Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.
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 circumstances,
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
circumstances 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 amusement
was gossip. All men find amusement 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 noble 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 noble
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 companionship to hours which knew no other, and,
perhaps, have since been overrated from association with what they
answered to or suggested.
Yet there are surely passages 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 circumstances. Dickens 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 circumstances the most exalting to passion,
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 circumstances 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 cushion 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 shell-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-worship--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