ings. The Christianity which attempts to occupy that position might as well haul down its flag to-day; for this, with it, can literally be only "a question of time.' It will burn its powder and explode its shells to no purpose, save its own very useless expense. ARTICLE II. THE HOMES OF LITERARY MEN. SEVERAL years ago there appeared a book called "Homes of American Authors." In contrast to the notion we always have of English writers since the days of Johnson, and GrubStreet life, the public were overjoyed to find that our authors are not literary vagabonds, but really have homes, and sometimes domestic peace; for the old notion that literary people must quarrel is nearly gone by. And yet it was but a few years since that poor Percival lived in a garret on sixty-five dollars a year, and feasted on every literature under heaven; and the erratic genius of Poe, and of the wild William Northboth suicides led them into painful haps and hazards. And there has ever been a sort of fatality about the literary geniuses which no philosophy will fully account for, a reverence, on our part, for the wonder-working mystery of genius; a curiosity to hear the story of its wrongs, perhaps a jealousy of shining parts joined with contempt for mortal weakness; and on the part of authors an ever-abiding sense that the world is out of joint and they are born to set it right, and a familiarity with mental suffering which duller spirits wot nothing of. Ah! the cost of being a genius; yet you, reader, love them passionately after all; and do you not grieve over the fate of that artistpoet neither whose poems nor whose paintings ever got the warm meed of praise, and whose last walk ended on the Bridge of Sighs? "Alas for the rarity It always thrills me when I see on the booksellers' shelves those thin, paper-bound volumes yet uncut, in which some young poet has sighed out his first passion, and gone back into obscurity, his volume selling for a sixpence, and unread at that. I always buy such books and put them side by side in my library, and rarely I find that the early Tennysonian volume of 1833 develops into the "Idyls" of 1860. I love to trace those gentle aspiring steppings-out into the great world, and hope for the best, remembering that my dear Southey, and dearer Irving, were always kind to young authors. It is rather painful for me, looking back, to call up that club of college friends who were so eager to write themselves into notoriety. Where are those dreams now? Ah! my old friend, you have whittled away your quills at an editor's desk, and what has your life come to? Where are all those fine tastes you pleased us with, during those Attic nights? You remember the volumes you said you should write; yes, your volumes! but who would read them if collected out of stray newspapers now? Here is a fine reputation spoiled. And our class-poet settled down into a very steady farmer when he had published a National Ode; while the one solitary, unpromising, hard-thinking plodder we had has lately become very eminent as a political and judicial author. What memories a university life affords! How green they always keep! And here is the very place where young genius is nursed, — nursed as hardily as Schiller at the Karls-schule where he "enrolled himself in 1773; and turned, with a heavy heart, from freedom and cherished hopes, to Greek, and seclusion, and law." Now I beg you, reader, to allow me to quote from the wise little volume of Rev. Dr. Osgood, wherein he discourses so sweetly of his Harvard reminiscences, and then we will return to our subject: "We sometimes had voluntary meetings in presence of our professors, and of these I remember with especial pleasure our evenings with Chaucer and Spenser at Professor Edward T. Channing's study. How his genial face shone in the light of the winter's fire, and threw new meaning upon the rare gems of thought and humor and imagination of those kings of ancient song. Who of us does not bless him every day that we write an English sentence, for his pure taste and admirable simplicity? I remember well, also, a little coterie who met to declaim choice pieces of prose and verse with the professor of elocution, our enthusiastic friend, Dr. Barber. Those twelve or fourteen youths have had various destinies, but none of them has made more mark in the world than the handsome, brilliant, free-and-easy fellow who used to declaim Byron with down-turned collar, that showed a throat smooth and full as a girl's. He spoke and wrote well, but we never expected Motley to read Dutch and write the 'History of Holland.'" A true picture. It does me good to read it. It nearly comes up to the glimpses we have of the earlier Stirling club at Trinity, Cambridge, when Milnes, and Trench, and Tennyson, and the Baconian Spedding were young. But I must come back and say, that in my opinion the country is the Home of literary men. I have not written this sentence without thinking, nor have I given way to the prejudice coming from life in a country parsonage; but I fancy in such retirement one can look out upon the world and give calm, just decisions on men and books. Does not an author value such a man's criticism more than the sparkling magazinist's? I of course imply that the parson does not vegetate upon the glebe but has much experience of stirring life. It was said by a critic that the country parson had no romantic interest in the United States as compared with the pleasantly rural life of his English brother. But that critic was town-bred; yet the best living editor of Shakespeare should have known better than thus to insinuate that New England parsons are generally unsocial, prejudiced, bilious men. The city is the grand generator of bile and nervous periods. I challenge him to the proof that they are much less genial, or cultivated, than the Anglican vicars and curates; or that they have a less healthy growth than other professional men. You love to think of a parson living near a stone church beside a moss-grown church-yard; and to say truth there is something homely in a decaying pine meeting-house; and we lack the discipline which gains Fellowships. With these abatements the position is much the same in both countries. It only needs Hawthorne to embody our Puritan parsons in fiction, or Whittier to mellow them in poetry; and they will take on even a pleasant and social look. But our clergy are nearly all parochial; they enter largely into the economy of village life; it is just this position, humble yet dignified, midway between the aristocrat and the peasant, ruling the hearts of both, which gives them such a gradual and harmonious growth. The social is not starved at the expense of the intellectual man. Hence the equable, long-lived temperament prevails. Now I shall state the fact that a large number of them are literary men. They publish sermons; they write in magazines and reviews; they write town histories; they aspire to the dignity of poet and novelist. Some, like the author of the "New Priest," give evidence of genius as rare as it is beautiful; others gush out in sacred poetry alone, and warble hallowed notes. There is a peculiarity, too, about all they write, about even what their wives write. It is the absence of what I must call a false taste in letters. They are seldom dull; never vapid; always have something to say; generally say it without beating the bush; they think more than they say, but write so that you are made to think all they do. If the singular truthfulness of these authors is not due to their living. among people of simple tastes, of truth-telling lips, among the fresh and living realities of Nature, how can you account for it? Now turn with me to our town-bred authors; but first let us dwell upon what was just called a false taste in letters. This is by no means universal. But our most popular literature is strikingly wanting in what a Coleridgean would call ideas. It is not so very sentimental; it is very spicy, brilliant, Frenchy; it is very hard for a sane, cultivated mind to read. It is difficult to find more than one George Elliot; you can count up any number of Beecher Stowes. The magazines are to blame for this. It is the age of magazines, just as Queen Anne's was of Spectators. The name of every popular author is blazoned on the cover; articles written under high pressure of throbbing brains blaze inside. It is all very taking; but is it true, is it real as seen in Nature and life? We have poets who love daisies, who thrill with ecstasy at sight of a peony, who languish after "sweet sixteen"; but who of our younger poets has watched Nature as keenly as Bryant, or even given signs of such watching? Who is about to stir up the human soul like the venerable Dana ? Do poets believe that we have souls What a spirit I have tried to other than to make love with, in these days? of unrest has entered into our novel writers! read Trumps; but Mr. Curtis has lost the gentle gracefulness of the Howadji, and his reckless exposure of city life is sickening enough. I daresay the story is powerfully written, but oh! the patience that can go through such moonshine. Are men real or not? Shall magazines swamp us, displacing all our stores of fine old English? It is not an ungentle hope, that among the benefits of civil war, a purer literature may arise to create healthier feeling, heartier action. Though our best authors contribute to periodicals and might thus seem to thwart merely magazinish tastes, their efforts must of necessity be fugitive-hardly such as can build up a reputation. But this false taste is only set forth — not accounted for. The explanation is anticipated. As the country is natural, the city is artificial. So sensitive is literature that it reflects every hue and passion of the hour. It both comes from and appeals to human nature. If it takes in distorted views of life, it becomes only a curiosity when the distortions are set right; thus one age purges another, what appeals to the essential in man alone surviving. Here, too, is De Quincey's distinction between literature as a power and as an accident. The city includes all those facts which have a factitious interest; one class quickly gives way to another; while the reflective powers act less freely. Society is engaged only with what is uppermost. But that eclectic mind which ranges freely through past and present, making each shed light upon the other the light of first principles, can it mingle in the din of metropolitan life and keep an eye intent upon its aim? Is not familiarity with vice and wretchedness apt to malign one's views of human nature, killing those sweet emotions that wed with truth and goodness? And what sort of man is this city author? He is a cynic in faith; he is shallow in philosophy; he loses sight of the great brotherhood of man; he affects a very amiable contempt for woman, save as material for "scenes"; 'virtue and morality is respected in name, but conventional at that; the spirit of the hour rules; a man may acquire influence and reputation, but his best efforts take the color of popular tastes; even the journalist finds himself merely the spokesman of public events. |