Society and solitude: Twelve chapters
life and manners and motives the novel still is! Life lies about us
dumb; the day, as we know it, has not yet found a tongue. These stories
are to the plots of real life what the figures in “La Belle Assemblée,”
which represent the fashion of the month, are to portraits. But the
novel will find the way to our interiors one day, and will not always
be the novel of costume merely. I do not think it inoperative now. So
much novel-reading cannot leave the young men and maidens untouched;
and doubtless it gives some ideal dignity to the day. The young study
noble behavior; and as the player in “Consuelo” insists that he and his
colleagues on the boards have taught princes the fine etiquette and
strokes of grace and dignity which they practise with so much effect
in their villas and among their dependents, so I often see traces
of the Scotch or the French novel in the courtesy and brilliancy of
young midshipmen, collegians, and clerks. Indeed, when one observes
how ill and ugly people make their loves and quarrels, ’tis pity they
should not read novels a little more, to import the fine generosities,
and the clear, firm conduct, which are as becoming in the unions and
separations which love effects under shingle roofs as in palaces and
among illustrious personages.
In novels the most serious questions are beginning to be discussed.
What made the popularity of “Jane Eyre,” but that a central question
was answered in some sort? The question there answered in regard to a
vicious marriage will always be treated according to the habit of the
party. A person of commanding individualism will answer it as Rochester
does,--as Cleopatra, as Milton, as George Sand do,--magnifying the
exception into a rule, dwarfing the world into an exception. A person
of less courage, that is, of less constitution, will answer as the
heroine does,--giving way to fate, to conventionalism, to the actual
state and doings of men and women.
For the most part, our novel-reading is a passion for results. We
admire parks, and high-born beauties, and the homage of drawing-rooms,
and parliaments. They make us sceptical, by giving prominence to
wealth and social position.
I remember when some peering eyes of boys discovered that the oranges
hanging on the boughs of an orange-tree in a gay piazza were tied to
the twigs by thread. I fear ’tis so with the novelist’s prosperities.
Nature has a magic by which she fits the man to his fortunes, by
making them the fruit of his character. But the novelist plucks this
event here, and that fortune there, and ties them rashly to his
figures, to tickle the fancy of his readers with a cloying success,
or scare them with shocks of tragedy. And so, on the whole, ’tis a
juggle. We are cheated into laughter or wonder by feats which only
oddly combine acts that we do every day. There is no new element, no
power, no furtherance. ’Tis only confectionery, not the raising of new
corn. Great is the poverty of their inventions. _She was beautiful,
and he fell in love._ Money, and killing, and the Wandering Jew, and
persuading the lover that his mistress is betrothed to another,--these
are the main-springs: new names, but no new qualities in the men and
women. Hence the vain endeavor to keep any bit of this fairy gold,
which has rolled like a brook through our hands. A thousand thoughts
awoke; great rainbows seemed to span the sky,--a morning among the
mountains;--but we close the book, and not a ray remains in the memory
of evening. But this passion for romance, and this disappointment,
show how much we need real elevations and pure poetry: that which shall
show us, in morning and night, in stars and mountains, and in all the
plight and circumstance of men, the analogons of our own thoughts, and
a like impression made by a just book and by the face of Nature.
If our times are sterile in genius, we must cheer us with books of
rich and believing men who had atmosphere and amplitude about them.
Every good fable, every mythology, every biography from a religious
age, every passage of love, and even philosophy and science, when
they proceed from an intellectual integrity, and are not detached
and critical, have the imaginative element. The Greek fables, the
Persian history (Firdusi), the “Younger Edda” of the Scandinavians,
the “Chronicle of the Cid,” the poem of Dante, the Sonnets of Michel
Angelo, the English drama of Shakspeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and
Ford, and even the prose of Bacon and Milton,--in our time, the Ode
of Wordsworth, and the poems and the prose of Goethe, have this
enlargement, and inspire hope and generous attempts.
There is no room left,--and yet I might as well not have begun as
to leave out a class of books which are the best: I mean the Bibles
of the world, or the sacred books of each nation, which express for
each the supreme result of their experience. After the Hebrew and
Greek Scriptures, which constitute the sacred books of Christendom,
these are, the Desatir of the Persians, and the Zoroastrian Oracles;
the Vedas and Laws of Menu; the Upanishads, the Vishnu Purana, the
Bhagvat Geeta, of the Hindoos; the books of the Buddhists; the
“Chinese Classic,” of four books, containing the wisdom of Confucius
and Mencius. Also such other books as have acquired a semi-canonical
authority in the world, as expressing the highest sentiment and hope of
nations. Such are the “Hermes Trismegistus,” pretending to be Egyptian
remains; the “Sentences” of Epictetus; of Marcus Antoninus; the “Vishnu
Sarma” of the Hindoos; the “Gulistan” of Saadi; the “Imitation of
Christ,” of Thomas à Kempis; and the “Thoughts” of Pascal.
All these books are the majestic expressions of the universal
conscience, and are more to our daily purpose than this year’s almanac
or this day’s newspaper. But they are for the closet, and to be read
on the bended knee. Their communications are not to be given or
taken with the lips and the end of the tongue, but out of the glow
of the cheek, and with the throbbing heart. Friendship should give
and take, solitude and time brood and ripen, heroes absorb and enact
them. They are not to be held by letters printed on a page, but are
living characters translatable into every tongue and form of life.
I read them on lichens and bark; I watch them on waves on the beach;
they fly in birds, they creep in worms; I detect them in laughter and
blushes and eye-sparkles of men and women. These are Scriptures which
the missionary might well carry over prairie, desert, and ocean, to
Siberia, Japan, Timbuctoo. Yet he will find that the spirit which is in
them journeys faster than he, and greets him on his arrival,--was there
already long before him. The missionary must be carried by it, and find
it there, or he goes in vain. Is there any geography in these things?
We call them Asiatic, we call them primeval; but perhaps that is only
optical; for Nature is always equal to herself, and there are as good
eyes and ears now in the planet as ever were. Only these ejaculations
of the soul are uttered one or a few at a time, at long intervals, and
it takes millenniums to make a Bible.
These are a few of the books which the old and the later times have
yielded us, which will reward the time spent on them. In comparing the
number of good books with the shortness of life, many might well be
read by proxy, if we had good proxies; and it would be well for sincere
young men to borrow a hint from the French Institute and the British
Association, and, as they divide the whole body into sections, each of
which sits upon and reports of certain matters confided to it, so let
each scholar associate himself to such persons as he can rely on, in
a literary club, in which each shall undertake a single work or series
for which he is qualified. For example, how attractive is the whole
literature of the “Roman de la Rose,” the “Fabliaux,” and the _gaie
science_ of the French Troubadours! Yet who in Boston has time for
that? But one of our company shall undertake it, shall study and master
it, and shall report on it, as under oath; shall give us the sincere
result, as it lies in his mind, adding nothing, keeping nothing back.
Another member, meantime, shall as honestly search, sift, and as truly
report, on British mythology, the Round Table, the histories of Brut,
Merlin, and Welsh poetry; a third on the Saxon Chronicles, Robert of
Gloucester, and William of Malmesbury; a fourth, on Mysteries, Early
Drama, “Gesta Romanorum,” Collier, and Dyce, and the Camden Society.
Each shall give us his grains of gold, after the washing; and every
other shall then decide whether this is a book indispensable to him
also.
CLUBS.
CLUBS.
We are delicate machines, and require nice treatment to get from us
the maximum of power and pleasure. We need tonics, but must have those
that cost little or no reaction. The flame of life burns too fast in
pure oxygen, and nature has tempered the air with nitrogen. So thought
is the native air of the mind, yet pure it is a poison to our mixed
constitution, and soon burns up the bone-house of man, unless tempered
with affection and coarse practice in the material world. Varied
foods, climates, beautiful objects,--and especially the alternation of
a large variety of objects--are the necessity of this exigent system
of ours. But our tonics, our luxuries, are force-pumps which exhaust
the strength they pretend to supply; and of all the cordials known to
us, the best, safest, and most exhilarating, with the least harm, is
society; and every healthy and efficient mind passes a large part of
life in the company most easy to him.
We seek society with very different aims, and the staple of
conversation is widely unlike in its circles. Sometimes it is
facts,--running from those of daily necessity to the last results of
science,--and has all degrees of importance; sometimes it is love, and
makes the balm of our early and of our latest days; sometimes it is
thought, as from a person who is a mind only; sometimes a singing, as
if the heart poured out all like a bird; sometimes experience. With
some men it is a debate; at the approach of a dispute they neigh like
horses. Unless there be an argument, they think nothing is doing.
Some talkers excel in the precision with which they formulate their
thoughts, so that you get from them somewhat to remember; others lay
criticism asleep by a charm. Especially women use words that are not
words,--as steps in a dance are not steps,--but reproduce the genius
of that they speak of; as the sound of some bells makes us think of
the bell merely, whilst the church-chimes in the distance bring the
church and its serious memories before us. Opinions are accidental in
people,--have a poverty-stricken air. A man valuing himself as the
organ of this or that dogma is a dull companion enough; but opinion
native to the speaker is sweet and refreshing, and inseparable from his
image. Neither do we by any means always go to people for conversation.
How often to say nothing,--and yet must go; as a child will long for
his companions, but among them plays by himself. ’Tis only presence
which we want. But one thing is certain,--at some rate, intercourse we
must have. The experience of retired men is positive,--that we lose our
days and are barren of thought for want of some person to talk with.
The understanding can no more empty itself by its own action than can a
deal box.
The clergyman walks from house to house all day all the year to give
people the comfort of good talk. The physician helps them mainly in the
same way, by healthy talk giving a right tone to the patient’s mind.
The dinner, the walk, the fireside, all have that for their main end.
See how Nature has secured the communication of knowledge. ’Tis certain