No More Learning

In Switzerland he organ-
ized in the same spirit the “Young Switzer-
land and the “Young Europe, fostering
the idea of universal political reform, and
the bringing in of a new era of the world,
in which free popular government should JOSEPH MAZZINI
displace the old systems both of legitimate
monarchy and despotic individualism. Banished from Switzerland
under a decree of the French government, in 1836 Mazzini found
refuge in London; and for the remainder of his life the English press
was the chief organ of his world-wide influence as a reformer, while
his literary ability won him a place among the most brilliant of the
modern British essayists. Only for brief intervals did Mazzini appear
again in Italy; notably in the period of 1848 and 1849, when, on the
insurrection of Sicily and Venetian Lombardy and the flight of Pio
Nono from Rome, like a Rienzi of the nineteenth century he issued
from that city of the soul ” the declaration of the Roman Republic,
and was elected one of the triumvirs. He led in a heroic resistance



## p. 9844 (#252) ###########################################

9844
JOSEPH MAZZINI
to the besieging French army until compelled to yield; and he was
content to have brought forth from the conflict the unstained banner,
"God and the People,” to be the standard for all future struggles for
the union of free Italy under the rightful leadership of Rome. In
1857 he again took part in person in the insurrections in Genoa and
in Sicily, and was laid under sentence of death, a judgment which was
removed in 1865. In 1870, on his attempting to join Garibaldi in
Sicily, he was arrested at sea and imprisoned at Gaëta, to be released
in two months, as the danger of a general insurrection disappeared.
During all this time he had been carrying on, mainly from England,
his propaganda through the press; publishing in 1852, in the West-
minster Review, the essay Europe, its Conditions and Prospects,'
completing in 1858 The Duties of Man,' and addressing open letters
to Pio Nono, to Louis Napoleon, and to Victor Emmanuel. In 1871 he
contributed to the Contemporary Review an essay on "The Franco-
German War and the Commune. The last production of his pen was
his essay on Renan's Reforme Morale et Intellectuelle,' finished in
March 1872, and published in the Fortnightly Review in 1874.
It was shortly after the completion of this essay at Pisa, whither
he had gone in the hope of regaining his health, that he was seized
with the illness that closed his earthly life on March 1oth, 1872.
Honors were decreed him by the Italian Parliament, his funeral was
attended by an immense concourse of people, and his remains were
laid away in a costly monument in the Campo Santo of Genoa.
If Mazzini is entitled to be called the prophet of a new political
age, it is because he sought for a new spiritual basis for political
reform. What is remarkable is, that his bold and ingenuous insist-
ence on the religious motive as fundamental in the government that
is to be, did not diminish his influence with his contemporaries of
whatever shades of opinion. Even so radical a writer as the Russian
anarchist Bakunin, in an essay on the Political Theology of Mazzini,
speaks of him as one of the noblest and purest individualities of our
age.
The two fundamental principles for which Mazzini stood were col-
lective humanity as opposed to individualism, and duty as opposed to
rights. His position was, that the revolutionary achievements of the
past had at most overcome the tyranny of monarchy in asserting the
principle of the rights of the individual. But this is not in itself a
unifying motive. The extreme assertion of this leads to disunion and
weakness, and makes way only for another and more hopeless des-
potism. The rights of the individual must now be sacrificed to the
collective good, and the motive of selfish aggrandizement must yield
to the sacred law of duty under the Divine government. It is this
undeviating regard for the supreme principle of duty to the collective


## p. 9845 (#253) ###########################################

JOSEPH MAZZINI
9845
man, under the authority of the Divine law, that alone can make the
perpetuation of the republic possible.
Mazzini's devotion to this principle accounts for his apparent luke-
warmness in many of the boldest and most conspicuous movements
in the progress of Italian liberation and unity. It was because he
saw the preponderance of sectional aims rather than the participa-
tion of all in the new federation, that he criticized the Carbonari king,
Charles Albert, in 1831, and that he fought against the policy of ob-
taining at the cost of Savoy and Nice “a truncated Italy of monarchy
and diplomacy, the creation of Victor Emmanuel, Louis Napoleon, and
Cavour. ” He lived to see Italy, nominally at least, a united nation,
freed from foreign control; but far from being the ideal republic
whose law is from above, and whose strength is in the supreme
deyotion of each citizen to the good of all, and to the realization
in this manner of a Divine government in the world. Toward the
attainment of this ideal by progressive governments everywhere, the
influence of Mazzini will long be a powerful factor, and his mission
more and more recognized as that of a true prophet of a new politi-
cal era of the world.
Among Mazzini's literary writings may be mentioned his essays on
(Victor Hugo,' (George Sand,' (Byron and Goethe,' (The Genius and
Tendency of the Writings of Thomas Carlyle,' and that on M. Renan
and France. His Life and Writings,' in six volumes, were published
in London in 1870; and a volume of Essays, Selected,' in 1887.
anh Surall
FAITH AND THE FUTURE
From the Essays
F"?
AITH requires an aim capable of embracing life as a whole,
of concentrating all its manifestations, of directing its vari-
ous modes of activity, or of repressing them all in favor of
one alone.
It requires an earnest, unalterable conviction that
that aim will be realized; a profound belief in a mission and
the obligation to fulfill it; and the consciousness of a supreme
power watching over the path of the faithful towards its accom-
plishment. These elements are indispensable to faith; and where
any one of these is wanting, we shall have sects, schools, political
parties, but no faith, -no constant hourly sacrifice for the sake of
a great religious idea.


## p. 9846 (#254) ###########################################

9846
JOSEPH MAZZINI
-
Now we have no definite religious idea, no profound belief in
an obligation entailed by a mission, no consciousness of a supreme
protecting power. Our actual apostolate is a mere analytical
opposition; our weapons are interest, and our chief instrument of
action is a theory of rights. We are all of us, notwithstanding
our sublime presentiments, the sons of rebellion. We advance
like renegades, without a God, without a law, without a banner
to lead us towards the future. Our former aim has vanished
from our view; the new, dimly seen for an instant, is effaced by
that doctrine of rights which alone directs our labors. We make
of the individual both the means and the aim. We talk of
humanity — a formula essentially religious — and banish religion
from our work. We talk of synthesis, and yet neglect the most
powerful and active element of human existence. Bold enough
to be undaunted by the dream of the material unity of Europe,
we thoughtlessly destroy its moral unity by failing to recognize
the primary condition of all association,- uniformity of sanction
and belief. And it is amidst such contradictions that we pretend
to renew a world.
Right is the faith of the individual. Duty is the common col-
lective faith. Right can but organize resistance: it may destroy,
it cannot found. Duty builds up, associates, and unites: it is
derived from a general law, whereas right is derived only from
human will. There is nothing, therefore, to forbid a struggle
against right; any individual may rebel against any right in
another individual which is injurious to him, and the sole judge
left between the adversaries is force: and such in fact has fre-
quently been the answer which societies based upon right have
given to their opponents.
Societies based upon duty would not be compelled to have
recourse to force; duty, once admitted as the rule, excludes the
possibility of struggle; and by rendering the individual subject to
the general aim, it cuts at the very root of those evils which
right is unable to prevent, and only affects to cure. Moreover,
progress is not a necessary result of the doctrine of right: it
merely admits it as a fact.
a fact. The exercise of rights being of
necessity limited by capacity, progress is abandoned to the arbi-
trary rule of an unregulated and aimless liberty.
The doctrine of rights puts an end to sacrifice, and cancels
martyrdom from the world: in every theory of individual rights,
interests become the governing and motive power, and martyrdom


## p. 9847 (#255) ###########################################

JOSEPH MAZZINI
9847
.
an absurdity; for what interest can endure beyond the tomb ?
Yet how often has martyrdom been the initiation of progress,
the baptism of a world!
Faith, which is intellect, energy, and love, will put an end to
the discords existing in a society which has neither church nor
leaders; which invokes a new world, but forgets to ask its secret,
its Word, from God.
With faith will revive poetry, rendered fruitful by the breath
of God and by a holy creed. Poetry, exiled now from a world a
prey to anarchy; poetry, the flower of the angels, nourished by
the blood of martyrs and watered by the tears of mothers, blos-
soming often among ruins but ever colored by the rays of dawn;
poetry, a language prophetic of humanity, European in essence
and national in form, - will make known to us the fatherland of
all the nations hitherto; translate the religious and social syn-
thesis through art; and render still lovelier by its light, Woman,
an angel,- fallen, it is true, but yet nearer heaven than we,-
and hasten her redemption by restoring her to her mission of
inspiration, prayer, and pity, so divinely symbolized by Christian-
ity in Mary.
The soul of man had fled; the senses reigned alone. The
multitude demanded bread and the sports of the circus. Philoso-
phy had sunk first into skepticism, then into epicureanism, then
into subtlety and words. Poetry was transformed into satire.
Yet there were moments when men were terror-struck at the
solitude around them, and trembled at their isolation. They ran
to embrace the cold and naked statues of their once venerated
gods; to implore of them a spark of moral life, a ray of faith,
an illusion! They departed, their prayers unheard, with
despair in their hearts and blasphemy upon their lips. Such
were the times; they resembled our own.
Yet this was not the death agony of the world. It was the
conclusion of one evolution of the world which had reached its
ultimate expression. A great epoch was exhausted, and passing
away to give place to another, the first utterances of which had
already been heard in the north, and which awaited but the Ini-
tiator to be revealed.
He came,- the soul the most full of love, the most sacredly
virtuous, the most deeply inspired by God and the future that
men have yet seen on earth,— Jesus. He bent over the corpse of
the dead world, and whispered a word of faith. Over the clay
that had lost all of man but the movement and the form, he
even


## p. 9848 (#256) ###########################################

9848
JOSEPH MAZZINI
uttered words until then unknown,- love, sacrifice, a heavenly
origin. And the dead arose. A new life circulated through the
clay, which philosophy had tried in vain to reanimate. From that
corpse arose the Christian world, the world of liberty and equal-
ity. From that clay arose the true man, the image of God, the
precursor of humanity.
THOUGHTS ADDRESSED TO THE POETS OF THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY
From (Giovine Italia
T".
He future is humanity. The world of individuality, the world
of the Middle Ages, is exhausted and consumed. The mod-
ern era of the social world is now in the dawn of its devel-
opment; and genius is possessed by the consciousness of this
coming world.
Napoleon and Byron represented, summed up, and concluded
the epoch of individuality: the one the monarch of the kingdom
of battle, the other the monarch of the realm of imagination;
the poetry of action, the poetry of thought.
Created by nature deeply to feel, and identify himself with
the first sublime image offered to his sight, Byron gazed around
upon the world and found it not.
Religion was no more. An altar was yet standing, but broken
and profaned: a temple silent and destitute of all noble and ele-
vating emotion, and converted into a fortress of despotism; in it
a neglected cross. Around him a world given up to materialism,
which had descended from the rank of philosophical opinion to
the need of practical egotism, and the relics of a superstition
which had become deformed and ridiculous since the progress of
civilization had forbidden it to be cruel. Cant was all that was
left in England, frivolity in France, and inertia in Italy. No
generous sympathy, no pure enthusiasm, no religion, no earnest
desire, no aspiration visible in the masses.
Whence could the soul of Byron draw inspiration ? where
find a symbol for the immense poetry that burned within him?
Despairing of the world around him, he took refuge in his own
heart, and dived into the inmost depths of his own soul.
indeed a whole world, a volcano, a chaos of raging and tumultu-
ous passions, - a cry of war against society such as tyranny had
made it; against religion such as the pope and the craft of priests
It was


## p. 9849 (#257) ###########################################

JOSEPH MAZZINI
9849
had made it; and against mankind as he saw them,- isolated,
degraded, and deformed.
The result was a form of poetry purely individual,- all of
individual sensation and images; a poetry having no basis in
humanity, nor in any universal faith; a poetry over which, with
all its infinity of accessories drawn from nature and the material
world, there broods the image of Prometheus bound down to
earth and cursing the earth, an image of individual will striving
to substitute itself by violence for the universal will and univer-
sal right.
Napoleon fell; Byron fell. The tombs of St. Helena and Mis-
solonghi contain the relics of an entire world.
ON CARLYLE
From the Essays)
E
W*
ALL seek God; but we know that here below we can
neither attain unto him, nor comprehend him, nor con-
template him: the absorption into God of some of the
Brahminical religions, of Plato, and of some modern ascetics, is
an illusion that cannot be realized. Our aim is to approach
God: this we can do by our works alone. To incarnate as far
as possible his word; to translate, to realize his thought, — is
our charge here below. It is not by contemplating his works
that we
can fulfill our mission upon earth; it is by devoting
ourselves to our share in the evolution of his work, without
interruption, without end. The earth and man touch at all points
on the infinite: this we know well, but is it enough to know this ?
have we not to march onwards, to advance into this infinite ?
But can the individual finite creature of a day do this if he
relies only upon his own powers? It is precisely from having
found themselves for an instant face to face with infinity, with-
out calculating upon other faculties, upon other powers, than
their own, that some of the greatest intellects of the day have
been led astray into skepticism or misanthropy. Not identifying
themselves sufficiently with humanity, and startled at the dis-
proportion between the object and the means, they have ended
by seeing naught but death and annihilation on every side,
and have no longer had courage for the conflict. The ideal has
appeared to them like a tremendous irony.


## p. 9850 (#258) ###########################################

9850
JOSEPH MAZZINI
In truth, human life, regarded from a merely individual point
of view, is deeply sad. Glory, power, grandeur, all perish,-
,
playthings of a day, broken at night. The mothers who loved
us, whom we love, are snatched away; friendships die, and we
survive them. The phantom of death watches by the pillow of
those dear to us. The strongest and purest love would be the
bitterest irony, were it not a promise for the future; and this
promise itself is but imperfectly felt by us, such as we are at the
present day. The intellectual adoration of truth without hope of
realization is sterile: there is a larger void in our souls, a yearn-
ing for more truth than we can realize during our short terrestrial
existence.
Sadness, unending sadness, discordance between the will and
the power, disenchantment, discouragement — such is human life,
when looked at only from the individual point of view. A few
rare intellects escape the common law and attain calmness: but
it is the calm of inaction, of contemplation; and contemplation
here on earth is the selfishness of genius.
I repeat, Mr. Carlyle has instinctively all the presentiments of
the new epoch; but following the teachings of his intellect rather
than his heart, and rejecting the idea of the collective life, it is
absolutely impossible for him to find the means of their realiza-
tion. A perpetual antagonism prevails throughout all he does;
his instincts drive him to action, his theory to contemplation.
Faith and discouragement alternate in his works, as they must in
his soul. He weaves and unweaves his web, like Penelope; he
preaches by turns life and nothingness; he wearies out the pow-
ers of his readers by continually carrying them from heaven to
hell, from hell to heaven. Ardent, and almost menacing, upon
the ground of ideas, he becomes timid and skeptical as soon as
he is engaged on that of their application. I may agree with
him with respect to the aim, I cannot respecting the means:
he rejects them all, but he proposes no others. He desires
progress, but shows hostility to all who strive to progress; he
foresees, he announces as inevitable, great changes or revolu-
tions in the religious, social, political order, but it is on condition
that the revolutionists take no part in them; he has written
many admirable pages on Knox and Cromwell, but the chances
are that he would have written them as admirably, although less
truly, against them had he lived at the commencement of their
struggles.


## p. 9851 (#259) ###########################################

JOSEPH MAZZINI
9851
(
What is meant by “reorganizing labor” but bringing back the
dignity of labor ? What is a new form but the case or the sym-
bol of a new idea? We perhaps have had a glimpse of the ideal
in all its purity; we feel ourselves capable of soaring into the
invisible regions of the spirit. But are we, on this account, to
isolate ourselves from the movement which is going on among
our brethren beneath us? Must we be told, “You profane the
sanctity of the idea,” because the men into whom we seek to
instill it are flesh and blood, and we are obliged to speak to their
senses? Condemn all action, then; for action is only a form
given to thought-its application, practice. “The end of man is
an action and not a thought. ” Mr. Carlyle himself repeats this
in his (Sartor Resartus'; and yet the spirit which pervades his
works seems to me too often of a nature to make his readers
forget it.
It has been asked, what is at the present day the duty of
which we have spoken so much? A complete reply would re-
quire a volume, but I may suggest it in a few words. Duty
consists of that love of God and man which renders the life of
the individual the representation and expression of all that he
believes to be the truth, absolute or relative. Duty is progress-
ive, as the evolution of truth; it is modified and enlarged with
the ages; it changes its manifestations according to the require-
ment of times and circumstances. There are times in which we
must be able to die like Socrates; there are others in which we
must be able to struggle like Washington: one period claims the
pen of the sage, another requires the sword of the hero. But
here and everywhere the source of this duty is God and his law;
its object, humanity; its guarantee, the mutual responsibility of
men; its measure, the intellect of the individual and the demands
of the period; its limit, power.
Study the universal tradition of humanity, with all the facul.
ties, with all the disinterestedness, with all the comprehensive-
ness of which God has made you capable: where you find the
general permanent voice of humanity agreeing with the voice of
your conscience, be sure that you hold in your grasp something
of absolute truth — gained, and forever yours. Study also with
interest, attention, and comprehensiveness, the tradition of your
epoch and of your nation — the idea, the want, which ferments
-
within them: where you find that your conscience sympathizes
with the general aspiration, you are sure of possessing the rel-
ative truth. Your life must embody both these truths, must
.


## p. 9852 (#260) ###########################################

9852
JOSEPH MAZZINI
represent and communicate them, according to your intelligence
and your means: you must be not only man, but a man of your
age; you must act as well as speak; you must be able to die •
without being compelled to acknowledge, “I have known such a
fraction of the truth, I could have done such a thing for its tri-
umph, and I have not done it. ”
Such is duty in its most general expression. As to its spe-
cial application to our times, I have said enough on this point
in that part of my article which establishes my difference from
the views of Mr. Carlyle, to render its deduction easy. The
question at the present day is the perfecting of the principle
of association, a transformation of the medium in which man-
kind moves: duty therefore lies in a collective labor. Every one
should measure his powers, and see what part of this labor falls
to him. The greater the intellect and influence a man enjoys,
the greater his responsibility; but assuredly contemplation cannot
satisfy duty in any degree.
Mr. Carlyle's idea of duty is naturally different. Thinking
only of individuality, calculating only the powers of the individ-
ual, he would rather restrict than enlarge its sphere. The rule
which he adopts is that laid down by Goethe, -"Do the duty
which lies nearest thee. ” And this rule, like all other moral
rules, is good in so far as it is susceptible of a wide interpretation;
bad so far as, taken literally, and fallen into the hands of men
whose tendencies to self-sacrifice are feeble, it may lead to the
justification of selfishness, and cause that which at bottom should
only be regarded as the wages of duty to be mistaken for duty
itself. It is well known what use Goethe, the high priest of
the doctrine, made of this maxim: enshrining himself in what he
called “Art”; and amidst a world in misery, putting away the
question of religion and politics as “a troubled element for Art,”
though a vital one for man, and giving himself up to the con-
templation of forms and the adoration of self.
There are at the present day but too many who imagine
they have perfectly done their duty, because they are kind toward
their friends, affectionate in their families, inoffensive toward the
rest of the world. The maxim of Goethe and of Mr. Carlyle will
always suit and serve such men, by transforming into duties
the individual, domestic, or other affections,- in other words, the
consolations of life. Mr. Carlyle probably does not carry out his
maxim in practice; but his principle leads to this result, and can-
not theoretically have any other.
(


## p. 9853 (#261) ###########################################

9853
JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
(1797-1851)
IN THE year 1843 appeared from an important Prussian pub-
lishing house a small volume, which was received with the
liveliest interest by literary Germany. Its title was Maria
Schweidler, the Amber-Witch: Being the most Interesting Trial for
Witchcraft yet Known: Taken from a Defective Manuscript, made by
the Father of the Accused, the Reverend Abraham Schweidler, of
Coserow (Usedom Island]; Edited by Reverend W. Meinhold. With-
in its pages was brought up from the superstitious past of the rural
life of North Germany, in 1630, a grim yet absorbingly interesting
picture and personal drama. Rev. Johann Wilhelm Meinhold, in edit-
ing the relic, stated that he had discovered its yellowed and torn
pages by merest accident among some literary rubbish in the choir
of the old Coserow church. The writer of it, the Reverend Abra-
ham Schweidler, a godly and simple-minded man, had almost lost his
only child Maria through a villainous plot on the part of a rejected
suitor, aided by an evil and jealous woman of the neighborhood, -
the latter confessing herself an actual servant of Satan. After a
formal trial, and the beginnings of those direful tortures to induce
confession that were then the ordinary accompaniment of German
criminal processes, the unfortunate young girl, wholly innocent of the
preposterous charge, had confessed it. She had found herself con-
quered by sheer physical agony, and by her inability to endure the
torment of the executioners. Sentenced to the stake, Maria had pre-
pared herself to meet her undeserved doom; and not before she was
fairly on the way to the pyre was she rescued by a courageous young
nobleman who loved her, and not only made himself her deliverer,
but anon her husband and protector for life. The whole narrative
was given with a simplicity of accent, and with a minuteness of
detail, that precluded doubt as to its being a genuine contribution
to the literature of the witchcraft delusion in Europe, - to which Mas-
sachusetts furnished an American supplement.
In offering to the public his interesting treasure, the Reverend
Pastor Meinhold particularly stated that he had kept the connection
between the fragments of Pastor Schweidler's old manuscript by
interpolating passages of his own editorial composition, imitating
as accurately as I was able the language and manner of the old
(


## p. 9854 (#262) ###########################################

9854
JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
»
biographer. ” The careful Meinhold noted that he expressly refrained
from pointing out the particular passages supplied, because “modern
criticism, which has now attained to a degree of acuteness never
before equaled,” could easily distinguish them.
The work met with the most complete success. (Maria Schweid-
ler, the Amber-Witch' was received with high commendation, as a
mediæval document most happily brought to light. Not only did its
dramatic treatment attract critical notice: a sharp argument soon
arose among those reviewers especially keen in dealing with curious
mediæval chronicles, as to the extent of Pastor Meinhold's "editorial”
additions; and as to whether this passage or that were original, or
only a nice imitation of the crabbed chronicle. The discussion soon
became a literary tempest in a teapot. Meinhold observed for months
a strict silence: then he abruptly announced that Maria Schweidler,
the Amber-Witch' was a total fabrication; that he had written the
whole story; that no part of it had ever been found in Coserow
Church or elsewhere; and further, that he had not been inspired to
perpetrate his brilliant fraud by merely the innocent vanity of a
story-teller or antiquarian. . He had desired to prove to the learned
Biblical critics of the date (it was the time of the attacks of Strauss
and Baur on the authenticity of certain books of the Scriptures) how
untrustworthy was their reasoning, from purely internal evidence, as
to the sources of the Canon. If a contemporary could deceive their
judgment with a forged romance, how much more might they err in
their Biblical arguments! Maria Schweidler, the Amber-Witch' was
thus a country parson's protest against inerrancy in the higher
criticism” then agitating German orthodoxy. It is interesting to
know that Meinhold's confession was at first rejected; although he
soon proved the story to be indeed the result of his scholarship
and quaint imagination. Its reputation grew; and the acknowledged
imposture only added to its circulation.
Of Meinhold's life and career, except as the author of Maria
Schweidler, the Amber-Witch,' there is little to be said. His father
was a Protestant minister, eccentric almost to the degree of insanity.
Wilhelm was born at Netzelkow, Usedom Island, February 27th, 1797.
He studied at Greifswald University, was a private tutor at Ueker-
munde and a curate at Gutzkow. On his marriage he settled first
at Usedom, later at Coserow. His literary success attracted the favor
of King Frederic Wilhelm IV. of Prussia; but after taking a pastor-
ate at Rehwinkel, in Stargard, Meinhold remained there almost to
the close of his life, although he inclined to the Roman Catholic
theology as he came to middle years. Another mediæval romance of
witchcraft, (Sidonia von Bork, the Cloister-Witch,' is by some critics
considered superior to Maria Schweidler, the Amber-Witch'; but it


## p. 9855 (#263) ###########################################

JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
9855
has never met with the popularity of the less pretentious story that
gave the Usedom clergyman his wide reputation.
It is of interest to
add that not only has the translation of the tale by Lady Duff-Gordon
been recognized as one of the very best examples of English transla-
tion of a fiction,- the translation that does not suggest the convey-
ance of a tale at second-hand, - but that on the appearance of her
version she was credited with the authorship of the story, and the
likelihood of a German original denied. From first to last, the drama
of Maria Schweidler's peril and romance seems to have been destined
to deceive better even than it was planned to deceive.
The Amber-Witch' belongs in the same category of “fictions that
seem fact » which includes Defoe's Robinson Crusoe,' or his ‘History
of the Plague in London'; where the appropriate detail is so abundant,
and the atmosphere of an epoch and community is so fully conveyed,
as to bar suspicion that the story is manufactured. As Mr. Joseph
Jacobs happily remarks in his excellent study of Meinhold, and of the
history that has kept his name alive among German romanticists:
(Who shall tell where Art will find her children ? On the desolate and
gloomy shores of the Baltic, the child of a half-crazy father, unfriendly and
unfriended as a bursch,-a Protestant pastor with Romanist tendencies, –
who would have anticipated from Meinhold perhaps the most effective pres-
entation of mediæval thought and feeling which the whole Romantic move-
ment produced ? And the occasion of the production of «The Amber-Witch)
was equally unexpected. Meinhold went forth to refute Strauss, and founded
on his way a new kingdom in the realm of Romance. It is a repetition of
the history of Saul. ”
THE RESCUE ON THE ROAD TO THE STAKE
From "The Amber-Witch)
[ The following extract is from the concluding portion of the terrible expe-
riences of Maria Schweidler. She has been tried and convicted of sorcery,
and solemnly sentenced. Seated in a cart, in which her father and her god-
father (the Pastor Benzensis of the chronicle) are allowed to accompany her
to her doom, the young girl maintains the courage of despair. On her ride
to the mountain, where the pyre has been raised, she is surrounded by suc-
cessive mobs of infuriated peasants; but is not unnerved, and advances toward
her death reciting prayers and hymns. Popular fury against her is deepened
by the rising of a violent storm, naturally laid to the young girl's last spells;
and by the violent death of her chief accuser, the wicked Sheriff Wittich,
who is killed by falling into the wheel of a roadside mill. At last the ele-
ments and the populace are quieted enough to allow the death procession to
be resumed. Surrounded by guards with pitchforks, and bound in the cart,
Maria is drawn toward the Blocksberg; and nothing apparently can interfere
with the legal tragedy of which she is the heroine. At this point the incident
occurs which is told in the excerpt. )


## p. 9856 (#264) ###########################################

9856
JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
How My DAUGHTER WAS AT LENGTH SAVED BY THE HELP OF THE ALL-
MERCIFUL, YEA, OF THE ALL-MERCIFUL GOD
M
EANWHILE, by reason of my unbelief, wherewith Satan again
tempted me, I had become so weak that I was forced to
lean my back against the constable his knees, and expected
not to live till even we should come to the mountain; for the
last hope I had cherished was now gone, and I saw that my
innocent lamb was in the same plight.
Moreover the reverend
Martinus began to upbraid her, saying that he too now saw that
all her oaths were lies, and that she really could brew storms.
Hereupon she answered with a smile, although indeed she was as
white as a sheet, "Alas, reverend godfather, do you then really
believe that the weather and the storms no longer obey our Lord
God? Are storms then so rare at this season of the year that
none save the foul fiend can cause them ? Nay, I have never
broken the baptismal vow you once made in my name, nor will
I ever break it, as I hope that God will be merciful to me in
my last hour, which is now at hand. ” But the reverend Mar-
tinus shook his head doubtingly, and said, “The Evil One must
have promised thee much, seeing thou remainest so stubborn
even unto thy life's end, and blasphemest the Lord thy God; but
wait, and thou wilt soon learn with horror that the devil “is a
liar, and the father of it” (St. John viii. ). Whilst he yet spake
this, and more of a like kind, we came to Uekeritze, where all
the people both great and small rushed out of their doors, also
Jacob Schwarten his wife, who as we afterwards heard had only
been brought to bed the night before, and her goodman came
running after her to fetch her back, In vain: she told him he
was a fool, and had been one for many a weary day, and that if
she had to crawl up the mountain on her bare knees, she would
go to see the parson's witch burned; that she had reckoned upon
it for so long, and if he did not let her go, she would give him
a thump on the chaps, etc.
Thus did the coarse and foul-mouthed people riot around the
cart wherein we sat; and as they knew not what had befallen,
they ran near us that the wheel went over the foot of a
boy. Nevertheless they all crowded up again, more especially the
lasses, and felt my daughter her clothes, and would even see her
shoes and stockings, and asked her how she felt. Item, one fel-
low asked whether she would drink somewhat, with many more
SO


## p. 9857 (#265) ###########################################

JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
9857
fooleries besides; till at last, when several came and asked her for
her garland and her golden chain, she turned towards me and
smiled, saying, “Father, I'must begin to speak some Latin again;
otherwise the folks will leave me no peace. ” But it was not
wanted this time: for our guards with the pitchforks had now
reached the hindmost, and doubtless told them what had hap-
pened, as we presently heard a great shouting behind us, for the
love of God to turn back before the witch did them a mischief;
and as Jacob Schwarten his wife heeded it not, but still plagued
my child to give her her apron to make a christening coat for
her baby, for that it was a pity to let it be burnt, her goodman
gave her such a thump on her back with a knotted stick which
he had pulled out of the hedge that she fell down with loud
shrieks: and when he went to help her up she pulled him down
by his hair, and as reverend Martinus said, now executed what
she had threatened; inasmuch as she struck him on the nose with
her fist with might and main, until the other people came run-
ning up to them, and held her back. Meanwhile, however, the
storm had almost passed over, and sank down toward the sea.
And when we had gone through the little wood, we suddenly
saw the Streckelberg before us covered with people, and the pile
and stake upon the top, upon the which the tall constable jumped
up when he saw us coming, and beckoned with his cap with all
his might. Thereat my senses left me, and my sweet lamb was
not much better, for she bent to and fro like a reed, and stretch-
ing her bound hands towards heaven, she once more cried out:
«Rex tremendæ majestatis !
Qui salvandos salvas gratis,
Salva me, fons pietatis ! ”
And behold, scarce had she spoken these words, when the sun
came out and formed a rainbow right over the mountain most
pleasant to behold; and it is clear that this was a sign from the
merciful God, such as he often gives us, but which we blind
and unbelieving men do not rightly mark. Neither did my child
.
heed it; for albeit she thought upon that first rainbow which
shadowed forth our troubles, yet it seemed to her impossible that
she could now be saved: wherefore she grew so faint, that she
no longer heeded the blessed sign of mercy, and her head fell
forward (for she could no longer lean it upon me, seeing that I
lay my length at the bottom of the cart), till her garland almost
XV11-617


## p. 9858 (#266) ###########################################

9858
JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
touched my worthy gossip his knees. Thereupon he bade the
driver stop for a moment, and pulled out a small flask filled with
wine, which he always carries in his pocket when witches are to
be burnt, in order to comfort them therewith in their terror.
(Henceforth, I myself will ever do the like, for this fashion of
my dear gossip pleases me well. ) He first poured some of this
wine down my throat, and afterwards down my child's: and we
had scarce come to ourselves again, when a fearful noise and
tumult arose among the people behind us, and they not only
cried out in deadly fear, “The sheriff is come back! the sheriff is
come again! ” but as they could neither run away forwards or
backwards (being afraid of the ghost behind and of my child
before them), they ran on either side; some rushing into the
,
coppice and others wading into the Achterwater up to their
necks.
Item, as soon as Dom. Camerarius saw the ghost come out of
the coppice with a gray hat and a gray feather, such as the sher-
iff wore, riding on the gray charger, he crept under a bundle
of straw in the cart; and Dom. Consul cursed my child again,
and bade the coachman drive on as madly as they could, even
should all the horses die of it, when the impudent constable
behind us called to him, “It is not the sheriff, but the young
lord of Nienkerken, who will surely seek to save the witch: shall
I then cut her throat with my sword ? ” At these fearful words
my child and I came to ourselves again, and the fellow had
already lift up his naked sword to smite her, seeing Dom. Con-
sul had made him a sign with his hand, when my dear gossip,
who saw it, pulled my child with all his strength into his lap.
(May God reward him on the Day of Judgment, for I never can. )
The villain would have stabbed her as she lay in his lap; but
the young lord was already there, and seeing what he was about
to do, thrust the boar-spear which he held in his hand in between
the constable's shoulders, so that he fell headlong on the earth,
and his own sword, by the guidance of the most righteous God,
went into his ribs on one side and out again at the other.
He lay there and bellowed; but the young lord heeded him not,
but said to my child, «Sweet maid, God be praised that you are
safe! When, however, he saw her bound hands, he gnashed
his teeth; and cursing her judges, he jumped off his horse, and
cut the rope with his sword which he held in his right hand,
took her hand in his, and said, "Alas, sweet maid, how have I
(
((


## p. 9859 (#267) ###########################################

JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
9859
an old
sorrowed for you! but I could not save you, as I myself also lay
in chains, which you may see from my looks. ”
But my child could answer him never a word, and fell into a
swound again for joy; howbeit she soon came to herself again,
seeing my dear gossip still had a little wine by him. Meanwhile
the dear young lord did me some injustice, which however I
freely forgive him; for he railed at me and called me
woman, who could do naught save weep and wail. Why had I not
journeyed after the Swedish king, or why had I not gone to Mel-
lenthin myself to fetch his testimony, as I knew right well what
he thought about witchcraft ? (But, blessed God, how could I do
otherwise than believe the judge, who had been there? Others
besides old women would have done the same; and I never
once thought of the Swedish king; and say, dear reader, how
could I have journeyed after him and left my own child ? But
young folks do not think of these things, seeing they know not
what a father feels. )
Meanwhile, however, Dom. Camerarius, having heard that it
was the young lord, had again crept out from beneath the straw;
item, Dom. Consul had jumped down from the coach and ran
towards us, railing at him loudly, and asking him by what
power and authority he acted thus, seeing that he himself had
heretofore denounced the ungodly witch ? But the young lord
pointed with his sword to his people, who now came riding out
of the coppice about eighteen strong, armed with sabres, pikes,
and muskets, and said, “There is my authority; and I would let
you feel it on your back if I did not know that you were but a
stupid ass. When did you hear any testimony from me against
this virtuous maiden ? You lie in your throat if you say you
did. ” And as Dom. Consul stood and straightway forswore him-
self, the young lord, to the astonishment of all, related as fol-
lows:
That as soon as he heard of the misfortune which had befallen
me and my child, he ordered his horse to be saddled forth with,
in order to ride to Pudgla to bear witness to our innocence:
this, however, his old father would nowise suffer, thinking that
his nobility would receive a stain if it came to be known that
his son had conversed with a reputed witch by night on the
Streckelberg He had caused him therefore, as prayers and
threats were of no avail, to be bound hand and foot and con-
fined in the donjon-keep, where till datum an old servant had
(


## p. 9860 (#268) ###########################################

9860
JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
watched him; who refused to let him escape, notwithstanding he
offered him any sum of money; whereupon he fell into the great-
est anguish and despair at the thought that innocent blood would
be shed on his account: but that the all-righteous God had gra-
ciously spared him this sorrow; for his father had fallen sick from
vexation, and lay abed all this time, and it so happened that
this very morning, about prayer-time, the huntsman in shooting
at a wild duck in the moat had by chance sorely wounded his
· father's favorite dog, called Packan, which had crept howling to
his father's bedside and had died there; whereupon the old man,
who was weak, was so angered that he was presently seized with
a fit and gave up the ghost too. Hereupon his people released
him; and after he had closed his father's eyes and prayed an
“Our Father” over him, he straightway set out with all the
people he could find in the castle in order to save the innocent
maiden. For he testified here himself before all, on the word
and honor of a knight, - nay, more, by his hopes of salvation,-
that he himself was that devil which had appeared to the maiden
on the mountain in the shape of a hairy giant: for having heard
by common report that she ofttimes went thither, he greatly
desired to know what she did there, and that from fear of his
hard father he disguised himself in a wolf's skin, so that none
might know him, and he had already spent two nights there,
when on the third the maiden came; and he then saw her dig
for amber on the mountain, and that she did not call upon
Satan, but recited a Latin carmen aloud to herself. This he
would have testified at Pudgla, but from the cause aforesaid he
had not been able: moreover his father had laid his cousin, Claus
von Nienkerken, who was there on a visit, in his bed, and made
him bear false witness; for as Dom. Consul had not seen him
(I mean the young lord) for many a long year, seeing he had
studied in foreign parts, his father thought that he might easily
be deceived, which accordingly happened.
When the worthy young lord had stated this before Dom.
Consul and all the people, which flocked together on hearing that
the young lord was no ghost, I felt as though a millstone had
been taken off my heart; and seeing that the people (who had
already pulled the constable from under the cart, and crowded
round him like a swarm of bees) cried to me that he was dying,
but desired first to confess somewhat to me, I jumped from the
cart as lightly as a young bachelor, and called to Dom. Consul


## p. 9861 (#269) ###########################################

JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
9861
>>
and the young lord to go with me, seeing that I could easily
guess what he had on his mind. He sat upon a stone, and the
blood gushed from his side like a fountain, now that they had
drawn out the sword; he whimpered on seeing me, and said that
he had in truth hearkened behind the door to all that old Liz-
zie had confessed to me, namely, that she herself, together with
the sheriff, had worked all the witchcraft on man and beast, to
frighten my poor child and force her to play the wanton. That
he had hidden this, seeing that the sheriff had promised him
a great reward for so doing; but that he would now confess it
freely, since God had brought my child her innocence to light.
Wherefore he besought my child and myself to forgive him.
And when Dom. Consul shook his head, and asked whether he
would live and die on the truth of this confession, he answered,
“Yes! ) and straightway fell on his side to the earth and gave
up the ghost.
Meanwhile time hung heavy with the people on the mountain,
who had come from Coserow, from Zitze, from Gnitze, etc. , to
see my child burnt; and they all came running down the hill
in long rows like geese, one after the other, to see what had
happened. And among them was my ploughman, Claus Neels.
When the worthy fellow saw and heard what had befallen us,
he began to weep aloud for joy; and straightway he too told
what he had heard the sheriff say to old Lizzie in the garden,
and how he had promised a pig in the room of her own little
pig, which she had herself bewitched to death in order to bring
my child into evil repute. Summa: all that I have noted above,
and which till datum he had kept to himself for fear of the
question. Hereat all the people marveled, and greatly bewailed
her misfortunes; and many came, among them old Paasch, and
would have kissed my daughter her hands and feet, as also mine
own, and praised us now as much as they had before reviled us.
But thus it ever is with the people. Wherefore my departed
father used to say:-
“The people's hate is death;
Their love a passing breath! ”
My dear gossip ceased not from fondling my child, holding her
in his lap, and weeping over her like a father (for I could not
have wept more myself than he wept). Howbeit she herself wept
not, but begged the young lord to send one of his horsemen


## p. 9862 (#270) ###########################################

9862
JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
to her faithful old maid-servant at Pudgla, to tell her what had
befallen us, which he straightway did to please her. But the
worshipful court (for Dom. Camerarius and the scriba had now
plucked up a heart, and had come down from the coach) was not
yet satisfied, and Dom. Consul began to tell the young lord about
the bewitched bridge, which none other save my daughter could
have bewitched. Hereto the young lord gave answer that this
was indeed a strange thing, inasmuch as his own horse had also
broken a leg thereon; whereupon he had taken the sheriff his
horse, which he saw tied up at the mill: but he did not think
that this could be laid to the charge of the maiden, but that it
came about by natural means, as he had half discovered already,
although he had not had time to search the matter thoroughly.
Wherefore he besought the worshipful court and all the people,
together with my child herself, to return back thither, where,
with God's help, he would clear her from this suspicion also, and
prove her perfect innocence before them all.
Thereunto the worshipful court agreed; and the young lord,
having given the sheriff his gray charger to my ploughman to
carry the corpse, which had been laid across the horse's neck, to
Coserow, the young lord got into the cart by us, but did not
seat himself beside my child, but backward by my dear gossip.
Moreover, he bade one of his own people drive us instead of
the old coachman, and thus we turned back in God his name.
Custos Benzensis, who with the children had run in among the
vetches by the wayside (my defunct Custos would not have done
so, he had more courage), went on before again with the young
folks; and by command of his reverence the pastor led the Am-
brosian Te Deum, which deeply moved us all, more especially
my child, insomuch that her book was wetted with her tears,
and she at length laid it down and said, at the same time giving
her hand to the young lord, “How can I thank God and you for
that which you have done for me this day? ” Whereupon the
young lord answered, saying, "I have greater cause to thank
God than yourself, sweet maid, seeing that you have suffered in
your dungeon unjustly, but I justly, inasmuch as by my thought-
lessness I brought this misery upon you. Believe me that this
morning, when in my donjon-keep I first heard the sound of
the dead-bell, I thought to have died; and when it tolled for the
third time, I should have gone distraught in my grief, had not
the Almighty God at that moment taken the life of my strange
(


## p. 9863 (#271) ###########################################

JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
9863
>>
»
(
father, so that your innocent life should be saved by me. Where-
fore I have vowed a new tower, and whatsoe'er beside may be
needful, to the blessed house of God; for naught more bitter
could have befallen me on earth than your death, sweet maid,
and naught more sweet than your life! ”
But at these words my child only wept and sighed; and when
he looked on her, she cast down her eyes and trembled, so that
I straightway perceived that my sorrows were not yet come to an
end, but that another barrel of tears was just tapped for me; and
so indeed it was. Moreover, the ass of a Custos, having finished
the Te Deum before we were come to the bridge, straightway
struck up the next following hymn, which was a funeral one,
beginning “The body let us now inter. ” (God be praised that
no harm has come of it till datum. ) My beloved gossip rated
him not a little, and threatened him that for his stupidity he
should not get the money for the shoes which he had promised
him out of the Church dues. But my child comforted him, and
promised him a pair of shoes at her own charges, seeing that
peradventure a funeral hymn was better for her than a song of
gladness.
And when this vexed the young lord, and he said, “How
now, sweet maid, you know not how enough to thank God and
me for your rescue, and yet you speak thus ? ” she answered,
smiling sadly, that she had only spoken thus to comfort the poor
Custos. But I straightway saw that she was in earnest; for that
she felt that although she had escaped one fire, she already
burned in another.
Meanwhile we come to the bridge again; and all the
folks stood still, and gazed open-mouthed, when the young lord
jumped down from the cart, and after stabbing his horse, which
still lay kicking on the bridge, went on his knees, and felt here
and there with his hand. At length he called to the worshipful
court to draw near, for that he had found out the witchcraft.
But none save Dom. Consul and a few fellows out of the crowd,
among whom was old Paasch, would follow him; item, my dear
gossip and myself: and the young lord showed us a lump of tal-
low about the size of a large walnut which lay on the ground,
and wherewith the whole bridge had been smeared, so that it
looked quite white, but which all the folks in their fright had
taken for flour out of the mill; itein, with some other materia
which stunk like fitchock's dung, but what it was we could not
were


## p. 9864 (#272) ###########################################

9864
JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
find out. Soon after a fellow found another bit of tallow, and
showed it to the people; whereupon I cried, “Aha! none hath
· done this but that ungodly miller's man, in revenge for the
stripes which the sheriff gave him for reviling my child. ” Where-
upon I told what he had done, and Dom. Consul, who also had
heard thereof, straightway sent for the miller.
He, however, did as though he knew naught of the matter;
and only said that his man had left his service about an hour
ago. But a young lass, the miller's maid-servant, said that that
very morning before daybreak, when she had got up to let out
the cattle, she had seen the man scouring the bridge; but that
she had given it no further heed, and had gone to sleep for
another hour, and she pretended to know no more than the
miller whither the rascal was gone. When the young lord had
heard this news, he got up into the cart and began to address
the people, seeking to persuade them no longer to believe in
witchcraft, now that they had seen what it really was. When I
heard this, I was horror-stricken (as was but right) in my con-
science as a priest, and I got upon the cart-wheel, and whispered
into his ear for God his sake to leave this materia; seeing that
if the people no longer feared the Devil, neither would they fear
our Lord God.
The dear young lord forthwith did as I would have him, and
only asked the people whether they now held my child to be
perfectly innocent ? and when they had answered «Yes! ” he
begged them to go quietly home, and to thank God that he
had saved innocent blood. That he too would now return home,
and that he hoped that none would molest me and my child if
he let us return to Coserow alone. Hereupon he turned hastily
towards her, took her hand, and said, "Farewell, sweet maid:
I trust that I shall soon clear your honor before the world; but
do you thank God therefor, not ine. ” He then did the like to
me and to my dear gossip, whereupon he jumped down from the
cart and went and sat beside Dom. Consul in his coach. The
latter also spake a few words to the people, and likewise begged
my child and me to forgive him (and I must say it to his honor
that the tears ran down his cheeks the while); but he was so
hurried by the young lord that he brake short his discourse, and
they drove off over the little bridge without so much as looking
back. Only Dom. Consul looked round once, and called out to
me that in his hurry he had forgotten to tell the executioner
C


## p. 9865 (#273) ###########################################

JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
9865
that no
one was to be burned to-day: I was therefore to send
the churchwarden of Uekeritze up the inountain, to say so in his
name; the which I did. And the bloodhound was still on the
mountain, albeit he had long since heard what had befallen;
and when the bailiff gave him the orders of the worshipful court,
he began to curse so fearfully that it might have awakened the
dead; moreover he plucked off his cap and trampled it under foot,
so that any one might have guessed what he felt.
But to return to ourselves. My child sat as still and as white
as a pillar of salt after the young lord had left her so suddenly
and so unawares; but she was somewhat comforted when the
old maid-servant came running with her coats tucked up to her
knees, and carrying her shoes and stockings in her hands. We
heard her afar off, as the mill had stopped, blubbering for joy;
and she fell at least three times on the bridge, but at last she
got over safe, and kissed now mine and now my child her hands
and feet; begging us only not to turn her away, but to keep her
until her life's end; the which we promised to do. She had to
climb up behind where the impudent constable had sat, seeing
that my dear gossip would not leave me until I should be back
in mine own manse. And as the young lord his servant had got
up behind the coach, old Paasch drove us home, and all the folks
who had waited till datum ran beside the cart, praising and pity-
ing as much as they had before scorned and reviled us. Scarce
however had we passed through Uekeritze, when we again heard
cries of —«Here comes the young lord, here comes the young
lord ! ” so that my child started up for joy and became as red as
a rose; but some of the folks ran into the buckwheat by the road
again, thinking it was another ghost. It was however in truth
the young lord, who galloped up on a black horse, calling out
as he drew near us, “Notwithstanding the haste I am in, sweet
maid, I must return and give you safe-conduct home, seeing that
I have just heard that the filthy people reviled you by the way,
and I know not whether you are yet safe. ” Hereupon he urged
old Paasch to mend his pace; and as his kicking and trampling
did not even make the horses trot, the young lord struck the
saddle-horse from time to time with the flat of his sword, so that
soon reached the village and the manse. Howbeit when I
prayed him to dismount awhile, he would not, but excused him-
self, saying that he must still ride through Usedom to Anclam;
but charged old Paasch, who was our bailiff, to watch over my
we


## p. 9866 (#274) ###########################################

9866
JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD
child as the apple of his eye, and should anything unusual hap-
pen he was straightway to inform the town-clerk at Pudgla, or
Dom. Consul at Usedom, thereof. And when Paasch had promised
to do this, he waved his hand to us and galloped off as fast as
he could.
But before he got round the corner by Pagel his house, he
turned back for the third time; and when we wondered thereat,
he said we must forgive him, seeing his thoughts wandered
to-day.
That I had formerly told him that I still had my patent of
nobility, the which he begged me to lend him for a time. Here-
upon I answered that I must first seek for it, and that he had
best dismount the while. But he would not, and again excused
himself, saying he had no time. He therefore stayed without
the door until I brought him the patent; whereupon he thanked
me and said, “Do not wonder hereat: you will soon see what my
purpose is. ” Whereupon he struck his spurs into his horse's sides
and did not come back again.
Translation of Lady Duff-Gordon.


## p. 9867 (#275) ###########################################

9867
HERMAN MELVILLE
(1819-1891)
N 1846 appeared a volume of travel and adventure called
(Typee,' with the name of Herman Melville on the title-
page. It created a stir, which in these days would be
called a sensation, which speedily spread to England.
What was
Typee ? What was this South Sea island ? Did it exist, with its soft
airs and compliant people, only in romance ? The romantic name
«Herman Melville » must be only a nom de plume. The critics and
the newspapers took up the mystery and tossed it about. Was the
whole thing an invention of a clever ro-
mancer? Was there any such person as
Melville and his sailor comrade “Toby” ?
The newspapers were facetious about the
latter, and headed their paragraphs “To Be
or not To Be. ” It was a great relief when
one day the veritable sailor Toby turned
up in Buffalo, New York, and inade affirma-
tion to the truth of the whole narrative.
(Typee' was the first of the long line
of books of travel, adventure, and romance
about the South Seas; and Fayaway was
the first of the Polynesian maidens to at-
tract the attention of the world. The book HERMAN MELVILLE
not only opened a new world, but it gave
new terms — like taboo — to our language. It led the way to a host
of other writers, among whom recently are Pierre Loti and Steven-
son. The Mariage de Loti, in its incidents and romanticism, copies
(Typee. It is not probable, however, that Pierre Loti ever saw Mel-
ville's book, or he would not have made such an imitation.
Herman Melville, son of a New York merchant, and born in that
city in October 1819, in a state of life which hedged him about
with a thousand social restrictions, early came to live in the all,” as
Goethe has it; though Melville himself put the transformation much
later, when he broke away from home, became a sailor on a whal-
ing vessel, and there endured innumerable hardships and cruelties.
Finally escaping from his tyrants, he reached the Marquesas Islands,



## p. 9868 (#276) ###########################################

9868
HERMAN MELVILLE
(
where he enjoyed strange adventures for many months,- a captive
in a tribe of cannibals in the Typee Valley. An Australian ship
having taken him aboard, he returned home, the hero of strange
tales which he at once chronicled in the romances (Typee) (1846)
and Omoo) (1847). No sooner were these volumes published than
his promise of lasting fame “was voluble in the mouths of wisest
censure, while his actual success put him in the first rank of Amer-
ican authors at the age of twenty-six. But for some mysterious rea-
son (for most of his other books were written on the subject which
inspired (Typee) and (Omoo,' and were possessed with the same
enthusiasm) Moby Dick,' published when he was only thirty-two
years old, disclosed that he had come to the last leaf in the bulb. ”
He wrote several books afterwards, musings and stories, and three
volumes of poems which just miss the mark. Mr. R. H. Stoddard, his
kindly and sympathetic critic, said of him that he thought like a
poet, saw like a poet, felt like a poet; but never attained any pro-
ficiency in verse, because, though there was a wealth of imagination
in his mind, it was an untrained imagination, and "a world of the
stuff out of which poetry is made, but no poetry, which is creation,
not chaos. ”
At one time Melville and Hawthorne were near neighbors,— when
Hawthorne lived on the brink of Stockbridge pool, and Melville at
Lenox; and it is possible that each was influenced by the genius of
the other. Mr. Stoddard thinks there were dark, mysterious elements
in Melville's nature akin to those that possessed Hawthorne; but that
unlike Hawthorne, Melville did not control his melancholy, letting it
rather lead him into morbid moods. Certainly, in the days of 'Omoo'
and “Typee' Melville exhibited no such traits; but he had probably,
like Emily Bronté, “an intense and glowing mind” to see everything
through its own atmosphere. Really to know Melville the man, it is
necessary to read the letters that passed between Hawthorne and
himself, which are printed in Mr. Julian Hawthorne's memoir of his
parents. There Melville pours out his sad strange views of life, which
on the whole had treated him kindly, given him a success which
would have intoxicated another man with joy, and the promise of
favors to come.
His later years were passed in the world of thought rather than
of action. He published nothing; and New York, his old camping-
ground, seldom knew him. But when he appeared, his gray figure,
gray hair and coloring, and piercing gray eyes, marked him to the
most casual observer. Though a man of moods, he had a peculiarly
winning and interesting personality, suggesting Laurence Oliphant in
his gentle deference to an opponent's conventional opinion while he
expressed the wildest and most emancipated ideas of his own.


## p.