No More Learning

He had more than his share of the shrewd
native humor, and therefore the loose jest-books of two centuries
have been ransacked for anecdotes to be attributed to him. He
was a great and powerful lover of mankind, especially of those
not favored by fortune. One night he had a dream, which he
repeated the next morning to the writer of these lines, which
quaintly illustrates his unpretending and kindly democracy.
was in some great assembly; the people made a lane to let him
"He is a common-looking fellow," some one said. Lincoln
in his dream turned to his critic and replied in his Quaker phrase,
"Friend, the Lord prefers common-looking people; that is why
he made so many of them. " He that abases himself shall be
exalted. Because Lincoln kept himself in such constant sympathy
with the common people, whom he respected too highly to flatter
or mislead, he was rewarded by a reverence and a love hardly
ever given to a human being. Among the humble working
people of the South whom he had made free, this veneration
and affection easily passed into the supernatural. At a religious
meeting among the negroes of the Sea Islands a young man
expressed the wish that he might see Lincoln. A gray-headed
negro rebuked the rash aspiration: "No man see Linkum. Lin-
kum walk as Jesus walk; no man see Linkum. ”
pass.
But leaving aside these fables, which are a natural enough
expression of a popular awe and love, it seems to us that no
more just estimate of Lincoln's relation to his time has ever been
made, nor perhaps ever will be, than that uttered by one of the
wisest and most American of thinkers, Ralph Waldo Emerson, a
few days after the assassination. We cannot forbear quoting a
few words of this remarkable discourse, which shows how Lin-
coln seemed to the greatest of his contemporaries:-
――
"A plain man of the people, an extraordinary fortune attended.
him. Lord Bacon says, 'Manifest virtues procure reputation; occult
ones fortune. ' . . . His occupying the chair of State was a triumph
of the good sense of mankind and of the public conscience.
He grew according to the need; his mind mastered the problem of


## p. 7101 (#499) ###########################################

JOHN HAY
7101
the day; and as the problem grew, so did his comprehension of it.
Rarely was a man so fitted to the event.
It cannot be said
that there is any exaggeration of his worth. If ever a man was
fairly tested, he was. There was no lack of resistance, nor of slan-
der, nor of ridicule.
Then what an occasion was the whirl-
wind of the war! Here was no place for holiday magistrate, nor
fair-weather sailor; the new pilot was hurried to the helm in a tor-
nado. In four years—four years of battle days - his endurance, his
fertility of resources, his magnanimity, were sorely tried and never
found wanting. There by his courage, his justice, his even temper,
his fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood a heroic figure in the centre
of a heroic epoch. He is the true history of the American people in
his time; the true representative of this continent-father of his
country; the pulse of twenty millions throbbing in his heart, the
thought of their minds articulated by his tongue. "
·
The quick instinct by which the world recognized him even
at the moment of his death as one of its greatest men, was not
deceived. It has been confirmed by the sober thought of a
quarter of a century. The writers of each nation compare him
with their first popular hero. The French find points of resem-
blance in him to Henry IV. ; the Dutch liken him to William of
Orange: the cruel stroke of murder and treason by which all
three perished in the height of their power naturally suggests the
comparison, which is strangely justified in both cases, though
the two princes were so widely different in character. Lincoln
had the wit, the bonhomie, the keen practical insight into affairs,
of the Béarnais; and the tyrannous moral sense, the wide com-
prehension, the heroic patience of the Dutch patriot, whose motto
might have served equally well for the American President-
"Sævis tranquillus in undis. " European historians speak of him
in words reserved for the most illustrious names. Merle d'Au-
bigné says, "The name of Lincoln will remain one of the great-
est that history has to inscribe on its annals. " Henri Martin
predicts nothing less than a universal apotheosis: "This man
will stand out in the traditions of his country and the world as
an incarnation of the people, and of modern democracy itself. "
Emilio Castelar, in an oration against slavery in the Spanish
Cortes, called him "humblest of the humble before his con-
science, greatest of the great before history. "
In this country, where millions still live who were his con-
temporaries, and thousands who knew him personally; where the
-


## p. 7102 (#500) ###########################################

7102
JOHN HAY
envies and jealousies which dog the footsteps of success still
linger in the hearts of a few; where journals still exist that
loaded his name for four years with daily calumny, and writers
of memoirs vainly try to make themselves important by belittling
him, his fame has become as universal as the air, as deeply
rooted as the hills. The faint discords are not heard in the wide
chorus that hails him second to none and equaled by Washing-
ton alone. The eulogies of him form a special literature. Preach-
ers, poets, soldiers, and statesmen employ the same phrases of
unconditional love and reverence. Men speaking with the author-
ity of fame use unqualified superlatives. Lowell in an immortal
ode calls him "new birth of our new soil, the first American. "
General Sherman says, "Of all the men I ever met, he seemed
to possess more of the elements of greatness, combined with
goodness, than any other. " General Grant, after having met the
rulers of almost every civilized country on earth, said Lincoln
impressed him as the greatest intellectual force with which he
had ever come in contact.
―――――
He is spoken of with scarcely less of enthusiasm by the more
generous and liberal spirits among those who revolted against
his election and were vanquished by his power. General Long-
street calls him "the greatest man of Rebellion times, the one
matchless among forty millions for the peculiar difficulties of the
period. " An eminent Southern orator, referring to our mixed
Northern and Southern ancestry, says: "From the union of those
colonists, from the straightening of their purposes and the cross-
ing of their blood, slowly perfecting through a century, came he
who stands as the first typical American, the first who compre-
hended within himself all the strength and gentleness, all the
majesty and grace of this republic - Abraham Lincoln. "
It is not difficult to perceive the basis of this sudden and
world-wide fame, nor rash to predict its indefinite duration.
There are two classes of men whose names are more enduring
than any monument: the great writers, and the men of great
achievement, the founders of States, the conquerors. Lincoln
has the singular fortune to belong to both these categories; upon
these broad and stable foundations his renown is securely built.
Nothing would have more amazed him while he lived than to
hear himself called a man of letters; but this age has produced
few greater writers. We are only recording here the judgment
of his peers.
Emerson ranks him with sop and Pilpay, in his


## p. 7103 (#501) ###########################################

JOHN HAY
7103
lighter moods, and says: "The weight and penetration of many
passages in his letters, messages, and speeches, hidden now by
the very closeness of their application to the moment, are des-
tined to a wide fame. What pregnant definitions, what unerring
common-sense, what foresight, and on great occasions what lofty,
and more than national, what human tone! His brief speech at
Gettysburg will not easily be surpassed by words on any recorded
occasion. "
His style extorted the high praise of French Academicians;
Montalembert commended it as a model for the imitation of
princes. Many of his phrases form part of the common speech
of mankind. It is true that in his writings the range of sub-
jects is not great; he is concerned chiefly with the political prob-
lems of the time, and the moral considerations involved in them.
But the range of treatment is remarkably wide; it runs from the
wit, the gay humor, the florid eloquence of his stump speeches to
the marvelous sententiousness and brevity of the letter to Greeley
and the address of Gettysburg, and the sustained and lofty grand-
eur of the Second Inaugural.
The more his writings are studied in connection with the
important transactions of his age, the higher will his reputation
stand in the opinion of the lettered class. But the men of study
and research are never numerous; and it is principally as a man
of action that the world at large will regard him. It is the story
of his objective life that will forever touch and hold the heart of
mankind. His birthright was privation and ignorance-not pecul-
iar to his family, but the universal environment of his place and
time; he burst through those enchaining conditions by the force
of native genius and will: vice had no temptation for him; his
course was as naturally upward as the skylark's; he won, against
all conceivable obstacles, a high place in an exacting profession
and an honorable position in public and private life; he became
the foremost representative of a party founded on an uprising of
the national conscience against a secular wrong, and thus came
to the awful responsibilities of power in a time of terror and
gloom. He met them with incomparable strength and virtue.
Caring for nothing but the public good, free from envy or jealous
fears, he surrounded himself with the leading men of his party,
his most formidable rivals in public esteem, and through four
years of stupendous difficulties he was head and shoulders above
them all in the vital qualities of wisdom, foresight, knowledge


## p. 7104 (#502) ###########################################

7104
JOHN HAY
of men, and thorough comprehension of measures. Personally
opposed, as the radicals claim, by more than half of his own
party in Congress, and bitterly denounced and maligned by his
open adversaries, he yet bore himself with such extraordinary
discretion and skill that he obtained for the government all the
legislation it required, and so impressed himself upon the national
mind that without personal effort or solicitation he became the
only possible candidate of his party for re-election, and was
chosen by an almost unanimous vote of the electoral colleges.
His qualities would have rendered his administration illustri-
ous even in time of peace; but when we consider that in addition
to the ordinary work of the executive office, he was forced to
assume the duties of commander-in-chief of the national forces
engaged in the most complex and difficult war of modern times,
the greatness of spirit as well as the intellectual strength he
evinced in that capacity is nothing short of prodigious. After-
times will wonder, not at the few and unimportant mistakes he
may have committed, but at the intuitive knowledge of his busi-
ness that he displayed. We would not presume to express a
personal opinion in this matter. We use the testimony only of
the most authoritative names. General W. T. Sherman has
repeatedly expressed the admiration and surprise with which he
has read Mr. Lincoln's correspondence with his generals, and his
opinion of the remarkable correctness of his military views.
General W. F. Smith says:-"I have long held to the opinion
that at the close of the war Mr. Lincoln was the superior of his
generals in his comprehension of the effect of strategic move-
ments and the proper method of following up victories to their
legitimate conclusions. " General J. H. Wilson holds the same
opinion; and Colonel Robert N. Scott, in whose lamented death
the army lost one of its most vigorous and best trained intel-
lects, frequently called Mr. Lincoln "the ablest strategist of the
war. "
To these qualifications of high literary excellence, and easy
practical mastery of affairs of transcendent importance, we must
add, as an explanation of his immediate and world-wide fame, his
possession of certain moral qualities rarely combined in such high
degree in one individual. His heart was so tender that he would
dismount from his horse in a forest to replace in their nest young
birds which had fallen by the roadside; he could not sleep at night
if he knew that a soldier-boy was under sentence of death; he


## p. 7105 (#503) ###########################################

JOHN HAY
7105
could not, even at the bidding of duty or policy, refuse the prayer
of age or helplessness in distress. Childern instinctively loved
him; they never found his rugged features ugly; his sympathies
were quick and seemingly unlimited. He was absolutely without
prejudice of class or condition. Frederick Douglass says he was
the only man of distinction he ever met who never reminded him,
by word or manner, of his color; he was as just and generous to
the rich and well-born as to the poor and humble-a thing rare
among politicians. He was tolerant even of evil: though no man
can ever have lived with a loftier scorn of meanness and selfish-
ness, he yet recognized their existence and counted with the
He said one day, with a flash of cynical wisdom worthy of a La
Rochefoucauld, that honest statesmanship was the employment of
individual meanness for the public good. He never asked per-
fection of any one; he did not even insist, for others, upon the
high standards he set up for himself. At a time before the word
was invented he was the first of opportunists. With the fire of a
reformer and a martyr in his heart, he yet proceeded by the ways
of cautious and practical statecraft. He always worked with
things as they were, while never relinquishing the desire and
effort to make them better. To a hope which saw the Delectable
Mountains of absolute justice and peace in the future, to a faith
that God in his own time would give to all men the things con-
venient to them, he added a charity which embraced in its deep
bosom all the good and the bad, all the virtues and the infirmi-
ties of men, and a patience like that of nature, which in its vast
and fruitful activity knows neither haste nor rest.
A character like this is among the precious heirlooms of the
republic; and by a special good fortune, every part of the coun-
try has an equal claim and pride in it. Lincoln's blood came from
the veins of New England emigrants, of Middle-State Quakers, of
Virginia planters, of Kentucky pioneers; he himself was one of
the men who grew up with the earliest growth of the Great West.
Every jewel of his mind or his conduct sheds radiance on each
portion of the nation. The marvelous symmetry and balance of
his intellect and character may have owed something to this
varied environment of his race, and they may fitly typify the
variety and solidity of the republic. It may not be unreasonable
to hope that his name and his renown may be forever a bond of
union to the country which he loved with an affection so impar-
tial, and served, in life and in death, with such entire devotion.
XII-445


## p. 7106 (#504) ###########################################

7106
JOHN HAY
[These poems are copyrighted, and are reprinted here by permission of Mr.
Hay]
WHEN PHYLLIS LAUGHS
THEN Phyllis laughs, in sweet surprise
WHE My heart asks if my dazzling eyes
Or if my ears take more delight
In luscious sound or beauty bright,
When Phyllis laughs.
In crinkled eyelids hid Love lies,
In the soft curving lips I prize
Promise of raptures infinite,
When Phyllis laughs.
Far to the Orient fancy flies.
I see beneath Idalian skies,
Clad only in the golden light,
Calm in perfection's peerless might,
The laughter-loving Venus rise,
When Phyllis laughs.
NIGHT IN VENICE
OVE, in this summer night, do you recall
Midnight, and Venice, and those skies of June
Thick-sown with stars, when from the still lagoon
We glided noiseless through the dim canal?
A sense of some belated festival
Hung round us, and our own hearts beat in tune
With passionate memories that the young moon
Lit up on dome and tower and palace wall.
We dreamed what ghosts of vanished loves made part
Of that sweet light and trembling, amorous air.
I felt in those rich beams that kissed your hair,
Those breezes warm with bygone lovers' sighs-
All the dead beauty of Venice in your eyes,
All the old loves of Venice in my heart.


## p. 7107 (#505) ###########################################

JOHN HAY
7107
A
[These poems are copyrighted, and are reprinted here by permission of Mr.
Hay and of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers, Boston. ]
A WOMAN'S LOVE
SENTINEL angel sitting high in glory
Heard this shrill wail ring out from purgatory:—
"Have mercy, mighty angel,-hear my story!
"I loved, and blind with passionate love, I fell.
Love brought me down to death, and death to hell;
For God is just, and death for sin is well.
"I do not rage against his high decree,
Nor for myself do ask that grace shall be,
But for my love on earth who mourns for me.
"Great Spirit! Let me see my love again
And comfort him one hour, and I were fain
To pay a thousand years of fire and pain. "
Then said the pitying angel: "Nay, repent
That wild vow! Look, the dial finger's bent
Down to the last hour of thy punishment! "
But still she wailed: "I pray thee, let me go!
I cannot rise to peace and leave him so.
Oh, let me soothe him in his bitter woe! »
The brazen gates ground sullenly ajar,
And upward, joyous, like a rising star,
She rose and vanished in the ether far.
But soon adown the dying sunset sailing,
And like a wounded bird her pinions trailing,
She fluttered back, with broken-hearted wailing.
She sobbed, "I found him by the summer sea
Reclined, his head upon a maiden's knee -
She curled his hair and kissed him. Woe is me! "
She wept, "Now let my punishment begin!
I have been fond and foolish. Let me in
To expiate my sorrow and my sin. ”
The angel answered, "Nay, sad soul, go higher!
To be deceived in your true heart's desire
Was bitterer than a thousand years of fire! "


## p. 7108 (#506) ###########################################

7108
JOHN HAY
JIM BLUDSO, OF THE PRAIRIE BELLE
WALL
VALL, no! I can't tell whar he lives,
Becase he don't live, you see;
Leastways, he's got out of the habit
Of livin' like you and me.
Whar have you been for the last three year
That you haven't heard folks tell
How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks
The night of the Prairie Belle?
He weren't no saint, - them engineers
Is all pretty much alike:
One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill,
And another one here in Pike;
A keerless man in his talk was Jim,
And an awkward hand in a row,
But he never funked, and he never lied,-
I reckon he never knowed how.
And this was all the religion he had:
To treat his engine well;
Never be passed on the river;
To mind the pilot's bell;
And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire,—
A thousand times he swore
He'd hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last soul got ashore.
All boats has their day on the Mississip,
And her day come at last,—
The Movastar was a better boat,
But the Belle she wouldn't be passed.
And so she come tearin' along, that night-
The oldest craft on the line-
With a nigger squat on her safety-valve,
And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine.
The fire bust out as she clared the bar,
And burnt a hole in the night,
And quick as a flash she turned, and made
For the willer-bank on the right.
There was runnin' and cursin', but Jim yelled out,
Over all the infernal roar,
"I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last galoot's ashore. "


## p. 7109 (#507) ###########################################

JOHN HAY
7109
Through the hot black breath of the burnin' boat
Jim Bludso's voice was heard,
And they all had trust in his cussedness,
And knowed he would keep his word.
And sure's you're born, they all got off
Afore the smoke-stacks fell,-
And Bludso's ghost went up alone
In the smoke of the Prairie Belle.
He weren't no saint-but at judgment
I'd run my chance with Jim,
'Longside of some pious gentlemen
That wouldn't shook hands with him.
He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing,—
And went for it thar and then;
And Christ ain't agoing to be too hard
On a man that died for men.


## p. 7110 (#508) ###########################################

7110
PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE
(1830-1886)
F REVOLUTIONARY ancestry, and the only son of an officer in
the United States naval service, Paul Hamilton Hayne was
born in Charleston, South Carolina, January 1st, 1830. Few
American poets have grown up with outward circumstances more
kindly toward a literary career and its practical risks. A name of
high local distinction, wealth, and associations with men of letters,
were part of Hayne's environment from the beginning. The literary
gatherings in the Hayne household, in which William Gilmore Simms,
PAUL H. HAYNE
John C. Calhoun, and Hugh S. Legaré were
prominent, drew all Charleston's intellectual
life at the time to a common centre.

Hayne was a graduate in 1850 of the col-
lege of his native city. For a time he studied
law. With the outbreak of the Civil War he
took service, and was on the staff of Gen-
eral Pickens. Broken health induced him
unwillingly to resign. With the bombard-
ment of Charleston and the advance of the
Federal army he suffered severe losses; his
costly house, his library, and pretty much
all his belongings being swept away by
fire or pillage. A ruined man pecuniarily,
he betook himself to the Pine Barrens of
Georgia. There he built himself a cottage at Copse Hill. There
he gardened, wrote verses, kept up his correspondence with the outer
world, corrected his proofs, and it is said "was perfectly happy" dur-
ing more than fifteen years, until his death in 1886. He was much
of an invalid by constitution; and with his frail vitality, his accom-
plishing so much is a striking example of the will to live and to do
what we wish to do.
Mr. Hayne's early literary work was connected with the Southern
Literary Messenger, to which so many of the South's poets were
contributors at one time or another. Later he became editor of the
Charleston Literary Gazette, and held a post on the Charleston Even-
ing News. In 1872 appeared his 'Legends and Lyrics,' one collection
of his poems; in 1873 his edition of the literary remains of his friend


## p. 7111 (#509) ###########################################

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE
7111
Timrod, with a sympathetic biography; in 1875 he published 'The
Mountain of the Lovers,'-like The Wife of Brittany,' one of his
long poems,—and in later succession we have other titles; with his
poems in a complete edition in 1882.
Mr. Hayne's verse largely reflects aspects of nature in the South-
ern United States. There is a strong influence of Wordsworth in
much of his writing. In other descriptive poetry, and in that of a
reflective or dramatic spirit, he won a measurable success, occasion-
ally coming into obvious poetical touch with Robert Browning. His
sonnets are a large element of his writing; a species of verse in
which he delighted, his meditative humor finding it, over and over
again, a vehicle at once suitable and congenial.
All the citations following are from the Poems of Paul Hamilton Hayne,'
copyright 1882 by D. Lothrop & Co. , and are reprinted here by per-
mission of the family of Mr. Hayne, and of the publishers.
ODE TO SLEEP
EYOND the sunset and the amber sea
B
To the lone depths of ether, cold and bare,
Thy influence, soul of all tranquillity,
Hallows the earth and awes the reverent air;
Yon laughing rivulet quells its silvery tune;
The pines, like priestly watchers tall and grim,
Stand mute against the pensive twilight dim,
Breathless to hail the advent of the moon;
From the white beach the ocean falls away
Coyly, and with a thrill; the sea-birds dart
Ghostlike from out the distance, and depart
With a gray fleetness, moaning the dead day;
The wings of Silence, overfolding space,
Droop with dusk grandeur from the heavenly steep,
And through the stillness gleams thy starry face,-
Serenest Angel, Sleep!
Come! woo me here, amid these flowery charms;
Breathe on my eyelids; press thy odorous lips
Close to mine own; en-reathe me in thine arms,
And cloud my spirit with thy sweet eclipse;
No dreams! no dreams! keep back the motley throng,—
For such are girded round with ghastly might,
And sing low burdens of despondent song,
Decked in the mockery of a lost delight;


## p. 7112 (#510) ###########################################

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE
7112
I ask oblivion's balsam! the mute peace
Toned to still breathings, and the gentlest sighs;
Not music woven of rarest harmonies
Could yield me such elysium of release:
The tones of earth are weariness,—not only
'Mid the loud mart, and in the walks of trade,
But where the mountain Genius broodeth lonely,
In the cool pulsing of the sylvan shade;
Then bear me far into thy noiseless land;
Surround me with thy silence, deep on deep,
Until serene I stand
Close by a duskier country, and more grand
Mysterious solitude, than thine, O Sleep!
As he whose veins a feverous frenzy burns,
Whose life-blood withers in the fiery drouth,
Feebly and with a languid longing turns
To the spring breezes gathering from the south,
So, feebly and with languid longing, I
Turn to thy wished nepenthe, and implore
The golden dimness, the purpureal gloom
Which haunt thy poppied realm, and make the shore
Of thy dominion balmy with all bloom.
In the clear gulfs of thy serene profound,
Worn passions sink to quiet, sorrows pause,
Suddenly fainting to still-breathed rest:
Thou own'st a magical atmosphere, which awes
The memories seething in the turbulent breast;
Which, muffling up the sharpness of all sound
Of mortal lamentation, solely bears
The silvery minor toning of our woe,
All mellowed to harmonious underflow,
Soft as the sad farewells of dying years,—
Lulling as sunset showers that veil the west,
And sweet as Love's last tears
When over-welling hearts do mutely weep:
O griefs! O wailings! your tempestuous madness,
Merged in a regal quietude of sadness,
Wins a strange glory by the streams of sleep!
Then woo me here, amid these flowery charms;
Breathe on my eyelids, press thy odorous lips
Close to mine own; enfold me in thine arms,
And cloud my spirit with thy sweet eclipse;


## p.
7113 (#511) ###########################################

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE
7113
And while from waning depth to depth I fall,
Down lapsing to the utmost depths of all,
Till wan forgetfulness obscurely stealing
Creeps like an incantation on the soul,
And o'er the slow ebb of my conscious life
Dies the thin flush of the last conscious feeling,
And like abortive thunder, the dull roll
Of sullen passions ebbs far, far away,-
O Angel! loose the chords which cling to strife,
Sever the gossamer bondage of my breath,
And let me pass, gently as winds in May,
From the dim realm which owns thy shadowy sway,
To thy diviner sleep, O sacred Death!
ASPECTS OF THE PINES
TALL
ALL, sombre, grim, against the morning sky
They rise, scarce touched by melancholy airs,
Which stir the fadeless foliage dreamfully,
As if from realms of mystical despairs.
Tall, sombre, grim, they stand with dusky gleams
Brightening to gold within the woodland's core,
Beneath the gracious noontide's tranquil beams—
But the weird winds of morning sigh no more.
A stillness strange, divine, ineffable,
Broods round and o'er them in the wind's surcease,
And on each tinted copse and shimmering dell
Rests the mute rapture of deep-hearted peace.
Last, sunset comes the solemn joy and might
Borne from the west when cloudless day declines-
Low, flute-like breezes sweep the waves of light,
And lifting dark green tresses of the pines,
―――
Till every lock is luminous, gently float,
Fraught with hale odors up the heavens afar,
To faint when twilight on her virginal throat
Wears for a gem the tremulous vesper star.


## p. 7114 (#512) ###########################################

7114
PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE
POVERTY
NCE I beheld thee, a lithe mountain maid,
Embrowned by wholesome toils in lusty air;
Whose clear blood, nurtured by strong primitive cheer,
Through Amazonian veins flowed unafraid.
Broad-breasted, pearly-teethed, thy pure breath strayed,
Sweet as deep-uddered kine's curled in the rare
Bright spaces of thy lofty atmosphere,
O'er some rude cottage in a fir-grown glade.
Now, of each brave ideal virtue stripped,
Ο
O Poverty! I behold thee as thou art,-
A ruthless hag, the image of woeful dearth,
Of brute despair, gnawing its own starved heart.
Thou ravening wretch! fierce-eyed and monster-lipped,
Why scourge forevermore God's beauteous earth?
THE HYACINTH
Η
ERE in this wrecked storm-wasted garden close,
The grave of infinite generations fled
Of flowers that now lie lustreless and dead
As the gray dust of Eden's earliest rose,
What bloom is this, whose classical beauty glows
Radiantly chaste, with the mild splendor shed
Round a Greek virgin's poised and perfect head,
By Phidias wrought 'twixt rapture and repose?
Mark the sweet lines whose matchless ovals curl
Above the fragile stem's half-shrinking grace,
And say if this pure hyacinth doth not seem
(Touched by enchantments of an antique dream)
A flower no more, but the low drooping face
Of some love-laden, fair Athenian girl?


## p. 7115 (#513) ###########################################

7115
TO
WILLIAM HAZLITT
(1778-1830)
HE life of William Hazlitt, apart from his matrimonial infelici-
ties, is uneventful. He was born the 10th of April, 1778,
Cat Maidstone, England, where his father was a Unitarian
minister; not a Presbyterian, as the Encyclopædia Britannica has it.
Of him Hazlitt gives an interesting though pathetic picture. A
learned and a kindly man, he spent sixty years of his life in petty
squabbles over disputed texts of Scripture and in pleading the cause
of civil and religious liberty. "What dreams of philosophy and
poetry," says his son, were stifled in the
dreary tomes over which he sacrificed fancy
and imagination! For ease, half-play on
words, and a supine monkish pleasantry,"
he says of his letters, "I have never seen
his equal. "
<<

The boy was intended by his father for
the Unitarian ministry; but though he went
to a denominational college, he disliked the
idea of preaching. He was about twenty
when he heard the memorable sermon of
Coleridge which was said to have fixed his
career. Coleridge was visiting a neighbor-
ing minister, and Hazlitt walked twelve
miles through the mud before daylight to
hear him. The sermon set him to thinking, not of theology but of
metaphysics. He gave up his studies, and having some talent for
painting, devoted himself from this time forth to his two passions,
art and metaphysics. And although he was destined to succeed in
neither, yet to his knowledge of both he owed his pre-eminence in
the career which he entered only by accident. "Nowhere," says one
of his critics, "is abstract thought so picturesquely bodied forth by
concrete illustration. "
WILLIAM HAZLITT
At the end of seven years, having come to the conclusion that he
could not be a Titian, he published his first book, 'An Essay on the
Principles of Human Action'; a book as dry as his favorite biscuit.
Thenceforth, he wrote on any subject for any employer. From
the first he seems to have been fairly paid, and to have gained a


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WILLIAM HAZLITT
hearing. He was at least sufficiently interesting to provoke the
implacable hostility of Blackwood and the Quarterly. For eighteen
years he was a regular contributor to the Edinburgh Review, the
London Review, and the New Monthly, while various daily and
weekly papers constantly employed him.
Hazlitt, like many persons of limited affections, had a capacity for
sudden passions; but finally, after many love affairs, he married at
the age of thirty a Miss Stoddard, with whom he lived for fourteen
unhappy years. He then met the somewhat mythical Sarah Walker,
the daughter of a lodging-house keeper, for whom he resolved to
leave his wife. As Mrs. Hazlitt was relieved to be rid of him, they
easily obtained a Scotch divorce. When, however, the mature lover
was free, Miss Walker had discreetly disappeared. Three months
afterwards he married a Mrs. Bridgewater, who took him on a Con-
tinental tour, but left him within the twelvemonth. Thackeray
describes the journey abroad as that of "a penniless student tramp-
ing on foot, and not made after the regular fashion of the critics of
the day, by the side of a young nobleman in a post-chaise »; but the
fact is that the bride of this second matrimonial venture paid the
bills. His other visit to the Continent was amply provided for by a
commission to copy pictures in the Louvre. Hazlitt lived only five
years after separating from his second wife. Pecuniary difficulties
and the failure of his publishers hastened his death, which occurred
in London September 18th, 1830. Only his son and his beloved
friend Charles Lamb were with him when he died.
The father of Coventry Patmore gives an interesting picture of
Hazlitt at thirty-five: "A pale anatomy of a man, sitting uneasily
on half a chair, his anxious, highly intellectual face looking upon
vacancy, emaciate, unstrung, inanimate. " But "the poor creature,"
as he used to call himself, was the launcher forth of the winged
word that could shake the hearts of princes and potentates. The
most unscrupulous biographer would hardly have dared to reveal Haz-
litt, the most reserved of men, as he reveals himself to the reader.
Every essay is autobiographical, and reflects his likes and dislikes.
In that strange book 'The New Pygmalion,' as in 'Liber Amoris,' he
invites the horrified British public to listen to his transports concern-
ing the lodging-house keeper's daughter. He abuses the Duke of
Wellington, idol of that public, as he abuses whoever may chance to
disagree with him on personal or impersonal subjects. The brilliant
iconoclast must have been the most uncomfortable of men to live
with. No wonder that Lamb used to sigh, pathetically, “I wish he
would not quarrel with everybody. " For he fell out with the amiable
Leigh Hunt, with the idol of his youth, Coleridge, whose poetry
he began at once to undervalue, and with Wordsworth and Southey,


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WILLIAM HAZLITT
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because they took a moderate view of the French Revolution. He
rated Shelley absurdly low for no better reason than that he was a
gentleman, and loaded Scott with bad names because he accepted
a baronetcy. De Quincey declared that "With Hazlitt, whatever is,
is wrong," and quotes an admirer of the critic who professed to
shudder whenever his hand went to his breast pocket, lest he should
draw out a dagger. What his politics were, except to worship the
genius of the French Revolution and abhor a something which he
called "the hag of legitimacy," no one knew. His heroes were the
first Napoleon and Rousseau.
Hazlitt says, with his usual indifference, that when he began to
write he left off reading. Much as he admired 'Waverley' and the
other "Scotch novels," as they were called, he never got through
more than half of any one, although it was his business to review
them. He gave a series of lectures on the Elizabethan dramatists,
and afterwards casually mentioned to Lamb that he had read only
about a quarter of Beaumont and Fletcher. And though he prided
himself on his metaphysics, he knew none of the metaphysicians but
the French and English philosophers of the eighteenth century. Pla-
tonists tell us that he went to Taylor the Platonist for his ideas. He
pretended to pride himself that he cared for no new book, and declared
that he neither corrected his own proof sheets nor read his work in
print. Of the beautiful 'Introduction to the Elizabethan Poets' Mr.
Saintsbury says, "All Hazlitt's faults to be found in it are due not
to prejudice, or error of judgment, but to occasional deficiency of
information. "
A bundle of inconsistencies, he had a sort of inexplicable con-
stancy, holding th same ideas at the end of his life that he had at
its beginning. While his egotism was as stupendous as that of Rous-
seau or Napoleon, he seemed to possess a double consciousness: with
one breath he blesses and curses. What he says of Burke sounds
like the ravings of a madman; yet he places Burke in his proper
place as the greatest of English political writers. He hacks and hews
the Lake School, while he discloses their choicest beauties.
« Were
the author of 'Waverley' to come into the room, I would kiss the
hem of his garment," he said; but Scott the man is to him "the
greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind. ” His judgment of an author
depended upon two circumstances: his private associations and his
sympathy with the writer.
Yet Hazlitt had something which is better than the capacity to
criticize fairly, to be consistent or learned, or to exercise the cardinal
virtues. He was an artist, and whatever he wrote is literature. His
choice of subject is of small importance if the reader is armed against
his prejudices. Some biographers rank him highest as a critic, others


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WILLIAM HAZLITT
(
as an essayist; but it is not easy to classify his work. Essay or crit-
icism, it is Hazlitt and the world that Hazlitt sees. His criticisms
are scattered through the seven volumes of his writings edited by
his son, but they are collected in the three volumes entitled 'The
Characters of Shakespeare,' 'Elizabethan Literature,' and 'The Eng-
lish Poets and the English Comic Writers. ' His essays are classed in
the volumes The Spirit of the Age,' The Plain Dealer,' The Round
Table,' and 'Sketches and Essays. ' In the essays we find the famous
Going to a Fight,' the beautiful and pathetic 'Farewell to Essay-
Writing, the 'Going on a Journey,' 'My First Acquaintance with
Poets,' On Taste,' 'On the Indian Jugglers,' 'On Londoners and
Country People. ' These are named not because they are special
efforts, for Hazlitt seldom tried himself in any direct flight, but as
specimens of the range of his subjects.
His style is as varied as his themes: gay, semi-sentimental, hitting
hard like his own pugilists, judicious, gossipy, richly embroidered as
mediæval tapestry, grave, and chaste. It has been already said that
Hazlitt is a man of letters, and that all he touched became literature.
It is fair to go further, and suggest that a certain amount of literary
temperament is necessary to enjoy him, and perhaps a certain matur-
ity of taste. He is the essayist of the traveler who has reached the
Delectable Mountains of middle age, from whose calm heights he
takes a wide and reasonable view; the essayist for the drawn curtain
and the winter fireside after the leisurely meal, when his pungent talk
is the after-taste of some rare cordial.
Shakespeare scholars agree that he knows nothing of Shakespeare
but the text, and that he has added nothing to the explanation of
difficult passages; but ey, Iwell as the general reader, turn to
him for noble enthusiasm and calm judgment. It is of Shakespeare's
characters that he writes, not of his plays; and it is Timon, Othello,
Antony and Cleopatra, - the doers, not the dreamers,-who interest
him, and whom he hates and loves. Strange to say, though he rated
himself so highly as a metaphysician, Hamlet is one of his least
successful portraitures; his artist's eye saw Shakespeare played, not
written, and Kean, whom he first ridiculed and then praised, said
that Hazlitt had taught him more than his stage manager.
What he did for the Elizabethan dramatists was to rediscover their
excellences and find them an audience. He shows Congreve's merits
with a force not possible to a calmer judgment. How discriminat-
ing, on the contrary, is his praise of the sweetness of Dekker and of
the beauties of The Beggar's Opera'! and though personal in its vin-
dictiveness, what a splendid assault he makes on Sidney's 'Arcadia'!
Hazlitt is accused of reversing the counsel of the proverb, and
speaking good only of the dead. He was certainly unlike the little


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WILLIAM HAZLITT
7119
members of the little mutual-admiration societies who half a century
later take themselves so seriously. It was his art which he found
serious. Mr. Saintsbury makes the important point that his work
molded the genius of his literary juniors. In 'The Spirit of the Age'
there are distinct intimations of Carlyle.
"Where the devil did you
get that style ? " Jeffrey asked Macaulay. It is easy to see where,
when one reads Hazlitt's contributions to Jeffrey's own Review.
another way, he furnished a model to Dickens and Thackeray; and
no one who is familiar with the essay on 'Nicholas Poussin' will fail
to add Ruskin to his "fair herd of literary children. "
In
It is almost incredible that with his spirit and temperament, Haz-
litt's last words should have been, "I have had a happy life. " But
literature was to him the wife and children and friends of whom per-
haps she robbed him, while becoming, as the poet promises, the solace
reserved for him who loves her for herself alone.
―――――
OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN
From Table Talk'
"Come like shadows-so depart. "
L
AMB it was, I think, who suggested this subject, as well as the
defense of Guy Fawkes, which I urged him to execute. As
however he would undertake neither, I suppose I must do
both,
a task for which he would have been much fitter, no less
from the temerity than the felicity of his pen:-
"Never so sure our rapture to create
As when it touched the brink of all we hate. "
Compared with him I shall, I fear, make but a commonplace
piece of business of it; but I should be loth the idea was entirely
lost, and besides, I may avail myself of some hints of his in the
progress of it.
I am sometimes, I suspect, a better reporter of
the ideas of other people than expounder of my own. I pursue
the one too far into paradox or mysticism; the others I am not
bound to follow farther than I like, or than seems fair and
reasonable.
On the question being started, A
said, "I suppose the
two first persons you would choose to see would be the two
greatest names in English literature, Sir Isaac Newton and Mr.
Locke? " In this A- as usual, reckoned without his host.
Every one burst out a-laughing at the expression of Lamb's face,
?


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WILLIAM HAZLITT
in which impatience was restrained by courtesy. "Yes, the great-
est names," he stammered out hastily, "but they were not per-
sons- not persons. " "Not persons? " said A—, looking wise
and foolish at the same time, afraid his triumph might be pre-
mature. "That is," rejoined Lamb, "not characters, you know.
By Mr. Locke and Sir Isaac Newton, you mean the 'Essay on
the Human Understanding' and the 'Principia,' which we have
to this day. Beyond their contents there is nothing personally
interesting in the men. But what we want to see any one bodily
for, is when there is something peculiar, striking in the individ-
uals; more than we can learn from their writings, and yet are
curious to know. I dare say Locke and Newton were very like
Kneller's portraits of them. But who could paint Shakespeare? "
"Ay," retorted A—, "there it is: then I suppose you would
prefer seeing him and Milton instead? » "No," said Lamb,
"neither. I have seen so much of Shakespeare on the stage and
on book-stalls, in frontispieces and on mantelpieces, that I am
quite tired of the everlasting repetition: and as to Milton's face,
the impressions that have come down to us of it I do not like,
-it is too starched and puritanical; and I should be afraid of
losing some of the manna of his poetry in the leaven of his
countenance and the precisian's band and gown. ”
"I shall guess no more," said A—. "Who is it, then, you
would like to see in his habit as he lived,' if you had your
choice of the whole range of English literature? " Lamb then
named Sir Thomas Browne and Fulke Greville, the friend of Sir
Philip Sidney, as the two worthies whom he should feel the
greatest pleasure to encounter on the door of his apartment in
their nightgown and slippers, and to exchange friendly greeting
with them. At this A laughed outright, and conceived Lamb
was jesting with him; but as no one followed his example, he
thought there might be something in it, and waited for an ex-
planation in a state of whimsical suspense. Lamb then (as well
as I can remember a conversation that passed twenty years ago
-how time slips! ) went on as follows:-
"The reason why I pitch upon those two authors is, that their
writings are riddles, and they themselves the most mysterious of
personages. They resemble the soothsayers of old, who dealt in
dark hints and doubtful oracles; and I should like to ask them
the meaning of what no mortal but themselves, I should sup-
pose, can fathom. There is Dr. Johnson,-I have no curiosity,
―――


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no strange uncertainty about him: he and Boswell together have
pretty well let me into the secret of what passed through his
mind. He and other writers like him are sufficiently explicit:
my friends whose repose I should be tempted to disturb (were it
in my power), are implicit, inextricable, inscrutable.
"When I look at that obscure but gorgeous prose composition
the Urn-Burial,' I seem to myself to look into a deep abyss, at
the bottom of which are hid pearls and rich treasure; or it is
like a stately labyrinth of doubt and withering speculation, and I
would invoke the spirit of the author to lead me through it.
Besides, who would not be curious to see the lineaments of a
man who, having himself been twice married, wished that man-
kind were propagated like trees?
"As to Fulke Greville, he is like nothing but one of his own
'Prologues spoken by the ghost of an old king of Ormus,' a
truly formidable and inviting personage: his style is apocalypti-
cal, cabalistical, a knot worthy of such an apparition to untie; and
for the unraveling a passage or two, I would stand the brunt of
an encounter with so portentous a commentator! "
"I am afraid in that case," said A————, "that if the mystery
were once cleared up the merit might be lost;" and turning to
me, whispered a friendly apprehension that while Lamb contin-
ued to admire these old crabbed authors he would never become
a popular writer.
Dr. Donne was mentioned as a writer of the same period, with
a very interesting countenance, whose history was singular, and
whose meaning was often quite as un-come-at-able without a per-
sonal citation from the dead, as that of any of his contemporaries.
The volume was produced; and while some one was expatiating
on the exquisite simplicity and beauty of the portrait prefixed to
the old edition, A got hold of the poetry, and exclaiming
"What have we here? " read the following:-
"Here lies a She-sun, and a He-moon there;
She gives the best light to his sphere,
Or each is both and all, and so
They unto one another nothing owe. "
There was no resisting this, till Lamb, seizing the volume,
turned to the beautiful 'Lines to his Mistress,' dissuading her
from accompanying him abroad, and read them with suffused
features and a faltering tongue.
XII-446


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WILLIAM HAZLITT
His
Some one then inquired of Lamb if we could not see from
the window the Temple walk in which Chaucer used to take his
exercise; and on his name being put to the vote, I was pleased
to find that there was a general sensation in his favor in all but
A, who said something about the ruggedness of the metre, and
even objected to the quaintness of the orthography. I was vexed
at this superficial gloss, pertinaciously reducing everything to its
own trite level, and asked "if he did not think it would be worth
while to scan the eye that had first greeted the Muse in that dim
twilight and early dawn of English literature; to see the head
round which the visions of fancy must have played like gleams
of inspiration or a sudden glory; to watch those lips that 'lisped
in numbers, for the numbers came' as by a miracle, or as if the
dumb should speak? Nor was it alone that he had been the first
to tune his native tongue (however imperfectly to modern ears);
but he was himself a noble, manly character, standing before his
age and striving to advance it; a pleasant humorist withal, who
has not only handed down to us the living manners of his time,
but had no doubt store of curious and quaint devices, and would
make as hearty a companion as Mine Host of the Tabard.
interview with Petrarch is fraught with interest. Yet I would
rather have seen Chaucer in company with the author of the
'Decameron,' and have heard them exchange their best stories
together, the Squire's Tale against the Story of the Falcon, the
Wife of Bath's Prologue against the Adventures of Friar Albert.
How fine to see the high mysterious brow which learning then
wore, relieved by the gay, familiar tone of men of the world, by
the courtesies of genius! Surely, the thoughts and feelings which
passed through the minds of these great revivers of learning,
these Cadmuses who sowed the teeth of letters, must have
stamped an expression on their features as different from the
moderns as their books, and well worth the perusal! Dante," I
continued, "is as interesting a person as his own Ugolino, one
whose lineaments curiosity would as eagerly devour in order to
penetrate his spirit, and the only one of the Italian poets I should
care much to see. There is a fine portrait of Ariosto by no less
a hand than Titian's: light, Moorish, spirited, but not answering
our idea. The same artist's large colossal profile of Peter Are
tino is the only likeness of the kind that has the effect of con-
versing with the mighty dead,' and this is truly spectral, ghastly,
necromantic. "


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Lamb put it to me if I should like to see Spenser as well
as Chaucer; and I answered without hesitation: -"No; for his
beauties were ideal, visionary, not palpable or personal, and there-
fore connected with less curiosity about the man.
His poetry
was the essence of romance, a very halo round the bright orb
of fancy; and the bringing in the individual might dissolve the
charm. No tones of voice could come up to the mellifluous
cadence of his verse; no form but of a winged angel could vie
with the airy shapes he has described. He was (to our appre-
hensions) rather a creature of the element, that lived in the
rainbow and played in the plighted clouds,' than an ordinary
mortal. Or if he did appear, I should wish it to be as a mere
vision like one of his own pageants, and that he should pass by
unquestioned like a dream or sound-
'That was Arion crowned:
So went he playing on the wat'ry plain! '»
Captain Burney muttered something about Columbus, and
Martin Burney hinted at the Wandering Jew; but the last was
set aside as spurious, and the first made over to the New World.
"I should like," says Mrs. Reynolds, "to have seen Pope talk-
ing with Patty Blount; and I have seen Goldsmith. " Every one
turned round to look at Mrs. Reynolds, as if by so doing they
too could get a sight of Goldsmith.
"Where," asked a harsh croaking voice, "was Dr. Johnson in
the years 1745-6? He did not write anything that we know of,
nor is there any account of him in Boswell during those two
years. Was he in Scotland with the Pretender? He seems to
have passed through the scenes in the Highlands in company
with Boswell many years after, 'with lack-lustre eye,' yet as if
they were familiar to him, or associated in his mind with inter-
ests that he durst not explain. If so, it would be an additional
reason for my liking him; and I would give something to have
seen him seated in the tent with the youthful Majesty of Britain,
and penning the proclamation to all true subjects and adherents
of the legitimate government. "
>>
"I thought," said A—, turning short round upon Lamb, “that
you of the Lake School did not like Pope ? "Not like Pope!
My dear sir, you must be under a mistake: I can read him over
and over forever! "-"Why, certainly, the Essay on Man' must
be allowed to be a masterpiece. "—"It may be so, but I seldom


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WILLIAM HAZLITT
(
look into it. "—"Oh! then it's his 'Satires' you admire? "-"No,
not his Satires,' but his friendly epistles and his compliments.
"Compliments? I did not know he ever made any. "-"The
finest," said Lamb, "that were ever paid by the wit of man.
Each of them is worth an estate for life
- nay, is an immortal-
ity. There is that superb one to Lord Cornbury: -
-
-
'Despise low joys, low gains;
Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains;
Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains. '
Was there ever more artful insinuation of idolatrous praise? And
then that noble apotheosis of his friend Lord Mansfield (however
little deserved), when, speaking of the House of Lords, he adds:
'Conspicuous scene! another yet is nigh
(More silent far) where kings and poets lie;
Where Murray (long enough his country's pride)
Shall be no more than Tully or than Hyde! '
And with what a fine turn of indignant flattery he addresses
Lord Bolingbroke:-
'Why rail they then, if but one wreath of mine,
O all-accomplished St. John, deck thy shrine ?