methinks
I see her frown!
Warner - World's Best Literature - v13 - Her to Hux
what are you saying!
These are mere fancies, per-
haps a passing weakness->
"You think so because I can speak of the end so quietly?
You ought long ago to have credited me with as much strength
as was needed for that. I know how few are willing to rise
from the table just when the viands are most tempting. And
indeed, Franzel, life never seemed to me so fair as now. How
many kind friends I have gained during these last weeks, how
much beautiful poetry and lofty and profound thoughts I have
enjoyed! But all that's of no avail: man must live and let live,
and there are doubtless others waiting to take their turn.
If you
are sad, Franzel, I must wait for another time to make my last
request; though I do not know how long I may have to linger.
But come, be sensible. You know I love you dearly; indeed, next
to Edwin you have the first place in my heart. But I do not
need to take leave of my brother. My whole life during the last
few years has been only one long farewell. We knew we should
not always remain together, I at least was fully aware of it, so
we have enjoyed all our happiness, as it were, on account. But
when the end comes, I know how it will be: at first he'll be
unable to reconcile himself. And that's why I want to beg you
to keep near him. His needs are great, and there are not many
who can fulfill them. "
――――――――――
―――――
-
"And that is the first thing you ask? " cried the honest friend,
with an emotion he vainly endeavored to repress. "But for
heaven's sake, Balder, what sort of talk is this? You - you really
believe I-we-" He started up and rushed desperately around
the little table in the centre of the room, so that the leaves of the
palms trembled.
"You scarcely understand as yet all that I mean," continued
the invalid quietly. "That you'll always remain his friend is a
matter of course. But to give me any real comfort, you will
have to make a sacrifice. "
"A sacrifice? As if I would not-do you know me so little? "
"I know you to be the most unselfish man under the sun,”
said Balder, smiling. "But it is just this very habit of never
## p. 7339 (#133) ###########################################
PAUL HEYSE
7339
thinking of yourself, that for his sake and mine you must lay
aside, at least so far as you can do so without being faithless to
yourself. Do you know what will happen if you go on as you
have been doing? In two years, in spite of your friendship, you'll
not set foot in the tun. "
"I? But tell me -"
"It's a very simple matter: because you'll be thinking of your
friends either behind prison bars or in America. Dear Franzel,
must I tell you why you're not fond of living?
Because you
believe that a man only truly lives when he becomes a martyr
to his convictions. I have always loved you for this belief, and
yet I believe it a mistaken one. Test it awhile: say to yourself
that you aid many more by living than you could by your mar-
tyrdom, and you will see that a man can guard his post very
bravely and self-sacrificingly, without foolhardily summoning the
enemy by alarm shots. It would be an inexpressible comfort to
me if you would promise for two years to let alone all 'agitation'
and see how affairs really are. There are currents in which it's
a useless waste of strength to row, because the boat floats onward
of its own accord. I know what it will cost you to do this.
it would be a great joy if this last wish - ”
But
"Say no more," cried the other, suddenly pausing before his
friend, with his tearful eyes turned toward him: "Balder, is it
possible that you that you are about to leave us? And can you
believe if that should happen, that I could continue my life as
if nothing had occurred? When men can no longer behold the
do you suppose I could-that I would Words failed
him; he turned abruptly away, and stood motionless beside the
turning-lathe.
>>>
sun
-
"I did not mean that I thought you could live on the same
as before," said Balder in a lower voice. "But you need a sub-
stitute for what you resign. You must learn to be glad to live,
and I think I know how you would learn to do so most quickly.
You must take a wife, Franzel! ”
"I? What can you be thinking about? How came such an
idea into your head? Just at this time, too--"
"Because it will soon be too late for me to earn a kuppelpelz*
from you. True, I shall scarcely need it. I shall not feel cold
where I lie. But I should like to know of your being warmly
*Reward for match-making.
## p. 7340 (#134) ###########################################
7340
PAUL HEYSE
sheltered. And I know from experience I've been 'married'
to Edwin-that the world looks much brighter seen with four
eyes than with two. "
"You see," he continued, as his friend still stood motionless,
boring a hole in the bench with the point of a file, "Edwin will
find a wife in time who will make him happy: then you would
be left again with nothing but mankind to clasp to your heart;
and beautiful and sublime as the idea is, it's not all you need -
and that's why you get over-excited, and the thought of martyr-
dom overcomes your judgment. So I think a little wife who
would know how to love and value you, would by her mere
presence instruct you every day in the doctrine that Edwin has
so often represented to you in vain, that you should husband
your energies for the future, and not prematurely sacrifice your
life without cause. There is no danger of your becoming faith-
less to your convictions from mere selfish pleasure in your home.
And then, how can a socialist who knows nothing except from
hearsay of family life, upon which basis the whole structure of
society rests, who knows nothing of where the shoe pinches the
father of a family, talk to married men about what they owe to
themselves and others? ”
As he uttered these words a bewitchingly cunning expression
sparkled in the sick boy's beautiful eyes. He almost feared that
Franzelius would turn, and looking in his face penetrate the
secret design, the purpose of attacking him on his weakest side;
so, rising, he limped to the stove and put in a few sticks of
wood. While thus employed, he continued in a tone of apparent
indifference:-
-
"You mustn't suppose I'm saying all this at random. No, my
dear fellow, I've a very suitable match in view for you: a young
girl who's as well adapted to your needs as if I'd invented or
ordered her expressly for you. Young, very pretty, with a heart
as true as gold, fond of work and fond of life too, as she ought
to be, if she is to wed with one who doesn't care to live; not
a princess, but a child of working people. Haven't you guessed
her name yet? Then I must help you: she writes it Reginchen. ”
"Balder! You're dreaming! No, no, I beseech you, say no
more about that: you've too long—"
"I am astonished," continued the youth, rising as he spoke
and moving toward the bed, "that you didn't understand me read-
ily and meet me half-way. Where have your eyes been, that
## p. 7341 (#135) ###########################################
PAUL HEYSE
7341
you've not seen that you have stood high in the dear girl's
favor for years? Even I have noticed it! I tell you, Franzel,
the little girl is a treasure. I have known her all these years,
and love her as dearly as a sister, and the man to whom I
don't begrudge her I must love like a brother. Therefore, blind
dreamer, I wanted to open your eyes, that I may close mine in
peace. To be sure, I'm by no means certain that you've not
already bestowed your heart elsewhere, and my brotherly hint
may be too late.
At any rate, whatever you do you should do
quickly, for the young girl's sake. She seems to have taken
your long absence to heart: her mother says she is by no means
well yet, and eats and sleeps very little. I should like to see
my little sister well and happy again before I - "
He could not finish the sentence. He had been seated on
the bed while speaking; and now he laid his head on the pillow
and closed his eyes, as if wearied with the unusual exertion of
conversing. Suddenly he felt his hands seized; Franzelius had
meant to embrace him, but instead he threw himself down beside
the bed, and with his head resting on Balder's knees, he gave
way to such violent and uncontrollable emotion that the youth was
obliged to make every exertion to soothe him into composure.
At last he rose. He tried to speak, but his voice failed.
"You - you're-oh! Heaven forgive me, forgive me! I'm not
worthy! " was all he could stammer. Then he started up and
rushed out of the room.
Balder had sunk back on the bed and closed his eyes again.
His pale face was almost transfigured; he looked like a hero
resting after a victory, and for the moment did not even feel the
pain in his chest. The room was perfectly still; the sunlight
played amid the palm leaves; the mask of the youthful prisoner,
suffused with a rosy light which came from the open door of the
stove, seemed to breathe and whisper to its image on the narrow
couch: "Die! -your death shall be painless! " But a sudden
thought roused Balder from this anticipation of eternal repose.
He rose and dragged himself to the turning-lathe, where with a
trembling hand he unlocked the drawer. "It's fortunate that I
thought of it! " he murmured. "What if they had found it! "
He drew out the portfolio in which he kept his collection of
verses. On how many pages was the image of the child whom
he secretly loved, described with all the exaggerated charms his
solitary yearning had invested her with; to how much imaginary
## p. 7342 (#136) ###########################################
7342
PAUL HEYSE
happiness these simple sheets bore witness! And yet he could
now let them slide through his fingers without bitterness. Had
not his feelings been sacred and consoling to him at the time?
What had happened which could strip the bloom and fragrance
of this spring from his heart? There would be no summer,
but did that make less beautiful the season of blossoming?
read a verse here and there in an undertone, now and then
altering a word that no longer satisfied him, and smiling at him-
self for polishing verses which no human eye had seen or ever
would see. Many he had quite forgotten, and now found them
beautiful and touching. When he had turned the last page, he
took the pencil and wrote on a loose scrap of paper that he laid
in the drawer in place of the volume of poems, the following
lines, which he wrote without effort and without revision:
GOOD-NIGHT, thou lovely world, good-night:
Have I not had a glorious day?
Unmurmuring, though thou leav'st my sight,
I to my couch will go away.
Whate'er of loveliness thou hast,
Is it not mine to revel in?
Though many a keen desire does waste
My heart, it ne'er alone has been.
Delusion's veil of error blind
Fell quite away from soul and eye;
Clearer my path did upward wind
To where life's sunny hill-tops lie.
No idol false is there adored;
Humanity's eternal powers,
O'er which the light of Heaven is poured,
Stand self-contained in passion's hours.
High standing on the breeze-swept peak,
Below may I with rapture see
The land whereof no man may speak
Save him who fares there wearily.
This is the rich inheritance
The children of the world shall own,
When crossed the wearisome expanse,
And fate's supreme decrees are known.
---
## p. 7343 (#137) ###########################################
PAUL HEYSE
7343
O brother, who art seeking still
For love and joy where I have sought,
I would your path with blessings fill
When to its end my life is brought.
Ah! brother, could we two aspire
Together to the glorious height-
Hence, tears! some part of my desire
Is thine. Thou lovely world, good-night!
COUNTESS TOINETTE SETS OUT FOR "THE PROMISED LAND »
From Children of the World'.
HE note inclosed in the doctor's letter ran as follows:
THE
-
-
"You will be alarmed, my dear friend, that I already
write you again. But fear nothing: it is for the last time,
and means little more than the card inscribed P. P. C. which
we leave with our friends before a long separation. I am going
away on a journey, dear friend, far enough away to enable you.
to feel perfectly secure from any molestation on my part. How
this has come about is a long story. Suffice it to say, that it is
not envy of the laurels won by my beautiful fair-haired sister-in-
law-I mean those she will undoubtedly win as a high-born,
intellectual, and pious traveler that induces me also to seek a
change of air. If that which I breathe were but conducive to
my health,- if I could but sleep and wake, laugh and weep,
like other men and women,-I certainly would not stir from the
spot. But even my worst enemy could hardly fail to understand
that matters cannot go on any longer as they are; so I prefer
to go. The 'promised land' has long allured me. I should have
set out for it before, if I had not had much to expect, to hope,
and to wait for, and been hindered by a multitude of as I
now see-very superfluous scruples, which are at last successfully
conquered.
"Do you know that since I saw you I have made the acquaint-
ance of your dear wife? A very, very pleasant acquaintance; if
I had only made it a few years sooner, it might have been very
useful to me. Well, even now it is not too late to rejoice that
you have what you need, the happiness you desire, in such a
noble, wise, and loving life companion. Give my kindest remem-
brances to her. In my incognito I may have behaved strangely.
-
## p. 7344 (#138) ###########################################
7344
PAUL HEYSE
But the idea of assuming it flashed upon me so suddenly, and
with the help of my faithful maid it was carried so quickly into
execution, that I had no time to consider what rôle I should
play; so everything was done on the spur of the moment. To be
sure, I had at first a vague idea of proposing that you should
accompany me on the great journey. But one glance into your
home quickly told me that you must be happiest there; that your
'promised land' is the room where your desk and the artist
table of your wife stand so quietly and peacefully side by side.
"Farewell, dear friend'! I should like to talk with you still
longer, to philosophize, as we used to call it; but what would
be the use? Or has any sage ever given a satisfactory answer
to the question, of how the commandment that the sins of the
fathers must be visited on the children can be made to harmonize
with the idea of a just government of the world? Why should
a freak of nature, an abnormal creation, be expected to fulfill all
the grave and normal demands we are justified in making upon
ordinary human beings? Or why are we usually punished by the
gratification of our wishes, and allowed to perceive what we ought
to have desired, only when it cannot be attained?
"A fool, you know, can propound more questions than ten
philosophers can answer. Perhaps I shall receive special enlight-
enment in the 'promised land. ' My memory is stored with much
that is beautiful; even many a trial that I have experienced in
the gray twilight of this strange, cold, inhospitable world was
not borne wholly without recompense. I would not give up even
my sorrows for the dull happiness of commonplace wiseacres, who
in their limited sphere think all things perfectly natural, and cling
closely to their clod.
"Farewell, my dear friend. Let me hope that you will always,
wherever I may be, remember me with as much sympathy as the
great and pure happiness you enjoy will allow, and that you will
wish a pleasant journey to
TOINETTE. "
-
## p. 7345 (#139) ###########################################
7345
THOMAS HEYWOOD
(15-? -16-? )
W
E HAVE Thomas Heywood's own word that he was the author
of the whole or chief part of two hundred and twenty plays.
For years he wrote his dramas and acted in them with
Henslowe's company, or that of the Lord Admiral, or at the theatre
of the Red Bull in London; and composed, too, many of the Lord
Mayor's pageants.
Yet so modest was he about his own achieve-
ments, and so careless of fame, that he made no effort to preserve
his work, and now we have only twenty-three plays and a variety of
scattered fragments. From these we may gather many hints of his
genial and gifted mind; but of his actual life we know little. There
is evidence that he was of good family, a fellow of Peterhouse Col-
lege, Cambridge, and remarkably well read; and that he early went
to London. Even the dates of his birth and death are lost; but he
was probably about ten years younger than "mellifluous Will" Shake-
speare, and must have known him well and many other celebrities of
that brilliant period.
He too felt the spirit of the English Renaissance, and wrote under
the influence of its overwhelming, sometimes rude, vigor and spon-
taneity. As a popular actor he must have been kept busy; yet for
years he found time to write something every day, scribbling off what
occurred to him wherever he might be, and often on the blank side
of his tavern bills. He watched the ardent city life with more criti-
cal vision than was common in that simpler-minded time; took note
of all, as his prose writing shows; and was, as Symonds says, “among
our earliest professional littérateurs. "
The anthology of poets of all ages and lands, which he planned
but never finished, has been much regretted by scholars. He him-
self was primarily a poet, and scattered through his plays are dainty,
breezy lyrics of "April morning freshness," which show an easy mas-
tery of metre. But he is best known as a dramatist; and his readers
must admire his eloquent expression of deep feeling, and a delicacy
of taste often lacking in his contemporaries.
He first tried historical plays; but although these contain fine
passages, they are less satisfactory than his later work. There is a
suggestion of the realist in Heywood; for he seldom left home for
his subjects, but sought them in English men and women of his time.
XIII-460
## p. 7346 (#140) ###########################################
7346
THOMAS HEYWOOD
He excelled in strong and simple situations, and in able touches
which depicted character and developed a homely every-day atmo-
sphere; but his work is very uneven, showing many technical faults.
of uneven metre and interrupted rhyme, and his finest passages are
sometimes followed by jagged doggerel unworthy a schoolboy.
wrote too rapidly to take much heed of form, and when not mastered
by an emotional instinct for the fitting expression, he was careless of
minor points.
Among his best known plays are The English Traveller,' a study
of character; The Fair Maid of the West,' which has an adventur-
ous ring much like that of Kingsley's Westward Ho'; and 'A Woman
Killed with Kindness. ' The last is well sustained, and in its capable
character-drawing and eloquent blank verse is considered his master-
piece. Henslowe records in his diary that he paid Heywood three
pounds for it. The slight plot-the story of a faithless wife whose
husband sends her to a manor-house where she must live separated
from him and from her children, although in comfort, and who dies
there of her bitter repentance-is of less interest than the natural-
ness of the emotion, and the lofty moral feeling for which Heywood
is especially noteworthy.
SONG
From The Rape of Lucrece ›
OME, list and hark;
The bell doth toll
For some but now
Departing soul.
C
And was not that
Some ominous fowl,
The bat, the night-
Crow, or screech-owl?
To these, I hear
The wild wolf howl,
In this black night
That seems to scowl.
All these my black
Book shall enroll,
For hark! still, still
The bell doth toll
For some but now
Departing soul.
## p. 7347 (#141) ###########################################
THOMAS HEYWOOD
7347
APULEIUS'S SONG
From The Rape of Lucrece ›
PACE
ACK, clouds, away, and welcome day;
With night we banish sorrow:
Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft,
To give my love good-morrow:
Wings from the wind to please her mind,
Notes from the lark I'll borrow:
Bird, prune thy wing; nightingale, sing,
To give my love good-morrow.
To give my love good-morrow,
Notes from them all I'll borrow.
Wake from thy nest, robin-redbreast;
Sing, birds, in every furrow;
And from each bill let music shrill
Give my fair love good-morrow.
Blackbird and thrush in every bush-
Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow-
You pretty elves, amongst yourselves,
Sing my fair love good-morrow.
-
To give my love good-morrow,
Sing, birds, in every furrow.
WITH
HARVEST SONG
From The Silver Age >
TH fair Ceres, Queen of grain,
The reaped fields we roam, roam, roam!
Each country peasant, nymph, and swain
Sing their harvest home, home, home!
Whilst the Queen of plenty hallowes
Growing fields as well as fallowes.
Echo double all our lays,
Make the Champions found, found, found,
To the Queen of harvest praise
That sows and reaps our ground, ground, ground.
Ceres, Queen of plenty, hallowes
Growing fields as well as fallowes.
Tempest hence, hence winds and hails,
Tares, cockles, rotten flowers, flowers, flowers;
## p. 7348 (#142) ###########################################
7348
THOMAS HEYWOOD
Our song shall keep time with our flails -
When Ceres sings none lowers, lowers, lowers.
She it is whose godhood hallowes
Growing fields as well as fallowes.
SONG
From The Fair Maid of the Exchange
E LITTLE birds that sit and sing
Amidst the shady valleys,
YⓇ
And see how Phyllis sweetly walks,
Within her garden alleys;
Go, pretty birds, about her bower;
Sing, pretty birds, she may not lower;
Ah me!
methinks I see her frown!
Ye pretty wantons, warble.
So tell her through your chirping bills,
As you by me are bidden;
To her is only known my love,
Which from the world is hidden.
Go, pretty birds, and tell her so;
See that your notes strain not too low,
For still methinks I see her frown:
Ye pretty wantons, warble.
So tune your voices' harmony,
And sing, I am her lover;
Strain loud and sweet, that ev'ry note
With sweet content may move her.
And she that hath the sweetest voice
Tell her I will not change my choice;
Yet still, methinks, I see her frown:
Ye pretty wantons, warble.
Oh, fly! make haste! see, see, she falls
Into a pretty slumber!
Sing round about her rosy bed,
That waking she may wonder.
Say to her, 'tis her lover true
That sendeth love to you, to you:
And when you hear her kind reply,
Return with pleasant warbling.
## p. 7349 (#143) ###########################################
THOMAS HEYWOOD
7349
O
FRANKFORD'S SOLILOQUY
From A Woman Killed with Kindness'
GOD! O God! that it were possible
To undo things done; to call back yesterday!
That time could turn up his swift sandy glass,
To untell the days, and to redeem these hours!
Or that the sun
Could, rising from the West, draw his coach backward,-
Take from the account of time so many minutes,
Till he had all these seasons called again,
These minutes and these actions done in them.
HIERARCHY OF ANGELS
M
ELLIFLUOUS Shakespeare, whose enchanting quill
Commanded mirth or passion, was but Will;
And famous Jonson, though his learned pen
Be dipped in Castaly, is still but Ben.
Fletcher and Webster, of that learned pack
None of the meanest, was but Jack;
Dekker but Tom, nor May, nor Middleton,
And he's but now Jack Ford that once was John.
SHEPHERDS' SONG
WⓇ
E THAT have known no greater state
Than this we live in, praise our fate;
For courtly silks in cares are spent,
When country's russet breeds content.
The power of sceptres we admire,
But sheep-hooks for our use desire.
Simple and low is our condition,
For here with us is no ambition:
We with the sun our flocks unfold,
Whose rising makes their fleeces gold;
Our music from the birds we borrow,
They bidding us, we them, good-morrow.
Our habits are but coarse and plain,
Yet they defend from wind and rain;
As warm too, in an equal eye,
As those bestained in scarlet dye.
## p. 7350 (#144) ###########################################
7350
THOMAS HEYWOOD
The shepherd, with his homespun lass,
As many merry hours doth pass,
As courtiers with their costly girls,
Though richly decked in gold and pearls;
And though but plain, to purpose woo,
Nay, often with less danger too.
Those that delight in dainties' store,
One stomach feed at once, no more;
And when with homely fare we feast,
With us it doth as well digest;
And many times we better speed,
For our wild fruits no surfeits breed.
If we sometimes the willow wear,
By subtle swains that dare forswear,
We wonder whence it comes, and fear
They've been at court, and learnt it there.
## p. 7351 (#145) ###########################################
7351
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
(1824-)
M
Y LITERARY life, such as it has been," writes Colonel Higgin-
son, "affords no lesson greatly worth recording, unless it
be the facility with which a taste for books may be trans-
mitted and accumulated from one generation to another, and then
developed into a lifelong pursuit by a literary environment. To go no
further back, my paternal ancestors in America were Puritan clergy-
men, who wrote many books, a few of which are still quoted. .
My father wrote several pamphlets, and my mother some children's
books, in one or two of which I figured; my
eldest brother wrote a little book against
slavery. All this must surely have been
enough to guarantee a little infusion of
printer's ink into my blood. Then as to
externals: my father, having lost a mod-
erate fortune by Jefferson's embargo, came
to Cambridge [Massachusetts] and became
-steward- or, as it is now called, bursar
of Harvard College. He built a house, in
which I was born, at the head of a street
then called Professors' Row, because so
many professors lived on it.
"I was thus born and cradled within THOMAS W. HIGGINSON
the college atmosphere, and amid a world
of books and bookish men, the list of these last including many
since famous who were familiar visitors at our house.
My
first nurse, if not a poet, was the theme of poetry, being one Rowena
Pratt, the wife of Longfellow's Village Blacksmith'; and no doubt
her singing made the heart of her young charge rejoice, as when she
sang in that Paradise to which the poet has raised her. Later I
'tumbled about in a library,' as Holmes recommends, and in the
self-same library where he practiced the like gymnastics.
At
home the process could be repeated in a comfortable library of Queen
Anne literature in delightful little old-fashioned editions, in which I
began to browse as soon as the period of 'Sandford and Merton' and
Miss Edgeworth's 'Frank' had passed.
"It passed early, for it was the custom in those days to teach
children to read, and sometimes to write, before they were four years
•
## p. 7352 (#146) ###########################################
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7352
old- -a practice now happily discontinued. Another more desirable
custom prevailed in the household, for my mother read aloud a great
deal in the evening; and I thus became familiar with Scott's novels,
as I sat gazing in the fire or lay stretched in delicious indolence upon
the hearth-rug. . . . Lowell and Story were my schoolmates, though
five years older; and when to all this early circle of literary per-
sons was added the unconscious weight of academic influence behind,
with all the quaint bookish characteristics of that earlier Cambridge, it
will be seen that merely to have lived in such a milieu was the begin-
ning of a literary training. This must be my justification for dwell-
ing on items which would otherwise be without interest to any one
but myself: they indicate the class of influences which not only made
a writer out of me, but accomplished a similar result for Hedge,
Holmes, Margaret Fuller, Lowell, and Norton.
"My father's financial losses secured for me a valuable combina-
tion of circumstances-the tradition of social refinement united with
the practice of economy. This last point was further emphasized by
his death when I was ten years old; and I, as the youngest of a
large family, was left to be brought up mainly by women, and for-
tunately by those whom I was accustomed to seeing treated with
intellectual respect by prominent men. Their influence happily coun-
teracted a part of that received from an exceedingly rough school to
which I was sent at eight years old.
"At thirteen I entered Harvard College, being already very tall
for my age and of mature appearance, with some precocity of intel-
lect and a corresponding immaturity of character. . . . I graduated
at about the time when young men now enter college-seventeen
and a half years; and spent two years in teaching before I came
back for post-graduate studies to Cambridge. Those two years were
perhaps the most important in my life. Most of them were passed
in the family of a cousin. . . . All my experience of college
instructors had given me no such personal influence as that of my
cousin, and it so fell in with the tendencies of that seething period —
the epoch of Brook Farm, of receding Transcendentalism, of dawning
Fourierism that it simply developed more methodically what would
probably have come at any rate.
When I came to him I
had begun the study of the law, and all my ambition lay that way;
but his unconscious attrition, combined with the prevailing tenden-
cies of the time, turned me from that pursuit and from all 'bread
studies, as they used to be called, toward literature and humani-
tarian interests.
·
"I came back to Cambridge expecting to fit myself for some
professorship in philology, or metaphysics, or natural science. Not
knowing exactly what the result would be, I devoted two happy
## p. 7353 (#147) ###########################################
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7353
years to an immense diversity of reading, in which German litera-
ture on the whole predominated. . . . Circumstances and influences
drew me at last aside to the liberal ministry; a thing which I have
never regretted, though it occupied me only temporarily, and I grav-
itated back to literature at last. "
These fragments of a sketch which Colonel Higginson wrote for
the Forum in 1886 clearly forecast the general character of his life;
but they do not adequately indicate the humanity and the benevolent
sympathy with the oppressed which have given that life its crowning
grace. After leaving the theological school in 1847, he was settled
over the first religious society of Newburyport. He became not long
after-in 1850-a candidate for Congress on the Free Soil ticket.
After his defeat, his antislavery principles having become distasteful
to his parish, he resigned his charge and undertook the ministry of
the Free Church at Worcester. The year following this settlement,—
that is, in 1853,- he was at the head of the body of men who attacked
the Boston court-house for the rescue of Anthony Burns the fugitive
slave. He played a manful part throughout the political imbroglio
which preceded the Civil War, and in 1856 assisted in forming Free
State emigrant parties for Kansas. Journeying to the very heart of
the turbulent district, he served as a soldier with the free settlers
against the pro-slavery invaders from Missouri. In 1858 he retired
from the ministry and devoted himself to literature. 'Thalatta,' a
collection of verse relating to the sea, to which he contributed and
which he in part edited, was published in 1853.
Immediately following the outbreak of the Civil War, Mr. Higgin-
son recruited several companies of Massachusetts volunteers, and in
1862 organized the regiment of South Carolina volunteers, the first
regiment of blacks mustered into the Federal service. With such
crude soldiery he made raids into the interior, at one time penetrat-
ing so far south as Florida, and capturing Jacksonville. In 1864 he
retired from service on account of general debility caused by a
wound. Some years later he removed from Newport to his birth-
place, Cambridge, where he established a permanent home. In 1880-81
he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives,
and in 1889 was made State military and naval historian.
Higginson's identification with nearly every movement of his time
looking to the amelioration of human life has been complete, and
he has never been backward in declaring his adherence during the
unpopular phases of the questions; such, for instance, as concern slav-
ery, and the right of women to make the most of themselves always
and everywhere. His sympathies with the questions involved in the
latter issue, in fact, the justice of giving to women higher educa-
tion, equal opportunities with men in the business world, and political
## p. 7354 (#148) ###########################################
7354
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
enfranchisement,- have given rise to many of his happiest and most
popular essays. It is as an essayist that he is best known. The ele-
gance of his style, the precision and finish of his diction, and his high
obedience to art, are not unfair evidence that Addison and his Spec-
tator had a permanent influence over the youthful mind, in the com-
fortable library of Queen Anne literature of which he speaks in the
fragments quoted above. His amenity of manner, grace of feeling,
and gleaming humor, belong wholly to our own half of the nineteenth
century; and the very essence of Queen Anne's age of wigs — an
artificiality that covered and concealed nature-is replaced in him
by a sane and simple naturalness.
Colonel Higginson's published volumes are numerous; but nearly
all are collections of essays, in which literature, outdoor life, history,
and heroic philanthropy in a wide sense, furnish the chief themes.
'Army Life in a Black Regiment' may be regarded as a chapter of
autobiography, or as a memorable leaf in the story of the great
Civil War. His romance Malbone' is largely a transcript from act-
ual life, the chief character being drawn from the same friend of
Higginson who figures as Densdeth in Winthrop's 'Cecil Dreeme. '
The Life of Margaret Fuller,' again, was a labor of love, a tribute
of loyalty to a woman who had most vitally influenced his early
years. His translation of Epictetus may be explained in a somewhat
similar fashion. The volume of his verse is small, and includes no
ambitious creative work. He is lyric in quality, and has a tender-
ness, purity, and simplicity which endear his verse to some readers
for whom his exquisitely elaborated prose is less effective.
In the Atlantic Monthly for 1897 Colonel Higginson publishes his
memoirs, under the happily characteristic title, 'Cheerful Yesterdays. '
MY OUTDOOR STUDY
Copyright 1863, by Ticknor & Fields. Reprinted by
permission of Longmans, Green & Co. , publishers, New York
From Outdoor Papers.
E
VERY summer I launch my boat to seek some realm of en-
chantment beyond all the sordidness and sorrow of earth,
and never yet did I fail to ripple with my prow at least the
outskirts of those magic waters. What spell has fame or wealth
to enrich this midday blessedness with a joy the more? Yonder
barefoot boy, as he drifts silently in his punt beneath the droop-
ing branches of yonder vine-clad bank, has a bliss which no Astor
can buy with money, no Seward conquer with votes,— which yet
## p. 7355 (#149) ###########################################
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7355
is no monopoly of his, and to which time and experience only add
a more subtile and conscious charm. The rich years were given
us to increase, not to impair, these cheap felicities. Sad or sinful
is the life of that man who finds not the heavens bluer and the
waves more musical in maturity than in childhood. Time is a
severe alembic of youthful joys, no doubt: we exhaust book after
book, and leave Shakespeare unopened; we grow fastidious in
men and women; all the rhetoric, all the logic, we fancy we have
heard before; we have seen the pictures, we have listened to the
symphonies: but what has been done by all the art and literature
of the world towards describing one summer day? The most
exhausting effort brings us no nearer to it than to the blue sky
which is its dome; our words are shot up against it like arrows,
and fall back helpless. Literary amateurs go the tour of the
globe to renew their stock of materials, when they do not yet
know a bird or a bee or a blossom beside their homestead door;
and in the hour of their greatest success they have not a horizon
to their life so large as that of yon boy in his punt. All that
is purchasable in the capitals of the world is not to be weighed
in comparison with the simple enjoyment that may be crowded
into one hour of sunshine. What can place or power do here?
"Who could be before me, though the palace of Cæsar cracked
and split with emperors, while I, sitting in silence on a cliff of
Rhodes, watched the sun as he swung his golden censer athwart
the heavens? "
It is pleasant to observe a sort of confused and latent recog-
nition of all this in the instinctive sympathy which is always.
rendered to any indication of outdoor pursuits. How cordially
one sees the eyes of all travelers turn to the man who enters the
railroad station with a fowling-piece in hand, or the boy with
water-lilies! There is a momentary sensation of the freedom of
the woods, a whiff of oxygen for the anxious money-changers.
How agreeable sounds the news-to all but his creditors — that
the lawyer or the merchant has locked his office door and gone
fishing! The American temperament needs at this moment noth-
ing so much as that wholesome training of semi-rural life which
reared Hampden and Cromwell to assume at one grasp the sov-
ereignty of England, and which has ever since served as the
foundation of England's greatest ability. The best thoughts and
purposes seem ordained to come to human beings beneath the
open sky, as the ancients fabled that Pan found the goddess
## p. 7356 (#150) ###########################################
7356
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
Ceres when he was engaged in the chase, whom no other of
the gods could find when seeking seriously. The little I have
gained from colleges and libraries has certainly not worn so
well as the little I learned in childhood of the habits of plant,
bird, and insect. That "weight and sanity of thought" which
Coleridge so finely makes the crowning attribute of Wordsworth,
is in no way so well matured and cultivated as in the society of
Nature.
There may be extremes and affectations, and Mary Lamb de-
clared that Wordsworth held it doubtful if a dweller in towns had
a soul to be saved. During the various phases of transcendental
idealism among ourselves in the last twenty years, the love of
Nature has at times assumed an exaggerated and even a pathetic.
aspect, in the morbid attempts of youths and maidens to make it
a substitute for vigorous thought and action,-a lion endeavoring
to dine on grass and green leaves. In some cases this mental
chlorosis reached such a height as almost to nauseate one with
Nature, when in the society of the victims; and surfeited com-
panions felt inclined to rush to the treadmill immediately, or get
chosen on the board of selectmen, or plunge into any conceivable
drudgery, in order to feel that there was still work enough in
the universe to keep it sound and healthy. But this, after all,
was exceptional and transitory; and our American life still needs
beyond all things else the more habitual cultivation of outdoor
habits.
Probably the direct ethical influence of natural objects may be
overrated. Nature is not didactic, but simply healthy. She helps
everything to its legitimate development, but applies no goads,
and forces on us no sharp distinctions. Her wonderful calmness,
refreshing the whole soul, must aid both conscience and intellect
in the end, but sometimes lulls both temporarily, when immediate
issues are pending. The waterfall cheers and purifies infinitely,
but it marks no moments, has no reproaches for indolence, forces.
to no immediate decision, offers unbounded to-morrows; and the
man of action must tear himself away when the time comes, since
the work will not be done for him. "The natural day is very
calm, and will hardly reprove our indolence. "
And yet, the more bent any man is upon action, the more
profoundly he needs this very calmness of Nature to preserve his
equilibrium. The radical himself needs nothing so much as fresh
The world is called conservative, but it is far easier to
air.
## p. 7357 (#151) ###########################################
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7357
impress a plausible thought on the complaisance of others than to
retain an unfaltering faith in it for ourselves. The most dogged
reformer mistrusts himself every little while, and says inwardly,
like Luther, "Art thou alone wise? " So he is compelled to exag-
gerate, in the effort to hold his own. The community is bored
by the conceit and egotism of the innovators; so it is by that of
poets and artists, orators and statesmen: but if we knew how
heavily ballasted all these poor fellows need to be, to keep an
even keel amid so many conflicting tempests of blame and praise,
we should hardly reproach them. But the simple enjoyments of
outdoor life, costing next to nothing, tend to equalize all vexa-
tions. What matter if the governor removes you from office? he
cannot remove you from the lake; and if readers or customers
will not bite, the pickerel will. We must keep busy, of course;
yet we cannot transform the world except very slowly, and we
can best preserve our patience in the society of Nature, who does
her work almost as imperceptibly as we.
And for literary training especially, the influence of natural
beauty is simply priceless. Under the present educational sys-
tems, we need grammars and languages far less than a more
thorough outdoor experience. On this flowery bank, on this
ripple-marked shore, are the true literary models.
How many
living authors have ever attained to writing a single page which
could be for one moment compared, for the simplicity and grace
of its structure, with this green spray of wild woodbine or yon-
der white wreath of blossoming clematis? A finely organized
sentence should throb and palpitate like the most delicate vibra-
tions of the summer air. We talk of literature as if it were a
mere matter of rule and measurement, a series of processes long
since brought to mechanical perfection: but it would be less in-
correct to say that it all lies in the future; tried by the outdoor
standard, there is as yet no literature, but only glimpses and
guideboards; no writer has yet succeeded in sustaining, through
more than some single occasional sentence, that fresh and perfect
charm. If by the training of a lifetime one could succeed in
producing one continuous page of perfect cadence, it would be
a life well spent; and such a literary artist would fall short of
Nature's standard in quantity only, not in quality.
It is one sign of our weakness, also, that we commonly assume
Nature to be a rather fragile and merely ornamental thing, and
suited for a model of the graces only. But her seductive softness
## p. 7358 (#152) ###########################################
7358
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
is the last climax of magnificent strength. The same mathe-
matical law winds the leaves around the stem and the planets
around the sun. The same law of crystallization rules the slight-
knit snowflake and the hard foundations of the earth. The thistle-
down floats secure upon the summer zephyrs that are woven into
the tornado. The dewdrop holds within its transparent cell the
same electric fire which charges the thunder-cloud. In the softest
tree or the airiest waterfall, the fundamental lines are as lithe
and muscular as the crouching haunches of a leopard; and with-
out a pencil vigorous enough to render these, no mere mass of
foam or foliage, however exquisitely finished, can tell the story.
Lightness of touch is the crowning test of power.
Yet Nature does not work by single spasms only. That chest-
nut spray is not an isolated and exhaustive effort of creative
beauty: look upward and see its sisters rise with pile above pile
of fresh and stately verdure, till tree meets sky in a dome of
glorious blossom, the whole as perfect as the parts, the least part
as perfect as the whole. Studying the details, it seems as if
Nature were a series of costly fragments with no coherency; as
if she would never encourage us to do anything systematically,
would tolerate no method but her own, and yet had none of her
own; were as abrupt in her transitions from oak to maple as the
heroine who went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make
an apple-pie: while yet there is no conceivable human logic so
close and inexorable as her connections. How rigid, how flexible
are, for instance, the laws of perspective! If one could learn to
make his statements as firm and unswerving as the horizon line;
his continuity of thought as marked, yet as unbroken, as yon-
der soft gradations by which the eye is lured upward from lake
to wood, from wood to hill, from hill to heavens,- what more
bracing tonic could literary culture demand? As it is, Art misses
the parts, yet does not grasp the whole.
Literature also learns from Nature the use of materials: either
to select only the choicest and rarest, or to transmute coarse to
fine by skill in using. How perfect is the delicacy with which
the woods and fields are kept throughout the year! All these
millions of living creatures born every season, and born to die;
yet where are the dead bodies? We never see them. Buried
beneath the earth by tiny nightly sextons, sunk beneath the
waters, dissolved into the air, or distilled again and again as food
for other organizations,-all have had their swift resurrection.
## p. 7359 (#153) ###########################################
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7359
Their existence blooms again in these violet-petals, glitters in the
burnished beauty of these golden beetles, or enriches the veery's
song. It is only out of doors that even death and decay become
beautiful. The model farm, the most luxurious house, have their
regions of unsightliness; but the fine chemistry of Nature is
constantly clearing away all its impurities before our eyes, and
yet so delicately that we never suspect the process. The most
exquisite work of literary art exhibits a certain crudeness and
coarseness when we turn to it from Nature, as the smallest
cambric-needle appears rough and jagged when compared through
the magnifier with the tapering fineness of the insect's sting.
Once separated from Nature, literature recedes into meta-
physics or dwindles into novels. How ignoble seems the current
material of London literary life, for instance, compared with the
noble simplicity which, a half-century ago, made the Lake Coun-
try an enchanted land forever! Is it worth a voyage to England
to sup with Thackeray in the Pot Tavern? Compare the "enor-
mity of pleasure" which De Quincey says Wordsworth derived
from the simplest natural object, with the serious protest of
Wilkie Collins against the affectation of caring about Nature at
all. "Is it not strange," says this most unhappy man, "to see
how little real hold the objects of the natural world amidst which
we live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature
for comfort in joy and sympathy in trouble, only in books.
What share have the attractions of Nature ever had in the
pleasurable or painful interests and emotions of ourselves or our
friends? . . . There is surely a reason for this want of inborn
sympathy between the creature and the creation around it. ”
·
THE SCENES AND THE ACTORS
From Mademoiselle's Campaigns,' in 'Atlantic Essays. Copyright 1871, by
J. R. Osgood & Co. Reprinted by permission of Longmans, Green &
Co. , publishers, New York.
HE heroine of this tale is one so famous in history that her
THE
proper name never appears in it. The seeming paradox
is the soberest fact. To us Americans, glory lies in the
abundant display of one's personal appellation in the news-
papers. Our heroine lived in the most gossiping of all ages,
herself its greatest gossip; yet her own name, patronymic or
## p. 7360 (#154) ###########################################
7360
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
baptismal, never was talked about.
haps a passing weakness->
"You think so because I can speak of the end so quietly?
You ought long ago to have credited me with as much strength
as was needed for that. I know how few are willing to rise
from the table just when the viands are most tempting. And
indeed, Franzel, life never seemed to me so fair as now. How
many kind friends I have gained during these last weeks, how
much beautiful poetry and lofty and profound thoughts I have
enjoyed! But all that's of no avail: man must live and let live,
and there are doubtless others waiting to take their turn.
If you
are sad, Franzel, I must wait for another time to make my last
request; though I do not know how long I may have to linger.
But come, be sensible. You know I love you dearly; indeed, next
to Edwin you have the first place in my heart. But I do not
need to take leave of my brother. My whole life during the last
few years has been only one long farewell. We knew we should
not always remain together, I at least was fully aware of it, so
we have enjoyed all our happiness, as it were, on account. But
when the end comes, I know how it will be: at first he'll be
unable to reconcile himself. And that's why I want to beg you
to keep near him. His needs are great, and there are not many
who can fulfill them. "
――――――――――
―――――
-
"And that is the first thing you ask? " cried the honest friend,
with an emotion he vainly endeavored to repress. "But for
heaven's sake, Balder, what sort of talk is this? You - you really
believe I-we-" He started up and rushed desperately around
the little table in the centre of the room, so that the leaves of the
palms trembled.
"You scarcely understand as yet all that I mean," continued
the invalid quietly. "That you'll always remain his friend is a
matter of course. But to give me any real comfort, you will
have to make a sacrifice. "
"A sacrifice? As if I would not-do you know me so little? "
"I know you to be the most unselfish man under the sun,”
said Balder, smiling. "But it is just this very habit of never
## p. 7339 (#133) ###########################################
PAUL HEYSE
7339
thinking of yourself, that for his sake and mine you must lay
aside, at least so far as you can do so without being faithless to
yourself. Do you know what will happen if you go on as you
have been doing? In two years, in spite of your friendship, you'll
not set foot in the tun. "
"I? But tell me -"
"It's a very simple matter: because you'll be thinking of your
friends either behind prison bars or in America. Dear Franzel,
must I tell you why you're not fond of living?
Because you
believe that a man only truly lives when he becomes a martyr
to his convictions. I have always loved you for this belief, and
yet I believe it a mistaken one. Test it awhile: say to yourself
that you aid many more by living than you could by your mar-
tyrdom, and you will see that a man can guard his post very
bravely and self-sacrificingly, without foolhardily summoning the
enemy by alarm shots. It would be an inexpressible comfort to
me if you would promise for two years to let alone all 'agitation'
and see how affairs really are. There are currents in which it's
a useless waste of strength to row, because the boat floats onward
of its own accord. I know what it will cost you to do this.
it would be a great joy if this last wish - ”
But
"Say no more," cried the other, suddenly pausing before his
friend, with his tearful eyes turned toward him: "Balder, is it
possible that you that you are about to leave us? And can you
believe if that should happen, that I could continue my life as
if nothing had occurred? When men can no longer behold the
do you suppose I could-that I would Words failed
him; he turned abruptly away, and stood motionless beside the
turning-lathe.
>>>
sun
-
"I did not mean that I thought you could live on the same
as before," said Balder in a lower voice. "But you need a sub-
stitute for what you resign. You must learn to be glad to live,
and I think I know how you would learn to do so most quickly.
You must take a wife, Franzel! ”
"I? What can you be thinking about? How came such an
idea into your head? Just at this time, too--"
"Because it will soon be too late for me to earn a kuppelpelz*
from you. True, I shall scarcely need it. I shall not feel cold
where I lie. But I should like to know of your being warmly
*Reward for match-making.
## p. 7340 (#134) ###########################################
7340
PAUL HEYSE
sheltered. And I know from experience I've been 'married'
to Edwin-that the world looks much brighter seen with four
eyes than with two. "
"You see," he continued, as his friend still stood motionless,
boring a hole in the bench with the point of a file, "Edwin will
find a wife in time who will make him happy: then you would
be left again with nothing but mankind to clasp to your heart;
and beautiful and sublime as the idea is, it's not all you need -
and that's why you get over-excited, and the thought of martyr-
dom overcomes your judgment. So I think a little wife who
would know how to love and value you, would by her mere
presence instruct you every day in the doctrine that Edwin has
so often represented to you in vain, that you should husband
your energies for the future, and not prematurely sacrifice your
life without cause. There is no danger of your becoming faith-
less to your convictions from mere selfish pleasure in your home.
And then, how can a socialist who knows nothing except from
hearsay of family life, upon which basis the whole structure of
society rests, who knows nothing of where the shoe pinches the
father of a family, talk to married men about what they owe to
themselves and others? ”
As he uttered these words a bewitchingly cunning expression
sparkled in the sick boy's beautiful eyes. He almost feared that
Franzelius would turn, and looking in his face penetrate the
secret design, the purpose of attacking him on his weakest side;
so, rising, he limped to the stove and put in a few sticks of
wood. While thus employed, he continued in a tone of apparent
indifference:-
-
"You mustn't suppose I'm saying all this at random. No, my
dear fellow, I've a very suitable match in view for you: a young
girl who's as well adapted to your needs as if I'd invented or
ordered her expressly for you. Young, very pretty, with a heart
as true as gold, fond of work and fond of life too, as she ought
to be, if she is to wed with one who doesn't care to live; not
a princess, but a child of working people. Haven't you guessed
her name yet? Then I must help you: she writes it Reginchen. ”
"Balder! You're dreaming! No, no, I beseech you, say no
more about that: you've too long—"
"I am astonished," continued the youth, rising as he spoke
and moving toward the bed, "that you didn't understand me read-
ily and meet me half-way. Where have your eyes been, that
## p. 7341 (#135) ###########################################
PAUL HEYSE
7341
you've not seen that you have stood high in the dear girl's
favor for years? Even I have noticed it! I tell you, Franzel,
the little girl is a treasure. I have known her all these years,
and love her as dearly as a sister, and the man to whom I
don't begrudge her I must love like a brother. Therefore, blind
dreamer, I wanted to open your eyes, that I may close mine in
peace. To be sure, I'm by no means certain that you've not
already bestowed your heart elsewhere, and my brotherly hint
may be too late.
At any rate, whatever you do you should do
quickly, for the young girl's sake. She seems to have taken
your long absence to heart: her mother says she is by no means
well yet, and eats and sleeps very little. I should like to see
my little sister well and happy again before I - "
He could not finish the sentence. He had been seated on
the bed while speaking; and now he laid his head on the pillow
and closed his eyes, as if wearied with the unusual exertion of
conversing. Suddenly he felt his hands seized; Franzelius had
meant to embrace him, but instead he threw himself down beside
the bed, and with his head resting on Balder's knees, he gave
way to such violent and uncontrollable emotion that the youth was
obliged to make every exertion to soothe him into composure.
At last he rose. He tried to speak, but his voice failed.
"You - you're-oh! Heaven forgive me, forgive me! I'm not
worthy! " was all he could stammer. Then he started up and
rushed out of the room.
Balder had sunk back on the bed and closed his eyes again.
His pale face was almost transfigured; he looked like a hero
resting after a victory, and for the moment did not even feel the
pain in his chest. The room was perfectly still; the sunlight
played amid the palm leaves; the mask of the youthful prisoner,
suffused with a rosy light which came from the open door of the
stove, seemed to breathe and whisper to its image on the narrow
couch: "Die! -your death shall be painless! " But a sudden
thought roused Balder from this anticipation of eternal repose.
He rose and dragged himself to the turning-lathe, where with a
trembling hand he unlocked the drawer. "It's fortunate that I
thought of it! " he murmured. "What if they had found it! "
He drew out the portfolio in which he kept his collection of
verses. On how many pages was the image of the child whom
he secretly loved, described with all the exaggerated charms his
solitary yearning had invested her with; to how much imaginary
## p. 7342 (#136) ###########################################
7342
PAUL HEYSE
happiness these simple sheets bore witness! And yet he could
now let them slide through his fingers without bitterness. Had
not his feelings been sacred and consoling to him at the time?
What had happened which could strip the bloom and fragrance
of this spring from his heart? There would be no summer,
but did that make less beautiful the season of blossoming?
read a verse here and there in an undertone, now and then
altering a word that no longer satisfied him, and smiling at him-
self for polishing verses which no human eye had seen or ever
would see. Many he had quite forgotten, and now found them
beautiful and touching. When he had turned the last page, he
took the pencil and wrote on a loose scrap of paper that he laid
in the drawer in place of the volume of poems, the following
lines, which he wrote without effort and without revision:
GOOD-NIGHT, thou lovely world, good-night:
Have I not had a glorious day?
Unmurmuring, though thou leav'st my sight,
I to my couch will go away.
Whate'er of loveliness thou hast,
Is it not mine to revel in?
Though many a keen desire does waste
My heart, it ne'er alone has been.
Delusion's veil of error blind
Fell quite away from soul and eye;
Clearer my path did upward wind
To where life's sunny hill-tops lie.
No idol false is there adored;
Humanity's eternal powers,
O'er which the light of Heaven is poured,
Stand self-contained in passion's hours.
High standing on the breeze-swept peak,
Below may I with rapture see
The land whereof no man may speak
Save him who fares there wearily.
This is the rich inheritance
The children of the world shall own,
When crossed the wearisome expanse,
And fate's supreme decrees are known.
---
## p. 7343 (#137) ###########################################
PAUL HEYSE
7343
O brother, who art seeking still
For love and joy where I have sought,
I would your path with blessings fill
When to its end my life is brought.
Ah! brother, could we two aspire
Together to the glorious height-
Hence, tears! some part of my desire
Is thine. Thou lovely world, good-night!
COUNTESS TOINETTE SETS OUT FOR "THE PROMISED LAND »
From Children of the World'.
HE note inclosed in the doctor's letter ran as follows:
THE
-
-
"You will be alarmed, my dear friend, that I already
write you again. But fear nothing: it is for the last time,
and means little more than the card inscribed P. P. C. which
we leave with our friends before a long separation. I am going
away on a journey, dear friend, far enough away to enable you.
to feel perfectly secure from any molestation on my part. How
this has come about is a long story. Suffice it to say, that it is
not envy of the laurels won by my beautiful fair-haired sister-in-
law-I mean those she will undoubtedly win as a high-born,
intellectual, and pious traveler that induces me also to seek a
change of air. If that which I breathe were but conducive to
my health,- if I could but sleep and wake, laugh and weep,
like other men and women,-I certainly would not stir from the
spot. But even my worst enemy could hardly fail to understand
that matters cannot go on any longer as they are; so I prefer
to go. The 'promised land' has long allured me. I should have
set out for it before, if I had not had much to expect, to hope,
and to wait for, and been hindered by a multitude of as I
now see-very superfluous scruples, which are at last successfully
conquered.
"Do you know that since I saw you I have made the acquaint-
ance of your dear wife? A very, very pleasant acquaintance; if
I had only made it a few years sooner, it might have been very
useful to me. Well, even now it is not too late to rejoice that
you have what you need, the happiness you desire, in such a
noble, wise, and loving life companion. Give my kindest remem-
brances to her. In my incognito I may have behaved strangely.
-
## p. 7344 (#138) ###########################################
7344
PAUL HEYSE
But the idea of assuming it flashed upon me so suddenly, and
with the help of my faithful maid it was carried so quickly into
execution, that I had no time to consider what rôle I should
play; so everything was done on the spur of the moment. To be
sure, I had at first a vague idea of proposing that you should
accompany me on the great journey. But one glance into your
home quickly told me that you must be happiest there; that your
'promised land' is the room where your desk and the artist
table of your wife stand so quietly and peacefully side by side.
"Farewell, dear friend'! I should like to talk with you still
longer, to philosophize, as we used to call it; but what would
be the use? Or has any sage ever given a satisfactory answer
to the question, of how the commandment that the sins of the
fathers must be visited on the children can be made to harmonize
with the idea of a just government of the world? Why should
a freak of nature, an abnormal creation, be expected to fulfill all
the grave and normal demands we are justified in making upon
ordinary human beings? Or why are we usually punished by the
gratification of our wishes, and allowed to perceive what we ought
to have desired, only when it cannot be attained?
"A fool, you know, can propound more questions than ten
philosophers can answer. Perhaps I shall receive special enlight-
enment in the 'promised land. ' My memory is stored with much
that is beautiful; even many a trial that I have experienced in
the gray twilight of this strange, cold, inhospitable world was
not borne wholly without recompense. I would not give up even
my sorrows for the dull happiness of commonplace wiseacres, who
in their limited sphere think all things perfectly natural, and cling
closely to their clod.
"Farewell, my dear friend. Let me hope that you will always,
wherever I may be, remember me with as much sympathy as the
great and pure happiness you enjoy will allow, and that you will
wish a pleasant journey to
TOINETTE. "
-
## p. 7345 (#139) ###########################################
7345
THOMAS HEYWOOD
(15-? -16-? )
W
E HAVE Thomas Heywood's own word that he was the author
of the whole or chief part of two hundred and twenty plays.
For years he wrote his dramas and acted in them with
Henslowe's company, or that of the Lord Admiral, or at the theatre
of the Red Bull in London; and composed, too, many of the Lord
Mayor's pageants.
Yet so modest was he about his own achieve-
ments, and so careless of fame, that he made no effort to preserve
his work, and now we have only twenty-three plays and a variety of
scattered fragments. From these we may gather many hints of his
genial and gifted mind; but of his actual life we know little. There
is evidence that he was of good family, a fellow of Peterhouse Col-
lege, Cambridge, and remarkably well read; and that he early went
to London. Even the dates of his birth and death are lost; but he
was probably about ten years younger than "mellifluous Will" Shake-
speare, and must have known him well and many other celebrities of
that brilliant period.
He too felt the spirit of the English Renaissance, and wrote under
the influence of its overwhelming, sometimes rude, vigor and spon-
taneity. As a popular actor he must have been kept busy; yet for
years he found time to write something every day, scribbling off what
occurred to him wherever he might be, and often on the blank side
of his tavern bills. He watched the ardent city life with more criti-
cal vision than was common in that simpler-minded time; took note
of all, as his prose writing shows; and was, as Symonds says, “among
our earliest professional littérateurs. "
The anthology of poets of all ages and lands, which he planned
but never finished, has been much regretted by scholars. He him-
self was primarily a poet, and scattered through his plays are dainty,
breezy lyrics of "April morning freshness," which show an easy mas-
tery of metre. But he is best known as a dramatist; and his readers
must admire his eloquent expression of deep feeling, and a delicacy
of taste often lacking in his contemporaries.
He first tried historical plays; but although these contain fine
passages, they are less satisfactory than his later work. There is a
suggestion of the realist in Heywood; for he seldom left home for
his subjects, but sought them in English men and women of his time.
XIII-460
## p. 7346 (#140) ###########################################
7346
THOMAS HEYWOOD
He excelled in strong and simple situations, and in able touches
which depicted character and developed a homely every-day atmo-
sphere; but his work is very uneven, showing many technical faults.
of uneven metre and interrupted rhyme, and his finest passages are
sometimes followed by jagged doggerel unworthy a schoolboy.
wrote too rapidly to take much heed of form, and when not mastered
by an emotional instinct for the fitting expression, he was careless of
minor points.
Among his best known plays are The English Traveller,' a study
of character; The Fair Maid of the West,' which has an adventur-
ous ring much like that of Kingsley's Westward Ho'; and 'A Woman
Killed with Kindness. ' The last is well sustained, and in its capable
character-drawing and eloquent blank verse is considered his master-
piece. Henslowe records in his diary that he paid Heywood three
pounds for it. The slight plot-the story of a faithless wife whose
husband sends her to a manor-house where she must live separated
from him and from her children, although in comfort, and who dies
there of her bitter repentance-is of less interest than the natural-
ness of the emotion, and the lofty moral feeling for which Heywood
is especially noteworthy.
SONG
From The Rape of Lucrece ›
OME, list and hark;
The bell doth toll
For some but now
Departing soul.
C
And was not that
Some ominous fowl,
The bat, the night-
Crow, or screech-owl?
To these, I hear
The wild wolf howl,
In this black night
That seems to scowl.
All these my black
Book shall enroll,
For hark! still, still
The bell doth toll
For some but now
Departing soul.
## p. 7347 (#141) ###########################################
THOMAS HEYWOOD
7347
APULEIUS'S SONG
From The Rape of Lucrece ›
PACE
ACK, clouds, away, and welcome day;
With night we banish sorrow:
Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft,
To give my love good-morrow:
Wings from the wind to please her mind,
Notes from the lark I'll borrow:
Bird, prune thy wing; nightingale, sing,
To give my love good-morrow.
To give my love good-morrow,
Notes from them all I'll borrow.
Wake from thy nest, robin-redbreast;
Sing, birds, in every furrow;
And from each bill let music shrill
Give my fair love good-morrow.
Blackbird and thrush in every bush-
Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow-
You pretty elves, amongst yourselves,
Sing my fair love good-morrow.
-
To give my love good-morrow,
Sing, birds, in every furrow.
WITH
HARVEST SONG
From The Silver Age >
TH fair Ceres, Queen of grain,
The reaped fields we roam, roam, roam!
Each country peasant, nymph, and swain
Sing their harvest home, home, home!
Whilst the Queen of plenty hallowes
Growing fields as well as fallowes.
Echo double all our lays,
Make the Champions found, found, found,
To the Queen of harvest praise
That sows and reaps our ground, ground, ground.
Ceres, Queen of plenty, hallowes
Growing fields as well as fallowes.
Tempest hence, hence winds and hails,
Tares, cockles, rotten flowers, flowers, flowers;
## p. 7348 (#142) ###########################################
7348
THOMAS HEYWOOD
Our song shall keep time with our flails -
When Ceres sings none lowers, lowers, lowers.
She it is whose godhood hallowes
Growing fields as well as fallowes.
SONG
From The Fair Maid of the Exchange
E LITTLE birds that sit and sing
Amidst the shady valleys,
YⓇ
And see how Phyllis sweetly walks,
Within her garden alleys;
Go, pretty birds, about her bower;
Sing, pretty birds, she may not lower;
Ah me!
methinks I see her frown!
Ye pretty wantons, warble.
So tell her through your chirping bills,
As you by me are bidden;
To her is only known my love,
Which from the world is hidden.
Go, pretty birds, and tell her so;
See that your notes strain not too low,
For still methinks I see her frown:
Ye pretty wantons, warble.
So tune your voices' harmony,
And sing, I am her lover;
Strain loud and sweet, that ev'ry note
With sweet content may move her.
And she that hath the sweetest voice
Tell her I will not change my choice;
Yet still, methinks, I see her frown:
Ye pretty wantons, warble.
Oh, fly! make haste! see, see, she falls
Into a pretty slumber!
Sing round about her rosy bed,
That waking she may wonder.
Say to her, 'tis her lover true
That sendeth love to you, to you:
And when you hear her kind reply,
Return with pleasant warbling.
## p. 7349 (#143) ###########################################
THOMAS HEYWOOD
7349
O
FRANKFORD'S SOLILOQUY
From A Woman Killed with Kindness'
GOD! O God! that it were possible
To undo things done; to call back yesterday!
That time could turn up his swift sandy glass,
To untell the days, and to redeem these hours!
Or that the sun
Could, rising from the West, draw his coach backward,-
Take from the account of time so many minutes,
Till he had all these seasons called again,
These minutes and these actions done in them.
HIERARCHY OF ANGELS
M
ELLIFLUOUS Shakespeare, whose enchanting quill
Commanded mirth or passion, was but Will;
And famous Jonson, though his learned pen
Be dipped in Castaly, is still but Ben.
Fletcher and Webster, of that learned pack
None of the meanest, was but Jack;
Dekker but Tom, nor May, nor Middleton,
And he's but now Jack Ford that once was John.
SHEPHERDS' SONG
WⓇ
E THAT have known no greater state
Than this we live in, praise our fate;
For courtly silks in cares are spent,
When country's russet breeds content.
The power of sceptres we admire,
But sheep-hooks for our use desire.
Simple and low is our condition,
For here with us is no ambition:
We with the sun our flocks unfold,
Whose rising makes their fleeces gold;
Our music from the birds we borrow,
They bidding us, we them, good-morrow.
Our habits are but coarse and plain,
Yet they defend from wind and rain;
As warm too, in an equal eye,
As those bestained in scarlet dye.
## p. 7350 (#144) ###########################################
7350
THOMAS HEYWOOD
The shepherd, with his homespun lass,
As many merry hours doth pass,
As courtiers with their costly girls,
Though richly decked in gold and pearls;
And though but plain, to purpose woo,
Nay, often with less danger too.
Those that delight in dainties' store,
One stomach feed at once, no more;
And when with homely fare we feast,
With us it doth as well digest;
And many times we better speed,
For our wild fruits no surfeits breed.
If we sometimes the willow wear,
By subtle swains that dare forswear,
We wonder whence it comes, and fear
They've been at court, and learnt it there.
## p. 7351 (#145) ###########################################
7351
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
(1824-)
M
Y LITERARY life, such as it has been," writes Colonel Higgin-
son, "affords no lesson greatly worth recording, unless it
be the facility with which a taste for books may be trans-
mitted and accumulated from one generation to another, and then
developed into a lifelong pursuit by a literary environment. To go no
further back, my paternal ancestors in America were Puritan clergy-
men, who wrote many books, a few of which are still quoted. .
My father wrote several pamphlets, and my mother some children's
books, in one or two of which I figured; my
eldest brother wrote a little book against
slavery. All this must surely have been
enough to guarantee a little infusion of
printer's ink into my blood. Then as to
externals: my father, having lost a mod-
erate fortune by Jefferson's embargo, came
to Cambridge [Massachusetts] and became
-steward- or, as it is now called, bursar
of Harvard College. He built a house, in
which I was born, at the head of a street
then called Professors' Row, because so
many professors lived on it.
"I was thus born and cradled within THOMAS W. HIGGINSON
the college atmosphere, and amid a world
of books and bookish men, the list of these last including many
since famous who were familiar visitors at our house.
My
first nurse, if not a poet, was the theme of poetry, being one Rowena
Pratt, the wife of Longfellow's Village Blacksmith'; and no doubt
her singing made the heart of her young charge rejoice, as when she
sang in that Paradise to which the poet has raised her. Later I
'tumbled about in a library,' as Holmes recommends, and in the
self-same library where he practiced the like gymnastics.
At
home the process could be repeated in a comfortable library of Queen
Anne literature in delightful little old-fashioned editions, in which I
began to browse as soon as the period of 'Sandford and Merton' and
Miss Edgeworth's 'Frank' had passed.
"It passed early, for it was the custom in those days to teach
children to read, and sometimes to write, before they were four years
•
## p. 7352 (#146) ###########################################
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7352
old- -a practice now happily discontinued. Another more desirable
custom prevailed in the household, for my mother read aloud a great
deal in the evening; and I thus became familiar with Scott's novels,
as I sat gazing in the fire or lay stretched in delicious indolence upon
the hearth-rug. . . . Lowell and Story were my schoolmates, though
five years older; and when to all this early circle of literary per-
sons was added the unconscious weight of academic influence behind,
with all the quaint bookish characteristics of that earlier Cambridge, it
will be seen that merely to have lived in such a milieu was the begin-
ning of a literary training. This must be my justification for dwell-
ing on items which would otherwise be without interest to any one
but myself: they indicate the class of influences which not only made
a writer out of me, but accomplished a similar result for Hedge,
Holmes, Margaret Fuller, Lowell, and Norton.
"My father's financial losses secured for me a valuable combina-
tion of circumstances-the tradition of social refinement united with
the practice of economy. This last point was further emphasized by
his death when I was ten years old; and I, as the youngest of a
large family, was left to be brought up mainly by women, and for-
tunately by those whom I was accustomed to seeing treated with
intellectual respect by prominent men. Their influence happily coun-
teracted a part of that received from an exceedingly rough school to
which I was sent at eight years old.
"At thirteen I entered Harvard College, being already very tall
for my age and of mature appearance, with some precocity of intel-
lect and a corresponding immaturity of character. . . . I graduated
at about the time when young men now enter college-seventeen
and a half years; and spent two years in teaching before I came
back for post-graduate studies to Cambridge. Those two years were
perhaps the most important in my life. Most of them were passed
in the family of a cousin. . . . All my experience of college
instructors had given me no such personal influence as that of my
cousin, and it so fell in with the tendencies of that seething period —
the epoch of Brook Farm, of receding Transcendentalism, of dawning
Fourierism that it simply developed more methodically what would
probably have come at any rate.
When I came to him I
had begun the study of the law, and all my ambition lay that way;
but his unconscious attrition, combined with the prevailing tenden-
cies of the time, turned me from that pursuit and from all 'bread
studies, as they used to be called, toward literature and humani-
tarian interests.
·
"I came back to Cambridge expecting to fit myself for some
professorship in philology, or metaphysics, or natural science. Not
knowing exactly what the result would be, I devoted two happy
## p. 7353 (#147) ###########################################
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7353
years to an immense diversity of reading, in which German litera-
ture on the whole predominated. . . . Circumstances and influences
drew me at last aside to the liberal ministry; a thing which I have
never regretted, though it occupied me only temporarily, and I grav-
itated back to literature at last. "
These fragments of a sketch which Colonel Higginson wrote for
the Forum in 1886 clearly forecast the general character of his life;
but they do not adequately indicate the humanity and the benevolent
sympathy with the oppressed which have given that life its crowning
grace. After leaving the theological school in 1847, he was settled
over the first religious society of Newburyport. He became not long
after-in 1850-a candidate for Congress on the Free Soil ticket.
After his defeat, his antislavery principles having become distasteful
to his parish, he resigned his charge and undertook the ministry of
the Free Church at Worcester. The year following this settlement,—
that is, in 1853,- he was at the head of the body of men who attacked
the Boston court-house for the rescue of Anthony Burns the fugitive
slave. He played a manful part throughout the political imbroglio
which preceded the Civil War, and in 1856 assisted in forming Free
State emigrant parties for Kansas. Journeying to the very heart of
the turbulent district, he served as a soldier with the free settlers
against the pro-slavery invaders from Missouri. In 1858 he retired
from the ministry and devoted himself to literature. 'Thalatta,' a
collection of verse relating to the sea, to which he contributed and
which he in part edited, was published in 1853.
Immediately following the outbreak of the Civil War, Mr. Higgin-
son recruited several companies of Massachusetts volunteers, and in
1862 organized the regiment of South Carolina volunteers, the first
regiment of blacks mustered into the Federal service. With such
crude soldiery he made raids into the interior, at one time penetrat-
ing so far south as Florida, and capturing Jacksonville. In 1864 he
retired from service on account of general debility caused by a
wound. Some years later he removed from Newport to his birth-
place, Cambridge, where he established a permanent home. In 1880-81
he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives,
and in 1889 was made State military and naval historian.
Higginson's identification with nearly every movement of his time
looking to the amelioration of human life has been complete, and
he has never been backward in declaring his adherence during the
unpopular phases of the questions; such, for instance, as concern slav-
ery, and the right of women to make the most of themselves always
and everywhere. His sympathies with the questions involved in the
latter issue, in fact, the justice of giving to women higher educa-
tion, equal opportunities with men in the business world, and political
## p. 7354 (#148) ###########################################
7354
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
enfranchisement,- have given rise to many of his happiest and most
popular essays. It is as an essayist that he is best known. The ele-
gance of his style, the precision and finish of his diction, and his high
obedience to art, are not unfair evidence that Addison and his Spec-
tator had a permanent influence over the youthful mind, in the com-
fortable library of Queen Anne literature of which he speaks in the
fragments quoted above. His amenity of manner, grace of feeling,
and gleaming humor, belong wholly to our own half of the nineteenth
century; and the very essence of Queen Anne's age of wigs — an
artificiality that covered and concealed nature-is replaced in him
by a sane and simple naturalness.
Colonel Higginson's published volumes are numerous; but nearly
all are collections of essays, in which literature, outdoor life, history,
and heroic philanthropy in a wide sense, furnish the chief themes.
'Army Life in a Black Regiment' may be regarded as a chapter of
autobiography, or as a memorable leaf in the story of the great
Civil War. His romance Malbone' is largely a transcript from act-
ual life, the chief character being drawn from the same friend of
Higginson who figures as Densdeth in Winthrop's 'Cecil Dreeme. '
The Life of Margaret Fuller,' again, was a labor of love, a tribute
of loyalty to a woman who had most vitally influenced his early
years. His translation of Epictetus may be explained in a somewhat
similar fashion. The volume of his verse is small, and includes no
ambitious creative work. He is lyric in quality, and has a tender-
ness, purity, and simplicity which endear his verse to some readers
for whom his exquisitely elaborated prose is less effective.
In the Atlantic Monthly for 1897 Colonel Higginson publishes his
memoirs, under the happily characteristic title, 'Cheerful Yesterdays. '
MY OUTDOOR STUDY
Copyright 1863, by Ticknor & Fields. Reprinted by
permission of Longmans, Green & Co. , publishers, New York
From Outdoor Papers.
E
VERY summer I launch my boat to seek some realm of en-
chantment beyond all the sordidness and sorrow of earth,
and never yet did I fail to ripple with my prow at least the
outskirts of those magic waters. What spell has fame or wealth
to enrich this midday blessedness with a joy the more? Yonder
barefoot boy, as he drifts silently in his punt beneath the droop-
ing branches of yonder vine-clad bank, has a bliss which no Astor
can buy with money, no Seward conquer with votes,— which yet
## p. 7355 (#149) ###########################################
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7355
is no monopoly of his, and to which time and experience only add
a more subtile and conscious charm. The rich years were given
us to increase, not to impair, these cheap felicities. Sad or sinful
is the life of that man who finds not the heavens bluer and the
waves more musical in maturity than in childhood. Time is a
severe alembic of youthful joys, no doubt: we exhaust book after
book, and leave Shakespeare unopened; we grow fastidious in
men and women; all the rhetoric, all the logic, we fancy we have
heard before; we have seen the pictures, we have listened to the
symphonies: but what has been done by all the art and literature
of the world towards describing one summer day? The most
exhausting effort brings us no nearer to it than to the blue sky
which is its dome; our words are shot up against it like arrows,
and fall back helpless. Literary amateurs go the tour of the
globe to renew their stock of materials, when they do not yet
know a bird or a bee or a blossom beside their homestead door;
and in the hour of their greatest success they have not a horizon
to their life so large as that of yon boy in his punt. All that
is purchasable in the capitals of the world is not to be weighed
in comparison with the simple enjoyment that may be crowded
into one hour of sunshine. What can place or power do here?
"Who could be before me, though the palace of Cæsar cracked
and split with emperors, while I, sitting in silence on a cliff of
Rhodes, watched the sun as he swung his golden censer athwart
the heavens? "
It is pleasant to observe a sort of confused and latent recog-
nition of all this in the instinctive sympathy which is always.
rendered to any indication of outdoor pursuits. How cordially
one sees the eyes of all travelers turn to the man who enters the
railroad station with a fowling-piece in hand, or the boy with
water-lilies! There is a momentary sensation of the freedom of
the woods, a whiff of oxygen for the anxious money-changers.
How agreeable sounds the news-to all but his creditors — that
the lawyer or the merchant has locked his office door and gone
fishing! The American temperament needs at this moment noth-
ing so much as that wholesome training of semi-rural life which
reared Hampden and Cromwell to assume at one grasp the sov-
ereignty of England, and which has ever since served as the
foundation of England's greatest ability. The best thoughts and
purposes seem ordained to come to human beings beneath the
open sky, as the ancients fabled that Pan found the goddess
## p. 7356 (#150) ###########################################
7356
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
Ceres when he was engaged in the chase, whom no other of
the gods could find when seeking seriously. The little I have
gained from colleges and libraries has certainly not worn so
well as the little I learned in childhood of the habits of plant,
bird, and insect. That "weight and sanity of thought" which
Coleridge so finely makes the crowning attribute of Wordsworth,
is in no way so well matured and cultivated as in the society of
Nature.
There may be extremes and affectations, and Mary Lamb de-
clared that Wordsworth held it doubtful if a dweller in towns had
a soul to be saved. During the various phases of transcendental
idealism among ourselves in the last twenty years, the love of
Nature has at times assumed an exaggerated and even a pathetic.
aspect, in the morbid attempts of youths and maidens to make it
a substitute for vigorous thought and action,-a lion endeavoring
to dine on grass and green leaves. In some cases this mental
chlorosis reached such a height as almost to nauseate one with
Nature, when in the society of the victims; and surfeited com-
panions felt inclined to rush to the treadmill immediately, or get
chosen on the board of selectmen, or plunge into any conceivable
drudgery, in order to feel that there was still work enough in
the universe to keep it sound and healthy. But this, after all,
was exceptional and transitory; and our American life still needs
beyond all things else the more habitual cultivation of outdoor
habits.
Probably the direct ethical influence of natural objects may be
overrated. Nature is not didactic, but simply healthy. She helps
everything to its legitimate development, but applies no goads,
and forces on us no sharp distinctions. Her wonderful calmness,
refreshing the whole soul, must aid both conscience and intellect
in the end, but sometimes lulls both temporarily, when immediate
issues are pending. The waterfall cheers and purifies infinitely,
but it marks no moments, has no reproaches for indolence, forces.
to no immediate decision, offers unbounded to-morrows; and the
man of action must tear himself away when the time comes, since
the work will not be done for him. "The natural day is very
calm, and will hardly reprove our indolence. "
And yet, the more bent any man is upon action, the more
profoundly he needs this very calmness of Nature to preserve his
equilibrium. The radical himself needs nothing so much as fresh
The world is called conservative, but it is far easier to
air.
## p. 7357 (#151) ###########################################
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7357
impress a plausible thought on the complaisance of others than to
retain an unfaltering faith in it for ourselves. The most dogged
reformer mistrusts himself every little while, and says inwardly,
like Luther, "Art thou alone wise? " So he is compelled to exag-
gerate, in the effort to hold his own. The community is bored
by the conceit and egotism of the innovators; so it is by that of
poets and artists, orators and statesmen: but if we knew how
heavily ballasted all these poor fellows need to be, to keep an
even keel amid so many conflicting tempests of blame and praise,
we should hardly reproach them. But the simple enjoyments of
outdoor life, costing next to nothing, tend to equalize all vexa-
tions. What matter if the governor removes you from office? he
cannot remove you from the lake; and if readers or customers
will not bite, the pickerel will. We must keep busy, of course;
yet we cannot transform the world except very slowly, and we
can best preserve our patience in the society of Nature, who does
her work almost as imperceptibly as we.
And for literary training especially, the influence of natural
beauty is simply priceless. Under the present educational sys-
tems, we need grammars and languages far less than a more
thorough outdoor experience. On this flowery bank, on this
ripple-marked shore, are the true literary models.
How many
living authors have ever attained to writing a single page which
could be for one moment compared, for the simplicity and grace
of its structure, with this green spray of wild woodbine or yon-
der white wreath of blossoming clematis? A finely organized
sentence should throb and palpitate like the most delicate vibra-
tions of the summer air. We talk of literature as if it were a
mere matter of rule and measurement, a series of processes long
since brought to mechanical perfection: but it would be less in-
correct to say that it all lies in the future; tried by the outdoor
standard, there is as yet no literature, but only glimpses and
guideboards; no writer has yet succeeded in sustaining, through
more than some single occasional sentence, that fresh and perfect
charm. If by the training of a lifetime one could succeed in
producing one continuous page of perfect cadence, it would be
a life well spent; and such a literary artist would fall short of
Nature's standard in quantity only, not in quality.
It is one sign of our weakness, also, that we commonly assume
Nature to be a rather fragile and merely ornamental thing, and
suited for a model of the graces only. But her seductive softness
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THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
is the last climax of magnificent strength. The same mathe-
matical law winds the leaves around the stem and the planets
around the sun. The same law of crystallization rules the slight-
knit snowflake and the hard foundations of the earth. The thistle-
down floats secure upon the summer zephyrs that are woven into
the tornado. The dewdrop holds within its transparent cell the
same electric fire which charges the thunder-cloud. In the softest
tree or the airiest waterfall, the fundamental lines are as lithe
and muscular as the crouching haunches of a leopard; and with-
out a pencil vigorous enough to render these, no mere mass of
foam or foliage, however exquisitely finished, can tell the story.
Lightness of touch is the crowning test of power.
Yet Nature does not work by single spasms only. That chest-
nut spray is not an isolated and exhaustive effort of creative
beauty: look upward and see its sisters rise with pile above pile
of fresh and stately verdure, till tree meets sky in a dome of
glorious blossom, the whole as perfect as the parts, the least part
as perfect as the whole. Studying the details, it seems as if
Nature were a series of costly fragments with no coherency; as
if she would never encourage us to do anything systematically,
would tolerate no method but her own, and yet had none of her
own; were as abrupt in her transitions from oak to maple as the
heroine who went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make
an apple-pie: while yet there is no conceivable human logic so
close and inexorable as her connections. How rigid, how flexible
are, for instance, the laws of perspective! If one could learn to
make his statements as firm and unswerving as the horizon line;
his continuity of thought as marked, yet as unbroken, as yon-
der soft gradations by which the eye is lured upward from lake
to wood, from wood to hill, from hill to heavens,- what more
bracing tonic could literary culture demand? As it is, Art misses
the parts, yet does not grasp the whole.
Literature also learns from Nature the use of materials: either
to select only the choicest and rarest, or to transmute coarse to
fine by skill in using. How perfect is the delicacy with which
the woods and fields are kept throughout the year! All these
millions of living creatures born every season, and born to die;
yet where are the dead bodies? We never see them. Buried
beneath the earth by tiny nightly sextons, sunk beneath the
waters, dissolved into the air, or distilled again and again as food
for other organizations,-all have had their swift resurrection.
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THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7359
Their existence blooms again in these violet-petals, glitters in the
burnished beauty of these golden beetles, or enriches the veery's
song. It is only out of doors that even death and decay become
beautiful. The model farm, the most luxurious house, have their
regions of unsightliness; but the fine chemistry of Nature is
constantly clearing away all its impurities before our eyes, and
yet so delicately that we never suspect the process. The most
exquisite work of literary art exhibits a certain crudeness and
coarseness when we turn to it from Nature, as the smallest
cambric-needle appears rough and jagged when compared through
the magnifier with the tapering fineness of the insect's sting.
Once separated from Nature, literature recedes into meta-
physics or dwindles into novels. How ignoble seems the current
material of London literary life, for instance, compared with the
noble simplicity which, a half-century ago, made the Lake Coun-
try an enchanted land forever! Is it worth a voyage to England
to sup with Thackeray in the Pot Tavern? Compare the "enor-
mity of pleasure" which De Quincey says Wordsworth derived
from the simplest natural object, with the serious protest of
Wilkie Collins against the affectation of caring about Nature at
all. "Is it not strange," says this most unhappy man, "to see
how little real hold the objects of the natural world amidst which
we live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature
for comfort in joy and sympathy in trouble, only in books.
What share have the attractions of Nature ever had in the
pleasurable or painful interests and emotions of ourselves or our
friends? . . . There is surely a reason for this want of inborn
sympathy between the creature and the creation around it. ”
·
THE SCENES AND THE ACTORS
From Mademoiselle's Campaigns,' in 'Atlantic Essays. Copyright 1871, by
J. R. Osgood & Co. Reprinted by permission of Longmans, Green &
Co. , publishers, New York.
HE heroine of this tale is one so famous in history that her
THE
proper name never appears in it. The seeming paradox
is the soberest fact. To us Americans, glory lies in the
abundant display of one's personal appellation in the news-
papers. Our heroine lived in the most gossiping of all ages,
herself its greatest gossip; yet her own name, patronymic or
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THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
baptismal, never was talked about.
