AUTUMN. Now cometh Autumn, lovelier than Spring, Making the sunny and transparent leaves UPON a leaf-strewn walk, I wander on amid the sparkling dews; Where Autumn hangs, upon each frost-gemmed stalk, Where the tall fox-gloves shake Their loose bells to the wind, and each sweet flower Where the cloud-shadows pass With noiseless speed by lonely lake and rill, Where the clear stream steals on To find each downward-gazing flower has gone That canopied my way? Where is the balmy breeze That fanned so late my brow? the sweet south-west, My raptured spirit blest? Where are the notes of spring? Yet the brown bee still hums his quiet tune, The thin transparent leaves, Like flakes of amber, quiver in the light; While Autumn round her silver fret-work weaves Oh, Autumn, thou art blest! My bosom heaves with breathless rapture here, Sweet Sabbath of the year! R. W. W. LITERARY NOTICES. Poems and Prose Writings. By Richard H. Dana. Mr. Dana belongs to that class of poets, whom we should choose to criticise with profound humility. Whatever may be said of the uniform and eternal principles of taste, running through all hearts and binding all ages and nations in a consenting attraction to similar forms of the sublime and beautiful, we must believe, that, excepting in a few general principles, mankind can never agree as to what they relish and admire. They are divided into sections; they have parted the field of the imagination into different inclosures; and often what is a precious flower in one man's garden, beautiful for its color, medicinal in its fragrance, is, in another's, a worthless weed, to be rooted from the soil, and thrown, in detestation, away. In plain English, we are very inadequate judges of each other's mental pleasures; there is certainly great meaning in the proverb, that there is no disputing about tastes; and we have often thought, that when a reviewer or critic has been laying down general rules, as he supposed, he has only been giving us the peculiar impressions of his own mind. Should it be granted that the elements of taste are the same in all minds, yet they are modified so much in each individual by accidental causes-grief, joy, prosperity, adversity, education, morals-that it is impossible to reason on them as if they were alike. We have heard some modest musicians say, that they could sing well enough to do their own singing; and perhaps it would be well if every critic would say that he can criticise enough to do his own criticism. There is something of presumption in imputing our own impressions to all mankind. Dr. Johnson was a great critic; and the Lives of the Poets is one of the most attractive books that we ever read. But there are some decisions in that book, laid down with all the oracular importance of general rules, which, we suspect, never had a wider circle of influence than the very singular mind, that produced them. Thus, blank verse must always be inflated prose; a pastoral must always be a poor vulgar thing; religion must be a subject wholly unfit for poetry; and an epitaph, with whatever pathos and discrimination written, is good for nothing unless it contains all the vowels and consonants of the dead man's name. But pray, from what ocean of universal feeling and experience did this profound adventurer fish up these important principles? Why, from the pool and puddle of his own mind? Happening to be a tory, he hated Milton; and, hating Milton, he hated blank verse; and, hating blank verse, he hated all who wrote in blank verse; and hence comes the great critical law. He was near-sighted; and hence rural descriptions were all hollow, and of course Pastorals. As he was an enormous eater, he had the crapula; and hence was gloomy; and hence irritable; hence could not bear to think of religion; and hence he disliked all religious poetry. Why an epitaph, without a name, must be worthless to all readers, it may be difficult to conjecture; it doubtless arises from some capricious feeling; perhaps some incident, by which he was mortified, which no one has recorded, and he himself could never trace.* But it is easy to see how the most fickle passions of the individual pass from the fancy to the judgement, and become general laws. Such are the depths of human wisdom! Such are the foundations of the authorities we adore! Mr. Dana belongs to a peculiar school of poets; and to that school we belong not; and hence we say that, in reviewing his poetry, we wish to speak with profound humility. In the departments of genius there is a kind of intellectual freemasonry, which none but the entered craftsmen can understand, and which we fully believe no literary Capt. Morgan will ever reveal. For example, will any apostate brother ever be buried at low water mark, for putting the secrets of the following lines into intelligible prose? The light Shed in by God, shall open to thy sight Vast powers of being; regions long untrod And faculties come forth; and put to shame Thy vain and curious reasonings. Whence they came Along its coming waves; and thou shalt see Factitious Life, p. 81. The lines are not quoted for the purpose of vituperation; we freely accord to them the praise of being as good as many of Byron's and half of Coleridge's. But they never can be relished by mankind, for they are spoken to the initiated few. Πολλά μοι ὑπ' αγκῶ νος ὠκέα Βέλη Ενδον ἐντὶ φαρέτρας Φωνᾶντα συνετοῖσιν· ἐς Δὲ τὸ πᾶν, ἑρμηνέων Χατίζει. Pindar, 2d Olympic. But something must be said; and, though we should esteem it presumption to speak for all the world, we proceed, with modest caution, to deliver our own impressions; and first impressions, too; for we have another impression that our first impressions may be reversed by the impressions of a later perusal. We begin with his faults as they strike us; to point out which, for a reviewer, is both occupation and joy. First, then, we begin with a fault which lies on the surface. Mr. Dana's poetry, as it strikes us, is like a great green water-melon, brought in from the gardens of Roxbury or Brookline, with a pumpkinvine twisted around it; you must clear away the incumbrance, and cut through the cold hard skin, before you can find the red slices and black seeds, which make your very mouth water to see them. In plain * Perhaps somebody read to him a nameless epitaph, and asked him to guess, like a Yankee, who it was for, and, like a Yankee, he guessed wrong; and never got over the pangs of his pride. words, his diction is harsh; his lines are too much broken; and an idle reader (and such are all readers of poetry) is tempted to throw away the book before he has tasted one of its beauties. Our author dislikes the school of Pope so much, that he avoids the structure of making the sense close with the couplet, with almost the same uniformity, that Pope's imitators have copied it. Hence we have continually central closes and broken lines, which may be introduced, with advantage, for variety's sake; but, when constantly used, make the lines roll like truck-wheels over the pavements. Besides, there is some little affectation in this constant structure; it is not only error but labored error. This repulsive harshness is a misfortune; for a poet wishes to strike at once. He must reach the heart through the ear. Mr. Dana's poetry is a garden, surrounded by a thorny fence, and there is no graveled walk or gate to enter it; you must hazard some scratches to enjoy its shady walks and recondite streams. A lawyer, perhaps, in teaching his science, has a right to say that his pupil "will be disappointed if he looks for entertainment without the expense of attention;" but it would be hazardous for a poet to say this. His readers are willing to be put to very little expense. In short, the difference between poetry and the more lucrative walks of learning is like the difference, with which we pursue the more precious ores and a flower; we are willing to go down into the mine for the one, in defiance of all its damps and dangers; but the other must bloom on the surface. Connected with this fault is another, not less embarrassing to the lackadaisical reader, who loves to run over the pages of a new poet, in a few hours, reclining on a sofa; we allude to the very rapid manner in which the stream of the narrative generally flows. If the reader takes a nap or a nod in any of Mr. Dana's tales, in prose or verse, it is like a nap in a steam-boat, you have passed over unsounded depths, and have reached new scenes before you awake. He claims an agonizing attention from all his readers, for every moment of the time. He is certainly one of the worst authors to amplify and develop an idea that we have ever perused. This, perhaps, it will be said, is a part of his power. It is so. But it is rather provoking to be called to watch, with minute attention, the little links of his slender chain, as if you were studying Euclid; and to find the whole thread of the story broken, because you have slumbered over half a line. It was not until the second perusal of the Buccaneer, that we discovered what the SpectreHorse had to do with the horrid visions of Matthew Lee; nor should we have ever discovered that the Spanish lady, who was murdered, fled from Spain in the time of Wellington's wars, by the following lines : VOL. V. A sound is in the Pyrenees! Whirling and dark, comes roaring down On field and vineyard, thick and red it stood. And wrath and terror shake the land; Awake ye, Merlin! Hear the shout from Spain! 42 So in the story of Tom Thornton, we have some important incidents despatched in a few words, which Richardson would have spread out over as many chapters. "The morning came and he thought of taking an eternal farewell, and the like. He lingered, and Mrs. Henley's carriage drove by. There was a familiar nod, and a smile, and his resolutions were again gone with the wind. That night he played, and lost, and grew angry almost to madness. Then came a duel. He was wounded, and called a man of honor." We must say that Mr. Dana is the only writer of fictitious narratives who moves too fast for us. His speed is worse than that of the cars on the Liverpool rail-way. Shak But his greatest fault arises from his always writing to his own ideal; he seems to impute his own musings and meditations to all mankind; and writes not only from his own genius but to his own taste. speare dipped his pen in the hearts of all the characters, which the world ever exhibited; but Dana dips his pen always in his own; and his mind moves not in unison with our whole species, but with a section of our race. It is the misfortune of a peculiar man that he is never conscious of his own idiosyncrasies; but he thinks all mankind are, or ought to be, just like himself. Now, we can assure this author, that, in the octave of notes, through which his heart and imagination move, half of them, at least, the majority of men will not respond to ; and his semi-tones very few will understand. His mind is sensitive, imaginative; prone to the indefinite and mystical; fond of the deeper tones and terrible graces; and loving the ideal images of its own creation with a rapture, in which the sons of labor and business cannot and ought not to join. His imagination delights to prowl in wildernesses; descend into tombs; ride on the waves, when lashed into foam; hear unearthly sounds, and see unearthly objects; and to sup full of those banquets of horror, from which unexercised minds turn away in fear, or behold with a shuddering at least equal to the delight. For such scenes, and the deep dark passions that befit them, he has such a fond partiality that he copies them too much. He has but one model, and that not a very healthful one. Mr. Dana is not the man after Shakspeare's own heart. It is remarkable of Shakspeare, that though he can rouse us with all the horrors of troubled description, yet he reserves these terrible graces for great occasions. Lady Macbeth walks in her sleep; but it is from crimes which might disturb the most obdurate mind. But Dana's characters are of that quickened sensibility that every joy is rapture; every trouble, agony; every house, a paradise; and every cavern, a tomb. The morality which he teaches, the secret lesson which runs through every page of his verse and prose, is, that men ought to have a keener sensibility than what now belongs to common mortals. We doubt, however, whether peopling the world with these delicate souls, these men of feeling, would promote the substantial felicity of this world beneath the moon. Though there may be truth in what he has said, To flee from sorrow and alone to keep The cup of pleasure. Think not, then, to spare Thyself all sorrow, yet in joy to share. Factitious Life, p. 71. |