Caxton's Book: A Collection of Essays, Poems, Tales, and Sketches Part 26

_SCIENCE, LITERATURE AND ART DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY._

Looking back into the past, and exploring by the light of authentic history, sacred as well as profane, the characteristics of former ages, the merest tyro in learning cannot fail to perceive that certain epochs stand prominently out on the "sands of time," and indicate vast activity and uncommon power in the human mind.

These epochs are so well marked that history has given them a designation, and to call them by their name, conjures up, as by the wand of an enchanter, the heroic representatives of our race.

If, for instance, we should speak of the era of Solomon, in sacred history, the memory would instantly picture forth the pinnacles of the Holy Temple, lifting themselves into the clouds; the ear would listen intently to catch the sweet intonations of the harp of David, vocal at once with the prophetic sorrows of his race, and swelling into sublime ecstasy at the final redemption of his people; the eye would glisten at the pomp and pageantry of the foreign potentates who thronged his court, and gloat with rapture over the beauty of the young Queen of Sheba, who journeyed from a distant land to seek wisdom at the feet of the wisest monarch that ever sat upon a throne. We should behold his s.h.i.+ps traversing every sea, and pouring into the lap of Israel the gold of Ophir, the ivory of Senegambia, and the silks, myrrh, and spices of the East.

So, too, has profane history its golden ages, when men all seemed to be giants, and their minds inspired.

What is meant when we speak of the age of Pericles? We mean all that is glorious in the annals of Greece. We mean Apelles with his pencil, Phidias with his chisel, Alcibiades with his sword. We seem to be strolling arm-in-arm with Plato, into the academy, to listen to the divine teachings of Socrates, or hurrying along with the crowd toward the theatre, where Herodotus is reading his history, or Euripides is presenting his tragedies. Aspasia rises up like a beautiful apparition before us, and we follow willing slaves at the wheels of her victorious chariot. The whole of the Peloponnesus glows with intellect like a forge in blast, and scatters the trophies of Grecian civilization profusely around us. The Parthenon lifts its everlasting columns, and the Venus and Apollo are moulded into marble immortality.

Rome had her Augustan age, an era of poets, philosophers, soldiers, statesmen, and orators. Crowded into contemporary life, we recognize the greatest general of the heathen world, the greatest poet, the greatest orator, and the greatest statesman of Rome. Caesar and Cicero, Virgil and Octavius, all trod the pavement of the capitol together, and lent their blended glory to immortalize the Augustan age.

Italy and Spain and France and England have had their golden age. The eras of Lorenzo the Magnificent, of Ferdinand and Isabella, of Louis Quatorze and of Elizabeth, can never be forgotten. They loom up from the surrounding gloom like the full moon bursting upon the sleeping seas; irradiating the night, clothing the meanest wave in sparkling silver, and dimming the l.u.s.tre of the brightest stars. History has also left in its track mementoes of a different character. In sacred history we have the age of Herod; in profane, the age of Nero. We recognize at a glance the talismanic touch of the age of chivalry, and the era of the Crusades, and mope our way in darkness and gloom along that opaque track, stretching from the reign of Justinian, in the sixth century, to the reign of Edward the Third, in the fourteenth, and known throughout Christendom as the "Dark Ages." Let us now take a survey of the field we occupy, and ascertain, if possible, the category in which our age shall be ranked by our posterity.

But before proceeding to discuss the characteristics of our epoch, let us define more especially what that epoch embraces.

It does not embrace the American nor the French Revolution, nor does it include the acts or heroes of either. The impetus given to the human mind by the last half of the eighteenth century, must be carefully distinguished from the impulses of the first half of the nineteenth. The first was an era of almost universal war, the last of almost uninterrupted peace. The dying ground-swell of the waves after a storm belong to the tempest, not to the calm which succeeds. Hence the wars of Napoleon, the literature and art of his epoch, must be excluded from observation, in properly discussing the true characteristics of our era.

De Stael and Goethe and Schiller and Byron; Pitt and Nesselrode, Metternich and Hamilton; Fichte and Stewart and Brown and Cousin; Canova, Thorwaldsen and La Place, though all dying since the beginning of this century, belong essentially to a former era. They were the ripened fruits of that grand uprising of the human mind which first took form on the 4th day of July, 1776. Our era properly commences with the downfall of the first Napoleon, and none of the events connected therewith, either before or afterward, can be philosophically cla.s.sed in the epoch we represent, but must be referred to a former period. Ages hence, then, the philosophic critic will thus describe the first half of the nineteenth century:

"The normal state of Christendom was peace. The age of steel that immediately went before it had pa.s.sed. It was the Iron age.

"Speculative philosophy fell asleep; literature declined; Skepticism bore sway in religion, politics, and morals; Utility became the universal standard of right and wrong, and the truths of every science and the axioms of every art were ruthlessly subjected to the _experimentum crucis_. Everything was liable to revision. The verdicts p.r.o.nounced in the olden time against Mohammed and Mesmer and Robespierre were set aside, and a new trial granted. The ghosts of Roger Bacon and Emanuel Swedenborg were summoned from the Stygian sh.o.r.e to plead their causes anew before the bar of public opinion. The head of Oliver Cromwell was ordered down from the gibbet, the hump was smoothed down on the back of Richard III, and the sentence p.r.o.nounced by Urban VIII against the 'starry Galileo' reversed forever. Aristotle was decently interred beneath a modern monument inscribed thus: '_In pace requiescat_;' whilst Francis Bacon was rescued from the sacrilegious hands of kings and peers and parliament, and canonized by the unanimous consent of Christendom. It was the age of tests. Experiment governed the world. Germany led the van, and Humboldt became the impersonation of his times."

Such unquestionably will be the verdict of the future, when the present time, with all its treasures and trash, its hopes and realizations, shall have been safely shelved and labeled amongst the musty records of bygone generations.

Let us now examine into the grounds of this verdict more minutely, and test its accuracy by exemplifications.

I. And first, who believes now in _innate ideas_? Locke has been completely superseded by the materialists of Germany and France, and all speculative moral philosophy exploded. The audiences of Edinburgh and Brown University interrupt Sir William Hamilton and Dr. Wayland in their discourses, and, stripping off the plumage from their theses, inquisitively demand, "_Cui bono_?" What is the use of all this? How can we apply it to the every-day concerns of life? We ask you for bread and you have given us a stone; and though that stone be a diamond, it is valueless, except for its glitter. No philosopher can speculate successfully or even satisfactorily to himself, when he is met at every turn by some vulgar intruder into the domains of Aristotle and Kant, who clips his wings just as he was prepared to soar into the heavens, by an offer of copartners.h.i.+p to "speculate," it may be, in the price of pork.

Hence, no moral philosopher of our day has been enabled to erect any theory which will stand the a.s.saults of logic for a moment. Each school rises for an instant to the surface, and sports out its little day in toss and tribulation, until the next wave rolls along, with foam on its crest and fury in its roar, and overwhelms it forever. As with its predecessor, so with itself.

"The eternal surge Of Time and Tide rolls on and bears afar Their bubbles: as the old burst, new emerge, Lashed from the foam of ages."

II. But I have stated that this is an age of _literary decline_. It is true that more books are written and published, more newspapers and periodicals printed and circulated, more extensive libraries collected and incorporated, and more ink indiscriminately spilt, than at any former period of the world's history. In looking about us we are forcibly reminded of the sarcastic couplet of Pope, who complains--

"That those who cannot write, and those who can, All scratch, all scrawl, and scribble to a man."

Had a modern gentleman all the eyes of Argus, all the hands of Briareus, all the wealth of Croesus, and lived to the age of Methuselah, his eyes would all fail, his fingers all tire, his money all give out, and his years come to an end, long before he perused one tenth of the annual product of the press of Christendom at the present day. It is no figure of rhetoric to say that the press groans beneath the burden of its labors. Could the types of Leipsic and London, Paris and New York, speak out, the Litany would have to be amended, and a new article added, to which they would solemnly respond: "Spare us, good Lord!"

A recent publication furnishes the following statistical facts relating to the book trade in our own country: "Books have multiplied to such an extent in the United States that it now takes 750 paper-mills, with 2000 engines in constant operation, to supply the printers, who work day and night, endeavoring to keep their engagements with publishers. These tireless mills produce 270,000,000 pounds of paper every year. It requires a pound and a quarter of old rags for one pound of paper, thus 340,000,000 pounds of rags were consumed in this way last year. There are about 300 publishers in the United States, and near 10,000 book-sellers who are engaged in the task of dispensing literary pabulum to the public."

It may appear somewhat paradoxical to a.s.sert that literature is declining whilst books and authors are multiplying to such a fearful extent. Byron wrote:

"'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't."

True enough; but books are not always literature. A man may become an author without ceasing to be an ignoramus. His name may adorn a t.i.tle-page without being recorded _in aere perenne_. He may attempt to write himself up a very "lion" in literature, whilst good master Slender may be busily engaged "in writing him down an a.s.s."

Not one book in a thousand is a success; not one success in ten thousand wreathes the fortunate author with the laurel crown, and lifts him up into the region of the immortals. Tell me, ye who prate about the _literary glory_ of the nineteenth century, wherein it consists? Whose are

"The great, the immortal names That were not born to die?"

I cast my eyes up the long vista toward the Temple of Fame, and I behold hundreds of thousands pressing on to reach the s.h.i.+ning portals. They jostle each other by the way, they trip, they fall, they are overthrown and ruthlessly trampled into oblivion, by the giddy throng, as they rush onward and upward. One, it may be two, of the million who started out, stand trembling at the threshold, and with exultant voices cry aloud for admittance. One perishes before the summons can be answered; and the other, awed into immortality by the august presence into which he enters, is transformed into imperishable stone.

Let us carefully scan the rolls of the literature of our era, and select, if we can, poet, orator, or philosopher, whose fame will deepen as it runs, and brighten as it burns, until future generations shall drink at the fountain and be refreshed, and kindle their souls at the vestal flame and be purified, illuminated and enn.o.bled.

In poetry, aye, in the crowded realms of song, who bears the sceptre?--who wears the crown? America, England, France and Germany can boast of bards _by the gross_, and rhyme _by the acre_, but not a single poet. The _poeta nascitur_ is not here. He may be on his way--and I have heard that he was--but this generation must pa.s.s before he arrives. Is he in America? If so, which is he? Is it Poe, croaking sorrowfully with his "Raven," or Willis, cooing sweetly with his "Dove"? Is it Bryant, with his "Thanatopsis," or Prentice, with his "Dirge to the Dead Year"?

Perhaps it is Holmes, with his "Lyrics," or Longfellow, with his "Idyls." Alas! is it not self-evident that we have no poet, when it is utterly impossible to discover any two critics in the land who can find him?

True, we have lightning-bugs enough, but no star; foot-hills, it may be, in abundance, but no Mount Shasta, with its base built upon the everlasting granite, and its brow bathed in the eternal sunlight.

In England, Tennyson, the Laureate, is the spokesman of a clique, the pet poet of a princely circle, whose rhymes flow with the docility and harmony of a limpid brook, but never stun like Niagara, nor rise into sublimity like the storm-swept sea.

Beranger, the greatest poet of France of our era, was a mere song-writer; and Heine, the pride of young Germany, a mere satirist and lyrist. Freiligrath can never rank with Goethe or Schiller; and Victor Hugo never attain the heights trodden by Racine, Corneille, or Boileau.

In oratory, where shall we find the compeer of Chatham or Mirabeau, Burke or Patrick Henry? I have not forgotten Peel and Gladstone, nor Lamartine and Count Cavour, nor Sargent S. Prentiss and Daniel Webster.

But Webster himself, by far the greatest intellect of all these, was a mere debater, and the spokesman of a party. He was an eloquent speaker, but can never rank as an orator with the rhetoricians of the last century.

And in philosophy and general learning, where shall we find the equal of that burly old bully, Dr. Sam Johnson? and yet Johnson, with all his learning, was a third-rate philosopher.

In truth, the greatest author of our era was a mere essayist. Beyond all controversy, Thomas Babington Macaulay was the most polished writer of our times. With an intellect acute, logical and a.n.a.lytic; with an imagination glowing and rich, but subdued and under perfect control; with a style so clear and limpid and concise, that it has become a standard for all who aim to follow in the path he trod, and with a learning so full and exact, and exhaustive, that he was nicknamed, when an undergraduate, the "Omniscient Macaulay;" he still lacks the giant grasp of thought, the bold originality, and the intense, earnest enthusiasm which characterize the master-spirits of the race, and identify them with the eras they adorn.

III. As in literature, so in what have been denominated by scholars the _Fine Arts_. The past fifty years has not produced a painter, sculptor, or composer, who ranks above mediocrity in their respective vocations.

Canova and Thorwaldsen were the last of their race; Sir Joshua Reynolds left no successor, and the immortal Beethoven has been superseded by negro minstrelsy and senseless pantomime. The greatest architect of the age is a railroad contractor, and the first dramatist a cobbler of French farces.

IV. But whilst the highest faculty of the mind--the imagination--has been left uncultivated, and has produced no worthy fruit, the next highest, the casual, or the one that deals with causes and effects, has been stimulated into the most astonis.h.i.+ng fertility.

Our age ignores fancy, and deals exclusively with fact. Within its chosen range it stands far, very far pre-eminent over all that have preceded it. It reaps the fruit of Bacon's labors. It utilizes all that it touches. It stands thoughtfully on the field of Waterloo, and estimates scientifically the manuring properties of bones and blood. It disentombs the mummy of Thotmes II, sells the linen bandages for the manufacture of paper, burns the asphaltum-soaked body for firewood, and plants the pint of red wheat found in his sarcophagus, to try an agricultural experiment. It deals in no sentimentalities; it has no appreciation of the sublime. It stands upon the ocean sh.o.r.e, but with its eyes fixed on the yellow sand searching for gold. It confronts Niagara, and, gazing with rapture at its misty shroud, exclaims, in an ecstasy of admiration, "Lord, what a place to sponge a coat!" Having no soul to save, it has no religion to save it. It has discovered that Mohammed was a great benefactor of his race, and that Jesus Christ was, after all, a mere man; distinguished, it is true, for his benevolence, his fort.i.tude and his morality, but for nothing else. It does not believe in the Pope, nor in the Church, nor in the Bible. It ridicules the infallibility of the first, the despotism of the second, and the chronology of the third. It is possessed of the very spirit of Thomas; it must "touch and handle" before it will believe. It questions the existence of spirit, because it cannot be a.n.a.lyzed by chemical solvents; it questions the existence of h.e.l.l, because it has never been scorched; it questions the existence of G.o.d, because it has never beheld Him.

It does, however, believe in the explosive force of gunpowder, in the evaporation of boiling water, in the head of the magnet, and in the heels of the lightnings. It conjugates the Latin verb _invenio_ (to find out) through all its voices, moods and tenses. It invents everything; from a lucifer match in the morning to kindle a kitchen fire, up through all the intermediate ranks and tiers and grades of life, to a telescope that spans the heavens in the evening, it recognizes no chasm or hiatus in its inventions. It sinks an artesian well in the desert of Sahara for a pitcher of water, and bores through the Alleghanies for a hogshead of oil. From a fish-hook to the Great Eastern, from a pocket deringer to a columbiad, from a sewing machine to a Victoria suspension bridge, it oscillates like a pendulum.

Deficient in literature and art, our age surpa.s.ses all others in science. Knowledge has become the great end and aim of human life. "I want to know," is inscribed as legibly on the hammer of the geologist, the crucible of the chemist, and the equatorial of the astronomer, as it is upon the phiz of a regular "Down-Easter." Our age has inherited the chief failing of our first mother, and pa.s.sing by the "Tree of Life in the midst of the Garden," we are all busily engaged in mercilessly plundering the Tree of Knowledge of all its fruit. The time is rapidly approaching when no man will be considered a gentleman who has not filed his _caveat_ in the Patent Office.

The inevitable result of this spirit of the age begins already to be seen. The philosophy of a cold, blank, calculating materialism has taken possession of all the avenues of learning. Epicurus is wors.h.i.+ped instead of Christ. Mammon is considered as the only true savior. _Dum Vivimus Vivamus_, is the maxim we live by, and the creed we die by. We are all iconoclasts. St. Paul has been superseded by St. Fulton; St John by St.

Colt; St. James by St. Morse; St. Mark by St. Manry; and St. Peter has surrendered his keys to that great incarnate representative of this age, St. Alexandre Von Humboldt.

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XXIV.