has lost its native grace, and the cares of earth sit at the fireside of the husbandman. Yet to him belong moments of deep content, and to his clean and arduous life are given pleasures which the artisan has never known.

“Better to watch the live-long day The clouds that come and go, Wearying the heaven they idle through, And fretting out its everlasting blue. Though sadness on the woods may often lie, And wither to a waste the meadowy land, Pure blows the air, and purer shines the sky, For nearer always to Heaven’s gate you stand.”

The most curious characteristic of Mr. Mathew’s work is the easy and absolute fashion in which it ignores the influence, and indeed the very existence of woman. The word “man” must here be taken in its literal significance. It is not of the human race that the author sings, but of one half of it alone. No troublesome flutter of petticoats disturbs his serene meditations; no echo of passion haunts his placid verse. Even in his opening stanzas on “The Child,” there is no allusion to any mother. The infant appears to have come into life after the fashion of Pallas Athene, and upon the father only depends its future weal or woe. The teacher apparently confines his labors to little boys; the preacher has a congregation of men; the reformer, the scholar, the citizen, the friend, all dwell in a cool masculine world, where the seductive voice of womankind never insinuates itself to the endangering of sober and sensible behavior. This enforced absence of “The Eternal Feminine” is more striking when we approach the realms of art. Does the painter desire subjects for his brush?

“The mountain and the sea, the setting sun, The storm, the face of men, and the calm moon,”

are considered amply sufficient for his needs. Does the sculptor ask for models? They are presented him in generous abundance.

“Crowned heroes of the early age, Chieftain and soldier, senator and sage; The tawny ancient of the warrior race, With dusky limb and kindling face.”

Or, should he prefer less conventional types--

“Colossal and resigned, the gloomy gods Eying at large their lost abodes, Towering and swart, and knit in every limb; With brows on which the tempest lives, With eyes wherein the past survives, Gloomy, and battailous, and grim.”

With all these legitimate subjects at his command, why indeed should the artist turn aside after that beguiling beauty which Eve saw reflected in the clear waters of Paradise, and which she loved with unconscious vanity or ever Adam met her amorous gaze. Only to the poet is permitted the smallest glimpse into the feminine world. In one brief half-line, Mr. Mathews coldly and chastely allows that “young Love” may whisper something--we are not told what--which is best fitted for the poetic ear.

What an old-fashioned bundle of verse it is, though written a bare half century ago! How far removed from the delicate conceits, the inarticulate sadness of our modern versifiers; from the rondeaux, and ballades, and pastels, and impressions, and nocturnes, with which we have grown bewilderingly familiar. How these titles alone would have puzzled the sober citizen who wrote the “Poems on Man,” and who endeavored with rigid honesty to make his meaning as clear as English words would permit. There is no more chance to speculate over these stanzas than there is to speculate over Hogarth’s pictures. What is meant is told, not vividly, but with steadfast purpose, and with an innocent hope that it may be of some service to the world. The world, indeed, has forgotten the message, and forgotten the messenger as well. Only in a brief foot-note of Mrs. Browning’s there lingers still the faint echo of what once was life. For such modest merit there is no second sunrise; and yet a quiet reader may find an hour well spent in the staid company of these serious verses, whose best eloquence is their sincerity.

DIALOGUES.

Dialogues have come back into fashion and favor. Editors of magazines look on them kindly, and readers of magazines accept them as philosophically as they accept any other form of instruction or entertainment which is provided in their monthly bills of fare. Perhaps Mr. Oscar Wilde is in some measure responsible for the revival; perhaps it may be traced more directly to the serious and stimulating author of “Baldwin,” whose discussions are sufficiently subtle and relentless to gratify the keenest discontent. The restless reader who embarks on Vernon Lee’s portly volume of conversations half wishes he knew people who could discourse in that fashion, and is half grateful that he doesn’t. To converse for hours on “Doubts and Pessimism,” or “The Value of the Ideal,” is no trivial test of endurance, especially when one person does three-fourths of the talking. We hardly know which to admire most: Baldwin, who elucidates a text--and that text, evolution--for six pages at a breath, or Michael, who listens and “smiles.” Even the occasional intermissions, when “Baldwin shook his head,” or “they took a turn in silence,” or “Carlo’s voice trembled,” or “Dorothy pointed to the moors,” do little to relieve the general tension. It is no more possible to support conversation on this high and serious level than it is possible to nourish it on Mr. Wilde’s brilliant and merciless epigrams. Those sparkling dialogues in which Cyril might be Vivian, and Vivian, Cyril; or Gilbert might be Ernest, and Ernest, Gilbert, because all alike are Mr. Wilde, and speak with his voice alone, dazzle us only to betray. They are admirable pieces of literary workmanship; they are more charming and witty than any contemporaneous essays. But if we will place by their side those few and simple pages in which Landor permits Montaigne and Joseph Scaliger to gossip together for a brief half hour at breakfast time, we will better understand the value of an element which Mr. Wilde excludes--humanity, with all its priceless sympathies and foibles.