Complete Prose Works
all lands like a divine thread, stringing all beads, pebbles or gold,
from God and the soul, and like God's dynamics and sunshine illustrating
all and having reference to all. From anything like a cosmical point of
view, the entirety of imaginative literature's themes and results as
we get them to-day seems painfully narrow. All that has been put in
statement, tremendous as it is, what is it compared with the vast fields
and values and varieties left unreap'd? Of our own country, the splendid
races North or South, and especially of the Western and Pacific regions,
it sometimes seems to me their myriad noblest Homeric and Biblic
elements are all untouch'd, left as if ashamed of, and only certain very
minor occasional _delirium tremens_ glints studiously sought and put in
print, in short tales, "poetry" or books.
I give these speculations, or notions, in all their audacity, for the
comfort of thousands--perhaps a majority of ardent minds, women's and
young men's--who stand in awe and despair before the immensity of suns
and stars already in the firmament. Even in the Iliad and Shakspere
there is (is there not?) a certain humiliation produced to us by the
absorption of them, unless we sound in equality, or above them,
the songs due our own democratic era and surroundings, and the full
assertion of ourselves. And in vain (such is my opinion) will
America seek successfully to tune any superb national song unless the
heart-strings of the people start it from their own breasts--to be
return'd and echoed there again.
SHIP AHOY
In dreams I was a ship, and sail'd the boundless seas,
Sailing and ever sailing--all seas and into every port, or out
upon the offing,
Saluting, cheerily hailing each mate, met or pass'd, little or big,
"Ship ahoy!" thro' trumpet or by voice--if nothing more, some
friendly merry word at least,
For companionship and good will for ever to all and each.
FOR QUEEN VICTORIA'S BIRTHDAY
_An American arbutus bunch to be put in a little vase on the royal
breakfast table May 24th, 1890_.
Lady, accept a birth-day thought--haply an idle gift and token, Right
from the scented soil's May-utterance here, (Smelling of countless
blessings, prayers, and old-time thanks,)[45] A bunch of white and pink
arbutus, silent, spicy, shy, From Hudson's, Delaware's, or Potomac's
woody banks.
Note:
[45] NOTE.--Very little, as we Americans stand this day, with our
sixty-five or seventy millions of population, an immense surplus in the
treasury, and all that actual power or reserve power (land and sea) so
dear to nations--very little I say do we realize that curious crawling
national shudder when the "Trent affair" promis'd to bring upon us a war
with Great Britain--follow'd unquestionably, as that war would have, by
recognition of the Southern Confederacy from all the leading European
nations. It is now certain that all this then inevitable train of
calamity hung on arrogant and peremptory phrases in the prepared and
written missive of the British Minister, to America, which the Queen
(and Prince Albert latent) positively and promptly cancell'd; and which
her firm attitude did alone actually erase and leave out, against all
the other official prestige and Court of St. James's. On such minor and
personal incidents (so to call them,) often depend the great growths and
turns of civilization. This moment of a woman and a queen surely swung
the grandest oscillation of modern history's pendulum. Many sayings and
doings of that period, from foreign potentates and powers, might well be
dropt in oblivion by America--but never _this_, if I could have my way.
W. W.
AMERICAN NATIONAL LITERATURE
_Is there any such thing--or can there ever be?_
So you want an essay about American National Literature, (tremendous
and fearful subject!) do you?[46] Well, if you will let me put down some
melanged cogitations regarding the matter, hap-hazard, and from my own
points of view, I will try. Horace Greeley wrote a book named "Hints
toward Reforms," and the title-line was consider'd the best part of all.
In the present case I will give a few thoughts and suggestions, of good
and ambitious intent enough anyhow--first reiterating the question right
out plainly: American National Literature--is there distinctively
any such thing, or can there ever be? First to me comes an almost
indescribably august form, the People, with varied typical shapes and
attitudes-then the divine mirror, Literature.
As things are, probably no more puzzling question ever offer'd itself
than (going back to old Nile for a trope,) What bread-seeds of printed
mentality shall we cast upon America's waters, to grow and return after
many days? Is there for the future authorship of the United States any
better way than submission to the teeming facts, events, activities, and
importations already vital through and beneath them all? I have often
ponder'd it, and felt myself disposed to let it go at that. Indeed, are
not those facts and activities and importations potent and certain to
fulfil themselves all through our Commonwealth, irrespective of any
attempt from individual guidance? But allowing all, and even at that,
a good part of the matter being honest discussion, examination, and
earnest personal presentation, we may even for sanitary exercise and
contact plunge boldly into the spread of the many waves and cross-tides,
as follows. Or, to change the figure, I will present my varied little
collation (what is our Country itself but an infinitely vast and varied
collation?) in the hope that the show itself indicates a duty getting
more and more incumbent every day.
In general, civilization's totality or real representative National
Literature formates itself (like language, or "the weather") not
from two or three influences, however important, nor from any learned
syllabus, or criticism, or what ought to be, nor from any minds
or advice of toploftical quarters--and indeed not at all from the
influences and ways ostensibly supposed (though they too are adopted,
after a sort)--but slowly, slowly, curiously, from many more and more,
deeper mixings and siftings (especially in America) and generations
and years and races, and what largely appears to be chance--but is not
chance at all. First of all, for future National Literature in America,
New England (the technically moral and schoolmaster region, as a cynical
fellow I know calls it) and the three or four great Atlantic-coast
cities, highly as they to-day suppose they dominate the whole, will
have to haul in their horns. _Ensemble_ is the tap-root of National
Literature. America is become already a huge world of peoples, rounded
and orbic climates, idiocrasies, and geographies--forty-four Nations
curiously and irresistibly blent and aggregated in ONE NATION, with one
imperial language, and one unitary set of social and legal standards
over all--and (I predict) a yet to be National Literature. (In my mind
this last, if it ever comes, is to prove grander and more important for
the Commonwealth than its politics and material wealth and trade, vast
and indispensable as those are.)
Think a moment what must, beyond peradventure, be the real permanent
sub-bases, or lack of them. Books profoundly considered show a great
nation more than anything else--more than laws or manners. (This is,
of course, probably the deep-down meaning of that well-buried but
ever-vital platitude, Let me sing the people's songs, and I don't care
who makes their laws.) Books too reflect humanity _en masse_, and surely
show them splendidly, or the reverse, and prove or celebrate their
prevalent traits (these last the main things.) Homer grew out of and
has held the ages, and holds to-day, by the universal admiration
for personal prowess, courage, rankness, _amour propre_, leadership,
inherent in the whole human race. Shakspere concentrates the brilliancy
of the centuries of feudalism on the proud personalities they produced,
and paints the amorous passion. The books of the Bible stand for the
final superiority of devout emotions over the rest, and of religious
adoration, and ultimate absolute justice, more powerful than haughtiest
kings or millionaires or majorities.
What the United States are working out and establishing needs
imperatively the connivance of something subtler than ballots and
legislators. The Goethean theory and lesson (if I may briefly state
it so) of the exclusive sufficiency of artistic, scientific, literary
equipment to the character, irrespective of any strong claims of the
political ties of nation, state, or city, could have answer'd under the
conventionality and pettiness of Weimar, or the Germany, or even Europe,
of those times; but it will not do for America to-day at all. We have
not only to exploit our own theory above any that has preceded us, but
we have entirely different, and deeper-rooted, and infinitely broader
themes.
When I have had a chance to see and observe a sufficient crowd of
American boys or maturer youths or well-grown men, all the States, as in
my experiences in the secession war among the soldiers, or west,
east, north, or south, or my wanderings and loiterings through cities
(especially New York and in Washington,) I have invariably found coming
to the front three prevailing personal traits, to be named here for
brevity's sake under the heads Good-Nature, Decorum, and Intelligence.
(I make Good-Nature first, as it deserves to be--it is a splendid
resultant of all the rest, like health or fine weather.) Essentially
these lead the inherent list of the high average personal born and bred
qualities of the young fellows everywhere through the United States,
as any sharp observer can find out for himself. Surely these make the
vertebral stock of superbest and noblest nations! May the destinies show
it so forthcoming. I mainly confide the whole future of our Commonwealth
to the fact of these three bases. Need I say I demand the same in the
elements and spirit and fruitage of National Literature?
Another, perhaps a born root or branch, comes under the words _Noblesse
Oblige_, even for a national rule or motto. My opinion is that this
foregoing phrase, and its spirit, should influence and permeate official
America and its representatives in Congress, the Executive Departments,
the Presidency, and the individual States--should be one of their
chiefest mottoes, and be carried out practically. (I got the idea from
my dear friend the democratic Englishwoman, Mrs. Anne Gilchrist, now
dead. "The beautiful words _Noblesse Oblige_," said she to me once,
"are not best for some develop'd gentleman or lord, but some rich and
develop'd nation--and especially for your America.")
Then another and very grave point (for this discussion is deep,
deep--not for trifles, or pretty seemings.) I am not sure but the
establish'd and old (and superb and profound, and, one may say, needed
as old) conception of Deity as mainly of moral constituency (goodness,
purity, sinlessness, &c.) has been undermined by nineteenth-century
ideas and science. What does this immense and almost abnormal
development of Philanthropy mean among the moderns? One doubts if there
ever will come a day when the moral laws and moral standards will be
supplanted as over all: while time proceeds (I find it so myself) they
will probably be intrench'd deeper and expanded wider. Then the expanded
scientific and democratic and truly philosophic and poetic quality
of modernism demands a Deific identity and scope superior to all
limitations, and essentially including just as well the so-call'd
evil and crime and criminals--all the malformations, the defective and
abortions of the universe.
Sometimes the bulk of the common people (who are far more 'cute than the