Life Without and Life Within Part 5

THOMAS HOOD.

Now almost the last light has gone out of the galaxy that made the first thirty years of this age so bright. And the dynasty that now reigns over the world of wit and poetry is poor and pale, indeed, in comparison.

We are anxious to pour due libations to the departed; we need not economize our wine; it will not be so often needed now.

Hood has closed the most fatiguing career in the world--that of a professed wit; and we may say with deeper feeling than of others who shuffle off the load of care, May he rest in peace! The fatigues of a conqueror, a missionary preacher, even of an active philanthropist, like Howard, are nothing to those of a professed wit. Bad enough is it when he is only a man of society, by whom every one expects to be enlivened and relieved; who can never talk gravely in a corner, without those around observing that he must have heard some bad news to be so out of spirits; who can never make a simple remark, while eating a peaceful dinner, without the table being set in a roar of laughter, as when Sheridan, on such an occasion, opened his lips for the first time to say that "he liked currant jelly." For these unhappy men there are no intervals of social repose, no long silences fed by the mere feeling of sympathy or gently entertained by observation, no warm quietude in the mild liveries of green or brown, for the world has made up its mind that motley is their only wear, and teases them to jingle their bells forever.

But far worse is it when the professed wit is also by profession a writer, and finds himself obliged to coin for bread those jokes which, in the frolic exuberance of youth, he so easily coined for fun. We can conceive of no existence more cruel, so tormenting, and at the same time so dull. We hear that Hood was forever behindhand with his promises to publishers; no wonder! But when we hear that he, in consequence, lost a great part of the gains of his hard life, and was, as a result, hara.s.sed by other cares, we cannot mourn to lose him, if,

"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well;"

or if, as our deeper knowledge leads us to hope, he is now engaged in a better life, where his fancies shall take their natural place, and flicker like light on the surface of a profound and full stream flowing betwixt rich and peaceful sh.o.r.es, such as, no less than the drawbacks upon his earthly existence, are indicated in the following

SONNET.

The curse of Adam, the old curse of all, Though I inherit in this feverish life Of worldly toil, vain wishes, and hard strife, And fruitless thought in care's eternal thrall, Yet more sweet honey than of bitter gall I taste through thee, my Eva, my sweet wife.

Then what was Man's lost Paradise? how rife Of bliss, since love is with him in his fall!

Such as our own pure pa.s.sion still might frame Of this fair earth and its delightful bowers, If no fell sorrow, like the serpent, came To trail its venom o'er the sweetest flowers; But, O! as many and such tears are ours As only should be shed for guilt and shame.

In Hood, as in all true wits, the smile lightens on the verge of a tear.

True wit and humor show that exquisite sensibility to the relations of life, that fine perception as to slight tokens of its fearful, hopeless mysteries, which imply pathos to a still higher degree than mirth.

Hood knew and welcomed the dower which nature gave him at his birth, when he wrote thus:--

All things are touched with melancholy Born of the secret soul's mistrust, To feel her fair ethereal wings Weighed down with vile, degraded dust.

Even the bright extremes of joy Bring on conclusions of disgust, Like the sweet blossoms of the May, Whose fragrance ends in must.

O, give her, then, her tribute just, Her sighs and tears and musings holy; There is no music in the life That sounds with idiot laughter solely; There's not a string attuned to mirth, But has its chord in melancholy.

Hood was true to this vow of acceptance. He vowed to accept willingly the pains as well as joys of life for what they could teach. Therefore, years expanded and enlarged his sympathies, and gave to his lightest jokes an obvious harmony with a great moral design, not obtrusively obvious, but enough so to give a sweetness and permanent complacency to our laughter. Indeed, what is written in his gayer mood has affected us more, as spontaneous productions always do, than what he has written of late with grave design, and which has been so much lauded by men too obtuse to discern a latent meaning, or to believe in a good purpose unless they are formally told that it exists.

The later serious poems of Hood are well known; so are his jest books and novel. We have now in view to speak rather of a little volume of poems published by him, some years since, republished here, but never widely circulated.

When a book or a person comes to us in the best possible circ.u.mstances, we judge--not too favorably, for all that the book or person can suggest is a part of its fate, and what is not seen under the most favorable circ.u.mstances is never quite truly seen either as to promise or performance--but we form a judgment above what can be the average sense of the world in general as to its merits, which may be esteemed, after time enough has elapsed, a tolerably fair estimate of performance, though not of promise or suggestion.

We became acquainted with these poems in one of those country towns which would be called, abroad, the most provincial of the province. The inhabitants had lost the simplicity of farmers' habits, without gaining in its place the refinement, the variety, the enlargement of civic life.

Their industry had received little impulse from thought; their amus.e.m.e.nt was gossip. All men find amus.e.m.e.nt from gossip--literary, artistic, or social; but the degrees in it are almost infinite. They were at the bottom of the scale; they scrutinized their neighbors' characters and affairs incessantly, impertinently, and with minds unpurified by higher knowledge; consequently the bitter fruits of envy and calumny abounded.

In this atmosphere I was detained two months, and among people very uncongenial both to my tastes and notions of right. But I had a retreat of great beauty. The town lay on the bank of a n.o.ble river; behind it towered a high and rocky hill. Thither every afternoon went the lonely stranger, to await the fall of the sunset light on the opposite bank of the full and rapid stream. It fell like a smile of heavenly joy; the white sails on the stream glided along like angel thoughts; the town itself looked like a fair nest, whence virtue and happiness might soar with sweetest song. So looked the scene _from above_; and that hill was the scene of many an aspiration and many an effort to attain as high a point of view for the mental prospect, in the hope that little discrepancies, or what seemed so when on a level with them, might also, from above, be softened into beauty and found subservient to a n.o.ble design on the whole.

This town boasted few books, and the accident which threw Hood's poems in the way of the watcher from the hill, was a very fortunate one. They afforded a true companions.h.i.+p to hours which knew no other, and, perhaps, have since been overrated from a.s.sociation with what they answered to or suggested.

Yet there are surely pa.s.sages in them which ought to be generally known and highly prized. And if their highest value be for a few individuals with whom they are especially in concord, unlike the really great poems which bring something to all, yet those whom they please will be very much pleased.

Hood never became corrupted into a hack writer. This shows great strength under his circ.u.mstances. d.i.c.kens has fallen, and Sue is falling; for few men can sell themselves by inches without losing a cubit from their stature. But Hood resisted the danger. He never wrote when he had nothing to say, he stopped when he had done, and never hashed for a second meal old thoughts which had been drained of their choicest juices. His heart is truly human, tender, and brave. From the absurdities of human nature he argues the possibility of its perfection.

His black is admirably contrasted with his white, but his love has no converse of hate. His descriptions of nature, if not accurately or profoundly evidencing insight, are unstudied, fond, and reverential.

They are fine reveries about nature.

He has tried his powers on themes where he had great rivals--in the "Plea of the Midsummer Fairies," and "Hero and Leander." The latter is one of the finest subjects in the world, and one, too, which can never wear out as long as each mind shall have its separate ideal of what a meeting would be between two perfect lovers, in the full bloom of beauty and youth, under circ.u.mstances the most exalting to pa.s.sion, because the most trying, and with the most romantic accompaniments of scenery. There is room here for the finest expression of love and grief, for the wildest remonstrance against fate. Why are they made so lovely and so beloved? Why was a flower brought to such perfection, and then culled for no use? One of the older English writers has written an exquisite poem on this subject, painting a youthful pair, fitted to be not only a heaven but a world to one another. Hood had not power to paint or conceive such fulness of character; but, in a lesser style, he has written a fine poem. The best part of it, however, is the innocent cruelty and grief of the Sea Siren.

"Lycus the Centaur" is also a poem once read never to be forgotten. The hasty trot of the versification, unfit for any other theme, on this betokens well the frightened horse. Its mazy and bewildered imagery, with its countless glancings and glimpses, expressed powerfully the working of the Circean spell, while the note of human sadness, a yearning and condemned human love, thrills through the whole and gives it unity.

The Sonnets, "It is not death," &c., and that on Silence, are equally admirable. Whoever reads these poems will regard Hood as something more than a great wit,--as a great poet also.

To express this is our present aim, and therefore we shall leave to others, or another time, the retrospect of his comic writings. But having, on the late promptings of love for the departed, looked over these, we have been especially amused with the "Schoolmistress Abroad,"

which was new to us. Miss Crane, a "she Mentor, stiff as starch, formal as a Dutch ledge, sensitive as a daguerreotype, and so tall, thin, and upright, that supposing the Tree of Knowledge to have been a poplar, she was the very Dryad to have fitted it," was left, with a sister little better endowed with the pliancy and power of adaptation which the exigencies of this varied world-scene demand, in attendance upon a sick father, in a foreign inn, where she cannot make herself understood, because her French is not "French French, but English French," and no two things in nature or art can be more unlike. Now look at the position of the sisters.

"The younger, Miss Ruth, was somewhat less disconcerted. She had by her position the greater share in the active duties of Lebanon House, and under ordinary circ.u.mstances would not have been utterly at a loss what to do for the comfort or relief of her parent. But in every direction in which her instinct and habits would have prompted her to look, the _materials_ she sought were deficient. There was no easy chair--no fire to wheel it to--no cus.h.i.+on to shake up--no cupboard to go to--no female friend to consult--no Miss Parfitt--no cook--no John to send for the doctor--no English--no French--nothing but that dreadful 'Gefullig,' or 'Ja Wohl,' and the equally incomprehensible 'Gnadige Frau!'

"'Der herr,' said the German coachman, 'ist sehr krank,' (the gentleman is very sick.)

"The last word had occurred so frequently on the organ of the Schoolmistress, that it had acquired in her mind some important significance.

"'Ruth, what is krank?'

"'How should I know?' retorted Ruth, with an asperity apt to accompany intense excitement and perplexity. 'In English, it's a thing that helps to pull the bell. But look at papa--do help to support him--you're good for nothing.'

"'I am, indeed,' murmured poor Miss Priscilla, with a gentle shake of her head, and a low, slow sigh of acquiescence. Alas! as she ran over the catalogue of her accomplishments, the more she remembered what she _could_ do for her sick parent, the more helpless and useless she appeared. For instance, she could have embroidered him a night-cap--or knitted him a silk purse--or plaited him a guard-chain--or cut him out a watch-paper--or ornamented his braces with bead-work--or embroidered his waistcoat--or worked him a pair of slippers--or openworked his pocket handkerchief. She could even, if such an operation would have been comforting or salutary, have roughcasted him with sh.e.l.l-work--or coated him with red or black seals--or encrusted him with blue alum--or stuck him all over with colored wafers--or festooned him.

"But alas! what would it have availed her poor dear papa in the spasmodics, if she had even festooned him, from top to toe, with little rice-paper roses?"

The comments of the female chorus, as the author reads aloud the sorrows of Miss Crane, are droll as Hood's drollest. Who can say more?

So farewell, gentle, generous, inventive, genial, and most amusing friend. We thank thee for both tears and laughter; tears which were not heart-breaking, laughter which was never frivolous or unkind. In thy satire was no gall, in the sting of thy winged wit no venom, in the pathos of thy sorrow no enfeebling touch! Thou hadst faults as a writer, we know not whether as a man; but who cares to name or even to note them? Surely there is enough on the sunny side of the peach to feed us and make us bless the tree from which it fell.

LETTERS FROM A LANDSCAPE PAINTER.[5]

This is a very pleasing book, and if the "Essays of Summer Hours"

resemble it, we are not surprised at the favor with which they have been received, not only in this country, but in England.

The writer is, we believe, very young, and as these Essays have awakened in us a friendly expectation which he has time and talent to fulfil, we will, at this early hour, proffer our counsel on two points.

First. Avoid details, so directly personal, of emotion. A young and generous mind, seeing the deceit and cold reserve which so often palsy men who write, no less than those who act, may run into the opposite extreme. But frankness must be tempered by delicacy, or elevated into the region of poetry. You may tell the world at large what you please, if you make it of universal importance by transporting it into the field of general human interest. But your private griefs, merely _as_ yours, belong to yourself, your nearest friends, to Heaven and to nature. There is a limit set by good taste, or the sense of beauty, on such subjects, which each, who seeks, may find for himself.

Second. Be more sparing of your praise: above all, of its highest terms.

We should have a sense of mental as well as moral honor, which, while it makes us feel the baseness of uttering merely hasty and ignorant censure, will also forbid that hasty and extravagant praise which strict truth will not justify. A man of honor wishes to utter no word to which he cannot adhere. The offices of Poet--of Hero-wors.h.i.+p--are sacred, and he who has a heart to appreciate the excellent should call nothing excellent which falls short of being so. Leave yourself some incense worthy of the _best_; do not lavish it on the merely _good_. It is better to be too cool than extravagant in praise; and though mediocrity may be elated if it can draw to itself undue honors, true greatness shrinks from the least exaggeration of its claims. The truly great are too well aware how difficult is the attainment of excellence, what labors and sacrifices it requires, even from genius, either to flatter themselves as to their works, or to be otherwise than grieved at idolatry from others; and so, with best wishes, and a hope to meet again, we bid farewell to the "Landscape Painter."

BEETHOVEN.[6]

This book bears on its outside the t.i.tle, "Life of Beethoven, by Moscheles." It is really only a translation of Schindler, and it seems quite unfair to bring Moscheles so much into the foreground, merely because his name is celebrated in England. He has only contributed a few notes and a short introduction, giving a most pleasing account of his own devotion to the Master. Schindler was the trusty friend of Beethoven, and one whom he himself elected to write his biography.